The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today, we will talk about how a person who adopts the theosophical worldview not only learns something and is able to recognise something about the world and its beings, but how the theosophical teachings, perspectives, thoughts and ideas are able to affect human feelings and emotions. Rightfully, it is often emphasized that theosophy shouldn't be something that only theoretically introduces us to higher worlds, but that it should be something that deeply penetrates our life. Normally, the opinion connected with this saying is deemed something trivial and inferior, so today we must form a view about the importance of such an opinion. In the most intimate way thoughts and ideas, which we absorb through theosophy, are flowing steadily into our whole feelings and emotions, so that we can become, literally through theosophy, different human beings. Of course, this trivial opinion is often based on a preconceived notion about how a theosophist must be. And if he is not like that, one says: I understand a theosophist to be someone completely different. I am thinking what a theosophist should be, only a theosophist can be the judge of. And if others who are not yet theosophists always say that they imagine a theosophist to be different, then their opinion cannot be very theosophical since they are not really experts. Today, we do not want to talk about such a trivial opinion, but about the intimate transformation of our emotions and feelings once we really absorb theosophy into ourselves. We want to deal with this question: Are such thoughts that are revealed to us able to penetrate into all the forces of our soul and, in relation to everything we experience within us, able to turn us into a new human being? They can do this.

The world around us, the ordinary world through which we walk, could look different for us at every turn if we understood theosophy. Therefore, today we must try to dive deeper into a theosophical understanding of the world.

Around us are lifeless beings that we call minerals, plants and animals, and other human beings. We know that behind these beings are spiritual beings, that there exists behind our physical world a spiritual world. We know that even of a human being who stands in front of us, we can only perceive a small part with our senses, the physical body. We know that this human being has apart from this physical body, his etheric body, his astral body, his Ego—these latter three members we are unable to perceive with ordinary senses. When looking at a stone, we tell ourselves it is different from a human being because as a mineral, as a stone, it has no etheric body, no astral body, no Ego in the physical world, but only a physical body. About the plant, we know it has a physical body and an etheric body. About the animal, we know that it has those and also has an astral body. But only the human being has the fourth member—the Ego. Thus, by having a fourth member, the Ego, above all other beings, the human being is the crown of our physical world. If we say it like that, then it is correct. But if we say it a little bit differently, then it is already wrong. If someone says, here in the physical world the stone or the mineral only has a physical body, then that is correct. But if one leaves out the words ‘here in the physical world’ then this is already wrong, and indeed utterly wrong. If someone says 'the stone has only a physical body' ... then this is utterly wrong.

What looks quite pedantic has to be said at least once, so that people get a feeling for the way how precisely one must talk about these subtle things. The stone too has its etheric body, its astral body and its Ego, albeit not in the physical world. This applies to the plant and the animal too. It is important to place in front of your soul precisely the idea that we should look at the stone from a higher point of view: as a being, that also belongs to something other than that which faces us. Have a look at your fingernails. Imagine that some sort of tiny being would look at these nails and could not see anything of the fingers, because it didn’t have any sense organs. It would believe that the nails are something separate that stands alone, and yet this is not true. The nails only make sense when they are attached to the fingers. So it is with all of our minerals. Human beings look at the minerals and they see of these only their physical body. But just like the nails belong to the fingers, the physical body of the mineral belongs to an etheric body which can no longer be found in the physical world. The physical body of the minerals is in the physical world, and the etheric body of the mineral is in the astral world. For a being that looks into the astral world, it just appears as if they follow the nails to the fingers because this etheric body in the astral world belongs to the mineral. In the same way, the mineral has an astral body, but this astral body of the mineral is in what we call ‘Devachan’. And finally, the mineral also has an Ego and this Ego is in the higher Devachan world, in the Arupic world.

Therefore, when we are looking at the minerals around us, we see entities pushed in front, that just like our nails stick out of the organism, they stick out of the beings to whom they belong and who in regard to their Ego exist in higher worlds. Just like you have nails, these beings have limbs which they extend, first into the lower Devachan world, then into the astral world and then they grow nails downwards: the minerals of the Earth. So when you look at a mineral, don’t believe that this one mineral has an Ego, but many related minerals belong to a common Ego. There are few such mineral personalities on the Devachan plane. The plant is different from the mineral in that on the physical plane it has its physical and also its etheric body. In the astral world, it has its astral body and on the Devachan plane, it has its Ego. The plant Ego is therefore one level lower than the mineral Ego so that on the lower Devachan plane one can encounter beings, who in turn have as their lowest limb a plant. The animal has its physical body, its etheric body and its astral body all on the physical plane, here in the physical world, and its Ego in the astral world. All animals belonging to one species and, for example, all lions, do not each have a separate Ego, but share a common one. This Ego is also called animal group-Ego. The human being differs from the animals because he also has his Ego on the physical plane.

When looking at an animal with the eyes of a theosophist, these feelings must arise: You will find in every human being an Ego—in every single human being. In an animal you cannot find an Ego on the physical plane. For this you must climb up to the astral plane, which is populated by animal group-Egos. The lion-Ego on the astral plane is an entirely different being than a single lion, just like your fingers appear to be a different ‘being’ from yourself. There are animal group-Egos, which are far more intelligent than the smartest human beings on the physical plane. These group-Egos are the drivers, catalysers and arrangers of what an animal experiences here on the physical plane. Never will anyone come to a true understanding of animal life, who doesn’t know that what the animals do here is only an expression of the measures that have been taken by the animal group-Egos. Look at the strange phenomenon that in a particular season, the bird life of the Northeast begins to migrate Southwest in one line, to return again in spring. Each bird species flies at a particular height and you can imagine that these bird migrations are connected to important instincts in the animal world. The spring migration is a wedding flight. If you enquire about the underlying wise arrangements of this, you will not understand these without making it clear to yourself that these are made by the group-Egos who conduct and direct everything. All that happens in the animal world will appear different to us, once we are aware of the presence of group-Egos. Imagine you had a wall with different holes in it through which someone would put his hands. What a mistake would one make if one would believe these hands are beings themselves. Someone who believes that an animal is a being by itself makes such a mistake. Those who conduct the bird migration are wise beings. In this way the animal world becomes an expression of a world of wise beings standing behind it. We learn to know a wonderful world of beings and no longer pass thoughtlessly over what we encounter directly. In fact, those animal group-Egos are always present in the periphery of our Earth. They are spiritually constantly encircling our Earth, just like the trade winds or the migrating birds or the electrical and magnetic currents that flow around the Earth. In this way spiritual currents and movements exist that do not represent anything but those deeds of the animal group-Egos.

When we now observe the plant world, it represents something similar. We see the outer plant. What we perceive as a plant in front of us, is a physical and an etheric body. But if we rise up to the astral plane, we find the astral bodies of the plants, and in Devachan the plant-Egos. For our earthly flora there is a greater number of such plant-Egos, which all have one common place where they are together—that is the centre of the Earth. All plants strive with the essence of their being towards the centre of the Earth.

Watch what happens to the Earth itself if we look at it from this perspective. It will no longer be the body as portrayed by geology, but the Earth will thereby become a living being with an Ego. A single plant does not possess an astral body, but all plants are immersed in and enclosed by an astral body, so that we can imagine the plant world of the Earth vaguely like this: All plants belong to the astral body of the Earth and in the centre of the Earth is the Ego of the plants. In this way, the Earth becomes a conscious being to us. Just as your Ego, which is located within your body, sends its rays towards your fingers, the Ego of the Earth, which is located in its centre, sends its rays towards the individual plants. Like our hair, the plants are organs of the Earth organism. Each plant strives towards the centre of the Earth as towards its Ego. In the spiritual world countless beings can be tucked in together at one single location. The spatial relationships in the spiritual world are different from those in the physical world. All plant Egos are able to meet each other in the centre of the Earth. The weeds have a different Ego than the wheat. Both Egos don't get on well with each other, but both their Egos are within the centre of the Earth. Such a truth must not only be grasped by the intellect, but must also be felt with every step you take through life. The plant cover of the Earth will become something different for us, when we stride along with the feeling that these plants are the outer physical expression of a spiritual content connected with the Earth. Earth has its Ego, which is realised through all the plants.

Only by looking at the issue in this way, and not stopping at mere concepts, does it come to life. Only then we will have grasped it in the right way. Because then we know that what we do to a plant is having a similar effect as if we did the same to a human being. If we are hitting a person, then this will hurt him because he has an astral body. The etheric body is unable to experience joy or pain. The individual plant doesn’t feel hurt if we squeeze it, as not all individual plants possess an astral body. But the jointly shared astral body of the plants belongs to the Earth, and what is done to a plant hurts it. In the centre of the Earth are the plant-Egos and it is there that consciousness originates about what one does to a plant. Once we grasp this teaching with all the strength of our soul, we will walk differently upon the surface of the Earth. Thus, every step we take in life becomes a communication with the Earth as a conscious being, and we know that this Earth as a whole experiences pleasure and pain and joy and sorrow. But we have to experience this in the right way. One could believe that if we cut a plant, the Earth would feel pain. This is not the case. Detailed information can only be given by a clairvoyant able to see the way the Earth’s astral body functions. If you pick a blossom, this creates a feeling as if a calf is suckling milk from its mother, which creates a kind of well-being sensation for the cow. Plants that the Earth lets sprout up, can be compared to the milk that spurts out of an animal, so that when you pick flowers, a feeling of pleasure for the Earth is provided. But if you rip these out with the roots, the Earth experiences pain, as if you were cutting into flesh. If you take this vividly, you will notice what kind of spiritual relationship with the Earth you will gain. Once the sickle slices through the stalks, the clairvoyant sees blissful sensations move across the Earth, across the fields. By mowing a field, a flood of well-being moves across the Earth. Our relationship to the world is deepening in a wonderful way when we begin to settle into these truths, and feel how we are hurting Earth when we rip out her plants, like someone would rip out a hair from us.

It could be objected that sometimes it might be very good to not rip off all the blossoms but leave them in nature, and sometimes it is good to reposition plants elsewhere and rip them out with their roots. This doesn’t change the fact that tearing out produces pain, and picking creates feelings of pleasure. The moral side is something different from the fact itself. A moral perspective which is justifiable in a human life, must not be applied to the cosmos. Imagine someone who is getting their first white hair, so that from an aesthetic standpoint it seems desirable to pull them out. He might become more beautiful, but it will hurt him. Thus, it might be desirable to replant plants, but it will hurt the Earth. The question is, ‘Is it not necessary to cause such hurt?’ or ‘Is one allowed or should one cause such pain?’. Pain is in many ways inseparable from existence. The human being steps into the world through the pain of the mother. Whatever is born is born in pain. Even if it is necessary to rip out plants, it will always be painful for the Earth. Our concepts and ideas turn into intimate emotions and feelings. We slowly notice all the things we do not perceive in our environment because we do not know about them. In our surroundings there is always feeling, and perceiving and living; it is not only a mechanical process when the sickle is wielded through the stalks, but floods of emotions stream across the field in autumn. Thus we learn to empathise with the beings which surround us.

What about rock? Rock, as we have said, has its Ego just like a human being, but in a much higher world. This rock-Ego and this rock-astral-body feel and sense just like the Earth, when you rip out plants or pick them. It is not only a mechanical process when the stone carvers in a quarry are hammering stone by stone out of it. Those rocks that are blown up will be seen by a person, who only uses his senses, as a process of the outer world. We learn to know that something similar happens, is experienced, in a soul when we immerse ourselves into theosophy. There you should not judge according to analogies, but must proceed with something concrete. One could believe that the hammering in a stone quarry causes pain. This is not so. You cannot bestow a bigger favour upon the mineral kingdom than when you split a stone apart—this is its true bliss. An outpouring of pleasure is happening when you blow up stones in a quarry and the stones are thrown around everywhere. The stone possesses a true longing and passion to be split, blown up, ripped apart.

In contrast, something else causes pain and suffering to the being at the foundation of our rock world. If you have dissolved cooking salt in a glass and this begins to separate, so that it separates itself as hard salt, settles, and then, when what had been dissolved forms once again a solid body, the affected being experiences pain. If you again dissolve what has been joined together, then it experiences pleasure. If you would reassemble the blown-up stone fragments and return them to the original rock, this would hurt the rock-soul tremendously. Consider that essentially our Earth was created as a liquid fire body. So that you can have solid ground under your feet, many different solutions and forms of water had to group together to form solid bodies.

Once our Earth consisted wholly of molten metals. Then the first island formations occurred. This was accompanied by massive pain. For the Earth it was painful to become our dwelling place, and the incremental solidification of the Earth, as described by natural science, meant spiritual processes happened simultaneously. If someone, who understands these things, experiences a volcanic eruption where the dissolved materials are flooding out and solidify, then he sees streams of pain of the lava-soul flowing down the mountain. In this way the whole of nature is ensouled for us, if we are conscious of these things. But this is also what the initiates have always held out to mankind. The sayings of the initiates have normally a deep meaning and deep value and sometimes not only one meaning. Understand that the Earth was once a liquid fire body, and that this stone kingdom has solidified and agglomerated itself. Under suffering, the Earth was transformed into our dwelling place. Only through the suffering of the rock kingdom were we able to reach a certain level of development. This pain of the rock will only cease, when the final state of the Earth will be reached, when the Earth will become softer again, when it will become spiritual again. Put yourself into this phase of the Earth: liquid-fire Earth, humans still spiritually immersed in it. The stone masses solidify. Ongoing pain and suffering in the seemingly lifeless rock kingdom for the sake of progressing the human race. How could one express this better than this: “For all creatures are sighing in pain, awaiting to be adopted as children”.¹ One cannot go down deep enough, if one truly wants to grasp the sayings of initiates.

This all shows that understanding the world is something completely different from an abstraction. When the concepts are being deepened, emotional experiences appear through which we can look into the soul entities that stream through the world. Everything becomes for us an expression of the soul in some form. Every step in our life becomes something different, because not only do we connect to the beings in front of our senses, but also with those unknown beings on ever higher planes of the world. We only must find within ourselves the thoroughly different way to live.

In this way, we also learn to find the soul in a plant, in an animal, in a mineral. We learn to know the soul of a whole people. An entire people has a common soul and what one calls the Folk-soul is not a dead term; it is something real. When a people arise, let’s say the Goths, and perish again, this is like the birth and death of a single human being. But in the whole people lives some soul essence and the individual beings are the limbs of this Folk-soul, embedded into the Folk-soul’s substance, which in turn has its fates, sufferings and joys. First, we gain an idea, then increasingly more knowledge of how the world around us is suffused everywhere with pleasure and pain, old and young—as it is within ourselves. This is what through the theosophical teachings turns us into different human beings. This means acquiring theosophical understanding, implementing theosophy intimately in your life, as if the theosophical concept was a seed, which we plant into suitable Earth. Then it starts to sprout and becomes blossom and fruit when it becomes an emotion and a feeling and when we immerse ourselves through our emotions and feelings deeply, deeply into our environment. When through theosophy plants and stones become not only objects of observation, but our friends and fellow beings, who warm up to us through theosophical observation, whom we learn to love, like we love human beings, then by and by we will gain understanding, a perspective will open up about the enormous educational value of theosophy for the whole future. Imagine human beings in two, three, four, five centuries who will not only have concepts about karma and reincarnation but will walk through the world with such emotions as we have indicated here. All of human life and all education will be different when the human being will be able to perceive everywhere the pulse of other beings. If he places his hand on a tree and feels the pulse of the Earth, if he smashes a stone and shares the emotions of bliss that the stone soul experiences, and if he becomes conscious that the Earth had to suffer pain, then the human being will walk across this Earth differently. Life then will be different, and the right empathy, through the human beings themselves, will prevail and be alive.

• 1. Luther’s translation reads literally: “The creatures are fearfully awaiting the revelation of the children of God”, Letter to the Romans, 8:19

Today we shall deal with a subject that is connected with the vast far-reaching view into cosmic space that we entered upon in our last lecture. We shall go more closely into the spiritual evolution that lies within spatial and material evolution than we did before. In the last lecture we saw how spiritual beings guide those mighty evolutionary processes which ordinary physical science describes to us inaccurately, but Theosophy or spiritual science exactly and accurately.

We have seen how the separate planets, the separate bodies of our cosmic system, arise from a common original substance, and have recognized that spiritual beings of various kinds are active in all this evolution. We have pointed out too in former lectures how spiritual science does not see merely physical material objects in the bodies of our cosmic system, but linked with the physical and material, spiritual beings of various grades. These may be beings of the most exalted order who raise evolution, thus benefiting the whole system, or they may be spiritual beings of a lower kind who hinder and destroy. Yet we must be clear that what seems to be hindrance and destruction is in the long run again membered into the wisdom of the whole system. One might therefore say: When something apparently destructive, retarding and evil exists anywhere, then evolution in its whole course will be so wisely guided that even this evil, this destruction and hindrance will be reversed and changed into the good. Today however we want to bring about a living feeling of the existence of such spiritual beings as belong to the “creative beings”—considering first those of an exalted order. Man must work in evolution for a long time yet, before he ascends to the rank of a “creative” being. We will consider in particular those beings who participated in the structure of our cosmic system when the Earth began its evolution in our universe as Saturn.

The Earth began its evolution as Saturn and advanced through the Sun and Moon evolutions up to its present formation. Everything on that Saturn cosmic body was, however, quite different from the nature of our present earthly planet. On Saturn there were no solid rocky masses, what we call the mineral world in the modern sense, nor was there water in the modern sense, not even air; what was present at that time could only be compared with warmth among our elements today, with “fire,” as one says in occultism. You would certainly not get a right idea if you thought that this Saturn fire looked like the modern flame of gas or candle. To have the right conception you must call to mind what pulses up and down in your own body—you must recollect the fundamental difference existing between a lower creature of the animal world, which has preserved certain stages of evolution, and the human being. A lower creature has the warmth of its surroundings. An amphibian has no inner warmth of its own; it has the warmth of its surroundings. It is as cold or as warm as its surroundings. Man has his own internal, equable warmth, as indeed he must have. His organism must ensure that when it is cold outside, he can nevertheless maintain his warmth at a certain temperature, and you know that when disturbances such as fever etc. enter this warmth, the health of the whole body is disturbed as well. The point is that man has an inner degree of warmth and he must think of some underlying force that creates it. This force is not water, not the solid, not air, it is an element for itself, and this element alone was present on ancient Saturn, the first embodiment of our Earth. If you had gone for a walk at that time in universal space—naturally that is a phantasy but it helps to form an idea of the condition—you would not have seen Saturn, for in the earliest stage it sent out no light at all. To shed light the cosmic body must first become a sun, or be united with a sun and so become luminous. If you approached ancient Saturn you would have noticed in its neighborhood that there was warmth, you would think that there was a space filled with warmth, you would enter a space like an oven. The existence of ancient Saturn would have been realized through this force of warmth alone. It was a rarefied material sub-stance of which modern man can scarcely form a right idea—least of all a learned physicist—but it was present, a condition finer than gas, finer than air, and all that existed of man at that time, namely, the first rudiments of the physical body, consisted of this substance. If you could eliminate today everything except the warmth of your blood then you would have an idea of those first rudiments of the human being. That, however, could not be done, since one cannot live like that. Today with our mineral kingdom, fluid kingdom, etc., we cannot live as the human being lived on ancient Saturn. At that time one could do so. But today you must think away all that you have of juices, tissues, solid parts, even the air that you take in as oxygen. You must conceive solely and alone that which remains over—naturally in quite a different form—namely, the warmth contained in your blood: a physical body consisting only of warmth! It is a horrible idea for a modern natural scientist—but therefore one that is all the more correct and real.

Such was the rudimentary germ of man—his physical body. All the other beings which are on the earth today animals—plants—minerals—were not in existence on Saturn. Saturn at that time consisted solely of human germs which were clustered together like the tiny berries which form a blackberry. In this way the Saturn-globe was a great berry made up purely of tiny berries which were the human beings. If we were to examine the surroundings of Saturn somewhat as we test our earth's surroundings and find a mantle of air in which are structures of mist, clouds etc., we should find nothing of a material nature. We should find in the Saturn mantle spiritual substance, spiritual beings, and these were at a much higher level than man in his first rudiments.

We will now occupy ourselves with a definite order of beings who were linked with the Saturn existence. There we find the Spirits of Will, then the Spirits of Wisdom, Spirits of Movement, of Form, of Personality, and so forth. To-day we will turn our attention especially to the Spirits of Form for the reason that they have played an important role in the beginning of our evolution. From the whole ranks of spiritual beings who were present in the atmosphere and environment of Saturn, we will therefore select the Spirits of Form and be clear that they have gone through an evolution up to today, just as all beings go through an evolution. As man received his etheric body on the Sun, his astral body on the Moon, his ego on the Earth and has become more and more perfect, so have the Spirits of Form passed through their evolution.

These Spirits of Form had no physical body on Saturn, their lowest member was an etheric body which one can compare with the etheric body of man; thus we should have to think away completely the physical body in the Spirits of Form, and think of the lowest member of their being as the etheric body. Then these beings had an astral body, an ego, spirit-self or Manas, life spirit or Budhi, spirit man or Atma and an eighth member which is a stage higher than man can reach in the course of his evolution through the Earth's embodiments. These Spirits of Form therefore act externally on Saturn through their etheric body as man on Earth works externally through his physical body. They possess no hands through which they can work, no feet with which they can walk, for these are members of the physical body. But their etheric body manifests in such a way that they continuously ray in fructifying life-saps from the Saturn atmospheric mantle, which are of very rarefied matter. We can picture Saturn as we have described it, and from the environment—continuously and from all sides—fructifying life-saps streaming down like rain from the etheric bodies of the Spirits of Form. The nature of Saturn was such that it did not retain these fertilizing life-saps but rayed them back like a mirror. In this way arose the mirror pictures of Saturn of which I have spoken in earlier lectures, but now more exactly. You can picture the warmth sub-stance of Saturn perpetually receiving the rays of the etheric body of the Spirits of Form and raying these back again. We can form a rough picture of it, if we remember how the rain drips from the clouds down to earth, collects in the earth and rises up again as misty vapors. We must not however imagine this as having an interval of time, but picture the process as a continuous one; the rank luxuriant life-saps stream in and are reflected, so that the rudimentary physical bodies appear like mirror-pictures. They actually consist of mirror-pictures. You can form an idea of what was present on Saturn as the physical germ of man, if you imagine a person standing before you and you look into his eye; you send your light into the eye of the other, and your picture comes back to you rayed out of his eye. So it was with the Spirits of Form in the environment of ancient Saturn. They sent their life-bestowing saps down into the warmth masses of Saturn and their own form, their likeness, was reflected; this mirror likeness was the first rudiments of the human physical body. Man was thus, even on ancient Saturn, in the most literal sense a likeness of his Godhead.

If we now go on to the Sun which arose out of old Sat-urn, the advance was made through the fact that the Spirits of Form no longer have need of an etheric or life-body; they give up the etheric body. They no longer ray down the life-giving saps, they relinquish their etheric body and in this way the first physical germs of man were permeated with an etheric body. The etheric body which the human beings received on the Sun was formed, to begin with, from the etheric body of the Spirits of Form,—a portion of the etheric body of the Spirits of Form. These celestial beings mirrored themselves in the warm Saturn, and through the fact that they brought a sacrifice and created pictures, they have gradually grown more independent and capable of the greatest deed, namely, to lay aside their etheric body in sacrifice and to permeate with their own life-force that which they first formed as picture. If you could endow with life the reflection which rays to you from the eye of your fellow man, make it independent, so that it had its own life and could step out of the eye, then you would have a deed which the Spirits of Form accomplished in the transition from ancient Saturn to the Sun. This was a significant advance for our cosmic evolution.

You know of course—I will just mention this here—that all sagas and myths have a multiple meaning, and when we consider the true facts of world evolution in a spiritual sense, then the myths disclose their truth in a surprising way. This may be the case right here.

Let us look at the advance that took place from Saturn to Sun. On ancient Saturn the life-giving forces streamed in, were reflected and taken up again by the mantle, the atmosphere of Saturn. In the old Greek myth the warm globe of Saturn was called Gaea and the atmosphere Chronos. Now consider the myth: the life-giving forces of Chronos rayed in continually upon Gaea and were reflected and absorbed. It is Chronos continually swallowing his own children! One must feel the truth of such a myth; if it is not felt, one has not the right attitude to it. For just consider what it means: in hoary primitive ages of ancient Greece we find a myth that presents this truth to us in a wonderful picture. There is only one possible explanation of such a fact, namely, the most advanced individuals of mankind, who guided man's further development from the Mystery centres, had exactly the same knowledge of world evolution as we give out today in Theosophy. In the Ancient Mysteries they spoke of these things as we speak today; for the masses the truths were veiled in pictures and these pictures form what today we know as Mythology. In the face of such knowledge how extraordinary seem those people who believe that men have discovered truth only in the last forty years and that all knowledge possessed by men of earlier times is only childish fantasy. One must however describe it as a childish fantasy when it is emphasized again and again: “How marvellously advanced we are today!” That is the really childish picture!

So we advance from Saturn to Sun and consider the evolution of the Spirits of Form further. They have laid aside their etheric body, “exuded” it out of themselves and imparted it to the body of the Earth, inasmuch as the human bodies have permeated themselves with it. As the lowest member of their being they now have the astral body and their higher development means that they have not only one member above spirit-man or Atma, but a still further one. We must now describe their being as consisting of astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man, an eighth and a ninth member which are beyond what man can attain in his completed seven-membered development. What do the Spirits of Form present as an “outside”?

The Spirits of Form have “trickled,” so to speak, the life-rain down on to Saturn. On the Sun they manifest through instincts, desires and passions raying into the Sun, through all that is anchored in the astral body. If someone had sat there and looked out into cosmic space, he would not have seen lightning flash or heard thunder pealing, but round him in the astral light he would have perceived the passions of spiritual beings—everywhere, all around him, passions, and you must not at all imagine only lower passions. These passions and emotions now worked creatively on the planet from without. If we consider the myths further we see the creative Titans within our earthly evolution, the creative passions which worked from out-side, from the spiritual airy circles of the Sun when this was a planet.

Now we advance to the Moon—the Sun is metamorphosed into the Moon. In the course of evolution this signifies that the Spirits of Form now lay aside their astral body also and that their lowest member is the ego. To describe their nature we should say: as the human being has the physical body for lowest member, so these Spirits of Form in the environment of the Moon have the ego as lowest member, then they have spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man, an eighth, ninth, and a tenth member. Thus they pre-sent their ego to the outer world. It is very remarkable, but so it is: they present externally pure ‘I’s, pure egos; they simply displayed sheer egos to the outside world. The whole activity in the surroundings of the Moon was as if one met with beings who revealed their whole character and individuality—and this was from the Moon's atmosphere inwards. Just imagine all your egos which are here in your physical bodies being suddenly freed from that and from etheric and astral body, imagine only your egos there as the lowest member, and that they could manifest them-selves through space. Think of yourselves on the old Moon and your egos outside in the universe, but in such a way that they were embedded in the spiritual substances, only the lowest members of the Spirits of Form working in out of the air, then you will have a picture of how the Spirits of Form express themselves as sheer egos out of space. They have given up to the human beings the astral body which they still had on the Sun, so that on the Moon man now consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body.

We will now picture the human being of Saturn who has the first rudiments of the physical body. We must visualize hovering above him beings who are the Spirits of Form and have an etheric body, astral body, I, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man, to the eighth member. Now we must think of the next stage. In the Sun-human-being we have the physical body and the etheric body. The etheric body had been instilled into man by the Spirits of Form, keeping their astral body, so that they had their astral body, their I, up to the ninth member. Then we pass on to the Moon.

We have man consisting of the physical, etheric, astral bodies. The astral body has been sacrificed to man by the Spirits of Form who then have as lowest member the I, and spirit-self, and so forth, up to the tenth member. All that we call ‘man’ has gradually flowed down out of the environment of the planet, has been put together, so to speak, from outside. All that is within was once outside, has entered into man from without.

Let us now follow evolution on the Earth itself: at the beginning man has the rudiments of his physical body, then his etheric, and astral bodies. The Spirits of Form came over from the Moon. Their lowest member is the I or ego. This they now sacrifice as well and with it fructify the human being in his rudimentary stage, so that the ego, as it appears on Earth, is a fertilizing force which streams out from the Spirits of Form, and these beings have now Spirit-Self or Manas as their lowest member.

If we wish to describe them we must say: Above us in the Earth's atmosphere there rule the Spirits of Form, their lowest member is Spirit-Self or Manas; in this they live and weave and they have sacrificed what they still possessed on the Moon—the ego working towards all sides, that ‘trickled’ down and fertilized the human being.

We will now follow the progress of man on the Earth itself. There one can point to the spot in man where the ego was trickled in, but today we will consider it only schematically. Man receives his ego. It comes in contact first of course with the astral body which surrounds him like an auric sheath, there the ego first flows in, interpenetrates the astral body. This takes place in what we call the Lemurian Age, in the middle of earthly evolution. In the Lemurian Age, in the course of long periods of time, different for each different human being, the ego drew into the astral body and fructified it. Let us picture this developing human being.

The physical body at that time did not consist of flesh and blood as it does today; it was a quite soft structure, even without cartilage, and was penetrated as if by magnetic currents. Then there was the etheric body and then the astral body which was fructified by the ego. We must imagine this fructification as being something like an indentation which occurred in the astral body, like a turned-in aperture. That is what actually took place, something like an opening arose at the top of the astral body through the inflowing of the ego, an opening as far as to the etheric body. (Fig. 1.) This was of great significance and produced an important result; the consequence was that the first dim perception of a physical outer world appeared. In earlier conditions man had perceived nothing but that which lived in him inwardly; he was as if hermetically sealed towards the outside. He was aware only of himself and what went on in him internally. Now for the first time there opened to him the sight of a physical outer world. But man was not yet quite independent, much was still regulated for him by other divine beings with whom he stood in connection. He could not immediately see all that was around him, as we do now; since only his astral body was opened he perceived only with that body. It was a quite dim clairvoyance, and when in this ancient primeval time the human being moved over the earth he perceived what was outside his body, he perceived if this were sympathetic or unsympathetic, beneficent or harmful. He perceived a color picture when he so moved about, a glaring-red, for instance, that arose as an auric color-picture, for it was his astral body that first opened. He knew that when a red picture appeared there was a being in the neighborhood that was dangerous to him. If a blue-red color met him, he knew that he could go towards it; thus he took his direction from these dim clairvoyant perceptions. He perceived only the soul elements, he could not perceive, for instance, what is present in the plants of today. He perceived only the soul-nature in the other human beings and in the animals, and the Group-souls, too. That was the first fertilizing with the ego.

The ego was gradually further developed and the fructifying element that entered the astral body began to permeate it more deeply so that the ego was increasingly present in the feelings of likes and dislikes. According as the ego expanded in this way in the astral body there arose what has been called in the book Theosophy the sentient soul. It is as if the fructifying ego spread its forces over the whole astral body, thereby producing the sentient soul. Here we still have to incorporate an important fact.

We have now seen a fairly normal advance of evolution. We have seen how the Spirits of Form on the Moon rayed in their lowest member, the ego, and how, when the Earth had arisen out of the Moon condition, they gave up the ego and fructified man with it. Now we know that certain beings on the Moon remained behind, beings who did not complete their development. What does that mean? It means that they had not advanced to the stage where they could let their ego stream out and fructify the human being. That they could not do. They still stood at the old Moon stage, when they worked with their ego into the atmosphere of the earth. There were laggard beings around man who worked on the earth as the Spirits of Form had done on the Moon. Man was surrounded in the earth's atmosphere by ego-beings who had not yet relinquished their egos. These beings now strove to accomplish on the earth what they had failed to do finally on the Moon. Man was thus exposed to influences that were not in the normal course of his evolution. These influences of the ego-spirits rayed into his astral body. While his astral body was molded through the in-trickling ego of the Spirits of Form, the ego-spirits, who were not at the stage of the Spirits of Form, rayed lower forces to him at the same time, lower than should have entered him in normal evolution. These lower forces brought it about that man divided into a higher and a lower part. Thus from the Spirits of Form an ego was instilled with the propensity to selflessness, whereas the laggard ego-spirits instilled into man the ego with the propensities towards selfishness, egotism. That is the ego which will still not free itself from instincts, desires, and passions. They press into the astral body and interpenetrate it—so that in man's astral body there is a twofold nature: selfless impulses that aspire to rise higher and those passions which are imbued with selfishness and have entered man through the influences of the ego-spirits and have anchored themselves in him.

Now we will further consider evolution itself. We have seen how the astral body has been entirely permeated by the force of the incoming ego. The next stage is when the etheric body too is seized by this force, so that here too a kind of aperture towards the outer world arises. To sketch this (Fig. 2) we must put in the middle a physical body, then an etheric body which is broken through and entirely filled with the force of the ego and then the astral body which is also entirely full of this force. So in the etheric body we now have a force desiring to expand; the etheric body opens to the outside world.

We have come in the formation of man practically into the first and second third of the Atlantean Age. There still existed an old clairvoyance which no longer saw in picture merely the beneficial and harmful, the sympathetic and unsympathetic, but a kind of living dream pictures arose before man which lasted a long time. For the etheric body is the bearer of memory and since these human beings had as yet no disturbance from the physical body, such pictures coming from outside were held for a long time. Memory at that time was an outstanding force of the soul. You can read in The Akashic Record¹ what man was at that time in respect of memory. There was not of course as yet complete observation of the external world, but a kind of dim clairvoyance. This was, however, more comprehensive than perception through the astral body. It caused everything to arise in mighty pictures, definitely formed, like a dream, but with a correspondence to the external objects, whereas formerly the pictures only served to guide man in taking his direction.

Now we advance to the last third of the Atlantean time. And now the physical body too is gripped by the force of the ego (Fig. 3). Rudiments of an indentation arise in the physical body, it becomes indented and around it we have the etheric and astral bodies. We will merely imagine the whole schematically now; in the course of succeeding lectures we shall get to know the realities. In a certain way, however, such a kind of indenting had appeared, the physical body took up the ego into itself. The point where the ego was taken in lies between the eyebrows, as I have often explained. The opening that comes about through the penetration of the ego into the physical body is to be thought of particularly as the opening of the physical senses. The ego presses through the eye, through the hearing—which is not merely an opening but a whole series of openings. All this takes place in the last third of Atlantean times and the human body was so transformed that it has become what it is today.

We call the etheric body as it was transformed at the beginning of the Atlantean Age the intellectual or mind soul and the transformed physical body we call the consciousness soul. So that what is described in my Theosophy as the position today, we have now followed as a consequence of evolution. You see here how things come about gradually.

After the physical body too is opened to the outside, man for the first time learnt to know the external world. And now begins the conscious transforming of the astral body. It was a more or less unconscious transformation before the beginnings of the consciousness soul. To picture this condition, we must think of it schematically like this: the astral body, etheric body and physical body opened, and through the fact that man comes in connection with the outside world he forms in himself an enclosure. This represents all that the ego develops in intercourse with the outer world, all that the ego “learns” through external contacts. Now imagine that the whole of what the ego develops in this way becomes greater and greater, and that this new structure, which has been gradually developed, lays itself round the astral body here. Although this is all schematic it corresponds to the actual process, and the new structure unites with man's astral body and in course of evolution transforms it into the human Manas or spirit-self. (Fig. 4.) Man is at work on this today, when through what he ac-quires in his intercourse with the external world he is transforming his astral body into Manas or spirit-self. We are in the midst of this process at the present time.

Since, however, the Spirits of Form have given up their ego, letting it trickle down into man, we are surrounded everywhere by these beings whose lowest member is of a Manasic nature, the spirit-self. If we want to seek in our surroundings for these Spirits of Form, for their lowest member, then we find it in that which we ourselves gradually develop as our fifth member. What we develop as human wisdom by which we must become wiser and wiser, that we should find manifested in our surroundings as the lowest member of the Spirits of Form. We have indeed often spoken of this. Let us look at what surrounds us, at what has been done by more exalted beings around us and in which we have taken no share. Let us look at what I have often mentioned, a piece of the thigh bone, in which the lattice work which goes to and fro is combined to such a wonderful scaffolding, that we must confess: Here with the minimum amount of material the maximum strength is attained! We see secreted in this structure what man will gradually learn—though it is impossible today—how to build bridge-scaffoldings through his engineering art that will be as wisely constructed as the thigh bones which carry the human upper body like pillars. The whole human body is thus wisely arranged, it is an expression of wisdom and when we go out into Nature this same wisdom meets us everywhere. Let us go, for example, to the dams which the beavers make. We see how the beavers collect at certain times of the year when the water has acquired a greater fall, in order to construct a dam in the water at a definite angle which will hold up the water and produce a new fall. Everywhere in our surroundings we find everything permeated with wisdom,—as we shall be permeated with it when we have developed Manas in full measure. The wisdom that we meet with everywhere belongs to the Spirits of Form. As the physical body is our lowest member so is the wisdom which we find all around us the lowest member of the Spirits of Form, then they have Budhi, Atma, where we have our etheric and astral bodies and then they have the eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh members. We have to do here, as you see, with highly exalted beings to whom we look up; and when we see the wisdom in our surroundings, we see only the lowest member of these exalted beings. In comparison with these beings we are like a creature, a lower being, that creeps about on man and sees only the outside of his physical body. We creep about on the earth and see the wisdom, which for the Spirits of Form is what the physical body is for us. Such a being is a “creative spirit” as regards man, for this creative spirit has instilled his ego into him.

Precisely as we raise ourselves to Manas, so in the further course of evolution we shall someday acquire the life-spirit, Budhi, through the transforming of our etheric body. In our environment we have Manas or spirit-self as the wisdom impregnated into the world. That is the lowest member of the Spirits of Form, but there are also other beings linked with the earth whose lowest member is not our fifth, Manas, but our sixth, i.e. the life-spirit or Budhi. Around us is the atmosphere for beings whose lowest member—as member of higher beings—is equivalent to our life-spirit. And just as truly as at the beginning of the earthly evolution an external deed instilled the ego into man, so at a definite point of time there came the first impression and influence of the beings who little by little instil the full strength of Budhi. Two thousand years after the time in the ancient hoary past when the ego was poured down, there was still not much to be seen of such egos in the human bodies. That all came about gradually, only in the course of many millennia did the ego reach full manifestation. One must never imagine that the instilling of the ego was an event of which someone could say: “Nothing special happened; I do not acknowledge it, that is simply an event as others have been before!” If any particularly “enlightened” persons had lived on earth 2000 years after the instilling of the ego, and had perhaps represented the materialism of the time, they would have said: “Oh, there are certain among us who maintain that a special force has come down from heaven and brought all mankind forward. But that is a dualism of the worst kind, as Monists we must explain that that is something which was already there long ago!” These things appeared slowly and gradually.

Just as at the beginning of the Lemurian Age a powerful impulse forwards was given through the inflowing of the ego, which has later made possible the development of spirit-self or Manas, even so there has been an event of fundamental importance through which man will become capable with his whole being of developing not only Manas, but life-spirit or Budhi. And this event is the Deed on Golgotha. This event is the appearance of Christ on earth! It may be that some people will deny that to-day, but this event was just as much a force coming out of the environment as that other was. Thus we see that we grasp the evolution of the world from its spiritual aspect when we look into the depths of the world. We learn gradually not to look merely to a material existence, but we discover, wherever we look into cosmic space, spiritual beings and their deeds. Through what we call Theosophy we learn to know of these deeds, we live and weave and have our being within the spiritual beings and their deeds.

In our next lecture we will go more exactly into the human organism and indicate how the development has taken place, after today having dealt with it more schematically.

• 1. See: Rudolf Steiner, Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner Publications, Englewood, N.J.

[ 1 ] The human body, like other organisms, forms itself out of the semi-fluid[colloidal] state. However for its formation a constant supply of gaseous material is necessary. The most important is the oxygen transmitted by breathing.

[ 2 ] We may consider in the first place a solid constituent of the body, e.g., a bony structure. It is precipitated from semi-fluid material. In this separation the ego-organization is active. Anyone may convince himself of this who studies the formation of the bony system. For, in the embryonic period and in childhood, the bony system develops in the same measure in which the human being receives his human form and figure, the characteristic expression of the ego-organization. The transformation of protein which underlies this process first separates the (astral and etheric) foreign forces from the protein; the protein then passes through the inorganic state, and in so doing, has to become fluid. In this condition, the ego-organization, working in the element of warmth, takes hold of it and introduces it to man's own etheric body. It thus becomes human protein, but it still has a long way to go before the transformation into bony substance is achieved.

[ 3 ] After its transformation into human protein, it must first be prepared for the receiving and transforming of calcium carbonate, calcium phosphate and the like. To this end it must undergo an intermediate stage. It must come under the influence of the absorption of gaseous substance. This brings into the protein the transformation-products of carbohydrates. The substances which thus arise can provide a basis for the form of the individual organs. They do not represent the finished substances of the organs, e.g. liver or bone-substance, but a more general, less differentiated substance, out of which the individual organs of the body can then be built up. It is the ego-organization which is active in moulding the final shape of the organs. The astral body is active in the above-mentioned undifferentiated organic substance. In the animal, this astral body also takes upon itself the task of moulding the final form of the organs; in man, the activity of the astral body and, with it the animal nature as such, persists only as a general underlying foundation for the ego-organization. In man the animal development is not carried to a conclusion; it is interrupted in its path and humanity is imposed, as it were, by the ego-organization upon it.

[ 4 ] Now the ego-organization lives entirely in states of warmth. It derives the individual organs from the undifferentiated astral nature. It works upon the undifferentiated substance with which the astral nature provides it, by enhancing or lowering the states of warmth of the nascent organs.

[ 5 ] If the ego-organization lowers the state of warmth, inorganic materials enter the substance and a hardening process sets in; the basis is provided for the formation of the bones. Salt-like substances are absorbed.

[ 6 ] If on the other hand the ego-organization enhances the state of warmth, organs are formed whose action is to dissolve the organic substance, leading it over into a liquid or gaseous condition.

[ 7 ] Let us assume, the ego-organization finds insufficient warmth developed in the organism, for the adequate enhancement of the warmth-conditions in those organs which require it. Organs whose proper functioning lies in the direction of a dissolving process will then fall into a hardening activity. They assume in a pathological way the tendency which in the bones is healthy

[ 8 ] Now the bone, once it has been formed, is an organ which the ego-organization releases from its domain. It enters a condition where it is no longer taken hold of by the ego organization inwardly, but only in an outward way. It is removed from the domain of growing and organizing processes, and serves the ego in a merely mechanical capacity, carrying out the movements of the body. Only a remainder of the inner activity of the ego-organization continues to permeate it throughout life because the bony system must, after all, remain as an integral organic part within the organism; it must not be allowed to fall entirely out of the sphere of life.

[ 9 ] The arteries are the organs which for the reason above mentioned, may pass into a formative activity similar to that of the bones. We then have the calcifying disease of the arteries known as sclerosis. The ego-organization is, in a certain sense, driven out of these organ-systems

[ 10 ] The opposite is the case when the ego-organization fails to achieve that lowering of the state of warmth which is needed for the region of the bones. The bones then assume a condition similar to those organs which normally unfold a dissolving kind of activity. Owing to the deficient hardening process, they are no longer able to provide a basis for the incorporation of salts. Thus the final process in the development of the bone-formations, which properly belongs to the organizing domain of the ego, fails to take place. The astral activity is not arrested at the proper point on its path. Tendencies towards malformation of shape must then appear; for the healthy creation of the human form and figure is only possible within the realm of the ego-organization.

[ 11 ] We have here the ricketic diseases. From all this it becomes evident how the human organs are connected in their activities. The bone comes into being in the realm of the ego-organization. It still continues to serve it even when the actual formation is concluded, when the ego-organization no longer forms and creates the bone, but uses it for voluntary movements. It is the same for that which arises in the domain of the astral organization. Undifferentiated substances and forces are there engendered. These occur throughout the body as an underlying basis for the differentiated organ forming processes. The astral activity carries them up to a certain stage and then makes use of them. The entire human organism is permeated by semi-fluid material, in which an astrally directed activity holds sway.

[ 12 ] This activity spreads itself in the secretions which are made use of to form the organism in the direction of its higher members. Secretions tending in this direction are to be seen in the products of the glands which play so important a part in the economy of the organism and its functions. In addition to these inward secretions, we then have the processes that are excretions in the proper sense, towards the outer world. But we make a mistake if we regard the excreta merely as those portions of the food consumed which the organism cannot make use of and therefore discards. For the important thing is not the mere fact that the organism throws certain substances out, but rather, that it goes through the activities which result in the excretions. The exercise of these activities is something that the organism needs for its subsistence. This activity is just as necessary as that by which the substances are received into the organism, or deposited internally. In the healthy relationship of both activities, there lies the very essence of organic life and action.

[ 13 ] Thus, in the outward excretions we see the result of astrally orientated activity. And if the excreta contain substances which have been carried as far as the inorganic nature, then the ego-organization, too, is expressing itself in them. Indeed, this part of the ego-organization's life is of particular importance. For the force that is spent on such excretions creates, as it were, an inward counter-pressure. And this latter is a necessary factor for the healthy existence of the organism. Thus the uric acid, which is secreted through the urine, creates as an inward reaction the correct tendency of the organism to sleep. Too little uric acid in the urine and too much in the blood will give rise to so little sleep that it is insufficient for the health of the organism.

The fact that we have the possibility of progressing to more and more advanced studies in this group is solely due to the arrangements we have made concerning the courses running parallel with the group lectures. Therefore I would like to ask you to give these courses all your support. It is necessary to have somewhere where we can progress with the lectures. Otherwise we would have to start from the beginning every year.

We will concern ourselves today with something that will again appear to be far removed from the previous lectures but which will nevertheless fit into our present train of thought. We want to take as our starting-point an observation made in one of the last public lectures; the one on ‘Superstition from the Spiritual Scientific Point of View’. An observation was made there that cannot be carried further in a public lecture because, for a deeper understanding of it, certain preliminary concepts would have to be presupposed that are less related to an intellectual understanding than to an understanding that lies in our whole soul constitution, and that we can only acquire after years of group work. Patient work of this kind brings us ultimately to the point where things that would have seemed absurd appear possible and probable, and we can see that life bears them out. The observation we want to start from is that it is an ordinary fact and no superstition that in the case of certain illnesses like, for instance, pneumonia, there is a crisis on the seventh day when the patient can easily die, and the doctor has to do everything in his power to bring the patient through this crisis which occurs without fail on the seventh day. This is recognised today by every sensible doctor, though doctors cannot investigate the causes because they have no idea of the spiritual foundation of things. First of all I will simply present you with the fact that pneumonia shows something quite remarkable that is connected with the mysterious number seven.

We must look at the human being in a way that makes it possible to understand this fact and many others besides. You know from the innumerable times we have referred to it that man can only be understood when we know that he has a fourfold structure of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. These four members of man's being are connected with and dependent on one another in the most manifold ways. Each member influences the other, and therefore they are in constant connection one with another. But this cooperation is very complicated. It takes a very long time for man to get to know these connections as well as the relationship of these members to certain forces, processes and beings in the cosmos as a whole. For man has a connection with the cosmos through each of his members; a connection which is continuous—and this again is very important—but which is also variable. What we know as the physical body, etheric body and so on are connected with one another but also with the cosmos, the whole world about us. For what we have within us is also to a certain extent outside us, and so we could say that we can best get to know these inner and outer connections if we observe man both in a waking and sleeping state.

When a man lies asleep, the physical and etheric bodies lie in bed and the astral body and the ego are to a certain extent outside these. But this is only roughly speaking. A rough idea is sufficient for a number of things, but we want to understand this situation a little more accurately today. The astral body and the ego are not active in the physical body now. But the physical body with its nerves and blood system and the etheric body cannot exist unless they are interpenetrated by an astral body and something resembling an ego. Nor could the etheric body exist without being interpenetrated by higher entities. When the human being's own astral body and ego depart, the activities of these two members have to be replaced. The human body cannot remain without there being an ego and an astral body active within it, so there also has to be an ego and an astral body active when the human being is asleep. To be exact, we would have to say that the ego and the astral body that are active in the human being's sleeping physical body are also within the human being during the day, but their activity is completely overpowered by the activity of the human being's own astral body and ego. If we want to imagine the ego as it is nowadays, in the waking state, we have to tell ourselves that this human ego is within the human body when man is awake, and because of its activity during this time it deprives a larger ego of its sphere of influence. What does our own limited ego actually do during sleep? We can in truth say fairly accurately that this ego that has freed itself in the daytime from the large cosmic ego and that has a free hand in the human body, descends into the cosmic ego during the night and foregoes its own activity. And because the day ego descends into the cosmic ego, the cosmic ego can work unhindered and get rid of all the exhaustion that has accumulated during the day. Because the day ego sinks down into the cosmic ego it is possible for the night ego to be active in an all-embracing way. If you want to imagine it pictorially, you can visualise the relationship of the day ego to the night ego as though the day ego described a circle, passing through the greater part of this circle outside the realm of the great ego and descending into the great ego at night. For sixteen hours on average it is outside the night ego and for eight hours it is within it.

You will only understand this correctly if you take what I have said quite literally, namely that your ego never stays the same for the whole sixteen hours—assuming that to be the normal time for being awake—and that the ego is changing all this while. It describes part of a circle and then sinks down, passing through more changes during the night, about which the ordinary human being knows nothing. These changes become more and more unconscious until a climax is reached, and then the ego becomes slowly more conscious again. We must say, then, that in the course of twenty-four hours the human being is continuously undergoing certain changes, the outer symbol of which we can imagine as a circle, as a hand of a clock describing a circle and disappearing from time to time into the large cosmic ego.

The human astral body goes through changes in a very similar way. This changes too in such a way that we can imagine it symbolically as describing a circle. With the astral body too the changes are such that we really have to speak of a kind of sinking down into a cosmic astral body. Only present-day man does not notice this descent into the cosmic astral body any more, whilst in earlier times man was very aware of it. Then man felt his own innate astral feelings that he had at one particular time alternating as it were with quite different feelings at another time. At one time he felt more alive in the world around him and at another time he was more aware of his own inner feelings. You could perceive quite different shades of feeling in the astral body because it underwent rhythmic changes in the course of seven days, that is seven times twenty-four hours, that can again be compared to a circle. The ego undergoes rhythmic changes over a period of twenty-four hours, still expressed today in the alternation between waking and sleeping, and the astral body in seven times twenty-four hours. In primeval man these rhythmic changes occurred very vividly. Thus in the astral body rhythmic changes run their course for seven days, and on the eighth day the rhythm begins again. The astral body actually does sink down into a universal cosmic astral body for part of the time that man undergoes this rhythm. For the remainder of the time it is more outside this cosmic astral body. This can give you a picture of how significant for man's life the universal astral body and ego are that are present in man when he is asleep. This I into which he plunges when he falls asleep and which keeps his blood flowing at night, is the same ego that works in his body during sleep. If he sleeps in the daytime he also goes into this universal ego, and this brings a certain irregularity into his rhythm which would have worked destructively in earlier times but which is not so destructive these days because in our times human life has changed considerably in this respect. During the course of the seven days, man's astral body actually goes into the same part of the universal cosmic astral body which interpenetrates the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. This brings about changes in man's inner feelings. This is hardly noticed today, though in earlier times it could not be ignored.

It is not only the ego and astral body that go through certain particular rhythmic changes but the etheric body does so too. These take place in such a way that in four times seven days the human etheric body, symbolically speaking, revolves on its own axis, and after four times seven days it comes back to the beginning again. A quite definite rhythm takes place in the course of the four times seven days. But now we are approaching a sphere about which we would have to speak in great detail if you are to understand it all. You will remember my saying that a man's etheric body is female and a woman's male. The two have a different rhythm, but we do not want to go into that today. We just want to emphasise that this rhythm occurs and, because of the difference in man and woman, we will just say it is approximately four times seven days.

This, however, does not bring us to the end of the matter. Quite definite processes are rhythmically repeated in the physical body too, however improbable this sounds to people today. Nowadays they have almost become obliterated, because man has had to become independent of certain processes, but they are still noticeable to occult observation. If the physical body were entirely left to itself this rhythm would take place over a period of ten times seven times four days in the woman and twelve times seven times four days in the man. That is how it would be if the human being were entirely left to the laws inherent in the rhythms. At one time it was really like this, but man has become more free of the cosmic influences around him. Thus we have a flow of rhythmic processes in the four members of man's being. If you like, you can imagine each of the four rhythms as a circling. The rhythms man would carry out in his physical body, for instance, if he were left entirely to himself, only approximate, of course, with the external physical, purely spatial processes that correspond to these rhythms. This is because man has been driven back upon himself in the cause of freedom, and his relationship to the cosmos has changed accordingly.

You will have noticed from the number ten times seven times four or twelve times seven times four that the rhythm of the physical body corresponds roughly to the course of the year. You can imagine an external symbol for these changes in the physical body if you think that in the course of a year the human being turns around as it were; at one time he is on one side of the sun and at another on the other. If we imagine that he always turns his face to the sun, then in the course of a year he has to revolve once on his own axis and once round the sun. Anyone who only looks at it superficially will think that it is of no consequence, but it happens to be very important. These rhythms occurring in the four bodies were implanted into man over long periods of time, and the hierarchies—entities we have often spoken about—have brought it about that the various bodies influence one another. We know that we are embedded in higher beings. It is due to the action of these spiritual beings, who fill both physical and spiritual space with their deeds, that these particular connections come about. If you consider what I have just said, however, you will find a new way of looking at a thought I often mentioned here last winter. The establishing of the rhythm of the physical body already began on ancient Saturn. The incorporating of the etheric body into the physical body, in such a way that the rhythm of the two bodies harmonise, is the work of other spirits, the spirits of the Sun. Through the working together of the various rhythms a relationship is brought about in the same way as the relationship of the two hands of a clock is determined by their rhythm. On ancient Moon another rhythm was incorporated, that of the astral body.

Now those spirits that regulated our whole cosmos—for everything of a physical nature is an expression of those beings—had to create the outer physical movement in accordance with their own inner relationships. That the sun is encircled by the earth in a year arises out of the rhythm that was implanted into the physical body long ages before the physical constellation existed. Thus the spatial relationships between these heavenly bodies were regulated from out of the spirit. The moon had to go round the earth because its rotation had to correspond to the rotation of the human etheric body in four times seven days because this rhythm was to find its expression in the movement of the moon. The changing illumination of the moon by the sun—the moon's four quarters—correspond to the different rhythms of the astral body, and the revolution of the earth in the course of a day corresponds to the ego rhythm. In connection with this ego rhythm in particular we can point out something that occultism has always taught, but which will appear to people nowadays as mere fantasy, although it is nevertheless true. In very ancient times the earth did not revolve around its axis; this axial rotation arose in the course of time. Whilst earth man was still in a different condition, this movement did not as yet exist. The first stimulus to movement did not occur in the earth but in man. The human ego was given this stimulus to turn by the spirits to whom it is subject, and the human ego actually took the earth with it and made it revolve round it. The revolution of the earth is the result of the ego rhythm. And this is true, however astonishing it sounds. The spiritual members of man that were developing their ego-hood had to receive the stimulus to turn first, and then they took the earth with them. Later on this was different. Man became free on the earth; conditions changed so that man was freed from the surrounding cosmic powers. But this is really what it was like originally. Thus you can see how everything that is physical around us is actually an outcome of the spiritual. Spirit is always there first. And it is the spirit that sets everything going.

And now think of the astral body that accomplishes its round in the course of seven days. Imagine how illnesses are connected with certain irregularities of the astral body because these irregularities are passed on through the etheric body to the physical body. Now we will suppose that the astral body has a certain defect. Through this defect it affects the etheric body and the defect is then passed on to the physical body. This also becomes defective. Then the organism starts revolting against the defect and applies protective measures. This revolt is usually in the form of a temperature, which summons man's forces of recovery. A temperature is not an illness; it is the human being calling together all the forces in his organism to put this defect right again. This revolt of the whole organism against the defect expresses itself as a rule in a feverish temperature. A temperature is the most beneficial, restorative part of an illness. The particular area that is defective cannot heal by itself, and it has to receive the forces from other places, and this is expressed in the temperature.

Now imagine this temperature occurring with pneumonia. The lungs have become defective through one or other cause. When it is the human lungs in particular that have suffered some damage, the astral body becomes defective first and then it passes through the etheric body to the physical body. With pneumonia the cause is always in the astral body; pneumonia can occur in no other way. Now think of the astral body's rhythm. The day pneumonia appears the astral body affects the physical body. Now the body begins to revolt with a temperature. Seven days later the astral and etheric bodies are in the same mutual relationship; parts of them meet again. But it is not the same part of the etheric body, because the etheric body has been going through its own rhythm. It meets the next part. This is also affected by the astral body, but this time in the opposite way. The fever is now suppressed. Through the fact that the particular part of the astral body that coincided with the previous quarter of the etheric body seven days earlier coincides with its next quarter, the opposite process from a week ago is produced, namely a reaction to the fever. The opposing rhythm of the body now suppresses the temperature. For the human body is meant to be healthy, and that is the purpose of the rhythm. Certain influences increase in the first seven days, and in the next seven days they have to decline. In a healthy person this increasing and decreasing alternates. When a person is ill, however, his life is endangered when the fever is suppressed. Whilst in a healthy person an ascending process is reversed on the seventh day, in an ill person the ascending process ought to continue. But a rapid ascent causes a rapid fall. This is the reason for the pneumonia crisis on the seventh day.

We can understand this if we consider that the lungs were developed at a time when the moon had already split off and was preparing to develop its own rhythm, and the rhythm of the days was also beginning to develop. This is why even today the lungs are still connected with the astral body and the rhythm of the etheric body.

You can see, then, that spiritual science helps us to form a judgment of just these abnormal conditions in human life, and that the whole nature of man can be understood only when we see these conditions. It will only become possible again for the sciences to achieve fruitful results when man is permeated with the great truths of spiritual science. In earlier times, up to about the middle of the earth evolution, all the rhythms in man were much more in harmony with the rhythms of outer nature. Since that time, that is, since the middle of Atlantean times, however, things have shifted. Man's inner life has emancipated itself from outer rhythm, but he has kept his inner rhythm. It is just because the rhythms do not harmonise that man has acquired his independence and freedom, otherwise the evolution of freedom in the history of mankind would not have been possible. Man's rhythm compared with the sun, or the earth's compared with the sun has shot ahead. A similar thing has happened with the other rhythms, for instance that of the astral body. In earlier times man experienced quite different shades of mood in the course of seven days. At one time everything outside him made a great impression on him, and at another time he lived more in his inner life. It is because the rhythms are no longer in harmony that the condition of inner experience remains, even when man has more joy from the outer world, and vice versa. They combine and balance one another and this makes the astral body even-tempered, as it were. By means of careful observation you can still notice these alternations of mood in people who live more in their astral body. The variations in the condition of the astral body can be established in the case of people who are psychologically or mentally ill.

The ego rhythm was the last to arise, but there too, things have already become displaced. Man can also sleep in the daytime, and stay awake at night. In earlier times this rhythm always coincided with the outer one. In Atlantis something very serious would have happened if man had wished to sleep in the daytime and stay awake at night. He would have brought his whole life into disorder. The rhythm is still there today to a certain extent, but it has become independent of outer circumstances. This is the same thing as setting a reliable clock exactly in time with the sun. You can then tell the exact solar time. But you could also turn the clock to midnight when it is seven o'clock in the evening. Then the rhythm of the clock will still remain correct but it would be displaced compared with that of the sun. This is what it is like with man. Man has kept the old rhythm that he used to share with the whole cosmos, but it has become displaced. If the clock were a living being it would be justified in dissociating its rhythm from the surrounding rhythms. In the far distant future man is to reach the point of projecting his rhythms out into the world again out of the strength of his own inner development. Just as there were once beings who, out of their own rhythms, made the sun, moon and earth move, man will at some future time transfer his rhythms to the world, when he has reached the stage of divinity. This is the meaning behind rhythm becoming independent. We can glimpse from this the deeper foundations of astrology. But we will not go into that just now. Today we only wanted to show that spiritual science is not a collection of abstract ideas for those egoistic people who take an interest in it, but something that can bring light into the most everyday things of life. One must have the will, however, to pass from external phenomena to the causes behind them. Rhythm has been implanted into matter by the spirit, and man, today, has these rhythms within him as a heritage of this spiritual origin. Nevertheless we can only understand what this rhythm signifies for man's being and also for the rest of natural creation if we go back to the original relationships. In the case of animals the various bodies—physical body, etheric body, astral body and group ego—have a quite different relationship to one another. There is a different rhythm for each animal species. It is roughly the same for the physical body, but the different animals have quite different rhythms in their etheric and astral bodies. In the same way as the animal world is classified nowadays according to external form, it can be classified in species according to the rhythms of the astral and etheric bodies.

Do not imagine that these rhythms have never been clearly recognised. We will be able to show that it is not so very long since people were at least dimly conscious of these rhythms. Whoever goes through the world with a consciousness for these things, will find in some calendars in use in country districts certain rules referring to definite relationships between the animals and the land. Farmers used to manage all their agriculture by observing the rules in such calendars. In the farmer's lore a consciousness of these rhythms lay hidden. These are things that can show us that since the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries an age of abstraction, of external science, has arisen, a science that is no longer in a position to go back to the causes. This is particularly the case in medicine. People only grope today, and the solid basis of pathology and of therapy goes back to ancient times. It was a torture for my intellect and my feelings when phenacetin was tested. This kind of testing, without any kind of guide, shows that at the same time as it lost the spirit science also lost its depth. Through spiritual knowledge this depth will be acquired again. It is absolutely necessary to distinguish between caricatures of science and real knowledge based on the spirit. If you take this to heart you will see how necessary it is to have spiritual scientific knowledge, and that it has to find its way into every realm of knowledge and life.

“The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” If we thoroughly understand this passage we shall also understand that deeply significant event in the history of humanity which took place through the appearance of Christ on the Earth. In the earlier lectures of this course we have traced the evolution of humanity in broad outlines, and we have described the way in which the consciousness of the Ego developed in the distant past whole groups and generations of human beings had one Ego in common. From this we learned to understand the long age of the patriarchs. Gradually this feeling of the Ego became limited more and more to the single personalities. We also showed how two spiritual streams made themselves felt in this evolution: the one was the stream of blood-relationship, which endeavoured to hold men together by natural ties, and the other, the Luciferic, which made men independent and prepared them for the purely spiritual tie which was to come.

During the whole period of the Old Testament one understood by “Law” something which brings order into human society from without. After blood-relationship had lost its binding power, men had to be brought into a certain connection with one another by an outer thought-order. The law was perceived as something coming from outside, and this Law which was given from outside holds good until the “grace and truth,” or devotion and truth, which comes through Jesus Christ, has developed in us from within, the understanding for the true knowledge. Devotion and truth can only develop gradually. Christianity, which is to bring devotion and truth in place of the Law, is only at the beginning of its growth; the further the Earth progresses in its evolution the stronger will be the influence of Christianity on humanity. Humanity is to raise itself to a stage of social life at which each one is drawn, by an impulse arising within himself, to act towards his neighbor as one brother to another. Men could not however, raise themselves of their own power to this high stage of development, and it is the task of Christianity to help them to do this. Men will no longer need any outer law to force upon them this attitude when they have the inner impulse so to act that devotion and truth are the motives for their actions.

We do not mean to say by the above, that humanity no longer needs the Law, but that which we have described is an ideal, which should be striven for. Gradually men will come to where the harmony of the world will be brought about through their voluntary action, but for this goal to be reached the Power which in the Gospel is called Christ had to step in. In the occult schools it is said of one who, of his own inner power, is able to raise himself into this relationship to all his fellow-men, that “he bears Christ within him.” In order to understand what we are about to say, it will first of all be necessary to recapitulate once more the real constitution of man. Recall to mind the contents of the third lecture with the aid of the following sketch:

Through the work of the Ego upon the astral body the latter is transformed into Spirit Self. But this takes place step by step, through the sentient soul being developed first, then the intellectual soul, and finally the spiritual soul; then the Spirit Self pours into the purified and mature spiritual soul. In the same way the Ego works upon the etheric body, and the impulses which are most effective in this case are the influences of art, religion and occult training.

There were also occult schools in pre-Christian times, where pupils were trained, so that they were able to look into higher worlds; but this vision only existed among the true pupils in the most hidden occult schools, and even they only at the actual moment of initiation, when the etheric body was separated from the physical body . The raising of a human being, so that he might be able to see in the spiritual world, was called Initiation. In all initiations of pre-Christian times the one who was to be initiated had to be brought into a kind of sleeping state. This sleep of initiation was distinguished from ordinary sleep by the fact that in the latter the etheric body remains united with the physical body, whereas in the former the etheric body was for a short time separated from the physical body. During this time the Hierophant had to keep the body alive. Through the etheric body being separated, it was possible to lead it, together with the other parts, into the higher worlds, in order there to undergo experiences which could afterwards be imparted to the physical brain. That was the method of initiation in pre-Christian times.

Through the advent of Christ Jesus an entirely new kind of initiation came in. Imagine that a man has transformed the whole of his astral body into Spirit Self. This Spirit Self then impresses itself into the etheric body, as a seal impresses itself into sealing-wax, and gives it its imprint. The etheric body is thereby changed into Life Spirit. When this has come about completely, the Life Spirit then imprints itself in the physical body and makes it into Spirit Man. Now it was only through the appearance of Christ Jesus that it became possible to imprint the Life Spirit directly into the life body; and the experiences undergone in the higher worlds could henceforth be embodied in the physical brain without the necessity of a previous separation of the etheric body. Thus all the pre-Christian initiates had undergone the experiences of initiation outside the physical body; they had then descended again into the physical body and could from that time forward, out of their own experience, announce what had taken place in the spiritual world.

Buddha, Moses and others were initiates of this kind. In Jesus there had come to the Earth for the first time a Being who, while still remaining in the physical body, could see the life of the higher worlds. The teachings of Buddha, Moses, etc., were quite independent of the personality of their agent. Those who accept the teachings of Buddha or Moses are Buddhists or followers of Moses, for these founders of religion only passed on what they had experienced in the higher worlds. With Christ it is different. It is only through His personality that His teachings become Christianity, and in order to be a Christian it is not enough merely to follow the teachings of Christianity. Those alone are true Christians, who feel themselves united with the historical Christ. Certain sentences contained in Christian teaching, or something very similar to them, could also be found in that world before Christ appeared; but that is not the point. The essential thing is, that the Christian believes in Christ Jesus, that he considers Him to be the One Who, while walking in the flesh, represents the perfect man.

In ancient times the statement was often made; ‘The initiate is a divine man.’ The reason for this lay in the fact that during the ceremony of initiation the initiate was above in the spiritual world with the spiritual or divine Beings; He was then the divine man. But one could “see” in the physical body for the first time through Christ Jesus, the Deity,—but never before. Thus we have to take the words of John 1:18. quite literally: “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.” Formerly the Deity could only be perceived by one who had himself made the ascent. In Christ the Deity had for the first time come down visibly to the Earth. This is told us in St. John's Gospel, (Chapter 1:14): “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.” It was also taught in the Dionysian School. Christ came to show men the way; they are to become His followers; they are to prepare to imprint what is in the etheric body into the physical body; that is to say, to develop within themselves the Christ principle.

The Gospel of St. John is a book of life. No one who has merely enquired into it with his intellect has understood this book; he alone who has experienced it really knows it. If a man meditates upon the first fourteen verses day after day for some time, he will discover the purpose of these words. They are really words which, when one meditates upon them, awaken in the human soul the capacity to see the various parts of the Gospel, such as the marriage at Cana in chapter two, the conversation with Nicodemus in chapter three, as one's own experiences in the great astral tableau. Through these exercises clairvoyance develops in the human being and he can then experience for himself the truth of what is written in St. John's Gospel. Hundreds have experienced this. The writer of St.John's Gospel was a great Seer who was initiated by Christ Himself.

The disciple “John” is never mentioned by name in this Gospel. We read of him as “the disciple whom the Lord loved,” for example in Chapter 19:26. This is a technical expression and signifies the one who was initiated by the Master Himself. “John” describes his own initiation in the story of the “raising of Lazarus.” (Chapter 11). It was only through the writer of St. John's Gospel being initiated by the Lord Himself that the most secret connections between Christ and the evolution of the world could be revealed. As we have already said, the old initiations lasted for three and a half days; hence the raising of Lazarus on the fourth day. It is also said of Lazarus that the Lord loved him (John 3:35-36.)

While the body of Lazarus lay as if dead in the grave, his etheric body was lifted out in order to undergo the initiation, and to receive the same force that is in Christ. Thus the one whom the Lord loved, the one to whom we owe St. John's Gospel, was raised, he was awakened. Not a line in St. John's Gospel, contradicts this fact; the process of initiation is represented in a veiled way.

Let us now consider another scene in this Gospel. In (John 19:25), we read: “Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, His mother, and His mothers sister, Mary the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene.” If we wish to understand this Gospel it is necessary to know who these three women are. We do not usually give two sisters the same name; neither was it the custom in former times. The passage we have quoted proves that, according to St. John's Gospel, the mother of Jesus was not called Mary. If we search through the whole of this Gospel we nowhere find it said that the mother of Jesus was called Mary. In the scene of the Marriage of Cana, for example, Chapter 2, we only read, “the mother of Jesus was there.” In these words something important is indicated, something we only understand when we know how the writer of this Gospel uses his words. What does the expression “the mother of Jesus” mean? We have seen that man consists of physical, etheric and astral bodies. We must not consider the transition of the astral body to the Spirit Self so simply. The Ego transforms the astral body very slowly and gradually into sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. The Ego goes on working and only when it has developed the spiritual soul is it able so to purify it that Spirit Self can arise in it.

The following diagram represents the constitution of man.

The Spirit Man will only be developed in the distant future, and Life Spirit is also only germinal in most people of the present day. The development of the Spirit Self has only just begun; it is closely united with the spiritual soul (somewhat like a sword in its sheath). The sentient soul is similarly united with the astral body. The human being thus consists of nine parts or principles; but as the Spirit Self and the spiritual soul, and the sentient soul and the astral body are so closely united, we often speak of seven parts. Spirit-Self is the same as the “Holy Spirit,” who according to esoteric Christianity, is the guiding Being in the astral world. According to the same teaching, Life Spirit is called the Word or the Son; and Spirit Man is the “Father Spirit” or the “Father.”

Those human beings who had brought the Spirit Self to birth within them, were called Children of God; in such men “the light shone into the Darkness and they received the light.” Outwardly they were, men of flesh and blood, but they bore a higher man within them; the Spirit Self had been born within them out of the spiritual soul. The “mother” of such a spiritualised man is not a bodily mother, she lies within him; she is the purified and spiritualised spiritual soul; she is the principle who gives birth to the higher man. This spiritual birth, a birth in the highest sense, is described in St. John's Gospel. The Spirit Self or the Holy Spirit pours into the most highly purified Spiritual Soul. This is referred to in the words, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.” (John 1:32).

As the Spiritual Soul is the principle in which the Spirit Self develops, this principle is called the “mother of Christ,” or, in the occult schools, the “Virgin Sophia.” Through the fertilisation of the Virgin Sophia the Christ could be born in Jesus of Nazareth. In the occult school of Dionysius, the Intellectual Soul was called “Mary,” and the Sentient Soul “Mary Magdalene.”

The Physical man is born of the union of two human beings; but the higher man can only be born of a Spiritual Soul which embraces a whole people. Among all the peoples of olden times the method of initiation was essentially the same. Each initiation had seven stages or degrees. Among the Persians, for example, they were called as follows:—I. The Raven. One at this stage had to bring information from the outer world into the temple. The Raven has always been called the spiritual messenger, for instance in the legend of the Ravens of Barbarossa, and also in the German legends of Odin and his two ravens. 2. The Occult. 3. The Warrior. In the occult school the warrior was allowed to go forth and announce the teachings. 4. The Lion. The Lion was one who was firmly grounded in himself; he not only had the word, but he possessed also the magical forces; he had stood the test which guaranteed that he would not misuse the powers entrusted to him. 5. The Persian; 6. The Sun Hero. 7. The Father.

Let us consider the title of the fifth degree,the “Persian”, a little more closely. In all the occult schools an initiate of the fifth degree was called by the name of the people to whom he belonged; for his consciousness had widened where it included the whole people. He felt all the sorrow of the people as his own; his consciousness had been purified and expanded to the consciousness of the whole people. Among the Jews the initiate at this stage was called an “Israelite.” Only when we grasp this fact do we understand the conversation between Christ and Nathanael (John 1:46-49). Nathanael was an initiate of the fifth degree. The words of Christ Jesus to Nathanael, that he had seen him under the fig tree, refer to a special process in initiation, namely, the reception of the Spiritual Soul.

The following considerations will help towards the understanding of the inner process of initiation. The individual “I”-consciousness of man is in the physical world; men walk the Earth with their Ego. But the egos of the animals are on the astral plane; each group of animals there possesses an ego-consciousness in common. There is, however, in the astral world, not only the ego of the animal, but also the ego of the body which man has in common with the animals, the ego of the human astral body. In the Lower Spirit World we find the ego of the plants and also the ego of the body man possesses in common with the plants, the ego of the etheric body. If we rise still higher, into the Higher Spirit World, we there find the ego of the minerals and the ego of that part which man has in common with the minerals—the ego of the physical body. Thus through our physical body we are connected with the Higher Spiritual World. We are here in the physical world with our individual Ego only. When, in the case of an initiate, the ego of the astral body is permeated by his Individual ego, the consequence is that he becomes conscious in the astral world; he can then perceive the beings around him there and become active in that-world. He then meets Beings who are incarnated in astral bodies; he also meets the group-souls of the animals, and the higher Beings who in Christianity are called angels. On being initiated still more deeply, the ego of the etheric body is also permeated by the individual ego. The consciousness of the human being then extends into the Lower Spiritual World. There he encounters the egos of the plants and the Spirit of the Planet. A still deeper initiation takes place when the individual ego permeates the ego of the physical body,—man then rises to personal consciousness in the higher Spiritual world. There he meets the egos of the minerals and still higher Spirits. Thus continued initiation raises a man to higher and higher worlds, in which he meets with higher and higher Beings.

When the individual Ego has gained full control over the three bodies, it has brought about inner harmony. Christ possessed this harmony to the fullest extent,—he appeared on the Earth in order that men might develop this power of inner harmony. In this Son of Man we see represented the full development of humanity, up to the highest spiritual stage. Formerly this inner harmony did not exist, outer laws worked in its place,—this inner harmony is the new impulse which humanity received through Christ. Man is to acquire the “Christ capacity,” that is to say, he is to develop the inner Christ. Goethe said: “The eye is built by light for light;” in the same way this inner harmony, this inner Christ is only kindled through the presence of the outer, historical Christ; before His appearance it was not possible for man to reach this stage of spiritual development.

Those human beings who lived before the appearance of Christ on Earth are not excluded from the blessings He brought to humanity; for it should not be forgotten that, according to the law of reincarnation, they will come again to the earth and will therefore have the opportunity to develop the inner Christ. It is only when people forget the law of reincarnation that they can speak of injustice. St. John's Gospel shows the way to the historical Christ, to that Sun which enkindles the inner light in man, just as the physical Sun has enkindled the light of the eyes.

The ego of the etheric body may be compared to the engineer who builds a motor-car; the ego of the astral body may be compared to the one who drives it; and the ego of the individual to the one who owns it.

From the three foregoing lectures, it should have become somewhat clear that in the Gospel of St. John the truths of Spiritual Science can be found again. However, it must be very clear that in order to discover these truths, it will be necessary to weigh every word thoroughly. In fact the important thing in a consideration of this religious document is that the true, exact meaning be perfectly understood, for as we shall see in particular instances everything in it has the deepest possible significance. Moreover, not only the wording of special passages is of importance, but something else must be considered and this is the division, the composition, the structure of the document. As a matter of fact, people no longer have the right feeling for such things. Authors of the past—if I may so designate them—introduced into their works much more of an architectural structure, much more of an inner arrangement than is usually imagined. You need only to recall from among them a relatively modern poet, Dante, to find this confirmed. Here we see that the Divine Comedy is architecturally composed of parts based upon the number three. And it is not without meaning that each division of Dante's Comedia closes with the word “Stars.” This I mention only to suggest how architecturally ancient writers constructed their works, and especially in the great religious documents we should never lose sight of this architectural form, because in certain cases the form signifies a very great deal. To be sure, we must first discover this meaning.

Here at the end of the 10th Chapter of this Gospel of St. John we should recall the following verse, which we should keep clearly in mind. In the first verse we read:—

And many came to him and said:

John performed no miracles, but all that he said of this man is true.

This means that we find in this verse of the 10th Chapter, an indication that the testimony given of Christ Jesus by John is true. He expresses the truth of this testimony in very special language. Then we come to the end of the Gospel and there we find a corresponding verse. Here we read in the 24th verse of the 21st Chapter:—

This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true!

Here at the end of the entire Gospel, we have a statement that the testimony of the one who reported these things is a true one. The coincidence that something very special is being said, here and there, by means of some particular word, is never without significance in ancient writings and just behind this coincidence is concealed something very important. We shall proceed with our considerations in the right manner if we direct our attention to the reason for this.

In the middle of the Gospel of St. John a fact is presented which, if not understood, would render this Gospel incomprehensible. Directly following the passage in which these words are introduced as confirmation of the truth of the testimony of John the Baptist stands the chapter concerning the raising of Lazarus. With this chapter the whole Gospel falls into two parts. At the end of the first part it is pointed out that the testimony of John the Baptist should be accepted for everything that is maintained and affirmed concerning Christ Jesus and at the very end of the Gospel it is pointed out that all that follows the chapter on the raising of Lazarus should be accepted on the testimony of the Disciple whom we have often heard designated as “the Disciple whom the Lord loved.” What then is the real meaning of the “raising of Lazarus?”

Let me remind you that following the narration of the raising of Lazarus there stands an apparently enigmatical passage. Let us picture the whole situation:—Christ Jesus performs what is usually called a miracle—in the Gospel itself it is called a “sign”—namely, the raising of Lazarus. And subsequently we find many passages which attest that “this man performs many signs,” and all that follows indicates that the accusers did not wish to have intercourse with Him because of these signs. If you read these words, whatever their translation (this has already been referred to in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact), you would need to ask:—What is really at the bottom of it all? The raising of some one provoked the enemies of Christ Jesus to rise up against Him. Why should just the raising of Lazarus so provoke these opponents? Why does the persecution of Christ Jesus begin just at this stage? One who knows how to read this Gospel will understand that a mystery lies hidden within this chapter. The mystery concealed therein is, in truth, concerned with the actual identity of the man who says all that we find written there. In order to understand this, we must turn our attention to what in the ancient Mysteries is called “initiation.” How did these initiations in the ancient Mysteries take place?

A man who was initiated could himself have experiences and personal knowledge of the spiritual worlds and thus he could bear witness of them. Those who were found sufficiently developed for initiation were led into the Mysteries. Everywhere—in Greece, among the Chaldeans, among the Egyptians and the Indians—these Mysteries existed. There the neophytes were instructed for a long time in approximately the same things which we now learn in Spiritual Science. Then when they were sufficiently instructed, there followed that part of the training which opened up to them the way to a perception of the spiritual world. However, in ancient times this could only be brought about by putting the neophyte into a very extraordinary condition in respect of his four principles—his physical, ether and astral bodies and his ego. The next thing that occurred to the neophyte was that he was put into a death-like sleep by the initiator or hierophant who understood the matter and there he remained for three and a half days. Why this occurred can be seen if we consider that in the present cycle of evolution, when the human being sleeps in the ordinary sense of the word, his physical and ether bodies lie in bed and his astral body and ego are withdrawn. In that condition he cannot observe any of the spiritual events taking place about him, because his astral body has not yet developed the spiritual sense-organs for a perception of the world in which he then finds himself. Only when his astral body and ego have slipped back into his physical and ether bodies, and he once more makes use of his eyes and ears, does he again perceive the physical world, that is, he perceives a world about him. Through what he had learned, the neophyte was capable of developing spiritual organs of perception in his astral body and when he was sufficiently evolved for the astral body to have formed these organs, then all that the astral body had received into itself had to be impressed upon the ether body just as the design on a seal is impressed upon the sealing-wax. This is the important thing. All preparations for initiation depended upon the surrender of the man himself to the inner processes which reorganized his astral body.

The human being at one time did not have eyes and ears in his physical body as he has today, but undeveloped organs instead—just as animals who have never been exposed to the light have no eyes. The light forms the eye, sound fashions the ear. What the neophyte practiced through meditation and concentration and what he experienced inwardly through them, acted like light upon the eye and sound upon the ear. In this way the astral body was transformed and organs of perception for seeing in the astral or higher world were evolved. But these organs are not yet firmly enough fixed in the ether body. They will become so when what has been formed in the astral body will have been stamped upon the ether body. However, as long as the ether body remains bound to the physical, it is not possible for all that has been accomplished by means of spiritual exercises to be really impressed upon it. Before this can happen, the ether body must be drawn out of the physical. Therefore when the ether body was drawn out of the physical body during the three and a half days deathlike sleep, all that had been prepared in the astral body was stamped upon the ether body. The neophyte then experienced the spiritual world. Then when he was called back into the physical body by the Priest-Initiator, he bore witness through his own experience of what takes place in the spiritual worlds. This procedure has now become unnecessary through the appearance of Christ-Jesus. This three and a half day death-like sleep can now be replaced by the force proceeding from the Christ. For we shall soon see that in the Gospel of St. John strong forces are present which render it possible for the present astral body, even though the ether body is still within the physical, to have the power to stamp upon the etheric what had previously been prepared within it. But for this to take place, Christ-Jesus must first be present. Up to this time without the above characterized procedure, humanity was not far enough advanced for the astral body to be able to imprint upon the ether body what had been prepared within it through meditation and concentration. This was a process which often took place within the Mysteries; a neophyte was brought into a death-like sleep by the Priest-Initiator and was guided through the higher worlds. He was then again called back into his physical body by the Priest-Initiator and thus became a witness of the spiritual world through his own experience.

This took place always in the greatest secrecy and the outer world knew nothing of the occurrences within these ancient Mysteries. Through Christ-Jesus a new initiation had to arise to replace the old, an initiation produced by means of forces of which we have yet to speak. The old form of initiation must end, but a transition had to be made from the old to the new age and to make this transition, someone had once more to be initiated in the old way, but initiated into Christian Esotericism. This only Christ-Jesus Himself could perform and the neophyte was the one who is called Lazarus. “This sickness is not unto death,” means here that it is the three and a half day death-like sleep. This is clearly indicated.

You will see that the presentation is of a very veiled character, but for one who is able to decipher a presentation of this kind it represents initiation. The individuality Lazarus had to be initiated in such a way that he could be a witness of the spiritual worlds. An expression is used, a very significant expression in the language of the Mysteries, “that the Lord loved Lazarus.” What does “to love” mean in the language of the Mysteries? It expresses the relationship of the pupil to the teacher. “He whom the Lord loved” is the most intimate, the most deeply initiated pupil. The Lord Himself had initiated Lazarus and as an initiate Lazarus arose from the grave, which means from his place of initiation. This same expression “Whom the Lord loved” is always used later in connection with John, or perhaps we should say in connection with the writer of the Gospel of St. John, for the name “John” is not used. He is the “Beloved Disciple” to whom the Gospel refers. He is the risen Lazarus himself and the writer of the Gospel wished to say:—“What I have to offer, I say by virtue of the initiation which has been conferred upon me by the Lord Himself.” Therefore the writer of the Gospel distinguishes between what occurred before and what occurred after the raising of Lazarus. Before the raising, an initiate of the old order is quoted, one who has attained a knowledge of the Spirit, one whose testimony is repeatedly announced to be true. “However, what is to be said concerning the most profound of matters, concerning the Mystery of Golgotha, I myself say, I the Risen One; but only after I have been raised, can I speak concerning it!” And so we have in the first part of the Gospel, the testimony of the old John—in the second half, the testimony of the new John whom the Lord Himself had initiated, for this is the risen Lazarus. Only thus do we grasp the real meaning of this chapter. These words are written there because John wished to say: I call upon the testimony of my super-sensible organs, my spiritual powers of perception. What I have related I have not seen in the ordinary physical world, but in the spiritual world in which I have dwelt by virtue of the initiation which the Lord has conferred upon me.

Thus we must attribute the characterization of Christ-Jesus, which we find in the first chapters of the Gospel of St. John as far as the end of the loth Chapter, to the knowledge which might be possessed by any one who had not yet, in the deepest sense of the word, been initiated through Christ-Jesus Himself.

Now, you will say: “Yes, but we have already in these lectures listened to profound words about Christ-Jesus as the incarnated Logos, the Light of the World, etc.” It is no longer surprising that these profound words concerning Christ-Jesus were spoken even in the very first Chapters, for in the ancient Mysteries, Christ-Jesus, who was to appear in the world at a future time, in other words, the Christ, was not perhaps an unknown being. And all the Mysteries point to One who was to come. For this reason the ancient initiates were called “prophets” because they prophesied concerning something that was to take place. Thus the purpose of initiation was to let it be clearly understood that in the future of mankind the Christ would be revealed, and in what he had already learned at that time, the Baptist found the truth which made it possible to state that He, who had been spoken of in the Mysteries, stood before him in the person of Christ-Jesus.

How all this is connected and what the relationship was between the so-called Baptist and Christ-Jesus will become clearer to us if we answer two questions. One of these questions is the following:—What was the position of the Baptist in his own age? The other leads back to the explanation of various passages at the beginning of the Gospel.

What was the position of the Baptist in his own age? Who, in fact, was the Baptist? He was one of those who—like others in their initiation—had received indications of the coming Christ, but he was represented as the only one to whom the true mystery concerning Christ-Jesus had been revealed, namely, that He who had appeared was the Christ Himself. Those who were called Pharisees or were designated by other names saw in Christ-Jesus some one who in fact opposed their old principles of initiation, one who in their eyes did things to which they in their conservatism could not accede. Just because of their conservatism they said:—We must adhere to the old principles of initiation. And this inconsistency of constantly speaking about the future Christ, yet never admitting that the moment had arrived when He was really present, was the reason for their conservatism. Therefore when Christ-Jesus initiated Lazarus, they looked upon it as a violation of the ancient Mystery-traditions. “This man performs many signs! We can have no intercourse with him!” According to their understanding, He had betrayed the Mysteries, had made public what should be confined within their secret depths. Now we can see how to them this was like a betrayal and seemed to be a valid reason for rising up against Him. From that time, because of this, a change takes place; the persecution of Christ-Jesus begins.

How did the Baptist represent himself in the first chapters of this Gospel? In the first place, as one who was well acquainted with the Mystery-truths of the Christ Who was to come; as one who knew very well that the writer of the Gospel of St. John himself could repeat all that he, the Baptist, already knew, having become convinced of its truth through what we are now about to learn.

We have heard what the very first words of the Gospel mean. We shall now consider for a moment what is said there about the Baptist himself. Let us present it once more in the best possible translation. Thus far we have only heard the very first words:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was a God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through It and save through It was not anything made that was made.

In It was Life and Life was the Light of men.

And the Light shone into the darkness but the darkness comprehended it not.

There was a man; he was sent from God, bearing the name John. The same came as a witness in order to bear witness of the Light that through him all might believe.

He was not the Light but was a witness of the Light.

For the true Light which lighteth every man should come into the world.

It was in the world and the world came into being through It, but the world knew It not.

It entered into individual men (that is, the ego-men); but individual men (the ego-men) received it not.

But they who received it could reveal themselves as Children of God.

They who trusted in His name were not born of the blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man—but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the once born Son of the Father filled with Devotion and Truth.

John bare witness of Him and proclaimed clearly: He it was of whom I said:—He will come after me, who was before me. For He is my forerunner.

For out of His fullness have we all received Grace upon Grace. For the law was given through Moses, but Grace and Truth came through Jesus-Christ.

Hitherto hath no one beheld God with his eyes. The once-born Son, who was in the bosom of the Universal-Father, has become the leader in this beholding.

These are the words which give again approximately the meaning of those first verses of the Gospel of St. John. However, before we come to their interpretation, we must add something else. How did John describe himself? You will remember that people were sent to discover who John the Baptist was. Priests and Levites came to him to ask him who he was. Why he gave the foregoing answer, we have yet to discover. Just at present we shall only consider what he said.

He said, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” These are the words which stand there. “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” “In solitude” stands there quite literally. In Greek, the word eremit signifies the “solitary one.” You can then understand that it is more correct to say, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude,” than “I am the voice of one preaching in the wilderness.” We shall better understand all that is presented in the opening words of the Gospel, if we call to mind John's own characterization of himself. Why does he call himself “the voice of one calling in solitude?”

We have seen that in the course of human evolution, the true Earth-mission is the evolution of love, but that love is only conceivable when it is given as a voluntary offering by self-conscious human beings. We have also seen that the human being little by little gains control of his ego and that slowly and gradually this ego sinks into human nature. We know that the animal, as such, has no individual ego. If the individual lion were able to say “I” to itself, the individual animal would not be meant thereby, but the group-ego in the astral world. All lions would say “I” to this group-ego. Thus whole groups of animals of like form say “I” to the supersensibly perceptible group-ego in the astral world. The great advantage human beings have over the animals is that of possessing an individual ego. The latter, however, only evolved by degrees, for human beings also began with a group-ego, with an ego belonging to a whole group of individuals.

If you were to go back to ancient peoples, to ancient races, you would find that originally human beings were everywhere formed into little groups. With the Germanic peoples you would not need to go very far back. In the writing of Tacitus it is quite evident that the German thought more of his whole tribe than of himself as an individual. The individual felt himself more as a member of the Cheruskian or of the Sigambrian tribe than as a separate personality. Therefore he partook of the fate of the whole tribe and when an individual member or the entire tribe received an affront, it did not matter who was the avenger.

Then in the course of time it happened that individual personalities gave up their tribal membership, and this resulted at last in the breaking up of the tribes so that they no longer held together. Human beings also evolved out of this group-soul characteristic and little by little they developed to a point where they could experience the ego in their own individual personalities. We can only understand certain things, especially religious documents, when we understand this mystery of the group-souls, of the group-egos. For those peoples who had come already to a certain conception of the individual ego, there still always existed a greater ego that spread out not only over groups living contemporaneously in a certain place, but also far beyond these groups. Human memory at the present time is of such a character that the individual remembers only his own youth. But there was a time when a different kind of memory existed, a time when the human being not only remembered his own deeds but also those of his father and of his grandfather as though they were his own. Memory reached out beyond birth and death as far as the blood relationship could be traced. The memory of an ancestor whose blood, as it were, flowed down through generations was preserved for centuries in this same blood, and a descendant or offspring of a tribe said “I” to the deeds and the thoughts of his forebears as though to himself. He did not feel himself limited by birth and death, but he felt himself as a member of a succession of generations, the central point of which was the ancestor. For what held the ego together was the fact that the individual remembered the deeds of the fathers and of the grandfathers. In ancient times this had its outer expression in the giving of names. The son remembered not only his own deeds but also those of his father and of his grandfather. Memory extended far back through generations and all that the memory thus encompassed was called in ancient times, for example, Noah or Adam. The individual human beings were not meant by these names, but the egos which for centuries had preserved the memory. This mystery was also concealed behind the names of the Patriarchs. Why did the Patriarchs live so long? It would never have occurred to the people of ancient times to denominate an individual human being by a special name during his life between birth and death. Adam was looked upon as a common memory, because the limits of time and space in ancient days played no part in the giving of names.

By degrees the human individual ego slowly freed itself from the group-soul, from the group-ego. The human being came gradually to a consciousness of his own individual ego. Formerly he felt his ego in his tribal membership, in the group of human beings to whom he was related through the blood tie, either as to time or space; hence the expression, “I and Father Abraham are one,” which means one ego. The individual felt himself safe within the whole, because a common blood ran through the veins of all of the members of his particular people. Evolution progressed and the time became ripe for individuals right within their race to feel their own separate egos. It was the mission of the Christ to give to human beings what they needed in order that they might feel themselves secure and firm within their separate individual egos. In this way we should also interpret those words which can be so easily misunderstood namely, “He who does not deny wife and child, father and mother, brother and sister, cannot be my disciple!” We must not understand this in the trivial sense of instruction to run away from the family. But it means that every one should feel that he is an individual ego and that this individual ego is in direct union with the Spiritual Father who pervades the world. Formerly a follower of the Old Testament said, “I and Father Abraham are one,” because the Ego felt itself resting within the blood relationship. At that moment this feeling of oneness with the Spiritual Father-Substance had to become independent; no longer should the blood relationship be a guarantee of membership in the whole, but the knowledge of the pure Spiritual Father-Principle in whom all are one.

Thus we are told in the Gospel of St. John that the Christ is the great bestower of the Impulse which gives to men what is needed to make them feel themselves forever within their own separate, individual egos. This is the transition from the Old Testament to the New, for the old had always something of a group-soul character in which one ego felt itself associated with the others, but in reality never felt either itself or the other egos. Instead, it experienced the folk or tribal ego within which they all had a common shelter.

What must be the feeling of an ego that has become so matured that it no longer feels the connection with the other individual personalities of the group-soul? What must have been the feelings of the individualized ego in a period in which it could be said: “The time is now past when union with other persons, union with all egos belonging to a group-soul can be felt as an actual life-reality; first, however, One must come who will give the spiritual Bread of Life to the soul from which the individual ego may receive nourishment.” This separate ego had to feel itself solitary and the forerunner of the Christ was compelled to say: I am an ego that has broken away, that feels itself alone, and just because I have learned to feel solitary, I feel like a prophet to whom the ego gives real spiritual nourishment in solitude. Therefore the herald had to designate himself as one calling in solitude, which means the individual ego isolated from the group-soul calling for what can give it spiritual sustenance. “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.” Thus we hear again the profound truth:—Each human individual ego is one wholly dependent upon itself; I am the voice of the ego that is freed, seeking a foundation upon which it, as an independent ego, can rest.—Now we understand the passage, “I am the voice of one calling in solitude.”

In order that we may accurately understand the words of the Gospel, we shall need to familiarize ourselves a little with the way names and designations were then usually given. The giving of names at that time was not so abstract and devoid of meaning as it is at present, and if the exponents of biblical documents would only consider a little how much is expressed in this way, many trivial interpretations would never come to the light of day. I have already pointed out that when the Christ said, “I am the Light of the World,” He really meant that He was the first to give expression to the “I AM” and was the Impulse for it. Therefore in the first chapters wherever “I AM” is to be found, it must be especially emphasized. All names and designations in ancient times in a certain sense are very real—yet at the same time they are used in a profoundly symbolical manner. This is often the source of tremendous errors made in two directions. From a superficial point of view, many say that according to such an interpretation a great deal is meant symbolically, but with such an explanation in which everything has only a symbolical meaning, they wish to have nothing to do, since historical, biblical events then disappear. On the other hand, those who understand nothing at all of the historical events may say:—“This is only meant symbolically.” Those, however, who say such things, understand nothing of the Gospel. The historical reality is not denied because of a symbolic explanation, but it must be emphasized that the esoteric explanation includes both, the interpretation of the facts as historical and the symbolic meaning which we ascribe to them. Of course, if anyone sees only the prosaic external facts, namely, that a man was born somewhere, at some particular time, he will not understand that this man is something more than just a person with a particular name whose biography can be written. But whoever knows the spiritual relationship will learn to understand that besides being born in some particular place this living human being is also a symbol of his age and that what he signifies for the evolution of humanity is expressed in his name. It is something symbolic and historical at the same time, not simply the one or the other. This is the important thing in a true interpretation of the Gospel. Therefore in almost all of the events and allusions, we shall see that John—or the author of the Gospel bearing his name—really has a super-sensible perception; he sees at one and the same time the outer events and the manifestation of deep spiritual truths. He has in mind the historical figure of the Baptist; he is considering the historical figure. But the true historical figure is for him at the same time a symbol for all men who were in ancient times called upon to receive the imprint of the Christ Impulse upon their egos, a symbol for those into whose individual egos the Light of the World might shine, although they had just started on the path. It was not, however, a symbol for those who in their darkness were not yet able to apprehend the Light of the World. What appeared as Life, Light, and Logos in Christ-Jesus, has always shone in the world, but those who were first to become matured did not recognize it. The Light was always there, for had it not been there, the germ of the ego could not possibly have come into existence.

Only the physical, ether and astral bodies of the present human being existed within the Moon Evolution; there was no ego in them. Only because the Light became transformed into that light which now shines down upon the earth did It have the power to enkindle the individual egos and to bring them gradually to maturity. “The Light shone in the darkness but the darkness could not yet comprehend it.” It entered into the individual human being—right into the human ego—for an ego-humanity could not have come into existence at all, had not the Light been rayed into it by the Logos. However, ego-humanity as a whole did not receive It, but only certain individuals, the initiates. They raised their souls to the spiritual worlds and they always bore the name, “Children of God,” because they possessed knowledge of the Logos, of the Light, and of Life and could always bear witness of These. There were certain ones who already knew of the spiritual worlds through the ancient Mysteries. What was present there in these initiates? It was the eternal human living within them in full consciousness. In the mighty words, “I and the Father are one,” they felt, in fact, I and the great Primal Cause are one! And the most profound thing of which they were conscious, their individual ego, they received not from father and mother but through their initiation into the spiritual world. Not from the blood nor from the flesh did they receive it, nor from the will of father or mother, but “from God,” which means from the spiritual world.

Here we have an explanation of why it was that although the majority of mankind had already received the rudiments of an ego-being they could not as individuals receive the Light which had only descended, in fact, as far as the group-ego. Those, however, who received the Light—and they were few, indeed—could by means of it make themselves “Children of God.” Those who put their trust in the Light were through initiation born of God. This gives us a clear picture. But in order that all men might perceive the living God, with their earthly senses, He, the Christ, had to appear upon earth in a way that made it possible for Him to be seen with physical eyes; in other words, He had to take on a form of flesh, because only such a form can be seen with physical eyes. Prior to this, only the initiates could perceive Him through the Mysteries, but now He took on a physical form for the salvation of every soul. “The Word or the Logos became flesh.” Thus the writer of the Gospel of St. John links the historical appearance of Christ-Jesus together with the whole of evolution. “We have heard His teaching—the teaching of the once-born Son of the Father!” What manner of teaching is this? How were other men born?

In the ancient times in which the Gospels were written, those who were born of the flesh were called “twice-born.” They were called twiceborn—let us say—because of the intermingling of the blood of father and mother. Those who were not born of flesh and did not come into existence through a human act or through the mingling of blood, were “born of God,” that is to say, they were “once-born.” Those who were previously called “Children of God” were always in a certain sense the “once-born” and the teaching about the Son of God is the teaching of the “once-born.” The physical man is “twice-born,” the spiritual man is “once-born.” You must not understand it to mean born into (hineingeboren)—no, “once-born” (eingeboren) is the antithesis of “twice-born” (zweigeboren). These words point to the fact that besides the physical birth, the human being can experience also a spiritual birth, namely, union with the Spirit, a birth through which he is “once-born,” a child or a son of the Godhead.

Such a teaching had first to be heard from Him who represented the Word-made-Flesh. Through Him this teaching became general—“this teaching of the once-born Son of the Father, filled with Devotion and Truth.” Devotion is the better translation here, because we have to do not only with being born out of the Godhead, but also with continued union with It, with the removal of all illusions which only come from being “twice-born” and which surround men with sense-deceptions. On the contrary it is a teaching, the truth of which is substantiated by Christ-Jesus Himself, living and dwelling among men as the incarnated Logos.

John the Baptist called himself—literally interpreted—the forerunner, the precursor, the one who goes before as herald of the ego. He designated himself as one who knew that this ego must become an independent entity in each individual soul, but he also had to bear witness of Him who was to come, in order that this be brought about. He said very clearly, “That which is to come is the ‘I AM,’ which is eternal, which can say of Itself, “Before Abraham was, was the I AM.” John could say, “The I (the ego) which is spoken of here existed before me. Although I am Its forerunner, yet It is at the same time my Forerunner. I bear witness of what was previously present in every human being. After me will come One Who was before me.”

At this point in the Gospel very significant words are spoken:—“For of His Fulness have we all received grace upon grace.” There are men who call themselves Christians, who pass over this word, “Fulness,” thinking that nothing very special is meant by it. “Pleroma” in Greek means “Fulness.” We find this word also in the Gospel of St. John: “For from the Pleroma have we all received grace upon grace.” I have said that if we wish really to understand this Gospel, every word must be weighed in the balance. What is then, Pleroma, Fulness? He alone can understand it who knows that in the ancient Mysteries Pleroma or Fulness was referred to as something very definite. For at that time it was already being taught that when those spiritual beings manifested themselves who during the Moon period evolved to the stage of divinity namely, the Elohim, one of them separated from the others. One remained behind upon the Moon, and thence reflected the power of Love until humanity was sufficiently matured to be able to receive the direct Light of the other six Elohim. Therefore they distinguished between Jahve, the individual God, the reflector, and the Fulness of the Godhead, “Pleroma,” consisting of the other six Elohim. Since the full consciousness of the Sun Logos meant to them the Christ, they called Him the “Fulness of the Gods” when they wished to refer to Him. This profound truth was concealed in the words:—“For out of the Pleroma, we have received grace upon grace.”

Now let us continue by transplanting ourselves back into the age of the group-souls, when each individual felt his own ego as the group-ego. Let us now consider what kind of a social organization existed in the group. As far as they were visible human beings, they lived as individuals. They felt inwardly the group-ego, but outwardly they were individuals. Since they did not yet feel themselves as separate entities, they were also unable yet to experience inner love to its fullest extent. One person loved another because he was related to him through blood. The blood relationship was the basis of all love. First those related by blood loved each other and all love, as far as it was not sex-love, sprang from this blood relationship. Men must free themselves more and more from this group-soul love and proffer love as a free gift of the ego. At the end of the earth evolution, a time will come for mankind when the ego, now become independent, will receive into its inner being, in full surrender, the impulse to do the right and good. Because the ego possesses this impulse, it will do the right and the good. When love becomes spiritualized to such a degree that no one will wish to follow any other impulse. than this, then that will be fulfilled which Christ-Jesus wished to bring into the world. For one of the mysteries of Christianity is that it teaches the seeker to behold the Christ, to fill himself with the power of His image, to seek to become like Him, and to follow after Him. Then will his liberated ego need no other law; it will then, as a being free in its inner depths, do the good and the true. Thus Christ is the bringer of the impulse of freedom from the law, that good may be done, not because of the compulsion of any law, but as an indwelling Impulse of Love within the soul. This Impulse will still need the remainder of the Earth period for its full development. The beginning has been made through Christ-Jesus, and the Christ figure will always be the power which will educate humanity to it. As long as men were not yet ready to receive an independent ego, as long as they existed as members of a group, they had to be socially regulated by an outwardly revealed law. And even today men have not, in all things, risen above the group-egos. In how many things in the present are men not individual human beings, but group-beings? They are already trying to become free, but it is still only an ideal. (At a certain stage of esoteric discipleship, they are called the homeless ones.) The man who voluntarily places himself within the cosmic activities is an individual; he is not ruled by law. In the Christ Principle lies the victory over law. “For the law was given by Moses, but Grace through Christ.” According to the Christian acceptation of the word, the soul's capacity for doing right out of the inner self was called Grace. Grace and an inner recognition of truth came into being through the Christ. You see how profoundly this thought fits into the whole of human evolution.

In earlier ages, those who were initiated developed higher spiritual organs of perception; previously no one ever saw God with physical eyes. The once-born Son who rests in the bosom of the Father is the first who made it possible for us to behold a God in the way we see a human being upon earth with the physical earthly senses. Previously God had remained invisible. He revealed Himself in the super-sensible world through dreams or in other ways in the places of Initiation. Now God has become an historical fact, a form in the flesh. We read this in the words: “Before this no one had beheld God. The once-born Son who dwelt in the bosom of the Universal Father became the guide to this perceiving.” He brought mankind to the point where it could behold God with earthly senses.

Thus we can see how sharply and clearly the Gospel of St. John points to the historical event of Palestine and in what exemplary and concise words which must be accurately weighed in the balance if we wish to use them for an understanding of Esoteric Christianity.

Now we shall see in the following lectures how this theme is further developed and at the same time how it is shown that the Christ is not only the guide of those who are united with the group-soul, but how He enters into each individual human being and endows the individual ego itself with His Impulse. The blood-tie indeed remains, but the spiritual aspect of love is added to it, and to this love which passes over from one individual, independent ego to another, He gives His Impulse.

Day by day, one truth after another was revealed to the neophyte in the course of his initiation. A very important truth is always disclosed, for example, on the third day. Then it is that one learns fully to understand that there is a point in the evolution of the earth when physical love, bound up with the blood, becomes ever more spiritualized. This point of time is the event which demonstrated the transition from a love dependent upon the blood-tie to a spiritualized form of love. In significant words Christ-Jesus makes reference to this when He says: “A time will come which is my time, a time when the most important things will no longer be accomplished by men bound by the tie of blood, but by those who stand alone by themselves. This time however is yet to come.” The Christ Himself who gave the first impulse, says on one important occasion that this ideal will sometime be fulfilled, but that His time is not yet come. He prophetically points to this when His mother stands there and asks Him to do something for mankind, hinting that she has the right to induce Him to an important deed for humanity. He then replies, “What we are able to do today is still connected with the blood bond, with the relationship between thee and me, for My time is not yet come.” That such a time will come when each must stand alone is expressed in the narrative of the Marriage at Cana when the announcement: “They have no wine,” was answered by Jesus with the words: “That is something that has still to do with thee and me, for My time is not yet come.” Here we have the words, “between thee and me” and “My time is not yet come.” What stands there in the text refers to this mystery. Like many others, this passage also is usually very roughly translated. It should not read: “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” but: “This has to do with me and thy blood relationship.” The text is very fine and subtle, but comprehensible only to those who have the will to understand it. But when, in our age, these religious documents are repeatedly interpreted by all kinds of people, one would like to ask, have those who call themselves Christians then no feeling for all this, that they make the Christ utter the words, incorrectly translated, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?”

In much that today calls itself Christianity which rests upon the teaching of the Gospel, we are inclined to ask, Do they really possess the Gospel? The important thing is that they should first possess it. And with such a profound document as the Gospel of St. John every word must be weighed in order that its proper value be recognized.

These studies will have to culminate in a description of the nature of the remedies we have arrived at and which we then need to bring into more common use. But it will not be possible to speak properly about what one must know and master with regard to these remedies if we have not fully prepared ourselves. This must be done first. Therefore today we will study a few of those things that can guide us into the whole web of man's being, which results from the cooperation between ego, astral body, etheric body, and physical body. I have already mentioned that, by means of a certain effect of arsenic, one can drive the astral body further into the organs than is otherwise the case in the human being. Of course, the astral body draws the ego in with it.

By driving the astral body further into the organs, we enhance the mineralizing process in the organs. And if we notice that the organs are indicating a proliferating etheric, are too active vitally, developing life forces that are too strong, then the introduction of arsenic would have a healing effect. One can even designate something that occurs inside the human being by means of an outer process that has a certain affinity with the human process. If you want to express this affinity of the astral body with the etheric body—and thereby with the physical—you may speak of “arsenizing.” A gentle “arsenizing” is continually taking place in the human being and is especially strong at the moment of waking. We must realize clearly that the human organism has within itself, as a system of forces, that which lies in the metals. This affinity between the human being and his earthly-cosmic environment is certainly present; certain processes that unfold outside and come to an end in the metals, for example, also occur in the human being. Hence, when we speak of “arsenizing” the human being, you must not think of the arsenic as directly active; rather the human being is itself active within in the way that arsenic is active outside.

Through this one attains insight into the way to assist such effects in the human being. When you study this “arsenizing” process—I might also say this “astralizing” process—in the human organism, you will notice that when it is too active it finds expression in a kind of warming in the region of the stomach, whereby digestion and assimilation become facilitated. When these become excessively facilitated, it can become a serious problem, because difficulties then arise as reactions to such processes that occur with too great a facility. All this is connected with a certain mineralizing process in the human being. This is a direction to pursue in our research. But such research must be done in the right way, taking all the other factors into consideration. The bodies of people who “astralize” too strongly, i.e., “arsenize” strongly in their organic physical processes, do not decompose so readily as those of people whose astral bodies are weakly connected with their organs. This is certainly something that ought to be observed. Indeed, one sees the extreme form of this tendency in bodies poisoned by arsenic; they tend to mummify and do not decompose easily.

Now the question is: What can we do if this “arsenizing” (or “astralizing”) process is too strong, that is when the person mummifies himself while alive, so to speak? One must have an eye for such things. If a person is mummifying too intensely, how can we counter this process? If I may express myself radically, I would say that then one must make the whole human being partly into a tooth. This is something that can give us many clues into the mysterious working of the human organism. One must make the whole human being into a tooth. In some way or other one must try to give him the radiating force of magnesium, taking the whole organism into account. He must be given some preparation of magnesium, thus introducing into his whole organism the radiating force of magnesium, which Professor Römer has described. This is something that leads us deeply into the relation between the astral body (which is also carrying the ego) on the one hand and the etheric and physical bodies on the other.

Let us now consider the opposite condition in the human being, in which the astral body and the ego have an inadequate tendency to permeate the organs. The organs, in so far as they are nurtured by the physical and etheric influences, begin to be left to themselves. The expression of this condition is that there is no proper connection between things that should work reciprocally, between the reciprocal nourishment of the human being by his environment and the inner organic processes. The inner organic processes begin to develop their vital forces too strongly. They receive no influence from outside; the permeation of the food-substance by the forces of the ego diminishes. The astral body, in consequence, has to be too active in one direction and cannot reach the etheric body properly. A proliferation of physical and etheric activity occurs, expressing itself in diarrhea, which is essentially connected with such phenomena. Blood is found in the stool, and the inner vital activity becomes so strong that small, organic tissues peel off from the intestinal walls. These are also found in the stool, which takes on the appearance of a fluid resembling beef bouillon. Finally protein is drawn into the process and excreted without being worked through in the proper way. Such phenomena clearly indicate that the vital force is proliferating, unhindered by the “astralizing” force.

The astral body and the ego must work into the physical and etheric human being if these half-conscious movements of the digestive tract, that are necessary for the organism, are to occur. Now imagine that the astral body and the ego are not inserted in the right way and that the etheric body and the physical body remain active by themselves. There then arises a nervous need to relieve the bowels, which is characteristic of such conditions. The farther you follow this matter, the farther you are from ordinary diarrhea and the nearer to dysentery. The farther you proceed with the description of this clinical picture, the more you find yourself describing in all these phenomena the opposite of “arsenization,” or “astralization.” And as the astral body is strongly implicated in all this, you will be led, by the matter itself, to the conclusion that the antidote to be used is in everything that comes from arsenic, i.e., that one must oppose these conditions by “arsenizing.”

I believe that we can deeply enrich and intensify our ideas in relation to such things if we make clear to ourselves that there are processes in the outer world corresponding to everything that takes place in the human being. And even if it must sound dreadful to one who has passed through the educational system of today, I do not want to avoid using certain expressions that have a serious meaning for spiritual science and which, if understood correctly, can lead us very deeply into these matters.

You see, the “arsenizing” (or “astralizing”) process observed in the human being, the mummification of the physical organism, its becoming brittle, is basically the same process as that which takes place when the earth forms rocks. Wherever rocks are in process of formation the earth is, in a sense, poisoned by arsenic or in the early stages of poisoning. Imagine, on the other hand, that the outer astrality that surrounds the earth everywhere (as I suggested in the last course of lectures), succeeds in avoiding the surface of the earth and rests directly on the water. Imagine that it avoids playing its part in bringing forth the blossoms, the growth and the emergence of the plants from the earth into the atmosphere. The outer astrality penetrates below the ground, and in these areas the earth gets dysentery. The process I am now describing ought to be taken into account, for there is much that is real behind it. It should be considered, because it gives information as to the connection of what takes place under the earth with a phenomenon such as dysentery, for example. In dysentery, we observe an effect on the human being of what lies under the ground, particularly in water, and it must be studied from this viewpoint. The essential thing to consider is that the astral body is very much involved in the matter, and hence to cure it it will be necessary to use intermediate potencies, because the efficacy of the astral body is through the middle system in the human organism.

Now phenomena such as those that take their course like diphtheria are especially able to teach us about certain subtleties in the human organism. Such diseases should be studied more precisely, if only for the sake of discovering remedies. I believe the opinion that has arisen from materialistic conceptions is still held that diphtheria must be treated locally as much as possible. Of course, numerous opposing opinions have also been expressed regarding this. The significance of the emergence of diphtheria—and to everything related to it—leads us to make some additions to what we studied in the last course, because at that time we were not yet able to deal so precisely with this interaction of the four members of the human organism.

In another context I have indicated that the child's acquisition of speech is accompanied by various organic processes. While he is learning to speak, and therefore while something special is taking place in his breathing organism, something also occurs polarically in his circulatory organism, which also receives into itself the metabolic processes. I also pointed out, in yet another context, how what at puberty appears in a reciprocal relationship of the human being to the outer world, takes place inwardly in learning to speak. Thus this push of the astral body, which at puberty takes place from within the human being outward, takes place from below upward in the astralizing process. The capacity for acquiring speech also develops from below upward. So here too we have an astralizing process, and we will be able to see clearly that an interaction occurs where the respiratory and circulatory systems meet (see drawing). The astralizing process working from below upward (yellow) encounters the developing organs of speech working from above downwards (red). In this encounter the organs of speech become stronger in their capacity for speech. It is what is taking place simultaneously below that especially interests us here: this tends to work upward. The whole process is one from below upward (yellow arrows). Now, if the astrality presses upward too strongly while the child is learning to speak, we have a predisposition to diphtheric conditions. It is certainly important to pay proper attention to this.

Let us now consider the outer earthly process that has a certain selective affinity for the process I have just described. Let this be the surface of the earth (see drawing above). In a plant that behaves appropriately in relation to the cosmos, the earth plays a part in the formation of its roots. With growth the influence of the earth diminishes and the extra-terrestrial influence becomes stronger and stronger, unfolding especially in the blossoms (see drawing, red). What develops here is a kind of external astralizing of the blossom, which then leads to the formation of fruit. If this process, which ought to occur in the normal course of the world processes, takes place below (see drawing below), it can only insert itself into the water, and we have what I have just called “dysentery of the earth.”

But we can also have another situation: What takes place when a plant develops properly—the blossom unfolding always a little above the earth's surface—can develop right on the earth's surface (see drawing below, red). Then fungi arise; this is the basis for fungus formation.

And now you will begin to guess that, if fungi arise from such a special astralizing process, the same process must take place from below upward when, as in diphtheria, this remarkable astralization occurs in the human head. This is actually the case. Hence you find in diphtheria the tendency to fungoid formations. It is most important to consider this tendency to fungoid formations in diphtheria, and it will also show you that a truly occult process is taking place there. Everything external is really only a sign that irregular astral currents are prevailing within the human being. This will suggest to you how a pathology, willing to consider merely outer symptoms, can know only the outer manifestations of the whole process; it then regards this process as local, for it sees only the outer aspects and does not consider what is pushing from within outward in such cases. The whole skeptical attitude adopted toward this process is certainly explicable if we trace it back to what we have just discussed.

As a matter of fact, the risk of infection in diphtheric conditions is very great. Why is it so great? Because diphtheric conditions clearly arise in connection with the acquisition of speech. Because of this they occur primarily in children from age two to four. Later the risk is very much less. However, every process that occurs as the normal course of events in the human organism at some time or other can also arise abnormally. Thus, this process, which is simply a concomitant of childhood, can also occur at another period of life, although somewhat modified or metamorphosed. Nevertheless, when a type of diphtheria occurs at a later stage in life, there is something of an infantile nature at work in the individual. The fundamental characteristic of the infantile stage is, as you know, the tendency to imitate. When expressing the facts of spiritual science about infants, it is only necessary to speak of the more psychological aspect, the external manifestation of the childhood stage is certainly this imitative aspect. The organism itself is forced to become imitative when it becomes diphtheric. Infection is due to a person becoming an imitator. Indeed, there is a very delicate sensitivity involved in this imitating. When this condition is studied with the methods of spiritual science, one finds that the ego actually plays a certain role in infection with diphtheria. For this reason, the parasitic aspect, what develops as fungoid growths, is more infectious than in other diseases. This is because the human organism, by virtue of its imitative tendency, comes to meet the trouble, adjusting itself in an imitative, receptive way as soon as it “perceives” the diphtheric poison. Hence a psychological rebuke, when it is possible in the initial stages, and psychological support by encouragement may well have a favorable effect.

But when, as here, the processes work so deeply into the organism, much more will naturally be achieved by trying to find the specific remedy with which to oppose the particular process at work. I am not aware of whether any steps have been taken to find, even empirically, a specific remedy for diphtheric conditions. One should try intermediate potencies of cinnabar. In cinnabar we will find effects that counteract all the phenomena I have mentioned. Cinnabar expresses this even in its outer appearance. The outer appearance of substances, however, is only of use when we supplement it with inner perception. The old “Doctrine of Signatures” was based on an instinctive, inner perception, and it has perished because people today no longer have the capacity to observe such things. Nonetheless it is important to be able to study these inner activities manifesting in all external appearances in the world. We ought not become involved in all sorts of mystical notions; if instead we acquire a sound understanding of such things we will recognize that cinnabar through its vermilion color is something that in a certain way brings to expression this activity opposed to the fungoid process. That which is approaching the colorless can become fungoid. While too strong an astralization of the earth's surface plays a part in the formation of fungi, in cinnabar there is a counter-reaction to this astralization and thus this reddening. Wherever a reddening appears in natural processes, we find a powerful counter-effect to the astralization process. You could express this in a moral formula: “The rose in blushing works against astralization.” These domains of pathological-therapeutic study are really interconnected in a certain way. They guide us into this peculiar relationship of the ego and astral body to the other organs, to their laying hold of organs, to their emancipation from organs, or to manifestations of the excessive working of the astral from below upward.

In this way insight can gradually be gained into the whole human body. This can be understood more thoroughly if one takes these studies to a further stage. Here you will have to take into account something that I would like to add now to what I presented to you last year. It is remarkable that the human ego, studied in its spiritual, psychical, organic, and mineral activities, is a kind of vehicle, you could say, for phosphorus. The ego creates the phosphorus-vehicle in such a way that with this vehicle it extends to the periphery of the organic human being. The phosphorization of the human organism is an activity of the ego. Through the ego, this phosphorus distribution is extended to the outermost borders, to the very periphery of the organic human being, in a most ingenious way. To a certain limit—which must not be exceeded, however—the ego can only carry phosphorus through the organism by first combining it chemically to other substances. The ego in essence hinders the chemical liberation of phosphorus by carrying it through the organism. This is one of the ego's tasks, to hinder the chemical liberation of phosphorus, of all but the traces of phosphorus required by a certain special process. This process would occur on a large scale if the ego did not succeed in preventing the liberation of the phosphorus taken in.

If the phosphorus were to be set free, inducing an intensive effect in the human organism, there would be definite consequences. I have told you in the course of these lectures that when the human being enters the world, that is, when his pre-existing soul-spiritual aspect comes into corporeality, the imprints of the etheric body, astral body, and ego are first created. I also said to you that everything constituting the imprint of the ego is actually to be found in dynamic systems, the systems of movement that are brought to an equilibrium. This is something to which we must pay special attention at this point in our considerations.

The ego requires phosphorus to bring about equilibrium between unbalanced states or those in which the balance has been disrupted. When I take a step forward, my equilibrium is disturbed and I must restore it again, but through the help of inner processes. This task in the human organism is accomplished essentially with the help of phosphorus. When the ego does not exhaust its phosphorizing activity in making static what is dynamic within the human being, it brings phosphorus to the imprint of the ego already present, to this process of making static what is dynamic. I have frequently drawn your attention to the fact that in addition to our solid constituents we must also consider the fluid man, the aeriform man, and the warmth man. Picture to yourselves the fluid man, that which is expressed in the imprinting of the ego, of the astral body, and then the ego itself, in the etheric body. This means that in the etheric body something dynamic, something not in a state of equilibrium, must continually be brought into equilibrium.

What we are speaking about here has to do with extraordinarily delicate effects. And these delicate effects are regulated by the presence in the human body of free-floating globules that are nevertheless connected with the whole movement of the organism, including the inner movement. These are the blood corpuscles. Against these blood corpuscles must beat the activity of the ego within the body's mobility—including, for example, the mobility of warmth. These blood corpuscles are not really little globules but are essentially constituted so that even their form shows that they are intended to guide movement over into equilibrium. What the ego does in working into the capacity for movement of the human organism reaches its limit at the blood corpuscles. Here it has to stop, and that most intimate interaction between the human ego and the whole human organism must occur. Here too occurs what I might call the most hidden battle between the continual phosphorizing process in the human being and the formative process of the blood. Thus, if phosphorus is brought into the human being in the free state, the blood corpuscles are destroyed by the phosphorizing process.

This is something that can lead us pictorially to this remarkable reciprocal action of the ego, which is a spiritual entity. Indeed, the ego is spiritual through and through, but it continually interacts with the physical through the blood corpuscles. In this respect, “blood is a very special fluid,” as an old saying—not Goethe—tells us. For in the blood the outer physical part of the human being interacts with his most spiritual member, the first that he carries with him, the ego. It is in the blood that the most injurious processes can arise when the ego enters into this interaction improperly. A great deal in the physical body can be ruined by such an incorrect interaction: destruction of the epithelium, fatty degeneration extending to the muscle fibers—especially the striated muscle fibers, for the ego acts especially on these—disintegration of the blood corpuscles, and so on. Indeed, this corporeal process of degeneration can extend into the bones if the phosphoric effects are not in order.

This interplay between the ego (which, of course draws the astral body with it) and the physical body (which then draws the etheric body with it), shows us clearly that there is a constant striving toward a normal and an abnormal state. The normalizing tendency attains a certain culmination and is then followed by a decline. We see this manifested when we have to do with a case of poisoning by phosphorus, for instance. In phosphorus poisoning, you will find that in the first place the astral body and the etheric body resist what is occurring in the physical body and the ego. They resist, they defend themselves with all the force, with the strongest force, of the etheric body. The etheric body tries to stand up to the over-activity of the ego; it tries to counter this by strengthening its own forces. Therefore there is an inner similarity between the process of the first stage of poisoning by phosphorus and another process, namely, the occurence of the review of life after death. As you know, this can last for a day and a half, or for two to three days. During this review the etheric body is held within the astral body. In a sense, they cling together. This also happens in the human body when phosphorus poisoning occurs. Everything that can develop through the cooperation of the astral and etheric bodies, which takes place during this review after death by means of the etheric body, is developed now. Hence through these forces that are expended in the first stage of phosphorus poisoning, an improvement will set in after a lapse of as long a time as such a review would last. There will be a kind of fatiguing or recession, and then after this recession the abnormal influence of the ego will set in with even greater intensity. An actual case of phosphorus poisoning is extraordinarily difficult to treat, because it can only be combatted by trying to find a way of inducing in the whole organism an intense cooperation of the astral with the etheric. This could be achieved by opposing the phosphorus poison with a strong application of drawing plasters applied to various parts of the body. You would certainly achieve results in this way. Of course something must be known about these things, and one has to have a feeling for how far to go.

Thus the physical organism, when the ego intervenes in it, can be intensely engaged by being involved in what we may call “phosphorization” of the human being. However, when the ego intervenes strongly in the physical organism,—that is, in a destructive way—the polar opposite must necessarily occur: what the ego normally does in the human organism, when it does not intervene too strongly, must suffer. Hence you will find a phosphorization that is too powerful accompanied by states of insomnia, due simply to an excessive proclivity of the astral body and ego to the physical. You could deduce this from everything I have said. You will find headaches and all the conditions usually accompanying paralysis. These conditions naturally arise in connection with what I have said about the interaction with the blood. What lies in the middle, and what therefore appears with phosphorization (when the ego attacks the blood corpuscles and is repelled again in the alternating process described) comes to expression in conditions of jaundice. In fact, in jaundice we can also observe an interplay of the psychological and the physical.

From what I have presented to you, you will see that the process constituting the human being is essentially a cooperation of the ego and astral body with the forces of the outer world, within the space enclosed by the skin. It is a process working in from without, and one must be able to study correctly how this process can be regulated, how one can acquire a kind of control over it.

Certain dietetic measures that would be effective occur to one when studying ailments with this perception as a foundation. If the ego is working too strongly in the human being, causing irregularities in the stomach, but at the same time an overvitalization is at work in abnormal diarrheal conditions and the like, it is necessary to combat this by appropriate dietetic measures. The actual ego process and the process of the astral in the human being are a kind of analyzing process; they fragment what is synthetically present in the outer world. Whereas we have a kind of primary synthetic process in the physical and etheric bases of the human organism, we have an analytic process in the ego and astral activities. This analytic process is a part of the normal activities of the human being, and its unusual character is expressed strongly in the necessity of keeping it within bounds. If the ego becomes too active an analyst regarding phosphoric salts, it decomposes them as far as the phosporus, and this then begins to be unhealthy for the human organism. In last year's lectures I referred to this analyzing process carried as far as iron: this is the farthest point to which analysis can be carried without harm. This process of analysis carried as far as iron is connected with the iron content of the blood. In many respects this is the polar opposite of analysis with respect to other metals, where the analytical process must, in a certain sense, be restrained.

Today I wanted to show you how outer phenomena in fact give us pictures of what is developing from the inner spiritual aspect. On this account the outer view of the human being in states of health and illness must be supplemented by what one can learn of the inner, of the spiritual human being. We now have a basis for understanding our remedies and answering many of the questions that have been asked.

We will deal with these as much as possible in the remaining lectures.

In the lecture yesterday I endeavored to give a general survey of the different manifestations and functions of the life of soul in the world around us. Today we will study the nature and being of man himself in greater detail, referring as well to a great deal of what is already known. We will think, to begin with, of facts connected with the nature of man that form part of the picture I was able to give you yesterday.

To begin with, in respect of his lowest body, the human being seems as if he had grown out of the first kingdom that surrounds us, that of the minerals. What immediately catches our eye when a man is standing in front of us, is the most tangible part of all, namely, his physical body. But the occultist knows that this is only one member of his constitution. It is easy to form an erroneous idea of this physical body when it is taken for granted that the physical body is what can be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands. That would be as mistaken as it would be to take hydrogen for water. The higher members of man's constitution are intermingled with his physical body. As it confronts us, this physical body is already permeated by the other members of man's nature, so that the structure of flesh and bones before us cannot without further ado be called the physical body. This physical body of man consists of the same substances and forces that are to be found in the mineral world outside, interwoven with consummate art in the structure of the human body. That this body looks and feels as it does is due to the fact that the other members of man's nature and constitution are mingled with it. The body of man seen by the eye is not, properly speaking, the physical body. The physical body as such is present when the human being has gone through the gate of death. The remaining corpse is the real physical body, the body freed from all the higher members of man's nature. When it is left to itself this physical body follows laws quite other than those followed until the moment of death. Before then, it has, in truth, been consistently repudiating the laws of physical chemistry. In earthly existence the body of man would be a perpetual corpse if it were not permeated by the etheric body that throughout life fights against the decay of the physical body. The ether or life body is the second member of man's being.

We will now take it for granted that both the plant and the animal have etheric bodies. Nevertheless, in a certain respect the human being differs from the animal in his etheric body as well, and it is this difference that is of particular interest to us. In what respect does the etheric body of man differ from that of the animal? First let us ask how clairvoyant consciousness is able to acquire knowledge of man's etheric body. To answer this question we must describe what clairvoyance is.

An individual who has developed a certain faculty of clairvoyance has also acquired such mastery of his mental activity that he is able to focus his attention upon or divert it from something with far greater strength than before. If you were to expect an average human being to be able to control his attention to the extent of suggesting away a physical form in front of him, you would find that it would be possible in the rarest instances. A clairvoyant, however, is quite capable of doing this. The space otherwise occupied by the physical body is then, for the clairvoyant, filled through and through by this etheric body. It has approximately the human form in the head, torso and shoulders, but the lower the area in the body, the less similar it is to the human figure.

The etheric body of an animal is different from its physical body. The etheric body of the horse, for example, extends far beyond its physical form. If you could see the etheric body of an elephant clairvoyantly you would be amazed at its gigantic proportions. In the case of the human form, the lower the level the greater is the difference between the etheric body and the physical form. Otherwise, in a certain respect, left and right correspond in the physical body and in the etheric body. The physical heart lies slightly to the left; the corresponding organ in the etheric body is the etheric heart, which lies to the right. The greatest difference, however, between the physical and the etheric body is that the etheric body of a man is female and the etheric body of a woman, male. This is a fact of great significance and many riddles of human nature are explicable on the basis of this finding of occult investigation. Thus, in the case of the human being there is a kind of correspondence, and in the case of the animal a great difference, between this second member of man's nature and the first.

Of man's astral body it is possible to have a much clearer idea. It is the third member of his constitution. The etheric body of man is a reality to one who is clairvoyant; to a materialist it is simply an illusion. Anatomists and physiologists investigate man's physical body only. But in this physical body there is something—the blood and nerves—that is much more closely related to man's consciousness. This consciousness is aware of his happiness, suffering and joy, all of which take effect in the space filled by his physical body. The bearer of these experiences is invisible to the individual concerned but it is visible to clairvoyant consciousness as a luminous cloud. This is the astral body. It differs greatly from the etheric body.

Movement in the physical body cannot be compared with the extraordinary mobility of the etheric body. In a healthy human being the color of this etheric body is that of the blossom of a young peach tree. Everything in the etheric body gleams and glitters in shades of rosy red, dark and light, becoming a radiant white. The etheric body has a definite boundary, although this fluctuates. The astral body is quite different. It displays the greatest possible variety of colors and changing forms, like a cloud floating by with ever changing movement. The colors and forms that appear in the cloud are expressions of the feelings and experiences that play between one human being and another. If a clairvoyant sees a bluish-red color in the astral body, he perceives love streaming between human beings, but another time he will also see the feelings of animosity that pass between individuals. As a man's activity of soul is constantly changing, so, too, do the colors and forms change in the astral body, appearing and disappearing in a multicolored play.

The fourth member of man's constitution is the bearer of the ego. Thus we have his physical body, which in external nature is comparable with the mineral, then his etheric body, which is comparable with the plant, and then his astral body, which is common to both animal and man. The astral body in man, however, is far more mobile than it is in the animal.

The ego bearer, the fourth member of man's nature, is seen as a kind of oval form, the source of which can be traced to the anterior part of the head. It is visible there to the clairvoyant as a bluish, luminous orb. A kind of bluish sheen streams out from this orb and passes into the human being. When, but not until, the clairvoyant can also suggest away a man's astral body, he is able to perceive the ego bearer. Man has the other three bodies in common with the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms of nature. But the ego bearer distinguishes him from these kingdoms and he becomes thereby the crown of creation.

In studying the fourfold nature of man we have actually been envisaging the dowry he has received from the higher worlds, no matter what his stage of evolution may be. The fact that he has the fourfold constitution of which we have spoken makes him man. Not until the “I,” the ego, works on the three bodies does his own task begin in the real sense. Whether the development achieved by a human being has reached a higher or lower stage depends upon how effectively he has worked upon the lower members of his constitution. The ego begins first of all to work upon the astral body. The effect of this work differs depending upon whether the individual concerned has reached only a low stage of development or is a highly evolved personality such, for example, as Schiller. The one has achieved less than the other in the process of transforming his astral body. This inner work upon oneself is known in occultism as purification, cleansing or catharsis. In this way the ego works at the perfecting of the astral body. In every human being, therefore, it will be found that the astral body is twofold. One part has been worked upon and purified, not so the other. Let us now suppose that the ego continues to work unswervingly upon the astral body. If this is the case, the individual concerned will gradually reach the stage of no longer having to force himself to do what is good, because it will become habit. There is obviously a difference when an individual is obeying a command, or has so much love in him that willy-nilly he will do what is good, meaningful and beautiful. If an individual is simply obeying a command, his ego is indeed working upon his astral body, but if doing the good becomes a habit, then the ego is working upon the etheric body as well.

To understand how the ego works upon the etheric body we will think of an example. When something or other is explained to you and you have understood it, then the ego has worked into the astral body. But if day after day you repeat a prayer, perhaps the Lord's Prayer, you are working into the etheric body because of the repetition every day; the soul is exercising the same activity over and over again. Repetition is an entirely different matter from a momentary understanding. We will clarify our minds as to how, in the latter case, the ego works upon the astral body and, in the former, upon the etheric body through repetition.

Think of the growth of a plant. The living seed produces the stalk and leaf after leaf; constantly new green leaves are added. This is possible because the plant is endowed with an etheric body and the underlying, active principle of the etheric body is repetition. Wherever repetition occurs, an etheric body is at work. The culminating feature of the plant, the blossom, is the product of a different principle, namely, the overshadowing astral body. Culmination, therefore, is brought about by astrality. This can also be observed in the structure of man's physical body. The spine with its numerous vertebrae is an expression of the etheric body in the physical body. Now think of man's head, of the brain. There you have the culmination, the work of the astral body in the physical stature. Spiritually, this is the same process as the manifestation of understanding resulting from the effect made upon the astral body; activity generated through daily repetition of the same prayer or meditative exercise is the product of work upon the etheric body. The essence of meditation is that through repetition it has an effect not only upon the astral body but also upon the etheric body. The reason why the effect made by the great religious teachers has been so dynamic is because they have imparted to humanity principles embodying a power that works ever onward. The etheric body of man is also twofold; one part has been worked upon by the ego, although in the average individual still to a limited extent, while the other part has not yet been worked upon at all.

There is still a third possibility for man. He can work from his ego into the physical body. This is the hardest task of all. Man has already worked continuously upon his physical body unconsciously, but not from his ego. This is possible only for the most advanced individuals.

We have thus studied the four lower members of man's constitution and have been made aware that three higher members are products of the transformation of the lower members as the result of the work of the ego. In this work upon the three lower members there is considerable difference in that it proceeds either consciously or unconsciously—unconsciously, that is to say, without the individual concerned being aware of it. The transformation occurs perhaps through the study and contemplation of works of art, pictures, and so forth, or through pious devotion and prayer. But these individuals are not conscious that they are working upon their astral and etheric bodies; conscious work begins at a comparatively late state. We have therefore to distinguish between conscious and unconscious work upon the lower members of man's being. His astral body is twofold; one part is the product of unconscious activity, the other of conscious effort. The part of the astral body that was worked upon unconsciously by the ego is called the sentient soul, which today is finished and complete in man. What was worked upon the etheric body unconsciously from the ego is the intellectual or mind soul. What has been worked upon in the physical body, unconsciously for long ages, is the consciousness or spiritual soul. Thus in man we distinguish physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ego. The ego, working unconsciously upon the astral body produces the sentient soul, upon the etheric body, the intellectual or mind soul, upon the physical body, the consciousness or spiritual soul. We have, therefore, spoken of six, or rather seven members present in man's nature because he has worked unconsciously upon his own nature and constitution.

Now the conscious work begins. What comes into existence as a result of it? Spirit self, or manas, is the outcome of what a man consciously instils into his astral body; what he consciously instils into his etheric body, but this is dependent upon occult training, is known as buddhi or life spirit. What happens if the ego eventually becomes able to work consciously into the physical body, to inculcate forces into the physical body itself? Through occult training this can actually be brought about consciously through the breathing process but there must be great caution and sensitivity of procedure, for through false methods of training such as are often given in public literature, a European body can be seriously harmed; knowledge of what is suitable for the constitution of a modern human being is essential. Through a conscious method of breathing the physical body can be transformed by the ego into atman or spirit man.

Man was a fourfold being when he assumed earthly form. In his first incarnation on earth he had already begun to work upon his own being through the ego. In the course of the following incarnations he has developed, unconsciously, the three functional aspects of the soul: sentient soul, intellectual or mind soul, consciousness or spiritual soul. We shall subsequently learn how the conscious transformation is achieved of physical, etheric and astral bodies into the three higher members. Meanwhile, you have heard how the sevenfold being of man evolves through the incarnations. The four members, physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, form the so-called sacred quaternary that was revered in all occult schools and with which a sacred trinity was allied, consciously forming a sevenfoldness or tenfoldness. We have thus a picture before us of man who has within him everything that is out-spread around him but which he transcends by virtue of his ego bearer.

We will now study the human being in waking life and in sleep in order to learn how the bodies are connected. What is happening when joy and pain in a man are stilled, when his consciousness sinks into sleep? His astral body and ego are then outside his physical and etheric bodies. In the state of sleep something striking happens to man. In sleep at night he has descended as it were to the level of the plant by day. He has become a twofold being; his physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed and his astral body and ego are outside. You may now ask whether it can be said that man is a plant while he is asleep. No, but man and plant then consist of the same combination of bodies. On our earth a being with a physical body and an etheric body only is a plant. When an astral body and ego are present, the physical and etheric bodies change. In the plant there are no nerve strands, and it is only a physical body in which there is an ego, that has warm blood. The higher animals must be regarded as degenerate forms of the original man. In the physical body the ego comes to expression in the blood, the astral body in the nerves, the etheric body in the glandular system and the physical nature of man in his own body. If, therefore, the astral body is the creator of the system of nerves, which is actually the case, this system of nerves is in a doleful situation, for during sleep it is abandoned by its creator. Not so the glandular system, for the etheric body remains with it. But the blood system of the physical and etheric bodies is faithlessly forsaken by the ego during the night. The physical body can exist on its own, because the physical nature remains the same, as does the glandular system, since the etheric body remains in the physical body during sleep. The system of nerves, however, is forsaken by its master. We will now ask clairvoyant consciousness what is then happening in the physical body? To the extent to which man's astral body goes out of the physical and etheric bodies during the night, to that same extent a “divine-spiritual” astral body moves into the bodies lying in the bed. The same applies to the blood system; a divine-spiritual ego enters into it and provides for its maintenance. In the night, too, man is a fourfold being but beings of a higher order take possession of the two bodies remaining in the bed. When man's astral body and ego return in the morning to his etheric and physical bodies, his own astral body expels a being of greater power. The same happens in the case of the blood system. Man's ego drives out the divine-spiritual ego that has provided for the blood system during the night.

Divine-spiritual beings are present in our environment all the time. By day they must withdraw, just as we ourselves withdraw during the night. These divine-spiritual beings sleep by day, whilst human beings sleep by night. In the evening a divine-spiritual ego and a divine-spiritual astral body draw into the physical and etheric bodies of the man asleep in bed and leave these bodies in the morning. The process in man is exactly the reverse. In the evening he abandons his bodies and in the morning resumes possession of them. Even in religions a feeling has remained that the gods sleep by day. There are countries where the churches are shut at midday because the gods are then most deeply asleep.

We will now think about what is outside man's body at night, namely, the astral body and the ego. We know that desires, urges and passions are rooted in the astral body but during the night man is not aware of them. Why is this? It is because at the present stage of evolution man's astral body and ego have no organs that would make this awareness possible. Man as he is at present can perceive only by means of physical organs. There are around man as many worlds as he has organs to perceive them. If he has one organ more, a new world reveals itself to him. His astral body, if he has not yet become clairvoyant, has no organs, hence during the night he cannot be aware of anything. It is easy to imagine that during sleep he may be without senses. There are blind people and also people in whom other senses are lacking. No world is present for one who is unable to use his senses. Hence, in the morning, when a man can again make use of his physical senses, he becomes aware of the world around him. But at death it is different. Through the whole of life the etheric body and the physical body remain connected with each other; at death, the etheric body, for the first time as a rule, abandons the physical body. The moment of death is therefore described by those who have knowledge of the subject as the moment when a retrospect of the whole past life passes like a panorama before the human being. What is the explanation of this? It is because the etheric body is the bearer of memory and this memory now becomes free. As long as the etheric body is in the physical body it cannot unfold all its power but only as much as the physical instrument permits. Now, however, at death the etheric body becomes free of the physical body and can unfold what has been inscribed in it during life. This panorama can also arise as the result of a shock but in that case the man concerned must not lose consciousness as he does at death. The shock may be caused by danger of death. But this is an exceptional case.

Now you may ask how long this tableau lasts. The time varies a great deal in human beings. Speaking generally, it can be said that the tableau lasts for as long as the individual concerned could stay awake during life without being overcome by sleep—twenty hours, fifty, sixty to eighty hours. The extreme limit of time during which waking consciousness can be sustained is approximately that of the duration of this panorama. The retrospect persists for as long as this. Then it fades away and a clairvoyant sees how the etheric body detaches itself at the same time—not entirely, however, and that is the important point. The individual concerned takes with him an essence, an extract of his etheric body and with it the fruits of his last life. He ascends, retaining the essence of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego until he also lays aside his astral body. He has now laid aside two corpses, and then he passes into the spiritual world.

Tomorrow we shall study the life after death and the entry into the devachanic world.

In a brief outline of philosophical thought Lessing alluded once to the only doctrine he considered worthy of the human soul—the doctrine he then expounded, in a form suited to Western consciousness, in his masterly treatise, ‘The Education of the Human Race’. He speaks there of reincarnation, of the repeated earthly lives experienced by the human soul, and continues somewhat as follows. Why, he asks, should this doctrine, so obvious in primeval days to the soul of man and one of its earliest treasures, while the soul was still uncorrupted by all kinds of theorising—why should this doctrine be less true than many other doctrines which in the course of time have been accepted as the result of philosophical speculation? After plainly indicating how this theory of repeated earthly lives is the only reasonable one for the human soul, Lessing says we might well expect that any unprejudiced man, willing to let the true nature of the soul work upon him, would grow accustomed to the doctrine—were it not for two things. We are certainly eager to know what Lessing meant by these two things that hindered the human soul from accepting the doctrine of repeated earthly lives. Lessing, however, never finished his sentence, having presumably been disturbed. He breaks off with the words: ‘were it not for two things’, and a colon. Nowhere in his writings, moreover, do we find anything to tell us what he considered these two things to be, although all kinds of speculations have been advanced by scholars who have made a special study of his work.

Now perhaps our conscience may allow us to assume that Lessing was most probably thinking of two things generally repellent to people when reincarnation is mentioned—two impulses rising up in the soul against the idea. One impulse may be expressed thus: whatever may be maintained by any form of spiritual science in favour of reincarnation, one thing is certain—that in normal consciousness we have no recollection of having lived before on Earth. Therefore, even should repeated earthly lives be in accordance with truth, they would seem to be of no significance for human consciousness and must therefore appear to it as an arbitrary hypothesis. That, for many souls, is certainly one of the objections to the idea of reincarnation. The second arises from a sense of justice towards oneself. Repeated earthly lives require an acceptance of destiny—whether we are fortunate or unfortunate, gifted or not in worldly affairs—as a consequence of what we have done in previous lives; so that, to a far greater extent than is generally believed, we ourselves would be the makers of our good fortune and abilities, or the reverse. Many souls may well exclaim: ‘If I have to accept my destiny, if my earthly existence is indeed burdened with that, have I got to accept also that I myself—the Ego within me—has in earlier lives on Earth created the destiny in which I am now involved?’ This is what could be called a man's sense of justice towards himself.

Anyone who delves more deeply into Lessing's ways of thinking and into his whole nature, making it part of his own soul will not doubt that this pioneer of the reincarnation theory meant to indicate these two objections to it. In the course of our study of eternity and of man's soul in connection with it, it will be well to pay attention to the facts just described. So now we will once again call to mind something said by the German philosopher Hegel about eternity—how if eternity belongs by nature to the human soul, it must certainly not reveal itself only after death, but must be capable of being experienced during life on Earth. Hegel puts it like this: Eternity cannot begin for the soul only at death but must belong to it already during earthly life. If we seek it in man's soul, if we seek to know how eternity lives in us and how we can investigate it by looking into our own depths, why should it not reveal itself at once, if, in the sense of Spiritual Science, it is so intimately bound up with the soul?

Former lectures have shown that this close connection holds good between what we may call the outgoing activity of the soul during its existence from birth to death and everything contained in the idea of reincarnation and in that of karma—the working of causes from earlier lives into the present one, and of the causes we are now creating to take effect in our next life on Earth. We must think of the human soul as enmeshed in this whole web of causes, bound up during its present life with all it has experienced in earlier stages of existence, and with all it has still to experience in future lives. Hence a study of the present life of the soul can lead to an outlook on the past and also on the future. If we do not take eternity as an abstract idea, but consider the human soul perceiving in itself its own being, then we come to something which could lead us to a true perception of the nature of eternity. For—to take a comparison—are we not more likely to discover what a chain is by examining it link by link rather than in its whole length? This latter method would mean tackling directly the study of eternity as such, whereas with the first method we consider the single life of a human soul as just one of the links in a whole chain representing for us the complete life of the human being throughout earthly existence.

Now it is true that anyone who looks for an assurance about eternity generally concerns himself with the present time. The lectures previously given here have shown from manifold aspects how, when a man surveys his life of soul, he repeatedly finds that all that takes its course there converges ultimately towards one central point which he calls his ego. Indeed, when we look around, at the philosophical thinkers of today, we meet with frequent indications that the only way of coming to any conclusion about our own being is by considering the nature of our ego; for it is the ego that holds together, as at a central point, everything experienced in our soul. Does it not seem, therefore, that all we experience in our heart, in our soul, in our thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, might simply arise and then pass away again? What, then, remains? To whose destiny do all those thoughts, feelings and will-impulses belong? It is this ego that proves itself to be the enduring central point. We are quite aware that if the experiences of our soul are not related to this enduring point, we can no longer speak of being an individuality. Yet, whatever fine things may be said about the ego by philosophers and thinkers, especially in quite recent times, their speculations about its nature are all open to one fatal objection. Intimately as we may come to know how this centre of our soul-life remains the same in all our conceptions, feelings and will-impulses, yet there is something able to wipe out this experiencing of the ego in normal consciousness; and this something is a constant reminder of how easy it is to refute all philosophical speculation about the endurance of the ego as normal consciousness knows it. This refutation consists in something we experience repeatedly every twenty-four hours: sleep. It is not only our thoughts, sensations and will-impulses that sleep obliterates, but also this central point, the ego. Hence, we cannot with truth speak of permanence in connection with the ego known to normal consciousness.

Nevertheless—as we have seen in previous lectures—it is possible for anyone to speak of the ego, not by focusing his attention on this central point to which he is at the moment relating his conceptions, moods of soul and will-impulses, but by considering something quite different. Here the question arises: Do we meet the ego among all the things experienced in the external world from morning till night? Anyone who asks this question without prejudice can say to himself: No, in all the experiences that come to me from the external world and make their impress on my conceptions, feelings and will impulses, no ego can be found. From nothing in the outer world can I derive the idea of the ego, yet it is there from the moment I wake until I fall asleep. What then can it be that lives in the flow of our concepts, states of feeling and impulses of will and is always to be found there, until sleep wipes it out? Since it is not to be found outside in the world, it must be sought in our own inner world. But our inner world is so constituted that we obliterate what we have in normal consciousness as our ego. Among the innumerable concepts a man is able to form, not one will really throw light on a fact of this kind, except the idea that the thought of the ego arising in normal consciousness and not received from any external source, is not a reality; for realities do not vanish as the idea of the ego vanishes in sleep. If, then, it is not a reality, what is it? Well, there is only one way of understanding it—by assuming it to be an image, a picture, but one outside the world of our experience and comprehensible only by comparing it to someone confronted by his own reflection.

Now suppose someone had never had an opportunity of seeing his own face; he would then be in the same position regarding his outward appearance as he is to his ego, which normally he always experiences as an image, never discovering its true nature. A man cannot see his own face from outside. Standing before a mirror he sees his face, but it is only the image of his face. If he looked around him what other reflections would he see? Tables, chairs, objects of that kind; but not everything around him would be reflected. Yet if he can say that there is something not in his surroundings, something which is a reflection for him alone—for nothing out there can be reflected in our consciousness in the way the ego is—it is then our own being which must experience the ego as a reflection, although in ordinary consciousness it is never directly perceived. Since it is a fact that nothing can be reflected that is not there, so, if a reflection of the ego is produced, the ego must be there, for the cause of the reflection cannot be anything else. A glance at general facts is enough to show the truth of that. We then have to say: As the ego is given to man only as a reflection, it may vanish in the way our face vanishes when we no longer look into the mirror. An image can disappear whereas reality endures and is still there, whether perceived or not. Anyone who wanted to question the truth of that would be forced to maintain that only what a man perceives exists in reality; but on following up this assertion he would soon be convinced of its absurdity.

Hence we must say: In the idea of the ego there is no reality, but the idea enables us to assume the reality of our ego. But how do we gain certain knowledge of the ego in ordinary life? We can acquire this knowledge by living not only in the present but also, through memory, in the past. If, on looking back to preceding days, weeks, years, even decades, to the point of time in our childhood where memory can take us, we could never link in one chain, as it were, all the experiences of our own inner life; it would indeed be impossible to speak at all of ego. What certain psychologists have said is quite correct: a man loses his ego, or at least consciousness of it, to the extent that the recollection of his experiences up to the time in question is wiped out. In so far as our memory fails, our ego breaks up.

We have frequently pointed out that a man is able, especially by thinking, to increase the backward stretch of his memory. Today, however, we will consider what effect it has when anyone experiences in memory not just a picture, of his ego, but his ego in its true reality. Were we simply to remember our experiences back to early childhood, there would be no great difference between that and the emergence of the idea of the ego at the present moment. Ultimately it is immaterial whether we experience the reflection of the ego while relating to this single point our present conceptions, sensations and impulses of will, or whether we draw them from the past. In both cases the ego with which we connect these experiences is but an image. Were we merely to relate our experiences to our ego, we should never, even in memory, discover its reality, for we arrive at that only by learning to know the ego in its activity, in its creative impulse; and this experience proves to us that this creative element, unaffected by the external world, maintains its activity even during sleep. What then is it that continues to live and weave within us while we are asleep?

Anyone who practises this looking back in memory seriously and without bias will say: In life I have gained knowledge of my experiences in a way that not only enables me to relate them to my ego, for it is undeniable that I have worked inwardly on my experiences, quite apart from anything external, and by so doing I have enriched them. Whoever is alive to the ripening and enhancement of life going on in his own depths knows that this cannot be due to any external reality, but to something at work within himself. Moreover, anyone who surveys life as a whole will realise that if we are to succeed in this enhancement of life, in this inner evolution, sleep is needed. We know quite well how lack of sleep creates havoc in our ideas, and to some extent lays waste our states of soul. We realise our need of sleep as a creative element, if what we experience and perceive in the outer world is really to contribute to the ripening of our inner life. By this means we become certain how it is not the ego we observe during the day that works upon us, but that behind this image stands its reality, always at work in us, even when we are asleep, for lack of sleep proves indeed to have a disturbing effect on the soul's progress. Thus, in the enhancement, the ripening, of the life of soul, we recognise the working of the ego. By acknowledging how disorganised we become if we do not sleep at the appointed time, when the ego should be released from its connection with the bodily nature and enabled to work in freedom—by knowing the lack of sleep to be an obstacle to the ripening of life, we come to be aware of the true ego working within us. We do not then perceive it as an image but as an inner force, ceaselessly at work in our life—whether we are awake or asleep.

There we have the first indication—penetrating straight to the reality—of the force that lives and weaves within us, quite independently of the world outside. On going more deeply into this inner experience, what do we find? Many of the details to be referred to today—including the following important fact—have been mentioned in former lectures. For it is a fact that we make a certain progress in life, that we become increasingly mature. But a remarkable thing comes to light: that all that is best in this maturity—everything that enables us to make the most progress in life and by means of which we can best observe the nature of the ego—is something that we can learn from our faults and shortcomings. When we have failed badly in some matter, or have done something which shows us how imperfect, how incapable we are, our very failure teaches us what we should have done. We have become more mature. By means of such opportunities in life—whether our thinking, feeling, willing or acting is concerned—we develop our wisdom, our maturity. But we should go on to say: Through the wisdom and maturity gathered from life, which become an ever stronger inner force, we learn how—because we never meet the same situation a second time to learn once more from our faults—we must store up this all-important force, for we shall never by able to use it in this life again.

We see therefore that throughout our earthly existence we are continually storing up forces that find expression in our maturity. If a life has been well spent, these forces will have gathered their greatest strength by the time the gate of death is reached. We see that we have something living in us that cannot find an outlet in the external world. We live in our souls by being able to look back on the past: it is memory that holds together the threads of the soul. But out of this memory comes forth something that lives and weaves in us as inner ripeness of life; something appearing in earthly existence as a surplus force. The spiritual scientist need only apply a law that is valid for all ordinary science: the law of the conservation of energy. Any scientist, any physicist, will accept this law for the external world. It is universally recognised that, when a finger is drawn lightly across the surface of a table, even this slight pressure is transformed into warmth. Hence we say that energy can be transformed, can go through a metamorphosis, but can never vanish away. Once we have consciously experienced that in the ripe content of our life we have stored up forces which at first cannot be used but are tested to their utmost when we pass through the gate of death, then it should not be difficult to understand that these forces, brought about by the activity of the ego independently of the body, can never be annihilated. Hence the bodily sheath, which contributes nothing to our ripeness in life, can be cast off and revert to its elements, but these forces remain intact. Because in them we have the active ego as powerful centre, the ego is present also in the ripened forces of life when the human being passes through the gate of death. This may be contested by those disinclined to apply to the spiritual life the laws of ordinary physics; but they should be aware that they run into an inconsistency directly they rise from the truths of ordinary physics to the reality of the spirit. We only need common sense in order to follow what Spiritual Science tells us, that when we go through the gate of death there lie, deep within us, stored up forces acquired in life, forces which, exerted to their utmost, in a world differing from that of the physical body, have then to work with the greatest intensity. After death these forces have to work on in a world which must obviously be presupposed, and there these forces, that is, the inner nature of man, permeated and strengthened by the ego, continue to live when man is free of the body. Thus our ordinary intelligence gives us some idea of life after death—not only showing in general terms that there is such a life, but also describing the forces which play into it.

When, however, Spiritual Science goes on to speak in more detail about life between death and rebirth, this naturally causes laughter among those who believe they are standing on the firm ground of ordinary science. This can well be understood by the spiritual scientist, for he knows that neither their laughter nor what they say depends upon reason and evidence but upon the way they think, which makes it impossible for them to acquiesce in what the spiritual scientist, as a result of his researches, is able to say about life after death. They are bound to find it ridiculous, or altogether fantastic, the figment of a dream. You know how Spiritual Science shows that a man, having passed through the gate of death, meets first with a phenomenon only occasionally arising in life—though this does sometimes happen and has, in fact, been repeatedly observed. This first experience is a quite unemotional looking back over the course of his earthly life. I say expressly that in this survey neither feeling nor emotion has any part; the whole panorama of his last life on earth passes quickly before him as if in pictures. This can be experienced in ordinary life if anyone has a shock, such as being nearly drowned, but without losing consciousness—for if that is lost the phenomenon does not occur. Those, however, who have had some great fright, endangering their life, have experienced this backward survey. That much is conceded even by the natural scientist whose research is confined to the external world. I have already reminded you how the distinguished criminologist and anthropologist Moritz Benedikt, having been nearly drowned, spoke of experiencing this backward survey of his past life. From such a natural scientist the spiritual scientist can learn a good deal, and willingly, although today in this sphere his kindly feeling will not be reciprocated.

Now what occurs when anyone experiences this sudden fear of losing his life? For a moment, though retaining consciousness, he ceases to use the external organs of his body. During the experience he loses the power of seeing with his eyes, of hearing with his ears; he is torn away, as it were, by his inner being from the physical body and from ordinary life, but without loss of consciousness. The fact that he is able to have this backward vista of his present life is proof that, when he thus looks consciously into his own depths, all that arises in his memory must be attributed to his inner being. For he retains his memory when thus torn from his physical body. Anyone experiencing a violent shock of this kind must realise that whatever it is which fills him with memories goes with him all through life but has no connection with his outer sense organs. Hence we must say that man is united with some more delicate soul-vesture that is the bearer of his memories, although at such a moment it is lifted free from his bodily organs. Obviously he cannot be asleep, for then it would be the usual thing in sleep to have this backward survey. So it follows that during a fright of this kind he has within him something not present in sleep.

This confirms what Spiritual Science has to say—that in sleep a man goes out with his soul from the physical body, leaving behind the bearer of memories, the vesture upon which he is working throughout his life, so that his memory-pictures can be preserved. In sleep he is outside the physical body, and also that external vesture of the soul, called in Spiritual Science the etheric body, which in ordinary sleep remains bound to the physical body. At the moment of death, however, this etheric body, which is also the activator of life, leaves the physical body, and only this outer physical shell of the human being remains. Death indeed comes because the etheric body, though present in ordinary sleep, is no longer there.

Hence, for a short time after death, the same phenomenon occurs as during a terrifying shock in ordinary life—a backward survey in memory.

Now, as the facts show, this survey experience is bound up with something so closely connected to the physical body that not even sleep can break the link. After death a man takes with him something that belongs not to his innermost soul but, in a certain sense, to his physical body. Spiritual Science shows that within a relatively short time—a few days only—after the discarding of the physical body, the human being becomes free of the etheric body and is then constituted in the main as he is during sleep. But Spiritual Science goes on to show how the inner soul-being is then in a situation different from its situation during life, when every morning a man has to return to his physical body and etheric body. He is closely bound to his physical body, to everything that enfolds him, and this does not specially belong to what we recognise as the real content of his life of soul.

If we are clear that during the whole of a man's waking life he is wearing out his physical body and that life in the daytime has fundamentally a destructive effect—as indeed we realise when we get tired—it will be evident that since in the morning we are able to go on consciously with our work, the destruction can be made good during the night. So, whereas in our waking state we are working all the time destructively on our bodily organism, at night, on the contrary, we are engaged in repairing the damage by replenishing our bodily vigour. We are then carrying out an activity beyond the range of consciousness. Directly we revert to any degree of consciousness, there arise those strange dream pictures that are so closely related to life in the body. We need remember only how bodily ailments may sometimes find expression in these pictures, showing where consciousness is involved. Since after death the physical body disappears, no effects of exhaustion have to be made good. Hence the forces expended during sleep on the physical body withdraw again into the soul after death, enabling it, free of the physical body, to use them for itself; and between death and a new birth they become the soul's consciousness. In proportion as the soul is freed from the physical and etheric bodies, with everything belonging to them, so does another consciousness arise, one that is not engaged in work on the physical body and for that reason unable to be aware of itself.

All this will seem to be nothing but a set of assertions. However, apart from the fact that reference can be made to the methods given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, life itself can draw attention to those things. For how does a man's life take its course in face of death? If we follow up the way in which thoughts and memories arise in us, what has been said becomes evident to the soul. We can precisely and repeatedly recall our past experiences as memory-images, but we remember very little of all we have gone through in the way of feelings and sensations, and in the exertion of our will. Who would deny that, when some painful experience comes back to him in memory, he recalls the pain in his thought but without feeling over again the pain itself? Many other things there are, too, experienced in our heart and soul, which are not felt again. But they live on withal us in a different form, to the point of making themselves felt in our whole disposition, so that afterwards this is made up of everything we have experienced in pain and sorrow, or in times of joy and pleasure. Who can fail to realise, on looking with inquiring sympathy at someone of an obviously despondent, melancholic disposition, that the experiences he has gone through in heart and soul have been drawn down deep within him, there to remain, though perceptible to an observer in this particularly melancholy guise? It is the same with the sanguine man and his joyful response to life. It can be said that our experiences are divided between those we can always recall and those that remain below, working on us and ultimately appearing in the very life of our body. If we look thoroughly at this, we become convinced that our thoughts and concepts are so weak, so lacking in colour and life, because the emotional shading, the particular mood of soul pervading the thought as it was experienced at the time, has been suppressed and is working below the level of consciousness, leaving thought empty of feeling.

When the whole course of life is observed impartially, however, this relationship between feeling and will on the one hand, and thought on the other, can be seen to change. Thus at a certain time of life a man will repress the feelings and impulses connected with his thoughts, whereas at another time he will keep them more together. Youth is the period when we are most apt to yield over our joys, sorrows and impulses of will to our subconscious. It is then that we are most easily inclined to send down to the subconscious the experiences of heart and soul that will eventually work into our whole disposition—even into our bodily condition. But as the body becomes more firmly knit, the elements of our consciousness come to be less and less like what they were, with the result that we are less and less able to work on the subconscious, and our feelings and will impulses come by degrees to remain bound up with our thoughts. When with genuine self-knowledge a man observes life, he feels, as he grows older, how in youth a person sends down most of his moods of feeling, so that they live on in the make-up of his body. But the more rigid and dried-up a man becomes later on, the more do these experiences and the impulses of will not exhausted in action, remain united with his thoughts. Thus we see how, in this respect, the inner life is enriched as we approach death. We see how the bodily organism gradually dries up and becomes less capable of absorbing the soul's experiences, whereas, if we continue to learn from life as though from a school, the soul will become more alive, more mature. For this reason all that in youth is connected with ideals, ideas, even with mere concepts, flashes through our unconscious being, lays hold of our blood, our nervous system, and settles there, in order later to emerge as our capability for living—or the reverse. Later on we feel that our blood will no longer be, is no longer in harmony with our enthusiasm for ideals. Because of our wrong methods of education this feeling is now to some extent repressed, but in future it will belong increasingly to the best things and blessings of life. For when we are approaching the winter of life, the feelings and impulses that in earlier years we gave over to our bodily organism will add to our strength of soul, no longer being able to pass down into the body on account of the resistance they meet with there.

Bearing this in mind, we shall say: If we look into our own inner being we find how, on approaching the gate of death, it becomes ever richer. The contention that a man weakens with age is not valid; it originates in materialistic habits of thought and prejudices. In proportion to the decline of the body, the inner life of the soul gains vigour, becoming inwardly more childlike; we see a kind of approach towards those forces which are at their highest tension when we are nearing the gate of death. This is particularly true of people who are enabled, through the training indicated in the book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds to have some perceptive experience independently of their bodily organs. It is also described there, how, by means of meditation and concentration, we can so school ourselves that experience and knowledge of the spiritual world can become absolute reality for our souls. At the same time the soul knows with certainty that this experience is acquired with no help from eye or ear, or from any bodily organ, for it is then outside the body. In a case of this kind, feeling and will-impulses must permeate livingly a person's meditation and concentration: thought alone is not enough. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds there is an exact account of how the person must not lose touch with his feelings and perceptions—with everything, indeed, that in youth withdraws into the depths of the soul. He has to meditate and concentrate with his mind, but his thoughts must be fired by his heart and soul, and infused with life by those impulses of will that are then not transformed into action but into thinking.

When a human being has developed the genuine clairvoyance appropriate for our times, he wins through to what otherwise would be experienced only after passing through the gate of death. All such clairvoyance, however, is experienced by him in such a way that he is aware of the following distinction: ‘I can certainly experience’, he says to himself, ‘a spiritual world, a world where men live between death and rebirth, for I live with them there. But all my knowledge of it I gain by simply perceiving it. The difference between me and these souls is that I perceive all this without being able to work and create in it.’ The soul is aware of this distinction, but it derives only from being closely linked to the physical body, for directly the clairvoyant consciousness is freed from it and from the etheric body, there follows a release of those forces which, while they are held in tension by the physical body, permit the seer to gain perceptive knowledge of the spiritual world beyond the gate of death. It is these forces which are pre-eminent in a man during the time between his death and rebirth. What the clairvoyant experiences is like the force of a drawn bow. He can use it only for perception, but directly the tension is released the bow springs at once into movement. So it is for the clairvoyant when he goes over from life in the physical body to life in the world after death. And he can say to himself: ‘I am able only to perceive the spiritual world, only to see what is going on there. But after death, the body having fallen away, forces are set free, just as they are with a bow when the arrow is shot off.’ These forces are available in a man's soul for other activities after his death until he is reborn. This is the period when he can look on his past earthly existence, and can then work upon his next incarnation, when he will wake to a new life on Earth. It is not only by looking at the matter in this light that we can furnish evidence for it. We can obtain satisfying evidence—though not a mathematical proof—by turning to nature. In the growth of a plant we see how leaf after leaf develops until the blossoms unfold: how these blossoms are fructified and seed develops from the fruit. Then the plant withers away. But does its force then come to an end? No, on the contrary: at this very time the forces which call the whole plant back to a new cycle of life are at their strongest. They are now inwardly concentrated at one point, as it were, and they appear again in a new form when the seed is sown in the earth. We then watch the whole plant being renewed; the beginning and the end of its life are thus united. In like manner the highly concentrated forces in ourselves when we pass through death are united with those seen at the outset of life on Earth. We see how the human being as an infant sleeps through a sort of twilight condition into life. This condition gives free play for work on the body, and this is carried out in such a way that the bodily organs harmonise with the life of the soul. It would be a sad pity if anyone wanted to maintain that the ego is not active until self-consciousness begins. No, its activity begins long before that, and afterwards the human being has only to turn its forces to the building up of consciousness and memory. Before this the forces of the ego are already working on moulding the bodily organs so that the still soft and pliable body shall be skilfully made ready to harbour the coming consciousness. Hence we see how the ego is engaged in its greatest work of art at the outset of a person's life, and this shows that he is already in possession of active forces when his memory begins to develop. if we observe the human being quite impartially, we see how he comes to relate himself to the world in his own individual way, and how his undefined features and faculties gradually take form. Finally we see how the force which had previously passed through the gate of death in a concentrated form, in readiness for building up a new body, is now actually at work on it, so that the human being can enter his new body bearing with him the fruits of his former life. In this way the ego proceeds from one earthly life to the next. By actively enhancing the life of a soul, it proves to be endowed with those potent forces which—after continuing to increase until death—maintain their activity during the time between death and rebirth in such a way that the ego can imprint them on another earthly incarnation.

Hence we see how we ourselves are responsible for the causes which take effect in our next life, since this life is the continuation of the one before; and we see how each link in the chain joins on to the next. We have only to compare this with Buddhism to see how modern Spiritual Science, speaking from an evolutionary standpoint based throughout on clairvoyance, can accept the good thought in Buddhism while rejecting the other. Buddhism is the last fruit of a primeval culture dating from the times when primitive clairvoyance was a natural gift, directly experienced, and when therefore the idea of repeated earthly lives held good. At the same time Buddhism maintains that everything working over from a man's former life, and gathered together as the ego of his present life, is merely a semblance. Fundamentally, Buddhism knows nothing of the true ego, but only of the ego we have spoken of as an image. Hence it says that our ego passes away like our body, like our sheaths, and our former experiences. All that the Buddhist recognises as playing over from the preceding life into the present one, are deeds—Karma. According to Buddhism, these deeds combine into a pattern which, in each new life, evokes the semblance of an ego, so that no real ego, but only a man's Karma works on from one life into the next. Hence the Buddhist says: the ego is mere semblance, Maya, like everything else, and I must endeavour to overcome it. The deeds of my former life, now forming a pattern as though round a central point, seem to be an ego, but that is an illusion. Therefore I have to wipe out all that Karma has thus brought into my life.

Spiritual Science says the opposite: that the ego is the concentrating deed of Karma. Whereas all other deeds are temporal and will be compensated in time, this karmic deed, that makes a man conscious of his ego, is not temporal. With ego-consciousness therefore, something enters in that we can describe only by saying—as we have done today—that its existence is rising continually to a higher level; and that when we re-enter earthly life we form ourselves again round the ego. The Buddhist, on the other hand, obliterates the ego and recognises nothing but Karma, which, working on from one life to the next, creates a fresh illusion of an ego. Adherents of modern Spiritual Science, however, for whom Karma and ego do not coincide, say: ‘My ego passes on from its present stage on Earth, with the enhancement thereby gained, to re-appear later in a further incarnation, when it will unite itself with the deeds then performed. When as an ego I have done something, it remains with this central point, and goes on with all my deeds from incarnation to incarnation.’

That is the radical difference between Spiritual Science and Buddhism. Although they both speak in a similar way of Reincarnation and Karma, it is the ego itself that progresses from one life to another and shapes our inner life of soul. When we contemplate this progress, we find it leading us back in each existence to some point in early childhood before which we recall nothing, relying on what is told us by parents and others. Then, at a certain point of time, memory awakes, but we cannot say that the forces of memory were not previously in us; they were definitely there, at work on our inner life. Evolution itself depends upon our memory arising at a certain point in our early life. Moreover, Spiritual Science shows that, just as memory awakes at a certain time in childhood, so it is possible for a man, by raising his consciousness to ever higher levels, to remember not only his immediate past but also his previous lives on earth. This is a fact of evolution which is at present evident only to clairvoyant consciousness. It is in full agreement, however, with what can be learned by other means. When a justifiable objection to reincarnation is said to be that people cannot recall their previous lives the answer is: Just as our ordinary memory is a reality, although we cannot recall our past experiences from the time before that faculty developed, so a memory that can look back to earlier lives must also be first developed. In this way memory becomes an ideal of evolution, and we have to admit: As a child I had to develop a memory for my present life: I must now go on to develop memory for previous earthly lives. Thus we arrive at the comforting fact—though narrow-minded people will certainly not be in sympathy with it—that many ideals lie ahead still for mankind, besides those derived from ordinary consciousness; and these others include a striving for the power to recall past earthly lives. But I repeat that this is not a matter on which philistine souls can be in accord with Spiritual Science. Only recently I was reading a statement by a man held in great esteem today, in which he advanced the opinion that it would never be possible for human reason to solve all the riddles of the universe—nor would this be desirable, for if all the riddles were solved there would be nothing left for us to do on Earth. Evidently he cannot conceive of evolution progressing beyond its present stage, bringing men new faculties for new tasks, nor can he imagine that what is for people's ‘good’ changes with the enhancement of their consciousness.

One of the blessings flowing from Spiritual Science is that it opens out a perspective which does not lead off into vagueness. We have no occasion to complain of looking ahead into empty time. All eternity lies before us. We can see how each link of the whole chain joins on to the next link and we can say to ourselves: You bear in you now the forces acquired in this present life, and with them you are building a future existence when there will be opportunity for you to develop these forces further. Thus, little by little, we experience how real the thought of eternity becomes, how it spreads out before the soul as a vast, everlasting perspective. One of our gains from Spiritual Science is that we no longer ask the abstract question: What is eternity?—nor do we receive a merely abstract answer, for by truly studying human life we see how eternity arises, how each link in the whole is formed, and all abstract considerations are thus driven from the field. The reality then shows—as reality always must—how everything is built up out of single parts, member by member. Thus Spiritual Science points to the nature of man's soul as throwing light upon the nature of eternity and on the way these two are connected.

If now we turn to the second objection, to which perhaps even a personality such as Lessing gave credence, someone might say : ‘On these lines my destiny becomes clear to me, but if I am to suppose that I prepared it for myself through my Karma, this makes it even more painful, for then I would have to blame my shortcomings on myself.’ In the light of Spiritual Science, however, this idea can be transformed. Before our last birth we chose to have the misfortune that now befalls us: by seeking it, and especially by overcoming it, we acquire full capability of which, previously, we could not realise our need. In our disembodied state we became convinced of our need, and only by steering our way to this misfortune do we fit ourselves for rising to a higher level. Thus, through karmic law, the school of life proves to be the bringer of good fortune; and misfortune is seen to add strength to the ideal of eternity.

There is no time now to show how our earthly bodies are continually changing their original form; and how, when the Earth comes to an end, it will be succeeded by another kind of existence. Hence our present lives on Earth do not cover the whole of human existence; they too have had a beginning. Whatever a human being has acquired during repeated lives on Earth will avail him for other forms of existence. In studying the earthly it is enough to consider the essence of the human soul. That is how we can learn that eternity does not begin only after death, for it can be discerned already in the nature of the embodied soul.

Spiritual Science, therefore, raises from the past to a new and higher level something that was foreseen to a certain extent and even investigated by searchers after the spirit in days gone by. Hegel was right in saying, that eternity could not begin for the soul only at death, but must be inherent there during its earthly existence. Here is something on which Spiritual Science will throw more and more light, with a clarity so permeated by feelings and impulses of will that it becomes the very elixir of life—something that has always been thought of as an essential part of the being, the nature, of the human soul. So I can now quote an old saying which, though not summing-up the content of this lecture, is in harmony with its character. It was uttered in the third century after Christ by the great mystic and philosopher, Plotinus, who meditated deeply upon the nature of time and eternity—upon everything, in fact, that forms the basis of what we have been considering today:

Eternity is not bound up with the soul and spirit of man's essential being as a merely fortuitous characteristic, but is a necessity for the nature of the human soul. Neither is Eternity a fortuitous characteristic of the spirit.

Eternity belongs to the spirit, is in the spirit, comes forth from the spirit.

Eternity lives through the spirit.

[ 1 ] The activities of the several human organisms in relation to the organism as a whole are strikingly expressed in the formation of the blood and nerves. Where the foodstuffs absorbed into the body become progressively transformed in the process of blood-formation, this whole process stands under the influence of the ego-organization. From the processes that take place in the tongue and palate, accompanied by conscious sensation, down to the unconscious and subconscious processes in the workings of pepsin, pancreatic juice, bile, etc., the ego-organization is at work. Then the working of the ego-organization withdraws, and in the further transformation of foodstuffs into the substance of blood, the astral body is predominantly active. This continues to the point where, in the breathing process, the blood meets the air, the oxygen. At this point the etheric body carries out its main activity. In the carbonic acid that is on the point of being breathed out but has not yet left the body, we have a substance which is in the main only living—that is to say, it is neither sentient, nor dead. (Everything is alive that carries in it the activity of the etheric body.) The main quantity of this living carbonic acid leaves the organism; a small part continues to work into the processes that have their centre in the head organization. This portion shows a strong tendency to pass into the lifeless inorganic nature, but it does not become entirely lifeless.

The nervous system shows an opposite phenomenon. In the sympathetic nervous system which permeates the organs of digestion, the etheric body is paramount. The nerve organs with which we are here concerned are primarily living organs. The astral and ego-organizations do not organize them from within but from without. For this reason the influence of the astral and ego-organizations working in these nerve-organs is powerful. Passions and emotions have a deep and lasting effect upon the sympathetic nervous system. Sorrow and anxiety will gradually destroy it.

[ 2 ] The spinal nervous system, with its many ramifications, is the one in which the astral organization primarily intervenes. Hence it is the bearer of everything which is psychological in man, namely the reflex processes, but not of that which takes place in the ego, in the self-conscious spirit.

[ 3 ] It is the actual cranial nerves which underlie the ego organization. In these, the activities of the etheric and astral organization withdraw.

[ 4 ] We see three distinct regions arising in the organism as a whole. In a lower region, nerves permeated from within mainly by the action of the etheric organism work with a blood substance that is predominantly subject to the activity of the ego-organization. In this region, during the embryonic and post-embryonic period of development, we have the starting-point for all organ-formations connected with the giving of inner life to man's organism. In the formation of the embryo, this region, being weak as yet, is supplied with formative and life-giving influences by the surrounding maternal organism. Then there is a middle region, where nerves, influenced by the astral organization, are working with blood-processes which are likewise dependent on this astral organization and, in their upper parts, on the etheric. Here, in the periods of formation of man, lies the starting point for the formation of those organs which are instrumental in the processes of outer and inner movement, this applies not only to the muscles for example, but all organs which are causes of mobility, whether or not they be muscles in the proper sense. Finally there is an upper region where nerves, subject to the inner organizing activity of the ego, work with blood-processes that have a strong tendency to pass into the lifeless, mineral realm. Here lies the starting point, during man's formative epoch, for the formation of the bones and all else that serves the human body as organs of support.

[ 5 ] We shall only understand the brain of man if we see in it a bone-forming tendency interrupted in its very first beginning. And we shall only understand the bone formation when we recognize in it the working of the same impulses as in the brain; in the bone formation, the brain-impulse is carried to its final conclusion and permeated from without by the impulses of the middle organism, where astrally determined nerve-organs are working together with blood-substance etherically determined. In the bone-ash which remains with its particular configuration when the bones are subjected to combustion, we see the results of the uppermost region of the human organization. While in the cartilaginous organic residue which remains when the bones are treated with dilute hydrochloric acid, we have the result of the impulses of the middle region.

[ 6 ] The skeleton is the physical image of the ego-organization. In the bone creating process the human organic substance, as it tends toward the lifeless mineral, is entirely subject to the ego-organization. In the brain, the ego is active as a spiritual being. The capacity of the ego to create form in the physical substance is here overwhelmed entirely by the organizing activity of the etheric, even by the forces proper to the physical. The brain is based only minimally on the ego's organizing power, which here becomes submerged in the processes of life and in the workings of the physical. Yet this is the very reason why the brain is the bearer of the spiritual work of the ego. For, inasmuch as the organic and physical activities in the brain do not involve the ego-organization, the latter is able to devote itself freely to its own activities. In the bony system of the skeleton, perfect though it is as a physical picture of the ego-organization, the latter exhausts itself in the act of forming and organizing the physical, and as spiritual activity, there is nothing left. Therefore the processes in the bones are the most unconscious

[ 7 ] So long as it is in the organism, the carbonic acid which is pushed out in breathing is still a living substance; it is taken hold of and driven outward by the astral activity that has its seat in the middle or spinal region of the nervous system. The portion of carbonic acid which the metabolism carries up into the head is there combined with calcium, and thus develops a tendency to come into the sphere of action of the ego-organization. Through this, calcium carbonate is driven under the influence of the head nerves, motivated inwardly by the ego-organization, toward bone-formation.

[ 8 ] The substances myosin and myogen produced out of the foodstuffs, tend to become deposited in the blood; they are substances astrally conditioned to begin with, and they stand in reciprocal interaction with the sympathetic, which is organized from within by the etheric body. These two proteins are, however, also taken hold of to some extent by the activity of the middle nervous system which is under the influence of the astral body. They thus come into relationship with the breakdown products of albumen, with fats, sugar, and other substances similar to sugar. This enables them, under the influence of the middle nervous system, to find their way into the process of muscle-formation.