The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Certain duties imposed on me from the spiritual world have made it necessary for me to research some things regarding the life of Christ Jesus in recent times. You know that it is possible to gain access to events that took place in the past through the so-called Akashic Records research. So an attempt was made to gain access to the most important event in the evolution of the earth, the event that is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. A number of things have emerged that can complement the more spiritual scientific explanations that have been given to you on various occasions about the Mystery of Golgotha. What has now emerged from the Akasha Chronicle research is of a different nature; it is, so to speak, more concrete, a sum of facts related to the life of Christ Jesus. It is hoped that these facts will, over time, come together to form a kind of fifth gospel, and we will talk about why it is necessary in our time to extract from the occult sources what can be described as a fifth gospel in a certain respect.

Today I will begin by telling a few stories that relate to the youth of Jesus of Nazareth and that will culminate in an important conversation that he had with his stepmother or foster mother. Some of what will now be discussed as the Fifth Gospel has already been communicated to some of you by Miss Stinde; but for the sake of the context I shall also have to briefly mention the things that have already been presented to some of you.

I would like to begin my story today with the event that I have already described to you several times, with the passing over of the Zarathustra ego into the physical form of the Jesus child who descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. I will briefly mention that, according to the Akasha Chronicle research, two Jesus children were born around the same time. One was born out of what we can call the Solomon line of the House of David, the other out of the Nathan line of the House of David. The two were very different in terms of their entire childhood. The body that descended from the Solomonic line of the House of David contained the same ego that once walked the earth as Zarathustra. This ego had advanced to become a spirit that, as is often the case occurred in such cases, he appeared childlike during the first twelve years, but he proved to be endowed with the very highest gifts, and he learned with great rapidity everything that human cultural development had produced up to that age. We would call a boy of the highest talent, according to what emerges from the Akasha Chronicle, this boy from the Solomonic line of the House of David. We cannot address the other Jesus boy from the Nathanic line with such predicates. He was basically untalented for everything that can be learned through the achievements of the earth sciences and arts of man. He even showed a certain reluctance to learn anything of what mankind has achieved. On the other hand, this Jesus-boy showed the most profound genius of the heart; even in his earliest boyhood he radiated the warmest love imaginable, and in human and earthly terms he absorbed everything that could lead to the development of a life of love.

We also already know that after the two boys had turned about twelve years old, the ego of Zarathustra emerged, as sometimes happens in the occult processes of the evolution of humanity on earth. It emerged from the body of the Jesus-child of the Solomonic line, and passed over into the bodily sheaths of the other Jesus-child. The Gospel of Luke indicates this by telling how this Jesus boy then sat among the scribes and gave astounding answers and was hardly recognized by his own parents. Thus, from the age of twelve, we have come to know this Jesus child, with the genius of the heart, who had united within himself the sum of all human gifts related to feeling and the soul; we have the union of Zarathustra's ego with this Jesus child, who at that time did not yet know what was happening to him: that it was the ego of Zarathustra that left the body of the Solomonic Jesus child and moved into him and already worked in his bodily shells, so that both elements gradually permeated each other to the highest perfection.

We also know that the biological mother of the Nathanian Jesus child soon died, as did the father of the Solomonian Jesus child, and we know that a family was formed from the two families from which the two Jesus so that the Nathanian Jesus from the other family got step-siblings and the natural mother of the Solomonian Jesus boy became his step- or foster mother. In this family he now grew up in Nazareth. The extraordinary talent which he had shown when he gave those great and powerful answers in the temple among the scribes, astonishing everyone, increased further. Something wonderful took place in the soul of this Jesus child of Nazareth, in whom was contained the ego of Zarathustra, from the age of twelve until about the age of eighteen: something emerged from the depths of his soul life that no one else at that time was able to experience; a tremendous maturity of spiritual judgment, alongside a deep originality of his soul abilities, asserted itself. To the amazement of those around him, that mighty divine voice from the spiritual regions, which in the Hebrew secret teachings was called the great Bath-Kol, spoke ever more clearly and distinctly to his soul. But differently than to the scribes, the great Bath-Kol spoke to this adolescent boy in a sublime way. It came up like an inner, wondrous illumination. So it came about that even in his youth, Jesus of Nazareth could say to himself in a sad mood: What has become of Hebrew humanity since those times, since this humanity heard the old prophets, those old prophets who themselves still received the spiritual secrets from higher worlds through their inspirations and intuitions? Then it dawned on Jesus of Nazareth through inner illumination that there had once been a close communication between the old Hebrew prophets and the divine spiritual powers; that the greatest secrets were revealed to the old prophets through the holy, solemn voice of the great Bath Kol. But times had changed until the present day, when Jesus of Nazareth lived. There were scholars and scribes, and some prophets, who could only grasp the echoes, the faint echoes, of what the great prophets had once received as revelation. But all that could be attained in the present time was only a shadow of the old teachings. But what was preserved in the scriptures as tradition, Jesus felt and sensed - now that he received it through his direct inner inspiration, through lights that shone more and more brightly in him from day to day, that it was there, but that the present was no longer suited to understand it. His life was powerful in these inspirations.

One gains an immensely strong impression when one directs one's spiritual gaze to this point in the evolution of the earth, when one sees again, in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, what was revealed in ancient times, as it were, to the patriarchal prophets, and one sees how lonely he stood in humanity, which was without understanding for what he experienced. He had to say to Himself: Even if the great Bath Kol spoke loudly and clearly from heaven, there are no people here who could understand it. What has become of humanity? This weighed heavily on his soul as an enormous pain. So we see the boy growing into young adulthood. From week to week, new insights arose for him, but each new insight was linked for him to an ever-increasing suffering, to deep, deep pain over what humanity has forgotten, what it can no longer understand. The entire descent of humanity was borne by the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. One learns many things about the pain and suffering that people in the world have to endure when one focuses one's spiritual vision on the evolution of humanity. But the impression that one receives from that soul, which out of pure compassion for humanity felt the most intense pain at the descent of humanity, at what humanity was no longer able to receive of what was prepared for it from spiritual worlds. This pain increased all the more because in the whole environment of Jesus of Nazareth, between the ages of twelve and eighteen, there was no one with whom he could have spoken about it in any way. Even the best disciples of the great scholars, such as Hillel, did not understand the greatness that was revealed in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He was alone with his revelations and alone with his infinite pain, embracing humanity in boundless compassion. Above all, I would like to characterize this mood of his soul in Jesus of Nazareth. While he was going through all this inwardly, while worlds were unfolding within him, he worked unpretentiously on the outside in his father's business, which was a kind of carpentry. And so he matured until he was eighteen years old. Then, according to the will of the family, he was to go on a kind of journey through the world, moving from place to place to work there for a while. So he did. And this brings us to a second period in the youth of Jesus of Nazareth, which lasted from about the age of eighteen to twenty-four.

He traveled to many places, both within and outside of Palestine. He came into contact with Jews and Gentiles in all kinds of Gentile regions. One could discern something remarkable about this personality, which will always be among the most instructive aspects of any attempt to explore the secrets of the human depths: One could see that the immense pain he had experienced in his soul had been transformed into immense love, as it often does when he is selfless, into a love that works not only through words but also through his mere presence. When he entered the families in whose midst he was to work, they knew from the way he presented himself, from the way he was, that the love that can only come from one person radiated from this soul; a love that did everyone good, in whose atmosphere everyone who was aware of it wanted to live. And this love was transformed pain, was the metamorphosis of pain. Many things happened that gave the people among whom he lived the impression that they were dealing with a person unlike any who had ever walked the earth. By day he worked; in the evenings the families gathered at the places where he worked and there he was among them. Everything that could radiate from his love lived in such families. People felt that they were more than mere humans when he spoke his simple words, but they were imbued with what he had experienced from the age of twelve to eighteen. And then, when he had moved away from the place, it was as if these families felt him still among them, as if he had not left at all. His presence was still felt. Yes, it happened again and again that they all had a real vision: while they were talking about what he had said, while they were inwardly rejoicing in what they felt of his presence, they saw him come in through the door, sit down among them, feel his loving presence, and hear him speak. He was not there in the flesh, but there was a vision shared by all.

And so, in many regions, a sense of community gradually developed between Jesus of Nazareth and the people with whom he came into contact over the years. And everywhere people talked about this man of great love. Many scriptures were applied to him. The scriptures were not understood, and he was also understood little with the mind; but with the heart, one felt all the more deeply his love, the extraordinary of his existence and his effect. He came not only to Hebrew but also to pagan areas, even outside of Palestine. Strangely enough, his path also led him to such pagan areas where pagan teachings had declined. He got to know some pagan places whose old places of worship had fallen into disrepair.

And then one day he came to a place that had suffered particularly from the decline of the old pagan places of worship, the old pagan priesthood. The pagan places of worship were, after all, an external expression of what had been practiced here and there in the mysteries. The ceremonies in the places of worship were images of the mysteries. But all this was in decline, had fallen into disrepair in many areas. Then Jesus of Nazareth came to a place of worship where, for reasons unknown to him, the outer buildings had also fallen into disrepair. I still do not know the location of this place of worship. Unfortunately, it has not been possible to determine the exact location and name of the place in the Akasha Chronicle; for some reason, the impression of the place has been blurred on the map of the earth, so to speak. What I am telling you is absolutely correct, in my opinion, but it is not possible to indicate the location; for some reason it cannot be found. But it was a pagan place, a dilapidated place of worship, and all around it the people were sad and sick and burdened with all kinds of diseases and hardships. Because they were burdened with such diseases and hardships, the priesthood had left and fled. The place of worship had fallen into disrepair. The people felt unhappy because their priests had abandoned them. There was tremendous misery when Jesus entered this pagan place of worship. As he approached, he was noticed by some and immediately it spread like wildfire among the people: here comes someone who can help us! Because of the power that radiated from his love, which had already become a kind of sanctifying love, people felt as if someone special was approaching, as if heaven itself had sent them another of their cult priests. They flocked there in great numbers, hoping that their cult would now be performed again. Jesus of Nazareth was not inclined to perform the pagan cult, as is understandable; but when he looked at the people with his gaze, which had now been heightened to a kind of clairvoyance, born of pain and love, he already understood something of the essence of the decline of paganism. Then he learned to recognize the following: He knew that in ancient times, when the still good priests served and sacrificed, good spiritual beings from the sphere of the higher hierarchies bowed down at these places of worship for the pagan sacrifices and rituals. But little by little – that dawned on him – paganism had fallen into decline. Whereas in the past the rivers of mercy and grace of the good gods worshipped by the heathens had been sent down to the sacrificial altars and united with the sacrifice, now demons, emissaries of Ahriman and Lucifer, had descended. He saw them among the people and realized that these demonic entities were actually the cause of the evil diseases that were raging among the people, who now pitied him in their deepest souls. And when he perceived these mysterious connections, when he thus came to understand the secret of the declining paganism, he fell down as if dead. This occurrence had a terrible effect on the people, who believed that a priest had come down from heaven. They saw the man fall down and flee, flee in terror from the place to which they had just flocked. With the last glance that he cast, in his ordinary consciousness, at the fleeing people, Jesus of Nazareth saw the demons fleeing with the people; but other demons still surrounded him. Then the everyday consciousness receded and he felt as if he had been transported into a higher spiritual world, from which the blessings of the pagan gods had once flowed, which had united with the sacrifices. And just as he had otherwise heard the voice of the great Bath-Kol, so now he heard the sounds from the divine-spiritual realms, from those hierarchies to which the pagan good gods belonged. He heard human primordial revelation in this enraptured state.

I have tried to put into German words what he heard there; as well as I could, to reproduce what he heard. And it is characteristic: I was able to share these words first at the laying of the foundation stone of our Dornach building. It is like the reverse of the Christian Lord's Prayer, which he only had to reveal much later in the well-known form. But now it impressed itself on him as it might have been revealed in the beginning of the evolution of the earth as a cosmic Lord's Prayer. This is how it sounds when translated into German:

Amen

Evil rules
Witnesses of dissolving egoity
From other selfhood guilt
We experience in our daily bread
in which heaven's will does not prevail
in which man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

So then:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of the disintegration of the ego
Of the guilt of selfhood owed to others
Experienced in the daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
In which man has separated himself from your kingdom
And forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

What spoke to him from the regions from which the gods of the heathens had once worked was like a great, powerful revelation to him. These words, which at first sound simple, in fact contain the secret of the whole incorporation of man into physical earthly corporeality. They contain this secret. One comes more and more to realize, as I have convinced myself by gradually meditating on these words, what tremendous depths are contained in them. One would like to say that the whole ancient pagan heaven, which expressed itself in this mystery of the Incarnation as in a macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, once worked on the fallen Jesus of Nazareth, who was in a raptured state. And when he came to again, he still saw the last fleeing demons, who had taken the place of the old good pagan gods, and in the far distance he saw the people fleeing. But he had suffered not only from the pain caused by the revelations of the Bath-Kol, for which humanity was no longer ripe, but now he had to suffer the second pain, because he had to recognize: Even that which had once been spoken to paganism, even that which were divine-spiritual revelations for paganism, is now in decline. Even if all the voices of the heavens were to resound today, humanity would not have the capacity to receive them. — So he had to say to himself.

It is a tremendous impression to see how much pain had to be accumulated in a soul for the Mystery of Golgotha to be prepared. It is a tremendous impression to realize, through these things, what pain had to be poured into that impulse which we call the Christ impulse for the further development of the earth. In this way, Jesus had also come to know the essence of paganism and the essence of its decline.

When he was about twenty-four years old, he went home; it was around the same time that his biological father died. He was now alone with his siblings, who were all his step-siblings, and his foster or stepmother. Now something strange happened: little by little, the love and understanding of the stepmother or foster mother for him grew more and more, while his brothers and sisters did not understand him. Something like a genius of the heart blossomed in her. She was able to understand the lonely man, who carried the suffering of humanity within him, little by little – even if only little by little – while his brothers did not care.

But first he would get to know something else: the community that showed him, so to speak, the third aspect of the decline of humanity. He would get to know the Essene community. This Essene community, which had its main center at the Dead Sea, was widespread throughout the world at that time. It was a strict, closed order that strove to ascend again through a certain regulated, renounced life to those levels above which humanity had descended in its decline ; to ascend by spiritual exercises to that spiritual height where something could be heard again of—no matter whether it was called in the Jewish sense, the great Bath-Kol, or in the heathen sense, the old Revelation. The Esseneans sought to achieve this through strict training of the soul and isolation from the things that otherwise characterized humanity. What they strove for had attracted many. They had various possessions far and wide throughout the land. Whoever wanted to become an Essenean had to give up what he had inherited or could still inherit to the common possession. No one was allowed to keep property for himself. Many Essenes had a house or a country estate here or there, which they dedicated to the order. As a result, the order had scattered settlements throughout the Near East, especially in Palestine, including Nazareth. Everything had to be in the public domain. The Essenes performed great deeds of charity. No one owned anything for themselves. Everyone was allowed to give away from the common property to anyone they considered poor or in need. Through spiritual exercises they attained a certain healing power, which had an enormous beneficial effect. They had one principle that would be impossible today, but which was strictly observed at that time: anyone could support people they considered worthy from the common fund, but never their relatives. They had to free themselves from all the ties of the senses that connected them to the outside world.

Jesus of Nazareth did not actually become an Essene, like John, whom he briefly met among the Essenes; but because of the enormity of what his soul held, he was treated with great trust in the order. Much of what was otherwise only known to members of the higher degrees was discussed with him in confidence, based on the way his soul worked. In this way he learned to recognize how they were striving upwards again along a steep path to the heights from which men had descended. Often it seemed to him as if he could say: Yes, there are still people among us who are ascending again to that which was once revealed to mankind in primeval times, but which mankind in general does not understand today.

Once, after he had had a profound conversation about the secrets of the world within the Essene community, he had a great, powerful impression. As he walked out through the gate, he saw two figures in a vision. He recognized Ahriman and Lucifer and saw them flee from the Essene gates. He knew that they fled into the rest of humanity. He often had such a vision from then on. It was the custom of the Essenes not to pass through the ordinary gates of a city or house of that time that were somehow decorated with sculptures. They had to turn back at such gates. But since there were so many Essenes – there were as many Essenes as Pharisees in Palestine at that time – they were taken into consideration and had their own very simple gates built. So the Essenes were not allowed to go through any gate that had any images on it. This was connected with their entire spiritual development. Therefore, there were special Essene gates in the cities. Jesus of Nazareth had often passed through such Essene gates. He always saw how Lucifer and Ahriman in a particularly threatening way for humanity departed from the gates. Yes, you see, when you learn about such things in theory, they certainly make an impression; but when you learn about them as you can learn through a glimpse into the Akasha Chronicle, when you really see the figures of Lucifer and Ahriman under the same conditions as Jesus of Nazareth saw them, then it makes a completely different impression. Then you begin to grasp the deepest secrets not only with your mind, with your intellect, but with your whole soul, you not only know them, you experience them, you are one with them.

I can only stammer with poor words what now, as a third great pain, was discharged onto the soul of Jesus: He recognized that it was indeed possible in his time for individuals to separate themselves and achieve the highest insight, but only if the rest of humanity is all the more cut off from all development of the soul. At the expense of the rest of humanity, such people seek the perfection of their soul, and because they strive for such a development, through which Lucifer and Ahriman cannot approach them, they must flee. But as these individual people break free, Lucifer and Ahriman flee to the other people. These are plunged into decadence all the more, the more such people rise in their isolation. This was indeed a terrible impression for Jesus of Nazareth, who felt undivided compassion for all people, who could not feel without the deepest, most profound pain that individuals should rise in their soul development at the expense of humanity in general. And so the idea formed in him: Lucifer and Ahriman receive in general humanity an ever-increasing power precisely because individuals want to be the pure, the Essene. That was the third great pain, even the most terrible pain; for now something like despair of the fate of mankind would sometimes break out in his soul. The secret of this fate of mankind came over him terribly. He carried this fate of the world, crowded together in his own soul.

So it was in his twenty-ninth or thirtieth year, so it was after the mother, who was his stepmother or foster mother, had more and more of an understanding for him that one day, when they both felt that their souls could understand each other, he entered into a conversation with this stepmother or foster mother, into that conversation which was so infinitely significant for the development of humanity. Now, during this conversation, Jesus of Nazareth realized how he could truly pour into the stepmother's heart what he had experienced since he was twelve years old. Now he could gradually put into words to her what he had been through. And he did so. He told her what he had felt about the decay of Judaism and paganism, about the Essenes, about the hermitage of the Essenes. And it was so that these words, which passed from the soul of Jesus to the soul of the stepmother or foster mother, did not work like ordinary words, but as if he could have given each of his words something of the full power of his soul. They were inspired by what he had suffered, what had come directly from his suffering for love, for the holiness of the soul. He was so connected with his suffering and love that something of his self floated on the wings of his words into the heart and soul of this stepmother or foster mother.

And then, after he had told her what he had gone through, he brought up something else that had come to him as an insight and which I will now summarize in words that we have gained in spiritual science. What Jesus of Nazareth said to his stepmother or foster mother will only be said in accordance with its actual meaning, but I will choose the words so that you can understand them more easily than if I were to speak directly in German the words that came to me from the pictures in the Akasha Chronicle. Jesus of Nazareth spoke to his stepmother or foster mother, as in all his pain he had come to understand the secret of the evolution of humanity, how humanity had developed. And so he said to her: I have recognized that humanity once went through an ancient epoch in which, unconsciously, it received the highest wisdom in the freshness of childhood. With these words, he hinted at what we refer to in spiritual science as the first post-Atlantic cultural epoch, when the holy rishis of the ancient Indian people were able to impart their great and powerful wisdom to humanity. But these teachings were seen by Jesus of Nazareth in such a way that he could say to himself: How were these teachings received by the holy rishis? What forces were active in the souls of the rishis and in the entire ancient Indian people? They were forces that otherwise only prevail in childhood, between birth and the seventh year, but which then died away for the individual human being, but were poured out over the entire human age. Because the childhood forces were spread over the entire human age, these ancient, sacred, divine truths flowed down into the human mind, inspiring and intuiting. But with the passing of this first epoch of humanity in the post-Atlantean era, which we call the ancient Indian cultural epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth compared to the first childhood to his mother, the possibility of preserving the forces of childhood until later in life also passed. They faded away and therefore humanity was no longer able to absorb and preserve within itself that which had once been revealed to it. Jesus of Nazareth further spoke of the fact that an epoch then followed which can be compared to the human age from seven to fourteen years, but where the forces that are otherwise only present from seven to fourteen years of age were poured out over the whole of human life, so that people still experienced them as old men. Because this was the case, and because these forces could still be present at later ages, it was possible in this second, the primeval Persian epoch, to attain the wisdom that we recognize as the wisdom of Zarathustra, which Jesus of Nazareth now saw rejected by humanity due to a lack of understanding. In the third epoch, which Jesus of Nazareth could look back on and spoke of to his mother, what is otherwise experienced between the fourteenth and twenty-first year was poured out over all generations, so that even at fifty or sixty years of age people still had the powers that otherwise only last until the age of twenty-one. Thus accessible for this third epoch were those great sciences of the workings of nature that we so admire when we penetrate into Egyptian, into the ancient Chaldean science, into the true foundations of their astrological knowledge, that deep knowledge that deals not only with the earth, but with the secrets of the world in their effect on people, and of which later humanity could understand only a little. But the third age also saw Jesus of Nazareth fading away. Just as the individual human being grows old, he said, so has humanity grown older.

The greatest impulses for Greek culture came from the mystery wisdom, which caused a high point of philosophical thought and art in it, but also brought about the transition to the fourth cultural period in which we ourselves live, which already appeals to the independence of the human being and creates new social structures that break with the dependency on the old mystery being. The decline of the old mysteries begins with the rise of the new state system and its rivalries among itself; but its rapid intellectual ascent is also connected with this. The forces that can only grasp the slightest when they are poured out over the entire human lifespan are now there. We live within a humanity that can only grasp with the powers that are inherent to humanity between the ages of twenty-one and twenty-eight. But when this cultural period has faded away, humanity will have reached its middle age; a certain peak will have been reached that cannot be maintained. The descent must begin, albeit slowly at first. Humanity is entering an age in which the forces are dying, in a similar way to the age that the individual reaches in his thirties, from which the descent begins. The descent of all mankind begins with the next age, so said Jesus of Nazareth, as all the pain of this future decline of mankind passed through his soul. Humanity itself, he said, is entering the age when the original forces have died. But while for the individual, as it were, the forces of youth can still continue to work, this cannot be the case for humanity as a whole. It must enter an invincible age of old age if no new forces come into it. He foresaw the desolation of earthly culture if no young forces came into it. The natural forces have dried up as humanity enters the age that, for the individual, runs from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five. If no other sources then open up, humanity will grow old.

Summarizing this, Jesus of Nazareth said to his mother: “What will become of all mankind if it is subject to the fate of the individual?” Faced with the force of this question, Jesus and his stepmother felt the need for a new spiritual impulse. Something had to come that could only come from outside, that was not in humanity itself, because after this middle age something new in inner human powers, not connected with the sense world, could no longer unfold freely in man. Something had to be expected from outside, which otherwise grows from within in the time between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth year of life. And with an enormous force, which cannot be compared to anything, the soul of Jesus of Nazareth was wrung from the pain that there was nothing in the environment that could pour the forces of renewal into decaying humanity.

That was how the conversation went, and with each word something flowed from one's own self into the stepmother or foster mother. The words had wings and in them it was expressed that they were not just words, but that something was wringing itself out of the corporeality of Jesus of Nazareth, which was precisely like his self, which had become one with his pain and his love-power. In that moment, as his self was wringing itself free, it shone in him for a moment what this self truly was: the consciousness of one's own ego as that of Zarathustra. He felt himself to be Zarathustra's ego, shining for a moment as if shining. But it seemed to him as if this ego went out of him and left him alone again, so that he was again the one, only greater, grown, who he had been in his twelfth year of life.

A tremendous change had also taken place in his mother. If one researches in the Akasha Chronicle to find out what was happening there, one comes to the conclusion that soon after Jesus of the Nathanic line had reached the twelfth year and the Zarathustra ego had become indwelling in him, the soul of his physical mother had ascended into the spiritual regions. Now she descended again as a soul and inspired his stepmother, who was thereby rejuvenated. Thus the stepmother or foster mother, who was the biological mother of the Solomonic boy Jesus, was now spiritualized by the soul of his own mother. So now the soul of the physical mother of the Nathanian Jesus child also walked again on earth in a physical body, in the body of the mother of the Solomonian Jesus child. But he himself was as if alone with his three bodies, but most highly spiritualized by all his experiences, alone with his physical, etheric and astral bodies; the self, however, had gone away. For in this physical, etheric and astral body dwelt all that came from the ego of Zarathustra. Although the Zarathustra ego had withdrawn, all its impressions had remained. This had the effect that in this remarkable personality, which Jesus of Nazareth now was, after the ego of Zarathustra had departed from him, something very special was. And what was in it, that presented itself to me, when I could see the further progress in this Fifth Gospel, as I describe it.

After the conversation with his mother, something stirred in Jesus of Nazareth, from whom the ego of Zarathustra had gone. It seemed like a mighty cosmic urge that pushed what was now there to the banks of the Jordan, to John the Baptist. On the way there, this strange being met—for that is what Jesus of Nazareth was now, a being who wore the highest humanity, as it is otherwise only compatible with fully developed four human limbs, only in three human covers across the ground, a being who felt inwardly different than a human being, but who had the human form on the outside. After the conversation with his mother, when he had felt the urge within himself to go to the Jordan to John the Baptist, he encountered this being, two Essenes, two of those Essenes who knew Jesus well. Of course, they found what was said in his features strange; but they still recognized him by his outward appearance, which had not changed and which was clearly recognizable. But they found him strange. The change that had taken place in him had given his eyes a very special expression. Something spoke from these eyes, like an inner light that shone gently, like the light embodied, not earthly, but heavenly, love of man. The two Essenes saw him as an old acquaintance. They felt that they could not escape the tremendously mild, infinitely mild gaze of Jesus, as he now was. But then again, when they looked into those eyes, they also felt something like a reproach that did not come from him, that was something like a force that welled up in their own soul, radiated into his eyes and back, like a mild moonlight, but like a tremendous reproach about their own being, about what they were.

Only with such words can I describe what can be seen by looking into the Akasha Chronicle, what these Essenes saw in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, which they felt through his body, that is, through his physical, etheric and astral body, which they saw looking at them, which they heard. His presence was hard for them to bear; for it was an expression of infinite love, but at the same time it was something of a reproach to them. They found his presence deeply attractive, but at the same time they felt the urge to get away from it. But one of them pulled himself together, since they both knew him from the many conversations they had had with him, and asked him: “Where are you going, Jesus of Nazareth?” — I could translate the words that Jesus then spoke into words of the English language something like this: “To where souls of your kind do not want to look, where the pain of humanity can find the rays of the forgotten light!” They did not understand his speech and realized that he did not recognize them, that he did not know who they were. From the strange way he looked at them, which was not at all like the way he looked at people he knew, from his whole behavior and from the way he spoke the words, they realized that he did not recognize them. And then one of the Essenes pulled himself together again and said: “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you recognize us?” And this one answered with something that I can only express in the following words in German: “What kind of souls are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive covers? Why does a fire burn inside of you that is not kindled in my Father's house?” They did not know what was happening to them, did not know what was wrong with him. Once again, one of the two Essenes pulled himself together and asked, “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?” Jesus replied, “You are like lost lambs; but I was the shepherd's son, whom you fled. If you recognize me, you will soon flee again. It has been so long since you fled from me into the world. — And they did not know what to think of him. Then he spoke further: You have the tempter's mark on you! He has made your wool glisten with his fire. The hairs of this wool pierce my gaze! — And they felt that these words of his were something like the echo of their own being from his being. And then spoke Jesus further: The tempter met you after your escape. He has saturated your souls with pride! Then one of the Essenes took courage, for he felt something familiar, and spoke: Did we not expel the tempter? He has no more part in us. Then spoke Jesus of Nazareth: You did indeed expel him; but he went to the other people and came over them. So he is not around you, he is in the other people! You see him everywhere. Do you believe that you have elevated yourselves by expelling him from your gates? You have remained as high as you were. You seem to have become high because you have humiliated the others. By belittling the others, you have seemingly come up.

Then the Essenes were frightened. At that moment, however, when infinite fear came over them, it seemed to them as if Jesus of Nazareth had dissolved into a fog and disappeared before their eyes. But then their eyes were transfixed by this vanishing being of Jesus of Nazareth and they could not avert their gaze from where it was directed. Then, as if in cosmic distance, their gaze fell on a huge apparition that looked like the face of Jesus of Nazareth, enlarged to an excessive size, which they had just seen. What had spoken to them from his features now spoke with gigantic size from these enlarged features, which captivated them. They could not avert their gaze from the apparition, whose gaze was fixed on them as if from far away. As a result, something like a reproach settled in their souls, which seemed to them to be deserved on the one hand, but unbearable on the other. As if transformed into a mirage in the distant sky, the Jesus appeared to these two Essenes, enlarged to gigantic proportions, and the circumstances that lay in the words also appeared to be magnified to gigantic proportions. Out of this vision, out of this countenance, there sounded the words which can be rendered in the German language in something like the following way: “Vain is your striving, because empty is your heart, you who have filled yourselves with the spirit, which deceptively shelters pride in the garment of humility.

These were the words spoken by the being to the Essenes he encountered, after the ego of Zarathustra had detached itself from the physical shell of Jesus, who in turn had become only what he had been in his twelfth year, but now imbued with all that the ego of Zarathustra and all the experiences of which I have told you could sink into this peculiar body, which had already announced its uniqueness by being able to speak wonderful words of wisdom in a language only the mother's heart could understand.

That is what I wanted to give you today in a simple story that first takes us to the path that Jesus of Nazareth took after his conversation with his mother to John the Baptist at the Jordan. The day after tomorrow, we will continue the story and try to build a bridge to what we have tried to grasp as the meaning of the mystery of Golgotha.

My dear Friends, This evening, when to my deep satisfaction I can be with you again after long absence, let our first thoughts be once more directed to the fields where the great events of our time are taking place, where so many of our dear brothers in humanity have to enter with their own life and soul for what the tasks of this time are requiring of them:

Spirits ever watchful, Guardians of their souls!
May your vibrations waft
To the Earth-men committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who in consequence of these events have already passed thro' the gate of death:

Spirits ever watchful, Guardians of their souls!
May your vibrations waft
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And that Spirit whom we are seeking thro' the deepening of Spiritual Science—the Spirit with whom we desire to unite, who descended on to the Earth and passed thro' earthly Death for the salvation of mankind, for the healing, progress and freedom of the Earth—may He be at your side in all your difficult duties.

N.B.—These Meditations were repeated at the beginning of each Lecture of this Course.

After a long absence I am able to be again in your midst, and I should like especially to devote the three lectures of this week to directing our gaze to a knowledge of the spiritual world, which stands more or less in close connection with those significant and deeply incisive events of our time which touch us so deeply. Our attention should not be turned immediately to the events themselves, but to what perhaps in everyone, in the feeling of us all, is connected with these events, like riddles, like uneasy questions concerning the destiny of man and the Cosmos. Our attention must be turned to this: to that wider destiny of the human soul, to which it is subject in that region of Cosmic existence to which the gaze of Spiritual Science is also directed, and which is not limited to earthly material existence. We are very much tempted at this time to knock at the door through which the human being passes when he forsakes this earthly body. We are urged towards that to which the human being can look up when he needs higher consolation, a deeper source of strength than can be obtained from material life. In how many ways does the voice of the spiritual world cry in these times to our hearts, even to those who do not wish to penetrate into the spiritual world, but whose hearts are nevertheless the windows into the spiritual world. How clearly and in how manifold a way does the spiritual world knock at these windows in our days. It is therefore fitting that we should once again bring together, from a special point of view, many things which we are able to know concerning this spiritual world.

One thing must be admitted by anyone who transcends the narrow prejudices of materialism (those prejudices which altogether deny the existence of a spiritual world). The view of those who do not deny the existence of a spiritual world but merely maintain that man can learn nothing of it by human means, goes somewhat further. If one does not stand at the standpoint of the absolute materialist, but has been so ripened by life as to admit at least the existence of a spiritual world—and this stage may soon be reached—even if such an one denied the possibility of knowing anything of it, he is not far from the thought that the knowledge which can be assimilated and the results which can be acquired through the ordinary material world, must indeed be trivial compared with that which spreads out as a wider kingdom in the spiritual world lying behind the physical-sensible. Certainly there are in our days narrow-minded materialistic souls who would enclose the entire human being in such narrow limits that man would have to be regarded as little higher than the animal, and belonging entirely to the animal-evolution. Certainly, there are such men. But they will become ever fewer; and, as we have often seen even Natural Science does not now admit these prejudices. And if one only begins by admitting that in the human being there is something which transcends external nature, very soon knowledge will arise of how trivial and limited is that which the physical-sensible world embraces, when compared with the greatness and might of the whole universe. And if we then study man himself, and become conscious of that which lives and can live in him, we cannot do otherwise than say: “No matter how far the spiritual world may extend, however great its kingdom, man is a kind of microcosm in himself.” However much a man may hold it as unproven; yet, he in his being, extends to the whole kingdom of the spiritual world. Although to sense-perception, those depths of the soul into which the deeper parts of the spiritual world extend may be concealed, they do extend into the human being. Man does not only consist of physical body, of a combination of external physical forces and substances, he is also a product of the entire Cosmos, a veritable microcosm. And much that we have striven and sought after, was intended to show, in detail, how far man is a product of the spiritual world, and how far in him are really to be sought, not only the forces of this earth, but we might also say those of all the heavens. If this thought is once grasped, it will be clear that by means of ordinary knowledge, we can really know but very little of man. Through ordinary science we know certain things concerning the laws of nature—which knowledge we acquire between birth and death. But even a very little penetration into spiritual science—not enough to be termed knowledge but enough to throw light upon life's riddles—will make us realise that, if we are to understand the human being, we must apply ourselves to something very different from the little external science that we can acquire between birth and death through the external means of the body, through the external senses and the understanding bound to the brain.

Now, let us unite this thought with another, with the thought which goes as a main thread through all our considerations: the thought of repeated earth-lives. That which probably most astonishes those who have busied themselves a little with our views, is this thought of repeated earth-lives, and that the time which we pass here between birth and death is relatively so short, compared with the time which we pass in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. From many different points of view we have stated that as a rule the time which man has to pass between death and rebirth is much, much longer than the relatively short time between birth and death here in physical life. There is a connection between the two thoughts which I have just expressed: that the little which we here acquire between birth and death, in the way of knowledge and fruits of life, stands to the spiritual wealth of the cosmos with which man is connected, in about the same ratio as the short time between birth and death stands to the longer time between death and rebirth. For in reality, it will occur to you from the many considerations which we have developed, that it is the task of the human soul between death and rebirth to assimilate quite other knowledge and forces from those we acquire here in our physical life.

Really, one can say, my dear friends, that when we enter physical earth-life, when we descend from the spiritual world and incarnate in the body given us by our ancestors through heredity, it is then our duty to have ready all the forces and all the fine ramifications of those forces which we require for the purpose of organising this body of ours. You know that our body, as we receive it, is born of our parents. But with this body our psychic-spiritual being unites, and this being has previously passed a long time in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Could one see—if one were for a moment justified in making the hypothesis—what this external human being can become merely through the forces of heredity, through the forces peculiar to the substance bestowed on us by our parents, we should see that with these forces alone man cannot become what he is. Through these forces which represent our external physical existence, and into these substances and groups or organs, we must pour that which we as souls bring, into the form which we receive from our parents; and out of the abstract soul-substance we form the individual person we are.

As I have said: it is a foolish hypothesis, but we may make use of it, to make things clear: let us think for once what might have arisen if you all were merely born of your parents. Let us leave Karma out of consideration, and leave out of account the fact that we are, of course, born into definite families; and let us only regard physical heredity. Then you would all be alike as human beings. You would only have the general human physical character. That you are quite definite individuals, that so many individual beings sit here before us, rests on the fact that the general human form, even in its finest principles, is fashioned by the spiritual individuality which descends from the spiritual world and enters into that which is given by father and mother.

To that end, just as we must have fingers to grip an object in the physical world, just as we must perceive an object in order to grasp it—even as we must have the necessary organs and also must have learnt to grasp a thing—so must we have learnt to attach ourselves to all the different organs which form our body physically. We have all got ears, but we each hear in our own way. We all have eyes, but we see individually. For the external organs this is least perceptible; in the inner behaviour of man it is more striking. Thus we must insert our psychic-spiritual essence into all these quite general organs, and fashion them individually. We must learn to know the forces, the inner psychic-spiritual formations, so that what we receive through inheritance as ears, nose, eyes, brain, etc., we can fashion individually. That means that when at birth we enter the physical world we must have knowledge, and not only knowledge but practical possibilities of using it. This wonderful structure of man, how little do we really know of it through external science? We must inwardly learn the whole subtle structure of the brain, because we have to organise it inwardly. And all these spiritual-psychic processes, everything which makes it at all possible for us to be men in a human body between birth and death, all this we have to acquire for ourselves. Just as we have to acquire abilities for ourselves in life, so we must also acquire between death and rebirth the power of being men in physical life. We must keep this in view. It must be quite clear to us, and then we shall be able to form an idea of what we do not know of man through mere physical knowledge, but which we must realise through that other knowledge which we have to assimilate in a practical form between death and rebirth. But we know that what we shall assimilate between death and rebirth is built on to all that we have assimilated in earlier earth-lives. And so, just as in a certain sense our physical life here is regulated between birth and death, so too is our life between death and rebirth regulated. We enter physical life as one might say, half sleeping, dreaming, as small children. We cannot at once develop memory, this development we have first to learn. If, however, we examine things more closely, we find that during the time before we develop memory, certain relations to the outer world are acquired. The child first gropes and then learns to grasp. Thus certain things are acquired systematically. The child learns much during this time, much more than is usually supposed. Then again each single epoch of life so runs its course that the later epochs are based on the earlier ones. Not only is the structural formation of man built up here between birth and death—but his life also. And his life between death and rebirth is similarly ruled and regulated. In this respect—to become aware how regulated this life of ours is—we need only bring to mind one thing that we have long known.

We have often emphasised the fact that for our soul-life here in physical existence we need a conception of our Ego, which once acquired—in the second, third and fourth year of life, that time to which we can go back in memory—should never leave us. In a man with whom to a certain extent this Ego-thread is broken, a disturbance of the soul's equilibrium takes place. There are such people, as I have often mentioned, but they are really suffering from a severe psychic illness. It may happen that a man is suddenly torn away from the connection with his Ego. He does not remember his earlier life. He may, for instance, go to the station, and buy a ticket for some place or another. His reason functions quite normally. At the intervening stations he does everything necessary, in quite a reasonable way. But he does not remember anything that previously took place. His inner life only extends to the point when he resolved to buy a ticket and make the journey. He travels all over the world with his mind and reason quite in order. Then comes a moment when he knows: he is he. Till then, his soul-life was extinguished as regards memory. The understanding may be in order, although the memory is extinguished. The Ego is wrenched away and the man suffers from a severe psychic illness. I myself had an acquaintance who while occupying a relatively high post was suddenly seized by such an illness. He suddenly had the impulse to travel, after having forgotten everything about himself and who he was. He traveled, as one might say, blindly through the world from one place to the other, and found himself again in his native city, in an asylum for the homeless. Then it suddenly came back to him who he was. The interval was passed quite rationally, but was not connected with the rest of his life. The illness befell him a second time—but this time he committed suicide while still in that state of consciousness in which the memory was dissociated from the Ego.

Now, you see, just as in the life between birth and death the Ego must be a continuous thread, which may not at any time during daily life lose the possibility of remembering what has happened since that point in childhood to which one can go back, so must it be also in the life between death and rebirth. There, too, we must always have the possibility of preserving our Ego. Now this possibility is given us, and it is given us through the fact that the first days after death are passed in the manner we have often described. Immediately after death a man has before him, as in a mighty picture, the life which has just run its course. For several days he goes back over his whole past life, but always so that the whole life is there before him. It lies before him as in a great panorama. Now, of course, if observed more closely, it turns out that these days in their review of the past life, are as it were endowed with a certain power of observation. In a sense we regard the life during these days from the standpoint of the Ego. We see in particular everything in which our Ego was interested. We see the relations which we have with a person, but we see them in a connection with the results we ourselves obtained from them. Thus we do not regard things quite objectively, but see all that has borne fruit for ourselves. Man sees himself everywhere as the centre. And that is extremely necessary. For from these days when he thus sees everything which has been fruitful for him, arises that inner strength and force which he needs in the whole of his life between death and rebirth, in order there to be able firmly to retain the thought of the Ego. For we owe the power of being able to retain the Ego between death and rebirth to this vision of the last life; the power to do so really proceeds from this. And I must again specially emphasise this, even if I have said it before—the moment of death is of extraordinary significance. Death is something which most distinctly has two totally different aspects. Regarded here from the physical world it certainly has many sad aspects, many painful sides. But we really only see death here from the one side; after our death we see it from the other. It is then the most satisfying and most perfect occurrence that we can possibly experience, for there it is a living fact. Whereas here death is a proof of how frail and transitory the physical life of man is—when seen from the spiritual world it is actually a proof that the spirit continually wins the victory over everything non-spiritual, that the spirit is ever the life, the eternal, ever-unconquerable life.

Death is precisely the proof that in reality there is no death, that Death is a Maya, an illusion. Herein lies the great difference between the life from death to rebirth and our life here from birth to death. For as you know, no man can with ordinary physical means of cognition remember his own birth. No one can prove his own birth by personal experience, for he has not seen it himself. One's birth is something which cannot be seen by the human eye here in physical life. It lies before the time which we can remember. Birth is never included in our recollection. Death, however—and it is thereby distinguished from birth as regards its significance after death—death stands before our spiritual vision as the greatest, most significant, living and perfect event in our life between death and rebirth. For death is precisely the means by which we retain our Ego-consciousness after death. And just as little as it is possible in physical life to remember our birth, is it necessary and self-evident in the life between death and rebirth, that the great moment, when the spirit separates from the body should, during the whole time we pass in the spiritual world, always stand before our psychic-spiritual gaze. For from this death flows to us, in connection with what we have experienced here, the force we need to feel ourselves as ‘I.’ We might say: “If we were unable to die we could never experience a spiritual Ego. For we owe the possibility of experiencing a spiritual Ego to the fact that we can die physically.” Thus lie the facts for our Ego. The Ego is strengthened and invigorated through our experiencing those first days after death, in which we are still within our etheric body. Then the etheric body is laid aside and we experience—retrospectively—the preceding life; this we call the passage of the human soul through the soul-world; a life lasting longer than that shorter life which lasts only a few days, and which immediately follows physical death. Now, the opinion is very prevalent that a person who can look into the spiritual world immediately beholds everything. I have often corrected this. Nothing produces such humility as true insight into the spiritual world. For one may look for a very long time, and the investigation of the single facts of the spiritual world is really a long, long labour, and is accomplished by means of forces of the spiritual world. It is mere prejudice to believe that anyone who looks into the spiritual world can immediately give information about everything. Just as here in the physical world things are investigated gradually, in the course of time, so is it in the spiritual life; things have to be investigated little by little. And now I should like to touch on a point which must appear important to some of those here present: that is, the absolute agreement of the different spiritual facts as they gradually come to light, as they continually arise in new forms. Even to those who do not yet see into the spiritual world, this may be a proof of the truth of that for which a true and genuine investigation is striving. In my Occult Science I have given, from different standpoints, a definite time to the periods of the life between death and rebirth. I should now like to bring forward yet another standpoint which I did not quote in my Occult Science for a simple reason, which I will not conceal from you, so that you may see that Spiritual Science is striven for here in an honourable and upright manner: for the simple reason that at that time I did not yet know these facts myself, but was only able to discover them later. There is a certain connection between the spiritual life which can be developed here on the physical plane, and the spiritual life between death and rebirth. You already know that we pass our physical life here in waking and sleeping. On the one hand we have a full consciousness in the waking state, and then for the normal man an unconscious condition sets in, in the time between sleeping and waking.

Now you know also from what has been set forth in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment that this sleep-life may be lit up by consciousness, that it is possible to look into that which happens between falling asleep and waking up. If we can attain to this, and learn more and more of the life which man passes here in sleep, we really learn to know an amazing kingdom of Life. In this unconscious condition between falling asleep and waking up a vast and amazing kingdom of human life flows by unperceived by the normal human existence. A great deal goes on then. And that which very soon strikes us, in this sleep-life, is that it is much more active than the life between waking and sleeping. During sleep we are within our Ego and astral body, and have as it were, our physical body and etheric body outside us. Now, even this external life is an active one, with many people a very active life indeed. It appears so active to us because we do not take all the inactivities which exist in this outer life much into consideration. Really, if everything in this external life had to proceed from our own initiative, we should be greatly astonished how differently everything would take place.

Just consider—you get up every morning, you hardly form the resolution to get up, you do it from habit; and you do not really come to a closer knowledge of what it signifies to be so connected with the whole Cosmic-ordering, that you pass your life at definite times in one or other of these two conditions of waking and sleeping, and have to regulate your life accordingly. How many people think of this? It all goes on as a matter of course. And now try for once, to consider how much goes on in this way, so that in a sense, we go through life like automata. You will then come to recognise that there is a great deal more inactivity in the life between waking and falling asleep, but great activity in the life between sleeping and waking. There a complete and tremendous activity takes place. It is an interesting fact that people who are relatively indolent in external life between waking and sleeping are just the busiest between sleeping and waking. Man is then extremely active, only he knows nothing of this in ordinary life. If we examine more closely into that which drives the soul, that is, the Ego and astral body, we find that this activity is really intimately connected with the whole existence of man, though in our journey through life we consciously take but very little of it with us. We do not work upon all our life as it approaches us externally. I should like to give an apt instance of this. Just consider, you are now hearing this lecture, which lasts perhaps one hour. Really, without wishing to offend any of the dear friends sitting here, I may say: it would be possible to hear infinitely more in the words of this lecture than the different friends sitting here, are hearing. Indeed, it would be possible to gather much more from all I am saying, than I know myself. But what I mean is this—and I am only saying this in illustration of the above—you will go home presently, go to bed and sleep, and wake up tomorrow morning. And in the time between your sleeping and waking—quite unconsciously, of course, as regards the normal consciousness—you will work upon much of what you are now in a position to hear. You will work upon it a great deal in your next sleep and perhaps also during the following nights. One sees souls labouring between sleeping and waking in quite a different fashion at what they have absorbed. And even if it occurred that someone had listened very inattentively, and had merely been somewhat receptive, yet through that receptivity he would draw into his soul the spiritual powers and impulse in the lecture. And that would be worked upon during sleep, and transformed into what we require not only for the rest of life up till death, but beyond death. Thus we work over our whole life as it transpires by day between our waking and sleeping. Everything we experience by day we work upon during the night. Thus as it were, we learn lessons which we need for all the rest of our life here, and beyond death into the next incarnation. When we are asleep, we are our own prophetic transmuters of our life. This sleep-life is full of tremendously deep riddles, for it is much more deeply connected with what we experience, than is the external consciousness, and we work at it all from the standpoint of its fruitfulness for the following life. What we can make of ourselves through what we have experienced, is the object of our labour in the time between sleeping and waking. Whether we become stronger and more powerful in our soul, or perhaps have to reproach ourselves, we labour at all our experiences so that they become life-fruit. You see from this, that the life between sleeping and waking is really enormously significant, and that it goes deeply into the whole riddle of man.

Now, perhaps one day the spiritual investigator forms the intention—we may even say the purpose—of comparing this life of sleep with another, a super-sensible life, and he decides to compare it with those days which take their course during the life of Kamaloka. And note here, though this can only be seen by clairvoyance, that whereas here in life we can recollect all that we have experienced in our day-life, after death—after the time of the life-tableau is past—we obtain a memory of all our nights. This is an important secret which is revealed to us. We remember all our night-life. This review so presents itself that we really live backwards starting from the last night passed here in life, passing to the preceding one, and so on. In this way we experience the whole life again backwards, but as seen from the night-aspect. One experiences again in this retrospective recollection, what one has unconsciously thought and investigated. One really goes back through one's life, but not from the day-aspect. How long does that last approximately? Now remember that we sleep away about one-third of our life. As you know, there are people who naturally sleep much more. But on an average we sleep away a third of our life. Therefore this retrospect also lasts about one-third of our earth-life, because we experience the nights. Just think how wonderfully that agrees with the other points of view which have been elucidated. We have always said that the life in Kamaloka lasts about one-third of one's life. And when we take the above into consideration, we again see that it must be a third. Thus do these things harmonise. The details always fit in. That is the wonderful thing in spiritual investigation—one learns to know a fact, and when that is settled, one presently learns it again from another aspect.

It is always like the case of a man who climbs a hill from which he sees something first from one side and then from another side, yet the essential points are always the same. So that one can say: Here in earth-life between birth and death our life is so experienced that it is always torn away from us, it is always broken off by the night-life; and we only remember the day-life, the things we have experienced by day. But in the night-life we do more than remember them; we work upon them and transform them, as stated above. And what we cannot remember now, we remember during the Kamaloka life. That is an important connection, and from this you will grasp many things which perhaps could not be understood otherwise. Just consider, especially in our present time, how many relatively young men pass through the gates of death. I have already stated from many points of view the significance this has for the collective life of humanity. But let us first look at the two divisions which we have just characterised. (We will come on to other things in the course of these lectures.) Let us first consider the life in the etheric body which lasts only a few days, during which a man has his life tableau before him, and then we shall consider the life of the soul in the soul-world. In going through the previous life from the night-side we shall easily be able to see why the spiritual investigator must say that even these two periods of life between death and rebirth are different for a man who has gone relatively early through the gates of death; one who dies at a later age has different experiences. This concerns us very closely because so many now are dying at a relatively early age. You see it is really the case that the separate sections which I have distinguished are of great significance for our life here in the physical world. I have given these divisions of life thus: the first extends to the seventh year, to the change in dentition; the next to the fourteenth year, the time of puberty; another extends to the twenty-first year and so on; in periods of seven years. And if you earnestly consider what lies in these phases of life you will see that the thirty-fifth year becomes an important epoch. Till then we are, as it were, in a state of preparation, whereas later we have ended the preparatory stage and built up our life on the basis of what has been prepared up to the thirty-fifth year. This thirty-fifth year of life is of very great significance. Till then, not merely the bodily growth continues, but also the growth of the soul; for the soul of a man really grows.

Now, it must decidedly be emphasised that much of the ripened condition of life can only be attained after the thirty-fifth year. And if we consider this thirty-fifth year of life from another point of view, it will appear still more significant to us. You see, if we place these seven-year epochs of life before the soul, we first have the building up of the physical body to the age of seven, and the building up of the etheric body to the age of fourteen. From the fourteenth to the twenty-first year there is fashioned and organised what we call the astral body; then the sentient soul to the age of twenty-eight, the rational or intellectual soul to the age of thirty-five, and the self-conscious or spiritual soul to the age of forty-two. And then we come to spirit-self, which is a kind of evolving back again to the astral body, and so on. The further epochs of life do not progress in periods of seven years, but irregularly, for they will only evolve to regularity in the future. Thus, unless thwarted by the errors of education, a certain regularity is followed up to the thirty-fifth year. Now, we may be especially struck by the deeper significance of the entire development of life, when we observe people who die at these different epochs of life. Suppose—merely as an instance—that we follow the soul of an eleven, twelve, or thirteen-year old boy or girl, who goes through the gate of death at that early age. In accordance with what I have already described, it follows in such a case that the etheric body—which would theoretically have been able to care for the full life of the child—has these unused forces still within it. In general it happens, that man during the whole life between birth and death really prepares himself for death: he really makes himself ready for death. In reality our whole life is a preparation for death, in so far that we continually labour at the destruction of the body. If we could not destroy it we could never attain to perfection. For we purchase the perfection, as it were, with the destruction of the outer physical body. Now, when a boy of thirteen goes through the gate of death, he does not accomplish the long work of destruction, which he might have been able to do. He does not fulfil everything he might have done. This expresses itself in a noteworthy manner. If we follow such a soul, we find it in the spiritual world, after a certain time, a relatively short time, between death and rebirth, in what I might call a most noteworthy society. We find it among those souls who are so preparing themselves for their next life that they will soon have again to descend to the earth. These are the souls who will soon incarnate. Among these then, live such souls as pass through the gate of death at the age of eleven, twelve, or thirteen. They are placed among them. And if we look more closely into these connections it turns out, strange to say, that these souls who are soon to enter their earth-life, require that which these other souls can bring up to them from the earth to give them the strength they on their part require to enter a physical body. Thus the souls of the young form a strong help to those others who must soon descend to the earth. Young children who are quite normal, who have no prominent spiritual life, but are merely intelligent, are normally able to give certain assistance, which can no longer be given by one who dies in later years. He, too, has his task, each one must accommodate himself to his own Karma, and we should not on this account wish to die at this or that age, for we all die at the age permitted by our Karma. Thus the help a soul can offer to the souls awaiting incarnation cannot be given by one who dies in later years. That rests in the fact that during the first half of life a soul stands nearer to the entire spiritual world, in one sense, than in the second half of life. Yet in another sense this is not the case. But in a certain sense we do stand nearer to the spiritual world in the first half of our life. In fact the whole life so runs its course that the longer we live in the physical body the further we are from the spiritual world. A child of one year still stands very close to the spiritual world. When it forsakes the physical plane it is soon in the spiritual world. This is the case up to the fourteenth year; till then a child so lives in the physical body that it can easily enter the world of souls who are seeking an early incarnation. This is connected with the fact that even in the tableau, one who dies very young has different experiences from those of one who dies in later life.

Thus the thirty-fifth year of life is an important boundary. If a man dies before the thirty-fifth year, he first experiences the life-tableau, and then goes backwards through the night-life. But during this entire experience of the spiritual world, he sees—as it were ‘through a glass darkly,’ as if he were seeing it through the life-pictures—that spiritual world which he forsook on being born. His perspective still extends to the spiritual world. But if he has passed this thirty-fifth year then it is quite different. He no longer beholds that wherein he himself was before birth. That is one of those things which particularly strikes one now, when so many die young. For this looking back at the spiritual world still retains a certain significance up to the thirty-fifth year. Of course after the fourteenth, fifteenth, or sixteenth year it is no longer such a direct vision, but even from then to the thirty-fifth year, if death occurs, it is as if the spiritual life was everywhere reflected in the retrospective life-picture. If one dies quite in infancy, there is naturally not much experience of life to go back over—one can almost immediately look into the spiritual world. If a child dies at the age of thirteen, he has a retrospective tableau, but immediately behind that lies the spiritual world. He can still see the spiritual world clearly. If death takes place later, the spiritual world is not perceived so distinctly, but it is contained in what one sees as one's own life. Up to the thirty-fifth year we are still connected with that spiritual world from which we descended. One who dies before the age of thirty-five, experiences even in the first period of the life in which he sees the life-picture, and then in the retrospective journey through the soul-world, that he really is in a kind of homeland which he forsook at birth. He has the direct feeling of coming back home into the world from which he descended. This is of tremendous importance. For each one who dies thus is, in one sense, as you see, immediately placed more easily into the spiritual world than one who dies later. Out of his post-mortem survey he carries far more spirituality into his next life between birth and death. And those young men who die in such numbers in our present age, will from this standpoint become important bearers of spiritual truths and spiritual knowledge when they descend to earth again in their next incarnation. Thus we see that the terrible suffering which is poured over the world is nevertheless necessary for the course of existence as a whole. For the blood which now flows will be the symbol of a certain refreshing of spiritual life at a particular time in the future, and this is necessary for the whole evolution of humanity. Then will the souls, who now go through the gate of death so early, descend again; but most of them will descend different from what they would have been had they reached the limits of life in material existence, and then died. It is Cosmic Wisdom which now calls away a number of souls, that they may be allowed to perceive even in their retrospective tableau and experiences, deep spiritual secrets connected with the earth. That, too, is Cosmic Wisdom, for these souls are thus filled with that which they will behold in stronger form when they come to see it again; they will have been strengthened by the shorter earth life which they have undergone. That is the true Wisdom of the Cosmos. And so we must say that much of what rightly gives us pain when we are only able to regard it from the standpoint of earthly existence, shows us its redeeming side when we observe it from the standpoint of spiritual vision. Thus it is with the whole of life. Certainly, my dear friends, earthly pain cannot be at present avoided through such a consideration. It must be experienced. For that is the very condition for its compensation. If we did not experience it in the physical world it could never be compensated. But although we must suffer many things in the physical world, there are nevertheless moments in which we can place ourselves at the standpoint of the spiritual. Then we shall recognise that much of that which must appear to us as painful from a lower point of view is a tribute which must be offered to the higher spiritual worlds and the wise beings therein, in order that the evolution of the whole Cosmos and of human existence may go forward not in a one sided manner, but in every direction. The expiation for much suffering must be achieved, and to this end the suffering itself must first be endured. Spiritual science cannot indeed spare us that, but it can teach us to lay it on the altar of existence, to seek the compensation, and to recognise the Wisdom of the Cosmos, in spite of all the pain which for higher ends it must cause. This is what spiritual science can give us as a precious unction for the whole human existence. Thus from this standpoint also and right from the feelings which spiritual science can arouse in us, let us regard the powerful events of our time, and say again that which we have often repeated here:—

From the fighters' courage,
From the blood of battles,
From the mourners' suffering,
From the people's sacrifice,
There will ripen fruits of Spirit
If with consciousness the soul
Turns her thought to Spirit Realms.

Spiritual science shall not only satisfy scientific curiosity. It shall give the human being an impulse for life or acting, for certainty and satisfaction in life. What spiritual science offers shall enable us to act and manage our tasks efficiently.

The child faces us like a living riddle. Prejudices in many fields of life can still be corrected, however, prejudices of child education have often detrimental effects and can no longer be corrected.

In the triality of man, woman and child the entire humanity appears. In the child many things are inheridited from man and woman. Hence, the question of heredity has impact here which also comprises the riddle of destiny to a certain degree. What has the child got from its ancestors? Concerning this consider Ibsen's dramas (Henrik I., 1829–1906, Norwegian dramatist). Everywhere in art the question of heredity arises, because one feels its significance and practical importance. However, we are not deceived by the prejudices which are suggested by the facts that one gains from the observation of lower animals. One of the biggest mistakes in this field is that we apply to the present human being automatically what observation and experiments with lower animals show or what we know about the history of our ancestors. Spiritual science acknowledges what science understands by heredity, but it ascends to higher facts that become obvious, actually, only from the aspects of the spiritual world. It exists an increase of lawfulness. Lawfulness prevails in the entire nature, in the bodily and in the spiritual. However, we have to ascend with our insights from lower principles to principles that apply to the higher regions. We have to accomplish this increase without fail.

Into what does heredity transform in higher regions? The solution of this question instills healthy respect of the becoming human being. It is a huge difference between the lower animals and the human being. The basic difference between the human being and other creatures is as follows: all that interests us in the animal is connected with the concept of species or genus. We do not notice the same respect of the individual with the animals as with the human being. The portrayal of a lion is the portrayal of the lion species. The species prevails. In contrast, the individuality prevails with the human being. That is why a biography of any human being is possible, even of the simplest. In this fact many things are concealed, above all, that the human being is a species, a genus in himself. In the human being, something lives that corresponds to an entire animal species.

The principle of soul re-embodiment or reincarnation results from this. We cannot understand the human individual from the ancestors. Perhaps, outer qualities can be led back, admittedly, to ancestors, but not that what belongs to the own being of a human individuality. Just as little, we can derive the individuality of any animal species from the qualities of its ancestors.

The cause of the origin of a living being must always arise from the living. Few centuries ago, one still believed in procreation, for example, that animals come into being from river mud. The human soul is not composed of all kinds of qualities, as little as a worm of certain inorganic substances, as one meant at that time. A soul always goes back to a soul; and the soul that lives in a human being today goes back to a former soul existence. It is a re-embodiment, but it is not a conglomerate of qualities of the fatherly or motherly side. Thus, the principle of reincarnation results inevitably. From this viewpoint, we want to look at man, at woman and child.

What as the deeper basis as the individuality of the child appears is that what as a soul fits into the physical nature, after it had lived on in another existence in the meantime. Man and woman have to give the child a cover only. Motherly love and fatherly love is degraded thereby by no means. The individuality of a human being exists for a long time before the copulation of the parents. A kind of unaware love leads the child to these certain parents and causes them to begetting. Then as a gift in return, both parents meet the child with their parental love.

Death and love are tied together with certain creatures. Some animals die after the copulation. Such beings point to the coherence of the living beings in the universe and to the fact of love. Love is for the human being something by which he dedicates his individual existence to the entire being. It is not that rhetorical thing of poetry, but a force pervading the entire nature. Love is the counter-image of egoism. In it, the individual goes beyond itself as it were. It is a real increase of life with more perfect beings.

The individual being is the human being. One can only understand the significance of individual and love completely considering the nature of the human being in the sense of spiritual science. According to it, the physical body is only a dress of the entire human existence. He has the etheric body in common with animals and plants. The astral body that also the animals have encloses the mental, from the lowest desire up to the highest moral ideas.

However, the human being owns the force of the ego only, hence, he may be regarded as a crown of creation. That personality felt the depth of the word “I” who spoke: the ego is, was and will be there. True knowledge of the ego is the highest form of knowledge. The ego-knowledge stands behind the “veiled picture at Sais.” “No mortal being has lifted my veils.” The true ego-knowledge is possible only to that human force which is immortal. Only the supersensible in the human being recognises the immortal. Hence, what is mortal in us does not lift the veil of the goddess. A German romantic said boldly, if no mortal lifts the veil of Isis, we must become just immortal.

Up to the second dentition of the child the physical body develops. Then the human being grows, admittedly, even further, but the figure becomes only taller, the form extends which he has received up to the seventh year. With it, we have an important regulator for education. Up to this time, one should develop the physical form of the child. If one does not do this, one has omitted something for the whole life of the human being concerned. In the second period up to puberty, the etheric body develops. In the time before, it was by no means idle. The etheric body is enclosed only in a kind of motherly sheath up to the second dentition. Only thenceforward, it gets free and can develop. The sexual maturity is a final point of the development of the etheric body, and from now on, the development of the astral body becomes free. Even later, the real education of the ego begins.

Another picture results from the hereditary process of the physical, another from that of the etheric body and again another from that of the astral body.

What the human being brings as inheritance of the ancestors lies in the physical and in the etheric body. Up to the sexual maturity, these inherited qualities become completely visible. Then, however, the development of the special individuality of the human being begins, and this expresses itself in love. Certain animal species die with the act of love because here their being stops and their individual existence is over. The higher the individuality of a being is, the more it takes along beyond the sexual maturity as something imperishable. In reality, there are transitions. Thus, the human being saves his inner life beyond the species only.

Perhaps, by a confrontation of a human being and a stone you get the understanding of it: in the crystal, the outer forces that have formed it conclude. They do no longer impress anything into the inside of the stone. With the plant, the essentials are not the increase of the form, but only a kind of recurrence of the form principle as Goethe explained it. What the human being himself acquired on former stages he shows as effect of his ego now. As the plant searches and receives its materials from the soil to build up its body, the young human being chooses his parents to build up his physical body.

Here the ideas of spiritual science immediately intervene in the will, in the feelings, in life. We must respect the right of the child in the deepest sense. Towards the next generation, the human being feels different if he sees the matters in this light.

Concerning that, the natural sciences say, from the male principle a number of qualities changes over to the germ, also from the female part, from the ovum. Both groups of qualities must blend in the embryo. The everlasting return of the same qualities is thereby avoided. This is the reason why the male and female gametes blend. This is the essential in nature.

Concerning the soul our natural sciences are the most superstitious that can be there. Schopenhauer had a flash of genius when he said, what strives for existence brings the human individualities of both sexes together in love. In the end, spiritual science teaches this too. The human being are brought together to procreate the future generations. If one considers every child that way, we have no right to force our peculiarity upon it. The right educator can promote the development of the child only as far as he has learnt this with himself. The child is the greatest teacher of the educator.

If the educator solves this riddle of the child thoroughly, he is the best educator. To him who penetrates such views with his soul they change into respect to the being of the child and arouse awe of what there grows and becomes. This attitude to duties extends to the entire growing generation. We adults are for the growing generation a sort of mother soil from which it develops. We have to give the child what it needs for life, but we are not allowed to form it in our own image under constraint, but we must leave it free in its development and respect it. It is a much more significant mission of the human beings to respect this nascent freedom than respecting that freedom of that which is there already. Spiritual science is a right educator of this respect. It shows the supersensible and the facts which spiritual beings create constructing the universe for ages and help the human beings with it. The knowledge of yesterday enables us to find adequate solutions also for the present. Our work in the present must respect the freedom of the developing supersensible. Freedom of the supersensible in the sensuous shall be our motto.

Thus, we help humanity to advance to a future that is salutary for us and means a divine condition. If the look is opened to the supersensible in the present, the past becomes explicable to us, and we can learn from it what helps and is advisable for the future

If Yesterday is clear and obvious to you,
You work freely and powerfully Today
You can also hope for a Tomorrow
That is not less happy.

From Goethe's Zahme Xenien (1820/1827)

If there is talk of the practical significance of the invisible, particularly of the invisible in the human being, I would like to illustrate by a comparison what I meant. Those people are practical who turn their look, their view to the supersensible view of existence, and those are impractical who stop at the only exterior, at the mere physical. Is anybody, actually, the true practitioner who has a horseshoe-shaped iron as a magnet before himself and uses this thing for anything that appears useful to him by all appearances? On the other hand, is such a person not impractical in the true sense of the word, and practical only someone who says to himself: in this piece of iron something rests that makes a lot of higher, nobler application possible to me than the mere inspection allows to suppose.—This is, of course, only a comparison, because we are not allowed to compare the higher forces about which we speak today with any natural force. However, practical is only someone who chooses the internal forces from the things and can use the things corresponding to their true values. Compared with those who can be led by a certain practical sense one could quote Fichte's word of the practical significance of ideals. Fichte (Johann Gottlieb F., 1762–1814) tried to explain the determination of the human being using high ideals.

In the introduction to his lectures on The Vocation of the Scholar (1794), he protests that none who speaks from such high idealistic viewpoints knows what can be objected to it, namely, that ideals cannot be shown directly in practical life. Perhaps, those who put up these ideals know this better than the opponents do. “We state only that reality has to be assessed and modified according to them by those who feel sufficient strength in themselves. Assumed, they could also not convince themselves, they lose very little, after they are once what they are; and, besides, humanity loses nothing. It becomes thereby only obvious that one does not count on them in the plan of the improvement of humanity. This will continue its way without any doubt; the benevolent nature may provide for them rain and sunshine, wholesome food and undisturbed circulation of humours at the proper time and—clever thoughts as well!” I want to point to this in particular. We briefly want to imagine the invisible members of the human nature. Spiritual science speaks of these invisible members of the human nature, but not as of anything that is there, as of an adjunct of the visible, but it speaks just of the spiritual as of the creative of the visible.

An almost obvious example is the following: everybody—also someone who cannot see into in the workshop of spiritual life—should imagine the senses of shame and anxiety repeatedly, so that he learns to believe that the supersensible is the reason of the sensuous. What are they? They are soul experiences undoubtedly to someone who does not think complicatedly. Anything, we must say, is there that threatens us; the soul feels threatened. This expresses itself as sensations of fear. Indeed, we could state various physical mediations. This would be easy, of course, and the modern researcher would hardly be able to state anything that the spiritual scientist would not know, too. Nevertheless, the matter is that the blood is forced back from the surface of the body to the centre.

We have a material process resulting from a soul process. The same is the case with the sense of shame. Again, we have a rearrangement of the blood, a change of the circulation caused by something spiritual. What one sees here in microcosm and what one can observe to a bigger extent, if because of a sad event tears are shed shows that the soul can cause bodily processes. Today, of course, there are people under the influence of our not evidently but latently materialistic way of thinking who also assert materialistic views here. I have also quoted the sentence of a certain worldview: one cries not because one is sad, but one is sad because one cries. This sentence came, actually, from somebody who thought idealistically, but one interpreted it wrong.

These are full-grown materialistic ways of thinking. Who has retained a piece of healthy thinking from the materialistic basis of our time sees in such evident connections between physical facts and spiritual-mental facts something that can make him gradually understand that spiritual science must say from its point of view: everything material has a spiritual origin.

Thus, something mental forms the basis of that which we see in the human being, what we can seize with hands with him. It is not the influence of the physical but just the primal ground of the physical. We call that a physical body in the human being, which he has in common with all beings surrounding him, which he has in common with the mineral world. The next, supersensible human member is the etheric body or life body. It prevents the physical body to being a corpse during the whole life, to following the principles of the physical only. Plants and animals also have such an etheric body, which one can deduce by thinking of someone who thinks philosophically only. It is real to the clairvoyant like the physical body.

A spiritual way of thinking defends itself with pleasure to understand the human body as a machine, however, does not need to defend itself if one is not a “carriage pusher of thinking from within.” One can absolutely say, the human body is a complex mechanism if one wants to include the physical and chemical in the mechanic. However, behind any machine, a builder and preserver must be, so also here, and this is the etheric body or life body, that is a loyal fighter against decay. Only at death, it separates from the physical body, and then the physical body follows as a corpse its physical laws. Then it is a corpse. The etheric body is something more certain than the mere physical body.

If we keep on studying the human being, we get to another member of his being, which every human being could already realise if he said to himself, I face a human being, a physical body, and an etheric body. Is there nothing else included in this human being than what one can see from without, what physiology et cetera disclose to us? Oh, there is something else: the sum of emotions, sensations, desires and wishes, pains and sufferings, impulses and passions.

All that represents the astral body. Now one could say, nevertheless, one cannot imagine that these things form a concluded reality. However, the spiritual scientist can perceive this clairvoyantly. There the astral body exists as the physical body exists. Nevertheless, the healthy human mind could also already say to itself that such a thing as an astral body must be there. Why could it say that to itself? I want to give you an example where, so to speak, with hands is to be seized how the astral body works, actually. There are people who say when the human being enters the physical world; he is not yet as developed as later. The external science can determine that, indeed, the senses and their organs exist in the brain that, however, the connections of the single senses in the brain develop relatively late. One can really study how the connecting nerve cords develop from the hearing to the facial sphere and make the human being the thinker finally. So—the materialist concludes—one sees how the internal parts develop bit by bit and then the world of sensations, images, sufferings, joys, complexes of thought et cetera flashes in the human being.—Imagine this development of the human brain. The complex lines of thought, which solve the world riddles, develop bit by bit. Are we then allowed to call that a mere mechanism which has developed, which builds itself up?

One can also admire a marvellous construction, as for example that of a clock. However, he would be a fool who wanted to believe that the clock has originated by itself. Who is able to do something, can develop only what he is able to do. Someone who had seconds, minutes, the principles of the clock in himself has joined it; one has thought ahead what we then reflect. Is there nothing that joins these connecting cords in the brain in such a way that you become a thinker finally? I mean, a healthy thinking would have to realise that for that which develops a master builder must exist who joins the cords, so that you can become a thinker. We are loyal only to ourselves and to our healthy human mind if we say, an astral body has to have constructed the physical brain. In the first weeks, months, years of the child, the astral body constructs the instrument only, which is able later to solve the world riddles. Who does not believe this, acts just as anybody who wants to use a machine, but denies that a constructor was there who has built it. The time will already come when again healthy judgments prevail in the human being, when they say to themselves that first the spiritual master builder must be there if anything should originate. This master builder has been already there before the human being is born.

The third human member is this astral body, that which forms the basis of the material again. The fourth human member is the ego, which makes the human being the crown of creation. The human being has the physical body in common with all minerals, the etheric body with all plants, and the astral body with the animals. He rises above the three physical realms by the ego. Therefore, all religions have probably directed their attention to the fact that there is only one name, which differs from all other. There is one thing that can be never called from the outside: this is in us as our core. No name can come from without that signifies us. Therefore, “I” was in the old Hebrew religion the inexpressible name that was inexpressible for all others.

These are the four lower members of the human nature from which only one is visible. The three others are real, are the primal grounds of the real. Any member is a basic being and cause for the next lower body; the ego-bearer for the astral body, the astral body for the etheric body, the etheric body for the physical body. Any experience of the ego imprints itself on the astral body. Here all experiences of the ego express themselves. Any momentary imagining, judging and feeling originate in the human being that way.

What lives in the astral body, expresses itself, imprints itself on the etheric or life body, and thereby it becomes permanent, not momentary, but keeps itself in a certain way. Let us assume that we pass momentary judgment; we make a mental picture about this or that. If we form a mental picture repeatedly, it becomes a habitual mental picture. Because it becomes a habitual image, it imprints itself in the etheric body. What lives in our memory, what we keep in mind from day to day, lives in our etheric body or life body. The fact that we play a piano piece once is in our astral body; the fact that we acquire the talent, the habit of playing is in the etheric body. All habits are in the etheric body or life body. If we pass moral judgment, it is again an action of the astral body. If a certain direction of judging imprints itself on us by repeated judgments, the moral judgment becomes a permanent once, it becomes conscience. The moral judgment is an experience of the astral body; the conscience is an experience of the etheric body or life body. Thus, we see how by the interaction of the higher members with the lower ones the whole human life builds itself up from within outwardly.

As far as the human being is a mere physical being, he has the etheric body or life body in common with the plants. What allows the humours to ascend in the plants, what causes that they subsist, reproduce, this causes the same in the human being. However, on this etheric body or life body custom, skill, conscience is imprinted top-down. Something mental-spiritual is imprinted on the human beings top-down. The experiences of the higher members are transferred more and more to the lower members. It is important for the human being to know that the higher members work into the denser members. Thus, the human being can work into the lower members in healthy, practical way.

The human being can ruin again, what nature has given him. As with the plant only malformation could originate if the etheric body or life body did not regulate what goes forward, an internal malformation originates in the human being if he works wrong inside, from the ego on the lower members. The astral body must be penetrated by the experiences of the ego in a healthy way. Who does not admit that an astral body builds on the brain of the child will also not realise how important it is that the ego has a proper effect on the astral body. Who realises this, however, says to himself, you are able to keep on working where nature has stopped. If you allow the whole scale of sensations to take place in healthy way, this continues working on your physical body, on your brain, and thus you build up your physical body during your whole life.

How many human beings walk around today with writer's spasm? The human body is wonderfully constructed. The human being adjusts his hand with everything that he does to the world outdoors. This cooperation of the hand with the outside goes adrift in certain ways from him if he is not able to set his hand aglow, to invigorate it with his inner life. This is a similar process, as if one gets artificial teeth. It is essential that all that we can get as our own is set aglow and invigorated by our ego. You get trembling hands only if the hands go adrift from the remaining forces to some degree. These are matters which one takes into consideration most intensely again in a not so distant future, and then one will realise what it means to grasp the spirit of the human being again.

I want to make clear this at an example. We remain in our field. It will become apparent how that which happens in the spirit really seizes the human being and makes him suitable or unsuitable for life, practical or impractical. Let us take a person who is impractical for life because he suffers from certain sensations of anxiety, so that thereby nervousness originates. This word already sounds the whole sum of lacking practice. Any human being who does not control himself completely in any respect is characterised as nervous, or one uses the catchword of genetic predisposition if anything is absent or exists that makes the human being impractical for life. All these things do not originate from a careful observation of the real facts, but because one has no palate for the spiritual due to the materialistic way of thinking.

It is important to pursue whether in the first times of life, when the invisible works so intensely on the visible, everything proceeds properly and is not disturbed. What is omitted here cannot be corrected later. If something is not formed well enough, the manifold discrepancies originate in the whole life. The human being, who is not able to let harmonising experiences surge up and down in the astral body, will always make himself impractical for life in certain ways. Instead of searching for genetic predispositions of fear and anxiety, we should rather look for something that is formed by this or that experience which has a solidifying effect on the physical body. It could be, for example,—however, it needs not always be in such a way—that a considerable part of claustrophobia was caused possibly by a particular way of parenting in the human being. He does not get loose from this evil because he lacks the means to stir it up again. Imagine children who recognise all festivities, actually, all the year round, only because they are showered with presents! They receive more than they can destroy. This abundance of undeserved gifts immobilises certain striving forces, which would generate healthy self-assurance. Such a thing can slumber in the human being during the time when the external education fulfils him or a new occupation absorbs him; but this appears once in the form of claustrophobia.

One cannot realise this if one does not understand what it means that the astral body changes itself bit by bit into that which the human being is in his physical, discernible behaviour. On the other hand, we can find—if particular states of unsuitability appear anyhow—that something presses on his soul. He cannot say it, cannot confess it, and thinks to have to conceal it. Because the human being does not find the way to the word, it seizes the lower members and works on them. What a soothing effect experiences the human being if he can confess such a thing! Then he has the feeling, now it is no longer lying on my heart like a stone, and this feeling of relief works recovering. Confession is an important remedy in this respect. The denominations have known this well. There we realise how the invisible inside of the human being works on the visible. Even certain reasonable doctors already realise that one cannot cure unsuitability for practical life by systematic application of cold water (Kneipp cure), but in such a way that one has to induce a kind of confession, has to detach something from the human being if healing should take place.

We want to look at the reverse now. There are reasonable doctors who say to themselves, one has to turn to the soul of the human being if one wants to know how the human being becomes unsuitable in certain respects. These doctors know that joy and desire are remedies, that they work recovering, that they soften again, what is solidified and ossified, and bring it under our control. However, this is not enough, just as little as it is enough if anybody says, the concealed secret must be detached from the soul of the human being. They do not know that everything that is experience of the inside has a big significance even if it appears wrong. Should we cancel everything mysterious in the human nature because it appears wrong with some persons? Should we make the doctors father confessors, as it one demands here and there? It can also be infinitely recovering for the soul if it is able to draw the veil of secret about some things. A Persian saying says, one saves the time that one uses for silent reflection, before one says something, in relation to the time of remorse about that which one has said thoughtlessly! Goethe pronounced the word of the “obvious secret” not without reason. In everything sensuous that surrounds us, we can realise something mysterious, something that lies so deeply in the things and that one cannot pronounce; however, it still flows from soul to soul. Health spreads out if the human being can feel the secret of life that way.

Spiritual science maintains this secret of life. Indeed, it does not make it easy for the human beings to approach the things. It is not so comfortable to approach them. Spiritual science can only stimulate, only say, this and that exists. Then the human being has to approach and co-operate. It may be uncomfortable, but it is infinitely healthy. The innermost member of the human being is thereby stimulated; spiritual science works immediately on the ego. If we hear anything about the evolution of the planets, if to us is told about the invisible members of the human nature, what goes from life to life with the human being—with all that one appeals immediately to the ego. All these world-enclosing ideas do not remain dry ideas and abstractions. They emit warmth and bliss; warmth and bliss irradiate and penetrate the astral body of the human being. Contentment and bliss originate from that which spiritual science offers. What sets the human being aglow as warmth, as fire keeps moving to his life body. The forces of spiritual science itself penetrate all forces of the etheric body, and the etheric body transfers the forces again to the physical body, it transfers it as a skill, in such a way that, for example, the hand becomes dexterous and practical if the great, elated ideas of spiritual science flow into the physical body.

Spiritual science makes the brain a flexible, pliable tool, so that it can get away from prejudices. Spiritual science works strongly down until the physical body of the human being. Up to the practical movements, he can be immersed in spiritual science. I want to give you an example of that. It helps, indeed, if one makes gymnastics possible to the child. This is an exceptionally healthy exercise if one makes it properly. Already in the talk on education, I have drawn your attention to the fact that it is important to remain aware that the human being is not only a physical apparatus, but is spiritualised by higher members. One should be able to project oneself completely into doing gymnastics to share any emotion of the etheric and the astral bodies. I knew a gym teacher, who was a big theorist. He knew the human physical body to a hair's breadth. He also had to give theoretical physical education. It does not matter that one knows the physical exactly, but that he experiences an increase of the inner ease with any exercise. One should experience purposefully what should be the single exercise. Who has a living feeling, not only an abstract idea of the physical body knows that one can have a living feeling for everything that the child experiences, for example, while climbing up a ladder.

A sort of gymnastics is imaginable that works so harmoniously on the cooperation of the etheric and the physical bodies that the best basis is laid of a good memory in old age. In addition, that which takes action visibly is properly understood only if it is understood from spiritual science. We would have the best means against the dwindling memory in old age in gymnastics if one wanted to do physical education from spiritual science.

Spiritual science is no theory, nothing dogmatic, but bestows something living to life. Once one will realise that only by spiritual science the human being can become a true practitioner of life. Someone only is a practical person who can use this life who is not its slave. The human being should always control his outer nature with his invisible members. The human being becomes a practitioner only down to the last detail of his life if he is the guide of the bodily. That human being is a practical person who can understand out of a true understanding of his members what Fichte said, but what is often misunderstood. This will be the ideal of the human being if he controls the visible from his invisible again: “The human being can what he has to do; and if he says: I cannot, he does not want it.”

In continuation of the lecture yesterday concerning man's evolution, we will go back in thought today to epochs in the remote past and consider matters relating to them. Before speaking of the fact of reincarnation and discussing questions of human destiny, however, we will pass in review lengthy periods in ancient epochs of the evolution of humanity.

Man of the present age confronts us as an assemblage of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego—the bearer of the ego, which means complete independence. Neither the ego nor the astral body are the most perfect members of man's being by reason of being more spiritual; the physical body, a structure consisting of the most wonderful components, is the most perfect member. What a truly magnificent structure it is, this physical body of man! The astral body is admittedly more inherently spiritual but it is less perfect; it is the bearer of joy and pain of urges, desires and passions. Why is the physical body the more perfect? Think of man's physical heart. It is a marvellous structure, holding its ground all through life against attacks! The same applies to all the other organs of the physical body. Wisdom itself is articulate in them. How does the astral body behave toward the heart? Certainly not always wisely! Because of its longings, the astral body needs to have the means for enjoyment and it continually maltreats the physical body, continually launches attacks upon the physical heart, which offers resistance. Why? Because the process of building the physical body has occupied a far longer period in the past than have the other bodies. The physical body is the oldest member of man's being, hence also the most perfect. A host of more advanced beings have already worked on it. Everything physical and material has evolved from spirit, has developed into its present form. The very first beginning of the human being in the physical world was the establishment of his physical body. At that time there were still no rudiments in the physical world of the etheric body, none of the astral body nor of the ego-bearer.

Everything in the universe is subject to the process of evolution, not only man but also a planet such as our earth. Our earth, like man, has already existed in other planetary embodiments, the first of which we call Saturn, the second, Old Sun, and the third, Old Moon. We must not think here of the present moon, which is only residue, dross or slag of the Old Moon.

We will now hear why our moon has since olden time been called “moon.” Here it must be remembered that the giving of names by the old occultists was by no means fortuitous but of deep significance. The name given to a thing or a being was always organically linked with what each was to express. The preceding planetary embodiment of our earth was the Old Moon; the still earlier embodiment was the Old Sun, not the present sun, which is like a remembrance of that ancient Sun. Then we come to that cosmic body to which it is now possible to look back with occult sight; this cosmic body is Saturn, Old Saturn, of which we have already spoken.

I will now speak briefly of the evolution of this ancient Saturn. To begin with, we must be clear in our minds about the character of the basic elements of our outer world, according to occultists. Ancient occultism distinguished the four elements of earth, water, air, fire or warmth. For a modern physicist this no longer has meaning; what modern science calls an element does not coincide with what the occultist means by the word. The modern expression “aggregate condition” means roughly the same as “element.” Everything that is solid in present temperatures on the earth is called by the occultist, “earthy” or “solid”; a quartz crystal, for example, in conditions of present-day temperatures, is “earth” for the occultist. Everything fluid, also fluid metals and so on, is “water” for him; everything aeriform is “air.” What the modern physicists regards as a state of the three “aggressive assemblages,” namely, fire, is for the occultist, the fourth element. I well know that modern science considers it a veritable abomination when fire is regarded not merely as a condition but as something on a par with earth, water or air. On Old Saturn you would have found no earth, water or air; warmth or fire alone was in existence. If at that time—perhaps by putting a chair in cosmic space—you had been able to observe the Saturn evolution with clairvoyant sight, perception of it could only have been through the sense of warmth; at first, this was purely warmth of soul, inner warmth. With the exception of man, no single one of the beings on the earth today was present. There was no mineral, plant or animal kingdom. Under the conditions prevailing today, man needs the three kingdoms for his organic structure; in that period of ancient Saturn it was not so. The whole human being was a formation consisting only of warmth. Otherwise, nothing whatever of man was in existence. Try to think away from man as he is today everything physically perceptible, even the in-haled air, and imagine that he consists only and entirely of the warmth of the blood circulating in him, thus forming a picture of the blood system as it is today. Such was the constitution of all human beings on Saturn. For the occultist, a celestial body is only an assemblage of spiritual beings. The earth, too, is an assemblage of beings belonging to the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms.

The consciousness of the men of ancient Saturn was also evolving. It was dull but comprehensive. Only on the earth has the clear day consciousness of the present time become possible. The consciousness of human beings on Saturn was dull and in a curious state. Man, as you know, is today unconscious during sleep. Now think of the plant, simply the physical plant without the beings concealed behind it. There you have a demonstration of a still deeper state, namely, dreamless sleep. The plant is a being in a condition of deep sleep. Now think of a state of sleep that is still deeper, still dimmer. this is the state of deep trance—the Saturn consciousness. I will describe it to you by means of an example of conditions that are abnormal in the modern age, occurring in a human being whose consciousness remained backward. A girl who up to her eighteenth year was totally unaccustomed to any form of alcoholic beverage was tempted by certain circumstances to drink rapidly a number of glassfuls of red wine. On account of certain organic conditions this made such an impression that she fell into a moribund state. A pencil was put in her hand and she began to make all kinds of drawings to which she added names. She had no consciousness whatever of what she was doing. She was like a machine, without life or consciousness. If you were to compare what this girl wrote down with what is said in theosophical books about planets, the structure of the universe today, and so on, you would find that what she wrote is, it is true, a strange cosmology but, for all that, one that in certain respects tallies with occult cosmology. The girl was in a state of consciousness deeper than that of ordinary sleep. In such a state the individual concerned is able in his dull consciousness to move far, far over the earth and to give expression to cosmic facts. The occultist knows that such a consciousness, dull and comprehensive, without the pertinent ego, is present in a physical stone, and that if the stone could be articulate it would be able to do what the girl did. This consciousness, although dull, embraces vast regions. Such was the consciousness of men on ancient Saturn.

Saturn itself was an entity unconscious of its own identity, or better said, was possessed of a low form of consciousness to be described by saying that it bore within it a mirror-image of the whole cosmos and would have been capable of delineating it. To understand what this implies we must consider other matters. While man was finding on Saturn the sphere where the first rudiments for his physical body could take shape, Saturn was at the same time the stage at which other beings also were able to evolve, beings whose rank today is much higher than that of man. We will clarify this by quoting an utterance once made by an Egyptian sage to a Greek. He said, “You Greeks remain forever big children. You know nothing about the greatest secret of the Mysteries, namely, that gods were once men.” It is no longer necessary for these beings to enter into physical existence.

On ancient Saturn, then, man was a kind of mineral; his consciousness was also on a par with that of the mineral. But beings who today are at a stage far higher than that of men once lived in human bodies. These are the Archai, First Beginnings, or Spirits of Personality. They passed through their “human” epoch on Old Saturn.¹ They were not men as we are today but merely made use of the then “physical” body in order to experience their human epoch, to acquire ego consciousness. These sublime beings therefore acquired ego consciousness on Saturn and used the human body as a vehicle deputizing as their bodily dwelling place. Certain beings permeated the human physical body together with their distinctive characteristics and for these, man today owes twofold thanks. First, the faculty that alone enables an ego-bearer to find a footing in him; it was these Spirits of Personality who endowed the human body at that time with the form proceeding from their own nature. But second, they also made it possible for man to develop selfishness. Through the influence of the Spirits of Personality, man's body was endowed with the germinal capacity to develop as a free personality but at the same time to cultivate selfishness, egoism. If I wanted to describe all the pertinent details of this process I should need not one lecture or one lecture course but years. Hence, we can study steps or stages only and we will consider seven such stages in the Saturn evolution, each differing from the others.

At the first stage you must picture to yourselves that as yet no physical warmth was present but that this was only in preparation. All that was present was purely of the nature of soul; soul warmth was present, and not until the midpoint of Saturn evolution was the physical human body in existence, composed of physical warmth substance. At the end of the Saturn evolution this human body of warmth dissolves. There are seven stages: three preliminary stages, a stage of physical warmth and three descending stages; each of these seven stages has again seven sub-divisions of which it is better not to speak at this point and to which we will return in the course of studying the evolution of the earth. In modern theosophical literature these stages are called rounds and globes.

But now we will ask, “Whence came the substance out of which the human body was formed?” Sublime spiritual beings poured forth their own being and let it flow down as substance for the physical body of man. These beings were the Spirits of Will or the Thrones. They made the sacrifice of allowing the outpouring of their own being to take place. On Saturn, then, we find the Spirits of Will or the Thrones who give the substance for the human body, then the Spirits of Personality who inhabit Saturn during their human epoch and man himself as a physical germinating entity. The Saturn evolution takes its course in such a way that we must picture the beginning, the zenith and the ebb. Thereafter, the whole planet passes through a pralaya. We can think of the process in connection with the plant. The seed is laid in the earth, decays and carries over the form into a new existence. Just as between the first and the second plant there is an intermediate condition, a hidden condition, so is it in the case of the planet. This condition is called the “sleep of worlds.”

After this sleep of worlds, when Saturn appeared again but metamorphosed, it was the Old Sun that now came into existence. The difference between Saturn and Sun is that the warmth substance of Saturn had densified to a gaseous state. Old Sun retained the warmth but evolved something as well, namely, air, so that on the Old Sun there was now warmth and air, and moreover light. Saturn consisted of dark warmth; the second planet, Old Sun, consisted of light—burning gas—warmth ether and air. Through Saturn there came into existence once and forever the foundation for the existence of the seed of the physical body of man. Now, on Old Sun, something new is added. The etheric body is poured into this substance by spiritual beings. This is the second planetary condition in which man has achieved the status of a plant. There is life in him. Through the integration of the etheric body, however, the physical body of man has also changed. It does not retain the egg-form of the Saturn period but is membered in itself. It is now a vibrant warmth egg in which forms of light gleam and fade away and in which there are indentures. The etheric body now works upon and elaborates the physical body.

Whereas on Saturn the Thrones poured out from them-selves the substance of the physical body, it is now other beings who pour out substance as their great sacrifice. These beings are the Spirits of Wisdom, Dominions or Kyriotetes. The more difficult sacrifice had been made by the Thrones. Had they not created the foundation, the Spirits of Wisdom could not have begun their work.

Again there were beings who passed through their “human” epoch on the Sun, namely, the Archangels or Fire Spirits—Archangeloi in Christian esotericism. Acting as substitutes they indwelt the body of man and in this way developed their ego consciousness.

Something must here be mentioned that it is important to remember. If, after pralaya, Saturn had emerged directly as Sun, the bodies of men could not have received the etheric body into themselves. On the new planet, Old Sun, there had first to be a brief recapitulation of Saturn, during which the beings concerned were obliged to assume their old form once again.

What other kind of beings were to be found on Old Sun? Certain Spirits of Personality had not reached their human stage on Saturn, had not succeeded in acquiring their ego consciousness on Saturn. They were obliged to make up for this on Old Sun and were therefore still at the same stage as their companions on Saturn. Hence, on Old Sun they were obliged to live as it were in a husk, in a mineral body that was not permeated by an etheric body. On Old Sun, therefore, a structure consisting only of physical body came into existence. Thus, structures of a lower grade existed side by side with those that consisted of physical body and etheric body, and these were the predecessors of our present animals. On Old Sun, therefore, there were two kingdoms: a human kingdom and the kingdom of the beings who, on Old Sun, were at the stage of the Saturn evolution. They constitute our present animal kingdom. On Old Sun there were thus two preliminary kingdoms, a human kingdom and an animal kingdom. The successors of the latter are the present higher animals.

Old Sun now passes again into a kind of “cosmic night” and is born again in a third metamorphosis as Old Moon, which is able, at the beginning, to recapitulate the earlier stages to which fluid or watery substance is now added. When the separation of the Sun takes place, warmth and light go with it; sublime beings also go forth together with the finer essences. What has become fluid or “watery” goes forth as Moon, condenses further and becomes a kind of secondary planet. At that time on Old Moon, therefore, there were warmth, light and water. Man has his etheric or light body as on Old Sun; the new element that is added on Old Moon is what may be called tone or sound. In order to realize more clearly what this means I will give an illustration. Think of a metal plate covered with powder, across the edge of which a violin bow is drawn. The powder shapes itself into definite forms—the sound figures of the physicist. What we today recognize as sound or tone is the physical configuration of the sound. The “water” on the Old Moon was permeated with sound and thereby stirred into regular movement. Inner experience is thereby made possible in the physical bodies of beings on Old Moon; organs take shape, for example, the liver, but it passes away again. The process is one of the forming and disappearance of organs, an experience of figures and rhythms. The bodies present are thus made ready to receive astral substance into themselves. The impact of the primeval tone in the watery substance is expressed in the Bible as follows: God arranged everything according to measure, number and weight. The essentially new feature of Old Moon evolution is therefore the process of inner oscillation that is forced, as it were, into the physical substance. You must think of Old Moon as being permeated by this inner oscillation, which is diversified into regular, numerical rhythms. Earlier, on Saturn, it had been warmth formations that built the human body; later, on Old Sun, it had been aeriform formations, appearing like an aerial mirage, like a Fata Morgana. On Old Moon, substance was now water, stirred into movement by inner oscillation. Organic members involved in a process of inner metamorphosis were brought into existence by this oscillation and shimmered through the human body. You must conceive of this as a transient process of coming into being and passing away again; thus, a liver or lung was formed in the human body and then dissolved. Such were the conditions on Old Moon. The Bible expresses it as follows: God once ordered everything according to number, measure and weight. The inner oscillation is here meant.

Within Old Moon there now, firstly, come into existence again the earlier structures of the human body; the physical and etheric bodies are formed again. Why? Because what first takes place on Old Moon is a repitition of the Saturn and Old Sun embodiments. Only then does the real Old Mood come into existence. Into the physical human body, which now contained the watery substance on the one hand, and on the other, as a result of the inner oscillation, was permeated by the primal tone and the etheric body, the Spirits of Movement, Powers or Dynameis pour the astral body of man. They, as the Spirits of Will on Saturn and the Spirits of Wisdom on the Sun had done, now offer up, out of their own substance, the human astral body. Thus, the development of the earth is continually progressing, and also that of man himself who is to inhabit it.

The human physical body, as you have heard, developed on Saturn. Through the three metamorphoses—Saturn, Sun, Moon—it has now reached the third stage of perfection. On Old Moon this physical body of man had come still nearer to resemble its present form. But the further development that was necessary for man's astral body would not have been possible on the earth if a severance had not taken place at a certain point of time. A basic mass of substance of the planet—the Old Moon—remained; part of it went out and surrounded the basic mass. Firstly, there was Saturn; secondly, Sun; thirdly, Moon. The best substances and beings have now separated into a basic body which, during the earth period, again separates and becomes a fixed star, higher in rank than a planet. Still another body separates and remains a planet. The sun of today was once a planet. If you were to take the present sun, the present moon and the substance of our earth with its beings, and combine them in a huge vessel, you would have Old Sun. If you were to combine earth and moon you would have Old Moon.

In the course of the evolution of humanity, our sun separated from the planet earth. With it the best substances and the best beings went out of the earth. The watery element, becoming denser and denser, accompanied the sun. The dense figures and forms are the bearers of the beings who inhabited Old Moon. Human beings now chose a separate scene of action. A fixed star, a sun, always comes into existence as the result of a planet having advanced. During this process of evolution, men were not the only beings who were present and had evolved to the stage of having as members the three bodies, physical body, etheric body and astral body. There were also other beings who had remained behind in their development.

The beings who had passed through their “human” epoch. on Old Moon were the Angels, called Angeloi in Christian esotericism and in India, Lunar Pitris. The consciousness of these beings was different from that of men today. But on Old Moon there were other beings as well. There were certain Archangeloi who had remained backward on Old Sun and were now obliged to repeat their “human” stage on Old Moon. There were also beings who had reached the stage of Spirits of Personality, (i.e., the Saturn stage of humanity) on Old Moon for the first time.

The Archangeloi who had become backward on Old Sun, produced as human bodies structures that had physical and etheric bodies only. This was a kingdom below that of man, a kingdom that continued on the earth as the animal kingdom; the beings belonging to it were the precursors of the physical bodies of the present animal world, and beings who on Old Moon had only a physical body were the precursors of the present plant kingdom, Thus, on Old Moon there was a human kingdom, an animal kingdom and a plant kingdom, on Saturn there was a human kingdom only, and on Old Sun a human kingdom and and animal kingdom. The mineral kingdom is the last of the kingdoms that have come into existence in the process of cosmic evolution. Man, the human kingdom, is the oldest kingdom in the evolutionary process; he was already there before the earth was in existence. On the earth he then receives, in addition to this three bodies, the fourth member of his being, the bearer of the ego.

• 1. For an explanation of “human” epoch, see An Outline of Occult Science, Anthroposophic Press, 1972, pp. 125–6.

After I have spoken about the nature and attitude of spiritual science in general in the first three talks, I would now like to discuss special objects. I note from the start that this talk and that of the next week form a whole as it were. They deal with the questions of the human soul life which are connected with death and with that what follows for the human being from death, and what I would like to call the sense of human immortality.

It is not easy in general to speak just about the topic of this evening in our time; for there are many outer and inner obstacles against a consideration of death in the present time. Above all I have to draw your attention—in order to avoid any misunderstanding today—to the fact that spiritual science has it not so good as some other scientific fields. Spiritual science depends on considering the fields about which it speaks in the strictest sense logically distinguished from adjoining fields.

I must say this because the discussions that should be done today and next time have only a meaning for the human experience, and because a more naturalistic science of the present is inclined to expand that which one understands by death to everything living. Now just spiritual science shows that that what is externally the same for the different beings can be very different concerning its inner nature, and I will probably have the opportunity in the course of the talks to draw your attention to the significance of death in the plant and animal realms. I intend to speak about death of the human being today only.—However, there are some other obstacles. I would like to show the nature of these obstacles—without going into a general characteristic—just from the attitude of spiritual science based on single facts.

 These obstacles are based on a fear of the death problem not clearly arising in the human consciousness. One needs only to consider this fear just with the most enlightened spirits of the present. One could point to many enlightened persons; one would find the same thing. I want to do it relating to the great religious researcher and orientalist Max Müller (Friedrich Max Müller, 1823-1900). ders what he wrote about death here or there that attracts attention above all which faces us also with numerous persons of the present: the timidity to imagine the possibility of investigating anything about death. Even the great Max Müller managed to say that all human thoughts that exceed the human life between birth and death even if they originate from a poet like Dante in his Divine Comedy are only childish poetry. Nevertheless, Max Müller says, if an angel descended from heavenlies onto earth and wanted to say anything to the human being about the conditions of the human life after death, the human being would understand these statements as little as a just born child would understand if one held a talk to it about the conditions of the present life in any human language. Some aversion exists even with the most enlightened spirits of the present to refer to these matters. Besides, Max Müller is not a negative mind in relation to the matters of human immortality; he himself is ensouled by a certain religious security concerning a postmortal life. He does only not want to award the possibility to the human being to attain any knowledge of the postmortal life. He emphasises repeatedly that the human being cannot know anything about the fields that are beyond death.

This fact shows symptomatically which difficulties exist in the present concerning our topic. However, one can also say that the modern scientific view mentioned in the previous talks repeatedly is so significant that it distracts the human being from the idea to gain any knowledge of the postmortal life.

I have spoken in the preceding talks so appreciatively about this scientific way of thinking and so approvingly about that what it has brought to light that today I am not misunderstood if I say briefly why it is difficult with the scientific way of thinking to admit that one can penetrate into the fields beyond death. What is this scientific way of thinking based on? Why has it become great? Because it established the principle of the human sensory observation and the application of the intellectual activity to this sensory observation in the strictest sense of the word.

You can now realise one matter easily. If one makes the principle of sensory observation and the application of the intellect to the sensory observation the exclusive principle of research, one wants, quite certainly, to investigate what the human being receives with his body by his birth and develops in his physical life. That what one could broach as anything “immortal” that has a spiritual life beyond birth, or conception, and death and one cannot enclose it in the field of sensory observation and intellectual research bound to the senses. With his body, the human being most certainly receives what surrounds his being what organises his senses and his reason that binds itself to the senses. The human being certainly acquires that in the area of temporality which research does in the most remarkable sense in the modern scientific way. This belongs to the area in which our being disintegrates if we go through the gate of death. Hence, without any doubt natural sciences completely work with tools, which pass away at death as they originate with birth. One is not surprised if one makes the work with these tools the exclusive principle of research that one cannot investigate what these tools cannot reach.

Therefore, nothing seems to be more foolish than to suppose that one could penetrate with the means of natural sciences into the mysterious fields one day that are beyond death. Hence, it has also happened that not the worst spirits of the nineteenth century finally denied the life after death from the scientific point of view. Since among many extraordinary praises of the scientific way of thinking which controls the general education and thinking more than one believes certainly also that is justified that it has educated the human being so that his preconceptions, his wishes and desires—his subjectivity—do not have a say if it concerns the scientific investigation of anything. One just gets big respect if one sees the efforts of this way of thinking really and works in the experiment with it: operating in the observation strictly objectively in such a way that anything subjective of the human being plays no role. Why should this not be concerning the question of death? However, have not always the human emotions, wishes, and desires played the biggest role if the human being answered to this question? While one has given up in the scientific research that these things play a role, just the ethically not worst persons of the nineteenth century refused the life after death.

If one looks for the reasons why these spirits refused a life after death, one finds noble motives. One has to admit this without further ado. Some materialistic thinkers of the last century said that it belongs to the human egoism to wish that one reached with his little ego beyond death. It is nobler, they said, that the human being should merge that what he works what he acquires between birth and death in the general human life, in the stream of historical development, and that he should know that this ego does not survive, but sacrifices itself on the altar of general humanity. Some moral and academically educated people regarded such a sacrifice, such merging of that what one has acquired in life as that what one can say about the death of the human being.

There are many things indeed which rebel within the human emotions and wishes against such a merging in the general stream of humanity. All that must not have a say answering our question based on real cognition. However, there is one thing that can lead the human being, even if not to an answer, nevertheless, to a correct question at least concerning death and the life after death. Even if one refrains from all wishes, from any fear of death if one refrains from all what he likes as an answer about the life after death, and if one looks, actually, only at that what he is entitled to look, namely at the economy in the universe, then one has to answer possibly as follows. If one considers what the human being acquires in life internally as valuable what revives there in the soul as our innermost possession and as possession concerning that what we can do for love, devotion and other impulses for ourselves and our surroundings, and one asks himself: what is the most valuable?—It is something intimate and individual for any human soul, so that one cannot give away it to the stream of general existence because of its intimate character. Really; so much we can also give away to the general stream of existence—the most valuable is connected so tightly with our soul that we would not give away it that it would absolutely have to sink into the general nothing if we did not go as something through the gate of death. For the most valuable would be lost without doubt for the world economy that the human soul has attained and worked for if the human life were over with death. However, this would contradict what we notice, otherwise, everywhere in the universe. We realise that nowhere in the universe forces develop up to an extreme height that they can develop at first and dissolve then into nothing; but everywhere forces are generated in such a way only that they change, that they keep on working in the world. Should the human being be condemned solely to acquire something that would not be processed further in the universe, but would have to dissolve into nothing?

This is by no means an answer at first, but means putting the following question that is quite independent of human wishes and preferences: how would it be possible for the purposes of a general world economy that that dissolves into nothing what the human being acquires in his soul during life? However, one cannot advance farther than to put this question, actually, with the means of outer research. Since undoubtedly one has to search the immortal of the human being beyond the outer experience. The outer experience approaches us by the senses, and a slight experience shows that also everything that can result from reason belongs to the outer experience, and that that all can only develop within the physical body which we get by birth or conception, and which dissolves at death. However, with it we have no tools that enable us to investigate the problem of death.

In the introductory talks I have already spoken of the fact that the human being is able to develop his soul by the spiritual-scientific methods, indeed, in such a way that it is detached from the bodily experience like by a spiritual chemistry. Thereby it really attains a point of view on which it cannot only express itself as a phrase, but as an immediate inner experience: I know what it means to develop a spiritual-mental activity in myself which does not have the body as its tool. Can we hope that anything can be stated about death by anything else than by investigating it with the means of the described cognitional forces instead of means of the outer experience? Just if one thinks scientifically, one must say that one has to experience what one should investigate. However, with no outer tool one can experience death that just takes away the outer tools from us.

Thus, one can investigate death only under the premise that it is possible with tools that do not exist within the bodily life. I have drawn your attention to the fact that the human being can strengthen his soul life by certain inner intimate exercises, so that really his spiritual-mental is detached from the bodily, like while decomposing water oxygen is detached from hydrogen. Thus, these exercises detach the spiritual-mental of the human being from the bodily and with it, the human can experience internally in the spiritual-mental. If he experiences internally in the spiritual-mental this way, if he gets around to having his own bodily as an object like an outer object beside himself, then he becomes aware of that what the spiritual researchers of all times meant when they moved two experiences closer together: the experience of the so-called initiation and the experience of death.

We must only keep in mind that spiritual research existed at all times. Spiritual research was done already in the oldest times of humanity in the so-called mysteries. Someone who would like to inform himself more exactly about it can read up in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity. However, at that time spiritual research could not be done as today. The human beings change in the course of evolution quite substantially; and before I go further into it, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in ancient times one had to develop quite different forces in the soul. This is why in sites, which were, so to speak, halfway of art, science, and religion, the human being concerned was brought to the point where by the development of his soul forces the spiritual world appeared to him.

One has to develop soul forces in our times that are different from those of former times, after the souls have been educated during the last centuries scientifically. Therefore, spiritual science must be different in our time where it must be a continuation of natural sciences. However, it always brought those two experiences: the development of the soul capacities, which allow experiencing the spiritual world regardless of the bodily, and the experience of death. Repeatedly we find in the different writings expressed that the human being who was brought to the experience of the spiritual world, its processes, and beings approached the “gate of death” in the mysteries. That means that he experiences something about which he knows immediately that it resembles the experience of death, or that it is something with which one can also know the relevance of death if one recognises it. The initiand knew that he had to approach the border of death. One always said this. In my writing A Way to Human Self-Knowledge, I describe an experience that I have already mentioned here which the human being attains if he opens himself to meditation and concentration for many years. I have said there that if the human being carries out that development of his soul by which it grows out of the body for short times to a body-free experience, he arrives at an infinitely meaningful moment that shakes the soul when it appears for the first time. The spiritual researcher must often repeat it later; but when it appears for the first time, it is a deeply intervening experience. If one increases that soul activity limitlessly which one else calls attention, devotion, the body-free soul forces gain strength in such a way that a particular moment appears in the soul life.

It may appear in the turmoil of the everyday life; it does not even disturb if one ascends to such an experience by a development as I have described it in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? and the usual everyday experience can go on apart from that. This moment can appear also in sleep. Then one feels it suddenly, or one feels an Inspiration or Intuition during the day life flowing into the general life. Typically, I want to describe what one experiences that way. It can be different a hundred and a hundred times with the human being, but always it has something of that what I would like to describe now. I try to express it in words; but doing this, I am aware that I can express it with words only imperfectly. One feels, as if one is rudely awakened, and one has the feeling that something asks: what happens with me? It is, as if a flash goes through the room where I am and as if it smashes the vessel of the outer physical body. At such a moment of increased knowledge you do not only feel something sneaking that destroys the outer physical body, but you feel almost filled with that what destroys the physical body. You feel that you can only maintain yourself with this experience by means of the strengthened inner soul forces, and you say to yourself now, I know what can exist in the outer world to detach the physical body from me in which I am. From this moment on you know that something spiritual-mental is in the human being that is independent of the physical body. The physical body relates to the spiritual-mental like an outer vessel and tool. From this moment on you know figuratively what death is.

Indeed, it is an uncertain knowledge, an uncertain experience at first; but it gives the soul that mood and inner seizing of a spiritual reality by which it can get into that what enables the soul to penetrate into the regions of spiritual life. It is an intimate experience; but it is an experience of humanly quite general kind because it is so serious that it separates you from that what is connected in the narrower sense with the personal wishes and intentions and familiarises you with that what is, actually, always only behind life. However, it shows something else quite clearly: the difference between achieving the real spiritual-scientific knowledge and that outer knowledge. You obtain outer science, outer knowledge learning this or that, you get yourself into this or that striving; then you have what you desire to learn. You gain for yourself by working what you should know.

It is not the same case with the spiritual-scientific knowledge. Indeed, it is not in such a way that somebody should believe that one gains spiritual-scientific knowledge in such a way that once enlightenment comes over the soul which then surveys the spiritual world. Indeed, some people imagine that one attains spiritual-scientific knowledge without any effort. However, that does not apply. If anybody said that on the part of spiritual research many a thing is said that the historian can bring to light only with efforts in a years-long work from the documents and sources, and then the spiritual-scientific researcher comes and says something without anticipating that one can say such a thing only after years-long research; then this is presumptuousness. One has to answer that the spiritual researcher must not only spend the work that one needs to such years-long investigation of documents or experimentation; but he must carry out the whole work that is necessary for years in himself. However, this work has another aim, another character in a way.

That which one can perform as a spiritual-scientific researcher does not really lead to knowledge but is only its preparation. All that I have said in my writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? characterises that only what the soul has to do to prepare for that moment when the spiritual world reveals itself. Preparation—not elaboration as in the outer science—is that what the spiritual researcher has to carry out at first. Indeed, one learns to recognise this if one can connect sense with the words: I experience myself as a spiritual-mental being within the spiritual world.

Then one still connects sense with something else, namely with that what does not seem so important, indeed, as the question of death because the usual consciousness is accustomed to it, namely with sleep. One learns to recognise the nature of sleep. One recognises that and in which way the human spiritual-mental being leaves the physical body every time with falling asleep as the hydrogen leaves the oxygen if water is decomposed. However, the human soul is not strong enough in sleep to maintain its consciousness. In the normal life, the human being can maintain his consciousness only if he submerges with his spiritual-mental being in the physical body and this reflects his mental experiences to him like in a mirror. He can have this experience only like in a reflection in his mental consciousness. It is in such a way, as if the human being maintained his consciousness only because he would pass by mirrors as it were and while looking in the mirrors he would sense and feel his self. However, if the human being sees himself in the mirror, he knows that not the mirror is the cause of the picture, but he who is standing in front of it.

The human being who experiences a spiritual-scientific development starts knowing that that what he thinks, feels, and perceives in the usual life is like a reflection, and that he is in the spiritual experience a being that perceives itself like in a reflection if it submerges in the body. The body makes the soul strong enough that it can perceive itself; if it is, however, beyond the body, it is not strong enough to know of itself. If the human being comes to the point that he senses and feels his independent spiritual-mental existence as it were, he knows that that is behind the mirror of the usual consciousness in reality. Then he starts knowing, not only as a phrase, but by immediate experience that he is from falling asleep up to awakening in his real spiritual-mental being and experiences that in it from which he can only not get any consciousness in the normal human experience.

The spiritual researcher learns to experience as one experiences in sleep, but only with the big difference that one is unaware in the normal sleep, while the spiritual researcher consciously experiences in his inside preparing his soul and gaining strength compared with the bodily-physical experience. Then the spiritual researcher completely experiences his spiritual-mental essence. Besides, one experience is of particular significance. One would like to call it the “change of the ego-experience.” The ego that we must have in life if life should normally pass lights up from a certain point of childhood. This is the point up to which we remember in life. If we can remember, we know how everything that we have experienced is connected with the ego. We sit down as it were beside our ego and feel united with all our conscious experiences. Our egoity is warranted only because we feel united with the ego with all mental experiences. If the spiritual researcher reaches that point, where he can scrape out his spiritual-mental core from the physical body, then a big transformation of his ego-experience takes place. For that transformation one has to be prepared, so that one does not become upset. A great deal of that what I have described in my writing How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? is intended to prepare the soul for this experience.

What happens at a certain moment when the soul becomes free of the body? What happens there, what becomes an immediate experience can be shown approximately, and I would like to take the following way.

If we took the human body as the outer science investigates it with its outer tools, one would already get clear by outer logical reasons about the fact that this human body must be penetrated by something, so that it does not follow its own laws and its own inner necessities. Which laws and necessities are these? They appear at death when the physical body disintegrates. Then it is left to its own resources, to its very own laws. One can conclude by a certain logic, which I have also already explained here, that in the human being something higher must exist than this physical body. However, a certain rest must always remain there with such logical considerations that make objections possible if from the start a healthy sense of truth does not exist for that which spiritual science can investigate from the primal grounds of existence. What is it, however, if really the initiation takes place by which the spiritual researcher experiences himself internally independently from his physical-body? There he really has his physical body beside himself, knows himself beyond this physical body, does not have it around himself; and how does it appear to him? One must not believe that it is so nice and cute that one hovers over his body and has his body lying in the bed.

That is not the case. Nevertheless, you perceive something very strange after a suitable preparation. You do not perceive the vital forces of the body but the lethal forces that already exist during the whole life as the dissolving forces. If you want to express yourself scholarly, you may say that you get to know the latent death in the body. Everywhere you get to know the trends of the body to fit into the elements of earth and to disintegrate. One can express this by a comparison; but I do not only mean a mere picture with it, but I use it in order to express inner experiences that one has to do.

Look at a candle flame. The candle burns low. The fuel is destroyed. As long as fuel is there, the flame can be there. Why is the flame there? Solely because the fuel burns gradually and dissolves. If you want to avoid that the fuel dissolves, you must extinguish the flame. You cannot demand that the candle remains intact and the flame still burns. You can only have the sight and use of the flame, while the fuel consumes itself.

Like such a flame the own physical body appears to you in the supersensible sight while it is used up. The body appears like the candle that burns low. You know what takes place in the body because in the body always the tendency exists to consume itself. As the flame of the candle originates by consuming the fuel, the human ego emerges from the forces of death. You would never experience this ego if you did not carry death in your body. That applies to the human being. Put yourself hypothetically in a human body that would be inserted in the world so that it could not die that it would not have the forces that consume it. Its ego would be extinguished; the ego would no longer be there! This is the impressive knowledge that you attain as a spiritual researcher, which one must summarise with the following words. We carry not only the vital forces, but we also carry the forces of death in ourselves. It gives us the possibility of ego-consciousness for the life between birth and death.

Indeed, you feel a transformation taking place by an inner process if you are now as a spiritual researcher out of the physical body. The ego becomes something that one does not like. From a thought, which accompanies you, otherwise, always in life without which you are not there while awake, the ego becomes something that you do not have in yourself that you face like a flame emerging from the picture of the physical death: the ego becomes memory. This is the significant transition to spiritual cognition that you have the ego as a mere memory in yourself about which you know that it is there at which you can look like at a memory, but you cannot have it in yourself now.—You get to know death spiritual-scientifically and its connection with the ego in the normal human life.

Now spiritual investigation can go on. You can divide what we experience in the soul in three groups. I would like to point two groups out as significant, namely the imagining thinking and the will. We must accompany the everyday life with our thoughts. What would we be as human beings if we did not walk thinking through the world if we could not form thoughts of the things? What would we be as human beings if we did not have the impulses to do this or that, to accomplish this or that? Will and thinking are the soul forces that always accompany the human being through his everyday life.

If you advance in spiritual research to the body-free experience, you realise that you are not able to take the thinking into the body-free experience. You have to leave the everyday thoughts outside, also those of the usual science, which follow the experience of the outer senses; they die away, while you enter the body-free cognition. The spiritual researcher understands completely if anybody who wants to count generally only on the life of thoughts as for example Professor Forel (Auguste-Henri F., 1848-1931, Swiss psychiatrist, brain researcher, myrmecologist), says: consciousness falls asleep very soon if it has nothing to imagine from the outside. This is comprehensible. For you cannot take the impressions that come from the outside world with you neither into sleep nor into the spiritual-scientific experience. For someone who wants to become a spiritual researcher this causes something extremely depressing by which he feels apart from everything to which he is attached in the outer life, that he considers as the most valuable about which you can even say to yourself, in the normal life, you fall asleep if you do not have it.

You have to go as spiritual researcher in a life where you cannot have this where you must lay down everything that you were used to think about in the usual life. What do you experience then concerning that which expresses itself in the normal life as thinking if the thoughts, which you normally do no longer have, have died away if they have remained before the threshold of the spiritual world? You experience at first what sleep makes. This is a quite significant experience to know how sleep makes it. Now you learn to agree even in rather modest way with the materialistic thinker who says that the brain is necessary for thinking, and certain movements must form the basis of a thought in our brain. Quite true, very true! One has to dismiss any objection against materialism that the thoughts can also be there without brain. Since thinking is not that, by which we settle in the spiritual world. We do not find them there. Nevertheless, we find that from which the thought in the brain only originates. What sets the brain in particular motions, so that it becomes the mirror of thoughts? These are only the spiritual-mental forces. Behind the thinking—not in the thinking—the spiritual-mental forces work which the spiritual researcher finds. Hence, he agrees with that what the materialistic researcher—if he remains in the borders of his field—can say that the everyday thoughts are results of the brain. However, what takes action in the brain that always makes the physical body the mirror of thinking is the work of the spiritual-mental behind it. We come as spiritual researchers really behind the everyday life into the creative realm of the world. Hence, we also learn to understand sleep and experience how that what is behind sleep mends the worn-out parts of our brain at night.

We look at this regeneration of the body; we get to know the activity of sleep. As spiritual researchers, we get to know the thoughts, which face us by day from the one side, from the other side. Whenever a thought can appear and appears in the mirror of the brain, we get to know it from the other side if the body sleeps if it lives within the brain and stimulates the brain to its activity by day. One gets to know thinking from the other side this way. This is the one part how you get to know thinking.

Now the other part, how one gets to know thinking, is something of spiritual research that you do not like from the start if you have not well prepared yourself. You get to know the inner work, the inner feeling, the inner self-experience of the soul. You get to know the soul as something internally mobile; you get to know an activity of the soul from which one can ask: what does this activity want? It wants to form thoughts. However, in such a way as it appears it cannot form thoughts. You get to know a part of the soul activity that is used to mend the exhausted brain in sleep; you may be content with that. You get to know another part of the soul activity with which you touch the whole physical brain like from the inside from which you may say to yourself: you have it now. While you start investigating more exactly, you realise that you have it by what you have experienced from birth and have processed it in your soul; but it has thereby become something that touches your brain; and this does not let it come about as usual thoughts of the everyday life. The spiritual researcher settles in a condition that way where he feels imprisoned in his body, his wondrous tool of thinking. He feels so touched with it that he says to himself, now you could form thoughts from your inner activity if your brain did not lie there like a heavy mass and cannot be roused to that what the soul wants.

One often speaks of the fact that the methods, which the spiritual researcher has to go through, lead to a certain suffering. Suffering always consists of the fact that something that one would like to carry out in the soul is prevented. Even physical pains consist of it; however, I want to speak about the latter another time. Suffering seizes the spiritual researcher in his development and that which wants to become a thought but cannot become a thought. Since the brain is good only for the thoughts which are obtained in the normal life. Maybe you understand just at this point that the investigation of the death problem becomes, nevertheless, an inner martyrdom of the soul. You can do it only because the human being has the necessary thirst for knowledge in himself to discover the mysteries of life. Yes, you also understand that this investigation is not carried out so often because one makes progress, indeed, generally only if one can be way beyond everything that one likes, otherwise, in life. Hence, one speaks only with a certain melancholy and deep seriousness about what I have indicated just now. Then you are able more and more to look not only at the lack in the spiritual-mental experience, but you learn to renounce to form thoughts from that what you experience with the body. This learning to renounce one can easily express; however, this renunciation belongs to the serious problems of life. This renunciation is connected with bitterness, which justifies itself only because it just leads to knowledge.—If you have experienced to be unable to find an expression in thought of that what you have attained, then you experience it only internally. What do you experience then? You experience what is fit to intervene, indeed, not in the body because the body prevents it but in that what forms the origin of a new physical body that we build for the next life on earth if we have gone through a life after death in a wholly spiritual world.—I speak later about the experiences in the time between death and the next birth.

I have tried to show by means of inner experiences, which the spiritual researcher has, how he experiences his inner, spiritual-mental essence that must emerge because of its own peculiarities in the next life on earth. That is as certain as a sprout evolves into a new plant. Since you do not get to know that of the human being which outgrows death, while you speculate on it, but while you recognise what prepares itself for the life beyond death, if you look for that what you cannot see with the senses and cannot think with the reason engaged in the senses. Spiritual science does not speculate or philosophise on immortality; but it wants to prepare the human soul in such a way that its immortal essence lies there, I would like to say, “spiritually prepared” as one also investigates something in natural sciences, while one extracts it surgically from the surroundings in which it cannot be investigated in its peculiarity. So far about thinking.

The matters of will are different. Here you experience a transformation, too. Then you realise how much the will that one expresses in the outside world depends on the constitution of the body, how a strong will in the usual life is connected intensely with the whole constitution of our body. With any impulse of will we bring our body into the field, so to speak. However, as spiritual researchers we must now have the will without the body. There the will asserts itself straight away in a way, as you are not used to it, otherwise. Otherwise, you are used if you have an impulse of will to bring your body into the field; if the body lies idly in the bed, no impulse of will stirs. We feel impulses of will always connected with the body. Now, however, the soul which wants to penetrate into the spiritual world is beyond the body; the body plays a part in the will impulse. This causes a certain inner tension, as if the will is limited from all sides, as if it is in an impenetrable eggshell, as if you are hindered from thinking, imagining, feeling and perceiving, from walking, from standing, from everything.

You feel the will as self-contained, but as stumbling at the walls everywhere through which it cannot go. You have to do the inner spiritual exercises again so far that you perceive not only this negative of the will, but that you can experience the inside like pressed in the will. Then you realise that you want something again that you do not like to experience. If you apply the will in the outer world, you have the will impulses on the one side, the moral-social order on the other side. You impose duties upon yourself in life, or the moral-social order imposes them upon you. One makes a difference between good will and bad will, between right and wrong; one distinguishes the moral rules from the will impulses in the outer world. This is correct. Now when you have withdrawn from the outer world, the will remains to you in a quite similar way as the ego has just now remained. What you have wanted remains like a memory. I describe how the experiences arise. I have to describe the Imaginative view in this case; this seems maybe fantastic, but I have to show the matters in such a way.

Then you experience something in your pressed will like morality contained in this will. You experience an action that must considered as bad with the outer sensory consciousness in this will in such a way that you have to compensate it. You experience the will in memory in such a way that the compensating force of that what must happen because the immoral action demands this is included in the will. I cannot help saying, if you have done anything bad, it must place itself beside you like a ghostlike enemy who stands beside you, until you have got rid of him by compensating actions. Someone who experiences the will in himself and in his memory what he himself has wanted faces the bad without fail which has an effect, until he has got rid of it by compensating will impulses. You experience what one often calls the inner work of karma.

Then you know for sure: if you experience an act of volition that you have wanted, you experience it in such a way that you recognise that it is done. Since every act of volition belongs, like thinking, to memory. Then you know that it is done, at the same time it has contributed that we advance in our development. Something also spreads over our consciousness that one can call an enlightening purification of that what is done. However, any action has an effect in such a way that you realise how the moral and the mechanical that are separated in the physical life are combined. You realise that something bad or immoral is effective, until you endeavour to extinguish it to a certain degree in the outside life, until we have gained the power to extinguish the bad; that means to make it good. We know if we experience the will in the body-free cognition that this has its inner moral impulses at any price; we know that karma is an active force continuing to have an effect in the world. We experience painfully now recognising that there are many, too many actions in our present life that we cannot compensate. We know about them, because we behold their reality that they go along in our next life on earth and contribute there to our destiny.

You can call investigation of death what I tried to suggest in such a way, because it means to experience what strides through the gate of death as the immortal of the human being. You recognise from all that that the true investigation of death is an intimate, inner research that it is, however, the more a generally human one because it aims at that what one can find in all human beings. For it is due to the outer body and the outer world that we are these particular human beings in the life between birth and death; this does not go with us through the gate of death. That goes with us through the gate of death, which lies behind the physical-sensory realm. That causes the physical-sensory realm and our outer experience between birth and death.

Now we put the following question. Why do we notice nothing of our immortal soul in the usual life? Why does that what can reveal the mystery of death drape itself in such darkness? Because we live on this darkness in the usual soul life between birth and death. We must extinguish our immortal in the usual consciousness, so that we live in the body in the outer physical sensory world, we become fond of it and accomplish our mission on it. If we want to penetrate to our immortal, we must extinguish our everyday life.

If we must extinguish our immortal in our usual consciousness to have the usual physical-sensory everyday life, we are not surprised that we do not find that what can inform us about death within the everyday life for which just the mystery of death must be covered. The spiritual researcher can also show, why one cannot find the mystery of death in the usual life. For while we descend with our spiritual-mental part from spiritual heights to that what is given us by the line of heredity by father and mother, while we combine with the bodily-physical substances and submerge in them, the limited consciousness must extinguish the infinite consciousness. At death where the infinite consciousness lights up again, the limited consciousness is extinguished, and that what can be maintained of it exists as memory. However, the life after death is guaranteed by the spiritual-scientific development of the human soul if it exercises those methods by which it already penetrates into the spiritual world in the usual life and passes the gate of death fully consciously.

Next time, however, I would like to describe the immediate result of that what we tried to discuss spiritual-scientifically today as the mystery of death which is there already during life, and which enables our usual consciousness. Yes, an aversion exists against these matters in the present; one does not like to investigate them. Even good, brilliant thinkers shy away from penetrating into those regions to which I have today pointed related to the death problem.

So it happens that such an excellent person like Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949, Belgian playwright, Nobel Prize in 1911) puts the [most] wrong views of the death problem forward in his recently appeared booklet On Death—which you should read because he has written it so excellently. He who is able to speak about all the other fields of life very brilliantly had to fail with this matter because he has a particular way to approach the matters; namely to describe death with the same cognitive means as the outer matters. He is no spiritual researcher. He does not know that one has to leave these means if the areas should be investigated which are considered with the death problem. Maeterlinck is in the same situation, as once the mathematicians were towards the problem that one called the square of the circle. There were certain times when one sent solutions to mathematical circles how one could transform a circle into a square using a compass. However, all the solutions were dissatisfying, and today everybody is a dilettante who still deals with this problem because it is strictly proved that the problem cannot be solved this way. While one had the opportunity once to count as a genius if one wanted to solve the square of the circle, today someone is a dilettante who still attempts this. Concerning immortality the view of the human beings will also change as the views of those mathematicians changed. For somebody still attempts a solution of the square of the circle in another field today; but one would have to say to him, you demand that one proves the mysteries of death with the means of the usual life. However, it matters, above all, that one realises the proofs. One must also realise that the proofs that want to prove the mystery of death and immortality with means of the usual life are impossible because we have covered the forces of the immortal just in our everyday life, so that we become ego-conscious human beings in the transience.

However, a particular feature still appears with Maurice Maeterlinck. After he has talked at cross-purposes everywhere, he finally concludes—somewhat more brilliantly, belletristically than Max Müller, who did it somewhat more professorially—that the soul should get used to the fact that it cannot really investigate the mysteries of existence in this and not in that life. Then he adds, it is probably good that one cannot investigate them. He would not wish on his worst enemy that he could investigate the real mysteries. He is afraid that the world becomes free of mysteries if they are investigated that it would lose any shine of the mysterious if one penetrated into the mystery of death. He considers it as valuable that a mystery remains a mystery, so that one does not destroy the surprise in the soul if one comes behind such a mystery.

I have already mentioned in another context that the mysteries do not become inferior if one faces them as spiritual science can speak about them. Since just that which we investigate in the mysteries does not make life more superficial, but deeper and deeper. It is still in such a way that if we behold in something of our previous life on earth, this does not solve the riddle of life superficially and does really not deprive the mystery of life of its shine but it makes it even greater, even more brilliant. Spiritual research does not penetrate into the matters so that it deprives the mysteries of existence of their admirable character, but so that our admiration can still increase because one can investigate the reasons behind the matters.

Therefore, one has to answer to someone who speaks about death as Maeterlinck does and says, he does not wish on his worst enemy that the mysteries are investigated, that the mysterious is not taken away from life, while one attempts to investigate it. However, with a trivial word—it is not trivial, but it is meant quite seriously-, one could express what one would like to say to a person who wants to maintain life while he wants to accept it as “unfathomable.” One could ask him, would you want if anybody has been born blind to advise that he should not be operated so that that what is round him remains a mystery to him, and that the shine of the world should not illuminate his inside? Would you like to argue that you did not wish even on your worst enemy that the mystery of the world would be divested of its wonders because he would be operated?—Someone who answers yes could also answer with the question, which Maeterlinck expresses at the end of his book: the world would lose its shine if one investigated its mystery. Spiritual-scientific research shows that this is not the case if one investigates the mysteries of the world. While investigating death our emotional life will just get the view that death forms a necessary link in the whole life, and that not only Goethe's word is true that nature invented death to have a lot of life, but that for the human life the word is true: nature needs death to let perpetually arise always new marvellous things from the origin of life.

During this course of lectures we have brought before our souls two remarkable documents of humanity, although necessarily described very briefly on account of the limited number of lectures; and we have seen what impulses had to flow into the evolution of mankind in order that these two significant documents, the sublime Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, might come into existence. What it is important for us to grasp is the essential difference between the whole spirit of the Gita and that of the Epistles of St. Paul. As we have already said:—in the Gita we have the teachings that Krishna was able to give to his pupil Arjuna. Such teachings can only be given and should only be given to one person individually, for they are in reality exactly what they appear in the Gita; teachings of an intimate nature. On the other hand, it may be said that they are now within the reach of anyone, because they appear in the Gita. This naturally was not the case at the time the Gita was composed. They did not then reach all ears; they were then only communicated by word of mouth. In those old days teachers were careful to ascertain the maturity of the pupil to whom they were about to communicate such teachings; they always made sure of his being ready for them. In our time this is no longer possible as regards all the teachings and instructions which have in some way come openly to light. We are living in an age in which the spiritual life is in a certain sense public. Not that there is no longer any occult science in our day, but it cannot be considered occult simply because it is not printed or spread abroad. There is plenty of occult science even in our day. The scientific teaching of Fichte, for instance, although everyone can procure it in printed form, is really a secret teaching; and finally Hegel's philosophy is also a secret doctrine, for it is very little known and has indeed many reasons in it for remaining a secret teaching; and this is the case with many things in our day. The scientific teaching of Fichte and the philosophy of Hegel have a very simple method of remaining secret doctrine, in that they are written in such a way that most people do not understand them, and fall asleep if they read the first pages. In that way the subject itself remains a secret doctrine, and this is the case in our own age with a great deal which many people think they know. They do not know it; thus these things remain secret doctrine; and, in reality, such things as are to be found in the Gita also remain secret doctrine, although they may be made known in the widest circles by means of printing. For while one person who takes up the Gita today sees in it great and mighty revelations about the evolution of man's own inner being, another will only see in it an interesting poem; to him all the perceptions and feelings expressed in the Gita are mere trivialities. For let no one think that he has really made what is in the Gita his own, although he may be able to express in the words of the Gita itself what is contained in it, but which may itself be far removed from his comprehension. Thus the greatness of the subject itself is in many respects a protection against its becoming common. What is certain is that the teachings which are poetically worked out in the Gita are such that each one must follow, must experience them for himself, if, through them, he wishes to rise in his soul, and finally to experience the meeting with the Lord of Yoga, with Krishna. It is therefore an individual matter; something which the great Teacher addresses to one individual alone. It is a different thing when we consider the contents of the Epistles of St. Paul from this point of view. There we see that all is for the community, all is matter appealing to the many. For if we fix our attention upon, the innermost core of the essence of the Krishna-teaching we must say: What one experiences through this teaching, one experiences for oneself alone, in the strictest seclusion of one's own soul, and one can only have the meeting with Krishna as a lonely soul-wanderer, after one has found the way back to the original revelations and experiences of mankind. That which Krishna can give must be given to each individual.

This is not the ease with the revelation given to the world through the Christ-Impulse. From the beginning the Christ-Impulse was intended for all humanity, and the Mystery of Golgotha was not consummated as an act for the individual soul alone; but we must think of the whole of mankind from the very beginning to the very end of the earth's evolution, and realise that what happened at Golgotha was for all men. It is to the greatest possible extent a matter for the community in general. Therefore the style of the Epistles of St. Paul, apart from all that has already been characterised, must be quite different from the style of the sublime Gita. Let us once more picture clearly the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna. He gives his pupil unequivocal directions as Lord of Yoga as to how he can rise in his soul in order to attain the vision of Krishna. Let us compare with this a specially pregnant passage in the Pauline Epistles, in which a community turn to St. Paul and ask him whether this or that was true, whether this could be considered as giving the right views about what he had taught. In the instructions which St. Paul gives, we find a passage which may certainly be compared in greatness, even in artistic style with what we find in the sublime Gita; but at the same time we find quite a different tone, we find everything spoken from quite a different soul-feeling; It is where St. Paul writes to the Corinthians of how the different human gifts to be found in a group of people must work in cooperation. To Arjuna, Krishna says “Thou must be so and so, thou must do this or that, then wilt thou rise stage by stage in thy soul-life.” To his Corinthians St. Paul says: “One of you has this gift, another that, a third another; and if these work harmoniously together, as do the members of the human body, the result is spiritually a whole which can spiritually be permeated with the Christ.” Thus through the subject itself St. Paul addresses himself to men who work together, that is to say, to a multitude; and he uses an important opportunity to do this-namely, when the gift of the so-called speaking with tongues comes under consideration.

What is this speaking with tongues that we find spoken of in St. Paul's Epistles? It is neither more nor less than a survival of old spiritual gifts, which, in a renewed way, but with full human consciousness, confront-us again at the present time. For when, among our initiation-methods, we speak of Inspiration, it is understood that a man who attains to inspiration in our age does so with a clear consciousness; just as he brings a clear consciousness to bear upon his powers of understanding and his sense-realisations. But in olden times this was different, then such a man spoke as an instrument of high spiritual beings who made use of his organs to express higher things through his speech. He might sometimes say things which he himself could not understand at all. Thus revelations from the spiritual worlds were given, which were not necessarily understood by him who was used as an instrument, and just that was the case in Corinth. The situation had there arisen of a number of persons having this gift of tongues. They were then able to make this or that prediction from the spiritual worlds. Now when a man possesses such gifts everything he is able to reveal by their means is under all circumstances a revelation from the spiritual world, yet it may, nevertheless, be the case that one man may say this and another that, for spiritual sources are manifold, One may be inspired from one source and another from another, and thus it may happen that the revelations do not correspond. Complete harmony can only be found when these worlds are entered in full consciousness. Therefore St. Paul gives the following admonition: “Some there are who can speak with tongues, others who can interpret the words spoken. They should work together as do the right and left hands, and we should not only listen to those who speak with tongues, but also to those who have not that gift, but who can expound and understand what someone is able to bring down from the spiritual sphere.” Here again St. Paul was urging the question of a community which might be founded through the united working of men. In connection with this very speaking with tongues St. Paul gave that address which, as I have said, is in certain respects so wonderful that in its might it may well compare, though in a different way-with the revelations of the Gita. He says (1 Cor. xii. verses 3-31): “As regards the spiritually gifted brethren, I will not leave you without instructions. You know that in the time of your heathendom, it was to dumb idols that you were blindly led by desire. Wherefore I make clear to you: that just as little as one speaking in the Spirit of God says: Accursed be Jesus; so little can a man call Him Lord but through the Holy Spirit. Now there are diversities of gracious gifts, but there is one Spirit. There are diversities in the guidance of mankind, but there is one Lord. There are differences in the force which individual men possess; but there is one God Who works in all these forces. But to every man is given the manifestation of the Spirit, as much as he can profit by it. So to one is given the word of prophecy, to another the word of knowledge; others are spirits who live in faith; again others have the gift of healing, others the gift of prophecy, others have the gift of seeing into men's characters, others that of speaking different tongues, and to others again is given the interpretation of tongues; but in all these worketh one and the same Spirit, apportioning to each one what is due to him. For as the body is one and hath many members, yet all the members together form one body, so also is it with Christ. For through the Spirit we are all baptised into one body, whether Jew or Greek, bond or free, and have all been imbued with one spirit; so also the body is not made of one but of many members. If the foot were to say: Because I am not the hand therefore I do not belong to the body, it would none the less belong to it. And if the ear were to say: Because I am not the eye I do not belong to the body, none the less does it belong to the body. If the whole body were only an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were a sense of hearing, where would be the power of smell? But now hath God set each one of the members in the body where it seemed good to Him. If there were only one member, where would the body be? But now there are truly many members, but there is only one body. The eye may not say to the hand: I do not require thee! nor the head to the feet—I have no need of you; rather those which appear to be the feeble members of the body are necessary, and those which we consider mean prove themselves to be specially important. God has put the body together and has recognised the importance of the unimportant members that there should be no division in the body, but that all the members should work harmoniously together and should care for one another. And if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, and it one member prosper, all the members rejoice with it. “But ye,” said St. Paul to his Corinthians, “are the Body of Christ, and are severally the members thereof. And some God hath set in the community as apostles, others as prophets, a third part as teachers, a fourth as miraculous healers, a fifth for other activities in helping, a sixth for the administration of the community, and a seventh He set aside to speak with tongues. Shall all men be prophets, shall all men be apostles, shall all be teachers, all healers, shall all speak with tongues, or shall all interpret? Therefore it is right for all the gifts to work together, but the more numerous they are the better.”

Then Paul speaks of the force that can prevail in the individual but also in the community, and that holds all the separate members together as the strength of the body holds the separate members of the body together. Krishna says nothing more beautiful to one man than St. Paul spoke to humanity in its different members. Then he speaks of the Christ-Power, which holds the different members together just as the body holds its different members together; and the force that can live in one individual as the life-force in every one of his limbs, and yet lives also in a whole community; that is described by St. Paul in powerful words: “Nevertheless I will show you,” says he, “the way that is higher than all else. If I could speak with tongues of men or of angels and have not love, my speech is but as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal, and if I could prophesy and reveal all secrets and communicate all the knowledge in the world, and if I had all the faith that could remove mountains themselves and had not love, it would all be nothing. And if I distributed every spiritual gift, yea, if I gave my body itself to be burnt, but were lacking in love, it would all be in vain. Love endureth ever. Love is kind. Love knoweth not envy. Love knoweth not boasting, knoweth not pride. Love injureth not what is decorous, seeketh not her own advantage, doth not let herself be provoked, beareth no one any malice, doth not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoiceth only in truth. Love envelopeth all, streameth through all beliefs, hopeth all things, practiseth toleration everywhere. Love, if it existeth, can never be lost. Prophesies vanish when they are fulfilled, what is spoken with tongues ceases when it can no longer speak to human hearts; what is known ceases when the subject of knowledge is exhausted, for we know in part, and we prophesy in part, but when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child; when I became, a man the world of childhood was past. Now we only see dark outlines in a mirror, but then we shall see the spirit face to face; now is my knowledge in part, but then I shall know completely, even as I myself am known. Now abideth Faith, the certainty of Hope, and Love; but Love is the greatest of these, hence Love is above all. For if you could have all spiritual gifts, whoever himself understands prophecy must also strive after love; for whoever speaks with tongues speaks not among men, he speaks among Gods. No one understands him, because in the spirit he speaketh mysteries.” We see how St. Paul understands the nature of speaking with tongues. His meaning is: The speaker with tongues is transported into the spiritual worlds; he speaks among Gods. Whoever prophesies speaks to men to build up, to warn, to comfort; he who speaks with tongues, to a certain extent satisfies himself; he who prophesies builds up the community. If you all attain to speaking with tongues, it is yet more important that you should prophesy. He who prophesies is greater than he who speaks with tongues, for he who speaks with tongues must first understand his own speaking, in order that the community should do so. Supposing that I came to' you as a speaker with tongues, of what use should I be to you if I did not tell you what my speaking signifies as prophecy, teaching and revelation! My speaking would be like a flute or a zither, of which one could not clearly distinguish the sounds. How could one distinguish the playing of either the zither or of the flute if they did not give forth distinct sounds? And if the trumpet gave forth an indistinct sound, who would arm himself to battle? So it is with you; if you cannot connect a distinct language with the tongue-speaking, it is all merely spoken into the air.

All this shows us that the different spiritual gifts must be divided amongst the community, and that the members as individuals, must work together. With this we come to the point at which the revelation of Paul, through the moment in human evolution in which it appears, must differ absolutely from that of Krishna. The Krishna-revelation is directed to one individual, but in reality applies to every man if he is ripe to tread the upward path prescribed to him by the Lord of Yoga; we are more and more reminded of the primeval ages of mankind, to which we always, according to Krishna-teaching, return in spirit. At that time men were less individualised, one could assume that for each man the same teaching and directions would be suitable. St. Paul confronted mankind when individuals were becoming differentiated, when they really had to become differentiated, each one with his special capacity, his own special gift. One could then no longer reckon on being able to pour the same thing into each different soul; one had then to point to that which is invisible and rules over all. This, which lives in no man as a separate individual, although it may be within each one, is the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse, again, is something like a new group-soul of humanity, but one that must be consciously sought for by men. To make this clearer, let us picture to ourselves how, for instance, a number of Krishna students are to be distinguished in the spiritual worlds, from a number of those who have been moved in the deepest part of their being by the Christ-Impulse. The Krishna pupils have every one of them been stirred by one and the same impulse, which has been given them by the Lord of Yoga. In spiritual life each one of these is like the other. The same instructions have been given to them all. But those who have been moved by the Christ-Impulse, are each, when disembodied and in the spiritual world, possessed of their own particular individuality, their own distinct spiritual forces. Therefore even in the spiritual world, one man may go in one direction and one in another; and the Leader of both, the One Who pours Himself into the soul of each one, no matter how individualised he may be, is the Christ, Who is in the soul of each one and at the same time soars above them all. So we still have a differentiated community even when the souls are discarnate, while the souls of the Krishna pupils, when they have received instructions from the Lord of Yoga, are as one unit. The object of human evolution, however, is that souls should become more and more differentiated.

Therefore it was necessary that Krishna should speak in a different way. He really speaks to his pupils just as he does in the Gita. But St. Paul must speak differently. He really speaks to each individual, and it is a question of individual development whether, according to the degree of his maturity, a man remains at a certain stage of his incarnation at a standstill in exoteric life, or whether he is able to enter the esoteric life and raise himself into esoteric Christianity. We can go further and further in the Christian life and attain the utmost esoteric heights; but we must start from something different from what we start from in the Krishna-teaching. In the Krishna-teaching you start from the point you have reached as man, and raise the soul individually, as a separate being; in Christianity, before you attempt to go further along the path you must have gained a connection with the Christ-Impulse-feeling in the first place that this transcends all else. The spiritual path to Krishna can only be trodden by one who receives instructions from Krishna; the spiritual path to Christ can be trodden by anyone, for Christ brought the mystery for all men who feel drawn towards it. That, however, is something external, accomplished on the physical plane; the first step is, therefore taken on the physical plane. That is the essential thing. Truly one need not, if one looks into the world-historical importance of the Christ-Impulse, begin by belonging to this or that Christian denomination; on the contrary one can, just in our time, even start from an anti-Christian standpoint, or from one of indifference towards Christ. Yet if one goes deeply into the spiritual life of our own age, examining the contradictions and follies of materialism, perhaps one may genuinely be led to Christ, even though to begin with one may not have belonged to any particular creed. Therefore when it is said outside our circle that we are starting from a peculiar Christian denomination, this must be regarded as a special calumny; for it is not a matter of starting from any denomination, but that in response to the demands of the spiritual life itself, everyone, be he Mahommedan or Buddhist, Jew or Hindu, or Christian, shall be able to understand the Christ-Impulse in its whole significance for the evolution of mankind. This desire we can see deeply penetrating the whole view and presentation of St. Paul, and in this respect he is absolutely the one who sets the tone for the first proclamation of the Christ-Impulse to the world.

As we have described how Sankhya philosophy concerns itself with the changing forms, with that which appertains to Prakriti, we may also say that St. Paul, in all that underlies his profound Epistles, deals with Purusha, that which pertains to the soul. What the soul is to become, the destiny of the soul, how throughout the whole evolution of mankind it evolves in manifold ways, concerning all this St. Paul gives us quite definite and profound conclusions. There is a fundamental difference between what Eastern thought was still able to give us, and what we find at once with such wonderful clearness in St. Paul. We pointed out yesterday that, according to Krishna, everything depended on man's finding his way out of the changing forms. But Prakriti remains outside, as something foreign to the soul. All the striving in this Eastern method of development and even in the Eastern initiation, tends to free one from material existence' from that which is spread outside in nature; for that, according to the Veda-philosophy, is merely maya. Everything external is maya, and to be free from maya is Yoga. We have pointed out how in the Gita it is expected of man that he shall become free from all he does and accomplishes, from what he wills and thinks, from what he likes and enjoys, and in his soul shall triumph over everything external. The work that man accomplishes should equally fall away from him, and thus resting within himself, he shall find satisfaction. Thus, he who wishes to develop according to the Krishna teaching, aspires to become something like a Paramahamsa, that is to say, a high Initiate who leaves all material existence, behind him, who triumphs over all he has himself accomplished by his actions in this world of sense; and lives a purely spiritual existence, having so overcome what belongs to the senses that he no longer thirsts for reincarnation, that he has nothing more to do with what filled his life and at which he worked in this sense-world. Thus it is the issuing forth from this maya, the triumphing over it which meets us everywhere in the Gita, With St. Paul it is not so.

If he had met with these Eastern teachings, something in the depth of his soul would have caused the following words to come forth: “Yes, thou wishest to rise above all that surrounds thee outside, from that also which thou formerly accomplished there! Dost thou wish to leave all that behind thee? Is not then all that the work of God, is not everything above which thou wishest to lift thyself created by the Divine Spirit? In despising that, art thou not despising the work of God? Does not the revelation of God's Spirit dwell everywhere within it? Didst thou not at first seek to represent God in thine own work, in love and faith and devotion, and now desirest thou to triumph over what is the work of God?”

It would be well, my dear friends, if we were to inscribe these words of St. Paul-which though unspoken were felt in the depths of his soul-deeply into our own souls; for they express an important part of what we know as Western revelation. In the Pauline sense, we too speak of the maya which surrounds us. We certainly say: We are surrounded by maya: but we also say: Is there not spiritual revelation in this maya, is it not all divine spiritual work? Is it not blasphemy to fail to understand that there is divine spiritual work in all things? Now arises the other question: Why is that maya there -? Why do we see maya around us? The West does not stop at the question as to whether all is maya: it inquires as to the wherefore of maya. Then follows an answer that leads us into the centre of the soul—into Purusha: Because the soul once came under the power of Lucifer it sees everything through the veil of maya and spreads the veil of maya over everything. Is it the fault of objectivity that we see maya? No. To us as souls objectivity would appear in all its truth, if we had not come under the power of Lucifer. It only appears to us as maya because we are not capable of seeing down into the foundations of what is spread out there. That comes from the soul's having come under the power of Lucifer; it is not the fault of the Gods, it is the fault of our own soul. Thou, O soul, hast made the world a maya to thyself, because thou hast fallen into the power of Lucifer. From the highest spiritual grasp of this formula, down to the words of Goethe: “The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives,” is one straight line. The Philistines and zealots may fight against Goethe and his Christianity as much as they like; he might nevertheless say that he is one of the most Christian of men, for in the depths of his being he thought as a Christian, even in that very formula: “The senses do not deceive, but the judgment deceives.” It is the soul's own fault that what it sees appears as maya and not as truth. So that which in Orientalism appears simply as an act of Gods themselves, is diverted into the depths of the human soul, where the great struggle with Lucifer takes place.

Thus Orientalism, if we consider it aright, is in a certain sense materialism, in that it does not recognise the spirituality of maya, and wishes to rise above matter. That which pulses through the Epistles of St. Paul is a doctrine of the soul, although only existing in germ and therefore capable of being so mistaken and misunderstood as in our Tamas-time, but it will in the future be visibly spread out over the whole earth. This, concerning the peculiar nature of maya, will have to be understood; for only then can one understand the full depth of that which is the object of the progress of human evolution. Then only does one understand what St. Paul means when he speaks of the first Adam, who succumbed to Lucifer in his soul, and who was therefore more and more entangled in matter-which means nothing else than this: ensnared in a false experiencing of matter. As God's creation external matter is good: what takes place there is good. But what the soul experiences in the course of human evolution became more and more evil, because in the beginning the soul fell into the power of Lucifer. Therefore St. Paul called Christ the Second Adam, for He came into the world untempted by Lucifer, and therefore He can be a guide and friend to men's souls, who can lead them away from Lucifer, that is, into the right relationship to Him. St. Paul could not tell mankind at that time all that he as an Initiate knew; but if we allow his Epistles to work on us we shall see that there is more in their depths than they express externally. That is because St. Paul spoke to a community, and had to reckon with the understanding of that community. That is why in certain of his Epistles there seem to be absolute contradictions. But one who can plunge down into the depths, finds everywhere the impulse of the Christ-Being. Let us here remember, my dear friends, how we ourselves have represented the coming into existence of the Mystery of Golgotha. As time went on we recognised that there were two different stories of the youth, of Christ Jesus, in the Gospel of St. Matthew and that of St. Luke, because in reality there are two Jesus-boys in question. We have seen that externally—after the flesh, according to St. Paul, which means through physical descent—both Jesus-boys descended from the stock of David; that one came from the line of Nathan and the other from that of Solomon; that thus there were two Jesus-boys born at about the same time. In the one Jesus-child, that of St. Matthew's Gospel, we find Zarathustra reincarnated: and we have emphatically stated that in the other Jesus-child, the one described by St. Luke, there was no such human ego as is usually to be found, and certainly not as the one existing in the other Jesus-child, in whom lived such a highly evolved ego as that of Zarathustra. In the Luke-Jesus there actually lives that part of man that has not entered into human evolution on the earth. *[See also The Spiritual Guidance of Mankind, the Gospel of St. Luke, the Gospel of St. Matthew.]

It is rather difficult to form a right conception of this but we must just try to think how, so to speak, the soul that was incarnated in Adam, he who may be described as Adam in the sense of my Occult Science succumbed to Lucifer's temptation, symbolically described in the Bible as the Fall of Man in Paradise. We must picture this. Then we must picture further, that side by side with that human soul-nature which incarnated in Adam's body, there was a human part, a human being, that remained behind and did not then incarnate, that did not enter a physical body, but remained “pure soul.” You need only now picture how, before a physical man arose in the evolution of humanity, there was one soul, which then divided itself into two parts. The one part, the one descendant of the common soul, incarnated in Adam and thus entered into the line of incarnations, succumbed to Lucifer, and so on. As to the other soul, the sister-soul, as it were, the wise rulers of the world saw beforehand that it would not be good that this too should be embodied; it was kept back in the soul world; it did not therefore take part in the incarnations of humanity, but was kept back. With this soul none but the Initiates of the Mysteries had intercourse. During the evolution preceding the Mystery of Golgotha this soul did not, therefore, take into itself the experience of an ego, for this can only be obtained by incarnating in a human body. None the less, it had all the Wisdom that could have been attained through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods, it possessed all the love of which a human soul is capable. This soul remained blameless, as it were, of all the guilt that a man can acquire in the course of his incarnations in human evolution. It could not be met with as a human being externally; but it could be perceived by the old clairvoyants, and was recognised by them: they encountered it, so to say, in the mysteries. Thus, here we have a soul, one might say, that was within, but yet above, the evolution of mankind, that could at first only be perceived in the spirit; a pre-man, a true super-man.

It was this soul which, instead of an ego, was incarnated in the Jesus-child of St. Luke's Gospel. You will remember the lectures at Bale; this fact was already given out there. We have therefore to do with a soul that is only ego-like, one that naturally acts as an ego when it permeates the body of Jesus: but which in all it displays is yet quite different from an ordinary ego. I have already mentioned the fact that the boy of St. Luke's Gospel spoke a language understood by his mother as soon as he came into the world, and other facts of similar nature were to he observed in him. Then we know that the Matthew-Jesus, in whom lived the Zarathustra ego, grew up until his twelfth year, and the Luke-child also grew up, possessing no particular human knowledge or science, but bearing the divine wisdom and the divine power of sacrifice within him. Thus the Luke-Jesus grew up not being particularly gifted for what can be learnt externally. We know further that the body of the Matthew-Jesus was forsaken by the Zarathustra ego, and that in the twelfth year of the Luke-Jesus his body was taken possession of by that same Zarathustra-ego. That is the moment referred to when it is related of the twelve-year-old Jesus of Luke's Gospel, that when his parents lost him he stood teaching before the wise men of the Temple. We know further that this Luke-Jesus bore the Zarathustra ego within him up to his thirtieth year; that the Zarathustra ego then left the body of the Luke-Jesus, and all its sheaths were taken possession of by Christ, a superhuman Being of the higher Hierarchies, Who only could live in a human body at all inasmuch as a body was offered Him which had first been permeated up to its twelfth year with the pre-human Wisdom-forces, and the pre-human divine Love-forces, and was then permeated through and through by all that the Zarathustra ego had acquired through many incarnations by means of initiation. In no other way, perhaps, could one so well obtain the right respect, the right reverence, in short, the right feeling altogether for the Christ-Being, as by trying to understand what sort of a body was needed for this Christ-Ego to be able to enter humanity at all. Many people consider that in this presentation, given out of the holy mysteries of the newer age about the Christ-Being, He is thus made to appear less intimate and human than the Christ-Jesus so many have honoured in the way in which He is generally represented-familiar, near to man, incarnate in an ordinary human body in which nothing like a Zarathustra ego lived. It is brought as a reproach against our teaching that Christ-Jesus is here represented as composed of forces drawn from all regions of the cosmos. Such reproaches proceed only from the indolence of human perception and human feeling which is unwilling to raise itself to the true heights of perception and feeling. The greatest of all must be so grasped by us that our souls have to make the supremest possible efforts to attain the inner intensity of perception and feeling necessary to bring the Greatest, the Highest, at all near to our soul. Our first feelings will thus be raised higher still, if we do but consider them in this light. We know one other thing besides. We know how we have to understand the words of the Gospel: “Divine forces are being revealed in the Heights, and peace will spread among men of goodwill.” We know that this message of peace and love resounded when the Luke-Jesus appeared, because Buddha intermingled with the astral body of the Luke-Jesus; Buddha, who had already lived in a being who went through his last incarnation as Gautama Buddha and had risen to complete spirituality. So that in the astral body of the Luke-Jesus, Buddha revealed himself, as he had progressed up to the occurrence of the Mystery of Golgotha on earth.

Thus we have the Being of Christ Jesus presented before us in a way only now possible to mankind from the basis of occult science. St. Paul, although an Initiate, was compelled to speak in concepts more easily understood at that time; he could not then have assumed a humanity able to understand such concepts as we have brought before your hearts today. His inspiration, however, was derived from his initiation, which came about as an act of grace. Because he did not attain this through regular schooling in the old mysteries, but by grace on the road to Damascus when the risen Christ appeared to him, therefore I call this initiation one brought about by grace. But he experienced this Damascus Vision in such a way that by means of it he knew that He Who arose in the Mystery of Golgotha lives in the sphere of this earth and has been attached to it since that Event. He recognised the risen Christ. From that time on he proclaimed Him. Why was he able to see Him in the particular way he did? At this point we must enter somewhat into the nature of such a vision, such a manifestation as that of Damascus: for it was a vision, a manifestation of a quite peculiar kind. Only those people who never wish to learn anything of occult facts consider all visions as being of one kind. They will not distinguish such an occurrence as the vision of St. Paul from many other visions such as appeared to the saints later. What really was the reason that St. Paul could recognise Christ as he did when He appeared to him on the way to Damascus? Why did the certain conviction come to him that this was the risen Christ? This question leads us back to another one: What was necessary in order that the whole Christ-Being should be able completely to enter into Jesus of Nazareth, at the baptism by John in the Jordan? Now, we have just said what was necessary to prepare the body into which the Christ-Being could descend. But what was necessary in order that the Arisen One could appear in such a densified soul-form as he appeared in to St. Paul? What, then, so to speak, was that halo of light in which Christ appeared to St. Paul before Damascus? What was it? Whence was it taken?

If we wish to answer these questions, my dear friends, we must add a few finishing touches to what I have already said. I have told you that there was, as it were, a sister-soul to the Adam-soul, to that soul which entered into the sequence of human generations. This sister-soul remained in the soul world. It was this sister-soul that was incarnated in the Luke-Jesus. But it was not then incarnated for the first time in a human body in the strictest sense of the words, it had already been once incarnated prophetically. This soul had already been made use of formerly as a messenger of the holy mysteries; it was, so to say, cherished and cultivated in the mysteries, and was sent whenever anything specially important to man was taking place; but it could only appear as a vision in the etheric body, and could only be perceived, strictly speaking, as long as the old clairvoyance remained. In earlier ages that still existed. Therefore this old sister-soul of Adam had no need at that time to descend as far as the physical body in order to be seen. So it actually appeared on earth repeatedly in human evolution: sent forth by the impulses of the mysteries, at all times when important things were to take place in the evolution of the earth; but it did not require to incarnate, in ancient times, because clairvoyance was there. The first time it needed to incarnate was when the old clairvoyance was to be overcome through the transition of human evolution from the third to the fourth Post-Atlantean age, of which we spoke yesterday. Then, by way of compensation, it took on an incarnation, in order to be able to express itself at the time when clairvoyance no longer existed. The only time this sister-soul of Adam was compelled to appear and to become physically visible, it was incorporated, so to speak, in Krishna; and then it was incorporated again in the Luke-Jesus. So now we can understand how it was that Krishna spoke in such a superhuman manner, why he is the best teacher for the human ego, why he represents, so to speak, a victory over the ego, why he appears so psychically sublime. It is because he appears as human being at that sublime moment which we brought before our souls in the lecture before last, as Man not yet descended into human incarnations. He then appears again to be embodied in the Luke-Jesus. Hence that perfection that came about when the most significant world-conceptions of Asia, the ego of Zarathustra and the spirit of Krishna, were united in the twelve-year-old Jesus described by St. Luke. He who spoke to the learned men in the Temple was therefore not only Zarathustra speaking as an ego, but one who spoke from those sources from which Krishna at one time drew Yoga; he spoke of Yoga raised a stage higher; he united himself with the Krishna force, with Krishna himself, in order to continue to grow until his thirtieth year. Then only have we that complete, perfected body which could be taken possession of by the Christ. Thus do the spiritual currents of humanity flow together. So that in what happened at the Mystery of Golgotha, we really have a co-operation of the most important leaders of mankind, a synthesis of spirit-life. When St. Paul had his vision before Damascus, He Who appeared to him then was the Christ. The halo of light in which Christ was enveloped was Krishna. And because Christ has taken Krishna for His own soul-covering through which He then works on further, therefore in the light which shone there, in Christ Himself, there is all that was once upon a time contained in the sublime Gita. We find much of that old Krishna-teaching, although scattered about, in the New Testament revelations. This old Krishna-teaching has on that account become a personal matter to the whole of mankind, because Christ is not as such a human ego belonging to mankind, but to the Higher Hierarchies. Thus Christ belongs also to those times when man was not yet separated from that which now surrounds him as material existence, and which is veiled to him in maya through his own Luciferic temptation. If we glance back over the whole of evolution, we shall find that in those olden times there was not yet that strict division between the spiritual and the material; material was then still spiritual, and the spiritual—if we may say so—still manifested itself externally. Thus because, in the Christ-Impulse, something entered into mankind which completely prevented such a strict separation as we find in Sankhya philosophy between Purusha and Prakriti, Christ becomes the Leader of men out of themselves and towards the divine creation. Must we then say that we must unconditionally give up maya now that we recognise that it seems to be given us through our own fault? No, for that would be blaspheming the spirit in the world; that would be assigning to matter properties which we ourselves have imposed upon it with the veil of maya. Let us rather hope that when we have overcome in ourselves that which caused matter to become maya, we may again be reconciled with the world.

For do we not hear resounding out of the world around us that it is a creation of the Elohim, and that on the last day of creation they considered: and behold, all was very good? That would be the karma to be fulfilled if there were nothing but Krishna-teaching (for there is nothing in the world that does not fulfil its karma). If in all eternity there had been only the teaching of Krishna, then the material existence which surrounds us, the manifestation of God of which the Elohim at the starting-point of evolution said: “Behold all was very good,” would encounter the judgment of men: “It is not good, I must abandon it!” The judgment of man would be placed above the judgment of God. We must learn to understand the words which stand as a mystery at the outset of evolution; we must not set the judgment of man above the judgment of God. If all and everything that could cling to us in the way of guilt were to fall away from us, and yet that one fault remained, that we slandered the work of the Elohim; the earth-Karma would have to be fulfilled; in the future everything would have to fall upon us and karma would have to fulfil itself thus. In order that this should not happen, Christ appeared in the world, so to reconcile us with the world that we may learn to overcome Lucifer's tempting forces, and learn to penetrate the veil; that—we may see the divine revelation in its true form; that we may find the Christ as the Reconciler, Who will lead us to the true form of the divine revelation, so that through Him we may learn to understand the primeval words: “And behold, it is very good.” In order that we may learn to ascribe to ourselves that which we may never again dare to ascribe to the world, we need Christ; for if all our other sins could be taken away from us: yet this sin could only be removed by Him. This, transformed into a moral feeling, is a newer side of the Christ-Impulse. It shows us at the same time why the necessity arose for the Christ-Impulse as the higher soul to envelope itself in the Krishna-Impulse.

An exposition such as I have given you in this course, my dear friends, should not be taken as mere theory, merely as a number of thoughts and ideas to be absorbed; it should be taken as a sort of New Year's gift, a gift which should influence our New Year, and from now on it should work as that which we can perceive through the understanding of the Christ-Impulse, in so far as this helps us to understand the words of the Elohim, which resound down to us from the starting point, from the very primeval beginning of the creation of our earth. And look upon the intention of the course at the same time as the starting point of our Anthroposophical spiritual stream. This must be Anthroposophical because by means of it will be more and more recognised how man can in himself attain to self-knowledge—. He cannot yet attain to complete self-knowledge, not yet can Anthropos attain to knowledge of Anthropos, man to the knowledge of man, so long as this man can consider what he has to carry out in his own soul as an affair to be played out between him and external nature. That the world should appear to us to be immersed in matter is a thing the Gods have prepared for us, it is an affair of our own souls, a question of higher self-knowledge; it is something that man must himself recognise in his own manhood, it is a question of Anthroposophy, by means of which we can come to the perception of what theosophy may become to mankind. It should be a feeling of the greatest modesty which impels a man to belong to the Anthroposophical movement; a modesty which says: If I want to spring over that which is an affair of the human soul and to take at once the highest step into the divine, humility may very easily vanish from me, and pride step in, in its place; vanity may easily install itself May the Anthroposophical Society also be a starting point in this higher moral sphere; above all, may it avoid all that has so easily crept into the theosophical movement, in the way of pride, vanity, ambition, and want of earnestness in receiving that which is the highest Wisdom. May the Anthroposophical Society avoid all this because from its very starting point, it has already considered that the settlement with maya is an affair for the human soul itself.

One should feel that the Anthroposophical Society ought to be the result of the profoundest human modesty. For out of this modesty should well up deep earnestness as regards the sacred truths into which it will penetrate if we betake ourselves into this sphere of the super-sensible, of the spiritual. Let us therefore understand the adoption of the name “Anthroposophical Society” in true modesty, in true humility, saying to ourselves Let all that remains of that pride and lack of modesty, vanity, ambition and untruthfulness, that played a part under the name of Theosophy, be eradicated, if now, under the sign and device of modesty, we begin humbly to look up to the, Gods and divine wisdom, and on the other hand dutifully to study man and human wisdom, if we reverently approach Spiritual Science, and dutifully devote ourselves to Anthroposophy. This Anthroposophy will lead to the divine and to the Gods. If by its help we learn in the highest sense to look humbly and truthfully into our own selves and see how we must struggle against all maya and error through self-training and the severest self-discipline, then, as written on a bronze tablet may there stand above us the word: Anthroposophy! Let that be an exhortation to us, that above all we should seek through it to acquire self-knowledge, modesty, and in this way endeavour to erect a building founded upon truth, for truth can only blossom if self-knowledge lays hold of the human soul in deep earnestness. What is the origin of all vanity, of all untruth? The want of self-knowledge. From what alone can truth spring, from what can true reverence for divine worlds and divine wisdom alone come? From true self-knowledge, self-training, self-discipline. Therefore may that which shall stream and pulsate through the Anthroposophical movement serve that purpose. For these reasons this particular course of lectures has been given at the starting point of the Anthroposophical movement, and it should prove that there is no question of narrowness, but that precisely through our movement we can extend our horizon over those distances which comprise Eastern thought also. But let us take this humbly in self-educative anthroposophical fashion, by creating the will within us to discipline and train ourselves. If Anthroposophy, my dear friends, be taken up among you in this way, it will then lead to a beneficial end and will attain a goal that can extend to each individual and every human society for their welfare. So let these words be spoken which shall be the last of this course of lectures, but something of which perhaps many in the coming days will take away with them in their souls, so that it may bear fruit within our Anthroposophical movement, within which you, my dear friends, have, so to speak, met together for the first time. May we ever so meet together in the sign of Anthroposophy, that we have the right to call upon words with which we shall now conclude, words of humility and of self-knowledge, which we should now at this moment place as an ideal before our souls.

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind to-day, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth's evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us,
That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam's body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam's grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth's aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as he began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man's being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer's entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man's deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth's evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth's goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam's grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth's goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his

Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me!’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen to-day is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of to-day, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well- behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the life of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we to-day regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Ear her when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their lives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union.

In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this ‘all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and lives in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men to-day, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the super-sensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel's science may lead those who think as he does to-day to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully to-day, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud to-day—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us to-day. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We burn something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls to-day, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But to-day, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam's grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet fives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth- life? It is related to that to which man, as a super-sensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and super-sensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross! The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls to-day.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which to-day oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that to-day is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what to-day is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and to-day we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the super-sensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the super-sensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything super-sensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel to-day, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you to-day: (Here follows a rough translation):—

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;—
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania's eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light—
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:—

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne'er have power to be,
Unless t'were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold, It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.’

Who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there lives on in a human soul all through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of all things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have to-day tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens to-day is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood- saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially to-day let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of light. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives m the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that he before you.

Dear friends, once again let us first of all remember those who are out there at the front, in the great arena of present-day events:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who because of those events have already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

May the spirit we are seeking as we work towards spiritual knowledge, the spirit who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha for the good of the earth, for the freedom and progress of man, be With you and the hard duties you have to perform.

Today it will be my task to sum up some of the things we may know already, though it is good to review them again and again, for they may serve as guide-lines for our work in spiritual science.

Above all we must every now and again return to the thought that our present life on earth, between birth and death, really is an interlude between our many past earth lives and the many lives we have already lived between death and rebirth on the one hand and the many earth lives and lives between death and rebirth that lie ahead in the future on the other. An interlude is what I have called this life of ours. We may therefore expect to find something in our present life that may, as it were, be considered to have arisen out of what has gone before, and also something that may be seen to point us towards the future. Some of the things we shall discuss today will relate particularly to the latter.

A person could easily believe, in considering his life, that there is really nothing in this life to indicate that the germs, the seeds of our future life are already within us. Yet that is the case. It really is the case that what is to happen with us in the future is already in preparation. We merely have to interpret our lives correctly and we shall find out that something already lies hidden within us just as the plant now before us holds within it the hidden seed of the future plant' for a plant that is still to come into being.

One element in our present life which often tends to be incomprehensible is our dream life, a subject only too well known to us all. Our dream life does of course have aspects that we may consider to be to some extent comprehensible. We dream about things which remind us of something or other we have gone through in life. It does, of course, often happen that things we have gone through the day before or some time ago appear changed in our dreams, that they have undergone some kind of transformation. But still, it will often be fairly obvious that part of the life we have behind us comes up in what we are dreaming, even if it has changed. On the other hand I think no one who pays at least some attention to himself and the world of his dreams can deny that there are dreams which show us such strange things that we really cannot say they derive from something or other we have gone through in our lives. It really is a fact that a person only needs to reflect a little on his dreams and he will be perfectly aware that things come up in his dreams which he could never have thought up, could never have had an idea of, at least as far as he is aware from what he remembers.

We shall understand how all this fits together if we take a closer look at what really happens when we dream. As you know, when we are asleep we are outside the physical and ether bodies with our astral body and ego. The physical and ether bodies are lying on the couch; with our astral body and ego we are outside them. Under present conditions on earth it is not possible for any one to have conscious awareness of what the astral body and the ego go through whilst they are asleep—unless they somehow acquire special faculties. These things are at a subconscious level. However, clairvoyant perception shows that what the astral body and ego live through outside the physical body is just as rich and varied, just as clearly defined, as what the physical body experiences. It is just as rich and varied, showing just as great a variety of form as many of the things we experience here on the physical plane. Our consciousness cannot take it in, but it is there and it is experienced. The astral body and the ego are normally so far away from the physical and ether bodies during sleep that these are not aware of anything that goes on in the astral body and the ego. Dreams arise when the astral body and the ego come so close to the physical and ether bodies that the ether body is able to receive impressions of what goes on in the astral body and the ego. When you wake up knowing that you have been dreaming, it strictly speaking means that the contents of your dream have become conscious because the astral body and the ego were re-entering. And before the physical body was able to become conscious of having the astral body and the ego within itself again, the ether body became conscious of this. The ether body rapidly took in what the astral body and the ego had experienced and this gave rise to the dream. A dream therefore arises through interaction between astral body and ether body.

As a result the dream is given a particular colouring. It is given a kind of coating, one might say. As you know, at death the human being departs with his astral body, ego and ether body and the ether body then immediately sees the past life in retrospect. This vision of the past life is in fact attached to the ether body and the review comes to an end when this dissolves. The ether body therefore has the capacity for carrying the imprint of all the events in one's life. The ether body really bears the imprint of everything we have gone through in life.

This ether body has a very complex structure. If we were able to dissect it out in such a way that it retained its form, it would be a mirror of our present life, a picture of our life going back to the moment, the point in time, to which our memory extends. As we enter into the ether body with our astral body and ego and the ether body comes to meet the incoming astral body, it carries things—memories of things it has experienced—towards that which is coming in with the astral body and it uses its own images for what in the astral body is something real.

I want to put it more precisely. Let us assume someone is asleep and with his astral body and ego out there encounters, let us say, another individual. The person will know nothing about this. He experiences the encounter; he experiences a certain friendly feeling towards the other and knows that he is about to do something together with this other individual. Let us assume he experiences this outside his ether body. This is possible. Yet he'll know nothing about it. Then the moment of waking comes. The astral body and the ego return to the ether body, bringing towards the ether body whatever has been experienced. The ether body meets the astral body with all that is inherent within it, with its world of images, and the sleeper dreams. He dreams of something he undertook maybe ten, twenty years ago. And the person will say to himself: ‘Ah yes, I have been dreaming about something I experienced ten, twenty years ago.’ But if he reflects carefully he may well find that the past event has undergone a complete change. It will still, however, remind him of something he experienced in the past. Now what did really happen in this case? If we follow the process carefully, using clairvoyant perception, we find that the ego and astral body have experienced something that in fact Will only take place during the person's next incarnation: an encounter with an individual, something or other which has to do with the individual. But the person is not yet able to take this in with his ether body, for this only contains, is only able to hold, the images of his present life. When the astral body enters, the ether body expresses what really is part of a future life in images belonging to the present life. This peculiarly complicated process actually takes place all the time in the human being when he is dreaming.

Considering everything you have already heard in spiritual science, this will not seem strange to you. We must be aware that in the principles which depart from our physical and ether bodies, in the astral body and the ego, we have that which tends towards our next incarnation, which is preparing in us for our next incarnation. As we gradually learn to separate our dreams from the images deriving from our present life, we come to know the prophetic nature of dreams. The prophetic nature of dreams can indeed be revealed to us; we merely have to learn to strip our dreams of the images in which they are clothed. We need to consider the nature of the experiences in our dreams rather than the actual experience. We might say to ourselves for instance: The fact that I dream of an individual is due to the nature of my ether body, the way in which my ether body goes out to meet the experiences gained by the astral body with images relating to the present. To identify the things which have already been prepared for our next life, we have to focus our attention more on the manner or essential nature of the dream, separating it from the image belonging to the ether body. Through our dreams we really have prophecies in us of things that will happen in the future. It is really most important to pay serious attention to this. Human life will be more and more revealed the more we take account of its complex nature. We'd like to have it simpler, that would be easier, but the fact is that it is complicated.

You see, someone who is in the outer, physical world does not realize that there are all kinds of things within him. We have just come to see that there is a foreteller of future lives within us. But there are many other things in us, and in gaining self-knowledge we come to see more and more of what there is in us, what is at work within us, making us happy or unhappy—for all the things that are in us make us happy or unhappy. People do not usually realize that prior to this earth life they went through life on Moon—not they themselves but that which has made them human beings on earth. We know something of life on Moon and also of earlier life stages on Sun and on Saturn. Let us first of all consider life on Moon. At present we are of course living earth lives, but life on Moon was essential if earth life was to come about. Life on Moon was preparatory, producing the causes of life on earth, and in a certain way this Moon life is still in us. On Moon man had a dream-like clairvoyance. He perceived reality through dream images. Today we still have in us what we once have been on Moon; it is still in us. Yes, I know Moon man has become earth man, but this effect still holds its original cause within it, we still have Moon man in us. Looking upon this Moon man we are able to say: ‘He is what we call the dreamer in us.’ Yes, indeed, We all carry a dreamer in us, a dreamer who actually thinks and feels and uses his will in a less dense, in a thinner, way, but who is really also wiser than we earth individuals are. We have a dreamer in us. We all carry another subtle human being within us. The way we walk about on earth, thinking, feeling and using our will, is something we have been given in the course of earth evolution. What Moon evolution has left in us is a dreaming human being. We are however given more in this dreamer than we are able to have in our thoughts, feelings and will impulses, and this dreamer is not entirely inactive. We do not take him into account, but we do many, many things that we are really only half aware of, things the dreamer in us is directing and guiding. We arrange things, but the dreamer in us also does his part, guiding our thoughts in this or that direction. We may think up a sentence, for example. The dreamer will make us say that sentence in a specific way, giving it a point, a particular nuance of feeling. The dreamer is what is left in us of Moon. Let us refer to an outstanding individual and show how the dreamer can be found in him. When people get to know people in life, or get to know outstanding individuals through their writings, they usually consider the other as a human being on this earth and not as a dreamer, a poet. Yet it is there that he expresses himself more profoundly.

Emerson was a great writer.⁷⁸ He had the peculiarity that he always became so engrossed in whatever subject he was dealing with that it is easy to show up the occasional contradiction in his work. The reason is that he was always completely taken up with the subject he was dealing with at the time, failing to take into account that what he was characterizing at the moment was contradictory to the characterization he had given when involved in another subject. In the case of Emerson it is always possible to detect subtle undertones of his Moon being, of the dreamer, wherever he became completely involved in a person or an object. Emerson wrote two excellent essays—one on Shakespeare as the typical poet and one on Goethe as the typical writer. Now what happens is that people read this and that in Emerson's essay on Shakespeare and read this and that in the essay on Goethe and this satisfies them, they are content. But we can also take things further and say to ourselves: 'Surely there is some subtle touch of something unusual in these works of Emerson?' And We shall discover something very strange indeed, for Emerson's intention was not to characterize Shakespeare as Shakespeare, but to make him the representative, the example, of poets. It is very strange to see what has come about through Emerson's becoming engrossed in Shakespeare—if we perceive the subtle undertones that are present in this work.

You know I would not say anything derogatory about Shakespeare out of chauvinism, for nationalistic reasons. Of course I consider Shakespeare a great poet, certainly one of the greatest poets of all time. But let me bring out those subtle undertones that are there in Emerson's characterization of Shakespeare. He wrote that it was not originality which made a great man. Characterizing a great poet one should not demand such a great person to be original in everything he did.

And you'll find that in his characterization of Shakespeare Emerson makes it clear that the poet went to all kinds of sources, taking anything he liked and using it in his own poetic works. Emerson was making an effort, as it were, to excuse Shakespeare for not being original, for collecting his material from all kinds of sources—Italian, Spanish, French and German—and of course also from English history. Oddly enough, Emerson, a man giving such loving concern to the work of Shakespeare, characterized Shakespeare in the following words:

‘Great men are more distinguished by range and extent, than by originality. If we require the originality which consists in weaving, like a spider, their web from their own bowels; in finding clay, and making bricks, and building the house; no great men are original. Nor does valuable originality consist in unlikeness to other men.’

He excused Shakespeare's lack of originality, the fact that he collected his material from many sources. Indeed, he went so far as to say that one had to consider the nature of English audiences at the time, for Shakespeare sought to be to their taste. Emerson wrote some strange things about Shakespeare:

‘It is easy to see that what is best written or done by genius in the world, was no man's work but came by wide social labour, when a thousand wrought like one, sharing the same impulse.’

And the strangest thing Emerson said about Shakespeare in his loving characterization, the strangest thing—please listen to this:

`It has come to be practically a sort of rule in literature, that a man, having once shown himself capable of original writing, is entitled thenceforth to steal from the writings of others at discretion.’

Emerson was therefore trying to demonstrate Shakespeare's world renown exactly by showing that great men plagiarize on each other's works and that the themes he used in his numerous works were actually taken from the work of others. That is the subtle undertone to be found initially in Emerson's Shakespeare characterization.

Let us now consider his loving appreciation of Goethe. Emerson characterized Goethe as representative of writers. Yet he said with reference to Goethe that nature depended on her wonders being put in words. Every stone, every plant, every creature in nature was waiting to be uttered in words by the soul of man. The writer, Emerson said, would be in immediate contact with nature. It was as though the creator himself has first made provision for the idea and then one day the writer would appear. It was strange, Emerson said with regard to Goethe, how this man owed none of his gifts to his people, his country, his environment, for everything bubbled up out of him. Truth and error, too, was determined by Goethe himself, everything was his own.

In his characterization of Goethe, Emerson sought to find his concepts from all kinds of sources. Characterizing Shakespeare as a splendid robber he presented Goethe as someone working out of the centre of the world, as nature herself. Here are some passages from Emerson's description of Goethe:

‘The secret of genius is to suffer no fiction to exist for us; to realize all that we know in the high refinements of modern life, in arts, in science, in books, in men, to exact good faith, reality and a purpose; and first, last, midst, and without end, to honour every truth by use.’

Elsewhere he said:

‘I find a provision, in the constitution of the world, for the writer.’

He characterized Shakespeare as being the way his audiences wanted him, Goethe as a man who had been envisaged from the very beginning of the world.

‘He is not a debtor to his position, but was born with a free and controlling genius.’

And again:

‘He sees at every pore, and has a certain gravitation towards truth. He will realize what you say. He hates to be trifled with, and to be made to say over again some old wife's fable, that has had possession of men's faith these thousand years.’

Those words were used to characterize Goethe. In his characterization of Shakespeare, Emerson said that he could never do enough to collect material from all kinds of sources, particularly written sources. I would say that in his characterizations of Shakespeare and of Goethe Emerson succeeded marvellously well in bringing out the difference between Shakespeare and Goethe. Out of what we feel about this we are then able to discover what the dreamer has contributed in either case, that is how Emerson came to characterize Shakespeare as a great robber and Goethe as the great ally of the truth. This is extremely interesting, for there was no conscious intention; yet there is this particular tinge to both essays.

You see, there is another way of reading than just picking up a book and going through it. In fact we do not find out the most important aspects of things if we just take them by themselves, but only by comparing them, by letting one thing act on us side by side with another.

It has been possible for me to give this example because in the case of Emerson it is often the dreamer who is speaking. It is absolutely possible to be aware of two persons speaking in his voice. Emerson was of course aware of the contradictions which your run-of-the-mill reader finds in his works. After all, some of the contradictions In Emerson are so glaringly obvious you really cannot miss them. On the one hand he calls the English the greatest nation on earth, on the other he puts the Germans above them. One thing is said out of surface consciousness, the other out of the dreamer. It is particularly interesting to read the two conclusions to the essays on Shakespeare and Goethe one after the other, taking them simply as conclusions. In the essay on Shakespeare, Emerson wrote that none has as yet attained to what the poet represented in the world: 'The world still awaits the poet-priest.' Something of a feeling of resignation is apparent in the conclusion of the Shakespeare essay. At the end of the Goethe essay we find the exact opposite: that we are spurred by him to revere all truth by not merely giving it recognition but also making it the guide-line for our actions. The Shakespeare essay ends in words of resignation, the Goethe essay in words of confidence and hope.

We are living in an age when it is important to consider these things to some extent, to realize them to some extent. We shall find that in all human beings there is a dreamer who makes himself known through their actions. Clairvoyant awareness is able to perceive him directly; in ordinary life we can recognize him by studying people. That is something we can do in the case of Emerson. Studying Emerson is of definite interest.

The dreamer is the principle in us which is influenced by everything that is supposed to influence us from the spiritual world without our being aware of it. In the experiences we gain as human beings on earth we form thoughts and will impulses. The things we know In the ordinary way are the things we discover in the course of life. Into our dreams however come the Inspirations of the angels, of the entities known as the Angeloi. These in turn are inspired by entities from higher hierarchies. Into our dreams enter things—more so in some and less in others—that are more sensible than anything we have gained from everyday life, anything we encompass in everyday life as we think, feel and use our will. The element that guides us, the element which is more than earth-dwelling man is or ever was, enters into the dreamer in us.

You see, this dreamer is capable of evoking many things that at present are unconscious in us. Oh yes, everything influencing us from the higher world by way of the entities belonging to the hierarchy of the Angeloi influences the dreamer; but all Ahrimanic, all Luciferic influences also influence the dreamer, they really act on the dreamer. A great deal of what people put forward—not entirely from their consciousness, I'd say, but at an instinctive level—is due to influence brought to bear on the dreamer from the spiritual world.

Again I would like to give you an example. I would like to take this example from contemporary history on a somewhat wider scale. I have told you on several occasions that we come to know the European peoples by understanding the way the folk soul speaks through the sentient soul to the Italian, through the intellectual or mind soul to the French, through the spiritual soul to the English, through the ego to the Germans, through the spirit self to the Russians. This communication through the spirit self in the case of the Russians takes the form of instincts today that will only develop further in the future. What the Russian folk soul has to say will only become apparent in the distant future, once the human soul has developed as far as the spirit self. This is why everything that emerges to the east of us is still only germinal. Those peoples to the east of us are, however, instinctively aware that they belong to a different cultural stream. They feel that they must wait. Yet no one likes to wait in reflecting on his awareness of the present. The point is that they are supposed to wait and consciously absorb European culture. Yet there is an instinct in them that they ought to lead and to guide, that they cannot put Europe to death quickly enough. The natural course of events, however, is that in Central Europe there develops whatever can develop in the dialogue between the folk soul and the ego.

As for the Russian folk soul, it must learn its lessons from Central Europe. Once it has worked through what is already being worked through in advance in Central Europe, it will be able to make its own Contribution to European culture. Instead, wild, chaotic instincts are giving rise to something very strange so that we are able to see that these instincts are brought to life in the dreamer out of all kinds of Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses. It is due to these Ahrimanic and Luciferic impulses that the East of Europe has now turned against Germany in such a horrific way.

One mind in whose utterances the dreamer is apparent is that of Yushakov⁷⁹ He gave his views in 1885 on the relationship between Russian and English culture. I suggest you consider his ideas, for it seems most desirable that as many people as possible today ideas like those which not all that long ago arose in the mind of a Russian who then wrote them down. We should consider these ideas not so much for their content but rather as symptoms of something to be found in all Russian peoples. develop

Yushakov said that the West had grown decadent and was ripe for decline—everything in the West had outlived its time and had to disintegrate. Russia would have to come in at this point. But Russia should not merely cultivate the West, redeem the West from its barbarism; Russian would have to redeem the whole world and Particularly Asia. The way Yushakov envisaged this redemption of Asia for the sake of the soul is as follows.

Let us consider Asia. Asiatic culture really originated from Iran. Iranian culture based on Ormazd.⁸⁰ The Iranians had realized that there was conflict between Ormazd and Ahriman and it has always been possible to see how the Iranians did everything in their power to spread the beneficial influence of Ormazd in Iran. Then, however, the Turanian peoples appeared on the scene. They were independent of Ahriman and constantly harried, fought and overcame the Ormazd culture. First Ormazd was in conflict with Ahriman in Iran. But If we look at the way the peoples of Europe behaved towards this Ormazd culture we find that this lovely culture had spread in the areas which were then predominantly colonized by the English. The English were absolute barbarians when it came to the Ormazd culture. Russia will have to make up for many crimes committed by the English in Asia. The English went there, took possession of large parts of Asia and exploited the Ormazd culture, sucking it dry. What did the English have in mind? Those Englishmen believed the Ormazd culture to exist for their benefit; those Englishmen said that all those parts of Asia existed only to wear English fabrics, fight among themselves with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English dishes and play with English trinkets. Asian culture, they felt, existed for no other purpose. The whole of Asia was to their mind booty won by England. Yushakov put it very precisely:

‘England is exploiting millions of Hindus, and her whole existence depends on the obedience of the various peoples inhabiting that rich peninsula. I desire nothing of this kind for my own country—I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this brilliant yet at the same time also lamentable situation.’

That was written in Russian by Yushakov in 1885. And what did the Russians do? Yushakov asked. They had not been able to emulate the Western European nations, the English, and without legal justification attack and arrogate for themselves the Ormazd culture which existed in Asia. They only went to the places where the Ahriman culture had spread, holding back the peoples in whom Ahriman was at work, so that they could do no further harm to all that Ormazd had achieved for Asia. Once the Russians had liberated the peoples of Asia from the evil of Ahriman they would have to liberate them from the evils due to the sins the English had committed against the Ormazd culture in those areas. To prepare for their future mission in Asia, following the liberation of Asia from Ahriman, they would also have to make good the harm European peoples, and above all the English, had done to the Ormazd culture. Asked why those peoples were unable to carry on with the Ormazd culture, Yushakov's reply was that they had become slaves to industrialism and individualism, that they always thought of themselves first whilst the Russians always thought of themselves last. Such people were of no use. Having blended industrialism into their individualism they had become bloodsuckers in Asia. Russia, he said, would forge different links; a link between the Cossacks, with their brilliant military skills, and the country people who were working with nature. Out of this would come the people who were to liberate the people of Asia. The individual who was to liberate human evolution would come from Asia. That was Yushakov's ideal—that the one to liberate the world would come out of the union between the Cossacks and the country people tilling the soil.

Dear friends, you see an ideal set up here that surely makes it clear beyond doubt that something of the Ahrimanic spirit entered into Yushakov's own mind, into the dreamer. This influence on the dreamer has gradually created a mood in a whole nation—the mood we now perceive in the people who are to the east of us. We are dealing here with a popular mood, a mood brought to expression in Yushakov's words.

You see, I also wanted to show how spiritual science lets us enter more and more closely, giving us deeper insights, into what people say and dream. We all have the dreamer in us, the dreamer is in all of us. Both good and evil powers influence the dreamer.

We have the dreamer in us who has brought Moon nature into us, and we also have a Sun man in us from Sun evolution. This Sun man, however, is no longer able to dream. His conscious awareness if of the same kind as that of the plants. We have within us a plant or Sun man, who is asleep. And then we have in us a Saturn man who is completely dead, as dead as a stone. We have the Sun man in us who is asleep and also Saturn man who is at an even lower level of consciousness, below the level of consciousness we have in sleep. Saturn man I'd say, is our oldest cause, the innermost core in us. All the knowledge man gains at the present time in external life or in science is gained because the external world influences the Saturn man in us. We are not aware of being influenced in this way, but we are nevertheless influenced. Everything we think, feel and will penetrates to Saturn man. And Saturn man is what finally remains of us on this earth, irrespective of whether we are cremated as far as our physical body is concerned or whether we decompose.

The principle we call the dreamer does not endure; the Sun man does not endure. Saturn man becomes part of the elemental realm of the earth in form of very, very fine dust particles. This endures. The earth will always contain a trace of what there has been in us. If you investigate the elemental world today you can find in it the remains of Abraham, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, though in the form of very very fine dust particles. You can find the part of them that was their Saturn man. The part of man that was his Saturn man is given to the earth, remains with the earth, remains in the earth with our permanent essential character.

It was not like this in earlier times. It has been like this since the 15th and 16th centuries. Previously, the whole of the human being dissolved; only those who had been well ahead of their time, like Abraham, Plato and Socrates, left their remains to the earth. By now, or course, it has gradually come to be like this for all people. For this is what is so strange: everything presently achieved by following the path of external science is imprinted in this Saturn man and becomes part of the earth when he does.

Everything else there is to man will be lost, dissolving into the universe once the earth has reached its goal. The minerals, plants and animals around us will pass away. Only the Saturn man you have been remains, in the form of fine dust particles. It will go over from earth to Jupiter existence, forming the solid skeleton of Jupiter. Those are real atoms for Jupiter. People studying external science today, people thinking in an external way, influence their Saturn man to the effect that they produce atoms for Jupiter in their Saturn man. That is how Jupiter get its atoms. If that, however, were the only thing to happen, the whole of Jupiter would be merely a mineral or mineral-like sphere. Jupiter would merely be a mineral-like sphere without plant growth. What we are able to take across to Jupiter through the Saturn man in us merely causes Jupiter to be a mineral sphere. Plants could not grow on it. If plants are to grow on Jupiter the Sun man in us must also be given something. This Sun man in us only receives something from now on and into the future if men and women absorb concepts developed in spiritual science; for the concepts we absorb outside, from external science, enter into Saturn man. What we absorb by way of thoughts engendered through spiritual science enters into the Sun man. This is why spiritual science calls for greater activity. Its thoughts differ from those of external science in that they are active. They have to be grasped in a living way and it is impossible to remain passive towards thinking activity the way we do in the external world. In spiritual science everything has to be actively thought out, we have to be inwardly active. This has an effect on the Sun man in us. And if there were no Sun principle in man, the Jupiter of the future would be entirely mineral, with no plant world. People going through spiritual development take something across that will give rise to a plant world on Jupiter. Through the Sun principle in us we take across the future plant world. All we have to do to make Jupiter barren is reject spiritual science. We can establish spiritual science now in order that there shall be vegetation on Jupiter.

Unlike others, we spiritual scientists do not talk of the marvellous progress we have made. Just listen to a modern physician, one who is very much taking the present-day point of view, or to a modern philosopher and so on. They say: ‘We need not go far back to find people who amounted to nothing at all. Someone like Paracelsus really was in idiot, and a grammar school teacher today is cleverer than Plato every was.’ Plato's philosophy was thoroughly picked to pieces by Hebbel. The latter put down in his diary, as an idea for a play, that a grammar school teacher had a reincarnated Plato in his class.⁸¹ He intended to make a dramatic figure of him, showing the schoolmaster to be dealing with his reincarnated Plato who was quite incapable of grasping anything his teacher was saying about Plato. Hebbel intended to make a play of this. It really is a pity he did not do so, for it really is a very good idea.

But we do not consider ourselves to have made marvellous progress. We hold a different point of view. What people consider philosophy today holds the ego-boosting view that anything going back ten years is already out of date. We know that we have to present spiritual science today the way we do. We also know, however, that a time must come when everything we now present as spiritual science will be a nonsense in a future where quite different work will have to be done within mankind. What we have to present as spiritual science today has the form appropriate for the moment, seeking out from eternity what will be for the benefit of the present age. A time will come, however, when it will be necessary for us to try and influence the dreamer in us just as we influence the Sun man, and the whole of our external science influences Saturn man. Jupiter as mineral mass will be based on what external science makes of Saturn man. Its vegetation will be based on what spiritual science makes of Sun man. Animal life on Jupiter will arise from something that is going to follow on after spiritual science. It will be based on the spiritual science of the future. Then something else will follow which will influence man on Jupiter, something which is still to come. It will provide the basis for Jupiter culture in the real sense.

At present, therefore, we are in a period in life where we prepare the mineral nucleus of Jupiter through external science and where spiritual science influences its plant life, providing the basis for vegetation on Jupiter. The future will bring the principle that influences the dreamer, and this will provide the basis for animal life on Jupiter. Only after this will come the principle which corresponds to what man is today producing in his thinking, feeling and will activity. This is guided by higher wisdom to the effect that when earth evolution has come to an end man will be able to take himself, as man, across to Jupiter.

This is how we are involved in the evolution of the earth, and we perceive, out of our very own human nature, that we are part of the great world, of the macrocosm. We know that everything we do is of account. We know that in joining in the pursuit of spiritual science we contribute to vegetative life for Jupiter and that through the things we put in words we create what will be given to the future at the Jupiter stage of the world.

Just think, dear friends, as I have told you, everything belonging to the mineral kingdom will disperse in the world; everything belonging to the plant kingdom will disperse; everything belonging to the animal kingdom will disperse. Nothing will continue on from the earth except for the mineral atoms coming from man, from the Saturn parts of human beings. Nothing of the mineral, plant and animal worlds passes across to Jupiter. The only thing which will continue is the Saturn man now within us. This will be the mineral kingdom on Jupiter.

I do not know if some of our friends still remember how we first started many years ago in Berlin. We were a small band in those days—some who shared in the experience are still with us—and we started to consider these things.

Let us imagine ourselves on the Jupiter of the future. What are the atoms of Jupiter? They are the Saturn parts of present-day man. It is a nonsense to talk of atoms of the kind modern physicists speak of. Everything man gains from the whole of the earth enters into Saturn man and later becomes Jupiter atoms. It is pure nonsense to say that our minerals, animals and plants contain what physicists are looking for in them. Our present earth atoms were prepared during Moon existence and are what will prepare us to be Sun men, just as we are now preparing the Saturn man in us. I have previously spoken of the way the atom is prepared our of the whole cosmos. You'll find this in the lectures given at the very beginning of our work in Berlin.⁸² Today I'll have to be brief, also taking into account what we have gone through in the meantime.

Our stars, too—the external physical stars, the physical sun, the physical moon we see out there in the universe—that, too, is not the way physicists see it. Physicists would be most surprised if they managed to get up to the sun, for they would find nothing at all of what they have construed. They'd be most surprised at what they saw there. What we would find if we ever could travel up there—in accord with the times it would have to be in a balloon that is still to be invented, in an ether balloon—we'd find the unexpected. We would not find what the physicists have construed; we'd find nothing at all by way of a physical body. It merely looks like that. The sun, moon and stars are part of a whole that arose at some point after Moon evolution. After Moon evolution it was not only the Moon which perished but everything that is part of the visible universe entered into night. And everything there is in the universe today really belongs to the earth, so that the end of the earth will not only mean the plant and animal kingdoms perishing with it but everything out there in the cosmos perishing as well. The stars in their present form will perish into night. And then the future Jupiter world will emerge. Its atoms will be the Saturn parts of present man. Its environment will look very different from our earth environment.

A person considering all this today might ask: 'What will remain of the present world when earth evolution has come to an end?' Mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—all that disperses and passes away. What man gains today by virtue of being man, the external power of discernment he is acquiring, will pass over into the mineral kingdom of Jupiter. The spiritual science he gains will pass over as Sun man and establish the vegetation. What we say—the words we speak—will pass over. Anything moral that happens will pass over.

Was not the One who was to give meaning and direction to the whole of earth evolution able to say some very special words? Was he not able to say: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’?⁸³ Are we not now beginning to grasp the utter profundity of the words Christ spoke: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away’? Is that not literally true?

Words coming from external science influence Saturn man and become the atoms of Jupiter. Words coming from spiritual science and influencing Sun man pass across to form the vegetation on Jupiter. That which acts on the dreamer passes across to form the animal kingdom on Jupiter. The moral progress made by man and what he gains through words of the spiritual science of the future—that will be man on Jupiter. It will be words, wisdom of thoughts. This shall endure. Everything all around us in the cosmos will perish. ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’

So we gradually come to see words of profound wisdom flowing from this central place of activity we call Golgotha. They flow from that point. As I once said, the whole earth evolution to follow exists so that gradually men shall come to understand the words spoken by the One who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. Today I have tried to explain to you, out of the whole of spiritual science as we know it so far, Christ's words: ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.’ Again and again in the future there will be people who know how to explain other words spoken by Christ out of spiritual science. There will have to be many of them before the full meaning of Christ's words can be understood, for they are words of guidance, words given out of the spirit, yet it will only be in the course of time that they can be understood out of what human beings are able to summon up out of the science of the spirit.

We need to enter into this with our feelings if we are to get a feeling for the utter uniqueness of the Mystery of Golgotha. Through perception directed upwards to the infinite we shall gain the marvellous insight into the one thing that has given the earth meaning from the world's beginning to its very end—the Mystery of Golgotha.

Dear friends, it will be another few weeks until we can talk again. And so it has been my task today to speak of something we are able to take into our hearts and minds and meditate on a great deal in the weeks to come. I wanted to put some ideas into your hearts and minds which you could then develop further. It always has been our summer task in spiritual science to develop further what has entered into our hearts and minds so that our souls shall grow more alive and mature. We do not progress in spiritual science by absorbing it as something theoretical, by merely absorbing ideas, but rather by transforming those thoughts into our whole inner life, letting them become living experience. If we let this thought of how man is part of the whole macrocosm act on our souls, we will come to feel part of it all as human beings. Faintheartedness, hesitation, lack of hope will have to vanish before the magnitude of this thought. We must then at last come to feel ourselves human beings in all humility. And all we have been able to absorb of spiritual science, all that can and shall come alive in us out of spiritual science—as has always been our principle until now—needs to be given emphasis in the present day. Again and again we have to remember, as we consider things today, that the great events happening in our time are a warning. We must remember those who are leaving their ether bodies behind for us while still young, ether bodies that will be a great help to us in letting the spirit enter into the culture of the future. If the spirit is to come in there must be souls that understand something of these spiritual things, souls that look up into that world and know that up there is not only what, in abstract terms, is called attraction, but up there are the living dead, up there is what they have given to mankind on earth of their own life—their unused ether bodies. Souls that have some understanding of these things will have to work together, souls whose thoughts reach upwards to meet what is streaming down from the unused ether bodies of those who have died before their time.

We must fill our souls with this image of the spiritual streaming down to join the earthly. Above all, we must look up to the spiritual realm with all our thoughts, with the part of us that is already spiritual. This I have always summed up in conclusion in the words that shall also be our conclusion today:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 78. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–82) American philosophic writer and essayist. Quotes taken from his Essays and Poems Collins, London & Glasgow 1954.
• 79. Yushakov, Seigel (1849–1910): Der Englisch-Russische Konflikt Ptersburg, 1885.
• 80. Ormazd (German spelling ‘Ormuzd)’ is equivalent to Ahura Mazda (translator).
• 81. Hebbel, Friedrich (1813-63): Tagebücher No. 1335:
  
  ‘The transmigration of souls makes it possible for Plato to be getting a thrashing at school today because he is unable to grasp Plato.’
• 82. See the lectures given in Berlin on 16 and 23 December 1904, in Die Tempellegende and die goldene Legende (GA 93); in English as The Temple Legend Or. John M. Wood) Rudolf Steiner Press. London 1985.
• 83. Mark 13:31.Mark 13:31.

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind to-day, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth's evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us,
That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam's body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam's grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth's aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as he began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man's being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer's entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man's deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth's evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth's goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam's grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth's goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his

Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me!’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen to-day is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of to-day, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well- behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the life of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we to-day regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Ear her when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their lives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union.

In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this ‘all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and lives in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men to-day, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the super-sensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel's science may lead those who think as he does to-day to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully to-day, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud to-day—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us to-day. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We burn something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls to-day, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But to-day, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam's grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet fives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth- life? It is related to that to which man, as a super-sensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and super-sensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross! The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls to-day.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which to-day oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that to-day is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what to-day is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and to-day we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the super-sensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the super-sensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything super-sensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel to-day, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you to-day: (Here follows a rough translation):—

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;—
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania's eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light—
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:—

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne'er have power to be,
Unless t'were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold, It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.’

Who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there lives on in a human soul all through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of all things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have to-day tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens to-day is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood- saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially to-day let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of light. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives m the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that he before you.