The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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.

Man's connection with the various planetary bodies. The earth's mission.

For the more exact understanding of our particular subject let us first consider the great world and then look down to the limited circle of our immediate earthly existence. We shall be able in this way to form a clear idea of what in Spiritual or Occult Science is understood in connection with the three conceptions we have brought together—Universe, Earth, and Man.

You will have already gathered from what has been said that in Spiritual Science one can by no means speak of the world as a mere material thing. We have seen how the manifold world beings (we may not say world-bodies) that have been brought before you as the different embodiments of our earth—Saturn, Sun, and Moon are quite other than mere material globes, each being, as we have seen, the dwelling-place of a host of spiritual beings, and created only according to the needs of the spiritual beings that live on them.

We saw how the sun separated from the earth because it had to be the home of certain highly exalted Beings who could only make use of the finer substances for their evolution, while man had to retain the other substances on the earth. Were we to investigate the whole wide world we should nowhere find anything that is material alone, everything is connected with a spiritual part. We have seen how the various earth-beings are connected with spiritual-beings. Stones and the minerals of the earth have their ego in that which surrounds us in the universe. Plants have their ego localised in the centre of the earth-planet, while their astral principle, which brings about the development of the flower, encircles them above the earth. Everything is pervaded by spirit, and thus our conception of a world-body is enlarged. We look up to some heavenly body and we know that it is but the expression of certain spiritual beings connected with a material planet.

Now, by developing certain capacities which are to be found slumbering within him, man is actually in a position to gain knowledge for himself regarding these bodies existing in space, and today we shall consider man in relation to the various planets.

We are surrounded on earth by minerals, plants, animals, and human beings, moreover we know that earthly affairs are regulated by higher beings who in Christian esotericism are described as Angels, Archangels, and Archai; we also know that there are other beings concerned with the earth, even though they send their forces from the sun and the moon. Today we have something to add to this. The question might rise in the mind of anyone: To what extent may one of the planets of our solar system be compared with another in respect to its inner nature?

To help us, let us consider the beings that visibly confront us in the present cycle of humanity, and enquire: How are the beings which surround us here as minerals, plants, animals, and men related to other beings in the universe? Of course we are dealing with this question from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, from knowledge gained through the development of clairvoyant consciousness; and of this development we shall speak later. In the first place let us ask: Are there on the other planets men such as those developing on our earth? Can clairvoyant consciousness discover such men? Clairvoyant consciousness answers: We do not find men on other planets in exactly the same form as upon earth, but we do discover that each planet, each heavenly body, has its particular mission. Nothing in the universe is repeated, other planets have other missions.

Our earth has originated from three preceding embodiments; the stage of existence we are now passing through (the human stage) has been passed through already by other beings; by Angels, for example, on the ancient Moon, by Archangels on the ancient Sun, and by Archai upon ancient Saturn. It is easy to make the mistake that these were men like ourselves, but we must bear in mind that on the ancient Moon there was no solid stone or mineral and therefore the beings who passed through their human stage there did so under entirely different conditions.

We know this, but we have to speak of it as the human stage. The Archangels, or Fire-Spirits, passed through their human stage in entirely different conditions, for the ancient Sun consisted only of warmth and gas, and beings passing through their human development there could not have bodies such as we have, with solid muscles, bones, etc. In earthly evolution nothing is repeated, every stage has its particular mission in the great household of cosmic existence.

Let us now consider for a time the evolution of our earth. If it is observed occultly we see it as a body inhabited by man on which he carries out his development. This development has only been made possible through the sun and the moon having separated from the earth, so that its forces were held in balance between the two. At the time when the earth was itself still sun (if we may call it so), it passed through an evolution in which it was incorporated with the sun. The sun was then itself at the planetary stage of existence, and was inhabited by Archangels, but because of advancing development it was possible for part of that which was embodied in it to rise to a higher existence at the cost of that other part which it sent forth as the earth-moon. In the great universe evolution proceeds in such a way that things which for a time have progressed side by side separate; the one expanding into higher regions, the other descending into a lower state. In order that certain beings might develop high enough the sun had itself to become a body fitted for their habitation; it advanced from planetary existence to fixed-star existence. We have to realize that a world-being like our sun has developed occultly from a planet to a sun. A sun is a planet that has progressed.

As was pointed out in the last lecture, after everything had united again, and the sun had once more at a certain period separated from the moon-plus-earth, man continued to dwell for a long period upon the earth, on into the present earth-period, without the spiritual Sun-Forces. Then through the advent of Christ the spiritual forces of the sun found again a place upon the earth. Now, if the Christ is embodied in the earth man must become more and more mature through receiving into him the Christ-Principle; the material form of a planet depends on what it evolves in the way of beings.

Exactly in the same way as the sun evolved to its present exalted position, by withdrawing the finer substances because the Sun-being had need of them, so also will the earth. The substances of the earth will have then so changed as to be suited to man, or rather to what, in the distant future, will have developed from man and from the earth-beings he bears along with him; for when man has become powerful he will draw other earth-beings along with him. What will happen then? If man fills himself ever more and more with the Christ-Principle, if he absorbs more and more of the Sun-Forces which descended to earth with the Christ, he will himself grow ever more Christ-like, and will irradiate the whole heart with the Christ-Principle.

What is this Christ-Principle? Before we can know what it is we must know what the mission of the earth is, so that we can describe it by one special word. What is the mission of earthly existence? Let us ask first, What was the mission of the Moon's existence?

If we cast our clairvoyant vision back to the ancient Moon we find at the beginning, in the ancestors of all the beings on our earth, a very remarkable quality. These beings possessed a great deal, but one thing they lacked at the very beginning of the Moon period, and this thing we now find everywhere around us on our earth. The forces of the Moon, the predecessor of our earth, worked at first unwisely; the conditions on the Moon to begin with were such that nowhere could one have perceived a harmonious working together in wisdom. If one follows the evolution of the ancient Moon clairvoyantly one sees how the wisdom of the cosmos was gradually embodied in the beings who dwelt upon the Moon, by other beings who were round about it and who worked on it from without. Because of this the ancient Moon is called the Planet of Wisdom.

When the Moon period came to an end, wisdom was in all things. Life on the Moon then went through an intermediate condition resembling a world-sleep called “pralaya,” and when the beings again came forth from pralaya, and the earth appeared, they brought with them the wisdom with which they had been imbued on the ancient Moon. The consequence of this is that wisdom is implanted in all we observe around us. In all the creations which are the result of the Moon evolution, and which have a yet further mission, we find wisdom. Look where you will: take, for example, the leaf of any plant; the more closely you observe it the more wonderful it appears, because the several parts are arranged according to the highest wisdom. Take a portion of the human thigh-bone; there also the constituent parts are arranged according to the highest wisdom so as to form a support capable of carrying the upper part of the body.

No engineering skill of today can equal the bridge-building of this mighty wisdom. In all the other human organs, and indeed in all the surrounding world, we see wisdom at the root of everything. Man can only absorb this wisdom in a bungling way into his inner being on the earth. Microcosmic wisdom is something only to be learnt from the objects that surround man here. Wisdom is in all things, including those parts of man in which he does not consciously participate.

Following the course of history, we often extol human wisdom. How wonderful it seems to us when we learn that at a particular time man made this or that discovery. The art of paper making, for example, was discovered in recent times; it was an accomplishment of human intelligence—but wasps knew how to do it long before man. A wasp's nest, however, is not built by individual wasps, but by the group-soul of wasps; it is built of exactly the same material as our paper. These group-souls possessed long ago something which human wisdom will only gain gradually. This wisdom, which is found deeply ingrained in everything that exists on earth, had to take form gradually, and we shall see how this was brought about throughout the Moon period; how at that time wisdom warred against un-wisdom, and how the ancient Moon then bequeathed to the Earth the germs of beings in whom wisdom had been implanted.

What is to be implanted in a similar way in the beings of our Earth? Just as wisdom was implanted in our predecessors on the ancient Moon, so love has to be implanted on our planet. Our planet (the Earth) is the planet of love. The development of this, the first instilling of love, had to be in its lowest form. This happened during the Lemurian epoch, when the ego of man took shape; at that time the development of love in its lowest form began through the separation of the sexes. All further development consists in the continual refinement, the spiritualizing, of this love-principle. Just as in the Moon-period wisdom was instilled into Moon-beings, so one day, when our earth shall have attained its goal, all earthly beings will be filled with love.

Let us now turn for a moment to the next planetary existence, that which is to succeed our Earth—the Jupiter planet. When the beings reappear who will inhabit Jupiter they will regard all those in their environment with their own spiritual powers of perception; and just as with our intellect we admire the wisdom contained in stones, plants, and animals, and indeed in everything that surrounds us—just as we draw wisdom from them that we also may have it—the Jupiter-beings will direct their forces to all that surrounds them, and the love which had been implanted in them during the Earth evolution will be wafted to those who now surround them. In the same way that we analyse objects and learn from the wisdom contained in them, so the Jupiter-beings will edify themselves with the outpourings of love that proceed from the beings about them. This love which is to develop on Earth can only develop through earthly egos being related one to another in the way described. Development in this direction can only take place through men being torn away from group-soul qualities; through one man drawing close to another; only thus can true love develop. Where egos are united within the group-soul there is no true love. Beings must be separated from each other so that love may be offered as a free gift. Only by such a separation as has come about in the human kingdom, where ego meets ego as independent individual, has love as a free gift become possible. This is why an increasing individualism and a uniting of separate individuals had to come about on earth.

Think of the various beings that are united within a group-soul; the group-soul directs them as to how they shall act. Can it be said that the heart loves the stomach? No, the heart is united to the stomach by the being within who holds them together. In the same way the several animals in a group are united one with the other within the group-soul nature, and what they have to do is regulated by the wise group-soul.

Only when the group-nature is overcome, and individual confronts individual ego, can the sympathy of love be offered as a free gift from one being to another.

Man could only be prepared for this mission gradually, and we see how he passes through a kind of preparatory school for love before he is fully individualized. We see how, before he possessed a complete ego of his own, he was gathered into groups that were related by blood by guiding beings, and the members of these groups loved each other because of the blood tie. This was a great time of preparation for humanity. We have already pointed out that at this stage love was not a free gift, but was directed by a remnant of the cosmic wisdom; we have seen how Luciferic beings worked here and opposed with their strong liberating force everything that gathered mankind into families and peoples through the power of the blood; these Luciferic beings strove to make man independent.

Thus man continued gradually to mature that he might eventually receive the highest potency of love—the Christ Principle, which expressed its nature in the words, “He who does not forsake father, mother, son, and daughter, he who does not take up his cross and follow Me, is not worthy of Me.” These words are not to be understood trivially, but in the sense that, through reception of the Christ Principle the ancient blood brotherhood had to assume a new form, a feeling of “belonging to each other” which, regardless of material foundations, must pass from soul to soul, from man to man. The Christ-Principle has given the impulse by which man can love man, and that through being Christened human love may become more and more spiritual. Love will become more psychic and more spiritual, and through this man will also draw along with him the lower creations, and will thus transform the earth. In a far distant future he will transform the entire substance of the earth, and so mature the earth-body that it will be enabled to unite again with the sun. Christ as Spiritual Sun has given the impulse by which the earth and the sun can again be united in one body at a future day.

We have surveyed the course of the evolution of the world; we have seen how the body of the sun first separated from the earth, and how the mighty Christ Impulse descended, and how the impulse was thereby given towards a reunion of earth and sun so that they might rise to higher stages of existence. We have also realized that the earth is to produce human beings who have this as their mission. Therefore, when we look around upon the human kingdom, and desire to learn about man, we can find him only on the earth, for only here are conditions produced for such men as exist today. You may now ask: How is it with the other kingdoms of the earth? Let us consider the vegetable kingdom. When clairvoyant vision sweeps out into the universe and we investigate the other planets belonging to our system, we find in all those belonging to our sun a vegetable kingdom entirely corresponding to our own—so that in our vegetable kingdom we have something that in its systematic life is a part of our whole universe.

Our solar system is peopled by a vegetable creation, and were the whole matter to be considered occultly we should see that each planet is peopled also by its own kind of human beings. It is easy to perceive an inner relationship between plants and the sun, and how the life of the plant is intimately connected with the life of the sun. If this is the case it must also be connected with all the planets belonging to the solar system. When we allow our thoughts to sweep back to the condition of the earth when it was still a Sun planet, we know that man consisted of physical and etheric body, that is, he was at the stage of a plant. Man at that time had the value of a plant; he was in the position in which the vegetable kingdom is now. This kingdom is composed of beings consisting of physical body and etheric body. These confront us in a way that moves us to say that they have remained true to the sun; even now they clearly reveal their relationship with the sun.

Let us consider the nature of a plant according to Rosicrucian wisdom. We see the plant fixed in the ground by its roots, that is, the organ which leads it towards the centre of the earth—to its ego and we see how it turns its organs of reproduction to the sun and absorbs its chaste rays.

Let us now turn to man. It is not difficult to imagine man as a reversed plant. If we think of a plant exactly reversed in position we have a man; his reproductive organs are turned to the centre of the earth, and his root towards space. The animal stands half-way between these. Hence one can say in a spiritual sense, when the soul-nature of the world passed through the various kingdoms it passed through a vegetable, an animal, and a human existence. Plato expresses this in a beautiful way. He says: “The world-soul is crucified on the cross of the world body.” Man has passed through the plant stage which directed him to the centre of the earth. The position of animals is expressed in the horizontal position of the spine. Man's position is that of the plant, only reversed. Thus the cross arose.

On it the world soul is crucified; this is the profound esoteric meaning of the cross. In the plant of today we have a being which strives towards the sun, which has, in a certain sense, remained united with the sun, hence it has the opposite direction to man. Animal forms on the various planetary existences are partly alike and partly different; even here the animal stands midway between man and plant.

If we now pass to the mineral kingdom we find in the forms of crystals something that directs us into space far beyond our solar system. In the formative forces of the mineral kingdom we find forces which reach far beyond the solar system. We are led, especially when considering those forms of the mineral kingdom through which the light passes, to a perception of what takes place far beyond our solar system. The most abstract thing, and that which has least individual existence, yet forms at present the foundation of our life, is the mineral. It has a universal existence; the higher the being the more it is suited to the system of our earth and sun.

We will now consider this point with regard to man. If man were adapted to forces that ruled on the earth alone he would be condemned to exist only on the earth; he could never become a citizen of the universe; he could speak of nothing that takes place beyond the earth. Though he is adapted, through his outward form, to the conditions of the earth, he has also through his higher powers a part in all the higher beings who are connected with the earth. That which limits man to the earth has reference to his body alone; the spiritual powers with which he is furnished lead him far beyond the earth. Here again we have to distinguish between different forces. In order that we may understand them let us dwell first on those forces that can be easily classified.

We have in the first place the power which called up pictures before our spiritual eyes during the Atlantean epoch. Man's consciousness, to begin with, was a picture consciousness; only as evolution progressed was he gradually able to comprehend external objects by means of his objective consciousness. The consciousness which at the present time presents the sense world to us so that we see colours with our eyes, hear sounds with our ears, smell, and taste, was only differentiated at one time from out the general perception of warmth by the organ which was then like a kind of lantern—the pineal gland. Objective consciousness is purely of the earth. Wonderful as it may seem, all the sensations man is aware of, such as the colour of objects, resounding tones, have only existence on earth, and if we were to consider the beings of another planet we would find that at first we could not understand them. For instance, if we were to say something to these beings about the colour red they would not know what was meant; on their planet they have a different way of perceiving beings and things. What we call sense-perception applies only to our particular planet.

I have already explained that before sense perception was differentiated it was inwardly connected with reproduction. Precisely as sense perception is of the earth, so also is the form of reproduction (as it exists at present) of the earth, and is only adapted to this planetary existence: it exists for the purpose of providing the first foundation of that which is the mission of the earth, namely, love—for love is to be developed upon the earth.

We now come to another human power. Suppose you observe some object; as long as your eyes are turned to it you know that you are in correspondence with the object; it acts upon you; now turn your eyes away and hold the idea-picture of it in your memory; the object has gone but the image remains. If man had not the capacity of retaining such images he would be an entirely different being, for as soon as his gaze left the object the image of it would also have disappeared, and in consequence he would not have power to connect the qualities of the things observed with his own qualities. That capacity of consciousness which makes the man of today able to retain the image of an object even when the object itself is gone, was his even on the ancient Moon; it is the same capacity which then enabled him to see what was external to him in pictures. He could not at that time see outer objects as he does today, but when anything approached him an astral vision rose before him like a vivid dream picture, but it was related in a particular way to the object he perceived.

Man's consciousness was then a picture consciousness, not an objective consciousness. Now he is in touch with the objects themselves, the picture he sees is the object. A last remnant of picture consciousness has remained in our power to form memory pictures. These are of greater value than the mere observation of external objects. In observing a number of objects that are similar to each other we bring them under one general idea. For instance, you have here so many pieces of chalk you group them under the general conception “chalk.” In this way man rises to general conceptions for which no outer object exists. Man can work inwardly with his ideas, and if with this inward activity—with this power of ideation—he were to come in touch with beings outside our planetary existence he would be able, without having to refer to any object, to make himself more easily understood by them. Both the picture consciousness (which man possessed before he could perceive outer objects, and which was a dim clairvoyance) and also the imaginative consciousness which he will develop later are more far reaching than mere sense observation.

When picture consciousness is acquired through occult development and man is able to perceive not only outer objects, but also, for instance the human aura; when in pictures he sees around him things of a soul and spirit nature; when that which exists in the world rises before him in pictorial symbols, he has gained with his imaginative consciousness the power to connect himself with other things inhabiting other planets.

There is a yet higher degree of consciousness. This was possessed by man dimly during the Sun period, and to a slight extent he has it still—it is dreamless sleep consciousness. Man is not without consciousness when asleep; neither is a plant without consciousness; its consciousness is the same as that of man in ordinary sleep. Sleep is only a lower degree of consciousness, when things escape man's attention and he does not observe them.

Through developing certain forces man can gain the power to perceive what is around him during the state of dreamless sleep. This is a higher state of consciousness than picture consciousness; it is the consciousness plants have, but in a sleeping form. If one rises to this consciousness but permeates it with one's ego in clear day-consciousness one has attained to the degree of inspiration or, in occult development, to inspired consciousness. This consciousness does not act merely by means of pictures. When something flows from the object and passes into the observer it is a tone-consciousness, and cannot be compared with picture-consciousness. The man who experiences it enters into a spiritual world of tone; this is the consciousness described by Pythagoras as “the Harmony of the Spheres.” The whole world then utters forth its nature, and when man is asleep at night and the astral body and ego are withdrawn from his physical and etheric bodies, the harmonies and melodies of cosmic music pervade his astral body. The astral body is then immersed in true spiritual existence, and from the music of the spheres it draws power by which to restore its exhausted forces. Man is plunged at night within the music of the spheres, and through the tones ringing within him he feels strengthened and refreshed anew when morning comes. When conscious of this he is Inspired, and is capable of perceiving all that is contained within the solar system.

Through his ordinary senses and the intellect associated with them man perceives only the things of the earth; through Imagination he comes in touch with the various planets; when he has attained to Inspiration he comes in contact with the solar system. This fact has always been known in certain circles. Goethe, who was an Initiate, knew it; hence in the prologue to Faust, the scene of which is set in the spiritual world in heaven—he represents the Angel as saying: “The sun intones his ancient song, 'Mid rival chant of brother spheres.”

From this we see that he knew that the secrets of the solar system are expressed in tones, and that one who can raise himself to Inspiration can learn these secrets. Goethe did not write this by chance, as we can see, for he maintains the character. In the second part of Faust, when he takes us up into the spiritual world he says again very much the same thing:

“Sounding loud to spirit ears,
Lo! the new-born day appears.”

Spirit ears are the ears of the clairvoyant, who is able to perceive the harmonies of the solar system. If you could perceive the Sun-Forces streaming down on to the bodies of plants as they grow (these bodies whose roots and leaves terminate in flowers bathed round by the astral body, into which stream the forces of the sun); if you could perceive these forces secretly entering the earth through the flower, you would perceive them as spiritual music—the music of the spheres. This can, however, only be heard by spiritual ears.

Spiritual sound enters into flowers, that is the secret of the development of plants, each separate flower is the expression of the tones which give it form, and give to the fruit its character. The sun tones are caught up by the plant, and these rule within it as spirit.

You perhaps know how form can be imparted by sound in the material world; you may remember the experiment of the Chladnic sound forms. How dust scattered upon a disc assumes certain figures as the result of sound; in these figures we have the expression of the sound that produces them. Just as physical sound is caught up, as it were, in this dust, so the spiritual sound of the sun is caught up and absorbed by flower and fruit. It is hidden mysteriously in the seed, and when a new plant grows from the seed it is the sun-tone it has absorbed that conjures forth its form.

Clairvoyant consciousness looks around upon the vegetable kingdom, and in the flowers which form the variegated carpet of the earth's surface it sees everywhere the reflection of sun-tones. What Goethe says is true, “The sun intones his ancient song,” but it is also true that these sun tones stream to earth, are absorbed by plants, and reappear when new plants spring from the seed. For in the forms of plants is heard the sun-tones which re-echo into space the music of the spheres.

Herein we see how universe and earth, how fixed star and planet, are spiritually in touch with each other, and we learn not only to look at what is in our environment in the physical world, but we also gain an inkling of how those who partake of Inspiration ascend to the sun.

There is a still higher state of consciousness, which, in the true sense of the word, we call Intuition; through it man can creep within the very nature of things. This is more than inspirational consciousness; here a man sinks himself into beings, he identifies himself with them. This leads him still further. Where does inspirational consciousness lead him? It leads him to where he feels one with the earth planet, for the egos of the plants are in the centre of the earth. When he perceives the sun-tone he becomes one with the planetary being that dwells in the centre of the earth; he becomes one with his planet; he can also become one with all other beings. He then goes through experiences that reach far beyond our solar system; his vision is extended from system-consciousness to cosmic-consciousness-intuition carries him beyond the several solar systems.

Thus we see that in the mineral kingdom we have something which in a homogeneous form furnishes us with a basis that extends far beyond our ordinary existence. We see that the present human form is a physical earthly form, but that man will raise himself once more from ordinary earthly consciousness to planetary-consciousness through imagination; to system-consciousness through inspiration; to cosmic-consciousness through intuition.

This is the path humanity has to travel in so far as it is connected with the entire evolution of the world. In the next lecture we shall descend from this study, which has led us outwards to that which has taken place in more recent ages of earthly existence, in the Egyptian and Grecian ages, and in our own age. We shall see how the macrocosm, the mighty universe of which we have formed some idea today, is reflected in the life and conception of individual man—the microcosm.

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.

You must not expect that these four lectures can be a substitute for those which were planned for Munich. [It had been Dr. Steiner's intention to give a course of lectures on the theme ‘Occult Reading and Occult Hearing’ in August 1914, after the production of a new Mystery Play, but this was prevented by the outbreak of the War.] I will try to give a brief outline of what was to have been the content of the Munich lectures but the most important and essential information that was to have been given there must be reserved for less turbulent times. I am astonished to find certain people thinking that the strenuous efforts required for giving very important teachings of Spiritual Science—as was intended in Munich—can be applied in times such as those in which we are now living. But it will be realised one day that this simply is not possible, that the highest truths cannot be communicated when storms are raging. As far as my theme is concerned, I will give a course of lectures on it later on, when karma permits, in substitution for what was to have been given in Munich. But in view of the desire to hear something about this subject, I will try to meet this wish as far as is possible at the present time.

The essential findings of Spiritual Science are acquired through occult reading and occult hearing. We hear something about the methods by which the spiritual investigator reaches his experiences, when he speaks of the actual processes of occult reading and occult hearing. Absurd theories still prevail at the present time about the way in which results are obtained in Spiritual Science. Before I pass on to the central theme I will speak of a trivial matter—trivial, that is to say, in comparison with what our stream of spiritual life would like to attain. A certain modern Professor wrote a review of my book Theosophy. This review was published a few years ago, and the author was obviously irritated most of all by what is said in the book about the human aura, about thought-forms and so forth. Among many things that I will not mention here, this review also contains something that is absolutely comprehensible from the point of view of a typical thinker of the present day. It is said that if there is anything in these statements about the aura and thought-forms, some of those who can see thought-forms should subject themselves to an experiment. There would have to be an experiment where a number of those who claim to be able to see such things stand in front of others who have certain thoughts and feelings, and then the former should be asked: ‘What do you see in these people standing or sitting in front of you?’ Then—according to the reviewer—these so-called occultists should state what they have observed, and the others should confirm that they had actually had these thoughts and feelings. If the seers' statements all tallied with each other, then they could be believed.

Let me say here that there is nothing more natural than this argument. Any thinker schooled in modern natural, science must use it because it inevitably appears to be completely reasonable. Nevertheless, one thing holds good. The Professor who said this had certainly read the book before writing his review. We must assume this at any rate. As the review gives the impression of honesty, we can certainly assume it. But he could not read it in the real sense because, comprehensible as it is that the objections should be made as long as there is no knowledge of the truths contained in the book, it ought also to be comprehensible that such objections would not be brought forward if the book had been read with understanding. With these words I am saying something that will be considered outrageous by every normal scientific thinker of to-day—he will think it outrageous because it must inevitably be incomprehensible to him; he simply cannot understand it. Among the things to be found in that book, there is also the following.—It is said that if the seer really desires to look into the spiritual world and see the truth, he must, above all, practise a self-education which enables him to penetrate into things with absolute selflessness, to silence his own wishes and desires in face of the spiritual world. Yes, but if five or six people are brought together in order to make an experiment according to the methods of natural science, as is demanded, those four or five people start off with the wish to reach a certain result—as a matter of fact a result that is demanded by science itself. The whole thing is arranged as happens when there are desires and wishes in ordinary life—which is just what should be avoided. It is obvious that every true impression of the spiritual world will be eliminated by such an experiment. For this experiment is arranged entirely according to the thinking of the physical plane and it is just these thoughts of the physical plane that must be overcome, together with all the desires and wishes connected with them. It may be said that it is a question of being passive. Certainly—but such conditions cannot be arranged from the standpoint of the physical plane and with the methods of the physical plane. They must be arranged only from the standpoint of the spiritual world and with the methods of the spiritual world.

First of all, the matter in question would have to lie in the spiritual world itself, not in the brain of a curious professor. The intention would have to emanate from the spiritual world that human beings who are seers here on the physical plane should experience something of the thoughts and feelings of other human beings; through the karma of the spiritual world a handful of people would have to be brought together—brought together, not by a professor but as if through a nexus of destiny. Then, from the other side, the seers too would themselves have to be brought together by karma. Again, from out of the spiritual world the feelings and so forth within the individuals would have to be revealed to the various seers. If the experiment could be arranged in this way it would undoubtedly succeed.

If anyone reads my book Theosophy with real understanding, he will know that what I have just said is a self-evident truth of the spiritual world but that such procedures are not possible in our age. And one has, after all, to reckon with this fact.

Because the review in question showed me that people are not able to read the book with sufficient understanding to discover such a thought by themselves, in the sixth edition—the proofs of which I am now correcting—I have added what I have just told you. One of the essentials in a book that has grown out of Spiritual Science is that one not only assimilate its actual contents—that is of minimal importance—but that having read it a change shall have taken place in thinking and feeling; standards and judgments otherwise applied in the everyday world should have progressed. The difficulty still standing in the way of understanding books on Spiritual Science is that people read them just as they read other writings and imagine that their contents can be absorbed in the same way, whereas the truth is that something will be changed within us when we have understood a genuinely occult book. It is therefore quite understandable that genuine occult books are rejected by most human beings to-day. For what ought to take place in someone who reads such a book at the present time? He takes the book ... and he is clever ... as everyone is clever to-day. He considers that he is capable of judging the contents of the book, and he is convinced at the outset that there can be no better judge of that book than himself. And now, after having read it, is he supposed to learn to judge differently? Of course, he cannot do so; he is clever already and has impeccable judgment! He does not admit that there is anything to change in his power of judgment. Needless to say he will realise nothing of the basic trend and intention of the book. At most he comes to the conclusion that he has learnt nothing from its contents and that it is all so much juggling with words and concepts. It must necessarily be so if he does not constantly have in mind the basic principle of Spiritual Science which is that in any circumstance, no matter how trivial, after reading a genuine book on Spiritual Science, a different kind of perception and judgment of the world must arise.

There is one essential to be remembered if the words ‘Occult Reading and Occult Hearing’ are to mean anything to us. We must, as it were, say farewell to the ordinary kind of thinking, the ordinary judgments applied to the physical world. I have often emphasised that one must, of course, remain a reasonable human being. Although a new kind of judgment, of thinking and of feeling must be acquired for the spiritual world, healthy judgment as regards the events and beings of the physical plane must be maintained. That goes without saying. But there is something that is necessary for the higher worlds and does not hold good for the physical plane. I will start from an experience that is certainly familiar

On the physical plane we are accustomed through our thinking, feeling and willing to relate ourselves to that plane. When we think, we create for ourselves mental pictures of the things and beings of the physical plane and the processes connected with then. Anything of which we opine that it is present in space or takes place in time, we thereby make into our own spiritual property. We learn, through our mental pictures, to know something. It is the same with feeling. We confront some object—for instance, we delight in a rose; we take the rose into our world, into our feeling, into our own soul. We make something that goes out as an impression from the rose and works upon our soul, into our own inner possession. In willing, we incorporate into the external world something that is contained in our intention. Relationships between ourselves and the external world are clearly evident when we observe our behaviour and conduct on the physical plane. Nothing we thus apply in acts of thinking, feeling and willing, nothing we do when we enter into relation with the outer world through the physical body, serves us in the remotest degree—in the form in which it is practised on the physical plane—for getting to know anything of the higher world. Whatever helps us for example, to know something about the physical world, whatever we apply in the form of feeling or thinking in order to know about the things of the physical world—this can serve only as preparation for spiritual-scientific investigation.

Let it be remembered, therefore, that in the physical world whatever we do in thinking, feeling and willing in order to have some knowledge of that world or to do something for it—all this serves only as preparation for knowledge of the higher worlds. Whatever we may think about something belonging to the physical world, no matter how astutely, gives us no knowledge of the higher worlds. Through thinking our soul is merely prepared, merely trained in such a way that it gradually becomes capable of penetrating into the spiritual worlds. And the same applies to willing and feeling in connection with things of the physical world. In order to be doubly clear, let me say this. A learned researcher, through his scientific methods, gets to know something belonging to the external world. When he has investigated it he is wont to say: I know this and that belonging to the external world. This kind of investigation, this kind of thinking, does not help him in the very least to penetrate into the spiritual world. His thinking and investigation are of significance only because they exercise the powers of his soul. The effect, as far as penetration into the spiritual worlds is concerned, is that through this thinking and investigation the soul becomes more capable of living its own life, of activating its own forces. The activities that are normally carried out in the physical world are of use for spiritual-scientific investigation only as an education of a man's own soul.

I will choose still one more comparison to make the matter clearer. Suppose someone is a carpenter; he has learnt carpentry and intends to make furniture. In his work as a carpenter he makes certain pieces of furniture and continues to do so for many years. This is his job. But something else happens as well; he becomes more skilful, his manipulations more effective; he acquires something else, inasmuch as his own organism becomes more skilful. This is a kind of supplementary achievement. It is the same with spiritual activities. If, as a botanist, I think and make great efforts for years in the sphere of botany, that is all to the good, but as well as this my mind becomes more flexible. That is also of help. I am better ‘drilled’ than I was some decades ago. Please do not take the expression in its ordinary trivial sense, if I say that the spiritual scientist must have been previously ‘drilled.’ He must use his drilling to make his spiritual powers more mobile, more flexible. Then, when everything that is otherwise practised in the world is placed directly in the service of self-education as happens in meditation and concentration, in the exercises that are given for the purpose of penetrating into the spiritual world—we duly prepare ourselves for this. Please take the words, ‘we prepare ourselves,’ as something infinitely important, for in reality we can never do anything more than prepare ourselves to enter the spiritual world; the rest is an affair of that world itself; the spiritual world must then come to us. It will not do so if we remain in the usual state of human beings on the physical plane. Only when we have transformed our soul-forces in the way indicated can we hope that the spiritual world will come to us. It cannot be anything like investigation in the physical world, for then we go towards the things we are investigating. We can only prepare so that when the spiritual world comes towards us, it will not escape us, but make a real impression upon us.

It must therefore be said: All that we can do to develop the capacity for spiritual investigation is to prepare ourselves worthily, in order that when karma wills that the spiritual world shall confront us, we shall not be blind and deaf to it. We can so prepare ourselves, but the manifestation of the spiritual world is an act of grace by that world and must be thought of as such.

And so to the question: How can one succeed in penetrating into the spiritual world?—the answer must be: We must prepare ourselves by adopting every measure that makes our actions more skilful, more mobile, that trains our thinking, makes our feeling and perception more delicate, more full of devotion. And then: Wait, Wait, Wait! That is the golden rule—to be able to wait in restfulness of soul. The spiritual world does not allow itself to become accessible in any other way than this: individuals must make themselves worthy of it and then develop a mood of expectation in restfulness of soul. That is the essential. We acquire it in the way I have described in detail in my books, by making ourselves ready to receive the spiritual world. But we must also acquire that absolute restfulness of soul which alone makes it possible for the spiritual world to approach us.

In lectures I have used the following example. In the physical world, if we want to see something we must go to it. Those who want to see Rome must go to Rome. That is quite natural in the physical world, for Rome will not come to them. In the spiritual world it is just the reverse. We can do nothing except prepare ourselves through the methods described, in order to be worthy to receive the spiritual world: we must acquire restfulness of soul, poise where we stand ... then the spiritual world comes to us. We must wait for it in restfulness of soul—that is the essential. And this that comes to us, where is it? Of this too I have often spoken and will speak of it merely by way of introduction so that we may have a good foundation upon which to proceed.

You are all familiar with our anthroposophical literature. Where are the Elemental Beings, where are the Beings of the higher Hierarchies? They are here, everywhere—just where the table is, where the chairs are, where you yourselves are—they are around us everywhere. But in comparison with the things and processes of the external world they are so ethereal, so fleeting, that they escape the attention of men. Men pass unceasingly through the whole spiritual world and do not see it because through their constitution they are still unprepared for it. If you were able to enter the spiritual world, as is the case at night when you are asleep, you would realise that consciousness is so weak that in spite of the fact that man is in the spiritual world from the time he goes to sleep until he wakes, his consciousness is too dull to perceive the spiritual Beings who are around him. He is in the spiritual world the whole night long, he is within this delicate, fluctuating world, but he is not aware of it because his consciousness is too dull.

What must happen in order that man can learn to be aware of this world in which he is really living all the time? Here we have to consider something very important. Above all, we must keep the following in mind. I have tried to describe it more precisely, for the public as well, in the last chapter of the book Riddles of Philosophy. I want to see whether a few individuals who are not in the Anthroposophical Movement are capable of understanding it.

How does external perception come about? As you know, people generally think—especially those who imagine themselves to be very clever—that external perception arises because the objects are there and then man, inside his skin, receives impressions from the objects; they suppose that his brain (if they think materialistically) produces inner pictures of the external objects and forms. Now that is simply not the case; the facts are quite different. The truth is that the human being is not by any means confined within his skin. If someone is looking at a bunch of flowers, then with his Ego and astral body he is actually within it, and his organism is a reflecting apparatus which reflects it back to him. In reality you extend over the horizon which you survey. In waking consciousness, you are also rooted, with an essential part of your Ego and astral body, in your physical and etheric bodies. The process is as I have often described in lectures. Let us assume that here are a number of mirrors. As long as you walk through space and have no mirror, you do not see yourself, but as soon as you come to a mirror you do. The human organism is not the producer of what you experience in your soul, it is only the reflecting apparatus. The soul is united with the bunch of flowers outside. That the soul may be able to see the flowers consciously depends upon the eye, in unison with the brain-apparatus, reflecting back to the soul that with which the soul is living. Man does not perceive in the night, because when he sleeps he draws out what is within him all day—his Ego and astral body. Therefore, the eyes and brain cease to reflect. Going to sleep is just as though you had a mirror in front of you—you look into the mirror and see your own face; take the mirror away, and all at once your face is no longer there!

And so man, with his being of soul-and-spirit, is actually within that part of the world which he surveys; and he sees it consciously, because his own organism mirrors it back to him. In the night this reflecting apparatus is not there, and he sees nothing. We ourselves are the part of the world which we see; during the night that part of the world is withdrawn.

One of the worst forms of Maya is the belief that man remains firmly within his skin. He does not; in reality he is within the things he sees. When I am confronting a human being, I am within him with my astral body and Ego. If I were not to confront him with my organism I should not see him. The fact that I can see him is due to my organism; but with my astral body and Ego I am within him. The failure to realise this is one of the most dangerous results of Maya.

In this way we can form an idea of the nature of perception and experience on the physical plane.

And what about the spiritual world? If we want to experience that of which I have said that it is so fleeting, so mobile compared with the processes and things of the physical world that although we live within it as within the coarse objects of the physical world, we do not experience it because it is too tenuous—if we want to experience this fluctuating, ethereal reality, then our ordinary Ego, the bearer of our individuality, our egoity, must be damped down, must be suppressed. In true meditation this is what we do. What is meditation? We take some content, or mental picture, and give ourselves over entirely to it. We forget ourselves and suppress the egoity of ordinary waking consciousness. We exclude everything that is connected with the egoity of waking consciousness. Whereas we are accustomed to apply egoity on the physical plane, we now suppress it. Instead of living in the physical and etheric bodies, we gradually succeed, by suppressing egoity, in living in the astral body only.

Please note the essential point here. When we meditate or concentrate, our primary goal always is to suppress our egoity. This egoity must not transmit physical experiences; we try to suppress it, to press it into the astral body. When it is in the astral body it is not, to begin with, reflected in the physical body.

When you look at this bunch of flowers, you are, in reality, within it. The physical body is a reflecting apparatus and you see the bunch of flowers because the physical body mirrors it to you. If you suppress the Ego with its egoity, then you will be living within the astral body. And the astral body is so delicate that you can perceive the fleeting things of the external world consciously; but they too must first be reflected if you are to see them in reality.

There are many among you who faithfully and sincerely devote yourselves to meditation. Thereby you succeed in suppressing the everyday egoity, and experience in the astral body begins. But reflection must first take place if you are to have conscious experience in the astral body. There are numbers among you who through meditation have already reached the stage of living in the astral body. But now it is a matter of reflection, of mirroring. And just as in ordinary life the physical body must reflect what we experience, so, if we want to perceive consciously in the spiritual world, the experiences of the astral body must be reflected by the etheric body.

But what happens when a man's experiences in the astral body are actually reflected by the etheric body? Something happens of which we must realise, above all, that it is absolutely different from sight in the physical world. Things in the spiritual world are not as convenient as they are in the physical world. Even a bunch of cut flowers is a self-contained object; it remains as it is. We can take a bunch of flowers home and have pleasure in it, put it in a vase and so on. We expect nothing else when the bunch of flowers is there in front of us. But this is not by any means the case with the astral experiences that are reflected to us by the etheric body. Everything there lives and weaves; nothing is still for a single moment. But the essential thing is not how it appears in the reflection. The essential thing about the bunch of flowers is what it actually is, at the time. I take the flowers and I have them. When something is reflected to me by the etheric body, I cannot take it as it is and be satisfied with it. For it simply is not what it appears to be.

Understand me well, my dear friends. For this too I have often used the following analogy. Suppose there are a few strokes here (on the blackboard) let us say B ... A ... U. Now if I could not read when these signs are in front of me I should simply say: ‘I see a few strokes like this which, when joined, form a peculiar pattern.’ I cannot take this home like the bunch of flowers and put it in a vase! If I were to take what stands there, the word BAU (building) and put it in a frame, then I have not got what is essential. What is essential is the actual building outside somewhere. I express the building through these signs, and I merely read the essential thing, in the signs.

On the physical plate the essential things are actually there, in front of me. In ordinary reading I have not the essentials; I have signs for them. So, it is with what I experience in the astral body which is then reflected in the etheric body. It is correct only if I take it as so many signs, realise that these signs mean something else and that it is not sufficient simply to look at what is reflected and assume that it is the essential thing. It is not the essential, any more than the word BAU is the actual building. The essential thing is what these signs mean. First of all, I must learn to read them. In the same way I must learn to read what, to begin with, I perceive in the spiritual world—simply a number of signs which express the truth. We can acquire knowledge of the spiritual world only by taking what it presents to us as letters and words which we learn to read. If we do not learn this, if we think we can spare ourselves the trouble of this occult learning to read, it would be just as clever as a person taking a book and saying: There are fools who say that something is expressed in this book, but that is no concern of mine. I can just turn over the pages and see fascinating letters on them. Such a person simply takes what is presented to him and does not trouble about what is there expressed.

If what I have just said is ignored, one comes into an entirely false relationship to the spiritual world. The essential point is to learn to read and interpret what is perceived. We shall see in the next lectures what is meant by this reading and interpreting.

Thus, we have indications at any rate, which help us to understand the question: What is occult reading? Occult reading begins when man experiences himself in the astral body—just as in the physical world he experiences himself in the Ego—and when the experiences of the astral body are reflected in the etheric body, not as is the case in the physical world, when the experiences of the Ego are reflected in the physical body.

Something else must be remembered here. We are not, as I have also told you to-day, wholly within the objects outside us; we are not only in them with our Ego and astral body; but in waking consciousness the Ego also sends part of itself into the physical body. It is only during sleep that the Ego withdraws from the physical body. This means that in order to live in the physical world we must be able to dive down into our physical body. As regards perception and reading in the spiritual world, we realise, in the first place, that we can live in our astral body, and that things are reflected to us by the etheric body. But we must advance to the further stage of being able to live in the etheric body itself, to come down into the etheric body just as on waking from sleep we come down into the physical body. Please take note too that it is necessary to come down with the astral body into the etheric body.

When we learn to read, we learn to live outside the physical body. Just as on waking we come down into the physical body, so must the occultist, without sinking into the physical body, come down into the etheric body. Occultists call this, with reason, ‘being thrust into the abyss.’ What is necessary is that we should not be stupefied when this happens, that we should go down with consciousness and maintain our own bearings, for this descent into the etheric body is not as easy as the descent into the physical body. In very truth it is like being thrust into the abyss. Man's being is split into three. I have spoken of this in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. Man becomes a threefold being. He cannot consciously descend into his etheric body without being multiplied in the way indicated.

When the human being lives in the physical world alone, and goes to sleep, his Ego and astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies; his consciousness then is too dull to enable him to see the spiritual world. When he comes down into the physical body which reflects the physical world to him so that he perceives it, this too is a kind of thrust into the abyss; only it is made so easy for us that we do not experience it as a shock. But every morning, if through our exercises we progress to that stage where we can experience something in the spiritual world, if we learn to read in this condition which is like sleep that has become conscious, we also experience what it means to be thrust down, to be divided into three. If we retain our consciousness now, we are also able consciously to penetrate into the things and happenings of the spiritual world that are outside us.

Thus, we learn to live in the astral body and have our experiences reflected by the etheric body. We read as when we are reading a book. As soon as we have come down into the etheric body we become threefold. We can send out these three parts of our being—and they then move about consciously in the spiritual world. In their wanderings they then experience what we call ‘occult hearing.’ As soon as we have been consciously thrust down into our own etheric body, occult hearing begins. Now we penetrate into things in the real sense. Now we notice that what we have previously learnt to read we can actually experience.

Let us therefore repeat what has been said. Through his occult exercises man is enabled to suppress his egoity to such an extent that he learns to live consciously in his astral body. Then, gradually, the beings and happenings of the spiritual world are reflected by his etheric body. When he is able rightly to interpret this reflected world, he has learnt the art of occult reading. At a further stage, when he is able not only to read while outside his etheric body, but to awaken in the real sense in the etheric body, then he sends out the three parts of his being into the world and hears what is going on, hears its inner weaving and activity. At this stage he hears it.

Gradually he develops the faculty of occult reading and occult hearing in such a way that something quite definite is associated with the experience. He succeeds in actually penetrating to the reality of things. For what transpires on the physical plane is not the reality, indeed it is not! Simple contemplation shows us in every region and corner of the world that what we experience in our environment is not the reality, that we attach a false meaning to everything. Someone once said to me on the banks of the Rhine: ‘There is the ancient Rhine.’ It was a beautiful, deeply felt saying. But what, in reality, is ancient in the Rhine? Certainly not the water that one sees flowing by, for the next moment it is no longer there. It shows clearly enough that it is not what is ancient. Ancient, at most, is the hollow that has been burrowed out in the soil, but that is not what is meant when someone speaks of ‘the ancient Rhine.’ What is it, in reality, that is designated by the phrase, ‘the ancient Rhine?’ If one says ‘the hollow’ ... well, there are hollows in the sea-floor too, and also streams. When the Gulf Stream flows through the ocean, not only is the water different at every moment but the hollow too is different. Nothing is permanent in the Physical, nothing whatever. It is the same with the whole physical world. Your own organism is only a stream: the flesh and blood you have to-day was not yours eight years ago. Nothing is real in the Physical, everything is in flow.

To speak of ‘the ancient Rhine’ has meaning only when we are thinking of those elemental Beings who actually have their life in the Rhine, when we are thinking of the elemental River God Rhine—a spiritual Being who is truly ancient. Only then have we said something that has meaning. We must mean the words ‘ancient Rhine’ in a spiritual sense, or we are talking thoughtlessly. It is profoundly true that we penetrate to spiritual realities only when we are guided by the spiritual world. It is then that we penetrate into the true realities. That we do indeed penetrate into these realities will be clear when we describe the details of occult reading and hearing—as far as is possible—in the lecture tomorrow.

After the excellent conference at Ilkley and summer school at Penmaenmawr, it gives me heartfelt pleasure to be able now to give this lecture at our London centre.

I may remind you first of what I said in former lectures here.¹ Man, in accomplishing his work from day to day and from year to year, works in the physical body which is given to him upon Earth, and through which he is physically linked with all earthly life. So long as we contemplate what surrounds us here in this physical existence upon Earth, including that which we ourselves contribute to if, we shall of course fix our attention mainly on the times we spend in waking life. Yet as I said in those earlier lectures, that which goes on for man during the times when he is fast asleep is still more important for his whole existence—even for what he is and does in earthly life.

When we look back in memory from any given point in our life, we always exclude the times we spent asleep; we join the things we did and underwent by day and while awake, as though they were to form a continuous whole. Yet none of this would be possible without the intervening periods of sleep. Above all, if we want to know the true being of man, we must pay attention to these periods of sleep. A man might easily say that he knows nothing of what goes on during sleep. To ordinary consciousness this may seem true, but in reality it is not so. For if we had to look back into a life uninterrupted by sleep, we should be mere automata. True, we should still be spiritual beings, but we should be automata.

Even more important than the daily periods of sleep throughout our life are the times we spent in sleep as very little children. We retain the good effects of those early periods of sleep all through our life; in a sense, we only supplement them by what accrues to us spiritually night by night during the rest of life. If we came into the world as little children wide-awake and never slept, we should, once more, be automata, in this automatic state we should be unable to do anything consciously at all. We should not even recognize what came about through us, as our own concern.

We may believe we have no memory at all of what transpires during sleep, but even that is not quite true. When we look back in memory, seeing the things we experienced while awake and omitting the periods of sleep, the fact is that we see a void, a nothing, in the intervals of time when we were sleeping. It is as though you were looking at a white wall where at one place the white paint was lacking; you see a black circle. Or there might be a hole with no light behind it; you see the empty hole inasmuch as you see darkness. So do you see the darkness when you look back on your own life. The times you spent asleep appear as darkness in the midst of life. And in reality it is to these darknesses of life that you say ‘I.’ If you did not see the darknesses you would have no consciousness of ‘I.’ You owe the ability to say ‘I’ to yourself, not to the fact that you were active every day from morning until night, but to the fact that you were also sleeping. The Ego as we know it in this earthly life is, to begin with, darkness of life, emptiness, even non-existence. If we consider our life truly, we shall not say that we owe our consciousness of self to the day but rather that we owe it to the night. This is the truth. It is the night which makes us real human beings and no mere automata.

Indeed if we look back into earlier epochs of human evolution upon Earth, though he was no mere automaton even then, for he already had certain differences between his waking and sleeping states, yet inasmuch as he was more or less aware of his sleeping states even in ordinary waking life, man's earthly life and action was far more automatic than it is today.

Truth is, we never bring our real and inmost Ego with us from the spiritual world into the physical and earthly; we leave it in the spiritual world. Before we came down into earthly life it was in the spiritual world, and it is there again between our falling asleep and our awakening. It stays there always, and if by day—in the present form of human consciousness—we call ourselves an ‘I,’ this word is but an indication of something which is not here in the physical world at all; it only has its picture in this world.

We do not see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Here am I, this robust and real man, standing upon Earth; here am I with my inmost being.’ We only see ourselves aright if we say: ‘Our true being is in the spiritual world, and what is here of us on Earth is but a picture—an image of our true being.’ It is entirely true if we regard what is here on Earth, not as the real man himself, but as the picture of the real man.

I will now show how you can see this picture-character of man more clearly. Let us imagine ourselves asleep. The Ego is away from the physical and etheric body; the astral body too is away. Now it is the Ego which works in the blood of man and in his movements. In sleep the movements cease, inasmuch as the Ego is away; the blood however goes on working, and yet the Ego is not there. We need only think of the physical body and we must ask ourselves: What happens to it while we are asleep? Something must still be living and working in the blood, even as the Ego lives and works in it by day. Likewise the astral body, living as it does in the whole breathing process, leaves it by night, and yet the breathing goes on. Here again, something must be there within the breathing process, working in it even as the astral body does in waking life.

Thus every time we go to sleep, with our astral body we forsake those inner organs which are the organs of respiration, and with our Ego we forsake the pulsating forces of our blood. What then becomes of them by night? The answer is that while the man lies asleep in bed, Beings of the adjoining Hierarchy enter into the pulsating forces of the blood from which his Ego has departed. Angels, Archangels and Archai are then indwelling the self-same organs in which the human Ego dwells in waking life by day. Moreover in the breathing organs which we have forsaken inasmuch as the astral body is outside by night, Beings of the next higher Hierarchy—Exusiai, Dynamis and Kyriotetes—are living then.

Thus when we go to sleep at night, setting forth with our Ego and astral body, leaving behind the body of our waking life, Angels, Archangels and higher spiritual Beings enter into us and animate our organs while we are outside—until we re-awaken. And what is more, as to our ether-body, even in our day-waking life we are not able to fulfill what is needed there. The Beings of the highest Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones—have to indwell this ether-body even while we are awake; they remain there always.

Lastly the physical body; if we ourselves had to achieve all the great and wonderful processes taking place there, we should not merely do it very badly; we could not set about it at all. Here we are utterly helpless. What outer anatomy ascribes to the physical body could not even move a single atom of it. Powers of quite another order are required here, namely none other than those that have been known since primeval times as the supreme Trinity—the Powers of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They—the essential Trinity—indwell the physical body of man.

Therefore in truth, throughout our earthly life our physical body is not our own. If it depended on us, it could not go on at all. It is, as was said of old, the true Temple of the Godhead—of the Divine threefold Being. Likewise our ether-body is the dwelling-place of the Hierarchy of Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. They have to help in caring for the organs which are assigned to the etheric body. As to those physical and etheric organs on the other hand which are deserted every night by the astral body, they are provided for by the second Hierarchy—Kyriotetes, Dynamis and Exusiai. Lastly, the organs forsaken during sleep by the human Ego have to be cared for in the night by Angeloi, Archangeloi and Archai. There is a constant activity within the human being, proceeding not only from man himself. Only in waking life he lives in this bodily nature, so to speak, as a subtenant. For at the same time it is the Temple and the dwelling-place of spiritual Beings—the Beings of the Hierarchies.

Bearing all this in mind, we only see this outer form of man aright if we admit: It is a picture—a picture of the working-together of all the Hierarchies. They are within it. Look at this human head in all the detail of its form; look at the rest of the body in its human form. I do not look at it truly if I describe it as a reality—as a real being, thus or thus. I only look at it truly if I say: It is a picture of an invisible, super-sensible working of all the Hierarchies together. Only when things are seen in this way can one speak truly and in detail of what is commonly propounded in a rather abstract manner. The physical world is not the true reality, so it is said; it is a maya—the true reality is behind it. Yet such a statement does not help us much. It is too general, as if one were to say: Flowers are growing in the meadow. Just as this statement will only be of use if you know what kind of flowers, so too the knowledge of the higher world can only be applied in practice if one is able to point out in detail how it is working in the outer picture, maya, or reflection, which is its physical, sense-perceptible manifestation.

Man therefore, seen in his totality, both in his earthly life by day and in his earthly life by night, is related not only to his physical and visible environment on Earth but to a world of higher spiritual being. Through all the kingdoms of Nature upon Earth—mineral, plant, animal kingdom—there works what we may call a lower spiritual realm. So too throughout the world of stars there works a higher spiritual realm—a realm which also influences man. Looked at in his totality, man is related through his physical existence to plants and animals, to water and to air; so too, he is related spiritually to the world of stars. The latter too is but a picture, a revelation of the underlying spiritual reality. It is the Beings of the Hierarchies who are really there. When he looks up to the stars, man in reality is looking up to the spiritual Beings of the Hierarchies. That which is raying down upon him is but a kind of symbolic light which they send to him of their presence, so that here too, even in physical life, he may have some indication of the living Spirit which in reality fills the entire Universe.

Just as on Earth we may long to know this mountain or that river, this animal or yonder plant, so should we feel a longing to get to know the starry world in its true being. In its true being it is spiritual. In Penmaenmawr I tried to tell a little of the real spiritual nature of the Moon, such as it shines upon us from the cosmic spaces in the present phase of earthy evolution. When we look up to the Moon, we never really see the Moon itself; we see at most a scanty indication of it where the illuminated crescent is continued. What we are seeing is the reflected sunlight, not the Moon itself. So altogether, only the cosmic forces thrown back or reflected by the Moon reach us upon Earth, never what lives within the Moon itself. That it reflects the Sun's light to the Earth is but a part, nay, the smallest part of what pertains to the Moon. All physical and spiritual impulses that reach it from the great Universe, the Moon reflects to us like a mirror. And as we never see through to the other side of a mirror, so do we never see the interior of the Moon, where, in effect, there lives a spiritual population among whom are very high guiding Beings. These guiding Powers, with the rest of the Lunar population, were once upon a time on Earth, whence they withdrew to the Moon more than 15,000 years ago. Before that time the Moon looked even physically different. It did not merely reflect the sunlight to the Earth but mingled in the sunlight something of its own essence. This is however not the point which interests us now. What does concern us at this moment is the fact that in the present epoch the Moon is there like a fortress in the Universe—a cosmic fortress within which lives a population which fulfilled its human destinies more than 15,000 years ago, and, with the spiritual guides of humanity, withdrew thereafter to the Moon. For there were once upon a time on Earth very advanced Beings—Beings who did not put on physical human bodies as do the men of today. They lived rather in etheric bodies, yet for the men who lived on Earth at that time they were the great leaders and educators.

It was these mighty teachers and educators who brought to mankind, long, long ago, the primeval wisdom—the original and sublime wisdom-teachings of mankind, whereof the Vedas, the Vedanta, are but a distant echo. They now are living in the Moon and only radiating spiritually to the Earth what issues from the Universe outside the Moon.

Something of the erstwhile Moon-forces has indeed remained behind on Earth, namely the physical forces of reproduction in man and animal; but that is all. Only the most external and physical element remained behind when at a certain time of old Atlantis the great teachers of mankind migrated to the Moon, which had itself withdrawn from the Earth long before.

Therefore when we look upward to the Moon we only see it truly if we realize that there are lofty spiritual Beings there—Beings who were once upon a time on Earth and who now make it their task to ray down to Earth not what they bear within themselves, but the forces, both physical and spiritual, which they reflect and thus transmit from the great Universe. Whoever seeks Initiation-wisdom in present time, must among other things seek to receive into this Initiation-wisdom what the Beings of the Moon with their sublime spiritual forces have to tell.

Now this is only one of the ‘cities’ in the great Universe—one colony, one settlement among many. Others are no less important, notably those belonging to our planetary system. And as concerns ourselves—as concerns humanity on Earth—the other pole, the opposite extreme to the Moon, is the population of Saturn.

The Saturn population too, as you may gather from my Occult Science, was once united with the Earth, yet in a very different way from the population of the Moon. The Saturn-beings are connected with the earthly life in quite another way. They reflect nothing from cosmic space. Even the physical sunlight is only just reflected on to Earth by Saturn. Saturn like a lonely recluse wanders slowly round the Sun, shedding very little light. What outer Astronomy can tell us about Saturn is but a very small portion of the truth. The significance of Saturn for humanity on Earth is made manifest, if only in a picture, every night when man is sleeping, and it is realized more fully between death and new birth when man is going through the spiritual world—and therefore too through the world of stars—as I explained in a lecture here not long ago.

True, in the present phase of evolution man does not meet Saturn directly; yet by a roundabout way—which we need not go into now—he does come into contact with the Saturn-beings. Within Saturn in effect, Beings of high perfection, very sublime Beings live—Beings who are in near relation to Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones. Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones are as it were the Beings nearest to them—nearest among the Hierarchies.

The sublime Beings, whom we may call the Saturn population, do not ray down to Earth or give to men from Saturn anything that can be found in the external, physical world. But they preserve the cosmic memory, the cosmic record. All facts and all events, both physical and spiritual, which the planetary system has undergone, all that the Beings within our planetary system have ever experienced—the Saturn-beings faithfully preserve it in memory. In recollection they are forever looking back on the entire life of the planetary system. Even as we look back in memory upon the limited range of our earthly life, so do the Saturn-beings—in their collective activity—cherish the cosmic memory of what the planetary system as a whole and all the beings in it have undergone.

For man himself, the spiritual forces living in this cosmic memory are present, inasmuch as he comes into relation with the Saturn-beings between death and a new birth, and also—more in picture-form—every night. Thereby the spiritual forces proceeding from the Saturn-beings—forces in which the deepest inner life of the planetary system is contained—are also working within man. Even as memory is our own deepest inner life on Earth, so too what lives in Saturn represents the innermost and deepest ‘cosmic I’ of the whole planetary system.

Inasmuch as these influences are also there in man, many things are going on in human life, of the significance of which we are for the most part quite unconscious—which none the less play the greatest imaginable part in our lives. What we are conscious of, is after all only a very small portion of our life.

Say for example there was an incisive moment, an all-important event in your life. You met another human being with whom you then went on through life together; or it was some other event, essential to your future life. If you look back in time from this event, you will be struck by the fact that something like a plan was leading you towards it, beginning long before. Something that happened, say, between your thirtieth and fiftieth year—follow it backward through your life and you will very likely find: ‘I entered on the path leading to this event when I was ten or twelve years old; all that then followed was leading up to it, so that I landed there.’

Elderly people, looking back contemplatively upon their life, will find that it all works out. They will be able to say: ‘There was a subconscious thread running through it all. Unconscious forces were impelling me to the decisive events of my life.’ These are the Saturn forces—forces implanted in us through our relation, such as has been indicated, to the ‘inner population’ of Saturn.

While therefore, of the Moon, only the physical forces of reproduction are there on Earth (for these are Lunar forces, once again, which remained at the Moon's departure), the very highest forces, namely the cosmic moral forces, are on Earth through Saturn. The source of cosmic equity, the great ‘restorer of the balance’ for all that happens upon Earth, is Saturn. And if the Moon-forces, now upon Earth, have to do only with heredity—heredity through father, mother and so on—the Saturn forces enter into human life through all that lives in Karma, from incarnation to incarnation. In this respect the other planets are intermediate between the two—they mediate between the physical upon the one hand and the highest ethical upon the other.

Jupiter, Mars and so on are there between Moon and Saturn. They in their several ways mediate what Moon and Saturn at the uttermost extremes bring into human life—the Moon inasmuch as its spiritual Beings have withdrawn, leaving behind with the earthly realm only the physical aspect, the physical force of propagation; and Saturn inasmuch as it represents the moral justice of the Universe in its highest aspect. These two are working together in that the other planets are there between them, waving the one into the other. Karma through Saturn, physical heredity through the Moon: these in their interrelation show how man upon his way from earthly life to earthly life is connected with the Earth itself and with the great Universe beyond the Earth.

As you will readily understand, my dear Friends, the science of today, fixing attention upon the earthly life alone, can only tell about a very little part of man. It tells a lot about the forces of heredity, yet even here it fails to see that these are Lunar forces left behind on Earth. It fails to relate them to the cosmic activities, transcending the mere earthly life, to which they properly belong. And it knows nothing at all about the destiny of Karma with which this earthly life is infused. Yet in reality, even as physical man is pulsated through and through by the living blood, so are the Beings bearing within them the vast memory of the planetary system with all its cosmic happenings, pulsating through man's Karma upon Earth. Looking into our own inner life, we must admit: We are true human beings only inasmuch as we have memory. Looking out into the planetary system with all its physical and spiritual happenings, and reaching upward to Initiation-science, we must equally admit: This planetary system would be void of inner life were it not for the inhabitants of Saturn preserving through the ages the memory, the cosmic past thereof, and also pouring ever down into mankind the forces springing from this preservation of the cosmic past, whereby all human beings are immersed in a living spiritual-moral nexus of causes and effects leading from earthly life to earthly life.

In earthly life, as to his conscious action, man is confined—in his relation to other men—within narrow limits. But if he takes into account what he experiences between death and new birth, there his relation to other human beings, who like himself will be discarnate, living no longer in physical bodies, reaches far wider circles. True, between death and re-birth he is at one time more in the neighbourhood of the Lunar influences and at another more in the neighbourhood of those of Saturn, Mars and so on. Yet through the cosmic spaces the one kind of planetary force interpenetrates the other. As upon Earth we work from man to man across the narrow confines of terrestrial space, so between death and new birth there is a working from planet to planet. The Universe then becomes the scene of man's activity and of the mutual relations between men. There between death and new birth, maybe the one departed soul is in the realm of Venus while the other is in Jupiter's domain; yet the interactions between them are far more intimate and tender than is possible within the narrow confines of earthly life. And even as the cosmic distances are called into play, to be the scene of action of the relations between human souls between death and new birth, so too the Beings of the Hierarchies are there, working throughout the cosmic spaces. We have to tell not only of the working of the several kinds of Beings—say, the inhabitants of Venus, or of Mars. We have to tell of the relations between the populations of Mars and Venus—a never-ending interaction, a constant to and fro of spiritual forces between the population of Mars and that of Venus amid the Universe.

This which goes on in the Universe between the populations of Mars and Venus—this everliving interplay in the spiritual Cosmos, the deeds of Mars and Venus fertilizing one another—all this again has its relation to man. Even as the Saturn-memory is related to human Karma, and the physical Lunar forces, left behind on Earth, to the external force of reproduction, so is the hidden spiritual interaction between Mars and Venus related to what appears in earthly life as human speech. For we could never speak by virtue of physical forces alone. It is the eternal being of man, going on from earthly life to earthly life, living in effect between death and new birth, which radiates into this outer world the gift of speech. Whilst as a spiritual being we are on our way from death to a new birth, we come into the sphere of action of the mutually fertilizing life which goes on between Mars and Venus—between the spiritual populations of Mars and Venus. Their spiritual forces, raying to and fro, co-operating, enter also into us ourselves upon our way from death to a new birth. This too is reproduced on Earth as in a physical picture, out of the innermost being of man, entering into the organs of speech and song. Never should we be able to speak through these organs if they were not physically kindled by the forces we receive into the depths of our being between death and new birth—forces derived from what is ever streaming to and fro in the Cosmos between Mars and Venus.

Thus in our daily life and action we are under the influence of the same spiritual forces, to the outward signs of which we look up with awe and wonder when we look out into the starry heavens. He alone is able to look up with inner truth who knows that in the stars, raying down to us from cosmic space, are to be seen the signs and characters of the great cosmic writing. For they are but the written signs of the great Universe—of the eternal, all-embracing spiritual life and process which also lives within us and of which we, once more, are but the image.

Long, long ago, in an instinctive atavistic clairvoyance, mankind had vision and perception of these things. The vision faded. If he had kept it, man could never have grown free. The ancient vision was therefore darkened. In compensation, the Mystery of Golgotha came into earthly life. A sublime Being from the population of the Sun came to Earth. He could not, it is true, bring to mankind all at once a consciousness of what is going on in yonder world of stars, but He brought with Him the forces whereby this consciousness can gradually be achieved.

Therefore it happened that to begin with, while the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place, a Gnostic wisdom was still there, inherited from olden time, through which the Mystery was understood This wisdom too then faded out; during the fourth century after Christ it vanished altogether. Yet the spiritual force which had come to Earth through Christ remained. Man can now call this force to life within him, if he once opens his eyes to the reality of spiritual worlds, as he can do through the communications of modern spiritual Science.

How much is yet to come to the humanity of modern time through looking thus once more to spiritual worlds! It is a striking fact: yonder in Asia, in more than one Asiatic, Oriental country, are living those who still preserve some relic of the old instinctive wisdom. They are the educated people, the true scholars, in the Oriental sense. No doubt this remnant of an ancient wisdom no longer belongs, in the best sense of the word, to our time; it needs to be replaced by a more conscious wisdom. And yet these bearers of an ancient and instinctive wisdom look down with not a little contempt upon the people of Europe and America. They are persuaded that their ancient Oriental wisdom even in its decadence, even the remaining rags and tatters of it, are preferable to the kind of knowledge of which Western civilization is so inordinately proud. Hence it is interesting to see a book recently published by a Cingalese, an Indian of Ceylon, The Culture of Souls among the Western Nations, wherein the author says to the Europeans, in effect: Since the Middle Ages your knowledge of the Christ has died out. No longer have you any real knowledge of the Christ, for he alone who can look up into the spiritual world can have real knowledge of the Christ. Hence you must first let teachers come to you from India, from Asia, to teach you Christianity again. You can actually read it in this book. A Cingalese Indian says to the Europeans: Teachers must come to you from Asia; they will be able to tell you what Christ really is. Your European teachers no longer know it. Since the decline of the Middle Ages you have lost your knowledge of the Christ.

Yet in reality it is for Europeans and Americans themselves once more to summon courage to look into the spiritual worlds from which the knowledge of the Christ, the wisdom of the Christ can be regained. Christ is the Being who came down from spiritual worlds into the earthly life. Therefore in His true inwardness He can only be understood in the light of the Spirit.

Upon this way it is also necessary for man to learn to look upon himself as a picture—an image of the spiritual Beings, spiritual realities and activities, on Earth. And he can do so best of all by permeating himself with such ideas and perceptions as I presented to you at the beginning of this lecture. Amid his conscious experiences in the stream of time he looks into the emptiness. He becomes conscious that his true Ego never descends from the spiritual world; that in the physical world he is but a picture. The real ‘I’ is not here in the physical world at all. He sees, as it were, a hole in time—a seeming darkness—and it is to this that he says ‘I’.

Man should therefore become aware of the deep significance of this fact. When he looks back and remembers his past life, he must admit: I see in memory the experiences I underwent from day to day, but there is ever and again a hole, a gap of darkness. It is this darkness which in my ordinary consciousness I call ‘I’. But I must now become conscious of something more than this.

I have summed up this ‘something more’ in a few words, which—as a kind of meditation reaching out to the true ‘I’—may be inscribed in the soul of every human being of our time. Ever repeatedly we may call to life in us these words of meditation, which I will write as follows:

Ich schaue in die Finsternis:
In ihr ersteht Licht—
Lebendes Licht.
Wer ist dies Licht in der Finsternis?
Ich bin es selbst in meiner Wirklichkeit!
Diese Wirklichkeit des Ich
Tritt nicht ein in mein Erdendasein.
Ich bin nur Bild davon.
Ich werde es aber wieder finden,
Wenn ich,
Guten Willens fur den Geist,
Durch des Todes Pforte gegangen.

I gaze into the Darkness.
In it there arises Light—
Living Light!
Who is this Light in the Darkness?
It is I myself in my reality.
This reality of the ‘I’
Does not enter into my earthly life.
I am but a picture of it.
But I shall find it again
When with good will for the Spirit
I shall have passed through the Gate of Death.

Entering ever and again into a meditative saying of this kind, we can confront the Darkness. We realize that here on Earth we are only a picture of our true Being—that our true Being never comes down into the earthly life. Yet in the midst of the Darkness, through our good will towards the Spirit, a Light can dawn upon us, of which we may in truth confess: This Light am I myself in my reality.

• 1. Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds. Six lectures given in England during 1922.

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.

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.

My dear friends! Today I shall attempt to add to the ceremonies that you are to introduce when you take up your new offices as soul-care givers and shepherds, something that you can regard as a first instruction, so to speak, a priestly sermon, as it has been given in all times when people knew the right thing to do in these matters, and as it must be given today, so that you may grasp in the right sense what has now been done to you through the ceremonial act and what is to be done through you in the future. Today, we should make a special effort to allow the full meaning of this ceremony, which was essentially woven into the Mass, to take effect on our soul. And since it is woven into the Mass, it should always be repeated when you yourself celebrate Mass before the community.

The point is that the Creation before us is completely new and yet is one that is to fit into the whole earthly context of the evolution of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha; and so again, as the Mystery of Golgotha itself has been placed in the overall evolution of the earth since its primeval beginning, so it is in turn compelled to take into account the evolving time. But for you, this means nothing other than taking into you the impulse of the time, insofar as the Christian impulse, the Christ impulse, lives in this time impulse precisely for the immediate present. It is indeed the case that in the immediate present this Christ impulse lives very particularly. You must realize that, especially with regard to what is to be transferred into your outer activity, you are doing many things differently than they were done in the older times of Christianity, when Christianity had not yet become Roman Catholic, when it still had an impact from the spiritual mystery knowledge with which the Christ impulse was received on earth in the first centuries. So you have to renew some of it and bring it into the present in its renewed form, so that it can continue to have an effect in the future.

Above all, you must understand that the languages in which Christianity was spread in the first centuries had a kind of sanctity. In the Near East, these languages were a Syrian dialect that still had an ancient flavor, the Greek language, and the Latin language. In fact, Christianity was first proclaimed to mankind in these three languages. So it can be said that those who either knew the apostles personally or at least were in the places from which the apostles preached and could still report on it, that they saw the apostle disciples and knew them face , that they recognized it as correct, that the gospel was proclaimed and the ceremonies were performed in the old Near Eastern Syrian dialect, in Greek and in Latin. Now we must be clear about the fact that in the course of human development everything undergoes a metamorphosis and that the essence of this Syrian dialect, which at that time had come from even older formations of spiritual development, was not used in the ceremonies but only in the sermon, where, of course, the territorial languages were used, that the essence of this dialect and of the Greek and Latin languages was that the Logos Himself was working in them. There was something in them that passed from the waves of language into the celebrant. This is something you should understand very deeply, that something was transferred from the structure of the language, from the formation of the language into the celebrant. And for those who were truly fervent as believers, it was the case that through the reciting of the Mass – for it was an old recitative in which the Mass was spoken; today it is called “singing” but it is not singing in the modern sense) — a power was also transferred to them, which today may no longer be transferred from person to person, because these powers counted on a certain elimination of the ego impulse in the person. Something passed directly from person to person that had a suggestive character, and today, if we want to renew Christianity in the right way, we have to transfer this into a completely different way of treating these things. That suggestive understanding, which was transmitted to the ancients by their presence when it was spoken suggestively, and which even brought forth from these fervent souls that they could see Christ in His presence when transubstantiation took place, must be conveyed in something that must be much more inward for today's time. And precisely for this reason, we may also give what has been expressed in the old language to the immediate present in a renewed language. And that is what we have done.

In doing so, we have first of all done something that shows in a very special way that, if we are to understand the Christ impulse in the present correctly, we must disregard the mere dead Christ and be aware that we must first find the spiritual relationship to the word spoken in the ceremony through our inner soul life, that relationship that originally existed with speech in a way in which the human being himself had less to do with. Today we are obliged to gradually achieve in our souls, through constant activation of this connection with the Christ impulse, that which is also to be achieved in this new form of speech and which can also be achieved if the Act of Consecration to Man is celebrated in the right way. It is my task today to bring about this transformation in the treatment of the Christian sacrificial act, and I would like to do this as vividly as possible in the following way.

Let us take the order of the Mass at the beginning. We need only imagine how, in older times, those feelings were awakened that were directly linked to the memory of Christ's appearance on earth. The Catholic Church still renews this in an external way in the order of the Mass that it celebrates at Christmas. The beginning of the Christmas Mass should be brought forward – not, of course, in the old recitative, which would actually be a sacrilege for more recent times, but in the way it can be done at present – so that we can vividly develop what can come before your souls today. You will recognize what you now have to do yourselves, but in a slightly different way.

Rudolf Steiner reads a Latin text from the Catholic Mass ritual. [The stenographer did not record which passage it was.]

In this language, we have something that should have an immediate effect on the faithful, in that the priest, by intoning the language, came into a direct connection with the spiritual, which always flows and weaves through language. We have now outgrown this undulating and weaving in language by raising ourselves in thought with self-awareness, and we must all live in this realization if we want to establish in the right way what we have in mind. In the older churches, intonation was very important, and the Catholic Church has retained this.

But as a result of this, in contrast to the development of modern times, in which the spirit of Christ should prevail directly in the Mass, it is in an Ahrimanic state of backwardness. Because of this Ahrimanic backwardness, in which the Catholic Church has remained by simply preserving what once was, it could never

never bring about that the Act of Consecration of Man becomes what it should become in our time. And if you want to implement what you want to implement in the right way, then you have to place yourselves in the evolution of the present in such a way that something is experienced by the souls again, just as the glory of Christ appeared before the eyes of the fervent souls during transubstantiation, so that the question of whether or not Christ was present in the sacrifice of the Mass could not arise. The theories and philosophies about transubstantiation only arose after this time, when those who were truly fervent souls could simply be asked: Did you see that Christ was on the altar? And many said, “Yes!” and the others had faith.

Our actions must be a preparation for what must happen in the future. And when you approach the community in the right way with the regenerated Mass, it will be able to work as I have just described. But then, above all, there must be a very deep and earnest understanding in your souls of what man's connection with Christ actually is in the immediate present and will become in the future. For you know that already in the first half of the twentieth century the Christ is to appear again for the seeing souls, whereas He was lost to the eyes of the souls because they lost the kind of seeing that I have just characterized and that made discussions about transubstantiation unnecessary. But people will have to do something to make this happen. The Christ is ready to walk visibly among men again in ethereal form, but men must do something for it. If you inaugurate and continue your movement in the right way, it will be able to happen through the power that lies in your Act of Consecration of Man and that passes over to the communities. Then you will have grasped what you are doing as something that is directly spiritually real. That is why I had to present to you today, at least briefly and vividly, what you have performed in the renewed, metamorphosed form as a mass cult in the last days.

Now it is a matter of what you accomplish in the right way being transferred to the community, because up to now you have done it for yourselves. Above all, it is important that you can properly place before your souls what is expressed as the mystery of Christianity in the third part of the letter to the Colossians, in the third verse. Today I would like to call this passage before your soul as it is really meant:

You have died, and your ego is separated from you and united with Christ in the spiritual world; but when Christ, who bears your ego, has himself appeared before the vision, then you too will reveal yourselves with him.

There is an enormous depth hidden in these words. It was actually spoken for later times rather than for the time of the apostles. It is actually spoken for our time, so that our time understands it in the right way. For it is the case that in the earthly development of humanity until about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people experienced in their inner being that which could be of their true self in this inner being. In what they experienced within themselves, they simultaneously experienced something real of what had lived in them in their pre-earthly existence. One could not have said to these people: Become aware of something of your eternal spiritual-soul core!, because they simply had states of consciousness in which this eternal spiritual-soul core shone forth. They needed only self-knowledge, just as people today have knowledge of the soul; and by looking at themselves they perceived - without that distinct sense of self that only developed later - their lives before birth and after death. And so they could understand when the initiates spoke to them: “Your body dies; but what you experience within yourselves, you know will not die with you; that is alive, that remains alive.” — Death had no instrument to kill the human soul as well.

But what put the apostle in a different position was that, around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, souls had begun to share in the fate of the body, and that souls [since that time] are in danger of sharing in the fate of the body. In ancient times, the soul did not share the fate of the body. Dying is part of the fate of the body, and the soul did not die with it. That was the very concrete conception in ancient times. This fact was later abstracted because people could not bear it in all its intensity. People did not want to admit to themselves that what has developed between birth and death under the constant urge of the ego consciousness no longer has a part in the eternal soul core of the human being, but has a part in the body and participates in the fate of the body, that it thus also dies. Above all, this was clear to the first Christians: that in the evolution of the earth, the time had come when the soul, although it acquires an ego on earth, dies with the body as a result. That the body dies was not what was said in the first gospel proclamations, but that the soul dies, and that it has already died in people who emerged from the pre-Christian evolution of the world. It was meant as a real word: You have died. Not the earlier souls had died, for then they had not yet shared in the fate of the body, but you belong to the fate of the generation of those who have died, that is, your souls share in the fate of the body; for that which you carry here as an ego consciousness through your physical body is only an image of your true ego. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, although people had looked into their own selves and had glimpsed this true self, it was not yet separate from the human being. During the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, it was precisely this self that was separated from the human being, and the human being was raised into the spiritual world.

If we imagine what man experienced before the Mystery of Golgotha, he had his soul, in which he experienced the prenatal, and he had the real I, but he did not perceive it at first. After the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that man had his soul, but he no longer experienced the prenatal in it. Since that time, the true self is spiritual, that is, it does not belong to the earthly world, but to the spiritual world. This self is reflected in the physical body, the consciousness of self: “And your self is separated from you and united with Christ in the spiritual world.”

He has now descended to earth so that this spiritual world can permeate the earthly world through him. But man's true self does not live in the world that can be seen with eyes and approached with the three ordinary faculties of thinking, feeling and willing; it lives in a world that has since that time permeated the earthly one, but it is united with Christ. And one can only know the true self by knowing the Christ at the same time; one can only feel the true self if one feels the essence of the Christ and the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha at the same time; one can only be imbued by the true self if one is imbued by the impulse that emanates from the Mystery of Golgotha.

What could previously be taught through the ceremonies and rituals is something that you have to translate into a living spiritual life if your movement is to have meaning. But then you must realize that in our time everything is actually being done on the part of the Christ to show Himself to people together with the true human I, so that the word of the Apostle shall be fulfilled in our time:

You died, and your ego is separated from you and united with Christ in the spiritual world; but when Christ, who bears your ego, has come before the vision himself,

– as we can expect in the first half of our century –

then you too will reveal yourselves with him.

That means that then people will be able to walk around with the direct consciousness of the true self – not just with the image that is created by the physical body. And you shall make of them true Christians.

That is what you must make your task if you carry a substantial content with your movement. You must be clear about what it actually means: “With the newer times, more and more has arisen in humanity that man has come to his self-awareness. This does not initially mean an inner penetration with the true self. To arrive at self-awareness means a separation from the true self, an experiencing of oneself as coming from the true self. For this true self is one with the world of Christ. He brought this world of Christ into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Today He waits to be seen again through the corresponding preparations [of human beings], to reveal Himself to people. Then it will be possible to endow self-awareness with the inner experience of the true self, and then the word from the Gospel will be fulfilled, which is found in this third chapter of the Epistle to the Colossians and is actually spoken for our time and : that you should first awaken in yourselves an understanding of the relationship of the true self to the Christ, so that you can then revive it through the Act of Consecration of Man in those laymen who are present at your Act of Consecration of Man. For by permeating yourselves with such an understanding of self-consciousness and its relations to the human world, of the Christ and his relations to the true human self, you will perform the human consecration ritual with the right feeling. And through feelings that can be stimulated in you by an understanding of these things, you will present to people a truth about the dying of the ego consciousness in the physical body, which is indeed a depressing truth for human beings, but also the uplifting truth of the salvation of the true human ego, in that the Christ can lead the ego through death. You will be so moved by the reception of such a truth that you will be able to enliven the Act of Consecration of Man through it and thus bring something before the faithful that must be understood differently than usual, that must be understood with the understanding of the spiritual world. And in doing so, you will not only perform the Act of Consecration of Man differently, but with an understanding of the spiritual world, so that the things that take place in transubstantiation can no longer be discussed, but will be seen and felt as a matter of course, in that it will be felt that something supersensible must be understood in the sensual. And because something supersensory is taking place in the sensory, it is superfluous to discuss it with the intellect.

That is the attitude with which you should approach the Mass before the people, and with this attitude you must permeate the Mass if it is to be celebrated in the right spirit before the members of your communities. I was obliged to add this as a first rule to the celebration of the Mass and to the celebration of the ordination of the pastoral care of souls. We will have to continue with such reflections for some time, because they are the foundations for what you will have to bring before the communities in words.

Now it would be good if you would discuss the things that are on your minds as long as I am still here.

A question has been raised about a formula for admission to the community and about the creed. [The exact wording of the question was not written down.]

Rudolf Steiner: The admission to the community will of course have to consist of a discussion between the person to be admitted and the person admitting them about the creed. Especially with regard to the creed, it cannot of course be demanded that it be immediately understood by the person to be admitted in the way it is presented in the formula, because on the whole we must continue to follow it in a certain sense of the old tradition. Even though we already have in our formula that which points to the right thing, we cannot change what has now been so shaped by historical development that actual admission into the community of Christians is effected through baptism, and it will also be impossible to perform baptism in any other way than as infant baptism. In this way you follow tradition on the one hand, but on the other hand you must be aware that this was of course not the custom in the early days of Christianity either. In those early days, one became a Christian by attending Mass – not as far as the Gospel, but as far as the first prayer, which I have called the “relay prayer” – and then was baptized. So one was baptized in the full consciousness that humanity had at that time. Actually, only adults were baptized, and those who were born of baptized parents were simply children of Christians, they were raised as Christians and were introduced to the baptismal act on the basis of this Christian education. This meant that those who were led to the baptismal ceremony had already been sufficiently introduced to the Christian creed through living with their Christian ancestors, and one could simply conduct a kind of exam with such candidates, whereby they were once again made aware of what they had experienced during their childhood in the company of older people. And so it happened; if they were found to be sufficiently grounded in Christian doctrine, they could be baptized. Admittedly, baptism was then a much more real act in the life of a person than it can be today. Today, in any case, we must continue to practice infant baptism for a long time to come. So we first accept the child into the community of Christians, but we omit from the infant baptism what belongs to the Mass. This is justified. Baptism is an act that takes place around the child in complete unconsciousness. And precisely for this reason, what confirmation is has been transformed so that today it stands in place of what originally was baptism and is simply postponed to the appropriate age. So with the person being admitted today, there will be, above all, a kind of discussion about what every person should actually understand of the creed. And if a formula is needed for this – and that seems to be the case from the question – then we can indeed draw up such a formula. But it could also develop in a free conversation. What should develop in free conversation with the person to be admitted, without a formula, would have to be the content that the person concerned can, I will not say, profess the real Christ to be equal to himself, but that he can develop a sufficient relationship to the real Christ when one speaks to him of this real Christ. From the way in which the person to be initiated perceives the way in which one speaks to him about the Christ, one must recognize whether he can really belong to the community. Whether or not someone should be accepted is, of course, entirely a matter of feeling. And then it will be a matter of the person to be accepted really learning to understand, at least in essence, the content of the Act of Consecration of Man. Even if it is not possible to really celebrate the Act of Consecration of Man everywhere, we will still have to make sure that even where we still have to hold back on anything cult-like, the inner content of the Act of Consecration of Man Consecration is brought home to the soul, so that one is always in a position to regard the Act of Consecration of Man as something that can be taken up in a sermon or in any theoretical discussion.

What is meant here can best be understood by saying the following. Think of the Protestant sermon. You will often have emphasized or heard emphasized how the Protestant sermon should not be merely a scientific or intellectual discussion, and most preachers today appreciate most about the sermon what is not intellectual at all, but what is emotional and spiritual. In fact, it is the case that in preaching, beyond everything intellectual, a spirituality radiates directly from the content of feeling and emotion. Even in our present-day de-divinized time, the Protestant preacher still tries to give people something spiritual with his sermon, and one can indeed experience good preaching in this sense. But what is left over from the cult in the Protestant Church is presented with a completely false pathos, even by good preachers. They immediately lose their role as speakers of spiritual matters when they come to celebrate, because they are no longer in the spiritual world. There is, of course, something right in the fact that the sermon should be inspired by the content of the soul, that it should speak to the heart and not to the mind. But because this, which is to happen through the sermon, is purchased through the exclusion of all knowledge about the spiritual world - which is still preserved in petrified dogmas - then such things come about as the assertion that one can approach what the Christian is supposed to experience by inserting foreign words into the language of those living today. It is a remarkable phenomenon – I have already drawn your attention to it today – how something spiritual still resides in the Latin language, which is no longer alive for today's man. Man today feels that the living language has been so transposed into the profane material that he no longer believes he can express anything supersensory with it. And even if he does not want a mass to be read in Latin – from which he can still discern what he should grasp in spirit – he would at least like to hear a single word that sounds fresh to him in his secular life, and so, for example, he would not just call the sacred a “sacred”, but a “numinoses” or something similar. Once again, something unknown and suggestive is introduced into that which, in the face of it, one is powerless to truly reach with the soul. Today, books are being written about the sacred from an unspiritual Protestant spirit, in which it is actually unconsciously said: we are not getting anywhere with the mere continuation of the Protestant spirit, we have to borrow from the Catholics. Not that one reads entire masses in a language that has not yet become profane, but one takes only a word that sounds similar – not entire sentences – so that at least a small point of the Catholic loan can be introduced into the Protestant. That is the ultimate extreme to which the inadequate practice of religion now carries even theology, because one actually wants to reject any recognition of the sacred that is substantial. Such things must be seen in their true light; one must know that today it is a mere expression of powerlessness if one does not try to feel the sacred again by penetrating from the “Spiritus sanctus” merely pronounced in rigid words by the Catholic Church “Spiritus Sanctus” to the ‘Healing Spirit,’ as it is expressed by the Catholic Church only in the rigidly formulated words. In the same way, one can gain a complete inner experience through the word ‘healing spirit’ if one takes things as we receive them in the teaching on which your efforts are based as spiritual facts.

By founding this movement, you will and must gain the opportunity to shape your preaching in such a way that you do not turn it into a sentimental, heart-wrenching one, with a terrible, untrue sentimentality, by, as it were, squeezing feelings out of yourselves. You do not have to do that. Rather, you must see in the Act of Consecration of Man something that has a spiritual content in its imagery, and you must keep this spiritual content alive in your congregation, stirring it into vibrancy, so that you will not need will have need merely to put into words and convey to the faithful what you have wrung from your own mind, something that can be true only for a short time and that may afterwards very easily seem hackneyed in your preaching. In the Act of Consecration of Man, which you present to the faithful, you have something that moves people, something you can refer to every time you have something to say. In it you have something real that you can tie into, which immediately transforms your word into one that retains the emotional content when it is heard by the faithful. In this way you also escape the danger to which the Protestant-Evangelical preacher is always exposed; this danger consists in his being compelled to give the content of his feelings to his sermon out of his personal life. In doing so, he clouds himself in a certain way. You can get to know Protestant preachers who already cloud themselves when preparing the sermon and who cloud themselves even more when they preach. But as a result, the sermon does not come across as something true. Now, by having to squeeze his personal feelings out of himself, the person uses his entire soul, engages all his soul powers and has nothing left free to let the Christ enter while he is speaking the sermon. If the preacher can give a hint at the appropriate points to what is hinted at in the ritual and what the believer has come to know through contemplation, if he thus passes over to the exemplification of the ritual , which can become an infinitely rich one, and if he makes this linking to the cultic action in the sermon very pictorial, then he rises, as it were, above himself, does not fully engage his soul powers. And it is precisely at the point where he does not engage his soul powers, but rather what takes place through the exemplification of the Mass, that the Christ enters. And it is out of this mood that the Mass can be spoken. It is precisely through this that the preacher can truly let the Christ speak. The power of the Christ permeates his words, and the feeling of the faithful answers him like an echo.

What matters for the preacher to be a true preacher is that he experiences something from the divine side, just as the listener experiences something from the world side. Only through his experiencing something from the divine side, only through his leaning backward toward the divine, can the right thing be stimulated in the minds of the faithful through the preacher.

That is what must permeate the sermon. And if what I have now explained has become a truth in your soul, then you will find out quite naturally whether someone is suitable for admission to the community or not. This cannot be described in abstract words. It depends on how you yourself feel about the matter. There may be a “formula”, but the formula is not the essential thing. What is essential is your insight, your insight formed out of the spirit of a Christianity such as has been presented here, into the person whom you wish to receive into the community and also into the person whom you wish to receive into your own, narrower priestly community. In this way you will come to be able to answer the questions for yourselves inwardly. Firstly: Can this person listen properly when the Gospel is proclaimed? If you have established that he can listen properly, then he will be a true believer. You will be able to answer the second question for yourselves through inner experience: Can the man who comes to me repeat the words of the Gospel from the spirit in the right way? Can he speak to his listeners in such a way that it is not his words but the words of the Gospel that resound? Then I can accept him as a candidate for the ministry.

This should show you how you must not fall back into an abstract and theoretical life, how you should not answer the questions of life with abstract sentences, but in such a way that life itself is pointed out, above all, the life that has been kindled in you.

That is what needs to be said first. We shall speak about the Credo later.

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.