The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today I should like to indicate the extent to which religious systems reveal, in specific instances, their hidden spiritual-scientific foundations.

It is a small but important aspect of the occult scientific basis of religions that I wish to discuss. Even the simplest people in contemporary society recognize this hidden background of religions as a spiritual fact involving the deepest truths. Seeking these truths brings to light how wisdom-filled and fraught with mystery are the ties binding together the spiritual life of mankind.

Think of Christian prayer. You all know what it is. It has often been spoken of, and anthroposophists have often reflected upon its relation to the spiritual-scientific world view. This spiritual-scientific world conception has brought to members of the anthroposophic movement another method of elevating the human being—the human soul—to contact with the divine, spiritual, cosmic forces. This method is meditation, by which a person experiences the spiritual content within himself, and receives something of what is given by the great guiding spirits of humanity or by the spiritual content of great civilizations in which the human being immerses himself and so identifies himself with the divine spiritual currents in the world.

Meditating in even the simplest way upon one of the formulas pronounced by the spiritual leaders of mankind, admitting to the mind a formula that embodies a great thought—not every thought is suitable, as you know, but only one handed down for this purpose by the guiding spirits of humanity—and letting such a formula really live in the heart and experience, brings a person to union with the higher spirituality. A higher power, in which he lives, streams through him, and patient perseverance to the point of letting this flow of power strengthen him enough morally and intellectually, brings him to the moment when the content of his meditation can awaken the deeper forces latent in the human soul. This kind of meditation may reach any of a number of stages, from the smallest gain in moral strength to the highest attainments of clairvoyance. But time, patience and energy are needed to bring most people to the higher degrees of clairvoyance by this means.

Meditation is usually thought of as an oriental approach to the divine. In the Occident, especially in Christian communities, prayer has taken its place. It is by prayer that the Christian customarily approaches the Divine, and through it he seeks entry to the higher worlds.

It should be noted by the way that what passes for prayer today would by no means have been considered such in early Christian times, least of all by the Founder of Christianity, Christ Jesus Himself. For if it were to happen that someone were really to gain the gratification of his personal wishes by prayer or entreaty, he would soon entirely disregard the all-embracing effect that the granting of the prayer should bring. He would assume that the Deity granted his wishes rather than those of others. One peasant might pray for sunshine for a particular crop; another for rain for another crop. What would Divine Providence then do?

Or suppose two opposing armies are facing each other, with each side praying for victory and supposing its cause alone to be just. Such an instance makes immediately obvious how little universality and sense of brotherhood attach to prayers arising out of personal wishes, and the granting of such prayers by God can satisfy only one group of supplicants. People so praying disregard the prayer in which Christ Jesus set forth the fundamental attitude of mind that should prevail in all prayer: “Father, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done.” This is the Christian attitude of prayer.

Whatever the object of the prayer, this fundamental temper of mind must echo readily as an undertone in the soul of the petitioner for his prayer to be given in a Christian manner. When this is the character of his plea, the form of his prayer will be but a means of rising to higher spiritual realms to experience the Divinity within the soul. It will be such, moreover, as to expel every selfish wish and will-impulse. Its spirit will be that of the words, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” The result will be a rising to the divine world and absorption in it. Attainment of this soul mood in Christian prayer renders it similar to meditation, though more colored by feeling. Originally, Christian prayer was not essentially different from meditation. Meditation is more imbued with thought, however. Through it, the thoughts of the great leaders of mankind draw the meditant onward toward harmony with the divine currents streaming through the world. Through feeling, prayer accomplishes the same result.

The goal of both prayer and meditation is thus clearly the soul's union with the divine currents in the world. This union, on the highest plane, is the so-called unio mystica, or mystical union, with the Godhead.

Never could the human being attain to this union with God, never could he gain a relationship with higher spiritual beings, were he himself not an emanation of the divine-spiritual. Man's nature is twofold, as we know. In him are the four oft-mentioned human principles—physical body, etheric or life-body, astral body and ego. Then, within the ego, he has the possibility of unfolding for the future the three higher principles—manas, buddhi and atma, known in our western languages as spirit self, life spirit and spirit man.¹

To understand rightly this twofold human nature, let us consider the period of man's origin. From previous lectures, you will remember that man now represents the blending of these two natures—the blending of the three higher potentials (spirit self, life spirit and spirit man) with the four existing lower principles (physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego) developed in a far-distant past, which we term the Lemurian epoch of the earth. Tracing man backward from the present epoch through the Greco-Latin, Egypto-Chaldean, Persian and Indian periods of mankind to the great Atlantean flood recorded in the deluge-myths of all nations, we reach those ancestors of ours who lived on the land-mass we call Atlantis, between present-day Europe and America. Still further back, we come to a primeval land-mass, which we call Lemuria, lying between Australia and India. It was in the middle of that Lemurian period that the higher triad of spirit self, life spirit and spirit man united with the four lower human principles—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego.

Correctly speaking, at that period in the Lemurian epoch, the highest being on earth was not yet a physical human being in our sense of the word. Only a kind of envelope existed, made up of the highest animal nature—a being, or collection of beings, made up of the four lower principles of human nature. But until then the higher human being, which is the internal part of human nature, destined to evolve further and further in the future through the three principles of spirit self, life spirit and spirit man, rested in the bosom of the Godhead.

To picture the scene at that time by a trivial modern comparison, it was as though all the people living on earth had been building bodies capable of receiving a human soul as a sponge absorbs water. Picture a vessel of water. It is impossible to tell where one drop of water ends and another begins. But picture also a number of little sponges immersed in the water, each soaking up a part of it. What had been a uniform mass of water is now distributed among the many little sponges. So it was with human souls in that remote age. Previously, they had been at rest, without individuality, in the bosom of the Divine First Cause, but at that particular moment they were absorbed by human bodies and so individualized, like the water by the sponges.

What was then absorbed by the separate bodies, or four lower principles, continued to evolve further, and will so continue into the future. In spiritual science it has always been called the higher triad, and the triangle and the square were made symbols, especially in the Pythagorean school, of the human being as he came into existence at the middle of the Lemurian epoch. The diagram on the next page thus represents the constituent elements of the human being,

But the higher, eternal portion, which passes through all incarnations, has a double character, as you can see, From one side it may be regarded as the primordial, eternal element of humanity and, from the other, as a drop of the Divine Essence given up by the Godhead and poured into the fourfold human vessel. As a result, a drop of the independently individualized Divinity is to be found in each of us human beings.

The three higher members of the human being—the eternal portion—may thus be looked upon as the three highest principles in man, but equally as three principles in the Godhead Itself. Actually, the three highest principles of human nature are at the same time the three lowest principles of the Divinity nearest to man. An enumeration of man's principles must start with the physical body, continue with the etheric body, astral body and ego, thence from spirit self to spirit man. But a corresponding enumeration of the principles of those Divine Beings who gave a drop of their own soul nature to man at the time of which we are speaking in the far-off past, must begin with spirit self, continue with life spirit and spirit man, and thence proceed to principles above spirit man, of which contemporary man can only conceive when he is a pupil of Initiates.

You see that the three principles of higher human nature may be looked upon as three divine principles, and today we shall so regard them, not as human, but as divine principles, describing them accordingly. The highest principle in us, which we shall only develop at the end of our earth incarnations, or, we may say, at the end of our present planetary course, is called spirit man in terms of spiritual or occult science. The original essence of this human principle is faintly comparable to the will element in present-day human nature. This comparison is not exact, but only a faint indication. Yet the fundamental character of this highest of the divine principles in us is of the nature of will—a kind of willing. This will element in us, today only feebly developed in our inner being, will become in the course of our ever ascending development the predominating principle in us.

Man is today essentially a consciousness, or understanding being, whereas in many ways his will is limited. He understands the surrounding world as a totality—that is, to a certain degree—but has no real control over all that he penetrates with his knowledge. This control by his will is a development of the future, and it will become ever stronger until he attains that central goal of existence known to spiritual science as “the great sacrifice,” signifying the power of will to sacrifice oneself completely, not merely in driblets of human sacrifice of the kind of which man is capable today with his puny present feelings and will power. In future time he will have developed the strength to sacrifice his whole being by letting it flow directly into material substance.

One may picture this “great sacrifice,” the highest expression of will in divine nature, by imagining oneself before a mirror in which one's image is reflected. This image is, of course, an illusion, a semblance. Now carry over this image to the point of imagining yourself dying, sacrificing your existence, your feeling and thought, your very being, to inject life into that image. Spiritual science in all ages has called this phenomenon the “outpouring,” “the emanation.” If you could really make this sacrifice, it would be clear that you would no longer be here because you would have given up your whole being to this reflected image to imbue it with life and consciousness.

When the will has become capable of making the “great sacrifice,” it actually creates a universe, great or small, whose mission is bestowed upon it by its creator. Such is the creative will in the Divine Being.

The second principle in the Godhead, life spirit, insofar as it has flowed into humanity, has already been indicated in the comparison that has been made with the mirror. This second principle is the reflected image itself.

Now imagine the inner being of a Divinity that has in this way created a universe, with itself as the center. If, for example, you imagine yourself as the central point in this room, surrounded not by these six surfaces of walls, ceiling and floor, but by a hollow globe that reflects its content, you will see yourself, as the central point, reflected on all sides, everywhere. In like manner you can picture a Divinity as a central will, reflected on all sides, and the mirror is both image of Divinity and the universe. For what is a universe? Nothing but a mirror of the essential nature of Divinity.

The universe lives and moves because the Divinity is poured into it—the “outpouring”—when Divinity makes the “great sacrifice” and is reflected in the universe. The pouring of life and being into a reflected image is an exact picture of this divine creative process.

The divine will expresses itself in infinite diversity, animating thereby the entire universe. In spiritual science, this process of Divinity repeating itself in infinite differentiation, in multiplicity, is known as “the kingdom,” distinguished from the will itself. The will is the central point; its reflection, the kingdom. The will is in this sense comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or will's reflected image, with life spirit.

The kingdom, in turn, reproduces the being of the Divine in infinite variety. Observe it fully, at least to the extent to which it is our kingdom, our multiplicity, or universe. Observe its visible manifestations in minerals, plants, animals and human beings. The kingdom is manifested in each separate being of all these, a fact that even our language expresses in the terms “mineral kingdom,” “vegetable kingdom,” “animal kingdom” and all the great divisions of our universe. The kingdom is all these; each of these in turn, is a kingdom, and if we observe the mass of details involved, we find the nature of all to be divine. In all of them the divine being is reflected, just as the central being is reflected in a hollow globe.

So an observer, looking at the world in the sense of spiritual research, sees God reflected in every human being as an expression and image of the Divine. In a graded series of beings, in infinite diversity, the Godhead appears in the kingdom, and the separate entities are distinguished from one another in the sense of spiritual science by their names. An observer at a stage of existence sufficiently lofty to look upon all these separate entities as “emanations,” or “outpourings,” of the Divine is able to give these entities their names, to give each manifestation of the Divine its name.

Of all beings in the universe, only man thinks the name of each of the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom, distinguishing each from all the others. The will, as we have noted is comparable with spirit man; the kingdom, or reflected image into which the will has been “outpoured,” is comparable with life spirit. The third of the three highest human principles that emanate from the Divine, by which the separate members of the great multiplicity of the kingdom are distinguished from one another and separately named, is comparable with spirit self. The occult science of the different religions has thus simply taught what it was that emanated from the Godhead and flowed into a person to become his eternal image or archetype.

Thus, if you could see yourselves in that condition to which you should finally rise—the condition of spirit man—you would recognize its will-like nature.

If you would rise in thought to a comprehension of the vehicle of will (spirit man)—in other words, to life spirit—you would see that it is the kingdom that represents it in the divine sphere.

If you would rise to penetrate what the names, or conceptions or ideas of things really signify in spirit, you would see that it is the name that represents this wisdom in the divine sphere.

So does ancient teaching reveal that the emanation of Divinity, which has flowed into human nature to form its eternal part, consists of name, of kingdom, of will. Thus what is called the higher triad in man is recognizable as part of the Divine.

To complete this picture, think of the four lower principles of perishable human nature. The three higher principles may be thought of, we know, as principles of the Godhead. Similarly, the four lower principles may be considered as of the perishable world, as human principles.

Think of the physical body, composed as it is of the same substances and Forces as is the seemingly lifeless world around it. The physical body could not go on existing without the inflow into it of matter and force from the surrounding world. The physical body, in a strict sense, is a continual thoroughfare for all that is in it. Into it and out of it again the substances continuously flow that are at one time of the outer world and at another time within us. In the course of seven years, as we have mentioned in other connections, the entire material composition of the human body is renewed. In none of you are the substances that were in you ten years ago. We are perpetually renewing the substances of our physical body. What was formerly in us is now somewhere else, distributed outside us in nature; something else has replaced it inside of us. The body's life depends upon this continual inflow and outflow of matter.

Just as we have considered the three higher human principles as parts of Divinity, we may observe the four principles of our lower nature as parts of Divine Nature.

The physical body may be seen as part of the physical substance of our planet. Its substance is taken from the material planet, then is returned to it. The etheric body likewise may be considered a part of the environment surrounding us here, and so also the astral body.

Think of the etheric body and the astral body together. The astral body, as you know, is the vehicle of all that lives in man as impulse, desire and passion, all that surges up and down in the soul as joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain. The etheric body, on the contrary, is the vehicle that represents and bears within it the more lasting qualities of soul.

Often I have compared the development of the etheric body and astral body with the hour-hand and the minute-hand of a clock. A great difference is observable between what you knew and experienced as an eight-year-old child and what you now know and have experienced, as I have also reminded you on other occasions. You have learned so much, gained so many concepts, in the intervening period. Much that your soul has taken in of joy and sorrow has left it again, actually has passed through it. How different are these relatively ephemeral experiences from such human elements as temperament, character and tendencies that are persisting and continuing. You will find, for instance, that if you were passionately inclined as a child, you are probably still so in later years. Most people keep throughout their lives such basic elements in their natures. It is to overcome this relatively stationary quality of the etheric organism that spiritual training and development are instituted; for, as has often been emphasized, such training is no matter of mere theoretical knowledge. The student has accomplished a great deal, indeed, if he has changed one quality of temperament to which he is predisposed, so speeding up the hour-hand of the clock even a little.

Whatever evolves slowly in this way—a human being's lasting tendencies, enduring qualities of temperament, habits that persist—is rooted in the etheric body; whatever changes quickly by contrast, minute- hand-wise, has its roots in the astral body.

Applying these facts practically to the human being in his environment, to life in the external world, the observer notices a person's connections with the epoch in which he lives, with a nation, with a family, all of which are revealed in his habits, temperament and enduring inclinations. These relatively fixed and abiding qualities tend to be observable, not only in the person himself, but in all with whom he is in any way connected—his family, his nation, etc. A nation's separate individuals are recognizable through their common habits and temperament. An individual who is to achieve a higher spiritual development, to unfold his higher nature, must change his disposition and basic habits. Such a man is called “homeless” in the terminology of spiritual science, because he is obliged to change his etheric body, through which he has been, except for this higher development, connected with his nation.

Life in one's native community reveals, too, that the qualities linking one to a family or nation, stirring one to feel relationships with individual people of the nation, are similar also to qualities widely discernible in one's era. If an ancient Greek should walk into your life, you would have little in common with him. His etheric body would be so unlike yours. Human beings understand one another through common qualities in their etheric bodies.

In the astral body, however, is rooted a man's ability to lift himself more readily out of certain qualities binding him to a common life with others, and to establish himself as a separate individual in his family, in his folk, so that he is not a mere Frenchman nor a mere German nor a member of a family, but stands out as a special individuality within the folk, the family, etc. Thus he can outgrow the totality of characteristics of his nation. Those qualities that he transcends are rooted in the astral body. The astral body is their bearer. The astral body is thus seen to bear more of what is individual and personal in man.

So it is that faults committed through the etheric body render a man more a sinner toward his fellow men through neglect of those obligations and conditions making social life possible among them, between one man and the next. On the other hand, faults of a more individual nature, a man's wrong-doings as a separate personality, result from qualities in the astral body.

Spiritual science has always termed as “guilt” (German, “Schuld”) those sins that are against the community, and that originate in a faulty etheric body. The more common English word “debts” (“Schulden”) has in German an origin similar to the word “guilt,” with its more moral connotation in English, signifying what one man owes another in a moral sense. Debt, or guilt, derives from defective qualities in the etheric body, whereas a defective element in the astral body leads to what spiritual science associates with the word “temptation.” The man yielding to temptation takes upon himself a personal fault, or failure.

The ego, or true personality, too, can commit faults. The Paradise story indicates the kind of fault through which an ego may fall. The human being's higher soul became an ego when it descended from the bosom of the Godhead and entered an earthly body for the first time. It was taken up by the earthly body like a drop of water by a sponge.

The higher soul, or individuality, can commit faults within the ego. These ego-failures, which are different from those stemming from faulty qualities of the etheric and astral bodies, occur through the very fact of a man's attaining independence. To rise gradually, in full consciousness, to freedom and independence, man had to pass through selfishness and egotism. As a soul, he is descended from the Godhead, which is incapable of egotism. A member of an organism never imagines itself independent; if a finger were to imagine itself independent, it would fall away from the rest of the hand and wither.

The self-dependence that is so necessary to human development, and that will attain its full meaning when its fundamental nature is unselfishness, could originate only from selfishness.

It was when this selfishness entered the human body that man became a self-seeking, egotistic being. The ego naturally follows the body's inclinations. Man devours his fellow man, follows selfish impulses and desires, is completely entangled in his earthly receptacle as the drop of water in the sponge.

The Paradise story shows the individual placed in a position to sin just by having become an individual, a really independent being. Whereas formerly he drew in what he needed from the universe, as a single drop in a mass of water derives its force from the mass, his impulses as a fully independent individuality derive wholly from himself. The eating of the apple in Paradise signifies this kind of error stemming from independence. It is significant, too, that the Latin malum means both “evil” and “apple.” All real meanings of words, of course, provided they have any spiritual scientific background, are deeply connected in an inner sense. Spiritual science never uses the word “evil” for any transgression that does not stem from the ego.

Evil is thus the fault proceeding from the ego. Trespass, or guilt, is the fault proceeding from the etheric body of a man in social relationships with his fellow men. Temptation may assail the astral body in any respect in which it is individually and personally at fault.

The fault of the etheric body:
Debts, or Guilt.
The fault of the astral body:
Temptation.
The fault of the ego:
Evil.

Consider the relation of the four lower principles of human nature to their environment, that is, the planetary conditions surrounding them. The physical body continually takes in physical substance as nourishment; so it maintains its existence. The etheric body's life in a finite condition is possible only by maintenance of fellowship with people into whose community one has grown. The astral body is maintained by overcoming temptation. The ego is maintained, and undergoes development in the right way, by not succumbing when “evil” threatens.

Now bring before your mind's eye the whole human being—the lower quaternary and the higher triad—so that you can say: In individual man there lives a drop of Divinity; he is evolving to the Divine through the expression of his deepest, innermost nature. In once expressing outwardly that deepest, innermost nature, he reveals that he has by gradual development transmuted his own being into what Christianity calls the “Father.” What lies hidden in the human soul and hovers before humanity as its great goal is called the Father in Heaven.

One wishing to attain that degree of development must be capable of bringing his higher triad and lower quaternary to the point at which they can maintain the physical body adequately. The etheric body must live socially so that an adjustment is effected with whatever exists of “trespass” within it. The astral body must not perish in “temptation,” nor the body of the ego fall in “evil.” Man must strive upward to the Father in Heaven through the three higher principles—the Name, the Kingdom, the Will.

The Name must be felt in such a way that it becomes hallowed. Look around you. All things in their diversity express the Godhead. In calling each thing by its name, you make it a member of the divine order of the world. By beholding in every single thing or being that you name in your environment some element that reveals in it a principle of Divine Being, you help make each part of your environment sacred. You hallow each part. You grow into the Kingdom—which is the outpouring of Divinity—and develop yourself up to the Will, which is spirit man but at the same time a principle of the Godhead.

Think, now, of a meditant who concentrates wholly upon this meaning of human development, and who wishes to gather this meaning—the seven principles of man's spiritual evolution—into seven petitions in prayer. How will he pray?

To express the aim of the prayer, he will have to begin, before he utters the seven petitions:

In this form of salutation, man concerns himself with the deepest foundation of the human soul, the inmost element of the human being, which Christian esoteric teaching characterizes as of the kingdom of spirit. The link of the first three petitions, which follow this exalted salutation, is with the three higher principles of human nature, with the divine substance within man:

We have already pointed out in these lectures that in the words of Christ-Jesus to Nicodemus, we must recognize a conversation between Christ and a personality who is able to perceive what can be beheld outside of the physical body by means of higher organs of cognition if developed to a certain stage. For those who understand such things, this is clearly and distinctly indicated in the Gospel wherein it is stated that Nicodemus came to Christ-Jesus “in the night,” meaning in a state of consciousness in which the human being does not make use of his outer sense organs. We shall not enter into the trivial explanations which have been presented by different people concerning these words, “in the night.” You know that in this conversation the problem is one of rebirth of the human being “out of water and Spirit.” These are very important words concerning rebirth which the Christ speaks to Nicodemus in the 4th verse of the 3rd Chapter:

Nicodemus said unto Him:—How can a man be reborn when he is old?

Jesus answered:—Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.

We have already said that these words must be carefully weighed and we should keep definitely in mind that the words of a religious document of this kind must be taken in a literal sense on the one hang, but on the other we must first discover and understand this literal meaning. The words are often quoted, “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life!” Those who quote these words often employ them in a very peculiar manner. They find in them a license for reading into them their own phantasy, which they call the “spirit of the thing,” and then they say to someone who has taken the trouble to learn the letter before coming to the spirit: “What have we to do with the letter? The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” One who speaks in this manner, stands about on the same level with a man who would say: “The spirit is what truly lives, but the body is something dead. Therefore let us destroy the body, then will the spirit become alive.” Whoever speaks in this way does not know that the spirit is formed gradually, that the human being must use the organs of his physical body for reception of what he experiences in the physical world, which he then raises into spirit. First we must know the letter, then we can kill it; likewise, when the spirit has drawn everything it can out of the human body, the latter falls away from the human spirit.

There is something extraordinarily profound just in this very chapter of the Gospel of St. John. We can only enter into the meaning of it, when we follow human evolution still further back than we have already in our consideration of the Gospel up to the present. Today we must trace the human being back into still more remote periods of the earth's evolution.

In order that you may not, at the very beginning, be too much shocked at what I shall have to say about these early human states, I should like to lead you back once more to the ancient Atlantean epoch.

We have already called attention to the fact that before that great cataclysm of our earth, a memory of which is retained in the sagas of the Flood, our human progenitors lived out there in the west in a region which no longer exists, but which now forms the bed of the Atlantic Ocean. This continent which is called the ancient Atlantis harbored our forefathers. When we examine the later epochs of this Atlantean period of human evolution, we find, even in these epochs of the far distant past, that at least the form of the human being was not so very much unlike his present one. However, if we should go back to the earliest periods of this Atlantean continent, we would find the human form quite different from that of the present. We can go still further back.

Before the Atlantean age, the human being lived in a land which, in the language of today, is called Lemuria. This continent also perished through great changes on our earth. It occupied approximately the region which now lies between southern Asia, Africa, and Australia. When we examine the human forms which lived in Lemuria, as they present themselves to clairvoyant sight, we find them very different from those of present day humanity, and it is not necessary that I describe them to you in detail nor those of the early Atlantean period. Although you have already had to endure a great deal in the descriptions of Spiritual Science, nevertheless the forms of these ancient Lemurians, fundamentally so different from the present forms, would appear to you quite improbable. However, we must in a certain respect describe them, although quite superficially if we wish to understand what has happened to the human being in the course of the earth's evolution.

Let us suppose, for example, something in reality quite impossible, but we shall assume it for the sake of an understanding. Let us suppose that with your present senses, which of course you did not at that time possess, you could look into the latter part of the Lemurian and the first part of the Atlantean epochs of human evolution, and observe the surface of the earth in its various parts. If you should expect to be able to find the human being upon the earth by means of this physical sense perception, you would be greatly disappointed. At that time he did not exist in a form which you would be able to see with your present physical senses. It would appear to you as though certain regions of our earth's surface, already resembling islands, protruded out of the rest of the still fluidic earth, which was either surrounded by sea-water or enveloped in vapour. But those regions which thus protruded like islands were not yet dry land like our present solid earth, but soft earth masses in the midst of which fiery forces played. These island regions were continually being thrown up and then again submerged by the volcanic forces of that time. In short, there was still in the earth an element active in fire; all was still actively in a state of flux, continually changing. In certain regions which already existed, and which had been cooled to a certain degree, you would find precursors of our present animal world. Here and there you would have observed grotesque shapes; you would have found strange forms, forerunners of our reptiles and amphibians. However, you would have been able to see nothing of the human being, because at that time he did not possess a physical body dense and solid enough to be seen. You would have had to seek him elsewhere, as it were, in the masses of water and vapour. It would be, perhaps, as though you were to swim out to sea at the present time and could see there not much more of certain lower animals than a soft, slimy mass. You would then find the human physical form of that time embedded in the regions of aqueous vapour. The further back we go, the more attenuated and like his vapoury, watery environment do we find the human form of that period. Not until the Atlantean period does it begin to condense, and were we able to follow with our eyes the whole of evolution, we should be able to see how, out of the water, this human being becomes condensed, gradually descending upon the surface of the earth. As a matter of fact, it is true that the physical human being set foot upon the ground of our earth's surface relatively late. From this region of water and air, he gradually descended, crystallizing out of it. We have now obtained a sketchy picture of a human being who is not distinguishable from his environment, who consists of the same element in which he lives. When we follow very far back in the evolution of the earth, we find that this human body becomes more and more tenuous.

Now let us go back to the very beginning of our present earthly planet. We know that it arose out of the ancient Moon. This ancient Moon we have called the “Cosmos of Wisdom.” At a certain stage of its evolution, this ancient Moon did not contain what we would call solid earth, and we must understand very clearly that the physical conditions were quite different on the embodiment of our planet which just preceded our present Earth. If you follow back as far as the ancient Saturn condition, you must not imagine that it would appear as our earth now appears, that you would find rocks upon which you could walk, and trees which you could climb. None of all this existed at that time. If you had approached ancient Saturn during the middle period of its evolution from far out in cosmic space, you would not, perhaps, have seen any special cosmic body moving about, but you would have been able to detect something very strange, namely, that you had come into a region where you felt as though you had crept into an oven. The only reality of this Saturn state was that it possessed a different degree of warmth from its environment. In no other way could it have been perceived. Occultism does not, like the present ordinary physics, distinguish three conditions of matter only, but it discerns still others. The physicist declares that at present there are solid, fluidic and gaseous bodies. Saturn, however, was not yet even gaseous. Our gaseous state is much denser than the densest state on Saturn. In occultism, we distinguish also the state of warmth which is not simply a state of matter in vibration, but a fourth substantial state. Saturn consisted only of this warmth and if we proceed from Saturn to the Sun, we experience a condensation of that ancient fiery planet. The Sun is the first gaseous embodiment of our planet; it is the first gaseous or airy body. The ancient Moon-state then condenses still further; it is a fluid body which only later, when the sun departs from it, assumes a more dense condition. The actual middle condition, however, while it is still united with the sun, is the fluidic state. All that we today call mineral earth, the mineral, rocks, surface soil, all this did not exist on the ancient Moon. This appeared for the first time upon our Earth, crystallizing itself out of it.

When the Earth commenced its evolution, it began by first repeating once more all the various earlier conditions. Every substance and every being in the cosmos always repeats earlier conditions at the beginning of any new stage of evolution. Thus our Earth passed quickly through the Saturn, Sun and Moon states. When it was passing through the Moon evolution, it consisted of water, mixed with vapour—not like our present water, but a watery, that is to say, a fluidic condition of substance. The fluid state was its densest condition. This watery sphere which swam about in cosmic space was not like the water of the present, but water mixed with vapour, in other words, something gaseous and something fluidic permeating each other, and within this we find the human being. He could exist in this watery sphere, because no solid substance had yet been precipitated. Of the present human being, only his ego and his astral body were present. This ego and astral body did not yet feel themselves as separate entities, but as though embedded within the body of divine spiritual beings. They did not yet feel themselves severed from a being whose body is the water-vapour earth. Then within these ego-endowed astral bodies, enclosures were formed, very tenuous, fine human germs. This is shown in the first diagram.

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The upper part of the diagram is intended to represent the astral body and ego which, insensible to outer perception, were embedded in the water-earth sphere; these draw from themselves the first germ of the physical body which together with the ether body was in a very rarefied condition. This then took form out of this watery earth-water sphere. If you were to follow this clairvoyantly, you would see the first germ of the physical and ether bodies surrounded by the astral body and ego as shown in the first figure. That part of you—namely, your physical and ether bodies—which at present lies in bed when you sleep, formed in its very first beginnings in this Earth-state the first human germ still wholly enveloped by the astral body and the ego. The watery vapour mass then densified, and the astral body with the ego gave the impulse to this first human germ to become a part of this primal water-earth. (We cannot now follow further the evolution of the animals and plants.) The next thing that occurred was the condensation of the water, and, in a certain sense, air and water appeared. No longer were vapour and water mixed together, but water and air were separated from one another. As a result, the human corporeality—physical and ether bodies—again became somewhat more densified and because the air had separated from the water, it became airy and took into itself the fiery element. Thus what was formerly watery now became aeriform. The physical ether human germ now consisted of air permeated by fire; the astral body and ego enveloped it and all this moved about in what remained of the water, fluctuating back and forth alternately in water and air.

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We thus have before us the human being of that time, whose incipient state has reached even the density of air and has been made incalescent by fire. This has become the same human being who lies sleeping in bed today. To each of these human fire-beings belong an astral body and an ego, but they are completely embedded within the bosom of the Godhead, that is, they do not yet feel themselves individualized.

You must meditate deeply upon these things, for these conditions are so different from the present conditions of the earth, they seem shocking and unbelievable. Now you will ask:—What is the fire element which you have indicated there in the air? The fire which human beings possessed at that time still exists within you. It is the fire that pulses through your blood, it is the heat of the blood. What is left over from the ancient air also lives on within your organism. When you inhale and exhale, you have air within your otherwise solid body which flows in and out of it. When you inhale deeply, the air is then taken up into the blood and this is the reason for the warm air-breath. Imagine this air permeating the whole body, penetrating into all its parts. Now, think away all that is solid and fluid and picture only the form that remains, the form of a human being who has just inhaled; that means that he has driven the oxygen into the outermost parts of the body. A form remains which is very similar to the human, but which, however, consists only of air. The air which streams through the human being takes on the exact form of the body. A kind of shadow body remains consisting of air permeated with warmth. That is the kind of human being you were at that time; you did not then have the form which you now possess, but the physical and ether bodies were enveloped by the astral body invested with the ego. This condition continued on into the Atlantean period. Those who yield to the illusion that in the earliest epochs of Atlantis men walked about as they do today, are quite in error. The human creature first descended out of the airy sphere into the denser region of matter. There were at that time upon the earth only the animals who could not hold back their incarnation in physical form, thus they remained at the animal stage, since the earth was not yet mature enough to yield up its substance for the physical human form. Therefore the animals remained in lower forms because they could not hold back their descent into matter.

The next thing that occurred was the division of the human being, in respect of his physical body, into airy, warmth and fluid parts. This means, in an occult sense, that he became a water-man. You may say that the human being was previously already a water-man. But that would not be quite correct. Previously the earth was a watery sphere, and within it—although only in a spiritual state—were astral body and ego. They swam about in the water as spiritual beings; they were not yet individualized. Now we have for the first time reached the point where we could have found the physical human body contained within this water, but in a sort of jelly fish formation. If you had swum out into this primeval sea, you would have found in it, condensed out of the water, forms which would have been transparent to you. This is the way these human beings appeared in the beginning. First they had a water body and at the same time their astral body and ego continued to remain deeply embedded in the divine, spiritual beings. At that time, when the human being possessed this watery body the apportioning of his states of consciousness was very different from what it became later on. The separation into unconscious night and conscious day did not exist as it does now, but then, when the human being was still embedded in the beings of the divine-spiritual world, he had a dreamy astral consciousness. When, during the day, he dipped down into his fluidic, physical body, this was night to him and when he was again out of his physical body, he beheld the dazzling, astral light. When he plunged into the physical body in the morning, there all was dull and dreary and a sort of unconscious state began. Gradually, however, the present physical organs were formed in his physical body and with these he gradually learned to see. Day consciousness became brighter and brighter, and he was thereby cut off from the divine matrix. It was only toward the middle of the Atlantean period that this human creature was dense enough to become flesh and bone. After the cartilage had solidified, the bones then gradually appeared. At the same time the earth also became more solid and the human being then descended upon the surface of the earth. Thus that consciousness which he had possessed in the divine-spiritual world gradually disappeared, and he became more and more an observer of the outer world, preparing himself thereby to become a true earth dweller. In the last third of the Atlantean period, the human form became more and more like the present one.

Thus literally and truly the human being descended from spheres which we must designate water-vapour, water-air spheres. As long as he remained in the water-air sphere, his consciousness possessed the faculty of a clear astral perception, because whenever he was outside of the physical body he was above in the presence of the gods, but by virtue of the densification of the physical body, he cut himself off, as it were, from the divine substance. Like something that had acquired a shell, he slowly severed himself from his earlier connections, when he ceased to be watery and gaseous. As long as he was fluidic and airy in form, he remained above with the gods. He was not able to develop his ego, for he had not yet released himself from the divine consciousness. Because he descended into physical matter, his astral consciousness became ever more darkened. If we wish to characterize the significance of this evolutionary process, we may say that formerly, when the human being was still living with the gods, his physical and ether bodies were fluidic and gaseous in form, and were only gradually, simultaneously with the solidification of the earth, condensed to their present material form. That is the descent, but just as he has made this descent, so will he also ascend again. After he has had the experiences that are to be had in solid substance, he will again mount into those regions where his physical body will be fluidic and gaseous. He must bear within him the consciousness that if he wishes to unite himself again consciously with the gods, his true existence will be in those regions from which he has sprung. He has become condensed out of water and air and he will again become diffused into them. He can only spiritually anticipate this condition today by gaining within his inner nature a consciousness of the future state of his physical body. Only by becoming conscious of it today, however, will he gain the power to do so. When we have acquired this consciousness, our earthly goal will have been reached, our earthly mission attained. What does that mean? It means that human beings were at one time born, not of flesh and earth, but of air and water and that they must later be truly re-born in the Spirit, of air and water.

In the linguistic usage of those epochs in which the Gospels were written, (which we should also study), “Water” was called water; but “Pneuma,” which is now used for “Spirit,” was then called “Air.” It had at one time exactly that meaning. The word “Pneuma” should be translated “Air” or “Vapour,” otherwise a misunderstanding arises. Thus we should interpret the words in the conversation with Nicodemus in the following manner: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and air he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The Christ is pointing to a future condition into which the human being will develop, therefore in this conversation we have before us a deep mystery of our evolution. We have only to understand the words correctly and employ them in the manner Anthroposophy can teach us. In the common language of every day, we still have remains of this former usage, when volatile substances are spoken of as spirit. Originally the word “Pneuma” meant air. You can see that it is very important for words to be understood in a very accurate and exact sense and to be carefully weighed. Then out of this very literal meaning arises the most wonderful spiritual interpretation.

Now let us try for a little while to direct our spiritual glance toward another fact of evolution. Let us once more look back to the time when the human astral body with the ego was immersed in the matrix of a common divine astral substance. As you follow this evolutionary course, you find that development took place in such a way that it is possible to describe it schematically. In the beginning, your whole astral being was embedded in the common astral substance and through the processes which we have just described, the physical and etheric enclosed it like surrounding shells. Thus individual human beings became separated from the general astral substance as detached parts. It was as though you had a fluid substance here before you and were dipping out parts of it. The detachment of the individual human consciousness from the divine consciousness runs parallel with the formation of the physical body. Thus we may say that the further we progress, the more we see how the separate individual human beings enclosed in the shell of the physical body, develop themselves as parts which are severed from the common astrality. It is true, the human being had to pay for this becoming independent by the darkening of his astral consciousness. Therefore he looked out from the sheath of his physical body and beheld the physical plane. The ancient clairvoyant consciousness, however, gradually disappeared.

Thus we see coming into existence the human inner being, an independent individual human inner being which is the bearer of the ego. When you observe the sleeping human being of the present, you have before you in the physical and ether bodies, which have remained behind in bed, what these sheaths, formed during the course of the ages, have produced through condensation. What had previously separated from the common astral substance returns to it each night in order to receive strength from it. Of course it does not enter so deeply into this divine substance as it did at that time, otherwise it would be clairvoyant. It retains its independence. This, then, is the independent individuality that came into existence in the course of evolution.

It may be asked, to what is this independent individual human being indebted for its very existence, this inner being that seeks its strength outside the physical and ether bodies? It is indebted to the physical and ether human bodies which were gradually formed in the course of evolution. They gave birth to that which dipped down into the physical senses and looked out into the physical world during the day, but which at night sank down into a state of unconsciousness, because it had severed itself from that condition in which it previously existed. In occult language, the part remaining in bed is called the real earth-man. That was “man.” And that part in which the ego remained day and night, that part born out of the physical and ether bodies was called the “child of man” or the “son of man.” The “son of man” is the ego and astral body, born out of the physical and ether bodies in the course of earthly evolution. The technical expression for this is the “son of man.”

Then comes the question, for what purpose did Christ Jesus come to earth; what was imparted to the earth through His Impulse? The “son of man” who had severed himself from existence in the bosom of the Godhead and had broken away from his earlier connections, and in place of which developed a physical consciousness will come again to a consciousness of the spirit through the force of the Christ Who appeared upon the earth. He will not only perceive in his physical environment with physical senses, but by means of the force of his own inner being of which he is now unconscious, a consciousness of his divine existence will flash up within him. Through the force of the Christ Who came upon the earth, the son of man will again be raised to his divine estate. Previously, after the manner of the ancient Mystery initiation, only chosen individuals could perceive the divine-spiritual world. In ancient times there was a technical expression for this. Those who could look into the divine-spiritual world and could become witnesses of it were called “serpents.” Those men of ancient times who were initiated into the Mysteries in this way were “serpents.” The “serpents” were the forerunners of the deed of Christ Jesus. Moses showed his mission by lifting up before his people the symbol of the elevation of those who could perceive in the spiritual worlds; he lifted up the serpent. What these chosen few had then become, now every “son of man” could attain through the force of the Christ present upon the earth. This the Christ expresses in his further conversation with Nicodemus when He says:—“Just as once upon a time Moses lifted up the serpent, even so will the son of man be lifted up.” Throughout, Christ Jesus made use of the technical expressions of that age. First the literal sense of the expressions must be discovered, then the true meaning can be understood; this is also identical with the Anthroposophical teaching. Therefore, in ancient times only a prophecy of the “I AM” teaching could gain a footing. Only on the outer authority of the initiated could the people hear something of the power of the “I AM” which should be enkindled in every “son of man.” But we are quite sufficiently informed about this.

We have seen what the “I AM” signifies in the Gospel of St. John and can ask whether this “I AM” in the course of time has been imparted to humanity. Has it been gradually proclaimed? Did the Old Testament prophetically point to and prepare for what was brought to mankind as an impulse through the descent of the incarnated “I AM?”

Please remember that all that occurs in the course of the ages has been slowly and gradually prepared before-hand. Like the child in the mother's womb, all that was brought by Jesus-Christ had been slowly matured in the followers of the Old Testament through the ancient Mysteries. On the other hand what had been prepared in the followers of the Old Testament among the ancient Jewish peoples had grown to maturity among the ancient Egyptians. Among them were highly developed initiates who knew what was to come upon the earth. We shall now learn how the Egyptians, who were the third sub-race of the post-Atlantean root-race, developed by degrees the complete impulse of the “I AM,” and how they furnished, like the mother's womb, the outer structure for this “I AM,” but did not go far enough to give birth to the Christ Principle. Then we shall learn how at last the ancient Hebrew peoples separated from them.

Moses is represented to us as one chosen from among the people of Egypt to become the prophet of God, of the incarnated “I AM.” He prophesied the coming of the “I AM” to those who could understand something of It. He announced that for the words, “I and Father Abraham are one,” will be substituted these other words, “I and the Father are one,” which means, I and the spiritual foundation of the World are directly one. The followers of the Old Testament looked up to the folk group-soul in its plurality and in this group-soul, each individual felt sheltered as though within the Divine. Through Moses, an initiate of the old order, it was prophesied that the Christ would come; in other words, that there is a divine principle which is higher than the blood-principle flowing down through the generations. It is true, God has been active in the blood since the time of Abraham, but this blood-father is only the outer manifestation of the spiritual Father.

Moses said unto God, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

He said, I will be with thee: and this shall be a sign that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth my people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

And Moses said unto God: Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them: The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, and they say unto me: What is his name? What shall I say unto them?

He had to announce prophetically a more exalted God, Who exists within the God of Father Abraham, but Who is at the same time a higher Principle. What is His name?

And God said unto Moses, I am the “I AM!”

Here is foretold the profound truth about the Word which later appeared incarnate in Christ-Jesus.

And he said: Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel: the “I AM” hath taught it to me.

This is the literal wording. In other words, this means that the “name,” that name which is the basis of the blood-name, is the “I AM”—and this “I AM” appears incarnate in the Christ of the Gospel of St. John.

And God said further unto Moses, Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, the Lord, God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob hath sent me unto you.

What has been seen only externally streaming through the blood, is in its deeper meaning, the “I AM.”

Thus was proclaimed what was later to enter the world through Christ-Jesus. We hear the name of the Logos, we hear Him at that time calling to Moses, “I am the I AM!” The Logos proclaims His name, that part of Himself which can be comprehended through the understanding, through the intellect. What is here proclaimed appears in the flesh as the Logos, is incarnated in Christ-Jesus.

Now let us consider the external sign of the flowing down of the Logos into the Israelitish people, as far as this can be grasped abstractly in thought. This outer sign is the “Manna” of the Wilderness. The word “Manna” is, in fact, (those who understand Spiritual Science know this) the same as “Manas”¹, the “Spirit-Self.” Thus there streams into that people which has by degrees acquired an I-consciousness, the first trace of the Spirit-Self. However that which lives and appears in Manas itself must be called by another name. It is not something that can be simply known, but it is a force which can be taken into oneself. When the Logos simply proclaimed His name, it could be understood and grasped with the intellect. But when the Logos became flesh and appeared among men, then it became a Force-Impulse which is not only a teaching and a concept, but exists in the world as a Force-Impulse in which humanity can participate. He then calls Himself no longer “Manna,” but the “Bread of Life,” which is the technical expression for Budhi or Life-Spirit.

The water transformed by the spirit, which was offered in symbolic form to the Samaritan woman, and the “Bread of Life” are the first heraldings of the influx of Budhi or Life-Spirit into mankind. Tomorrow we shall continue this discussion.

• 1. Note by translator. Dr. Steiner was giving these lectures to Theosophists who were familiar with the oriental terminology. By degrees he dropped this as the students became familiar with his own new occidental terms.

Before I begin my lecture today may I express to our esteemed guests my heartiest greetings out of the spirit that prevails here in the Goetheanum and that underlies all the work that is developed here. This kind of spirit does not spring from any human one-sidedness, but from a total all-encompassing humanness. For this reason, what is offered and accomplished here can originate in scientific knowledge, art and religious devotion while at the same time its spirit should be that of a free humanness, combined with generosity of heart and soul.

Now when the construction of the Goetheanum was begun in 1913 it was upon this spirit that it rested, as on the finest foundation stone. At a period when the whole of Europe and vast areas beyond were embroiled in warfare and bitter hostilities, here in Dornach people from all the nations of Europe worked together out of a free, encompassing humanness. Here, the international work never ceased. Allow me to point to this fact especially today because I desire to bring you this greeting out of such an international spirit. Out of no other spirit can the work done here be carried on, for only this spirit of many-sided, universal, free humanness can produce genuine spiritual science, spiritual art and truth-filled religion, which in itself can only be spiritual and international. But this spirit also gives, I think, that largeness of heart that is able to welcome and greet every human being affectionately. So, it is out of this spirit that rules here at the Goetheanum that I speak of these first words of greeting. They are therefore meant from the heart. In this heartfelt manner, then, may I express the wish that in the days to come we may successfully work together and exchange ideas on some topics drawn from the most varied areas of science and life, something that everyone who had wanted to come here will carry home with a certain measure of gratification. When we who have worked at the Goetheanum for years find that our visitors look back with joy to what they have experienced here, we are filled with special satisfaction. With this feeling let me welcome you and thank you for coming and express the wish that your visit may prove gratifying to you all.

As already indicated, the aim here is to engage in spiritual research so that it will be the foundation for making life in all its aspects more fruitful. The spiritual knowledge we seek here at this Goetheanum should not be confused with much that today is promoted as occultism, or the many things that go by the name of mysticism. This occultism, pursued today in many forms, actually runs contrary to the spirit of our age, the spirit of real modern life, which results from the development of natural scientific knowledge in recent times. What is cultivated here as spiritual knowledge must certainly reckon with what in the strictest sense of the word is in keeping with the spirit of modern scientific knowledge. What is frequently called occultism today is founded on ancient traditions; it is not directly governed by the spirit of the present time. Old traditions are revived. But since present-day humanity cannot unfold corresponding perceptions from the same substrata of soul, one can say that these old traditions are often misunderstood; as such, they are presented in dilettante fashion by one or the other group today as a knowledge intended to gratify the human soul.

We have as little to do with such partly misunderstood traditional occultism as we have with the kind of occultism that seeks to do research in the supersensible worlds by borrowing the usual scientific methods of sense observation and experimentation. If this is done, the fact is overlooked that the methods of scientific research developed during the past few centuries are preeminently adapted for gaining knowledge of the external sense reality; for this very reason, however, they are unsuitable as a means of research into the supersensible realm.

On the other hand, much is said today about mystical immersion, inner mystical experience. There, too, one often has to do with nothing else than immersing oneself in the soul experiences of the old mystics, trying to repeat these soul experiences of the past. But again, the unclear introspection that is used can lead only to a dubious knowledge.

I only pointed to these things in order to warn against confusing the work here at the Goetheanum with what is often carried on in such an amateur, dilettante fashion, even if out of sincere good-will. Here a scientific method for gaining supersensible knowledge as being cultivated, as rigorous, as exact and as scientific as is demanded today of the methods in the area of natural scientific research. We can reach the supersensible realm only if we do not remain limited to the paths of research suited only to the sense world. We cannot, however, scientifically ascend into the supersensible worlds by proceeding in a spirit other than the one that has proven itself so well in the domain of the sense world. Today I should like to give just a few indications concerning the purposes and goals of the work carried on here. Therefore, more detailed discussions of what I will but mention today will follow in the days to come. May I point out first that for the purpose of supersensible research here we are concerned with drawing from the depths of the human soul those forces for gaining knowledge that can penetrate the supersensible world in the same way as the forces of the outer senses penetrate the physical sense world. What the spiritual research requires first of all is to direct his soul's attention to his own soul-spiritual organism, which is able to approach the super-sensible. This distinguishes the spiritual investigator from the ordinary scientist. The latter uses the human organism as it is, directs it toward nature, and employs the exactness needed to gain results about the facts of outer nature. But the spiritual researcher, just because he is grounded in correct natural scientific knowledge, cannot proceed in this way. He must first direct his attention to the soul-spiritual organ of knowledge—I can perhaps call it 'eye of the spirit.' But this attention, which initially prepares and develops the spiritual eye, must be such that the inner conformity of this spiritual eye appears before it exactly; as exact, for instance, as a mathematical problem appears to a mathematician, or the content of his experiment appears to the experimenter. This work that must be applied by the researcher upon himself in preparation for the actual attainment of knowledge is the essential point in spiritual research. Thus, as the mathematician or natural scientist is exact in the search for results, the spiritual researcher must be exact in preparing his soul-spiritual organism, which then can perceive a spiritual fact as the eye or ear perceives facts in the sense world.

The spiritual research referred to here must be exact, in the same way that mathematics or natural science is exact. But I should say that where natural science with its exactness stops, spiritual science with its own kind of exactness begins. It must be rigorous in developing one's own human nature, so that all the work man does on himself in order to become a spiritual researcher is carried on in rigorous manner. For this exact work, then, fully justifiable to science, turns, as it were, into the inner spiritual eye when it begins spiritual research and encounters the existence of the supersensible world. While what is often termed mysticism has little clear understanding of the soul, in genuine spiritual research every minute step must be taken with the same clarity and insight as is required of a mathematician confronted by a mathematical problem. This will then lead to a kind of awakening, an awakening on a higher level of consciousness comparable to what we experience when we awaken from our usual sleep and have the sense world around us again.

When I speak here of the exactness needed especially for spiritual research, the word relates to the exact, scientific preparation of what must precede the research, namely the soul-spiritual organization of man. It is this above all that must stand before the spiritual researcher in transparent clarity. Then he may begin to penetrate within the world of supersensible phenomena.

This is just a preliminary indication, not one that proves anything. Because one strives for this exactness in preparing for genuine spiritual perception, if one is to call the kind of spiritual perception meant here 'clairvoyance,' one can indeed speak of 'exact clairvoyance.' It is to be the specific characteristic of the spiritual research carried on here that it is based on methodologically exact clairvoyance. The exactness of the clairvoyance is to be the distinctive mark of the spiritual research practiced here. From this point of view, one would want to consider not only a narrowly circumscribed area, but to attain to something into which flow all other sciences and patterns of life of the present age. What is spiritually achieved here is not merely to be a spiritual super-structure having as its foundation the natural scientific mode of observation; what humanity has developed in the spirit of this modern natural scientific point of view should also be led up into the spiritual region in order that the attainments of natural science may be crowned with what spiritual research can provide.

As an example, I may cite medicine. The way this science has developed today out of materialistic knowledge, and has achieved its admirable results, is fully recognized by what is cultivated here as spiritual knowledge. But it is possible to carry further by means of the spirit of an exact clairvoyance what has now been achieved out of a purely external approach to medicine. Only then will the whole fruitfulness of natural scientific medicine as presently practiced be attained. Similarly, we desire to gain here in a spiritual way knowledge that is in a position to lead the artistic into the spiritual. We strive for an artistic element here, which in a spiritual way arises out of the totality of man's nature, as does the knowledge we seek. A religious, a social element is also to be cultivated here in such a way that they both arise as something self-evident flowing from the spiritual knowledge attained.

The spiritual knowledge we strive for is to lay hold of the whole man, is to come forth from him, not from a single human faculty. It is therefore the nature of this knowledge that it desires to have all areas of theoretical as well as practical life flow into the spiritual life, and that thereby only the completely human, the universally human, is to be achieved. From this standpoint I would like to speak to you in these lectures mainly about three areas of knowledge, using these three examples to show to what extent the spirit of modern science can lead into the spirit of higher spiritual science. I would like to speak to you about philosophy, cosmology and religion, in a manner that shows how through anthroposophy they are to gain a certain spiritual form.

Philosophy was once the all-inclusive knowledge, which, in ancient times, threw light on all the separate areas of reality that men experienced. It was not a specialized science. It was the universal science, and all the sciences we cultivate today developed fundamentally out of the substance of philosophy as it still existed in Greece. In recent times, a specific philosophy has arisen by its side that lives in a certain sum of ideas. The strange thing that came about is that this philosophy, out of which all other sciences actually have grown, has now come to the point of having to justify its own existence before them. The other sciences, which have indeed grown out of philosophy, busy themselves with this or that recognized field of reality. The field of reality is there for the senses, or for observation, or experiment.

One cannot doubt the justification for all this scientific pursuit of knowledge. In spite of all these separate areas of study having been born out of philosophy, it is forced today to justify its own existence, to explain why it develops a certain body of ideas, whether these ideas are perhaps quite unreal, do not relate to any reality, are merely something people have thought out. Just consider how much hard thinking is devoted nowadays to justifying those ideas, which, incidentally, have already taken on a quite abstract character and today are called the content of philosophy, in order that they can still enjoy a certain standing in the world. They have nurtured the sciences, which, I might say, are well accredited in regard to their own specific areas of reality. Philosophy, on the contrary, is not accredited today. It first has to prove that its existence is justifiable. In ancient Greece that was never brought into question. There, a man who was capable of developing himself far enough to attain a philosophy felt the reality of philosophizing in the same way a healthy person feels the reality of breathing. But today, when a philosopher examines his philosophy, he experiences the abstract, cold, sober quality of the ideas he has developed in it. He does not feel that he stands solidly in reality. Only a person working in a chemistry or physics laboratory, or in a hospital, has matters well in hand, so to say. One who nowadays has philosophical ideas and acts upon them often feels miles removed from reality.

There is an additional consideration. It is with good reason that philosophy bears a name that does not point merely to theoretical knowledge. Philosophy is “love of wisdom,” and love exists not only in one's reason and intellect but has its roots in the whole human heart and soul. A comprehensive soul experience, the experiencing of love, is what has given philosophy its name. The whole human being should be engaged in the development of philosophy, and one cannot love, in the true sense of the word, what is mere theory, matter of fact and cold. If philosophy is love of wisdom, those who have experienced it assume that this Sophia, this wisdom, is something worth loving, something real and tangible, whose existence does not require to be proven. Just think a moment. If a man were to love a woman, or a woman a man, but would find it necessary to first prove the existence of the loved one—, quite an absurd thought! But this is just the case with philosophy taken in its present sense. From something that was warmly alive and received in a heartfelt way by man, the existence of which was self-evident, philosophy has turned into something abstract, cold, dull and theoretical. What caused this?

When one turns back to the origin of philosophical life—not through outer history but with an inwardly experienced and felt knowledge of history—one finds that philosophy originally did not live in man as it does today. Man, today, basically only recognizes as valid what is achieved through sense observation, or through experiments developed in the field of the senses, when he thinks in a scientific way; this is then put together by the intellect. But these achievements belong to physical man, for the senses are physical organs imbedded in the physical body. What man's physical body attained in knowledge is today considered scientifically acceptable, but in this way one only reaches as far as physical man. In him what the ancients considered as philosophy cannot be found. I will go further into this in the days to follow but must here point out that what was called philosophy in the golden age of Greek philosophy—that spiritual substance experienced within the soul—was not experienced in the physical body but in a human organization that permeates the physical body as etheric man.

In present-day science we really know only physical man. We do not know the body that, as a fine etheric organism, permeates man's physical body and in which the Greek philosopher experienced his philosophy. In the physical body we experience breathing, and the process of seeing. But just as we have this physical organization before us, so man also has an etheric body; he is an etheric man. When we look at the physical body we see something of the breathing process; physically and biologically we can make clear to ourselves the process of seeing. When we look at supersensible, etheric man we see the medium in which the Greek carried on his philosophizing. The Greek constitution was such that a man of that time felt—lived—in his etheric organism. In the activity of exerting himself through his organism—as one does physically in breathing and seeing—philosophy came into being in the etheric man. As there never can be any doubt about the reality of our breathing, because we are conscious of our physical body, so the Greek never doubted that what he experienced as philosophy, as wisdom, which he loved, was rooted in reality, for he was conscious of his etheric body. He was clearly aware that his philosophizing took place in his etheric body.

Modern man has lost perception of the etheric body. In fact, he does not know he has one. Therefore, traditional philosophy is a sum of abstract ideas for the reason that it considers to be reality only what one experiences as reality while philosophizing. If one has lost the knowledge of etheric man, the reality in philosophy is also lost. One feels it as abstract; one feels the necessity to prove that it really exists.

Now imagine that man were to develop an organism still more powerful, solid and material than his present physical body. Then the breathing process, for instance, would gradually appear to be almost imperceptible by comparison with this more powerful experience, until finally he would no longer know anything about what is now his physical body, just as modern man knows nothing about his etheric body. The breathing process would be a theory, a sum of ideas, and one would have to 'prove' that breathing was a reality, just as one must now prove that philosophy is rooted in reality. Doubt as to the reality of what one should love in philosophy has arisen because the etheric body has been lost to human perception, for it is in the etheric, not in the physical body, that the reality of philosophy is experienced. If, then, one is to recover a feeling for philosophy as a reality one must first gain a knowledge of etheric man. Out of this knowledge a true experience of philosophy can come. The first step in anthroposophy therefore is to bring out the facts concerning man's etheric organism.

I want to proceed in three steps and would like to ask Dr. Sauerwein¹ to translate now. After the translation I shall continue.

In philosophy man has initially an inner experience of himself, of his etheric body. From the time humanity began to think it has also felt the need to incorporate each single human being into the whole cosmos. Man not only needs a philosophy, he needs a cosmology. As an individual firmly grounded within his organism at a certain place on the earth, he wants to understand in how far he belongs to the whole universe, and to what extent he has evolved out of it.

In the earliest stages of human evolution man felt himself to be a member of the whole cosmos. As physical man, however, he cannot feel himself as part of the cosmos. His experience as physical man between birth and death belongs directly to the life of his physical sensory surroundings. Beyond this he has his inner soul life, which is completely different from what he bears in his physical body out of his physical sensory environment. Since man wishes to feel, to know himself as a member of the whole cosmos, he also must feel and know his inner life of soul as part of the universe.

In the most ancient periods of human evolution men were actually able to see the soul life in the cosmos, not only by means of what today is mistakenly called anthropomorphism, but through an inner power of vision. They could perceive their own soul life as part of the soul-spiritual life of the universe, as one can see one's physical bodily life as part of natural sense existence. But in most recent times men have only developed in an exact way natural scientific knowledge based on sense observation, experiment, and a thinking similarly limited. Out of the natural scientific results achieved in this way, bringing together all the separate findings, a universal science, a cosmology, has been formed. But this cosmology contains merely the picture of facts from sense reality that are combined by thinking. One constructs a picture of the universe, but the separate parts of this picture are only the recognized laws of physical sensory phenomena.

This picture produced by the natural scientific cosmology of modern times is not like that of ancient times, which also contained the life of soul and spirit, for it contains only the sense world that natural science is able to examine. In this picture that stands as cosmology of the modern age man can re-discover his physical body, but not the inner life of his soul. In ancient times the inner soul life could be derived from the picture of cosmology; the soul's inner life cannot be derived from the cosmological view based upon natural science. This is in turn connected with the fact that modern perception cannot see the soul-spiritual in the same way as an old primitive perception was able to do. So, when modern knowledge speaks of the soul element in the body it speaks of the manifestations, the inner experiences of thinking, feeling and willing. It views the soul's life as being an outflow of what comes to expression in what is thought, felt and willed, separately and intermingled. It makes a picture of those three activities as phenomena playing a role in the soul's inner life.

When one observes the inner life of soul and spirit in this way one is forced to say, “Yes, what you have recognized and designated as an intermingling of thinking, feeling and willing arises in embryonic life, develops in the child, and perishes at death.” A scientist holding this view cannot fail to conclude that the soul must disappear at death. For actually, this thinking, feeling and willing between birth and death appear to be intimately bound up with the life of the physical body. Just as we see its members grow we watch thinking and feeling grow. As the body calcifies and we see it approaching physical decline, we see also how the phenomena of thinking, feeling and willing gradually diminish.

The distinguishing quality of the ancient viewpoint was a perception of the inner soul life that went beyond what lives in mere thinking, feeling and willing. The ancients perceived hidden within these a foundation for the life of soul of which they are only a reflection. We see thought, feeling and will originating and then developing further between birth and death. What lies beneath—of which thinking, feeling and willing are but the outer reflection—was beheld by the old primitive clairvoyance as the astral being of man.

So, as one at first recognizes the etheric body as a super-sensible member in physical man, one recognizes the astral body as a higher member in physical etheric man. This astral being of man does not consist of thought, feeling and will. It is the basis for them. It is the being which, out of soul-spiritual worlds, finds its way into our existence between birth and death. This astral man clothes himself between birth and death with the physical and etheric bodies, and after death goes out into a soul-spiritual world. In regard to this astral nature of man birth and death are only outer manifestations. Thinking, feeling and willing can be understood only in the context of man's physical organization, and can be found only between birth and death. There they develop, gradually decline, and disappear. The astral being underlying them, the foundation for the inner life of the soul, extends above physical and etheric man and is incorporated in a cosmic world. It is not enclosed within man's physical organism.

In order to arrive at a comprehensive cosmology, we need a knowledge of etheric and astral man, of which thinking, feeling and willing are a reflection. But, as manifested in each individual man, they cannot be incorporated in the cosmos. What constitutes their background, what is concealed in them between birth and death and is only accessible to a primitive or an exact clairvoyance—that can be incorporated in a spiritual cosmos of which the physical sensory cosmos is merely the reflection.

Modern cosmology is but a super-structure founded on the results of natural scientific research; a combination of facts found in the physical sense world. In such a cosmic picture man's inner life cannot be incorporated; but we only have such a cosmology because modern knowledge does not provide a picture of astral man. Anyone conceiving soul life as merely a combination of thinking, feeling and willing cannot defend the idea of its continuing beyond birth and death. Only if one first advances from these three activities to what lies concealed within them, to astral man, only then does one arrive at the human element that is no longer bound to the physical body and can be thought of as membered into the soul-spiritual universe. But man will never re-discover such a spiritual cosmos after abandoning it, because he has lost the perception of astral man. He will never be able to construct a picture of such a spirit-soul cosmos until he regains a picture of man's astral being. The possibility of a cosmology that again has soul-spiritual content depends upon the development of a perception of man's astral being. If we have merely an external cosmology comprising the physically perceptible, man himself has no place in it. We have come to such a physical cosmology because the perception of astral man has been lost. If the perception is again achieved, it will be possible to have a picture of the cosmos in which man himself is incorporated.

So, our concern is to succeed in developing a knowledge of man's astral being. Then we will also be able to attain a true cosmology that includes man. This is to be the second step for anthroposophy.

After Dr. Sauerwein has been so kind as to translate the second part, I shall discuss how matters stand with the third step in the last segment of my lecture.

Man experiences himself as condensed together into himself as for example when he philosophizes—and he also feels himself to be a part of the cosmos as depicted by cosmology. But in addition, he experiences himself as an entity independent of his own physical body as well as of the cosmos to which he belongs. He feels himself to be independent of his own corporeality and does not even feel part of the cosmos when he points to his own higher spiritual being—something that is today only hinted at when we utter the word 'I.'

When we say, 'I,' we do not refer to that part of us encompassed by our physical, our etheric, or our astral body, insofar as through the latter we are part of the cosmos. We refer to an inner, self-contained entity. We feel it as belonging to a special world, to a divine world, of which the cosmos is only the outer reflection, the external replica. As human beings who address themselves as “I,” we feel that this entity, this spiritual man indicated by the word “I,” is only enclothed with everything in the cosmos; that even the physical sense body is a covering of the actual being.

Because man in ancient times—through an inner if primitive vision—experienced his human entity as independent both of his body and of the cosmos, he knew he belonged to a divine world. But he also knew that between birth and death he was placed outside of this world and was clothed in a physical body. He knew he was placed in the soul-physical cosmos. He knew that his ego, the essence of his being, is concealed by the cosmic, by the physical-bodily elements, and he sought for union of this I-being with the divine world to which it belongs. In this way primitive man—with his clairvoyant experience of his egohood attained above and beyond his physical and etheric bodies and his astral nature—attained a union, religion , with the divine world. Religious life was that into which flowed a perception that was both philosophical and cosmological. Man found himself united with that from which he had been separated by his own body and by the outwardly visible soul-sensory cosmos. In religious experience he was united with the divine world, and this religious experience was the highest flowering of the perceptual life.

This religious experience on a primitive level, however, depended on a real inner experience of egohood, of the real spirit man. Only when the ego is experienced can the longed-for union with the divine world be attained—the religious feeling.

But to the modern way of thinking, what has the ego, this true spiritual man, become? It has become nothing but the phenomena of thinking, feeling and willing conceived of as a single, abstract idea. The ego has now become a kind of cosmic, or at most one or another composite formulation made up of thought, feeling and will—in any case something abstract. Philosophers themselves arrive at a notion of the ego by combining the experiences of thought, feeling and will into an abstract concept. But in this composite, nothing has been found that is not disproven every night when a person sleeps. Take the characterizations of modern philosophers concerning the “I,” for example, Bergson. Throughout, you will only find in these characterizations something that is disproven every night in sleep, for what the ego absorbs of these concepts, these ideas, is extinguished every night in sleep. Reality refutes these definitions, these characterizations of the ego. Furthermore, what I say here is not refuted by claiming that memory reconnects us after sleep with the “I.” It is not a matter of interpretations, but of facts. This implies that modern knowledge, even the finest philosophical knowledge, has lost perception of the ego, the true spirit man, and with it also the way to an understanding of religion.

So it has developed that in recent times, alongside the knowledge resulting from the attainable world of observation and experimenting, there are traditions handed down from a true religious life of past ages. They are accepted in a historical sense. But man's knowledge no longer has access to them; therefore, he only believes in them. Thus, for modern man, who will not extend knowledge to cover religious experience, science and faith confront each other. The whole content of the faith of today was once knowledge and is brought up only as a memory retained in tradition. No declaration of faith exists that is not a reminder of ancient knowledge. Because mankind today does not have a living perception of the true ego through exact clairvoyance—the ego that is not extinguished with every sleep but underlies both the sleeping and waking conditions—the path of knowledge is not pursued all the way into religion. Faith, which actually only perpetuates the memory of old traditions, is then placed alongside knowledge.

Today, therefore, what once was a unity—knowledge both of the physical and the divine worlds—has split into two external, parallel fields, knowledge and faith. That has come about because the old, primitive clairvoyant vision of the true ego—the foundation of man's being even when sleep extinguishes thought, feeling and will—that ancient knowledge has been lost, and exact clairvoyance is not yet advanced enough to see man's true egohood, the spiritual man. Only when it wants to advance to this point—as it must advance to seeing the etheric and astral parts of man's constitution—only then will a direct extension of knowledge of the outer world into knowledge of the divine world take place. Then, again, the content of science will pour into religious life.

This gap between knowledge and faith exists because the living, clairvoyant vision of the true ego, the fourth member of man's being, has been lost. Therefore, it is the task of the new spiritual life to restore knowledge of the true ego through exact clairvoyance. Then the way will open for advancing out of world knowledge to divine knowledge, out of the knowledge of the world to a renewal of religious life. We shall be able to view faith only as a special, higher form of knowledge, not, as now, something specifically different from knowledge.

So, what we need is the possibility for a real knowledge of the ego. From that will also result the possibility for a new experience of religion. We need to bring about this ego knowledge so that it takes its place within spiritual science just as does the previously characterized cognition of etheric man, who is not perceived in the human physical body, and the perception of astral man, who endures beyond birth and death. Thus, too, a perception of the ego, which exists beyond sleeping and waking as the foundation for both, needs to be cultivated to bring about a revitalization of life. This is to be the third step of anthroposophy. What should result organically from the viewpoint of anthroposophical research is therefore:

A modern philosophy through an exact clairvoyant knowledge of the ether body.

A cosmology that includes man, through a clear grasp of his astral organism.

A renewal of religious life through an exact clairvoyant comprehension of the true human ego which exists beyond sleeping and waking.

From this point of view, I will make further observations in the next lectures on philosophy, cosmology and religion.

• 1. Dr. Jules Sauerwein, born in 1880; one of the most prominent French journalists between World War I and World War II; he met Rudolf Steiner in Vienna in 1906 and translated a number of his works into French.

From ANTHROPOSOPHY: A Quarterly Review—Michaelmas 1929 No 3 Vol. 4. From GA# 57.

In ancient times a kind of natural clairvoyance was a common heritage of the European peoples. Indeed man's consciousness as it is to-day has evolved from that earlier state of clairvoyant consciousness. With these ancient clairvoyant faculties, man was able to perceive certain connections of his life, and what he so perceived was then expressed in the legends and myths which speak of goblins, elfin-beings, dwarfs and the like. Now these legends and myths are very different in character. They were based on what man was able to see with his clairvoyant faculties, but when we study them we find on the one hand certain resemblances and on the other outstanding differences, simply because the clairvoyant powers of men were by no means the same. There is a much greater similarity in the more important mythological figures—the figures of Gods and Heroes in the sagas. These sagas, too, were the outcome of clairvoyance, but in a different sense. The great mythological figures lead us back to the experiences of those who were Initiates in the ancient Mysteries. It is not easy for our present consciousness to form a true conception of these ancient Mysteries and their Initiates, for the nature of our education and the knowledge resulting therefrom does not conduce to an understanding of the nature of Initiation—far from it! If we were to speak of the nature of the Mysteries and their Initiates in the language of current thought, we should say that the Mysteries are schools for the training of those faculties which enable the soul of man to have actual vision of the spiritual worlds. They are schools, where in a methodical and systematic way, man's soul is so guided and trained that he can finally perceive the higher worlds with spiritual eyes and ears. Although modern scholarship knows little of the Mysteries, they are nevertheless still in existence to-day and are the means whereby man can be led consciously to the spiritual worlds.—And the whole content of Spiritual Science, everything that is communicated in Spiritual Science, is, in its essence, Mystery-wisdom.

The man who so trains his soul that he can perceive in higher worlds, is an Initiate. Through all the ages there have been centres for developing the faculty of fully conscious clairvoyance and the aim of the present lecture is to give a cursory survey of the European Mysteries.

For this purpose we must go back to ancient pre-Christian times and try to visualise what went on in the occult schools of Initiation and how they influenced civilisation and culture in general. You have often heard how man to-day can be led to the Initiates, how his thinking, feeling and willing can be so trained that he can set out on the path leading to the “Mothers.” This is the path which the pupils of all the Mysteries have had to tread in quest of fully conscious clairvoyance.

There were Mysteries of great significance, deeply influencing ancient European civilisation, in various regions of France, Germany and Britain. In all these regions the Mysteries were of a definite and unique kind, and were instituted on the basis of knowledge such as I indicated in my lecture “Isis and Madonna,” namely, that man has a spiritual origin, that his home was once in spiritual worlds whence his spirit and soul have come forth. When a man penetrates more deeply into his soul and rises to a level higher than that of ordinary sense-perception, he still feels, even to-day, that there is within him something that is a last remnant of his being as it was in the spiritual world. To-day, this last remnant—the human soul—is enclosed within the physical body, which in its turn is a densification of the primordial spiritual being. When he has conscious realisation of the spirit and soul within him, man says: ‘Now I know what I once was in my whole being; now I know that I was born out of the womb of worlds, out of the great universe.’ To-day the universe is revealed to human intelligence in everything that is spread out before the senses. But behind all that can be perceived by the senses and grasped by the intellect there is the spiritual universe—the Primordial Father and Mother from whom the soul is born. The body too is born from them but at first in spiritual form. This true form of man is now hidden.

It was known in the ancient European Mysteries that the true being of man is hidden and must be sought in its concealment. The saying went: “Isis is seeking for the Being from whom she proceeded.” To be initiated was to live through all those processes which enable the soul of man once again to behold its true origin and to unfold the faculty which will unite it again with its spiritual origin. Whether in the depths of the sacred oak-groves, or in places adapted for the Mysteries, it was always the same.—The candidate was subjected to certain processes whereby he might be united with his spiritual origin.

All that lies hidden behind the sense-world, as the sun behind the clouds, the hidden spirit, was known in these Mysteries by the name of “Hu.” “Ceridwen” was the seeking soul. And all the rites of Initiation were a means of revealing to the pupil that death is only one of the many processes in life. Death changes nothing at all in the innermost kernel of man's being.—In the Druidic Mysteries (Druid denotes an Initiate of the third degree), the neophyte was put into a condition resembling death; his senses could not function as organs of perception. A man whose only instrument of perception is the physical body or the physical brain has no consciousness in a condition where his senses cease to function. But in Initiation, the senses—feeling, hearing and so on—cease to function, and yet the neophyte is able to experience and observe. The principle which observes was called “Ceridwen”—the soul. And that which comes to meet the soul, as light and sound come to our outer eyes and ears, was called “Hu”—the spiritual world. The Initiate experienced the union between Ceridwen and Hu. Such experiences are described in the myths. When we are told to-day that the ancients paid homage to a God Hu and a Goddess Ceridwen, this is simply another way of describing Initiation. The true myths are always concerned with Initiation. It is empty chatter to say that these myths have an astronomical meaning, that Ceridwen is the moon and Hu the sun, and so on. These myths originated because their creators were conscious of an inner union between the aspiring soul and the spirit of the sun, not the physical sun. The Mysteries of Hu and Ceridwen, then, were those into which men were initiated in the regions of which we are speaking.

More to the North, in Scandinavia and Northern Russia, we find the Trottic Mysteries, founded by the Initiate who is known as Sieg, or Siegfried: Sikke. All the Siegfried myths are to be traced back to this being. These Northern Mysteries are characterised by a principle that is really common to all the Mysteries, but which here for the first time is clearly emphasised. Let me explain this principle by means of a comparison.—Think of the human being as he stands before us in life, with his head, hands, feet and other members. And now, if we imagine him without one of these members, he is no longer a whole man. Think of the most important organs, the heart, the stomach and others. Each one of these organs contributes to human life and serves its needs. The fact that these organs work together makes it possible for a soul to live and develop in the body of man. The soul lives in a physical body which is a unit composed of many members. This suggests that wherever a dwelling place has to be found for a human soul, or for a higher being, single members must be working together, each one of them carrying out their particular functions. And so even in the ancient Northern Mysteries it was realised that something can be accomplished if a number of men are gathered together and each individual is allotted a special and definite task. One man, for instance, may resolve to develop principally the thinking faculty, another the power of feeling, a third the power of will. Sub-divisions are of course also possible.

The Northern Mysteries were based upon the idea that when a number of men, each of whom has his particular task, are gathered together into a whole, an invisible influence will work in them, just as the soul works in a human body. When men come together in this way, each playing his own part, they form a kind of higher organism or body, and thus make it possible for a higher spiritual being to dwell among them. Thus Sieg gathered together a circle of twelve men, each of whom set out to develop the powers of his soul in a particular direction. And then, when they gathered together in their holy sanctuaries, they knew that a higher spiritual being was living among them as the soul lives in a human body, that their souls were members of a higher body. This was the sense in which the “Thirteenth” lived and moved among the Twelve who knew: We are twelve and the Thirteenth lives among us. Or else they chose out a Thirteenth whose function was then, within the circle of the Twelve, to be the connecting link enabling the higher influence to descend. And so the Thirteenth was recognised to be the representative of the Godhead in the sanctuaries of Initiation.

Everything was related to the sacred number three, and for this reason the one who united in himself all the knowledge was known as the representative of the ‘holy Three’ and around him were the twelve, each one with his definite functions, like members of an organism.

And so it was realised that when twelve men united together to develop a power which enabled a higher being to dwell among them, they were rising out of the physical into the spiritual world, rising to their God. They regarded themselves as the twelve attributes, the twelve qualities of the God. This was all reflected in the figures of the twelve Germanic Gods in the Northern sagas. He who desired to become a member of this noble circle was told that he must seek Baldur—in other words, he must seek Initiation. And who is Baldur? Baldur is the Spiritual in man, the principle for which the soul is seeking and which is found in Initiation. Who slew Baldur? Those who killed out the clairvoyant faculties in man, who organised his physical nature, who endowed him with material sight and who could prematurely misuse the forces of physical matter—Loki, the power of Fire, and Hodur the Blind, representing the principle in man's being that is incapable of beholding the spiritual world. This is only a way of describing processes of Initiation. Material existence has made man blind; through Initiation he again finds the path leading to the higher worlds. The trained clairvoyance of the old Initiates was a higher faculty than the innate, natural clairvoyance possessed by all human beings in those days.

The Druidic and Trottic Mysteries were the inspiring source of European civilisation and culture in pre-Christian times. Now the essential feature of European culture, namely, the development of a consciousness of personality, is likewise a danger—a danger likely to be far greater here than in other regions of the earth. Consciousness of personality is a keynote of all European culture. It was present in all Germanic lands, in a much stronger form than in the East where men loved to surrender themselves to Brahman. But this consciousness of personality brought with it the danger that those who were initiated could readily misuse what they learnt in Initiation and turn it into caricature. Initiation gives man control of spiritual forces and those who have learnt to use them can also misuse them. So it came about that the Mysteries of ancient Europe began to degenerate, the unripeness of the Initiates began to give rise to all kinds of atrocities and in many regions they were dreaded by the people. Much that we hear of the Mysteries to-day, although not everything, refers to the period of their decline. In this age we need not, after all, be so very astonished that the Mysteries are so often misunderstood. For if Spiritual Science does not help a man to realise what went on in the Mysteries and he has to rely merely on the tittle-tattle of history written down much later on, his ideas on the subject will be utterly barren. Just think what happens when people are content to draw their information about Spiritual Science from what the outside world has to say about it. They get a fine picture! And if what is being said about Spiritual Science to-day were to live on, it would do far more harm than the fragmentary knowledge of the Mysteries has done.

It would be an attractive study to trace back many things in the sagas and legends of Europe to the Mysteries. We should find a great deal in the Niebelung and Siegfried legends that points back to the ancient Mysteries. But it is difficult to discriminate in such study. The only thing that can reveal whether a certain feature in the legends is simply an improvisation of fancy or leads back to the Mysteries, is actual knowledge and the capacity to trace it back to its real source.

In all these Mysteries, no matter where we look, we find an element of tragedy. Let me put it thus: The Initiate in the ancient Druidic or Trottic Mysteries might indeed be united with Hu or Baldur, but there was something lacking in the spiritual world into which he entered. In more popular parlance, the Initiates would have said: ‘Our Gods are mortal, are doomed to downfall.’—Hence the myth which tells of the Twilight of the Gods. But then came the news of the great Christ Impulse which could work more strongly in Europe than anywhere else—the news that a sublime Spirit, the Christ, had lived in an earthly body among men. And the Initiates realised that all that had hitherto been experienced in the depths of the Mysteries had become historic fact in the Christ Event. In the ancient Mysteries the Initiate had not fully vanquished death.—But now he learnt of the Mystery of Golgotha. This historic Mystery was received with understanding in the European Mysteries—a much deeper understanding than elsewhere. The attitude of the Initiates may be described somewhat as follows: In our Initiation we rose to a divine-spiritual world, yet it was a world pervaded with the forces of mortality. But he who steeps himself with all that is bound up with the mighty impulse brought by the Christ-Being, he who can link himself with Christ, will realise that just as the sun irradiates and quickens the life of the plants, so the Christ Impulse can flow into the human soul and endow the soul with knowledge of eternity and immortality, with knowledge of victory over death. The soul is quickened by a true understanding of Christ.—And it was also known to the Initiates that besides such outer teaching as can be given, there is an inner knowledge, a quest of the soul (Ceridwen) not only for a Hu or a Baldur but for another ‘Baldur,’ for One Who fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha. The Initiates knew that the soul who experienced this acquired a bigger kind of clairvoyance than was attained through Initiation into the ancient Mysteries.

Here in Europe there was a deep understanding of these things. I have often told you of the great stimulus given to the evolution of man by the Christ Impulse. To understand this, let us think once more of ancient Hebrew consciousness. The ancient Hebrew felt himself one with his “Fathers.” He said to himself: ‘My Ego is enclosed between birth and death, but my blood streams into me from my Father Abraham. The blood in my veins is the expression of my Ego, of my individuality; it is the blood-stream which flows through the generations and is the expression of my God.’—And so the ancient Hebrew felt himself part of one great whole, secure in the blood-stream which passes down through the generations. Christ says: “Before Abraham was, I AM;” and “I and the Father are One.” The Ego of man is linked to a spiritual world by threads which everyone may discover in his own individuality. The Mystery of Golgotha brought to man a realisation of the Ego that is grounded upon itself, albeit the ties of blood are not ignored—the Ego that understands the physical world. Therefore, in the blood which flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, men saw the expression of the human Ego-principle, and the saying went: “He who quickens this blood within himself will become a true seer.” But the world was not ripe enough to understand the true essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. It was not ripe in the centuries immediately following the Coming of Christ, nor is it to-day. Paul had a vision of the Living Christ in the spiritual world, but, after all, who understands those profound Epistles of one who was an Initiate or speaks with any truth of Paul's disciple, Dionysos the Areopagite?

In the Mysteries of Wales and Britain the teachings of Dionysos were received and the influence of the Christ Mystery so permeated the Druidic and Trottic Mysteries that the Initiates realised in full clarity of consciousness that He whom they had sought as Hu and Baldur, had come to earth as Christ. But they said among themselves that mankind in general was not ripe to understand the mystery of the blood flowing from the Redeemer's wounds, that men were not fit to receive into themselves the blood that runs through all creation.

It was only in small circles of Initiates that this sacred Christ Mystery was preserved. A man who was initiated into this Mystery experienced the overcoming of the Ego that functions in the world of sense. This is how he experienced it.—He asked himself: ‘What has been the manner of my life hitherto? In my quest for truth, I have turned to the things of the outer world. The Initiates of the Christ-Mystery, however, demand that I shall not wait until outer things tell me what is true but that in my soul, without being stimulated by the outer world, I shall seek the invisible.’—This quest of the soul for the highest was called by the outer world in later times: The secret of the Holy Grail. And the Parsifal or Grail legend is simply a form of the Christ Mystery. The Grail is the holy Cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper and in which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood as it flowed on Golgotha. The Cup was then taken to a holy place and guarded. So long as a man does not ask about the invisible, his lot is that of Parsifal. Only when he asks, does he become an Initiate of the Christ Mystery.

Wolfram von Eschenbach speaks in his poem of the three stages through which the soul of man passes. The first of these is the stage of outer, material perception. The soul is caught up in matter and allows matter to say what is truth. This is the “stupor” (Dumpfheit) of the soul, as Wolfram van Eschenbach expresses it. And then the soul begins to recognise that the outer world offers only illusion. When the soul perceives that the results of science are not answers but only questions, there comes the stage of “doubt” (Zwifel), according to Wolfram von Eschenbach. But then the soul rises to “blessedness” (Saelde, Seligkeit)—to life in the spiritual worlds.—These are the three stages.

The Mysteries which were illuminated by the Christ Impulse have one quite definite feature in common whereby they are raised to a higher level than that of the more ancient Mysteries. Initiation always means that a man attains to a higher kind of sight and that his soul undergoes a higher development. Before he sets out on this path, three faculties live within his soul: thinking, feeling and willing. He has these three soul-powers within him. In ordinary life in the modern world, these three soul-powers are intimately bound together. The Ego of man is interwoven with thinking feeling and willing because before he attains Initiation he has not worked with the powers of the Ego at the development of his higher members. The first step is to purify the feelings, impulses and instincts in the astral body. Out of the purified astral body there rises the “Spirit-Self” or “Manas.” Then man begins to permeate every thought with a definite element of feeling so that each thought may be said to have something ‘cold’ or ‘warm’ about it.—He is transforming his “ether-body” or “life-body.” Out of the transformed ether-body (it is a transformation of feeling), arises “Budhi” or “Life-Spirit.” And finally, he transforms his willing and therewith the physical body itself, into “Atma” or “Spirit-Man.” Thus by transforming his thinking, feeling and willing, man changes his astral body into Spirit-Self or Manas, his ether-body into Life-Spirit or Budhi and finally his physical body into Spirit-Man or Atma. This transformation is the result of the Initiates systematic work upon his soul, whereby he rises to the spiritual worlds. But something very definite happens when the path to Initiation is trodden in full earnest and not light-heartedly. In true Initiation it is as if a man's organisation were divided into three parts, and the Ego reigns as king over the three. Whereas in ordinary circumstances the spheres of thinking, feeling and willing are not clearly separated, when a man sets out on the path of higher development thoughts begin to arise in him which are not immediately tinged with feeling but are permeated with the element of sympathy or antipathy according to the free choice of the Ego. Feeling does not immediately attach itself to a thought, but the man divides, as it were, into three: he is a man of feeling, a man of thinking, a man of will, and the Ego, as king, rules over the three. At a definite stage of Initiation he becomes, in this sense, three men. He feels that by way of his astral body he experiences all those thoughts which are related to the spiritual world; through his ether-body he experiences everything that pervades the spiritual world as the element of feeling; through his physical body he experiences all the will-impulses which flow through the spiritual world. And he realises himself as king within the sacred Three. A man who is not able or ripe enough to bear this separation of his being, will not attain the fruits of Initiation. The sufferings that crowd upon him in his immature state will keep him back. A man who approaches the Holy Grail but is not worthy, will suffer as Amfortas suffered. He can only be redeemed by one who brings the forces of good.—He is freed from his sufferings by Parsifal.

And now let us return once more to what Initiation brings in its train. The seeking soul finds the spiritual world; the soul finds the Holy Grail which has now become the symbol of the spiritual world. Individual Initiates have experienced what is here described. They have gone the way of Parsifal, have become as kings looking down on the three bodies. The Initiate says to himself: ‘I am king over my purified astral body which can only be purified when I strive to emulate Christ.’ He must not hold to any outer link, to anything in the external world, but unite himself in the innermost depths of his soul with the Christ Principle. Everything that binds him with the world of sense must fall away in that supreme moment. Lohengrin is the representative of an Initiate. It is not permitted to ask his name or rank, in other words, what connects him with the world of sense. He who has neither name nor rank, is called a “homeless” man. Such a man is permeated through and through with the Christ Principle. He too looks down on the ether-body which has become Life-Spirit, as upon something that is now separate from the astral body. By this ether-body he is borne upwards to the higher worlds, where the laws of space and time do not hold sway. The symbol of this ether-body and its organs, is the Swan who bears Lohengrin over the sea in a boat (the physical body), over the material world. The physical body is felt to be an instrument.

The soul on earth who experiences a new impulse through Initiation is symbolised in the figure of Elsa von Brabant. This shows us the sense in which the Lohengrin legend—which has many other meanings as well—is a portrayal of Initiation in the Mysteries associated with the Holy Grail. Thus in the eleventh to the thirteenth century, these secrets of the Holy Grail were taught in connection with the Christ Mystery. The Knights of the Grail were the later Initiates. They were confronted in the world with an exoteric Christianity, whereas esoteric Christianity was cultivated in the Mysteries. And in the Mysteries, men sought to find that relation to Christianity whereby, through the outer Christ in the soul, the inner Christ, Who is symbolised by the Dove, was awakened to life.

The whole development of the European Mysteries is expressed in yet another cycle of legends and sagas, but it is difficult to speak of them now. We must wait for another occasion. To-day we will consider how this knowledge found its way into the outer world and made its appearance in a remarkable body of legends. Comparatively little notice has been taken of a legend which was given poetic form by Conrad Fleck in 1230. It is one of the legends of Provence and deals with the Initiation of the Knights of the Grail or the Templars. It speaks of an ancient pair, “Flor” and “Blancheflor.” In modern parlance: the flower with red petals (the rose) and the flower with white petals (the lily). In earlier times it was known that a great many mysteries were contained in this legend, of which it is only possible to-day to speak briefly. It was said: Flor and Blancheflor are souls incarnated in human beings who have lived on earth. According to the legend, these two were the grandparents of Charles the Great. But those who studied the legend more deeply, saw in Charles the Great the figure who, in a certain sense, united esoteric and exoteric Christianity. This is expressed in the coronation of the Emperor. But in the grandparents of Charles the Great, Flor and Blancheflor, lived the rose and the lily—typifying souls who were to preserve in its purity the esoteric Christianity which had been taught by Dionysos the Areopagite and others. The rose—Flor or Flos—symbolised the human soul who has received the impulse of the Ego, of personality, who lets the Spiritual work out of his individuality, who has brought the Ego-force down into the red blood. But the lily was the symbol of the soul who can only remain spiritual when the Ego remains outside. Thus there is a contrast between the rose and the lily. The principle of self-consciousness has entered wholly into the rose, whereas it remains outside the lily. But there was a union between the soul that is within and the soul that as the World-Spirit pervades the universe outside. Flor and Blancheflor symbolise the finding of the World-Soul, the World-Ego, by the human soul or the human Ego. The event recorded in the legend of the Holy Grail is also described in the legend of Flor and Blancheflor. Flor and Blancheflor must not be thought of as outer figures—the lily symbolises the soul which finds its higher Egohood. The union of the lily-soul with the rose-soul was taken to express that principle in man which can link him with the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore it was said: Over against the forces of European Initiation inaugurated by Charles the Great which were to fuse exoteric and esoteric Christianity, pure esoteric Christianity must be kept alive and continued. But among the Initiates it was said: The same soul who lived in Flos or Flor and of whom the legend tells, was reincarnated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as the founder of Rosicrucianism, a Mystery-School having as its aim the cultivation of an understanding of the Christ Mystery in a way suited to the new era. Thus esoteric Christianity found refuge in Rosicrucianism. Since the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Rosicrucian Schools have trained the Initiates who are the successors of the ancient European Mysteries and of the School of the Holy Grail. Many things have trickled through into outer life in regard to the Rosicrucian Mysteries, but much that is told is a caricature of the truth. Profound achievements of spiritual life were influenced by the mysterious threads of Rosicrucianism which found their way into civilisation.—So, for instance, there is a connection between Bacon of Verulam's New Atlantis and Rosicrucianism. This work is more than a Utopia. Bacon there tries to lead those who would revive the dim clairvoyant faculties of the old Atlanteans, to higher levels. But associated with the outer Brotherhood of the Rosicrucians is all the charlatanism, quackery and caricature that is unavoidable in our age since the discovery in the art of printing. Since printing was discovered it has been no longer possible, as it was in olden times, to let secrets remain secret. Everything comes out, caricatured and distorted! And the same terrible thing happens to the teachings given in the Anthroposophical Movement. If the Anthroposophical Movement were what it is said to be in entirely ignorant circles, it would be something to be avoided at all costs. But in reality, anthroposophical teachings are nourished to a greater extent than has yet ever been the case, from the wellsprings of the Mysteries. Goethe's greatest poetic achievements were nourished from Rosicrucian sources. It is not without significance that in his poem Die Geheimnisse he speaks of a man who was led to a house and found on its door the sign of the Rose Cross. “Who brought the roses to the Cross?”—Who were these Initiates of the European Mysteries who linked the mysteries of the rose to the mystery of the Cross? How deeply Goethe had penetrated these things is apparent, for instance when he speaks of the twelve gathered around the table—twelve as in the ancient Trottic Mysteries. Oh! Goethe knew all these things. But those who study him to-day, study only the Goethe they are capable of understanding. But although he was only able to speak a mysterious language, the time has now come to speak openly about Initiation. More and more it will become apparent that Spiritual Science does not produce dreamers who are remote from the affairs of the world, but men who are practical and active in life. It brings a new hope and confidence. To modern thinking we shall more and more be able to apply the words spoken by Faust of Wagner, the representative of materialistic thinking: “How ardently be grubs for treasures, and is happy when he finds rain-worms!” Truly, materialism is happy when it finds rain-worms and can prove that in a certain sense they are necessary to the re-organisation of everything that lives and moves upon the earth. But the spirit that flows from the Mysteries makes human thinking so supple and flexible that it can really cope with life. It could not be otherwise, for the meaning of world-evolution itself is contained in the mystery-teachings of Spiritual Science.

The world and “all that therein is” is born out of the spirit; man is born and called to rise to the spirit. Spiritual Science shows us more and more that the spirit lies exhausted in matter, that physical substance is the magic robe of the Spiritual. It is for man living in the material world, to charm the spirit out of this magic robe. The Spiritual finds its resurrection in man, in the human soul that rises above itself.—To enable the soul to find this path is the task of Spiritual Science. Thus does spirit find spirit. And man will realise and understand the spirit more and more as he fashions himself in its image.

Yesterday I concluded here by saying that in recent times a confusion has arisen regarding the conception of what Ormuzd-Ahriman, living out in Persian duality, actually is. I have also pointed out how one can go back to the older European-Germanic views, such as, for example, in the poem known as the “Muspilli” poem, the poem about the firmament and the earth, in which the antithesis of an upper, luciferic principle and a lower, ahrimanic principle is expressed in a thoroughly Christian form. I say, in a thoroughly Christian form, because it has not been infected by that out of whose spiritual makeup the antithesis of above and below in the sense of the “Muspilli” poem has vanished. It was not presupposed that the Christ principle, so to speak, belongs to the higher spirituality, but the higher spirituality has been raised to the Elijah principle, and it is Elijah who fights against the Antichrist with his trickling blood, which is nothing other than the expression of the Ahrimanic principle in Christian form. Thus, in these older European-Germanic conceptions there still exists a clear consciousness of the necessity to distinguish between an upper and a lower principle, upper forces and lower forces, and that, as it were, the equalization, the harmonization of the two principles is to be sought in the Christ principle. It will also be easy to see that when one has elevated the Elijah principle and placed the antichrist principle below, then in the higher principle there is that which follows the moral impulse of the world order, and in the Ahrimanic principle that which follows the intellectual impulse of world evolution.

In such an awareness of the upper and the lower, one has generally seen a polarity that exists in the world order. When one says up and down, it is of course projected onto the human being in a certain way. And we know that the human being determines up and down by orienting the most essential direction of the spine vertically. This is how up and down arise. So this is meant to be quite relative. But what is being referred to today, quite apart from up and down, is a certain polaric contrast. This polar contrast appears to us in an extraordinarily complicated way in the human being. But one can also study this polar contrast, I would say more externalized, in the world, and it is extraordinarily useful to look at the world order in such a way that it reveals to one, through very special phenomena in which certain forces are radically developed, what secrets actually prevail in it.

Now, in man a certain contrast is less clearly expressed, but it can be very clearly seen if you look at the organization as a whole. Just as man has grown out of the whole order of the world, so too has the bird race. But the secrets that prevail in the world show us this bird race in a certain direction much more clearly than we can see it in humans, where we then have to apply it in a more complicated way.

What then is the characteristic of the bird kingdom? The characteristic of the bird kingdom is that the bird, before our world order, insofar as it is given to us in the physical sphere, first appears to the outer world in the form of an egg, if I may say so. The bird appears to the world in the form of an egg. Then the egg must be broken. The bird develops out of the egg, and you will be aware – because you will have seen what a chicken looks like when it has just hatched from the egg – you will have noticed how it is only when it hatches from the egg that the growth of what feathers are and so on really comes to life. Now, this contrast, if I may call it that, between being in the egg and being in the world with feathers, is not so clearly expressed in humans. After all, humans are not born into the world in an egg, and they are spared the later stage of entering this world with such preparation as growing feathers. But what a contrast we have in the bird kingdom with regard to the egg shape and the later form of life!

If you look at the egg from the outside, the first thing you see is, of course, the chalky shell. This chalky shell has a certain shape. But basically you cannot consider this chalky shell to be something essential in a bird, because otherwise it could not shed it. It cannot belong to something essential in the bird. You can call it, if you speak in trivial terms, a protective covering of the young being. But in any case, something that is particularly localized in the lime shell does not actually have an effect on the shape of the bird. So we have this secretion of matter in the outer shell. We have this secretion of matter as something that is pushed out of the organization of the bird, as something that is thrown off, something that the bird, in the later stages, cannot use for its development; it is therefore something that is thrown out. So there must be forces within the being that secrete what is in the egg and throw it out of itself.

When we consider this whole matter, we cannot really come to terms with it within the natural laws that present themselves within the earthly. One must take what is said in 'Occult Science' to help. In 'Occult Science' you have the indication of how, in a certain epoch of the development of our earth, the moon separates from the earth, how the matter of the moon is separated from the earth. This process actually mimics what takes place here in a certain way. Just as the formative forces of the entire Earth cosmos once separated the forces of the moon from themselves, so the matter of the bird separates this lime shell as something one might say is super-mineral. And what is it that was initially inside this lime shell? (See drawing, red.)

The creature that was originally inside this lime shell was protected by this lime shell from the forces that act in the earth's environment. If the chicken were exposed to these forces too soon, say to the sun too soon, it would of course die. It would not be able to withstand the forces that are at work in the earth's environment. The point is that the being, protected by the chalk shell, lives in a world that is not actually the earthly one.

What kind of world is it in which this creature protected by the lime shell lives? This world is the one we have gone through through Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution and which has ceased to exist, which is no longer there as Earth evolution. The past is still present in the present. And if we say to ourselves: everything that is outside of an egg shell belongs to the earth, then in that which is inside an egg shell we have everything that does not belong to the earth, that wants nothing to do with the earth itself, that, so to speak, does not want to go along with the evolution of the earth. For it must first mature, break the shell and then have matured for the evolution of the earth.

This is also the point where we may draw attention to something else. We may point out that not all the beings that are laid in the egg are actually born. A great many bird's eggs perish, and even more of the eggs of fish and the like, they all perish. And besides, I don't know if it's always opportune to discuss things in such a dry way. Humanity likes to leave a lot in the unconscious, but for the times to come, a certain amount of knowledge is necessary for humanity, and one must not close oneself off from this knowledge. Besides, a large number of bird's eggs also perish because people eat them. They do not reach their goal. And now the question is: What happens to all this, what develops from the egg content, including the latter fact, without it becoming a mature chicken or mature bird or mature fish on earth, what happens to all this? The ordinary materialist will say: Well, nature just creates nonsense, into the blind, and so and so much of what nature creates just perishes. But that is not correct. The essential substances that are in the egg shell in some way do not just become ripe for earthly existence, but they are ripe in their powers for the pre-earthly existence, for the existence that we ourselves, that the earthly beings have gone through during the Saturn, Sun and Moon time. And that is the luciferic existence. They become substances from which the luciferic existence continues to feed. Everything that perishes in the form of eggs provides nourishment for the entities, for certain spiritual entities. But now let us consider what concerns the earth.

So, when we look at the bird species, we first have the Luciferic in the egg content, that which, as such, wants nothing to do with the earth, that which does not want to be on the earth, that which, I might say, surrounds itself with a wall against the laws of the earth, which only then intervene when that which otherwise works on the earth, warmth, light, has burst the shell.

And what intervenes there? The opposing forces intervene there. If you have a bird's egg in front of you, you can say to yourself: Lucifer in his essence is sitting inside there. If you pluck the feathers of a bird, you can say: Here I have the purest image of the Ahrimanic directional forces. The Ahrimanic directional forces are at work here, even in the fine, downy feathers that you find on the fledgling chick. The Ahrimanic forces have already worked through the shell. They were already in conflict with that which does not want to be permeated by feathers. So when you look at the bird's plumage, you have the purest image of the Ahrimanic.

Therefore, you can say: When I look at an egg, Lucifer veils himself from me. He betrays himself to me only through the outer form that he sheds, through that which is cast out in a certain way as matter. So whatever falls away, whether it is a bird's egg shell, a snake skin that is thrown off and so on, that is thrown out of the Luciferic principle, out of the Luciferic forces. In what is thrown away, one can still see something of the actual formation of the Luciferic forces. They actually work, when they work purely, in spirals. And in what you have as plumage, or what you have in general, that it moves from the outside into the physical, there you have the Ahrimanic. Its directional forces act tangentially. Take a peacock's tail and look at it very closely, thinking: This is the purest image of Ahrimanic directional forces.

Now, of course, you must be aware that everywhere Lucifer and Ahriman work into and through each other, so that we only have images of them. But these images are actually most beautifully available in the bird sex; for we need only look at this bird sex as I have just described it.

But of course the forces that are within the eggshell are also active in the bird inside. The bird has these forces, which were inside the eggshell (red), surrounded by the Ahrimanic forces (blue) in its feathers. In the bird, you also have the possibility of being able to localize the etheric and the physical. If you take everything that the bird retains of the Luciferic, which was only in the egg shell, what it retains of the growth forces, then you have what underlies the etheric body. So what I have drawn in red, these are the forces, and that is subject to the activity of the etheric forces. So that we can also say about the bird: What the bird receives as an inheritance from the egg is under the influence of the life forces, the etheric forces, throughout its life. And what it acquires as its plumage is under the influence of the physical forces (arrows) throughout its life. And what is in between, its flesh, muscles and so on, is under the influence of the astral forces (yellow) throughout its life. In the case of the bird, we can thus localize, so to speak, the astral in the flesh and muscles, the physical in the plumage, and the etheric in what remains of the egg contents as growth forces.

In the case of humans, it is much more complicated. Man does not live externally in an egg. He develops his Luciferic in the mother's body, which the bird still carries outwards. That is why Ahriman does not yet come over him in the mother's body. With birds, it is the case that they show, as it were, how they bring the Luciferic out into the world without it actually going astray, and how they also, in turn, take on the Ahrimanic. With human beings, you can see the individual examples develop with particular clarity. Between the human and the bird sex, we can then insert the mammal sex.

In the human being, you have a very strange difference compared to the bird. Take the bird's legs. The bird's legs are, as a rule, when you compare them to the human leg, actually quite stunted organs. How did the bird come to have legs just like it has? Take the sparrow's legs: What miserable rods they are compared to the proud legs that humans have! So take these stunted bird legs – yes, when you look at the bird's entire stunted form, you will say to yourself: the bird is designed primarily for flying, it takes off from the earth, and that is also the reason for the shape of its legs. They are, so to speak, only a hint of its connection to the earth. Man does not lift his legs off the earth. Man cannot fly. He places both his legs on the earth like proud pillars. The way these legs are formed, they are essentially an earthly gift. The bird does not receive this earthly gift because it is not bound to the earth in this way at all, because it is separate from the earth. And by receiving this earthly gift, the human being is more bound to the forces of Ahriman in this earthly gift than the bird is. In a sense, the bird also does not receive its Ahrimanic forces from the earth as fully as the human being does. In the human being, Ahriman shoots into the legs and from there up into the rest of the organism. In the bird, Ahriman sprouts into the feathers.

Now, if you look at a human being, who is more built for the earth in terms of his legs, then you may well ask: Why does a human being not have feathers? A human being does not have feathers because, unlike a bird, he is not built for the earth. If a human being were to fly in the air, he would also have feathers, because then the Ahrimanic forces would affect him from completely different directions. So he has only these few Ahrimanic tendencies, which are present in the hair. These are the Ahrimanic tendencies he has. They are strongest in the head, which is proof enough that the human head has a great deal of Ahrimanism, which we have already gathered from other insights.

If you look at mammals, you will say to yourself: They are even more bound to the earth than humans. These mammals are also bound to the earth with what humans are not bound to, for example with the front limbs; because monkeys only walk upright in rare cases, and even dogs do that when they are attentive, but it is not natural for them. Even for the gorilla it is not natural to walk upright; he climbs. These front limbs are real grasping organs, they are for moving around. Man is therefore half lifted off the earth, the bird is completely lifted off the earth, the mammal is bound to the earth with its front limbs as well as with its hind limbs. So in a sense it is entirely an earthly creature. The human being frees itself from the earth again through the upright position of its backbone, while the mammal is entirely bound to the earth. The mammal's entire remaining form is built accordingly. The mammal has, so to speak, only its hair from the region where the bird has its feathers, which are actually incorporated into the organism from the outside.

If you take all this into account, you will say to yourself: You can, if you look at the relationships of a being – a mammal, bird, human being, and you could now move on to the other beings – you can, if you look at the relationship of these beings to the environment and have a complete overview, find the shape of the being from the understanding of the relationship to the environment. – You can construct the shape for yourself. You can say that the bird has within itself the Luciferic principle, which the Earth does not like at all, so the bird in its egg separates itself from the Earth for as long as possible; then it comes about that the Earth has as little effect on it as possible. Its legs remain stunted, and the forces surrounding the Earth, the nearest forces to the Earth, which surround the Earth in the mantle of warmth, then affect the bird. Therefore, it will have to take on the shape that it has: stunted legs and so on. Man is bound to the earth by his lower limbs; he frees himself. The mammal is in the middle of it all, standing on the earth with four pillars: it is formed out of the earth. It is therefore the forces that directly emanate from the earth that primarily affect the mammal.

Such things were well known to an older, more instinctive science. Therefore, in that which is formed most independently of the earth in man, because it is actually only a metamorphosis of earlier life on earth, therefore an earlier view saw a bird, an eagle, in man's mind. In the human being with a metabolism of the limbs, which is completely organized towards the earth, an earlier view saw an ox or a bull or a cow, because that is an animal that is now completely organized towards the earth. In the middle part of man, who is, as it were, the connecting link between the eagle and the cow or calf, in this middle man, one has seen that which, through the metabolism, is indeed detached from the earthly in a certain way; you can see from this, cannot you, that the lion has a very short intestine. Its metabolic system is extremely primitive, whereas its chest and heart systems are very specially developed. Hence its passion, its rage, and so on. The lion has been seen by the older, more instinctive view as being in the middle part of the human being. These were views that were based on something.

Now we have to come back to these things in a different, I would say much more conscious way. We have to realize, for example, that we humans differ from all animals in our I. For the vast majority of people today, our I is still a very dormant organ. If one believes that the I is very much awake, one is actually mistaken. For in the will — I have already explained this to you — the human being is actually asleep too, and when the I acts willfully, we are not dealing with something that stands before us as the I, but rather with something that stands before us as night actually stands before us. We take the night for granted, even though it is dark, and we do the same in our lives. If you really look back on your life, it does not only consist of the days that were as bright as day, but also of the nights. But they are always crossed out of the course of time, so to speak. It is similar with our ego. Our ego is actually noticeable to ordinary consciousness in that it is not there for consciousness; it is already there, but for consciousness it is not there. Something is missing in that place, and that is how you see the ego. It is really like having a white wall and a place that has not been painted white; then you see the black. And so you actually see our ego in ordinary consciousness as the erased. And so it is also during waking: the I is actually always asleep at first; but it shines through as the sleeping one through thoughts, ideas and feelings, and therefore the I is also perceived in ordinary consciousness, that is, it is supposed that it is perceived. So we can say: our I is actually not perceived directly at first.

Now, a prejudiced psychology, a doctrine of the soul, believes that this I actually sits inside the human being; where his muscles are, his flesh is, his bones are and so on, there the I is also inside. If one were to survey life just a little, one would very soon perceive that this is not the case. But it is difficult to bring such a consideration before people today. I already tried it in 1911 in my lecture at the philosophers' congress in Bologna. But to this day no one has understood this lecture. I tried to show what the ego actually is. This I actually lies in every perception, it actually lies in everything that makes an impression on us. The I does not lie in my flesh and in my bones, but in that which I can perceive through my eyes. When you see a red flower somewhere: in your I, in your entire experience, which you have because you are devoted to the red, you cannot separate the red from the flower. With all of it, you have also given the I, the I is connected with the content of your soul. But your soul content is not in your bones! You spread the content of your soul throughout the entire space. So this I is even less than the air you are breathing in, even less than the air that was in you before. This I is connected with every perception and with everything that is actually outside of you. It is only active within you because it sends forces into it from your perception. And furthermore, the I is connected with something else: You need only walk, that is, develop your will. In doing so, your ego goes with you, or rather, the ego participates in the movement, and whether you sneak along slowly, walk, move in a Kiebitz step or turn somehow and the like, whether you dance or jump, the ego participates in all of it. The ego participates in everything that comes from you. But that is not in you either. Think, it takes you with it. When you dance a round dance, do you think the dance is in you? It wouldn't have any space in you! How could it have space? But the I is there, the I is doing the dance. So in your perceptions and in your activity, there sits the I. But it is never actually in you in the full sense of the word, not in the way that your stomach is in you. It is always something outside you, this I. It is just as much outside the head as it is outside the legs, except that when you walk it is very much involved in the movements your legs make. The I is actually very much involved in the movement that the legs make. But the head is less involved in the I.

But what is the further difference between the legs or the limbs in general and the metabolism of the head? In the case of the head, the etheric body and the astral body are also relatively independent; the head is mostly physical body. This head, which is so old that it comes from the previous incarnation, has become the most physical, and is really the worst inhabitant of the earth. In contrast, in the case of the legs, or rather the limbs, and in the case of the metabolism, the etheric body and the astral body are intimately connected with the physical body. So we can say: In the case of the legs, the etheric body and the astral body are connected to the physical body; only the I is relatively free of the legs and only takes the legs with it when the legs move. And it is the same with the metabolism: the metabolic organs are essentially connected to the etheric and astral bodies.

We can now say: How does the human head differ from the 'metabolic-limb human'? — In that the head actually has a free ether body, a free astral body and a free I; the metabolic limb-human being has only a free I, while the ether body and the astral body in the metabolic limb-human being are bound to the physical body; they are not free from it.

Perhaps the following will help you to understand the matter even better. Imagine that your astral body or your etheric body, the part that has to supply your metabolic limb man, suddenly decides to behave in the same way as the etheric body and the astral body of the head: it also wants to be free. Do you think it would have this strange idea that it also wanted to be free? Let's say, for example, that the astral body of your metabolic person wanted to behave like its colleague, the astral body of the head is allowed to behave. It is just a different part, so I say: its colleague. What arises there? What arises is something that should not arise at all because it contradicts the shape of the human being: our abdomen wants to become a head, it wants to become like the head. And the strange thing is, what is healthy in the head makes the abdomen sick. Basically, it is a general characteristic of all abdominal diseases that the abdomen takes on the configuration of the head.

It is, of course, only a special case of what I have explained, for example, for carcinoma in a Stuttgart or Zurich lecture, where I have shown that carcinoma formation is based on the fact that in a part of the human body where no sensory organs are supposed to develop inwardly, the astral body suddenly begins to want to develop sensory organs. A carcinoma is just an ear or an eye that wants to be in the wrong place. It grows there. It wants to form an ear or an eye. So when the astral body or the etheric body of the lower body wants to behave like the astral or etheric body of the head, the lower body becomes ill.

And the other way around, when the head also begins – it begins quietly in migraine-like conditions – to want to live like the lower body, to draw its astral body or its etheric body into its affairs, then the head becomes ill. When it draws in its etheric body, migraine-like conditions arise. When it draws in its astral body, even worse things arise.

These are the things that show you how complicated human nature is. This human nature cannot be studied in the way that today's trivial science does, but it must be studied by looking at it in all its complexity, by saying: the head cannot be like the abdomen, because if the head is like the abdomen, it can only be sick. So if, for example, the cerebrum begins to develop its metabolism too strongly, if it begins to develop secretion processes too strongly, then illnesses will arise. And these strong secretory processes arise precisely from the fact that the head makes too much use of its etheric body. But as soon as our abdomen is left to its own devices, when it becomes head-like, so to speak, when it develops an inclination to develop sensory organs, for example, then its diseases develop. So you can say: the head of the human being has a free etheric body, a free astral body, a free I. The metabolic-limb man has a bound etheric body, that is, an etheric body bound to physical matter, a bound astral body and only a free ego. And the middle man, the rhythmic man, has a bound etheric body, a free astral body and a free ego.

Head: free etheric body, free astral body, free I
Rhythmic human being: bound etheric body, free astral body, free I
Metabolic-limb human being: bound etheric body, bound astral body, free I

This is an overview of the human constitution from an extremely important point of view, because it gives you an impression of how the I actually has something free in relation to the whole human being, how the I actually falling asleep, has an effect on the human being, but how it always remains relatively free from the human being, how it is actually connected with external perception as well as with what the human being does as an external movement, but how it does not actually merge completely with the human body. In what does the human being's I live? Is there any way to see in what the human being's I lives?

Well, we can see something of it in what develops in the feathers of birds. Human beings do not have feathers, but their I lives in the forces that are in our environment and that are the guiding forces for the feathers of birds. The I lives externally in these forces. And we can see these formative forces even more clearly. In the feathers of birds we see them, as it were, held by the bird's body; but these forces also form the guidelines for free-moving beings: insects. When you see the insects buzzing around and grasp them imaginatively, you have an image of the realm in which your I lives. Just imagine insects buzzing around you: beetles, flies, beautiful butterflies, ugly horseflies and bumblebees and all sorts; imagine all of them floating around you in the most diverse guidelines: that is the outwardly visible image of what your ego actually lives in. And it is more than a mere image when one says: ugly thoughts live there, like bumblebees, like horseflies; beautiful thoughts like butterflies; some people's thoughts bite like evil flies, and so on. Only one is spiritual and the other physical. Man's I lives entirely in the environment.

This has an extraordinarily strong significance, and much of the real knowledge of the world depends on correctly assessing what one sees, on not just raving and rambling in general about a spirit, but also being able to see in the image outside what one experiences in an abstract, spiritual form within one's own self for one's own sake. For everything that exists spiritually also exists in the world in the form of images. What exists only in spirit exists somewhere in the image. One must only know how to properly assess the image. And when the Ahrimanic enters our ego, in that the ego finds itself in the butterflies and the feathers of the birds out there, that is, in the formative forces out there, then our ego in turn has the ability to form all kinds of forms from within. We construct the circle, we construct the egg shape, the triangle; we also build a world out of the inner being. And if we search for it, we will find: these are precisely the forces that are thrown out of the luciferic principle.

I said the other day: Mathematicians, when they study space, should consider the relationship of spatial dimensions to a hen's egg; something very interesting would come out of it.

This is the contrast: we live with the I both in the forms that we can construct into the world in this way and in that which is constructed out of the world.

Yes, anyone who understands the various wonderful shades of the bird world also understands something of the nature of the human soul in its relationship to the world. For what the bird turns outward in its plumage, what it lets us see, that shimmers through our ego in the flickering, shimmering, glittering perception from the outside in.

So we must try to grasp the world with the help of images. Our abstract science today grasps very little of the real world.

Every profound soul must repeatedly ask itself the question about the meaning of life and must always ask itself anew about the mystery of death. Not only when we look up at the starry heavens, at the far reaches of the world, but at every step of everyday life, questions arise about the essential riddles of life. When one person is born under such circumstances that we can already see at his cradle that hopelessness and hardship will accompany him through life, while another is born under the most favorable circumstances and with the most favorable disposition, so that it is known that he is destined for a happy life and will be able to bring many blessings to his fellow human beings, we ask: Why is that so? We ask: How is it that one person seems to be born and grows up in need and misery through no fault of their own, while the other seems to be able to lead a happy existence through no merit of their own?

Man is never able to answer the riddles of life by merely considering them physically. Theosophy seeks the answers in the spiritual realization of the background of existence, which leads beyond the sensual world. Not because idle curiosity plagues people, does Theosophy want to answer their questions about the riddles of life, but because humanity needs that confidence for its healthy existence, which comes from the sources that give us answers to the questions about the riddles of life.

If we want to explore the sources of life in the sense of the theosophical worldview, we must remember the structure of the human being. What the senses see in a person is only a part of the human being, which it shares with so-called mineral beings. Spiritual science shows us how the physical organism is kept alive by a second principle of human existence, the etheric or life body, which is a continuous fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Furthermore, we have seen from the study of Theosophy how everything that lives in the soul in the way of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, instincts, desires and passions, has a third link in the human being as a carrier – the astral body. While the physical body is shared with all mineral beings, the etheric body is shared with all living beings, but the astral body is shared only with animals. The sum of powers, that which the human being has at the center of his being, he is able to summarize with the words “I am”. The “I am” is proper only to man among all the living beings around him.

From this I, he becomes the master and transformer of his other three limbs. As the I works, it first transforms part of the astral body into the spirit self or manas. By working on itself through powerful impulses, the life body is transformed into the life spirit or budhi. When the ego works down into the physical principle, Atman or the spiritual man develops from it.

The ordinary human being has the four limbs up to the I. Large parts of Manas are also usually already developed. In the course of his development, the human being will achieve the ability to independently develop the seven limbs of his being. Actually, the seven parts are only four limbs, because Manas is the transformed astral body, Budhi is the transformed etheric body, and Atman is the transformed principle of the physical body.

When a person wakes up in the morning until the moment he falls asleep at night, we have the four limbs in front of us: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I.

In the state of sleep and in the state of death, these four members are present in different proportions. The state of sleep is also called the brother of death. When a person falls asleep in the evening, all the things that the astral body carries, such as desire and suffering, joy and pain, sink into an indeterminate darkness. The I also sinks into an indeterminate darkness when a person falls asleep in the evening. For those who view the human being from the standpoint of spiritual science, the state of the sleeping person is as follows: the physical body and the etheric body are lying in bed; the astral body and the ego are lifted out. In today's human beings, the astral being and the ego do not yet have spiritual organs of perception. In order to perceive the world, they still need the organs of the physical and etheric bodies. Otherwise, he cannot perceive consciously. Naively, man does not say, quite correctly, “My eye sees, my ear hears,” but “I see” and “I hear.” The sense organs of the physical body are the instruments of the astral body and the I.

Sleep thus presents itself as that state of man in which the astral body and the inner man, the I, are in a purely spiritual world. Is the astral body inactive during the night? It is not. During the night it is outside the physical and etheric bodies. For those who can explore these things, it can be observed that the astral body works on the physical and etheric bodies of the person throughout the night. Its actual home is where it is at night. There are the forces into which it immerses itself during the night. During the day, it absorbs all kinds of impressions through the external senses: form, color, light and so on. All of this surges back and forth in the astral body.

The astral body is not yet in complete harmony with the physical body; this is what causes fatigue. This has to be removed at night by the astral body immersing itself in the forces of its spiritual home and refreshing itself. Once complete harmony has been established between the astral body and the physical body, a very different state will have been reached. The surging and swaying of the impressions absorbed during the day from the physical environment manifests itself in the evening as fatigue. During the night, the astral body works off the fatigue. We feel the consequences of this work on the physical and etheric bodies early in the morning. We can see the manifestations of what the astral body does during the night in the refreshment we experience in the morning. Even when the physical and etheric bodies are ill, the astral body has a harmonizing effect on the disturbed etheric and physical bodies during sleep.

Physical science may object to some of these things, but spiritual processes at work behind the facts do not contradict the results of scientific research. If, time and again, physical research wants to object to the teachings of spiritual science about spiritual and psychological processes, the following example of a similar assessment can be pointed out. Let us assume: A person gives another a slap in the face. A has observed that the first person had a fit of anger and was therefore tempted to give the other a slap in the face. But B says: “I saw his hand rise and move towards the other person's face, and that's why he slapped him.” The part about the fit of anger is nonsense! This is the verdict of physical research when it insists on the truth of external facts in the face of the results of spiritual research. We only recognize a small part of the world when we only judge and observe external facts. Everything that happens in the world, that physics researches, that external observation shows us, these are only the gestures of the soul life of the world. The situation is quite different for a person in death than in sleep. Then not only the ego dissolves with the astral body, but the etheric body also goes with it and only the physical body remains behind. During life, the etheric body is a constant fighter against the decay of the physical body. But the physical body disintegrates the moment the etheric body leaves it. Immediately after death, the ego, the astral body and the etheric body are together – for a short while. Not all people experience this togetherness right after death; for each person, it lasts as long as that person has been able to exist without sleep.

The experiences that a person has during this time are very strange. They literally feel how they grow out of themselves, become greater. During this time, they see all the events of their past life around them as in a large memory tableau. This moment is extraordinary. Only in exceptional cases does a person experience something similar during their lifetime. It may be that in the event of a strong fright, when he is close to drowning or falling, he experiences a loosening of the etheric body from the physical body to such an extent that the memory of his entire past life then comes to him. However, this is only the case if the ego and the astral body do not lose consciousness. The astral body must remain within the etheric body.

Another example of the etheric body being disconnected from the physical body in places is when a limb, for example a hand, has fallen asleep. Children have a very telling expression for this; they say: “It feels like seltzer water.” The seer knows that at this moment the etheric body is protruding from the physical body at that point. The different blood circulation is only a consequence of the etheric body being partially released. Like the fingers of a glove, we can see the etheric body hanging out of the hand. When someone is hypnotized, you can see how the etheric body protrudes to the left and right, hanging down like rags.

Perhaps some will say that these explanations are nonsense and consider them foolishness. It is very good when we can cite examples from people who might otherwise laugh at theosophy to support our stories about the facts of the spiritual world. Criminal anthropologist Benedikt recounts the following experience: When he was once close to drowning while bathing, he suddenly saw his entire life before him.

We can explain this fact, that after death a person sees their entire previous life in front of them, and the similar experience of a tremendous shock, as follows: the etheric body is, among other things, also the carrier of memory. In ordinary life it is connected with the physical brain. At the moment when the vehicle of memory is freed from the physical brain, but while the astral body is still within the etheric body, the whole of life presents itself to the human soul as a great tableau of memories. Bit by bit it fades away into darkness, and a second corpse remains of the human being. From the etheric or life body, something remains for him like an essence, like an extract of the great memory picture, as if the content of a large book had been summarized in one page. So after death, the essence of earthly life remains for us from this memory tableau; this is incorporated into the astral body on its journey after death.

Now the human being still consists of his ego, the astral body and the imprinted essence of his last life. If we want to know what fate the astral body has after death, we must remember the experiences of ordinary life. Let us see who actually experiences the enjoyment of physical things. That is the astral body, which uses the physical organs only as tools. For example, in the case of a gourmet, it is also the astral body that uses the physical organs only as tools. But it is the astral body that craves the delicious food. Let us imagine ourselves in the astral body after death. It has the same desires and instincts as it had before, but now it lacks the instruments to satisfy them. The astral body is now in a special situation. It has desires but no tools to satisfy them. The human being is in a state of burning thirst. The more a person depends on everything that can only be satisfied by the physical body, the more burning the thirst. This thirst lasts until the astral body can recognize that it must get rid of these desires. The time of burning thirst is called the Kamaloka time; Kama - desire; Loka - place. It is the sum of experiences that can only be satisfied by the physical body and must be given up.

When man learns to seek the Divine-Spiritual in the world, he will lack nothing after death. It is a method of shortening the Kamaloka time if one frees oneself from the lower pleasures and learns to let one's inner being be satisfied by spiritual interests. The highest by which man can free himself from the sensual in the sensual is art, true art. The more idealistic and spiritual the art that affects a person, the shorter the Kamaloka period. Art that is directed towards the external, the sensual, is not suitable for the whole of the human being. For one person it is relatively longer, for another person it is relatively shorter, the time in which he must unlearn what connects him to the physical world.

Then there is the shedding of a third corpse. After a long time, the human being discards the astral corpse. The ego cannot take anything with it on the further pilgrimage through life that is not purified by the ego. The unpurified, unprocessed parts of the astral body remain in the astral world. These astral corpses are always around us. People who are or have been closely connected to the material world leave dense astral corpses behind.

Some influence on a person comes from the fact that he walks through spiritual entities, that his soul is permeated by such spiritual entities. These also include such astral corpses. Because if a person is not armed against it, he is open to such influences. A restlessness arises in him, perhaps also bad impulses. But a good person, full of character, will not succumb to these harmful influences.

We have now followed the human being to the point where only the ego remains, with the purified parts of the astral and etheric bodies. Now a purely spiritual state occurs, which is called devachan. The human being is stripped of his covers; he is a purely spiritual being. We now still have the I before us. It has sprung out of the bodily sheaths and has become spiritual in itself. The I in man is almost like a plant that has been enclosed in crevices and has been freed and unfolds freely. The I unfolds in all directions when the astral corpse has fallen away. It feels a bliss of the deepest kind.

If we want to get to know these feelings, we have to compare them with a feeling that is only a very weak echo of these feelings. When the hen on the egg uses her body heat to guide the developing being towards maturation, we have a small something in this feeling of bliss that the I experiences during this time.

Then comes the time when the fruit ripens, as an extract of the last life. It is not for nothing that the I has absorbed this extract of the last life. The I has absorbed the world in a thousand and one impressions. The I has faced life with the intellect and the mind. Everything it has absorbed is compressed into this small extract, and this extract has become a creator through the feeling of inner bliss.

The I is preparing to build a new human being. We have built ourselves as we are. Only the outer disposition and something of what is in the etheric body has been passed down to us by inheritance. What we have already seen developing in the child's body took this long time after death to utilize the fruits of the last life. Every time after death, the human being takes with them an extract of their last life. Each time, the human being builds a new life through what they have experienced. In addition to what we have brought with us from previous lives, after death we take with us the extract of our last life. The ego experiences this bringing in of the fruit of the last human life and its use as a blessing. So the ego works to use this fruit of the last life to build a new human being. Physical inheritance provides the building blocks. How they are put together comes from the last life. The extract of the last life contains the design of the new life.

But after death, people have more to do than just occupy themselves with themselves. If we look at the development of the earth, we have to realize that everything on earth is changing. People will not reappear on earth until they can have new experiences on earth. Imagine Europe a few centuries before Christ, when everything was covered with mighty forests, and how every corner of the earth has changed since then. The face of the earth is constantly changing, and so is the cultural face of the earth. Our children learn something completely different at school than the children of ancient Rome learned. The face of the earth has also changed in spiritual and mental terms. Where are the forces that bring about these changes?

The forces that transformed the Germany that existed in the first centuries after the birth of Christ lie in the spiritual world. The co-workers in this change are the people themselves. After death, they continue to work on the physiognomy of the earth. The seer sees how the earthly beings are surrounded and enveloped by the bodiless human beings who are preparing the soil into which they will be born into a new life. In the physical life, we build cities, construct instruments, machines, and so on. But after death we transform the face of the earth. We prepare the bed in which the human being will be embedded when he is ready to take on a new form. We see the human being creating in the spiritual world; he is one of the architects, one of the co-creators in the transformation of the earth.

It takes a long time for the earth to change in such a way that the soul returns to a completely different scene. Once man appeared for the first time in the earthly body. Before that he was in a purely spiritual world, in the bosom of the Godhead. What man experiences in the physical body in the physical world can only be experienced within the physical body. With each life he adds a new page to the previous one, so to speak. At the end of his incarnations, these earthly experiences are added to his soul, and he lays them down before the altar of the Deity.

As long as the human being can be enriched by special forms of earthly existence, he embodies himself. This is how the individual life is comprehensible. It is an effect of previous lives and is a preparation for a later life. This law was not created for brooding, for idle speculation and for looking back at the past without taking action. This law tells us: the experiences of this life are the consequences of previous lives and the preparations for later lives. If I am in need and misery, then this is the preparation for later experiences. This is a law of life that knows how to solve the riddles of life in a wonderful way.

If someone, invoking this law, were to object, as sometimes happens, that one could not then help someone who is in need, then that is completely nonsensical. Just as a merchant's balance is a specific one, but a new item can be entered on the debit and credit side every day, so you can take stock of all your good and bad deeds at any moment in your life, but a new item can also be added to either side at any moment. It is never out of the question for us to add completely new items. Through the law of karma, we are able to help people. It is a law that gives impetus to life and mobilizes all energy. The law of karma is often misunderstood from two sides: from theologians and from some theosophists. The theologians object that salvation was brought to all of humanity by Christ Jesus, and therefore people cannot do anything themselves for their salvation. On the other hand, many a theosophist believes that he must oppose the teaching of redemption through Christ Jesus because he believes in the law of karma. But if he understands the law of karma correctly, then he knows that you can always add a new item to your life account and that you can therefore always help another person. Thus, the more powerful a person is, the more he can help other people. A mighty being, such as Christ, can have an effect on an infinite number of people. The act of redemption is inscribed in the karma of all humanity. The law of karma is in beautiful harmony with the redemption of Christ Jesus.

The most beautiful instrument for comprehending the great religious truths is Theosophy. Through it, the modern human being receives the form that is right for his soul.

The meaning of life arises when we recognize that which is behind life and incorporate it into the impulses of our actions. Theosophy is for energetic people who want to create in this life. When we learn to recognize spiritual forces, we also learn to introduce them into life. The theosophist is indifferent to arguments for or against Theosophy based on the usual dialectical arguments. What matters for Theosophy is that it becomes an instrument for life, that it increasingly intervenes in life. In the next period of cultural development, it will become clear what people owe to Theosophy: that people become joyful in their work and hopeful through Theosophy.

Theosophy is a remedy for humanity. If it proves to be such, then it needs no other logical proof. If Theosophy has a healing effect on people, then it will be proven by the facts of life.

In the last Lecture I began by giving some idea of the nature and character of the Gospel according to Mark. I showed that when this Gospel is studied something more can be gathered from it than from the other Gospels concerning the great laws both of human and cosmic development. One has to acknowledge that in what is indicated concerning the profundities of the Christian Mystery, an opportunity is here given us to enter perhaps most deeply into these mighty secrets.

I originally thought that it might be possible, in the course of this winter, to give intimate and important instructions concerning matters we have not heard as yet within our spiritual-scientific movement; or perhaps I should say concerning things that lie on the border of spiritual matters not as yet dealt with by us. But it has been necessary to abandon this scheme, for the simple reason that our Berlin Group has grown so enormously during recent weeks that it would not have been possible at present to bring to the understanding of its members all that I had intended to say.

It is necessary in the case of mathematics, for instance, or any other science, that preparation should he made for any special stage, and this is necessary to a still higher degree when we advance to the consideration of certain high spiritual matters. Therefore we shall leave to a later date the consideration of those parts of the Gospel of Mark which cannot be explained to so large a circle.

It is most necessary when a document like this Gospel is under consideration that we should clearly understand through what important factors the evolution of mankind has passed. I have always impressed on you—as a quite abstract and general truth—that in every age there have always been certain guides or leaders of men who, because they stood in a certain relationship to the Mysteries, to the spiritual super-sensible world, were in a position to implant impulses in human evolution which contributed to its further progress. Now there are two principal and essential methods by which men can come into relationship with super-sensible worlds. The one is that to which I have referred when indicating certain features of the teaching of that great leader, Zarathustra; and the other is one that comes before our souls when we study the special methods of the great Buddha. These two great teachers, Buddha and Zarathustra, differ very much as regards their whole method and manner of working.

We must realise that the entrance into that state which Buddha and Buddhism describe as being “under the Bodhi tree,” is a symbolic expression for a certain mystic enhancement of consciousness, and opens a path by which the human ego can enter into its own Being, its own deeper nature. This path, blazed by Buddha in such an outstanding way, is a descent of the ego into the abyss of its own human nature.

You will gain a more exact idea of what is meant by this if you recall that we have followed man through four stages of development, three of which are already concluded and the fourth is that we are in at present. We have traced human development through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions; now it is passing through the Earth-evolution.

We know these three stages correspond with the upbuilding of the physical, the etheric, and the astral natures of man; that now during earthly evolution we are at the stage corresponding to the development of the human ego, in so far as this can be developed as a member of man's Being. We have described the human Being from various points of view as an ego enclosed within three sheaths: an astral sheath corresponding to the Moon-evolution, an etheric sheath corresponding to the Sun-evolution, and a physical sheath corresponding to the Saturn-evolution.

As normally developed to-day, man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric and physical bodies, he really knows nothing of them. You will naturally say: but man is aware to-day of his physical body. This, however, is not the case. What ordinarily confronts him as the human physical body to-day is only illusion, Maya. What he regards as the physical body is in reality the interblending activity of the four members of his Being physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego; and the result of this interplay, of these interblended activities, is what our eyes see and our hands grasp as man. If we really wish to see the physical body we must separate off three parts and retain one; as when analysing a chemical compound formed of four substances; we must separate the ego, astral body and etheric body, then the physical body remains. But this is not possible under present conditions of earthly existence. You might perhaps say this happens whenever a man dies. But this is not correct, for what a man leaves behind at death is not the human physical body but a corpse. The physical body cannot live when the laws present at death are active in it. These laws did not originally belong to the body, but are laws belonging to the external world. If you carry out these thoughts you must acknowledge that what is usually called man's body, is a Maya, an illusion, and what spiritual science calls the “physical body” is the combination, the result, within our mineral world of organic laws, which produces the physical body of man in the same way as the laws of crystallisation produce quartz, or those of emerald-crystallisation produce emeralds. This physical body of man as it works in the physical mineral world is the true human body. What man knows of the world to-day is but the outcome of observation made by the senses. But observation as it is made by the senses can only be made by an organism in which an ego dwells. The present day superficial method of observation states that animals perceive the external world, for example, in the same way as men do; through their senses. This is a most confused conception, people would be much astonished if they were shown, as must be clone some day, the picture of the world formed by a horse, a dog, or any other animal. If a picture were made of what a horse or a dog sees round it this would be very different from the picture of the world as seen by man. That the human senses perceive the world as they do is connected with the fact that the ego reaches out over the whole surrounding world and fills the sense organs, eyes, ears and so on, with the pictures it perceives. So that only an organism in which an ego dwells can have such a picture of the world as man has; and the human organism belongs to this picture and is part of it. We must therefore say: What is usually called the “physical body” of man is only the result of sense-observation and not reality. When we speak of physical man and of the physical objects around him it is the ego, aided by the senses and the understanding connected with the brain, that regards the world. Hence man only knows those things over which his ego extends, to which his ego belongs. So soon as the ego is not present the pictures the world presents to it are no longer there; this means the man is asleep. Then no pictures of the world surround him—he is unconscious.

Whenever you regard anything, at every moment, the ego is hound up with what you see. It is spread out over what you see so that you really know only the content of your ego. As normal human Beings you know the content of your ego, but of that which belongs to your own nature, into which you enter each morning when you wake—of your astral body, etheric body, and physical body you know nothing. The moment he awakes, the normal man of to-day sees nothing of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he did, that is if he perceived the sum of the instincts, desires and passions that have accumulated in him in the course of his repeated earthly lives. Man does not see these. He would not be able to endure the sight. When he does dip down into his own nature, into his physical, etheric and astral bodies his attention is at once deflected from this to the external world; he there beholds what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his sphere of vision, so that it is in no way possible for him to sink into his own inner nature.

We are correct therefore when in speaking of this in spiritual science we say: The moment a man awakes in the morning he enters through the door of his own being. But at this door stands a watcher, the “little guardian of the threshold.” He does not permit man to enter his own being, but directs him at once to the outer world. Each morning we meet this little guardian of the threshold, and anyone who on awakening enters his own nature consciously, learns to know him. In fact the mystic life consists in whether this little guardian of the threshold acts beneficently towards us, making us unaware of our own being, turning our ego aside so that we do not descend into it, or permitting us to pass through the door and enter into our own being. The mystic life enters through the door I have described, and this in Buddhism is called “sitting under the Bodhi tree.” This is nothing else than the descent of a man into his own being through the door that is ordinarily closed to him. What Buddha experienced in this descent is set before us in Buddhistic writings. Such things are no mere legends, but the reflections of profound truths experienced inwardly—truths concerning the soul. These experiences in the language of Buddhism are called “The Temptation of Buddha.”

Speaking of this Buddha himself tells us how the Beings he loved approached him at the moment when he entered mystically into his own inner being. He tells how they seemed to approach him bidding him to do this or that—for instance, to carry out false exercises so as to enter in a wrong way into his own being. We are even told that the form of his mother appeared to him—he beheld her in her spiritual substance—and she ordered him to begin a false Askese. Naturally this was not the real mother of Buddha. But his temptation consisted in this very fact, that in his first evolved vision he was confronted not by his real mother but by a mask or illusion. Buddha withstood this temptation. Then a host of demoniac forms appeared to him, these he describes as desires, telling how they corresponded to the sensation of hunger and thirst, or the instinct of pride, conceit and arrogance. All these approached him—how? They approached him in so far as they were still within his own astral body, in so far as he had not overcome them at that great moment of his life when he sat under the Bodhi tree. Buddha shows us in a most wonderful way in this temptation, how we feel all the forces and powers of our astral body, which are within us because we have made them ever worse and worse in the course of our development through succeeding incarnations. In spite of having risen so high Buddha still sees them, and now at the final stage of his progress he has to overcome the last of these misleading forces of his astral body which appear to him as demons.

What does a human personality find when through temptation it passes down through the realms of its astral body and etheric body into its physical body? That is, when it really gets to know these two members of human nature?

If we are to know this, we must realise that in the course of his descending incarnations on earth man has been in a position to injure his astral body very much, but has not been able to injure his etheric and physical bodies to the same extent. The astral body is deteriorated through the “Egoism of human nature,” through greed, hate, selfishness, arrogance and pride. Through all these, and through his lower desires man injures his astral body. The greater part of the etheric body is so strong that however much a man may try to injure it he is unable to do so, for the etheric body resists injury. A man cannot descend so deeply into his own nature with his individual powers, as to injure the etheric or physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults he develops directly affect the physical and etheric bodies injuriously, and appear later as weaknesses and as dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot affect his physical body directly. If he cuts his finger, this is not brought about through the soul, neither is infection. In the course of his incarnations he has only become capable of affecting his astral body and a part of his etheric body; on his physical body he can only work indirectly, not directly. We can therefore say if a man descends into his etheric body on which he can still work directly he sees in this region all the things connected with his former incarnations, so that the moment he dips clown into his own being he also dips into his earlier, more remote incarnations. Man can therefore find the way to his former incarnation by sinking down into his own being. If this plunging down into his own being is very intensive, very thorough and forceful, as was the case with Buddha, the insight into other incarnations goes further and further back.

Originally man was a spiritual being, the sheaths that envelop his spiritual nature only gathered round him at a later day. Man came forth from Spirit, and everything external has condensed, as it were, out of Spirit. So that in sinking down into his own being man enters into the Spirit of the world. This sinking down, this breaking through the sheaths of the physical body, is one path into the spiritual framework of the world.

In the information handed down to us concerning Buddha (and these are no mere legends) we learn of the different stages he attained in the passage through his own being, of which he says:—“When I had got as far as to the attainment of illumination”—that is when he felt himself to be a part of the spiritual world—“I beheld the spiritual world as a cloud spread out before me; but as yet I could not distinguish anything; I felt I was not as yet ready for this. Then I advanced a step further. There I no longer merely saw the spiritual world as a widespread cloud, but could distinguish separate forms, although I could not yet see what these forms were, for I was not yet sufficiently advanced. Again I rose a step higher, there I perceived not only separate Beings, but I knew what kind of Beings they were.”

This continued so far that Buddha even beheld his own archetype, that which had passed down from generation to generation, and he saw it in its true connection with the spiritual world. This is one path, the mystic path, the path leading through a man's own being to the point where the boundaries are broken down beyond which lies the spiritual world. By following this path certain leaders of humanity attained what such individuals had to have in order that they could give the necessary impulse to the further development of mankind.

It is by quite another path that personalities, such as the first Zarathustra for instance, attained what enabled them to become leaders of humanity. If you recall what I said about Buddha you will realise that in his former incarnations when he was a Bodhisattva he must have already risen through many stages. Through illumination—that which is known as “sitting under the Bodhi tree”—I described in the only way it can be described how an individual can gradually rise through his personal merit to heights whence he can behold the spiritual world.

If humanity had only had such leaders to look to, it could not possibly have advanced as it has. But it had also other leaders. Of these Zarathustra was one. (I am not speaking now of the “individuality” of Zarathustra, but of the personality of the original Zarathustra who taught concerning Ahura Mazdao.) In studying this personality in the parts of the world in which we find him, we must realise, that at first no individuality was in him as had risen so high through his own merit as Buddha had done; but he had been set apart to be the bearer, the sheath one might say, of a higher Being, of a spiritual entity, who could not himself incarnate in the world, but could only illuminate and work within a human form.

I have shown in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, “The Portal of Initiation,” how when it is necessary for the further evolution of the world, a human Being is inspired at certain times by some higher Being. This is not intended as a mere poetic image, but is an occult truth presented poetically. The personality of the original Zarathustra was no such highly evolved Being as the Buddha, but was chosen as one into whom a high individuality could enter, could dwell, and inspire him. Such persons were mainly found in olden times, that is in pre-Christian times, in the civilisations that evolved in North-Western Europe and Mid-Western Asia, but not among the peoples that in pre-Christian times evolved in Africa, Arabia, and the districts of Asia Minor extending eastwards into Asia. In these countries that kind of initiation was found which I have just described in its highest development as that of Buddha; while the other I am now about to describe as that of Zarathustra was more suited to northern peoples. The possibility of anyone being initiated in this way has only existed, even in our part of the world, for the last three or four thousand years. The personality of Zarathustra was selected somewhat in the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being, who could not himself incarnate. It was ordained from the spiritual worlds that a Spiritual Being should enter into some child, and when the child had grown up should work within this human being making use of the instruments of his brain, his will, etc. In order that this might take place something quite different had to happen than would otherwise happen in the individual evolution of this human being. Now the events I am about to describe did not happen in any such physical way throughout the life of this highly evolved human being as they otherwise should; though, naturally, people who follow the life of such a child with ordinary perceptions do not observe this. But those who have higher perception see that there is conflict from the beginning between the soul-forces of this child and the outer world, that it is possessed of a will, of an impulsiveness that is in apparent contradiction to all that goes on around it. The fate of this divine, spirit-filled personality is that it grows up as a stranger, that those about it have no idea, no feeling, by which they can rightly understand such a child. As a rule there are few, perhaps only one person, who is able to divine what is developing within this human being. Conflict with its surroundings is apt to develop, and then occurs (but not till later years) what I described as happening when dealing with the story of the temptation of Buddha, when a man descends into his own being.

In normal life a man's individuality is born in him by means of the “sheath-nature” he receives from his parents or his nation. This individuality is not always in entire harmony with its sheaths, and on this account such a man feels more or less dissatisfied with the way fate has treated him. But so heavy, so mighty a conflict as occurred in Zarathustra's case is not possible if a man's individuality develops as it does in ordinary life. When a child like Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly it is seen that he has feelings, thoughts, and powers of will very different from the feelings, thoughts and will-impulses developed by the people about him. We are shown (and indeed it is always to be seen, only nowadays people do not notice spiritual, but only physical facts) that the people around such a child know nothing of his nature. They feel on the contrary, an instinctive hatred for him, no matter what may be developing within him. To clairvoyant vision the sharp contrast is revealed that such a child who is really born for the salvation of mankind is surrounded by storms of hatred.

This has to he. It is because of this contrast that great impulses are born into humanity. Similar things are then told concerning such personalities as are told of Zarathustra.

One thing we are told—that Zarathustra could do at birth which otherwise only occurs weeks later. We are told he looked on the harmony of the world in such a way that he evolved his “Zarathustra smile.” This smile is described as the first thing which showed him to be quite different from the rest of mankind. The second thing is that there was an enemy, a kind of King Herod, in the neighbourhood where Zarathustra was born. His name was Duranasarum, and after he had been informed of the birth of Zarathustra, which had been divulged to him by the Magi, the Chaldeans, he tried single-handed to murder the child. The legend goes on to tell how, at the moment he raised his sword to kill the child, his Hand was paralysed, and he was forced to let it go. These are pictures perceived by spiritual consciousness, pictures of spiritual realities. Further, we are told how this enemy of the child Zarathustra, unable himself to slay him, had him carried away by his servant to the wild beasts of the wilderness so that he might be devoured by them; but when people went to look for him no wild beast had harmed him, the child was found sleeping peacefully. As this attempt failed his enemy had the child placed where a whole herd of cows and oxen would pass over him and trample him to death. But the first beast, so we are told, took the child between its legs and bore it away, so that the rest of the herd might pass by; it then set him down uninjured. The same thing was repeated with a drove of horses. And the final attempt of this enemy was that he was given to some wild animals after their young had been taken from them. Now it happened when his parents sent people to look for him, they found that none of these animals had harmed him, but as the legend relates “the child Zarathustra was nourished for a considerable time by a heavenly cow.”

We need see no more in all this mass of evidence than that through the presence of the spiritual individuality that had been introduced into such a soul, very exceptional powers had been aroused in the child which brought it into disharmony with its surroundings, and that this was necessary in order that an upward impulse could be given to human evolution. For disharmonies are always necessary if true progress towards perfection is to be made. The nature of these forces is thus revealed, in spite of so great a Being making use of such a child they were required to bring it in touch with the spiritual world into which it was to enter. But how did the child experience this conflict? Picture to yourselves the entering of the soul into its own being at a moment of awaking. When the soul is able to experience the physical body and etheric body it then passes through the evolution I described in respect of Buddha. Now think of falling asleep as a conscious process. As things are to-day man loses consciousness when he falls asleep, instead of the ordinary pictures of the world a blank surrounds him. But suppose that a man could retain his consciousness when falling asleep, he would in that case be surrounded by a spiritual world—the world into which he pours his Being when sleep overtakes him. But here also there are hindrances. When we fall asleep a guardian of the threshold stands before the door through which we would have to pass. This is the Great Guardian who prevents our entrance into the spiritual world so long as we are unripe. He prevents our entrance because if we have not made ourselves inwardly strong enough, we are exposed to certain dangers when we allow our ego to pour forth over the spiritual world into which we enter when we fall asleep. The danger consists in this, that instead of seeing what is in the spiritual world objectively, we only see what we take there through our own fanciful imaginations, through our thoughts, perceptions and feelings. In this case we take what is worst in us, what is not in accordance with truth. Hence an unripe entry into the spiritual world indicates that a man does not see reality but imaginary forms, fantastic images which are described technically in spiritual science as “non-human visions.” If a man would see objectively in the spiritual world he must rise to a higher stage where “human” things are seen. It is always a sign of a fantastic vision when animal forms are seen on rising to the spiritual world. Such animal forms represent the man's own fantasy, and are owing to his not being strongly enough established in himself. What is unconscious in us at night must be strengthened so that the surrounding spiritual world becomes objective, otherwise it is subjective, and we take our fantasies with us into the spiritual world. They are within us in any case; but the Guardian preserves us from seeing them. This rising into the spiritual world and being surrounded by animal forms which attack us and desire to lead us astray is a purely inward experience. We have only to encompass ourselves with greater inward strength, we can then enter the spiritual world.

When a child is filled by a higher Being, as was the young Zarathustra, his bodily nature is naturally unripe, and has first to become ripe. The human organism, that is the understanding and sense-organisms, are disturbed. Such a child is in a world which is rightly described as “being among wild animals.”

We have often shown that descriptions like this, which are both historical and pictorial, only represent different sides of the same matter. Events then happen so that spiritual powers, when represented as hostile forces, make their influence felt as did King Duranasarum in the case of the child Zarathustra. The whole thing exists in its archetypal form in the spiritual world, and external happenings only correspond with what takes place there. Present day methods of thought do not grasp such ideas easily. When people are told that the events connected with Zarathustra are of importance in the spiritual world they think—“Then they are not real.” But when they are shown to be historic, the man of to-day is then inclined to regard everyone as only evolved so far as he is himself.

The endeavour of present day liberal theologians, for instance, is to present the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as being similar to, or at least as not far surpassing, what they can picture to themselves as their own ideal. It disturbs the materialistic peace of their souls when they have to picture great individualities. There should not be anyone in the world, they think, so very much exalted above the modern Professor of Theology.

But when dealing with great events, we are concerned with something that is at the same time both historic and symbolic, so that the one does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external things indicate more than appears on the surface will not attain to the understanding of what is true and essential.

The soul of the young Zarathustra really passed through great dangers in his early years, but at the same time, as the legend tells, the heavenly cows stood at his side helping and strengthening him.

We find similar things happening to all great founders of religions through all the regions of the Caspian Sea and even into Western Europe. We find people (without their having raised themselves through their own development) who are ensouled by a spiritual Being so that they can become leaders of mankind. Numerous legends and sagas exist among Celtic peoples, They tell of a founder of religion, one Habich, he was exposed as a child and was nourished by heavenly cows, hostile forces appeared later on and drove away the animals—in short, the accounts of the dangers to the Celtic leader Habich are such that one can almost say they were extracts from certain of the miracles of Zarathustra. While we recognise Zarathustra as the greatest of these personalities, certain features of his miracles are found everywhere, all through Greece and as far as the Celtic countries of the West. As a well-known example we have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the other way in which the leaders of mankind arose. In speaking of it we have described, in a deeper sense, what we have often considered before: the two great streams of civilisation of post-Atlantean times. After the great catastrophe of Atlantis one of these streams continued to spread and develop throughout Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other, which took a more northerly course, passed through Europe and Northern Central Asia. Here these two streams eventually met. All that has come to pass as a result of this is comprised in our post-Atlantean culture. The northern stream had leaders such as I have just described in Zarathustra; the southern, on the other hand, those such as we see in their highest representative in the great Buddha.

If you recall what you already know in connection with the Christ Event you might ask:—How does the Baptism by John in Jordan now strike us? The Christ came down and entered into a human being—as Divine Beings had entered into all the leaders and founders of religions—and into Zarathustra as the greatest of these. The process is the same, only here it is carried out in its sublimest form: Christ entered into a human being. But He did not enter this human being in childhood. He entered it in its thirtieth year, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth had been very specially prepared for this event. The secrets of both sides of human leadership are given us in synthesis in the Gospels. Here we see them united and harmonised. While the evangelists, Matthew and Luke preferably, tell us how the human personality was organised into which the Christ entered; the Gospel according to Mark describes the nature of the Christ, tells of the kind of Being he himself is. The element that filled this great individual is what is especially described by Mark. The Gospels of Matthew and Luke give us in a wonderfully clear manner a different account of the temptation from that given in the Gospel of Mark, because Mark describes the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. Hence the story of the temptation has here to be presented as it occurred formerly in the childhood of such great persons: the presence of animals is mentioned and the help received from spiritual powers. So that we have a repetition of the miracles of Zarathustra when the Gospel of Mark states in simple but imposing words:

“And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness (loneliness). And he was there in the wilderness with the wild beasts; and the angels (that is Spiritual Beings) ministered unto him.” (Mark I, 12-13).

The Gospel of Matthew describes this quite differently, it describes what we perceive to be somewhat like a repetition of the temptation of Buddha; this means the form temptation assumes at the descent of a man into his own Being; when all those temptations and seductions approach to which the human soul is liable.

We can therefore say the Gospels of Matthew and Luke describe the path the Christ travelled when He descended into the sheaths that had been given over to him by Jesus of Nazareth; and the Gospel according to Mark describes the kind of temptation Christ had to pass through when He experienced the shock of coming up against His surroundings, as happens to all founders of religions who are inspired and intuited by Spiritual Beings from above.

Christ Jesus experienced both these forms of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of mankind only experience one of them. He united in Himself the two methods of entering the spiritual world; this is of the greatest importance; what formerly had occurred within two great streams of culture (into which smaller contributory streams also entered) was now united into one.

It is when regarded from this standpoint that we first understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. Mark had been initiated into such mysteries as enabled him to describe the temptation as we find it in his Gospel; the “Being with wild beasts,” and the ministration of spiritual Beings. Luke was initiated in another way. Each evangelist describes what he knows and is familiar with. Thus what we are told in the Gospels are the events of Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha, but told from different sides.

In stating this I wish once more to put before you, from a point of view we have as yet not been able to discuss, how human evolution has to be understood; and also how we must understand the intervention into it of such individuals as are passing on from the evolution of a Bodhisattva to that of a Buddha. We have to understand that the main thing in the evolution of these men is not so much what they are as men, but what has come down into them from above. Only in the form of Christ are these two united, and it is only when we realise this that we can rightly understand this form. We can also understand through this the many inequalities that must appear in Mythical personalities.

When we are told that certain Spiritual Beings have done this or that, in respect of what is right or wrong, and have done, for instance, what Siegfried did, one often hears people exclaim:—“And yet he was an Initiate!” But Siegfried's individual evolution does not come under consideration as regards a personality through whom a Spiritual Being is working. Siegfried may have faults. But what matters is that through him something had to be given to human evolution. For this a suitable personality had to be found. Everyone cannot be treated alike; Siegfried cannot be judged in the same way as a leader who belonged to the southern stream of culture, for the whole nature and type of those who sunk down within their own being was different. Thus one can say:—A Spiritual Being entered the forms belonging to the northern culture, compelling them to transcend their own nature and rise into the Macrocosm. While in the southern stream of culture a man sank down into the Microcosm, in the northern stream of culture he poured himself forth into the Macrocosm, and by doing so he learnt to know all the Spiritual Hierarchies as Zarathustra learnt to know the spiritual nature of the Sun.

The law contained herein can be summed up as follows:—The Mystic path, the path of Buddha, leads a man so far within his own inner being that breaking through this inner being he enters the Spiritual World. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm, sending his being forth over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the mighty Spirits whose mission it is to reveal the secrets of the great universe. For this reason very little real understanding of the nature of Zarathustra has spread abroad, and we shall see how greatly what we have to say concerning him differs from what is usually said of him.

This lecture has again been an Excursus concerning those things which should gradually reveal to you the nature of the Gospel according to St. Mark.

I have already spoken of the different states of consciousness which can be developed out of the forces of the human soul. Initiation-knowledge is dependent upon the fact that our knowledge of the world stems from these different states of consciousness.

Today we propose to ascertain how man's relationship to the world is determined by these different states of consciousness. First of all, let us recall that a single level of consciousness, that of daily waking consciousness, suffices to meet the needs of everyday existence. In our present epoch man has the possibility of developing two further states of consciousness in addition to his normal waking consciousness, but initially they cannot serve as valid criteria for immediate purposes of knowledge.

The one is the state of dream consciousness in which man experiences reminiscences of his daily life or faint intimations of the life of the spirit. But in ordinary dream life these reminiscences and intimations are so distorted, so commingled with uncorrelated, grotesque images and symbols that nothing can be learnt from them.

If, with the aid of Initiation-knowledge, we wish to know what realm man inhabits when he dreams, the answer would be somewhat as follows: in normal life man possesses a physical body, the body which is perceptible .to the senses and which is an object of scientific study. This is the first member of man's constitution, the member which everyone imagines he understands, but which in effect, as we shall see later, he understands least of all today.

The second member is the etheric body which is described in more detail in my publications, especially in my book Theosophy. The etheric body or body of formative forces is a delicate organization, imperceptible to ordinary sight. It can be perceived only when man has developed the first state of consciousness which is able to accompany the dead in the first years after death. This etheric body is more intimately linked with the Cosmos than the physical body whose whole organization is more independent.

The third member of man's constitution—it seems best to adhere to the old terminology—is called the astral body. This is an organization that is imperceptible to the senses; neither can it be perceived in the same way as the etheric body. If we were to try to perceive the astral body with the cognitive faculty by means of which we perceive the external world today or with the insights of the next higher consciousness that is in touch with the dead, we should see nothing but a void, a vacuum, where the astral body is located.

To sum up: man possesses a physical body that is perceptible to the senses; an etheric body perceptible to Imagination by virtue of the forces that can be developed through the practice of concentration and meditation in the manner already indicated. But if we try to perceive the astral body with the aid of these forces, we meet with a void, a spatial vacuum. This void is filled with content only when we attain the emptied consciousness which I have described, when we can confront the world in full waking consciousness in such a way that, though sensory impressions are obliterated and thinking and memories are silenced, we remain none the less aware of its existence. We then know that in this void we have our first spiritual vehicle, the astral body of man.

A further member of the human organization is the Ego itself. We perceive the Ego only when the emptied consciousness is progressively developed.

When we dream, our physical and etheric bodies are detached from the astral body and Ego which are in the spiritual world, but we cannot perceive with the astral body and Ego if we possess only normal consciousness. We perceive external impressions of the world around because the physical body is endowed with eyes and ears. At the present stage of man's evolution we find that in ordinary life his astral body and Ego, unlike the physical body, are not endowed with eyes and ears. Thus, when he withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies in order to enter the dream-state, it is as if he had a physical body in the physical world bereft of eyes and ears, so that all around were dark and silent. But it was never intended that the astral body and the Ego should always remain without organs, without eyes and ears of the soul. Through spiritual training of which I have spoken in my books, it is possible to awaken these spiritual organs in the astral body and Ego and thus to see into the spiritual world through the insight born of Initiation. Then man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies and perceives the spiritual, just as in his physical and etheric bodies he perceives the physical, and in a certain sense, the etheric as well. The man who achieves this insight then achieves Initiation.

Now what is the position of the ordinary dreamer? Try and imagine concretely the process of falling asleep. The physical and etheric bodies are left behind in the bed whilst the astral body and Ego slip out of the physical vehicle. At this moment the astral body is still vibrating in harmony with the physical and etheric bodies. The astral body has participated in all the inner activities of eyes and ears and of the will in the functioning of the physical and etheric bodies throughout the day. The astral body and the Ego have shared in all this. When they quit the body, the vibration continues. But the day experiences, as they continue to vibrate, come in contact with the surrounding spiritual world and there arises a chaotic, confused interplay between the activity of the external spiritual world and the continued vibrations of the astral body. The individual is caught up in all this and is aware of the confusion. All that he has brought with him has left its impact upon him, continues to vibrate and becomes the dream.

It is obvious that this will contribute little to the understanding of reality. What is the position of the Initiate? When he slips out of his physical and etheric bodies, he is able to obliterate the reminiscences and after-vibrations that still persist. He suppresses, therefore, all that proceeds from the physical and etheric bodies. Moreover through concentration, meditation and the development of emptied consciousness, the Initiate has been able to acquire eyes and ears of the soul. He does not now perceive what is happening within himself, but what is happening in the spiritual world outside him. In place of dreams he now begins to perceive the spiritual world. Dream consciousness is a chaotic counterpart of spiritual perception.

When the Initiate has first developed these inner astral organs, clairvoyance and clairaudience, he finds himself in a continual state of conflict and endeavours to suppress these reminiscences, these after-vibrations from the physical and etheric bodies. When he enters into the world of Imaginations, when he has an intuitive perception of the spiritual, he must fight a continual battle to prevent the dreams from asserting themselves. There is a continual interplay between that which seeks to dissolve into dreamlike fantasy and delude him, and that which represents the truth of the spiritual world.

Ultimately every aspirant becomes familiar with this conflict. He comes to realize that, at the moment he strives to enter consciously into the spiritual world, he experiences recurrent after-images of the physical world, disturbing images that intrude upon the true pictures of the spiritual world. Only through patience and persistence can he resolve this intense inner conflict.

Now if we are too easily satisfied when dream images flood our consciousness, we may readily dream ourselves into an illusory world instead of entering into a world of spiritual reality. The aspirant, in effect, must possess an exceedingly strong, intelligent inner control. Imagine what this demands of him. If we are to speak of spiritual investigation, or of methods for attaining to the spiritual world, we must draw attention to these things. If we wish to take the first steps towards an understanding of the spiritual world, we must show real enthusiasm for the task. Inner lethargy, inner indifference or indolence are obstacles in the path of its fulfilment. Our inner life must be active, lively and responsive. But there is a danger of losing ourselves in day-dreams, of spinning a web of illusion. We must be able, on the one hand, to soar into the empyrean on wings of fancy and, on the other hand, we must be able to temper this inner activity and responsiveness with prudence and sober judgment.

The Initiate must possess both these qualities. It is undesirable simply to indulge one's emotions; it is equally undesirable to submit to the dictates of the intellect and to rationalize everything. We must be able to strike a balance between these two extremes. We must be able to dream dreams and yet be able to keep our feet on Earth. As we enter into the spiritual world we must be able to participate in the dynamic world of creative imagination, but at the same time have firm control over ourselves. We must have the capacity to be a poet richly endowed with imagination, yet not succumb to its lures. We must be able, at any moment in our search for spiritual knowledge, to be fired by a creative impulse. We must be able to control the drift towards a world of fantasy and rely upon practical common sense. Then we shall not become victims of illusion, but experience spiritual reality.

This inner disposition of soul is of vital importance in true spiritual investigation. When we reflect upon the nature of dream consciousness and recognize that it conjures up chaotic images out of the spiritual world, we realize at the same time that, in order to acquire spiritual knowledge, the whole force of our personality must now enter into the psychic energy that otherwise persists in a dreamlike state. Then for the first time we begin to understand what ‘entering into the spiritual world’ implies. I said that dream consciousness conjures up the spiritual. This would appear to contradict the statement that the dream consciousness also conjures up pictures derived from the corporeal life. But the body is not only physical, it is wholly permeated with spirituality. When someone dreams that an attractive and tasty meal is set before him and he proceeds to consume it, though he has not a tithe of the cost of the meal in his pocket, then in the symbol of the meal he is presented with a picture of the real spiritual, astral content of the digestive organs. There is always a spiritual element in the dream despite the fact that the spirit has its seat in the corporeal. The dream always contains a spiritual element; but very often it is a spiritual element associated with the body. It is necessary to realize this fact. .

We must understand that when we dream of snakes, their coils are a symbol of the digestive organs or of the blood vessels in the head. We must penetrate into these secrets, for we can only arrive at an understanding of these subtle, intimate elements that must be developed in the soul when we undertake spiritual investigation through the science of Initiation and give the closest attention to these matters.

The third stage through which man passes in ordinary life is that of dreamless sleep. Let us recall this condition: the physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed; outside these bodies are the astral body and Ego-organization. The after-vibrations and reminiscences from the physical and etheric bodies have ceased. It is only in his Ego and astral body that man inhabits the spiritual world. But, having no organs, he cannot perceive anything. Darkness surrounds him; he is asleep. Dreamless sleep means that we live in the Ego and astral body and are unable to perceive the vast, majestic world around us. Take the case of a blind man. He has no visual perception of colours and forms. So far as these are concerned, he is asleep. Now picture a man living in his astral body and Ego, but without organs of perception. In relation to the spiritual he is asleep. Such is man's condition in dreamless sleep. The purpose of concentration and meditation is to develop spiritual eyes and ears in the astral body and Ego-organization. Then man begins to behold the spiritual plenitude around him. He perceives spiritually with that which in normal consciousness is lost in sleep and which he must rouse from its slumber through meditation and concentration. The otherwise uncoordinated elements must be integrated. Then he gazes into the spiritual world and shares in the life of the spiritual world in the same way as he normally shares in the life of the physical world through his eyes and ears. This is true Initiation knowledge. One cannot prepare a person for spiritual perception by external means; he must first learn to organize effectively his inner life which is normally so chaotic.

Now at all times in the history of humanity it was an accepted practice to prepare selected individuals for Initiation. This practice was interrupted to some extent during the epoch of extreme materialism, i.e. between the fifteenth century and today. During these centuries the real significance of Initiation was forgotten. Men hoped to satisfy their quest for knowledge without Initiation and so they gradually came to believe that only the physical world was their proper field of enquiry. But what is the physical world in reality? We shall not come to terms with it if we consider only its physical aspect. We only understand the physical world when we are able to apprehend the spirit that informs it. Mankind must recover this knowledge once again, for today we stand at the crossroads. The world presents a picture of disruption and increasing chaos. Yet we know that amidst this chaos, this welter of dark, obscuring passions that threaten to destroy everything, the intuitives are aware of the presence of spiritual powers who are actively striving to awaken in man a new spirituality. And preparation for Anthroposophy consists fundamentally in listening to this voice of the spirit that can still be heard amid the clamour of our materialistic age.

I said that in all ages men endeavoured to develop the human organization in such a way that they could perceive the spiritual world. Conditions varied according to the epoch. When we look back to ancient Chaldean times, or to the epoch of Brunetto Latini, we find that men were more loosely linked with their physical and etheric bodies than is the case today when we are firmly anchored in those bodies. And this is to be expected; it is the inevitable consequence of our education today. After all, how can we expect to communicate with spiritual beings when we are compelled in many cases to learn to read and write before the change of teeth? Angels and spiritual beings cannot read or write. Reading and writing have been developed in the course of human evolution in response to physical conditions. And if our whole being is orientated towards purely scientific investigation we shall obviously have difficulty in withdrawing from our physical and etheric bodies.

Our present age finds a certain satisfaction in ordering our entire cultural life in such a way that we cannot have any possibility of spiritual experience when we are separated from our physical and etheric bodies. I have no wish to inveigh against our contemporary culture, nor do I wish to criticize it. It is the inevitable expression of the epoch. I shall discuss the implications later; meanwhile we must accept things as they are.

In ancient times the astral body and Ego, even in waking consciousness, were much more loosely associated with the physical and etheric bodies than they are today. The Initiates, too, were dependent upon this loose association of the bodies that was natural to them. Indeed, in the remote past, nearly everyone could be initiated into the Mysteries. But it was only in the far distant times of the primordial Indian and old Persian cultures that everybody could be raised above his human station.

Then, in later epochs, the selection of candidates for Initiation was limited to those who had little difficulty in withdrawing from their physical and etheric bodies—men whose astral body and Ego enjoyed a relatively high degree of independence. Certain conditions were a prerequisite for Initiation. This in no way prevented every effort being made to bring the aspirant to the highest stage of Initiation commensurate with his potentialities. But beyond a certain point success depended upon whether the aspirant could attain to independence in his astral body and Ego easily or only with difficulty. And this was determined by his makeup and natural disposition. Since man is born into the world, he is inevitably dependent upon the world to a certain extent between birth and death.

The question now arises whether man today is subject to similar limitations when embarking on Initiation. To a certain extent that is so. Since I wish to give a full and clear account in these lectures of the true and false paths leading to the spiritual world, I should like to point out the difficulties in the way of Initiation today.

The man of ancient times was more dependent upon his natural endowments when he became an Initiate. Modern man also can be brought to the threshold of Initiation, in fact, through appropriate psychic training he can so fashion his astral body and Ego-organization that he is able to develop spiritual vision and perceive the spiritual world. But in order to complete and perfect this vision he is still dependent today on something else, something of extreme subtlety and delicacy. I must ask you not to come to any final conclusions about what I shall say today until you are familiar with the content of my next lectures. I can only proceed step by step.

In Initiation today man is dependent to a certain extent on age. Let us take the case of a man who is thirty-seven when he begins his Initiation and has good expectations of life. He begins to practise meditation, concentration or some other spiritual exercises, either under guidance, or independently, in accordance with some instruction manual. As a result of repeated meditation on some theme, he acquires, first of all, the capacity to look back over his life on Earth. His earthly life appears before his inward eye in the form of a uniform tableau. Just as in normal three dimensional vision objects are situated in Space—the front two rows of chairs and their occupants here, over there a table and behind it a wall; we see the whole in perspective in simultaneity—so at a certain level of Initiation we see into Time. One has the impression that the passage of Time is spatial. Now we see ourselves at the age of thirty-seven. We had certain experiences at thirty-six, at thirty-five and so on, back to the time of our birth. In retrospect we see a uniform tableau before us.

Now let us assume that at a certain stage of Initiation a man reviews his life in retrospect. At thirty-seven he will be able to look back into the period from birth to the age of seven approximately, the time of the change of teeth.

Then he will be able to look back into the period between the ages of seven and fourteen, up to the age of puberty. And then he is able to look back into the period between fourteen and twenty-one and the rest of his life up to his thirty-seventh year. He can survey the panorama of his life in spatiotemporal perspective, so to speak. If he can add to this perception the consciousness born of the emptied waking consciousness, a certain power of vision flashes through him. He acquires insight, but his insight assumes widely different forms. The experiences from birth to the age of seven, from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and those of later years evoke different responses in him. Each life-period responds in its own way; each period has its own power of vision.

Now let us consider the man of sixty-three or sixty-four. He is able to look back over the later periods of his life. The period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two appears relatively uniform. Then follows further differentiation. There are significant differences in his perceptions between the ages forty-two to forty-nine, forty-nine to fifty-six, fifty-six to sixty-three. All these periods are an integral part of his make-up. They represent the spiritual aspects of his life on Earth. If he develops this inward vision, he sees that his different insights are dependent upon the level of his being at a particular age. The first seven years of childhood awaken in him a different insight from that of the years between seven and fourteen. In the period of adolescence, from fourteen to twenty-one, it is again different; the years between twenty-one and forty-two bring further differentiation, to be followed in its turn by the somewhat differentiated powers of insight that belong to the later periods of life.

Let us assume that we have acquired the capacity to have memory-pictures of our life experiences and, in addition, have attained the insight derived from the emptied consciousness which has obliterated the memory-pictures. The forces of Inspiration now become operative, so that we no longer survey our life-periods through the physical eye, but through the spiritual eye, the new organ of vision. Through Inspiration we have reached a point when we no longer conjure up pictures of our life-periods with their separate happenings, but perceive them through spiritual eyes and ears. At one time we see clairvoyantly the life-period between seven and fourteen, at another clairaudiently the period between forty-nine and fifty-six, just as formerly we heard and perceived in the external world when we used our eyes and ears. In the world of Inspiration we make use of the power derived from the period between the ages of seven and fourteen and from the period between the forty-second and forty-ninth years. In this world the life periods become differentiated organs of cognition. Thus we are, to a certain extent, dependent upon our age for the range of our vision. At thirty-seven we are perfectly capable of speaking from first-hand experience of Initiation, but at the age of sixty-three we would speak with deeper knowledge, because, at that age, we have developed other organs. The life-periods create organs. Now let us assume that we propose to describe personalities such as Brunetto Latini or Alanus ab Insulis, not from information derived from books, but from clairvoyant knowledge. (These examples will be familiar to you because we have already spoken of them in the last few days.) If we try to describe them when we have reached the age of thirty-seven, we discover that we are in touch with them spiritually in the awakened consciousness of sleep. We can converse with them, metaphorically speaking, as we do with our fellowmen. And the strange thing is that when they discuss spiritual matters with others, they can only speak with them from their present level of wisdom and inner spirituality. Then we realize how very much we can learn from them. We must listen to them and accept in good faith what they have to teach.

Now you will realize that it is no light matter to stand in the presence of a personality such as Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. But if we have made the necessary preparations we shall be able to determine whether we are victims of a dream delusion or in the presence of a spiritual reality. It is possible therefore to evaluate the communications we receive.

Suppose, then, at the age of thirty-seven we were to converse with Brunetto Latini in the spiritual world. This should not be taken literally, of course. He would talk to us of many things; then, perhaps, we should like to have more precise, more detailed information. Thereupon he would say: ‘in that case we must retrace our steps from the present, the twentieth century, back through the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, to the century in which I lived when I was Dante's teacher. If you wish to accompany me along this path you must wait until you are a little older, until you have a few more years behind you. Then I can tell you everything and satisfy your thirst for knowledge. You can become a high Initiate, but, in reality, you cannot accompany me along this path into the past by spiritual volition alone.’—For this to be possible you must have grown older. If you wish to make certain of returning without hindrance to the spiritual world with the person in question, you must have passed your forty-second year at least and have reached the age of sixty.

These things will show you the deeper aspects of man's being and the significant part they play in youth and age. Only when we draw attention to these things are we in a position to understand why some die young and others live to a ripe age in their different incarnations. I shall have more to say about this later.

We have seen how man, as he develops, progressively deepens and extends his perception of the spiritual world. I have shown how his relationship with a being existing as a discarnate soul in the spiritual world, such as Brunetto Latini, changes with the conditions of evolution, depending on whether he uses for spiritual perception the organs developed in youth or in age.

The panoramic survey of the world and its evolution that unfolds before the soul of man in this way can be extended to other fields. The question is: in what way can we enlarge human consciousness, human insight, and give it another direction? Today I will indicate one such direction and enter into further details in the following lectures.

In the normal consciousness of our earthly life we know only the Earth environment between birth and death. If there were an end to our chaotic dream life, if we were to have perception in a state of deep, dreamless sleep instead of normal consciousness, we should no longer experience a purely Earth environment around us. But we are, in effect, endowed with other conditions of perception and consciousness than the normal.

Let us now consider the following: our everyday consciousness is related to our immediate environment. Since we cannot see into the interior of the Earth our immediate environment is the sphere of normal consciousness. Everything else in the Cosmos, Sun, Moon and all the other stars shine into this sphere. Sun and Moon send down to Earth clearer indications of their presence in the Cosmos than the other heavenly bodies. Physicists would be astonished if they could experience in their own way—for they refuse to consider our approach—the prevailing conditions in the sphere of the Moon or the Sun. For the descriptions given in the text-books of astronomy, astrophysics and the like are wide of the mark. They offer only the vaguest indications. In ordinary life when we wish to make a person's acquaintance and later have an opportunity of speaking to him, we do not normally say: I have only a vague impression of this person; he must retreat to a distance where he is almost out of sight. Then I shall have a much clearer impression of him and will describe him.

The physicists of course have no choice; it is the result of necessity and they can only describe the stars when they are a long way off. But a transformed and enlarged consciousness lifts us into the world of stars. And the first thing we learn from this is to speak of these worlds of stars quite differently from the way in which we speak of them in ordinary life.

In normal consciousness we see ourselves standing here on Earth, and at night the Moon over against us in the heavens. In order to see differently, we must enter into another kind of consciousness and sometimes that takes a considerable time. When we have attained this consciousness and are able to perceive our experiences, all that we have lived through from birth to the age of seven, to the change of teeth, with the consciousness that is in touch with the dead, with a consciousness that has achieved Inspiration and so become inner power of vision, then we see a totally different world around us. The ordinary world grows dim and indefinite.

This other world is the Moon sphere. When we have attained to this new consciousness, we no longer see the Moon as a separate entity, we are actually living in the Moon sphere. The Moon's orbit traces the furthest limits of the Moon sphere. We know ourselves to be within the Moon sphere.

Now if a child of eight could be initiated and could review the first seven years of its life, it could live in the Moon sphere in this way. Indeed, a child would not have the slightest difficulty in entering into the Moon sphere because it has not yet been corrupted by the influences of later years.

Theoretically this is a possibility; but, of course, a child of eight cannot be initiated.

When we use the power derived from the first life-period, from birth to the age of seven, for spiritual vision, we are able to enter into this Moon sphere which is radically different nom the sphere perceived by ordinary consciousness. An analogy will help to illustrate my point.

In embryology today the biologist studies the development of the embryo from the earliest stages. At a certain stage in the development of the embryo a thickening of the membrane occurs at an eccentrically situated point on the external wall. Then encapsulation takes place and a kind of nucleus is formed. But whilst this is clearly visible under the microscope, we cannot say: this is nothing but the germ, the embryo, for the rest is also an integral part.

The same applies to the Moon and the other stars. What we see as the Moon is simply a kind of nucleus and the whole sphere belongs to the Moon. The Earth is within the Moon sphere. If the germ could rotate, this nucleus would also rotate. The Moon's orbit follows the boundaries of the Moon sphere.

The ancients who still knew something of these matters did not speak therefore of the Moon, but of the Moon sphere. The Moon, as we see it today, was to them only a point at the furthest boundary. Every day this point changes position and in the course of twenty-eight days traces for us the boundaries of the Moon sphere. When our inner experiences between birth and the seventh year become inspirational vision, we acquire the power to enter into the Moon sphere as our perception of the Earth is gradually lost.

When the experiences of the second life-period, between the change of teeth and puberty, are transformed into inspirational vision, we experience the Mercury sphere, the second sphere. We live together with the Earth in the Mercury sphere. The experiences of the Mercury sphere only become visible through the organ of vision that we can create for ourselves when we look back consciously and with clear perception into the experiences of our life on Earth between the ages of seven and fourteen. With the inspirational vision derived from the years between puberty and the age of twenty-one, we experience the Venus sphere. The ancients were not so ignorant as we imagine; with their dreamlike knowledge they knew a great deal about these things and they endowed the planetary system that we experience after the years of puberty with a name associated with sexual awareness which begins at this period.

Then when we look back consciously on our experiences between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, we know that we are within the Sun sphere.

When the separate life-periods are transformed into organs of the inner life, they endow us with the power to enlarge step by step our cosmic consciousness.

It would be untrue to say that we cannot know anything of the Sun sphere before our forty-second year. We can learn about it from the Mercury beings for they are fully acquainted with it. But in that event our experience comes to us indirectly, through super-sensible teaching. Now in order to have direct experience in the Sun sphere in our own consciousness, in order to be able to enter into it, we must not only have lived in the period between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, but we must have passed our forty-second year, we must be able to look back over the past, for only in the retrospective survey are the mysteries revealed.

And again, when we are able to look back upon our life up to the forty-ninth year, the mysteries of Mars are revealed. If we can look back upon our life up to the age of fifty-six, the Jupiter mysteries are revealed. And the deeply veiled, but extraordinarily illuminating mysteries of Saturn—mysteries which, as we shall see in the following lectures, veil the profound secrets of the Cosmos—are revealed when we look back upon the events and happenings between the fifty-sixth and sixty-third years.

Thus you will realize that man is in fact a microcosm. He is related to those things that he never perceives in normal consciousness. But he would be unable to fashion, or to order his life, if the Moon forces were not active within him from birth to his seventh year. He perceives later on the nature of their influence. He would not be able to re-create his experiences between the ages of seven and fourteen, if the Mercury mysteries were not active within him; nor would he be able to re-create his experiences of the years between fourteen and twenty-one—the period when powerful creative forces pour into him, if he is karmically predisposed to receive them—if he were not inwardly related to the Venus sphere. And if he were not united with the Sun sphere, he would not be able to develop ripe understanding and experience of the world between the ages of twenty and forty-two, the period when we pass from early manhood to maturity. In ancient times the system was not very different: the craftsman served his apprenticeship until he reached the age of twenty-one, then he became “travelling man” and ultimately “master.” Thus, all man's inner development between his twenty-first and forty-second years is related to the Sun sphere. And all his experiences during his declining years between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three can be attributed to the influences of the Saturn sphere.

Together with the Earth we exist within seven interpenetrating spheres, and in the course of our life we grow into them and are related to them. The original pattern of our life between birth and death undergoes a metamorphosis through the influence of the starry spheres which mould us from birth to death. When we have reached the Saturn sphere, we have passed through all that the Beings of the planetary spheres can of their bounty accomplish for us. Then, in the occult sense, we embark upon a free and independent cosmic existence which looks back upon the planetary life from the standpoint of Initiation, an existence that in certain respects is no longer subject to the compulsions of earlier life-periods. However, I shall speak further on these matters in the following lectures.

If I were asked to map out a course of medical study for people who would want to approach this study immediately and finish it in a certain period of time, I would begin—after the necessary natural scientific background had been acquired—with a discussion of the various functions in the human organism. I would feel bound to begin with a kind of anatomical-physiological study of the foodstuffs as they are worked through from the stage where they are worked upon by the ptyalin to that of being worked on by the pepsin and then taken up into the blood. Then, after considering the general act of digestion in the narrower sense, I would pass on to discussion of the system of heart and lungs and all that is connected with it. I would then discuss everything connected with the human kidney system. The kidney system must then be discussed in relation to the entire nerve-sense apparatus—a relationship not recognized at all today. Then I would lead on to the system of liver, gall, and spleen, and this cycle of study would gradually open up a vista of how things are arranged in the human organism, a vista that would be needed in order to build up the knowledge that it is the task of an anthroposophical spiritual science to develop. Then, with the light that would have been shed upon the results of sense-perceptible empirical research, it would be possible to pass on to therapy.

In the few days at our disposal, it is only possible, of course, for me to give a few hints about this wide and all embracing domain. A great deal of what I have to say, therefore, will be based upon a treatment of empirical evidence that is not customary today, but I think it will be quite accessible to anyone who possesses the requisite physiological and therapeutic knowledge. I shall have to speak differently from the way people are accustomed to, but I will really present nothing that cannot in some way be brought into harmony with the data of modern sense-oriented empirical knowledge, if these data are studied in all their connections.

Everything I say will be aphoristic, merely hinting at ultimate conclusions. Our starting point, however, must be the sense-perceptible empirical investigations of modern times, and the intermediate stages will have to be mastered by the work of doctors everywhere. This intermediate path is exceedingly long, but it is absolutely essential because, as things are today, nothing of what I present to you will be fully acknowledged if these intermediate steps are not taken—at least in relation to the most important phenomena. I do not believe that this will prove as difficult as it appears at present, if people will only submit to bringing the preliminary work that has already been done into line with the general conceptions I am trying to indicate here. This preliminary work is excellent in many respects, but its goal still lies ahead.

In the last lecture I tried to show you how broadening ordinary knowledge can give us insight into the human being. And now, bearing in mind what I have just said, let me add the following. To begin with you may find it offensive to hear it said in anthroposophy that the human being, as he stands before us in the physical world, consists of a physically organized system, an etherically organized system, an astrally organized system, and what characterizes him as an ego organization. You do not need to take offense at these expressions. They are used merely because some kind of terminology is necessary. By virtue of this ego system, the human being is able to develop that inner soul cohesion, the inward soul life, that cannot be found in animals. This cohesion reveals itself on the one hand in the fact that the human being can unify his inner experience in an ego-point, if I may use that expression, from which all his general organic activity rays out in a certain sense, at least in the conscious state. It reveals itself on the other hand in the fact that during his earthly evolution the human being has a different relationship to sexual development from that of the animal organization. Though of course there are exceptions, the animal organization is such that sexual maturity represents a certain point of culmination. After this, deterioration sets in. This organic deterioration may not begin in a very radical sense after the first stage of sexual maturity, but there is a certain organic culmination. On the other hand, the physical development of the human being receives a certain impetus at puberty. Even in the outer empirical sense, then, if we take all the factors into account, there is already a difference between the human being and the animal.

You may say that it is really an abstract method of classification to speak of physical, etheric, astral, and ego organizations. This objection has been made by many people, especially from the side of philosophy. We take the functions of the human organism and differentiate them, and—since differentiations do not necessarily point back to any objective causes—people think that it is all an abstraction. This is not so. In the course of these lectures we will see what really lies behind this classification and division, but I assure you they are not merely the outcome of a desire to divide things into categories.

When we speak of man's physical organization, this encompasses everything in the human organism that can be dealt with by the same methods we adopt when we are doing experiments and investigations in the laboratory. We encompass all this when we speak about the physical organization of the human being.

Regarding the human etheric organization, however, which is incorporated into the physical, our mode of thinking can no longer confine itself to the ideas and laws that apply when we are doing experiments and making observations in the laboratory. Whatever we may think of the etheric organization of the human being as revealed by super-sensible knowledge—without needing to enter into mechanistic or vitalistic methods in any way—it is apparent to direct perception (and this is a question that would be the subject of lengthy study in the curriculum that I sketched earlier) that the etheric organization as a whole is involved in the fluid nature within the human organization. You need only think of this as a structure of functions that can be grasped directly in this fluid nature. The purely physical mode of thinking, therefore, must confine itself to what is solid in the human organization, to the solid state of aggregation. We understand the human organization properly only when we conceive of what is fluid in this organization as being permeated through and through with life, as living fluids—not merely as the fluids we have in outer, inorganic nature. This is the sense in which we say that the human being has an etheric body.

We do not need to enter into hypotheses about the nature of life but merely to understand what is implied, for example, by saying that the cell is permeated with life. Whatever views we may hold—mechanistic, idealistic, spiritualistic, or the like—when we say that the cell is permeated with life, as the crass empiricist also says, then what is revealed to direct perception yielded by the methods I have referred to here shows that the fluid nature in the human being is likewise permeated with life. But this is the same as saying that the human being has an etheric body. We must think of everything solid as being embedded in the fluid, and here we already have a contrast: we apply all the ideas and laws derived in the inorganic world to the solid parts of man's being, whereas we think not only of the cells—the smallest organisms present in the human being—as living but of the fluid nature in its totality as permeated with life.

Furthermore, when we come to the airy nature of the human being, it appears that the gases filling his being are in a state of perpetual interchange with each other. In the course of these lectures we shall have to show that this is neither an inorganic interchange nor merely a process of interchange mediated by the solid organs, but that an individual lawfulness controls the inner interchange of the gases in the human being, the vortex formed with the interworkings of the gases. Just as there is an inner lawfulness in the solid substances, expressing itself, among other things, in the relationship between the kidneys and the heart, so we must postulate the existence of a lawfulness within the airy or gaseous organism—if I may use this expression—a lawfulness that is not confined to the physical, solid organs. Anthroposophy designates this lawfulness that directly underlies the airy or gaseous organism as the astral lawfulness, the astral organization. This lawfulness would not be there in the human being if his airy organization had not permeated the solid and fluid organizations. The astral organization does not penetrate directly into the solid and the fluid. It does, however, directly lay hold of the airy organization. This airy organization directly takes hold of the solid and fluid, so that in the airy human being there is now an organized astral organization by which this airy organization has a definite inner form, which is naturally fluctuating.

By ascending through the aggregate states, we thus arrive at the following conclusions: when we consider the solid substances in the human being we do not need to assume anything other than a physical organization. In the case of the living fluidity that permeates the solid, physical organization, we must assume the existence of something that is not exhausted by the physical lawfulness, and here we come to the etheric organism, which is a self-contained system. In the same sense I give the name astral organization to that which does not directly lay hold of the solid and fluid but first of all penetrates the gaseous organization. I do not call this the astral lawfulness but rather the astral organism, because it is again a self-contained system.

And now we come to the ego organization, which penetrates directly only into the differentiations of warmth in the human organism. We can therefore speak of a warmth organism, a warmth man. The ego organization penetrates directly into this warmth man. The ego organization is, of course, something super-sensible and brings about the various differentiations of the warmth. In these differentiations of warmth the ego organization has its immediate life. It also has an indirect life in the rest of the organism through the warmth working upon the airy, fluid, and solid organizations.

In this way the human organism becomes more and more transparent. Everything that I have been describing expresses itself in the physical human being as he lives on the earth. What in a certain way can be called the most intangible organization of all—the ego-warmth organization—works down indirectly upon the gaseous, fluid, and solid organizations, and the same is true of the others. Thus the way in which this whole configuration penetrates the human organization, and known through sense-oriented empirical observations, will find expression in any solid system of organs verifiable by outer anatomy. Hence, taking the various organ systems, we find that only the physical organ system is directly related to its corresponding lawfulness, the physical-solid lawfulness; the fluid is less directly related, the gaseous still less directly, and the element of warmth most distantly of all, although even here there is still a certain relation through mediation.

All these things—and I can indicate them here only in the form of ultimate conclusions—can be confirmed by an extended empiricism simply from the phenomena themselves. Due to the short time at our disposal I can only give you certain ultimate conclusions.

In the anatomy and physiology of the human organization we can observe, to begin with, the course taken by food up to the point when it reaches the intestines and the other intricate organs in that region and is then absorbed into the lymph and blood. We can follow the process of digestion or nourishment in the widest sense up to this point of absorption into the blood and lymph. If we limit ourselves to this realm, we can get on quite well with the not entirely mechanistic mode of observation that is adopted by natural science today. An entirely mechanistic mode of perception will not lead to the final goal in this domain, because the lawfulness observed externally in the laboratory and characterized by natural science as inorganic lawfulness is always playing into the living organism in the digestive tract. From the outset, the whole process is involved in life, even at the stage of the ptyalin-process.

If we pay heed only to the fact that the outer, inorganic lawfulness is immersed in the life of the digestive tract, we can get on quite well, as far as this limited sphere is concerned, by confining ourselves to what can be observed merely within the physical organization of the human being. But then we must be absolutely clear that a remnant of the digestive activity still remains, that the process of nourishment is still not quite complete when the intestinal tract has been passed, and that the subsequent processes must be studied by a different means of observation. But as far as the limited sphere is concerned, the best we can do to begin with is to study all the transformations of substance by means of analogies, just as we study things in the outer world. Then we find something that modern science cannot readily acknowledge but that is nonetheless a truth, resulting indeed from modern science itself. It will be the task of our doctors to pursue these matters scientifically and then to show from the sense-perceptible empirical facts themselves that as a result of the action of the ptyalin and pepsin on the food the food is divested of every trace of its former condition in the outer world?

We take in food from the mineral kingdom—you may dispute the expression “food,” but I think we understand each other—we take in food from the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. What we take in as food belongs originally to the mineral, plant, and animal organizations. The substance most nearly akin to the human organization is, of course, the milk that the suckling baby receives from the mother. The child receives it as soon as it has left the human organization. The process enacted within the human organism during the absorption of nourishment is this: through the absorption of the food into the various glandular products, every trace of its origin is eliminated. It is really true to say that the human organization itself makes it possible to engage in the purely natural scientific, inorganic mode of observation. In fact, human chyle comes nearest of all to the outer physical processes in the moment when it is passing from the intestines into the lymph and bloodstream. The human being finally obliterates the external properties that the chyle still possessed until this moment. He wants to have it as similar as possible to the inorganic organization. He needs it thus, and this again distinguishes him from the animal kingdom.

The anatomy and physiology of the animal kingdom reveal that the animal does not eliminate the nature of the substances introduced to its body to the same extent; the excretory products are different for the animal. The substances that pass into the body of the animal retain a greater resemblance to the outer organization, to the vegetable and animal organizations, than is the case with the human being. They proceed on into the bloodstream still in accordance with their external form and with their own inner lawfulness. The human organization has advanced so far that when the chyle passes through the intestinal wall, it has become as close as possible to the inorganic. The purely physical human being actually exists in the region where the chyle passes from the intestines into the heart-lung organization, if I may express myself in this way.

It is at this point that our way of looking at things first becomes heretical to orthodox natural science. The entire heart-lung tract—the vascular system—is the means whereby the foods that have now become entirely inorganic so to speak, are led over into the realm of life. The human organization cannot exist without providing its own life. In a more encompassing sense, what happens here resembles the process occurring when the inorganic particles of protein, let us say, are transformed into organic; into living protein, when dead protein becomes living protein. Here again we do not need to enter into the question of the inner being of man but only into what is continually being said in physiology. Due to the shortness of time we cannot speak of the scientific theories about how the plant produces living protein, but in the human being it is the system of heart and lungs, with all that belongs to it, that is responsible for transformation of the protein into something living after the chyle has become as inorganic as possible.

We can therefore say that the system of heart and lungs is there so that the physical system may be drawn up into the etheric organization. The system of heart and lungs therefore brings about a vitalizing process whereby the inorganic is drawn into the organic, is drawn into the vital sphere through the process that takes place in the heart-lung system. (In the animal it is not quite the same, the process being less definite.) Now it would be absolutely impossible for this process to take place in our physical world if certain conditions were not fulfilled in the human organization. The chyle's being drawn into, transformed into an etheric organization could not take place within the sphere of earthly lawfulness unless other factors were present. Angels would be able to perform this, but if they did then they would fly around having merely a mouth, an esophagus, and then finally a gastrointestinal system, which would then stop and disappear into the etheric. Thus such digestive tracts would float around and would be carried by invisible etheric angel-beings.

What I am describing here could not take place in the physical world at all. That would be impossible. The process is possible in the physical world only because the whole etheric system is drawn down, as it were, into the physical, is incorporated into the physical. This happens as a result of the absorption of oxygen in the breathing. Therefore man is not an angel but can walk around physically on the earth, can walk around because his angelic aspect is physicalized through the absorption of oxygen. The entire etheric organization is projected—but projected as something real—into the physical world; the whole is then fulfilled as a physical system; that which otherwise could be only of a purely super-sensible nature comes to expression as the system of heart and lungs. And so we begin to realize that just as carbon is the basis of the animal, plant, and human organizations (though in the human organization in a less solid way than in the plant) and “fixes” the physical organization as such, so is oxygen related to the etheric organization in so far as this expresses itself in the physical domain.

Here we have the two substances of which the formed, the vitally formed protein is primarily composed. But this mode of observation can be applied equally well to the proteinaceous cell, the cell itself. We simply extend the kind of observation that is usually applied to the cell by substituting a macroscopic study for the microscopic study of the cell in the human being. We observe the processes that form the connection between the digestive tract and the heart-lung tract. We observe then in an inner sense, seeing the connection between them, perceiving how an etheric organization is drawn in and “fixed” into the physical as a result of the absorption of oxygen.

But you see, if this were all, we would have a being that existed in the physical world possessing merely a digestive organization and an organization of heart and lungs. Such a being would not yet be an ensouled being; the element of soul could occur only in the super-sensible, and it is still our task to show how what makes the human being a sentient being incorporates itself into his solid and fluid nature, permeating the solid and fluid organizations and making him a sentient being, a being of soul. Only when we are able to trace the ensouled aspect can we perceive man as an ensouled being. The entire organization in which oxygen plays a role is now within the human being due to the fact that we bind the etheric organization into the physical body by oxygen.

The ensouled organization cannot come into being unless there is a direct point of attack, as it were, for the airy man, with a further possibility of access to the physical organization. Here we have something that lies very far indeed from modern ways of thinking. I have told you that oxygen takes hold of the etheric through the organization of heart and lungs; the astral makes its way into the organization of man through another system of organs. This astral nature, too, needs a physical system of organs. I am referring here to something that does not take its start from the physical organs but from the airy nature (not only the fluid nature) that is connected with these particular organs—that is to say, from the airy organization that is bound up with these solid organs. The astral-organic forces radiate out from this gaseous organization in the human organism. Indeed, the corresponding physical organ itself is first formed by this very radiation, on its backward course. To begin with, the gaseous organization radiates out, makes man into an ensouled organism, permeates all his organs with soul, and then streams back again by an indirect path, so that a physical organ comes into being and plays its part in the physical organization of the human being. This is the kidney system, which is regarded primarily as an organ of excretion. Its excretory functions, however, are secondary. I will return to this later, for I have yet to speak of the relationship between the kidney excretions and the higher function of the kidneys. As physical organs the kidneys are excretory organs (they too, of course, have entered the sphere of vitality), but in addition to this, in their underlying airy nature, they are the radiating-organs for the astral organism which now permeates the airy nature and from there works directly into the fluids and the solids in the human organism.

The kidney system, therefore, is that which from an organic basis permeates us with sentient faculties, with qualities of soul and the like—in short it permeates us with an astral organism. Sense-perceptible, empirical science has a great deal to say about the functions of the kidneys, but if you penetrate what you can see and observe of these functions with a certain instinctive inner perception, you will be able to discover the relations between inner sentient experience and the functions of the kidneys—remembering always that the excretions are only secondary indications of that from which they have been excreted. What the kidneys excrete arises through the function of the kidneys. In so far as the functions of the kidneys underlie the sentient system, this is expressed even in the various kinds of excretions.

If you want to extend scientific knowledge in this field, I recommend that you do experiments with a more sensitive individual and try to find out the essential change that takes place in the renal excretions when he is thinking in a cold or in a hot room. Even purely empirical tests like this, suitably varied in the usual scientific way, will provide results. If you make absolutely systematic investigations, you will discover what a difference there is in the renal excretions of a person thinking either in a cold or a warm room. You can also do the experiment by asking someone to think objectively and putting a warm cloth around his head. (The conditions for the experiment must of course be prepared in an orderly way. ) Then examine the renal excretions, and examine them again when he is thinking about the same thing and cold compresses have been applied to his feet. You can conduct experiments that are entirely sense-perceptible and empirical that will provide you with evidence.

The reason that there is so little concern with such inquiries today is that people have an aversion to entering into these matters. In embryological research into cell division, the allantois and the amnion are not studied carefully. These discarded organs have been investigated, but to understand the whole process of human development the accessory organs in embryonic development must be studied much more exactly than the processes that arise from the division of the germ cell itself. Our underlying task here, therefore, is to establish starting points for rational research. This is of the greatest significance, for only in this way will we reach the point of having insight into the human being so that we have before us not a visible but an invisible giant cell.

Today we do not describe the cell as we describe the human being, because microscopy does not lead so far. The curious thing is that if one studies the realm of the microscopic with the methods I am describing here, wonderful things come to light, for instance the results achieved by the Hertwig school. The cell can be investigated up to a certain point with the microscope, but then there is no possibility of further research into the more complicated life processes. Ordinary, sense-oriented empiricism comes to a standstill here, but with spiritual science you can follow the facts further. You now look at the human being in his totality, and the tiny point represented by the cell grows out, as it were, into the whole being of man.

From this you can proceed to learn how the purely physical organization is in every way connected with the structure of the carbon, just as the transition to the etheric organization is connected with the structure of oxygen. If you now make exact investigations into the kidney system, you will find a similar connection with nitrogen. Thus you have to study carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and in order to trace all the roles played by nitrogen in the astral permeation of the organism, you need only follow, through a series of very precise experiments, the metamorphoses of uric acid and urea. Precise study of the secondary excretions of uric acid and urea will provide definite evidence that the astral permeation of the human being proceeds from the kidney system. This will also be shown by other things connected with the activity of the kidneys, even to the point where pathological conditions play a role, for example if we find blood corpuscles in the urine. The kidney system radiates the astral organization into the human organism. Here we must not think of the physical organization but of the airy organization that is bound up with it. If nitrogen did not play a part, the whole process would remain in the domain of the super-sensible, just as we would be merely etheric beings if oxygen were not to play its part. The outcome of the nitrogen process is that the human being can live on earth as an earthly being. Nitrogen is the third element connected with this.

There is thus a continual need to widen the methods adopted in anatomy and physiology by applying the principles of spiritual science. This is not in any sense a matter of fantasy. You will see that this is so when you receive your first results. If you study the kidney system and do your experiments as accurately as you possibly can, examining the urea and uric acid excretions under different astral conditions, step by step you will find confirmation of what I have said. Only in this way will you be able to penetrate the constitution of the human organism.

We can therefore say that everything entering the human being through the absorption of food is carried into the astral organism by the kidney system. There still remains the ego organization. All this is received into the ego organization primarily as a result of the working of the liver-gall system. The warmth structure and the warmth structure in the system of liver and gall radiate out in such a way that the human being is permeated with the ego organization, and this is bound up with the differentiation of warmth in the organism as a whole.

Now it is quite possible to adapt your methods of investigation as precisely as possible to what I have said. Take certain lower animals where there is no trace at all of an ego organization in the psychological sense. With these you will not find a developed liver, and still less any bile. These things develop in the phylogeny of the animal kingdom only when the ego organization appears. The development of liver and gall runs absolutely parallel with the degree to which the ego organization unfolds in a living being. Here, too, you have an indication for a series of physiological investigations in connection with the human being, only of course they must cover the different periods of human life. You will gradually discover the connection of the ego organization to the functions of the liver in the human being.

You need only observe particular pathological conditions that are lethal—certain childhood illnesses, for example—in order to find out how certain psychological phenomena, tending not toward the life of feeling but toward the ego, are connected with the secretion of bile. This might form the basis of an exceedingly fruitful series of investigations that can be derived to some extent out of what our sense-oriented, empirical science provides. You will see that the ego organization is connected with hydrogen in the same way that the physical organization is connected with carbon, the etheric organization with oxygen, and the astral organization with nitrogen. You will be able to relate all the differentiations of warmth—I can only hint at this—to the specific function carried out in the human organism by hydrogen, in combination with other substances, of course. And so, as we ascend from the sense-perceptible to the super-sensible and make this super-sensible a concrete experience by recognizing its physical expressions, we come to the point of being able to conceive the whole human being as a highly complicated cell, a cell that is permeated with soul and spirit.

It is really only a matter of taking the trouble to examine and develop the marvelous results achieved by natural science and not simply leaving them where they are. My understanding and practical experience of life convince me that if you will set yourselves to an exhaustive study of the results of the most orthodox empirical science, if you will relate the most approachable with the most remote and really study the connections between them, you will constantly be led to what I am telling you here. I am also convinced that the so-called “occultists” of the modern type will not help you in the least. What will be of far more help is a genuine examination of the empirical data offered by orthodox natural science. Natural science itself leads you to recognize truths that can be perceived only supersensibly but that indicate, nevertheless, that the empirical data must be followed up in this or that direction. You yourselves can certainly discover the methods; they will be imposed by the facts before you. There is no need to complain that such guiding principles create prejudice or that they influence by suggestion. The conclusions arise out of the things themselves, but the facts and conditions prove to be highly complicated, and if further progress is to be made, all that has been learned in this way about the human being must now be investigated in connection with the outer world.

I want you now to follow me in a brief train of thought. I am giving it merely by way of example, but it will show you the path that must be followed. Take the annual plant that grows out of the earth in spring and passes through its yearly cycle. Now relate these phenomena that you observe in the annual plant with other things you can observe—above all the custom of peasants who, when they want to keep their potatoes through the winter, dig pits of a certain depth and put the potatoes into them so that they may keep for the following year. If the potatoes were kept in an ordinary open cellar, they would not remain fit to eat. Investigations have proven that what originates from the interplay between the sunshine and the earth is contained within the earth during the subsequent winter months. Warmth conditions and light conditions are at play dynamically under the surface of the earth during the winter, so that in winter the aftereffects of summer are actually contained within the earth. Summer surrounds us outside the earth's surface. In winter, the aftereffects of summer work under the earth's surface. And the consequence is that the plant, growing out of the earth in its yearly cycle, is impelled to grow, first and foremost, by the forces that have been poured into the earth by the sun of the previous year, for the plant derives its dynamic force from the soil. (I have to make rather large leaps, of course, but these things can all be verified easily through empirical observations.) This dynamic force that is drawn out of the soil can be traced up into the ovary and on into the developing seed. So you see, we can arrive at a botany that really corresponds to the whole physiological process only if we do not confine ourselves to the dynamic forces of warmth and light and the light conditions during the year when the plant is growing. We must rather take our start from the root, and so from the dynamic forces of light and warmth of at least the year before. These forces can be traced right up into the ovary, so that in the ovary we have something that really is brought into being by the forces of the previous year.

Now examine the leaves of a plant, and, still more, the petals. You will find that in the leaves there is a compromise between the dynamic forces of the previous year and those of the present year. The leaves contain elements that are thrust out from the earth and those that work in from the environment. It is in the petals that the forces of the present year are represented in their purest form. The coloring and so forth of the petals represents nothing that is old—it all comes from the present year.

You cannot follow the processes in an annual plant if you take only the immediate conditions into consideration. Examine the structural conditions that follow one another in two consecutive years. (What the sun imparts to the earth, however, has a much longer life.) Do a series of experiments concerning the way in which the plants continue to be relished by creatures such as the grub of the cockchafer, and you will see that what you first thought to be an element of the plant belonging to the present year must be related to the sun forces of the previous year. You know what a prolonged larval stage the cockchafer undergoes, devouring the plant the whole time.

These matters must be the subject of exact research; only the guiding principles can be given from the spiritual world. Research will show that the structure of the substances found in the petals and leaves, for instance, is of an essentially different character from the structure of the substances found in the root or even the seed itself. There is a tremendous difference, and this leads to the distinction between a tea prepared from the petals or leaves of plants and an extract of substances found in roots or seeds. You will find that this difference is the basis for the other differences, so that the effect of a tea prepared from petals or leaves upon the human digestive system is quite different from that of an extract prepared from roots or seeds. In this way you relate the organization of the human being to the surrounding world, and everything you discover can be verified through purely physical, sense-perceptible methods. You will find, for instance, that disturbances in the transition of the chyle into the etheric organization, as it is brought about by the system of heart and lungs, will be influenced by the leaves; everything connected with the digestive tract is influenced essentially by a tea derived from petals. An extract of roots and seeds influences the wider activity that works on into the vascular system and even into the nervous system. In this way you will discover rationally the connection between what is going on within the human organism and the substances from which our store of remedies may be derived.

In the next lecture I will have to continue this subject, showing you that there is an inner connection between the different structures of the plants and the human nerve-sense organization and the organization of his digestive tract.

Man gains interest in the physical world through perception or estimatio. It's this interest that fetters him to the physical world. One can grow out of this by seeing the spiritual behind things in the sense world. In an earlier stage of consciousness men had imaginatio and no estimatio for physical things, and even earlier they had incantatio or inspiratio. Moderns usually only have estimatio during the day, and they have imaginatio at night. Men are unproductive in daytime; they used to be much more productive. Moderns are only productive during sleep. Consciousness arises when the astral body and ego destroy the physical and etheric bodies during the day. When the astral body and ego become aware of their physical surroundings it's as if the nerves were being torn to pieces.

Corporeal tiredness arises from the destructive, deadly effect of the astral body and ego on the etheric and physical bodies. The streaming of the physical world into man's organism has a poisonous, destructive effect.

At night the ego and astral body take in the forces of the spiritual world and stream them into the physical and etheric bodies. They surround the physical body with pictures that have a healing effect on it. The first thing a man sees when the spiritual world opens before him for the first time is his physical body. This picture of the physical body has a healing effect on him. Likewise the astral body and ego work upon the rest of man in a strengthening, healing way at night through true pictures out of the spiritual world. They stream into the ripped nerve strands and destroyed organism. Thereby forces from the spiritual world stream in at night that eliminate tiredness from the body.

Tiredness mainly arises from interest in things. No tiredness is caused if one looks at something without personal interest. For instance, say someone really likes a tasty food. Thereby he has a personal interest in the food because it stimulates his gums. It has quite a different effect on a man if he knows his connection with the cosmos and that he's at a stage where he has a physical body that needs food. This affects his organism differently than if he only eats food for pleasure. A man must get to know spiritual things through the physical body, and then he loses interest in physical things.

A man should look upon estimatio as the low point in evolution. He must grow out of this into the imaginatio that he had previously. But if he connects himself with the physical world he goes below the lowest point and can no longer ascend. It's very important for a man to learn to occupy himself with things that lie beyond the physical plane, with ideas and concepts that are super-sensible. Exercises are given to this end. The longer and more patiently a pupil practices certain ideas, the more he learns to overcome personal interests and to ascend to imaginatio. Then a man becomes productive instead of just taking in things from outside. He then streams something from within out into the world. One rightly says that man has the sun and moon in him. When he looks at things without personal interest he streams a spiritual light onto them; he becomes a sun who illumines things. They reflect his light. The surroundings that reflect his light become a moon.

Correct ideas have a healing effect on man, and wrong ideas make him sick. One can find a wrong idea behind every disease, if one traces it back. Mankind in general is responsible for this and not individuals. Interest also has a destructive effect when people run from one sensation to the other and always want to be amused. That makes people sick. It's also a hindrance to progress to have a personal interest in higher knowledge. Men become scleroticized thereby. A man must not become indifferent to his surroundings. He must retain his feeling and sympathy for his surroundings. Some say that sympathy can also come from egotism. That may be the case. Many kinds of sympathy only arise because one doesn't want to see other people suffer. That's even a good thing. It's better for a man to help someone out of egotistical sympathy than not to help him at all. But we must learn to develop a sympathy that stands above egoism, that helps neighbors because it's one's duty to help them.