The Rudolf Steiner Archive

By receiving the Spirit the human soul develops to ever further stages in the course of cosmic existence. The Spirit is eternal, but the way in which it takes effect, how it manifests in what man can feel, love and create on Earth—that is new in every epoch.

When we think in this way of the Spirit and its progressive manifestation in the course of man's existence, the Eternal and the Transitory are revealed to our eyes of soul. And in particular manifestations of life here and there, we can constantly perceive how the Eternal reveals itself, comes to expression in the Transitory and then vanishes again, thereafter to assert its reality in perpetually new forms.

And today too we can feel that the emblems of Christmas around us are reminiscent of past forms in which the Eternal, manifesting in the outer world, was wont to be symbolised. Certain it is that in the second half of December at the present time, when we go out into the streets of a great city and look at the lights that are intended to be invitations into the houses to celebrate the Christmas Festival, our aesthetic sense must be pained by displays of so-called Christmas goods, while inventions out of keeping with Christmas trees and Christmas symbols whiz past—motor cars, electric tramcars and the like. These phenomena, as experienced today, are utterly at variance with each other. We feel this still more deeply when we realise what the Christmas Festival has become for many of those who want to be regarded in the great cities as the representatives of modern culture. It has become a festival of presents, a festival in which little remains of the warmth and profound depth of feeling which in a past by no means far distant surrounded this most significant season.

Among the experiences restored to us by our anthroposophical conception of the world and way of thinking, will certainly be the warmth of feeling that pervaded the human soul at the times of high festival in the ancient Church's year. We must learn to understand once again how necessary it is for our souls to become aware at certain times of the connection with the great Universe out of which man is born, in order that our intellectual, perceptive and also moral forces may be revitalised. There was an epoch when Christmas was a festival when all morality, all love, all philanthropy could be revivified; in its symbols it radiated a warmth undreamed of by the dreariness and prosaicness of modern life. Nevertheless deep contemplation of these symbols could be a means of developing the perceptions, experiences and convictions of which we ourselves can be aware concerning the resurrection of mankind, the birth of the Spirit of Anthroposophy in our souls.

There is indeed a connection between the earlier conceptions of the Festival of Christ's birth and the modern anthroposophical conceptions of the birth of truly spiritual ideas and ways of thinking, of the birth of the whole anthroposophical spirit in the cradle of our hearts; there is indeed a connection. And maybe it is the anthroposophist of today who will most readily enter into what for long ages was felt at the time of the Christmas Festival and could be felt again if there were any hope of something similar emerging from the atmosphere of materialism surrounding us today.

But if we want to experience the Christmas Festival in the truly anthroposophical way, we cannot limit ourselves to what the Christmas Festival was once upon a time or is now. Wherever we look in the world, and into a past however distant, something that can be compared to the thoughts and feelings connected with the Christmas Festival has existed everywhere. Today we will not go back to the very far past but only to the feelings and experiences which men living in the regions of Middle Europe might have had before the introduction of Christianity at the time of the year when our own Christmas Festival is drawing near. We will think briefly of epochs prior to the introduction of Christianity into Europe, when in regions subject to relatively harsh climatic conditions our forefathers in Europe were obliged to make their living by spending the summer as pastoral or agricultural workers, while their feelings and inclinations were intimately connected with the manifestations of the great world of Nature. They were full of thanksgiving for the sun's rays, full of reverence for the great Universe—a reverence that was not superficial but deeply felt. And when the herdsman or cattle breeder of ancient Europe was out on his rough fields, often in scorching heat, he was inwardly aware not only of the outer, physical aspect of Nature, but in his whole being he felt intimately connected with whatever was radiated to him from Nature; with his whole heart he lived in communion with Nature. It was not only that in his eyes the physical rays of the sun were reflecting the light, but in his heart the sunlight kindled spiritual jubilation, summer-like exultation which culminated in the St. John's fires when the spirit of Nature shouted for joy and was echoed from the hearts of men. Intimate community was also felt with the animal world as being under man's guardianship.

Then came autumn, followed by the season of rigorous winter—and I am thinking now of times when winter swept through the land with a bleakness of which modern humanity has little idea. This was a time when, with the exception of what it was absolutely essential to preserve, the last head of cattle had to be slaughtered. All outer life was stilled; it was actually as though a kind of death made its way into the hearts of men, a kind of darkness, in contrast with the mood that pervaded these same hearts throughout the summer. Those were times when the unique manifestations of climate and of Nature, enabled echoes of ancient clairvoyance still to persist in Middle Europe. People who during the summer were full of joy and merriment, as though Nature herself were rejoicing in their hearts—these same people could become inwardly quiescent during the time of approaching winter; their own souls could respond to an echo of the mood that pervades a man when, unmindful of the outer world, he withdraws into his own inner world in order to become aware of the indwelling Divinity.

So it can be said that Nature herself made it possible for these ancient European peoples to descend from life in the external world deep down into their own inmost being. When November came near this descent into death and darkness was felt for weeks to be a solemn season, to be a harbinger of the approaching dawn of what was called the Yuletide Festival. This mood was a clear indication of how long the remembrance of ancient clairvoyant faculties had persisted among all the peoples of Northern and Middle Europe. During the season following the period roughly corresponding to our months of January and February, men felt inwardly aware of the portents of renewed rejoicing, renewed resurrection in Nature. They were aware of a foretaste of what they would subsequently experience in the external world; but when the fields were still covered with snow, when icicles were still hanging from the trees, when outside in Nature nothing indicated a future state of exultation, there was a persistent condition of withdrawal into themselves, of inner repose which was ultimately transformed in the soul in such a way that a man was, as it were, liberated from his own selfhood.

This intermediate state experienced by our forefathers at the approach of the season we now call spring was felt by them somewhat as the clairvoyant feels his astral body, before that astral body is completely cleansed and purified. It was as if the spiritual horizon were filled with all kinds of animal forms. And those men tried to give expression to this. For them it represented a transition from the profound, festival mood of approaching winter to the mood which would again pervade the soul during summer. And they imitated in symbols what the astral body reveals, imitated it in the form of uninhibited games and dances; by donning animal masks they imitated this transition from a state of complete inner repose to a state of exultant abandonment to great Nature.

When we ponder over this, when we reflect that the hearts and minds of peoples over wide areas were completely given up to such a mood, then we understand that there was present on this soil the feeling of sinking down into the outer physical darkness, into the outer physical death of Nature; we also understand the deep, persistent feeling that in sinking down into the physical death of Nature, into physical darkness, the supreme light of the Spirit can be revealed; and how the experience of being submerged in physical death is directly transformed into that mood of unbridled abandonment to which expression can be given by animal masks, unrestrained dancing and music. Admittedly there was not yet any fully developed feeling that if a human being is to find the highest light he must seek for it in the deepest depths of being; but through an inner, loving union with the weaving forces of Nature a soil was prepared into which there could be planted a knowledge to be imparted to men concerning their further evolution through the power of the Christ Impulse. To these peoples living all over Europe it was only necessary to say—not in dry, abstract words but speaking to the heart by means of symbols: ‘Where you plunge into darkness, into the death of outer Nature, there—if you have prepared your souls to perceive and feel rightly, you can find an eternal, imperishable Light. And this Light has been brought into the evolution of mankind through the quickening power of the Mystery of Golgotha, through the events in Palestine’.

It is characteristic of the centuries immediately following, that in Europe the warmest, most intimate feelings for the Christ Impulse were to be kindled by the thought of the Christ Child, by the birth of the Christ Child. And if we believe that mankind has a mission, what conception must we have of that mission? We must conceive that man has a divine-spiritual origin, that he can look back to that origin, but that he has descended farther and farther away from it, has become more and more closely interwoven with physical matter, with the outer physical plane. But we must also be aware that through the mighty Impulse which we call the Christ Impulse, man can overcome the forces that led him down into the physical world and tread the path upwards into the heights of spiritual life.

Having grasped this we must say to ourselves: as the human Ego is today, incarnated in a physical body, it has descended from divine-spiritual heights of existence and feels entangled with the world of the outer physical plane. But this Ego that has become sinful is rooted in another Ego, a guiltless Ego. Where then, does the Ego that is not yet interwoven with the physical world contact us? At the point when, looking back in memory over our life as it takes its course between birth and death, we come to the moment in our early years when consciousness of our Ego dawned for the first time. The Ego is there, although we are not aware that it is living and active within us, even when there is no realisation of Egohood at all. The Ego looks into the surrounding world, is interwoven with the physical plane even before there is any consciousness of Egohood. In its childlike, innocent state the Ego is nevertheless present and may hover before us as an ideal to be regained, but permeated then with everything that can be experienced in this school of physical life on the Earth. And so, although it will inevitably be difficult for the prosaic intellect to find words in which to clothe it, this ideal can be felt by warm human hearts: ‘Become what your Ego is before there is any concept of it! Become what you could be if you were to find your way to the Ego of your childhood! Then that Ego will shine into everything acquired by the Ego of your later years!’—And inasmuch as we feel this to be an ideal, it shines before us in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ subsequently became incarnate.

Experiences such as these enable us to understand that an impulse promoting growth and development could move the hearts of the simplest people all over Europe when they contemplated the incarnation of the Being who was afterwards able to receive the Christ into himself. So we realise that it was truly a step forward when feelings connected with the Festival of the birth of Jesus were inculcated into experiences connected with the old Yuletide Festival. It was indeed a mighty step forward and may perhaps best be characterised by saying that in those dark days, when souls gathered together in order to prepare for the rejoicings of the new summer—in that darkness the light of Christ Jesus was kindled!

An echo of what took place among European peoples in those early times still persists in the Christmas Plays which during the nineteenth century, or at any rate during its latter half, had become little more than objects of study for learned investigators and for collectors. During the Middle Ages, however, these Plays were already being performed in a characteristic style during the Christmas period. All the emotions, all the vitality kindled in souls living in the regions where, when Yuletide was approaching, people of an even earlier period had experienced what I have been describing—all these feelings were awakened by the Plays. And as we turn from the description of the old Yuletide Festival to the medieval Christmas Plays, we ourselves can realise what warmth swept through the European peoples with the advent of Christianity. An impulse of a unique kind penetrated then into the hearts and souls of men.

Conditions now are, of course, different from those of earlier times, and in the nineteenth century these Plays were regarded simply as perquisites of erudition. Nevertheless it was a moving experience to make the acquaintance of older philologists and authorities on Germanic mythology and sagas, men who with intense enthusiasm devoted profound study to whatever fragments remained of the Christmas Plays that were performed in different regions. I myself had an elderly friend who during the fifties and sixties of last century had been a Professor at a College in Pressburg and while there had devoted a great deal of time to research among the Germanic peoples who had been driven from Western to Eastern Hungary. He also admired the charming customs and the language of the now Magyarised German gypsies and of other folk living at that time in Northern Hungary. It came to his knowledge that early Christmas Plays were still performed in a village near Pressburg. And he—I am speaking of my old friend Karl Julius Schröer—went to the village in an attempt to discover what vestiges of these old Plays still survived among the country people. Later on he told me a great deal about the wonderful impressions he had also received of what was left of Christmas Plays belonging to far, far earlier times.

In a certain village—Oberrufer was its name—there lived an old man in whose family it was an inherited custom when Christmas came near, to gather together those in the village who were suitable to be alloted parts in a Play in which the Gospels' story of Herod and the Three Kings would be presented in a simple way.

To understand the unique character of these Christmas Plays, however, we must have some idea of the kind of life led by simple folk in olden times. It now belongs to the past and must not be repeated. To make the gist of the matter clear, let me just put this question: Is there not a particular time of the year when the snowdrop flowers? Are there not for the lily-ofthe-valley and for the violet particular seasons when they take their own places in the macrocosm? Certainly, under glass they can be made to flower at other periods but it really gives one pain to see a violet flowering at a time other than that which properly belongs to it. There is little feeling for such things in our day but something of the kind can be said about the people of earlier times. What men felt during certain periods of the Middle Ages at the approach of autumn and of Christmas, when the dark nights were drawing on apace, what they felt in such a way that their intimate experiences were akin to the manifestations of Nature outside, akin to the snow and the snowflakes and the icicles forming on the trees—such feelings were possible only at the time of Christmas. It was a mood that imparted strength and healing power to the soul for the whole of the year. It renewed the soul, was a real and effective power. And how deeply one was moved a decade or so ago when the last indications of such feelings were still to be encountered here or there. From my own personal experience on the physical plane itself I can confirm that there were utterly good-for-nothing fellows who would not dare to be dissolute as the days shortened. At Christmastime those who were invariably the most quarrelsome, quarrelled less and those who quarrelled only now and then stopped quarrelling altogether. A real power was active in souls at that time of the year and these feelings abounded everywhere during the weeks immediately before the Holy Night.

What was it that people actually experienced during those weeks? Their experiences, translated into actual feelings, were that human beings had descended from a divine-spiritual existence to the deepest depth on the physical plane, that the Christ Impulse had been received and the direction of man's path reversed into one of reascent to divine-spiritual existence. That is what was felt in connection with everything to do with the Christ Event. Hence it was not only Christian happenings that people liked to present, but just as the Church calendar couples Adam and Eve's day on 24 December with the birthday of Jesus on the 25th, a performance of the Paradise Play was followed directly by the Play presenting Christ's birthday, denoting the impulse given for man's reascent to divine-spiritual existence. And this was deeply felt when the name EVA resounded in the Paradise Play – EVA, the mother of humanity, from whom men had descended into the vale of physical life. This theme was presented on one day and on the next there was a Play depicting the impulse which brought about the reversal of man's path. This reversal was indicated in the actual sounds: AVE MARIA. AVE was felt to be the reversal of EVA: AVE-EVA. People were deeply stirred by words which rang out countless times to their ears and hearts from the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth centuries onwards, and which were understood.

Ave maris stella (Hail, star of the sea,)
Dei mater alma (Nursing mother of God,)
Atque semper virgo (Virgin for ever and ever,)
Felix coeli porta (Blissful door to the heavens above.
Sumens illud Ave (Adopting that ‘Ave’
Gabrielis ore (Out of the mouth of Gabriel,
Funda nos in pace (Establish us in peace
Mutans nomen Evae! (Altering the name of ‘Eva’.

(Tr. by Owen Barfield)

It was felt that the Paradise Play must be performed in the mood of piety befitting the Holy Night of Christmas. This was a deep conviction, and as anthroposophists, when we hear how the performers in the Christmas Plays rehearsed, how they prepared themselves, how they behaved before and during the performances of the Plays, we may well say: Is this not reminiscent of the attitude to truth adopted in the Mysteries?—although that, admittedly, was a matter of even greater significance. We know that in the Mysteries truth could not be received in any superficial mood of soul. Those who are aware to some extent of the holiness of truth know how absurd it is to imagine that it could be found in the arid, prosaic lectures of modern times, lectures in which there is no longer any indication that truth must be sought by a pure, unsullied, well-prepared soul and that it will not be found by a soul inwardly unsanctified, whose feelings are not duly prepared for its reception. There is no longer any conception of this in our age of materialism when truth itself, in the way it is presented, has become utterly prosaic.

In the Mysteries, truth might be approached only after the soul had passed through probationary tests of purity, inner freedom and fearlessness. Are we not reminded of this when we hear of the old man whom Karl Julius Schröer had known, who while he was assembling his players demanded that they should observe the ancient rules. Anyone who has lived among village people knows what the first rule signifies. The first rule was that during the whole period of preparation none of the actors might visit a brothel. In the village this was a matter of tremendous importance, signifying that the task lying before the actors must be steeped in piety. Nobody, while he was rehearsing, might sing an unworthy song; that was another rule. Further, nobody should desire anything more than a good, honest livelihood. That was the third rule. And the fourth was that he who was the authentic guardian of the traditional Christmas Plays should in all things be obeyed. It was an office not willingly transferred to anyone else.

In the second half of the nineteenth century people collected these Plays, although by then the old feelings associated with them had vanished. Later on I myself came across indications of the piety and fervour of scholars who still had some contact with country folk living in the scattered provinces of Hungary, for example, and were collecting the old Plays and Songs. When I was once in Hermannstadt about Christmastime I found that the teachers at the Gymnasium (Grammar School) there had been busily collecting these Plays and I came across the Herod Play. And so in the second half of the nineteenth century it was still possible to find people who were gathering evidence of old customs in regions which I have mentioned in connection with the Yuletide Festival. Do not let us think of anything theoretical but let us picture this warm, magical breath of the Christmas mood presented in these Plays. We then have a conception of mankind's belief in divine-spiritual reality—a belief acquired through the Christ Impulse.

This deep study of the Christmas Plays was something that could be highly instructive for the present age when the realisation that Art is the offspring of piety, of religion and of wisdom has long since been lost! In these days, when people are apt to regard Art as being detached from everything else, when Art has degenerated, for example, into formalism, much could be learnt from considering how Art in all its aspects was once regarded as a flower of human life. Simple as was the presentation of these Christmas Plays, it nevertheless indicated a flowering of man's whole nature. In the first place, the boys taking part in the Plays must be God-fearing, must absorb into their whole character something that was like an essence of the Christmas mood. They were also obliged to learn how to speak in strict rhythm. At the present time, when the Art of speaking in the ancient sense has been lost, there is no inkling of the vitally important role played by rhythm and rhyme, or of how every movement and gesture of men otherwise accustomed only to handling flails were rehearsed in minutest detail. The actors devoted themselves for weeks on end to practising rhythm and intonation, and were wholly dedicated to what they were to present. For a true understanding of Art, much could be learnt from those customs today when we have forgotten to such an extent how to speak artistically that hardly more than the intellectual meaning of what we have to say is expressed. The essential charm of these old Christmas Plays, however, lay in the fact that in rhythm, intonation and gesture the whole man became articulate. It was indeed a significant experience to have witnessed even the last remnants of these customs.

When the Christmas days were over, the actors taking. the parts of the Three Holy Kings walked through the villages, but at no other time than immediately after Christmas. I still remember seeing the Three Kings going through the villages from house to house. They carried long strips of lattice work attached to shears, a star being fixed to the end of the lattice work. The star shot out when the shears were opened and the lattice work swung back in harmony with the rhythmic movements made by the Three Kings. The Kings wore the most primitive costumes imaginable but their way of bringing the appropriate facts to the notice of the people at the right time of the year and their complete forgetfulness of self, induced a mood of soul that will be utterly incomprehensible to our age unless there can be a spiritual awakening. What should awaken in us as the life of the spirit, transformed through Anthroposophy into Art, can be presented in Plays which transcend the normal standards of the present age. Such Plays will not necessarily be connected with festivals but will be concerned with what is eternal in the human soul, unrelated to any particular season.

The Christ Impulse that was a reality for the souls of a certain epoch could become for us a living experience. True, in a certain sense we are already deeply rooted in an age when materialism in the outer world has taken such a hold in every sphere that if this Christ Impulse is to be renewed, stimuli quite different from the simple methods employed in the Middle Ages are called for. A revitalisation of man's inner life is necessary. The goal of Anthroposophy should be to draw forth the deepest forces of the human soul, forces quite different from those indicated to us by the present Christmas symbols and customs. True as it is that through our Anthroposophy we can become aware of the breath of enchantment which filled men's hearts during performances of the Paradise and Christ-Plays and during all the experiences connected with the festival seasons, it behoves us also to face the other fact—that the eternal Spirit must live in ever new forms through the evolution of humanity. Hence the spectacle of the Christmas symbols should be an incitement to infuse into the Christmas mood the spirit of anthroposophical thinking. Those who have a right feeling of the mysteries of the Christmas night will be filled with hope as they look forward to what will follow the Christmas Festival as a second Festival: they will look forward to Easter, the Festival of Resurrection, when He who was born in the Christmas night will be victorious.

Thus we are convinced that all cultural life, all spiritual life must be pervaded and inwardly charged with anthroposophical conceptions, anthroposophical feeling, thinking and willing. In the future, my dear friends, there will either be an anthroposophical spiritual science or no science at all, only a kind of applied technology; in the future there will either be a religion permeated with Anthroposophy, or no religion at all, merely external ecclesiasticism. In the future, Art will be permeated with Anthroposophy or the various arts will cease to exist, because cut off from the life of the human soul they can have only a brief, ephemeral existence. So we look towards something that shines with the same certainty as Theodora's prophecy of the renewal of the vision of Christ in the first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. With as great a certainty there stands before our souls the resurrection of the anthroposophical spirit in Science, Religion, Art and in the whole life of humanity. The great Easter Festival of mankind is arrayed before our foreshadowing souls.

We can understand that still there are ‘mangers’, still lonely places in which there will be born, as yet in the form typical of childhood, that which is to be resurrected among men. In the Middle Ages people were led into the houses and shown the manger—an imitation of the stable with the ox and the ass—where the Child Jesus lay near his parents and the shepherds, and the people looking on were told: There lies the hope for the future of mankind!

May all that we cultivate in our anthroposophical centres become in the modern age new mangers in which, under the guidance of the Being we call Christ Jesus, the new spirit may come to life. Today this new spirit is still at the stage of childhood, still being born as it were in the mangers which are the centres of anthroposophical activities, and bearing the pledge of victory—the pledge that we, as mankind, will celebrate the great Easter Festival, the Resurrection Festival of humanity in the new spirit which we already anticipate and for which we strive—the spirit of Anthrophosophy.

[ 1 ] Yesterday we referred to the important turning point in human evolution at the beginning of the third mystery epoch, when man's participation in the cosmic things in transubstantiation and in the act of consecration of man began to occur in the astral body. This is that member of the human being which leaves the physical body as far as ordinary consciousness is concerned, and which is unreceptive for percepts from the environment during the time of the separation.

[ 2 ] Let's try to get a clear idea of how this astral body functions in present-day man. It is the member which transmits the thoughts which enable us to understand the world. For thoughts about one's environment disappear as soon as one's astral body leaves the physical and etheric bodies.

[ 3 ] We can round out this idea if we realize that the ego-organization—the actual ego in man as he is today—is the receiver of sense impressions. However, the latter are obliterated when the ego-organization leaves the physical and etheric bodies.

So that we can say: here are the physical and etheric bodies of the human being, and during sleep the astral body and ego-organization are outside. The ego-organization gives us our sense percepts and sensations when we are awake. There is no sense perception during sleep, because the ego-organization is not in the physical and etheric bodies and because the ego is not receptive for impressions from the environment during that time. Likewise, the astral body gives us thoughts when it is in the physical and etheric bodies, but when it is outside it is not sensitive to things in the world and it gives us no impressions.

[ 4 ] However, it was this astral body which became receptive for what I described to you, during the third mystery epoch when man was to connect himself with divine, spiritual beings through cultic words and through everything the priest did in the way of preparatory exercises. It became receptive for the elaboration of the transubstantiation in itself during communion, and after the transubstantiation was elaborated it became receptive for apocalyptic things.

[ 5 ] The same kind of thing has to happen in the ego-organizations of people from the present epoch on. Even though this ego-organization can only experience sense impressions in ordinary consciousness, it must be constituted in such a way that it experiences transubstantiations and in such a way that it can participate in apocalyptic things through the latter.

[ 6 ] People can really become receptive for these things today, that is, someone can really become a priest if he takes in ideas which are true spiritual copies of the supersensible world. Therewith we have described the esoteric or inner connection between the esotericism which rightfully exists today and what must live in a priest's soul. We have described what can make the Christian Community a bearer of an important part of the new mysteries. We must only consider how the Anthroposophy which is approaching human beings today is really constituted.

[ 7 ] I have often used an analogy. I said that people are inclined to accept things which are supported by outer perceptions and experiments today, but they don't want to accept things which are not supported in this way. However, anyone who has this attitude is like a person who says: every rock on earth must be supported so that it won't fall down and therefore the planets in the universe must also be supported so that they won't fall down. Of course, since it's taught in a traditional and authoritative way, people believe that the planets in the universe mutually carry each other without supports. However, many people doubt that Anthroposophical truths support and carry each other, and that they don't have to be supported by outer observations and experiments.

[ 8 ] As soon as one sees that Anthroposophical truths are valid because they all support each other, so that the truths mutually support each other, in that moment one will stop saying: I can't see anything in the spiritual world yet and therefore I can't understand the content of Anthroposophy. Instead one will begin to understand Anthroposophy through the fact that its truths mutually support each other, and one will then work one's way further into it.

[ 9 ] The main thing which can and must put this body of priests on its inner path today is the task of penetrating what is given about the spiritual world. If it does tread this path, we should make it clear to ourselves that the attitude of soul which someone gets into if he takes possession of Anthroposophy in an honest way enables him to approach the Apocalypse. It enables one to approach it in such a way that one can say: It's true that the Apocalypse exists, but if I let it work upon me, each one of its images or Imaginations becomes united with my own ego. And then comes the moment where this Apocalypse can be a creation of the human ego and not just a personal experience. However, we must try to approach the Apocalypse in an Anthroposophical way. There's no other context which leads to it today.

[ 10 ] We will now try to grasp a few of the main points in the Apocalypse in a spiritual way, if I may put it that way. [ 11 ] “I am Alpha and Omega.” Expressed in an ancient form: one only understands alpha or A if one knows that a sound or letter as a component of a word was not the abstract, separate and meaningless thing back then, that we experience today. A sound was something which deserved to have a name. Mankind has treated The sounds of language which really enclose a great mystery in a peculiar way.

[ 12 ] Mankind has treated the sounds of language in the way that a policeman treats a criminal. A long time ago it numbered the letters in the way that we give numbers to criminals when they are put into their cells, so that they lose their names and get numbers. Sounds have lost their identity through the numbering process. This is a pictorial way of putting it, but a true one nevertheless.

[ 13 ] For if we go back before the late Hebraic period when they first gave numbers to the sounds, we find that mankind was fully aware that it is quite right for a sound to have a name, and that one can say alpha to it because it is a divine, supersensible being. If we want to find out what this first letter alpha of the so-called alphabet really is, we will have to go through a kind of spiritual development or conceptual development.

[ 14 ] You know that Anthroposophy goes back in earth evolution through Moon, Sun to Saturn. It tries to dig up things in the world which are connected with the evolution of man. We find the first cosmic human germ on Saturn, which became the present human body after manifold transformations during Sun, Moon and earth. Man was present on Saturn in his first, germinal form.

[ 15 ] For anyone who honestly and seriously wants to see the true state of affairs in this area, it's no doubt quite important to ask what men really experienced on old Saturn. Man experienced successive conditions of warmth. Man absorbed various states of warmth and cold. He existed in states which really only told him something about warmth conditions in the cosmos, for although they also told him many spiritual things, they only disclosed a limited region of the spirit through differentiated warmth and cold.

[ 16 ] If we go on from Saturn to Sun, we find that man's organism has become differentiated. During Sun existence man lives in a physical body which is differentiated into warmth ether and air. Differentiation also occurs within as man becomes filled with a richer content. He not only perceives the differentiated warmth like on old Saturn, but something like an inner life emerges. Man perceives the warmth on the Sun with his old perception and he also perceives an inner breathing rhythm in himself which in turn is an expression and a reflection of cosmic secrets.

[ 17 ] Just look at how the human being becomes richer as he evolves from Saturn to Sun. He also gets richer as he evolves from Sun to Moon and from Moon to Earth. And he will continue to get richer as he develops on Jupiter and up to Vulcan.

[ 18 ] Let's ask ourselves what the relation of man to the world is on ancient Saturn. On old Saturn man's relation to the world is such that he perceives a very large number of different warmths, but qualitatively he perceives very little. Not much of the world is in man. Man is present as man and he is just a man, as it were; not much of the world is in him yet. As he moves forward through Sun, Moon, earth and on to Jupiter his inner life becomes filled with the world more and more, and therefore it is richer. We already have a large part of the world in us here on earth. And when the earth gets to the stage where it will pass away again, man will have elaborated a large part of the macrocosm and he will bear it in him as earthly copies.

[ 19 ] We bear it within us already, but people are not usually aware of this. When a human being moves upwards through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition to a knowledge of the spirit, his inner soul life becomes ever more magnificent. Look at how little man knows about the human eye in his ordinary consciousness. But this eye is a whole cosmos, and like the macrocosm all of its details are marvelous and great. Every single organ in man becomes unveiled in a wonderful way in his physical body already. So that when an initiate looks around him he sees a world with the elements down below and its sun, moon and stars up above. If he looks into himself he sees that the eye, ear, lung, liver and every other organ is a world in itself, and that man's physical body is a marvelous interaction of worlds. Some of these worlds are finished, others are just beginning, some are sensory, others are half supersensible or entirely supersensible. Man really bears ever more worlds in himself as he works his way through one evolution after another.

[ 20 ] Thus we can distinguish man at the start of old Saturn evolution, where he is just beginning, where he is man, although he doesn't bear the world in himself yet. The first thing which man acquired during old Saturn evolution was a perception of the circumference of the warmth body which he felt that he was. So that in a schematic way we can say that man feels that he is warmth on old Saturn, but after he has felt that he is a warmth mollusk he gradually feels something like an accumulation of warmth, like an outer skin, a warmth skin, a somewhat cooler sheath than the warmth which is in him. He feels manifold degrees or intensities of warmth within him, and the warmth skin is the coolest.

[ 21 ] We express this in our present language, but this language is abstract and it doesn't conjure up the greatness of such a mental image before our soul, if we look into the course of time and we want to go back to old Saturn. However, people who are moved by a perception of these things at all are also moved by the awe with which such things were looked upon in the ancient mysteries. In the ancient Greek chthonic mysteries, they still spoke of Saturn men who didn't have a warmth skin yet, and then of men who had taken the first part of the world into their warmth skins; for the latter had a certain structure and form which imitated the world. This was the first thing from the world.

[ 22 ] What do man's experiences which he had while he was still a warmth man look like from a subjective, psychic viewpoint? They are like absolute amazement about the world. If one wants to describe them, one has to call them complete amazement. For one cannot grasp warmth in any other way than as sheer amazement. Outwardly it is warmth and inwardly it is complete astonishment. It's only because people have become as blockheaded as old Kant was, that they speak of a thing in itself which can't be explained. The thing in itself of warmth is astonishment;' and Saturn man is astonishment just as much as he is warmth. He lived in amazement or astonishment about his own existence, for he was just entering into this existence. This is alpha; the Saturn warmth man who is living in amazement. And the first thing which man experiences as the housing of the world, namely his skin, is beta,—building, this building or house. Man was a man in his house, and the house or temple or skin was the first thing from the world: beta.

[ 23 ] If we go through the alphabet like this, we go through the whole world. When man gradually absorbs everything which the world was and unites it with his being, until by Vulcan he will become united with the whole wide world to which he belongs, he will be the one he was at the beginning of Saturn evolution plus the whole world. He will be alpha and everything else too. But everything else amounts to the whole world. This is omega—man and everything in him which is the world. The “I am alpha and omega” describes what man will be at the end of the Vulcan period. At the end of Vulcan evolution, man will be able to say: I am alpha and omega. [ 24 ] Let's look at the Mystery of Golgotha from the vantage point of what we have placed before ourselves as the beginning, middle and end of human evolution. At the Mystery of Golgotha or approximately the halfway point in world evolution, we have the being who dwelt in Jesus' body at the stage of development that man will be in at the end of Vulcan evolution. We have a being as god which man will be at the end of Vulcan evolution.

[ 25 ] What is the difference between God's existence and man's existence? The difference between a god's existence and a man's existence is that the god already is what the human being will be later on in time. Don't say that this brings the god down to the human level and makes him into a human being. It doesn't. Because for supersensible perception, time is a simultaneous reality, if you'll permit me to use this paradoxical expression. The difference between man and God is the one which existed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One shouldn't relate different times or beings from different times when one looks at these things.

[ 26 ] A great deal of what is in writings like the Apocalypse is expressed in the language which was used in the mysteries, and it can only be understood if it is deciphered. On the other hand, one shouldn't blame the author of the Apocalypse for speaking in mystery language, for it was customary for people to do this at that time. People still knew that sounds are supersensible beings and that alpha is the supersensible human being when he was first created, and that when one goes from alpha to beta one is turning away from man and towards the world, including the divine world, and that if one goes through all the sounds to omega one has the entire divine world in omega.

[ 27 ] It's rather shocking that we're surrounded by experiences today which we consider to be trivialities. For instance, all the sounds are basically trivialities for us. Someone who only knows the alphabet doesn't know very much. The ABCs are trivialities. However, these trivialities point to divine, spiritual beings at the starting point, and our trivial letters are the descendents of what were once divine, spiritual beings for mankind. The whole alphabet was a number of such divine spiritual beings. Sounds were gods who assailed men from all sides with their din. The sounds AB were man in his house, and so on. Man with the whole world was alpha to omega. When someone uttered a sound he felt that it permeated him with spirituality.

[ 28 ] A last remnant of this life of a divine, spiritual element in sounds still existed in the intonation of cultic language during the third mystery epoch. They still understood this completely in very ancient times. When someone successively intoned what has now become our abstract, traditional alphabet, he was intoning the cosmic word. He intoned everything which exists and he connected himself with all the gods: In the beginning was the word. And when Christ says “I am alpha and omega,” he could say “I am the word” and mean the same thing.

[ 29 ] You can see that the Apocalypse is written in a mystery language, and it uses terms which remind us of the long period during which man felt that the macrocosm was a speaking universe. We have obscured the sounds of our language and made them trivial, whereas men used to know that they were something very spiritual. We must be able to feel what happened there. What happened? The sounds exist, but the gods are no longer in them as far as men are concerned. The gods have left the sounds. Our sounds contain Ahrimanic beings in a demonic way. The popular idea that the fixed sounds of our language are connected with black magic is not entirely unfounded. This idea of the people is a healthy one. For our sounds are now Ahrimanic gods. The gods who were once in them left, and Ahrimanic beings moved in. People will permeate language with more and more Ahrimanic powers if they don't find their way back to the gods in this sphere.

[ 30 ] We must approach the Apocalypse with such feelings about, language. This is the only way that the real greatness and power of what is placed, before our souls in the Apocalypse can become manifest to us. For what does the author of the Apocalypse want to do? He wants to do the same thing that all those who speak out of a true knowledge of the Christ want to do. [ 31 ] He wants to place the Christ before mankind. He draws attention to the fact that he is there. He begins by saying that he exists. For if one takes the first words of the Apocalypse and translates them into our language in accordance with their real meaning, they read: Look at the manifestation of Christ Jesus: Look over there; I want to show you the vision of Jesus Christ which God has given.

[ 32 ] Thus the first thing which is pointed out is that the author of the Apocalypse wants to let Christ appear to humanity in an apocalyptic way. But he also points out that he doesn't just want to report about the appearance or the Imagination of Jesus Christ, which presupposes vision, but he also wants to indicate that the divine world power which placed this phenomenon into the world and made it visible also expressed it in words.

[ 33 ] God has sent these words by his angel unto his servant John, and they are like an interpretation of the vision of Jesus Christ. This is how we must read the beginning of the Apocalypse.

[ 34 ] Two things are really being said here. An Imaginative element in Christ is mentioned, and something is said about what Christ's tidings are. And what John affirms and testifies to in his second sentence is the vision of Christ and the interpretation of this vision. The Christ in a picture and the Christ in words. The author of the Apocalypse wants to place the Christ before human beings in a picture and in words.

[ 35 ] Therewith we are also made aware of something which was quite obvious to people at that time, although most people today have lost sight of it completely. Our impoverished psychologists speak of sense percepts and ideas. To make the thing as poor as possible, people let the sense percepts arise through the senses and they say that ideas are created within. Everything is subjective and there is nothing cosmic there at all; they make a Kantian world out of a rich one, and they completely forget that man is standing in the whole world.

[ 36 ] The intuitive element in our words has shriveled into impoverished ideas: the second thing or so-called supersensible percept which John affirms, testifies to and tells us about is what the Apocalypticer places there as the manifestation of Christ. So that we have to say [ 37 ] “Behold the manifestation of Jesus Christ which is given by God, for this is how God must be shown to you [ 38 ] (I will interpret this later). [ 39 ] He has put it into words and has sent it to his servant John via his angel. John has affirmed God's words and the manifestation of Jesus Christ in the way that he saw it. [ 40 ] He wants to give mankind what he has seen and a letter he received from God.”

[ 41 ] We must approach Christian writings in this concrete way again. If you really want to become priests out of the deepest and most honest impulses in your heart you will have to see to it that these writings become concrete. For the fact is that people are basically dishonest when they say they understand the gospels the way they are translated today. The Apocalypse begins in the way that I said. One translation of the beginning of the Apocalypse reads, “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to show his servants, and he has interpreted it and sent it to his servant John by his angel;” this is how it reads. And then the whole world is told that this is what the Apocalypse says. But no one can really make any sense out of these words. The same goes for most of the gospels, because one wants to explain things to people with wording which doesn't tell one what's really there anymore. This is why the idea gradually arose that one shouldn't penetrate very deeply into the gospels. For how can one really do that? No matter what modern language one reads the gospels in, one can't really read them if one is honest about it. For the modern versions tell one nothing.

[ 42 ] One has to go back to what is really there, just as we did this for the first two sentences and as we will continue to do it. Or some people might say that one has to go back to the Greek for certain parts of the gospels. Now, with all due respect to our contemporaries, who take great pains to understand Greek, the fact is that no one understands Greek any more today, because we don't have the same things in us which the Greeks had when they spoke or listened.

We're basically like sacks of flour when we listen to someone or when we speak ourselves. We remain just as quiet inwardly as flour in a sack should, if it is packed properly. This was not the case with the Greeks. The consciousness of a Greek vibrated when he listened to someone. He became alive inwardly and he spoke out of this vitality. The words which he heard and spoke were alive; they were still living bodies. Not to speak of oriental people. The latter are decadent today but unlike European people they can still perceive and understand things inwardly in a vital way when they speak or hear.

Just listen to an ordinary oriental like Rabindranath Tagore and watch how he presents the inner weaving and life which can exist in language.

[ 43 ] Today one has language in such a way that one even thinks one has it if one takes a dictionary and a German word stands on one side and the English word on the other. People very calmly place the English words where the German words are. They are blissfully unaware that one steps over an abyss here and that one comes into an entirely different world, and that one really has to treat what lives in language as something which is divine.

[ 44 ] People have to become aware of this again. Then they will decide to go back to what vibrates out of writings like the Apocalypse, which conjures up a vision of Jesus Christ before our soul. If we can see this mighty vision it's as if the clouds, which could give us wonderful things, suddenly became concentrated and took on human and angelic forms, and the past, present and future welled out of the clouds' substances as they go past and revealed the world's content of spiritual substances, which includes human beings. This is how the manifestation of Jesus Christ is presented.

[ 45 ] The vision is there and we fall silent before it, so that we become united with the world and are no longer conscious of ourselves, and so that we confront the vision until nothing but the vision remains, while we become insignificant.

Then when we perceive the Father God who has given the vision we find that he holds back the inspiring words behind the vision. The words are the interpretation of the vision and they are his secret; but the time is at hand and God gives the secret to an angel, and he brings it down to men as an epistolary message from God on the path on which Inspirations from God generally come down.

[ 46 ] As soon as a man becomes quiet and disappears and becomes immersed in the vision and begins to be not in himself, and he takes in God's letter, which he first has to open, which is sealed with seven seals, which he takes in as a letter with seven seals which has been sent to him by the godhead—as soon as he does this he becomes the letter, because he gets to the point where he looks upon the contents of the letter as his own ego-being. Then he stands before the vision with God's ideas and concepts and with spiritual mental images.

[ 47 ] If you imagine John the priest in this way, with the vision of Jesus Christ before him, disappearing selflessly, if you see him receiving the letter of God that is sealed with seven seals from the angels there, and if you see the resolve arising in him to unseal God's letter and to communicate its contents to mankind—you have the picture or Imagination which stands at the beginning of the Apocalypse. For we must interpret the words which stand there in what we receive in such a way that it is like the Imagination I described. This is what the author of the Apocalypse wants to say. That is why he says, “Blessed is he that reads and hears the words in the macrocosm and who takes in and preserves what is written in the book, when he understands it. For the time for this has come.”

[ 48 ] It has come. It is not just chance that we're discussing the Apocalypse in this context; it lies in the karma of the community for Christian renewal.

Today our subject is one that undoubtedly concerns all human beings, for the words “illness” and “death” express something which enters in every life, often as an uninvited guest, often too in a vexing, frustrating, frightening guise, and death presents itself as the greatest riddle of existence; so that when anyone has solved the question of its nature he has also solved that other question—the nature of life. Frequently we hear it said that death is an unsolved riddle—a riddle which no-one will ever solve. People who speak thus have no idea how arrogant these words are; they have no idea that there does exist a solution to the riddle which, however, they do not happen to understand. Today, when we are to deal with such an all-embracing and important subject, I beg you particularly to bear in mind how impossible it is for us to do more than answer the above question: “What do we understand by illness and death?” Hence we cannot go into detail where such things as illness and health are concerned, but must confine ourselves to the essential question: How do we arrive at an understanding of these two important problems of our existence?

The most familiar answer to this question concerning the nature of death, one that has held good for centuries but today has little importance attached to it by the majority of educated people, is contained in St. Paul's words: “For the wages of sin is death”. As we have said in previous lectures, for many centuries these words were in a way a solution of the riddle of death. Today those who think in modern terms will not be able to make anything of such an answer; they would be mystified by the idea that sin—something entirely moral and having to do only with human conduct—could be the cause of a physical fact or should be supposed to have anything to do with the nature of illness and death.

Perhaps it will be helpful if we refer to the present utter lack of understanding of the text “the wages of sin is death”. For Paul and those who lived in his day did not attribute at all the same meaning to the word “sin” that is done by the philistine of today. Paul did not think of sin as being a fault in the ordinary sense nor one of a deeper kind; he understood sin to be anything proceeding from selfishness and egoism. Every action is sin that has selfishness and egoism as its driving force—in contrast to what springs from positive, objective impulses—and the fact that the human being has become independent and conscious of self pre-supposes egoism and selfishness. This must be recognised when we make a deep study of the way in which a spirit such as that of Paul thinks.

Whoever is not content with a merely superficial understanding of both Old and New Testament records but penetrates really to their spirit, knows that a quite definite method of thinking—one might call it that of innate philosophy—forms the undercurrent of these records. The undercurrent is something of this kind: All living creatures in the world are directed towards a determined goal. We come across lower beings who have a perfectly neutral attitude towards pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. We then find how life evolves, something being bound up with it. Let those who shudder at the word teleology realise that here we have no thought-out theory but a simple fact—the whole kingdom of living beings right up to man is moving towards a definite goal, a summit of the living being, which shows itself in the possibility of personal consciousness.

The initiates of the Old and New Testaments looked down to the animal kingdom; they saw the whole kingdom striving towards the advent of a free personality, which would then be able to act out of its own impulses. With the essential being of such a personality is connected all that makes for egoistic, selfish action. But a thinker like St. Paul would say: If a personality who is able to act egoistically lives in a body, then this body must be mortal. For in an immortal body there could never live a soul who had independence, consciousness, and consequently egoism. Hence a mortal body goes together with a soul having consciousness of personality and a one-sided development of the personality towards impulses to action. This the Bible calls “sin” and thus Paul defines death as the “wages of sin”. Here indeed you see that we have to modify certain biblical sayings because in the course of centuries they have become inverted. And if we do modify them, not by altering their meaning but by making it clear that we change the present theological meaning back to its original one, we see that we often find a very profound understanding of the matter, not far removed from what today we are once again able to grasp. This is mentioned in order to make our position clear.

But the thinkers, the searchers after a world-conception, have in all ages been occupied with the question of death, which for thousands of years we may find answered in apparently the most diverse ways. We cannot embark upon an historical survey of these solutions; hence let us mention here two thinkers only, that you may see how even present-day philosophers cannot contribute anything of consequence about the question. One of these thinkers is Schopenhauer.

You all know the pessimistic trend of his thinking, and whoever has met with the sentence: “Life is a precarious affair and I have decided to spend my life to ponder it”, will understand how the only solution Schopenhauer could arrive at was that death consoles us for life, life for death;—that life is an unpleasant affair and would be unbearable were we not aware that death ends it. If we are afraid of death we need only convince ourselves that life is not any better than death and that nothing is determined by death.—This is the pessimistic way in which he thinks, which simply leads to what he makes the Earth-spirit say: “You wish that new life should always be arising; if that were so, I would need more room.” Schopenhauer therefore is to a certain extent clear that for life to propagate, for it to go on bringing forth fresh life, it is necessary for the old to die to make room for the new. Further than this Schopenhauer has nothing of weight to bring forward, for the gist of anything else that he says is contained in those few words.

The other thinker is Eduard von Hartmann. Von Hartmann in his last book has dealt with the riddle of death, and says: When we look at the highest evolved being we find that, after one or two new generations, a man no longer understands the world. When he has become old he can no longer comprehend youth; hence it is necessary for the old to die and the new again to come to the fore.—In any case you will find no answer here that could bring us nearer to an understanding of the riddle of death.

We will therefore contribute to the present-day world-conceptions what spiritual science—or anthroposophy, as we call it today—has to say about the causes of death and illness. In so doing, however, one thing will have to be made clear—that spiritual science is not so fortunate as the other sciences as to be able to speak in a definite manner about every subject. The modern scientist would not understand that when speaking of illness and death a distinction has to be made between animal and man; and that if the question in our lecture today is to be understood we must limit ourselves to these phenomena in human beings. Since living beings have not only their abstract similarity to one another, but each one has his own nature and individuality, much that is said today will be applicable also to the animal kingdom, perhaps even to the plants. But in essentials we shall be speaking about men, and other things will be drawn upon merely by way of illustration.

If we want to understand death and illness in human beings we must above all consider how complicated human nature is in the sense of spiritual science; and we must understand its nature in accordance with the four members—first the outwardly visible physical body, secondly the etheric or life body, then the astral body, and fourthly the human ego, the central point of man's being. We must then be clear that in the physical body the same forces and substances are present which are in the physical world outside; in the etheric body there lies what calls these substances to life, and this etheric body man possesses in common with the whole plant-kingdom. The astral body which man has in common with the animals is the bearer of the whole life of feeling—of desire, pleasure and its opposite, of joy and pain. It is only man who has the ego and this makes him the crown of earthly creation.

In contemplating man as physical organism we must be aware that within this physical organism the other three members are working as formative principles and architects. But the formative principle of the physical organism works only in part in physical man, in another part is active essentially the etheric body, yet in another the astral body, again in a further part man's ego is active. To spiritual science men consist from the physical side of bones, muscles, those members that support man and give him a form sufficiently firm to move about on the earth. In the strictest sense of spiritual science these things alone are reckoned as belonging to the members which come into being through the physical principle. To them are added the actual sense-organs, where we have to do with physical contrivances—in the eye with a kind of camera obscura, in the ear with a very complicated musical instrument. It is a question here of what the organs are built from. They are built by the first principle. On the other hand all the organs connected with growth, propagation, digestion and so on, are not built simply in accordance with the physical principle, but with that of the etheric or life body, which permeates the physical organs as well. Only the structure built-up in accordance with physical law is in the care of the physical principle, the processes of digestion, propagation and growth, however, being an affair of the etheric principle. The astral body is creator of the whole nervous system, right up to the brain and the fibres which run to the brain in the form of sense-nerve fibres. Finally the ego is the architect of the circulatory system of the blood. If, therefore, in the true sense of spiritual science we have to do with a human organism, it is plain to us that even within the physical organism these four members are blended in a man like four distinct dissimilar beings who have been made to work together. These things which jointly compose the human organism have quite different values, and we shall estimate their significance for men if we look into the way in which the development of the individual members is connected with the human being.

Today we shall speak more from the physiological standpoint of the work of the physical principle in the human organism. This work is accomplished in the period from birth to the change of teeth. At that time the physical principle works upon the physical body in the same way as, before the birth of a child, the forces and substances of the mother's organism work upon the embryo. In the physical body from the seventh year until puberty, the working of the etheric body is paramount, and, from puberty on, that of the forces anchored in the astral body. Thus we have the right conception of man's development when we think of the human being as enclosed within the mother's body up to the moment of birth; with birth he, as it were, pushes back the maternal body and his senses become free, so that it is then possible for the outer world to begin having its effect on the human organism. The human being thrusts a sheath away, and his development is understood only when we grasp that something that resembles a physical birth takes place in spiritual life at the changing of the teeth. At about the seventh year the human being is actually born a second time; that is to say, his etheric body is born to free activity just as his physical body is at the moment of physical birth. As before birth the mother's body works on the human embryo, up to the change of teeth spiritual forces of the cosmic ether in a similar way work upon the etheric body of the human being, and about the seventh year these forces are thrust back just as the maternal body is at the time of birth. Up to the seventh year the etheric body is as if latent in the physical body, and about the time the teeth are changed what happens to the etheric body can be compared to the igniting of a match. It is bound up with the physical body, but now comes to its own free, independent activity. The signal for this free activity of the etheric body is indeed the change of teeth. For anyone who has a deeper insight into nature this change of teeth holds a quite special place. In a human being up to his seventh year we have to do with the free working of the physical principle in the physical body; but united with it and not yet delivered from their spiritual sheaths are the etheric principle and astral principle.

If we study the human being up to his seventh year we find that he contains a great deal of what is founded on heredity, which he has not built up with his own principle but has inherited from his ancestors. To this belongs what are called the milk teeth. Only the teeth that come with the change of teeth are the creation of the child's own principle, which physically has the task of forming firm supports. What is expressed in the teeth is working within up to the time they change; it comes, as it were, to a head and produce in the teeth the hardest part of those members that give support, because it still has bound up within it as bearer of growth the etheric or life body.

After the casting off of this principle, the etheric body gains its freedom and works upon the physical organs up to the time of puberty, when a sheath, the outer astral sheath, is thrust away as the maternal sheath is thrust away at birth. The human being at puberty has his third birth, this time in an astral sense. The forces that were working in connection with the etheric body now come to a culmination with their creative activity in man by bringing him his sex maturity, with its organs and capacity for propagation. As in the seventh year the physical principle comes to maturity in the teeth, creating in them the last hard organs, whereby the etheric body, the principle of growth, becomes free, in like manner the moment the astral principle is free it sets up the greatest concentration of impulses, desires, for the outer expressions of life, in so far as we have to do with physical nature. As we have the physical principle concentrated in the teeth, the principle of growth is thus concentrated in puberty. Then the astral body, the sheath of the ego, is free and the ego works upon the astral body.

The man of culture in Europe does not follow simply his impulses and desires; he has purified them and transformed them into moral perceptions and ethical ideals. Compare a savage to an average European, or perhaps to a Schiller or Francis of Assisi, and it may be said that the impulses of these men have been purified and transformed by their ego. Thus we can say that there are always two parts of this astral body, one arising out of original tendencies, and the other which the ego itself has brought forth. We understand the work of the ego only when we are clear that a man is subject of re-incarnation—to repeated lives on earth—that he brings with him through birth in four different bodies the outcome and the fruits of former earth-lives, which are the measure of his energy and forces for the coming life. One man—because earlier he has brought things to this point—is born with a great deal of energy in life, with forces strong to transform his astral body; another will soon grow weak. When we are able to investigate clairvoyantly how the ego begins to work freely on the astral body and to gain mastery over the desires, impulses and passions, then—if we are able to estimate the amount of energy brought by the ego—we might say: this amount suffices for the ego to work on the transformation for such and such a time and no more. For every human being who has reached puberty possesses a certain amount of energy from which can be estimated when he will have transformed all that comes from his astral body, according to the forces that has been apportioned to him in his life. What man in his heart and mind (Gemüt) transformed and purified, maintains itself. So long as this amount lasts he lives at the cost of his self-maintaining astral body. Once this is exhausted he can summon-up no more courage to transform fresh impulses—in short he has no more energy to work upon himself. Then the thread of life is broken, and this must be broken in accordance with the measure apportioned to each human being. The time has then arrived when the astral body has to draw its forces from the principle of human life lying nearest to it, namely, from the etheric body, the time when the astral body lives at the expense of the force stored up in the etheric body. This comes to expression in the human being when his memory, his creative imaginative force, gradually disappears.

We have often heard here how the etheric body is the bearer of creative imagination, of memory and of all that we call hope and courage in life. When these feelings have acquired a lasting quality they cling to the etheric body. They are then drawn upon by the astral body, and after the astral body has lived in this way at the expense of the etheric body and has sucked up all it had to give, the creative forces of the physical body begin to be consumed by the astral body. When these are consumed, the life-force of the physical body disappears, the body hardens, the pulse becomes slow. The astral body finally feeds upon this physical body too, deprives it of its force; and when it has thus consumed it there is no longer any possibility for the physical body to be maintained by the physical principle.

If the astral body is to reach the point of being free, so that it becomes part of the life and work of the ego, it is then necessary that in the second half of life this emancipated astral body—once the measure of its work being exhausted—should consume its sheaths just as they were formed. In this way the individual life is created out of the ego.

The following is given as an illustration. Imagine you have a piece of wood and that you set it on fire; were the wood not constituted as it is you would be unable to do so. Flames leap out of the wood, at the same time consuming it. It is in the nature of a flame to get free of the wood and then to consume the mother-ground from which it springs. Now the astral body is born three times in this way, consuming its own foundations as the flame consumes the wood. The possibility for individual life arises through the consuming of foundations. The root of individual life is death, and were there no death there could not be any conscious individual life. We understand death only by seeking to know its origin; and we form a concept of life by recognising its relation to death. In a similar way we learn to know the nature of illness, which throws still more light on the nature of death. Every illness is seen to be in some way a destroyer of life.

Now what is illness? Let us be clear what happens when a man as a living being confronts the rest of nature. With every breath, with every sound nourishment and light that he takes up into himself, a man enters into a mutual relation with the nature all around him. If you study the matter closely you will find, without being clairvoyant, that outside things actually form and build the physical organs. When certain animals migrate in dark caverns, in time their eyes atrophy. Where there is no light there can no longer be eyes susceptible to light; vice versa, eyes susceptible to light can be formed only where there is light. For this reason Goethe says that the eye is formed by the light for the light. Naturally the physical body is built in accordance with the ways of its inner architect. Man is a physical being and outer substances are the materials out of which—in harmony with the inner architect—the whole man is built. Then will the relation of individual forces and substances give us a very different picture. Those who have had the true mystic's deeper insight into these matters will have particularly much to tell us here. For Paracelsus the whole external world is one great explanation of the human organism, and a man is like an extract of the whole external world. When we see a plant, in accordance with Paracelsus we may say: In this plant is an organism conforming to law, and there is something in man which, in the healthy or the sick organism, corresponds to this plant. Hence Paracelsus calls a cholera patient, for example, an “arsenicus”, and arsenic is to him the cure for cholera. Thus there exists a relation between each of man's organs and what is around him in nature; we need only take a natural substance, give it human form, and we have man. The single letters of an alphabet are set out in the whole of nature, and we have man if we put them together. Here you get a notion of how the whole of nature works upon man, and how he is called upon to piece his being together out of nature. Strictly speaking, everything in us is drawn from nature outside and taken up into the process of life. When we understand the secret of bringing the external forces and substance to life, we shall be able to form a concept of the nature of illness.

We touch here on ground where it is difficult for educated men of today to understand that there are many spheres in medicine which work in a nebulous way. What a suggestive effect it has in a present-day gathering when someone skilled in nature-healing mentions the word “poison”. What is a poison and how does anything work unnaturally in the human organism? Whatever you introduce into the human organism works in accordance with the laws of nature, and it is a mystery how anyone can speak as if it could work in the body in any other way. Then what is a poison? Water is a strong poison if you consume it by the bucketful in a short time; and what today is poison could have the most beneficial effect if rightly administered. It depends always on the quantity, and under which circumstances, one takes a substance into oneself; in itself, there is no poison.

In Africa there is a tribe who employ a certain breed of dog for hunting. But there is a fly in those parts carrying a poison deadly to the dogs that they sting. Now these savages of the Zambesi river have found a way of dealing with this sting. They take the pregnant dogs to a district where there is an abundance of tsetse flies and let these animals be bitten, choosing the time when they are just going to whelp, with the result that the puppies are immune and can be used for hunting.

Something happens here which is very important for the understanding of life—a poison is taken up into a life process, where a descending line passes over in an ascending one, in such a way that the poison becomes a substance inherent in the organism. What is thus taken from external nature strengthens us and is of use to us.

Spiritual science shows us that in this way the whole human organism is built up—if we like to put it so, simply out of things that were originally poisons. The foods you enjoy today have been made edible by their harmful effects being overcome through a recurrent similar process. We are all the stronger for having thus taken such substances in us; and we make ourselves defenseless against outer nature by rejecting them.—In regions where medicine is founded on occultism, the doctor throws his whole personality into the process. There are cures, for example, for which the doctor administers to himself some kind of snake poison in order to use his saliva as a means to heal bites from that species of snake. He introduces the poison into his own life-process, thereby making himself the bearer of healing forces; he grows strong, and so strengthens others to resist the poison in question.

All that is most harmless in the organism has arisen in this way and the organism has need of the incorporation into it of the external world—of nature; but then it must also be possible for the matter to swing over to the other side like a pendulum. The possibility is always there when a man is exposed to such substances—and at all times he is so exposed—that the effects of the remedy are reversed. The organism is strengthened to resist the remedy the moment it is strong enough to absorb the substance. It is impossible to avoid illness if we wish for health. All possibility of strengthening ourselves against outside influences rests on our being able to have diseases, to become ill. Illness is the condition of health; this development is an absolute reality. It belongs to the very nature and condition of health that a man is obliged to acquire his strength. What survives the beat of the pendulum contains the fruit of immunity from sickness—even from death.

Whoever goes further into these things will indeed gain some kind of understanding of the nature of illness and of death. If we wish to be strong, if we wish for health, then as a preliminary condition we must accept illness into the bargain. If we want to be strong we must arm ourselves against weakness by taking the weakness into us and transforming it into strength. When we grasp this in a living way we shall find illness and death comprehensible. These concepts will be brought to mankind by spiritual science. Today this may well speak to the understanding of many people, but when the understanding has fully accepted the matter it will bring about in man a deep, harmonious mood of soul which will then become the wisdom of life.

Have you not heard that it is possible for anthroposophical truths derived from occultism to become dangerous? Haven't we countless opponents who assert that anthroposophy must be accepted for the strengthening of human beings—that it is not just a subject for discussion but something which proves itself in life to be a spiritual means of healing.

Spiritual science knows too that the physical is built up from the spiritual. If the spiritual forces work upon the etheric body, they work also health giving in the physical body. If our conceptions of the world and of life are sound, then these sound thoughts are most potent remedies, and the truths given out by anthroposophy work injuriously only on those natures who have grown weak through materialism and naturalism. These truths must be taken into the body to make it strong. Only when it produces strong human beings does anthroposophy fulfil its task.

Goethe has answered our questions about life and death in a most beautiful way when saying that everything in nature is life and that nature has only invented death to have more life.¹ And we might say that besides death she has invented illness to produce greater health; therefore she has had to make of wisdom an apparently harmful remedy, in order that this wisdom may work upon mankind in a strengthening and healing way.

This is just the difference between the world movement of spiritual science and other movements—that it promotes strife and discussion when logical proof of it is demanded. Anthroposophy is not meant simply to be confirmed by logical argument; it is something to make human beings both spiritually and bodily sound. The more it shows its effect on life outside by so enhancing it that life's sorrows are transformed into the happiness of life, the more will anthroposophy prove itself in a really living way. However firmly people today believe they are able to bring forward logical objections to it, spiritual science is something which, appearing to be poison, is transformed into a means of healing, and then works in life in a fructifying way. It does not assert itself by mere logic. It is not to be merely demonstrated—it will prove itself in life.

• 1. “Life is here fairest invention, death but her artifice whereby to have much life.” Hymn to Nature.

The original text is included in the volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner, entitled: Dar christliche Mysterium. (No. 97 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961). This volume contains the texts and notes of thirty-one lectures, also of answers to questions, given by Rudolf Steiner in different places between 9th February, 1906 and 17th March, 1907.

All the formulae of a devotional or petitionary character, wise saws, aphorism and the like will be found at all times to contain much that touches upon the hidden mysteries of existence. But we must realize that all the different religions practiced prayer, but differed in one particular aspect in that some practiced prayer more in the form of so-called meditation, whilst Christianity and a few other religions practiced true prayer in the sense we know it to-day. On the whole, meditation is characteristic of the oriental religions. Meditation implies identification with some specific spiritual theme or object so that the meditator finds union with the divine Ground through this spiritual theme or object with which he is identified. Let us be quite clear that there are religions which, for example, prescribe for their members exercises in meditation, definite formulae of a devotional character on which they concentrate their mind, and as they concentrate upon these formulae they feel that divine spiritual life permeates their soul and that the individual, at this moment, is merged with the divine Ground. These formulae, however, belong to the mental realm. Fundamentally Christian prayer is no different except that its content is associated more with the emotional nature and feeling part of man. The Christian merges with the all-pervasive divine Being more through his emotions and feelings.

One should not imagine however that Christian prayer was always understood in this sense, nor indeed should it be understood in the manner in which it is frequently understood to-day. Now there exists an original, archetypal Christian prayer in which Christ Jesus Himself has indicated in the clearest possible way what attitude of mind the Christian should adopt towards prayer. And the injunction of this original prayer is simply this: “Oh my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou willt.” Now let us look closely at these final words. We are first of all faced with a definite request—Christ asks to be spared the cup of suffering; but at the same time we are asked to surrender to the Divine Will: “Not as I will but as Thou willt.” This frame of mind which, when we pray, allows the Divine Will to pervade us, wills nothing for itself, but allows the Godhead to will in us, this frame of mind, this attitude of surrender must form the undercurrent, the key-note of prayer, if prayer is to reflect the Christian spirit.

So long as this spirit of humility prevails it is clear that it is impossible to practice petitionary prayer. And there are additional reasons why it is impossible to pray to God for the gratification of one's desires: one person would pray for rain, another for sunshine and both would be motivated by self interest. Or take the case where two armies are facing each other. Before the battle is joined each side prays for victory. But it is obviously impossible to grant both requests. But if the spirit in which one asks is, “Not my will but Thine be done”, then the petition is irrelevant—one surrenders to the divine Will. If I wish to make a particular request I leave it to the divine Being to decide whether my request should be granted or not.

This is the predominant spirit of Christian prayer and it is this spirit that gave birth to that universal, all-embracing prayer of Christian tradition, the Lord's Prayer, which according to Christian tradition was taught by Christ Himself. This prayer must, in fact, be reckoned amongst the most profound of all prayers. To-day we cannot really measure the full depth and dimensions of the Lord's Prayer as revealed by the original language in which it was taught. But the thought-content is so powerful that it could lose nothing of its effectiveness in translation into any language.

When we turn to the prayers of other peoples, we find, wherever religions have reached their high-point, prayers such as I have described to you. But when the various religions declined, these prayers inevitably lost something of their true character. They have become magical formulae, instruments of idolatry, and in the epoch when Christ Jesus taught His followers to pray, many of these magic formulae—all of which had their particular significance in their place of origin—were in common use. These magic formulae were always associated with worldly desires, with personal demands of a self-interested nature. Jesus taught that petitionary prayer, asking for oneself, was contrary to the Christian idea of prayer. Such prayers were secular in intention. When the Christian prays he should withdraw into his inner chamber, into the inner recesses of the soul where he can unite with the divine, spiritual Being. We must realize that in each of us dwells a spark of the Divine, that we partake of the Divine nature. But it would be wrong to assume that the creature is therefore commensurate with the Creator. When we say that man partakes of the Divine this does not imply that man himself is divine. A drop of water from the ocean is of the same element as the ocean, but is certainly not the ocean. So too the human soul is a drop from the ocean of the Godhead, but it is not God. Just as the drop can unite with its own element when returned to the ocean, so, as a drop from the Godhead, the soul unites spiritually in prayer or meditation with its God. This union of the soul with its God is called by Christ entering into the inner chamber.

Now that we have described the nature of Christian prayer and what is demanded of the Christian in prayer we shall be able to turn our attention to the content of the Lord's Prayer itself. I stated that the Lord's Prayer is the most all-embracing prayer. Therefore, in order to understand the Lord's Prayer, it is necessary to begin by widening the scope of our enquiries; we shall need to make many a detour in order to grasp its full meaning. We must study the being of man from a certain angle. As you know, we follow the traditional method which spiritual investigation has practiced over thousands of years. Let us briefly recall the nature of man's being.

First there is the physical body. Its substances and forces are identical with the mineral kingdom and the whole of inorganic nature. This physical body however is not, as the materialist imagines, simply an object in space, but it is also the lowest member of the human being. The next member is the etheric or life-body which man shares in common with the plants and animals, for every plant, animal or human being must call upon the chemical and physical substances so that they are galvanized into life, since of themselves they would remain inert. The third member is the astral body, the bearer of joy and sorrow, of impulses, desires and passions and the normal impressions of daily life. All these are the province of the astral body. Man shares this astral body only with the animal kingdom for the animal also is subject to joy and sorrow, impulses, desires and passions. To sum up, therefore: man shares the physical body in common with inorganic nature, the etheric with all that grows and propagates, with the entire plant kingdom, and the astral body with the animal kingdom. In addition there is a fourth member of his being which raises him above these kingdoms of nature and makes him the crown of Creation.

Such is the conclusion we arrive at after a little reflection. Now there is a name which differs from all others, the “ I ”, which can only refer to oneself. To everyone else I am a “thou”, and everyone else is a “thou” to me. As a name for the identity of the individual, the “ I ” can only arise within the soul itself; it cannot be experienced from without. The great religions have always been aware of this and therefore they said: when the soul recognizes itself as an “ I ”, then the God in man begins to speak, the God who speaks through the soul. The name “ I ” cannot be experienced from without, it must be experienced within the soul itself. This is the fourth principle or member of the human being.

The occult science of the Hebrews called this “ I ” the ineffable name of God. “Jahve” signifies simply “I am”. Wherever interpretations may be given by external scholarship, it really meant “I am”, namely, the fourth principle of the human being. Man consists of these four principles and we call them the four principles of man's lower nature.

Now if we wish to understand the being of man as a whole, we must look back into the history of human evolution. We can trace in retrospect the many and diverse peoples who precede us: the old Teutonic and Central European civilization, the Greco-Latin and Chaldean peoples, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Hebrews, the Persian peoples, even as far back as the Indian people from whom our present civilization stemmed. And in their turn the Indian people could look back to their forebears who dwelt in Atlantis, the continent which now forms the ocean-bed between Europe and America. Atlantis was destroyed by a series of deluges and vanished beneath the waters. The memory of this catastrophe has survived in the myths and legends of all peoples as the story of the Flood.

But even this civilization is not the oldest on earth. We can look back to still earlier times when man inhabited a continent that was situated approximately between the present Indo-China, Australia and Africa—ancient Lemuria, a continent of immemorial antiquity where totally different conditions from those of to-day prevailed. Usually we are not sufficiently aware of the vast and sweeping changes on earth in the course of human evolution. Now at this time the lower principles in man were already in eminence, and this continent was inhabited by beings consisting of the four principles, physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ego-nature. These beings were more highly organized than the highest animals of to-day, but had not reached the human stage. They were animal-men, yet different from the existing animals of our time. The latter are degenerate descendants which have evolved from these animal-men as a result of retardation and degeneration. The Lemurian beings, therefore, living at that time underwent a quite specific modification.

At that time they were ready to receive a certain force, the force of our higher soul to-day. There took place what we may describe as the union of the lower human nature with the human soul. Up to this time this human soul rested in the bosom of the Godhead, was an integral part of the Godhead Himself. Above therefore, in the realm of the spiritual, we have the divine-spiritual Being; below, the human envelopes consisting of four principles which had evolved so far that they were able to receive “drops” of this Godhead. We can illustrate what took place at that time by the following analogy. Picture a glass full of water. Let us imagine a number of sponges each containing a drop of this water. The drops which had previously formed an integral part of the water are now distributed amongst the sponges. This is a simple illustration which serves to show how the process of ensoulment took place at that time. Hitherto the soul had been one with the divine First Cause, just as the drop had been one with the water. These physical human envelopes behaved exactly as the sponges. These spiritual “drops”, separated from the common divine substance, became individualized. When they became souls they were like drops within the envelopes and from that moment actively began to fashion man as a physical and spiritual being such as he is to-day. These souls incarnated for the first time in the Lemurian epoch, then passed through innumerable incarnations and developed their physical body to its present stage. Thus parts of the Godhead were united with the lower principles of man's being. With each embodiment these souls progressively evolved, with each embodiment they became more perfect in order to attain a higher stage of being in the future.

This part of the higher nature which at that time was united with the lower nature and transformed it, and in the process of this transformation raised itself to a higher level, we call the higher principle of man's being: Spirit Self (Manas), Life Spirit (Buddhi), and Spirit Man (Atma). These are the aspects of the divine Essence by means of which man transforms in gradual stages his lower nature into the higher nature. By means of the force working within Manas he transforms his astral body, through the force of Buddhi he transforms his etheric body and through that of Atma the physical body. Therefore in order to attain the goal of his evolution he must transfigure and spiritualize these three bodies. Formerly, man consisted of the four lower principles—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, to which was added at that time the germ of higher development which in reality is an emanation of the highest spiritual principle, namely the higher Triad, the divine Essence, the spiritual potentiality of man. Now we can look at this higher aspect of human nature from two standpoints: on the one hand as the higher nature of man which he is to evolve in the course of evolution, or on the other, as an aspect of the divine Being from which he has emerged, as the Divine aspect in man. Christ takes the second point of view first. We shall follow the same course and enquire into the nature of these higher forces in human nature. We shall start from the highest principle, the force of Atma working within man.

I would now like to characterize for you the true nature and essence of this higher principle of human nature rather than to offer you some kind of superficial definition. That which becomes the force of Atma is, in so far as it is a force emanating from the Godhead, of a volitional nature. If you pause to reflect upon your own power of volition, upon your will power, then you have a pale copy, a pale reflection of that which proceeds from the force of Atma, from the Godhead. Will is the power or force which is least developed to-day. The will, however, has the potentiality to grow increasingly in strength until a time will come when it reaches its maximum potentiality, when it will be able to attain its goal, which the religions call the “Great Sacrifice”.

Now imagine you are looking into a mirror. Your reflection is a faithful copy of your physiognomy, imitates your every gesture, resembles you in every respect, but it is a lifeless image of yourself. You stand before the mirror as a living being and are faced with your lifeless image, which resembles you in every detail, but is without the living reality, the essential self. Imagine that your will had developed to the point when it was able to make the decision to sacrifice your own existence, your own being, or to surrender it to your reflected image. You would then be in a position to sacrifice yourself wholly in order to endow your reflected image with your own life. Of such a will we say: it emanates, it pours out its own nature. What Christianity terms “the divine Will of the Father” is the highest expression of the will.

Today, therefore, the human will is the least developed member of the soul forces. It is however in the process of developing such strength that it is able to consummate the “Great Sacrifice”. Volitional nature, in so far as it is an outpouring of Divinity, is the true nature of that which can develop as the power of Atma.

Let us now consider from the Christian standpoint the second principle of man's higher nature, Buddhi or Life Spirit, as an outpouring of the Godhead. You will have no difficulty in understanding this if you do not concentrate on the force radiating from itself in order to lend life to the reflected image, but upon the reflected image itself. The reflected image is an exact repetition of the original entity. It is the same—and yet not the same—when you apply this idea to the entire universe, showing how the divine Will as a center is reflected in all directions.

Imagine a hollow globe whose inner walls are reflecting surfaces. A center of illumination inside this globe is reflected in myriad sequins on the walls: everywhere the universal Will in endless multiplicity, everywhere reflected images, single aspects of the Godhead.

Consider the Cosmos in this way—the Universe as a reflection of the infinite Divine Will. The Divine Will is not present in any single being, but expresses itself in infinite diversity. The reflection of the Godhead—where the Godhead occupies the central position and yet at the same time by virtue of the “Great Sacrifice” pours life into every reflected image of Himself—is called in Christian terminology “the Kingdom”. And this expression, “the Kingdom”, is identical with the Buddhi in man. When we contemplate the creative and productive principle in the Universe, the principle that issues from the Divine First Cause, then the next higher principle associated with Atma is Buddhi, a vital spark of this creative principle. In the form of “Kingdom”, Buddhi is universal and cosmic.

Let us now turn our attention to the individual aspects of the “Kingdom”. So far we have only considered it as a whole. Let us now look into the separate entities. How do we distinguish between them? By what is called in Christian terminology “the Name”. Each separate entity is invested with a name and thus we distinguish respectively the manifold, and the particular. By “the Name” the Christian understands what is often called the “representation”, that which is characteristic of an object. Just as the individual is distinguished from his neighbor by the name, so too the name is felt to reflect at the same time a part of the divine Being. The Christian responds to this name in the right way when he realizes that every member of “the Kingdom” is an outpouring of the Divine, that every morsel of bread he consumes is an outpouring, a mirror and a part of the Godhead. The Christian must realize that this is true of the smallest things. In human nature man owes it to the individual Spirit Self that he becomes an individual over against the others. What in “the Kingdom” is “the Name”, man possesses in his individual Spirit Self or Manas through the fact that he is a special part of the Godhead, that he has his own particular name, the name which in the individual passes from incarnation to incarnation.

Thus this threefold nature is seen to be a manifestation of the Supreme Being and from this point of view Atma is “the Will” of the Godhead, Buddhi or Life Spirit “the Kingdom”, and Manas or Spirit Self “the Name”.

Let us now look at the four lower principles of human nature, starting from the lowest, the physical body. This body is composed of the same substance and forces as external nature, substances and forces which the body continually transforms. It is only through the processes of anabolism and catabolism in the physical organism of man that life is maintained. He can only continue to exist because he is continually renewed by the transformation of these physical substances. He is an integral part of the whole of physical nature. A finger cannot preserve its identity if severed—it withers the moment it is separated from the body; it keeps its identity because it is an integral part of the whole organism; in the same way the physical body cannot preserve its identity if detached from the Earth. Thus man only preserves his identity when he is intimately related to the elements of the Earth. It is only through the metabolic processes that his fundamental being is maintained. Such is the nature of the physical body.

The second principle is the etheric or life-body. We must realize that it is this body which activates the physical substances and forces. It is not only the bearer of growth and propagation and of biological phenomena in general, but also of all those qualities in man which are of a more permanent nature than the transient impulses, desires and passions. In what respect does it differ from the astral body? If you wish to understand wherein this difference lies then you need only look back to the time when you were only eight years old. Think of all that you have learnt since that time, of the vast store of concepts, ideas and lessons won from those experiences which have enriched your life. Then think how painfully slow are the changes in your etheric body. Think how choleric you were as a child and ask yourself if you are not still prone to fits of anger on frequent occasions. Think of how your tendencies or your temperament have largely remained unchanged. They have not changed so much as your personal experiences. All that we experience, all that we learn from experience can be compared to the minute hand of a clock and the changes in character, temperament and habits to the hour hand. This difference then is explained by the fact that the astral body is the bearer of the former, whilst the etheric body is the bearer of the latter. A change in your habits implies a change in your etheric body. The lessons learned from experience imply a change in the astral body.

The training of the student in true occultism does not depend on what he outwardly learns; all spiritual training modifies the etheric body. Therefore you have done more for your real occult development if you have succeeded in transforming a single deep-rooted trait than if you have acquired unlimited external knowledge. Accordingly we distinguish exoterically, that for which the etheric body is the vehicle, and esoterically, what the etheric body needs. The etheric body is also the vehicle of the faculty of memory, but not of memory as conscious recollection. Any strengthening of the memory, for example, is associated with a transformation of the etheric body; any weakening of the memory implies a change in the etheric body, a change in the power to remember. And there is an additional factor of vital importance. Man lives to-day on two levels. He is a member of a family, of a clan, a nation and so on, and he also possesses certain characteristics which he shares in common with others and which bind him to that relationship. The characteristics of the Frenchman are quite different from those of the German and these again are different from those of the Englishman. They all share certain characteristics of their descent. At the same time every man has his own individual characteristics through which he transcends the limitations of his nation and through which he establishes his particular identity. One is a member of a community by virtue of certain qualities or characteristics of the etheric body. It is these characteristics which determine one's membership of a nation, a race and especially of a community. That which makes it possible to transcend the limitations of this community originates in the astral body. The astral body determines man's individual tendencies.

Therefore it is important for man's life in the community that his etheric body should harmonize with the etheric bodies of those with whom he has to associate. If he cannot make this adjustment it is impossible for him to live with them: difficulties arise and he is rejected by the community, he becomes an outcast. The task of man's etheric body therefore is to adjust itself to the etheric bodies of others. The astral body determines man's individual tendencies; it must live in such a way that the individual does not commit personal sins. Personal sins are the consequences of errors on the part of the astral body, are in effect defects of the astral body. Failure to achieve harmony with the community is the consequence of defects of the etheric body. In the esoteric teachings of Christianity the correct term for the defects of the etheric body was “debt”, that which disturbs harmonious relationship with others. A defect of the astral body, a defect which stems from individuation was called in Christian esotericism “succumbing to temptation”. It is the impulses, passions and desires of the astral body which lead man into temptation. The astral body errs through its own inner defects. In this way Christian esotericism distinguished between “debt” and yielding to temptation.

Let us now turn to the fourth principle of the human being, the ego. We have already described the physical body which is continuously recreated by means of metabolic processes, the etheric body which may be burdened with “debt”, and the astral body which may succumb to temptation. The fourth principle, the ego, is the primal source of selfishness, of egoism. It is through the efforts and operation of the ego that what was a unity in the Godhead is now diffused among the many. The defection from the divine unity into individualized existence is the work of the ego. Hence Christian teaching attributed to the ego the real origin of self-seeking and egoism. So long as the separate entities were united in the Godhead, conflict could not exist among them. Conflict could only arise when they became individualized, i.e. separate egos. The mutual development through conflict, which is tantamount to egoism, is called in Christianity the transgression of the ego, and Christian tradition indicates very precisely the moment when this soul became incarnated in the body through the Fall into sin, the eating of the apple in Paradise. The real “sin” or transgression of the ego is designated by the term “evil”. Evil therefore is the defect or transgression of the fourth lower principle. Only the ego can succumb to evil, which arose through the eating of the apple. In Latin, “malum” means both evil and apple.

To sum up: the physical body and the physical elements of the environment are of the same nature. The physical body is sustained by the processes of metabolism, the continuous interchange of forces and substances. The etheric body is that which holds the balance between the different members of the community and may incur “debt”. Finally we have the astral body which must not fall into sin and the ego which must not become the victim of egoism, of evil. This lower Quaternary unites with the higher Triad, the divine Essence,

 ATMA BUDDHI MANAS (Will) (Kingdom) (Name) 

Now think of prayer as a union of man, who has withdrawn into his inner chamber, with the Godhead itself. In the original teaching of Christianity the soul is portrayed as divine, as a drop from the ocean of the Godhead. And the soul in its separateness must pray to be reunited with the immanent and transcendent Godhead. The origin of the divinity in man is given the name of the Father. And the goal of the soul's destiny, where the soul will be united with the Father is Devachan or heaven.

And now let us recall the nature of the primal or archetypal prayer. It is an appeal by the alienated soul to be united with the divine Fatherhood.

The purpose of this prayer was to beseech God for the consummation of the three higher principles, to pray that the Will, the highest manifestation of the Divine may be realized in man; that the second higher principle, the Kingdom, shall take possession of the soul; and that the third higher principle, the Name, shall be felt as holy. This prayer therefore would refer to the three higher principles of the divine in man. In respect of the four lower principles he would ask: may my physical body be granted the substances necessary to sustain it; may the etheric body strike a balance between its own debt and the debt of others; may man live in harmony with his neighbor. May the astral body not fall into temptation and may the ego not succumb to evil, the true outcome of what we ordinarily mean by egoism.

You should pray for union with the Father in the words of a primal or archetypal prayer. And you should pray in such a way that, as you pray, you meditate upon the single principles of your sevenfold being.

“Our Father which art in Heaven.” First you invoke the Father, then you prefer your petitions which are related to the three higher principles:

“Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Then follow the four petitions which refer to the four lower principles:

“Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses (our debts) as we forgive them that trespass against us (as we forgive our debtors).”

This implies reconciliation with our fellow men.

“Lead us not into temptation”—refers to the astral body, and “Deliver us from evil”, i.e. from all manifestation of egoism or self-interest—to the ego.

Thus the meaning of the evolution of the seven-principled being of man is incorporated in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer as a Christian prayer, is offered to Christians from out of a deep understanding of the being of man and it incorporates the sum of theosophic teaching concerning the nature of man. Prayers that are not of merely transient effect, but which possess the soul and rejoice the heart for thousands of years, are the fruit of deepest wisdom. Such a prayer could never have arisen through an arbitrary collocation of beautiful or sublime words. It is only because these words have been drawn from the deep well of wisdom that they possess the power to influence the soul of man for thousands of years.

To maintain that the simple-minded have no understanding of this wisdom is not a valid objection. They have no need of understanding, for the power of the Lord's Prayer stems from this wisdom and is effective even when there is no understanding of the wisdom content. It is important to have a right understanding of this. When we look at a plant we are captivated by its beauty. And the most simple minded will also be captivated though he may know nothing perhaps of the divine wisdom concealed in the plant. And the same is true of prayers that answer our deepest needs. One need know nothing of the wisdom they embody and yet such prayers possess none the less the power, the wisdom, the exaltation and the sanctity of prayer. If a prayer is born of the highest wisdom, it is not essential that we know of this wisdom. What is of importance is that we experience personally the power of that wisdom.

Only in our present epoch is it possible once more to throw light upon what Christ Jesus contributed to prayer and to discover afresh the power He has infused into it, especially the Lord's Prayer. And because this prayer has issued from the fountain head of wisdom concerning man himself and his sevenfold being it not only exercises a powerful and lasting influence upon the most untutored mind, but is all the more edifying for those who are able to discover its deeper meaning. And at the same time it loses nothing of that power which if has always exercised, a power that overwhelms yet exalts, for the whole of theosophy, of divine wisdom, is found in the Lord's Prayer.

Christ often spoke to the multitude in parables. When He was alone with His disciples He expounded the parables to them. From this wisdom-filled exegesis of the parables the disciples were to derive that power through which they could become His messengers and could learn how Christ Himself had attained that magic power through which His mission is destined to continue acting upon mankind for thousands of years.

In this way we come to understand the meaning of the Lord's Prayer.

Automated Translation

We have already gained an insight into the complexity of the human being. This is not always borne in mind, because, out of a certain complacency in our quest for knowledge, we strive for simplicity, for a simplification of knowledge, for a certain schematism. Only a more exact study of the things we have observed over the years can show us the complexity of the totality of human nature.

Take, for example, the fact that the human physical body arose in relation to its first predisposition in the distant past, during the ancient Saturn period. What arose at that time as the first predisposition of the human physical body, we still carry within us today, but in such a way that we have to recognize it from the transformed product that we have gradually become. After we have passed through the evolution of the sun, moon and earth as a physical human body, it is no longer possible for us to recognize with ordinary perception what came into being during the ancient Saturn time. For this human body has been transformed during the time of the sun, moon and earth. During the time of the sun it has undergone a transformation through the etheric body permeating it; during the time of the moon it has undergone a transformation through the astral body permeating it, and during the time of the earth it has undergone a transformation through the I permeating it.

If we now consider only the physical human body, not yet the etheric body as such, not the astral body and not the I, but only the physical body, we must say that this physical body has undergone four main transformations.

Once it was there as a physical body, and the higher limbs of human nature were not yet in it. Then it was transformed under the influence of the ether body, then under the influence of the astral body and finally under the influence of the ego. But all this is the physical body, it is a product of the transformation of the physical body.

Let us make a note of this: first we have the first formation of the physical body during the old Saturn time. Then, under the influence of the solar time, we have what the etheric body makes of the physical body, that is, the original formation, and what the evolution of the sun makes of it. Then, under the influence of the moon-time, we have what the astral body makes of it, and during the earth-time, what the I makes of it. These are four forms of transformation of the physical body (see diagram on page 13). We have now considered what is brought about by the etheric and astral bodies and by the I in this physical body. But we have not considered the higher aspects of human nature in themselves, nor what changes have taken place over time in the etheric body, the astral body and the I. During the sun time, the etheric body is added; it undergoes its own development during the sun time and then undergoes changes during the moon time through the influence of the astral body and during the earth time through the influence of the I, so that this etheric body also has a threefold nature. Finally, during the moon time, the astral body is added; it develops for itself in its astrality during the moon time and during the earth time through the I. But now only during the earth time the I itself is added as a single one.

We can now also look at the whole from a different point of view. When we consider the I, we actually have a fourfold I within us. We have within us that which the I makes out of the physical body. We then have that which the I makes out of the etheric body, then that which it makes out of the astral body and then the I itself in the I.

But now let us pose a different question. When we see a person as they are on the physical plane – we know, when we count the sections of the diagram, that the person is a ten-fold being – so when they stand before us on the physical plane, what of their entire ten-fold being do we actually see?

1. Physical body 2. Etheric body 3. Astral body 4. I
5. Etheric body 6. Astral body 7. I
8. Astral body 9. I
10. I

Now, basically, very little of all this is initially present in the physical plane; most of what I have written here about this tenfold nature remains hidden. What is present initially is this I here (diagram p. 19: I 1). What is this I? This I is what the physical body is, what the I has made out of the physical body. Please pay close attention to what I am going to say, because only then can you get a real idea of it.

When you look at someone, the shape of their head, the physiognomy of their nose and mouth, when you see what they are like – even if you dissect them as an anatomist or physiologist – that is what the I has made out of their physical body.

What existence in the moon, the sun or Saturn has made of the physical body escapes your gaze, and remains hidden from you. Only what the I makes of the physical body is there before your physical eyes. Only by paying attention can we form a clear concept of the matter.

I will try to help you further with another consideration to explain the matter. If you have an animal in front of you, for example a dog, a wolf, a cat, then you have a form that is made by an astral body. When you look at a human being, you have a form that extends into the blood circulation, which is made by the I. When you look at an animal, on the other hand, you have a form that is made by the astral body.

What remains hidden is the configuration of the physical body, which is made by the etheric, the astral and the physical body itself. What we experience externally is actually an embodiment of the ego. Let us bear this in mind. It is an embodiment of the ego, and when we speak precisely about the human being, we should say: the human being in his entire form, right down to the blood circulation, is an ego embodied on earth.

So we perceive what the I does with the physical body. But what do we not yet perceive? What we do not yet perceive is precisely this I. If you call this I 1 and this I 4 (see the diagram on page 19), then I 1 is perceptible from the outside, I 4 is what you do not perceive from the outside, but only as a self-experience. When you experience yourself in your self-awareness, when you experience what you perceive, what you feel, what you think, in short, when you experience yourself as I, then you perceive this I as such: that is the I that philosophers speak of. I 4, then, you perceive as an inner experience.

Now you would not be able to perceive it as an inner experience if only the ego were really there. I have already told you that we not only sleep at night but also during the day. We are not fully aware of all our inner experiences, and to the extent that we sleep during the day, the beings of the higher hierarchies also live in us during the day.

In this I live, stretching out their impulses from the spiritual world, the Angeloi, the Archangeloi and the Archai. In that which sleeps most of all, in the decisive will, the power of the Archai lives first. The angels and archangels also live in the will, but the deepest impulses of the will always come from the archai. Only, as I have already explained to you, man knows very little about his will. The power of the archangels lives in man's feelings and the power of the angels in his thinking. We may say that the Archai, who give the will, the Archangeloi, who give the feelings, and the Angeloi, who give the thinking, live in us as unconscious self-awareness. And all this strives and weaves into the I and finally becomes what man calls his inner soul life.

But actually only the I is known. 1 Just as behind what we see as the embodiment of the I lies what the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body itself have made out of the physical body, so behind what we experience inwardly lies what the angels, archangels and archai bring about. So that we can say: In essence, the human being knows very little about what he actually is.

When one person meets another, they perceive the other person's I 1; when they look into themselves, they perceive their own I 4. So eight of the ten limbs remain hidden at first. But even if these limbs remain hidden from us, we can still say that their effects come to light in certain individual phenomena of human experience. What the I does with the etheric body remains hidden. How the I here, which I would like to call I 2, behaves in the etheric body remains hidden at first, but only seemingly so. We will see in a moment that something comes out.

What the I 1 looks like is revealed to us when we meet a person, in their shape and form. Of course, the I 2, that is, what the I makes out of the etheric body, can only appear to a clairvoyant in the same way that the I 1 manifests itself in the physical form for external perception. The etheric body is not a body of form but of motion. You can sense, even without clairvoyance, how the I2 sets the etheric body in very specific rhythmic movements, just as the I1 gives the physical body its form. But these rhythmic movements, these inner movements of the etheric body, come to expression in the physical body by pressing through into it, or rather, they come to expression in the physical world.

We try to express through eurythmy movements what the I can produce in the etheric body in terms of movements, I would say, to the extent that this can already happen in the present. If you could imagine a poem or piece of music eurythmized in such a way that you could abstract, disregard the physical body and only look at what the etheric body is doing, then you would have the I in the etheric body moving within.

We try to defy Ahriman with this eurythmy; because Ahriman has come into the world, the human etheric body has become so hardened that it could not develop eurythmy as a natural gift. People would perform eurythmy if Ahriman had not hardened the human etheric body to such an extent that the eurythmic cannot be expressed; for this eurythmic must force its way through only one limb of the human physical body and is held captive by the other limbs of the physical body.

The etheric body, which is actually caused to live in eurythmic movements through music, singing and also speaking, is held back by the heaviness of the physical body, that is, Ahriman, from actually carrying them out and can only express them through a single limb: it can only be deposited in the lungs and larynx by forcing the air through them. This is how speech and song come about. We can therefore say that the I, by wanting to thoroughly organize and thoroughly eurythmize the etheric body, must be content with one part of the human being in song and speech, instead of taking hold of the whole human being.

When a person sings or speaks, a spectrum of the whole person always comes to light in the tone and in the vocalization. What one hears is the tone, the vowel. But for the clairvoyant consciousness, what comes to light is basically the whole person, the whole person in a certain form of movement.

A, E, I, O, U, that is always a whole person, namely a spectrum, an ethereal ghost of the whole person. Only the etheric body is moved in a one-sided way, so that when you hear a person speak: A, E, I, O, U – it happens that you see five people in succession, only always in different forms of movement and in such a way that the whole person is not always seen fully and evenly, but sometimes more of the head, sometimes more of the hands, sometimes more of the legs. The other parts then, I would say, recede into darkness, into gloom.

But now, in connection with that same I 2, of which I have just told you, there is an entity from the series of the angels that resounds in its effects in language and song. But this Angelos is precisely the one of whom I have spoken several times in these lectures. This is something that, of course, cannot come to consciousness at all, because not even what I have just told you about the activity of the I in the etheric body comes to consciousness when people sing or speak. A being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi pours into all of this. This is a servant of the folk spirit, and in this way the particular language coloring comes into the human being from the folk spirit. The fact that the folk spirit belongs to the hierarchy of the archangeloi is connected to the higher realms. It is a complicated path by which the folk-like, the national, enters the human being. But that is how it is integrated, in this way and at this point. Behind this Angelos stands the folk spirit, which is an entity from the series of archangeloi.

We will now call this next ego, which again remains hidden, ego 3. Man does not experience this ego 3 directly either. For that which one experiences directly is ego 4. What one sees from the outside is ego 1. And when we perceive the effect of ego 2 from the outside, it is when a person sings or speaks. I3 lives in very subconscious regions; it lives in everything that man is capable of in the scope of his imaginative creativity. Everything that man can produce within himself in the way of imaginative pictures, pictures that are not copies of the physical external world, comes from I3, so that we can say: it lives as creative imagination in the broadest sense.

What you find in my Philosophy of Freedom under the title Moral Imagination would also have to be described here. It appears as a moral imagination that creates moral principles. Everything creative, for good or ill, belongs to this part of the human being. I said, “for better or for worse,” because you might think that there are many people who show a striking lack of imagination. One can only say, “Oh, if only they had more real imagination!” Because a little cultivation of real imagination is a good remedy for certain harms of life.

I would like to draw your attention to just one thing. There are people who seem to have no imagination at all in the areas where one often seeks imagination. Yes, when they sometimes take the opportunity to express themselves about imagination, they even show a pronounced hatred for all imaginative creations. But if you get at their souls, they show that they basically have a great deal of imagination: no sooner do they hear a word about their neighbor that is detrimental to him, than they invent whole stories and tell the most outrageous things about their neighbor. All lies are the product of the imagination, a transformation of the imagination into evil. And if you take this extension of the imagination into evil, you will realize that imagination is quite widespread in the human world. If you consider all the creations of fantasy that people bring about by saying this or that about their fellow human beings, or by otherwise passing this or that off as their own, you will find a considerable amount of fantasy even in those people who, in the ordinary, more noble sense, have little imagination. Human abilities sometimes go astray, and mendacity and slander are devious forms of fantasy.

All in all, we can say that down there in the stream of human nature, there rests I3, because in everything that man can create out of himself, that wells up out of the depths of his soul life, in good and in evil, is that which comes from I3. But this I-3 is influenced by beings from the category of the angels and beings from the category of the archangels, for better or for worse, by nature, by Lucifer or by Ahriman.

You get an image of human nature when you define it here. (See diagram: I 4, I 3, I 2, I 1.) When you define it here, you have the revelation of the human ego on the outside; when you define it here, you have the revelation of the human ego on the inside. Between the two, you have what I would call half-outside, the expression of the inside to the outside; that is I 2. I 3 is what is only half inside, namely coming from unknown depths into the inside. On the other hand, what lies upwards from this oblique line here is something of the hidden human nature that lies towards physical nature. What lies below this oblique line are the nearest spiritual hierarchies that are connected with the human being. Basically, when we speak of the human being on earth, we have in mind hardly anything other than what lies within this line. Above it, however, is everything that is present in man as a residuum, as a remnant from the old Saturn, Sun and Moon times.

If you draw a line here ( )), you get everything that is hidden in the moon time in man. If you draw a line here (©), you get everything that is hidden in the sun time in man. If you draw a line here (h), you get everything that is hidden in the Saturn time in man.

If you draw a line here (9), you get what will become apparent during the Jupiter period, when man will live among the Angeloi. If you draw a line here (9), you get what will become apparent during the Venus period, and here at the end you get what will become apparent during the Vulcan period.

This scheme gives you a rough idea of the complexity of human nature. It is good not only to look at things as they present themselves in the course of our cycles, but also to relate the individual things to each other. Today I wanted to give you an example of how these things can be related to each other.

There are various ways to find such a scheme. First, I will tell you how a clairvoyant arrives at such a scheme. The clairvoyant will say to himself: I meet a person; from this person, I first perceive his outer form with physical perception, everything that belongs to the outside. But now, with clairvoyance, I can deepen this form; in a sense, I get to the bottom of the outer form. If I then disregard the outer form, I perceive an ethereal being, and into this ethereal being play, song, and in general all sound expressions, play a part. This deepens the outer form for me. In the same way I can deepen my inner life. I can develop my self-awareness in the way one develops it in ordinary physical life. But then you can also deepen it. You can pour your inner life into the world, which otherwise only manifests itself as a fantasy. But then something real arises. Then imagination really arises, then fantasy ceases to be mere fantasy. The human being enters into a feeling that tells him: fantasy is no longer merely fantasy, but is immersed in something real. Something comes to meet you and you know that this is the inner and this is the outer (see drawing), and they come to meet each other.

This is how the clairvoyant consciousness experiences it. Then it has to piece together what it can experience in the vision by placing itself in the time of the moon, the sun and Saturn. In this way, one can clairvoyantly and creatively experience the necessity of such a scheme within oneself. Those who have gone through the first stages of initiation can experience it that way.

But even if you have not yet reached this stage, you can help yourself to a certain extent, so that you gradually come to experience inwardly what is approaching you from the outside. If you take everything that has been presented so far about spiritual science, you can put this scheme together yourself, as it is written here. You just have to make an effort not just to read in succession, but to try to connect the things that have been presented. You can form this scheme from the available cycle material. And that is very useful, because by processing the material offered in the cycles in this way, one progresses from an external assimilation to an internal processing. This internal processing has a high value for real progress.

Today I have given you an example of how to build such a scheme from the cycles. I now hope that many of you will gradually build such schemes. Then, firstly, there will be less uninspired speculation about the content of the cycles, and that is very good; and secondly, through such compilations, real inner evolution will take place. Individuals will progress when such fruitful compilations are made. You cannot just make a few such combinations from the cycles. From what is now available as cycle material, if you make it fruitful, you can make not only hundreds, but many, many thousands, perhaps even more, of such combinations. So you see, you have enough to do if you apply what is given in the cycles in a correspondingly fruitful way.

If you go from such a scheme to an expansion of the scheme, then you will go even further. If you separate what is actually on the physical earth plane, this fourfold formation of the ego, then you can say: everything here lies under the diagonal strip, and everything there lies above it. For these points, we just have to reverse the order. What has been written down here, you have to put up there. Then we have the six points at the top; so we have to make six points up there and write what are here six links on these six points. What is up here, we would have to write down below. We could make six points again and we could write the six points where the upper points are.

But we do not need to do that, because the cosmos has already done that for us. That which is on the earth is there; and although that which lives in us from the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods is hidden for the time being, and that which will come as the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan periods is also hidden, the traces of it are still 'present in the universe, in the Zodiac, in the zodiac.

So this scheme can be expanded. Everything that is not human on earth can also be found if we ascend or descend. This is just a hint of how you can connect our elementary teachings with what is contained in the cycles about the spiritual hierarchies and their connection with the worlds.

But you will also find much that can be applied to pedagogy, let us say. Even pedagogy will arise when we look at something like we have now discussed in the right way.

Consider that we have come to the conclusion that language and singing are present in I 2. So that we can say: language and singing have been driven out of the whole of human nature by Ahriman. Once this is properly understood, something extraordinarily important for real life will arise. First of all, the principle will arise for singing pedagogy that one must evoke an awareness in the person learning to sing of the part played by the etheric body in the process: so to speak, of the continuous transmission of sounds to the etheric body. Only when this involvement of the etheric body in singing is really taken into account will the impulse for change occur, which, with regard to vocal pedagogy, must necessarily come from our principles. In practical terms, this will be reflected in the fact that singing teachers will increasingly encourage their students to connect the feeling in the physical organs less consciously, but to develop more consciousness in what, so to speak, is adjacent to these physical organs. The singer must have a feeling, not so much of the movement of the organs, but of what the air in and around them does in its movement. An emancipation of the conscious experience of the sound in the air from the experience of the sound in the organ is what will follow from the correct recognition of the spiritual-scientific principles in singing pedagogy.

Likewise, with regard to speech technique, especially as regards recitation, it will become more and more apparent that here too it is a matter of becoming truly aware of the elementary interweaving while speaking artistically.

In this way it is possible for the tone to become a truly artistic tone, for the speaker to gain a sense of awareness that, in speaking artistically, one is not merely living locked up in one's own skin; rather, I would put it this way: the person speaking artistically will feel the sound in the air, feel the tone in the air as a living being, and through this feeling of the tone as a living being, there will be something like an undertone, like an undertone in speaking. Feeling the sound in living speech: this in turn will enrich the pedagogy of recitation.

It is precisely by responding to the intimacies of spiritual science that something meaningful for teaching and learning in life will arise. Much of what resonates when touching on such things as those touched on today is actually still quite unknown to humanity today. For example, it would be good to develop an awareness of how a certain new formulation of sounds has been attempted in individual areas of my Mystery Dramas. This can most easily be followed in the seventh picture of the first Mystery Drama. But there are also such passages in the other Mystery Dramas where this can be followed.

A certain inner shaping of the sound – in addition to everything else that is in it – is the expression of a new element in poetic creation, of which there is hardly a trace anywhere today, but which will take the place of what rhyme, end rhyme or initial rhyme was in earlier times. A certain inward, I would say ethereal-poetic experience of the sound as opposed to the more external-physical experience of the sound, as it is in end rhyme or in initial rhyme. There is a need, even in our increasingly prosaic recitation, to strip away the old forms. Not many people today are willing to use the initial rhyme, the alliteration, as Jordan tried to do; and not many reciters today are willing to emphasize the final rhyme as it was originally emphasized. It is better to emphasize the sense. But that is prose; it is not poetic speech if one merely recites in a manner that is analogous to the sense. Poetic recitation would be recitation with an excellent emphasis on that which is not the prosaic element in the artistic form. But that will only be possible again when one, instead of living in the externals of sound configuration in rhyme or external rhythm, lives in that inner rhythm. In this way one will have to live into the sound in the way I have discussed in another area: as I have discussed it in recent lectures, where I spoke of living into the individual tone in musical composition in the future.

All these examples show that it is not enough to learn the theories of spiritual science, but that it depends on an inner experience of what we take in and on a penetration of the whole soul with what spiritual science wants, as I have already said on another occasion.

And it is precisely with this that we should begin our work. Insofar as something that is capable of providing inspiration can be presented externally, it should be presented in this building, in order to feel an effect in the whole soul and not just in the eye through the contemplation of forms and colors. But what has been suggested will only be fully realized when we feel impelled to shape our whole life in the same way — wherever this is possible today — as was attempted in this building. But then we must also try to make spiritual science truly alive, to really pour it into what we undertake and want to do. It is necessary to become aware that with the spiritual-scientific world view, something is to be given that produces a kind of new human being in that old human being who has come to us like an heirloom from earlier earth evolution. At the same time, with spiritual science, we absorb the prerequisites that serve to help give birth to what is to be born for the future of the earth.

If one wants this, then one must indeed connect one's entire being deeply, deeply with spiritual science. We have already experienced beautiful examples of such penetration here and there. We have often spoken of an outstanding example. I would like to take this opportunity to mention a few words by our friend Christian Morgenstern, which represent such an example of how spiritual science can penetrate our hearts and souls as a soul experience. It is not by absorbing spiritual science in theory that it really penetrates us, but only when it is lived in every fiber of our being.

And this is one example, one example among many, of how spiritual science has been so beautifully expressed in a poem like Christian Morgenstern's. This poem could seemingly have been written from a different worldview, but in reality it breathes the spirit of our spiritual science in every line, and not only in every line, but also in the vocalization - but vocalization here taken in a spiritual sense.

I am born of God as all being is born of God.
I go to God to die with all that is mine.
I return home, O God, to live as Thine.

First I was given out of Thy I.
then it was a matter of acquiring what had been given,
of raising it breast to breast to Thee as a Thou.

But pride in the midst of it wanted to ruin it,
and it became You, and You were lost to it...
Until You, overpowering, summoned me!

Then I was born to You for the second time:
for I understood to die for the first time,
for I felt to live for the first time.

In the course of lectures on the life between death and a new birth which I gave in 1914, you will find many indications that may be regarded as a complement to what I have explained to you during the past days and weeks. To-day I want to speak in particular of the change which takes place in the conditions of life between death and a new birth, which greatly resembles the alternating states of waking and sleeping during the life between birth and death.

When we are awake we have our normal consciousness, and it is this which really gives us our human character between birth and death; and when we are asleep our consciousness is, as it were, dulled. Our consciousness then lies below the threshold of our waking life and we experience the processes in which we live from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up, only in a blunt state of consciousness, either quite bluntly, quite asleep, or so that certain life-reminiscences or inner organic processes rise out of our sleep in form of pictures. A similar alternation may also be found in the life between death and a new birth, except that there, as you have seen, everything is, as it were, reversed in comparison with the conditions of our earthly life. I have described to you how radically different are man’s experiences between death and a new birth to his experiences on earth. This also applies to the alternating states of consciousness. As described in my last lecture, between death and a new birth our experiences show us the deeds, the will-impulses of our Ego. This state of consciousness in which our Ego then lives, is, as it were, the normal one, even as here, the waking state of consciousness is the normal one. We have seen that here we are built up, as it were, of our physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, and there, of the Ego, the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, which exist, to begin with, as a preliminary foundation. Between death and a new birth, the Ego is therefore the lowest member. But even as here we are inward1y conscious of our Ego through our waking consciousness, so there, through the corresponding state of consciousness, we grow aware of our Ego as an outer experience; we are conscious of our Ego by looking back upon our past deeds and volitional impulses, which, as already described, we experience as if they were reflected to us from the earth. This condition alternates with another; here on earth we may speak of a waking and of a sleeping consciousness, to which we may add a sub-conscious state, whereas between death and a new birth we must speak of the state of consciousness described above and of a kind of super-consciousness, where higher Beings grow conscious within us, that is to say, where higher Beings are the vehicles of our consciousness.

During our earthly condition of sleep we sink down to a kind of plant existence, but in the super-conscious state between death and a new birth we rise up to a kind of Archangel-consciousness, to one which lies above our own. I said that when we are in a normal condition we have behind us, as it were, the Hierarchies of the higher Spiritual Beings. In this super-conscious condition we positively move back towards them. And then we live within them. From them we learn more than we could know as human beings. If between death and a new birth we only experienced what we can experience through our Ego, that sends its rays after us and yet belongs to us, if we were limited to this, we could not experience, as already described, all the processes through which we must pass in order to build up our organism anew, for a new earthly life. We can do this only because our normal states of consciousness alternate with states of existence in which the knowledge (Wissens-zustände) of the Archangeloi and even of the Archai penetrate into our human being, also into our normal consciousness, where they rise up like memories, in the same way in which here on earth dreams enter our consciousness from the sub-conscious spheres. Between death and a new birth we thus live in such a way as to have the consciousness described above, but in between there are always super-conscious conditions, in which we also acquire a super-human knowledge which enables us to build up our existence exactly as required for our next earthly life. Consequently there are analogies between the earthly life from birth to death and the other life from death to a new birth. But we should bear in mind the strong, radical difference between these two conditions of life.

It is possible to see still more clearly into such things by perceiving also the uniting element between the two, by becoming acquainted with what penetrates as an essence of a higher kind into both states of existence—into our earthly life, and into the life between death and a new birth. As we pass through our earthly life, we have, to begin with, the external sensory impressions. We have seen that volitional impulses and actions interweave with these external sensory impressions. But let us now envisage first of all the external sensory impressions.

Try for a moment to set before your soul the fact that throughout your earthly life all the human senses give you a whole complex of sensory impressions, out of which is woven the web of sensory impressions. Generally these sensory impressions are viewed in such a way as to say that they form part of the objects, that the single objects or beings appear, for example, in colours which leave an impression upon the eye, whereas other beings emit sounds and leave an impression upon the organ of hearing. But let us now consider the whole world of sensory impressions and ask what they really are.

I have often drawn your attention to the following: It is out of the question that behind the sensory impressions there should be that fantastic world of atoms dreamed of by the physicists; behind the sensory world there is instead a spiritual world. The spiritual thus exists also in the physical world, but, to begin with, it cannot be perceived by our ordinary consciousness. The ordinary consciousness has before it this web of sensory impressions. But what does it contain? In reality, it contains Beings described in my “Occult Science” as the Spirits of Form. Everything that appears to us in space has a certain form, an object even obtains form through the colour-surface. The Spirits of Form live in everything which we experience through the senses in space. In it live the same Beings named “Elohim” in the Old Testament. For the Elohim are the Spirits of Form. We rightly call this world of physical manifestations a world which manifests itself, a world of phenomena. But this is correct only because with our ordinary consciousness we human beings at first perceive in this world nothing but phenomena, manifestations, the external appearance and semblance, or—as Orientals say—Maya. But when our consciousness awakens and becomes imaginative this whole world of semblance becomes filled with images, or rather transforms itself into a world of weaving images.

This world of weaving images immediately reveals that the world of the Angeloi or Angels is woven into it. And when we reach the stage of inspiration, we obtain inspirations which come to us from everywhere in this world, for it has changed into a world of inspiration. Into this inspiration are interwoven the Beings of the Archangeloi or Archangels.

The world which we experience afterwards is that of intuitions. There we advance to the world of the Archai, whereas ordinarily we only have before us the physical world.

To be sure, when in the world around us we have advanced to the world of the Archai, it is the world of the Archai which also enables us to look back upon what we have already experienced through the higher Hierarchies in former lives between death and a new birth. In the intuitive world we perceive that the Beings whom the Bible calls Elohim, the Beings that are described in my “Occult Science” as Spirits of Form, lie behind the Archai.

We may therefore say: By looking out into the world through our senses we really look into the world of the Spirits of Form, into the physical world.

When we have thus set the physical world before our soul by saying that there we move in the world of the Spirits of Form, we may return to our inner self, but to that inner being that is still very intimately connected with the external world and has to depict for us inwardly the external world in such a way that we can bear it within us in the form of memories. In other words: We may advance from the sensory world to our inner being, to our world of thought.

The thought-world is, to begin with, given to us as a world of picture-thoughts. You will not be tempted to consider as a reality the thoughts that ordinarily live in you, the thoughts that arise in your ordinary consciousness. But in the same way in which realities conceal themselves in the physical world, namely the realities of the Spirits of Form, so there are also realities in the thought-world. Thoughts first appear to our ordinary consciousness as the fleeting inner forms we know; but even as spiritual beings may be discovered in the web of the physical world when we ascend, in the manner described, to higher knowledge through imagination and inspiration, so it is also possible to perceive the activity of spiritual beings in the world of thought. These spiritual beings live in the accompanying phenomena of thought which take place when we think.

From former lectures you know what happens when we think. Processes are then continually taking place within us which may be described by using a comparison, namely as if salt were to dissolve completely in a glass of water leaving it transparent. But if the water cools off a little it gets dim; for the salt crystallizes. Similar processes, which are processes of densification, take place within us when we think. A kind of mineralization process really takes place within us when we think. This mineralization process within us is connected with spiritual Beings that weave through the element of thought. They are the Beings we have always called Archai. We are thus able to know that when we live in our thoughts the Archai live in our life of thought, even as the Elohim, or Spirits of Form, live in our sensory perceptions. In the external world, these Spirits of Form can only be perceived through imaginative knowledge.

When we study the external world with the consciousness which is the normal one to-day, we come to the so-called laws of Nature. These laws of Nature are abstractions. As soon as we proceed to imaginative knowledge we do not have abstract laws of Nature formulated in sentences, but we have pictures, imaginative life. These pictures are not the same as those I have mentioned before, but images which penetrate in a condensed form into the pictures which we obtain when beholding the Elohim, and they penetrate into them as a dimming, tinging element, as it were. This is the influence of the Archai in the external world. We may trace it in the outer and in the inner world.

Perhaps it is now good to turn our gaze away from man’s inner being and to envisage one of life’s manifestations. Thought first lives within us, although thought connects us with the external world; the secrets of the external world are revealed to us through thought, yet, to begin with, thought lives within us. But thought comes to expression when we communicate it to other people. In human life speech is the element through which we give expression to our thoughts, through which thought can manifest itself outwardly.

After having considered the world of thought, let us now consider the world of speech. I have often drawn attention to the fact that the human being of course has more experiences in connection with his world of speech than with his world of thought. Although the will also streams into the element of thought, man’s ordinary consciousness only notices this very slightly. But into speech the human will flows in a way which is quite noticeable to the ordinary consciousness. Yet ordinary consciousness only grasps very little of what really lives in speech. What lives in sound is perceived in the present intellectual age at the most as a sign denoting something. For modern man the inner life of sound is something which has to a great extent withdrawn to the background of consciousness. In regard to modern man we can only point out that sound, the resounding of speech, contains something which can be grasped as a life-element of its own.

Take, for example, a word containing two E (pronounced A in German), the word “gehen”, to walk. If we have a feeling for such things, we may well experience in these two sounds of “gehen” a tranquil way of walking that does not excite us. But when the A-sound (German E) is replaced by an OW-sound (German AU), as in “laufen”, to run, you will feel in it something which you do not experience when you are not walking calmly, but when greater claims are made on your breathing. You feel what takes place when you breathe more quickly, and this is expressed in the OW-sound (German AU). You could not experience the calm way of walking, “gehen”, better than by the two A-sounds (German E), which convey the experience of calm and tranquillity, whereas the running movement, “laufen” is expressend in the OW-sound (German AU) which it contains. There is a spiritual essence in language and many examples which I have given you draw attention to the inner genius undoubtedly contained in speech. Modern men hardly know of its existence, but in past times, when the inner essence of sound could still be experienced, men felt in speech, more consciously than through sensory observation and thought, something which may indeed be felt as a spiritual weaving, a spiritual life.

In this element of speech, in this world of speech, live the Archangeloi, the Archangels, even as the Archai live in the world of thoughts. And because the Archangeloi live in the genius of speech, they are at the same time the Folk-Spirits, the leading spirits of the nations, a fact which I have often described in connection with the Archangels. They live in the element of speech. More than we suppose, man himself is the product of speech, in the same way in which he is, on the other hand, the product of his thought-world. We derive our form completely from the external world, and through our will we again pour form into the external world. What constitutes our life comes from the same region as our thoughts. The Archai live in it. What comes to expression in our language, through which we belong to a nation, brings to expression physical qualities which limit us far more as human beings than that which comes from the thought-element. People have the same thoughts, yet different languages. In regard to language they differ, yet it is nevertheless something which they have in common with others, for man belongs to a small or large nation.

Let us now descend to the sphere of the Angeloi. As often explained, also in this lecture, man has an individual connection with his Angel. This comes to expression in two ways. It expresses itself inwardly. Man may submit to his inner life in such a way as to transcend his inner self. In ordinary life, a Luciferic element will immediately enter because this is an intimate experience; nevertheless man may transcend himself inwardly and experience, as it were, an objective element in phantasy. In many respects, his phantasy is a creative force, but individually creative, like speech. And in reality, the force of phantasy lies at the foundation of speech. Through speech, man only experiences something abstract, he cannot always feel the Archangel, who is the genius of speech, unfolding his wings in speech; similarly man cannot perceive in his phantasy—which becomes a play of fancy when pervaded by Luciferic elements—that an Angel is slipping through his individual life; whenever he lives in his phantasy, an Angel passes through him. A genuine poet, a genuine artist, who has not become cynical, frivolous or superficial, knows that a higher spirituality pervades him whenever he is artistically creative. It is the same higher spirituality that carries him from life to life, as our individual guardian spirit, as his Angelos, his Angel. It is the Angel that enters sound human phantasy. In some of Goethe’s mottoes we can recognise that Goethe was aware of an unconscious element working in him, the one that is really active in phantasy.

When the human being does not inwardly transcend himself, but is outside himself during sleep, and in sleep enters the sphere which is the source of phantasy during his waking life, then the same forces which openly manifest themselves in his phantasy come to expression more sub-consciously in the form of dreams. Phantasy may degenerate into an empty play of fancy when it is pervaded by Luciferic forces, and in the same way dreams may degenerate, become abnormal, and man may take them for realities when they are pervaded by Ahrimanic influences. Dreams as such enter the Luciferic sphere, but they may be pervaded by Ahrimanic influences. When, however, our dreams are innocent and purely human, they also contain the Being whom we call our Angelos, the same that lives in our phantasy when we transcend ourselves inwardly, as it were.

The world of speech, ruled by the Archangel, is shaded off inwardly to a world which exists between feeling and thought, to a world of representations—we might also say, to a world of feeling representations. Phantasy and dreaming are shaded off to a world of feeling and to the element of feeling contained in the will—we might also say, to volitional feeling. But when we descend still further, below the Angeloi, what sphere do we reach? We reach our own sphere, we come to the human Ego. There we must transcend ourselves more intensively than when the Angel lives in us. This occurs when we transform impulses of the will into external actions, as explained yesterday.

Elohim—Spirits of Form World of the Senses.
Archai—World of Thought.
Archangeloi—World of Speech – Feeling Representation.
Angeloi—Phantasy—Dreaming—Volitional Feeling.
Human Ego—Volitional Action—Will.

When we dream, we are completely outside ourselves, but we go out of ourselves only spiritually. When we do something through our will, we do not of course go out of ourselves physically, but we move our physical body, and these impulses of the will are really the foundation of our Ego. We may therefore say: The will lives in our volitional actions, the will digs itself, as it were, into the external world.

We have descended as far as the physical world. In the physical world we develop ourselves in an independent way only through our will-actions, only in what remains to us as the sum-total of our actions when we pass through death. Our Ego, upon which we look back after death, lives in our actions. In everything else, in our phantasy and dreams, in world of speech, in our world of thought and in what we obtain through the senses, live higher spiritual Beings that constantly pervade us.

We have now been able to conclude from ordinary life how we are connected with the spiritual cosmos. But the following consideration will lead us to the results which spiritual science can reach through these concepts. Let us take human life in the physical-sensory world. You pass through this world, you derive certain impressions from it. Perhaps you may still remember these impressions on the following day. I do not say that tomorrow all the people who are now sitting in this hall will have an inner experience of the lecture they are now hearing. But as a rule we may say that the things which we perceive in our surroundings continue to live within us.

I will now make a schematic drawing, in order that we may continue along this line of thought. Here is the surrounding world and at this point let us imagine man. What constitutes the surrounding world continues to live in him, for what you experience in connection with your environment continues to live within you physically. The external world, which we can only perceive through the senses, continues to live in the soul in the form of abstract experiences, in thoughts and feelings which stimulate our will impu1ses. You may now say: What lives within me, what I thus carry about with me (let us envisage this very exactly!), is the result of my ex-periences between birth and death, or between birth and the present moment.

But let us now turn our gaze to something which we do not carry within our soul in such an abstract, picture-like form, but which lives within us—I might say—in a concretely material way: the organs that lie under our skin, the lungs, the heart, the liver, and so forth. This too is something which we carry within us. A true mystic will say: This does not interest me in the least! I am only interested in the spiritual, in the soul. I am content to have within me soul-impressions which come from the surrounding world. Material things are far too low for me. But the mystic shows by this how deeply materialistic he really is, because he does not yet know that what apparently reveals itself materially is in reality spiritual. Spiritual is not only what we bear within us abstractly, the soul-experiences which are echoes of external experiences between birth and death, but spiritual are also our lungs, our liver, etc. Only to our ordinary consciousness do they appear in a material form, but they are altogether products of the spirit. When you are sitting in your study you may have the thought that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. This thought is your inner property. But once it lived outside. It may first have approached you through a book or a lecture; that is to say, from the outside world. But you also bear within you materially the lungs, the heart, the liver, the brain, etc. Also these are the result of experiences. These inner organs that live in you were of course not produced by the physical substance which only comes through conception and birth, but their inner form, their inner structure is the result of experiences between death and birth. You now hear what I am saying and my words will become a soul-experience; similarly your heart, your lungs, your liver, are the result of experiences made between death and a new birth. We may therefore say:

“What I carry with me psychically within my inner being is the result of my experiences between birth and death.”

“What I carry within me as my bodily organisation is the result of my life between death and birth.”

Materialists will of course object that all the organs which live in man were inherited physically from the forefathers. But this is quite mistaken; it is not so. Certainly, the physical substance is transmitted by the ancestors, but the germ is generally viewed quite wrongly. It must be viewed wrongly if it is only considered from the material aspect. Conception does not consist therein that the human being is drawn down materially through the generations, but there arises, as it were, a vacuum, substance is destroyed in man, and in this vacuum the whole universe begins to work, to build up man. Physical structure penetrates into the spiritual structure, for the lungs, the heart, the liver, etc. are altogether spiritual in their structure. But all the organising forces come from the whole universe, and they are formed by our experiences between death and a new birth. This is what we experience through a super wakeful consciousness when we rise up into the sphere of the Archangeloi and of the Archai. Between death and new birth we experience consciously, indeed we must say super-consciously, our organic structure, the way in which we build up our organs.

Our organs are built up in a way which is entirely in keeping with our Karma; they correspond with what we bring with us from a former earthly life. The merely physical processes which apparently take place in the line of the generations are therefore not only physical processes, but they are brought about by the whole cosmos.

When ordinary, superficial materialists come along and say: “Do not explain man’s origin and development in his mother’s womb by drawing in the whole cosmos, do not lead us out into the whole cosmos, for we can explain all this by describing the continuity of the germ’s plasma throughout the generations”—when these materialists come along, the following picture I have used has often been of help: You have a magnetic needle pointing north and south. Now a person may say: Certain mad physicists declare that the whole earth is a magnet and that the needle’s south-pole is attracted by the earth’s soul-pole. But the reason why the needle points to the south must be sought in the needle itself. What does the magnetic needle matter to the earth?—Our biologists talk more or less in the same way when they speak of the human germ. They see nothing but this germ. But even as the whole earth is active in the magnetic needle, so the whole universe is active in the development of the germ. Except that man’s share in it lies further back, in the unconscious sphere.

You see, if things are considered in this light, man and his whole existence are linked up with a material and with a spiritual universe. We say to ourselves: Whenever we think or cognise something through our ordinary consciousness we change the outer world into an inner world. Yesterday I explained to you from a certain aspect that when the human being passes through the portal of death his inner world becomes his outer world, and his outer world his inner. To-day I explained to you from another aspect that everything which lies before birth, i.e. before conception, should be regarded in such a way that the processes which prepare our inner bodily structure should be sought in the life between death and a new birth. Outer life becomes inner life. Our experiences which lie spread out, as it were, in the whole cosmos, quietly and unconsciously change into inner experiences and become our organs.

The organs within us indeed contain a whole universe. If we only bear in mind the ordinary descriptions of our organs in anatomy and physiology we have before as an illusion, a Maya, which is far stronger than the one which faces us in the external world.

I have told you that when we look out into the sensory world we look as far as the sphere of the Elohim. But when we look down into our inner bodily structure we must rise still higher in regard to that which lives within us and forms our organs. From my “Occult Science” you also know that there are Beings above the Spirits of Form. They do not only live outside man, but work within him. We learn something about them between death and a new birth, when we rise to the sphere of the Archai, but with our own consciousness. Through the Archai we learn to know these higher Beings. In this super-conscious state they show us what we pour into our organism. Throughout our life we really carry the world of the Hierarchies within our organic structure.

Now it is again possible to investigate such things. In past epochs they were known through a certain instinctive clairvoyant consciousness. People still spoke of the fact that the human organism is a temple of the gods, and knowledge of the whole cosmos was sought within man’s being, the microcosm; it was sought by interpreting the microcosm.

Do we not remember everything by drawing it out of our memory, in connection with the world which we have experienced since we gained consciousness in our earthly existence? We look into our inner self, and there we find the world which we experienced outside; it lives within us and we can, as it were, look upon the pictures which we carry within our soul in such a way that the life outside has entered these pictures. We understand our earthly life anew by looking back upon these pictures of memory. And when we consider our bodily organisation and understand it, then we understand cosmic processes. Our inner memories enable us to understand our experiences. And if we know how to consider our whole human organisation, we grasp the cosmic processes. To understand man through and through is Anthroposophy.

Anthroposophy is therefore also a cosmosophy. Our life rises up before us when we remember; similarly Anthroposophy is a cosmic memory that sets before us the whole world-process: Cosmosophy. It is impossible to think of these two things apart. Cosmosophy and Anthroposophy are one. Man is to be found in the cosmos and the cosmos in man. Consequently my “Occult Science” is still anthropomorphic when it describes the evolution through Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, etc., for it is at the same time the evolution of mankind. It gives the evolution of the cosmos and that of man. The further we penetrate into the mysteries of life, the more cosmos and man flow together, and the more evident it becomes that the separation between man and cosmos which exists in earthly life is only an illusion, for man belongs to the cosmos and the cosmos to man; man is to be found in the cosmos and the cosmos in man.

Today's lecture will add further details to an image which I finally hope to present in its entirety tomorrow.

We are living at a time—yesterday's lecture will have given you an idea of this—of which we can say that much will have to change in the way people think, feel and use their will. Our inner aims will have to change. It is especially with regard to our innermost being that old, inherited and acquired habits will have to go and a new way of thinking and feeling develop. This is what our time demands. I think it can have a profound and truly significant effect on people to ponder the truth I presented yesterday which is, to put it simply, that there can only be one of two things: destructive processes here on the physical plane, or the spiritual development of humanity. Just think what it means—that, knowing this truth, we shall be compelled to feel socially at one with the dead, the departed. Our inner response to present events on this physical plane is one of deep pain, and it is right this should be so; on the other hand, we should not forget that the number of people who have taken up spiritual life in recent decades is small, and the souls of those who have not done so are thirsting for destructive processes here on the physical plane because these will give them the powers they need for the life of soul and spirit which comes after death. In practice this means we are challenged to do everything we can to encourage spiritual life as the only way of freeing future humanity from those destructive forces. It has to be clearly understood, of course, that this was different in the past, when the fact that an age of materialism must inevitably summon up an age of wars and devastation did not hold true to the same degree. It will, however, hold true in future.

Humanity is labouring under numerous illusions that have their origin in the past. The consequences of these have not been as serious in the past as they will be in the future evolution of humanity. I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, human souls are still very much asleep at the present time, and fail to notice many of the tremendous changes now taking place. Sometimes, however, some of this comes through at an instinctive level, and individuals are then aware of the great riddles of the age. However, many are not fully active inwardly and therefore not yet able to experience these riddles in their full depth.

Taking note of the turbulent and destructive events of today, some individuals are becoming aware of one such riddle. Yet they are in many respects quite unable to find the answers. The riddle I am speaking of is the discrepancy between intellectual and moral development in human evolution. Strangely enough, recent developments in materialistic thinking have lead none other than the Darwinists to this conclusion. Haeckel, too, has commented to this effect in his Welträtsel.¹ Now, in these times of war, it can be seen again and again that this imbalance between intellectual and moral life in human evolution is beginning to puzzle people. They say to themselves, quite rightly, that the life of the intellect, the rational mind, has made tremendous advances. This is what many people call the realm of science today; it provides the basis for the modern materialistic view. Consider the tremendous advances made as the laws of nature have been penetrated, studied and finally used to build all kinds of instruments—most recently especially the instruments for murder! People will also begin to consider other things in the light of this science of theirs. They will analyse foods for their constituents and manufacture chemical foods, never realizing that chemical foods are not the same as those provided by nature, even if they do have the same constituents.

Intellectual, or we may also say scientific, development has shown an upward trend. Moral development has not progressed to the same extent. Surely the present world catastrophe could not have arisen, or taken the course it has taken, if moral development had kept pace with intellectual development. It would be right to say that because moral development has not progressed, intellectual development has assumed something of an amoral character and has in many respects become downright destructive. Many people are beginning to notice that the moral development has not been keeping pace with the intellectual development of humanity today. However, no one asks at the present time that issues like these should be gone into sufficiently deeply so that they may serve a truly human evolution. No one asks that they should be tackled at the point where it is fully evident that modern people simply cannot penetrate to the deeper sources of human thinking and human actions, because elements which are separate and distinct in man and relate to quite different regions of the universe are all mixed up in people's minds.

Modern scientists are faced with a human being consisting of physical body, etheric body—the body of generative powers—astral body and ego; but everything is mixed up. People do not make the distinction in modern science. How can we arrive at a science that will enable us to grasp these things if everything is mixed up together? The truth is that these different aspects of human nature belong to entirely different regions and spheres of the universe. Our physical body and our generative powers relate to the physical world; with the astral body and the ego we enter a totally different world every night, and initially this has extraordinarily little to do with the world in which we are awake during the day. The two worlds really only work together in so far as they are brought together in the human realm.

Consider also that the human ego and astral body are much younger than the physical and etheric bodies. The first beginnings of the physical body go back to the time of ancient Saturn. That early body progressed through four stages—Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth—to reach its present level of evolution on earth. The etheric body has gone through three stages, the astral body through two stages. The ego has only come in during Earth evolution; it is young and belongs to an entirely different cosmic age. The apparatus or instrument of our human intellect is intimately bound up with the physical body. It has reached a great level of perfection because the physical body has gone through such a comprehensive process of development in the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods. We can see this from the level to which the nerves, the brain and the blood have developed. This, then, is the highly developed instrument we use for our intellectual activity.

On a previous occasion here in Dornach I suggested that the human being is much more complex than we are inclined to think. When we say ‘physical body’ we are speaking of something that is far from simple. It is based on principles that go back to ancient Saturn. Then the etheric body was added. This created its own element in the physical body; the astral body also created its own element in the physical body, and so did the ego. The physical body thus really has four elements to it. One of these relates to the physical body as such, one to the etheric body, one to the astral body and one to the ego. The etheric body has three elements—one related to itself, one to the astral body, one to the ego.

Let us stay with the physical body for the moment. We find that during the night, when we are asleep, the element of the physical body relating to the physical body continues in the usual way. The element relating to the etheric body can also continue, for the etheric body stays with the physical body. But what happens to the element relating to the astral body, which is organized to meet the needs of an astral body that wants to go outside, and with the element relating to an ego which has also gone outside? During the night, these two elements—let us call them the astral physical body and the ego's physical body—are forsaken by the principles on which their whole organization is based. The ego and the astral body are then outside the parts of the physical body to which they belong. For as long as we live between birth and death we are really leaving something behind in bed every night which is not taken care of by the principle to which it relates. It clearly has to function differently during the night than it does during the day; I think you can see this. During the day the astral body and the ego are active and aglow in it; during the night they are not. People do not enquire into these things today because everything has merged into one and become mixed up in their minds, as I have said. They do not distinguish between the different aspects of their body, though these can be quite clearly distinguished.

During the night when we are asleep the ‘astral physical’ element in the physical body exercises powers very similar to the powers of Mercury, the mercurial powers that make mercury liquid, and so on. The part of the physical body relating to the ego acts like salt during sleep. Human beings thus have Salt and Mercury flowing through them during sleep.

Up to the fourteenth century, those alchemists who must be taken seriously still knew of these things. After this, sectarianism came into alchemy and the books were written which are generally read today. The old knowledge was still to be found with Jacob Boehme,² however, who used the terms Salt, Mercury and Sulphur.

These are some of the secrets of human nature. We say, then, that when we are asleep we look down on a body that has become mercurial and salty. The fact that the body becomes mercurial has highly significant consequences and we may be able to say more about this in the course of these weeks. The fact that it becomes salty—well, I think it is not at all difficult for people to discover this for themselves when they get up in the mornings.

What is the significance, however? It is more or less like this: On waking, the ego and astral body, having been outside in the world of the spirit during sleep, enter into the salty, or mineral, principle in the human body and into the mercurial principle, which flows within the human being as a vitalizing principle. Principles which have been separated during the night now come together. As they interact, opportunity is given for the things acquired in the world of the spirit to be brought in. Mercury and Salt have been resting; now the ego and astral body enter and fill them with what they have gained in the world of the spirit. As a result, the physical body, the instrument which has evolved from ancient Saturn, is enriched still further. On the one hand the physical body is the instrument we use for intellectual activity and it is truly venerable and highly developed because it has evolved over such a long time. Yet, on the other hand, the process I have just described can bring the influence of the spiritual world to bear in the present time. As a result, human beings are now able to influence the instrument of the intellect from the world of the spirit and intellectual thinking can play such a significant role in the present age.

The world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does, however, have one peculiarity—there is nothing in it by way of moral laws. Strange as it may seem, between going to sleep and waking up again you are in a world devoid of moral laws. We might also say it is a world that is not yet moral. When we wake up, the impulses we bring from this world may take hold of the physical body and the etheric body with regard to the intellect, but cannot in any way take hold of them in any moral sense. This is quite impossible, for the world in which we are between going to sleep and waking up again does not have moral laws. People who think it would have been better for the gods to arrange things in such a way that humans did not have to live on the physical plane at all are very much mistaken; for in that case people could never become moral. Human beings acquire morality by living here on the physical plane. In short, we bring wisdom to the physical body from the world of the spirit, but not morality.

This is tremendously important and significant, for it explains why humanity must inevitably lag behind when it comes to moral principles, whereas the gods have made excellent provision for their intellectual development, not only providing them with an instrument which has evolved through the Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth periods, but also giving them the wherewithal by which to maintain the intellect by filling them with wisdom in the world which they enter during sleep. It will not be until later periods, in the second half of Venus evolution, that we make connection with a moral world during sleep. Clearly, it is therefore tremendously important for us to see to it that our social life becomes truly moral.

These are the things modern humanity does not want to consider. Some are aware of the riddles, as I have said, but people do not want to consider the deeper reasons, for that would be too much of an effort. They want to take human nature as it presents itself and refuse to consider that in many respects it extends into the worlds of the cosmos, beyond space and beyond time, and that human nature cannot be explained if we merely look at it the way in which it normally comes to expression and do not take account of these other aspects. It is a magnificent and awesome truth that sleep helps our intellectual thinking, even our genius—for geniuses, too, bring back elements from sleep that enter into their mercurial and salt principles—in fact, it is this which makes someone a genius; but morality can only be provided for if human beings gradually let the moral element enter into them here on the physical plane.

For humanity here on earth, the Christ impulse is the heart of the moral life. It is therefore most important—I have stressed this before, from other points of view—that human beings encounter the Christ impulse here on the physical plane. We have to look at this from many different points of view. So it seems we can now understand why people who have all kinds of impulses based on wisdom at an instinctive level—for these impulses are given in sleep—and are able to invent tremendously complex machines, playing a role in the advance of science and technology, need not connect this in any way with morality, for morality belongs to a totally different sphere.

People do not like to hear or know such things today. Yet they will have to be known if we are to escape from the chaos that has arisen in the world. And this is a very serious matter. Human evolution will not progress unless these truths become part of our life on earth. The gods did not intend human beings to become automatons which they could influence like automatic machines. They wanted them to be free individuals who realize what will take them forward. It is wrong to ask why the gods do not intervene. Attempts have to be made; and if one such undertaking should go awry, we should not draw the wrong conclusions. Instead, those who come later must let this give them an even greater impetus to work in a way that helps to encourage such an attempt at further development in the spirit. I have recently been much concerned with a significant attempt made in the past which did not entirely come off. I discussed this in the first part of my essay on The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459—it is to be continued in Das Reich.³ The work was written in the early seventeenth century. People were given it to read as early as 1603, and it was published in 1616. The author, Johann Valentin Andreae, also wrote Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci, unusual works which attracted all kinds of comment, some sensible but most of them absurd. All I want to say about them today is that although they may at first sight appear to be satirical, they nevertheless represent one great impulse—to deepen insight into nature in its spiritual aspect to a point where deeper knowledge of the laws of nature also discovers the laws that govern human social life.

This is an area where people find it particularly difficult to distinguish between maya—illusion—and reality. The motives we ourselves or others tend to ascribe to our actions are not the true ones. It is painful to have to realize this, but—I have spoken of this on several occasions—they are not our true motives. Nor are the outward positions people hold in social life their true positions. People are usually completely different inside from the way they present themselves in the social sphere and also from the way they see themselves. People believe so strongly that their actions are based on a particular motive. Some think their motives are entirely selfless, when in reality they are nothing but the most brutal egotism. People are not aware of this because they have such illusions concerning themselves and their social connections. This is another area where we can only discover the truth if we look more deeply into the whole scheme of things.

Johann Valentin Andreae was someone who wanted to look more deeply. What mattered to him, among other things, was to see beyond maya into reality. He was not the kind of superficial person who thinks he can do this with all those harangues profound educationists and others today think will reform the world; he realized that one must look more deeply into the whole scheme which lies behind the world of nature if one is to find the spirit in nature. Then one will also find the threads which truly connect human beings with the spirit. And only then shall we really know the social laws that are needed. You cannot reflect on social relationships today if you think the way people do in modern science, for this will only give you the surface of nature and the surface of social life. Johann Valentin Andreae looked deep down to find nature and the social life, for only there do they come together. It really is like this: Think of the borderline between maya and reality—there you have a peep-hole on nature on the one side and a peep-hole on social life on the other. And you have to look deeper before you realize that they actually only meet a long way back.

People will never reach this point, however. They will continue to look at some of the laws of nature at a surface level and will then speak about social life out of their feeling, out of superficiality. This will not help us to see the scheffle of things, however, that Johann Valentin Andreae sought to find. At most we shall get to be—excuse me calling a spade a spade—a Woodrow Wilson. Andreae wanted to discover the scheme of things, and his desire to do so fills such works as his Fama Fraternitatis and Confessio Rosicruci. He was addressing the leaders, the statesmen of his time; it was an attempt to establish a social order based on truth and not illusion. The Fama appeared in 1614, the Confessio in 1615, and The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in 1616, though it had already been written in 1603. The year 1618 marked the beginning of the Thirty Years War,⁴ which brought conditions in which the truly great things aimed at in the Fama and the Confessio were swept away.

We are now living in an age when one year of war is equal to more than ten years of war in the seventeenth century, because war has become so much more destructive. By the standards of those times we have more than a Thirty Years War behind us already.

Try and see this as something that can guide you towards the will and endeavour that arose in the seventeenth century but was brought to a halt by the Thirty Years War. As I have said, if there have been such attempts and a beginning has been made, we must not let ourselves be put off by this but rather let it spur us on to even greater activity; then a later attempt may not end in failure. The first condition is, however, that we really come to know life.

I now want to relate this to matters I discussed with you last year and at the beginning of this year. I drew your attention to the strange course that the whole of human life and human evolution is taking. Individuals will gain in years, being 1, 2, 3, 4, years old, and later 30, 35, 40, and so on, years old; but the opposite is true for humanity as a whole. Humanity was old to begin with and is getting younger and younger. If we go back in time—for our present purposes we need only go back as far as the watershed between Atlantean and post-Atlantean life when the catastrophe happened on Atlantis—we come first of all to ancient Indian times. Conditions were very different then; humanity as a whole remained capable of further development beyond the 50s. Today we are only capable of developing in such a way in childhood and up to a certain time of our youth, for only then is our physical development directly connected with the development of soul and spirit, and the two run parallel. This soon comes to an end, however. In ancient Indian times, development in soul and spirit continued to be dependent on physical development until well into the 50s. People went on developing the way a child develops, and this only came to an end when they were old men and women. This is the reason why people looked up with such humility to their old people.

During the time of ancient Persia, people were no longer able to develop to such a high level but only into their 40s and early 50s; and in Egyptian and Chaldean times only into their 40s. In Graeco-Latin times, this kind of development went only as far as the thirty-fifth year. Then came a time—you will remember, the Graeco-Latin age began in the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha—when human beings were only capable of development up to their thirty-third year. That was the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The age of humanity then matched the age at which Christ went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

After this, the human race got younger and younger. By the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age, in the fifteenth century, humanity was only able to develop up to the age of 28, with no further development after this, and today we have reached a point where people only reach the age of 27, if this is left to nature. In the past, human beings naturally remained capable of development into a ripe old age. Today people must conclude such development as comes of its own accord and is tied to the physical body by the age of 27, unless they take up a spiritual impulse in their inner life and push on from within. People who do not take up anything spiritual remain 27 years old even if they live to be 100. It means they have the characteristics of 27-year-olds. And with people refusing to look for inner spiritual impulses we now have a culture and a social life that is 27 years of age. We do not grow beyond the age of 27 in our outer social life. This age now rules humanity. If we go on like this, humanity will go down to 26, 25 and 24 years, then in the sixth post-Atlantean age to the twenty-first and later to the fourteenth year.

These things must be looked into, and they should not be taken pessimistically; instead they should give us the inner impulse to go towards the life of the Spirit and set out on an inner quest to look for the elements nature is unable to provide.

This is another point of view from which it is apparent that spiritual impulses are needed in civilization. The most characteristic people of our age, those who take the lead today, are people who do not get beyond their twenty-seventh year. The question is, what would really make someone a present-day leader? Well, let us say we have someone who is born and is very much alive, who does not take in much by way of tradition but only what comes by nature, without undue influence from outside; this individual would be very much determined by what comes of its own accord. Education usually gives colour and nuance to this in most people. But let us take a really typical individual who essentially shows only the characteristics of the present age, someone born into poverty perhaps and not given an education that puts much emphasis on tradition, but who would only be influenced by whatever arises from circumstance. Such a person would grow up, would be very active initially, for it is Part of the present age that one is active up to the seventh, fourteenth and twenty-first year, and perhaps be a forceful personality up to his twenty-first year. But unless he is able to develop spiritually, then, being very much a representative of the age, he will come to a halt at the age of 27. Now if he were to be truly representative of the age, something like the following would have to happen: At the age of 27 he would come to a key point in his life, to such effect that the circumstances he creates for himself at the age of 27, committing himself for life, would not allow him to progress beyond this. In modern life this could take the form, for instance, that such a person, a self-made man with tremendous energies and all kinds of impulses arising from the time itself, gets himself elected to parliament at the age of 27. To get oneself elected to parliament means one has committed oneself and there are some things that now have to be maintained. And so the individual remains as he is—which is entirely due to this development in the present age—and he is highly representative of the present age. Parliament being the great ideal in the present day and age, this would be a key point in the life of an individual who would then refuse to accept anything capable of growth for the future and who would have become completely adapted to external circumstances or, in a word, remained 27 years of age. And so at the age of 27 this would be a strong, powerful individual imbued with the impulses of the age who now entered parliament. After some time he would even be a minister and advance to become one of the leading figures. But he would merely be a man of our time, a typical 27-year-old.

There is such an individual, someone born into such circumstances who only took in what came, nothing by way of tradition. He grew strong and powerful under these circumstances—someone who would go through thick and thin for anything that came to him in the first twenty-seven years of his life and who did, in fact, become a Member of Parliament at the age of 27. He was a thorn in the flesh at first, being in opposition, but soon rose further and has become a kind of axis of rotation at the present time—and this is Lloyd George.⁵ No one is more characteristic of the present age than Lloyd George. ‘His own man’, he committed himself for life within a week of his twenty-seventh year by getting himself elected to the House of Commons. This and the rest of his life story show him to be a typical representative of life in the present age, a life we should not follow, for spiritual impulses should have taken over in the twenty-seventh year.

If one is able to penetrate the inner aspects of life one sees the most important events of the present time to be events to which other people are asleep. To anyone who can take a wider view it is immensely significant that such a self-made man is elected to the British Parliament exactly at the age of 27 and thus commits himself.

These are the realities which people must gradually learn to observe and consider, for they reveal the deeper connections in life. People like to skip over them today because they are not easy. Reluctance is felt because people prefer to give free rein to their passions, the emotions they create for themselves in the outer world and to their instincts, rather than seek to gain insight. They want to live the life of the world, basing themselves on these emotions and not on their true selves.

• 1. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834–1919), German naturalist. His Welträtsel first appeared in 1899. Rudolf Steiner was probably referring to the following statement from the first chapter:
  
  Today we feel justifiably proud as we see the tremendous advances made in the pure and applied science of nature in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately the picture is entirely different and far from pleasing when we consider other aspects of modern civilization that are no less important. Much to our regret, we have to agree with Alfred Wallace who wrote that compared to our remarkable progress in the physical sciences and their practical application, our system of government, the justiciary, national education and the whole of our social and moral organization was still in a state of barbarism.
• 2. Jacob Boehme (1575–1624), shoemaker in Goerlitz, Germany,. was a mystic whose influence went beyond Germany to Holland and England. He was studied by Henry More, Newton and William Law among others. His main works were Aurora (1612), Vom irdischen und himmlischen Mysterium (title translates as ‘The mystery of earth and heaven’—not available in English) and Der Weg zu Christo in acht Buchern (title translates as ‘The road to Christ in eight books’—not available in English).
• 3. Das Reich was a quarterly published in Munich and Heidelberg by Alexander Freiherr von Bernus. Rudolf Steiner contributed three consecutive essays on the subject in Nos. 3 and 4 of the second and No. 1 of the third volume (October 1917 and January and April 1918). These have been Philosophie und Anthroposophie (GA 35) 1965. Johann Valentin Andreae's (1586–1654) work was translated into modern German and published by Walter Weber in Dornach in 1942; 2nd improved edition, Stuttgart 1957. Available in English as The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz: Anno 1459, as translated by Edward Foxcroft in 1690. Minerva Books, London (no date).
• 4. The Thirty Years War, 1618–1648, devastated Central Europe. It held great terrors for the civilian population, which have lived on in people's memories, in tales, legends and in the literature and were still very real to people in Germany up to the Second World War. (Trans.)
• 5. David Lloyd George, later Lloyd George of Dwyfor (1863–1945), elected as an Advanced Liberal for Carnarvon Boroughs in 1890, Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1916 to 1922.

The Unity of All in All

Enq. Having told me what God, the Soul and Man are not, in your views, can you inform me what they are, according to your teachings?

Theo. In their origin and in eternity the three, like the universe and all therein, are one with the absolute Unity, the unknowable deific essence I spoke about some time back. We believe in no creation, but in the periodical and consecutive appearances of the universe from the subjective on to the objective plane of being, at regular intervals of time, covering periods of immense duration.

Enq. Can you elaborate the subject?

Theo. Take as a first comparison and a help towards a more correct conception, the solar year, and as a second, the two halves of that year, producing each a day and a night of six months' duration at the North Pole. Now imagine, if you can, instead of a Solar year of 365 days, ETERNITY. Let the sun represent the universe, and the polar days and nights of 6 months each — days and nights lasting each 182 trillions and quadrillions of years, instead of 182 days each. As the sun arises every morning on our objective horizon out of its (to us) subjective and antipodal space, so does the Universe emerge periodically on the plane of objectivity, issuing from that of subjectivity — the antipodes of the former. This is the "Cycle of Life." And as the sun disappears from our horizon, so does the Universe disappear at regular periods, when the "Universal night" sets in. The Hindoos call such alternations the "Days and Nights of Brahma," or the time of Manvantara and that of Pralaya (dissolution). The Westerns may call them Universal Days and Nights if they prefer. During the latter (the nights) All is in All; every atom is resolved into one Homogeneity.

Evolution and Illusion

Enq. But who is it that creates each time the Universe?

Theo. No one creates it. Science would call the process evolution; the pre-Christian philosophers and the Orientalists called it emanation: we, Occultists and Theosophists, see in it the only universal and eternal reality casting a periodical reflection of itself on the infinite Spatial depths. This reflection, which you regard as the objective material universe, we consider as a temporary illusion and nothing else. That alone which is eternal is real.

Enq. At that rate, you and I are also illusions.

Theo. As flitting personalities, to-day one person, to-morrow another — we are. Would you call the sudden flashes of the Aurora borealis, the Northern lights, a "reality," though it is as real as can be while you look at it? Certainly not; it is the cause that produces it, if permanent and eternal, which is the only reality, while the other is but a passing, illusion.

Enq. All this does not explain to me how this illusion called the universe originates; how the conscious to be, proceeds to manifest itself from the unconsciousness that is.

Theo. It is unconsciousness only to our finite consciousness. Verily may we paraphrase verse v, in the 1st chapter of St. John, and say "and (Absolute) light (which is darkness) shineth in darkness (which is illusionary material light); and the darkness comprehendeth it not." This absolute light is also absolute and immutable law. Whether by radiation or emanation — we need not quarrel over terms — the universe passes out of its homogeneous subjectivity on to the first plane of manifestation, of which planes there are seven, we are taught. With each plane it becomes more dense and material until it reaches this, our plane, on which the only world approximately known and understood in its physical composition by Science, is the planetary or Solar system — one sui generis, we are told.

Enq. What do you mean by sui generis?

Theo. I mean that, though the fundamental law and the universal working of laws of Nature are uniform, still our Solar system (like every other such system in the millions of others in Cosmos) and even our Earth, has its own programme of manifestations differing from the respective programmes of all others. We speak of the inhabitants of other planets and imagine that if they are men, i. e., thinking entities, they must be as we are. The fancy of poets and painters and sculptors never fails to represent even the angels as a beautiful copy of man — plus wings. We say that all this is an error and a delusion; because, if on this little earth alone one finds such a diversity in its flora, fauna and mankind — from the sea-weed to the cedar of Lebanon, from the jelly-fish to the elephant, from the Bushman and negro to the Apollo Belvedere — alter the conditions cosmic and planetary, and there must be as a result quite a different flora, fauna and mankind. The same laws will fashion quite a different set of things and beings even on this our plane, including in it all our planets. How much more different then must be external nature in other Solar systems, and how foolish is it to judge of other stars and worlds and human beings by our own, as physical science does!

Enq. But what are your data for this assertion?

Theo. What science in general will never accept as proof — the cumulative testimony of an endless series of Seers who have testified to this fact. Their spiritual visions, real explorations by, and through, physical and spiritual senses untrammelled by blind flesh, were systematically checked and compared one with the other, and their nature sifted. All that was not corroborated by unanimous and collective experience was rejected, while that only was recorded as established truth which, in various ages, under different climes, and throughout an untold series of incessant observations, was found to agree and receive constantly further corroboration. The methods used by our scholars and students of the psycho-spiritual sciences do not differ from those of students of the natural and physical sciences, as you may see. Only our fields of research are on two different planes, and our instruments are made by no human hands, for which reason perchance they are only the more reliable. The retorts, accumulators, and microscopes of the chemist and naturalist may get out of order; the telescope and the astronomer's horological instruments may get spoiled; our recording instruments are beyond the influence of weather or the elements.

Enq. And therefore you have implicit faith in them?

Theo. Faith is a word not to be found in theosophical dictionaries: we say knowledge based, on observation and experience. There is this difference, however, that while the observation and experience of physical science lead the Scientists to about as many "working" hypotheses as there are minds to evolve them, our knowledge consents to add to its lore only those facts which have become undeniable, and which are fully and absolutely demonstrated. We have no two beliefs or hypotheses on the same subject.

Enq. Is it on such data that you came to accept the strange theories we find in Esoteric Buddhism?

Theo. Just so. These theories may be slightly incorrect in their minor details, and even faulty in their exposition by lay students; they are facts in nature, nevertheless, and come nearer the truth than any scientific hypothesis.

On the Septenary Constitution of Our Planet

Enq. I understand that you describe our earth as forming part of a chain of earths?

Theo. We do. But the other six "earths" or globes, are not on the same plane of objectivity as our earth is; therefore we cannot see them.

Enq. Is that on account of the great distance?

Theo. Not at all, for we see with our naked eye planets and even stars at immeasurably greater distances; but it is owing to those six globes being outside our physical means of perception, or plane of being. It is not only that their material density, weight, or fabric are entirely different from those of our earth and the other known planets; but they are (to us) on an entirely different layer of space, so to speak; a layer not to be perceived or felt by our physical senses. And when I say "layer," please do not allow your fancy to suggest to you layers like strata or beds laid one over the other, for this would only lead to another absurd misconception. What I mean by "layer" is that plane of infinite space which by its nature cannot fall under our ordinary waking perceptions, whether mental or physical; but which exists in nature outside of our normal mentality or consciousness, outside of our three dimensional space, and outside of our division of time. Each of the seven fundamental planes (or layers) in space — of course as a whole, as the pure space of Locke's definition, not as our finite space — has its own objectivity and subjectivity, its own space and time, its own consciousness and set of senses. But all this will be hardly comprehensible to one trained in the modern ways of thought.

Enq. What do you mean by a different set of senses? Is there anything on our human plane that you could bring as an illustration of what you say, just to give a clearer idea of what you may mean by this variety of senses, spaces, and respective perceptions?

Theo. None; except, perhaps, that which for Science would be rather a handy peg on which to hang a counter-argument. We have a different set of senses in dream-life, have we not? We feel, talk, hear, see, taste and function in general on a different plane; the change of state of our consciousness being evidenced by the fact that a series of acts and events embracing years, as we think, pass ideally through our mind in one instant. Well, that extreme rapidity of our mental operations in dreams, and the perfect naturalness, for the time being, of all the other functions, show us that we are on quite another plane. Our philosophy teaches us that, as there are seven fundamental forces in nature, and seven planes of being, so there are seven states of consciousness in which man can live, think, remember and have his being. To enumerate these here is impossible, and for this one has to turn to the study of Eastern metaphysics. But in these two states — the waking and the dreaming — every ordinary mortal, from a learned philosopher down to a poor untutored savage, has a good proof that such states differ.

Enq. You do not accept, then, the well-known explanations of biology and physiology to account for the dream state?

Theo. We do not. We reject even the hypotheses of your psychologists, preferring the teachings of Eastern Wisdom. Believing in seven planes of Kosmic being and states of Consciousness, with regard to the Universe or the Macrocosm, we stop at the fourth plane, finding it impossible to go with any degree of certainty beyond. But with respect to the Microcosm, or man, we speculate freely on his seven states and principles.

Enq. How do you explain these?

Theo. We find, first of all, two distinct beings in man; the spiritual and the physical, the man who thinks, and the man who records as much of these thoughts as he is able to assimilate. Therefore we divide him into two distinct natures; the upper or the spiritual being, composed of three "principles" or aspects; and the lower or the physical quaternary, composed of four — in all seven.

The Septenary Nature of Man

Enq. Is it what we call Spirit and Soul, and the man of flesh?

Theo. It is not. That is the old Platonic division. Plato was an Initiate, and therefore could not go into forbidden details; but he who is acquainted with the archaic doctrine finds the seven in Plato's various combinations of Soul and Spirit. He regarded man as constituted of two parts — one eternal, formed of the same essence as the Absoluteness, the other mortal and corruptible, deriving its constituent parts from the minor "created" Gods. Man is composed, he shows, of (1) A mortal body, (2) An immortal principle, and (3) A "separate mortal kind of Soul." It is that which we respectively call the physical man, the Spiritual Soul or Spirit, and the animal Soul (the Nous and psuche). This is the division adopted by Paul, another Initiate, who maintains that there is a psychical body which is sown in the corruptible (astral soul or body), and a spiritual body that is raised in incorruptible substance. Even James (iii. 15) corroborates the same by saying that the "wisdom" (of our lower soul) descendeth not from the above, but is terrestrial ("psychical," "demoniacal," vide Greek text); while the other is heavenly wisdom. Now so plain is it that Plato and even Pythagoras, while speaking but of three "principles," give them seven separate functions, in their various combinations, that if we contrast our teachings this will become quite plain. Let us take a cursory view of these seven aspects by drawing two tables.

THEOSOPHICAL DIVISION [SANSCRIT TERMS // EXOTERIC MEANING // EXPLANATORY]

LOWER QUATERNARY

(a) Rupa, or Sthula-Sarira // Physical body // Is the vehicle of all the other "principles" during life.

(b) Prana // Life, or Vital principle // Necessary only to a, c, d, and the functions of the lower Manas, which embrace all those limited to the (physical) brain.

(c) Linga Sharira // Astral body // The Double, the phantom body.

(d) Kama rupa // The seat of animal desires and passions // This is the centre of the animal man, where lies the line of demarcation which separates the mortal man from the immortal entity.

THE UPPER IMPERISHABLE TRIAD.

(e) Manas — a dual principle in its functions // Mind, Intelligence: which is the higher human mind, whose light, or radiation links the MONAD, for the lifetime, to the mortal man // The future state and the Karmic destiny of man depend on whether Manas gravitates more downward to Kama rupa, the seat of the animal passions, or upwards to Buddhi, the Spiritual Ego. In the latter case, the higher consciousness of the individual Spiritual aspirations of mind (Manas), assimilating Buddhi, are absorbed by it and form the Ego, which goes into Devachanic bliss.¹

(f) Buddhi // The Spiritual Soul // The vehicle of pure universal spirit.

(g) Atma // Spirit // One with the Absolute, as its radiation.

Now what does Plato teach? He speaks of the interior man as constituted of two parts — one immutable and always the same, formed of the same substance as Deity, and the other mortal and corruptible. These "two parts" are found in our upper Triad, and the lower Quaternary (vide Table). He explains that when the Soul, psuche, "allies herself to the Nous (divine spirit or substance), ² she does everything aright and felicitously"; but the case is otherwise when she attaches herself to Anoia, (folly, or the irrational animal Soul). Here, then, we have Manas (or the Soul in general) in its two aspects: when attaching itself to Anoia (our Kama rupa, or the "Animal Soul" in "Esoteric Buddhism,") it runs towards entire annihilation, as far as the personal Ego is concerned; when allying itself to the Nous (Atma-Buddhi) it merges into the immortal, imperishable Ego, and then its spiritual consciousness of the personal that was, becomes immortal.

The Distinction Between Soul and Spirit

Enq. Do you really teach, as you are accused of doing by some Spiritualists and French Spiritists, the annihilation of every personality?

Theo. We do not. But as this question of the duality — the individuality of the Divine Ego, and the personality of the human animal — involves that of the possibility of the real immortal Ego appearing in Seance rooms as a "materialised spirit," which we deny as already explained, our opponents have started the nonsensical charge.

Enq. You have just spoken of psuche running towards its entire annihilation if it attaches itself to Anoia. What did Plato, and do you mean by this?

Theo. The entire annihilation of the personal consciousness, as an exceptional and rare case, I think. The general and almost invariable rule is the merging of the personal into the individual or immortal consciousness of the Ego, a transformation or a divine transfiguration, and the entire annihilation only of the lower quaternary . Would you expect the man of flesh, or the temporary personality, his shadow, the "astral," his animal instincts and even physical life, to survive with the "spiritual EGO" and become sempiternal? Naturally all this ceases to exist, either at, or soon after corporeal death. It becomes in time entirely disintegrated and disappears from view, being annihilated as a whole.

Enq. Then you also reject resurrection in the flesh?

Theo. Most decidedly we do! Why should we, who believe in the archaic esoteric philosophy of the Ancients, accept the unphilosophical speculations of the later Christian theology, borrowed from the Egyptian and Greek exoteric Systems of the Gnostics?

Enq. The Egyptians revered Nature-Spirits, and deified even onions: your Hindus are idolaters, to this day; the Zoroastrians worshipped, and do still worship, the Sun; and the best Greek philosophers were either dreamers or materialists — witness Plato and Democritus. How can you compare!

Theo. It may be so in your modern Christian and even Scientific catechism; it is not so for unbiassed minds. The Egyptians revered the "One-Only-One," as Nout; and it is from this word that Anaxagoras got his denomination Nous, or as he calls it, Nous autokrates, "the Mind or Spirit Self-potent," the archetes kinedeos, the leading motor, or primum-mobile of all. With him the Nous was God, and the logos was man, his emanation. The Nous is the spirit (whether in Kosmos or in man), and the logos, whether Universe or astral body, the emanation of the former, the physical body being merely the animal. Our external powers perceive phenomena; our Nous alone is able to recognise their noumena. It is the logos alone, or the noumenon, that survives, because it is immortal in its very nature and essence, and the logos in man is the Eternal Ego, that which reincarnates and lasts for ever. But how can the evanescent or external shadow, the temporary clothing of that divine Emanation which returns to the source whence it proceeded, be that which is raised in incorruptibility?

Enq. Still you can hardly escape the charge of having invented a new division of man's spiritual and psychic constituents; for no philosopher speaks of them, though you believe that Plato does.

Theo. And I support the view. Besides Plato, there is Pythagoras, who also followed the same idea.³ He described the Soul as a self-moving Unit (monad) composed of three elements, the Nous (Spirit), the phren (mind), and the thumos (life, breath or the Nephesh of the Kabalists) which three correspond to our "Atma-Buddhi," (higher Spirit-Soul), to Manas (the EGO), and to Kama-rupa in conjunction with the lower reflection of Manas. That which the Ancient Greek philosophers termed Soul, in general, we call Spirit, or Spiritual Soul, Buddhi, as the vehicle of Atma (the Agathon, or Plato's Supreme Deity). The fact that Pythagoras and others state that phren and thumos are shared by us with the brutes, proves that in this case the lower Manasic reflection (instinct) and Kama-rupa (animal living passions) are meant. And as Socrates and Plato accepted the clue and followed it, if to these five, namely, Agathon (Deity or Atma), Psuche (Soul in its collective sense), Nous (Spirit or Mind), Phren (physical mind), and Thumos (Kama-rupa or passions) we add the eidolon of the Mysteries, the shadowy form or the human double, and the physical body, it will be easy to demonstrate that the ideas of both Pythagoras and Plato were identical with ours. Even the Egyptians held to the Septenary division. In its exit, they taught, the Soul (EGO) had to pass through its seven chambers, or principles, those it left behind, and those it took along with itself. The only difference is that, ever bearing in mind the penalty of revealing Mystery-doctrines, which was death, they gave out the teaching in a broad outline, while we elaborate it and explain it in its details. But though we do give out to the world as much as is lawful, even in our doctrine more than one important detail is withheld, which those who study the esoteric philosophy and are pledged to silence, are alone entitled to know.

The Greek Teachings

Enq. We have magnificent Greek and Latin, Sanskrit and Hebrew scholars. How is it that we find nothing in their translations that would afford us a clue to what you say?

Theo. Because your translators, their great learning notwithstanding, have made of the philosophers, the Greeks especially, misty instead of mystic writers. Take as an instance Plutarch, and read what he says of "the principles" of man. That which he describes was accepted literally and attributed to metaphysical superstition and ignorance. Let me give you an illustration in point: "Man," says Plutarch, "is compound; and they are mistaken who think him to be compounded of two parts only. For they imagine that the understanding (brain intellect) is a part of the soul (the upper Triad), but they err in this no less than those who make the soul to be a part of the body, i.e. those who make of the Triad part of the corruptible mortal quaternary. For the understanding (nous) as far exceeds the soul, as the soul is better and diviner than the body. Now this composition of the soul (psuche) with the understanding (nous) makes reason; and with the body (or thumos, the animal soul) passion; of which the one is the beginning or principle of pleasure and pain, and the other of virtue and vice. Of these three parts conjoined and compacted together, the earth has given the body, the moon the soul, and the sun the understanding to the generation of man."

This last sentence is purely allegorical, and will be comprehended only by those who are versed in the esoteric science of correspondences and know which planet is related to every principle. Plutarch divides the latter into three groups, and makes of the body a compound of physical frame, astral shadow, and breath, or the triple lower part, which "from earth was taken and to earth returns"; of the middle principle and the instinctual soul, the second part, derived from and through and ever influenced by the moon; ⁴ and only of the higher part or the Spiritual Soul, with the Atmic and Manasic elements in it does he make a direct emanation of the Sun, who stands here for Agathon the Supreme Deity. This is proven by what he says further as follows:

"Now of the deaths we die, the one makes man two of three and the other one of (out of) two. The former is in the region and jurisdiction of Demeter, whence the name given to the Mysteries,telein, resembled that given to death, teleutan. The Athenians also heretofore called the deceased sacred to Demeter. As for the other death, it is in the moon or region of Persephone."

Here you have our doctrine, which shows man a septenary during life; a quintile just after death, in Kamaloka; and a threefold Ego, Spirit-Soul, and consciousness in Devachan. This separation, first in "the Meadows of Hades," as Plutarch calls the Kama-loka, then in Devachan, was part and parcel of the performances during the sacred Mysteries, when the candidates for initiation enacted the whole drama of death, and the resurrection as a glorified spirit, by which name we mean Consciousness. This is what Plutarch means when he says: —

"And as with the one, the terrestrial, so with the other celestial Hermes doth dwell. This suddenly and with violence plucks the soul from the body; but Proserpina mildly and in a long time disjoins the understanding from the soul.⁵ For this reason she is called Monogenes, only begotten, or rather begetting one alone; for the better part of man becomes alone when it is separated by her. Now both the one and the other happens thus according to nature. It is ordained by Fate (Fatum or Karma) that every soul, whether with or without understanding (mind), when gone out of the body, should wander for a time, though not all for the same, in the region lying between the earth and moon (Kamaloka).⁶ For those that have been unjust and dissolute suffer then the punishment due to their offences; but the good and virtuous are there detained till they are purified, and have, by expiation, purged out of them all the infections they might have contracted from the contagion of the body, as if from foul health, living in the mildest part of the air, called the Meadows of Hades, where they must remain for a certain prefixed and appointed time. And then, as if they were returning from a wandering pilgrimage or long exile into their country, they have a taste of joy, such as they principally receive who are initiated into Sacred Mysteries, mixed with trouble, admiration, and each one's proper and peculiar hope."

This is Nirvanic bliss, and no Theosophist could describe in plainer though esoteric language the mental joys of Devachan, where every man has his paradise around him, erected by his consciousness. But you must beware of the general error into which too many even of our Theosophists fall. Do not imagine that because man is called septenary, then quintuple and a triad, he is a compound of seven, five, or three entities; or, as well expressed by a Theosophical writer, of skins to be peeled off like the skins of an onion. The "principles," as already said, save the body, the life, and the astral eidolon, all of which disperse at death, are simply aspects and states of consciousness. There is but one real man, enduring through the cycle of life and immortal in essence, if not in form, and this is Manas, the Mind-man or embodied Consciousness. The objection made by the materialists, who deny the possibility of mind and consciousness acting without matter is worthless in our case. We do not deny the soundness of their argument; but we simply ask our opponents, "Are you acquainted with all the states of matter, you who knew hitherto but of three? And how do you know whether that which we refer to as ABSOLUTE CONSCIOUSNESS or Deity for ever invisible and unknowable, be not that which, though it eludes for ever our human finite conception, is still universal Spirit-matter or matter-Spirit in its absolute infinitude" It is then one of the lowest, and in its manvantaric manifestations fractioned-aspects of this Spirit-matter, which is the conscious Ego that creates its own paradise, a fool's paradise, it may be, still a state of bliss.

Enq. But what is Devachan?

Theo. The "land of gods" literally; a condition, a state of mental bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far more vivid and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the state after death of most mortals.

• 1. In Mr. Sinnett's "Esoteric Buddhism" d, e, and f, are respectively called the Animal, the Human, and the Spiritual Souls, which answers as well. Though the principles in Esoteric Buddhism are numbered, this is, strictly speaking, useless. The dual Monad alone (Atma-Buddhi) is susceptible of being thought of as the two highest numbers (the 6th and 7th). As to all others, since that "principle" only which is predominant in man has to be considered as the first and foremost, no numeration is possible as a general rule. In some men it is the higher Intelligence (Manas or the 5th) which dominates the rest; in others the Animal Soul (Kama-rupa) that reigns supreme, exhibiting the most bestial instincts, etc.
• 2. Paul calls Plato's Nous "Spirit"; but as this spirit is "substance," then, of course, Buddhi and not Atma is meant, as the latter cannot philosophically be called "substance" under any circumstance. We include Atma among the human "principles" in order not to create additional confusion. In reality it is no "human" but the universal absolute principle of which Buddhi, the Soul-Spirit, is the carrier.
• 3. "Plato and Pythagoras," says Plutarch, "distribute the soul into two parts, the rational (noetic) and irrational (agnoia); that that part of the soul of man which is rational is eternal; for though it be not God, yet it is the product of an eternal deity, but that part of the soul which is divested of reason (agnoia) dies." The modern term Agnostic comes from Agnosis, a cognate word. We wonder why Mr. Huxley, the author of the word, should have connected his great intellect with "the soul divested of reason" which dies? Is it the exaggerated humility of the modern materialist?
• 4. The Kabalists who know the relation of Jehovah, the life and children-giver, to the Moon, and the influence of the latter on generation, will again see the point as much as some astrologers will.
• 5. Proserpina, or Persephone, stands here for post mortem Karma, which is said to regulate the separation of the lower from the higher "principles": the Soul, as Nephesh, the breath of animal life, which remains for a time in Kama-loka, from the higher compound Ego, which goes into the state of Devachan, or bliss.
• 6. Until the separation of the higher, spiritual "principle" takes place from the lower ones, which remain in the Kama-loka until disintegrated.

A quite particular language is given to central Europe out of a mystical mission, in which every single sound of words and their sequence expresses something occult as for instance in the statement Es denkt mich, it thinks me. A long E expresses the reigning, weaving, creating Gods in the world order and in men, and S spoken long expresses the wavy astral element that snakes its way through everything. Mich—that means my I. In other words, the Gods think my I. After meditating on this one should make one's soul completely empty and only have the deepest feeling of piety in it.

Second mantric statement: Es webt mich, It weaves me. That means the Gods weave my I. We should have a feeling of the greatest thankfulness for this. Es wirkt mich, It works me, that is, divine forces work my I. Again feel the divine forces in e, then the astral s, as we also feel the deepest reverence and devotion.

A modern esoteric knows that his ego and astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies behind every night. He should then imagine that a demon took possession of his physical and etheric bodies and that the ego and astral body couldn't go back into their dwelling. On awaking he should ask himself: What did you think and do shortly before awaking? An advanced esoteric does this before he wakes with full consciousness. At first one can't recall that one thought or did anything. But after one has pursued this idea for awhile a thought first flits by and then takes on increasingly firm forms: You thanked the Gods that they let you live again in the body that they built for you.—We're born from the Gods: Ex Deo nascimur. We should repeat these three words every morning and accompany them with a feeling of deepest thankfulness that we've sunk our ego-consciousness back into the temple that the Gods built for us during Saturn, Sun and Moon evolution. We no longer have our ego-consciousness at death. Ancient Atlanteans still entered the spiritual worlds with full consciousness at death. This was gradually lost, until the Greeks were very afraid of the realm of the shades. This became different through the Christ event. By taking Christ into ourselves we can again get to the point where we press into spiritual worlds consciously after death, that means to die in Christ: In Christo morimur. One must always meditate these three words with a feeling of the deepest piety in one's heart. And then we must get to the point where we're conscious of our divine I; it must as it were be born in us again: Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus.

The last lectures here were essentially devoted to an examination of the way in which we have to think about the present time consciousness. I then tried for the last time to reach back into earlier periods and to draw attention to the fact that what now lives in the souls has actually been preparing itself within Western civilization for a very long time. Today I would like to highlight some episodes from the immediate present that may draw your attention to how a spiritual life must necessarily arise out of the general consciousness of the times, simply out of the necessity inherent in the development of humanity. We can say: Wherever we observe man, whether in the West of present civilization, in the Middle or in the East, everywhere, on closer examination of the times, it can become clear to us how, without the onset of a spiritual impulse, things simply can no longer go on.

Today, we want to take a look at the last fifty years of Central European spiritual development, so as to prepare for tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, by considering the characteristics of the beginning and the end. I will do this symptomatically. I will characterize some things at the beginning and at the end of these last fifty years.

If we go back to the beginning of the 1870s, we find a wide range of spiritual phenomena that indicate the state of the human soul at the time. I will highlight a few of these spiritual phenomena. In 1872 and 1873, for example, there was a sensational novel that was closely related to the trends of the time. These things are actually forgotten for the younger people in our time, but the novel I mean is one that did indeed capture the imagination in an extraordinarily incisive way fifty years ago. I am talking about Paul Heyse's “Children of the World”. Paul Heyse, who was a famous writer of novellas at the time, wanted to use this novel to depict a number of personalities in their lives, all of whom were already imbued with a certain vague religiosity, but who had at the same time fallen away from some religious denomination or other. So, the children of God, whom, I might say, Paul Heyse saw in the traditional terminology of belonging to some denomination, he wanted to contrast with the children of the world, who belonged to no denomination, who, as they were said at the time, were without religious affiliation, but who nevertheless had a certain tendency towards embracing a religious belief. Now I do not want to talk too much about this novel itself, but I would like to draw attention to how such a work, which thus portrays people who are undenominational, made an impression in those days.

I have often mentioned my old friend and teacher Karl Julius Schröer before. He had the peculiarity of following intellectual phenomena as they made their impact in broader social life. Karl Julius Schröer characterized the effect of Paul Heyse's “Children of the World” by saying that it was extraordinarily strange how this novel was passed around fifty years ago, how it interested everyone, interested in how this novel actually gave people the idea that they had never thought about before: that they had no connection to any positive religious belief and that their religious search did not stop at any particular religious belief. And Schröer made the extraordinarily interesting comment at the time that people who had previously taken part in the religious practices of their church, who had thus gone along with their old religious practices, the customs of their church, out of habit, that such people said that this work actually expresses their innermost convictions. And then Schröer concludes with a sentence that is actually interesting: that in the face of such an apparition, religious disputes appear as an anachronism, as something that no longer fits into the present – he is referring to the present at the beginning of the 1970s – because people have already moved beyond them in their thinking. But as I said, although all this is true, we must still say: the people who are described there have lost all connection with any of the existing faiths, but there is a certain trait in them that allows them to find some kind of religiosity. They just can't find it. They go through the world without any religious affiliation, unable to find a connection to a spiritual world through religious feeling.

If we now look from such a phenomenon, which took place more within the literary-belletristic life, into the lecture halls, we find that it is roughly the same time in which the conviction of an extraordinary number of people within science was expressed by Du Bois-Reymond with the “Limits of Natural Knowledge”, which I have already mentioned frequently. In this famous lecture, which Du Bois-Reymond gave in 1872, it is stated that certain knowledge is only possible if one follows and penetrates the external phenomena of nature through experiment and observation, to a kind of mathematical-mechanical thinking about the structure of the world, to a kind of mechanism, an atomistic mechanism of the world. Science does not go beyond such a comprehension of the world, everything else must be left to faith. But if one had asked the people who spoke in this way at the beginning of the 1970s, such as Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen des Naturerkennens” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), how people should now seek their way into spiritual worlds in a religious way, no answer would have been forthcoming. There would only have been a comment, very similar to the comments made by the people in Paul Heyse's “Children of the World” who are described as having no religious affiliation.

Now it must be said that all those people who took part in the life that one calls educated, who absorbed something of scientific thought, who adopted something from other schools of thought, who lived in that time, were actually all more or less in a certain frame of mind. Whether they continued to practice their old religions or not depended essentially on old habits, on all kinds of prejudices and the like, and not on a strict and rigorous assertion of what the Zeitbewußtsein would have given to souls. In the last fifty years, people have actually lived in an indefinite, fickle relationship to the spiritual world. But we can also find something similar in other areas. A few years before the publication of Heyses “Children of the World” and Du Bois-Reymonds “Limits of Natural Knowledge”, the famous art writer Herman Grimm published “The Invincible Powers”, which is also a novel. In it, the prejudices and differences between social classes that dominate people in Western civilization are presented as invincible powers. And in an interesting way, this novel contrasts the differences in class and rank within Western civilization with what developed from certain, I would say unhistorical, habits in America as a new life, as a life that did not have to struggle in the same way with class differences and class prejudices. And it is interesting how Herman Grimm, at the end of the 1860s, that is, also about half a century ago, describes how, despite everything, European man, despite all his liberalism, despite all his humanism, does not have the strength to truly overcome class differences. These are insurmountable forces for him.

If you want to go deeper and ask yourself: Why are such things insurmountable forces for the European man? then one cannot get any other answer than this: because thinking, which in the case of the European has assumed a certain passive character, the thinking that I have characterized when, for example, I spoke about Richard Wahle, that thinking extends only to “events” and does not want to go into the primal factors, that therefore does not want to grasp forces but only wants to grasp appearances, because this thinking has dominated precisely the decisive people in the last fifty years. With such thinking, which has no power in itself, which is actually only a thinking, one might say, in powerless thought images, with such thinking one simply cannot overcome what has arisen in reality as class differences and class prejudices. What was needed was a thinking imbued with reality, a thinking permeated by reality. And this thinking permeated by reality, which once created the differences in social standing, which once created everything socially real, this dynamic thinking, in contrast to mere descriptive thinking, has actually been completely lost to people within European civilization over the last fifty years. It was absent from their science, which was therefore based only on observation and experiment; but it was also absent from their lives, so they continued to reproduce what had arisen from old habits based on old class prejudices. They did not think about it any further. Because if they had wanted to think about it, they would have needed active thinking. And when the proletarian class began to consider class differences, then this weak thinking, which contains no dynamism, was completely abandoned. It was said: these class differences do not come from forces that would have been within human thinking, but only from economic, physical forces. A conclusion was simply drawn.

There you have the situation at the starting point of our modern intellectual life fifty years ago. And now I want to present to you a work that was published recently and that is characteristic of our time, namely Werfel's “Mirror Man”. There you have something that has been born out of certain forces of our time, just as the “Children of the World” or the “Invincible Powers” were born out of the time of fifty years ago.

So what is the situation for people like Werfel today? In recent decades, this weak and anemic thinking has been at work. People have somehow sought something of a religious context, of a connection with a spiritual world, but nothing has emerged. But human nature cannot remain one-sided in the long run. It can do so in the development of world history for about fifty years, but then a reaction of human nature begins again. In a certain way, it wants to strive for something more powerful – if we stick with the last fifty years – than the powerless and insipid thinking was. Now, quite a few contemporary works already bear witness to this striving for a more powerful grasp of reality, but Werfel's 'Spiegelmensch' is particularly illustrative of this.

Werfel's “Mirror Man” compels us to speak about the present in this way: for long enough, people have sought their way in an indefinite, weak and impotent manner to something that makes man a full human being in the first place. Now an indefinite inner feeling asserts itself on the paths that have been taken in the last fifty years and which are actually not paths at all, but slippery passageways on which one continually slips. Nothing can really be achieved on these slippery passageways; one must get some iron into one's blood again. From such a striving for the times, something like this “mirror man” has emerged. Let us sketch with just a few lines what is depicted in this “mirror man”. It is not my intention to sin against the artistic by characterizing what is in this mirror man. But that is not the point at all; rather, we will see immediately afterwards that what I am about to say also touches on the artistic.

We see here a half-grown human being who has grown tired of the outer life as it can be led today. He takes leave of this outer life and now actually wants to become human. For he admits to himself that within the ordinary life, as we live it today, both in Asian and European and American civilization, one cannot really become human. You get up in the morning, have breakfast and do something to maintain yourself within the social order, you eat lunch or receive your guests and say things that perhaps need not be said, that ultimately do not aim to achieve much more than to make the lips move, that are not idle; you take your guests for a walk or whatever else you do today. You can't become a person in such company – I'm not quoting verbatim, I'm just characterizing. It is necessary to try a different path if you want to become a person. And so this “hero” – to use the old aesthetic style – tries to become a person by seeking admission to a monastery. But he is told that this is something extraordinarily difficult. I do not want to characterize the details, but only point out what is important to me today. He is therefore informed that it is something extraordinarily difficult and that, above all, he must be clear about the fact that he has to go through three stages of knowledge. In the first stage of knowledge, he would have to become clear about the human being's position in the world, insofar as this position is contained in the human ego itself. So this life in the ego and this striving to overcome the ego as the first level of knowledge. The second view of the world would consist in the fact that, after one begins to shed the ego in a certain sense, one no longer sees the world from one's prejudiced point of view, as one used to do before, when one had not even begun to shed the ego. And the third vision would be where man would truly penetrate into the world and its reality, not as seen by man living in his ego. He is told this. And he is admonished in the appropriate way not to want such an incarnation too urgently. He is made aware of the difficulties. But he does not back down.

So he is initiated in the appropriate way. The initiation takes place – I will mention only the essentials – by being led into solitude for the night, into a room where only a monk watches over him. And there, after he has initially abandoned himself to his thoughts, he falls into a brief sleep, from which he very soon believes he will wake up. And now he finds himself in the room whose one wall has a mirror on it. In this mirror he sees himself, and he is amazed at what is meant. It is meant that when one, after a collection of thoughts and after such a strong decision as this person has made, steps in front of his own reflection, one sees oneself in a different way. So it is actually pointed out that the person is only now beginning to see himself. The mirror image looks so similar to him, but yet again somewhat different. And by doing what must follow from such a surprising experience: by striking the mirror, believing that he has wounded himself, the mirror man steps out of the mirror towards him, that is, that of him which, in a certain respect, is himself and yet again not himself.

Now the person has arrived at the first step of knowledge. He must get used to not only going through the world as a person without ego consciousness, but also to having that which is himself and yet not completely himself, his mirror-person, accompany him. In the company of this mirror-man, who now tempts him to do all kinds of things in the outer world, lies a new encounter with world phenomena, with his own deeds, in that he finds himself precisely in the presence of his own ego.

Now, I do not want to go into the details. The person in question is actually lying in bed, but he goes through what he can go through according to his previous experiences of external world experiences and external actions. These are not always very nice. But how someone describes something like that depends on their own taste. You can see from the way the author describes things how he feels about such a case. People also experience the world according to their tastes. So we are led through the experiences of the world. Just as Mephisto in Faust has something of the driving force, this mirror man is now always the driving force, and he is led from event to event, being made to do many wrongs. Everything appears to him in a new light, because he has looked into the mirror and seen himself. He now sees one thing after another in the world. He sometimes sees things as they appear to him because he is an ego-person, and sometimes as they appear to him after he is already able to see his reflection. He becomes more and more familiar with the phenomena of the world. In the process, he comes out of his ego more and more. The mirror-man, who is rather slight at first, becomes fatter and fatter. This is a polar-parallel phenomenon, which is not uninteresting. And so this person now lives through the world by experiencing in a different way what he could have experienced earlier, now that he has seen his own self. And in the end he has become so entangled in the experiences of the world that he has to become his own judge, condemning himself to death, which is again very characteristic. He finds that he cannot really live in the world.

When he entered the monastery, he realized that it is impossible to live in today's society if you want to become a human being. This has increased to such an extent that now, when he has become his own judge, he condemns himself to death. And now he awakens. In a sense, he awakens from the execution of his own death sentence. He is again in the same room where he was. Now he looks at the mirror again. But by looking now, he notices, for example, that the mirror does not reflect a procession of monks passing by. Earlier, when he looked into the mirror, he saw himself and everything in front of the mirror. But now a procession of monks is passing by and is not reflected. He realizes from this that he is not standing in front of a mirror now, but that the mirror has become a window. He looks through it and sees out into the wide world, sees the landscape. He has attained the third vision. Now he sees the world, whereas at the beginning he saw only what the mirror gave. Because he had the mirror man at his side, he saw what he had seen before in a different way. But now, as it were, he sees through the surface of things - that is how it is presented - out into the free reality. It is, of course, implied that he now also sees out into the spiritual reality.

So we have a trilogy before us: the first is the mirror, the third is, let us say, the window. The mirror has become the window. So there we have the two polar opposite views of the world. At first, everyone sees in the other 'their own reflection', sees only what they already have within themselves in the other, where they are caught up in their own ego, and thus sees only their own reflection everywhere in their neighbor or in anything they see in nature. Finally, after breaking through the mirror, they no longer see the mirror, but through the surface of things into the spiritual. And in between

where the two merge into one another:

1. The mirror
2. One into the other
3. The window

Now, I would like to point out two characteristic features of this drama. The first is this: we see that there is a desire to depict a person in the process of rising to a certain religious connection with another world. That the first part, the mirror, is short, one can forgive, because it is very interesting to see how the person lives into an insight into his own ego, so that this ego becomes so concrete to him that it now accompanies him through his experiences in the world. The middle part is quite detailed, and a great many experiences are described. In order to find these appealing at all, one must have a taste, one could even say sometimes, distaste, for them. But as I said, everyone has to do it according to their own taste. In any case, this part, where one looks into the experiences of the world, is very long. But the third part is quite short, and what is seen out there is actually only hinted at, I would say symbolically, by looking through the window; nothing real comes into view. It is quite short, this third part. That is the one peculiarity I would like to emphasize. But the other peculiarity is this: one must recognize that here is the most beautiful expression of the striving to pour strength and energy into thinking. But one also sees that the modern man, of the kind that Werfel is, cannot do that at first. Why? Yes, it is very peculiar. When I had finished reading this drama – and I read with the greatest interest, I must say, because it is extremely significant for our present spiritual life as represented by individual personalities – I had to say the following to myself: the process is as follows: 1. Der Spiegel; 2. Eins ins andere; 3. Das Fenster. But one could also read the whole thing backwards from front to back. Of course, it would have to be rewritten, but one could also read the whole thing backwards from front to back. Because why? It is entirely possible to understand the matter in such a way that one says to oneself: the way a person initially relates to the world is how things appear to him. He is no different from the things. He has not awakened to his sense of self. He stands before the window, looks out into the world. Now we could say that the old monk, to whom he has now come and to whom he says that he can no longer bear it, that everything is always only inside, what he sees through the window, that he wants to find himself – that the old man now says to him: Yes, there are three views to go through. The first view shows us the world without our finding our ego in it. We lose ourselves to the world. The second view allows us to gain something of the ego, and then, gradually, a multitude of beings comes towards us from the world. The world is brought to life, spiritualized. We used to see it as spiritless, now the world is spiritualized. Everywhere, from every being, from plants, animals, clouds and so on, something spiritual comes towards us. Many spiritual beings come towards us in this second part. In the third part, we wake up. We step in front of the window, we look out. But we see everything anew, because now we see the real world for the first time. The window has been transformed into a mirror, the human being has come to himself. He unites all these mirror beings that have come to meet him in the world of plants, animals, clouds; they are in his only self, which has become cosmic to him. And now, by recognizing himself, he actually sees the cosmos for the first time.

You could easily describe the whole thing backwards, the last part of the trilogy first, then the middle part, then the part with which it started. That is extremely interesting, because it is precisely this that makes this drama particularly characteristic of the present. What is the peculiarity of intellectualism?

Yes, the peculiarity of intellectualism is this: you can start with the idea anywhere and stop anywhere, and you can assert one thing and you can assert another – I have emphasized this many times. In terms of thought, you can prove anything, in terms of thought you can refute anything. Intellectualism, which is nothing more than a system of vapid and feeble thoughts, allows you to start anywhere and go somewhere, but you will stop at a certain point. But you can also start at this latter point and go the other way.

Today, one can be a very clever person and a gross materialist, because materialism can be quite well proven in an intellectual way. And if one is purely intellectual, one can, in the way it happened after our anthroposophical congress in Vienna at a meeting, one can, from the standpoint of today's monism, quite intellectually lead the fight against the spirit. One can prove very well that materialism is right. But one can also want to be a spiritualist and prove this just as well. All these things, as long as one lives only in the intellectual, can be proved quite well, and they have the appearance of tremendous cogency, these intellectualistic discussions.

And so it is in our time. People do not suspect, as they become entangled in spiritualism, materialism, realism, idealism, that they are becoming entangled in the intellectual spirit. They rightly feel: this can be firmly proven. They are the creatures of intellectualism. Because it is indeed true that things can be proved, that is why it is so dismal when one is obliged today to seriously discuss something based on reality, and then 'free discussion' is set up. One person says this, another says that, a third says something else. Basically, if you are just a little bright, you can say: they are all right. Of course, they are all equally wrong. The whole point of the talk is, after all, that one or the other sees what a tremendous swindle of one's own self it is to live in intellectualism, because with intellectualism, everything can be easily proven. The only thing that matters is that one has immersed oneself long enough in some direction or current, in some sect or party or something else, then one can quite rightly say: Yes, that's all clear; the other one who claims the opposite is an idiot. - Certainly, but the other one can just as easily prove that the first one is an idiot and his own claim is correct. Today, with the configuration that intellectual life has attained, this is perfectly possible and is taken for granted. And so it is a matter of course that one can write such a piece today without arriving at a real spiritual insight. The fact that Werfel is not approached proves that nothing significant is seen through the window; the spiritual insight would only begin if something significant were seen through the window. But if you merely describe three steps, and then, after describing how he woke up and looked out, you do not describe what he sees, if you make so many concessions to the general consciousness that you can write such a “Mirror Man” and still say something reasonable in response to something like “Occult Science in Outline” or “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” or the like: If one has to say that one would not be in one's right mind if one accepted it, and if one can only say: Yes, the person in question has arrived at the window, but I am wary of seeing what one sees when looking out through the window, then one is simply not yet ready to immerse oneself in the real spiritual life, then one is simply completely stuck in intellectualism.

That is why I was allowed to speak in this way. Of course, one would not have the right to give a philosophical critique of a work of art. But I did not give a philosophical critique at all; what I said is just as much an artistic view. Because it happens to you, you read a trilogy, read it with the utmost interest. Afterwards, when you're done, you suddenly feel upside down! It's an uncomfortable feeling, and to get back on your feet again, you would have to rewrite the whole story from back to front. It would take a very long time before you could finally work your way back to your feet, to your footing. Yes, it is quite true that one is also artistically cheated by becoming aware: in there is the spinning wheel of intellectualism, while the work of art must indeed make a beautiful impression. You cannot reverse that. Try to turn Goethe's “Faust” around, to start writing from the back to the front. You cannot! A work of art cannot be turned around. Here in this work you can, because the intellectualism predominates, because it has not penetrated to the real looking. Intellectualism has indeed received the vague, unconscious feeling that there must be juice and strength in the thoughts, but in reality neither juice nor strength has entered, there is nothing in it. There is only a pattern of a more real inner experience in it. And so we see just from something that is really full of spirit, which is extremely significant in terms of what our time can bring forth, where the path must go.

For fifty years it has been the case that people actually feel: they must go in the direction of something spiritual, but they would avoid the real path. So they take something out of all kinds of old traditions, like the three-part path and the like. But it is characteristic that today they take up this three-part path; you can find it in all kinds of books that describe some old atavistic clairvoyant paths.

As long as one refrains from accepting what one sees when looking through the window, this story of “mirror” and “one into the other” and “through the window” can very easily still be part of our spiritual life. It is easy to describe if one only has such general ideas about it. But as long as you stop at that, you still can't get out of intellectualism, which holds the people of the present day captive with a tremendous magic.

I have pointed out this intellectual element in our time in the most diverse forms. I have pointed out how one could get into all kinds of branches in the Theosophical Society, and there were great schemes, races and rounds, whole world systems and all kinds of things were built up in wonderfully intellectual forms - all intellectual! On the other hand, when it was a matter of characterizing the structure of the human being, there was a scheme: physical man: dense physical matter; etheric body: finer matter; astral body: even finer; kama manas: even finer; manas: even finer, ever finer and finer. Yes, but only from the intellectual point of view! This thinning out did not stop at all! But it is just purely intellectual. Just as you can always turn a wheel, you can, if you just stick to the intellectual, let matter become thinner and thinner. And so we had an intellectualized theosophy, and so we have here an intellectualized poetry that even borders on mysticism and that will certainly be admired by a great many of our contemporaries, and rightly so, because one can see from such poetry how the striving of our time is again turning towards something spiritual.

But my judgment is not an unartistic one. When I look at this mirror man who accompanies the hero throughout his entire evolutionary life, this mirror man is something completely different than Mephisto in relation to Faust. There is life in Faust. You know, I once showed how Mephisto is ultimately only the other side of Faust, like Wagner. “You resemble the spirit you comprehend, not me.” You resemble Wagner, you resemble Mephisto, and so on. But there is life in it. But it is not yet life when the self jumps out of the mirror, is initially frail and then becomes fatter and fatter as the person himself grows more and more out of life.

In short, what dominates from beginning to end is the inanimate, the abstract. The abstract can always be turned around. And because nowhere in the artistic work can one feel a full-blooded, intense contemplation, but everywhere one sees only thought-patterns blown up into images, one feels an unartistic quality. And it is strange that in the present day, this is often defended by saying: Anthroposophy, yes, that is only the pursuit of ideas, and that is not artistic. But in Anthroposophy, the aim is to gain insight, only one must really be prepared for this insight. One must look through a window and see something. But here, the actual artistic is called something that has not quite hatched, that is just about to hatch from the egg, but is content to remain in the egg. You know what I mean, that the chicken does not really hatch from the egg to live in the world. It is as if man wants to begin a journey of knowledge, but still avoids the spiritual world in all its concreteness and certainty. I don't want to say how the egg feels when the chicken just can't get out! But isn't it true that it is just the same with such intellectual products that don't really get out.

This is not to say anything against the value of such things. In the sense of the present I actually see something of the very first order in this mirror-man. But from a higher point of view it must be characterized and placed in the spiritual life, in the whole cultural life of the present, as I have tried to sketch it.