The Rudolf Steiner Archive

You know that the saying that is to be the leitmotif of our lecture, “Blood is [a very special fluid],” is found in Goethe's “Faust.” Mephistopheles, the emissary of hell, and thus of evil, demands that Faust sign the contract he is concluding with him in blood. The point is that Faust, whom Goethe presents as a representative of striving humanity, is placed between good and evil, that Faust is to be served by the servant of hell and that Mephistopheles is to accompany Faust throughout his life and Faust in return surrenders himself to him. This contract should be signed in blood, as Mephistopheles demands. Now you know the answer to Faust's remark as to whether such a form, and especially blood, is required: “And blood is a very special fluid.”

There is a whole literature about Faust, but very few people know the meaning of the word “Mephistopheles”: the liar, the corrupter – from the Hebrew =; much less [do they] know the meaning of the blood. In one of the last commentaries on Faust, you can read that one has to understand the saying of Mephistopheles in this way: Mephistopheles demands the blood and remarks ironically: “Blood is a very special fluid” because he hates the blood, because it is particularly unpleasant for him, so he demands the signature in blood. You really have to be a “Goethe explainer” to be able to make such a statement. Can you in your right mind demand something as a special prize because it is the most unpleasant thing to you? You don't do that; when you demand something, as strictly as Mephisto does, with the signature, you are designating this something as something valuable. Common sense simply dictates that the emissary of hell places a very special value on blood. Hence the signature in blood.

We can trace the legend on which Goethe based his poem back to the sixteenth century. Even then, we find the signature in blood, and it is still vividly depicted. How Faust's vein is opened, how the blood trickles out, how it then coagulates, how the sign finally appears: O man, cleanse thyself!

The Faust saga is in turn only one of the many sagas in which blood and blood oaths play a role. The blood oath did not come into the Faust saga by mere happenstance, but through that through which we find a deep wisdom expressed in so many sagas and myths. How mysterious a fact often appears! But the spiritual researcher knows that when we explore the old legends and fairy tales, not in the way of today's materialistic scholars who speak of a poetic folk fantasy that the connoisseur of the people certainly has never found them anywhere, and who speak of fantastic creations – if we observe not in this way, but as spiritual researchers, we find profound spiritual truths expressed in them everywhere, figurative expressions for profound spiritual truths. It is most remarkable that when we look at simple expressions of the people, we have before us great spiritual truths, presented in images. These are fairy tales, myths, legends! And we can always ask ourselves: is there perhaps a deep spiritual truth contained in this folk tale, perhaps in this one saying? And then, as spiritual scientists, we want to examine this saying.

Today, we will deal with the significance of blood, the significance of this particular fluid, in the life of the individual as well as in the life of humanity and nations. By illuminating the mystery of blood, we will shed some light on important cultural issues of the present.

We will understand what we have to say about it if we keep to an ancient saying, a saying that is called the Hermetic Principle. It comes from one of the greatest initiates, Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian initiate. Many scholars consider him to be a fabulous personality. However, spiritual science knows that he was the greatest teacher of Egyptian culture. This sentence may at first seem strange, it reads: “Everything above is as it is below, everything below is as it is above.”

What does this mean? You will understand when you consider the following: You see a smiling expression on a person's face; it is immediately clear to you that serenity is present in that person's soul. You see a tear, and it is clear to you that sadness or pain has settled on this person's soul. You draw conclusions about the inner being from what the eyes see on the outside, and about the material from the spiritual. Now, in the sense of the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the material is called the lower, and the spiritual-soul is called the upper. And anyone who is familiar with this philosophy is aware that there is a spiritual world and that everything that takes place in this spiritual world can find expression in the material world. This philosophy tells us that at some point every spiritual reality finds material expression. There is no spiritual reality that does not express itself in the material world, and no material reality that does not have a spiritual side. Everything down in the material as well as up in the spiritual.

In medieval philosophy of that great, wonderful brotherhood, which is called the brotherhood of the Holy Grail, you could have been an invisible spectator between the teacher and students of the Holy Grail covenant and overhear a long-lasting teaching scene. I cannot sketch this in any other way than in the form of a conversation. It did not take place like this, but you will get an idea of what happened between teacher and student.

It was made clear to the student: just as you can tell a person's soul and their cheerfulness by a laughing expression on a face, and their sadness by a tear, you can do the same in all of nature. For such a student, what Goethe characterizes as the earth spirit was not just a poetic image, but reality. Just as every human being, when he sees his fellow human beings laughing or sad-faced before him, says to himself: Here I have not only flesh and blood, but a soul, so the medieval Grail disciple had been brought to say to himself: When I look at this earth with its stones, plants, animals, people and everything else, , it is, like the human body, the expression of a soul or spirit; and it was made quite clear to him: If your finger were to imagine itself to be an independent entity without your soul, you could easily convince yourself that this is not the case by cutting it off from your body. It would wither away in no time. It cannot live an independent life. Nor can you, who belong to the earth soul. If you could separate yourself from it, you would wither like the finger if you were to move only a few miles away from the earth. The finger does not indulge in the foolish illusion of being an independent entity because it has grown; if it could walk around like a person, it would do so.

Thus the saying became a deep truth for the pupil, and the earth spirit a real being. And when he walked across the fields, a realization shone in him, going deep to his heart. When he saw one plant with a laughing face, it was the expression of the cheerful earth spirit, and when he saw another with dark purple flowers, it was the expression of the grieving earth spirit; the whole earth became the expression of a spirit, as did the seemingly dead stone.

When the student then went on to the so-called Rosicrucian school, which was founded in the fourteenth century, the teaching continued with the following: Look at the stone, this crystal! It consists of a certain substance. Compare this substance with animal and human substance. This is permeated by instincts and desires, by cravings and wishes; but desireless, without desire - only of glass - illuminated by the light, the stone substance stands there; chaste in the face of animal and human substance. - And so the disciple had to delve deeper into the chaste stone. As a lofty ideal, the goal was before his eyes, to become as pure as the stone in its kind. The disciple had to feel this way about the chaste stone.

I may only tell you the first sentence of a very solemn formula that was spoken every time there was an important section in the teaching, the formula that indicates the passage of divine wisdom through all nature. Where world wisdom works down in the realm of stones, it is characterized in the formula: The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creative Word in them, and chaste and modest, they bear it in the depths.

And another scene that took place within the Grail Schools was this: one pointed to the plant calyx, which stands out from the plant, and said: “Behold the plant! It stretches its roots into the earth and its organs of fertilization towards the sun, those organs that appear here in chaste purity and are kissed by the sunbeam, which is called the holy lance of light. And this plant chalice contains the same reproductive organs that must be covered by the sense of shame in the human realm. Man is the completely inverted plant. The roots are the head of the plant. We have to imagine that, through the absorption of desires and instincts, the human being has to shamefully conceal what the plant holds up to the sun as a chaste chalice. A development takes place from plant to human being. Imagine the plant indicated by a downward stroke, the animal makes half the turn, the human being the whole. This is drawn: a cross is created. Plato expressed it thus: the world soul is crucified on the cross of the cosmic body. — For the three kingdoms were felt in spiritual science as the cross, and as the world soul passes from the plant to man, it passes through the cross.

And now the disciple was told: Imagine this development, imagine the chaste chalice of the plant as a model for the human power of procreation, and this purified from all desire; imagine man as a creative being, as pure and chaste as the calyx of the plant, then the chalice appears to man as the spiritual organ of production of the future, kissed by the sun of spiritual life. This ideal is called the Holy Grail. - So the spiritual content of the Holy Grail was distributed to the students.

Those who walk through nature as scientists see in the chalice a deep reference to what man should become. The lower, matter, expresses the spirit, the upper, everywhere.

And we learn to understand the lower when we get to know the upper. We understand the matter of blood when we get to know the upper that corresponds to it. Our task is first to look at the human being spiritually and then to see what corresponds to the blood in the spiritual.

We no longer need to get to know the nature of the human being in detail in the spiritual. Four members: physical, etheric, astral body and I, through which the human being has become the crown of creation. The I is that which sensitive natures always feel as the expression of the actual and eternal in man. And you need only make a very small effort to consider what this name 'I' means in contrast to all other names. Anyone can call a chair a chair; but this cannot be done with the name 'I'. No one can say 'I' to me, the name 'I' can never approach us from the outside if it is to mean anything to us. The soul must begin to speak from within. With the I, we express something that gives itself its name. The true religions have always felt this. For example, the ancient Hebrew secret science called this divine the God himself, and the name for it the unspeakable name of God. “I am, who am” means nothing other than this “I am” in the soul. And that is what those who heard it, the listeners felt: the resounding of the spiritual in the soul when it was spoken: “Jav” = “I am who I am”; that is the unspeakable name of God.

The I is therefore the highest of the four members of man. Of these four members, you can only see and touch the physical body here, et cetera. The other three members are the upper part of man; but to every upper part there corresponds a lower. Each of these three members is built up in the physical body by special organs. The physical body, of which the ordinary materialistic anatomist knows something, is also a many-membered being. Its organs are not all the same; man has four kinds of organs: those that are purely physical, built only by the physical body itself; then those that he could not have developed without the etheric body, without the astral body, without the ego. Certain organs are the lower part of the etheric body, certain the lower part of the astral body, and certain the physical expression, the lower part of the ego.

At the same time, you must not believe that physical organs, which are only composed of the physical, can also be in a purely physical body; all are permeated by the etheric and astral bodies; but these first ones take their form only from the physical body. The ear and the eye are physical apparatuses. In his senses, the human being is an expression of the physical body. Now go from these senses to the organs of nutrition, reproduction and growth: these are no longer mere physical apparatuses, they are structured and are the lower part of the etheric body. You have to imagine that the human body, in its sense organs and its skeleton, is built by the physical principle itself. The fact that it is permeated by the etheric body means that the others are incorporated into it. The plant is also permeated by an etheric body, which is why it also incorporates the organs of nutrition, growth and reproduction. The moment a being is also permeated by an astral body, a nervous system is incorporated into that being. This is the expression of the astral body.

As man gradually developed as a material being, he passed through the various kingdoms of nature; he has found his way from the mere physical body up to the higher ones, and the higher members of his being have incorporated more and more organs from the lower ones. The organs are not of equal value. The nerves are the expression of the astral body, the stomach and liver those of the life body; they find, as it were, their outer physiognomy in the lower for the upper.

The matter can be explained in even more detail: the astral body has developed slowly; it consists of different members, first of all the so-called sentient body, the lowest member, then the sentient soul, then the intellectual soul, and finally the consciousness soul. They have developed little by little. If you want to understand this gradual development of man, you have to start again at the bottom. Look at a physical being! Great philosophers call this a mirror of the entire world system. Why? Look at the smallest stone, consider that it could not be as it is if the whole environment were not as it is. The great naturalist Cuvier said: If you show a very wise anatomist a single bone, he would be able to see from its structure what the structure of the whole animal to which it belongs should be; if the bone were a little different, the whole structure would have to be different. The whole is expressed in the individual; this applies to the whole cosmos.

Just as a single bone must be as it is because the whole is as it is, and would be different if the whole were different, so a very wise being could tell from the smallest stone how the whole planet is formed. The individual is a mirror of the cosmos.

But if we ascend from the mere lifeless mirror of the cosmos, as it already shows itself in the stone, this cosmic reflection appears to us in a higher form when we see it where there is life underlying the beings. There the cosmos is not reflected as it is in the stone; there the process of reflection continues within. The being closes itself off from the outside. Processes within are stimulated because certain processes are taking place outside. In its movements, the plant reflects what is happening outside.

In the nervous system, the reflection is even more complete. The simplest nervous system is the one that still exists in humans as the sympathetic nervous system, which spreads out in two strands on either side of the spinal cord and whose activity our consciousness is unaware of. This nervous system, as the lowest nervous system, is the lower one for the sentient body. Now you can see, as is shown in my Theosophy, how the sentient soul integrates itself into the sentient body. There is an expression of this in the lower part: the spinal cord nerve strand integrates itself between the two ganglion strands. Everything below is like everything above!

The material world is a wonderful expression of spiritual life. Theosophy will offer you a spiritual image of the world. This has the seal imprint outside. And this is the meaning of the word seal. In the language of revelations, St. John calls it “sealed” where we have something material in front of us and we do not yet know the spiritual aspect of it. And our world will become apparent with its seven secrets. The whole world is sevenfold: seven colors, seven tones, seven limbs of the human being. There is nothing miraculous about this, only the same basic law. This sevenfold universe is, as far as it is not revealed, a book with seven seals. When it is unsealed, one will recognize the upper part for the lower.

For the mind soul, which is a higher link in the astral body, the brain is the outer expression, the lower.

Now the question arises: if the physical body is, so to speak, its own physical expression, everything that belongs to the nutritional and et cetera system, the expression of the ether body, if the nervous system is that of the astral body, what then is the expression of the eternal?

That is the blood and the blood system. Wherever blood appears, it is an expression of an ego.

In this way, we will understand in a spiritual-scientific way why, for example, in the human being, when the germ develops, the heart and blood come only after all the organs have been formed in the womb. This corresponds entirely to what takes place in the spirit. The I is the crown of everything and also appears last.

There is also a wonderful connection between blood and the I. You may be able to get an idea of how blood is connected to the I, to the very essence of the human personality, if you consider the following: where the I is afraid, where it is horrified, its physical body turns pale; where it wants to hide, the blood appears in the form of a blush. Wherever the ego is particularly engaged, we see external expression in the discoloration of the face. This is trivial, but it gives us an idea of the connection between the ego and the blood.

You see, our materialistic science regards the heart as a kind of pumping station. It is of the opinion that the heart pumps blood through the body, quite mechanically. Hegel was the only German philosopher of the nineteenth century to know that this is not the case. He said: it is not the heart that drives the blood, but the blood that gives the heart its movement. And the blood gets its movement from the soul, is driven by the spirit. The heart beats faster when the spiritual impulse is there. The blood is the driving element of the heart.

It was a bold statement, but it is common knowledge in spiritual science. It has never said anything other than this: that it is the soul itself, under the impulse of the ego, that causes the blood to flow either under a sense of terror or under some other feeling that belongs to the soul, that this soul, this ego, drives the blood and thereby the heart.

And at the same time, this will draw your attention to something in spiritual science that will make one thing clear to you. Namely, the heart is something that thwarts today's material science. The voluntary muscles are so-called striated muscles, all involuntary muscles are so-called muscles with smooth muscle fibers. The heart is now an involuntary muscle; most people cannot control it. And yet it is striated; where does that come from? Spiritual science explains it thus: the heart as it is today is at the beginning of its development; there will come a time when what is still an involuntary movement today will become an involuntary one, subordinate to its spirit. The brain is the thinking organ of today and the heart will become the spiritual organ of the future. In the future, the heart will occupy a completely different position. Man will consciously make his blood circulate through his body. The heart will be the expression of his spiritual life, a consciously working muscle. In the future it will be so. That is why it is already present in the germ. Thus we have these very different organs of man, blood and heart, as the expression of the I and can follow it in its significance for the world.

We speak of blood relationship, of the importance of blood. We sense this, but we have no real insight into it. I will present such intuitions from life: Anzengruber and Rosegger, who are both known for their depictions of rural life – the latter describes them as he sees them, but the former very aptly describes them entirely from his own perspective, without having observed and studied them more closely – had a conversation in which Rosegger said to Anzengruber: You live and have lived entirely in the city, and yet you have characterized the farmers so admirably. If you were to go out to them and take a good look at them, you would be able to describe them perfectly. That would just drive me crazy, Anzengruber replied. I have lived in the city all my life, but my ancestors were farmers, all farmers, it's in my blood.

It is in the blood – that could seem like a picture; but is it a mere picture? Anzengruber really did describe from his blood. He didn't have a notebook. Why? Not because blood is inherited, it cannot be inherited. Not a single drop of blood passes from father to son. It is even the latest thing to arise in the germ. But just as you inherit your father's nose, the structure of external organs, you also inherit the structure of your nervous system, the structure of your internal organs. Everything that is the expression of the physical body, the etheric and astral body, you inherit from your ancestors. You could just as easily examine the similarity of your stomach to that of your father as you could your nose. And you could examine the similarity of the Anzengruber brain to that of his peasant ancestors, like the nose. The limbs of the human being that prove to be similar to the ancestral forms express themselves in the blood as in a tablet, because the blood represents the I. What makes an impression on the blood makes an impression on the I. If I live entirely as a son of my ancestors, and what has been inherited is the strongest in me, then what has been inherited is imprinted in the blood, and I feel in the blood what was still present in my ancestors. If the impressions of the outer world are stronger, then what has entered my ego, my blood, drowns out what flows from within. I forget what the ancestors have allowed to flow in.

Thus, the one of whom it is said that he has “race” will truly be a son of his family, have the structure of his ancestors. He imprints this in his blood, his I. The one in whom the race is no longer so strong is dependent on external impressions. Everyone has these impressions, whether they are the son of this or that father. They have drowned out their inner impulses when faced with stronger external impressions. If the impressions of the outside world are stronger, then he has its blood, if race lives in him, then race has his blood. What the ancestor has experienced is then expressed in what he does and writes.

Expand this and consider the spiritual origin of man. Imagine: Even more is expressed by what is inherited. Imagine that; it really happened.

If we go back to ancient times, we find a certain starting point in every people. Very different marriage relationships, relationships of love and belonging and kinship prevailed then; within the family, the tribe, the individuals married. In every nation, you will find the transition from what can be called close marriage to what is called distant marriage. In the time of the former, it would have broken the custom, the law of a tribe, if a male or female member had married outside it. In every nation, however, we see how close marriage is later broken, how individuals married into other tribes. And everywhere this transition from close marriage, where blood relatives marry, to distant marriage, where those who are distant unite, is linked to a change in spiritual life.

The legends of the peoples have preserved this transition from close to distant marriage in a special, unique way. There are many legends in which women are abducted and taken to foreign tribes. Something tragic in the transition from the old order to the new is expressed in them. The transition to distant marriage is linked to a transition from an ancient clairvoyance to a modern one, more dependent on the observation of the external world of the senses. Where close marriage is common practice, people still have something like a natural clairvoyance. This is lost when foreign blood is mixed with the close blood. What Anzengruber felt in his blood was also felt by those who were in close marriage, but to a much greater degree. They did not feel what their ancestors had experienced as darkly, as half unconsciously as Anzengruber, but as something they had experienced themselves. Through the close relationship, the inherited structure was so strong that it was imprinted in the blood. Thus the ego, the blood, the whole family felt, not just itself. Only when foreign blood was added did the power of generation cease, did the old cult of ancestors lose itself. Where a distant ancestor was honored, it was not the product of the imagination, but rather the feeling that the most distant descendant felt connected to the ancestors in his blood, in his ego. Clairvoyance was there. All legends, which are like images of truths, become understandable to us when we know that they arose out of other perceptions, out of clairvoyance, which can still be found today in primitive, natural peoples.

You need to know this if you want to understand the writings that are based on spiritual science. One writing belongs here above all: the Bible. You cannot understand the most important parts of it in today's times. It is impossible if one does not know one thing: that in ancient times a name did not refer to what was represented in a personality, but to what lived on in the blood of a distant relative for entire generations. Because the inherited structure was expressed in the blood of the most distant descendant, one felt all of this in one's self. It did not yet work as it did with the Anzengruber, but rather like a true memory. The person in whom all the blood had merged with another through the distant marriage remembers only his own life, while the person from the close marriage remembers everything that the ancestors have experienced. They, the ones from the close marriage, referred to it as belonging to their ego. Through generations the same name resounded, because the experiences of the ancestor were recalled. Thus Adam was not the name of an individual man, but of a continuous memory through generations.

Let the Bible describe the original ages; it knows that the names were given in that way. A wonderful light falls on those ancient reports. They are correct as soon as one knows that their names belong to the time when the same structure was expressed in the blood over and over again.

And then we find everywhere, where the transition from the near to the distant marriage takes place, how that ancient clairvoyant memory is killed. Today you can find everywhere the very first elementary truths, which are thousands of years old in occultism. You can find the sentence presented: The more closely related the blood relationship is, the more vivid the power of vision is. The mixing of blood had an extinguishing effect on the life of the spiritual body. Today, researchers are trying to see if the blood of different animals can be mixed. The blood of mice does not kill rats, that of rabbits does not kill hares, because these animals are closely related. Blood from more distantly related animals kills them. Distant blood really does kill here. It was different with humans. Distant blood did not have an extinguishing effect on the physical body, but on the spiritual body, which was the carrier of that higher wisdom.

This shows us the function of blood. We see that the one who has the blood has the I. Where the outside world has gained greater power because foreign blood has been added, there the external experiences have taken effect and these have the blood. Whoever has the blood of a being has the being's I.

Not everything is the same for all time. When close marriage existed, conditions on earth were different. This does not apply to the new era; because conditions on earth have changed, the I had to move into distant marriage. The old aristocratic families have retained the old ways, and this has adverse consequences today. What in ancient times was the bearer of high spiritual human development must have a harmful effect in materialistic times.

In the future, humanity will rise again to higher levels of consciousness, but in a different way, in that the individual will take possession of spiritual rebirth; he will become so strong that he himself as a person will be able to imprint the spirit in his blood, gaining power over his blood. Then man will become clairvoyant again, so that he will not merely conquer abstract knowledge, but will be able to transfer this knowledge into his blood. Try to acquire as much theoretical knowledge as you want, it remains dry and abstract, sober and bare; try to develop knowledge in such a way that concepts become feelings for you, higher affects, touch your blood, then it becomes higher knowledge. Hence that medieval schooling that led the student across the fields, that let the flowers speak to his blood, and not just to his cool mind.

This is how things are connected. It is necessary to research the function of blood. Just as blood is the creator of what holds the ego together, so if we bring spiritual life to the blood from the outside and it does not match the blood, the spiritual life cannot be understood by the blood. Therefore, the European cannot simply impose his culture on a “savage” tribe. They can preach as much as they like, but they will not achieve their purpose and will only destroy it. This is how the Spanish destroyed the Indians: the blood differences were too great. The Indians had very different blood from the Europeans.

Thus you will see that the spiritual intercourse between nations must be consciously regulated. One must pay attention to the mission of the blood, the blood question is related to the colonial question. Here again one can see how practical Theosophy is. The time will come when we will have to consciously guide what we call cultural mixtures. We must not overlook the fact that only the upper part can penetrate into the lower part, where it can truly find expression.

Study the conditions of your blood, for then you will get to know the conditions of your various selves.

When you speak to a person in everyday life, you speak to them in terms of abstract, bare, and dull concepts! The other person can learn a lot from you, but everything they can learn remains in a certain shadowy conceptual state. If you speak to them about something that touches their heart and makes their blood boil, then you will not only have their mind, but also their soul, and you will have them inside you. Whoever has a man's blood has his soul. Whoever has a nation's blood – not in a materialistic sense, but as an expression of the soul – has the nation, and whoever wants to have a nation, to teach it, must understand the soul and the expression of the soul in blood. Whether for good or evil, if you want to take possession of a human soul, you must take possession of the blood.

Thus the folk tales have spoken wisdom here, by emphasizing the blood oath, to indicate that a person gives himself completely. There is profound wisdom in the legend that lets the devil win Faust, his entire self, by obtaining the signature in blood. Once Mephistopheles has the blood of Faust, he has his ego. That is why he did not mean it mockingly, but it is truth and really the expression of deep wisdom; yes, it is precisely the deepest wisdom about the nature of man in the sense that the lower is the expression of the upper, it confirms this sentence to us: And blood, yes, blood is a very special fluid.

From the previous lecture you will have been able to see that the very form of man's body is a result of the co-operation of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers.

It is particularly important in the present age for man to recognize this co-operation between Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers; for only by such recognition can he gradually learn to understand the forces that are at work behind the external phantasmagoria of existence. We know very well that we have no occasion either to hate Ahriman or to fear Lucifer, since their powers are inimical only when they are working outside the realm where they belong. We spoke on this subject at some length in Munich last year [ see Secrets of the Threshold, by Rudolf Steiner. ]; and we have also given indications in this direction in lectures here in Dornach.

When we saw last time how the physical spatial body of man owes its form to the interaction of Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, we were dealing with the most external element of human life in which Lucifer and Ahriman play a part. We come a little nearer to the inner nature of man when we pass from the physical to the etheric body. The etheric body may be regarded as the shaper of the physical body. At the foundation of our physical organism—and embedded at the same time in the whole etheric world—lies this etheric organism, in perpetual inner movement. Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers are active here too, as well as in the physical body. Man as etheric being—and it is important to recognize the fact—is also placed into the counterplay of these forces.

In order to give focus to our study of this question, let us now turn our attention to the three fundamental activities of the human being in so far as he is not physical human being. I refer to the activities of Willing, Feeling and Thinking.

So long as we regard man in respect of his physical body alone, we do not of course see this willing, feeling and thinking. Only in its physiognomy or in the performance of certain gestures or the like, does the physical body give us any indication of what is in man's inner nature. The etheric body, however, which is in perpetual movement, is continually giving expression to man's thinking, feeling and willing.

A purely external science finds itself in difficulties when it comes to consider these activities of the human soul. If you will study the various philosophies you will find that one gives pre-eminence to the will, another to thought; and there are again others which consider feeling as the most important force in man. But as to how thinking, feeling and willing unite in man to form a whole—to that problem none of the philosophies of modern times can offer a solution. This inability to form a correct idea of the relationship between thinking, feeling and willing in the life of the soul is not unlike the difficulty someone might experience who, in order to relate himself rightly to the world around him, set out to form a clear conception of man as he appears in the external world. We do not know—so say the philosophers—whether the human soul in its essential nature has more the character of willing or feeling or thinking. It is exactly as if someone were to say: “I have no idea what a ‘man’ really is. One person brings me a five-year-old child and says: There is a man for you! Then another person comes along and points me out a much taller being, who is what is called ‘middle-aged.’ Finally a third person comes and shows me an entirely different being, with wrinkled countenance and grey hair. And now I am really at a loss to know what the being called ‘man’ is, for I have been shown three totally different beings with this name.” Of course the true answer is that they are all of them “man.” The one is very young, the second somewhat older and the third quite old; they are very different in appearance. But by taking all three ages together we acquire a knowledge of “man.” It is the same with willing, feeling and thinking. The difference there too is one of age. Willing is the same soul-activity as thinking, but willing is still a child. When it grows a little older, it becomes feeling, and when it is quite old it is thinking. The matter is made difficult by the fact that the different ages live together in our soul in these three activities.

We have explained on other occasions (and you may read of it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World) that when we leave the physical world we come into a world where the law of change prevails instead of the law of persistence or fixity. There all is in constant change; what is old can suddenly grow young again and vice versa. Hence in that world the three activities can and actually do appear at one and the same time. Willing shows itself contemporaneously as young willing, as older willing (i.e., feeling) and at the same time also as quite old willing (i.e., thinking). The different ages are in that world intermingled, everything is mobile. This is how it is with the etheric body of man.

These changes cannot, however, simply come about of themselves. To begin with, a uniform and single action of the soul does not come to consciousness at all in ordinary life, we are quite incapable of bringing such a thing into consciousness. If we think of the etheric body in the likeness of a flowing stream—for it is in the etheric body that we have to make our observations—then we are obliged to say that this stream of soul-activity does not come to consciousness at all in our life; but into this stream, into this perpetual movement of the etheric body that flows in the current of time, Luciferic—and again Ahrimanic—activity enters. Luciferic activity has the result of making the will young. When the activity of our soul is streamed through by Luciferic activity the result is will. When the Luciferic influence predominates, when Lucifer makes his forces felt in the soul, then will is active in us. Lucifer has a juvenating influence on the whole stream of our soul-activity.

When, on the other hand, Ahriman brings his influence to bear on our soul-activity, he hardens it, it becomes old, and thinking is the result. Thinking, the having and holding of thoughts, is quite impossible in ordinary life unless Ahriman exerts his influence within our etheric body. We cannot get on in our life of soul, in so far as this comes to expression in the etheric body, without Ahriman and Lucifer. If Lucifer were to withdraw entirely from our etheric body, we would have nothing to fire our will. If Ahriman were to withdraw entirely from our etheric body, we would never be able to attain cool thinking. In between stands a region where Lucifer and Ahriman are in conflict. Here they interpenetrate; their activities play into one another. It is the region of feeling. The etheric body has actually this appearance; one can perceive in it Luciferic light and Ahrimanic hardness. If you could look at it, you would not of course see it as we might try to show it in a drawing; you would see it all in movement. But there are places where the etheric body seems to be quite untransparent, as if it had ice tracings in it. Forms and figures show themselves which resemble the patterns made by ice on a window pane. These are hardenings in the etheric body, and they are the result in it of the life of thought. This freezing of the etheric body at certain places is due to Ahriman; his forces have found entry there by means of thought. There are also places which seem to be full of light. Here the etheric body is transparent and gleams and glows with light. It is Lucifer who sends his rays into the etheric body of man and makes there centers of will. Then there are regions in between, where the etheric body is in perpetual movement and activity. Here you see at one moment hardness—and then suddenly the hardness is caught by a ray of light and melts right away. Hardening and dissolving, in perpetual alternation—such is the expression of the activity of feeling in the etheric body.

Not only, therefore, is the form of the physical body of man called into being by the interplay of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces—now creating a balance, now disturbing it again—but in the whole etheric body too, Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces are continually active. When the Ahrimanic forces gain the upper hand, we have an expression of thinking; when the Luciferic forces are in ascendance, we have an expression of willing; and when they are in mutual conflict one with the other, we have an expression of feeling. Thus do Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces play into one another in the etheric body of man. We human beings are as it were ourselves the resultant of these forces, we are placed into their midst.

Now we must not imagine that we are present in this interplay with our full Ego. Our earthly Ego, the Ego that we have acquired in the course of earth evolution, can only come to its full consciousness in the physical body. Not until the time of Jupiter will the Ego be able to unfold itself completely within the etheric body. In all that takes place within the etheric body the real Ego of the human being has no immediate part. Had the progress of world evolution gone on without the intervention of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces, then man would have been an altogether different being. He would, for example, have been able to have perceptions in his physical body, but he would not have been able to have thoughts. The capacity to have thoughts he owes to the fact that Ahriman can acquire influence over his etheric body. And he has impulses of will because Luciferic forces can acquire influence over his etheric body. These forces are therefore necessary for man, they must needs be present.

We have said that with our earthly consciousness we cannot descend fully into the etheric body. Only in the physical body can we experience our full Ego-consciousness. With the etheric body we enter a world with which we cannot fully identify ourselves. And it is so, that when Ahriman enters into our etheric body, something more enters in with him besides the thoughts he forms there. Nor is it only impulses of will that enter our etheric body with Lucifer. And the same must be said of the feelings, the realm where the two are in conflict. In so far as Ahriman lives in our etheric body we dive down with our etheric body into the sphere of the elementary Nature spirits—the Earth, Water, Air and Fire spirits. We are not cognizant of the fact because we are not able to descend fully into our etheric body with our Ego. Nevertheless it is always so. Within this etheric body not only does there live the power of the thoughts that we ourselves think, but the influences also of the Nature spirits; these enter in and make themselves felt. When a man has met with these Nature spirits he is able afterwards to tell of some experience he has had which he did not have in his ordinary Ego-consciousness. For it is when he, is in an abnormal condition that man meets the Nature spirits, namely, when the etheric body is to some extent loosened from the physical body.

How can such a thing happen? It can happen in the following way. The etheric body of man is in communion with the whole surrounding etheric world, therefore also with the whole sphere of the Nature spirits. Let us imagine, to take a simple case, that a man is walking along a road. When he is walking along a road in the daytime with his ordinary consciousness, his etheric body is properly in his physical body and he perceives with his Ego-consciousness what one is normally able to perceive with the Ego-consciousness. But now suppose that he is walking along a path by night. When we walk along a path by night, it is generally dark, and this fact will of itself produce in many persons a “creepy” feeling. And just because he gets into this condition, then the peculiar sensations that he experiences enable Lucifer to seize hold of him. His etheric body becomes loosened from the physical body, and then this emancipated etheric body can enter into relation with the surrounding etheric world.

Now let us suppose that the man comes into the vicinity of a churchyard where etheric bodies are still present over the graves of recently deceased persons. In the condition in which he is, with his etheric body loosened, he is perhaps able to perceive something of the thoughts which are still remaining in the etheric bodies of the dead persons. Suppose someone has died only a short time ago leaving debts behind him; he died with the thought that he has incurred debts. Then it can be that this thought is still present in the etheric body of the person after he has died. We do not of course ordinarily perceive the thoughts in the etheric body of a dead human being. But for a man who has come into the condition I have described it might well be possible. He could enter into relation with the etheric body of the other and perceive within it the thought: “I have incurred debts.” And then because this experience strengthens the Luciferic power in him, there arises in him the feeling: “I must pay the debt for him.” He experiences in this way in his etheric body something he would never experience in the physical body in normal life. Such an experience does not happen to us in ordinary human life, and when it comes it makes an extraordinary impression upon our consciousness. For it arouses the knowledge: “I have had a strange and singular experience. I have not had this experience within the body, nor can I ever have it within the body.” We have the feeling quite distinctly that we are somewhere else than in our body, and that is a strange, an unaccustomed feeling. We experience at the same time an overpowering desire to return once more into the body, we long for help to return again into the body.

This feeling of longing to return attracts to us certain elementary Nature spirits for whom this very feeling in us is food and nourishment. They come, because they are attracted by the feeling, “I want to be drawn into my physical body,” and they help us to find the way back to it. If one is asleep in the ordinary way, one finds the way back quite easily. But when one has undergone an experience such as I have described, it is difficult to find the way back. You must not of course imagine that we see the situation as we perceive things in the physical body; no, we see it imaginatively, in pictures. Someone comes to us—it is really a Nature spirit, appearing perhaps in the guise of a shepherd, and gives us the advice: “Go to a certain castle, I will take you there in my wagon,”—or some similar words. The situation may even be still further developed. The body which we have left and outside of which we have had the experience, may assume the appearance of an enchanted castle from which we have to release someone when we return into it. So do we “imaginate” in pictures the longing for the physical body and the help that the Nature spirits bring to us. And then we come back into the physical body—that is to say, we wake up.

People who have had such experiences will tell us that they feel they have in actual reality come into contact in this way with the thoughts of a dead man. They say to themselves: “That feeling I had was not something that was merely in myself, it was no mere dream that I dreamed, it was a feeling that communicated to me something that was taking place in the world outside. It is of course all expressed in pictures, but it does truly correspond to an event.” I will now read to you such a picture, where a man narrates what he has experienced. As you will see, it was an experience somewhat similar to the one of which I have spoken. He describes it as follows. “When I had taken leave of the soldiers I met three men. They wanted to exhume a dead person who owed them three marks. I was filled with compassion and at once absolved the debt, in order that the dead man might rest in peace and not be disturbed in his grave. I walked on a little further. A strange man with pale countenance accosted me, invited me to mount a leaden carriage, and persuaded me to go with him to a castle. In the castle, he said, dwelt a princess, who had declared she would marry only a man who came to her on a carriage of lead. He turned to the driver and said: ‘Drive in the direction of the sunrise.’ Then came a shepherd who said: ‘I am the Count of Ravensburg.’ He ordered the driver to drive faster. We came to a door and we could hear a tumult within. The door was opened. The princess asked the man whence he came and how it had been possible for him to drive in company with that old man—and behold, I saw that he who had led me thither was a spirit. Then I entered in at the door and took possession of the castle.”

That is to say, he came back into his body. There you have the description of just such an experience as I have been speaking of.

And what is such an event, when it happens to someone who then tells others of it? It is a Märchen (a fairy-tale [ see Goethe's Standard of the Soul, by Rudolf Steiner. ]).

You must not imagine that an experience of this nature is the only way in which man comes into relationship with the external etheric world through his etheric body. There is another. And that is, in an activity which is only half conscious, an activity in which the Ego only half participates—namely, the act of Speech. Our speaking is not so conscious as our thinking. It is not the case that speaking is something which belongs to us and which we have in our power. In speech live etheric Powers, and a good part of our speaking is unconscious. The Ego does not reach fully down into speech. When we speak we are in communication through our etheric body with the surrounding etheric world. We learn to think as individuals, but not to speak. We are taught to speak through the fact that our Karma places us into a particular set of circumstances in life. We have already seen how we may come into relation with the Nature spirits in abnormal conditions when the etheric body is loosened, and now we find that inasmuch as we speak and do not merely think silently, we come into relation with the Folk Spirits. The Folk Spirits enter our etheric body and live there—without our being aware of it. This life of the Folk Spirit within the human being really belongs just as little to his fully conscious Ego activity as does the “Märchen” of which I have told you. So much, then, for the activity of Lucifer and Ahriman in man's etheric body.

The Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces enter also into the astral body. When we come to study the astral body of man, we must turn our attention to what is the distinguishing mark of the astral human being as he is on earth—namely, consciousness. In the physical body form and force are the essentials, in the etheric body, movement and life: in the astral body, consciousness. Now in the body of man we have not only one consciousness, but two; the ordinary waking state and the state of sleep. But, strange to say, neither of these two states is entirely natural to us. Natural would be for us an intermediate state between the two, a state which, as a matter of fact, we never really consciously have.

If we were perpetually awake we would scarcely be able to develop in a proper, orderly manner through the various ages of life. Something is always present in us which is less awake than we are in our day-consciousness, and only by virtue of this are we in a position to evolve and develop. Ask yourselves, how much do you expect to be able to evolve through all that you experience and receive in ordinary life? For the most part, we merely satisfy thereby our desire, our curiosity, or our need of sensation. It is not often we act with deliberate intent to place what we experience in waking day life in the service of our development. The truth is, development takes place through the fact that something is continually sleeping in us, even in the daytime. I am not alluding to the habit of dropping off to sleep in the daytime! But when man is wide awake by day, something still remains fast asleep in him, and this it is which brings it about that he does not remain for ever a child, but evolves further.

The ordinary waking state is what comes to consciousness through our astral body. In this ordinary waking state we are, however, too strongly awake, we are too intensely given up to the external world; we are, in fact, quite lost in it. How does this come about?

The reason is that the waking consciousness lives under the influence of Ahriman. Ahriman has great power over our waking consciousness. It is quite different in the case of the sleep consciousness. In sleep consciousness we are too little awake. We are too engrossed in our own evolution; we are so completely and so powerfully within ourselves that all consciousness is obliterated. In sleep consciousness, Lucifer has the upper hand.

This is then how the matter stands with our astral body. When we are awake, Ahriman has the upper hand over Lucifer, and when we are asleep Lucifer has the upper hand over Ahriman. They are in equilibrium only when we dream; there they pull with equal force, they strike a balance between them. The ideas which are called forth by Ahriman in day consciousness and which he causes to harden and crystallize, are dissolved and made to disappear under the influence of Lucifer; everything becomes pictures when Ahriman is no longer busy fixing them in rigid ideas. They melt and become mobile in themselves. A state of equilibrium is induced in a pair of scales by having both scale-pans equally laden; we have, then, not a state of rest but a state of equilibrium. It is the same with the life of man. We have not in man a state of rest, but a state of equilibrium; and the two forces which hold the scales and each of which at certain times brings extra weight to bear, are Lucifer and Ahriman. In waking consciousness Ahriman's side sinks down, in sleep consciousness Lucifer's. Only in the intermediate state, where we dream, are the two scale-pans held in poise, not at rest, but delicately poised in equilibrium.

We can go on to carry our study into still higher regions of human life. Here too we shall find evidence of how Lucifer and Ahriman fill the world with their inter-working. Two ideas play a great part in human life. One is the idea of duty. We might also say, when we consider it from a religious point of view, the idea of commandment or behest. We speak sometimes, do we not, of the “behest of duty.” The other idea, which can be placed over against it, is the idea of right (or rights).

If you will reflect a little on the part played in human life by these two ideas of duty and of right—I mean, the “right” one has to do this or that—you will very soon realize that they are polar opposites, and that men's inclinations are turned now more in the direction of duty, and now again in the direction of right. We live certainly in an age when people are more ready to speak of right than duty. All possible spheres of life claim their rights. We have Workers' Rights, Women's Rights, and so on and so on.

Duty is the opposite idea of right. Our age will be followed by an age when duties will be more regarded than rights, and this will be directly attributable to the influence of the anthroposophical spiritual world-conception. In the future—certainly, in a rather distant future—we shall have movements where less and less emphasis will be laid on the demand for rights and people will inquire more and more as to their duty. The question will rather be: What is our duty as man, as woman, e.g., in this or that situation of life? The present epoch that demands rights will be succeeded by an epoch that asks after duties.

We said that right and duty play into life like two polar opposites. Whenever a man turns his thought and attention to duty, he looks right away from himself. Kant has given great and grand expression to this fact. He pictures duty as a lofty goddess, to whom man looks up: “Duty, thou great and exalted Name, thou has nought to do with fondness nor with favor; all that thou requirest is to submit thyself and serve.” Man beholds duty, so to say, raying down upon him from regions of the spiritual world. In a religious sense, he feels duty as an impulse laid upon him by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. And when man surrenders himself to duty, he goes right out of himself. It is in this going-out-of-himself in the feeling of duty, that man can begin to learn how to get beyond his ordinary self.

There is, however, a danger to man in all such going-out-of his ordinary self, in all such endeavor after spiritualization. If man were to give himself up entirely to this, he would lose the ground from under his feet, he would lose his feeling of gravity. Therefore he must endeavor, when he surrenders himself to duty, to find within himself at the same time something that shall give him weight, so that he may keep his sense of gravity. Schiller expressed it very beautifully when he said that man has the best relation to duty when he learns to love duty.

This is really saying a great deal. When a man speaks of learning to love duty he no longer merely surrenders himself to duty; he rises out of himself, taking with him the love with which otherwise he loves himself. The love that lives in his body, in his egoism—this love he takes out of himself, and loves with it duty. So long as it is self-love, so long is it a Luciferic force. But when man takes this self-love out of himself and loves duty in the way that otherwise he loves only himself, he releases Lucifer. He takes Lucifer into the realm of duty and gives him, so to say, a justified existence in the impulse and feeling of duty.

If, on the other hand, a man cannot do this, if he cannot draw forth the love out of himself and offer it to duty, then he will continue to love only himself; and since he cannot love duty, he is obliged to subject himself to her, he becomes a slave to duty, he becomes, as we say, a man who “does his duty,”—hard and cold and uninspired. He hardens in an Ahrimanic sense, notwithstanding that he follows duty devotedly.

You see how duty stands, as it were, in a midway position. If we surrender ourselves to her, she annuls our freedom, we become her slaves, because Ahriman draws near on the one hand with his impulses. But if we bring ourselves—if we bring all our power of self-love—as an offering and offer it up to duty, bringing thus to duty the Luciferic warmth of love, then the result is that, through the state of balance induced in this way between Lucifer and Ahriman, we find a right relation to duty.

Thus we are truly, in a certain connection, redeemers of Lucifer. When we begin to be able to love our duty, then the moment has come when we can help towards the redemption and release of the Luciferic powers; we set free the Lucifer forces which are held in us as by a charm, and lead them forth to fight with Ahriman. We release the imprisoned Lucifer (imprisoned in self-love) when we learn to love our duty.

Schiller sets himself this very question in his “Aesthetic Letters”: How is it possible to rise above slavery to duty and attain to love of duty? Of course he does not use the expressions “Lucifer” and “Ahriman,” because he does not see the problem in its cosmic aspect. Nevertheless these wonderful letters of Schiller on the Aesthetic Education of Man are directly translatable into Spiritual Science.

Right, on the other hand, immediately shows that it is united with Lucifer. Man does not need to learn to love his right, he loves it already! It is perfectly natural that he should do so. It is natural for Lucifer to be connected with right in man's feeling—man feels that this or that is his right. Everywhere that right asserts itself, Lucifer is speaking there too. It is very often only too evident how Lucifer makes his voice heard in the demand of some right. Here it is a question of calling in something that can be set over against right. We have to call in Ahriman to create a polarity to Lucifer. And this we can do by cultivating the polar opposite of love.

Love is inner fire, its opposite is calmness—the quiet acceptance of what happens in the world. As soon as we approach our right with this quiet and calm interest we call in Ahriman. It is not easy to recognize him here, for we set him free from his merely external existence, we summon him into ourselves and warm him with the love that is already united with right. Calm and peace of mind have the coldness of Ahriman; in the quiet understanding of what is in the world, we unite our warmth and our understanding love with the coldness that is in the world outside. And then we release Ahriman, when we meet what has come about with understanding, when we do not merely demand our rights out of self-love but understand what has come about in the world. This is the eternal battle that is waged between Lucifer and Ahriman. On the one hand man learns in a conservative way to understand the conditions that are in the world, he learns to understand how they have come about from cosmic, karmic necessity. That is one aspect of the matter. The other aspect is that he feels in his heart the urge to make new conditions possible, continually to let the old give place to the new. This is the revolutionary current in human life. In the revolutionary stream lives Lucifer, in the conservative stream Ahriman, and man in his life of right lives in the midst between these two poles.

Thus we see how right and duty show each of them a state of equilibrium between Lucifer and Ahriman. We only learn to understand how the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body manifest in life, or how duty and right come to expression in the life of duty and the life of right, when we learn to recognize the interplay of great spiritual Powers, above all of those spiritual Powers who bring about the state of equilibrium.

For just as what is in the external world stands under the influence of the spiritual forces that bring about balance, so does our moral life too belong in a world of polar opposites. The whole morale of human conduct, the whole ethical life of man with its poles of right and duty, only become comprehensible when we take into account the instreaming forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. And when we look at the life of man in history, that takes its course in an alternation between, on the one hand, revolutionary and warlike—that is to say, Luciferic—movements, and on the other hand, conservative—that is, Ahrimanic—movements, there too we find a condition of balance between Lucifer and Ahriman. In no other way is the world to be understood than by recognizing in it these opposite forces and influences.

What we behold in the world outside is dualistic, it shows itself to us in opposites. And in this connection Manichaeism, correctly understood, has its complete justification. How Manichaeism is fully justified even within a spiritual monism—of that we shall have more to say in the future. The object I have had in view in these lectures is to show you how the whole world is a result of the working of balance.

Particularly evident is the result of the working of balance in the life of art. With this as our starting-point we will go on in later lectures to consider the arts and their evolution in the world, and the part that has been taken by different spiritual Powers in the evolution of the life of art among mankind.

If you recall the talks we had in connection with the evolution of the Earth through the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, you will know that at each of these evolutionary stages, one particular kind of being from among what we would now call the higher hierarchies, attained their human level, as it were. We know that during the ancient Saturn period the Spirits of Personality, the Primal Beginnings, the Archai reached their human level, during the Sun period the Archangels, during the Moon period the Angels and during the Earth period, mankind.

You will also have seen from our talks on evolution, that each level of beings that reaches a certain stage of development, received preparation in advance. We know that the human being was being prepared throughout the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods, and that what we nowadays call man's completed physical body has been evolving since the Saturn period, the etheric body since the Sun period, the astral body since the Moon period, and that the ego was only added to these during the Earth period; that is, all the beings that are at a certain level are prepared as a whole.

Now you may be anxious to know whether, in our present period of evolution, beings are being prepared to attain their human level in the Jupiter period. Another thing you know is that during the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods—you can look it up in my book Occult Science—the spirits of the higher hierarchies took part in the preparation of humanity. There is a description of how the Angels, Archangels and Archai were involved in the development of human beings, and therefore an obvious question is whether human beings, during their Earth existence, are possibly involved in preparing the beings who will reach their human level during the Jupiter period?

This question is certainly a vital one for every feeling person, if his feelings have been inspired by spiritual science, as we have been describing. For it could be the case that human behaviour in general during the course of Earth evolution could either help, or omit to help, the beings who might attain their human level on Jupiter. We might say, ‘What could be worse than behaving in such a way during Earth evolution as to make it impossible for proper Jupiter beings to arise through our deeds?’ We must of course take it for granted, if we want to talk about these things, that there is a certain goodwill, for these are truly important secrets of initiation, the kind of initiation secrets that modern science detests as a matter of course. One certainly has to prepare one's feeling to be able to look at the attitude modern science is bound to have to the real truths of life.

In the previous lectures I have already tried to say a little about the way modern science necessarily relates to life. It cannot make direct contact with the secrets of life. It cannot even want to; it must not even pretend to want to reach these secrets of life. It is surely a good thing to make hard-boiled eggs for the people who like eating eggs when they are hard-boiled, and hard-boiled eggs are useful for those who like them. But if someone wanted to go and say that he takes the eggs away from the hens to hard-boil them, and then lets them hatch them after that, he would be doing something absurd. A person does exactly the same thing as far as the cosmos is concerned, if he sets out to solve the secrets of the cosmos and wants to use modern science for it; this is the same attitude as wanting to hatch hard-boiled eggs that have nothing left in them to be hatched out.

I will show you by means of a comparison just how misleading this science is that is bound up with the whole way of modern thinking, particularly when it approaches the real riddles of life. If somebody wants to hold forth about whether science is helpful or harmful he will usually start off by asking, ‘Is science right about this or that?’ And if he can prove that it is right in one or another instance, he will swear by it as a matter of course.

But this is just what we have to get away from, this attaching so much importance to the question of whether what science says is right or not. We must reach the point of seeing that this is not the main thing when it comes to the solving of riddles of life. If someone sees a horse-drawn cart with a man in it, he will be quite right in saying that the horses are pulling this person in the cart, and drawing him along behind them. This is correct, of course. And anyone who wanted to say that the horses were not drawing the cart and the man sitting in it, would obviously be wrong. But it is also true that the man sitting in the cart, through the way he guides the horses, is controlling the direction in which they should pull him; and that is surely the more important aspect from the point of view of the destination. Modern science can be compared to the statement of the person who denies that the man in the cart is guiding the horses, and insists that the horses are drawing the man in the cart.

If you think the comparison through in detail, you will get the right idea about the relation of modern science to modern research into truth. I have to say these things over and over again, because a person who bases himself on our world outlook, must come more and more into the position where he can defend and protect our spiritual-scientific outlook against the attacks of the modern world outlook. But you will be able to do this only if you enlighten yourself as to the relation of modern external science to a genuine research into truth. You must always approach spiritual-scientific questions with a certain attitude and a certain kind of feeling, otherwise you will not make the proper connection with them.

Now our question concerning the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter is connected in very truth with the deepest questions of man's Earth evolution. There is something in our Earth evolution that has always been a philosophical problem, namely the relation between man's moral behaviour and his natural existence. As an earthly being, man has to decide to what extent he is the kind of being who is ruled by his instincts, has to obey and satisfy them, and is at the mercy of his instincts and their satisfaction, because the laws of nature simply insist on their being satisfied. That is one side of human nature. In this respect we say, ‘We do these things because we have to. We have to eat and we have to sleep.’ But there is another realm of human conduct on this earth, a realm in which we cannot say ‘must’, for it would lose its whole significance if we were to say ‘must’ here. This is the wide realm of ‘shall’, a realm where we feel that we have to follow a purely spiritual impulse as distinct from instinct and everything arising out of ourselves on a natural level. ‘You shall’ never speaks to us from out of our instincts but directs us in a purely spiritual way. ‘You shall’ comprises the realm of our moral obligations.

There are some philosophers who cannot find any connection between what is implied by the ‘you shall’ and ‘you must’. And our present age that is almost bogged down in materialism, especially where moral life is concerned, and will get more and more bogged down, would like to turn all the ‘you shalls’ into ‘you musts’. We are heading for times where, in this respect, the turning of ‘you shall’ into ‘you must’ will be blazoned forth with a certain amount of pride, and actually called psychology. Terrible aspects present themselves if we look at what has begun to develop in the field of criminal psychology. It is already evident that the human being is being conceived of in such a way that people do not ask whether he has overstepped a ‘you shall’, but try to prove that he was driven to one or another destructive act out of the necessity of his nature. Strange experiments are on the increase to define crime merely as a particular case of illness. All these things arise out of a certain materialistic lack of clarity in our times, regarding the relation of ‘you shall’ to ‘you must’.

What does this ‘you shall’, or in other words the categorical imperative, actually signify within the whole framework of human existence? Whoever obeys the ‘you shall’ is known to carry out a moral action. Whoever does not obey the ‘you shall’ commits an immoral action. This is of course a trivial truth. But now let us attempt to look at ‘moral’ and ‘immoral’, not only with regard to the external maya of the physical plane, but with regard to the truth and what is actually behind physical maya. Here the moral element corresponding to the ‘you shall’ appears to initiation science as something that hits you in the eye, spiritually, to put it rather crudely. If you look at a person—these truths which the materialistic outlook detests have to be told sometime—if you look at someone in certain temperature and weather conditions—you see this even better in horses, but we are not speaking about horses now—you will see him breathing out, and the breath becoming visible as vapour in the air. Obviously as far as materialistic science is concerned, this breath a person exhales, disperses and dissolves and has no further significance. But it has significance for a person who follows up the phenomena of life with initiation science, for he sees in the patterns of the breath the exact traces of the moral or immoral conduct of the person. A person's moral or immoral behaviour can be seen in the steamy breath, and the breath of a person who is morally inclined is quite different from the breath of a person who is inclined to immorality. You know, with regard to various things in the human being, the more delicate qualities can only be seen in the more delicate parts of the etheric and astral aura. But man's moral and immoral nature in the ordinary sense of the word is actually visible in the etheric-astral content of the steamy breath. The physical part of it dissolves. But what is incorporated in it does not dissolve; for it contains a genie, which, in the case of steamy breath, has a physical, an etheric and an astral part, only the physical is not earthly, just watery. Something that has an extremely differentiated form can be seen in this breath.

Deeds which arise out of love show something quite different from deeds which are done out of enthusiasm, a creative urge or the urge for perfection, for instance. But in every case the form in the breath reminds one of beings that do not exist on earth at all as yet. These beings are a preparation for the ones that will reach their human stage on Jupiter. Their forms are very changeable and will pass through further changes in the future, for these beings are the first advance shadow images of the beings who will reach the human level on Jupiter.

In a certain way we also owe our existence to the exhalation of the Angeloi on the Moon, and it is one of the moving experiences of spiritual life to know that Jupiter human beings of the future will evolve out of what we breathe out in present ages. If we turn to the Bible with such knowledge in mind, and read the opening words, we can tell ourselves, ‘Now we begin to understand what is meant when it says that the Elohim formed earthly man by breathing into him.’

I will confess that I would never have understood the part about the Elohim breathing the living being of man into his mouth and nose, if I had not known beforehand that the breath of earthly human beings also contains the first germinal beginnings of the beings who will become human on Jupiter. But Jupiter human beings can only arise from the kind of breath that owes its existence to deeds that obey the ‘you shall’, and which are therefore moral actions.

Thus we see that through our earthly morality we take a creative part in the whole cosmic order. It is indeed a creative power, and we can see that spiritual science gives us a strong impulse for moral action by telling us that we are working against the creation of Jupiter human beings, if we do not act in a moral way on earth. This gives morality a very real value and makes its existence worthwhile. Our human conduct is very strongly formed by what we acquire through spiritual science, especially as we become acquainted with real secrets regarding the cosmos.

I have already made references to similar things and mentioned at various times that language also symbolises man's own future creativity. I do not wish to dwell on this today though, but just wanted to show you, to begin with, what significance moral behaviour has in the whole of the cosmos.

You could now ask, ‘What about immoral behaviour?’ Immoral behaviour also comes to expression in the formation of the breath. But immoral behaviour imprints a demonic form on it. Demons are born through man's immoral conduct. Let us look at the difference between the demons that arise through immoral behaviour and the spiritual beings—spiritual in so far as they only have a watery existence on earth—the spiritual forms that are created by moral actions.

These beings that incarnate as far as a transitory watery existence and arise from moral conduct, are the kind of beings that have an astral, an etheric and finally a physical body condensed to the level of wateriness, just as, in the Moon period, we had an etheric, an astral and a physical body, and this physical body was also only condensed to a wateriness. We were more or less like that, even if not exactly the same. And this creature, with a physical body, etheric body and astral body that arises out of moral actions, is predestined to receive an ego, just as in the Moon period our physical, etheric and astral body were predestined to receive an ego. They have the basis for receiving an ego, and beings of this kind are qualified to undergo a regular progressive evolution in the cosmos. The other beings, the demons created out of immoral actions, also have an astral body, an etheric body and a physical body, at the watery stage, of course, but they do not have the basis for developing an ego. They are born without heads, as it were. Instead of taking up the basis for progressing along a regular evolutionary path to the Jupiter existence, they reject this basis. By doing so they fall victim to the fate of dropping out of evolution. But this only increases the hordes of luciferic beings, for they come under their power. As they cannot progress in a regular way they have to become parasites. This is what happens to all the beings that reject their normal path; they have to attach themselves to others in order to move on. These beings that arise through immoral actions have the particular inclination to be parasites in human evolution on earth under Lucifer's leadership, and to seize hold of the evolution of the human being before he makes his physical entry into the world. They attack man during the embryonic period and share his existence between conception and birth. Some of these beings, if they are strong enough, can continue to accompany the human being after birth, as seen in the phenomena of children who are possessed.

What is brought about by the criminal demon parasites attached to unborn children is the cause of the deterioration of the generation succession, which are not as they would be if these demons did not exist. There are various reasons for the decline of families, tribes, peoples and nations, but one of them is the existence of these criminal demon parasites during man's embryonic period.

These things play a great part in Earth evolution as a whole, and they bring us into contact with deep secrets of human existence. This is often the cause of people acquiring certain prejudices and points of view before they are born into earth existence. And people are tormented by doubts and uncertainties in life and all kinds of other things, because of these demonic parasites.

There is not much more these beings can do with the human being once his ego has entered and made itself felt, but they prey on him all the more before he is born or during his earliest years. Thus we see that evil actions have a significant effect in the cosmos, too, and work creatively, but their creativity works in the direction of the ancient Moon existence. For what man passes through in the embryonic period when these demonic beings can prey on him, is basically the heritage of the old Moon period, which makes its appearance in subconscious, instinctive behaviour. Something that even physical science preserves an instinct for is that, in older and better times, man's embryonic period was not calculated according to ordinary months but lunar months, therefore it speaks of ten lunar months, and knows certain other things, too, concerning the connection of embryonic development with the phases of the moon.

So we see that our Earth evolution contains two tendencies: good deeds that contain the impulse to work creatively on Earth in preparation for Jupiter, so that man's successor on the human level can come into being. But evil deeds have also brought into our evolution the tendency to drag the Earth back again to the ancient Moon period and make it dependent on everything to do with the subconscious. If you think about it, you will find a great number of things that are connected with these subconscious impulses; in fact, there are far more of these subconscious impulses in materialistic humanity of modern times, than there were in bygone ages when people were less materialistic.

I believe that the kind of things I have been telling you about again today will make you feel what a deep impression spiritual science can make on your outlook on life, and that it really and truly will not only give you theoretical knowledge but will be capable of giving human life a new direction. A time will come when life will become quite chaotic if people do not use the chance of giving it a new direction out of spiritual-scientific knowledge. Man must get beyond a knowledge that is restricted to the physical body. Our materialistic age does not want knowledge of any other sort than the kind that is restricted to the physical body. But man has to lift his knowledge out of the physical body. And what we know today as the first exercises in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds will gradually—though ‘gradually’ will be quite a long time—they will gradually turn into something he does naturally, something he will feel to be second nature. Particularly what we call thought concentration will come naturally to people.

People will more and more feel the need really to concentrate their thoughts, to focus their whole soul activity on sharply defined thoughts which they place in front of their consciousness. Whilst they would otherwise let their senses roam from one thing or fact to another, they will more and more often direct their thought life to certain things of their own choosing; even if only for a short time, they will concentrate on a definite thought, so as to focus their soul activity on this thought. They will then discover something that a lot of you know very well. Everyone makes a certain discovery in the course of concentrating. If we place a thought in the centre of our consciousness and focus all our soul activity on it, we shall notice the thought growing stronger and stronger. Certainly it does. But then there comes a point where it does not get stronger any more but gets weaker and fades away. This is an experience lots of you will have had. The thought has to fade away, it has, as it were, to die away inside. For the kind of thoughts we have to begin with and the way we think, are through the instrument of the physical body, and we concentrate the kind of thinking we do by means of the instrument of the physical body until the moment the thought dies, then we slip out of the physical body.

We would go into the unconscious altogether if, parallel with this concentration exercise, we did not attempt to do something else to maintain our consciousness when we have slipped out of our physical body. What we have to do to maintain our consciousness when we are outside, is what we call leading a calm and composed life and accepting the things of the world calmly. We can do even more than accept things calmly. We can take seriously a theory we know so well, namely the concept of karma. What do I mean?

A person is not at all inclined, to start with, to take the idea of karma really seriously. If he has only a small mishap that hurts him, or anything at all happens to him, he sometimes gets furious, but at any rate he has antipathy for it. We encounter what we call our destiny with sympathy or antipathy. It cannot be any different in ordinary life, as it is absolutely essential that we feel sympathy for some of the occurrences of destiny and antipathy for others. To us, destiny is something that meets us from outside.

If we take the idea of karma seriously, we must really recognise our ego in our destiny and realise we ourselves are active in what happens to us through destiny; that we are the actual agents. When someone offends us it is certainly difficult to believe we are hidden behind the offender. For it may be necessary in physical life to punish the offence. But we must always keep a corner within us where we admit to ourselves, ‘Even when someone offends you it is you offending yourself, when someone hits you it is you hitting yourself, when unpleasant blows of destiny hit you, it is you, yourself, dealing yourself these blows.’ We forget that we are not only within our skin but are in our destiny; we forget we are within all the so-called chance happenings of our destiny.

It is very difficult really to acquire the attitude that one's own ego brings one one's destiny. But it is true that with our own ego we bring ourselves our destiny, and we get the impulses for this in the life between death and a new birth according to our earlier incarnations, so that we can bring ourselves our destiny. We have to unite with our destiny and, instead of warding off hard blows of destiny with antipathy, tell ourselves more and more often, ‘Through having this blow of destiny, that is, through meeting yourself in this blow of destiny, you are making yourself stronger, more vigorous and robust.’ It is more difficult to form a union with your destiny in this way than to resist it, but what we lose when our thought passes away can only be regained by drawing into ourselves, like this, what is outside us. We cannot stay in what is within our skin if the thought fades when we concentrate on it, but it will carry us out of ourselves if we have taken hold of our destiny, our karma, in the true sense. We thus awaken ourselves again. The thought dies, but we carry forth the identification we have grasped between our ego and our destiny, and it carries us about the world.

This composure with respect to our destiny, this sincere acceptance of destiny, is what gives us existence when we are outside our body. Obviously this does not need to alter our life on the physical plane. We cannot always do that. But the attitude we have to acquire in a corner of our soul must be there, for the moments when we really want to be able to live consciously outside our body.

Two maxims can be our guiding principles and can mean a very great deal to us. The first of these to impress upon our minds is:

Strive for the dying away of the thought in the universe.

For the thought becomes a living force outside, only when it dies away in the universe. Yet we cannot unite ourselves with this living force unless we work at the content of the second maxim:

Strive for the resurrection of destiny in the ‘I’.

If you achieve this, you unite what has been reborn in the thought with the resurrected ego outside you.

There is a great deal in human nature, though, which makes it difficult to progress in the spirit of these maxims. It is particularly hard to look at the relationship between inner and outer in the right way. The more ethics we can learn from spiritual science in this connection, the better. And we can learn ethics from it in so far as certain ethical concepts acquire life and blood for the first time through what spiritual science can bring to them.

For instance, there are people who are perpetually complaining about other people and the awful things they do to them. They go as far as to say that other people persecute them. Everything of this kind is always connected with the other pole of human nature, you only have to observe life in the right way, which means according to spiritual science as properly understood. Of course there is good reason to complain about unkindness, but in spite of this you will always find, if you go through life with vision that has been made somewhat clairvoyant by spiritual science, that most of these complaints come from egoists, and that the suspicion that everyone wants to be nasty to them arises most often in egoistic natures, whereas a loving disposition will not readily suspect persecution, nor that people are trying to harm them in all kinds of ways, and so on.

When it is put into words like this it is easy to agree with it in theory. I am actually convinced that most people will admit to it theoretically, if they stop to think about it. But to live accordingly is what matters.

Now you may ask, ‘How do we live accordingly?’ And again the answer must be, ‘You must actually live with the spiritual science you are striving for, live with it as much as you can.’ That is the point. That is why spiritual science is not given in compendiums or short sketches, but we are trying to make spiritual science a force of life in which we can live, and from which we can constantly draw stimulating impulses.

This was the main reason that led us to make the Goetheanum building a kind of focal point for this living anthroposophical striving, for as I mentioned yesterday, the Goetheanum building, in its form, and in the whole way it has been built, has a bodily, a soul and a spiritual nature in a spiritual-scientific sense. It is itself a token of the fact that we are striving according to impulses from the spiritual world to bring into human evolution what it so badly needs, if the immediate future is to go the way it should. The very fact that you can perceive the being of spiritual science in the forms of the Goetheanum building makes it a sort of centre, a focal point around which the kind of anthroposophical striving can crystallise, that has to become an essential part of the evolution of humanity.

We probably often say that we live in troubled times and that many things exist today which stand out in stark contrast to spiritual science. Yet our karma has allowed us to come so far as to overcome, as it were, the material basis out of which our Goetheanum is built, so that it can be a token of spiritual science even in its external form.

Each one of us can acknowledge this to himself, as I often do, especially in the difficult times we are going through in face of the strong attacks being made on anthroposophy at present. Some people can question how much personal progress we have made on our part towards what ought to be crystallising around the Goetheanum. Even if one or another individual cannot be physically present any more in the work being done on the physical plane, the fact that the building is there, and that our karma has brought it to us, is an important step forward. And if we bear in mind that people with as deep an understanding of spiritual science as Christian Morgenstern, for example, remain united, even after physical death, with what the Goetheanum is intended to be, then our building can also be a token in our time of the kind of activity within our spiritual movement that is not concerned with boundaries between what is usually called life and death.

We can really feel united with this building, and therefore it can stimulate us to think the kind of serious thoughts which it is quite natural for us to think at a time like ours, when materialism is at its peak. Even if this building finds one or another individual co-operating only as a spiritual being, the building will be important for the continuation of our movement. This, you will understand, is said only to show you that our movement has a seriousness that goes beyond life and death.

We have encountered this seriousness to a special degree this week. And if one thing happens, why should not other things be able to happen soon, too? It is extraordinarily difficult to achieve what I have spoken about and mentioned again this time. I have stressed that I give the strictest attention to choosing and finding exactly the right words for which I can be fully answerable to the spiritual worlds. So it is to be desired that these words shall be heard and received in the same spirit.

Times will certainly come when people will be able to be more light-hearted with regard to the anthroposophical movement. But now, right at the beginning, we must get used to taking things very, very seriously. A while ago I talked here about occult research, among other things, because I thought it would be of use to some of you. I was mainly describing facts. I thought these would be of help to one or another of you in understanding our present difficult times. But that which I presented with this intention has not been treated with sufficient caution—there are one or two exceptions, of course, but I am right in saying that not everyone has treated it with the necessary discretion and regard, and it has transpired that it was repeated here and there in a form that conveyed exactly the opposite of what I said here.

If I just think of what has been made out of something that cannot have been misunderstood because it is already in print, regarding the classification of the peoples of Europe according to sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness soul and the ego, which was truly not meant to express a superiority; if I think of the statements that have gone out into the world and the opposition and bad feeling they have aroused, it is easy to see that the principle of taking things quite exactly, even in such difficult cases, has not been given due consideration. If, for instance, I have ever said that the ego activity which is there among the European peoples ought to be effective in organising the European population, I would have been talking nonsense. Yet this is one of the things that has been made public, and it creates the most fearful misunderstandings and bad feelings.

So I am duty-bound not to say a word about these things in my lectures for the time being. I must desist from any mention of them, and whereas everybody else is free to speak about it, it has become impossible for me to do so because of the way people have misconstrued what I said.

All these things go to show that we should look at ourselves and see if we cannot take the anthroposophical movement absolutely seriously. For sometimes we completely fail to notice how much feeling of responsibility there is for each sentence of the communications of genuine spiritual research, when the matter is taken seriously. To stir up emotions is certainly not what spiritual science is for, nor to oppose or pacify them. And if anyone says these things are communicated in order to oppose somebody, he ought to ask himself whether the right or wrong use has been made of that which has been communicated with the utmost objectivity and reverent love of truth. These are things which add even more pain to my occult experiences, which are already painful enough. Even if I cannot mention certain important things, and a lot has to be omitted which I thought we could investigate soon, there are still some important and substantial matters left for us to discuss during our time together.

Have you perhaps noticed something, gentlemen?

Mr. Dollinger: I wanted to ask about the fate of human beings. Millions of people died in the great world war. Did they bring this with them into the world as their fate? What does it look like in the spiritual world in connection with world development?

Dr. Steiner: We can also talk about this in connection with other things, because it is absolutely necessary that one does not simply explain things in anthroposophy as people sometimes do. What is said must be scientific. Now, with this in mind, I would like to tell you something that will help us to understand how the great catastrophe, this terrible world misery of so many people, could have been possible at all. Nowadays, people no longer pay attention to how one person is actually connected to another. It is the case that today all people actually stand isolated in the world. Even if, out of habit or some lingering superstition, you know and observe the things I have told you about in the last lesson, you usually explain them wrongly.

Now I want to tell you a simple story that can show you how today no one even considers the fact that one person is connected to another in any way. Once upon a time, the following occurred, which is well documented, like a scientific fact. In one family, a younger family member, an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old girl, was ill, not so ill that she was bedridden, but she had to lie down again and again. Now, for a while, her mother was with her, taking care of her. She was lying on the sofa, so her mother was caring for her. When she had almost fallen asleep, her mother went into another room and read something out of a book to her husband and other family members. It was in a room quite a distance from the one where the sick woman was lying.

The sick woman now had the following realization. When her mother had gone out the door, she suddenly had the urge to get up. She got up and followed her mother through two rooms into the third room, where she found her reading. She was extremely surprised that they were not at all surprised. The sick woman, who could hardly walk and had just been left asleep, now appeared in the room where the mother only wanted to be for a while because she also wanted to take care of the others. She was a bit strangely touched by the fact that they remained completely calm. Now the mother, who was reading, suddenly said: “But now I have to see what is wrong with my daughter!” — and went out of the room. But the daughter followed. The mother went through these two rooms again and found the daughter lying on the sofa, but terribly pale. She did not speak to her at first. But then, when she spoke to her, the daughter did not answer, she was very pale. So the daughter had always followed her mother and now she saw her mother walking along and she, the daughter, saw herself lying on the sofa. And the daughter was again very surprised about it, first that she saw herself lying on the sofa, secondly that the mother was addressing her. At that moment it is as if the daughter receives a terrible blow, and what is lying on the sofa becomes of a slightly better complexion, and the matter is back to the old one.

This is a well-established story; the event actually took place. But now all kinds of people are coming who want to explain it. Yes, they then explain it as follows, for example: Well, this daughter also has an astral body in addition to her physical body. People talked about the astral body until the 16th century, that is, until four hundred years ago, just as we talk about the nose or the ear. But that is not something that has been preserved to this day; it has been generally forgotten. So those people can talk about the astral body and can say: Well, the astral body went out, walked around the rooms, experienced what the others were reading and so on, went back in and slipped in at the moment the mother addressed the girl.

But, gentlemen, you must realize that when you explain it this way, you explain it as if there were a second physical person inside you, as if there were a circle around you, and as if you could slip out of it and go for a walk like a physical person. It is a strong superstition to explain it in this way. This superstition is very common among learned people today, otherwise things like those of Oliver Lodge, which I have told you, would not happen. It always depends on knowing what really happened there.

Now, what really happened is as follows. The mother is sitting with her daughter and caring for her. Right, something is taking place that is called loving care, and the daughter is very, very comfortable being cared for by her mother. She feels her mother's love. At such a moment, gentlemen, when one feels the love of the other so strongly and is also very weak, the strange thing happens that one no longer thinks with one's own astral body. It becomes dull and the astral body of the other person gains power over one's own astral body. Then it even happens that one begins to think with the thoughts of the other person who is next to one. Now it so happened that while the mother was still caring for the daughter, this feeling that developed was transferred to the daughter in such a way that the daughter felt and thought exactly like her mother. Now the mother is leaving. Just as a ball that I push then rolls away, so the daughter now thinks not with her own thoughts, but with the thoughts of the mother. And while the mother goes through the two rooms, the daughter always thinks with the thoughts of the mother. And while the mother reads aloud, the daughter thinks with the thoughts of the mother.

So the daughter naturally remains lying quietly on the sofa, but she is constantly thinking with her mother's thoughts. And when the mother then becomes restless, going back again, the daughter thinks, she also goes back. And now you need not be surprised that the daughter has turned pale. Because just consider: if you lie as if in a deep swoon for a while, you will also turn pale. Because something like that naturally causes a faint-like state when you think with the thoughts of the other person. And when the mother returns, it has the effect on the daughter that she is shaken and can have her own thoughts again. So you see, the correct explanation in this case is that a person has an extraordinarily strong effect on the other, especially in his spiritual part. But this occurs especially when the person upon whom the effect is being exerted is himself very weak. If he cannot develop strength of soul himself, then the strength of soul of the other person can very easily have an influence on him.

But that is how it is in life in general. Often we do not even think about the great influence people have on each other. Do you think that when someone tells you something and you believe it, that you always have reasons, reasonable reasons, that convince you? That is not true at all. If you like someone, you believe them more than you believe someone you hate. The story is that the soul of one person has an extremely strong influence on the soul of another person. So you have to say to yourself: I have to know how strongly one person influences another. I have to know exactly how things are with spiritual things if I want to talk about them at all.

I will now give you another example, which I am telling you about for a specific reason. Because someone could say: Yes, Dr. Steiner does not believe at all that a person can step out of themselves, he only believes that one person can influence another. — No, I just gave you an example where you could see very clearly how one person influenced another, here the mother influenced the daughter.

Now another example where there can be no question of one person having been influenced. Two students live together in a room. That happens to students all the time. One is a math student, the other is a philology student and understands nothing about math, understands nothing about math at all. But now, one evening, they are working away furiously, as they say in student slang, one with his Latin grammar, the other with his arithmetic problem that he wants to solve and just can't figure out. He can't do anything. The one with the language is doing reasonably well and goes to bed quite satisfied. But the math student doesn't go to bed satisfied, because he hasn't mastered his task. With languages, you usually don't know whether you have mastered something or not. At most, you make mistakes, but you think they are right. In mathematics, however, if you haven't mastered anything, nothing comes of it. That's the difference. Well, they go to bed; so at around half past twelve or twelve o'clock, the two go to bed.

When it is about three o'clock, the math student — the language student has looked at the clock — gets up, sits down at his desk again and starts calculating, calculating, calculating. The language student is extremely surprised, but he has enough presence of mind to wait quietly and see what happens. The other calculates, calculates, then gets up from his chair again, lies down in bed and continues sleeping.

At eight o'clock the next morning, they both get up. The math student says: Gosh, I have a real headache today, like when we had a few drinks the whole evening, and we were at home! The other one said: That doesn't surprise me! Why did you get up during the night and work? - What, I worked? That didn't even occur to me! I just laid in bed the whole night, - says the math student. “But you did get up!” says the other. ‘You picked up the pencil and did the sums, over and over!’ ‘Well,’ says the first student, ‘that's not the point!’ ‘Well, let's have a look,’ says the language student. ‘It must say what you wrote!’ The math student checks. The whole calculation was there, everything he hadn't been able to do that evening was done.

Now you see, there you have an example where there is absolutely no question that the other person did not cheat, because he would not have been able to solve the problem. He was merely a student of languages and, furthermore, he saw how everything went. So the person in question, without knowing it himself, got up and solved the whole calculation. So there is no question of any kind of influence from someone else. The person in question actually got up during the night.

But now, when you explain this, something very strange comes out. You see, as you know, we first have our physical body, then the etheric body, the astral body and the ego body. I call everything a “body”; of course they are not external bodies, but I call these four parts of the human being “bodies”. Now, gentlemen, when we sleep, only our physical body and etheric body are in bed; the astral body and the ego body are outside. We see them around the physical body and etheric body. I have already explained all this to you. This is what happened to the math student. He goes to bed. He can sleep well, so he brings his astral body and his ego body out, but he is still disturbed by the fact that he has not solved his arithmetic problem. If the astral body and the ego body had now slipped into his physical body and into his ether body, then he would have woken up and would have been unable to do anything again, probably not solving the task again. But the astral body and the ego body did not do that at all; instead, the restlessness into which he fell only made him puff. The astral body can puff, it can even puff the skin a little. But that can only happen through the air, not physically, because the astral body is not physical. But it can set the air in motion. And that has a particular effect on the eyes, something on the ears, especially on the nose and mouth. Wherever there are sensory organs, this puff of the astral body has a very strong effect. So the student goes to bed, but his astral body keeps pushing from the outside, but does not enter. But because it is pushing, the physical body with the etheric body automatically feels pushed like a machine to get up. However, the astral body remains outside, because if it had been inside, the student would have become conscious. So he sits down. It does not even occur to his astral body and his ego to enter. Yes, who is doing the calculating now? Now the physical body and the etheric body are doing the calculating, and the etheric body is capable of doing the whole calculation, which it cannot do if the astral body and the ego are inside.

From this you can see, gentlemen, that you are all much cleverer in your etheric body than in your astral body and in your ego. If you could do everything you can do in your etheric body, then you would be clever chaps! Because the whole point of learning is actually to bring up what we already have in our etheric body into our astral body.

So what actually happened to the math student? You know, in the old days there were almost no teetotallers or anti-alcoholics among students, but they usually drank quite a lot. And so the two guys didn't just drink every night, they also sat in pubs a lot, and as a result — through the influence of alcohol on the blood — the astral body was ruined. The etheric body was less ruined. And the consequence of this was that the student of arithmetic would have been able to solve the problem quite well if he had gone to the pub less, but because he had so strongly influenced his astral body, he could not solve the problem while awake. He first had to get rid of the corrupted astral body; then he could sit down at the table and his ether body, which had remained cleverer, solved the arithmetic problem. So we can do with the etheric body precisely what the mind does. We cannot love with the etheric body; that has to be done by the astral body, but everything that the mind does, can be done with the etheric body. So we can say: This example shows us very clearly that there is no influence from another side, but that the student of arithmetic is only dealing with himself.

Now imagine this very clearly: we have (see diagram) the physical body, here the etheric body (yellow), which passes through the physical body. And now, to make it easier for us to see the whole person, I will draw the astral body, which is there at night, outside (red). It is very small at the top and huge at the bottom. Then the I, the ego body (violet). So that's what we're like at night. So actually we are two people at night. You don't have to imagine this as a second physical person here, but it is quite spiritual, what is out there. Otherwise you would fall back too much into materialism if you did not imagine it spiritually. But from this you can certainly have the opinion that man is actually this two-part being in himself, a spiritual-soul part and a physical part with the etheric body. The person who is awake is only through this as he is, that every morning the astral body and the I-body are properly integrated into the physical and etheric bodies (arrows).

Now you might think that this could not always happen properly. There are, in fact, some very strange cases. There was once a girl – such things always happen when they happen of their own accord, that is, when they do not happen through practice. They happen when a person becomes a little weak, for example in young girls who have just reached maturity, in the early stages of female maturity. So there was a girl of nineteen or twenty who had the following experience. She had days when she talked, but those who belonged to the family could not understand anything she said, nothing at all. She talked about completely unknown things. It was very strange. For example, she could say: Ah, good afternoon, I am very pleased that you are visiting me. We saw each other two days ago in... - ah yes, we went for a walk in the beautiful forest. There was a spring there. Then she waited. It was just like on the telephone, you couldn't hear the other person, but then you heard the answer. It was as if she was answering something: “Well, yes, you took the glass and drank.” And so it was that you always heard what the person concerned said in response to something someone else had said. Those around could not see the others. But the girl was in a completely different world and talked in it. It happened, for example, that Well, it's not true, she couldn't move, she just stayed very quiet on days like that. But when she was sitting like that and someone puffed at her, she didn't say, “Why are you puffing at me?” Instead, she said, “It's a terrible wind! Close the window, it's drawing so terribly!” She had completely different ideas about what would happen when someone puffed at her, for example. Well, she stayed like that for a day or two. Then came a few days or a longer period when she was quite calm, knew everything, spoke properly with people, knew nothing of what had happened in these other days. She remembered nothing. When people told her about it, she said she knew nothing about it. It was just as if she had been asleep. But something else occurred. When she was in this other state, she remembered everything that happened in this other state and nothing at all of what happened in her ordinary state. She could see the whole of the life she had led in what others called a dream world.

What was it with this girl? What I am telling you now happens countless times, of course, and sometimes in a gruesome way. You see, I had an acquaintance with whom I worked together for a while. He then became a professor at a German university and one day he just disappeared. Nobody knew where he had gone. All the investigations led nowhere in the end. The only thing they could find out was that he had come from his place of residence to the train station and had bought a ticket. But since a large number of people were boarding, they didn't know where he had bought his ticket. He left. He just didn't come back for a very long time. Then it happened that a stranger came into the vagabonds' shelter in Berlin, wanted to be admitted, and when he was asked for his papers, it turned out: that was Professor XY from there and there. He ended up in Berlin in a shelter for the homeless. He came back and was able to resume his professorship quite well. Isn't that right, it automatically continues; it doesn't hurt to have a little break. So he continued to do that. But his relatives – he was even married – continued to investigate what had happened in the meantime. And it was something like this: the person in question had bought a ticket to a certain station, not very far away. He had done all this very cleverly. He then got off, bought another ticket – it was not yet the time when passports were needed – and traveled to a completely different country, then to yet another country, then a completely different route – was stationed in a town in southern Germany – to Berlin, lived in a homeless shelter, was admitted there, knew absolutely nothing about it all, was in a completely different state of consciousness.

What happens to such a person? You see, with such a person it is the same as with such a girl. With such a person, when he is supposed to wake up, the astral body and the ego body do not quite come in, only push from the outside, and then the physical body and the ether body go through all that. Such people behave tremendously cleverly. This is also a well-documented story, similar to one that I myself experienced with an acquaintance.

Another story: A person first buys a train ticket, does the same with it, and travels to a station not far away. Then he has to think of all kinds of ruses; his etheric body does all this. He gets as far as India and stays there for a few years. And then, after he has forgotten everything, he lives on as before.

Yes, you see, these things are really so that one must say: there you see deep into the whole being of man. - For what happened now to the man whom I knew so well, who made his journey through two countries and ended up in the homeless shelter? He had now returned to his college, and had even been appointed to a different college to replace a famous professor. One day I happened to be in the city in question. He no longer associated with me, as indeed happened in general: during the time I was giving anthroposophical lectures, many people who had previously associated with me no longer wanted to associate with me. One day they said: Yes, Professor XY has left again. But this time he did not reappear, but was found dead. He had drowned himself. Yes, what had happened? You see, this had happened: he had again reached the same state where the astral body was just puffing him. Then he remembered the earlier events in his etheric body and was so frightened by them that he committed suicide. So you can see quite a lot about a person's nature when you know how the various parts of the human nature interact.

Now, however, the matter is as follows: there was once a person who also came into such states, and there he told the story in such a way as if he were a completely different person than he was now, so that the other people understood nothing at all. He described how he was active in the French Revolution (the story took place in the 19th century). He described entire scenes. What had happened to him? It was something like the case of those people I told you about. But what had happened to him?

In ordinary consciousness, man does not know very much about what is going on in the astral body and in the ego body, but he still experiences a great deal in them. Now, imagine the following happens. You see, I want to describe to you what happens when a person wakes up. When a person wakes up, this astral body splits first. Here (see drawing p. 112) it breaks off, and one part goes into the head, the other, the lower part, goes into the other body. This also happens sometimes. Now imagine: if the head takes up the astral body and the ego more easily than the lower part, then the astral body can be in the head earlier, but not yet in the lower part. In that case the person starts talking as if he were a completely different person. What is entering then? You see, for a moment the ability to look back into a past life enters. One learns to look back into a past life. But one cannot interpret it properly, one does not understand it, and so one invents something that one has learned in history. The one who was in a different state because his astral body and his ego came into his head earlier said that he was French and experienced the French Revolution. He had learned that, it is just a reinterpretation. But he experienced himself in a past incarnation, in a past life, and he could not understand that right away; so he interpreted it in this way.

You just have to realize that until the 16th century – so only four centuries ago – people talked about such things, even if it was rather foolish and rather vague. It was something extremely important to people. Wherever people came together – not that they told each other ghost stories, but it was the case that they took this just as seriously as the other events of life – they told each other such things and knew that they existed. It is not true that people did not know about this. Today – yes, please, gentlemen, just try it once and tell such stories as I have told you now in your party meetings, you will soon see how you are dismissed – today it is not possible to talk about these things in a natural, reasonable way. They are no longer even mentioned. And scholars talk about them least of all. I will prove to you that they know the least about it.

Now think of one of the most important scientific facts that occurred in the 19th century. A resident of Heilbronn became a doctor. And since the people at the University of Tübingen considered him to be a rather unqualified person, he could not become much, and so in 1839 he allowed himself to be recruited as a ship's doctor and went to Hinterindien with a very full ship. The ship had quite a mishap. It was a rather rough sea and the people became seasick. When they arrived in Hinterindien, almost the entire ship's crew was sick. The ship's doctor was constantly very busy. Now, in those days, if someone had this or that, the usual thing was to have his blood drawn. That was the first one.

Now, a person has two types of veins. In one vein, the blood that squirts out during bloodletting is reddish. Right next to it is another vein. When the blood squirts out of that vein, it is bluish; then bluish blood squirts out. When you bleed an ordinary human child, you don't get the red blood out, of course. The body needs that. You get the bluish blood out. The doctor knows that very well. He also knows where the blue veins run and does not prick into the red ones. So the good Dr. Julius Robert Mayer, who was a ship's doctor, had to bleed a lot. But everywhere he pricked people, the blood that came out was not a bluish color, but a light reddish color. “Gosh,” he thought to himself, “I must have missed again!” But when he did it to the next person and paid more attention, light reddish blood came out again. Finally, he can no longer help but say to himself: Well, when you come to the tropics, to the hot zone, it is not as usual, the blue blood turns reddish from the heat. — Of course, this was something that Julius Robert Mayer considered a very important discovery, and rightly so. He saw something extraordinarily important.

But now we have to make a hypothesis, an assumption. Imagine that, not in the 19th century, but in the 12th century, it had happened to someone. He had traveled somewhere with people. They didn't make such long journeys back then, but the fact that an entire crew almost perished could have happened to anyone. So let's assume that a whole crew had fallen ill at the time, the doctor had bled them and found that the blood, which should actually be blue, was reddish. So there must be some kind of heat. What would he have said? Yes, in the 12th century, he would have said: What is it that makes blood blue? And he would have said, since he knew all the things I have told you, even if only vaguely – because anthroposophy did not yet exist and things were still hazy – he would have said, because he at least had an inkling of the answer: Yes, by Jove, the astral body does not sink as deeply into the physical body as it does in those in whom the blood is completely blue! He would have known that the astral body is what makes the blood blue. But warmth keeps the astral body out. Therefore the blood becomes less blue and remains similar to the red blood. — He would have said: That is an important discovery, because now I understand why the ancient Orientals had such great wisdom. In them, the astral body has not yet penetrated so deeply into the physical and etheric bodies. He would have had enormous respect for the wisdom of the ancient Orientals and would have said to himself: Now the Orientals are only infected by people who have a lot of bluish blood, and it is no longer possible for them to bring their ancient wisdom to light. A ship's doctor from the 12th century would have said that.

A 19th-century ship's doctor knew nothing at all of what I have now told you. What did he say to himself? He said to himself: Well, there is the heat. This causes combustion. A stronger heat causes stronger combustion. So the blood burns more strongly when you are in the hot zone. - And he found the law of heat transformation in force, which plays such an important role in today's physics, a very abstract law. He was not interested in any of the others. He finds the law that plays a major role in the steam engine, for example, where heat is converted into work. And he said: I can see from the fact that red blood comes out of it that the organism in the hot zone simply works harder, therefore generates more heat. - So now Julius Robert Mayer finds something completely mechanical.

You see, that is the big difference. In the 12th century, people would have said: the blood is redder there because the astral body does not sink as deeply. In the 19th century, however, nothing was known about the spiritual, and it was simply said that the human being works like a machine, and the fact is that heat produces more work and thus more heat is transformed in the human organism. Yes, gentlemen, what Julius Robert Mayer did as a great scholar is roughly the way of thinking of all people today. That is the case. But because man can only think and feel in this way about what is no longer spiritual, he has lost touch with other people. And at most, when he becomes ill and weak like the girl I told you about, then he empathizes with other people to such an extent that he even goes with his thoughts to another room. That is, of course, a big difference! Of course, we have come an enormous way and have made great progress, but our humanity has not progressed; it has regressed. We speak of the human physical organism only as if it were a machine. And even the greatest scholars like Julius Robert Mayer speak of it only as if it were a machine.

Yes, gentlemen, if things continue like this on earth, then all thinking will become a chaos. All horrors and catastrophes would occur. Even now people no longer know what they should actually do. Therefore, they approach something with all their might and say: Yes, our reason no longer holds us together, so nationality must hold us together. These nation states arise only because people no longer know how to hold together. And that, gentlemen, that one no longer knows anything about the spiritual world, that is what has actually caused the immense misery – the other is the external appearance – that has caused the immense misery. And to say: People deserve this because they did bad things in their previous life – that is nonsense, of course, because that is not the fate of each individual, but it is the common fate of each individual. But everyone experiences it in this life. Just think of how much misery people experience in their present life. It does not come from a past life. But in the next life, they will suffer the consequences of the misery they experience now. The result of this will be that they will become wiser and that the spiritual world can enter them more easily. So the present misery is already an education for the future.

But something else can be concluded from this. Imagine that anthroposophy had already begun in 1900 and had really become very well known. But people opposed it and did not want to hear about the spiritual world. Now, gentlemen, if you had a schoolboy in the old days who didn't want to learn anything – now they have changed their minds about that; I won't say whether it's right or wrong – then you gave him a good thrashing! Some of them then started to learn after all. It helped some of them. Yes, people didn't want to learn anything spiritual until 1914. Now they have been beaten by the fate of the world, by their common destiny. Now we will see if they help.

Yes, that is indeed the case, gentlemen, you have to see this as a common human destiny! Because what has happened? You see, the girl I told you about was thinking with her mother's thoughts. People have gradually completely given up thinking for themselves and only think with the thoughts of those they have as authorities. People must start again, every single one of them, to think for themselves, otherwise they will, especially if they know nothing of the spiritual world, be continually influenced by it, but in a bad sense. And then one can say: One can really see that what has come over humanity as misery is, I would say, a beating of fate, and one can still learn from it. No matter how many congresses are held, none of it helps. The people who want to support the mark with today's intellect will cause it to fall by half, because this intellect, which is completely of the earth, is of no use, absolutely no use. When a body does not have enough fluid in it, it becomes sclerotic, calcified. And when the soul knows nothing of the spiritual world, then in the end it gets the mind, which is no longer useful. And humanity is heading for this fate if it does not continually receive nourishment from the spiritual world.

Therefore, the only real remedy is that people begin to take an interest in the spiritual world. You see, that is how you have to answer the question that Mr. Dollinger asked. You have to express things a bit radically, but that is how the connections are.

I have to go to Stuttgart next week, but I will be back very soon. I will let you know the time and date of the next lesson.

Gentlemen, the question that has been asked is:

Is the iris in the eye the mirror of the soul in a healthy and diseased state?

I think the second question can be added, they are probably meant together:

What causes albinism or leukopathy in black people?

If we want to answer this question, we must first take a closer look at the workings of the human eye. The question relates to the fact that certain people can tell whether a person's entire body is healthy or sick by looking at the color of the iris, the colored ring-shaped body in the eye that surrounds the black of the so-called pupil. Not only, as you know, is a person's iris colored blue or black or brown or gray or even greenish brown, but the iris also has lines drawn in one way or another, which are created by fine vessels. So that, just as the general facial expression of one person is different from that of another, the finer structure of this iris or rainbow skin is quite different in different people, and much more different from each other than the actual physiognomy of people is different from each other.

Now we have to go into the structure of the eye a little if we want to talk about such a thing. This is connected with the other question you have asked. Namely, that especially in Negroes, but also otherwise, in non-black people, an abnormal, not quite ordinary skin coloration occurs, which is connected with the special coloration of the iris. This is connected in a certain way. Now this skin color is particularly noticeable in naturally black people, because they are just black, and then they have all kinds of white spots, and are then mottled like a tiger. They are very rarely completely pale and completely white; this occurs very rarely among Negroes, extremely rarely. But such so-called albinos also occur in other races that are not completely black. But this albinism also occurs in white people, in the so-called cockroaches – that's what they're called – they have a very pale skin color, almost milk-white skin color. Then they usually have a light reddish iris, and the pupil, which is otherwise black in humans, is then dark red. I once saw a female cockroach like this who even exhibited herself in all kinds of sideshows and let herself be seen. She had milky-white skin, a red iris or rainbow-shaped pupil, dark red pupils instead of black eye stars, and would then say in an extremely weak voice: “I am all white, have red eyes and see very weakly.” That was true, she saw very weakly.

If we want to get into this matter, we must, above all, study the structure of the eye itself. Over time, I have told you many things about the eye. Therefore, today you will perhaps understand what I have to say. You see, the eye is located inside the very firm bony body of the head. The bone structure of the head bulges inside, and in this bone cavity, which is open towards the brain at the back (see drawing), the eye sits inside. The eye is now first limited from the outside by a hard skin, which is opaque here. The so-called eyeball is limited by the cornea. This skin becomes transparent towards the front, here, where it bulges out a little. Otherwise, one could not approach the light with the inside of the eye if this outer cornea were not transparent. It is called the cornea because it is horny. Inwards from this is a skin, which consists of fine veins. The blood network of the body extends into the eye and also sends very small, fine veins into the eye. So here we have the hard cornea, which becomes transparent towards the front, and then the so-called choroid, which is adjacent to it. The third skin inside is formed from nerves; this is the so-called retina. So I still have to draw a third membrane, the retina. And the retina goes backwards into the brain, as does the choroid, of course. And this is called the optic nerve because it is a nerve substance, it goes to the eye. You know that people say: you feel through the nerves. — So with the optic nerve you see.

Now, the strange thing is that everyone has to admit that, as people say, you can see with the optic nerve everywhere here, except precisely where it enters; there it is blind, you see nothing there! So if someone looks just enough to somehow see out there, or if the nerves around it are diseased and only the spot where the optic nerve enters is healthy, then you still see nothing where the optic nerve enters. Now people say: with the optic nerve you see, it is there for that, that you see. Have you now heard the following? Just imagine: there is a group of workers, let us say thirty workers. Twenty-five of them have to work very hard; they are standing everywhere. And there is a group of five – they won't do it, but I'll assume they do it – these five are allowed to laze around while the others work hard. So we can say: there are the 25 hard-working laborers, and there are five who laze around all the time, sitting on padded chairs and lazing around. If someone were to tell you that the work is being done just as well by the five idlers – or perhaps he can't say that because he doesn't see it, but the work is accomplished by idling – you won't believe it, will you? That is nonsense. But now science teaches us that the optic nerve sees. But precisely at the point where it is most, it sees nothing! It is just as if you were to say: the work is done by what the five loafers are doing. You see, one knows such things—that is precisely the strange thing—one knows such things, but one nevertheless continues to assert quite ordinary nonsense. Isn't it, from the fact that here is the so-called blind spot—that's what it's called—and that you see nothing at all at the point where the optic nerve attaches the most, it is quite clear from this that the optic nerve cannot be what you see with.

The thing is this: there is something in the human body that is very similar to this thing in the optic nerve; namely, your two arms and hands. Imagine picking up a chair. You strain your arms all the way down to your hands. But what connects them stays up there, doesn't it. It's the same with the optic nerve. They are aiming at something that is affected by light, and in the middle it is as it is between the two arm approaches here. But it is not the optic nerve that is affected - because if it were the optic nerve, it would have to see the most of all - but what is affected is something of the very invisible that I have described to you. That is precisely the I, the ego organization. It is not the physical body, not the etheric body, it is not even the astral body; it is the I. And so I have to draw something else in there besides what is already there: there is the invisible I that is spreading out. Only it is not as if there were two such arms, but rather as if the arms were closing and becoming a sphere. We already begin to make a sphere with our hands when we touch something. So there is the supersensible I; it is reaching out there. And what is the nerve for? Yes, gentlemen, the nerve is for this purpose - because it is the work of the invisible human being - that something is secreted. Substance is secreted everywhere, and it remains there everywhere. With the supersensible self, one sees. But the nerve is there to secrete something.

Think of the nonsense that science says, just as if one were to examine the large intestine and what is inside it, and then immediately say, from what is now being excreted from the large intestine, that this is how humans nourish themselves! Just as what is excreted is inside the large intestine, so the nerve substance is excreted here. And this (the blind spot) is then the place where it is excreted the most. What is not needed in the eye is excreted into the brain, then goes further and is excreted at all. You see, this is something that you can easily understand, but about which the most fantastic stories are told to you today. It's just that people don't realize what it means when it is said that the nerve substance is seen or felt or something is perceived. That would be just as if one were nourishing oneself with the contents of the rectum. So you see that this business of the blind spot has no significance for vision, because the optic nerve does not see around it either, only here, where the blind spot is, is where the most secretion occurs. And just as nutrition ends in the rectum, where it is only for excretion, so here too vision ends, because that is where most is excreted, and because it makes no sense for vision to be in the middle.

Imagine you have a stick lying there and want to pick it up with your head! You can't. You have to pick it up with your arm, with your hand, with what is attached at the side. You can't see with your nerve either. You have to see with what is attached.

Now, gentlemen, everything that is there (pointing to the drawing) ends here in a kind of muscle. This muscle carries the lens. This is a completely transparent body. Why transparent? So that you can get to the light. And behind this body here is a thick liquid. In front of it is an even thicker liquid, and in this thicker liquid at the front floats the iris or rainbow skin, which is located here near the veins. It really floats in the liquid and leaves a hole open for the light. This hole appears black when you look into it, because you look through the entire eye to the background, which is black.

This iris is fairly transparent at the front, but at the back it is black. This black skin at the back is quite thin in some people. Because if it is thin, when you look through the transparent part into the black, certain people have blue eyes. And in those with thicker skin here, where you look at the thick back skin at the iris, they have black eyes or dark eyes. We will talk about brown eyes in a moment.

Now, gentlemen, we need to educate ourselves about what it is that causes the skin here, which actually determines the blue or brown or black, to be thicker or thinner in some people. I have already told you: what is called the I, the noblest, supersensible part of the human being, goes into the eye. The I goes into it. The I is more or less strong in different people. Now suppose a person has a very strong ego. You see, such a person is capable of completely dissolving the iron that is in the blood and that he also gets into the eye through this choroid. So someone with a very strong ego completely dissolves the iron, and the result of this is that little iron enters this skin, which is at the very outermost edge of the body, because it is completely dissolved. So little iron enters, and the result of this is that this skin becomes thin. Because it becomes thin, you get blue eyes. Now imagine that a person has a weak ego; then he does not dissolve the iron as much, and the result of this will be that a lot of undissolved iron gets into this skin. The skin becomes thicker because of this undissolved iron and the person gets dark, black eyes. So it depends on the ego whether the person has black or blue eyes.

Now, gentlemen, there is also another substance in the blood: sulfur. And even if the ego can process the iron, it is sometimes still unable to process the sulfur. If the ego lets the sulfur into the skin without processing it, then a yellowish-brown color develops in the iris, and that is how brown eyes come about. And if a lot of sulfur gets into the eyes, then a reddish iris develops. Because of the sulfur shimmering behind it, even the pupil does not turn black. You do not see the black, but the emitted, sprayed sulfur itself makes the pupil dark red. This is the case with cockroaches and humans who otherwise cannot supply their skin with the right color. So you can say: there are people who can inject sulfur into their eyes. The ego can inject it, and this is how the iris gets its special color.

But what goes into the eye in the way of sulfur or iron goes into the whole body, because it comes from the blood. There are only small blood vessels here in the eye. So if someone injects sulfur into the eye, he injects sulfur into his entire skin everywhere. And the consequence of injecting sulfur into his entire skin everywhere is that he does not have his natural skin color at the points where the sulfur has been injected; because the natural skin color comes from the processing of iron. So when a person processes their iron only slightly, but instead spews sulfur, then they get such mottled spots in their skin, and at the same time you can see it in the color of their eyes.

So you see: when you look at this invisible human being that is in every human being, you can understand the human being right down to the material level, right down to the substance. Anthroposophy is not so stupid that it does not understand the material. Materialism does not understand the material. Read somewhere about albinism, what can you read? The one of you who asked me the question will probably have read somewhere: the cause of albinism is unknown! — Materialism always comes to this strange conclusion: the cause is unknown! — because it does not trouble itself at all with those cases where the causes can be found. Of course it is easy to say: There is a red pupil. Yes, but one must know what is actually working inside and what history injects, because the red coloration and the pale coloration of the body comes from sulfur.

Now you can understand what real science is. Imagine you come to a place on earth where something has been worked on; someone looks at it and says: The work is already there, the cause is unknown. He does not care what happened before; that is why he states: the cause is unknown. He does not care that, for example, thirty people have been working there for many days. That is how science does it when it says: the cause of the red coloration of the pupil and the pale coloration of the skin is unknown. — But the cause lies precisely in the I that works in the matter, in the substance.

But from this you can also see that the iris really does contain a true reflection of how the whole body works with iron and sulfur. But take such an albino, such a cockroach; that is actually a kind of disease. There is too much sulfuric work in the body, but the body gets used to it, and it is organized. But now it can happen that this enters the eyes to a much lesser extent. You see, apart from the cockroaches I told you about, apart from the lady who exhibited herself in the show, I have seen many cockroaches. You can always tell that there is something very special about such cockroaches. You can say: There is a cockroach, an albino like this, and it has this peculiar reddish coloration of the iris, pale red, has the dark red coloration of the pupil, has the pale body. If you examine it further, you get from the nature of its body the view that in its case the connection between heart and kidney is particularly weak. He is not only weak in the eyes, he is weak in the connection between heart and kidneys. The kidneys of such a person are supplied with blood with great difficulty, so they work very hard. If he were to deposit the sulfur that he carries throughout his body in his kidneys, he would die as a child. Therefore, he releases the sulfur through the surface of the body – the skin turns white, the eyes turn red – so that the kidneys can work gently. Such albinos have kidneys that work very gently, for example. This can also occur in other people. But if, in people who are not cockroaches (most of them are not cockroaches), some kind of defect occurs in the kidneys, then doesn't it have to show up in the iris as well? What the sulfur and iron do together there is also expressed here. From the nature of the human iris, one can therefore conclude whether there is any damage in the human body. Therefore, if there is a spot here or there in the fine appearance of the iris, which is not actually normal, one can see: there is damage in the body. But, gentlemen, you have to bear this in mind: the human body is a unified whole, and what you see in the iris you would also see, if you were clever enough, if you cut out a small piece of skin and took it out – something would also appear in the skin that would not be normal – or even if you cut the nail of your big toe. There is also a very fine structure that could show if the liver, kidneys or lungs were not working properly, although it is a little different again. So if someone were particularly clever and, instead of examining the iris, were to examine the cut fingernails, for example – it would be much more difficult because it is not as pronounced – they would also be able to recognize the healthy or diseased condition there. It is only noticeable in the eye because the eye is an especially delicate structure, and the delicate is easy to grasp. It is most pronounced in the eye. But you can see that things are most pronounced on the surface of the body. For example, I have rarely seen someone put something on their shoulders when they want to feel a particularly fine material or something like that. If it were the case that it would be more advantageous, we would do something about it, so that when we have to feel something fine, we could free ourselves up there on the shoulder and feel it. But that doesn't help us. We feel it with the fingertips. And at the fingertips we are particularly sensitive to feeling things. There you have the same thing again. If the nervous system were what actually makes up feeling, then we should feel the most where we are close to the brain. But we don't feel the most close to the brain; instead, we feel the most where we are furthest from the brain, in the outermost fingertips, because the I sits most on the surface of the body. What a person is in their inner self can best be recognized on the outermost surface. Therefore, because the eyes are closest to the surface, they can also recognize the most, because the eyes are delicate and far away from the brain.

You may say: The eyes are in the skull and close to the brain. But there are quite a few bones in the way, and where the eye is connected to the brain, where there is no bone, nothing can be seen. So at the fingertips, it is due to the vastness of space that they are particularly sensitive; in the case of the eyes, it is because they are most protected from the brain.

There is something else that is strange. When any lower animal develops its brain, it develops the brain in such a way that the brain leaves the cavity free for the eye, and the eye does not grow out of the brain in that way, but rather it starts from the side and grows into it (it is drawn). The eye grows from the outside, not from the brain; the eye grows into the brain. So it is formed from the outside.

From all this you can see that what is formed on the surface, whether in the skin or in the eye, is connected with the way in which a person is actually most in touch with the outside world. In a person who is always in bed, who cannot use his will for his body, one cannot say that he is developing his ego strongly. In a person who is very mobile, one can say that he expresses his ego strongly. And that which otherwise brings us into contact with the outside world, that is precisely in smelling, seeing and so on, these are the senses. And the eye is just the most delicate sense that brings us into contact with the outside world. So you can say: because the I is particularly strong in these fine veins – there are terribly fine veins in this iris – you can see a lot from this, how the whole I works inwards, whether a person is healthy or sick.

That is the original truth and knowledge that can be gained about this matter. But the fact that I have just described to you is also one of the most difficult, because one must be very thoroughly informed about what such a small irregularity in the iris means if one wants to draw conclusions about a healthy or sick person. I will give you an example. You see, it may be, for example, that in some irises there are dots, dark dots, here or there. These dark dots naturally mean that the person has something that is not there otherwise, if these dark dots are not in the iris. But suppose the person in whom these dark dots appear were a terribly stupid fellow. Then he will have some kind of illness that these dark spots indicate. But in the case of the person with these dark spots, it may also be that in his youth he was overstrained with some kind of learning, had to learn beyond his physical strength. Then, as a result of having used certain organs too much in his youth, he may have developed a certain weaker activity in the eyes, and then these small iron deposits, these very fine iron deposits, can occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. So they can occur as a result of an illness in later life, but they can also occur as a result of overexertion in childhood. Most people think: if I see black spots in the iris, then there must be this or that in the body. But it depends on knowing not only the present life of the person concerned, but especially if you want to recognize something like this in terms of the causes of the disease, you have to go through the whole life of the person with him; you have to let him remember what he has already done here or there in childhood. Thus, what one sees in the iris can point to many things. And to draw conclusions from something like this to something in particular is one of the most complicated forms of knowledge.

That is why it is so outrageous that all kinds of little books are being written today; the things that are written there are usually very short and are called: On Eye Diagnosis. There you get a fifty-page instruction on how to examine the iris. Like this, right? There is the iris classification, there is the pupil, drawn quite schematically, then the disease is indicated; spleen disease is then indicated; lung disease, syphilis and so on. Now the eye diagnostician in question, who is familiar with what is recorded in this way, when he looks at the iris with a moderate magnifying glass, need only refer to his little book; and when he notices what is written where lung disease is written, he states: lung disease! And that is how numerous eye diagnosticians do it today after a study of an hour. They then leave the rest to the little book they have; they just make the diagnosis. Yes, gentlemen, but that is outrageous. Because what is most difficult is to be learned in the easiest way. This does not lead to the acquisition of something valuable, but on the contrary, it damages the whole medical system. And one must distinguish whether someone seriously wants to achieve something in the medical field, or whether someone just wants to make money.

Of course, people are upset about science today; and rightly so, because, according to the example of the optic nerve that I told you about, science actually does not pay attention to what a person really is, but most appreciates the filth of a person, the filth in the eye, for example, which is the optic nerve. Of course, people don't know that, but they feel it and become disgusted by science. This outrage can be understood. But what the eye diagnostician usually does is not better than science, but usually much worse. Science, unsuspecting because of materialism, considers dirt to be the noblest components of the human being. Of course, the dirt is also very necessary, because if it were to remain in the body, it would kill the body very soon; so it is necessary. But science thinks that dirt is the most valuable thing about a person! But that means it is on the path of good and does not just want to make money. It is just blinded. It just has a very large blind spot in its knowledge; but with all that, one must acknowledge the good will. But with these little eye diagnostic devices, one can no longer speak of good will, only of the desire to make money. That is why you always have to ask yourself about all these things: a good truth can underlie any endeavor, but it is precisely the best truths, gentlemen, that are most often misused by the world. You see, it is truly wonderful that in this little iris the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected. But on the other hand, because the healthy and the sick person are both completely reflected, the iris is also most difficult to recognize in its entirety, and it must be said that anyone who practices eye diagnosis without recognizing the whole person, without really knowing something about the whole person, is practicing nonsense.

And what does it mean to recognize the whole person? You see, we have learned that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and the I. So not only do we need to know something about the physical person, but, especially if we are doing eye diagnosis, we also need to know something about the spiritual person. The usual anatomy, which only deals with the corpse, can, under certain circumstances, suffice with what it offers; it can actually offer relatively good things. Even if it does not know that the eye nerve is the dirt of the eye, at least it finds the eye nerve. But the eye diagnostician usually has no idea how the nerve runs, but has his little book of fifty pages and the classification of the iris and diagnoses away, without examining the person. Now, of course, he needs some other little book, again of fifty pages. There is the rubric “lung disease” and the remedy for it. But lung disease is something that can come from many causes. Knowing that the lungs are affected is not enough. The lungs can be affected by digestion. You have to know where it comes from. Many people suffer from lung disease. For many, the lung disease has a wide variety of causes. This is precisely where you have to be extremely careful, because where the most beautiful things are present, there is the most nonsense. How much have I told you in these lessons about the fact that man does not depend only on the earth, but on the whole starry sky. But that is precisely what requires the most complicated insight. You must not do any nonsense with it. After all, the various astrologers in the world today are doing a great deal of fraud and nonsense. It is similar with eye diagnostics as with astrology. There is also something very noble and magnificent underlying astrology; but for those who practice astrology today, there is nothing very noble underlying it. For them, speculation about the wallets of their fellow human beings is usually the underlying basis.

And so you can understand the connection, gentlemen: on the one hand, there are the phenomena that change the entire surface of the human being externally. The person gets pale spots where the skin is otherwise darker; his eyes change color, he is an albino. A certain activity is driven to the surface, diverted from the internal organs. But if the person is not a cockroach, not an albino, then the same things, the outer appearance of the eye, are present in the iris; but the finer structure, the finer arrangement then points to the inside. An albino is not a completely sick person just because he is an albino, but he is only afflicted with a predisposition to disease because he has it from an early age and his physical makeup becomes accustomed to it later.

You see, it is not at all good to call the albino a leukopath. This already indicates, because leukocytes, for example, are certain bodies in the blood, that the blood of such people is different. We do not know the cause. But if the blood becomes paler on the surface, then the general pallor does not occur, but the skin becomes paler on the surface. That is the difference between the disease of anemia, where the blood simply becomes paler on the inside, and leukopathy or albinism, where the blood is pushed more to the surface. So it is the case that in the case of people with anemia, an activity in the interior is not in order. The ego is more active on the surface, the astral body more in the interior. Therefore, all the bodies with which one sees and hears are more pushed to the surface. You need them for the ego. You need your liver in the inner being. And if you felt everything as strongly as your liver does, then you would constantly observe only your inner being and say: Aha, now I have just received a little cabbage soup in my stomach, the stomach walls are beginning to absorb it. It is like a radiance, very interesting. Now it goes through the pylorus into the small intestine; now it goes into the villi that are on the intestinal walls. You would observe all this, and all this, that would be very interesting; but you would not have time to observe the outside world! It is very interesting and there is plenty to observe and in some things much more beautiful than the outside world, but the human being is just quite distracted by it. So in general, what is inside does not come to consciousness; what lies on the surface comes to consciousness. So if someone does not process the iron properly in his inner being, where the astral person is more active, he will become an anemic person. If he does not process the iron properly on the outside, but dissolves it as I have described to you, then he will become an albino - which is very rare - or he will get leukopathy.

So you see, the question I was asked is related to this: albinism comes from an irregular processing of sulfur or iron by the ego. Anemia comes from an irregular processing of iron by your astral body and has more of an effect on the inside of the blood. Thus, if one only understands the human being correctly in what is going on inside him, one can also see which supersensible part of the human being is actually involved. He who properly understands the physical human being also understands the superphysical, the supersensible human being. But with materialism it is just the opposite: he does not understand the supersensible human being at all, and therefore he does not understand the physical human being either.

I will let you know whether I will be back next Wednesday. Perhaps someone will have another question by the next lesson, so that a similar discussion can take place as a result of this question.

Good morning, gentlemen! Anything come up today?

Mr. Dollinger: I would like to ask why it is that people who live near a cemetery are often not so lively and look pale? He gives an example that seems to prove this. I would like to know what the rhythm of their bodies is like – whether it could not also have a beneficial effect?

Dr. Steiner: Well, I think I can give quite a good answer to this question because I lived right next to the cemetery from the time I was eight until I was eighteen – so I must have looked terribly pale back then. It was a little bit true. According to the various details you have given, it would have been true in my case.

Well, the cemetery was the cemetery of a small town – the town had maybe six hundred inhabitants – so it was a moderately sized cemetery. But at least it was right next to the house and the train station where we lived. And the people lived quite close together, as was usual in such places. There was the church, surrounded by the cemetery, and then came the houses: you could always see the state of health of the people who lived around the cemetery. Well, you can say that there were already considerable differences among the inhabitants, and that, for example, the pastor who did not live very far from the cemetery was not pale and not scrawny either, but rather quite corpulent and also quite good-looking. That is my finding from back then.

But the view that one forms here is that if one otherwise establishes health conditions - and that happened in many places where cemeteries were around the churches - one cannot assume that this is terribly harmful. In those places, walnut trees were widespread everywhere at the same time. These walnut trees are such that they also have an extraordinarily strengthening effect on health due to the scent they spread. Now, you just have to assume that there were healthy instincts in those places where it was originally common practice; this has led to the fact that the churchyard is within the village and the people live all around, bringing chestnut or walnut trees, and especially lime trees, into the vicinity. Linden trees and walnut trees, which then have the opposite effect to the harmful effects of the cemetery, have a balancing effect.

Now, this must also be taken into account: If we look more closely at what Mr. Dollinger actually wants to know, namely the effect on the higher bodies, then we must be clear about the fact that actually of these bodies, which I have mentioned, only the physical body and the etheric body have an invigorating effect, while the astral body and the I do not have an invigorating effect, but essentially a paralyzing one; they act as soul and spirit. And from what I have already told you, you will see that the physical body and the etheric body are like a plant; they grow, and in the process the organs develop. If we only had these, the physical body and ether body, we would be constantly unconscious. Otherwise we would lead a sleeping life like plants, if it were not for the fact that there is a constant process of decomposition within us; only because there is always a process of decomposition within us do we not lead a sleeping life like plants. The astral body and the ego break down, which in turn atomizes. There is always a process of building and breaking down in the human being. And the astral body is the one that actually breaks down the most in our human being. And all these waste products that I have spoken of are actually broken down by the astral body and the ego. The etheric body only plays a small part. I have already explained this to you.

Now you see, gentlemen, the cemetery atmosphere that arises is related to what breaks down in the astral body in man, and this then supports the degradation. And man is more degraded when he lives near the cemetery than when he lives somewhere out in the forest. If he lives out in the forest, his constructive powers are stronger; if he lives near the cemetery, his destructive powers are stronger. But if we had no destructive powers, then, as I have already told you, we would remain stupid for life. We need these destructive powers. Then there is something else to consider. I told you: I can talk about this because I experienced it myself, and I experienced it at a young age when so many things are forming. I have always had a tendency to think carefully. Now, I am convinced that I owe this tendency to think carefully to the fact that fate allowed me to grow up near a cemetery. So that, in turn, is good, gentlemen. You also have to take that into consideration.

Isn't it true that the only harmful thing about a cemetery are the corpses in it? The corpses only continue the process of decomposition. When we die, the process of building and breaking down stops. The building process now stops. So the astral body is actually encouraged to think positively when it is near the cemetery. There is no denying that either.

In today's so-called Burgenland, where I grew up, the villages were all built in such a way that the cemeteries were in the middle. Burgenland is the one that has been the subject of so much dispute. There are a few larger towns, Eisenstadt and so on, but they are far apart, so that the villages are spread out everywhere, and the cemetery was in the middle everywhere. And so it is true to say that the people there had a certain rustic shrewdness. And it cannot be denied that this rustic shrewdness actually grew under the influence of the cemetery atmosphere. They kept the harmful things out by planting walnut and lime trees everywhere.

The area was also a wine-growing region. The atmosphere of the grapevine also has a certain balancing effect. The scent of lime blossoms, as you know, is a very strong scent, and the walnut tree also has a very strong scent; this has a more invigorating effect on the astral body. And the atmosphere of the grapevine has a more invigorating effect on the ego. So you already have a very strong effect on the higher bodies of the human being.

But of course, on the other hand, one must not deny how things change with the growth of civilization. Of course, at the moment when the villages become larger, when many houses are built around them and the effectiveness of the trees is impaired by the fact that houses are built around them, the cemetery begins to have a harmful effect, then, of course, there are these pale faces around the cemetery. This can no longer be balanced out and the result is that the cemetery then causes people to suffer from the cemetery atmosphere. This in turn led to a natural instinct: that when the villages had grown into towns, the cemetery was made outside the town.

Now, of course, there is something else to consider. This is the case when the effect goes even further, when it affects the etheric body. You see, everything that rises into the atmosphere as a fine haze affects the astral body and the I. So that also the subtle smell of corpses, which is always present around a cemetery, as well as the scent of walnuts, lime blossoms, horse chestnuts, which has a particularly invigorating effect, can actually only affect the higher bodies; these do not reach the etheric body so strongly.

But the situation with the etheric body is such that water in some area has a particularly strong effect on it. Water has a very strong effect. And the water in the vicinity of a cemetery is very easily permeated by what comes from the corpses. The water is drunk, the water is used for cooking. And if, in a village where the cemetery is close to the houses, the water is affected, no trees will help! Then nature helps very little. And the result of that is that people very easily become consumptive and suffer greatly from it.

You see, I was able to observe that very clearly. There was a place - it was several hours away from where I lived - a small place. Almost everyone lived around the cemetery. The people were very lethargic by nature; they just couldn't. They had flaccid muscles, flaccid nerves, everything about them was flaccid; they were pale. And then the thought occurred to me: where does it come from? And you see, that is very interesting: in our village of Neudörfl, the people who also lived around the cemetery were relatively healthy! Now, that is a big question for someone who really looks at the country in terms of the conditions that affect people. There was a village where the people lived around the churchyard and where they did nothing but plant nut trees; they also planted them, that was a very healthy instinct - but otherwise they often even took the water for cooking from the village stream! There was a row of houses (it is drawn), in between the village brook; there was the churchyard, there was the church; there we lived, there the pastor, there was the schoolhouse; then there was a row of houses, in between a brook, and there were nut trees everywhere. The people simply took the water from the little stream; in the stream, of course, were the remains and bacteria, the bacilli, of what seeped through from the cemetery. That was everywhere. The people, especially those who lived there, were not particularly clean: there were houses with thatched roofs and dung heaps right at the entrance, the pigsty right next to it – a nice connection between the pigsty and the dung heap – and again the descent to the village stream, so that when you came in, you waded in a brownish sauce. Well, you see, it was not exactly, as they say today, hygienically prepared! And yet the people were healthy! You couldn't help but say that they were healthy.

Now, firstly, if the people are healthy, the corpses in the beginning are not as bad as if the people in the village are infected. But that is of less importance. On the other hand, there was a big question: how come the people were healthy and the others were sick or weak and unable to live? - This can be explained by the following. Near this village was another, very small village, but a spa town: there was a spring of acidulous water, carbonic acid water. The whole village got its drinking water from this place. And the drinking water from this place, the carbonic acid water, in turn had a balancing effect on the contaminated water from the cemetery. The others, who lived far away from this acidulous spring, did not have that. So there one could directly study how the carbonic acid water, which, as I have explained to you once, has a particularly strong effect on the ego and on thinking, in turn has an effect on the ego and the etheric body, and in the etheric body in turn balances the destructive effect of what seeped from the cemetery into the village stream.

Of course, if the cemetery remains in cities, it is basically impossible to help transform the cemetery atmosphere, at least as long as spring water is not brought in from afar. If a town is situated in such a way that the cemetery is still in the middle of the town and the water is still drawn from wells, then of course the conditions for health are the worst, because then the etheric body is attacked; and the etheric body is that which cannot be further conquered by the astral body and the I.

You see, the sanitary and hygienic conditions are extremely interesting from this point of view. But of course it must not be forgotten that for people who live around the cemetery, if they are still religious people, if they have not yet lost their faith, the constant sight of the funeral ceremonies always has a warming effect! It has a balancing effect. It has an effect on the ego. It is certainly strengthening. It must be possible to look at this from a health point of view. It also has a balancing effect.

Is that more or less what you wanted to know? Perhaps someone else has something to add.

Well, gentlemen, then I will continue with this question from a completely different point of view. You see, we have already looked at a great deal; today, let us look at the following from the point of view of the insights we have gained.

If you look at the map, you may be interested in the map to the extent that you say: Well, this is where this nation lives, that nation lives there. We are interested in the various nations living side by side. But you can also say: I want to look at the map from the point of view of how humanity has developed. And then the map becomes really quite interesting.

Let us take a closer look at a small part of the map. I will only draw it very roughly. If we move over to Asia, for example, I have drawn it for you in terms of the human races: India, Hindustan; then Arabia; and here we have Asia Minor. Then Asia crosses over into Europe; we come to the islands that look towards Europe. There is Greece. Then we come to Africa. And there we have a river: that is the Nile; there is Egypt - today, as you know, completely dominated by the English -; that was once a free country. Now, you see, today the peoples live everywhere. In India, the Indians are living there, and they are really pulling themselves together. They were ruled by the English for a long time, and of course they still are, but today they are pulling themselves together, and anyone who is insightful enough in England is terribly afraid that the Indians might somehow gain independence. There is a great Indian movement today: the so-called Mahatma Gandhi stirred up such a movement in India and was then imprisoned, but has now been released for health reasons. Likewise, here in Arabia there are people who are more or less ruled by the British; that is still a rather inaccessible region, Arabia. You know, of course, that one of the main causes of the great world war was that they wanted to build a railroad through Turkey, over here, and they were looking for a route to India on one side and to Arabia on the other. Germany wanted to do this, and in doing so, Germany provoked the envy and jealousy of other nations in so many ways because it wanted to build the so-called Baghdad Railway through Turkey, all the way into Asia. - And Syria was there once.

You see, from the most diverse points of view, it is interesting to ask yourself: So there were peoples living everywhere since ancient times; they were very different in their lives. You only need to mention a few things to see how different these people were in their lives. In India, for example, there was a strict caste system, a caste system that makes what the European classes are actually only a shadow of. In India, you were born into a caste. The highest caste was the Brahmins. These were the people who performed the priestly services, who were allowed to learn. So in the oldest times, all the children of the Brahmins actually went to school. They were the ones who could write; that was the highest caste. Although the priests were taken from this caste, the kings were not. The kings were taken from the second caste, the warrior caste. But never could anyone ascend from the warrior caste to the Brahmin caste; that was strictly separated. The third caste were the agriculturists, the country folk; and the fourth caste were those who were actually considered to be manual laborers. Now there was a strict division between these castes. In ancient India, it was considered as bad luck if a person from one caste were to enter another as it would have been if a lion were to become a lamb! The castes were regarded as separate from each other as the individual species of animals are separate from each other. And so people took no offense at all. It would have seemed as strange to them if someone from the third caste had entered the first as if a lion had wanted to become a bull. So that was quite evident, it was an absolute matter of course for people. Now, that was also in India.

Let us now move on to Egypt: there were still castes there too. What I am going to tell you now, gentlemen, can be placed in the period about three thousand or three thousand five hundred years, or perhaps even four thousand years, before the emergence of Christianity. So we have to go back five to six millennia if we want to look back to the time of which I am now telling you. In Egypt, there were also castes, but they were not so strictly adhered to; one or the other could pass from one caste to the other. So it was not so strictly adhered to, but there were still castes in Egypt. On the other hand, in Egypt it was the case that the entire state structure emanated from the priesthood. The priesthood ruled everything. That was also the case in India, but there everything was predetermined by the caste system, whereas in Egypt the caste system was not so strict. But the rule was adhered to that everything that was to become law emanated from the priesthood.

And in a corresponding way, the other peoples who lived in Syria also lived in Asia Minor. They had their peculiarities, they were different.

Now, today, I would like to tell you something else about these very peoples so that you can see what role the things we have learned play in human history. Let us take four of these peoples: first the Indians, then the Egyptians, then those peoples who sat here. The Euphrates and Tigris flow into this gulf, and there was a people who later were called the Babylonians. We will consider these as the third.

And then you know that a people distinguished themselves here who later played a major role in history: the Semites, the Hebrews, the Jews. They moved over to Egypt, later moved back again and then lived here in Palestine – a relatively small people in terms of extent, but a people who played their great role in history. So we can look at them in succession: first the Indians, second the Egyptians, third the Babylonians, fourth the Jews. Let us look at these four peoples today.

You see, it is a particularly characteristic feature of the Indians that they actually look at the people who are there as separately as the animal classes and divide them into four castes. Added to this is the peculiar religion that the Indians had in ancient times. The Indians did not distinguish between the spiritual and material world; in the time when this Indian population first developed in India, they did not distinguish between spirit and body. A tree was not distinguished as it is by many other peoples: there is the physical tree, and there lives a spirit in it - nothing, that was not distinguished. The tree was a spirit at the same time, only a somewhat coarser spirit than man and animal. The animal was also not divided into body and soul for the Indians, but it was soul and so was man. There was no division into body and soul. And when the oldest Indian asked about the soul - and he knew that one breathes in, breathes in the air - there was the air that one breathed in, the spirit. And then he knew: the air is out there; that is the spirit that surrounds the whole earth. And when this spirit, which surrounds the whole earth, begins to flow, to blow, then he called the spirit that moves, that blows on the whole earth: Varuna. But what he had within him was also Varuna. When there was a storm outside, it was Varuna; inside: also Varuna. Today one often hears it said that these Indians had a nature service because they worshipped wind and weather and so on. But one can just as well say that they had a spirit service because they saw everything as a spirit. The Indians had no concept of the body at all. And because of that, every part of the human being was also a spirit for the Indians: the liver was spirit, the kidneys were spirit, everything was spirit. They did not distinguish between body and spirit. That is precisely the secret of ancient Indian wisdom: that no distinction is made between body and spirit. The liver was liver spirit, the stomach was stomach spirit.

Yes, you see, when we look at the stomach today, we find that something must be in the stomach if the stomach is to digest properly; we call the substance pepsin. If it is lacking, then digestion is not done properly; then we have to put in some hydrochloric acid. The Indian said to himself – he did not yet have the name, but he knew that there was a spirit – the stomach is constructed like this: that is the stomach spirit. And the name of the remedy has remained: “stomach spirit.” Of course, today you can take drops for the stomach, no longer “stomach ghost”, but named after the inventor “Hoffmann's ghost” or something like that; but you will still find where it is simply spoken that the ghost concept is still in the words.

So the Indians saw spirit everywhere. And that is why they did not take offense at the caste spirit, because they saw it as something spiritual, just as they saw the division of animals as something spiritual.

If you look at these Indian beliefs, it is interesting that the Indians had a very precise knowledge of all human organs. They saw them only as spirit. The human being was composed of nothing but spirits: lung spirit, stomach spirit, kidney spirit, and so on; they only looked at the physical body. So, looking at the Indians, we can say that they were imbued with a view that focused on the physical body. They saw the physical body as spirit.

1. Indian: physical body spiritual

This is very interesting, because now we have discovered a people who initially had a precise knowledge of the physical body.

Now we move on to the Egyptians. With the Egyptians it is a strange story. The Egyptians had the Nile. The Nile is actually, one could say, the nourishing father of the country. Every year, when July comes, the Nile rises out of its banks, and in October it goes back down again. So the ancient Egyptians actually knew nothing other than: The Nile contains the water; the water recedes during the cold season; the water comes out again, flooding the land and becoming a benefactor to the people. But when the water recedes in October, what remains - they don't need to fertilize! - a very fertile mud. In this mud, the cereals and so on were sown; they then sprouted and were harvested before the Nile flooded again. And so the Nile actually prepared the farmland for them every year. So the Egyptians were deeply imbued with the beneficence of water. They have dealt with what water is in nature in many ways. You see, we admire our engineering skills today because they can channel. Yes, thousands of years before us, the Egyptians were already very good at channeling! Of course, when the Nile overflowed its banks and flooded everywhere, it may have come to places where it shouldn't have been. So the Egyptians created Lake Moria in the most ancient of times – an entire lake! It did not exist by nature, but was created to bring the flooding into the right channels. What was superfluous water was collected in this Lake Moria. So actually artificially the Egyptians have ruled nature. But as a result, their attention was extremely drawn to the water.

Now, I have already told you in answer to Mr. Dollinger's question that water has an enormous influence on the etheric body of man. And with the instinct that the Egyptians still had, they developed the doctrine: Man does not consist only of a physical body, but he also has an etheric body. - It is interesting, you see: In the back of beyond in India were the oldest peoples; many of these oldest peoples came via Arabia and only then immigrated to Egypt. In Egypt there was a kind of old culture: everything came from India. When the Indians migrated to Egypt, they recognized the beneficial effect of water. But they said to themselves: This does not work on the physical body that we got to know in India, but on a still higher body of the human being. And so the Egyptians - the Indians too - mainly through what they experienced with water, actually discovered the etheric body.

The fact that the Egyptians discovered the etheric body is the reason why they developed their entire religion, because it is a religion of the etheric body. If you take the most important thing from the Egyptian religion, the following legend is the result. These Egyptians said - and this was something that the Egyptians told everywhere, as the stories of the Gospels were told in a certain period in Europe: There is a high God; they called this high God Osiris. This high God is the benefactor of mankind. He is actually the originator of everything that comes to man through the element of water. But he has an enemy. He works for the benefit of man; but he has an enemy. And this enemy lives in the hot wind that comes from the desert. There was the desert (pointing to the drawing). So they had two deities: Osiris and Typhon, Osiris and his enemy, Typhon. All that they saw in nature, they also saw in human life. But they did not ascribe it to the physical body, as the Indians did, but to the etheric body. Then they continued the saga: One day Typhon killed Osiris and carried him off. And Isis, the wife of Osiris, retrieved the body and buried the various limbs in different places. Monuments were then erected over them. And since then, Osiris has been ruler over the dead. Once he was ruler over the living, then he became ruler over the dead. The Egyptians were already thinking about death.

Now you know – I have already told you – a few days after death, the etheric body of the human being leaves; then the person gradually comes to consciousness again. This is expressed in the legend that Osiris leaves and is brought back by Isis. The human being regains consciousness after death.

So you can say: the Egyptians realized that man has an etheric body. - That's very interesting! The Indians, they still took the physical body as spiritual. The Egyptians, they came up with the etheric body and took that as spirit:

2. Egyptians: etheric body spiritual Osiris Typhon Isis

And everything the Egyptians believed in, everything they worked for, was actually for the etheric body. That dominated their entire view.

You see, gentlemen, you have at least seen one thing in the Egyptians: their mummies. I mentioned them to you the other day; I said: When medieval physicians spoke of mummies, it was something spiritual; I explained that to you. But today, when people speak of mummies, they only mean these Egyptian mummies. The corpses were embalmed, finely embalmed, and preserved. Yes, but why was that? The Egyptians knew only of the etheric body and kept the physical body so that when the person lives again, he will find his physical body again. If they had already known about the astral body and the ego, they would not have believed that one must keep the physical body. They only knew the etheric body, which is very spiritual. If they had known about the ego and the astral body, they would have said: They are building their own physical body. But they only knew the subtle etheric body, so they believed that you had to preserve the physical body so that the person could find it again when they returned. So the Egyptians discovered the etheric body.

Now we come to the third, the Babylonians. They developed something very large and strong, namely, well-developed thinking, so that much of the thinking of the Babylonians is still preserved today; but what they developed particularly strongly was astronomy. They built their great stargazings from which they observed the stars. And there they saw that man does not only depend on what is on earth, but depends on what is in the stars. They particularly sought the influences of the stars on people and, above all, made their observations about how the year was divided. The year, in turn, has a great influence on people through the stars. The Babylonians were the first to leave the earth and develop astronomy, the knowledge of the influence of the stars on people, into a particular science. And that's how they came up with the idea of dividing everything into sixties and twelves and so on.

They divided money into sixty and twelve, for example. The decimal system only came later. But today you can still find this old Babylonian division into twelve in the English shilling. So this numerical division was first brought down from heaven by the Babylonians. Now, what does the world of the stars have a particular influence on in humans? On the astral body, gentlemen. The astral body is completely under the influence of the world of the stars. But because today's star science wants nothing to do with the astral body, it does not seek to observe the stars in their influence on man. What is calculated in today's astronomy really has no particularly strong influence on man. But the Babylonians had a fine star science. And through this they discovered the astral body of man. That is the wonderful thing. So that we can say that the Babylonians discovered the astral body spiritually.

3. Babylonians: spiritual astral body.

The astral body even got its name from this. First, the Babylonians discovered it. And because they discovered it from the stars, from the astral - astrology, astronomy, star science, star knowledge - it was called the astral body. So you see, the successive peoples discovered one after the other out of the spirit: the Indians the physical body, the Egyptians the etheric body and the Babylonians the astral body.

If you look at what the Babylonian legends are based on, you find that they are all based on the stars. You just have to not be deceived by today's science and its books. There is one scholar who says: Originally, all religions originated from a star service. Therefore, one must see the star service as the origin of all religions. Another comes and says: Oh no, religions all originated from nature worship. The wind and weather were worshipped. A third says: Religions all originated from the elements, from water and its effects. Yes, gentlemen, but why do people say that? The person who tells you that religion comes from serving the stars has studied nothing but the Babylonian period. Now he believes that what was true of the Babylonians was true everywhere. The person who tells you that religion comes from the elements has studied nothing but the Egyptians. Now, in turn, he is Egyptianizing everything. And he says: All religions have arisen from the worship of wind and weather. This is due to the fact that people are limited, that they only study individual things. Religions arise from the most diverse.

Now there is something else, I told you, a small people there in Palestine: the Hebrews, the Jews. You see, they lived among these other nations, and they were not satisfied by the other nations at all. You can read in the Bible, in the Old Testament, how the Jews are unsatisfied everywhere and how they come up with a completely invisible, spiritual essence. The physical body is, of course, completely visible. The etheric body expresses itself in the floods, in the water effects of the Nile; they are there. The astral body of the Babylonians is no longer visible on earth, but if you study the stars, you will find the astral body. The Jews no longer wanted any of this, but only an invisible God. This invisible God, what is he? He is the one who has an effect on the human ego. So:

4. Jews: I spiritual (Yahweh)

The Jews came upon the ego as a spiritual being and called it Jahve.

And now you have history! You can read as much as you like in history books: you will not understand how the ancient peoples progressed. You are told about all kinds of things, about all kinds of wars and kings, which creates a motley chaos in the human mind; you don't know what it actually is. Then, at most, religions are still told about, but you don't know where they come from. But if you now know that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego, and that these have been discovered one after the other by people, and that their views of life depended on it, then you will find out in this respect: the Indians discover the physical body, the Egyptians the etheric body, the Babylonians the astral body, the Jews the ego. Little by little it comes out that man has these different bodies. This did not just fall from the sky, but people discover it according to their living conditions.

The Indians, through whom many peoples have passed, so that they are racially diverse, come into the physical body. The Egyptians, who had a lot to do with water, come to the ether and thus to the etheric man. The Babylonians, who took over everything they needed for the astral body from the other peoples, where the priests came up with the idea of building high towers: they came up with astronomy. And the Jews, who were always wandering – you can follow this in the stories of Abraham, Moses and so on – were reluctant to worship anything visible in the heavens and the earth: they came up with the invisible Yahweh, who is the creator and enforcer of the human ego.

That's when you start to make sense of it all! That's when you see how, little by little, man discovers himself. Then it continues. We also want to look at that. So, gentlemen, today is Saturday – we'll see each other again next Wednesday.

Speaking exoterically, theosophy is a knowledge. What we esoterics learn in exoteric lectures we should take into our feeling, willing and thinking in such a way that we can then pour it out again into exoteric life. That's esoteric work. And what happens through the same? How can we carry a quite simple theosophical truth directly into life, for instance, the one about going to sleep and waking up, where the physical and etheric bodies remain behind on going to sleep, while the ego and astral body go into the spiritual worlds?

A primitive man used to receive prayers that he said in the evening before going to sleep, and in the morning after waking up, and that was good, for he strengthened his soul with spiritual forces as he prepared his soul for higher worlds, and after he left them, he again permeated his soul with higher forces, and as it were, sucked out soul forces from spiritual worlds.

The mineral, plant and animal kingdoms below man are permeated with spiritual forces that always become renewed; the same is true of the four elements fire, water, air, and earth. Things are different with men. If a man doesn't connect himself with these spiritual forces, he doesn't' receive them. If he goes to sleep without preparation he doesn't get any forces in the worlds he enters then. No matter how learned, scientific and high-ranking a materialist is, if he goes into spiritual worlds unprepared in the evening, he stands far below a simple primitive man who has already connected himself with them through his prayer. Man has increasingly forgotten prayer in our materialistic age with its very admirable scientific achievements. He goes to sleep and wakes up with his everyday thoughts. But what does he do thereby? Something happens through this omission. He kills some of the spiritual life and forces on the physical plane each time.

A man goes into spiritual worlds unconsciously. For instance, if he went to sleep at 11 p.m. unprepared and awakened at 12 in spiritual worlds, he wouldn't know his way around; he'd have the feeling that he was spread out over endless spaces and that he had lost his center. He would be in ecstasy or “beside himself” in the real sense of the word. In ancient Druidic mysteries this ecstasy was artificially induced to let a pupil experience higher worlds consciously. But 12 helpers had to stand at his side so that the pupil didn't lose his ego; they poured the whole power of their pure egos into him. That's how much power was necessary to prevent this dissolution.

This Druidic initiation was the outer way, whereas the inner one was followed in ancient Egyptian mysteries. There the candidate for initiation had to look for the path through the lower astral world for three to five days, that is, to climb into his own interior, and 12 pure priests had to stand beside him, to prevent his lower drives, desires and passions from overpowering him—that slumbered deep in his nature and would otherwise have worked themselves out in the course of his incarnations.

Unheard of vices would have been awakened in him if the 12 priests hadn't protected him from this through their purity. These two paths wouldn't be possible today, for a modern would rebel against such interventions in his ego and against being treated like a child with respect to his drives, desires and passions.

The Rosicrucian school combines both paths in it and also leaves a man completely free. Through the meditations he's given he must himself acquire the forces that helpers used to give him. An esoteric increases the spiritual forces that are necessary for mankind through this work on himself. He combats the desolation that will arise through the terrible materialism in which men have simply forgotten their connection with spiritual worlds and have forgotten how they can get forces out of them for themselves. When souls become ever more desolate, empty and despairing it'll be the task of esoterics to let their spiritual forces work in a living way. They'll maintain their soul's cheerful equilibrium in spite of all blows of destiny and thereby let happiness stream into the rest of mankind to ease their soul pains as torture, as a result of the attainments of materialistic science. Moderns have found many means to anesthetize physical pains to make them disappear. But they haven't really disappeared that way. Exoteric science tells us that no force is lost, and the force of pain doesn't get lost either—it just has an effect in other regions. The pains come back as soul agony. Men will have to go through strong soul pains, and esoterics will then use the spiritual forces that they bring down from the heights to ease these sufferings. Be it ever so unconsciously, each of us resolved to ease mankind's sufferings when we set out on an esoteric path.

After much exercising a man may have the feeling that he hasn't gotten further in his experience of the spiritual world. But this may be based on an error. It may be that one notices nothing during or after meditation, but then it can happen that when one goes back to one's customary duties and doesn't become entirely absorbed by outer work, one suddenly has the feeling: Something is thinking in me now.

It also often happens that a meditator goes to sleep while he's doing his retrospect, but when he reawakens and tries to follow up what happened in him in the meantime he'll often be able to find that the retrospect was continued. It's important to feel that. It doesn't contradict what was always said to the effect that we mustn't give any value to what happens without the ego. For when we recall it, we incorporate it into the ego.

One who has had such experiences can be permeated by the consciousness in special moments: It thinks—it's not me who thinks, but it thinks, and namely: It thinks me. Esoterically this is the same thing that was expressed exoterically in the words: In your thinking, world thoughts live.

At any spare moment in daily life one can permeate oneself with the thought, It thinks me, even if it's only for a few seconds: the thought that what otherwise appears to me as “I” was created by world thoughts through their thinking—that also my ego-feeling is a thought that thinks me. But this thought should never arise without being accompanied by a particular feeling. A man standing in the outer world thinks it's all right to think anything, but esoterics know that there are certain thoughts that shouldn't be thought if they're not accompanied by the appropriate feelings. The feeling that should accompany “It thinks me” is piety. We only think this thought in the right way if we connect it with this feeling. An esoteric should consider it to be his greatest sin if he can have the thought, It thinks me, without the feeling of piety.

An esoteric can get another awareness in connection with the words: In your will world beings are working. This can be transformed in him into the thought: It works me. The way that all forces stream together to work a human being, the way that a man is composted of past and future—all of this is in, It works me. Here, too, this must never be thought without being accompanied by a certain feeling, the feeling of reverence for the beings who create men.

What we've made out of ourself through our karma bumps into what higher beings have brought about in us. A man should never forget that no matter what may hit him, it's brought about by himself, just as he is the one who closes a door.

These are mighty mantras: It thinks me, It works me—and those who are the furthest ahead on the esoteric path are those who could permeate themselves the most at every moment of their lives with It thinks me, It works me, and always let these two be accompanied by the corresponding feelings.

Someone who has practiced It works me like this for years will get something like a present for it, as for instance when someone says: “It's raining,” where one feels the spiritual forces that are connected with the rain and work in rain.

Another feeling can come to someone who develops himself like this, a feeling that's connected with the third mantra: In your feeling world, forces are weaving. This is the feeling: It weaves me—and namely one feels that just as world thoughts think the thoughts of our ego, so world forces weave our higher I. Therefore, the feeling that should always be connected with this is that of thankfulness.

It's possible that meditation on the words: It thinks me, It weaves me, It works me, in succession, connected with the feelings of piety, thankfulness, and reverence, will replace all other meditations and will by themselves lead one into the spiritual world.

However, great help is given by what we receive from theosophy, when we study what is said there about the Saturn, Sun and Moon conditions, for then we can understand what the “it' is in: It thinks me. It's theosophy; that's what this it is. Theosophy is the world thoughts that thought me as an I. This also sheds light on our verse and on the feelings that we should cultivate there. We're not always able to have these feelings of piety, thankfulness or trust, and reverence that should accompany the Ex Deo nascimur, In Christo morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus—but it's only when we connect these feelings with the verse that we're using it in the right way.

The law concerning the stages of the perfecting of human qualities (the Eight-fold path). Nature of Initiation in pre-Christian Mysteries. Descent into the physical body and expansion into the Macrocosm. The dangers connected with this. The twelve helpers of the Hierophant. The Christ-event the beginning of freedom. Christ the model—the fulfilment—of the great Initiation

Our endeavour in these lectures is to explain the significance of the Christ Event in human evolution. The main outlines of that Event will be placed before your souls to-day; the details will be filled in subsequently. An understanding of one of the fundamental laws of human evolution, already described at Basle in the course of lectures on the Gospel of St. Luke, is necessary to this outline: the law, that all through human development new faculties are ever emerging and attaining ever higher degrees of perfection. This fact emerges in an external way when we look back into the short periods of time covered by ordinary history when certain human faculties had not yet developed. Throughout the ages we can trace the development of new faculties in man which have finally brought about our present civilization; but before any entirely new faculty can appear, spread, and in due course become the property of all, special conditions are necessary; it is necessary that this faculty should appear somewhere for the first time in a quite special way.

In the earlier cycle on the Gospel of St. Luke I drew your attention to the ‘eight-fold path’ which men can follow who hold to the teaching which flowed into human evolution through Gautama Buddha. This is usually given as: right opinions, right judgments, right speech, right actions, right standards, right habits, right memories, and right contemplations. These are qualities of the human soul. It may be said: before Gautama Buddha lived, human nature lacked the power to develop such faculties, but since then it has advanced sufficiently to make the gradual development of these qualities of the eight-fold path possible as faculties of man's inner being. Before Gautama Buddha lived on earth in his Buddha incarnation, the independent development of these qualities was not possible. In order that they might gradually be developed, a being like Gautama Buddha had to come in the flesh to give the necessary impulse so that in the course of hundreds and thousands of years they might develop independently in mankind. This fact must be emphasized. In the lectures already referred to, I said that in a certain number of people these faculties are already developed, and when this number has sufficiently increased the earth will be ripe for the reception of the next Buddha, the Maitreya Buddha, who at the present time is a Bodhisattva. Enclosed between these two events lies the period during which a sufficient number of men will have acquired the higher intellectual, moral, and emotional qualities of the eight-fold path. It was, however, necessary at the birth of this period, that once, and for the first time, the impulse whereby all the qualities of the eight-fold path could be developed, should find expression in a single exalted individual, in the personality of Gautama Buddha. Such is the law of human evolution. A faculty destined for development in the whole human race must, in the first place, be fully evolved in a single person; then by slow degrees, throughout the ages, maybe thousands of years, these faculties pass into mankind as a whole.

But that which is to enter humanity through the Christ Event will not be confined within some five thousand years—the period of the influx of the Buddha impulse—it will come to life and continue working as a special faculty to the very end of our earthly evolution. But what is it that actually entered through the Christ Event, in a way similar to what entered through the Buddha, but in an infinitely greater and more exalted manner?

It can be described as follows: That which in pre-Christian times could only draw near to man through the Mysteries, can, since the Christ Event, become to some extent a common attribute of human nature, and this possibility will increase. To comprehend this, an understanding of the nature of these ancient Mysteries and pre-Christian initiations is necessary.

Initiation varied among the different peoples in different parts of the globe, as indeed it has varied in post-Atlantean times. One part of initiation would belong to one nation, another to another. It was unnecessary that every people should possess every form of initiation. Souls by reincarnating successively in different peoples, gained experience of the various initiations. Initiation is the power of looking into the spiritual world; this is not revealed through physical perception or through the external understanding dependent on the instrument of the physical body.

In ordinary life, twice in every twenty-four hours, a man has to be, so to say, where the Initiate also is; but the Initiate is conscious of his surroundings, ordinary man is unconscious of them. In twenty-four hours the life of man alternates between sleeping and waking conditions of consciousness. The fact of the withdrawal of the astral body and ego from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep is familiar to you. The astral nature and the ego on expanding into the more immediate universe, derive thence the forces needed during waking life. From the time he falls asleep until he wakes man is actually poured forth into the surrounding world. He is, however, ignorant of this, for the moment he falls asleep his consciousness is extinguished. During sleep he actually lives in the macrocosm.

Initiation consists in man's learning to partake consciously in this experience, to slip consciously into the existence in which our earth is united with other heavenly bodies. This is the essence of initiation into the macrocosm or Great World.

If a man were to fall asleep and behold all unprepared that world into which he enters, then through the mighty, overwhelming impression made upon him, he would be as one who with unprotected eyes attempts to gaze on the Sun. He would suffer a cosmic blinding that would bring death to his soul. All initiation is for the purpose of enabling man to enter the macrocosm, not unprepared, but with organs strengthened and ready to withstand the shock. Blindness and confusion would otherwise occur while sojourning in the macrocosm, because existence there is so far removed from that to which man is accustomed.

It is usual for man to regard everything in the sense world from one aspect only; anything that approaches him in a sense contrary to this seems false and discordant. As long as he holds the opinion that everything should conform to this view, a view quite natural on the physical plane, the seeker for initiation into the cosmos could never feel at ease there. Man lives within his narrow snail's shell of the sense-world, concentrated on one point of view from which he judges every circumstance. What harmonizes with the opinions he has formed he regards as true; all else he considers false. But when he passes through initiation man must expand into the macrocosm. Suppose he were only to expand in one direction, his experience would be limited to that direction, and he would be ignorant of everything else; but expansion in one direction into the macrocosm and with one point of view is impossible. Man cannot help expanding in all directions. The very fact of passing out into the cosmos is an expansion, an enlarging of himself into the macrocosm. It is impossible to have only one point of view there. He must be able to see the world not only from one point—from himself looking back—but also from a second, a third, and many other points of view. The seeker must develop flexibility of outlook, and be able to see things from every side. This does not imply that an infinity of conditions has to be reckoned with, for their number is limited. Theoretically, an infinite number of points of view is possible, but actually, twelve are sufficient. These are symbolized in the star-language of the Mystery schools by the Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. Man must not reach out only towards Cancer, for instance, but must view the world from all twelve points of the Zodiacal Circle. It is vain to seek agreement by means of abstract words suited to the understanding; the first step towards real agreement here on earth will be taken when the world is viewed from many different aspects.

Parenthetically it may be stated that the great difficulty in all world movements based on occult truths is that the ordinary habits of life are so apt to be carried over into them. When a man is constrained to communicate truths which are the results of super-sensible investigation, it is necessary, even when describing them exoterically, to observe the rule of doing so from different points of view. Those who have watched our movement attentively for some years must have noticed that we have always been striving to describe things not from one aspect but from many. Hence judgments formed in accordance with the usage of the physical plane discover contradictions here and there, for a matter seen from one aspect may appear very different when viewed from another. In a spiritually scientific movement it is necessary to emphasize from the beginning, that when a statement made on one occasion apparently contradicts another given previously, the matter needs careful consideration, each being correct in its own setting. In order to avoid such an unjustified spirit of contradiction among ourselves, we take the course of characterizing things from different sides. Those who attended the lectures given at Munich last year on ‘The Children of Lucifer and the Brethren of Christ’ heard of far-reaching cosmic mysteries from the standpoint of Oriental philosophy. It is therefore necessary for the seeker who ventures on the path leading into the cosmos to acquire adaptability of outlook, otherwise he will be lost in a labyrinth. For though man may adapt himself to the world, the world does not adapt itself to him. While the prejudiced man progresses only in one direction, remaining fixed at one standpoint, the world, ignoring him, moves on, and he is left behind in evolution. In the imagery of the stars, a man may desire to advance only in the direction of Aries and to remain with the surrounding world in that constellation, but the world moves on and presents to him the constellation of Pisces. Such a man will see what comes from Pisces as an experience of Aries; confusion results, and so he finds himself in a labyrinth. To find a way through the labyrinth of the macrocosm, not one point of view but twelve are required.

We have here described one way by which a man may pass out into the Cosmos. But there is another way by which a man may enter into the divine spiritual world without being aware of it, namely, during the other portion of the twenty-four hours. When a man awakes from sleep he plunges down into his physical and etheric bodies, but quite unconsciously, for his perceptions connect him immediately with the external world. Were he to descend consciously into his bodies, he would perceive something quite different. During sleep he is preserved from conscious participation in the life of the macrocosm (for which he is unprepared), and he is preserved from entering consciously into the life of the physical and etheric bodies through his perceptive faculties being immediately directed to the world surrounding him. The danger attending the conscious experiencing of this physical world is somewhat different from the confusion and blindness associated with a view of the other.

When a man enters without preparation into the nature of his physical and etheric being, identifying himself with it, the purpose for which these bodies were given him is developed to an extraordinary degree. That purpose is the development of ego-consciousness. The ego enters the world of the physical and etheric body unprepared, and impure. Were this to happen consciously instead of unconsciously, as is usual, the resulting mystic preception would exclude inner truth, and present illusion to him. Because the eye of man's inner being is then opened, he is united to all the egoistic wishes and desires, all the depravity within him. Ordinarily this does not happen, for during waking hours, with his attention directed to the physical world, he does not contact what may evolve out of his own inner nature.

Other lectures have referred to the experiences of Christian martyrs and saints on first touching and plunging into their own nature. These experiences illustrate the statements just made. Through the withdrawal of outer perception and the stimulation of the inner, the Christian saints were able to speak of the temptations and delusions that took possession of them. The descriptions they give are in strict accordance with truth. It is therefore wonderfully instructive to study the lives of the saints from this point of view; to see how the passions, emotions and desires implanted in man work—things from which he is preserved in ordinary life.

By sinking down into his inner being, by being compressed within his ego, and concentrated into one point, by desiring to be nothing else than an ego—this is what renders man incapable of experiencing anything except the satisfaction of his own wishes and desires. The evil in him can then lay hold of his ego.

We thus find that to seek to expand into the cosmos unprepared, means the danger of cosmic blinding; on the other hand to plunge into one's own etheric and physical bodies unprepared, is to be cramped, confined, and contracted entirely within oneself. There is, however, yet another side of initiation which was cultivated by certain other peoples. While expansion into the cosmos was followed more especially by the Aryan and Northern peoples, the other form was largely practised among the Egyptians. There is also this initiation where man draws near to Divinity by following the more inward path and an intensification of the inner life, by sinking within his own being, and striving to learn how divine activity works there.

In the days of the ancient Mysteries mankind as a whole was not sufficiently advanced for initiation, whether directed outwards to the macrocosm or inwards to a man's own self—the microcosm, for it to attain that high point where a man could be left entirely to himself. When for instance, an Egyptian initiation was being carried out the neophyte was inducted into the powers of his physical and etheric bodies so that he should experience with full consciousness what took place there. Dreadful passions and emotions would then arise from every side of his astral nature; demoniacal influences would proceed from him. Hence in these Mysteries the hierophant had to be assisted by helpers who drew these evils towards themselves and through the power of their own nature turned them aside. The Initiator had to be assisted by twelve helpers who received the expelled demons into themselves. Thus in ancient initiation a man was never entirely left to himself; for what was necessarily developed through his sinking into the physical and etheric was only possible when he was surrounded by the twelve helpers who accepted and overcame the demons.

In the northern Mysteries, where similar results were brought about by expansion into the macrocosm, twelve servers were required by the Initiator. They surrendered their forces to the would-be initiate, enabling him to develop the necessary methods of thought and feeling that could guide him through the labyrinth of the macrocosm.

Initiation where a man was dependent on those who assisted the Initiator, and where, because of this help he was safe from the danger of demons, was destined to be gradually replaced by one in which the novice had to rely more on himself. In this case he was given certain instructions which he had to follow; the gradual attainment of initiation was thus left more to the man himself. At the present time man is not far advanced upon this path; but by degrees an independent faculty will develop in humanity. By means of this faculty he will be able without any assistance, either to ascend to the macrocosm or descend into the microcosm. He will thus be able to pass as a free being through both forms of initiation.

The Christ Event took place in order that this might come to pass. This Event means for man the starting point from which, with complete independence, he can either sink inwards into the physical and etheric body or expand outwards into the macrocosm. Both this descent and this expansion had to be fully carried out once and for all time by a Being of a most exalted nature—Christ Jesus. The essence of the Event of Christ is: That this all comprising nature of the Christ accomplished ‘in anticipation’ for all mankind what will now be possible of achievement by a sufficient number of human beings at least, in the course of earthly evolution.

What actually did take place through the Christ Event?

On one hand the Christ Being had himself to descend into a physical and etheric body, and because the physical and etheric body of one human Being had been so sanctified that the Christ could descend into it (which happened only once), an impulse so great was given to human evolution that the possibility was given to every human being who sought it, of experiencing the descent into the physical and etheric body as a free agent. For this the Christ came down to earth, and accomplished what had never been accomplished before. This is something quite different from what was attained in the Mysteries through the co-operation of helpers. In the Mysteries man could descend into the secrets of the physical and etheric bodies, and could ascend to those of the macrocosm, but only when not really living within the physical body. He certainly could penetrate to the secrets of the physical body, but not when in it, only when quite free from it. On returning, he brought back into the physical body a remembrance of his experiences, but this was a remembrance, not a participation when in the physical body.

The Christ Event was to change all this radically, and it did so change it. Before this Event there never had been a physical and etheric body in existence capable of experiencing complete inner penetration by the ego. Up till then no human ego had really taken possession of a physical and etheric body. This occurred for the first time through the Deed of Christ.

From Him originated also that other outpouring, whereby a Being, though infinitely exalted above humanity, yet united Himself with human nature, and poured Himself into the macrocosm without external aid solely through the force of his own Ego. This was only possible through the Christ. Only through Him did it become possible for man to acquire the faculties by which he could gradually penetrate into the macrocosm, with complete freedom. These are the two main pillars that support both the Gospel of Matthew, and that of Luke. How was this?

We know that Zarathustra was the great teacher of Asia in far past post-Atlantean ages, that he subsequently incarnated as Zarathos or Nazarathos, and again later as the child Jesus of the house of David, who sprang from the Solomon line of this house, as described in the Gospel of Matthew. For twelve years, as we have seen, this individuality developed within the child Jesus every faculty it was possible for him to develop in the physical and etheric instruments of a member of the house of Solomon. The Zarathustra individuality then forsook this child and entered the other Jesus, the child of the Gospel of Luke, who was descended from the Nathan branch of the house of David, and was brought up in Nazareth, close to the other Jesus, the child of whom the Gospel of Matthew tells. This event took place at the moment described in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus was missing during the festival, and was later discovered in the Temple. While the Solomon Jesus died shortly after this, Zarathustra continued to live in the Jesus of whom St. Luke tells, until his thirtieth year, and during this time he developed all the qualities it had been possible to acquire through the instrumentality of the carefully prepared physical and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus on the one hand, and further, through having added to these what could be acquired through that very special astral body and ego-bearer belonging to the Nathan Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. Thus Zarathustra evolved within the body of this Jesus up to his thirtieth year. He had then advanced so far in this body with the qualities he had acquired, that he was able to make a third great sacrifice—the sacrifice of the physical body, which then for three years became the body of the Christ Being. Thousands of years before, the Zarathustra individuality had sacrificed his etheric and astral bodies to Moses and Hermes; he now sacrificed his physical body to Christ; that is, he forsook this physical sheath with everything of an etheric and astral nature remaining in it. What had formerly been occupied by the Zarathustra individuality was now occupied by a being of unique nature, the fountain head of all the wisdom of the mighty wisdom-teachers of the world: by the Christ.

This is the event presented to us at the baptism by John in Jordan, the event whose all-embracing nature and infinite greatness is revealed in one Gospel in the words—‘Thou art my well-beloved Son, in Whom I behold Myself, in Whom I am confronted by Myself,’ which should not be translated by the trivial words: ‘In Whom I am well pleased.’ In other Gospels it is even given as: ‘Thou are my well-beloved Son, this day I have begotten thee!’ These words clearly show that we are here concerned with a birth, the birth of Christ in the sheaths first prepared and then offered up by Zarathustra. At the moment of the baptism by John, the Being of Christ passed into the human sheaths prepared by Zarathustra; hence we are now speaking of the rebirth of these three sheaths, since they were permeated by the substance of Christ. The baptism by John is the rebirth of the sheaths acquired by Zarathustra and the birth of Christ on earth. Christ was now within a human body, a body certainly prepared in an unique manner, yet a human body like that of other men however less perfect these may be.

Christ, the most exalted individuality who can be united with the earth, had now entered a human body. If He was to be an example to all mankind, if He was to go through the great experience of complete initiation, He would have to experience this from both sides—the descent into the physical and etheric body, the microcosm, and the ascent into the macrocosm. Christ did pass through both these experiences as an example for mankind. We must, however, realize, as is necessary from the very nature of the Christ Event, that in considering these events, that is His descent into a physical and etheric body, the Christ was proof against the temptations which certainly assailed Him, but which rebounded from Him; and we must also realize that He was quite untouched by those dangers which affect ordinary humanity when seeking to expand into the macrocosm.

The Gospel of Matthew now tells how after the baptism of John, the Christ Being actually descended into the physical and etheric bodies. The account of this is found in the story of the temptation. We can see how the details of these scenes reproduce in every particular the experiences a man passes through when he descends into his physical and etheric bodies. In the descent of the Christ into a human physical and etheric body we see the compression of the human ego lived through before our eyes, and we can say This is true; all this can happen to us! If we remember Christ and desire to become like unto Him, we can acquire power to face all these things, and to conquer all that on such occasions emerges from our physical and etheric bodies.

The scene of the Temptation might be called the first great outstanding event of the Gospel of Matthew. It reproduces one side of initiation, the descent into the physical body and etheric body. The other side of initiation, the expansion into the macrocosm, is also described in such a way that we are indeed shown how the Christ endured this expansion absolutely in accordance with His human nature. I should like to mention here an obvious objection often made, namely: If Christ were indeed such a high Being, why had He to endure all this? Why had He to descend into a physical and etheric body? Why, like men, had He to go forth and expand into the macrocosm? What the Christ did was not done for Himself, but for humanity. In higher spheres and with the substances of these higher spheres, beings of a like nature to Christ could do this, but never before had it been done in a human physical and etheric body, for never before had a human body been permeated by the Christ Being.

Divine substances had before this gone forth into space, but never that which lives in man. Christ alone could take this human nature into Himself and pour it forth into space. This had to be done for the first time by a God in human nature!

And this second great event, the setting up, so to say, of the second pillar of the Gospel of Matthew, is recounted when we are shown how the second side of initiation, expansion to the sun and stars, was really accomplished by Christ while in His human nature. For this He had first to be anointed—anointed as another man would be, that he might be purified and sanctified, so as to be proof against what would approach Him from the physical world. Here we see how the anointing, which played a part in the ancient Mysteries, is again met with, this time on a higher level in the course of history, for formerly anointings were confined to the temples. We see how at the Last Supper the Christ gives expression to this ‘going forth into the universe,’ not only ‘existence within Himself’ when in the words, ‘I am the Bread,’ He tells those around Him that He feels Himself to be a part of what is expressed in the solid substance of the earth and likewise in all that is fluid. Expression is given to this conscious expansion into the macrocosm as distinct from the unconscious expansion of man during sleep, and all that is experienced by man as a blinding, is expressed in the monumental words, ‘My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.’

Christ Jesus actually felt what is experienced by man as the pains of death, of injury, or blinding. In the scene at Gethsemane He experienced what can be described as the soul revealing its own agony when forsaken by the physical body. In other words it is what is felt by the soul on leaving the body and expanding into the universe. All that follows is really an account of expansion into the macrocosm: The Crucifixion, and what is represented by the Burial, all these were formerly enacted in the Mysteries. This is the other pillar of the Gospel—the living out into the macrocosm.

The Gospel of Matthew tells us clearly that Christ Jesus lived in a physical body, which later hung upon the Cross. He was concentrated within this one point in space; but now He expands into the whole cosmos, and those who would seek Him then must do so no longer in this physical body, but they would have to seek Him clairvoyantly in the Spirit; the Spirit which fills all space.

After the Christ had actually accomplished that which formerly, and only with help from outside, was accomplished during three and a half days in the Mysteries; after He had done that which awakened so much opposition among the Jews, by saying that if they destroyed the Temple He would restore it again in three days (thus clearly referring to initiation into the macrocosm, formerly accomplished in three days), He further tells them that when this is fulfilled He would no longer be found where the Being of Christ Jesus now was, enclosed within a physical body, but that He would have to be sought in the Spirit permeating Universal Space. This is usually translated as follows (and even through the feebleness of the translation the full glory of the new age that was approaching can be seen): After this ye will have to look for the Being who is to be born out of human evolution, at the right hand of Power, and He will appear to you out of the clouds. It is there we must seek the Christ, the Christ Who is poured forth into the world as a prototype of the great initiation which man passes through on forsaking his body to expand into the macrocosm.

Herein we have the beginning and the end of the actual life of Christ. It begins with the birth of Christ, at the baptism in the Jordan, into that body of which we have spoken. It begins with one side of initiation, the descent into the physical and etheric bodies, as set forth in the story of the Temptation, and it ends with the other side of initiation: the expansion into the macrocosm. This expansion begins with the scene of the Last Supper, is continued in that of the Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

Between these two points lie all the events with which the Gospel of Matthew is concerned; so far we have but sketched the outline of these events, which will be amplified in subsequent lectures.

This is presumably a transcription by Rudolf Steiner, but the original document is missing. Text based on a typewritten template.

If we direct our gaze to the essence of evolution, we find everywhere that life reveals itself, whether in the course of world evolution or that of the individual human being, two great currents that symbolically represent themselves as a line rising and a line descending, which reveal themselves in time and space and transform into one another. The forces themselves on which these currents are based transcend all manifestation and project into them in such a way that the whole process of evolution is interwoven with them. It proceeds through these two lines as through a portal.

In every planetary state of development of the earth, from its first embodiment as ancient Saturn, these two forces are active. There is a period when the upward striving forces are mainly at work, they produce a state of awakening, of blossoming, until at a certain point the forces begin to reveal themselves that are connected with falling asleep, with dying. There is always a period of blossoming first, which then reaches its peak, and then a period follows in which everything dissolves again and the whole thing breaks down. The same thing can be found in every period of development on earth: something new blossoms, unfolds to a certain height, then decays and gradually dies. Every condition on earth during a certain period of time can be explained by the interaction and weaving of forces, those that flourish and those that die, those that belong to the ascending and those that belong to the descending line. Dawn and dusk and in between the height of noon, where the two forces combine and merge.

Seen from his horizon, man sees the stars rising in the east and rising higher and higher until they reach their zenith in the south. From there on, they sink down until they set in the west. And even though the stars in the west disappear from his view, he must still say to himself: The true point of setting lies in the south and coincides with the zenith, just as the true point of rising lies in the north and coincides with the nadir, because that is where the rising begins. This describes a cycle that can be divided into two halves by a vertical line running from south to north. In the part where the East Point lies, the ascending forces are active; in the part where the West Point lies, the descending forces are active. The East and West Points cut the semicircle right through the middle. These are the two points where the manifestation of the forces begins and ends for the physical, sensory eye of man. They form his horizon. (See drawing on page 387.)

The same cycle that is perceptible in the macrocosm can be found again in the physical body of man as the bloodstream. There, those forces that are related to blossoming and life are at work first in the red blood as it flows out of the heart. Then, as the red blood transforms into the blue, the forces associated with dying and death gradually reveal their effect. This bloodstream could also be divided into a semicircle, which belongs to the ascending forces, and one, which belongs to the descending forces.

It is the same in the life of a human being. During the day, he is active in the physical-sensual world, living out his impulses and consuming the forces that he draws from the cosmos during sleep at night. Just as the red blood flows out of the heart, having been refreshed by the oxygen that he takes in from the outside world with his lungs, so the human being wakes up in the morning with new strength. And just as the red blood, on its journey through the physical body, gives up its vital forces and gradually becomes blue, dead blood, so too, in waking consciousness, man lives out his forces and must sink into the state of sleep so that he can gather new forces from his environment, the macrocosm. The states of sleep and waking are like the inhaling and exhaling of the human being. During the night it inhales new forces, which it exhales during the day.

The development of the human individuality in a physical embodiment on earth also falls into these two forces, in that the human being develops the limbs of his being out of himself until he is about 35 years old, and thereby increasingly settles into the physical-sensual world. It is like an exhalation of his being on the physical plane. Then follows the period when man develops nothing new and begins to withdraw more and more from the physical-sensual world. As a physical man he gradually dies, an inhalation of his being takes place. In the first half of his life the constructive forces are so predominant that there is always an abundance of those forces, and man grows in his nature as an earth man. In the second half, however, the destructive forces are more active, and something remains that can no longer be replenished. This gradually causes the decay and death of the physical body.

Long before a person begins life as an earthly human being in a physical embodiment, so to speak appearing on the horizon, his being is already being built by divine spiritual forces from the macrocosm. This began at the point that lies deepest below the horizon, the nadir. As a microcosm, it actually rises in the eastern point, experiences its peak at around the 35th year of life in the south, and sets with death in the west. But then, for a long time, divine spiritual forces from the cosmos are still at work in its decline.

Thus the semicircle between the eastern and western points and through the south belongs to the conscious active life of the microcosm, and the semicircle from west to east through the north to the working of macrocosmic forces in the microcosm. The first is therefore the light half for the earthman, for it is here that he himself lives and works with his waking day consciousness. In the second, dark half, everything in him works subconsciously, because he has no self-awareness while he sleeps. In both halves, in the light as well as in the dark, the constructive and the destructive forces are effective. Thus the whole circle is divided into four parts and two right angles arise, both in the microcosm and in the macrocosm; one in which the life forces work, as in red blood, and another in which the death forces work, as in blue blood. Likewise, in every cosmic manifestation, in every state of planetary evolution of the present earth, there is a period when the constructive forces predominate and a period when the destructive forces are more active. This is the inhaling and exhaling in relation to physical-sensory manifestation. Thus, there is also a rising and setting to be perceived.

In evolution, it is the case that from the very beginning, where the constructive forces reveal themselves, the destructive forces are also at work at the same time, just as in the red blood at the moment when it leaves the heart, the killing element begins to work. Every life contains the germ of death at its beginning, although its effect only manifests itself later. The point of origin is at the same time the low point, just as the high point is the point of destruction. This is the case in man and also in the cosmos.

Because these destructive forces are also active from the beginning, much falls prey to these forces even before the certain peak of a certain development is reached, before that which should be developed has been achieved. So then something always remains behind, which then needs a new opportunity to develop further. When a new state of development is created, a certain culmination is determined for it, which is a continuation of the previous one, because there too a continuous build-up takes place up to a certain point. What has been left behind must then, under new conditions, further develop that which was not achieved under the previous state of development. If this were not the case, each state of development would be self-contained and, when it was over, there would be no occasion for a subsequent one. But now, in one state of development, the germ is laid for the following one through that which has been left behind; it strings these states together.

In the development of human individuality, it shows itself in the successive embodiments on earth. That which did not develop to the intended peak of perfection in one embodiment will be further developed in subsequent earthly lives. Thus, from the beginning, the powers left over from earlier earthly lives live and weave into human life from earlier earthly lives. As the new develops, the old lives in it, adapted to the changed conditions, because the normal degree of perfection to be attained is different for every human embodiment. Like something dark that opposes the new and blossoming, it lives itself into the new embodiment. It is the same in the cosmos. It shows itself in the beings that remain behind at every planetary state of development of today's earth. By placing themselves in the course of normal evolution as something that does not belong to this evolution, they form a contrast that lies outside the normal of this evolution, an outside world for that which develops as normal in a certain period. Thus evolution is divided into that which lives and flourishes within, and that which forces its way in from earlier states and actually lies outside evolution, and has a dying direction.

From the very beginning, both reveal themselves in a developmental period, and in the evolution of the earth, which has the internalization of the macrocosm into the microcosm as its task, the construction of human individuality, only that which has reached the specific peak of development in each [previous] planetary state belongs to the ascending line. The other falls prey to the disintegrating forces, it does not gradually internalize itself into the microcosm, it remains behind in the macrocosm. Thus, from the very beginning, an inner world and an outer world are predisposed by the action of the two forces. Thus there are Saturn beings that are still active in the solar state during the development of the physical, without being able to achieve what is the task for the solar state, the development of the etheric alongside the physical. In the lunar state, there are beings that first develop the physical, and others that develop the etheric, while the task there is the development of the astral. In the earthly state, beings are active that first develop the physical, then those that develop the ethereal and others that develop the astral, while the normal task is the development of the ego principle in the physical, ethereal and astral [body]. Thus there are beings at every level who have remained behind. For those beings who developed their sense of self on earth within the three sheaths, the human beings, these remaining beings express themselves through the physical, sensual outer world, their environment on earth. They are outside the normal process of development, which is that of the human being, and present themselves to him as something that does not belong to his nature. They have a different pace, in that they are an expression of what projects from earlier states into today's earthly development. However, they cannot fully participate in this and belong to the descending line of development.

Just as these retarded forces express themselves physically and sensually on earth as the external world in relation to the human being, so too the effect of retarded forces can be recognized in the spiritual. There too, the activity of the retarded beings intrudes into the work of those beings who direct and guide the normal course of evolution for a certain period. They form a counterpoise and a foundation for the activity of the more advanced beings, and just as the physical-sensual man cannot live and develop on earth without his environment, so the more highly developed beings cannot accomplish their work unless the retarded beings with their powers oppose them, thus forming a contrast. Therefore, from the very beginning there must be beings that work primarily in the constructive forces and others that reveal themselves in the destructive forces. Evolution can only take place between these two forces. Thus there were beings who increasingly internalized themselves in human individuality and revealed their powers from the inside out in human deeds; they reached the definite high point of evolution on earth, the development of consciousness of the ego in the three microcosmic sheaths. They then lived and revealed themselves in the active work of the power of the I in the outer world. These spiritual beings are active in the human I, as it lives in its three sheaths and pours its power into the environment. The human being perceives them during his waking day life, they are active while he lives self-consciously in the luminous semicircle. Those forces of light and warmth that have followed the normal course of evolution are at work within the human being himself. They have become internalized in the microcosm, and from there they radiate into the environment. But there is also a part in the luminous semi-circle that belongs to the destructive forces, in the eastern and western half. Those forces which during the day, as light and warmth, stream from the outside into the earth from the sun, are those that have not undergone the process of development in relation to the internalization of macrocosmic forces into the microcosm. Even during the moon condition, when the sun and moon separated, these forces had remained on the level of the sun's evolution; they did not participate in the further evolution of the old moon. They remained in the macrocosm, not internalizing further into the microcosm.

This was repeated in the state of the earth when the sun again separated and its light shone in from the outside. The heavenly body that we see as the sun belongs, in terms of microcosmic development, to the descending line. That which has internalized solar forces in the microcosm belongs to the ascending line. Everything that surrounds the human being, be it physical or spiritual, belongs to the forces that are destructive, because it has only internalized itself to a certain extent. As [environment] it then participates in the development, building up from the outside in into the microcosm. That which has become more and more internalized in the microcosm and has thus gone through the whole process of earthly development belongs to the constructive forces. Through them, a center is formed in the macrocosm, from which forces radiate into the environment, which initially have a destructive effect, for this center develops as a microcosm at the expense of its environment. It draws its nourishment from the physical environment. In the spiritual world there must be macrocosmic beings that pour new forces into him from outside as nourishment, so that he can continue to develop.

Those forces that did not follow the normal course of development, that did not internalize themselves into a microcosm, are active in man during the night. They had not gone through the development of the ego and the astral body in man, they had remained there, therefore they can only work in the microcosm when the ego and the astral body have separated out, that is during the state of sleep. In the microcosmic ego and astral body they had not internalized themselves, there they were outside, remaining in the macrocosm. Now they could only internalize themselves from the macrocosm into a microcosm, which consisted of an etheric and physical principle. There they are like an external world, internalizing themselves in the microcosm, like the substances and forces that serve as food for the human being are absorbed into him from the external world. Subconscious activity, without human self-awareness, can only take place. For just as the beings that live in the physical and sensory environment of man have not developed an individual sense of self, just as little have these macrocosmic beings developed the sense of self from his spiritual environment as man has. These forces belong to the dark half-circle. During the day and night, the beings that belong to the ascending forces alternate with those that belong to the descending forces in their work on the microcosm. During the day, the ascending forces in his ego consciousness are at work in him, while during the night they are poured out with his ego into the macrocosm. During the night, those forces are at work in the microcosm that pour out into the macrocosm during the day. When the human being sleeps, the macrocosm within him awakens; when the microcosm awakens, the macrocosm around him sleeps.

Something similar to what happened in the development of the old moon, when the sun and moon separated, and which is repeated in the development of the earth, takes place when the moon separates from the earth. Beings from the moon's development also remain behind, they fall back on the descending line of development because they cannot reach the certain high point of the earth's development. That which had followed the normal course during the lunar state and reached the corresponding climax could now absorb the power of the ego within itself and develop it further in the microcosm. But that which had remained behind at that time still had to develop the astral during the earthly state; it had not internalized itself accordingly and could only influence the microcosm from the outside as a lunar element. The beings from the lunar evolution that were left behind could not work their way into the ego forces of the earthman, they work in the day-consciousness of man down to his astral body. They do not take part in the highpoint of earth evolution, they belong to the forces of the descending line. Their effect on earth evolution occurs where the blossoming of the ego power begins. That was in the Lemurian period, when the I is internalized in the microcosm, and the effect of the retarded forces from the lunar state, the luciferic beings, begins in the astral body of man.

Alongside the new in evolution, there arises that which, as the old, projects out of the preceding state. Both develop side by side for a time, then comes the moment when the old must die, as the new unfolds further.

The development of those forces that were to take shape in the earthly state, and those that belong to an earlier state and continue their development under new conditions and therefore, at their level, are more highly evolved than that which is only beginning, is symbolically represented in the legend of the temple. It is told therein: One of the Elohim descended, took as his wife Eve, the Earth Mother, and from this union was born Cain, the first Earth man. Another of the Elohim created Adam, and from the union of Adam with Eve was born Abel.

The Cain-man is the son of divine spiritual forces, which influenced the development of the earth in such a way that they could bring forth a microcosm in which the macrocosmic forces internalized themselves. He belongs to those forces which were able to reach a certain high point during the development of the earth by inducing and later developing the power of the I in man.

The Abel-man belongs to other macrocosmic forces. They could not so directly internalize the power of the I in him. Through the mediation of two human beings, the macrocosm had an effect. He was not so directly a bearer of the macrocosmic forces as the Cain-man. They worked more from the outside in on him, not in him, but through the mediation of two human beings. He had to pass through sexuality. The Abel-man belongs to those forces which, out of an earlier evolution, reach into the earthly state. In him, forces from the evolution of the moon are at work that did not reach the appropriate climax at that time and therefore cannot internalize themselves further in the microcosm on earth than the astral body. Therefore, they could only have a creative effect on the development of the earth through the mediation of a human couple. What they creatively effected had to pass through the sexual sphere, because they could work only in this power, which belongs to the evolution of the moon. In the lunar state, the principle of duality was active, as two forces that creatively interacted as solar and lunar forces. This was part of what was to be formed at that particular peak of development. The retarded forces, which manifested themselves at the same time in the state of the earth when the development of the power of the I began to flourish in man, brought these lunar forces into the evolution of the earth and internalized them there in the microcosm, so that a duality arose in it, whereby either the sun or the moon influence was predominant in his physical or etheric body. Thus the two sexes came into being.

The Cain-man, who belonged to the actual evolution of the earth, did not need to go through sexuality. Just as the principle of duality applied on the old moon, so a trinity was destined for the earth: sun, moon and earth. Man on earth could contain within himself the forces of both sexes, just as the earth bears within itself the forces of the sun and the moon. He could work creatively through that which is developed on earth, the power of the I.

But the legend continues by telling how Cain became guilty through killing his brother Abel. In doing so, he became involved with the forces that work in Abel, the retarded forces from the development of the moon. Thus, these could also take hold in him. By bringing about death, he made himself guilty of the forces that lead to death, the descending, degenerative forces.

The Temple Legend further teaches: Cain became a tiller of the soil, Abel-Seth, the replacement son of Adam and Eve, became a herdsman. The Cain man lives in the evolution of the earth, he builds that which bears fruit, he works his way up with the ascending line of development. He must work with the forces that have internalized in him, in his environment on earth.

In the Abel-man, the cosmic forces have not internalized so much, they radiate even more from the outside into him, it flows to him from the macrocosm that which the Cain-man must conquer with his own forces from his environment. He does not become a farmer because he cannot work in the earth's evolution as does the Cain man, who belongs to this evolution. He becomes a shepherd, works with the astral, and herds the animals.

The currents of the Cain and Abel men continue to have an effect in the evolution of the earth. The temple legend continues to tell how there was a time when the great King Solomon, a descendant of the Abel current, and his great master builder Hiram Abiff, a descendant of the Cain current, lived at the same time.

King Solomon had the wisdom that flowed to him from the spiritual world, the macrocosm. His master builder constructed works of art through his own powers. His greatest work of art was to be the building of a temple that would contain everything that was in the outside world; the temple was to be an image of this outside world. King Solomon could think up the plan for this temple, but he could not build it. As an Abel human, he could not work down to the physical. The Master Builder was able to build the Temple, for as a Cain-man he had learned to work with and to control the material substance of the Earth. The Cain-man was able to build the Temple of the Microcosm, in which were internalized all the forces that work in the external world; the Abel-man only attained the pictorial mental image of the Temple.

The great final work of art of the Master Builder, so it was said, was to be the casting of the Sea of Bronze. In it were to be mixed the seven metals of the earth in such a way that a transparent liquid was formed. In the seven metals (copper, tin, gold, lead, iron, mercury, silver) the seven forces are at work, which find expression in the seven planets. Where they unite in harmony, they form a radiant unity that contains all of them, just as white light contains the seven colors of the spectrum.

The Cain man can work with his ego power so harmoniously in these planetary forces, which live out in him as the seven limbs of his nature (three higher, four lower), that they join together to form a human essence that looks through the physical-sensual world into a spiritual world. That was the last great work of art.

From the side of King Solomon, something is done to prevent this casting. Three treacherous journeymen mix something into the casting that destroys everything. Because Cain once became guilty by killing his brother Abel and thereby took in those forces that belonged to the descending line, the Cain-man could now approach from the side of the Abel-man this end of destruction, which turned out to be destructive in the work of building. It is further related how the builder is rescued during the catastrophe that arises from this and led through the fire to his great ancestor Cain in the center of the earth. There he receives a new hammer and begins his work anew, then he succeeds. The Cain man is guided through the blood of the generations to his great ancestor with the power of the ego, which finds expression in the blood and in the fire. There he looks into the spiritual, in that he sees as the center of the development of the earth the world I, which has internalized its power in him. Through this he receives new strength to continue to fulfill his task.

Then a new working period also begins for him, in that the wisdom connects with him, which previously flowed from the spiritual world to the Abel human being. This is what the legend tells as the engagement of the Queen of Sheba with the great master builder, who should have united with King Solomon before. From that time on, the forces that work in the Abel current decrease, having reached their peak in earthly development.

A certain peak is determined for every development; that is when the task for this development is achieved. This point can be designated as the height at noon. Until then the forces flourish, from then on they decline. This height at noon is determined from the horizon, the forces that reveal themselves in the east reach their greatest development; until then work is done in a constructive sense, from then on the work of dismantling begins, towards the west. Those forces that project from earlier states of development into the new ones cannot reach the definite height of noon; they are like the heavenly bodies that have a short diurnal arc and a long nocturnal arc. They remain for a shorter time in the light half of the circle, and for a longer time in the dark half. Their height at noon (in relation to the horizon) is low, their orbits extend only a little beyond the horizon. Thus they mainly work in the dark half of the circle. In the evolution of the earth through its earlier planetary states into the earth state itself, macrocosmic forces should gradually internalize themselves into the microcosm. Those forces that remained behind had not internalized themselves in this way; they remained in the macrocosm while the microcosm developed its sense of self. Therefore, they could only work in the microcosm itself in that half of the circle that belongs to the subconscious life of the microcosm. Their work is mainly below the horizon. In the conscious day-life of the microcosm, beyond the horizon, they could only work outside the microcosm. The lines, which are formed by the horizon from east to west, and the certain height at noon, perpendicular to it, together form the symbolic figure of the Tao sign. It is the hammer that is given for the construction of a certain developmental period. With this hammer the temple of the microcosm was built out of the macrocosm and is further worked on that temple. Its power manifests itself in the three points of the east, south and west in the light half of the circle, where the microcosm can consciously work with the internalized powers, there its beat sounds.

In the evolution of the earth, when the divine spiritual forces from the macrocosm had become internalized in the microcosm, the greatest internalization took place when God Himself lived in the microcosm. The highest point of the evolution of the earth had been reached. From that time forth the powers must gradually reveal themselves which, in relation to the microcosm, have a disintegrating effect. Then the whole course of evolution is reversed. From this point onwards, the microcosm must expand to become the macrocosm. Until then, everything that had come with evolution had become internalized in the microcosm. Now the microcosm is to absorb into itself that which always remained behind so that evolution could proceed. The divine spiritual beings had to gradually withdraw from the human being; then he himself should begin to influence the macrocosm. Instead of taking, he should begin to give. He must then approach those beings who kept their distance and stayed behind so that man could develop, so that he can also connect his consciousness with theirs.

The Cain-man should work on the construction of the microcosm until the climax is reached, and build into it all the forces from the macrocosm. In the light half of the circle he should work in microcosmic consciousness. But then the time comes when the task of his work changes so that he is to work from the temple of the microcosm on the outer world, so that his forces flow into the dark half of the circle, where the macrocosmic forces work in him subconsciously. Then, through his work in the temple of the microcosm, the darkness that surrounds him as an environment and that which lives in him as subconsciousness will be illuminated with the light of understanding. His consciousness will extend beyond his environment. Microcosm and macrocosm unite, the light and the dark halves form a circle in which the human being can be consciously active when he feels himself as macrocosm in the microcosm. The constructive and destructive forces, life and death, become one, they transform into each other. Thus he consciously passes through the ascending and descending lines of development, through the portal that leads to the divine spirit itself, which reveals itself in these forces.

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