The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It has already been mentioned here that in the group meetings this winter we want to gather together all the threads as it were that will eventually link up to form a deeper understanding of the being of man and various other things connected with man's whole life and evolution that will lead us deeper and deeper into the secrets of the world. Today I would like to remind you of the group lecture the time before last (21st December 1908) and take our start from there. You will remember that we spoke of a certain rhythm existing in the four members of man's being. We want to start there today and find an answer to the question: How can a knowledge of these things help us understand in a deeper way both the necessity and the object of the anthroposophical movement?

Today we shall have to link up two things apparently very far removed from one another. You will remember that there are certain relationships between man's ego, astral body, etheric body and physical body. What there is to say about the fourth member, the ego, is best seen if we bear in mind the two alternating states of consciousness experienced by the ego in the course of the twenty-four hours of the day. One day with its twenty-four hours, during which the ego experiences day and night, sleeping and waking, will be seen as a kind of unity. So when we say that what the ego goes through in a day is based on the number one, we shall have to say that the number that corresponds in a similar way to our astral body is the number seven. Whereas the ego as it is today comes back as it were to its starting-point in twenty-four hours or a day, our astral body does the same thing in seven days. Let us go into this in greater detail.

Think of waking up in the morning; that is, you rise up out of the darkness of unconsciousness, as people say incorrectly in ordinary life, and the objects of the physical sense world appear round you again. You experience this in the morning and again twenty-four hours later, with the occasional exception. This is the regular course of events, and we can say that our ego returns to its starting-point after a day of twenty-four hours. If we look in the same way for the astral body's corresponding rhythm, we have to say that if the ordered regularity of the astral body is really there, then the astral body returns to the same point after seven days. So whilst the ego goes through its cycle in a day, the astral body goes considerably slower, and carries out its cycle in seven days. The cycle of the etheric body, on the other hand, takes four times seven days; after four times seven days it returns to the same point. And now please bear in mind what was said the time before last. With the physical body it is not as regular as with the astral and the etheric bodies. We can, however, establish a rough figure, and say that it goes through its cycle in about ten times twenty-eight days, and then returns to its starting-point. You know of course that a great difference exists and that the female etheric body is male and the male etheric body female. From this we can see that in a certain respect an irregularity is bound to occur in the rhythm of the etheric bodies. But on the whole the numbers 1:7:(4 x 7):(10 x 7 x 4) are the proportional figures that so to say specify the ‘speeds of rotation’ for the four members of man's being. This is of course speaking figuratively, for they are not really rotations but repetitions of the same conditions; rhythm ratios. A fortnight ago I had to point out that phenomena of daily life are comprehensible only when we know things like this that lie behind the sense perceptible world. And in a public lecture I also indicated a remarkable fact which cannot be denied by even the most materialistic scientist or doctor or be ranked among the ‘spectres of superstition’, because it is an indisputable fact. It is something that really ought to make people think, namely that in pneumonia a special phenomena occurs on the seventh day. A crisis arises, and the patient has to be pulled through this seventh day. The temperature suddenly falls, and if the patient cannot be brought through this crisis then in certain circumstances there is no recovery. This fact is known by most people, but as a rule the starting-point of the illness is not always correctly ascertained, and if you do not know which the first day is then as a rule you do not know which the seventh day is either. But the fact remains, so we have to ask why the temperature drops with pneumonia on the seventh day. Why does a special phenomenon occur at all on the seventh day?

Only a person who sees behind the scenes of existence, behind the physical sense phenomena into the spiritual world, knows of these rhythms, and why phenomena like a temperature arise. What actually is a temperature? Why does it occur? The temperature is not the illness. On the contrary, the temperature is something that the organism calls up to fight against the actual process of the illness. The temperature is the organism's defence against the illness. There is some damage in the organism, in the lungs, say. When the human being is healthy and all his inner activities are working harmoniously, these inner activities are bound to fall into disorder if one particular organ of the human body is upset. Then the whole organism attempts to pull itself together and develop the forces within itself to counterbalance the local upset. There is really a revolution going on in the whole organism, otherwise the organism would not need to gather its forces because there is no enemy to fight. The expressing of this massing of forces in the organism is the temperature.

Now the person who looks behind the scenes of existence knows that the various organs of the human body came into existence and developed at very different periods of human evolution. What from the spiritual scientific point of view is called ‘the study of the human body’ is the most complicated matter imaginable, for the human organism is extremely complex and its individual organs came into existence at quite different times. The rudimentary beginnings of these organs were developed further at a later stage of evolution. Everything in the physical organism is an expression or outcome of man's higher members, so that each physical organ expresses the higher Organisation of the higher members. What we call the lungs today have their origins in the astral body and are to a certain extent connected with it. We will eventually come to talk about what the lungs have to do with the astral body, how the very first, archetype basis of the lungs came into man on the predecessor of our Earth, ancient Moon, and how at that time the astral body was as it were planted into man by higher spiritual beings. But today I want you to look at the fact of the lungs being an expression of the astral body. The actual expression of the astral body is of course the nervous system. But man is complicated, and the development of the various parts always runs parallel. The construction of the lungs began at the same time as the development of the astral body and the incorporation of the present-day nervous system. This in a way includes the lungs in the rhythm of the astral body, that rhythm that is governed by the number seven. The phenomenon of a rising temperature is connected with certain functions of the etheric body. Something must be happening in the etheric body if a temperature runs a certain course. The temperature, then, is somehow within the rhythm of the etheric body. Whenever you have a temperature it has this rhythm, but in what way? We shall have to be clear about the following:

The etheric body, which completes its cycle in four times seven days, moves considerably slower than the astral body with its seven day rhythm. So if we relate the rhythmic course of the etheric body to that of the astral body, we can compare them with the hands of a clock. The clock's hour hand goes round once whilst the minute hand, in the same span of time, goes round twelve times. There you have the relationship of 1:12. Now suppose you look at the clock at noon, when the minute hand lies on top of the hour hand. The two hands coincide. Then the minute hand goes round one, and when it returns to the twelve it can no longer coincide with the hour hand, for this has meanwhile moved on to one. It will be roughly another five minutes before the two hands can coincide, so the minute hand does not point to the same place as the hour hand an hour later but after an hour and just over five minutes later. Now you have a similar relationship between the movement of the astral body and the movement of the etheric body. Imagine that your astral body, that is connected the whole time with the etheric body, were to be in a certain position in relation to the etheric body. Now the astral body begins to rotate. When after seven days it returns to its original position, it does not coincide again with the etheric body, for, after seven days, the etheric body has moved round a quarter of its cycle. So seven days later the position of the astral body does not coincide with the same position of the etheric body but with a position that is a quarter of the cycle behind the original one. Now imagine you have a case of the illness in question. A definite position of the astral body is connected with a definite position of the etheric body. And at this moment, with the co-operation of these two positions working together, the temperature appears, as a summons to fight the enemy. Seven days later the astral body covers an entirely different part of the etheric body. Now in the etheric body there must be not only the power to produce a temperature, for in that case, once it had really got going, it would never drop again; so seven days later this point of the etheric body that is now covered by the part of the astral body that produced the temperature seven days previously has the tendency to counteract the temperature and bring it down. If the patient's disorder has been overcome in seven days, then all is well. But if the disorder has not been overcome, and the astral body has not got the tendency now to push the illness out, the patient comes into the unfortunate position in which the etheric body has the tendency to bring the temperature down. It is important to pay good heed to these two points of coincidence. We could discover points like this for all kinds of phenomena in human life. And just through these rhythms, these mysterious inner workings, man's whole being could be understood. The etheric body really has a tendency that expresses itself in four times seven. In the case of other illnesses you will notice that the fourteenth day is of special importance; that is, two times seven. And we can definitely say that with certain phenomena the paroxysm has to be especially strong after four times seven; The point being that if the trouble decreases then, you can definitely hope for recovery. All these things are connected with rhythms of the kind we touched on three weeks ago and have dealt with in greater detail today. With such things as these, which appear difficult but which can nevertheless be understood, we can begin to penetrate a little way beneath the surface of the physical sense world. And we must penetrate further and further. Now let us enquire into the origin of such rhythms.

We have to look once again to the great cosmic relationships to find the origin of such rhythms. We have often drawn your attention to the fact that what we call the four members of man, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego have evolved through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth existence. If we look back to our old Moon we find that it also separated itself from the sun for a certain length of time, though a large part of what is the moon today was then part of the earth. But outside there was a sun, and when such heavenly bodies belong together then their forces, which are the expression of their beings, always have an influence on regulating the life of their creatures. The orbiting of a planet around its sun or of a satellite around its planet is by no means mere chance, nor is it unconnected with life, on the contrary it is regulated by those beings we have learnt about in the hierarchies of spirits. We have seen that it is absolutely untrue that the heavenly bodies rotate by themselves through mere lifeless forces. We have pointed out how grotesquely the modern physicist explains the Kant-Laplace theory by means of his experiment with the blob of fat. A cardboard disc is inserted through the floating blob of farm the direction of the equator and a needle stuck through it from above, and then the whole thing is rotated, whereupon small droplets break off from the large drop and rotate as well. Thus the experimenter shows how a planetary system in miniature arises, and physicists generally draw the conclusion that this is how the large planetary system must have arisen. Although it is usually good to forget yourself, in this particular case it is not. For the good man usually forgets that the miniature planetary system could not arise if he did not turn the handle. It is perfectly permissible to do such experiments, and they are very useful, but you should not forget the most important part. What an infinite number of people fall victim to such suggestions! They overlook the fact that the professor was doing it. There is no gigantic professor out yonder of course, it is the hierarchies of spiritual beings who regulate the rhythms of the heavenly bodies and actually bring about all the ordering of matter in the cosmos, so that the individual planetary bodies revolve around one another. And if we could go into the movements of the planetary spheres that form a correlated system—and a time will come for this—we should recognise the rhythms of our own human members. For the time being, however, we need only point to one thing.

Modern man, with his materialistic mode of thought, laughs at the idea that in earlier times certain conditions in man's life were organised in connection with the four quarters of the moon. Now just with the moon in particular there is in a wonderful way a cosmic reflection of the relationship existing between the astral and the etheric body. The moon moves round its cycle in four times seven days. Those are the positions of the etheric body, and these four times seven positions of the etheric body are exactly mirrored in the four quarters of the moon. It is by no means nonsense to look for a connection between the phenomenon of the rising temperature we described and just these quarters of the moon. Just think, there really is a different quarter of the moon at the end of seven days, just as there is another quarter of the etheric body and the astral body covers a different quarter of the etheric body. Originally the relationship of the human astral body to the etheric body was indeed regulated by spiritual beings bringing the moon into a corresponding orbiting of the earth. And you can see how the things are to a certain extent connected, in that even modern medicine reckons with an ancient heritage of rhythmic knowledge. As the rhythm of the body is ten times twenty-eight and the physical body is as it were back at the same point ten times twenty-eight days later, there are about ten times twenty-eight days between the conception of a human being and his birth, ten lunar months. All these things are connected with the regulating of the great cosmic relationships. Man as microcosm is a true image of the great world relationships, for he is created out of them.

Today we want to turn our thoughts to evolution in the middle of Atlantean times. That was a very important point for earth evolution. Before that time we can distinguish three races in human evolution; the Polarian, the Hyperborean and the Lemurian race. Then comes the Atlantean race. We are now in the fifth race and two races will follow us, so the Atlantean epoch lies right in the middle. The middle of Atlantean times is the most important point in earth evolution. If we were to go back before this time, even then we should have found an exact reflection of cosmic relationships in the relationships of external human life. It would have had a very bad effect on man if he had done the kind of things then that he does now. Nowadays man does not adjust himself very much to the cosmic situation. In town life things often have to be arranged in such a way that people are awake when they would otherwise be asleep and asleep when they ought to be awake. If anything like being awake at night or sleeping in the daytime had occurred in Lemurian times, and man had paid so little attention to the external phenomena that belong to certain inner processes, he would not have survived. Of course such a thing was quite impossible then, because it was a matter of course that man in his inner rhythm conformed with outer rhythm. Man lived as it were with the cycles of the sun and the moon and modeled the rhythm of his astral and etheric bodies on the cycle of sun and moon.

Let us come back to the clock. In a certain respect this also conforms to the great cosmic cycle, when the hour and minute hands coincide at twelve o'clock, that is because there is a certain constellation of the sun and stars. We set our clocks according to this and a clock is unreliable if the two hands do not coincide the following day as soon as this constellation of stars occurs again. In Berlin the clocks are set daily by electricity from the Enckeplatz observatory. So we may say that the movements or rhythms of the clock hands are set every day according to the rhythm of the cosmos. Our clock is correct if it synchronises with the central clock which, in its turn, synchronises with the cosmos. In ancient times man had no need of a clock, for he himself was a clock. His life's course, which he could clearly feel, absolutely conformed to cosmic relationships. Man really was a clock. And if he had not conformed to the cosmic situation, exactly the same thing would have happened to him as happens to a clock if its movement does not correspond to the outer situation: it goes wrong, and he would have gone wrong too. The inner rhythm had to correspond to the outer. And the essential part of man's evolution on earth is that since the middle of Atlantean times the outer situation does not absolutely coincide with the inner one. Something else has come about. Just imagine someone fancying that he could not bear the two hands of his watch coinciding at noon. Supposing he alters them to three o'clock, then when it is one o'clock for other people he makes it four p.m., at two o'clock he makes it 5 p.m., and so on. The inner working of his clock will not have changed, it will only have become displaced compared with the outer situation. Twenty-four hours later he will make it three o'clock again; that it, his clock's movement will not coincide with the cosmic situation but its inner rhythm will still agree with it, for it has only been displaced. Man's rhythm has also been displaced. Man would never have become an independent being if all his activity had remained in cosmic leading strings. The basis of his freedom lies in his having preserved his inner rhythm while severing himself from external rhythm. He has become like a clock that at the nodal points no longer coincides with cosmic occurrences yet is inwardly in harmony with them. Thus in the far distant past a human being could be conceived in one particular stellar constellation only and be born ten lunar months later. This coinciding of conception with a cosmic situation has ceased but the rhythm has remained, just as a clock keeps to its rhythm even though at midday you set it at three o'clock. Of course it is not man's circumstances only though, that have become displaced, the times have become displaced as well. Even if we disregard the last-mentioned cosmic displacement, something very special has occurred in man's inner life, in that he has lifted himself as it were out of the cosmic situation and is no longer a ‘clock’ in the proper sense of the word. He is more or less like a man who has put his clock forward three hours and then, forgetting how much he has put it forward, cannot sort himself out any more. This is what happened to man in earthly evolution once he was free of the situation in which he was like a clock in the cosmos. In certain respects he brought his astral body into disorder. The more the conditions of human life were regulated by the physical, the more the old rhythm was preserved; but the more his life conditions became influenced by thought, the greater the disorder that came into them. I would like to clarify this from another angle.

Men are not the only beings we know of, we also know of beings that are superior to present-day earth man. We know of the sons of life or the angels, and we know that they went through their human stage on ancient Moon. We know of the spirits of fire or the archangels, that went through their human stage on the old Sun condition of the earth, and we also know of the primeval forces, who went through their human stage on ancient Saturn. These beings are in advance of man in their cosmic evolution. If we were to study them today we would find that they are beings of a much more spiritual nature than man. Therefore they live in higher-worlds. But in regard to the particular things we have been mentioning today, their situation is totally different from man's. In spiritual matters they conform absolutely to the cosmic rhythm. An angel would not think in such a disordered way as man, for the simple reason that his thought process is regulated by the cosmic powers which guide him. It is right out of the question for a being like an angel not to think in harmony with the great spiritual processes of the cosmos. The laws of logic for the angels are written in the universal harmony. They need no textbooks. Man needs textbooks because he has brought his inner thought processes into disorder. He no longer knows how to take guidance from the great script of the stars. Angels know the course of the cosmos, and the course of their thought corresponds with the ordered rhythm. When man came on to the earth in his present form he fell out of this rhythm, hence the lack of order in his life of thought and feeling. Regularity still holds sway in the things man has less influence on in his astral and etheric bodies, but in the parts that have been given into man's hands, that is, his sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul disorder and lack of rhythm have entered in. It is one of the least important matters that in our cities man turns night into day. It is of far greater significance that in his inner life of thought man has torn himself away from the great universal rhythm. The way man thinks all day long is in a certain respect in contradiction to the life of the great universe.

Do not imagine though, that all this is being said to encourage a world conception that will bring man back into this kind of rhythm again. Man had to get away from the old rhythm; his progress depends on this: When certain prophets go around today preaching ‘Back to Nature’, they want to bring life into reverse instead of helping it forward. All this chatter about returning to nature contains no understanding of real evolution. When a movement today recommends people to eat certain foods only at certain times of the year because nature herself indicates this by making foods grow only at certain times, this is the abstract talk of the amateur. The essential thing about evolution is that man grows more and more independent of outer rhythm. But we must not lose the ground from under our feet. It is not the best thing for man's progress and salvation to return to the old rhythm and ask himself how he should live in harmony with the four quarters of the moon. For it was essential in olden times for man to be like an impress of the cosmos. But it is important too that man should not believe he can live without rhythm. Just as his inner life was formed from outside inwards he must now create rhythm from inside outwards. That is the essential thing. His inner life must become rhythmic. Just as rhythm created the cosmos, man has to permeate himself with a new rhythm if he wants to share in the creating of a new cosmos. It is characteristic of our age that it has lost the old, external rhythm and has not yet attained a new inner one. Man has outgrown nature—if we call the outer expression of spirit ‘nature’—but has not yet grown into the spirit. He is still floundering today between nature and spirit. This is just what is characteristic of our time. This floundering between nature and spirit reached its climax in the second third of the nineteenth century. Consequently the beings who know and interpret the signs of the times had to ask themselves at that time: What can be done so that man does not lose all trace of rhythm but acquires an inner rhythm?

What you can see today as the characteristic of mental life is its chaotic nature. Today, when you see something that has been thought out, the first thing that is bound to strike you is its chaotic nature, its inner lack of order. This is the case in almost every sphere. Only the spheres that still possess good old traditions have something of the old order left. In new spheres man has first of all to create a new order. That is why men can see facts today, like the fall in temperature on the seventh day of pneumonia, but their explanation of them is an absolute chaos of thoughts. When the human being thinks about it, then—because he does not think in an ordered way—he piles up a medley of thoughts around the fact. All our sciences take an external fact of the world and stir up a mass of thoughts about it with no inner order, because man has gone astray in a kind of mental abyss. He has no guiding principles of thought today, no inner thought rhythm, and humanity would become completely decadent were they not to acquire an inner rhythm. Look at spiritual science from this point of view.

You will see the element you are in when you begin to study spiritual science. To begin with you hear—and gradually understand—that man has four members of his being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. And then you hear that work is done by the ego, and the astral body is changed into manas or spirit-self, the etheric body into buddhi or life-spirit and the principle of physical man into spirit-man or atma. Now just think how much ground we have covered with this basic formula of spiritual science. Think of the many themes that were really fundamental themes, and how we had to build up our whole thought structure time and again out of this basic scheme: physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. You know, some people actually get tired of hearing these basic facts over and over again in certain public lectures. But this is and remains a reliable thread on which to string our thoughts: these four members of man's being and their inter-working; and then on a higher level, the transformation of the three lower members: the third into the fifth, the second into the sixth and the first into the seventh member of our being. If you count all the members of man's being that we know of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit and spirit-man, you have seven. And if you count those that form the foundation of these, namely the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, you have four. And you are reproducing in thought the macrocosmic rhythm of 7:4 and 4:7 when you follow this train of thought. You are producing the outer, macrocosmic rhythm again from out of yourself You are repeating the rhythm that was once there macrocosmically in the universe and bringing it to birth again. You are laying down the plan or basis for your system of thought, as once the gods laid down the plan for the wisdom of the world. When we bring the inner rhythm of number to life in us again in this way, then out of the chaos of thought life a cosmos of thought is developed out of the innermost being of the soul. Men have freed themselves from external rhythm. By means of what is truly a science of the spirit we return to rhythm again, creating a cosmic structure from within outwards that is inwardly rhythmic. And if we turn to the cosmos and look at the earth's past, at Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, we find four, then the Moon in spiritualised form at the fifth stage as Jupiter, the Sun at the sixth stage as Venus, and ancient Saturn at the seventh stage as Vulcan. Thus in Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan our evolutionary phases add up to seven. Our physical body as it is today, has developed through the number four, through Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. In the future it will gradually become completely transformed and spiritualised. So that here too, when we look at the past we have the number four, and when we look to the future the number three: again there is 4:3, or if we include the past in the whole of evolution, 4:7.

We are still only at the beginning of our spiritual scientific activity, even if we have been working at it for many years. Today we could only point out what men meant by the ‘inner number’ at the root of all phenomena. And we see that in order to gain freedom man had to fall away from the original rhythm. But he has to rediscover within himself the laws with which to regulate the ‘clock’, his astral body. And the great regulator is spiritual science, because it is in harmony with the great laws of the cosmos beheld by the seer. The future as created by man will have the same great numerical relationships as the cosmos had in the past, but on a higher level. Therefore men have to bring the future to birth out of number, like the gods created the cosmos out of number.

We can see how spiritual science is connected with the course of the macrocosm. When we grasp what is there in the spiritual world behind man, the number four and the number seven, we shall understand why we must look to the spiritual world to find the impulse to carry forward what we know to be the evolutionary course of humanity. And we shall understand why just in an age when men have reached the greatest chaos in their inner life of thought, feeling and will those individualities who have to interpret the signs of the times had to draw attention to the kind of wisdom that enables man to create his soul life in a regulated way from within outwards. We shall learn to think with inner rhythm in a way that is necessary for the future, when we think in accordance with these basic relationships. And man will take into himself more and more from the world of his origins. At present he is acquiring what we can see to be the ground plan of the cosmos. He will go further and feel himself filled with certain fundamental forces and ultimately with fundamental beings.

All this is just in its beginnings today. And we appreciate the importance and world significance of the anthroposophical mission when we regard it not as an arbitrary act of this or that individual, but rather set about understanding it with all the inner force of our very existence. Then we can reach the point of being able to say that it is not a matter of choice whether we take up the anthroposophical mission or not, for if we want to understand our times we must recognise and fill ourselves with the thoughts of the divine-spiritual worlds which are the basis of anthroposophy. And then we must let them flow out of us again into the world, so that our actions and our being acquire, in place of chaos, the stature of a cosmos, like the cosmos out of which we were born.

Berlin, May 25, 1909

It is often emphasized, and with good reason, that Spiritual Science should not simply be a theory about the world, life, and the human being, but that it should become the most profound content of the human soul: that which gives life its meaning. If one approaches Spiritual Science with the right attitude, it can indeed become the very substance of life within a human being. However, let me stress emphatically that it can take on this function only gradually, little by little, because Spiritual Science is much like everything that grows and develops: first it must have a seed that keeps growing, and then by virtue of this growth it becomes ever more effective.

It is also a fact that nobody could hope to extract from Spiritual Science the right way of life just by an intellectual understanding of its truths. Judging Spiritual Science by its outward features, one may come to the conclusion that it is a view of the world, albeit one that is more comprehensive and sublime than others. But no, it is still something else, for what other theory would be able to advance those comprehensive ideas about Saturn, Sun, and Moon? What other theories of the world today would dare to make very concise statements about this? None, because they end up with abstract concepts when they attempt to raise themselves above the objects we perceive with our physical eyes and ears. Such theories and conceptions of the world can offer only vague concepts about the divine that weaves and works behind material reality. As far as other less ambitious truths are concerned, such as the doctrines of reincarnation and of karma, Spiritual Science is also far ahead of anything traditional science has to offer when it talks about the evolution of the human being. To be sure, science too could adopt these doctrines for if one really wants to draw the proper conclusions from the materialistic-scientific facts, reincarnation and karma would long have been popular ideas. However, because modern scientists have not dared to come to these conclusions, the discussion about the subject has simply been put to rest. Evolution from the perspective of natural history and of history is discussed, but nobody wants to hear anything of the true evolution of the human individuality, which continues from one life to another and carries the human soul into the future.

Those who observe life properly will be compelled by its very consequences to embrace the doctrine of the four members of the human constitution, which is also revealed by clairvoyant investigation. But because thinking in the modern age lacks all courage, this doctrine is proclaimed only by Spiritual Science, which as a body of knowledge is in many ways ahead of other conceptions of the world and of the philosophies presented to human beings at the present time.

However, when all has been said and done, all that is not the real fruit of Spiritual Science. Its fruit does not consist in the fact that one accepts its teaching as satisfying and far- reaching. We cannot have the fruit without the seed. What we develop today as the fruit of the anthroposophical world view can make our hearts happy and warm our capacity to love. Yet nobody can enjoy this fruit of our spiritual scientific world view without the seed, that is without spiritual scientific knowledge itself. People may say: Of what use are these ideas about reincarnation and karma, or about the members of the human constitution and the evolution of the world? What is really important is the development of human love and of moral character. To this I would answer: Certainly, that is important, but true human love that is fruitful for the world is possible only on the basis of knowledge—Spiritual Scientific knowledge.

As a branch of knowledge, Spiritual Science has an advantage over other world conceptions in many areas. When it is experienced by us in a truly intimate manner, when we do not tire to awaken in our souls time and again those great comprehensive thoughts and carry them with us, then we will see that this body of teaching can in a very definite sense become the content and substance of one's life. Spiritual scientific teaching is a body of ideas that leads us into super-sensible worlds, and in spiritual scientific thinking we must therefore soar to higher worlds. Every hour spent in spiritual scientific study means that the soul reaches out beyond the concerns of everyday life. The moment we devotedly give ourselves to the teaching, we are transported into another world. Our ego is then united with the spiritual world out of which it was born. Thus, when we think in a spiritual scientific way, we are with our ego in our spiritual home, at the fountainhead from which it came.

If we understand this in the right sense, then we can truly compare spiritual scientific thinking with that state of consciousness that we recognize from the spiritual point of view as sleep. When human beings fall asleep at night and sleep themselves into a spiritual world, then they have transported the ego into the world whence it was born and from which it emerges every morning so that it can pass into the world of the senses within the human body. In times to come, the soul will live consciously within this spiritual world; however, at the present such is normally not the case. And why not? It is because in the course of the ages consciousness of the spiritual world has become weaker and weaker in the ego. In the Atlantean epoch the ego during sleep saw itself surrounded by divine-spiritual beings, but after the Atlantean catastrophe the ego was pushed out into the world of the senses and increasingly lost its capacity to gaze into the world that it inhabits during sleep. The idea that the ego is blotted out at night and resurrected in the morning is absurd. It is in the spiritual world but is not conscious of it.

Spiritual scientific thinking gives us the strength to tie ourselves consciously, little by little, to these spiritual realities. By leading us—at least in thinking—into the spiritual world, anthroposophy has certain beneficial qualities in common with sleep. The cares and worries that issue from the things of the sense world are obliterated in sleep. If human beings are able to sleep and their thinking is blotted out, they forget all worries. That is the most beneficent effect of sleep, an effect resulting from the fact that the ego lets the forces of the spiritual world stream into it during sleep. These spiritual streams contain strengthening forces, the effect of which is to help us forget our worries and cares during sleep and also to repair the damage that such worries and cares have inflicted upon our organism. The injuries caused by the sense world are healed by spiritual powers—hence the refreshment, the regeneration that every healthy sleep bestows upon us. In a higher sense, these then are the qualities that spiritual scientific thinking has in common with sleep.

Spiritual thoughts are powerful if we accept them as living forces. When we elevate ourselves to the thoughts that are connected with the past and the future of the earth and allow these momentous events to work on us, then our keyed-up soul will be drawn to these events, far away from the worries of the day. Thoughts of how the ideal of our own sovereign will grows for us out of karma—this plan of destiny—give us courage and strength so that we say to ourselves: “However insurmountable some of the problems of our lives may be today, our strength will grow from one incarnation to the next. The sovereign will within us is becoming stronger every day, and all the obstacles will help us to strengthen it even more. In the process of overcoming these obstacles, our will is going to develop ever more, and our energy is going to increase. The trivialities of life, all the inferior things in our existence, will melt away as the hoar does in the sun—melted by the very sun that rises in the wisdom that permeates our spiritual thinking. Our world of feeling is made to glow throughout and becomes warm and transillumined; our whole existence will be broadened, and we will feel happy in it.”

When such moments of inner activity are repeated and we allow them to work on us, a strengthening of our whole existence into all directions will emanate from this process. Not from one day to the next, to be sure, but constant repetition of such thoughts will bring about the gradual disappearance of our depressions, lamentations about our fate, and an excessively melancholy temperament. Spirit knowledge will be medicine for our soul, and when that happens, the horizon of our existence widens and implants in us that way of thinking that is the fruit of all spirit knowledge. This resulting way of thinking and feeling, this attitude of mind and heart, must be considered the ideal state to which spiritual scientific endeavors can lead. All discord, all disharmonies of life will disappear opposite the harmonious thoughts and feelings that bring about an energetic will. Thus, spiritual investigation proves to be not just knowledge and doctrine, but also a force of life and a substance of our soul. Seen in this light, Spiritual Science is capable of working in life in such a way that it frees human beings from cares and worries. And that is how it has to work in our time, for it owes its existence not to arbitrariness, but to the knowledge that it is needed.

The individualities who in their knowledge were far ahead of normal human beings, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings, knew that Spiritual Science had to flow into our culture if it was not to wither. Spiritual Science is a new sap of life, and humanity needs such new sap from time to time. Spiritual Science is the stream necessary for our time. Those who have a feeling for these great truths should hurry to us and absorb the truths so that they can be salt and ferment for the spiritual life of all humanity The striving individual must see this as a sort of duty. It is not difficult to understand why the highest authorities have issued a call for Spiritual Science in our time precisely so that those with open hearts and unprejudiced minds may be assembled.

We have been viewing with our souls post-Atlantean humanity and have traced its cultural epochs from the ancient Indian down to our own fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We have seen that during this time human beings lost their consciousness of the spiritual world bit by bit. In the first epoch, the ancient Indian, human beings still had a profound yearning for the spiritual world. The world of the senses was considered maya, illusion. Then came the ages that issued a call to human beings to do external, physical labor. Human beings had to learn to love the world of the senses because only then were they able to cultivate it. At this time, human beings no longer said that the external world was nothing but maya. On the contrary, human beings now had to immerse themselves into the world and work on it with their faculties and wisdom. That, however, resulted in human beings' gradually losing the consciousness of the spiritual world so that Zarathustra, the initiator of the Persian culture, felt compelled to tell his disciples: “All living beings are called into existence by the force that streams from the sun as physical force. But this physical force is not the only thing. In the sun lives Ahura Mazdao—the spiritual Sun Being.” It was necessary to demonstrate to people how the material world is but the physical expression of the spiritual world.

Thus it was first in the ancient Persian epoch that there arose the sentiment that would express itself as follows: “Certainly, what the sun shines upon is maya, but I must seek the spirit behind this maya. The spiritual world is always around me, but I cannot experience it with physical eyes and ears. I can experience it only with super-sensible consciousness. Once this consciousness has been awakened, then in the physical existence also can I recognize the Great Spirit of the Sun with all its subordinate beings who also belong to the Sun. But an age is approaching when my soul will no longer have this knowledge.” It was difficult to transmit this knowledge fully to human beings. They must gradually be made more mature through renewed incarnations in order to recognize the divine-spiritual element behind all physical phenomena and to understand that all of nature is permeated by it.

In the ancient Persian culture, human beings were still capable of recognizing the divine element in this life, but they were unable to take this consciousness into the time period between death and rebirth. For the peculiar thing in this epoch was that consciousness between death and rebirth became increasingly darker. By contrast, let us look at the soul of an individual in ancient India. When it passed through death into the other world, it lived there among spiritual beings in a comparatively light-filled world. In the Persian culture, such was less the case; the world between death and rebirth had become darker. Obstacles between various souls accumulated, and the soul felt lonely; in a manner of speaking, it could not extend its hand to another soul. But that is the difficult and dark side of life in the spiritual world: the soul may not share its path with others.

In the Egyptian epoch, a substantial part of the soul's capacity to link up with other souls had already been lost to such an extent that the soul longed for the preservation of the physical body, which was to be preserved in the mummy. The reason for this was that the soul sensed it had very little strength that could be taken into the life between death and rebirth. Human beings at this time wanted to preserve the physical body so that the soul might be able to look down on it as on something that belonged to it, thus compensating for the power it no longer had in the spiritual world. Cultural phenomena such as mummification are deeply connected with the evolution of the human soul.

An Egyptian had the notion that in death he would be united with Osiris. He said these words to himself: “Long ago, in ancient ages, the soul was able to gaze into the beyond. It has now lost this visionary power, but it can make up for the loss if in this life it develops qualities by which it will become more and more like Osiris himself. The soul will then itself become Osiris-like and will be united with Osiris after death.” And so, by clinging to Osiris, the soul tried to create a surrogate for everything that could no longer be preserved from ancient times.

However, what Osiris was unable to give to the human soul is told in an Egyptian legend, whereby Osiris was once living with human beings on earth, until his evil brother Seth shut him up in a wooden box similar to a casket. This means that Osiris did live on earth with human beings when they were still more spiritual. But then he had to remain in the spiritual world because he was too sublime to fit into the physical human form. Similarly, if the soul wanted to create a substitute for the lost spiritual power of vision between death and rebirth, it had to become a being that is too sublime, too good for the human form. By becoming similar to Osiris, the soul would be able to overcome its loneliness in the beyond, but it could not take into a new incarnation what it had received in the spiritual world through the characteristics it had in common with Osiris. This is so because, after all, Osiris was not suited for this physical incarnation.

The grave danger threatening humankind in those times was that incarnations were steadily deteriorating because there could be no new influx of spiritual forces. Only what had remained from ancient ages could be further developed, and all that reached its ultimate maturity in Graeco-Roman times. This was made manifest in the magnificent art of the Greeks—the mature fruit from earlier blossoms. Greek art was the finest fruit of the heritage bequeathed to humanity beginning with primeval times. But hand in hand with this accomplishment came the feeling of deep darkness in the life between death and new birth, and a noble Greek individual was right when he said: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shadows.”⁴⁴ Yes indeed, human beings in Greece and the Roman states possessed so much to delight and satisfy their senses, but they could take nothing with them into the life between death and new birth.

Then came the event of Golgotha—the event that is of significance not only for the external physical world, but also for all the worlds through which a human being must pass. The moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, when the corpse was hanging on the cross, the Christ appeared in the underworld and kindled the light that once again gave sight to the souls below. And the soul was able to realize from that moment on that once again strength could also be derived from the world below and benefit the physical world. No longer does the soul endeavor to unite itself with Osiris in order to have a surrogate for the loss of vision. From now on, it could say to itself: “In the underworld, too, I can find the light of Christ—that which has immersed itself into the earth, for the Christ has become the spirit of the earth. And now I imbibe a new force from a spiritual fountainhead, a force that I can take back to earth when I return for a new incarnation.”

What was necessary so that this force could flow into the soul in the right way? A complete reversal in the way human beings looked at the physical world was necessary. First, let us ask what the people in ancient India experienced when we reconstruct what one of them might have said: “This world is maya, the great illusion. Whenever I perceive this world and relate myself to it, I have fallen victim to the illusion. Only by withdrawing from it and by elevating myself to primeval spiritual things beyond the world of the senses can I be in the world of the gods. Only by withdrawing from the outer world can I traverse through my inner being that has remained with me as an ancient legacy of these spiritual worlds and thus return to my ancient home. I must return to this primeval holy realm from which I once started out to the world of the senses, and I can return only by giving free rein to my spiritual powers, thereby diverting my attention from the lure of the outer world.” In the days of the ancient Indian culture it was possible for human beings to take this step back into the far-distant past. Inside of them, they had retained much of the force that could help an individual, if properly applied, to find the way back to the old gods. Thus did the human being in ancient India find his Devas, the beings from whom everything had come into existence.

Now came the epoch of ancient Persia, when the human soul had lost much of the power that was like a legacy from ancient times. If in this epoch the soul had said: “I will turn back because I do not wish to remain in this world,” it would not have found the ancient gods because the power to make that possible was no longer adequate. This fact is related to the evolution of humanity. Had the soul attempted to divert its gaze away from the outer world and consider it as nothing but maya, this would have led to its seeing not the higher gods, but rather the subordinate Devas who were evil spiritual beings that did not belong to the ranks of higher gods. Because this danger existed, the soul had to be shown how this world of the senses could be seen as the outward expression of the spiritual by starting from the world of the senses and not turning away from it. In looking up to the sun, the soul learned to see in it not only its external physical sun force, but also the Sun God Ahura Mazdao, and thereby it learned to know something of the divine-spiritual reality.

The soul of the ancient Persian had become too weak to activate the spiritual forces that could lead it back to the ancient gods. Hence, it had to be educated to pierce through the veil of materiality covering the spiritual. In the outer world the evil Asuras lay hidden, but human beings were not yet capable of seeing the beneficent spiritual beings beyond the world that was regarded as maya. That is why all names for spiritual beings came to be reversed during the time between the Indian and the Persian epochs. Devas were the good beings in ancient India, but in the Persian culture, they became the evil gods. The true reason for this reversal is evident from the continuing development of the human soul; in relation to the external world it had become increasingly stronger, in relationship to the inner world, increasingly weaker.

Preparation for what was to come was now made by those beings who guide and direct human evolution. After Zarathustra had learned to look up to the sun and see in its aura the Sun God, he knew that this Sun God was no one else but the Christ-Spirit, who at that time could reveal Himself only from outside the world. The human being in his soul here on earth could not yet perceive the Christ-Being. The being that was formerly seen in the sun and had been given the name Ahura Mazdao had to descend to earth because only then could the human being learn from within to recognize a Deva, a divinely spiritual principle, within his own soul. In the age of ancient Persia, life in the human body was not yet capable of receiving the Christ-Spirit, let alone be permeated by it. All that had to happen slowly and gradually. We must acquaint ourselves with the thought that the gods can reveal themselves only to those who prepare themselves as recipients of a revelation. Deva, the god who can be perceived through our inner forces, could appear only to that part of humanity that had prepared itself for his coming.

Everything in human evolution comes to pass slowly and gradually, and evolution does not proceed everywhere in the same manner. After the Atlantean flood, the tribes had migrated to the East. Since they settled in various regions, their development also differed. What enabled the ancient Indian to have a vivid feeling for the spiritual world? This happened because the evolution of the ego in this part of the world had taken a very special course. In the people of ancient India the ego had remained deeply entrenched in the spiritual world so that it was disinclined to make much contact with the physical world. It was the peculiar characteristic of an individual in ancient India that he or she would cling to the spirituality of preceding ages while at the same time confining relations with the physical world to a minimum. Since the individual in ancient India did not want to connect his or her ego with the physical world, the achievements of external civilization have not blossomed in India or in many other regions of the East where people by and large seem to have lacked inventive genius. By contrast, the inventiveness of the people in the West prompted them to take hold of the external world since they considered it their task to cultivate and improve it. Ancient Persia formed, as it were, the boundary between East and West. The people who paid little attention to the material existence in this world tended to settle and remain in the East. That is why the teaching of a Buddha was still necessary for the people of the East six hundred years before Christ. Buddha had to be placed into world evolution at this juncture because it was his mission to keep alive in the souls the longing for the spiritual worlds of the past, and that is why he had to preach against the thirst for entering the physical world. However, he was preaching at a time when the soul still had the inclination, but no longer the capacity, to elevate itself into the spiritual worlds. Buddha preached to human beings the sublime truths about suffering, and he brought to them the insights that could lift the soul above this world of suffering.

Such teaching would have been unsuitable for the Western world. It needed a doctrine that was in tune with the people's inclination to embrace the physical world and that could be summarized by the following explanation: “You must work in the outer world in such a way that the forces of this world are placed in the service of humanity; but after death, you can also take the fruits of your life into the spiritual world.”

The peculiar essence of Christianity is usually not properly understood. In the Roman world it did not appeal much to those who were able to enjoy the treasures and riches of this world, but those who were condemned to toil in the physical world liked Christianity. They knew that in spite of all their work in the physical world, they were developing something in this life that they could take with them after death. Such was the feeling of exaltation inspiring the souls of those who accepted Christianity. Human beings could say to themselves: “By setting up Christ as my ideal, I develop something in this world that cannot be annihilated even by death.” This consciousness could develop only because Christ had actually been on earth not as a Deva, but as a being who had incarnated in a human body and who could be a model and an ideal for every human being. For this to happen, the impulse and the proper forces had to be created, and this preparatory work had been done by Zarathustra. He had experienced so much that he was prepared to take this mission.

In ancient Persia, Zarathustra had been able to behold the Sun God in the aura of the sun, but he had had to prepare himself for that task in earlier incarnations. During the era that was still inspired by the teachings of the Holy Rishis, Zarathustra had already gone through some sublime experiences in incarnations. He had been initiated into the teachings of the Holy Rishis, having absorbed them stage by stage in seven subsequent incarnations. Then he was born into a body that was blind and deaf, which afforded him as little contact with the outer world as was possible. Zarathustra had to be born as a human being who was practically nonsusceptible to outer sense impressions, and then out of his innermost being the memory of the teachings of the Holy Rishis from a previous incarnation welled up in him. And at that moment the Great Sun God was able to kindle in him something that went ever further than the wisdom received from the Holy Rishis. That experience awakened in him again in his next incarnation, and it was then that Ahura Mazdao revealed himself to Zarathustra from without.

You can see, therefore, that Zarathustra had experienced a great deal before he could become the teacher and inspirer of the people of ancient Persia. We also know that Moses and Hermes were his disciples and that he gave his astral body to Hermes and his etheric body to Moses. Moses was the first to proclaim the teaching that emanated from the Akasha Chronicle, the teaching of the “I am the I am.” (Ejeh asher ejeh). And thus Zarathustra prepared himself slowly for an even greater and more prodigious sacrifice. When Zarathustra's astral body reappeared in Hermes and his etheric body in Moses, his ego—whose development had steadily progressed—was able to form a new astral body and a new etheric body for the new incarnation, commensurate with the full powers of the ego. And six hundred years before Christ, Zarathustra was born again in the land of Chaldaea and became the teacher of Pythagoras under the name Zarathos, or Nazarathos. Within the Chaldaean culture he then prepared the new impulse that was to come into the world. This is reflected in that passage of the New Testament that speaks of the Three Wise Men from the East who came to greet the Christ as the new Star of Wisdom. Zarathustra had taught that the Christ would come, and those who were left as disciples of this significant Zarathustra doctrine knew at what point in time the great Impulse of Golgotha would arrive.

There is always a certain connection between great individualities of the world, such as Buddha, Zarathustra, and Pythagoras, because what is at work in the world is a force—a fact. Great spirits work together, and they are born into a certain age for a purpose. Likewise, the great impulses in human evolution weave themselves into each other. Zarathustra had pointed to the One who was to make it possible, through the Event of Golgotha, for human beings to find the world of the Devas through the force of their own inner being; moreover, they would be increasingly able to do so as they developed forward into the future. And in the same epoch, the Buddha was teaching: Yes, there is a spiritual world, compared to which the whole world of the senses is maya. Turn your steps back into the world in which you were before the thirst for an earthly existence awakened, and then you will find Nirvana—rest within the divine!

Such is the difference between the teachings of Buddha and Zarathustra. Buddha taught that the human being can reach the divine by going back; Zarathustra, in his incarnation as Zarastra, taught that the time is approaching when the light will incarnate within the earth itself, which will enable the progressive soul to come closer to the divine. Buddha said, the soul would find God by going back; Zarathustra said it would find Him by going forward.

Regardless of whether you regress or progress, whether you seek God in the Alpha or in the Omega, you will be able to find Him. What is important is that you find Him with your own heightened human power. Those forces necessary to find the God of the Alpha are the primal forces of a human being. However, the forces necessary to find the God of the Omega must be acquired here on earth by striving human beings themselves. It makes a difference whether one goes back to Alpha or forward to Omega. He who is content with finding God and just wants to get into the spiritual world has the choice of going forward or backward. However, the individual who is concerned that humanity leave the earth in a heightened state must point the way to Omega—as did Zarathustra.

Zarathustra prepared the way for that part of humanity that was to become involved with the very forces of the earth. Yet Zarathustra also fully understood the Buddha, for their quest was ultimately the same. What was Zarathustra's task? He had to make it possible for the Christ-Impulse to descend to the earth. Zarathustra was reborn as Jesus of Nazareth, and because of what had transpired in the previous incarnation, his individuality was able to unite itself with many a force that had been preserved as a result of spiritual economy. The world is profound and truth is complicated!

There was also interwoven in Jesus of Nazareth the being of the Buddha. It had advanced on different paths because many powers work in the one who is supposed to have an influence on humankind. The ego of Jesus left the physical, etheric, and astral bodies at baptism in the Jordan River, and the Sun God—the Christ-Spirit—entered and lived three years in the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is how Zarathustra had prepared humanity to be the recipient of the Christ-Impulse.

An important moment in the evolution of the earth had arrived with these events. It had now become possible for human beings to find God in their innermost being; in addition, they were now able to take something with them from the life between death and new birth into the new incarnation. And now, in our own age, there are already present souls who feel strongly enough that they have been in a world illumined by the Light of Christ. The fact that this is dimly divined in many a soul means that human beings today are capable of receiving and understanding the teachings of Spiritual Science. And because such people exist today, the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings have expressed the hope that such people will also feel the truths of Spiritual Science and will make them the very substance of their lives. Knowing all this, the Masters assigned the mission of proclaiming anthroposophy in the present age to those who have already attained a high level of understanding.

It is essential that Spiritual Science begin now to become a spiritual impulse of our time. Christ Himself has prepared human souls for Spiritual Science, and it is guaranteed to stay in this world for the simple reason that the Light of Christ, once kindled, can never be extinguished. Once we inspire ourselves with the feeling that the stream of anthroposophical spirituality is a necessity, then we are immersed in it in the right way, and it will always stand before us as an unshakable ideal.

Yes, the human personality had to develop to such an extent that light could descend and say in a human body: “I am the Light of the world!” The Light of the World first came down into the soul of Zarathustra and spoke to it. Zarathustra's soul understood the meaning of this universal light and sacrificed itself so that these significant words would go out to all humanity—from a human body: “I am the Light of the World.”

• 44. Homer, Odyssey, Canto 489–491. These words are spoken by the soul of Achilles after Ulysses had conjured it up from the Underworld.

In present-day anthroposophical life we must begin to develop an art which was one of the arts of the old Mysteries—those Mysteries which were based on a quite different kind of knowledge from that of to-day, and yet possessed in their customs, and in their whole way of conducting affairs, a great deal that has been lost, and must be renewed. The art I mean can be described, quite in accordance with the intentions of the old Mysteries, thus: from words there must be drawn Spirit. But when, in the old Mysteries, they spoke of Word, or Logos, they meant something very much more significant than is generally meant to-day. We have to learn to find again a deeper and deeper meaning in the objects and processes of the world—and in this sentence, once more: Spirit must be drawn forth from words.

To speak of the human being as consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, and so on, is really very abstract. For this reason we have tried on many occasions to describe what is really meant by these members of man's being. It is always possible to go further in such descriptions, and so to approach nearer to spiritual reality. To-day we shall consider the human etheric body, describing what is discovered by super-sensible vision about the real being of this human etheric body. We should not stop at the vague conception conveyed by describing how the etheric body is related to the physical body, how it differs in substance, and so on. Such descriptions are only approximate, and only by developing these approximate descriptions very much further do we penetrate to reality.

We know that when, under earthly conditions, the human being goes to sleep, the etheric body remains within the physical body, and that—as we have always described it—the astral body and the Ego leave this physical body and etheric body. The life of the astral body and Ego is still so weak, at the present stage of their cosmic development, that they are not capable of conscious experience between falling asleep and awakening. We have often discussed, up to a point, the subconscious experiences through which the astral body and the Ego pass during this time.

But to-day we shall look back at what is left behind in bed when a human being is asleep, and in particular at the etheric body. In this way we shall treat the term “etheric body” so as to draw out the Spirit from it, by that art of which I said just now that it was cultivated in the ancient Mysteries. Looking at this etheric body, we shall consider its real nature, as it is beheld super-sensibly, when the human being is asleep.

We see the physical body grow still. We see the human being unable to move his limbs—unable also to pour his will through his bodily form, so as to make use of his senses. The relation of the external world to his senses does not change. But the relation of the senses to the external world changes, inasmuch as the human being becomes inwardly still. Just as externally his arms and legs are still, in his organs of perception his will is not active in the delicate movements of response to the external world which are necessary for sense-perception. But it is a complete mistake to believe that the sense-organs themselves, or more exactly the sites of the sense-organs, are not filled by any activity during sleep. Over its whole extent, the physical body rests—but the human etheric body becomes all the more active and inwardly mobile between falling asleep and awakening. This is a characteristic fact: in the same measure as the functions of the physical body come to rest, at and after the moment of falling asleep, a more and more lively activity of the etheric body begins.

This lively activity of the etheric body streams out, in particular, from the senses. If the super-sensible gaze is directed upon the sleeping human being—that is to say upon the part of the human being present in the physical frame—then it is found that from those places where the sense-organs are located, a continual lively activity streams inwards. This is the life of the etheric body, or vital body during sleep.

For example, from the moment of falling asleep there is a particular process which originates from the region of the human eyes. It is as if, through the influence of light during the waking period, the eye had stored up forces for an activity that develops only after sleep begins. And this is in fact an etheric activity. In the same measure as the influence of light and colour from outside upon the eye is darkened, the eyes themselves begin, like two phosphorescent suns, to irradiate the interior of the physical part of the sleeping human being. The interior space of the human being is illumined by a phosphorescent, glimmering light. It is not surprising that this light, which streams into the interior of the human being, cannot be seen in the ordinary way. External, physical eyes do not see what goes on in the interior of man; there is no organ within the physical body which could immediately perceive this phosphorescent glow.

One of the inner activities of the etheric body in the human being during sleep can be described in this way. Into this there flows a further process. What a man can still observe while he is going to sleep—a kind of humming and singing, a changing murmur within his organism—continues during sleep itself as a music, extraordinarily rich in melody and harmony, which also fills the whole interior of man during sleep. From falling asleep to awakening, this musical activity continues. And the Ego and astral body, which are outside the physical and etheric body, receive strong impressions from this—from what they have left behind, the resounding music in the etheric body. And while it resounds in music, the etheric body is at the same time radiant with light. But the impression made upon the Ego and the astral body remains unconscious.

In the same way, etheric streams of warmth flow into the interior of man from the whole surface of the skin. The result—with much else that is more remote from what we perceive in the external world as warmth, light, and sound, and is thus difficult to describe—is an immensely beautiful and impressive living and streaming activity of the human etheric body.

Distinct, like an island, there stand out from the general etheric life of the cosmos this particular music, and radiance, and flooding stream of warmth. They stand out for inner reasons—which are rooted in the very existence and being of man himself. They belong to man's individual etheric body. And this flooding warmth, this phosphorescent glow, this resounding music—it is these that detach themselves, a few days after man's death, as etheric body from the astral body and Ego, and flow out into the general cosmic ether.

Many of you may have noticed how, after attending a concert the previous evening, one may wake up with the feeling that the soul has been listening again to the same music; as if the whole concert had been repeated for the soul during sleep. But this is a more complicated process than for the ordinary consciousness it appears to be. In reality the soul is emerging from the impressions of the cosmic music, which resounds in an individualised form in the human etheric body. But when the human being returns into the etheric body, all that I have described as going on in the etheric body is blotted out for consciousness by the perceptive activity of the physical body. And the human soul translates what is really individualised cosmic music into the recently-experienced earthly sounds. They are in a sense the clothing assumed by the cosmic music at the moment of awakening, because it has something in common with the stream of sound received at the concert. Because in the ordinary consciousness man cannot perceive the cosmic music, it is clothed in the sounds taken from earthly experience that are most nearly comparable to it. This is the real experience behind the phenomenon most of you may have met at some time.

You see what complex processes are embraced in the human etheric body. And if the attempt is made to penetrate further—using the methods with which penetration into such realms is possible—then it can be observed that in reality this flowing warmth, this gentle phosphorescent glow, this living music, are an outer revelation of cosmic beings. All that I have described is the external clothing, the revelation, the glory of mighty cosmic beings. And these beings disclose themselves as those we know from anthroposophical writings as the Exusiai. I have often named these Exusiai Revelations, because they live, in accordance with their inner nature, in the shining stream which during earthly sleep flows from the human sense-organs towards the interior of man. In this stream the weaving life of those beings we name Exusiai is revealed.

And now, with the same methods with which one observes these revelations of the human senses, so active in their etheric substance during sleep, these streams can be followed further along their course into the interior of man's organism. If one is looking at some shining object, one can follow the line from the eye towards this object. It is to be found somewhere on this line that leads outwards, the visual line. In the same way you can follow inwards from the senses the streaming, flooding etheric radiance.

There is not so far to go; very soon something different is reached. The mild phosphorescent glow, proceeding from the eyes; the living music, which comes from the region of the organs of hearing; the streaming warmth, which goes inward from the whole surface of the skin—all these become an organically coherent etheric system. (When one observes the waking human being, one sees the etheric body in activity—the physical body of course as well—and this activity is somewhat different from that I have described for sleep; the activity then extends a little outside the physical body.) Now one sees how all that streams and flows and shines inwards, from the senses and from the whole skin, is formed into a shell-like copy of man, but within him, extending to a certain depth. From the eyes, one sees this phosphorescent glow, inwards, changing into something I will describe in a moment. The streaming warmth goes inwards from the skin, attains a certain thickness like a shell, and then forms a kind of etheric organism which is compounded of the living music, the glowing light, the streaming warmth, intermingled with one another. All these, and much else, flow through one another, influence one another mutually, and form an organism—the etheric organism of man. If one contemplates this etheric organism with spiritual vision, and begins to understand its phenomena, one is bound to describe it as consisting simply of the forms of thoughts, of flowing thoughts. What is flowing within it is everywhere Thought.

If one were to follow this inner activity of the etheric body during sleep, in its continual fluctuation, and then draw it at a particular moment, one would draw of course lines, or coloured forms. But to describe the substance of these lines or coloured forms one could only say: it is as if thoughts were starting to flow. What lives otherwise in the activity of thought becomes an ever-changing flood and flow. It is the thought-process of the Universe individualised. This individualised thought-process of the Universe reveals itself as individualised Logos. One cannot really say: this forming of thoughts, which streams and weaves within man, connected with these movements shining in from the senses, is only thought. For it speaks. It speaks indeed a silent language, but one that can be perceived as belonging to the interior of man. It speaks indeed—as all things through the Logos speak to us—in an individual form, expressing in an inner Word, that can be perceived spiritually, the essential being of Man.

Thus when we proceed further inwards from the senses there appears to us: the human speech that is directed inwards. It can really be said: the Ego and astral body of man, which from falling asleep to awakening are outside the physical and etheric bodies, are unconscious, as far as the ordinary consciousness is concerned. But they do experience what is happening. And just as they experience the etheric activity of the senses during sleep, as an inward streaming and flowing, they experience too during sleep the etheric body as individualised Logos. Speech, which otherwise is directed outwards to the ears of our fellow men, is as if transformed, turned inwards etherically. It is as if we were to repeat inwards everything which we have said during the day, from waking to falling asleep—but in the opposite order, beginning with the evening and ending with the morning. In a silent language we repeat all that we have said from morning to evening—but in a way that reveals the whole nature of our soul. In so far as man's essential being is experienced in what is spoken, from morning to evening, this experience is manifested inwardly, from evening to morning, in the resounding, speaking, individualised Logos. And this resounding, speaking, individualised Logos brings to expression at the same time—writing, as it were, into the time-sequence of the etheric, in that gleaming, gently phosphorescent light—the occult script corresponding to everything that works inwardly during the night, as the other side of what is spoken during the day. (The same thing happens during every sleep, even during a daytime nap, but in a more fragmentary way.)

Looking at this still more closely, using the same methods through which the individualised Logos that weaves within man is revealed—seeking the ultimate reality, behind what is fundamentally only appearance—one finds all those hierarchical beings called in the anthroposophical writings Dynamis, who are above the Exusiai.

Thirdly—in this attempt to exercise the art of seeking the real being behind the words—we find the ultimate reality of what I once described as a kind of opposite vertebral column. Perhaps some of you remember how I described the human etheric body many years ago. In the periodical, Luzifer Gnosis, it is described how the streams that compose the etheric body as a whole work together to form a structure that lies towards the front of man, just as in the physical body the bony structure of the vertebral column, and the vertebral canal, lie towards the back. In the physical body we have this vertebral column and vertebral canal, running vertically. And in the etheric body we have a confluence, a radiating together of what I have just described, into a kind of opposite vertebral column—lying in relation to the physical body towards the front. And just as the nerves proceed from the physical vertebral column, and also the rib-bones, for example—in the same way the rays and the streams in the etheric body flow together into this other column. They do not proceed from it, but flow together and work together, with all that they contain, here in the front of the human etheric body.

The result is an exceptionally beautiful and impressive etheric organ. Particularly during sleep, it is revealed in its gleaming and glowing, its resounding and its manifold effects of warmth, its inner language. And beholding it more closely, one can see that this organ permeates what I once described (because these things must be described in vivid pictures) as the various Lotus-flowers. Thus you can realize how through this organ—which develops in this confluence of the etheric body, and connects with the streams of the astral body, forming the Lotus-flowers—man finds his connection with the external astral and cosmic universe.

This, too, is a manifestation. This, too, can be described as an appearance, and its true inner reality must be sought. This reality is found in the Hierarchy which in anthroposophical writings I have called the Kyriotetes.

You have now drawn out from the word “etheric body” its ultimate reality. It is a working and flowing and weaving together of the Exusiai, Dynamis, and Kyriotetes, who individualize their streaming, flowing, resounding, speaking activity, and form the human etheric body.

When we contemplate all that Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai have formed and made individual, which shines and warms and sounds and speaks into the human physical body as the individual human etheric body—we have also reached man's astral body. For in this living activity of the Second Hierarchy, which streams from the Cosmos and is individualized in the human being, there is really contained the human astral body itself. This activity shows itself in the etheric body—it exists in the astral body.

Think of this whole activity, in which man is interwoven during sleep. For during sleep he is interwoven, unconsciously, with the activity of the Second Hierarchy. When he has gone through the gate of death, man needs this whole activity. For he must live on within it, when he has laid aside the etheric body as such; when after some days this sounding, this living music, this gently phosphorescent glow, these streams of warmth, have flowed away. When all this has flowed into the cosmic Universe, when one has observed the glow extending more and more widely, but growing fainter and fainter, and the music growing softer.... Really this should be described differently. When these regions are described it becomes natural to explain a thing by its polar opposite. It would correspond better to the perceptions of one who has died if I were to say: what is at first like a silent resounding—but one that is perceptible within man—becomes louder and louder, spreading outwards. But just because it grows louder this is perceived as a fading away of the inner etheric music; it can no more be perceived by the being of soul and spirit, who for the earth has died. For this being no longer has physical ears—and physical ears would be needed.

It is similar with the other experiences of man in the first days after death. Then he feels himself in his astral body. But again it is only the external side, a word, if one says: Man is now in the Soul-World. I have described it in this way in my book Theosophy, in accordance with the perceptions of the soul-organ most immediately accessible by man. But for the universal, cosmic intelligence, developed in cosmic realms, this region reveals itself as an interwoven activity of the beings of the Second Hierarchy.

Observe what sort of existence it is, at first, within the activity of the Second Hierarchy after death. Between birth and death the human being lives on earth, alternating between waking and sleeping. During waking, although his soul is woven into the activity of Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, he is compelled to plunge down continually into the forms of the physical body. During sleep he lives with the etheric body, but this, too, imposes an individual quality on the activity of the spiritual beings, in accordance with the forms of the physical body. Thus the work of the Second Hierarchy has to absorb what the human being is, morally—whether he is good or evil, devoted to error or to truth. The activities appropriate to the beings of the Second Hierarchy are individualised according to what man is, as good or evil earthly man, as earthly man living in truth or in error. But account must be taken of what these beings of the Second Hierarchy, according to their own essential nature, purpose to do for the being of man.

Let us assume that a human being has a relation to a particular Being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Dynamis. Through this is developed, with the help of an Archangel as intermediary, the faculty of speech in man's organism. But in the development of this faculty the work of the Dynamis is in a sense dislocated, and distorted into triviality. And when a human being uses his words to say something evil, something filled with hatred, this work of the Second Hierarchy is violently dislocated. And it must be restored again. The human being must not live on after death in those forms which he has given to all I have described through his moral or immoral being. He must strip them off, and find his way into the living work of the Second Hierarchy. This stripping off of the dislocations, of the trivializations—this stripping off of those uses of the work of the Second Hierarchy which distort it into its opposite—this is accomplished by all that I have described as the passage of man through the Soul-World. And then man has ascended to what I spoke of in Theosophy as the World of Spirits, when he can follow with his own Ego-being, with his innermost being of soul and spirit, those activities which correspond to the Being of the Dynamis and Kyriotetes.

You see—in this way, through the art that seeks out the reality in words, the Being of Man can be described once again. We get nearer and nearer to a real picture of this Being. Just as one might indicate on the blackboard the distribution of the figures in a picture by Raphael, say the Sistine Madonna, with a few characteristic strokes—the words physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego are only an indication. The reality is living activity, inwardly full and rich; and in this activity the Beings of the Cosmos, in realm's of body, soul, and spirit, are revealed. In the end one comes always to Beings.

If anything is described as if it were vaguely extended in Space or swimming in Time, or as a Physical World, Etheric World, and so on—it is the manifestation which is being described. It is like describing a swarm of gnats seen in the distance, so that the particular gnats cannot be distinguished, only a grey patch in the air. In the real world, what are at first called etheric body, astral body, are such grey patches. If one looks closely at these grey patches in the physical air, one discovers the particular existing gnats. If one looks closely at these spiritual grey patches, “etheric body”, “astral body”, one always discovers Beings.

To Beings one must come at last in all understanding of the world. For Beings alone are real. Anything comes into existence only through the co-operation of Beings—presenting then an unreal appearance to unclear vision. Just as in the unreal grey cloud the gnats are the real, particular beings—everywhere in the world it is particular Beings that are at work, and the rest is illusion, arising from the co-existence of Beings. Physical matter, too, is an illusion of this kind—something of the nature of a Being underlies everything. Men must understand this again, in order not to speak of something that is not really there: of Matter—or (which is no better) of Spirit in general—in order to learn to speak about beings, individual Beings of the universe.

Once, in the old Mysteries, they knew how to speak about the Beings of the universe. They knew that realities could not be described by talking either of Matter or of what is called Spirit in the ordinary consciousness—a grey spirituality, conceived pantheistically as present in all things. They knew that if one wants realities, one must have particular Beings. But consciousness of these Beings has gradually been lost—to the same degree that in Man himself the equality of individual being has developed more and more. As I have often said, Man has become more and more intellectual ever since the first third of the fifteenth century. What he knows about himself becomes more and more abstract. But behind this abstract life there is a being living more and more within itself; increasingly rich in inner spirituality. Man lost the dreamy consciousness he once possessed of the Beings of the universe, in becoming a self-apprehending being himself. He must realize again that only when we can point to individual Beings in the universe do we grasp realities.

It was the necessary course of human evolution to see Being everywhere in ancient times, but in a dreamy consciousness. Then the time came, when things were felt in the following way. The realities consist of all these Beings, living in the Cosmos: Kyriotetes, Dynamis, Exusiai, Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi, human Egos, animal group-souls, the cosmic souls of the plants and so on. Not even the animals, as they live on earth, are realities; they too are illusion; the realities are the group-souls. The whole plant world on earth is no reality; the earth-soul is the reality. Plants are only as hair upon the earth organism, like the hair upon our own organism. Men knew that all these Beings I have named existed in the universe, and shine out, manifesting themselves, revealing themselves in speech. They knew that this expression in speech proceeded from their essential being. And that universal resounding, which arises from the confluence of what is spoken by the particular Beings in self-revelation, this is the Logos. But to begin with, the Logos was also only an Appearance. Only because Christ united this appearance, and made it concrete in His own Being, was through the Mystery of Golgotha the apparent Logos born upon earth as real Logos.

We must understand the connection of these things. Then the particular Beings can be described spiritually—how they shine, with gentle phosphorescence, and resound: how they spread streaming warmth, how they speak out their own essence. For each particular Being a full spiritual Form can be found in this way. And these full spiritual Forms are the only real things in the universe. In the old dreamy consciousness they knew a great deal about these realities. But this knowledge has shrunk more and more. Once it was known: Form shines out in this way from a certain Being who is reckoned among the Kyriotetes, in this way from human Egos, in this way from Angels, and so on. All this shrank, and contracted at last into a point, because the realities were seen less and less.

Originally they knew very well how the manifestations of the Exusiai, for example, differ from the manifestations of the human Egos, or these from the manifestations of the group-souls of the animals or of the plant Earth-soul. The differences were known, but gradually they fell into unconsciousness. A time came, when there was only the feeling: Yes, there are such realities, everything else is not real ... Space is not real, Time is not real, Matter is not real, Spirit in vague generality is not real—but cosmic individualities are real. But they could no longer be distinguished. And so they were described with the uniform word Monad. Leibnitz and Giordano Bruno spoke of Monads in this way. These Monads were the Realities I have spoken of, shrivelled up small. And no distinction was made between one Monad and another—or at most by tacking on an attribute to the word: the Monads of the Exusiai, the Monads of men, the Monads of animals, and so on.

And at last men lost the power even to speak about the Monads—to which the great German thinker ascribed a conceptual faculty, because he felt that spirit did indeed live in what had shrunk to the Monad. We have not only to remember that the Monad is something living; if human civilization is not to fall into decay, but develop further, we must not only remember the Monads, but we must understand once more, and now with a clear, enhanced consciousness, that all true reality consists in living, ensouled spirit-beings. And what is sketched first with a few lines—physical body, etheric body, astral body—must be brought to life, in the way we have done today.

And so one reaches the point of seeing man's soul and spirit-nature interwoven with the Beings of the second Hierarchy. One observes how man goes from earthly life to earthly life, and how from life to life a compensating cosmic Justice, a Karma, is at work. And here, too, considering this power at work in the Cosmos, one need not stop at the abstractions “Karma”, or “universal Justice”, or “moral world order”—but can go on to the realities.

Beginning with the etheric body, a description can ascend to the second Hierarchy, and therewith describe the human astral body as well. Just in the same way, one can begin with the astral body, and take hold of Thinking, Feeling, and Willing in the astral body, as they fade away at the moment of falling asleep, and go out with the astral body. If one begins there, and looks for the realities, one finds the following.

In our human Thinking there lives the activity of the Angels. In our human speech, which springs from Feeling, there lives for man as he sleeps during the night the activity of the Archangels. And in what is revealed in waking life through human movement of the limbs, through all that is imbued with Willing—and which also goes on in the astral body—there lives during the night, when the astral body is outside, the world of the Archai.

But what lives outside in this way, these super-sensible activities of Archai, Archangels, and Angels, which are reflected in the waking human being in Willing, Feeling, and Thinking—these must be harmonized with the etheric and physical bodies. The physical body must be formed in such a way that it can become the organ of thought, of speech, and of movement. One sees then how the activity of the Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai passes over into a still higher activity: that of the Thrones, who bring human Willing into accord with the physical human organism, the human metabolism and limbs. Then we come to the Hierarchy of Cherubim, who bring the human faculty of speech into accord with its physical basis. In all that serves speech or song in the organism, or anything similar to speech—the Cherubim bring the human life of Feeling into accord with the organs of speech. And now the faculty of Thought must also have its physical organ in the human nerves and senses. It is the Seraphim who bring Thinking into accord with the nerves and senses of man. Speech, and all that is connected with it, is brought into accord with Thinking and Feeling by the Cherubim.

Thus we see, when we have threefold Man before us:—

In the organism of nerves and senses, in the basis of Thinking, the creating Seraphim.

In all that is the rhythmic man, which must as physical organism be brought into harmony with the faculty of speech—in all this we see the creating Cherubim.

In all that is expressed in the movement of the human limbs, in all activities of Will, for which the inner structure of metabolism and limbs must be present in man, harmony is accomplished by the Thrones.

From this we see how the physical human form dissolves into appearance, and behind it there stand as realities: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones. We are always looking into the activity of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones, when the human Ego is interwoven with its inner activity, when man in waking life moves, speaks, feels, and thinks.

In this way we can find again a renewed Mystery wisdom for men; a Mystery wisdom which once more exercises the art of releasing Spirit from the word—of finding real Being in what is at first only sketched in a few lines as physical Man, etheric Man, astral Man. Real Being consists always in individual Spirits, who bear in experience within them what is of the nature of Soul, and who create what is outwardly manifest, the physical. Only existent Spirit-individualities are real. Their expression as Soul comes about because these individual Spirits experience themselves inwardly, and each other in mutual stimulus. That a physical world exists is because these Spirits (who have been rendered abstract as Monads and then have disappeared altogether from human observation) reveal themselves in creation, according to their various stages of existence. We can go back from the created world, which is really nothing but the outer Glory of creating Beings, to the world of experience, of Soul—which is the self-experience of the world of individual Spirits. And when we go on to the true reality, we come to the individual Spirits themselves, of whom the Universe is the revelation and the life.

As long as man stands upon Earth, he lives among the revelations of the individual Spirits. Between death and a new birth he must behold and pass through in full reality the individual Spirits in their own immediate forms. And in order to complete his development he must achieve the passage from the beholding of the spiritual realities in their true form to the order of Earth, in which he does not behold the individual Spirits, but in which they show themselves as it were only from outside, in their outer garments.

But if earthly life is not to fall into complete decay, man must learn once more to behold, and to know, and to understand, through the outer garment, the individual Spirits belonging to a higher world. Then man will see how his whole life consists in a struggle and effort among all that is outer garment of the Divine, and in a life within the Being of the Divine. But he can achieve a right existence within the Being of the Divine only if he develops himself more and more in the true beholding of the outer garment. He must learn to penetrate to the Being through the outer garment. He must not stop at the outer description, but press on to the inner life.

When once this is attempted by a considerable number of human beings, there will be the dawn of a future Earth-evolution, and of the metamorphosis of earthly being into the forms of Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan. The Anthroposophical Society must unite human beings who feel themselves today as the nucleus of what must spread to wider and wider circles in human civilisation, that progress in the evolution of mankind may really come about, and that earthly life may not fall into decay.

In today's lecture I would first like to speak about what we can know within occult research about the Christ Being, and then link an examination of the progress we have made in our knowledge of the Christ since the Mystery of Golgotha.

Within our spiritual movement, the great significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the entire evolution of the earth has been repeatedly pointed out. By pursuing this significance within occult research, we were able to arrive at three preliminary stages of the Mystery of Golgotha, which took place within and in connection with the evolution of the earth. Three preliminary stages precede the Mystery of Golgotha, preparing it, but they do not take place on the physical plane; they take place in the higher worlds.

The first of these events occurred during the Lemurian evolution of the Earth. The second and third events occurred during the Atlantean evolution of the Earth. The fourth event is the Mystery of Golgotha, which took place on the physical plane during the post-Atlantean period, at the beginning of our era.

In the Lemurian period, the same Being that we know as the Christ Being unites with another Being from the higher worlds, a Being from the higher worlds that did not embody itself on the physical plane but belonged to the world of the higher hierarchies. And just as we speak of the mystery of Golgotha as the Christ entering into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, so we can speak of the Christ entering into an archangelic being of the higher worlds in the ancient Lemurian times. One could speak of the fact that a similar event, translated into the spiritual, took place during the Lemurian evolution, as later took place on the physical plane the baptism of John in the Jordan. Thus, in those ancient times, we meet the Christ-being in the soul body of an archangel. And through this sacrifice of the Christ-Being, through entering into the soul body of an archangel, a very definite effect is radiated from the spiritual worlds into the evolution on earth.

In order to understand the significance of this event, we must speak of a danger that threatened the entire human evolution in the Lemurian period through the forces of Lucifer. If humanity had not averted this danger, all that we call the human being's sensory perception would have been disrupted. Under the influence of Lucifer, the sensory powers would not have been able to develop as they have done, but would have become much more sensitive, much more capable of arousal in relation to the outside world. For example, we would have had to go through the world like this: If we had seen a blue color, it would have been as if it had been sucked into our eyes and we would have felt something like a sucking power, and if we had seen a red color, we would have felt something like a stinging in the eyes. We only have to imagine what we humans would have become if we had been thrown back and forth at every turn in life by the sensory perceptions in nothing but arousing impressions. This danger was averted by the fact that the Christ, I must now say, did not embody himself, but rather ensouled himself in an archangelic being, and the powers that radiated from the spiritual worlds as a result poured into the evolution of mankind, and the powers of the senses were harmonized so that the danger just discussed was averted from people and they received the necessary balance. Today, when we consider the moderation of our sensory perceptions, we can look back to the ancient Lemurian time and say: It was then that the Christ sacrificed Himself, ensouled Himself in an archangelic being, and took from us the danger of hypersensitivity of our sensory system.

The second danger threatened human evolution, and that now through Ahriman and Lucifer together, in the first period of Atlantean evolution. During this time, an abnormal development threatened the life forces. The life forces should have developed in such a way that, for example, when man felt hunger and had food before him, he would have pounced on the food with animal greed. And on the other hand, for example, if he had had any food before him that was not beneficial to him, he would have felt terrible disgust and fled from the food. At that time man was threatened by the hyper-sensitivity of the life forces. The Christ once more embodied Himself in an archangel-like being of the higher hierarchies, and through this sacrifice of the Christ the danger just described was averted from humanity, and the life forces were so harmonized that we can now use them in moderation and balance.

The third danger threatened human development towards the end of the Atlantean period. Through the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, the three soul powers, thinking, feeling and willing, were to become disorderly, so that they would have worked in a disorderly, chaotic manner if this danger had not been averted.

If we want to understand how this matter actually stands, we must realize that the earth is not only what geologists think, a mineral body, but that the earth is a whole organism. What rises from the earth's surface, what rises from the earth's surface as misty vapors, is not only physical haze, but also the embodiment of passions that can unite with the passions and drives of human beings and that are permeated by Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. In the human soul, they would have caused chaotic thinking, feeling and willing during the period of time indicated. And if this danger had not been averted, the whole human race would have had to fall into a kind of delirium as a result of the chaotic thinking, feeling and willing. The human race would have developed into a madness that would have become the normal state of the earth. Then the Christ-Being ensouled itself for the third time in an archangel-like Being and averted this danger through the radiations that could be exerted through this newly-characterized sacrifice on the development of mankind. The effect of this third ensoulment of the Christ-Being is the harmonization of thinking, feeling and willing in the nature of the human soul.

The Greeks, who sensed something like an afterimage of the events during the Atlantean period in their mythology, also expressed this supersensible fact in their mythology. And the image, the afterimage under which the Greeks imagined the third inspiration of Christ in an archangel-like being, is Apollo, the sun god. Apollo, as protector of the oracles of Pythia, appears as the entity that harmonizes the dragon that rises from the earth in the form of vapors. If Apollo did not harmonize this vapor, it would flow into the passion of Pythia, and thinking, feeling and willing would be expressed as madness. Through the impregnation with the powers of Apollo, what the Pythia has to say sometimes becomes the wisest advice given to the Greeks.

If one could have asked an initiate of the ancient mysteries for his true opinion of who Apollo is, he would most certainly have given the answer: He is the forerunner of the Christ Jesus, who has only not yet descended to the physical plane.

Humanity has preserved a wonderful image of this third Christ event in the picture of St. George slaying the dragon, or Archangel Michael slaying the dragon. It is wonderful to be able to pay attention to how, in fact, this image of St. George slaying the dragon is an echo of the third supersensible Christ event.

And the fourth event occurred in the post-Atlantean period, when humanity was again exposed to the danger of becoming disorderly in the course of development with the soul forces. Now the human ego itself was to become disorderly.

The first danger was that the sense powers would have come into disorder. The second danger was that the life forces would have come into disorder. The third danger was that the soul forces, thinking, feeling and willing, would have come into disorder. The fourth danger was that the powers of the I would have come into disorder.

The same Being, the Christ Being, which had previously divided Itself three times, now embodied Itself in the Mystery of Golgotha in Jesus of Nazareth, in order to avert this fourth danger from humanity through Its radiance into the earth aura.

One can truly see in the development of humanity over the centuries that preceded the Mystery of Golgotha, and the centuries that followed, how the danger existed that would bring disorder to the I and its power. We see how, with the blossoming of the power of the I, which we can observe in Greek philosophy in Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, beginning with Thales and Heraclitus, we see how, alongside the blossoming of the power of the I through Greek philosophy, something else is taking place. As the powers of human thought are blossoming in Thales, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we see, from about the same time, the powers of the so-called Sibyls spreading throughout the whole of the then civilized part of the earth, showing themselves here and there. These Sibyls, which appear alongside the emergence of philosophy, represent how chaos is to penetrate into the forces of the I. We see how, on the one hand, what such Sibyls proclaim can give rise to truth, to good prophecy, and, on the other hand, misunderstandings, deceptive, disorderly ego-forces that speak out of the Sibyls. How the chaotic-earthly speaks out of the Sibyls was wonderfully portrayed by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, out of tradition. It can be seen in the gestures of the individual Sibyls how the disorder of the ego-forces worked through them, expressing itself in the most diverse ways.

And Michelangelo has placed, as a polar opposite to the Sibyls, those who have tried to seek the I, to find the I in human nature and to make it fruitful for the historical development of humanity: they are the prophets. What appears to us in Michelangelo's Sibyls and Prophets represents the two poles: On the one hand, the tendency of the ego to fall into disorder, on the other hand, the Jewish prophetic search to bring the ego forces into order. Human nature was seething around the actual awareness of the ego, which was to occur at that time. If the danger had not been averted, dark prophetic and Sibylline forces would today be chaotically mixed up in our ego. A real clarity of the ego could not have existed in the development of the following centuries. Then the incarnation of Christ in Jesus of Nazareth fell into this ferment and brought about the harmonization of human nature for the fourth time. This could only happen because the Christ-being embodied itself in a human being who, in the highest sense, had brought all the abilities that came to man at that time to development within himself.

Just as today's occult research enables us to throw light on the four stages of the Mystery of Golgotha, it also enables us to spread light on the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ-being, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the last stage, has embodied itself. On earlier occasions I was able to point out that two Jesus children were born at the beginning of our era. I was able to show that in the twelfth year of the one Jesus child, who descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David, the soul of the other Jesus child, who descended from the Solomonic line, entered, so that the two Jesus children became one being. If we ask ourselves who this twelve-year-old Jesus of Nazareth was, occult research answers today: It is the soul of Zarathustra in a very special human being, who descended from the Nathanic line of the House of David. And if we now turn our spiritual gaze to the being of Zarathustra in the Nathanic Jesus, we see how this Jesus of Nazareth developed until his thirtieth year.

We can distinguish three epochs in the development of this Jesus of Nazareth. The first from the age of twelve to eighteen. The second from the age of eighteen to twenty-four. The third from about the age of twenty-four to thirty. The young Jesus of Nazareth lived in the house of his real father and the mother of the Solomon-like boy Jesus. The other two had died in the meantime. The young Jesus of Nazareth was introduced to his father's trade, a kind of carpentry or joinery. But strangely enough, he developed with infinite perfection of spiritual life in his soul. We must note that basically no one in his family understood the deeply significant development of the young Jesus of Nazareth. He was alone with it even as a boy from twelve to eighteen years old; completely alone with it. What made this inner development, which took place in the solitude of the soul, so remarkable was that Jesus of Nazareth was able to draw from the depths of his soul all the great revelations that had come to the Jewish people over time. In the time when Jesus of Nazareth lived, the Israelite people hardly had anything else but written traditions of what the ancient prophets had once received in direct revelations from the spiritual worlds. They knew from the scriptures what the ancients had received in revelation, but they no longer had the opportunity to reach up to the revelation itself, which had once come to the ancient prophets through that voice called the great Bath-Kol. In a retrogressive development, Jesus of Nazareth went through everything again that the Jewish people had gone through, and he worked his way up to the point where his soul sensed: “The great Bath-Kol speaks to me again. Directly from the spiritual world I hear the voice once received by the prophets. And as is the case with such inner development, so it was also with Jesus of Nazareth: this inner development was connected with the deepest mental pain and suffering. The highest realizations are not attained without pain and suffering. In particular, there was one that settled like a terrible pain in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth, who was about seventeen to eighteen years old, when he said to himself: “Once the great Bath-Kol spoke the most wonderful revelations to the Jewish people. Today the Jewish people are here, but if the great Bath-Kol were to speak to them today, there would be no one to hear her. They understand the scriptures, but they no longer understand the living scripture. He was lonely within himself; an immense sadness came over his soul, over what had become of his people in the downward development of humanity. Then the time came when Jesus of Nazareth was to be sent out into the world. He wandered around, practicing his trade here and there, in the most diverse areas, both in Palestine and outside of Palestine, in pagan areas. These wanderings were particularly remarkable in their impression on the people Jesus of Nazareth came to. What the pain in his soul had done had been transformed into something like love, which one felt radiating from him directly in his presence. When he sat with the people he visited in the evening after he had finished his work, they felt an atmosphere of love surrounding them with his words, but also through his mere presence. The love-imbued words he spoke to them made the deepest impression on the people, and when he had gone away to work elsewhere, something like the most vivid memory of him remained with the people he had left. It often happened that Jesus of Nazareth had been gone for three or four weeks when the people he had left three to four weeks earlier had a shared vision that he entered their house again and spoke to them – the vision spoke to them. So deep was the impression that, in essence, he had remained with them, this Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, what Jesus of Nazareth was, found expression in hundreds and hundreds of souls as he wandered around in his eighteenth to twenty-fourth year.

During these wanderings, Jesus of Nazareth also came to gentile areas. One day he came to a gentile place where the population was neglected. The place was abandoned by its priests. In this place was a place of sacrifice, but it was deserted. The priests had fled because an evil disease had broken out among the people of the place. Such places of sacrifice and the cultic practices at these places of sacrifice were derived from the mysteries. What had been revealed in the mysteries passed into the ceremonial acts at these places of sacrifice. To understand such a thing, one must be a little aware of the significance of ceremonial sacrifice. Through the way the sacrificial rites are performed and the prayers that permeate them, spiritual forces do indeed flow down onto the altars, so to speak. But Jesus of Nazareth, when he came to the place of worship in the place I have mentioned, no longer found the good powers that had once flowed down on the altars during the ancient sacrifices. He found the places of worship, abandoned by their priests, populated by demonic forces that were around the altar. Even the neglected, sickly, and downtrodden people of this pagan place were deeply impressed when they saw Jesus of Nazareth, whom they did not know, but who radiated an atmosphere of love. At first they thought that one of their old priests, who had abandoned them, had returned and wanted to offer them their pagan sacrifices. Of course, Jesus of Nazareth did not want to offer the pagan sacrifice, but he went among the people. There he was seized by the power of the demons that were around the altar, and he fell as if dead. When the people saw this, they fled, and in his stupor, Jesus of Nazareth still saw the people being pursued by the demonic forces. Then he lost his usual consciousness and was transported into spiritual worlds. And now he could perceive what had once been revealed to the ancient mystery priests in purity and truth; he could perceive the ancient pagan revelations, just as he had perceived the Jewish revelations in the voice of the great Bath-Kol. And now he could hear the ancient pagan revelation, which can be repeated in today's language in the following way:

Amen
Evil reigns
Witnesses of dissolving unity
Of self-guilt incurred by others
Experienced in daily bread
in which heaven's will does not prevail
because man has separated himself from your kingdom
and forgotten your name
you fathers in the heavens.

And Jesus of Nazareth knew in his altered state of consciousness that this revelation had passed through the ancient sacred teachings of the mysteries. He awakened and had retained the memory of that which had once been the ancient sacred teachings of the pagan religions. He then turned what he had received in this revelation around for the further progress of humanity, and the “Our Father” came from it.

What is learned about the higher worlds is not learned merely through teaching, but rather through facts that are experienced in the higher worlds. But the full significance of such a revelation is then experienced in an infinitely deeper way than one can ever experience something through teachings or theories. A new great sorrow settled in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He had before him in a particularly clear case the whole misery that pagan revelations had become, and could now contrast it with what they had once been. Just as he could say in the midst of the Jewish people: And even if the voice of the great Bath-Kol were to resound today, there are no longer any people here who could understand it ; one is alone with it, – so he could now say in relation to the pagan people: And even if the voices of the old pagan mysteries were to resound again everywhere, there would no longer be any people here who could understand them.

Thus, Jesus of Nazareth was to learn of the declining development of humanity in the deepest pain.

The story just told took place around the twenty-fourth year of Jesus of Nazareth. Shortly after that happened, he returned home. It was around the time his father died in Nazareth.

During the time between his twenty-fourth and thirtieth year, now that he was back home in Nazareth, he came into contact with the Essenes, who had one or two colonies in the area. He did not actually become an Essene, but because of the depth of his inner life and the two great sorrows that had settled in his soul and been transformed into love, the Essenes accepted him and often talked to him about their deepest secrets, which they had otherwise only spoken about among their own kind, among initiates. Only to him did they speak of their deepest secrets. And in the Essenes he came to know people who, in those days, through a special inner development, sought to ascend again to that from which humanity had developed downward. He eagerly absorbed what he could learn from the Essenes about the human development of such an ascent. But one day, as he left the Essene house and passed through the gate, he had a particularly remarkable vision: on either side of the gate he saw two figures whom he later, through his later experiences, knew to be Lucifer and Ahriman. They fled from the gates of the Essenes into the rest of the world. And through what he had gone through in his own inner development, he was now so far that he could, so to speak, read in the occult writing the meaning of this flight of Lucifer and Ahriman from the gates of the Essenes. He now knew: Yes, it is also possible in this present time for individual

people, through a special development of soul, can ascend to spiritual heights, but only at the expense of other people. For only a few chosen ones could undergo the Essene development, and they could only do so because others remained at lower levels. He knew that the Essenes, through their mystical development, freed themselves from the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, but that Lucifer and Ahriman, because they had to flee from the Essenes, fled precisely to the other people and seized the rest of humanity all the more. And from this occult experience came the third great pain for him, in that he could say to himself: Yes, it is possible for a few specially chosen people to ascend to what was formerly revealed to people, but they can only ascend at the expense of the other people. That almost broke his heart, for he was full of love for all people. And now, as a result of the third great sorrow, he could say to himself: Just as individuals in our time ascend to higher spiritual knowledge, it must be withheld from the rest of humanity. No matter how high a soul may rise, or what it may know, to experience this with the Essenes, the other people in the wide world are far too miserable for that.

When Jesus of Nazareth experienced such things, he was able to see how his stepmother or foster mother increasingly gained more and more understanding for his inner life. This was especially the case since the death of his father. And while in earlier years Jesus of Nazareth was quite alone and lonely in the family, during this time many a conversation developed with his mother in which Jesus of Nazareth was able to speak of what he experienced in his lonely soul. And there came a great and decisive conversation between Jesus of Nazareth and the mother in the thirtieth year of his life. All the insights that had been deposited in his soul since the age of twelve – through hearing the voice of the great Bath-Kol, through the cosmic Lord's Prayer, through the experience with the Essenes – all this he spoke to his mother one day. And he spoke to his mother in such a way that this conversation is deeply moving, even if it is deciphered afterwards from the Akasha Chronicle by occult research. The words went over to his mother not just as words, but as living forces that carried the essence of the soul of Jesus of Nazareth into the essence of his mother's soul as if on wings. So deeply connected was Jesus of Nazareth with what he had to clothe in his words that his suffering and his insights passed into the words and flowed over into the heart and soul of his mother. And it was as if the mother had been imbued with a new life; she lived anew, rejuvenated.

But Jesus of Nazareth entered into a completely different state of mind. With his words, he had poured out what was so intimately connected with them, his own ego. Zarathustra's ego had left the three bodies, the physical, etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth, and the cosmic forces were working in the three bodies. Without ego consciousness, as in a higher dream life, Jesus of Nazareth was driven onto the path to John the Baptist: Jesus of Nazareth, who had breathed out his Zarathustra ego in conversation with his mother.

Thus prepared, after having surrendered his Zarathustra ego, he received the Christ essence as his new ego. The Mystery of Golgotha, the fourth stage of the Christ events we have been speaking of, was thus prepared. It took place during the three years that the Christ lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, up to the Mystery of Golgotha. And it was only at the event, the memory of which we celebrate in the event of Pentecost, that the disciples, as if from a different state of consciousness, came to realize what had happened to Christ Jesus.

When we survey what has now been revealed about the Christ-Being as a result of occult research in the present day, can we say that our hearts and minds would be less shaken by these revelations for our time than by those revelations that became known to an earlier time

about Jesus and Christ? The occult science of our day really does enable us to know more and deeper about the Christ Jesus than past centuries have known. And we may say that the figure of the Christ grows to cosmic greatness as we try to recognize it with the means that modern occultism puts at our disposal.

Let us look back at what was given to an earlier humanity about the Christ Jesus, for example in the four Gospels. From the occult point of view, we are clear that those who wrote the Gospels wrote them according to the inspirations of ancient mysteries, from an atavistic clairvoyance. I have pointed this out in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. The first person to have an impression of the cosmic significance of the Christ was Paul; Paul, who was able to perceive how the power of the Christ-Being had flowed into the earth aura. What had emerged for Paul at a certain point in his knowledge of the Christ can, if we deepen our knowledge of occultism today, emerge for people in further fields of knowledge of the Christ. For by extending Paul's vision from the Mystery of Golgotha to its three preliminary stages, by extending it from what for Paul is almost exclusively the perception of Jesus of Nazareth to the life of Christ Jesus, then, in a sense, Paul's method is spread from a single center over the whole great phenomenon of the Christ Jesus life. In that today, through dedicated occult research, we are able to generalize the Pauline method for the realization of the Christ, real progress in the realization of the Christ has been made.

I did not want to speak in the abstract about the development of progress in the knowledge of Christ, but rather to illustrate concretely what knowledge of Christ can be gained in the present day through occult science. Thus, it may have become apparent to us from our reflection today that spiritual science, as we understand it, can be an instrument for an ever deeper knowledge of Christ. It is to be hoped that, even if humanity has come so far in the rejection of the old religious conceptions about the Christ through materialistic influences, the newer spiritual science will give the Christ to humanity again. For this spiritual science does not speak about the Christ out of theory, but in remembrance of the Christ-Word itself: “I am with you until the end of the days on earth!” For the Christ has been poured into the aura of the earth, in which we ourselves are embedded. He lives in it! And we can associate with him as a spiritual being in the aura of the earth if we acquire the ability to do so as the disciples once lived with Christ Jesus on the physical plane. We must only get used to really seeing through the living presence of Christ in the earth aura and not just identifying Christianity with a mere teaching, a mere doctrine. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ has been there, is around us. We can find him in the same world in which we are, in which he is, only not in a physical form, but as a spiritual being.

And we can follow how He is active as a Being, independently of what human beings have been able to think about Him. Have we not experienced that in councils and other places of dispute, opinions and teachings about the Christ have gone back and forth, that people have not been able to come to terms with their thoughts about the Christ? How many opinions have been expressed about the Christ! But if the further development of the Christ impulse had depended on the opinions of men about it, then this further development of the Christ impulse would truly be in a sorry state. This Christ impulse is a living reality in the evolution of the earth, and it works in it as a reality, quite apart from what men have thought about it.

To visualize this, let us consider the date October 28, 312. At that time, Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, stood at the gates of Rome, which was ruled by Maxentius. Constantine, with his relatively smaller army, approached Rome, where Maxentius commanded a significantly larger army. Maxentius was safe within the walls of Rome. Constantine approached in an open field. The battle that was fought then decided the map of Europe. Those who study history in its depths will always have to admit: it was not the ideas of the generals, not the rational arguments of men that decided what happened in the battle, but something quite different! Maxentius consulted the Sibylline books and received the answer: If you attack Constantine outside the gates of Rome, you will destroy the greatest enemy of Rome. — A true oracle! And in the night before the battle, Maxentius had a dream that urged him to leave the safety of the walls of Rome and go out to meet Constantine. But Constantine, with his much smaller army, had a dream that night that instructed him to let his army carry the symbol of Christ and to win in this sign. No rational arguments, no strategic reasons, no knowledge of warfare had played a role at that time, because it came down to the decision, but subconscious forces faced each other in Maxentius and Constantine. One may think of the value or worthlessness of Constantine as one wants, in the victory, which Constantine achieved at that time, the impulse of Christ lived as a real, actual force, which worked through the subconscious of humans since the Mystery of Golgotha, completely apart from what humans thought about the Christ.

This is only one of the events, of which many could be cited, that testify to how the Christ impulse first entered into the subconscious soul forces, which would otherwise have passed over into the Sibylline, and worked its way up. And while the superconscious soul forces increasingly tended to no longer understand the Christ impulse through the materialistic current, the Christ continues to work in the subconscious soul forces of people, just as He worked in Constantine and Maxentius.

Today, however, we are faced with the necessity of bringing up what has been working in the subconscious soul forces and consciously presenting it to the soul. We must consciously recognize the Being that has been working in the aura of the Earth, in the souls of human beings, since the Mystery of Golgotha, and that has determined the fate of the evolution of the Earth and of humanity from this aura of the Earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we bear this in mind, we understand the progress that human knowledge has made in relation to Christ, and we understand our own task in relation to the progress in the knowledge of Christ.

It will be easier for us to understand details in the Gospel of St. Luke if during our preparatory study the beings and individualities concerned stand before our mind's eye as living figures. The need for a good deal of preliminary history must therefore not discourage us.

First and foremost we must learn to know the great central Figure of the Gospels in the whole complexity of His nature, and also certain other facts essential to any real understanding of the Gospel of St. Luke.

Let us first recall what has already been said about the Bodhisattva who in the fifth/sixth century before our era became Buddha. We have described what this most significant event meant for humanity and we will consider it in detail once again.

The content of Buddha's teaching had at some given time to be transmitted to men as their own possession. In none of the epochs before Buddha could there have existed on the Earth a human being capable of discovering within himself the teaching of compassion and love as expressed in the Eightfold Path. Evolution had not progressed sufficiently to enable any human being to discover these truths through his own contemplation and deepened life of feeling. Everything in the world comes into being and develops; for everything in existence there must be a cause. How, for example, could men in earlier times have obeyed the principles subsequently expressed in the Eightfold Path? They could have done so only because these principles were handed down as tradition, were inculcated into them from the occult schools of the initiates and seers. It was the Bodhisattva who taught in the secret Mystery-schools, where it was possible to rise to the higher worlds and receive from those realms knowledge that could not yet be imparted directly to the human intellect. In ancient times this teaching had had to be instilled into humanity by those who were fortunate enough to come into direct contact with the teachers in the Mystery-schools. It was necessary for men to be influenced in such a way that their lives were governed by these principles, although they would not themselves have been capable of discovering them.

Thus men who lived outside the Mysteries unconsciously obeyed the principles received from those who had access to them. As yet there existed on the Earth no human body constituted in a way that would have enabled a man to discover the content of the Eightfold Path himself, however deeply the spirit may have penetrated into him. The principles had to be revealed from above and then communicated in a suitable form. Consequently a Being such as the Bodhisattva, before he became Buddha, was never able to use a human body on Earth in the fullest sense. He could find no body capable of incorporating all the faculties through which he was to influence men. No such body existed. What, then, was necessary? How did the Bodhisattva incarnate? We must now ask this question.

What the Bodhisattva was as a spiritual Being did not fully incarnate. Clairvoyant observation of a body ensouled by a Bodhisattva would have revealed that the body enclosed only part of his nature and that his etheric body towered far above the human sheath; his connection with the spiritual world was never wholly relinquished; he lived in a spiritual and in a physical body simultaneously. The transition from Bodhisattva to Buddha meant that for the first time there existed a body into which the Bodhisattva could fully descend and through which his powers could take effect. Thus he exemplified the ideal human stature which men must strive to emulate in order that each individual may eventually discover from within himself the teaching of the Eightfold Path, as the Bodhisattva himself discovered it under the Bodhi tree. Were we to examine the previous incarnations of the Bodhisattva who became Buddha we should find that part of his being was obliged to remain in the spiritual world; he could send only part of himself into the physical body. It was not until the fifth/sixth century B.C. that for the first time there existed a human organism into which the Bodhisattva could descend in the fullest sense, thus exemplifying the possibility that the principles of the Eightfold Path can be discovered by humanity itself through the moral tenor of the soul.

The fact that some men lived with part of their being in the spiritual world was known to all religions and cognate modes of thought. It was known that there were Beings destined to work on the Earth, for whom human embodiment was too restricted to contain the whole Individuality. In the religious thought of Western Asia this kind of union of a higher Individuality with a physical body was called ‘being filled with the Holy Spirit’. This is a quite definite, technical expression. In the language of those regions it would have been said of a Being such as a Bodhisattva while incarnated on Earth that he was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’—meaning that the forces and powers possessed by such a Being were not fully contained within his human organism and that something spiritual must work from outside. Thus it might with truth be said that the Buddha, in his previous incarnations, was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’.

Having grasped this we shall be able to understand what is said at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Luke. We know that in the etheric body of the Jesus-child of the Nathan line of the House of David there was present the hitherto untouched part of the etheric body that had been withdrawn from humanity at the time of the ‘Fall into sin’. The etheric substance withheld from Adam had been preserved and was sent down into this child. This was necessary in order that a being so young and entirely untouched by any experiences of earthly evolution might be in existence and assimilate all that he was destined to assimilate. Would an ordinary human being who had passed through incarnations since the Lemurian age have been able to receive the overshadowing power of Buddha's Nirmanakaya? No indeed! A human body of great perfection had to be made available, one that could only be produced through part of the etheric substance of Adam—untouched by all earthly influences—being united with the etheric body of this Jesus-child. This etheric substance was imbued with the forces that had worked upon Earth evolution before the Fall and now, in the Jesus-child, their power was immeasurably enhanced. This made it possible for the mysterious influence referred to in the lecture yesterday to be exercised by the mother of the Nathan Jesus upon the mother of the Baptist—that is to say upon John himself before he was born.

It is also essential to understand the nature of the one known as John the Baptist. We can understand him only when we perceive the difference between the teaching given by Buddha in India and the teaching given to the ancient Hebrew people through Moses and his successors, the Hebrew prophets.

Buddha imparted to mankind what the human soul can find as its own law and obey in order to purify itself and thus reach the highest level of morality attainable on Earth. The ‘Law of the Soul’—Dharma—was proclaimed through Buddha in such a way that at the highest stage of development attainable by human nature, man can discover it himself, in his own soul. Buddha was the first to reveal it. But the evolution of humanity does not by any means proceed in a straight line. The several streams of culture and civilization must fertilize each other. The Christ Event was to come to pass in Asia Minor and this made it necessary that the development of the people there should remain behind that of the people of India, in order that men in Asia Minor might receive in greater freshness, at a later period, what had been imparted to the people of India in a different form.

Thus a people who developed in a quite different way and remained at a more backward stage than those living farther to the East, had to be established in Asia Minor. Whereas the people of the more distant East were destined by cosmic wisdom to advance to the stage of being able to behold the Bodhisattva as Buddha, it was necessary for the people of Asia Minor—especially the Hebrew people—to be left at a lower, more childlike stage. The same thing had to happen in the evolution of humanity on a large scale as might be seen on a small scale in the case of a human being who develops to a certain degree of maturity by his twentieth year and has acquired definite faculties. But acquired faculties are apt also to become shackles, hindrances. Such faculties tend to become fixed at the stage they have actually reached and to keep the person concerned at that stage. They have a firm hold upon him and later on, perhaps in his thirtieth year, it is not easy for him to transcend the stage reached when he was twenty. On the other hand, a second man who has kept himself longer in a childlike state and because he has acquired only very few faculties by his twentieth year is obliged to learn from the other—such a man can more easily attain the required stage and indeed at the age of thirty may reach a higher level than the first man who acquired his faculties in his early years. Anyone who observes life closely will find this to be the case. Faculties that a man has made his own possession may become shackles later on; whereas faculties that are not so intrinsically linked with the soul but have been acquired in a more external way are less liable to have that effect.

In order that humanity may advance, provision has always to be made for two streams of civilization, one of which receives into itself the rudiments of certain faculties and elaborates them, while the development of the other, adjacent, stream is as it were held back. The one stream develops certain faculties to a suitable degree—faculties which are then essentially part of this stream and of the men belonging to it. Evolution proceeds, and something new appears; but the first stream would not be capable of rising to a higher stage through its own powers. Provision has therefore to be made for another stream to run side by side with it. This second stream remains in a certain respect undeveloped, having not nearly reached the level of the first; nevertheless it continues its course and is eventually able to benefit from the faculties acquired by the first. Having in the intervening period remained youthful, it is able, later on, to rise higher. Thus the one stream has fertilized the other. Spiritual streams must run their course side by side in this way in the evolution of humanity and provision must be made accordingly by the spiritual guidance of the world.

In what way could it be ensured that side by side with the stream represented by the great Buddha a second stream should run its course and at a later time receive what Buddha had brought to mankind?

This could only be achieved by withholding from the stream known as the ancient Hebraic, the possibility of producing human beings capable of developing Dharma out of their own moral nature, that is to say, capable of finding the teachings of the Eightfold Path for themselves. In this stream there could be no Buddha. What Buddha brought to his spiritual stream in the form of deep inwardness, the other stream had to receive from outside. As a particularly wise measure, therefore, and long before the appearance of Buddha, this people of the Near East was given the ‘Law’, not from within but from outside, in the Ten Commandments known as the Decalogue. The teaching imparted to another people as a possession of the inner life was given to the ancient Hebrew people in the Ten Commandments—a number of external Laws received from outside and not yet united with the soul. Hence by reason of their childlike stage of evolution the ancient Hebrews felt that the Commandments had been given to them from heaven. The Indian people had been taught to realize that men evolve Dharma, the Law of the Soul, from their inmost being; the Hebrew people were trained to obey the Law given them from without. In this way they formed a wonderful complement to what Zarathustra had accomplished for his own civilization and for all civilizations originating from it.

Emphasis has been laid on the fact that Zarathustra directed his gaze to the outer world. Whereas Buddha gave deeply penetrating teachings concerning the ennoblement of man's inner nature, from Zarathustra came sublime teachings relating to the Cosmos, in order that men should be enlightened about the world out of which they are born. Buddha's gaze was directed inwards, Zarathustra's to the outer world, with the aim of understanding it through spiritual insight.

Let us now concern ourselves with what Zarathustra bestowed upon humanity from the time when he appeared as the proclaimer of Ahura Mazdao until his life as Nazarathos. The depth and impressiveness of his teachings about the great spiritual laws and beings of the Cosmos steadily increased. What he had given to Persian civilization concerning the Spirit of the Sun amounted to no more than indications; but then these indications were amplified and elaborated into the wonderful Chaldean knowledge that is so little understood to-day—knowledge relating to the Cosmos and the spiritual causes governing birth and existence.

If we study these cosmological teachings we find that they reveal one particularly significant characteristic. While teaching the ancient Persian people about the external spiritual causes of the material world, Zarathustra spoke of two Powers: Ormuzd and Ahriman or ‘Angra Manyu,’ who oppose one another throughout the Universe. But what may be called the element of moral fervour, moral warmth, would not have been found in this teaching. According to the ancient Persian view, man is enmeshed in the whole process of cosmic life. The struggle between Ormuzd and Ahriman is waged in the human soul, and it is because of the battle between these two Beings that passions rage in man. There was as yet no knowledge of the inner nature of the soul; all the teaching related to the Cosmos. By ‘good’ and ‘evil’ were meant the beneficial or harmful workings which run counter to each other in the Cosmos and also come to expression in man. Moral conceptions were not yet included in teaching that was concerned essentially with the outer world. Man was made acquainted with the beings governing the material world, with everything that prevails in the world as a good, or as a sinister influence. He felt himself enmeshed in these forces but the moral element itself in which the soul participates was not yet inwardly experienced. When, for instance, a man was confronted by another of apparently ‘evil’ nature, he felt that forces from the evil beings of the world were streaming through him, that the other man was ‘possessed’ by these evil beings and moreover could not be held to blame for it. Human beings were felt to be entangled in a system of cosmic existence not yet permeated by moral qualities. That was the characteristic feature of a teaching primarily concerned with the outer world—viewed, of course, with the eyes of spirit.

It was for this reason that the Hebrew teachings formed such a wonderful complement to the cosmological knowledge of the Persians, for they introduced the element of morality into revelations given from without, thus making it possible for the concept of ‘guilt’, of ‘human guilt’ to be imbued with meaning. Before the introduction of the Hebrew teaching, all that could be said of an evil man was that he was possessed by evil forces. The proclamation of the Ten Commandments made it necessary to distinguish between men who obeyed the Law and others who did not. Thus there arose the concept of human guilt. How it was introduced into the evolution of humanity can be grasped if we consider a record proving what a tragic uncertainty still prevailed as to the exact meaning of guilt. Study the Book of Job and you will discern the lack of clarity about the concept of guilt—the uncertainty as to what attitude a man should adopt when misfortune befalls him; there you will glimpse the dawning of the new concept of guilt.

Thus the moral code was given to the ancient Hebrew people as a revelation from without—like the revelations concerning the kingdoms of Nature. This could only come about because Zarathustra had made provision for the continuation of his work, as I explained, by passing on his etheric body to Moses and his astral body to Hermes. Moses was thereby endowed with the faculty to perceive, as Zarathustra had perceived, the forces at work in the external world; but instead of experiencing neutral forces only, Moses became aware of the moral power holding sway in the world, the power that can take the form of commandment. Hence the element of obedience, submission to the Law, was implicit in the life and culture of the Hebrew people, whereas the ideal contained in the stream represented by Buddha was to give direction to man's inner life in the teachings of the Eightfold Path. But it was necessary that this Hebrew people should be preserved until the right time arrived—the time of the advent of the Christ-principle of which we are about to speak. The Hebrew people had to be ‘screened’ from Buddha's revelation and kept at a less mature stage of culture—if we like to call it so. Hence among the ancient Hebrews there were personalities who could not themselves, as human beings, be bearers of the full powers of an Individuality whose mission it was to represent the ‘Law’. A personality such as Buddha could not have appeared within the Hebrew people. The Law could be apprehended only through enlightenment from without—through the fact that Moses bore the etheric body of Zarathustra and was able to receive something that was not born of his own soul. To give birth to the Law from their own hearts was beyond the power of the Hebrew people. But it was essential, as in all other such cases, for the work of Moses to be carried onward and so bear fruit at the right time. Hence it was inevitable that there should arise among the ancient Hebrew people Individualities such as the Prophets and Seers, one of the most important of whom was Elijah. What is there to be said about a personality such as his?

Elijah was destined to be one of the ruling figures in the régime inaugurated by Moses. But the folk-substance of the Hebrews could produce no human being able to represent the whole content of the Law of Moses—which could be received only as a revelation from above. What we described as being necessary in the ancient Indian epoch, also as the special nature of the Bodhisattva, had to be repeated again and again in the Hebrew people too: there had to be Individualities who were not wholly contained in the human personality; one part of their being was in the earthly personality and the other in the spiritual world. Elijah was an Individuality of this nature. Only part of his being was present in his personality on the physical plane; the Ego-hood of Elijah could not penetrate fully into his physical body. He must therefore be called a personality ‘filled with the Spirit’. A figure such as Elijah could not possibly be brought into existence through the normal forces by which other men are placed in the world. In the normal way the human being develops in the mother's body in such a way that through physical processes the Individuality who has been incarnated previously simply unites with the physical embryo. In the case of an ordinary man everything takes place as it were straightforwardly, without any intervention by forces outside the normal. This could not be so in the case of an Individuality such as Elijah. Other forces had to intervene, concerned with the part of the Individuality that reached into the spiritual world. His development was necessarily attended by influences working upon him from outside. Hence when such Individualities are incarnated they appear as men who are ‘inspired’, ‘impelled by the Spirit’. They appear as ecstatic personalities whose utterances far surpass anything that might issue from their normal intelligence. All the prophets in the Old Testament are figures of this kind. They are ‘impelled by the Spirit’; the Ego cannot always account for its actions. The Spirit lives in the personality and is sustained from outside. From time to time such personalities withdraw into solitude; the part of the Ego needed by the personality withdraws and inspiration comes from the Spirit. In certain ecstatic, unconscious states such a being is responsive to the inspirations from above. The man who lived as ‘Elijah’ was an outstanding example of this. The words uttered by his mouth and the actions performed by his hands did not proceed only from the part of his being actually present in his personality; they were manifestations of divine-spiritual Beings in the background.

When this Individuality was born again he was to unite with the body of the child born to Zacharias and Elisabeth. We know from the Gospel itself that John the Baptist is to be regarded as the reborn Elijah. But in him we have to do with an Individuality who in his earlier incarnations had not habitually developed or brought fully into operation all the forces present in the normal course of life. In the normal course of life the inner power or force of the Ego becomes active while the physical body of the human being is developing in the mother's womb. The Elijah-Individuality in earlier times had not descended deeply enough to be involved in the inner processes operating here. The Ego had not, as in normal circumstances, been stirred into activity by its own forces, but from outside. This was now to happen again. But the Ego was now farther from the spiritual world and nearer to the Earth, much more closely connected with the Earth than the Beings who had formerly guided Elijah. The transition leading to the amalgamation of the Buddha-stream with the Zarathustra-stream was now to be brought about.

Everything was to be rejuvenated. It was now the Buddha who had to work from outside—the Being who had linked himself with the Earth and its affairs and now, in his Nirmanakaya, was united with the Nathan Jesus. This Being who on the one side was united with the Earth but on the other withdrawn from it because he was working only in his Nirmanakaya which had soared to realms ‘beyond’ the Earth and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus—this Being had now to work from outside and stimulate the Ego-force of John the Baptist.

Thus it was the Nirmanakaya of Buddha which now stirred the Ego-force of John into activity, having the same effect as spiritual forces that had formerly worked upon Elijah. At certain times the being known as Elijah had been rapt in states of ecstasy; then the God spoke, filling his Ego with a force which could be communicated to the outer world. Now again a spiritual force was present—the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the head of the Nathan Jesus; this force worked upon Elisabeth when John was to be born, stimulated within her the embryo of John in the sixth month of pregnancy, and wakened the Ego. But being nearer to the Earth this force now worked as more than an inspiration; it had an actual formative effect upon the Ego of John. Under the influence of the visit of her who is there called ‘Mary’, the Ego of John the Baptist awoke into activity. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha was here working upon the Ego of the former Elijah—now the Ego of John the Baptist—wakening it and penetrating right into the physical substance.¹

What may we now expect?

Even as the words of power once spoken by Elijah in the ninth century before our era were in truth ‘God's words’, and the actions performed by his hands ‘God's actions’, it was now to be the same in the case of John the Baptist, inasmuch as what had been present in Elijah had come to life again. The Nirmanakaya of Buddha worked as an inspiration into the Ego of John the Baptist. That which manifested itself to the shepherds and hovered above the head of the Nathan Jesus extended its power into John the Baptist, whose preaching was primarily the re-awakened preaching of Buddha. This fact is in the highest degree noteworthy and cannot fail to make a deep impression upon us when we recall the sermon at Benares wherein Buddha spoke of the suffering in life and the release from it through the Eightfold Path. He often expanded a sermon by saying in effect: ‘Hitherto you have had the teaching of the Brahmans; they ascribe their origin to Brahma himself and claim to be superior to other men because of this noble descent. These Brahmans claim that a man's worth is determined by his descent, but I say to you: Man's worth is determined by what he makes of himself, not by what is in him by virtue of his descent. Judged by the great wisdom of the world, man's worth lies in whatever he makes of himself as an individual!’—Buddha aroused the wrath of the Brahmans because he emphasized the individual quality in men, saying: ‘Verily it is of no avail to call yourselves Brahmans; what matters is that each one of you, through his own personal qualities and efforts should make of himself a purified individual.’ Although not word for word, such was the gist of many of Buddha's sermons. And he would often expand this teaching by showing how, when a man understands the world of suffering, he can feel compassion, can become a comforter and a helper, how he shares the lot of others because he knows that he is feeling the same suffering and the same pain.

The Buddha, now in his Nirmanakaya, shed his radiance upon the Nathan Jesus-child and continued his preaching inasmuch as he let the words resound from the mouth of John the Baptist. These words were spoken under the inspiration of the Buddha and it is like a continuation of his former preaching when, for example, John says: ‘You who set so much store by your descent from those who in the service of the spiritual powers are called Children of the Serpent, and plead the Wisdom of the Serpent, who led you to this? You believe that you bring forth fruits of repentance when you merely say: We have Abraham to our father’ ... (now, however, John continues the actual preaching of Buddha) ... ‘Say not that you have Abraham to your father, but be good men, whatever your place in the world. A good man can be raised up from the stones upon which your feet tread. Verily, God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham’ ... And then again he says: ‘He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none!’ Men came to him and asked: ‘Master, what shall we do?’—exactly as the monks once came to Buddha. All these sayings seem to be like utterances of Buddha himself, or a continuation of them. (See Luke III, 7–12).

Knowing that these Beings appear on the physical plane at different turning-points of time, we learn to understand the unity of religions and the spiritual proclamations made to mankind. We shall not realize who and what Buddha was by clinging to tradition but by listening to how he actually speaks. Five to six hundred years before our era, Buddha preached the Sermon at Benares, but his voice has not been silenced. He speaks, although no longer incarnated, when he inspires through the Nirmanakaya. From the mouth of John the Baptist we hear what the Buddha had to say six hundred years after he had lived in a physical body.

There we have a real indication of the ‘unity of religions!’ We must look for each religion at the right point in the evolution of humanity and seek for what is truly alive in it, not what is dead—for everything continues to develop. This we must learn to realize. To refuse to hear Buddha's utterances from the mouth of John the Baptist is like someone who had seen the seed of a rose-tree and later on, when the tree has grown and bears flowers, refuses to believe that the tree grew from the seed, insisting that it is something different! The truth is that what was once alive in the seed now blossoms in the rose-tree. And the living essence of the Sermon at Benares blossomed in the preaching of John the Baptist by the Jordan.

We now know something of another Individuality of whom the Gospel of St. Luke speaks so impressively. Only by endeavouring to understand each word as it is really meant can knowledge of the Gospel be acquired. St. Luke tells us in his introduction that he will recount information given by ‘seers’. Such persons were able to perceive the conditions revealing themselves gradually in the course of the ages; they did not see merely what was happening on the physical plane in the immediate present. One who saw only that might say: In India, five or six hundred years before our era, there lived one called the ‘Buddha’, the son of King Suddhodana, and then, later on, there lived a man known as John the Baptist. Such a person would not, however, find the thread passing from the one to the other, for that is perceptible only in the spiritual world. St. Luke says, however, that his account is based on the evidence of actual ‘seers’. It is not enough merely to accept the words of these sacred records; we must learn to understand their true meaning. But for this purpose we must have clear pictures in our minds of the Individualities in question and be cognisant of all the elements that streamed into them.

It has already been said that whatever may be the nature and rank of an Individuality who descends to the Earth, his development must be in conformity with the faculties available in the body in which he incarnates, and he must take these faculties and their character into account. If a Being of very lofty rank wished to descend to the Earth at the present time, he could not count upon finding bodily conditions other than those pertaining to a human organism of to-day. Recognition of who this Individuality actually is, is possible only in the case of a seer who perceives how the delicate threads of destiny are woven into his inmost nature. Such a Being, having attained a higher stage of wisdom, must however bring the body to maturity through childhood and onwards in such a way that at a particular point of time what that Being was in earlier incarnations can become manifest. If a Being is to awaken certain feelings in mankind the conditions of his earthly incarnation must be such that his body too is able to endure whatever is the object of his mission. In the spiritual world things do not present the same appearance as in the physical world. A Being whose mission it is to proclaim the possibility of the healing of pain and release from suffering must himself taste the very depths of suffering in order to find the right words applicable to it in the human sense.

The Being who subsequently passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus was the bearer of a message to the whole of mankind. It was a message intended to lead men out of the narrow ties of blood-relationship prevailing hitherto. It was not to set aside the tie between father and son, brother and sister, but to add to the love inherent in blood-relationship the ‘universal’ love that flows from soul to soul and transcends all ties of blood. This deepened love that has nothing to do with kinship of blood was to be brought by the Being who manifested Himself later on in the body of the Nathan Jesus. For this purpose it was necessary that the Individuality who had dwelt since his twelfth year in the body of the Nathan Jesus should himself experience on Earth what it means to feel no ties, no relationship with others through the blood. Then only could this Being experience in all its purity the link between man and man. He had first to feel himself free from all ties of blood—free even from the possibility of such ties. The Individuality in the Nathan Jesus was to stand before the world not only as a ‘homeless’ man (like the Buddha who left his home for unknown domains) but as one liberated from all family connections and from everything associated with the tie of blood. He had to experience all the pain that can be felt when a man must bid farewell to everything that is near him, and stand alone; he had to speak from the experience of utter loneliness and the abandonment of all family ties. Who was this Being?

We know that he was the Being who until about his twelfth year had lived in the body of the Solomon Jesus, his father and mother having descended from the Solomon line. His father had died early, so the boy was orphaned on the father's side. Besides himself there were brothers and sisters in this family, and he lived with them as long as he (Zarathustra) was in the body of the Solomon Jesus. In his twelfth year he left this family, gave up mother, brothers and sisters, and passed into the body of the Nathan Jesus. Then the mother of the Nathan Jesus died and, later on, the father too. Thus when the Zarathustra-Individuality went out to work in the world he had parted from everything connected with ties of blood. Not only was he completely orphaned, not only had he given up brothers and sisters, but as Zarathustra he had to forgo ever founding a family and having descendants. For he had abandoned not only his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, but even his own body, and had passed into another body—that of the Nathan Jesus. This Being could then prepare the way for One still more sublime, who later on, in the body of the Nathan Jesus, entered upon His great mission—the proclamation of Universal Love. And when the mother and brothers came and the people said to Him: ‘Thy mother and thy brethren are without and seek for thee’, then, from the depths of His soul and without danger of being misunderstood or of wronging filial love, He could utter the words: ‘That they are not!’ ... for Zarathustra had relinquished even the body that was connected with this family. Then, pointing to those who were with Him in free community of soul, He could say: "Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother." (See Mark, III, 35.)

The words of the scriptures are to be taken literally! In order that One Being might proclaim universal love He had actually to be incarnated in a form wherein He could experience the abandonment of everything that could be founded upon ties of blood.

Our feelings go out to this Being as if He were humanly near us—a Being who, having descended from sublime heights of spirit underwent human experiences and human suffering. The more spiritual our conception of Him, the truer it will be, and the more fervently will our hearts and souls acclaim Him!

• 1. There is a slight ambiguity in the German text and the reader will do well to turn to the passage in the this lecture (p. 119) where Dr. Steiner speaks again of the mysterious process connected with the birth of John the Baptist and of the influence of the Nirmanakaya of Buddha hovering above the Nathan Jesus.

I am very glad that we can meet here today and take a break, so to speak, for a while from the work on our new building in Dornach.¹ But I thought it would be impossible to gather here so near our building without also discussing anthroposophical matters. I hope we can do this more often in the course of the year; otherwise our friends working on the building will not have as many opportunities to attend such meetings as they do when they are not working on our building.

Let us start with some thoughts on the life of the spirit that might be useful in considering what meaning spiritual science and living with anthroposophy can have for us, for our soul. People new to anthroposophical thinking, feeling, and perception may think we should not worry about the life of the spirit, about the spiritual world, since we enter the spiritual world anyway after death (even a materialist might say this) and will there learn all we need to know about it. Why should we not be satisfied in this life between birth and death simply to do what is necessary for life in the physical world; why is it wrong when we just fulfill our duties in the physical world, and leave matters concerning the spiritual world in the realm of the uncertain and indefinite? One could hear these words often during the time when the tide of materialism engulfed human development, especially in the last third of the nineteenth century. And it was by no means the most morally reprehensible souls who said: While on earth, let us concentrate on our tasks here and leave the rest for the world we enter after death.

Now, let us talk about something that can be grasped immediately by anyone who begins to concern himself with—I do not even want to say spiritual science—but with truly logical thinking. We actually spend only part of our time between birth and death in the physical world, namely, our waking time. And even people who have not yet thought much about the spiritual world, but who can think logically, would have to admit that with our conscious mind we know as little about life in sleep as we do about life after death. And certainly no one can deny that we continue to live in sleep—unless such a person were prepared to accept that we really die every evening and are created anew each morning. That is unlikely, but the truly logical person will be equally unable to accept that the whole human being is really present in a sleeping body lying in bed.

The fact that we sleep regularly should at least make people think. And then they will be motivated to reflect on what spiritual science has to offer. In particular, the natural sciences will more and more realize that our soul is not present in our physical body when we sleep. In fact, they will reach this conclusion on their own before the end of this century of scientific development. Then they will look to spiritual science for answers to their questions. They will be forced by their own conclusions to realize that our soul-spiritual being is really not connected with our physical body when we are sleeping. It will then become ever more important for people in the twentieth century to know something about sleep. Therefore let us begin today and get an idea of what people in our century will have to know about the nature of sleep.

We know from our studies in spiritual science that when we fall asleep, two members of our being, the ego and the astral body, leave the physical and etheric bodies. Where are the ego and the astral body when we are asleep? To begin with, we can say they are in the spiritual world. Of course, we are always in the spirit realm, because the latter is not separated from the physical world, but surrounds us just as air envelops us everywhere. We are always in the spiritual world, even when we are awake.

However, we inhabit it in a different way when we are asleep than when we are awake. Now, it may be sufficient for the immediate needs of spiritual science to describe this situation by saying that in sleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric bodies. But then we would actually be telling only half the truth. It is the same as saying the sun sets here at night; because the sun in fact sets then only for us in Europe. We know this does not apply to all the inhabitants of the earth. Fundamentally, the ego and astral body leave our physical and etheric bodies properly, we might say, completely, only after death. In sleep they actually leave only the blood and nervous system. But when the “sun” of our being, namely, the ego and astral body, sets in relation to our blood and nervous system, which they penetrate during the day, it rises for the other half of our being, that is, for the other organs.

Our ego and astral body do just what the sun does, which shines here during the day and when it sets for us, it rises for the people on the other side of the earth. When ego and astral body “set” for our blood and nervous system, they rise for the other organs and are linked all the more strongly with them.

These other organs, to which our ego and astral body are connected when we sleep, have been constructed out of the spirit, as has everything else in the world. And the remarkable fact is that while we are sleeping, we strongly influence these other organs of our body with our ego and astral body. During the day, our ego and astral body work strongly upon our blood and nervous system, but they influence our other organs, all those not part of the blood and nervous system but which affect the blood from the nerves, when we are asleep.

From this follows that it is of some consequence how we enter sleep with our ego and astral body. Materialists will not care much about what happens in sleep to their ego and astral body, which they never mention anyway. However, those who understand these things will know that the organs that are not part of the blood and nervous system and do not manifest in our conscious existence are dependent on those aspects of our ego and astral body that are active in sleep.

Let me illustrate this with an obvious example. As we know, people today are haunted by a fear we can compare with the medieval fear of ghosts. It is the fear of germs. Objectively, both states of fear are the same. Both fit their respective age: People of the Middle Ages held a certain belief in the spiritual world; therefore quite naturally they had a fear of spiritual beings. The modern age has lost this belief in the spiritual world; it believes in material things. It therefore has a fear of material beings, be they ever so small. Objectively speaking, the greatest difference we might find between the two periods is that ghosts are at any rate sizable and respectable. The tiny germs, on the other hand, are nothing much to write home about as far as frightening people is concerned. Now of course I do not mean to imply by this that we should encourage germs, and that it is good to have as many as possible. That is certainly not the implication. Still, germs certainly exist and ghosts existed also, especially as far as those people who held a real belief in the spiritual world are concerned. Thus, they do not even differ in terms of reality.

However, the important point we want to make today is that germs can become dangerous only if they are allowed to flourish. Germs should not be allowed to flourish. Even materialists will agree with this statement, but they will no longer agree with us if we proceed further and, from the standpoint of proper spiritual science, speak about the most favorable conditions for germs. Germs flourish most intensively when we take nothing but materialistic thoughts into sleep with us. There is no better way to encourage them to flourish than to enter sleep with only materialistic ideas, and then to work from the spiritual world with the ego and the astral body on those organs that are not part of the blood and the nervous system. The only other method that is just as good is to live in the center of an epidemic or endemic illness and to think of nothing but the sickness all around, filled only with a fear of getting sick. That would be equally effective. If fear of the illness is the only thing created in such a place and one goes to sleep at night with that thought, it produces afterimages, Imaginations impregnated with fear. That is a good method of cultivating and nurturing germs. If this fear can be reduced even a little by, for example, active love and, while tending the sick, forgetting for a time that one might also be infected, the conditions are less favorable for the germs.

These issues are not raised in anthroposophy merely to play on human egotism, but to describe the facts of the spiritual world. This concrete case demonstrates that in real life we cannot avoid dealing with the spiritual world, because it is the basis for our actions between going to sleep and waking up. If people were given thoughts that lead them away from materialism and spur them on to active love out of the spirit, it would serve the future of humanity better. Then infinitely more productive work could be achieved than through all the preparations now being developed by materialistic science against germs. In the course of this century, the insight has to spread more and more widely that the spiritual world is by no means irrelevant to our physical life, but is of essential importance to it because we are in the spiritual world between going to sleep and waking up, and continue to affect the physical body from there. Even if this is not immediately obvious, it is nevertheless true.

Now, we will have to get used to the fact that the direct healing powers of spiritual science have to work through the human community if we are to see these matters in the right light. What does it mean that some individual here or there enters the spiritual world in sleep with thoughts turned toward the realm of the spirit, while all around other people nourish and nurture the germ world with their materialistic thoughts, materialistic feelings, and with fears, which are always connected with materialism? What is the real nature of germs? Well, here we come to a subject essential for human life. When we see the air around us filled with different species of birds and the water filled with fishes, when we observe the life forms that creep along the earth and others frolicking on it and revealing themselves to our senses, we are looking at beings we can correctly describe as creatures of the developing Godhead in one form or another, even if they are occasionally harmful. But in the case of germ-like creatures resident and active in other living beings, in plants, animals, or humans, we are dealing with creations of Ahriman. To understand the existence of such creatures correctly we must know that they express spiritual facts, namely the relationship between human beings and Ahriman. This relationship is established through a materialistic attitude and purely egotistical states of fear. We see the conditions allowing the existence of such parasitic beings correctly if we realize that they are a symptom of Ahriman intervening in the world.

Clearly, then, it is not a matter of indifference whether we take materialistic or spiritual ideas with us into the spiritual world when we fall asleep. As soon as we realize this, we can no longer claim it is irrelevant whether or not we know of the spirit in this world. We have to start at a specific point if we really want to understand the great importance of spiritual scientific research for our life between birth and death.

It will become increasingly clear to us how this earthly life is connected with spiritual life. We rely on nature, which is on a lower level than we are, for our nourishment. For some time after death, the dead derive their nourishment from the ideas and the unconscious emotions that we here on earth take into sleep with us. Those who have died perceive a tremendous difference between people who in their waking life are filled only with materialistic feelings and ideas and also take them into sleep, and others who are wholly filled with spiritual ideas while awake and who continue to be filled with them in sleep. The two types of people are as different in their effect on the dead as a barren region where no food can grow, where people would starve, and a fruitful area that offers nourishment in abundance. For many years after death, the dead draw a vitality from the souls sleeping here on earth filled with spiritual content, a vitality that is similar, only transposed into the spiritual realm, to what we draw in our physical life from the beings of the kingdoms of nature below us. We literally turn ourselves into fruitful pastures for the dead when we fill ourselves with the ideas of spiritual science. And we turn ourselves into barren ground and starve the dead if we take only materialistic ideas and attitudes into sleep.

It is not out of the enthusiasm that leads to the establishment of many other associations and societies that we speak of spiritual science in these times. Rather, the urge to speak about it comes out of necessity and the heartfelt realization that in the twentieth century people will need it. Regardless of outer circumstances, those who fully understand how much the world needs spiritual science cannot help but talk about its results and share it with their fellow human beings. The power of the words at our disposal seems much too weak to meet the necessity of making spiritual science ever more available to those who would otherwise sink deeper and deeper into materialism.

Let us think about the nature of our relationship to the dead we were connected with in life, whom we can clearly visualize, and of whom we often think. What is our relationship to those who have died, apart from offering them spiritual nourishment by taking spiritual thoughts into sleep? What is our relationship with the dead in waking life?

If the dead draw nourishment from the content of our souls in sleep, then every thought that enters the spiritual world and is concerned with it and its beings can be perceived by the dead. On the other hand, if we do not cultivate such thoughts, the dead are deprived of them. Ideas related only to the material world, to things in nature, live in our souls in such a way that the dead cannot perceive them. These ideas, however scholarly or wise, are meaningless for the dead. As soon as we have thoughts about the spiritual world, not only the living but also the dead have immediate access to them. That is why we have often recommended that our friends read silently to an individual with whom they were closely connected and who has passed on to the spiritual world. One forms an image of the person and then, while thinking about him or her, one reads on a subject related to the spiritual world. The dead can then participate in the process, which is important. Although the dead are in the world we know through spiritual science, thoughts about the spiritual world must be produced on earth. The dead must perceive more than the spiritual world around them; they need the thoughts of those who live on earth, thoughts that for them are like perceptions.

The most important and the most beautiful thing we can give the dead is to read to them in the way I have just described. We can give something to the dead by reading on a spiritual subject. And if you doubt that this is useful, since the deceased is in the spiritual world anyway, just think that we can be surrounded by things and beings in the physical world, yet may not understand them. The understanding has to be acquired. Thus, although the deceased is in the spiritual world, thoughts from earth have to flow to him. Illuminating thoughts must flow up to those regions where the dead dwell, just as rain streams down from the clouds as a blessing to the physical world.

All these examples show that it is infinitely important even for the physical world to experience the spiritual world in thought. Obviously, we cannot wait until after death for knowledge about the spiritual world. In truth, a thorough study of the spiritual world shows us that we are not on earth for nothing; we are here to learn something that can be learned only on earth—a possession of such value that the living can give it even to the dead.

The close connection between our earth existence and life immediately after death also manifests in many other respects, but it is difficult to talk about this connection in concrete terms, because the words can so easily be misunderstood. People are greatly inclined to prejudice, and whenever a subject, such as the spiritual world and its beings, is discussed, certain motives of the heart provoke misunderstandings. When I tell of an individual case where there is this or that connection between a person's life here on earth and after death, people all too easily jump to the wrong conclusions out of a very understandable self-centeredness and apply the description of a particular case to themselves. They are tempted to think that things are quite different in their case; therefore, they will not experience something this beautiful after death. Instead of deriving satisfaction from the events described, the listeners out of egotism feel that their experience will not be equally exceptional after death.

As soon as we do more than just speak in general terms and deal with specific cases, we must develop selflessness so we can observe someone else's destiny without drawing conclusions about our own life. Then we will not worry that if the same does not happen to us, we are missing out on what is being described. These and similar reactions provide grounds for misunderstandings, which I want to avoid.

A short time ago, a very dear friend of ours died, and many of us attended his cremation.² He would have celebrated his forty-third birthday tomorrow, on May 6. In the final years of his life, he suffered much. I would like to tell here, parenthetically as it were, a wonderful story from his last years as his wife told it to me.³ During his great suffering, our friend fought not against admitting to himself that he had to suffer, but against saying that he was ill. He was not ill, he said. He suffered, yes, but he was not ill, and he was adamant that such a statement should not be taken as quibbling but as something meaningful. This definition, “I suffer, but I am not ill,” arose from his awareness that what he carried within him as spiritual science, what supported and carried him inwardly, defeated all attacks of illness. He was aware that he suffered, but the health of his soul is so great that, when he compared it to his physical condition, he could not call himself ill. This definition is very important and well-suited to permeate our soul as a feeling.

Anyway, we saw how the person concerned spent his last years on earth in a sick body, in a suffering body. Yet he did not see himself as sick but only as suffering. If we compare that with the spiritual life that has now begun for our friend, we will have a worthy image of what connects our earth existence with life after death. It is a fact of the spiritual world that a series of Imaginations was prepared in his body, a body that showed the symptoms of illness. A series of Imaginations, powerful Imaginations, lived, so to speak, in the sick limbs. He was completely filled with the content of the spiritual worlds. They lived in him in such a way that they worked on all those organs we are usually not as aware of as we are of our brain and nervous system, that is, organs we experience on a more subconscious level. These powerful Imaginations lived in these organs, and all the more so, the more outwardly ill these organs became. They prepared themselves and now face the soul of the deceased as a mighty tableau of the spiritual world. Now he is living in the images that were trapped in his sick organs, especially in his final years. They prepared themselves in such intensity that they now surround him as his spiritual world.

It is impossible to see more beautiful worlds, or to see the spiritual cosmos more perfectly and more beautifully, than those that blossom and unfold in spiritual art, which cannot be observed better anywhere else than through such a situation. Here, on the physical plane, an artist can create in beauty a piece of the world, so that the image on canvas or in marble lets us see more of the world than we do on our own. All of this, however, pales into insignificance in comparison to the spiritual world seen as it is and also as it arises and blossoms forth from the soul of the deceased who has been prepared by his karma in the way I have described. How he was prepared will be clear from his poetic works, which are now being printed and will appear soon.⁴ His poetry reveals that this kind of spiritual life and passage into the spiritual world after death are intimately connected with what we have for many years called the Christ-Impulse. The Christ-Impulse, in the sense spiritual science speaks of it, is beautifully alive in our friend's poetry.

In this connection I want to add something that can truly lead us to feel the relationship between the world of our earthly life and the one we pass through between death and a new birth. I will not present this connection with abstract thoughts, but so you can grasp it at the level of feeling. You see, one can be either stupid or clever here on the physical plane; one can even be a scholar—in the life after death it is of little importance whether one was stupid, clever, or learned if all these qualities relate only to the things of the physical world. Our thoughts about the material world may be ever so clever; they will be of no use to us once we have passed through death. They will then no longer have any meaning. After death we need thoughts, ideas, and feelings that do not relate to the physical world, because only those have meaning then.

Now, I would like to put this in a somewhat grotesque, paradoxical way. Do not be put off by the paradox; what I want to say will become clear immediately. Let us assume that someone refuses to have any thoughts that are not called forth by sensory perception. As soon as anything impinges on him and thoughts begin to develop, he says: I do not want you. I proceed only on the basis of what my eyes see and my ears hear. That is what I want to think about. Stop bothering me with anything else; I will not bother with it ... Such a person does not accumulate any strength that can be used after death. He is blind when entering the world between death and new birth.

Let us assume now that someone else has a lively imagination, but cannot be bothered to approach spiritual science and learn things slowly and gradually. He finds it much easier to develop ideas about the spiritual world from his imagination, to fantasize about the spiritual world. This person has ideas concerning the sense world as well as all kinds of fantasies about the realm of the spirit. Such an individual would not enter the spiritual world as a blind person, but will have soul forces that will enable him to see in the spiritual world. However, such people will be as we are when our vision in the physical world is impaired and we see things inaccurately as a result. Such inaccurate vision is a lot worse in the spiritual world than on the physical plane because there it leads to confusion at every turn. What I have just said, even if it seems grotesque at first, shows us that we need ideas reaching beyond the life of the senses if we really want to become citizens of the spiritual world, as we must. And unless we get our bearings from beyond the sense world, we will live in the spiritual world in a crippled state, as do those who take in only ideas related to the sensory realm and those who allow their imagination to run wild.

Various founders of religions appeared throughout history to prevent people from having thoughts triggered purely by physical objects or by fantasies about the spiritual world. If we look at these personalities and the teachings they gave humanity, we find that the aim of all these religious founders was to offer people ideas about the super-sensible world that would allow them to enter it healthy and whole, not crippled. The founders of our religions provided ideas that met the needs of their particular time and culture.

Our age is different from the past and requires us to grow up into mature human beings. Please do not take this in a superficial, merely external sense, but in a deeply inward one. We have to reach maturity and find the path into the spiritual world through our souls. The ancient founders of our religions spoke to a humanity that was not yet mature. They addressed people at a stage through which all our souls have also passed. These ancient religious leaders knew their times, and also knew that they could not speak in the same way to a humanity moving further toward the future. For humanity must develop toward maturity and independence.

If people of ancient times had either restricted themselves to sense impressions or had reached for the products of their imagination, in both cases they would have entered the spiritual world crippled or at the very least in a confused state. At that point a leader appeared, bringing true ideas from the spiritual world. People then said that they themselves did not gain access to the spiritual world through sensory perception or use of the imagination, but rather through Zarathustra, Buddha, or Krishna, who stimulated thoughts in them that allowed them to enter the realm of the spirit.⁵ In our time human beings must come of age, regardless of whether the ego causes confusion or blindness. The Mystery of Golgotha took place so that we can find the way into the spiritual world as independent beings. Religious leaders no longer appear in history as they did in earlier times.

Those who compare Christ to the ancient religious teachers do not understand anything about him. In the first place, Christ worked through a deed, the ancient religious leaders through their teachings. To describe him merely as a teacher of humanity means not knowing at all who Christ is. The essential thing about him is the deed he performed, which began as a consequence of his baptism by John and ended with the crucifixion on Golgotha. What was done there for humanity is spiritually all-important. What happened there is what can permeate human souls ever since then, namely, the experience St. Paul described as “Not I, but Christ in me.” Indeed, Christ has become the path into the spiritual world because he brought it into this world. He brought us the spiritual world we need if we are not to be crippled or blind after death.

It is quite possible these days to deny Christ and claim that there is no evidence that Christ lived in the physical world in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, people have even produced evidence showing there was no historical Christ. But with that they merely prove that they missed the point. If Christ had chiseled into a rock for all future generations, “I was here,” then those future generations would have known he existed from the sensory world, and they would not have needed to believe it. His deep significance, the possibility of redemption, is precisely that this was not the case, that we cannot comprehend him through our senses but have to accept him with the forces of the spirit. Seen in this light, we find Christ intimately connected with those things that even here on earth lift human beings beyond the sense-perceptible world into the spiritual realm. None of this exists for those who cannot raise themselves to the spiritual world, because they cannot escape their doubts.

In this context it can be a great relief for someone fully involved in modern culture, in science and art, to come across a view of Christ that is appropriate to our modern civilization, namely the anthroposophical view of Christ presented in spiritual science. Much can be learnt from it, for example, how to view the physical world correctly. Oh, the physical world—where is it headed these days? I hinted at some of these things recently in a public lecture, but now I can be more explicit.⁶ Of course, we have to admire materialist civilization and all the achievements of technology, industry, and so on. An immense amount of intellectual energy has flowed into these things; they have taken up a great deal of human energy. But who benefits from these intellectual efforts? Insofar as they satisfy the material needs of modern humanity, they serve Ahriman. Christ Jesus experienced the temptation by Ahriman. Ordinary human souls could certainly not survive the sudden shock of such an experience. For us the temptation has to be diluted. But as a consequence of this dilution of temptation, Ahriman can say to us: Yes, think only with the power of your science, with all those things you can discover through science applied to technology, industry, and so on. Use only those things for your thinking and apply them to nothing but physical experience; that suits me fine. It fits in well with my aims, says Ahriman, if you are unable to see me. You might well despise reason and knowledge, the supreme achievements of human beings; thus you are absolutely mine—at least as long as you do not see me. I will instill the drive in you to use reason and knowledge only for earthly things!

Something else is required to counterbalance the service we render Ahriman. It is therefore important that we gather everything modern technology and so on can accomplish to build something with it that is not to serve our outer existence, but only our spiritual life.

In ancient times, people presented sacrifices to the gods, the first fruits of the field and of the herd. I do not intend to talk about the meaning of sacrifice today, but you can see what it could signify presented in a form appropriate to modern times. When the first fruits had been sacrificed to the gods, the people partook of the remainder. Spiritual science is certainly not based on false asceticism. It will not be guilty of the absurdity of ranting and raving against modern culture with all its material blessings. On the contrary, it recognizes their value. But if it wants to avoid serving only Ahriman, it has to sacrifice something of the first fruits of this external material culture to the gods.

So you see, there is a profound thinking underlying the building that is growing outside on the hill at Dornach: We want to offer the first fruits of modern civilization to the gods. Everything is different now from the way it was in the times our souls passed through in previous incarnations. And we have to understand the nature of our current task just as we understood what we had to do in our earlier incarnations when we were guided by spiritual luminaries. That is especially difficult now because we have to take into account not only the nature of our time but also our soul qualities. In addition, we can no longer rely on the external authority that supported the founders of religions; we have to work with quite different forces. Christ was the Word; in the same way true spiritual science wishes to work only through the word and must not use any other means.

Such reflections give us an insight into the connection between the spiritual world and our world here on earth. And no matter where we begin, we see the Mystery of Golgotha radiating toward us as the heart and soul of such reflections. But we must not forget that we have to become mature, truly mature, so that we can understand what spiritual science is meant to be. We must never forget that it must exist because humanity must come of age.

It is completely true that humanity descended from higher spiritual regions and has moved away from the old atavistic clairvoyance by developing a world view based on reason and systematic thinking. We have to take this progress in evolution seriously. We must realize we live at a time when it is our mission to develop our thinking, to advance through our thinking, and to learn through studying. Spiritual science is our basis, our point of departure. We must try to immerse ourselves in these ideas so that they stimulate within us what our souls need in the future. What spiritual science offers can be understood by everyone. Those who claim one cannot understand the contents of spiritual science, but must believe it, speak without knowing how these things really are.

We must not be misled when we meet people who have not advanced by means of intellectual understanding, but have certain psychic abilities that seem to appear spontaneously. Based on our understanding of the mission of spiritual science, we know that souls can now think only because the clairvoyance of an earlier age has been suppressed. People with natural clairvoyance, which was not acquired through inner effort, must be seen as persons who have remained at an earlier evolutionary stage and who should therefore receive special care in our Society, rather than be considered particularly advanced. It would be an incorrect judgment if we were to consider such souls particularly mature, as having experienced particularly high incarnations. People with a natural gift of clairvoyance have gone through far less than those who are thinkers nowadays. These things have to be properly understood in our Society. Then it would be possible (and it is my duty to say this) for our Society to be a place where such souls with psychic powers can find care and be guided on the right path. Our Society could give them what they cannot get anywhere else: order in their soul. But to make that possible most of the members of our Society must have a profound inner knowledge of the mission of true spiritual science in the present. If that happened, then the case that so saddened us in recent days could not recur. I am referring to a member, who joined in the belief our Society would care for clairvoyant psychic forces, but then found here a captive audience and took on the role of a prophet. Such an event opens the door to all those things that, if they were to prevail, would turn our Society into the exact opposite of what it should be according to the intentions of the spiritual forces supporting it.

Unfortunately, we have had to suffer the case of ..., who came from a country in the north. He might have become a good member if he had worked quietly on developing his psychic powers. Instead, he was immediately surrounded by a kind of aura. He presented himself everywhere as a healer in a way we can only consider regrettable. It became necessary to announce that he could no longer be considered a member of our Society. For it would be turned into the exact opposite of what it should be if we failed to carefully draw attention to psychic phenomena that are not imbued with true spiritual power, which, after all, is the true power of Christ. Christ, not psychic powers, must work in us. These circumstances must be handled so as to make it clear that our Society will have nothing to do with this. It knows no other sanction than the one used in the last few days. Unfortunately, a step had to be taken we otherwise oppose in principle: a member had to be expelled.

This cannot be separated from a serious and worthy concept of the mission of the Anthroposophical Society. And certainly you will understand that it is only with great sorrow one lives through the events that had to be lived through here in the last few days. We are in principle opposed to all expulsions and yet could not avoid expelling someone in such a case. It will happen less and less frequently if our dear friends continue to take to heart the things that have been said so often and that were also the subject of tonight's talk. With that I will conclude my remarks, my dear friends, and entrust them to your souls.

• 1. Work on the construction of the first Goetheanum in Dornach. Started in 1913, it was destroyed by arson on New Year's Eve 1922/23.
• 2. Christian Morgenstern May 6, 1871 – March 31, 1914. See Lecture Two, note 8.
• 3. Christian Morgenstern, Alles um des Menschen Willen: Briefe, (Munich, Germany: Piper, 1962), letter of January 22, 1914, to a young girl, p. 398.
• 4. Morgenstern, Wir fanden einen Pfad. See Lecture Two, note 9.
• 5. Zarathustra, 628–551 B.C. Persian religious leader. Buddha, Siddharta Gautama, 563–483 B.C. Founder of Buddhism. Krishna, Indian deity, appears in Bhagavad-Gita as teacher of Arjuna.
• 6. Rudolf Steiner, “Homunkulus,” public lecture, Berlin, March 26, 1914, in Geisteswissenschaft als Lebensgut, vol. 63 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1959).

In the course of the last week we reflected on a number of considerations suited to throw light on the spiritual condition of the present and the immediate future. Recently, we have referred in particular to the decisive turning point of humanity's development in Europe in the fourth century. Earlier, at least in the south of Europe, people understood the Mystery of Golgotha to some extent on the basis of Oriental wisdom. They still grasped with a certain comprehension something that is viewed today with such antipathy by some circles, namely, the Gnosis. The Gnosis was indeed the final remnant of Oriental primeval wisdom, that primeval wisdom which, though proceeding from instinctive forces of human cognition, did penetrate deeply into the nature of the world's configuration. With the aid of the conceptions and feelings acquired through Gnostic knowledge, people were able to have insight into what had taken place in the Mystery of Golgotha. But the Christian stream that increasingly flowed into the Roman political system and took on its form was actively involved in destroying this Gnostic world outlook. Except for a few quite insignificant remainders from which little can be gained, this Christian stream eradicated everything that once existed as Gnosis. And, as we have seen, nothing was left behind of ancient Oriental wisdom in the consciousness of mankind in Europe except for the simple narrations, clothed in material events, about what took place in Palestine at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

To begin with, these narrations were clothed in the form that originated in ancient paganism, as you can see in the Heliand. They were adopted by European civilization. But there was less and less of a feeling that these stories should be penetrated with a certain cognitive force. People increasingly lost the feeling that a profound world riddle and secret should be sought for in the Mystery of Golgotha. For concerning the one who had been united with Jesus as Christ dogmas determined by council decisions had been established. The demand had been raised that people believe in these established dogmas; thus, gradually all living knowledge that had still existed up until the time of the fourth Christian century passed over into the solidly structured system of doctrines of the Roman State Church.

Then, if we have an overview of this whole system of the Occidental Christian church stream, we see that the nature of the Mystery of Golgotha was enveloped in certain firm, rigid, and more and more incomprehensible doctrines, and that any living spiritual knowledge was in fact eradicated.

We are faced with a strange factor in European evolution. One might say that the fertile, living Oriental wisdom flowed into the doctrines adopted by the Roman Church and became rigid. In dogma, it continued on through the ensuing centuries. This dogma existed. One must remember that there were some people who to some extent knew what to make of these dogmas, but it had become impossible for the general consciousness of humanity to receive anything but a dead form. Certainly, we encounter a number of splendid minds. We need only to recall some of those who came from the Irish centers of knowledge; we need only recall Scotus Erigena who lived at the court of Charles the Bald.¹ In individuals like him, we have people who received the doctrines and still sensed the spirit in them, or discovered it more or less. Then we have scholasticism, often mentioned here in a certain connection, which attempted in a more abstract form to penetrate the doctrines with its thinking. We face the fact that an extensive system of religious content was present in rigidified doctrines and was handed down from generation to generation; it survived as a system of dogmas. On the one hand, there were the theological dogmas, on the other, the narrations concerning the events of Palestine clothed in materialistic pictures.

Now, if we wish to comprehend our modern age, we must not forget what these Roman-Catholic dogmas couched in Roman political concepts are fundamentally all about. Among them are doctrines of great significance, splendid doctrines. There is, above all, the doctrine of the Trinity, which, in other terminology of later times, points to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. An ancient and profound primordial wisdom was frozen into this doctrine, something great and mighty that human perception once possessed instinctively. Yet, only the brilliant, inspired insight of a few could fathom what is contained in such a doctrine.

Running through the various council resolutions, there was what finally rigidified into the dogma of the two persons of Christ and Jesus in one man. There were dogmas concerning the birth, the nature of Christ Jesus, the death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. Finally, there were dogmas establishing the various festivals; and all this was basically the skeleton, the silhouette of a wondrous, ancient wisdom. Now this shadowy image, this skeleton, continued on through the centuries. One particular reason why it was able to go on was that it assumed a certain form of ancient cults. The content of what was thus expressed in dogmas, in the most sublime dogmas, such as the dogma of the transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, could spread because it was clothed in the form of an ancient, sacred cult, namely, the Sacrifice of the Mass. The ancient cult was just altered a bit but as such continued on. The various metamorphoses of the Christian festivals lived on through the whole ecclesiastical year. Those aspects lived on that you know as the sacraments. They were intended to lift the human being out of the ordinary material life through the agency of the Church, so to speak, into a higher, spiritual sphere. Because of all this and because of its link with the impulse of Christianity, this content lived on throughout the centuries of historical development in Europe. Side by side with this, as I have said, existed the humble narration of the events in Palestine, but garbed in materialistic formulas.

Because of its significant content and because people basically had nothing else with which to establish a relationship to the super-sensible worlds, all these doctrines together were something that affected minds striving for such higher knowledge. Due to the ritual and the simple narration of the Gospel, however, these doctrines could also unfold that form of activity that gained influence over the broad masses of Europe's population.

In addition to this, another separate and different cult system spread, one that counted less on Christianity as such but frequently accepted it. It was basically not organically connected with Christianity but proceeded more from older cults. This other system culminated in the dogma of present day Freemasonry, which, indeed, had and still has only a superficial relationship to Christianity. As you know, the element that clothed itself in the form of Roman-Catholic dogmatism and the element that in Masonic tradition is linked to other cults and symbolism fight each other tooth and nail to this day.

This development can be traced more or less if only we focus our soul on the historical facts with some sense. But what presents itself can be fully comprehended only when we look to that turning point of European evolution in the fourth Christian century that, in a sense, sank all the ancient spiritual wisdom and its aftereffects into a sort of abyss. Due to that, people in Europe knew little of Oriental primeval wisdom throughout the ensuing centuries.

As I pointed out yesterday, the inner faculties that enabled human beings in ancient times to experience weight, number, and measure in their own being had gradually disappeared. Measure, numbers, and weight then turned into abstractions. With these abstractions, people then established in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch what has today become our natural scientific world view, something that could not include human beings in its sphere and stopped short of them, unable in any way to comprehend them. By means of the abstractions of weight, number, and measure, it did, however, grasp the external natural phenomena with a certain excellence and arrived at a kind of culmination point in the nineteenth century.

People today do not yet have enough distance from these matters; they do not yet realize that a quite special point in time was actually reached in European development in the middle of the nineteenth century. Intellectual striving, pure rational effort, attained to its fullest and greatest unfolding at that time. It was the trend that resulted from those same sources from which the modern natural scientific views have been flowing since the first third of the fifteenth century. Yet, at the same time, this was the trend that ultimately could no longer make anything of the cult that had spread; indeed, this trend basically had been unable for a long time to do anything with the ritual and dogmatic formulas established by the Church councils. Merely a few vestiges had survived, a few remnants; for example, the vestige of the Council of 869,² where it had been resolved that the human being consists not of body, soul, and spirit, but merely of body and soul, with the latter possessing a few spiritual qualities. This vestige remained and lived on in the modern philosophical views that believed themselves to be objective but actually only reiterated what had originated in this Catholic dogmatism.

The modern mood of European civilization, which tended increasingly to a purely intellectual, rational view of the universe, formed out of all these directions. Having been prepared for centuries, this mood reached its culmination in the middle of the nineteenth century. How can we understand this culmination if we observe the human being from a soul-spiritual standpoint? We have to focus on human nature, as it was in ancient times and as it has gradually changed. We have done this already from a number of different viewpoints and shall do so again today from yet a certain other standpoint.

Let us place the human being schematically before us. Take, first of all, man's physical body (red). As I said, I am making a schematic drawing.

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This is man's etheric body (blue); that is the human astral body (yellow); here we have man's ego. Let us first consider the human being as he was in ancient times, those ancient times when instinctive clairvoyance still existed, which then faded, withered, and gradually disappeared. The ego is basically a product of the earth and we need to give it less consideration. But we must be clear about the fact that the whole world actually dwells in man's physical, etheric, and astral bodies. We can say, in this physical body lives the element that represents the whole world. The corporeality is born out of it and continues to reconstruct itself through the intake of nourishment. In the etheric body, the whole world lives as well; in the most diverse ways, influences enter constantly into it and send their effects into the human being in a superphysical manner, effects that express themselves in the forces of growth, for example in the circulation of the blood, in the breath, and so on. They are by no means identical with the forces that are present in the intake of food and in digestion. In addition, there are all the influences living in our astral body that receive impressions from the world through the senses, and so forth. It is like this to this day and was like this in the days when the human being still lived with his ancient instinctive clairvoyance, but in that age, he was more intimately connected with his physical body, his etheric, and astral bodies than he is today. When he woke up in the morning, he submerged with his ego and astral body into his physical and etheric bodies. A close connection developed between his ego and astral body and his etheric body and physical corporeality. And he not only dwelled in his physical body, he also lived in the forces that worked within the latter.

Let me give you a vivid description of this. Imagine that a person possessing ancient clairvoyance ate a plum. It seems almost grotesque to a human being of today when something like this is described, but it is profoundly true. Assume that such an ancient clairvoyant ate a plum; this plum contains etheric forces. If a person eats a plum today, he is not aware of what goes on within this plum. The ancient clairvoyant ate a plum; it was then in his stomach, was digested, and he experienced how the etheric forces in the plum passed over into his body. He cosmically participated in this experience. When he inwardly made comparisons between the various things he ingested into his stomach, he saw that all the relationships in the outside world continued inside the human being, and he perceived them inwardly. From waking in the morning to going to sleep at night, such a person was filled with the vivid inner perception of the life lived outside by the plums, by the apples, and by much else that he ate. Inwardly, through the breathing process, he was aware of the essential, spiritual being of the air. Through the warmth that coursed through his circulation process, he was familiar with the warmth forces of the cosmos in his surroundings. He did not stop short at merely sensing the light in his eyes. He felt how the light rays streamed in through the nerves of his eyes; how, in his own etheric body, they encountered the physical limbs and dwelled within them.

Such a person experienced himself quite concretely within the cosmic element. While it was a dim consciousness, it was present. During the day, it was muted by what a person perceived outwardly even in those days. But even in the early times of Greek civilization, it was true that human beings still retained an aftereffect of what is possessed today only by creatures other than man. I have already mentioned several times that it is most interesting to look with spiritual sight upon a meadow where cows are lying down and digesting. This whole activity of digestion is a cosmic experience for the cows. It is even more so the case with snakes; they lie down and digest and do indeed experience cosmic events. Out of their organism, something blossoms and sprouts that is “world” to their perception. Something arises out of their inner being that is much more beautiful than anything we are ever able to see with our eyes from outside. Something like this was present as an underlying mood in human beings who still possessed ancient, instinctive clairvoyance. While it was muted throughout most of the day by external perceptions, when these people fell asleep, they carried with them what they had thus experienced and received into their astral body and ego. Then, when their ego was alone with its astral body, these experiences arose powerfully in the form of true dreams. Then, in the form of true dreams, these people experienced after the fact what they had only dimly experienced during the day.

You see, I am referring you to the inner soul-bodily manner of experiencing on the part of human beings of ancient times; because they were able to experience in this way, they had cosmic experiences. It was in this that they found their cosmic, super-sensible perception. Then, when people in the Orient drank the Soma drink,³ they knew the nature of the Spirit of the Heights. This Soma drink permeated, surged, and wove through their inner being, enlivening their blood. When these people subsequently fell asleep and the ego and astral body, which had been active in the blood, took along the forms that had come into being through the digestion of the Soma drink, then their being widened out in the widths of space and, in their nocturnal experience, they felt the spiritual beings of the cosmos.

Such an experience was still present in those among whom the ancient Zarathustra found willing listeners in the ancient Persian epoch. If one is unaware of these things, one does not understand what finally came down to us from the Oriental scriptures that have survived. This living cosmic perception gradually became extinguished. Already in the historical Egyptian age, little of it can be found, only its aftereffects are still present. And except for final vestiges that have always been retained among primitive human beings, it then disappeared in the fourth Christian century. From then on, the intellect, the rational element, increasingly struggled to come to the fore in the human being, the element that is completely tied to the mere physical body in its isolation from the world.

If you have a pictorial imagination and enter into your body, you cannot help but experience something cosmic. If you have retained something of the inner quality of numbers and enter into your body with it, you cannot help but experience the number element of the cosmos. The same is true for the ratios of weight. However, if you enter into the human organism with the power of the ego, which is active as a purely rational, intellectual element, then you immerse yourself only in the isolated human body, in what the human body is by virtue of its own nature, without its relationship to the cosmos. You enter into the earthly human body in its total isolation. Thus, if I would try to sketch this from the point of view of the intellect, I would have to do it like this:

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The etheric body, the astral body, and the ego (see above, blue, yellow, and shape in the middle) are present there too. But the ego no longer experiences anything of the cosmic element here within the human being. It only has a dim experience of its own existence, of its own immersion in the isolated human organism. Therefore, when this purely intellectual ego goes into its surroundings in sleep, it takes nothing along. The fact that it takes along nothing is the reason that at most reminiscences, dream images of an unrealistic kind, can arise in the human being, and that this ego can in no way be permeated by anything from the cosmos. Basically, from the moment of falling asleep until awakening, the human being experiences nothing of significance, because his whole manner of experiencing is calculated for the isolated human organism, which in turn affects the ego with those forces that have nothing to do with the cosmos. This is why the ego is dulled from the moment of falling asleep until waking up.

Indeed, it must be so, for though instinctively clairvoyant ancient human beings possessed cosmic vision and dwelled in instinctive Imaginations, Inspirations, and Intuitions, they possessed no independent rational thinking. If this independent rational thinking, this actual intellectual thinking, is to develop, it has to make use of the instrument of the isolated human body. It has to be dull during sleep and therefore brings nothing along when it awakens. The ancient human being, on the other hand, having carried his experiences in the body out into the cosmos, brought with him what he had experienced in the encounter of the cosmic aftereffects with the actual spiritual-cosmic occurrences out there. Again, he brought back aftereffects of what he had experienced there and thus enjoyed a lively relationship with the cosmos. What is attained by the human being through intellectual thinking is acquired in the period from waking up until falling asleep and dims down after sleep begins. Human beings now have to depend on the time when they are awake.

We come across the strange phenomenon that in ancient times the human being was bound more to his body than he is today, but that he experienced in this body the spiritual aspect of the cosmos. Modern man has lost this experience in the body. The human being today is more spiritual but he has the most rarefied spirit; he lives in the intellect and can dwell in the spirit only from the time he awakens until he falls asleep. When he enters the spiritual world with his completely rarefied intellectual spirit, his consciousness is dimmed.

Why have we developed materialism? And why did ancient humanity not have materialism? The ancients did not have it because they dwelled within the matter of the body; modern men have materialism because they dwell only in the spirit, because they are completely free of a cosmic connection to their body. Materialism actually comes about because the human being became spiritual, but spiritual in a rarefied manner. People were most spiritual during the mid-nineteenth century. But they lied to themselves in an ahrimanic way inasmuch as they did not recognize that it was the rarefied spirit in which they dwelled. Into the most spiritual element possible for the human being, he only absorbed the concept of materiality. The human being had turned into a completely spiritual vessel, but into this vessel he only let flow the thoughts of material existence. It is the secret of materialism that human beings turned to matter because of their spirituality. This is modern man's negation of his own spirituality. The culmination point of this spiritual condition was in the middle of the nineteenth century, but human beings did not grasp this condition of spirituality.

As I said, this developed slowly through the centuries. The ancient instinctive spirituality had slowly died down in the fourth Christian century; beginning in the first third of the fifteenth century, the new spirituality dawned; the time between is in a sense an episode of purely human experience. Now, however, after this point in time in the first third of the fifteenth century and after that century as a whole this dependence of man on his isolated physical body made itself felt. Now he no longer developed any relationship to what was frozen into dogmatic council doctrines and what, although rigidified, still possessed a grandiose content. Now, too, human beings basically could no longer find any relationship to the humble narrations of Palestine. For a while yet, they forced themselves to connect some meaning with them. However, meaning can be connected with them only when they are penetrated by knowledge. In particular, modern human beings no longer could connect any meaning with the cults, the ritual itself. The Sacrifice of the Mass, a religious act of the greatest cosmic significance, turned into an external, symbolic act because it was no longer understood. The sacrament of the Transubstantiation, which had survived through the Middle Ages and which has profound cosmic significance, became part of purely intellectual disputes. Certainly it goes without saying that when people began to question with their isolated intellect how the Christ could be contained in the sacraments of the altar, they could not comprehend it, for these matters are not suited for comprehension by the intellect. But now human beings began to try to understand them by means of the intellect.

This then led to the emergence of debates of great importance in world history known as the “Eucharist-Dispute,”⁴ and linked to names like Hus⁵ and others. The most progressive individuals in Europe, those most advanced in the rational comprehension of the world, then arrived at the various forms of Protestantism. It is the intellect's reaction against something that had emerged from a much broader, much more intense power of cognition than is the intellect itself. The powers that had developed in the modern soul as intellectual faculties and what dwelled in the rigid dogmas yet containing something great and mighty, these two confronted each other as two alien views! Protestant confessions of the greatest variety arose as compromises between the intellect and the ancient traditions. The sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries passed, and in the middle of the nineteenth century the human being reached the culmination of his intellectual development. He became a spiritual being through and through.

With this spirituality, he could comprehend what exists in the outer, sensory world, but he did not comprehend himself as spirit. People hardly had an inkling any longer of the meaning of a sentence such as the one by Leibnitz that states, “Nothing dwells in the intellect that did not dwell earlier in the senses, except for the intellect itself.”⁶ Modern people completely omitted the phrase at the end and acknowledged only the sentence, “Nothing dwells in the intellect that did not dwell earlier in the senses,” whereas Leibnitz clearly discerned that the intellect is something totally spiritual at work in the human being quite independently of all aspects of the physical corporeality.

As I have said, the intellect was active but did not recognize itself. Thus, it has been our experience that human beings are now in the transition to another phase of development in their life, and, so to speak, they carry nothing out with them into the night. For what is intellectually acquired is attained through the body and has no relationship to what is outside the body. People now have to work their way anew into the spiritual world. The possibility distinctly exists for them to look into this spiritual world. What people earlier had attained from their physical and etheric bodies as well as from their astral body in regard to an instinctive view of the cosmos can be attained again today. We can come to Imaginations and by means of them we can describe the world evolution from Saturn, Sun, Moon, to earth, and so on. We can behold what dwells in the nature of numbers, namely, the being of numbers. Through Inspirations, we can receive insight into how the world is shaped out of cosmic spirituality according to the laws of numbers. It is entirely possible that we can have insight into the world in this way through Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition.

Most people will say: If we have not ourselves become clairvoyant, we can at most study these matters. Good and well, but one can study them, and it has been said again and again that the ordinary intellect can grasp them. Today, I shall add the reason why the ordinary intellect is able to grasp these matters. Assume that you are reading something like An Outline of Occult Science. Imagine that you try to place yourself into these descriptions with your ordinary intellect. You take it in with the intellect, which is only linked to the isolated human body. But you do take something in that you could not receive through this intellect, since throughout the past few centuries this intellect did not comprehend itself. Now you take something in that is incomprehensible on the basis of those concepts that the intellect derives from the external sense world. It does become comprehensible, however, when the intellect on its own makes the effort to understand it, initially neither agreeing nor disagreeing but only comprehending. After all, the emphasis is on understanding these things.

Initially, you need simply understand them. If you do, then you create something with the insight the ego has gained that extends into the night. Then, during the night, you no longer remain dull as is the case with the merely intellectual attitude towards the world; then, from the time of falling asleep until waking up, you dwell in a different content in the delicately filtered spirituality. Then, you awaken and find that the possibility has been added—small though it is each time—of inwardly acquiring what you have struggled to understand intellectually. With each passing night, every time we sleep, something of an inner relationship is added, we acquire an inward connection. Each time, upon falling asleep, we bear the aftereffect of our daytime comprehension with us into the world beyond corporeality. In this way, we acquire a relationship to the spiritual world, a relationship acquired completely out of reality. This, however, is the case only if the human being does not ruin this relationship by means of something with which he so frequently ruins it today. I have mentioned these means for ruining spirituality quite often. As you know, many people are intent on acquiring a certain state of sleepiness prior to going to sleep; they consume as many glasses of beer as it takes to have the necessary degree of sleepiness. This is a quite common practice, especially among “intelligent” people. In that case, the faculties I just mentioned certainly cannot develop.

Spirituality can be researched, however, and this spirituality can indeed be experienced as well in the manner just described. The human being has grown away from spirituality. He is capable of growing into it again. Today, we are only at the beginning of this process of growing into spirituality. In the past few centuries, from the fifteenth century into the nineteenth century when the intellect had reached its highest level, a certain spirituality has developed, in particular among the most progressive people in Europe, albeit a spirituality that has as yet no content. For it is only when we turn to Imagination that this spirituality receives its first content. This spirituality, which is filtered to the extreme, must first receive its content.

At this point in time, this content is being rejected by the majority of the people. The world wishes to remain with the filtered spirituality; it wishes to produce a content derived from the outer material world. People do not wish to struggle with their intellect to comprehend the results of insight into the spiritual world offered. The confessions that follow the Gospel are, after all, compromises between the intellect and ancient traditions; they have lost the connecting link. Ritual means nothing to them. This is why the latter has gradually disappeared within these confessions. People arrived at abstract concepts instead of a living comprehension of, for example, the Transubstantiation. At most, the simple stories can be told, but no meaning other than the one that is compatible with a materialistic theology can be connected with them, namely, that one is dealing with occurrences that can be linked to the humble man from Nazareth, and so forth. All this can no longer lead to a content; it is something that loses all connection with spirituality.

Thus, the situation in the world today is such that there is, first of all a faith that has rejected the intellect and did not strike any compromise. Due to this, in vast segments of the population a relationship has been retained, albeit an instinctive one, to the doctrines and dogmas, the content of which is no longer accessible to human beings but did flow out into these dogmas. This segment of the populace also has retained its living relationship to the cult, to the ceremonial ritual; it has retained its link to the sacraments. As depleted as all this is, the ancient spirituality—the spirituality to which there is still a connection through dogmas—did once dwell in what has become a skeleton, a shadow. Among the more recent Protestant confessions, where a compromise is being tried out, such a connection is no longer alive. And then we have those who call themselves quite enlightened and dwell only in the intellect, which is spiritual but does not wish to grasp the spirit.

These are the three streams we confront. In regard to the future, we cannot count on the fruitfulness of those streams that only tried to make an external compromise; we cannot count on mere intellectuality that cannot arrive at any content and therefore can only lose itself since it does not want to understand itself. We can only count on the direction in which these streams are gradually heading, and they are more and more clearly heading there, namely, we can count on what has been poured into ancient doctrines and is represented in the surviving Roman-Catholic Church. We can count on the attitude that takes the new intellectuality seriously and deepens it Imaginatively, Inspiratively, and Intuitively, thus arriving at a new spirituality. The modern world is becoming divided and estranged in these two contrasting directions. On the one hand stand people with their intellect. They are inwardly lazy and do not wish to utilize this intellect, but they need a content. So they refer to the dead dogmas. Particularly among intelligent people, who are, however, mentally indolent, who are in a certain respect intellectual and Dadaistic, a neo-Catholic movement is making itself felt that is trying to take hold of the old traditions that have rigidified in dogmas and that is trying to receive a content from outside, through historical phenomena but that rigidifies in historical forms. Based on the intellect, this trend tries desperately to make some sense of the ancient content; thus we have intellectual battles that, by means of the old content, try to prepare their rigidified doctrines in a new way for the use of human beings.

To cite an example, on many pages in the newest edition of the magazine Tat,⁷ we can observe an intellectual, cramped tendency towards rigidified doctrines. After all, the publisher, Diederichs, does everything; he puts everything into categories and on paper. Thus, he has now dedicated a whole edition of Tat to the neo-Catholic movement. It allows us to discern how cramped people's thoughts are today, how people are developing inwardly cramped thinking so that they can avoid having to rouse themselves and can remain mentally lazy in order to grasp with the intellect whatever moves forward most indolently.

People experiment with all this in order to be able to reject this life-filled striving out of modern intellectuality towards spirituality, a striving that can and must be grasped. More and more, things will come to a head in such a way that a powerful movement with a fascinating, suggestive, hypnotic effect on all those wishing to remain lazy within the intellect permeates the world. A Catholic wave is even pervading the world of intelligent people who wish, however, to remain lazy within their intelligence. The drowsy souls just do not realize it. But it must remain unfruitful to strive for what Oswald Spengler described so vividly in his Decline of the West.⁸ One can turn the Occident Catholic, but one will thereby slay its civilization. This Occident has to concern itself with waking up, with becoming inwardly active. Its intelligence must not remain lazy, for this intelligence can rouse itself; it can fill itself inwardly with an understanding for the new view of the spirit.

This battle is in preparation; in fact, it is here—and it is the main point. In the future, everything else concerning world views will become crushed between these two streams. We must turn our attention to this, for what is coming to expression conceals itself in any number of formulas and forms. Nobody is living fully in the present who believes that he can make progress with something that people were perhaps still dreaming about at the beginning of this century. He alone lives fully in the present who develops an eye for what dwells in the two streams described above. We have to be aware of this. For everything I have discussed a week ago when I said that nowadays a great number of people love evil and, purely due to their tendency towards evil, indulge in slander in the way I described—all this is what must come before our souls. We must bear in mind that inner untruthfulness, which expresses itself in the facts—as I told you—that people, who are supposed to be strengthened in their Catholic faith, are sent to the Catholic church in Stuttgart to attend a lecture by General von Gleich, and that this Catholic general concludes with a hymn by Luther! There, the two tendencies come together that care nothing about the confessions but only try to stream together in the proliferation of lies.

These things must be noticed today. If this is not done, then one is asleep and does not participate in what alone can make the human being today truly human.

• 1. Johannes Scotus Erigena, A.D. 810–877, Irish philosopher of scholasticism in Paris.
• 2. Council of 869: See Johannes Geyer, “Ein Konzilbeschluss and seine kulturgeschichtlichen Folgen” in Die Drei, vol. X (1922) and Alfred Schuetze, “Das Konzil 869 zu Konstantinopel and die Verleugnung des Geistes” in Die Christengemeinschaft, vol. I and II.
• 3. Soma drink (Sanscrit): The fermented juice of the soma plant, a leafless vine (sarcostemma acidum), mixed with milk or barley, whose intoxicating and enthusing power was worshipped as the God, “Soma.” Concerning the occult significance of “Soma” see also H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, vol. I and II.
• 4. Eucharist-Dispute: The dogma of the Transubstantiation, the transformation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ (Fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215), was rejected by the Reformation.
• 5. Johannes Hus: around 1370–1415, early Czech reformer from Bohemia, banned by the Church in 1410 and burned as a heretic in 1415.
• 6. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, 1646–1716, German philosopher.
• 7. “Die Tat”—Monthly Magazine for the Future of German Culture. VIII, 1921, vol. 1.
• 8. Oswald Spengler, 1880–1936, German philosopher of culture.

The subject of today's lecture¹³ is one on which widespread confusion prevails. Not long ago I heard a cultured scholar declare that Goethe should be numbered among the mystics, for he had admitted the existence of a dark, inscrutable element, beyond the range of knowledge. And many people would probably agree with that opinion. What indeed is not called mysticism or mystical nowadays? When a person is not clear about something, if his response to it hovers between not-knowing and a dim inkling, he will call it mystical or mysterious. When people are tempted by a certain lack of thought and psychological knowledge to assert that nothing reliable is known about something, and then go on to deny that anyone else may have knowledge of it, as is the wont today, they dismiss it as mystical.

If, however, we study the historical origin of the word, we shall gain a quite different idea of what great men have understood by mysticism and of what they believed it offered them. We shall see that there have been men who, far from regarding that which is obscure and inscrutable as the content of mysticism, have spoken of its goal as attainable only through a higher clarity, a brighter light in the soul; so much so that for them the clarity of science leaves off where the clarity of mysticism begins. That is the conviction of those who believe they have experienced real mysticism.

We find some mysticism in the earliest periods of human evolution, but what was called mysticism in the Mysteries of the Egyptians, the Greeks and the Asiatic peoples is so far removed from our conceptual thinking that it is hard to give any idea of mysticism if we go by those old forms of mystical experience.

We can come nearest to present-day concepts if we start with the still fairly recent forms of mysticism found among the German mystics from Meister Eckhart¹⁴ onwards, during the 13th and 14th centuries, up to their culmination in that incomparable mystic, Angelus Silesius.¹⁵ If we examine their mysticism, we find that it sought to reach a true knowledge of the deepest foundations of the world by a purely inward soul-experience; above all, by the liberation of the soul from all external impressions and perceptions, so that the soul would draw back from the outer world and try to plunge into the depths of its own inward life. In other words, a mystic of this type believes that by this means he can find the divine ground of the world, which he would not be able to do if he attempted to analyse natural phenomena, however intensively, and to grasp them with his intellect. His view is that outward sense-impressions form a kind of veil through which human cognition cannot penetrate in its search for the divine foundations of the world. The inward experiences of the soul, however, form a much thinner veil, and it is possible to penetrate through this to the divine ground, which also lies at the foundation of external appearances. This is the mystical way of Meister Eckhart, Johannes Tauler¹⁶ and Suso¹⁷ and other mystics of that century, leading to Angelus Silesius.

We must be clear that these mystics were expecting to find more than only that which could be regarded as the immediate result of their inward search. In the course of this winter's lectures we have dealt with this inward search in all its manifold aspects. We saw that if we look into what is rightly called man's inner being, we come first to the darkest depths of the soul, where the soul is still subject to emotions of fear, terror, anxiety and hope, and to the whole gamut of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. We called this part of the soul the sentient soul. We went on to distinguish in these dark foundations of soul experience what we call the intellectual soul, which is achieved when the ego assimilates external impressions and quietly allows that which emerges in the sentient soul to live itself out and find equilibrium. We said also that inner truth, as we may call it, arises in the intellectual soul. When the ego then works further on what it has gained on its way to the intellectual soul, it raises itself to the consciousness soul, where for the first time a clear knowledge of the ego is possible, and where man is led out from inner life to a real knowledge of the world. If we keep before us these three members of the soul's life, we have the outline of what we find when we sink ourselves directly into our inner being; and we find out how the ego works on the three soul members.

Those mystics who sought for knowledge in the way described, believed that they could find something else through this immersion in the depths of the soul. For the inward experiences of the soul's life were for them only a veil they had to pass through in order to reach the source of being. Above all, they believed that if they attained to that source, they would themselves undergo, as a further inward experience, what is presented in external history as the life and death of Christ.

Now when this mystical descent into the soul occurs, even if only in the mediaeval sense, the process is as follows. The mystic has in front of him the external world, with its realms of light and colour and all the other impressions it makes on his senses, and he works on all this with his intellect. But he remains in thrall to the external world and cannot penetrate through its appearances to their source. His soul retains conceptual images of the outer world, and above all it retains all its experiences, whether as pleasure or pain, sympathy or antipathy, from the impressions it receives. A human being's ego, with his interests and his entire inner life, always directs him towards the outer world and the impressions the latter makes upon him. When, therefore, a mystic first attempts to turn away from the outer world, he has to reckon with everything that the outer world has engendered in his soul from morning till evening. So at first his inner life appears to him as a repetition, a reflected image, of outer life.

Is the soul left empty, then, when it exerts itself to forget everything reflected within it from the outer world, to obliterate all impressions and conceptual images drawn from that world? The true mystical experience depends on the fact that the soul has other possibilities, so that when it banishes not only its memories but its feelings of sympathy and antipathy, it still has some content. The mystic feels that impressions of the outer world, with their brightly coloured pictures and their effects on the soul, have the result of suppressing something which exists in the soul's hidden depths. The mystic feels that when he is open to the external world, its life is like a powerful light which outshines and blots out the finer experiences of the soul. But when all impressions from the outer world are erased, the inner spark, as Eckhart calls it, shines forth. He then experiences in the soul something which had previously seemed not to be there, for it was imperceptible in face of the dazzle of the outer world.

For the sake of clarity, the mystic then asks if what he experiences in the soul is comparable with what he encounters in the outer world. No: there is a radical difference. Our relation to things in the outer world is such that we cannot penetrate into their inwardness, for they show us only their outer sides. When we perceive colours and sounds, it is possible for us to realise that behind them lies something which for the moment we must regard as their hidden side; but with the experiences that arise in the soul it is different once we have obliterated the impressions and conceptual images of the outer world: we cannot say that they show us only their outer side, for we are within them and are part of them. And if we have the gift for opening ourselves to the inner light, they show themselves to us in their true being, and we see them to be entirely different from anything we encounter in the outer world. For the outer world is subject everywhere to growth and decline, to flowering and withering, to birth and death. And when we observe what reveals itself in the soul when the little spark begins to shine, we see that all ideas of growth and decline, of birth and death, are not applicable to it, for here we encounter something independent; and we see that concepts which belong to the outer world, including that of outside and inside, are not relevant to it. Hence it is no longer the surface or outer side of things that we grasp, but the thing itself in its true being.

It is precisely through this inward knowledge that we gain assurance of the imperishable element in ourselves and of its kinship with what we must think of as the spirit, the primal basis of everything material. This experience leads the mystic to feel that he must overcome and kill all his former experiences; that his ordinary soul-life must die, and then his real soul, the victor over birth and death, will arise within him. This awakening of the inner kernel of the soul, after the death of ordinary soul-life, is experienced by the mystic as an inner resurrection, an analogue of the historical life, death and resurrection of Christ. Thus he sees the Christ-event taking place in his soul and spirit as an inner mystical experience.

If we trace out this mystical path, we find that it must lead to what may be called a unity of all experience. For it belongs to the nature of our soul-life that we pass from the multiplicity of sense-perceptions, the flow and ebb of perceptions and feelings and the rich variety of thoughts, to a simplification; for the ego, the centre-point of our life, is always working to create unity in our entire life of soul. It is clear, then, that when the mystic treads the path of soul-experiences, they come before him in such a way that everything manifold and multiple strives towards the unity prescribed by the ego. In all mystics, accordingly, we find an outlook which could be called spiritual monism. When the mystic raises himself to the knowledge that the inner being of the soul has qualities radically different from those found in the external world, he experiences in his inner being the consonance of the soul's kernel with the divine-spiritual ground of the world, which he therefore represents as a unity.

What I have now been saying should be regarded simply as descriptive. It is impossible to reproduce in a modern sense what the mystic reveals except in the form of individual mystical experience passed through by the soul as its most intimate concern. Then the strange things told us by the mystic can be compared with one's own experience. But external criticism is not possible if one has no personal experience, because another person's description of individual experience has to be relied on. But from the basic standpoint of these lectures we can form a clear picture of the mystic's path. It is essentially a path into the inner life, and the history of human development shows it to be one of the paths taken by the human spirit in its search for enlightenment. Various opinions as to which is the right path may be held, but if we are to give a clear answer to the question “What is mysticism?”, we must throw some light on the other path that can be pursued.

The mystic's path leads him to unity, to one divine-spiritual Being. This he does by following the path which leads into his inner being where the ego gives him the unity of soul experience. The other path is the one that the human spirit has always taken when it seeks to pierce through the veil of the external world to the foundations of existence. Here, in conjunction with many other things, it has been above all the human thinking which has tried to reach a deeper understanding of what lies behind the surface of things through that which can be perceived by the senses and grasped by ordinary intelligence. Whither does such a path necessarily lead, in contrast to the goal of mysticism? If all relevant relationships are taken into account, it must lead from the manifold variety of external phenomena to the conclusion that a similar multiplicity of spiritual grounds must exist. In modern times such men as Leibniz¹⁸ and Herbart,¹⁹ who followed this way of thought, have seen that one cannot explain the wealth of external phenomena in terms of any kind of underlying unity. In brief, they found the true antithesis—monadology—to all mysticism. They reached the view that the world is founded on the activities of a multiplicity of monads, or spiritual beings.

Thus Leibnitz, the great thinker of the 17th and 18th century, said to himself: When we look at what comes to meet us in space and time, we go astray if we believe that it all springs from a unity; it must come from many unities working together. And this reciprocal activity of monads, a world of monads or spiritual beings, brings about the phenomena perceived by human senses.

I cannot go further into this today, but a deeper study of spiritual development would show that all those who have sought for unity on the outward path were subject to an illusion, for they projected outwards, like a sort of shadow, the unity which is experienced inwardly in mysticism, and they believed that this unity was the basis of the external world and could be apprehended by thinking. Healthy thinking, however, finds no unity in the outer world, but recognises that its manifold variety arises from the inter-working of a variety of beings, or monads. Mysticism leads to unity because the ego works in our inner being as a single centre of the soul. The path through the external world leads by necessity to multiplicity, plurality, monadology, and thus to the view that many spiritual beings must work together in order to engender our world, while human knowledge of the world is achieved through a multiplicity of organs and observations.

Now we come to a point of far-reaching importance which receives all to little attention in the history of thought. Mysticism leads to unity; but its recognition of the divine ground of the world as a unity derives from the nature of the ego, the inner constitution of the soul.

The ego sets its seal of unity when the mystic looks up to the Divine Spirit. Contemplation of the external world leads to a multiplicity of monads. But it is only our way of observing the outer world and the way in which it comes to meet us that lead to multiplicity and which therefore prompted Leibniz and Herbart to postulate multiplicity as the foundation of the world. Deeper research leads to a realisation that unity and multiplicity are concepts inapplicable to the divine-spiritual ground of the world, for we cannot characterise it as either a unity or a multiplicity. We must say that the divine-spiritual transcends these concepts and cannot be fathomed by them.

This is a principle which throws light on the supposed conflict between monism and pluralism, so often portrayed as opposites in philosophical debates. If the disputants would only realise that their concepts are inadequate for any approach to the divine ground of the world, they might come to see the subject of their debate in the right light.

Now we have learnt what the essence of real mysticism is. It is an inner experience of such a kind that it leads the mystic to real knowledge. He will not be justified in regarding the unity he experiences as objective truth, for its appearance of unity derives from his own ego, but he may truly say that he experiences the substantiality of spirit as one living within it.

If we pass on from this general account of mysticism to individual mystics, we often encounter facts which are called in evidence against mysticism by its opponents. The inner experience of individuals takes various forms, so that the experiences of one mystic may not agree entirely with those of another. But if two persons have different experiences of something, it by no means follows that their reports are untrue. If one person sees a tree from the right and another sees it from the left, and each describes it from his own point of view, it will be the same tree and both descriptions may be correct. This simple example will show why the soul-experiences of mystics differ: after all, a mystic's inner life does not come before him as a complete blank. However much it may be his ideal to obliterate external experiences and to withdraw his attention from them completely, they will yet leave a trace in his soul, and this makes a difference. The mystic will be subject also to some influence from the character of the nation from which he descends. Even if he casts out from his soul every external experience he has had, his inner experience will still have to be described in words and concepts drawn from his own life. Two mystics may experience exactly the same thing, but they will describe it differently as a result of their earlier lives. It is only if we are able through our own personal experience to allow for these individual variations in description and representation that we can come to recognise that fundamentally the reality of mystical experience is always the same. It is just as though we were to photograph a tree from various angles: the photographs would differ but they would all be of the same tree.

There is another point, which might in a sense be considered an objection against mystical experience, and since I must speak quite objectively, with no bias one way or the other, I have to say that this objection is valid and applies to all forms of mysticism. Just because mystical experience is so intimate and inward, and has an individual character derived from the mystic's earlier years, it is extraordinarily difficult for anything he says about his mystical life, closely bound up as it must be with his own soul, to be rightly understood or assimilated by another soul. The most intimate aspects of mysticism must always remain intimate and very hard to communicate, however earnestly one may try to understand and enter into what is said. The point is that two mystics, if both are far enough advanced, may have the same experience—and anyone well-disposed will then recognise that they are speaking of the same thing—but they will have passed through different experiences during their earlier years, and this will give their mysticism an individual colouring. Hence the expressions used by a mystic and his style of utterance, in so far as they derive from his pre-mystical life, will always remain somewhat incomprehensible unless we make an effort to understand his personal background and so come to see why he speaks as he does. This, however, will divert our attention from what is universally valid to the personality of the mystic himself, and this tendency can be observed in the history of mysticism.

With the deepest mystics, especially, we must set aside any idea that the knowledge they have gained can be imparted and assimilated by other people. Mystical knowledge cannot at all easily be made part of general human knowledge. But this only goes to strengthen our interest in the personality of the mystic, and it is endlessly attractive to study him in so far as the universal human image is reflected in him. What the mystic describes and values only because it leads him to the foundations and sources of existence will in itself have little interest for us as regards the objective nature of the world; what interests us will be the subjective side of it and its bearing on the mystic as an individual. In studying mysticism, accordingly, we shall find value in precisely what the mystic tries to overcome—in the personal, the immediate, his attitude to the world. Certainly we can learn a great deal about the depths of human nature if we observe the history of mankind from the aspect of the mystic as it were, but it will be very hard for us—this can never be too strongly emphasised—to find in a mystic's words as he expresses them anything that can have direct validity for us.

Mysticism is the opposite of monadology, or pluralism, which derives from observing and reflecting on the external world which all men have in common. The resulting systems of the latter may contain error upon error, but they can be discussed and something made of them from whatever point of development the individual has reached.

The mysticism I have been describing here can thus be extremely attractive, but we shall recognise its limits quite objectively if we allow our souls to assimilate what has just been said about it.

Further light is thrown on mysticism if we assess it in relation to the method of spiritual science, a method drawn from the deeper levels of present-day spiritual life with the aim of penetrating to the primal foundations of existence. If a subject gives difficulty because of the subtlety of its ideas, the best way of understanding it is often to compare it with some related subject.

You have often heard it said in these lectures that there is a path of ascent to the higher worlds. In a certain sense it is a threefold path. We have described the outward path, and then the inward path taken by the mediaeval mystics, and we have defined the limits of the latter. Now we will turn to what can be called the proper path of spiritual science, or spiritual research.

We have already seen that this way of knowledge does not simply require the student to take either the outward path, leading to the spiritual basis of the sense-world and therefore to plurality, or the inward path leading to the deeper foundations of one's own soul and finally to the mystical unity of the world. Spiritual science says that a man is not bound to follow only those paths which his own immediate knowledge opens for him, but that he possesses hidden, slumbering faculties of cognition, and that starting from them he can find other paths than the two just mentioned.

A person who follows either of these two paths remains as he already is and has become; he may seek to pierce the veil of the sense world and penetrate to the foundations of existence; or he may obliterate external impressions and allow the inner spark to shine out. But in spiritual science it is fundamental that man need not remain as he is today, with his existing faculties of knowledge. Just as man has evolved to his present stage, so, by using the appropriate method, he can develop faculties of knowledge higher than those he has now.

If we are to compare this method with the mystical mode of knowledge, we must say: If we eliminate outer impressions we can discover the inner spark, and see how it shines when all else is extinguished, but we are still only drawing on what is already there. Spiritual science is not content with that; it comes to the spark, but does not stop there. It seeks to develop methods which will turn the little spark into a much stronger light. We can take the outward path or the inward path, but since we are to develop new powers of cognition, we take neither path immediately. The modern form of spiritual scientific research is distinguished both from mediaeval mysticism and from pluralism and also from the old teachings of the Mysteries, by developing inner faculties of cognition in such a way that the outward path and the inward path are brought together. Thus we follow a path that leads equally to both goals.

This is possible because the development of higher faculties by the methods of spiritual science leads man through three stages of knowledge. The first stage, which proceeds from ordinary knowledge and goes beyond it is called Imagination; the second stage is called Inspiration, and the third is called Intuition, in the true sense of the word. How is the first stage attained and what is accomplished in the soul for higher faculties to arise? The way in which they are developed will show you how pluralism and mysticism are transcended along this path. The example most helpful for an understanding of Imagination, or imaginative cognition, has already been mentioned more than once: it is drawn from the methods applied by the spiritual scientist to himself. It is one of many such examples and is best given in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil.

The teacher who wants to educate a pupil in the higher faculties leading to Imagination would say: “Look at the plant; it grows up out of the soil and unfolds leaf by leaf until it is a flower. Compare it with man as he stands before you. Man has something more than the plant, for the world is reflected in his ideas, feelings and sensations; he excels the plant in possessing human consciousness. But he has had to pay for this consciousness by absorbing into himself on his way towards becoming man, passions, impulses and desires which may lead him into error, wrong and evil. The plant grows according to its natural laws; it unfolds its being according to these laws, and it stands before us, pure, with its green sap. Unless we indulge in fancies we cannot attribute to it any desires, passions or impulses which could divert it from the right path. If now we observe the blood as it circulates through man, the blood which is the external expression of human consciousness, of the human ego, and contrast it with the green chlorophyll sap permeating the plant, we shall realize that this streaming, pulsating blood is the expression as much of man's rise to a higher stage of consciousness as it is of the passions and impulses which drag him down.

“Then”—the teacher might continue—“imagine that man develops further; that through his ego he overcomes error, evil and ugliness, everything which tries to drag him down to evil; that he purifies and refines his passions and affections. Picture an ideal which man strives to realise, when his blood will no longer be the expression of any passions, but only of his inner mastery of all that might drag him down. His red blood may then be compared with what the green sap has become in the red rose. Just as the red rose shows us the plant sap in all its purity, and yet at a higher stage than it had reached in the plant, so the red blood of man, when purified and refined, can show what man becomes when he has mastered everything that might drag him down.”

These are the feelings and images that the teacher can evoke in the pupil's mind and soul. If the pupil is not a dry stick, if he is able to enter with his feelings into the whole secret symbolised by this comparison, his soul will be stirred and he will experience something which will come before his spiritual vision as a symbolic picture, The picture can be of the Rose Cross: the black cross symbolising what has been slain in man's lower nature and the roses representing the red blood, so purified and refined that it has become a pure expression of his higher soul-nature. Thus the black cross wreathed with red roses becomes a symbolical summing-up of what the soul experiences in this dialogue between teacher and pupil.

If the pupil has opened his soul to all the feelings and images which can make the Rose Cross a true symbol for him; if he does not merely claim to have placed the Rose Cross before his inner vision, but if with pain and struggle he has won through to a heightened experience of its essence, he will know that this picture, or similar ones, call forth something in his soul—not merely the little spark but a new power of cognition which enables him to look at the world in a new way. Thus he has not remained as he formerly was, but has raised his soul to a further stage of development. And if he does this again and again, he will finally attain to Imagination, which shows him that in the outer world there is more than meets the eye.

Now let us see how this way of knowledge came into being. Did we say to ourselves: We will take the outward path and seek for the foundations of things? To a certain extent, yes. We go out to the external world, but we are not searching for the basis of things, or for molecules and atoms; we are not concerned with what the outer world sets directly before us, but we retain something from it. The black cross could not arise in the soul if there were no wood in the world; the soul could not imagine a red rose unless it had received an impression of one from the world around it. Hence we cannot say, as the mystic does, that we have obliterated everything external and turned our attention away entirely from the outer world. We submit to the outer world and take from it something that it alone can give, but we do not take it just as it comes, for the Rose Cross is not found in nature. How was it, then, that rose and wood, drawn from the outer world, were combined into a symbolic picture? It was the work of our own souls. The experience that comes to us when we devote ourselves to the outer world, not merely staring at it but becoming absorbed in it, and what we can learn from comparing plant with man as he develops—all this we have made into an inner mystical experience. But we have not taken immediate possession of our experience, as the mystic does; we sacrifice it to the outer world, and, with the help of what the world can give outwardly and the soul inwardly, we build up a symbolic picture in which outer and inner mystical life are fused. The picture stands before us in such a way that it does not lead directly either to the outer world or to the inner world, but it works as a force. If we place it before our souls in meditation, it creates a new spiritual eye, and then we can see into a spiritual world which previously we could not find, either in the inner world or in the outer. And then we can discern that what lies at the basis of the external world, and can now be experienced through imaginative cognition, is identical with what can be found in our own inner being.

If now we ascend to the stage of Inspiration, we have to strip away the content of our symbolic picture. We have to do something very similar to the procedure of the mystic who takes the inward path. We have to forget the rose and the cross, to banish the whole picture from our mind's eye. However difficult this may be, it has to be done. In order to bring before us inwardly the symbolical comparison between plant and man, our soul had to exert itself. Now we have to concentrate our attention on this activity, on what the soul had to do in order to call up the image of the black cross as a symbol of what has to be overcome in man. When we thus deepen ourselves mystically in the experience of the soul during this activity, we come to Inspiration, or inspirational cognition.

The awakening of this new faculty not only brings the appearance of the little spark in our inner being: we see it lighting up as a powerful force of cognition, and through it we experience something which reveals itself as closely related to our inner being and yet wholly independent of it. For we have seen how our soul-activity is not only an inner process but has exercised itself on something external. So we have here a knowledge of our inner being, as a residue of mysticism, which is also knowledge of the outer world.

Now we come to a task which is opposed to that of the mystic. We have to do something similar to what ordinary natural science does: we have to go forth into the external world. This is difficult, but essential for rising to the stage of Intuition, or intuitive cognition.

Our task now is to divert our attention from our own activity, forget what we have done to bring the Rose Cross before our inner sight. If we are patient and carry out the exercises long enough and in the right way, we shall see that we are left with something which we know for certain is entirely independent of our own inner experience and has no subjective colouring, and yet shows by its objective being that it is akin to the centre of the human being, the ego. Thus in order to reach intuitive knowledge we go out from ourselves and yet come to something which is closely akin to our inner being. So we rise from our own inward experience to the spiritual, which we no longer experience within ourselves but in the external world. Thus on the path of spiritual science, through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, we overcome the shadow-sides both of pluralism and ordinary mysticism.

Now we can give an answer to the question—What is mysticism? It is an endeavour by the human soul to find the divine-spiritual source of existence through immersing itself in its own inner being. Fundamentally, spiritual-scientific cognition also must take this mystical path, but it is well aware that it must first prepare itself and not set out prematurely. Mysticism is thus an enterprise which springs from a justified urge in the human soul, thoroughly justified in principle, but undertaken too early if the soul has not first sought to make progress in imaginative cognition. If we try to deepen our ordinary life through mysticism, there is a danger that we may not have made ourselves sufficiently free and independent of ourselves, so that we are unable to form a picture of the world not coloured by our personality. If we rise to the stage of Inspiration, we have poured out our inner being into something drawn from the outer world; and then we have gained the right to be a mystic. All mysticism should therefore be undertaken at the proper stage of human development. Harm is done if we try to achieve mystical knowledge before we are ready for it.

In justified mysticism, accordingly, spiritual science can recognise a stage which enables us to understand the real aim and intention of spiritual-scientific research. There is hardly anything from which we can learn as much in this respect as we can from a devoted study of the mystics. It must not be thought that the spiritual scientist, when he recognises something justified in mysticism, is denying the need for further progress. Mysticism is justified only if it is raised to a certain level of development, so that its methods yield results which are not merely subjective but give valid expression to truths concerning the spiritual world.

We need not say much about the dangers which a premature devotion to mystical methods can incur. They involve a descent into the depths of the human soul before the mystic has prepared himself in such a way that his inner being can grow out into the external world. He will often then be inclined to shut himself off from the outer world, and fundamentally this is only a subtle, refined form of egotism. This often applies to mystics who turn away from the outer world and indulge in those feelings of rapture, exaltation and liberation which flood into their souls when this golden mood pervades their inner life. This egotism can be overcome if the ego is constrained to pass outside itself and make its activity flow into the external world by the creation of symbols. In this way an imaginative symbolism leads to an experience of truth which strips away egotism. The danger incurred by a mystic who strives after knowledge too early in his development is that he may become an eccentric or a refined egoist.

Mysticism is justified, and what Angelus Silesius says is true:

If you transcend yourself in God's prevailing,
Then in your spirit will ascension reign!²⁰

It is true that by developing his soul man attains not only to his own inner being but to the spiritual kingdoms which underlie the outer world. But he must take in full earnest the work of transcending himself, and this must not be confused with a mere brooding within himself just as he is. He must take seriously the words of Angelus Silesius, both the first line and the second. We fail to do this if we withdraw from any aspect of the divine revelation; we let God hold sway only if we are able to sacrifice our inner being to all that can flow into us as revelation from the outer world. If we bring this way of thinking into relation with our spiritual-scientific cognition, we shall be taking the second line in the right sense. We let the divine-spiritual ground of the outer and inner worlds hold sway in us, and only then can we hope that we shall be “on Heaven's way.” This means that we shall come to a spiritual realm which is coloured neither by our own inner world nor by the outer world—a realm which has the same ground as the infinite world of stars shining in on us, as the atmosphere which envelops the earth, as the green plant-cover, as the rivers flowing into the sea; while the same divine-spiritual element lives in our thinking, feeling and willing and permeates our inner and outer worlds.

These examples will show that to read a saying such as this one by Angelus Silesius is not enough; we must take it up at the right stage, when we are first able to understand it truly. Then we shall see that mysticism, because it has the right kernel, can indeed lead us to the point where we shall be ripe for learning gradually to see into spiritual realms, and that mysticism in the highest and truest sense can make real for us what can be found in the beautiful words of Angelus Silesius:

When you raise yourself above yourself and truly let the divine spiritual ground of worlds hold sway in you, you will tread the heavenly way to the divine-spiritual sources of existence.

• 13. On this subject and the mystics mentioned in the lecture cf. also Rudolf Steiner, Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Multimedia Publishing Corp., New York, 1980.
• 14. Meister Eckhart, 1260–1327.
• 15. Angelus Silesius, 1624–1677.
• 16. Johannes Tauler, c. 1300–1361.
• 17. Heinrich Suso, c. 1300–1366.
• 18. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, 1646–1716. Cf. for example his Monadology, a short treatise which he wrote in 1714 (without title) as a summary of his philosophy of unities.
• 19. Johann Friedrich Herbart, 1776–1841. Philosopher and pedagogue.
• 20. Angelus Silesius, Cherubinischer Wandersmann, Book 4, Verse 56.

In connection with the question raised by Dr. Husemann yesterday, we have decided to read out two cases from the book that Dr. Wegman will soon be publishing. We can then build on the presentation of these cases to address the issues that arise from your question as a need for further knowledge.

Of course, I will ask that these cases be treated with the utmost discretion at first, because they will be an integral part of the forthcoming book.

These cases are intended to show how to arrive at a therapy, especially by means of diagnosis. This is to be made clear, and it is to be done on the basis of anthroposophy. In this book we will not be embarrassed to speak entirely in anthroposophical terms.

Dr. Wegman reads the “Fourth Case” described in the book “Fundamentals of an Expansion of Medicine Based on Spiritual Science” on pages 97ff. [pp. 107ff. in GA 27, 1984]: “A child who was brought to the clinic twice, first at four years old, then at five and a half years old. In addition, the mother and the sister of the mother were present.

It is important that the mother and sister were present, and you will see why in a moment.

"The diagnosis led from the child's illness to that of the mother and sister. We were able to determine the following for the child: it is a twin child, born six weeks prematurely. The other child died in the last embryonic stage. At six weeks the child became ill, screamed an extraordinary amount and was taken to hospital. There the diagnosis was pylorospasm. The child was partially breastfed and partially bottle-fed. At eight months it was discharged from hospital. On arriving home, it had a seizure on the first day, which repeated daily for the first two months. During the attack, the child became stiff and rolled his eyes. Before the attack, the child was anxious and cried. The child also squinted with his right eye and vomited before the attack occurred. At two and a half years of age, another attack occurred that lasted five hours. The child became stiff again and lay there as if dead. At four years of age, an attack occurred that lasted half an hour. For the first time, we were informed that this seizure was accompanied by fever. After the convulsions that occurred after the child was brought back from the hospital, the parents noticed paralysis in the right arm and right leg. At two and a half years old, the child made his first attempt at walking, which turned out that only the left leg could step and the right one was dragged. The right arm also remained without will. The same condition was still present when the child was brought to us. The task was to determine the state of the child's organizational limbs. This was attempted independently of the symptom complex. It turned out that there was a strong atrophy of the etheric body, which in certain parts took up only a very slight influence of the astral body.

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That is essentially the finding. We are dealing with an etheric body that is atrophied in the most diverse places and does not absorb the effect of the astral body in the atrophied places. There are such gaps in the etheric body (see drawing). The astral body does not penetrate into the areas where the etheric body is atrophied. This was the case in various parts of the organism.

“The area of the right side of the chest was paralyzed in the etheric body. In contrast, there was something like a hypertrophy of the astral body in the stomach area.”

One must use unusual expressions here, just as the term “hypertrophy” is used for places that are too active, too lively.

"Now the task was to harmonize the symptom complex with these findings. There is undoubtedly a heavy demand on the stomach during digestion due to the astral body, but this is blocked due to the paralysis of the ether body at the transition from the intestines to the lymph vessels. As a result, the blood is malnourished. We must therefore take the nausea symptoms as particularly important symptoms. Cramps always occur when the etheric body becomes atrophic and the astral body gains direct influence on the physical body without the mediation of the etheric body.

This is something important in principle. The occurrence of spasms is based on the fact that the regular connection between the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body is not there. One has to imagine this in such a way that the astral body only acts on the physical body with the help of the etheric body. If there are such atrophic areas, then the astral body takes hold of the physical body to the exclusion of the ether body. Spasm occurs everywhere where this is the case. We know that where spasm occurs, the ether body does not mediate properly between the astral body and the physical body.

"This was present to a high degree in the child. If this condition becomes permanent during the growth period, as was the case here, then those processes that make the motor system suitable for the normal absorption of the will are lost. This was evident in the child in the unusability of the right side. We now had to relate the child's condition to that of the mother. She is 37 years old when she comes to us. She states that she was already as tall as she is now at the age of 13. She had bad teeth early on.

I ask you to note this in particular. She has not grown any more from the age of thirteen until now, so that all her growth up to sexual maturity was complete.

"She had bad teeth early on, suffered from articular rheumatism as a child, claims to have had rickets. Menstruation started relatively early. The patient reports having had a kidney disease at the age of sixteen and also speaks of convulsive conditions she has had. At twenty-five years of age, obstipation due to spasm of the anal sphincter, which had to be stretched. Now she also has spasms during defecation. The findings, established without any conclusion from the complex of symptoms in direct observation, show an extraordinary similarity to those of the child. Only everything appears in a much milder form. It must be borne in mind that the etheric body of a person undergoes a special development between the change of teeth and sexual maturity. In the case of our patient, this is expressed in the fact that the available forces of the etheric body, which are not very strong, only allow for growth up to sexual maturity. With this, the special development of the astral body begins, which, with its hypertrophy, now overgrows the etheric body and intervenes too strongly in the physical organization.

This was the case with both mother and child: the astral body intruded too strongly into the physical body.

"This becomes evident in the arrested growth at the age of thirteen. The patient is by no means dwarfish, but very tall, which is due to the fact that the growth forces of the etheric body, although weak, caused a strong expansion of the physical body when uninhibited by the astral body. These forces were not yet able to intervene regularly in the functions of the physical body. This manifested itself in the occurrence of articular rheumatism and later in convulsive states.

Joint rheumatism is also connected with the fact that the astral body directly engages with the joints of the physical body. This engagement can also cause inflammation where it can occur. So either we are dealing with spasms or with inflammation.

"Due to the weakness of the etheric body, the effect of the astral body on the physical body is particularly strong. This effect is destructive. In the normal course of life, this is balanced out by the anabolic forces at work during sleep when the astral body is separated from the physical and etheric bodies. If the etheric body is too weak, as in the case of our patient, there is an excess of catabolism, which in her case was indicated by the fact that her teeth needed their first filling at the age of 12.

Due to the excessive intervention of the astral body, too much breakdown occurs. The physical body and etheric body build up; the astral body and ego organization break down. If there is now an excess of degrading activity, this is indicated by the fact that she has to wear fillings at the age of twelve. Each time she has become pregnant, her teeth have become worse.

"If the etheric body is particularly stressed, as in pregnancy, the teeth deteriorate each time. The weakness of the etheric body in relation to its connection with the astral body is still particularly evident in the frequency of dreams and in the healthy sleep that the patient has, despite all the irregularity.

If there is complete regularity in the connection between the astral body, etheric body and physical body, there is no excess of dreams. The moment the astral body can predominate because the etheric body is weakened, frequent and vivid dreams occur. And because the astral body is strong, it can easily come out and the sleep still remains healthy.

"The weakness of the etheric body is also evident from the fact that foreign processes take place in the physical body that are not mastered by the etheric body, and these show up in the urine as protein, isolated hyaline cylinders and salts.

These are the decomposition products that form due to the hypertrophy of the astral body. They must always be sought when one is dealing with a hypertrophy of the astral body.

"The relationship of these disease processes to those of the mother's sister is remarkable. The findings regarding the composition of the parts of the human being are almost exactly the same. Weak etheric body, hence predominance of the astral body. Only the astral body itself is weaker than in the sister. Therefore, just as in the sister, the menses begin early, but instead of inflammations, she experiences mere pains that arise from irritation of the organs, for example, the joints.

This is really very interesting. The mother and child have almost the same disease constitution. The sister, who is walking at the same time, only has weaker symptoms, everything to a lesser extent, everything, I would say, en miniature, in hints.

"The etheric body must be particularly active in the joints if vitality is to be normal. If the activity of the aetheric body is weak, the activity of the physical body becomes predominant, which is evident here in swelling and chronic arthritis. The weakness of the astral body, which has too little effect on subjective feeling, is indicated by a preference for sweet foods, which increase the astral body's sensitivity.

This is very interesting. In order to arrive at a diagnosis, one must actually ask what the person concerned likes to eat: sweet or bitter things, a preference for these or those sensory impressions. Some have a peculiar weakness with regard to olfactory impressions. All this shows that the astral body is to be engaged somehow. This preference of the astral body shows that it is not engaged; it is engaged immediately when it has sweets.

"If the weak astral body is still worn out by daytime life, then, if the weakness persists, the pains become more significant. The patient complains of increased pain in the evenings. The connection between the conditions of the three patients points in the ascension to the generation preceding the two sisters, in particular to the grandmother of the child. The cause must be sought in the latter. The disturbed equilibrium between the astral and etheric bodies in all three patients can only be explained by an equivalent disturbance in the grandmother of the child. This irregularity must be due to the defective formation of the embryonic organs of nourishment, especially of the allantois, in the grandmother's astral and etheric bodies.

This case is particularly interesting because it can be seen that the cause really lies in the inadequate development of the allantois of the grandmother. The whole condition of this astral body, which of course manifests itself more strongly in one person, the mother, and to a lesser extent in the other, can be traced back to the grandmother. It is not bound to one part, but constitutionally goes through the whole astral body and can only go back to that peculiar formation, the allantois, the embryonic period.

We have here an occult finding that must be taken up. But once we have come across it, the individual phenomena are quite suitable for verification. We must definitely get into the habit of verifying the causes from the causes. The composition of the symptoms actually only gives an unclear picture.

“This defective formation of the allantois must be sought in all three patients. We first established it in a purely spiritual scientific way. The physical allantois metamorphoses, passing over into the spiritual, into the efficiency of the forces of the astral body.”

What is more, we could only hint at this as a principle, in the physical allantois, which can only be embryonic as well; the entire organs that are present in the embryo are present in the born human being as the higher limbs. What is a physical accessory organ is, spiritually, in the adult state, so that we only have to see the physical correlate of the embryonic period in the allantois.

"A degenerated allantois produces a diminished efficiency of the astral body, which manifests itself particularly in all motor organs. All this is the case with the three patients. One can really recognize the nature of the allantois from that of the astral body.

It is important to know that the amnion is the physical correlate of the etheric body, the allantois is the physical correlate of the astral body, and the chorion is the physical correlate of the I organization of the adult.

"It will be seen from this that our reference to the ascendants does not come from a daring fantasy conclusion, but from a real spiritual scientific observation.

To those who may be disturbed by this truth, we would say that our statements are not motivated by a desire for paradox, but by a desire to share this knowledge with everyone. The mystical concepts of inheritance will always remain obscure if we are afraid to recognize the metamorphosis from the physical to the spiritual and vice versa in the succession of generations.

In therapeutic terms, such an insight can only lead to a view of the point at which the healing process is to be applied.

Now it moves into the therapeutic.

"If one had not been referred to the hereditary in such a way, but had simply noticed the irregularities in the connection between the etheric and astral bodies, one would have applied remedies that would have worked on these two parts of the person. But these would have remained ineffective in our case because the damage, which goes back generations, lies too deep to be balanced out in these links of the human organization itself.

It is particularly important that we consider this case. What is presented here ties in with yesterday's question. If one simply had the finding that the astral body and the etheric body are not in intimate harmony, one would have to take this or that remedy — then one would hardly achieve any particular effect. If one goes strictly further to the cause, then the therapy also becomes clearer. By being led away from direct observation into the succession of generations, the way was pointed to strict exactness.

"In such a case one must work upon the ego-organization and bring to bear in it everything that has to do with the harmonizing and strengthening of the etheric and astral bodies. This can be achieved by acting on the ego organization with, so to speak, intensified sensory stimuli (sensory stimuli act on the ego organization). In the case of the child, this was attempted in the following way: a bandage of the right hand was applied with a five percent pyrite ointment and at the same time the left half of the head was rubbed with emperor's sponge ointment.

And now we have the therapy: we work directly on the hand with pyrite, iron sulphide. This enables us to influence the astral body and the etheric body at the same time, thereby bringing about harmonization. We must work to bring the etheric body and the astral body closer together. This is the basis for healing. And for that we must apply means that go beyond the immediate, because it has been going on for generations.

"Pyrite, a compound of iron and sulfur, when applied externally, stimulates the I-organization to make the astral body more lively and to increase its affinity to the ether body. The substance of the Emperor's mushroom, with its special content of organized nitrogen, works in such a way that an effect emanates from the head, which, through the ego organization, makes the ether body more lively and increases its affinity to the astral body. The healing process was supported by eurythmy therapy, which sets the ego organization itself in lively activity. Thus, what is applied externally is guided into the depths of the organization. The healing process thus initiated was then further strengthened by means of measures that were intended to make the astral and etheric bodies particularly sensitive to the effect of the ego organization. In a rhythmic daily sequence, the following treatments were applied: baths with a decoction of Solidago, back rubs with a decoction of Stellaria media, and internally, tea made from willow bark (which particularly affects the receptivity of the astral body) and Stannum 0.001 (which particularly makes the etheric body receptive). We also gave poppy juice in a weak dosage to make the damaged self-organization recede in the face of the healing effects.

The mother received more the last therapy because, as a generation older, the forces of heredity had less effect. The same applies to the mother's sister. While the child was still in the clinic, we were able to see that it was easier to direct and that it was in a better mental state. For example, it became more obedient; and the movements it otherwise made very awkwardly, it now made more skillfully. Afterwards, the aunt told us that a great change had taken place with the child. It has become calmer, the excess of involuntary movements has decreased; it has become so skilled that it can play alone; and in terms of the soul, the former stubbornness has disappeared."

Perhaps you would like to say something? In this way, the diagnosis leads to the therapy. This is where the higher aspects of human nature come into play. The starting point is the clinical picture. In this case, the starting point is as follows: the sick organism was subject to a process that takes a certain course. This process must be reversed. By properly understanding the process, one arrives at the point of reversing the process by realizing how not only an organ, but the entire human interior is related to what is happening in the world.

So let us say you want to recognize how to treat some kind of damage, say to the gall bladder. Then you have to study the opposite process in the outside world; at least take this opposite process as an aid. If you recognize one of them, say, as the incoming process, you recognize the other as the outgoing process and thus have the closed circuit. Is there perhaps another question?

Sometimes with adults, sometimes with those who are psychically agile, one can arrive at a diagnosis. I have also tried this with children; but I have the impression that I have gone too far in this kind of diagnosis.

That you did not achieve what you intended by penetrating the soul? This is something that may be true or may be false. It depends entirely on how far one is able to coax the things one wants out of the child, and also on whether the child is communicative or not. It also depends on the memory effect; and on whether the right things from the soul are elicited. In principle, the child can give really great things, especially when there are condensed soul phenomena. If you expect the childish and it tells what it has seen of condensed soul phenomena, you can look very deeply into irregularities; these are always the correlate of this. You have to look at the case individually.

With adults, of course, it is fairly easy to penetrate the soul if you know the soul organism as such, if you know that people tell you anything. Now you move forward. Most of the time what they tell is not true. First of all, the patient does not say how it is. Now you have to find something to latch onto. You come across something that is mostly true. Once you have grasped that, you can move on. You have to distinguish whether one thing is true in relation to the other. An animal that has the beak of an eagle cannot at the same time have the feet of an ostrich. In the same way, things in the soul fit together. You have to guide the patient towards this. Until you have found the right point, you believe everything, that is, you believe nothing, but you make him understand that you believe everything. Once you have hooked on a point where the matter must be true, you then draw his attention very sharply to what cannot be. You then get a kind of soul organism that points very strongly to the physical organism. So it is useful to be based on a mental diagnosis.

A participant comments.

The direction you indicated yesterday is this: I make a diagnosis and then have the diagnosis before me. I know that when this turns out, these remedies are available to me. I can choose from among them. Now you wanted to know: how can one actually choose? The answer can only be given by saying: If I can choose between several remedies, I must assume that I have not yet completed the diagnosis and must continue the diagnosis until I arrive at a definite remedy. There is no such thing as an arbitrary choice. This was truly a happy case, and I was amazed. The fact that one goes from the condition of the child to the allantois of the grandmother is something that does not otherwise occur in the diagnosis. I was extremely astonished that this was the motif; on the other hand, the result shows that one must try to penetrate to the last cause.

Dr. Wegman reads the “Fifth Case” described in the book mentioned at the beginning on pages 114-116:

"A 26-year-old female patient came to our clinic with the severe consequences of influenza, which she had suffered through in 1918 with lung catarrh, and which had followed a pleurisy that had occurred in 1917. Since the flu, the patient had been unable to fully recover. In 1920, she was very emaciated, weak, and had a slight fever and night sweats. Soon after the flu, she developed lower back pain that continued to worsen until late 1920; and then, with severe pain, a curvature appeared in the lower back. There was also swelling of the right index finger. A rest cure supposedly brought improvement of the back pain. When she came to us as a patient, she had a suppurative abscess on the right thigh, distended abdomen with some ascites and catarrhal noises over the lung tips, both on the right and left. Digestion and appetite are good. Urine is concentrated, showing traces of protein. The spiritual scientific examination showed: hypersensitivity of the astral body and the ego organization; such an abnormality initially expresses itself in the ether body in that it does not develop the actual ether functions, but an etheric imprint of the astral functions.

This is very interesting when, as in this case, the etheric body is so weak that it does not perform its own functions but acts as a matrix, like wax, into which the astral body imprints its own functions. We have an etheric body that actually acts as a masked astral body. This is the case here.

"The astral functions are destructive. Therefore, vitality and the normal process in the physical organs must show signs of atrophy. This is always connected with processes that are, as it were, not human, but which take place in the human organism.

We must be strict about this. When something enters the human organism, whether it is from some aggregate state or warm air and so on, it must undergo a change in the human organism – roughly speaking, within the human skin. Nothing is the same outside of and within the human organism. The human organism has to work through everything that comes from outside. No heating process may take place in the body as it does in stone, where a temperature simply passes through and warms the stone. If we are warmed from the outside, like an inorganic body, we process the warmth that approaches us so deeply that it is completely revitalized. If a cold occurs, even if it is an internal cold of the internal organs, it does not come from within, but from an external imposition of heat.

This goes all the way down to the metabolic states. When a substance enters, it must be transformed in the human organism, right down to its most intimate processes. If we have ingested something – let's say a carbohydrate – another process takes place in the organism. The carbon-hydrogen-oxygen process, which takes place outside of human nature, must not be there in the same way. There is a process in the human being that is foreign to human nature. This is the basis for all disease states that are based on metabolic deposits. All of them are basically based on the fact that heat processes do not occur through the human being himself, but rather processes that arise as actual processes of matter because the human organization is not strong enough in some part. If, for example, the ego organization is too weak, one will find that the fat taken in is not processed in the right way. If the astral organization is too weak, one will find that carbohydrates are not processed properly. If the aether organization is too weak, one will find that the protein taken in is not processed in the right way. This is something to be aware of.

"The abscess, back pain, bloating, catarrhal phenomena in the lungs and also the inadequate processing of protein are caused by this. The aim of the therapy is to reduce the sensitivity of the astral body and the ego organization. This is achieved by administering silicic acid, which always strengthens the power of self-healing in the face of sensitivity.

So silicic acid always strengthens the power of self-healing in the face of sensitivity.

“We did this by adding powdered silicic acid to food and giving it as enemas. We also reduced sensitivity by placing mustard plasters on the lower back. Its effect is based on the fact that it causes sensitivity on its own and thus reduces it for the astral body and the ego organization.”

You see how one helps oneself: one applies mustard plasters to the lower back; this causes artificial sensitivity. This artificial sensitivity takes away the inner sensitivity of the astral body, thus creating an intimation. This is often the case when something is wrong in the human limbs, creating an intimation; in this case, a strong intimation of the astral body downwards. If it becomes strong enough, the sensitivity is no longer there. The sensitivity of the astral body decreases downwards. If the sensitivity moves upwards, it is increased.

"Through a process that dampens the hypersensitivity of the astral body in the digestive tract, we achieve a diversion of this astral activity to the etheric body, where it normally belongs. We achieved this by administering small doses of copper and carbo animalis. We counteract the possibility that the etheric body withdraws from the normal digestive activity to which it is unaccustomed by administering pancreatic juice.

This is only a help, a last resort.

"The abscess was punctured a few times. Large quantities of pus were drained off by aspiration. The abscess shrank and the swelling of the abdomen decreased as the pus formation steadily diminished and finally disappeared. While the pus was still flowing, we were surprised one day by a renewed rise in temperature. This did not seem inexplicable to us, since, given the constitution of the astral body described above, even slight psychic agitation can cause such fever. However, one must distinguish between the explicability of the fever in such cases and its severely damaging effect. For under the given conditions, such fever is virtually the mediator for a profound intervention of the catabolic processes in the organism. And one must immediately ensure a strengthening of the etheric body so that it paralyzes the damaging effect of the astral body. We used highly potentized silver injections and achieved a decrease in fever. The patient left the clinic with a 20-pound weight gain and in a strengthened condition. We are under no illusion that in this case, a follow-up treatment is still needed to consolidate the healing."

So the case is intended to show how one can really come to use therapeutically what is otherwise said more theoretically about the astral body and the etheric body. One can now be faced with the question that has always been raised by “well-meaning” people: Should one use the terms that have been used here as the naked truth and reality, or should one conceal them? “Well-meaning” people have said that one should not speak of the etheric body, but of functional processes or something similar. You can't get as far as the astral body that way. The fact of the matter is that most illnesses are not grasped in their essence if one does not go up to the astral body. The damage caused by the organization of the ego, that is, the severe damage caused by metabolic deposits: here the situation is such that this damage is already clearly present. On the other hand, the more insidious damage is the catabolic damage caused by the astral body. One really has to be very careful when talking about this.

Now the situation will be such that one can simply say – yes, that is what many people will say – one should not come to people with the astral body and the etheric body. But if you don't approach people with that, there is no reason at all to believe that something new is being presented here. People think that only a little of one or the other has been changed here, that it is done here just as it is done elsewhere, that at most there is a little progress. It is not like that! And that must be made clear to people with all the radical clarity. If one shows that these are not abstract things, but rather, in these many very concrete individual cases, points out how the individual cases are constituted, and then shows how the diagnosis leads into the therapy, and how, as soon as the therapy is applied, the healing progresses: it is indeed the case that this must be understood, otherwise one would have to despair of humanity's ability to understand at all. I am completely convinced that only this method can help us: to say things very boldly and courageously.

The question is how the scientific picture presents itself in the intimate study of carcinoma.

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In the case of carcinoma, we are dealing with the fact that a sense organ is evoked at a point in the organization where there is no reason to evoke a sense organ. Take, I would like to say, the most radical sensory organization – just to understand the matter – take the eye. How does the eye come about? You know that it is actually formed partly from the outside; it is incorporated into the organism. Roughly speaking, the organism leaves out the eye socket. Then the eye is embedded. This indicates that essentially extra-human processes are at work in the formation of the eye. The eye is only embraced by the human being. When we have such a striking sensory organ as the eye, we can say that a foreign body is incorporated into the human organism. This is a radical concept because it is so unusual. Nothing like the shape of the lens or vitreous humor, or the substantial composition of the lens or vitreous humor, would ever arise from the human organism. Now, all that is deposited, which is partly even in the eye ethereal, not merely physical, is embraced by the astral body and the ego organization, which are actually as emancipated as possible from the physical and etheric in the eye. In the eye, the connection between the I, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body is quite different than, let us say, in a piece of muscle. In a piece of calf muscle, you see a very intimate connection between the ego, the astral body, the aetheric body and the physical body. This is the normal constitution in this respect. If I were to write a chemical formula to describe the eye, I would say that the ego and the astral body are closely connected (see drawing I and A), and the other two are also closely connected! There is only a loose affinity between the etheric body and the astral body. This is only the case with the eye.

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With other sense organs, for example with the ear, it is not so, there it cannot be so pronounced. There is actually a loose affinity between the ego organization and the astral body and again between the physical body and the ether body. It is somewhat different for each sense.

If there is a tendency towards a sense organization somewhere in the human organism where there should be no sense organization - and the tendency can arise in any part of the human organism; what should happen in another place, the tendency for it can arise in any other place - then you can see how the physical body and ether body on the one hand, and the astral body and I on the other, fall apart.

Take a very specific case. In the case of a severe physical insult, say to the mammary gland, the impact continues inwards in such a way that it shows, roughly speaking, a line of action within the skin that originates from the outside – in other words, a mechanical insult that continues inwards. In most cases of breast cancer, this will be the real origin. It could only be a prolonged process of overheating or burning. In the sense I am describing here, it will always be an insult that brings this about, speaking externally. Now, in this case, something occurs that strongly suggests the astral body at this point, which is otherwise absorbed by the etheric body. When the astral body suddenly appears at this point, it shows itself in, I would say, dim light; it appears as if it were burning. When it becomes so noticeable, then there is a tendency at this point towards the formation of a sensory effect, a carcinoma develops. There it is not a question of at least starting with the first seven vaccinations.

The connections there become particularly interesting when you see how one is connected with the other. Suppose you have someone who is no longer quite young. You are obliged to remove the carcinoma. But the thing that is present in a fairly strongly developed carcinoma manifests itself in such a way that actually in the whole body, because the organism is one entity, there is a tendency to allow non-human processes to take place. The carcinoma changes in its course in a very strange way. After a while, the localized carcinoma becomes a valve for concentrating the carcinomatous development. If you cut out the carcinoma, the valve is suddenly gone. But if you are dealing with an older person, this tendency to have something non-human in the person leads to the valve being in the lungs, which is the organ that most absorbs the inorganic, non-human. Therefore, especially in the case of carcinoma present in old age, you will dissolve the process into pneumonia. If the organism is sclerotic, the process in old age ends in pneumonia. This is because the old organism takes in the extra-human even more and more easily than the younger one. The organ that most easily takes in extra-human processes is the lung; it is damaged in the process. There is an organ that can easily absorb extra-human processes and is not damaged by them; that is the liver. It is very thick-skinned against extra-human processes. The lungs absorb them, but are damaged by them. That is the essential thing, that the lungs absorb easily and are damaged by it.

Question about the heritability of the predisposition to carcinomas.

This is connected with acquired ideas. In itself, there is no inclination in humans to fear carcinoma. This can be seen from the fact that this fear actually only exists among civilized people of educated classes. Country folk have no fear. They carry the carcinoma, die of it, without having had any knowledge of it. This is something that depends on education, and one must work against it.

To what extent is supersensible vision necessary in these two cases, and how is it applied?

The processes must be as follows: First of all, in order to get started at all, one must have complete mastery of spiritual scientific observation – this becomes apparent over time – and see how what can be established spiritually is connected with outward symptoms. If nothing else is indicated, then the purely spiritual finding is always apparent.

How does it express itself outwardly?

On the other hand, one could just as well say that it should, of course, be meditative. You can meditate on rheumatoid arthritis, you can meditate on diabetes. But that would only drive you back. Meditating on a disease process according to the symptoms is a very good way to arrive at spiritual scientific observation. It is just not easy to go the other way around. You can even do it like the homeopaths, who put together the symptom complex and then do the therapy. Only there it happens – I don't even say it can, I know it is so – again and again that symptoms are overestimated and underestimated, that they are put together wrongly, so that sometimes a symptom complex put together by homeopaths is a caricature of reality. When you meditate on this, you meditate on caricatures. If you have a real spiritual cause, that is decisive for the complex of symptoms, then you do not overestimate or underestimate any of the symptoms. You will have noticed that the symptoms we have presented are not caricatures, but well-formed complexes of symptoms. When you meditate, you come to the impossibility of making spiritual findings. And if someone says that is not possible, I must say: try it, but not with a randomly composed complex of symptoms, but with one that has been established by spiritual science.

What is eurythmy based on?

In the human organism everything is based on the fact that a conscious element goes back to an unconscious one. Eurythmy is based on the fact that when a human being comes into the world and wants to express himself, he does not lack a language as such, but the expression in the use of the movements of the limbs. This is rejected, he is not allowed to do it and cannot do it. Today this is not noticed, because it has already been beaten back by inheritance. All this integrates itself, metamorphoses itself, comes out bound to the air and lives itself into language. If one knows how this has lived itself into language, one knows that this is the origin of language, then one goes back from the movements to the language, in reverse order of consciousness. Here too it is the same: spiritual scientific diagnosis illuminates the symptom complex. If one forms it and meditates on it, one comes back to spiritual scientific diagnosis. I have to leave it at these three hours; I hope that we will meet again. But if you come more often, the little social being will become the key to future work.

In any case, it was nice to be able to talk about things again.

My dear friends! I would now like to speak here about what a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass could be, and I would like to show how one can move towards such a ceremony of the sacrifice of the Mass while at the same time taking into account the modern consciousness of humanity, out of which these reflections, which I am making here before you, should always flow. I would like to convey as much as possible of what is necessary to you. This will probably enable you to build on what you have learned.

Before I approach the ritual of the sacrifice of the mass, I would first like to say a few words, my dear friends, that are not connected with the external, but with the outward appearance of the mass sacrifice, and which we will then expand in a corresponding way to other ceremonies. How the priest himself relates to the mass sacrifice is intimately connected with it. This should already be apparent in the outward appearance in which the priest rode up to the altar. It is indeed the case that, by approaching the altar in his appropriate robes, the priest indicates that the sacrifice of the Mass is something for which I used the term “wholly human” yesterday. In our age, the whole human being can only be exhausted when we speak of the physical human being, the etheric human being or the human being of the formative forces, the astral human being, who already appears in the internalization, but is connected with the astral of the cosmos, and the I-human being. The higher members need not be taken into account here, because in the course of earthly development they are for the time being hidden within man as mere active forces. Now it is a matter of the fact that for a complete human insight, the human being as he stands before us first is the physical human being, and that if the complete human being is to be seen, it must be indicated, at least outwardly, how the other members of human nature relate to the human being. This is indicated for the Mass sacrifice in the vestments. (During the following explanations, the following is written on the board.)

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The physical body of the priest is first of all contained in the etheric body, which is essentially represented by a kind of extended white surplice that reaches the floor. I will write “white robe”. It still has various parts that are separate from the actual surplice cut, but these things have also been added over time for various reasons, and I will speak here only of the essential. When we look at the white of the surplice, we must realize that it contains a hint of the part of the human being that is integrated into the cosmos, just as the physical human being is integrated into the forces of the earth. And just as one has to look for man's guilt in the forces of the earth, so one has to see innocence in the white robe that man puts on.

Now, as you know, the human being, as he walks on earth, first has a firm connection with the physical and etheric bodies, and then these have a looser connection with the astral body and the ego – during sleep, these two are detached – and then again has a firm connection with the astral body and the ego. During sleep, the astral body and the ego separate from the physical body and the etheric body. During the whole of life, therefore, on the one hand the physical body and the etheric body, and on the other hand the astral body and the ego, remain connected to a certain extent in the body, but now they can be abstractly separated within consciousness, just as they also appear in an organized way, with the human being having a clear differentiation of the inner being in thinking, feeling and willing. In the will there is a strong impulse of the ego, in the astral body there is a strong impulse of thinking and feeling, coming from the side of the etheric body and from the side of the physical body, so that the human being is already differentiated in terms of the ego and the astral body for his consciousness, while the differentiation of the etheric and physical bodies does not confront him at all. But precisely that which otherwise forms a looser connection between the etheric and the astral body in a natural way in man must be hinted at during the actual central priestly action, during the sacrifice of the Mass and also otherwise during priestly actions, in that for the priest the interweaving of the etheric and the astral is actually always directly present. So the working over of the astral body into the etheric body must be indicated in some way, and this is the case in that the priest wears the stole. By wearing the stole, the connecting link between the astral and etheric bodies is indicated in the stole. We have the astral body (it is drawn). You see, the connection with the etheric of the cosmos is, so to speak, in itself a permanent one in man from birth to death and is only tinged by what the astral body as such sends into the etheric and physical bodies, that is, what emanates from human will emotions, from emotional content. With all these emotions of will and feeling, the human being must now place himself in that which I spoke to you about yesterday as the course of the year. I tried to draw your attention to the different ways in which people relate to the universe within themselves when they understand these festivals in the original way.

He then places himself with his mood in these festivals, if his astral body is placed in them accordingly. The astral body is now expressed accordingly in the robe worn by the priest during the sacrifice of the Mass, in the actual chasuble, which is designed so that the priest can slip through it at the top, and which then hangs down at the front and back in a not quite identical form. It is, I would say, the symbol of the astral body. This symbol of the astral body must actually be adapted to the moods that the human soul must have in relation to the course of the year, and it is adapted by giving this, I say now “astral body”, the color mood that expresses how the soul mood stands in relation to the whole course of time at the turn of the year, in the course of the year. (See drawing, plate 12.)

Let us begin with the preparations for Christmas. I say what I am about to say with full awareness of how it must sound to modern man. You will find the most diverse deviations from what I have to say in the Catholic Church, but these are deviations that have arisen from misunderstandings over time. If the colors of the chasubles were really taken from the spirit of the supersensible world, they would have to be as I am now going to show you. We must therefore have a certain mood, which is the mood of expectation towards Christmas. This mood can only be expressed in color by everything that belongs to the chasuble being blue for this time. So we have blue for the Advent season. This does indeed express that mood of devotion in which man does not feel what is around him, let us say, as if the forces of sunlight were working through him, but so that he feels that what is transformed into the spiritual, what is preserved by the forces of light, is working through him from the earth.

But a mood of hope will have to find expression in the Christmas festival itself. It is the festival of expectation, it is the festival of hope, it is therefore the festival that must brighten, that must have a faint light in what was the earlier blue. We will therefore have the chasuble in the color at Christmas that we have mixed a red with the blue, in a kind of purple. We then have this purple gradually becoming lighter as we approach the time encompassing the first weeks of the year, and we then come to the expectation of Easter, of death, where we now have the chasuble in black to suggest the right mood. For the period before Easter, the chasuble is black.

We now come to the Easter season itself, and there the chasuble turns to the earlier blue-red-purple in a rather abrupt transition – just as there is a sharp transition from purple to black – then reddish-yellow.

We approach the time of Pentecost. At Whitsuntide, the chasuble is essentially white and then, until it returns completely to blue, it is in shades of white with all kinds of colorful embroidery, which indicates that during the summer season, when the soul is united with the cosmos, so to speak, the soul of the earth is subdued and the fertilizing forces of growth are sent from the cosmos. In a true priest's vestment, one should therefore see, as a symbol, that which is sent down from the heavens in the form of plant and animal growth forces. As autumn approaches, these forces find expression in that which corresponds to the fruitfulness of the harvest, until it in turn opens out into the blue of the Advent season.

In fact, the Catholic Church has ritual prescriptions for these changes in chasubles. If they appear in different colors, it is only because of a misunderstanding; but essentially it is true that what appears in the Catholic Church as the color of the chasubles goes back to ancient traditions and ancient visions, to ancient knowledge of the supersensible world and man's relationship to the supersensible world. So that an extraordinary amount can be studied from the chasuble itself, although, if one includes the errors, one can also err a great deal.

First of all, we have to consider the color of the chasuble. We will always see the stole, which is worn under the chasuble and crossed over the chest, in a slightly lighter tone than the chasuble itself, but essentially, since it is the connection between the astral and etheric bodies, in a lighter color than the seasonal color of the chasuble. We must then seek, by going further, that which is the symbol for the human ego. I would just like to add the following about the chasuble: the chasuble is essentially a revelation of the astral body. This is also expressed in the embroidery or the other dyes of the chasuble, let us say, in gold, if one follows either good old traditions or if one brings things directly from the spiritual worlds. so that this figure will always be found in some variation on the front of the chasuble (see plate 12, top right) and on the back of the chasuble (plate 12, bottom right). This is to suggest that, to a certain extent, the currents from the spiritual life extend into the astral life, and that the human being himself — precisely as he crosses the axes of his eyes, as he can fold his hands, as he can touch one hand with the other — comes to perceive the self through the crossing of the curves here on the chasuble representing the astral body.

When we now ascend to the ego, it is the case that what man calls his ego is, in fact, most separate in human consciousness; it is the case that man, through his ego, has, in fact, his particular relationship to the outer world, that he can either consciously establish this relationship to the external world, which is established by the ego, or that he can also withdraw into his ego, that this is something that is only loosely connected to the unconscious being. Therefore, everything that is an outer work, such as the head covering, or everything that the priest only wears, symbolically points to the ego. Everything that can be taken off at the altar, everything that the priest only wears, everything that can really be taken off or put on, actually belongs to the ego area. The power of the ego rests in everything the priest wears; hence the power of command and the power of the law, which is inherent in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, is expressed primarily in the headgear. If you take the ordinary priest's headdress, it is the most inconspicuous; go up to the provost, go up to the bishop, and you will have the headdress becoming more and more complicated, and you will finally have the most complicated headdress at the head of the Catholic Church, the Pope, the tiara of the Roman Pope. The triple headdress of the Roman Pontiff expresses the fact that no one is a worthy Pope who has not come to have control over the thinking, feeling and willing of his ego, and to rule the earthly kingdom of Christendom from this organization of thinking, feeling and willing.

These symbols, which are also used in the vestments for the sacrifice of the Mass, are important down to the smallest detail, but that is not important for us. You may also know that the priest does not wear the chasuble, which is specifically intended only for the performance of the Mass, during other ceremonies, such as baptisms or funerals, requiems (I will talk about these later) or afternoon ceremonies. Instead, he wears a mantle over the stole, which now also has to appear with a similar figure to the one shown here, but which is intended to suggest how this astral body is supposed to behave in a different way during the other ceremonies, is in a different mood, above all is in a mood that is less devoted, but more blessing-like and the like. This is expressed in the particular cut of the so-called surplice, which is also worn at other ceremonies.

The point is that for the Catholic priest, not only is the daily breviary prescribed – we will have to talk about that again – but the Catholic priest also has to check the ecclesiastical calendar, especially before celebrating the Mass, in order to determine exactly how he has to wear the chasuble on the relevant days according to the signatures, which are in line with cosmic processes. Of course, in poor churches it is not possible to change the chasuble every day or even every week, but there the change of the chasuble could be based on the respective constellations of the stars; a varied chasuble could certainly be used for each day according to the ecclesiastical calendar, which, according to the Catholic view, essentially gives us the constellations of the stars, the sun and the moon.

Thus clothed, the priest celebrates the sacrifice of the Mass. I have already explained to you the structure of the sacrifice of the Mass in its four main parts. I would like to explicitly mention that these four main parts of the Catholic Mass are surrounded by a wealth of other prayer-like or ceremonial acts, which I will discuss later. Today, I will first talk about the first two main parts of the Mass, the reading of the Gospel, the proclamation of the Good News and the offertory.

So after the preparatory prayers have been said – as I said, we will talk about these later – the priest enters the left side of the altar and then has to read the mass from the left side of the altar.

There are differences here too. The ordinary daily mass is relatively shorter than the solemn mass. The solemn mass has additional elements, but each mass has the four parts that I will now discuss, with a preface, with prayers that lie between these main parts, or with ceremonial acts that lie before or in the middle. But first we must become thoroughly familiar with the nature of these main parts.

So, first of all, I would like to show rituals in the way that is generally possible today directly from the spiritual world. I would like to emphasize that I am not claiming that the rituals I am about to show are perfect. But they are to be given in the way that is possible for me, in that I will first present what can be drawn directly from the spiritual world today.

After the prayers and ceremonies have been performed, the gospel of the day is read on the left side of the altar. How the gospel falls on the day again, according to such a calendar as I have spoken to you about, we will speak briefly about in the next few days. So when the priest prepares to read the Gospel, he would say the following, either silently, at so-called silent masses, which every priest must read every day, or by reciting it aloud, or by accompanying it with singing and music at high solemn masses. I will now only have to communicate what the content should be. The priest will therefore first speak as he prepares to read the Gospel:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.
From my lips, let the word flow, cleansed through Thee.
For when Thy grace does me honor, pure
may my heart and pure my word be.
So may Your Word live worthily on my lips and May your blessing, O Christ, flow livingly through the word.
You may be in my heart.
Your word may flow from my lips.
Thus, from a worthy source and in the right stream,
your gospel is proclaimed.

The priest has the altar servers at the altar, the ministers of the sacrifice of the Mass. What I have just spoken is spoken by the priest alone. What I now have to speak is a dialogue between the priest and the altar boy – usually, if there are two, between him and the one standing on the right side of the altar, while the one standing on the left side has more of a silent role. The priest now speaks:

Christ in you.

This is not the case in Catholic masses, [where it is] Dominus vobiscum – the Lord be with you. This is something that arises from a misunderstanding of the ritual, because it makes the mass not a Christian sacrifice, but a sacrifice for the Father. So the priest would have to say:

Christ in you.

And the altar server:

And fulfill you with your Holy Spirit.

The Priest says:

The Gospel of Mark will now be proclaimed,

Matthew, John, Luke, chapter such-and-such.

The altar server says, after the priest has said this announcement:

May Christ reveal himself through you, O Christ.

Now, what I have just said is spoken in such a way that the first words, “My heart be filled...” to “...proclaim your gospel” are spoken by the priest, looking towards the altar, the word “Christ in you” is spoken looking towards the congregation, and the word “It is now proclaimed the gospel of Mark...” is spoken with the priest always turning around in between. The priest now turns around again and approaches the actual reading of the Gospel. But before that, he turns to the congregation. It is a custom in Catholicism today for the priest to often read the Gospel with his face turned towards the altar – especially at silent masses. However, it corresponds to the actual meaning, as is also done at the most solemn masses, that the priest reads the Gospel at least half turned towards the congregation.

The altar server says after the Gospel is read:

We lift up our soul to Thee, O Christ.

The priest says:

May the word of the Gospel blot out whatever is impure in our words.

Thus the ceremony of reading the Gospel is complete. It is certainly the case that the Gospel should not be read without the things that preceded its reading and those that follow. The Gospel should be read in a dignified manner, with the appropriate mood. This should be done by the priest dignifying the Gospel with the appropriate words.

Now there are some intermediate prayers and ceremonies, which I will discuss later, and then the second main part of the Mass follows: the sacrifice, the offertory.

We have already spoken about the essence of the sacrifice, and it will reveal itself to you in the sacrificial act itself when I communicate it to you now. This sacrifice consists, first of all, of offering wine and water as a sacrifice by mixing them, and that what is spoken into the mixing of wine and water is transferred, thus transferred as a word with the waves of the smoke clouds that stream out of the censer and that are supposed to carry up what is in the words of the sacrifice to the heights, so that grace may descend. Such a correct mass offering, a mass offertory, would then have to proceed in the following way: First the priest will uncover the chalice, which is initially covered with a small rug-like thing, and will have to speak opposite the covered chalice – this is how it should be:

Receive, divine World Ground, weaving in the expanses of space and in the remote times, this sacrifice, brought to you by me, your unworthy creature.

Thus the sacrifice is brought to the World Ground, to the paternal principle: Receive, divine World Ground, you who are weaving in the widths of space and in the remote of time, this sacrifice through me, your unworthy creature, offered to you.

I bring it because my straying from You, my denial of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

With me, all who dwell here bring it.

With me, may all true Christians who have been born bring it.

With me, may all who have died bring it.

So that they do not bury their eternal for the sake of their temporal.

Yes, so be it.

Now, after the acolyte has brought [the vessels] in which there is wine in one and water in the other, and after the priest has poured from one water and from the other wine into the chalice, the following is spoken in the chalice during this mixing of water and wine:

Divine World Ground, which has ordained beings in the supersensible out of its essential members, and which has transformed the ordained, turn my will to You; may the power of this willing arise from a feeling that unites.

– now the mixture is ready; the following will be spoken after it has already been mixed –

with Christ, who lives in Your life and may my thinking live in the Holy Spirit's life through all the following earthly cycles.

This “per omnia saecula saeculorum” [of the Catholic Mass] is actually always to be replaced [by the words] “through all the following earthly realms,” that is, all the following earthly cycles, all the following time cycles.

Now the chalice is raised, which is the actual symbol of the sacrifice. The believing community sees the raising of the chalice, and during the raising of the chalice the words are spoken:

Be thou sacrificed, O foundation of the world, this draught of health. May it quicken what is good, so that what has fallen to earth may also be raised up to the heavens. May the fragrance ascend, as this divinely willed being has descended.

Yes, so be it.

The chalice is placed on the altar. The incense for the chalice is now prepared. In the Catholic Mass, this is done in two acts, but as far as I can see, this is not the intention. First the chalice is incensed and then the altar. But as I said, I cannot see that this is the intention. Before the incense is burned, the following is said:

We all approach You with our soul, O Christ, so that You may offer us with You and Your light may shine upon our day, and You may accept us.

Come to us, Spirit of the vastness of space and the remoteness of time, and sanctify our sacrifice with Your holy being.

May our resurrection in spirit fill the smoke with a blessing spirit, through Christ living in our prayers. Yes, so be it.

Now the altar boy takes the censer and incense is burned. During the burning of incense, the word is spoken that is actually to be taken up by the smoke and carried upwards:

Christ in us. From our thoroughly Christianized soul may the smoke ascend, and may Thy grace descend to us.

Christ in us. Christ in our prayer. Our prayer may be heard by Thee.

The faithful then join the priest in raising their hands.

Christ in our lifting up of hands. The Christ light in our daylight.

After lowering the hands:

Let the threshold guard my mouth; let a wall bar my error, to keep me from going astray.

Let all evil be removed from my words, and let good will flow into them.

During these words incense is continually being smoked. After these words the censer is given to the acolyte and carried away from the altar. Usually the priest then has to descend to turn around and also smoke the faithful congregation. Then the censer is handed over, and the priest has to speak the prayer as an echo:

In the sacrifice, may the fire of love that creates substance arise, and the flame generate timeless being, so that good may endure.

Yes, so be it.

That, more or less, is what I am able to give, my dear friends, what can be given today when the question is how to find it from the spiritual worlds today – that which is to be done as gospel reading and sacrificial act.

But I also want you to become familiar with the traditional, and so I would like to introduce you to what I have attempted at the suggestion of our dear friend, Pastor Schuster, as a translation of the Mass ritual.^{1The translation of the Catholic mass ritual is placed in quotation marks ”} but with spiritual scientific foundations, which is the result of this approach. If one were to translate the traditional ritual of the mass, but not by proceeding in a lexicographic manner, but rather by first ascertaining what the text really means in terms of word-value and soul-content, then the aim would be to express before the Gospel:

"Cleanse my heart and lips, Almighty God, who cleansed the lips of the prophet Isaiah with a burning coal: cleanse me, then, by Your compassionate mercy, that I may worthily proclaim Thy Holy Gospel. Through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

O Lord, pour forth Your blessing. May the Lord be in my heart and on my lips: that I may worthily and rightly proclaim his Gospel. Yes, so be it.

The priest says:

“The Lord fulfill you.”

The altar server says:

“And your Holy Spirit.”

The priest says:

“It follows from the Gospel of St. Mark, Matthew, John, Luke.”

The altar server then says:

“May the Lord reveal himself through you, O Lord.”

The Gospel of the day is read. After the reading, the altar server says:

“Praise be to you, O Christ.”

The priest then says:

“By the words of the Gospel, may our corruptions be blotted out.”

So, my dear friends, what you have just heard would, in today's time consciousness, have to be said in preparation:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.

It cannot be said in the Christian sense, if one takes up today's time consciousness: “Cleanse my heart and lips, Almighty God.” Yesterday afternoon I pointed out the reasons to you clearly. So:

My heart be filled with Thy pure life, O Christ.

From my lips, O let the purified word flow through Thee.

For when I am worthy of Thy grace, my heart can be pure, my word pure.

So may Thy word live worthily on my lips and, carried by Thy spirit, reach those to whom it is to be proclaimed.

Thy blessing, O Christ, flow livingly through the word.

It cannot be “Pour out Thy blessings, O Lord”; nor can it be “The Lord be in my heart and on my lips,” but it must be:

Thou shalt be in my heart.

Thy word shall flow from my lips.

Thus, from a worthy source and in the right stream,

Your Gospel is proclaimed.

Yes, so be it.

In the correct understanding of Christianity, it cannot be “dominus vobiscum”, but [it must be]:

Christ in you.

The altar boy:

And may He fill your spirit.

The priest:

The Gospel will now be proclaimed...

The altar server:

May Christ reveal himself through you.

The Catholic Mass Office still has the ritual: “May Christ reveal himself through you, O Lord”; these are echoes from the old days, which are not really understood in a Christian way.

The Gospel reading follows. After the reading of the Gospel, if we translate the text properly, we have to say:

"Praise be to you, O Christ.

But what these words actually mean is:

We lift up our soul to you, O Christ.

The priest then says:

The word of the gospel erases what is impure in our words.

The Catholic text reads:

“Through the words of the Gospel, may our corruptions be wiped out.”

In the Catholic liturgy, the offertory would have the words:

"Receive, O Holy Father, Almighty, timeless God, this pure offering which I, your unworthy disciple, bring to you, my living and true God, for my innumerable transgressions and offenses and negligences and for all present, but also for all believing Christians, living and deceased: so that it may be to my and their salvation for lasting life. Yes, so be it.

We have the words for this because the words must be so – they also reveal themselves in this way – in the sense that the sacrifice is offered to the Father, the ground of the world:

Receive, divine ground of the world, weaving in the vastness of space and in the distance of time, this sacrifice, brought to you by me, your unworthy creature.

I bring it because my straying from You, my denial of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

When I read the supersensible directly, my dear friends, I must read:

I am bringing it because my deviations from You, my denials of Your nature, my weaknesses, have also flowed to You.

If I read the traditional text, I have to read:

“... which I, your unworthy disciple, offer to you, my living and true God, for my innumerable offenses and negligences.”

And it is the same with the following. In the original text:

”... and for all the faithful...

in the text that can be given today:

With me may it be brought by all true Christians who are born.

Then in the old text:

”... but also for all believing Christians who are living and who have died:

and in the new text:

Those who have died may also bring it with me.

In the old text:

”... so that it may benefit them and me for eternal life.

In the new text:

Lest they should bury their eternal for the sake of their temporal.

This verse is closely connected with the full understanding that we must have today, in the sense in which it was expressed yesterday. With regard to the mixing of the wine and water, the old text would read:

"O God, who has composed the essence of man in a wonderful way and transformed it in an even more wonderful way: through the secret nature of water and wine, give us the communion of divine being with him who has made himself a partaker of our human nature, Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in unity with the God of the Holy Spirit through all ages. Yes, so be it.

Today it says:

Divine Ground of the World, who has ordained out of the essential parts of his being the essence of mankind in the supersensible, and who hast transformed what was ordained, to Thee do I turn my volition; may the power of this volition arise out of a feeling that unites with Christ, who lives in Thy life and may my thinking live in the life of the Holy Spirit through all the following circles of the earth.

When the chalice is raised, that is, at the sacrifice, in the old text:

"We sacrifice to you, O Lord, the chalice of healing, beseeching your goodness: that it may rise for your divinely exalted looking down upon us and the whole world with a gentle fragrance of healing. Yes, so be it.

In a spirit of devotion and with a soul aware of its weakness, we approach You, O Lord, and may the sacrifice of our day penetrate Your perception so that it may please You, You divine Lord. O come, Bringer of Healing, Almighty Timeless God: and give Your blessing to this sacrifice, which is prepared for Your holy revelation of Being.

Through the intercession of the blessed archangel Michael, who stands at the right hand of the altar, and of all who are counted by him as followers, may the Lord bless the sacrificial smoke and accept it in a gentle fragrance, through Christ our Lord. Yes, so be it.

Then follows the incense-burning for the chalice. I will first say what is said here when the chalice is raised:

Be sacrificed to you, O foundation of the world, this draught of health. May it quicken that which is good, so that what has fallen to earth may also be raised up to the heavens. May the fragrance ascend, as this divinely willed being has descended. Yes, so be it.

We all draw near to You with our soul, O Christ, that You may offer us with You and let Your light shine upon our day, and that You may accept us. Come to us, Spirit of the expanses of space and the remote times, and sanctify our sacrifice with Your holy nature.

May our resurrection in the Spirit fill the smoke with a blessing, so that Christ may live in our prayers. Yes, so be it.

During the incense-burning of the chalice, the old text is spoken:

“Imbued with your blessing, O Lord, this sacrificial smoke rises up to you, and your gracious mercy descends upon us.”

And then at the following incense of the altar:

“Cause, O Lord, that through my prayer, which like the sacrificial smoke enters into thy sight, the lifting up of my hands may be an offering made perfect by the day. – Set, O Lord, a guard before my mouth and a wall around my lips: that my heart may not pour out in evil words, and fall into excuses for my transgressions.”

And this is what we now say (according to the new text) during the incense-bearing:

Christ in us

or, if a silent Mass is being read:

Christ in me. From a soul permeated with Christ may the smoke rise up and to us – or to me – may your grace descend, Christ in us.

Christ in our prayer. Our prayer be for your ear.

Christ in our raising of hands. The Christ light in our daylight.

Let the threshold be guarded before my mouth; let a wall hinder my error, in order to flow.

All evil be removed from my words and good will pour into them.

The censer is removed and the prayer to be said is in the old text:

“May the Lord enkindle in us the fire of his love and the flame of timeless kindness. Yes, may it be so.”

New text:

In the sacrifice, may the fire of the love that creates and the flame that engenders timeless being arise, so that good may endure.

Yes, so be it.

Actually, the text that I read to you as the old text is part of the Credo, which is inserted between the Gospel and the Offertory in the Christian Mass as the recitation of the Creed. In fact, the passage is absolutely correct; the question is rather that the Credo is inserted at this point, between the Gospel and the Offertory. We will have to talk about the Credo on the following days. Today, I will merely familiarize you with the Credo that goes with the old text I have read. This Credo reads:

"I believe in one God, the Almighty Father, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, who was begotten before all ages. He is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, Of one substance, though not having begotten, with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation descended from heaven. Who also came in the flesh by the Holy Spirit, being born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. Who also was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, who died and was buried. And on the third day He rose again in the sense of the scriptures. And was taken up into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and will reveal Himself again, to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom is endless. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeded from the Father and the Son. Who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and revealed, who spoke through the prophets. And in the only holy catholic and apostolic church. I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. And I hope in the resurrection of the dead and in life in the future age. Yes, so be it.

The Priest says, after reciting the Credo:

“Dominus vobiscum – the Lord be with you.”

the acolyte:

“And with you, O Lord.”

The Priest says:

“Oremus – we pray.”

And now follows the prayer.

My dear friends, it is necessary for you to grasp the connection between the entire ancient sacrificial rite and this Credo, so that you will see how necessary it is for the modern consciousness to approach the sacrificial rite in an original way. Tomorrow we will deal with the ritual of consecration and communion.