The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Let us start from the fact that the human being is a many-part, a multi-part being, that is, from a fact that is quite familiar to us. We want to assume that within the anthroposophical movement there is always an effort to understand how the human being is composed of members, each of which requires a certain understanding, so that the understanding of the whole human being is only possible if one is able to unite the understanding that one has brought to the individual members into a whole. If we disregard everything else for the moment, we know that this human being is divided into the physical body, the etheric body or formative forces, the astral body and that which we call the I. Now this is not — or at least should not be — a mere classification of the human being and his essence, but what is listed as the four members of the human being actually comes from very different worlds and can only be understood from the inner conditions of these worlds. And only when one has understood how the physical body, the etheric body, the body of formative forces, the astral body and the I are formed out of their corresponding worlds, then one is able to gain an understanding of the entire human being from the resonance of the understanding of these individual human limbs. The human being's physical body must be understood from the standpoint of the physical world, but the etheric body or formative forces must be understood from the standpoint of the etheric world, and so on. If we are not extremely precise in this area, if we do not accept that things are exactly as I have just indicated, then we cannot come to an understanding of the human being as a whole.

Let us turn our attention away from the physical body of the human being. We can do this because all of today's education and science is based on understanding the physical body of the human being. But today there is no similar endeavor to understand the etheric body or the body of formative forces. At most, it is imagined that this etheric body or body of formative forces perhaps consists of a finer substance than the dense physical body and that this finer etheric substance is mixed with the physical body. But things are not like that; the situation is essentially different. Someone who has grasped everything that can be grasped from the standpoint of physical science in order to form an idea about the workings of the physical body could completely ignorant about the etheric or formative forces, because when we look at the human being, it is impossible to find the laws of the etheric or formative forces near the earth. We cannot look for the laws of the etheric or formative body in the vicinity of the earth itself. Just as we say, when a stone falls in a vertical direction: gravity is at work, the stone moves in the direction of the center of the earth - just as we look for the causes of the stone's fall in the vicinity of the earth or in the earth look for the causes of the stone's fall, we proceed correctly when we remain close to the earth, we proceed wrongly when we ask about the causes of the event in the etheric or formative forces. Rather, we must look for that which is at work in our etheric or formative body not on earth at all, but in the vastness of the universe, in a sphere that is, an indeterminate distance away from us. There the forces are at work from all sides. Just as physical forces work out from the center of the earth, so the forces from all sides work in and condition our etheric body.

Recall what I told you about the transition of a person from his pre-earthly existence to his earthly existence. He comes down and has already sent the laws for his physical body to earth. Then, I said, he collects his etheric body from the vastness of the cosmic ether. So there he is, before he moves into what he has sent ahead: his physical body, I, astral body and etheric body. But the ether body is not formed by the earth in terms of its laws, but, as we say, representatively: from the four quarters of the world; but this only means that it is drawn together from all sides. So the laws are effective from all sides of the world periphery, the surrounding area, when the human ether body is formed.

What we are now going to discuss may come as something of a shock to the modern reader, and will be extremely surprising. You will agree with me when I say that if we light a flame, however strong, the intensity of the light will mean less and less to us the further we move away from the source of the light. Eventually, at a certain distance, where this light source is hardly taken into account, where it has become so weak that we can no longer read; where, if there is a light somewhere in the distance, we can say for all practical purposes that there is no light. Everyone will admit that. Likewise, today's science admits that the force of gravity decreases with the square of the distance, becoming weaker and weaker the further you get into the surrounding area. But what people today do not consider at all is the following. We on earth express in our words the laws that apply on earth. The law that we express as earthlings also decreases, becomes weaker and weaker and is finally practically no longer there for a certain distance. No matter how cleverly you formulate natural laws for earthly conditions, no matter how cleverly you formulate historical sentences for what happens on earth, these laws, the laws of nature and historical laws, are no longer valid in a certain radius, just as the strength of gravity or the intensity of light has no further significance. Therefore, it is naive if someone were to claim that the same natural laws apply to a star that is so many light-years away as they do to us. For the validity of our natural laws exists only for earthly conditions and ceases when we venture out into space. But the laws of the ether come from the vastness of space. If we expect the same laws from them as the natural laws of the earth are, then we will never understand the etheric existence. Even as we speak of the etheric body of man, we must speak of something that follows quite different laws from the natural laws of the earth.

There lies that which is astonishing and shocking for today's humanity, but which must be gradually grasped. Otherwise, today's humanity will simply spin itself into earthly conditions and not get beyond these earthly conditions with its soul condition. I will now tell you this in a form in which one can say it – or at least should be able to say it – after having discussed anthroposophical truths within a circle for some time. For if one were to say what is about to be said today in front of an otherwise different circle, people would think one was not quite of sound mind. But that is not a criticism at all. Because as long as one is of sound mind, one retains the spiritual science. So basically, because the genius of language works quite correctly, one must be able to take it seriously with such things. At most, one should reproach someone who presents spiritual science for not being of sound mind. That is not a reproach at all! He is not of sound mind. One must only be with spirit with full consciousness, that is what matters. But if one says that one only has a justified consciousness when one is of sound mind, then one must renounce spiritual science.

People everywhere are declaiming: There are certain tremendously simple laws that one comes upon last. — People call them axioms or something, it does not depend on the names. I will call such axioms. The first axiom is: The whole is always greater than one of its parts. That is a matter of course, people say, and whoever sins against such axioms is not quite of sound mind, because the whole is greater than one of its parts. Or: The straight line is the shortest path between two points. For earthly conditions and for the world of the senses, this applies to the fullest extent. If we go to the most extreme abstractions, we come to such sentences: the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, and: the straight line is the shortest way between two points.

But if you sail into the ether, then you really have to break through from the sensory world into another world, where precisely the most trivial laws of the sensory world no longer apply. As soon as you enter the etheric world, the law no longer applies that the whole is greater than one of its parts. Because in the etheric world, for example, it is like this for a human being: If you look at what is etherically behind the part of the whole human being, you look at the liver, lungs and search for their etheric correlates, then each individual part of the human being is considerably greater than the whole human being on earth. And if you ever believed that a person is greater than his liver, you would never be able to penetrate into the spiritual. For in the spiritual, a whole is created by the larger parts working together to form a smaller one, by the whole being created precisely through the interaction of the larger parts.

This may become even clearer to you for the other example, that a straight line is the shortest way between two points. Yes, that applies in the physical world. If you have one point here and a second point there, the straight line is the shortest. But if you enter the ether world, then every path that is taken is easy, every crooked one, every winding one, and if you want to take the straight path, it will get in the way. It forks at every point, it is just the longest way to get from one point to another. Therefore, in relation to the ether world, such a sentence: the straight line is the shortest way between two points - a sentence that spins you into the physical, that makes you not get out of the crust in which you are locked at all. As long as one does not take seriously the fact that even in the world of ether everything is different and even opposite to that in the physical world, one does not come to an understanding of the spiritual world.

People would like to know the members of the human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, I. But now they would like to have it so that they apply the same kind of thinking to the etheric body that they have applied to the physical body. But that is precisely what cannot be done, because to the same extent that one moves away from the physical world - but this is identical with the earthly world - the validity of natural laws diminishes, and quite different laws take their place. I am merely pointing out to you all how, when one comes to this second link in human nature, the necessity arises to engage in a completely different way of thinking.

But as soon as you enter this other thinking, you have to take this other thinking very seriously. You can go around in the physical world as much as you like and find all kinds of things, not atoms, but you can find cells and the like. But it would never occur to anyone to think that they would find thoughts under a microscope or in a telescope. They must be found in some other way. You can examine the brain under the microscope until the end of time, but you will not find thoughts in it, they do not go into the microscope. But that is precisely the proof that you only find the physical world in the microscope and in general in the whole view, because the ether world consists of nothing but thoughts. The etheric world is the activity of thoughts as forces. And as soon as one penetrates from the physical body to the etheric body in the case of man, this etheric body consists of thoughts throughout, but thoughts work as forces. We are completely permeated by thoughts, interwoven with thoughts everywhere, but thoughts work as forces.

This now has a very important consequence for the view of the human being. Because now imagine you are going to sleep. There in bed lies the physical body and the etheric body. The etheric body is full of thoughts. It is a kind of excerpt, a kind of extract from the ether of the world, and the ether of the world is an active world of thought. And therefore it is true that the etheric body of a person is something extraordinarily clever, if I may express it that way, full of thoughts full of light and without contradictions. And when a person leaves his physical body and etheric body with his I and his astral body, he actually leaves a very clever entity. The only thing that is fatal is that when a person sleeps, he is not aware of how clever he is, while he remains in bed. The fact that we are not so clever during the day is because during the day we and our astral body submerge into the very clever etheric body and constantly dull it. The fact that we are imperfect as human beings stems from our ego and our astral body. Our astral body and our ego are incapable of rising to the inner solidity, clarity and worldliness of the etheric body. If only we could make the etheric body speak and then write down in shorthand, just as faithfully or unfaithfully, what it has to say all night about the secrets of the universe, then it would be something tremendously clever, even more clever than what is written here.

So, world thoughts as forces work in this ethereal body of man, and we are only ever able to use something - it is always very little - of what is spread out in our ethereal body, in proportion to what we have in our astral body.

And yet, what are we as physical and etheric bodies when we remain in bed when we sleep and have withdrawn our ego and our astral body? We are then in bed a being of physical body and etheric body, and thus we carry within us only the laws of the plant kingdom. And the same thing that we can observe in ourselves, when we look back, as it were, and see the wisdom of the whole world radiating from our sleeping etheric body, in what we could observe in a backward glance in a human being, we basically have before us on a small scale everything that we also have before us when we look at the earth, in that it exists as a physical sphere, but out of itself lets the plant world sprout and has sprouted, and this plant world is ethereally stimulated on all sides by the world thoughts that are weaving in the world ether. This is the infinitely sublime image of the cosmos; of the cosmos that lies before us when we are only able to look at everything that springs from every single plant on our earth as if, I would like to say, from spiritual flames of fire, drawing lines and waves into the farthest reaches of space. So that we actually have before us the globe, the forces that bring vegetation out of the earth, sprouting from the farthest point in space and repeating this earth formation in every single sleeping human being.

When we visualize this image, we have to exclude everything that is in our ego and in our astral body, and we have to think of the image of animals with their astral body instead of the cosmic image. That which is in our astral body does not belong to that which is earthly on the one hand or etheric on the other, but rather belongs to a completely different world altogether. However, we do not seek this world in the same way that we seek the ether. If one describes it pictorially, and these things can only be described pictorially, because otherwise one comes into earthly ideas, one would have to say: How does one get an idea of the world ether? One comes to an idea of the world ether when one simply follows that which is here on earth outwards, when one swings further and further outwards - one must do this spiritually, of course. Here on earth, the effect of the ether is actually hardly noticeable, because it is weakest there. Just as the earthly effects of illumination, for example, are weakest far out in space, so the effect of the cosmic ether is weakest in the vicinity of the earth. As soon as we go out into the far reaches of the world, the actual nature of the etheric effect becomes more and more apparent. When we go out into the wide world, we begin to see how the physical of the earth is woven into the etheric according to very different laws than those found on the earth. But if one could go all the way out to the boundaries where the ether sprays in its effects from the outside, one would experience something curious. The superficial physical thinkers say: If you move out from the earth in a radial manner into the world, then you can go away into infinity. At most, those who know a little newer geometry will say: If you go out into infinity, you will come back on the other side, it will just take a little while. But that is what they think; in reality it is not so. In reality, you really do come to an end, even if the path can be called infinite by earthly standards, superficially speaking. The world has a transition from earthly lawfulness to cosmic lawfulness, which radiates in. The world is a closed whole, and if you come to the end - you only have to imagine it figuratively - then you will encounter the inside of a spherical surface everywhere. The astral then radiates inwards. The astral begins to work in from the outside by taking possession of the etheric.

But you still do not come to something that is the I. If you follow the world, you first come to nature, to physical nature, to earthly nature, from there to the etheric, and at the end of the etheric to the astral. But you do not yet enter the world to which the human ego belongs. It is initially not present at all in this area of the cosmos, which can be found even for the astral senses, but the ego still belongs to a further world, which in turn has its own laws. So when speaking of the human being, one must be clear about the fact that the different members belong to completely different worlds. We are not dealing with a mere classification, but with the presentation of the fact that the human beingness is a confluence of the beingnesses of radically different worlds. And now, at the moment when you want to think at all about the differentiation between waking and sleeping, you must also think about this differentiation of the different worlds. Because what we actually have in our I and in our astral body does not belong to the same world as the two members of human nature that lie in bed. What we left in bed, we have conveyed to the mineral and plant world for the time of sleep. What we carry with us as I and astral body, we have taken out of the plant and mineral world, we have raised it up into another world, which is not the plant and not the mineral world.

And what happens now while we sleep? While we sleep, exactly the same thing happens in what lies in bed as goes on outside in the world in the mineral and plant kingdoms, as long as the plants are not eaten by animals. For then the astral world of the animal world comes into play. But if we disregard humans and animals and consider only the earth with the plants, we have the world to which we surrender our physical and etheric bodies during sleep, and everything that happens in the mineral and plant kingdoms then also happens in our physical and etheric bodies.

Let us assume that we could not sleep. I have said before that people sometimes claim that they cannot sleep, but they do sleep, even if they interrupt their sleep and often wake up. Because the time that some people claim they have not slept is so great that they would have been dead long ago if it were true. So sleeping is necessary for the entire being of a person. But if we did not sleep – let us assume that – then we would continually work in our physical and etheric bodies with our astral body and our ego. But the physical body and etheric body cannot stand that at all. The physical body follows the laws of the earth. The astral body does not belong to the earth at all, it continually works on the physical body in opposition to the laws of the earth. The physical body would become quite unsuitable if a person could not sleep, because it is constantly being worked on by extraterrestrial laws. Just as if someone were to continually work a field of the mineral kingdom with hoes and spades and thereby pulverize it completely, so our astral body begins to work on the physical body. The physical body must again assert the earthly laws within itself so that it is strengthened in a certain way. And the etheric body is dulled by the astral body. I do not mean it is so bad, there are also clever people, one need not always reproach people for being clever; but in fact, seen cosmically, it has this effect. Then the etheric body must once again be exposed to the cosmos, so that it gets rid of this dulling influence for a while. And so the human being must become mineral and vegetable cosmos, so that that which is in him can flourish, so that a certain state is established when we wake up. I am now talking about normal life. In the case of abnormal phenomena, the human being naturally sleeps and wakes as well.

What is the condition that is brought about when we wake up? The condition that is brought about is that our soul, namely the astral body and the ego, cannot initially enter the physical body and etheric body completely. They can never enter completely. Oh, how clever we would be if we could enter our etheric body completely. But that would also exhaust us, we could not bear it. It is really true, this astral body is basically terribly selfish. The etheric body, which is actually identical in nature to the cosmos, is not selfish. It is also not envious, it has no need of it. But the astral body is subconsciously terribly envious of the etheric body, which is so wise, which contains the thoughts of the whole world in itself, - is terribly envious. And now it is already ensured that the senses remain independent, the I and the astral body remain independent during the day. Then gradually the I and the astral body are increasingly able to sink deeper into the physical body and the etheric body. But this only makes them imbued with the longing to go out again. They then want to sleep, and so the I and the astral body become tired. For the human being is only able to prove himself as an independent being because he is not absorbed by the physical and etheric bodies during waking. If the human being were absorbed by the ego and the astral body, then we would know nothing of ourselves and of the world, but we would find ourselves in the interior of our physical organism, which would go up to the skin, would follow the processes in our physical physical organism, would only know something about our inner being, and then we would still know that magnificent thoughts imbued with wisdom are sprayed into our inner being, but we would not go beyond these thoughts either. We would know nothing at all about any other human being, about animals on earth, about other beings on earth, if we were completely absorbed in our physical and etheric bodies. If we did not retain our independence, so that we did not enter completely into our physical body and etheric body, we could never establish relationships with the world, we could only know something of our physical body and our own etheric body.

People reflect on this: how is it that one says the table is outside of us? — One would not arrive at this statement: the table is outside of us — if we were to completely immerse ourselves in our physical and etheric bodies. We would never come to the realization that the table is outside of us — we would only experience what is within us, namely within the skin of our body. And there would shine in an internally closed universe, which is etheric, full of wisdom. But the idea that there is something outside of us comes from the fact that we ourselves are outside of ourselves when we are asleep. When the I is outside of the physical body, it gets used to being outside of the physical body. When the I slips back into it, it has an understanding of the outside world. We can thank the fact that we can sleep for the possibility of accepting things outside of us. We become accustomed to being outside of ourselves by placing ourselves outside of ourselves in our sleep.

Philosophers reflect on what guarantees existence; on why I say at all: something is – or: I am. If I were completely absorbed by my physical and etheric bodies, I would never come to say: I am. But by being able to make myself independent of the physical and etheric bodies between falling asleep and waking up, I get into the habit of living with the outside world as well. Just as one consciously has a memory, as I consciously remember yesterday when I saw someone today and ascribe a reality to this memory, so out of habit I ascribe an external reality to what is outside of me, because I am also sometimes outside myself when I sleep.

We must therefore think about things from completely different angles than we do today. But then we will really come to understand how much depends on the human being not being absorbed by his physical and etheric bodies. Only then can one really understand how the sense of freedom is essentially conditioned by the fact that one can also be outside one's physical and etheric body. People as naturalists, who do not reflect at all on the independence of an ego and an astral body in sleep, can never come to an understanding of freedom, because man would not be free if he were united all the time only with his physical and his ether body. How could they know about freedom if they know nothing of the times when man makes his astral body and his ego independent of his physical and ether bodies! If we could not sleep, we could not be free. Only what we bring with us from sleep into wakefulness makes us free.

Modern man has no conception at all of the world in which the I and the astral body find themselves during sleep. But if we know that everything that modern man can imagine lies in the realm of the mineral and the vegetable, then we know that modern science actually has only to decide about the sleeping person and not about the waking one; and about the sleeping person only if one has such ideas about the ether as I have mentioned today. If one knows this, then one will say to oneself: Now, however, I must also be able to arrive at ideas about the ego and the astral body. Today, as I already indicated the other day, one only has words from these things.

How can we get an idea of the ego and the astral body? Let me use a trivial example. Firstly, your thoughts can rest a little during the trivial comparison and secondly, we will understand each other better if I use this example. Imagine that some being, a human being or any other being that needs food, does not feed itself but completely refuses food. It becomes increasingly emaciated, until it is nothing but skin and bones. This is beautifully symbolized in a story: there was a farmer who had decided to wean his ox from eating. And now he had come quite a way with this weaning cure. He gave him less and less every day and was confident that he would be able to get to the point of giving him just a straw a day. He would have succeeded, but the ox died first, so he could not carry the experiment to the end. In the end, the being simply stops needing the extra nourishment.

But that is what has happened to the human soul in the course of historical development - or as we call the soul: I and the astral body. Gradually, people have lost any concepts that they can apply to the soul. Thus, the soul has become a mere word. I already told you last time: Mauthner, who wrote the “Criticism of Language,” no longer wanted to use the word soul at all. He wanted to say “Geseel” (to nourish the soul).

Now we recall times when there was still a living awareness that the concept of the soul needs nourishment if it is to be present; that for the soul one needs something to give to it, just as one needs nourishment for a living being. The concept of the soul has indeed died altogether, because in the end there was no more nourishment in the content of people's concepts. Let us look back at such times. I recall to you a saying of St. Paul's that is familiar to everyone: “If Christ is not risen, our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain,” because people - and this is the basis - would have to die spiritually if the power that lies in the resurrection of Christ had not come into the world. But this power is a spiritual power that is given to the souls. And if one comes from such ideas, one will say: What then should the concept of the soul be, in order for it to become a living concept, so to speak, as food? It must be given that on earth which is not earthly, the ethical-religious content, the moral content. These are what keeps the soul alive, just as the body receives nourishment.

How far is today's humanity from saying to itself: If the soul does not receive spiritual nourishment, it dies with the body! In Paul's time, there was still a vivid idea that not receiving spiritual nourishment means death for the soul. This must come to the world again through anthroposophy. For you can believe that if someone today is looking for proof of the immortality of the soul, he is looking for it in a similar way to the way science does. It does not occur to him to say: In the course of earthly life, the soul becomes more and more similar to the physical and etheric bodies; in order for it to sustain itself, it must receive spiritual nourishment, that is, moral and religious content, then it conquers the transience of the physical and etheric bodies. That the spiritual, the moral and religious in the spiritual has something to do with the life of the soul must first be understood by mankind. Then one also comes to attach reality and reality to the moral and religious.

You can see from this what the age of intellectualism has actually done. What has the age of intellectualism done? You see, before the age of intellectualism, people still immersed themselves a little in their physical and etheric bodies. The fact that people no longer immerse themselves at all is only an achievement of the intellectual age. Since that time, they have only had reflections in their thoughts. The nature of abstract, intellectual thought is that it contains nothing in itself, because it is a reflection. People's earlier thoughts still had power. That is when people developed myth. The myth still penetrated down into reality. With abstract, intellectualistic thinking, one can think everything exactly, but it does not acquire any content; it is merely a drawing of the world, which one has with intellectualistic thinking. So it is that the intellectualistic age has brought man completely out of himself, leaving him to experience only mirror images of reality. The moral-religious world is not experienced at all if one wants to experience it intellectually, because the moral-religious things must indeed be done by man. No mirror images are experienced if they are not done, the moral-religious things. So it is a matter of the human being having to rise above the intellectualistic in order to experience the reality of the moral-religious in reality, to a real inner experience. This can only be done if one faces the will of spiritual science with full clarity.

What I have already been obliged to say elsewhere, I would also like to repeat here. In certain areas of the world, people are finally realizing that there is a difference between today and a hundred years ago. People talk about Goethe as he lived, say, in 1823, without emphasizing one thing that is only now beginning to emerge as an inkling in America, where it is even more pronounced than in Europe. Do you think that in the Weimar where Goethe walked around – or anywhere else, for that matter, where Goethe walked around – there were no telegraph wires, no telephone lines and so on? The air was not permeated by telegraph lines, by electrical lines. Now just imagine how fine the instruments are, where the effect of electricity is sent. But man has nothing but such devices before and around him. People over there in America are beginning to suspect that this has an influence on the physical human being, that he is surrounded by electrical lines and the like. Goethe walked the world without his body having induction currents in it. Today you can go far enough anywhere and the electrical lines will follow. This continuously induces currents in us. Goethe was not in such currents. All this takes away the physical body from humanity, makes the physical body so that the soul cannot enter it at all. We must be clear about this: in the time when there were no electric currents, when the air was not buzzing with electrical lines, it was easier to be human. Because there were not constantly these ahrimanic forces present, which take away one's body even when one is watching. It was also not necessary for people to exert themselves so much to come to the spirit. Because when we enter into ourselves, we actually only come to the spirit. Therefore, it is necessary today to apply much greater spiritual capacity to be human at all than it was a hundred years ago.

It does not occur to me to be reactionary and say, “So get rid of all that stuff, the modern cultural achievements!” That is not the intention. But modern man needs this direct access to the spirit, as spiritual science gives it to him, so that through this strong experience of the spirit he may indeed be the stronger in the face of those forces that are emerging with modern culture to solidify our physical body and take it away from us. Otherwise it will come to the point that people, I would say, miss the boat in the evolution of humanity.

This intellectual age has emerged for the benefit of humanity at a time when people could still immerse themselves somewhat in their physical body. If we had remained as people were in the 13th or 14th century, with the state of mind of those people, we would not be able to grasp intellectual thoughts at all. Then we would no longer have the older, but we would not even come to abstract intellectual thoughts; they would evaporate. The old would be alienated from us, we would not be able to think, and so we would go around as dreaming beings in the world, so reeling in the face of the most important world affairs. We would go around like reeling dreamers. But that is also what would happen to humanity if it does not sharpen and strengthen its inner spiritual abilities. Humanity would suffer so much from progress that it would be like hurting a person if they were to think. In the 16th century, people were still inwardly robust enough to think sharply in an intellectual way. They still took great pleasure in thinking intellectually. Today, we are already very close to people saying: Oh, thinking is so hard, film the whole story for me so that I don't have to think and can watch it in its various stages! — Strange things could come of that. I don't mean that in a humorous way. This is something, as you will see in a moment, that is very much within the realm of possibility. Just imagine if you could film the whole multiplication table, then a person could always carry a camera in front of him and, by making the calculation, the correct answer would be triggered by the specific sound, and he would have the whole story filmed in front of him. Gradually, man no longer wants to think because it starts to become unpleasant. Thinking becomes unpleasant. Man much prefers dreaming to thinking. And if those outer things, the outer cultural development, were to continue forever and a strong inner spiritual element were not to arise in the development, then it would actually be the case that all people would become reeling dreamers. This is meant very seriously; such a thing is in store for humanity. And this can only be counteracted by really getting involved in it, courageously and boldly tackling the spiritual world in the way spiritual science wants it and can do it. Today it is still quite possible for us to pull ourselves together so strongly inwardly as humanity, that we can achieve inner activity. But all those who understand this must work in earnest with all means at their disposal.

Please do not take the things I say in a negative sense negatively. I do not want to take anything away from modern culture. The more things are developed, the more I am enthusiastic about them. I do not want to abolish the telegraph or the film, that does not occur to me at all. But it is really necessary in the world to take into account that everywhere two things are juxtaposed. The world is completely dominated by externalization. The counterbalance: just as one must dry oneself after bathing, so one must delve inward in spirit, when on the other hand the culture of external observation is becoming ever greater and greater. This in particular calls upon us to become inwardly more and more active when we are outwardly absorbed in that which no longer works through us but works on us, so that we literally switch off as soul and spirit.

We can best find these thoughts, which we need, by realizing that This human being is such a complicated creature because the entities of the most diverse worlds flow together in him to form a total being. When I had written my “Outline of Esoteric Science”, a quite important contemporary philosopher sent me – I have already mentioned this – a long treatise about this “esoteric science”. And when I began to read it, I came across clever things like: Yes, that is an abstract division of the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body and so on. Now that is just as clever as saying: It is abstract to say that water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. One need not be surprised if one has to say: It is impossible to discuss with someone like that. We must always distinguish between the impossibility of discussing the subject matter with our contemporaries. Such discussions are fruitless discussions. They are, of course, also the rarer ones. The more frequent cases are where opponents come forward with personal slander and lies. In such cases, the lie must be exposed as a lie, the slander as slander, before the world. But discussions alone achieve very little. For it is precisely the nature of anthroposophy and the nature of what its opponents have to present that they somehow want to discuss: that no bridge can be built; that anthroposophy must emerge through its own efforts in all areas. We must be just as vigilant in repudiating calumny and falsehood as we must realize that Anthroposophy can only make its way in the world by working with all the intensity that its inner strength can give it. So, dealing with opponents means: be vigilant where the fight is being waged with dishonest means. On the other hand, it may certainly be necessary for reasons of expediency to point out how justified one or the other is; one can do that when one is merely dealing with a fictitious opponent. Some people have liked to copy the refutations that are in my writings and have left out only what was positive. So it is indeed the case that one can extract factual refutations from my writings oneself. It is necessary to see clearly in these matters and not to start dreaming in this area.

Please forgive me for having to end almost every reflection with such a request, even if it attempts to introduce more remote areas. The most harmful thing for the Anthroposophical Society to do is to develop too great an inclination to sleep; it must be awake. Man becomes a plant when he sleeps. But the Anthroposophical Society also takes on a plant-like existence when its actual affairs are neglected. Just as a human being cannot always be a plant, cannot sleep through his whole life, so the Anthroposophical Society cannot always be asleep. Vigilance must also be developed. And I would like to recommend this to both the Anthroposophical Society and the Free Anthroposophical Society without distinction. Otherwise it could come about that the two societies developed only alongside each other because, if they had remained together, the members of one or the other would have disturbed each other's sleep too much. But when one is independent, the others disturb one's sleep less, and one can sleep all the better.

It is therefore important that both societies come to realize that both are now awake and not happy due to their own internal forces, and that the other should no longer disturb their sleep. Of course, I do not want to be insinuating, but sometimes one has to say such things and even has to say them to the Free Anthroposophical Society. If neither is to be the pet project of the other, then both should be treated quite humanely. So I would like this to be taken into account a little. I think one or the other already knows what I actually mean. People often say they don't know what I mean, but I still believe that if you want to, you can know what I mean, and even when I call for awakening, you can know what I mean, even if it sounds unpleasant.

So, my dear friends, send your delegates to the General Assembly of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach from July 20 to 22. Send them well awake. Because we need wakefulness in the future, full wakefulness in the whole Anthroposophical Society.

The human soul's experiences in ordinary consciousness during its existence on earth come to expression in thinking, feeling and willing. Their actual background, however, must be sought in what I have described here as man's astral organism and ego being. I have shown how the part of the soul that does the thinking relates in a specific way to the head organization; how the part of the soul that produces the feelings has a somewhat different connection to the rhythmic system, to the breathing, the circulation and other rhythmic processes. In a much looser way, the will nature of the soul is connected with the physical and etheric organisms.

When we examine how the nature of the thinking-soul is connected with the head system, we find that it is devoted entirely to it, it is transformed, as it were, into the head organization. The head organization forms a physical and etheric replica of the part of the soul involved in thinking: therefore, when man really thinks in waking everyday life, he cannot actually observe the process of thinking in himself but must seek it in its replica in the physical and etheric processes of the brain and the rest of the nervous system. This is why the anatomy and physiology of the brain are the real domain for the physical part of a science of the soul, because the replicas of what goes on in thinking can really be observed in the structure of the brain, and thereby also in its processes.

The part of the soul expressed in feeling is not devoted in the same way to the physical and etheric organisms, neither has it become a part of them. We can say of it that at times it is devoted entirely to the breathing and the blood circulation, streaming into them so that it becomes as if invisible to imaginative and inspired vision; we focus on it and see that it slips into the breathing and circulatory processes. At times, the feeling-soul tears itself away from these processes, it becomes independent and exhibits within itself a formative activity of its own. Thus, the feeling-soul slips, so to speak, into the circulatory system and then withdraws, slips in again, and so on.

The part of the soul that is the basis for the human will behaves quite differently. It is neither devoted continually to the physical and etheric organisms, nor does it become involved in an alternation of permeating the two organisms and withdrawing from them; rather, by its own powers, it holds itself aloof from the physical and etheric parts of man's organism. It has an independent existence of its own by means of its own capacities. By virtue of these forces, it actually remains within the soul and spirit realm, and would stay there if nothing else intervened. We can therefore say that in this willing-soul, the soul's nature always remains soul-spiritual, even during life on earth. When, through intuition, you receive insight into the actual reality that exists behind the willing-soul, you are able to study the lasting soul-spiritual being of man in this will element. There is, nevertheless, a kind of surrendering of the willing-soul to the physical organism, an out-pouring into it, but it is neither continuous as is the case with the thinking-soul, nor is it a rhythmical alternation as with the feeling-soul. Instead, it is like this: When, for example, our thinking-soul takes hold of a thought by means of the head organization, which, because of its content, is in itself an impulse for willing something, then, the process that takes place in mere contemplation does not occur. Only the head organization is involved when a person ponders the affairs of the world without arriving at an act of the will. Through the thinking activity, the head organization is worn down, or is at least brought toward a tendency to a breakdown, to dissolution and death, as I described yesterday. But if we formulate the thought, “I will this or that,” then the activity that belongs to the thinking-soul spreads out from the head organization into the metabolic and limb organism. When a man has a thought that represents an intention of the will, intuition perceives how an astral activity pulses into some part of the metabolic or even the limb system. Then, through such a thought that arouses the will, a degenerative process takes place not only in the head system but also the metabolic organs and the limbs. Destructive processes arise through such thoughts. These destructive processes in turn cause the willing-soul that underlies the human will as reality to pour into the metabolic or limb system and to restore a balance by rebuilding what has been worn down by the thought.

If I want to illustrate this clearly, this is what happens: I have the thought: I will lift my arm. This thought then shoots out of the head organization into the arm, there it induces a degenerative process of destruction. It can be called a form of combustion. Something in the configuration of my arm is destroyed. The part of the astral organism that corresponds to the willing-soul follows in the wake of the degenerative process, enters the arm and repairs the damage. The lifting of my arm takes place during this regeneration,—what was burned up is restored and the actual act of the will occurs during this restoration.

Now the true ego being is contained in that part of the astral organism that underlies the soul's will impulses; so, whenever the will is stirred into action, the ego is aroused. When we observe how man unfolds his will, we gain insight into how the human astral organism and the ego being stream into the physical and etheric bodies in response to a certain stimulus. This also happens when an expression of the will occurs that does not require that I set my limbs in motion, but that is perhaps a supplementary impulse or maybe a fairly vivid wish. There, something similar also takes place, only much more inward parts of the human organism are permeated by the actual will nature of the soul.

You can see that the unfolding of the will can be studied in all its details, but in order to do so you require a knowledge of man's actual soul and spirit being. Without this insight, you cannot study the willing-soul, nor arrive at the ego being, for the latter expresses itself only in a weak replica in thinking, it appears on as an impulse in feeling, and has its true reality in earthly life only in the will. Aside from this unfolding of the will that follows a certain inducement, an element that corresponds to the human will as a reality is the continuous desire in the whole human organization for the physical body. Subconsciously, in the will nature of the soul, man longs, as it were, to be enclothed in the metabolic and limb systems of his body. If we go further into this part of the human soul, we see through this will nature into depths, into substrata of the human soul life, into processes of the soul that are completely hidden from ordinary consciousness.

I have already shown that ordinary consciousness remains completely unaware of the processes of degeneration and regeneration which take place in the human body. But aside from these activities that the human soul unfolds and that come into consideration in regard to the ordinary impulses of the will, there exist other processes, subconscious processes in man's being which are very real, but do not project their effects up into ordinary consciousness at all during earthly life. They are described below.

We saw yesterday how a continuous evaluation of the moral and moral-spiritual nature of man takes place in the feeling-soul. The process that only lights up as a weak reflection in consciousness as stirrings of conscience, as evaluations of one's own actions, is a very significant, incisive activity in the subconscious sphere. Everything that a person does, he also evaluates in his subconscious soul organization; on this level, it only comes to an assessment. But something additional and quite different occurs in the part of the soul that corresponds to the will. In the course of earthly life, we see how the astral body and ego, which are linked to this will nature, actually build up an inner entity of man—it is only dully alive—by means of the astral and ego forces in the cosmos. Indeed, it is like this: By inwardly evaluating our own capabilities, we bring to birth an astral being that exists within us and grows increasingly larger. This being contains these evaluations as facts, whereas the feeling-soul only causes the evaluations to arise, as it were, like a thought process, or—after it has happened—like a subconscious memory-thought. After the deed has been done, something additional arises in the willing-soul. The judgement, “I have perpetrated an evil deed,” turns into a being in us. With this being, we possess something within us that is the actualized evaluation of man's deeds.

Now, as you have just seen from this description, something lasting is contained in this will nature of the soul, something that was also present before man descended from the soul-spiritual world into a physical-etheric organism. In this spirit-part of the soul, this willing-soul, the after-effect of the soul-spiritual existence is at work to build up a human organism once again, for that was its activity in pre-earthly life. It is hindered now only by the presence of the physical organism; its activity cannot unfold since it bumps against all the protrusions and walls, so to speak, of the physical organization, but the tendency remains. Now, the reality that I have just described, the being that represents the actualized evaluation of the moral and moral-spiritual nature of man, unites with this tendency. Thus, we bear within us an entity in which flow together the impulses to form a new organism and the realized moral evaluation. We bear this being through the portal of death when our earthly life has come to an end.

From my descriptions you have seen that regenerative and degenerative forces are constantly present in the human organism, forces that cause dying and revitalizing, forces that dampen and arouse life. We find benumbing forces in the thinking-soul, revitalizing ones in the willing-soul. This battle between death and life accompanies us throughout our sojourn on earth. When we bring it to a close we carry the unconsciously developed result of our moral qualities into the spiritual world.

You have seen from the descriptions that I gave in the past few days that in the moment when man passes through the gate of death his consciousness, until now only an earthly one, expands into a cosmic consciousness. Just as man becomes accustomed on earth to live in a physical organization and feels himself enclosed within the skin of his body, he finds his way after death into the expanses of the cosmos. His former surroundings now become his inner content. His consciousness becomes a cosmic consciousness. The question then arises: What happens to the evaluation of the moral qualities of man, when, having passed through the portal of death, the human being receives this cosmic consciousness and has the desire to form a new physical and etheric organism? The answer to this will be given in the second part of today's considerations.

Before I can answer the question that I have just posed, I have to characterize several points concerning the course of man's earthly life in the light of the above described conditions. You have seen that continuous degeneration and regeneration go on in the human organism. This destruction and revitalization take place throughout life between birth and death. Inasmuch as we are thinking soul beings we must deteriorate, as beings of will we must restore what has been worn down. As feeling beings, we bring about an interplay between degeneration and regeneration. Therefore, the soul elements represented inwardly as thinking, feeling and willing are expressed as processes of destruction, recreation and an interplay between the two. These processes in the human organization, which are extremely complicated, are different for each period of life. They come to expression in a child in one way, in another way in an adult. It is especially important for anyone who raises and teaches children to see by means of a spiritual knowledge of man into this continuous interplay of degenerative and regenerative processes of man. It is important to be aware of this in-streaming of constructive processes into the destructive ones, of destructive ones into the constructive ones; to see how they constantly intermingle in certain parts of the human organization and to discern their effects on it. For you can only educate and teach correctly when you can discern how these forces work in a child and what effect can be brought to bear on them through upbringing and education.

I shall cite just one example of this. There is a big difference between making a child memorize only so much as is good for it, or making it memorize too much so that its memory is over-burdened. Because of the opinion prevailing today concerning the interplay of constructive and destructive processes, one could easily believe that they exert an influence only on the soul organism of the young person. That is not the case. When we make a child memorize too much, it forms thoughts that pertain to memory in an irregular fashion. They find their way into the head system. There, they cause irregularities by continuing on into thoughts of the will, even reaching into the metabolic and limb organism. We can discover that if we have raised and educated a child wrongly in regard to its memory, this error manifests itself, perhaps as late as the age of thirty, forty, or forty-five, in poor digestion and metabolic disturbances.

I only mention this as an example that is close at hand. These matters are most complicated. It is a fact that out of a spiritual insight into man a true teacher can estimate and survey the extent of what he undertakes with a child in respect to both body and soul. Genuine, true pedagogy can therefore only be established on the basis of a knowledge of man that views the physical corporeality and the soul and spirit, and also comprehends the interplay between these three members of man's total being. Such a pedagogy has been created within our anthroposophical movement. It becomes a reality in the Waldorf School, also in certain attempts at continuing education here at Dornach. But it must be stated once and for all that the mere sense-derived science that is generally accepted today can never establish a true pedagogy. This becomes possible only through an anthroposophical deepening of scientific life. Some of the details of what has now been touched upon will be further elaborated upon in the lectures tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.¹

Furthermore, clairvoyant sight beholds a certain interplay of destructive and constructive activities, an intermingling in one way or another of the two in the whole human body and in the individual organs depending on the state of a man's health. We can only learn to understand illnesses and their various symptoms by tracing the manner in which degenerative processes gain the upper hand over the whole organism, over one organ or a group of organs, causing the organism to become unyielding and hard; or how regenerative processes gain control, leading to unrestrained life and growth. We also learn to recognize how the destructive processes penetrate the constructive ones in erratic ways and permeate them with undigested products of the metabolism. In short, just as it is important for the teacher to be able to judge the normal course of these processes in a child, so it is important for one dealing with the sick to have insight into the abnormal processes of degeneration and regeneration.

Now, if we gain insight into the various kingdoms of nature around us in the physical world—the mineral, plant, and in part the animal kingdom—we find everything permeated by hidden soul-spiritual elements. In a particular kind of plant, for example, we find regenerative forces, which, when prepared in a certain way and introduced into the human organism, are effective against such destructive, pathologically abnormal processes. In short, we find medications for the abnormal processes in outer nature. The connection between medicines and an illness can only be perceived by looking into man's organism in the way just characterized. In everything that can be undertaken in some way for an ailing organism—be it the application of external medications, or that the ailing organism is treated in a manner one does not treat the healthy organism, or that supplements are found for what the body itself cannot do—whether it is such correctly employed measures or what I have put forward as Curative Eurythmy, one always seeks by such means to bring into balance again in the organism the rampant processes of regeneration or the destructive processes that exceed the norm.

You see that medicine that is based merely on a sense-oriented science must be supplemented and expanded by what can result from spiritual insight, from a knowledge of the total human being. Since, in physiology and anatomy, physical science is able to judge only the outer aspects of man's organization, it is able to find the relationship of a medication to an illness only through external experimentation. Inspiration, imagination and intuition make it possible to view simultaneously the inner connection of a medication or a healing process with the nature of the sickness. In place of a merely experimental, empirical therapy, it is possible to attain to a rational therapy that has insight into the human being and the healing processes. I can only refer to this in passing today, but from this you can see that a starting point for an extension of pathology as well as therapy along the lines described above is contained in what is being established as anthroposophical knowledge. These matters have already assumed practical form within our movement. We do not practice in a spirit of medical dilettantism in our therapeutic institutes in Stuttgart and here in Arlesheim. Present-day medicine is fully acknowledged and applied, but our methods of treatment are permeated by what spiritual perception and a spiritual point of view can add to them.

Critics who rely merely on physical science today still claim that what this spiritual science, working out of anthroposophy, has to say about illness and processes of healing is childish. This is quite understandable, coming from people who choose to base their ideas and their work on physical science alone. But I must say that when such people call our methods “childish,” they have no idea of the true facts. Indeed, what physical science produces as anatomy, pathology and therapy is only a substructure for what results for medicine from spiritual observation. I would like to say—not in a derogatory sense, only in reference to certain critics—that if anything is childlike in some respects it is medicine that tries to rely only on physical phenomena. I do not deride what is childlike with this remark, I only want to point out how it is supplemented by what arises out of a spiritual perception regarding man's total being. If you consider all this, you will realize how one must go into details if insight is to be attained into the activities of man's etheric, astral and ego organisms during physical life.

Now, at death, man lays aside his physical organism; it is lost to him. A condition then commences in which man is no longer clothed in a physical body, but in which his ego being and astral organism are still ensheathed in the etheric organism. I have already outlined that what constitutes man's etheric organism is not strictly separated by clear-cut boundaries from the general organization of the etheric cosmos. Streams from this etheric cosmos flow continually in and out of the human etheric organism. This is why, in the moment when man passes through the gate of death, but still carries his etheric organism within him, his consciousness expands into the etheric expanses yet he still feels that the etheric body which has just been drawn out of the physical corporeality is his own. During this state, man is wholly devoted to the etheric experiences of the cosmos, which, for his consciousness, contract now and then into the mere etheric experience of his own organism. After having passed through death, man is, as it were, overpowered by what this cosmic consciousness represents for him. As yet, there arises no conscious contemplation for what I have described as an entity which develops in us and represents the actualized valuations of man's moral qualities. This moral-spiritual being, which has incorporated itself in the astral body, is carried by us through death, but we do not perceive much of it in the very first period after death. Instead, passing in and out of the cosmic element, we are absorbed in beholding the course of our life just completed on earth, for that is the content of the etheric body. For a while, we look back on this earthly life that we have just completed. The course of our life appears directly after death in its inner nature in the same way that it represents itself to imaginative consciousness, as I described it already during the past several days. This condition, however, lasts only a few days, about as long as a person's daytime experiences stimulate the shaping of dreams, which is something that varies with each individual.

As to the form that dreams take, they always correspond directly to the experiences of the day before or the second or third one before that. Just as we dream about something from the day just past, which is linked, however, in an association of thoughts with other, earlier experiences of ours, in the same manner these other experiences also arise in a dream. We dream, for example, about having spoken to someone yesterday about one thing or another; this experience of the past day still enters directly into the life of dreams. We perhaps talked to him in an animated way about someone we met maybe ten years ago and have not seen since. Because this experience has woven itself into the conversation, we dream up all kinds of things about that person. Dreams are not studied correctly. If they were one would recognize these experiences of dream-life for what they are. Now dreaming does vary with different people. One person dreams only about what happened yesterday, another dreams about what he experienced the day before, still another dreams about what happened three or four days earlier. Insofar as this possibility exists for each individual person, this determines the length of the condition after death that a man still remains in the etheric body. I could also characterize it differently and say: The length of this time coincides with the length of time that a man does not require sleep, the time lasting through as many days and nights as he can remain awake without falling asleep. One person falls asleep when he goes only one night without sleeping. Another can stand to be awake for two, three or four nights. Just as long does the experience last during which the human being still remains in his ether body after death.

Then, however, it comes about that we are increasingly caught up by our consciousness which has lived its way into the cosmic-etheric world. Since our etheric organism is now not strictly separated from the cosmic-etheric world, it flows out into it, so to speak. We feel ourselves to be in this cosmic-etheric world, and when we look back upon our etheric body, it already appears larger to us. This continues until at last we no longer possess the etheric body. Then, clad in our astral organism, we find our way into the cosmos and into our new consciousness. It is then that there emerges in man what I have characterized as a being which represents the actualized valuation of man's moral-spiritual qualities. Man feels himself burdened with this being. His nature is then composed of what flows out of him into the cosmos, and the being to which he must return again and again in his experiences after death, namely the being that actually represents the sum total of his moral qualities.

Now, because, in a manner of speaking, the compensatory forces work continually out of the cosmic consciousness in a very real way, an extraordinarily strong tendency arises to say: You must now confront the wrong, foolish things you have done with the right action! Therefore, in the further course of the life that I have characterized yesterday as the soul world, man finds his way into the rhythm that alternates between his moral-spiritual qualities and the cosmic qualities. In this rhythm, a sum of tendencies develops in him to experience again the possibility of creating compensations for what he finds to be morally inferior, and so on. If, for instance, he has done something that affected another person in one way or another, the tendency develops to make amends for it in an action in the next earth life. In short, the seed of destiny which passes through repeated earth lives is created in this manner. But at the same time, the purely cosmic consciousness grows quite dark and dim because we carry this element within us. During the whole passage through the soul world, the human soul must remain in a dull—at least a duller—state of consciousness, until it becomes necessary for it to enter spirit land and to cast off the being that I have described. Then we can live for a while in the amoral cosmos into which we cannot bring what we have experienced in the soul world as the sum total of our moral or immoral spirit being.

If I wish to describe this transition from the soul experience to the spiritual experience after death, I can present it from the standpoint of human earth life in this way by saying: As long as man passes through the soul world, where he experiences a cosmic rhythm and the moral-spiritual being contained within him from the past earthly life, namely the interacting pulse beat of these two manifest realities, so long does he remain in a kind of affinity, as if spellbound to his last earth life. The being that he has brought with him, which represents his moral-spiritual qualities, has, after all, flowed out of his last earth life. He clings to it with all the inclinations of his soul. He can pass on into the pure experience of the cosmos only after he has freed himself inwardly from these inclinations. Spiritual beings can live together there with the human being in such a way that he gains for himself from their powers the forces that can develop the universal cosmic-spiritual part of a physical human organism for his future incarnation.

This is spoken from the standpoint of human earth experience. But the same relationship can be characterized from the standpoint of the cosmic consciousness and experience. Then one must say: After man has laid aside his etheric body, and while the inclination toward earth life continues to live on in his ego being and astral organism as I have described it, he is inwardly penetrated by the spiritual moon forces that pervade the cosmos. I already had to mention the moon forces when I characterized the condition of sleep.

Now they confront us again in man's existence after death. These moon forces are the element that brings or wishes to bring man into a certain connection with earth existence. Here, after death, they express themselves by trying to prevent man from leaving earth existence. He has laid aside his physical body, but he is anxious to return again to earth. This happens because the moon forces of the cosmos permeate him. Ordinary earthly thinking has ceased after death, for it is bound to the head organism of the physical body. Pre-earthly man flowed into this head system. Upon laying aside the physical body, everything that was brought about merely in a material way ceases to function. Man is therefore no longer an earth-bound being in a direct sense, though he is indirectly because the moon forces continue to affect him. For a long while after death, they still produce, as it were, a tendency in him to turn back to earth because it was there that he prepared the being now enclosed within him.

After death, however, it is necessary for man to struggle free of the moon forces and to reach beyond them, to become free inwardly from their influences that flow into him and affect him. They always preserve in him a kind of cosmic memory of the rhythmic forces, that is, in inspirations and imaginations they continually confront him with what is happening in the movements of the planets and their relationships to the fixed stars. But they hold man back from experiencing those spiritual beings who have their physical replica in the constellations of the fixed stars. Yet, he now faces the necessity of entering the pure, spiritual world. As long as the moon forces influence him, they prevent him from entering. He is, however, not supposed to view the cosmos he experiences merely from the side turned to him in physical existence; it is his task to view it from the other side. Man actually arrives at this condition if he develops a purely spiritual cosmic consciousness. Then, he reaches a position where he is, so to speak, at the periphery of the cosmos. Just as we stand here at the center and look out everywhere into the cosmos, so, in this spiritual perception, we look from the periphery inward into the cosmos. But now we do not see the physical replicas of the spiritual beings in question, we behold the beings themselves. We do not look into the cosmos from the periphery in a spatial manner. Just as we look out into the cosmos from the focal point of our two eyes here on earth, there, we look in from a spherical surface. Yet, it is in a way after all a spatial experience. We behold it qualitatively. We look out into the realm of the fixed stars and observe this universe from the outside.

Between death and a new birth, we must become independent of the physical world where we spent our earthly existence. In the period of humanity's development prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, man entered the spirit world in a manner that was quite different from that of the time that followed this event. During the course of human evolution on earth, a tremendous metamorphosis has taken place in man's inner life. The Christ event represents a turning point in the development of earthly humanity. Therefore, in the fourth part of my considerations and as a culmination of this evening, I would still like to describe how this entrance of man's soul-spiritual being into spirit land appears since the beginning of Christian evolution.

Before man enters the actual spiritual world where he engages in a life in common with other human souls who are not incarnated and are in a condition similar to his own—as it happens, he lives together with these souls even earlier—that is to say, before he can enter into a common life with those spiritual beings of the highest rank, whose physical replica is expressed in the starry constellations, he must leave behind in the moon sphere the being that constitutes his moral evaluation. Without it, he must enter the region of the stars where the moon forces no longer prevail. There, through the companionship with spiritual beings of the highest kind, the forces are born in his soul that enable him now really to prepare and work at the spirit germ of the future human physical organization.

Prior to the Mystery of Golgotha, when the old initiates wished to characterize the manner in which this transition into spirit land took place for the humanity of that time, they had to say to those who were willing to listen: “When, after death, you are to pass out of the soul world into the spirit land, you must leave behind you in the moon sphere the destiny-forming part of your good and bad deeds. But the forces of your own human organization are not enough to give you the power to bring about the transition from the moon sphere to that of the stars. Therefore, the Sun Being intercedes for you; He, Whose physical reflection is the physical sun. Just as your outer life proceeds under the influence of the physical sun's light and warmth, so, after death, the lofty Sun Being claims you, sets you free from your burden of destiny and bears you into the sphere of the stars. There, with the help of your Sun Guide, you can work out the spirit germ of your future physical organization. Then, after having worked sufficiently under the guidance of your Sun Leader on the formation of your physical organism in the spiritual realm, you can return again to life on earth. On this return to earth, you are again received by the moon sphere. In it you find the destiny being which you carried out of your earlier life on earth through the gate of death. You unite with it again and now, after having prepared the spirit germ of your future physical organism together with the great Sun Being, you can control it quite differently. You can unite this destiny being with the forces in you that are drawn toward your physical organism. You stride again through the moon sphere. “ Then follows the entrance into earth life as I have described it already earlier.

The initiates who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, or who lived in the following centuries up until the third and fourth century, could say to their followers: The form which the human physical organism assumes in earth life increasingly shapes and develops the ego. But man loses the power to enter that region where the high Sun Being could be his guide above in the spiritual realms of the stars. Therefore, the Christ descended to earth and accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha. The power that the human soul gains by having in its feelings a bond with the Mystery of Golgotha works on after death. It tears the soul free of the germinal being of destiny and the moon sphere. Under the after-effect of the earthly Christ Event, the soul shapes its future physical organism with the other beings of the starry worlds and finds in turn the seed of its destiny, into which is placed the tendency for the destiny that will develop in the earth lives to come. The force that the human soul has received from the Christ Impulse enables it to pass through the spiritual realm in the right way and to take up the seed of destiny correctly.

A person who speaks out of initiation science today must add the following to this: “Indeed, it is the Christ Impulse Whose effects continue on beyond death. Under Its influence man wrenches himself away from the moon sphere and penetrates into the sphere of stars and the sun. There, out of the impulses given to man by the beings of the stars, he is able to work at molding the physical organism for his next earth life. But he frees himself from the moon sphere by means of the forces that he has accumulated in his ego by having turned on earth to the Christ Being and the Mystery of Golgotha. He struggles free of the moon sphere in such a way that he can in turn work in the starry sphere in a specific manner so that, when he returns again to the moon sphere and the core of his destiny confronts him, he can incorporate into himself as a free spiritual deed this seed of destiny. For he must tell himself: World evolution can only proceed in the right way if I incorporate into myself the seed of my own destiny and adjust what I have thus prepared as my destiny as compensation in future earth lives.”

This is the main element of the new experience in the life after death in the moon sphere. There comes a moment in cosmic existence when man in a self-reliant manner brings his destiny, his karma, into relation with his own advancing being. In the following earth life, the earthly reflection of this deed, which is accomplished in the supersensible realm, is human freedom, the feeling of freedom during earthly life. A true understanding of the idea of destiny, which traces this idea right into the spiritual worlds, does not establish a philosophy of determination but an actual philosophy of freedom, as I set forth in the nineties of the last century in my book, The Philosophy of Freedom.

Thus, when man finds his way into the spiritual regions after death in the right way, he brings back with him to earth—incorporated into his organism and linked with his universal destiny—the after-effects of having been permeated with the spiritual worlds, something he has experienced in the spirit land. Inasmuch as he experiences the Christ within him, modern man can experience freedom; and in connection with freedom he can also have the feeling of being pervaded by God, the permeation with the divine on earth which can be a recollection of what he has undergone in passing through the world of the stars to the moon sphere, and through the moon sphere itself.

Spiritual science strives towards a knowledge of all these relationships, inasmuch as intuition is brought about through soul exercises of the will. In ancient times, this intuition was produced according to instructions by those who were then initiates. These instructions directed man to mortify his outer physical organism through asceticism. By mortifying and subduing his physical body, man's independent will, which otherwise only expresses a craving for the physical organism, emerged with all the more intensity. Through asceticism, the physical organism becomes so mortified that it is difficult for the will to enter into the body and there to express itself. The will is driven back, as it were. The more difficult it becomes for the will to submerge and live in the physical organism, the more it finds its way into the spiritual world and develops intuitions. This is what was brought about by asceticism. It is wrong, however, to continue with this old asceticism in modern times. Since the Mystery of Golgotha, the human physical body has assumed a form that is no longer able to tolerate a successful practice of asceticism. By means of such asceticism, modern man would at the same time deaden his physical organism to the point where the ego consciousness that must develop could not properly do so. Man would then never attain a consciousness of freedom. He would also be unable to unite himself in a proper, free manner with the Christ Impulse.

Therefore, the will exercises must be undertaken in such a way that the physical body is not subdued as was the case in ancient times; instead, by means of these exercises, man's pure soul-spiritual capacities are strengthened so much that the body does not withdraw from the soul, but the soul can find its way into and live in the spiritual worlds. Not only has what the old initiates told their followers about experiences between death and rebirth changed, but also what has to be said about the exercises that men have to take up in order to acquire knowledge leading into the higher worlds. These exercises also have changed in accordance with humanity's progressive development. The ascetic of ancient times could not attain the royal consciousness of freedom which modern man must reach through his present organization. Nor could the old ascetic between death and rebirth encounter the Sun Being, Who at that time had to accomplish for him after death what now, ever since the Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, the human being can find within himself the strength to accomplish.

With the entrance of Christianity into human evolution, religious consciousness has therefore changed, for this consciousness is the earthly after-image of what man must experience as permeation with God in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. In all respects we are led by modern initiation science to a deeper comprehension of Christology. Therefore, we can speak of a renewal of religious consciousness by means of anthroposophic insight, just as we have spoken in the past few days of a renewal of philosophy, which turns into a living philosophical science; likewise, we spoke of a deepening of cosmology through the inclusion of the insight into the higher worlds that can only be attained by means of intuition and inspiration. Through enhancement by anthroposophy, a renewal of religious consciousness, which only then will become a fully conscious Christian awareness, can be attained for the whole of mankind. Anthroposophy would like to contribute to the further rightful development of Christianity; this is meant in the sense that it does not want to become a new religion but wants to help in the development of the Christian religion that came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha. This Christian religion has in itself the power to develop further, and anthroposophy wishes to understand this in the right way and be a true aid in this further development.

So, in these lectures I have sought to describe for you how philosophy, cosmology and religious knowledge are to be fructified by anthroposophy. Naturally, knowledge of religion is not religion. Religion can also be experienced if you devote yourself with your heart (Gemüt) in an open-minded way to what intuitive knowledge communicates, for the heart (Gemüt) can understand it. Therefore, the renewal of religious knowledge can bring about a new deepening of religious life.

I could describe all this only in a sketchy way during these days. Naturally, these matters can only be penetrated completely if one becomes acquainted with the details. Then, much that had to remain sketchy here could appear in its full coloring and with all the possible nuances. That alone would present a complete picture.

Most esteemed ladies and gentlemen! In concluding these lectures, I am deeply gratified when I think of the fact that you actually came from a foreign country to attend these lectures. This feeling leads me to express my heartiest thanks for your attention. I would like to express heartfelt thanks especially to Dr. Sauerwein for the trouble he took to present a faithful translation, and to ask him to fulfill one more wish of mine, namely to translate my thanks to him also, just as he translated everything else. I would be especially happy if you took home with you the feeling that the time spent here was not a waste of time for you.

• 1. Steiner gave eight lectures on the 16th and 17th of September 1922. They are currently unavailable in English, see table at the end of this lecture.

Medieval mysticism prepared the way for spiritual science; prayer prepared for medieval mysticism. Today the essence of prayer has been misunderstood. Prayer is intended to produce the divine spark, the special life of the soul. For this, we must understand both the soul and the soul in relation to the future set before us by world wisdom.

In my recent lecture on mysticism I spoke of the particular form of mystic absorption that appeared in the Middle Ages between the time of Meister Eckhart and that of Angelus Silesius. This type of mysticism is distinguished by the fact that the mystic seeks to become free of all the experiences aroused in his soul by the external world. He seeks to acquire the feeling that proves to him that, even when everything of the everyday world is removed from his soul and it withdraws into itself, a world of its own still remains within it. This world always exists but is outshone by the experiences that work so powerfully on man from without. Thus, it generally appears as a light so faint that most men do not even notice it. The mystic usually calls it “the spark.” Yet, he feels sure that it can be fanned to a mighty flame that will illumine the source and foundation of existence leading man along the path of his soul to the knowledge of his origin. This may, indeed, be called “knowledge of God.”

In the same lecture we saw how medieval mystics held that this spark, constituted as it is at the moment, must grow by itself. In contrast, we pointed out that modern spiritual research calls for a conscious and controlled development of these inner soul forces, so that they can rise to higher forms of knowledge, designated the imaginative, the inspirational and the intuitive. This medieval absorption is thus the beginning of true higher spiritual research that does indeed seek the spirit through the development of the inner being but, through the method of approach, is led beyond it to the source and foundation of the existence of all facts and phenomena, and of our own souls as well. Mysticism, therefore, appeared as a sort of first step to true spiritual investigation. If we have the ability to sink ourselves in the fervor of a Meister Eckhart, to recognize what an immeasurable force of spiritual knowledge it brought to Johannes Tauler, to see how deeply Valentin Weigel or Jacob Boehme were initiated into the secrets of existence by all that they attained through such absorption even though they passed beyond it, or to understand what an Angelus Silesius became through its means, how he was enabled not only to gain an illuminating insight into the great laws of spiritual order but also to utter with glowing rapturous beauty all sorts of sayings about world secrets, we shall then be able to realize the depth and force of this medieval mysticism and to see what an enormous help it can be to anyone who wants to tread the path of spiritual investigation.

Medieval mysticism thus appears to us, particularly as the result of that lecture, as a great and wonderful preparatory school for spiritual research. Indeed, how could it be otherwise? After all, our own object is simply to develop the spark of which the mystics spoke through its own inner forces. They believed that they might surrender themselves in the peace of their souls to the little glimmering spark, so that it might begin to burn ever more brilliantly of itself. Spiritual science, however, is convinced that, for the growth of the spark, we must use the capacities and forces that are placed under our control by the wisdom of the world.

This mystical attitude, then, is a good preparation and guide for spiritual science, and the soul activity that may in the true sense be called prayer is a preparation for this medieval absorption. Just as the mystic is enabled to attain a state of absorption because he has, even though unconsciously, trained his soul to have the right temper for such mysticism, so if we want to work our way through to this absorption, treading a path that shall end there, we shall find a preparation in true prayer.

In the development of the last centuries, even from a spiritual aspect, the essence of prayer has been misunderstood in many ways by various spiritual currents or thought. Thus, it will be difficult for us to get a true understanding of it. If we remember, however, that the last centuries have been associated particularly with the appearance of egoistic currents of spiritual thought that have laid hold of all sorts of people, we shall not be surprised to find that prayer has been dragged down among the egoistic wishes and desires of men. In fact, prayer can hardly be more misunderstood than when it is permeated with some form of egoism. In this study we shall try to consider prayer entirely and without prejudice from the point of view of spiritual science.

To get some preliminary understanding of prayer we might say that, while the mystic assumes the existence in his soul of some spark that his mystical absorption can brighten and illuminate, prayer is intended to produce that spark and special life of the soul. Whatever leads to prayer displays its efficacy just in this stirring of the soul, so that, if it lives there, even though hidden, we either gradually discover the spark, or else we kindle it. To study the need for, and the essence of, prayer, we shall have to enter on a description of soul depths of which the words of Heraclitus are only too true: “You can never fathom the boundaries of the soul even though you tread every path, so all-embracing is it.” Thus, even if in prayer we seek only for the secrets of the soul, it is true that these inmost feelings that are stirred in prayer teach even the simplest of us something of the infinite expanses of soul life.

We must comprehend this soul as it lives in us and carries us forward in life somewhat as follows. This soul that is in process of living evolution does not merely come from the past and progress into the future, but at every moment of its life it carries within itself something of the past and, indeed, also of the future. The actual moment in which we are living is penetrated by both the effects of the past and the effects that come from the future. Anyone who can see deeply into the life of the soul will feel that there are two streams continually meeting in it, one rising from the past, the other from the future.

Possibly in other spheres of life it might seem mere folly to talk of the approach of the events of the future. It is, after all, easy to say that the events of the future do not yet exist, thus preventing us from saying that what will happen tomorrow approaches us. But it is possible to say that what happened in the past stretches its effects into the present—a standpoint that is easy enough to establish. Who would dispute that our lives today are the result of our lives yesterday, or that we are today under the influence of our activity or idleness of yesterday or the day before? No one will deny the penetration of the present by the past. Yet, we ought no more to deny the reality of the future since we can see in the soul the reality of such intrusion of future events before they happen. There is, for example, such a thing as fear or anxiety of something that is to happen tomorrow. Is that not a sort of feeling or perception that we direct to an as yet unknown future? Every moment the soul experiences fear or anxiety it shows by the reality of its feelings that it reckons not only with the effects of the past but also that it vividly allows for what is coming to it from the future. These are, of course, trivial indications. They will show, however, that even a casual observation of the soul contradicts the logical abstractions that proclaim the future can have no effect because it does not exist. This is proved in living reality when we study immediate soul life.

In our souls, then, the past and the future unite and produce there, as everyone who observes himself would admit, a sort of whirlpool comparable to the confluence of two streams. Observation of what lives in our souls from the past shows that they come into being under the impression of our experiences of the past. The way in which we have used those past experiences has made us what we are, and we bear within us the legacy of our past doing, feeling and thinking. We are what we have become. If we look back from today's standpoint to our past experiences, particularly those in which we were ourselves concerned in their actual happening and in the judgment of them, if we allow our memory to play over the past, we shall be driven to a judgment of ourselves. We shall realize that today we have attained a certain quality of character. With that as our basis we shall find we are not in agreement with a good deal that happened in our pasts because we have acquired the capacity to be opposed to, even ashamed of, some past actions.

If we thus measure our pasts against the present, we shall come to the conviction that there is something within us that is far richer, far more significant than what we have made of ourselves by our will, consciousness and individual forces. If there were not something stretching beyond what we have made of ourselves, we should be unable to reproach ourselves or even to know ourselves. There must, then, be something within us greater than all that we have employed to form ourselves from the past. If we allow such a judgment to be transformed into a feeling, we shall be able to observe what is known and visible to us in our past deeds and experiences. This will lie as clearly before us as memory can make it. Then we shall be able to compare this clear vision with our souls, and we shall see there something bigger seeking to work itself out, urging us to set ourselves face to face with ourselves and to judge ourselves from the standpoint of the present. In short, we shall feel something projecting beyond ourselves when we observe the stream flowing into the soul from the past. This sense of something greater is the first glimmer of the inner feeling of God within us, a feeling that there is something within us that is greater than our own will. So we are enabled to see something leading beyond our limited egos to a divine spiritual ego. Such is the impression of an observation of the past that has been transformed into feeling and perception.

What is the message, then, of what we may call the stream of the future, when we transform it into feeling and perception? This speaks even more emphatically and definitely to us. In looking back over the past, our feelings assert themselves in the form of a judgment of rejection, of regret or shame, but only after the event. In relation to the future, however, we deal at once with the feelings of fear and anxiety, hope and joy, but the actual events to which these feelings refer are not yet existent. We cannot see through to them and it is thus easier in this case to transform the idea into a feeling, something the soul does of itself. As it can, in relation to the future, give no more than the feeling of reality, these feelings exist as something born from an unknown stream of which we know only that it may have different effects and bring different hopes. If we can transform into a right feeling what comes so surely to us from the lap of the future, and if we experience its course into our souls and the way in which our own perceptions meet it, we shall realize how our souls are always being kindled anew by the experiences approaching from the future. Here, above all, we feel how our souls can become richer and more comprehensive. Even now in the present we can know that in the future our souls will have an infinitely richer and mightier content. We feel ourselves akin to the future. We must feel it. We must feel our souls to be equal to everything the future can give.

Such an observation of the streaming together of the future and the past into the present will show us how the life of the soul grows beyond itself. When, in looking back over the past, the soul observes the important things that play on it and of which it does not feel itself to be equal, we shall understand how it can unfold a basic attitude and feeling in relation to the outcome of the past. When the soul, whether in judgment or in shame and regret, feels something great flow into itself out of the stream of the past, it creates within itself what we may call a devotion toward the divine. This devotion toward the divine that looks down upon us from the past and that we can imagine as something acting upon us, although our consciousness cannot take it in, is produced by one of two forms of prayer that lead to an intimacy with God. If the soul surrenders itself in inmost calm to these feelings about the past, it will begin to wish that the mightier thing it left unused and that has not permeated its ego may become present in it. The soul will know that if it were possessed of this greatness, it would be different, but the divine did not belong fully to its inner life and that is why it has failed so to form itself that it can approve of all that it is. When the soul experiences this, it can overcome the feeling by asking itself clearly how it can make truly part of itself what has lived unconsciously in all its actions and experiences, how it can draw into itself this unknown that its ego has failed to grasp. When the soul holds this attitude, either in feeling or in word and idea, we have the prayer to the past and thus seek to approach the divine through one of the ways of devotion.

Another attitude is held toward the divine gleam shining through the approaches of the future. To distinguish it from the one with which we have just been dealing, let us ask once again what it is that leads to prayer as regards the past. It is that we have remained imperfect even though we can feel something divine shining into us. We have not developed and unfolded all the capacities and forces that might have flowed to us, and we feel all the defects that make us less than the divine shining into us. What is it, then, coming to us from the future that makes us defective in similar fashion and restricts our ascent to the spiritual?

We have only to remember that feelings and sensations, fear and anxiety of the unknown future, gnaw at our souls. Is there anything that can pour some certainty about the future into our souls? It is what we may call the feeling of devoted acceptance of what enters our souls from the hidden future, and it can only work properly if it arises as an attitude of prayer. Let us avoid misunderstanding. We are not praising what here or there is considered to be acceptance, but a definite form, an acceptance of what the future can bring forth. If we look to the future with fear and anxiety, we strangle our development and hamper the free unfolding of our soul forces. Nothing so obstructs this development as anxiety about what may come to the soul from the future. Only actual experience, however, can judge the results of the right feeling of acceptance of the future. What does such devoted acceptance mean?

In its ideal form it would be the sort of soul attitude that would assure us that no matter what might come, no matter what the next hour or day might bring, were it unknown to us, we could not alter it by fear or anxiety. We should wait for it, therefore, in complete inner peace and utter tranquillity.

This experience, resulting from devoted acceptance of future events, means that anyone who can thus calmly and quietly meet the future and can yet prevent his energy and activity from suffering in any way, is able to develop his soul forces most intensively and freely. It is as if hindrance after hindrance falls away as his soul is gradually pervaded by this feeling of acceptance of the events that approach from the future.

This feeling, however, cannot be produced in our souls by some edict or arbitrary decision lacking foundation. It is the result of this second form of prayer that is directed to the future and the course of events, pervaded by wisdom, within it. To give ourselves up to the divine wisdom of events, to be certain in our thoughts, feelings and impulses that what will be must be and that it will have its good effects somewhere, to call forth this feeling in the soul and to live it in our words and ideas is the second form of prayer, the prayer of devoted acceptance.

It is from these feelings that we must acquire the impulses to what is called prayer. The soul possesses the urge, and fundamentally it attains the attitude of prayer when it raises itself even only a little above the immediate present. The attitude of prayer, we might say, is the upward gaze of the soul from the transitory present into the eternal that embraces past, present and future. Because to live looking upward from the present is so essential, Goethe has Faust speak these great and significant lines to Mephistopheles:

Were I to say the pleasing present should remain,
And that is what I truly meant ...

This is, if ever I could be satisfied with living merely for the moment,

Then you may throw me into chains,
And I will gladly seal my doom.

We might say, then, that it is the attitude of prayer for which Faust begs in order to escape the fetters of his companion.

Prayer leads to the observation of the limited ego that has worked from the past into the present. Upon examination, we see how much more there is in us than we have put to actual use. It also leads us to the study of the future, showing how much more can flow from the future into the ego than it has comprehended in the present. Every prayer must coincide with one of these attitudes. If we take this to be the spirit of prayer, and prayer as the expression of this spirit, we shall find in every prayer the force to lead us beyond ourselves. Prayer that is born in this way is nothing else than the kindling of the power that seeks to pass beyond what our ego is at the moment. As soon as the ego is seized by this striving, it already has this power of development. When the past has taught us that we have more within us than we have ever used, our prayer is a cry to the divine to come to us and fill us with its power. When we have reached this knowledge by our own feelings and perception, prayer becomes the source of further development. It is thus one of the means of developing the ego.

When we live in anxiety over what the future may bring, still lacking that submissiveness that prayer can give when it is directed to our future destiny, we can do something similar. By means of prayer we realize that the future is set before us by world wisdom. If we surrender ourselves to this feeling, we produce something quite different than we do when we meet coming events with fear and anxiety. These only restrict our development, pushing back from our souls what the future can give us. If, however, we meet the future with submissiveness and devotion, we draw near to it in fruitful hope and make it possible for it to enter our souls. Thus, submission, which seems to make us small, is a powerful force carrying us forward toward the future, enriching our souls and bringing our development to a higher level.

So we see prayer as an active force within us. We can also see in it a cause drawing with it as immediate effects the growth and evolution of our egos. We need not expect external results. We know that by prayer we have put within our souls what we may call a force of warmth and light—light because we free the soul in regard to what is coming to us from the future and prepare it to assimilate what the obscure future may bring; warmth because it helps to realize that even though in the past we have failed to bring the divine within us to full development, we have now permeated our feelings and sensations with it so that it can really work within us. The attitude of prayer that we attain from our feeling of the past produces the inner warmth of soul of which all those speak who can understand prayer in its true being. The effect of light appears in those who know the feeling of submission in prayer.

With this view of prayer we shall not be surprised that, in devotion to prayer, the greatest mystics found the best training for what they were seeking in mystic contemplation. They guided their souls by means of prayer to the point where they were able to ignite the spark previously mentioned. It is just the study of the past that can give us the deep intimacy that comes over us in true prayer. Experience and living in the external world really estrange us from ourselves, just as in the past they prevented the unknown and more powerful ego from coming to the surface. We are given over to external impressions, wasting our energies in the variety of external life, thereby upsetting our composure. It is this that prevented the higher and stronger divine force from unfolding in us. Now, when we unfold it in such deep intimacy with God, we no longer feel ourselves given over to the dissipating effects of the external world. Rather are we filled with that wonderful and ineffable warmth, as with an inner blessedness, that we really may call divine. It is the heat in the cosmos that appears in higher beings as physical inner warmth and it originally created the higher beings; the lower beings, of course, have the same body temperature as their surroundings. As this physical heat interiorizes a being, so the psychic warmth, born of prayer, can make a soul that is losing itself in externalities collect itself in inwardness. In prayer we are warmed in the feeling of God. We not only feel warmth but we find ourselves intimately within ourselves.

When we approach the external world, however, we always find it confused with what has been called “the dark lap of the future.” Upon close observation we always find that there is a germ of the future in whatever we touch of the outer world. We are continually thrust back when we still feel fear of what may befall us, and the world is like a veil before us. If we develop this feeling of submission in regard to all that may come to us from the future, we shall find that we meet everything in the external world with the same certainty and hope. This we have gained from our submissiveness. We know that in everything it is the wisdom of the world that shines before us. As a rule, in everything that comes to meet us, we see a darkness that passes into our feelings. Through our submission, however, we now see how the feeling arises in us that all the wisdom of the world shines through what we long for and desire as the highest. Thus, it is hope for illumination of the entire world that comes to us in the devotions of prayer. When darkness encloses us within ourselves and narrowness and confusion surround us even in the physical, when we stand in the gloom and black of night, we feel when morning comes and we meet the light as though set beyond ourselves. Yet this is not in such a way that we should lose ourselves, but as though we could transfer into the real world all our soul's truest longing and highest aims. Surrender to the world, estranging us from ourselves, is overcome by the warmth of prayer uniting us with ourselves. Then, too, the warmth of prayer becomes a light. We pass beyond ourselves and know that when now we unite with and behold the outer world, we are no longer disturbed and estranged by it. What is best in our souls flows from it and we are united with what radiates toward us from the external world.

These two types of prayer can be better comprehended in pictures than in ideas. Consider, for instance, the Old Testament story of Jacob and the bitter nocturnal struggle that seared his soul. It is as if we ourselves were given over to the manifoldness of the world in which our souls at first were lost and could not find themselves. When the striving to find ourselves begins, the struggle between the lower and higher egos follows. Feelings surge up and down, but we can work our way through this turmoil by prayer. As illustrated in the story of Jacob, the moment finally will come when, as the morning sun shines upon us, the inner struggle of our souls during the night is leveled out in harmony. That is really the effect of prayer in the human soul.

To think of prayer in this way is to be free of all superstition. It brings out the best in us and works within us immediately as a force. Prayer in this light is preliminary to mysticism, just as mystic contemplation is itself preliminary to what we know as spiritual investigation. From this discussion it should now be clear that, as has so often been emphasized, we continually err if we think we can find the divine, or God, in ourselves by mystic thought. This has been a common mistake of many mystics, and even of ordinary Christians in the Middle Ages, because at that period the attitude to prayer began to be permeated with an egoism that impels the soul to concentration on an ever-increasing inner perfection. It is fundamentally an echo of such an egoistic desire for inner perfection that impels a misguided theosophy today to assert that, if we will only turn aside from everything external, we can find God within ourselves.

We have seen that there are two types of prayer, one leading to an inner warmth, the other leading through a feeling of submission out again into the world to illumination and true knowledge. When we think of prayer in this way, we soon see that the knowledge acquired through ordinary intelligence is unfruitful compared to this other knowledge. When we come to realize the attitude of prayer, we become aware of the soul's withdrawal into itself, thus releasing it from the multiple world in which it has been dissipated. It gathers itself together and lives enclosed in itself, a complete self-being living above the momentary and what comes to it from the past and future.

When we know this feeling, when our environment becomes breathless and silent, when only our finest thoughts and feelings hold the soul together, when perhaps even these vanish and only a basic feeling remains directed toward the God who proclaims himself from the past, and toward the God from the future, when we know this and have learned to live in this feeling, then we realize that there are moments when the soul sees that it has turned away from, and disregards, all the cleverness it created by its own thinking. What it brought into being by its thinking and feelings, the ideals to which it had been educated and grasped in its will have all been swept away. It was given over to its highest thoughts and feelings, but even these were swept away, leaving only that last basic feeling. When we have come to feel this, we know that in the same way that the wonders of nature meet us when we look upon them with cleansed and purified eyes, these new feelings of which we were hitherto unaware shine into the soul. Impulses of will and ideals formerly strange to us rise up in it, germinating fruitful seeds.

In its best sense, then, prayer can give us wisdom that we are not yet capable of acquiring by ourselves. It can give us the possibility of feeling and thinking that we cannot attain by ourselves. If we go further, it can give us a strength of will that we have previously been unable to muster. In order to feel this, it must be called up by the greatest thoughts, the most splendid ideas and impulses living in the soul. Here we must refer again to the prayers that have originated in most solemn moments and that have been handed down to us from time immemorial.

In my pamphlet on the Lord's Prayer you will find an account showing that its seven petitions embrace all the wisdom of the world. It is no real objection to tell me that there it is said that these seven petitions can only be understood by those who know the deeper sources of the universe and that simple people have no real comprehension of their depth. This is not so. In order, however, that the Lord's Prayer should have come into existence, it was necessary that the all-embracing wisdom of the world should be set down in words that may indeed be said to express the deepest secrets of man and the world. Since this is what is contained in this prayer, it works through the words even if we are far from understanding the secrets. This can be understood when we rise to the higher stages to which prayer and mysticism are the prelude. Prayer prepares us for mysticism, mysticism for meditation and concentration, and from that point on we are directed to the real work of spiritual research.

Nor is it an objection to say that we must understand a prayer if it is to have its true effect. That simply is not the case. Who understands the wisdom of a flower? Yet, we can take pleasure in it. Even though we do not penetrate all its wisdom, nevertheless the soul delights in its contemplation. Wisdom was necessary that the flower might come into being, but it is not necessary to be aware of such wisdom to take delight in the flower. For a prayer to come into existence, the wisdom of the world is necessary. That it should possess warmth and light for the soul is just as possible without understanding its wisdom as it is in the case of the flower. If a prayer did not owe its existence to such wisdom, however, it could not produce such an effect. The mere effect of a prayer shows us its depth.

If one's soul is really to develop under the influence of such a vital quality within it, it makes no difference what one's stage of development may be. A true prayer can give everyone something. Even the simplest person, who knows nothing more than the mere prayer, can still feel its effect, which calls forth the power to raise him ever higher. But whatever height we may have achieved, we are never finished with a prayer. Our souls can always be raised higher. The Lord's Prayer can be simply repeated, yet it can also call forth a mystical frame of mind and even be the subject of meditation and concentration. This is also true of other prayers.

Since the Middle Ages, however, a sort of egoism has occurred that makes prayer and the attitude of prayer impure. If we use prayer in order to become more perfect in ourselves, to descend into ourselves, as was the case with the medieval Christians and perhaps still is today—if we do not look out into the external world with the illumination we have received, then prayer can only estrange and isolate us from the world. This has happened with many of those who have used prayer as false and seclusive asceticism. They have wanted perfection, not only as the rose, which adorns itself that the garden may be fair, is perfect, but for their own sakes that they might find blessedness in their souls. When we seek God in our souls and then do not pass to the other world the power we have thus won, we find that we are in a sense punished. Thus you will find in the writings of many authors who have known only the type of prayer in which inner warmth is to be found—even in the work of Miguel Molinos—remarkable descriptions of all sorts of passions and impulses, fights, temptations and wild desires that the soul has to experience if it seeks perfection by inner prayer and complete surrender to what it understands to be God. If we approach the spiritual world by seeking God one-sidedly, if we only unfold that feeling for prayer that leads to inner warmth and excludes illumination, this neglected other side takes its revenge on us.

If I look to the past only with feelings of regret and shame, realizing that there is something great in me that I have never allowed full play, thus failing to fill myself with this greatness so that I may become perfect, then, even so, to a certain extent a feeling of perfection does still arise. But the imperfection remaining in the soul becomes a counterforce that assails us with greater vigor in the form of temptation and passion. But as soon as the soul that has found itself in inner warmth and intimacy seeks for God wherever he is revealed and thus strives for illumination, it immediately comes out of itself and escapes the narrow selfish ego. The wild temptations sink down in calm and peace. This is why it is so harmful to allow an egoistic impulse to be mixed up in prayer or mystical contemplation or meditation. If we want to find God only to keep him in our souls, we exhibit an unsound egoism that maintains itself even into our soul's highest reaches. For this, we shall be punished. Healing is to be found only when, having found God in ourselves, we pour out unselfishly into the world in thoughts, feelings and actions what we have won.

We are often told today, particularly in the ideas of a falsely understood theosophy, and we cannot be careful enough of this, that we cannot find God in the external world because he lives within us. We have only to look within ourselves in the right way and we shall find God. I have even heard someone say in flattery of his audience that we need not learn or experience anything of the great secrets of the world. If only we would look within ourselves, we would find God.

But something must be added to this before we can reach the truth. To this, which may be true enough if it is kept within proper limits, a medieval thinker gave a true answer. Let us remember that it is not untruths that are most harmful. The soul will soon uncover what is false. Most harmful are those things that are true from one aspect but when applied on false assumptions produce grave falsehoods. It is true that in a sense we seek God in ourselves. Because it is true, it is the more harmful if it is not kept within its proper limits.

This medieval thinker said, “Who would seek everywhere in the external world for a tool he needed when he knows it to be at home? He would be a fool to do so. Equally is he a fool who seeks the instrument for the knowledge of God in the outer world when it lies at home within his soul.”

Bear in mind that he uses the words tool and instrument. It is not God we seek in the soul. He is sought by an instrument that we shall not find in the external world. It is found in the soul in prayer and genuine mystical absorption, and beyond that by meditation and concentration. We must approach the kingdoms of the world with this instrument, and then we shall find God everywhere. If we have acquired the instrument, he reveals himself in all worldly realms and at all stages of being. Thus, we find the instrument in ourselves but we find God everywhere.

Such observations of prayer are not popular today. Nowadays we are asked how on earth any of our prayers could alter the course of the world, which after all is guided by laws of necessity that cannot be altered. When we want to locate a force, however, we should look for it where it really is. Today we have sought the power of prayer in the soul and have found it to exist there, thus enabling the soul to progress. If we know that it is the spirit that works in the world, not an imagined, abstract spirit but a real, perceptible spirit, and that the soul belongs to the realm of the spirit, we shall also know that material forces are not the only forces working actively in accordance with external laws of necessity. Spiritual beings also are at work in the world even though the effects of these forces and beings are not visible externally to the eye or outwardly available to knowledge. If we strengthen our spiritual lives by prayer, we need only wait for the effects. They will certainly appear. No one, however, will seek the working of spirit in the external world who has not first recognized the force of prayer to be a reality.

When once we have admitted this fact, the following experiment will give evidence to support it. Consider a period often years during which we have scorned prayer, and another period often years when we have recognized its force. Compare the two periods. We shall soon see how the course of our lives was altered under the influence of the forces that poured into the soul with prayer. Forces become visible in their working, but it is easy to deny them when we shut our eyes to their effects. Who can deny the force of prayer if he has never let its force be effective within him? Do we believe we can know the Light if we have never developed or approached it? A force that is to work in and through the soul can only be discovered by its use.

The further effects of prayer, I am willing enough to admit, cannot yet be discussed today, however unbiased the discussion might be. Thus, to understand that a community prayer in which the forces rising from a praying community flow together, has an enhanced spiritual force and therefore an intensified effect on reality, cannot be easily accepted by the ordinary consciousness of today. So we must remain content with what we have discussed as the inner being of prayer. Indeed, it is sufficient since, if we have some understanding of it, we shall rise above many of the possible objections that are so easily raised against it.

We are told, for instance, that if we compare an active man who uses his powers to help his fellow men with one who withdraws meditatively into himself and works on the forces of his soul in prayer, then idleness is the only word that can truly apply to the one who meditates. You will excuse me if on the basis of spiritual science I tell you there is another point of view. I will speak bluntly, but there is good reason for it. Anyone who knows the interrelations of modern life will maintain that many journalists would do others a better service if they were to pray and work for the perfection of their souls. Would that there were people who were convinced that it would be better to pray than to write newspaper articles. This attitude is equally applicable to many other intellectual occupations today.

Further, we shall never understand the life of man in its entirety without the force that lives in prayer and that becomes particularly clear when we look at certain departments of higher spiritual activity. For instance, is it not clear that prayer, when considered not in a one-sided egoistic sense but in the broad sense in which we have discussed it today, takes its place as an element of art? Art, of course, also expresses the opposite attitude in comedy through the humorous feeling with which it rises above what it depicts, but there is in the ode and hymn, for example, a feeling of prayer. In painting we have what might be called a “painted prayer,” and surely in a massive, majestic cathedral a prayer in stone towers heavenward.

We need only to feel these things in relation to the whole of life in order to see that prayer, looked at in the right way, can lead us from the transitory finite of this world to the infinite. This was felt especially by those such as Angelus Silesius whom I have previously mentioned who passed from prayer to mysticism. He felt that he owed the inner truth and glorious beauty, the warm intimacy and brilliant clearness of his mystical thought, shown for instance in The Cherubinean Wanderer, to the training of prayer that had worked so powerfully on his soul. In fact, following this prelude of prayer, it is the feeling of eternity that streams through and illuminates all such mysticism. Everyone who prays has an idea of this, when in prayer he comes to true inner peace and intimacy and thence again to liberation from himself. It is something that teaches us to look from the passing moment to eternity, embracing in our souls the past, present and future. Whether we know it or not, whenever we turn in prayer to those sides of life where we seek God, the feelings, thoughts, and impressions accompanying us are permeated by a sense of eternity. It dwells consciously or unconsciously in every true prayer like some divine sweetness and aroma. It lives in the following lines of Angelus Silesius, which form a fitting conclusion to our discussion.

When I leave time,
I myself am eternity.
Then I am one with God
And God is one with me.

One could ask why people want to devote themselves willingly to an esoteric life today, and whether it wouldn't be better to tell oneself that if a divine spiritual will wants to let me enter higher worlds it'll do this by itself, and so I'll wait. But if one asked the present, esoteric leaders of the Rosicrucian stream about this, they would have to reply: You're forgetting that you as a man are placed on a battlefield on earth, and namely in the battle of good spiritual powers against Lucifer and Ahriman. Both are trying to recruit the souls of men for their armies.

What does Lucifer want to make out of men? Looked at one-sidedly, he has a sublime goal. We know that the previous embodiment of our earth Old Moon, was the cosmos of wisdom, that it was completely permeated by wisdom. But Lucifer lacked the force of love that's now incorporated in the earth. And so he's permeated with wisdom but he knows nothing about love at all. He has devoted himself entirely to wisdom, he's gotten high on it as it were, and he wants to fill all of earth's children with wisdom.

And this is a big temptation for men again and again. Lucifer's forces live in us, and he in effect tells us: If you take me completely into yourself you'll see all relationships, you'll know everything, and everything will be clear to you.

He wants to give men wisdom without love, which leads to selfish knowledge. Lucifer still thinks that he'll get human soldiers for his army, and he's working very hard to achieve this.

Lucifer is in all knowledge and perception. There's only one place where he can't get at us, and that's when we quite devotedly immerse ourselves in our meditation in wisdom without outer influences—then we escape Lucifer.

And what does Ahriman want? He wants to give men power. Ahriman is a spirit who fell away even earlier. Archangels were men on old Sun, but quite different ones than we are. At that time, thinking was immediately translated into deeds. Men were mighty beings back then. Thought was reality immediately. Wisdom then was not like it was on old Moon yet—it was power; but power without wisdom leads to black magic, to darkening.

We conquer Ahriman through the attitude that we want to devote ourselves to the World Spirit, that we only want to be his instrument, to only let him work in us. If we do our meditation with this attitude we can conquer Ahriman.

We conquer Lucifer by filling our ego completely with the meditation's content. Lucifer can't get into the ego, only into the astral body.

The Christ impulse is love. But love without wisdom would be very bad. For instance we're told that there was a mother who loved her daughter like an idol and wouldn't refuse her anything. Through this wrong training the daughter became a famous poison mixer at the beginning of the 19^th century. The daughter's individuality is now incarnated again as a black magician. It reincarnated so quickly because such beings are practically spit out of the spiritual world.

Lucifer is redeemed by Christ. Men who take Lucifer in on Jupiter will be mighty beings; but it'll be like a burning of these egos in wisdom without love.

Then on Venus one will be dealing with black magic; the condition will be like a spiritual drowning. Men must already have the will for spiritual things now so that pure love can shine on Venus.

When one wants to meditate, one must order oneself to exclude all thoughts and to only have the soul content of the mediation in one's soul. After that, soul quiet must set in, emptiness must begin, and then wait to see whether something flows in from the spiritual world, wait with patience and perseverance. Then one may have an experience that's like a dream that flits by. Then one has the feeling: “Something is thinking in me,” “An angel touched me,” “I raise myself into his kingdom.”

Our relation to our thoughts is like that of an angel to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit doesn't think like we do—he lets his angels rush through the world as his messengers.

Such an experience is the first step into the spiritual world, and one should watch for it.

One should feel and experience: It thinks me with piety.

One can now raise oneself further to the divine principle that vitalizes and weaves through the world and to which we owe our existence. Then one has an experience such as: It weaves me.

Thereby, we touch the hem of the clothes of beings whom we call Spirits of Movement.

Even in ordinary life, we must dive down or bump into something in order to develop consciousness. We bump into our physical body and wake up. We also bump into something after death, into Christ-substance. We must wake up in it, dive down in it to become aware of the spiritual world, so that we're not asleep there.

But having consciousness doesn't mean that one has ego-consciousness yet. We also have consciousness in the experience that something thought in us, but it's only when we remember that something has thought in us that we connect the experience with our ego.

So we lose our ego at death, and we dive down dead as a soul to find ourselves and to gradually become conscious in the Christ-substance.

Then we come to sublime beings whom we feel we should call Thrones or Spirits of Will, and the mantra for this is: It works me. Here one should feel reverence and devotion.

If we have a luminous moment in the spiritual world we see our body down below, but it takes a high stage of vision to see it as in a mirror. At the beginning of such experiences we see an image of a coffin with a man in it, or a bathtub filled with hot water, or we stand before a door that doesn't open. All of these images are in the physical body that doesn't let us in.

When we experience the image that we're looking at our physical body down there, and that we're born out of the divine-spiritual world, then we express this in the words:

Ex Deo nascimur.

When we imagine how we dive down into the Christ-substance to die, then this is:

In Christo morimur.

And how we reemerge from the trickling water in a fine body and move up into the spiritual world:

Per Spiritum Santum reviviscimus.

Notes from memory of 120 [123] esoteric lessons that Rudolf Steiner gave in 1904-1912 and meditation texts and exercises he wrote down in Aus den Inhalten der esoterischen Stunden, bibl. No. 266, vols. 1 and 2.

[ 1 ] Names which are to express the experiences of the human soul in the elemental and spiritual worlds must be adapted to the special characteristics of those experiences. In giving such names it will have to be borne in mind that even in the elemental world experience runs its course in quite a different way from that in which it does in the physical world. Experience in the elemental world is due to the soul's capacity for transformation and to its observation of sympathies and antipathies. The terminology will necessarily assume something of the changeful character of such experiences. It cannot be as fixed and rigid as it must be with regard to the physical world. One who does not keep in view this fact, arising out of the nature of the case, may easily find a contradiction between the terminology used in this book and that in Theosophy and Occult Science. The contradiction disappears when it is remembered that in the two latter works the names are so chosen that they characterise those experiences which the soul has during its complete development between birth (conception) and death on the one hand, and between death and rebirth on the other. In this book, however, the names arc given with reference to the experiences of clairvoyant consciousness when it enters the elemental world and the spiritual spheres.

It is seen from Theosophy and Occult Science that soon after the detachment of the physical body from the soul at death, there is also detached from the soul that which in this book is called the etheric body. The soul then lives for a while in the entity which is here called the astral body. The etheric body, after being detached from the soul, is transformed within the elemental world. It passes into the beings forming that world. When this transformation of the etheric body takes place, the soul which had lived in it is no longer there. The soul, however, experiences as its outer world after death the processes of the elemental world. This experience of the elemental world “from withou” is described in Theosophy and Occult Science as the passage of the soul through the “soul-world.” It must therefore be realised that this soul-world is identical with that which, from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness, is in this book called the elemental world.

When the soul in the interval between death and rebirth—as described in Theosophy—becomes detached from its astral body, it goes on living in the entity which is here called the real ego. The astral body then experiences by itself, the soul being no longer with it, that which has been described above as oblivion. It plunges, so to speak, into a world in which there is nothing which can be observed with the senses, or experienced in the way in which will, feeling and thought, as man develops them in his physical body, experience things. This world is experienced as its outer world by the soul which continues to exist in the real ego. If it is desirable to characterise the experience in this outer world, it can be done in the same way in which it is described in Theosophy and Occult Science, as the passing through the “spirit region.” The soul, experiencing itself in the real ego, has around it within the spiritual world that which has been formed in it as soul-experiences during physical existence. Within the world above described as that of living thoughts-beings, the soul finds between death and rebirth all that it has experienced in its inner being during physical existence through its sense perceptions and its thinking, feeling, and willing.

The legend of Judas indicates that an old descending spiritual current is joining forces with a new ascending one. Everything should become new from the moment when the Christ event made an impression on the naive soul, except for those who had ascended to a certain degree of initiation. The effect of the latter on those who had been initiated in the sense of the old schooling is made clear to us by the conversation with Nicodemus. By night - the trivial interpretation is not enough here; [but Nicodemus was] one of those who had come a certain way: through his clairvoyance he could come by night; through the power of clairvoyance Nicodemus stood before Christ Jesus by virtue of the gifts which Nicodemus already had. But Christ also had something to say to this Jewish initiate: that the old initiation was not enough and that something new had to come: If you are not born again of spirit and water. - If he does not experience a renewed opening of his spiritual senses, he cannot come to the spirit. — Not only the others, but you too must be born again.

For before, rebirth was not experienced as it would be in the future. The I clouded, it dawned in the old Egyptian initiation. Likewise, the one who came through ecstasy behind the veil of the sense world had to lose his I. Now man is to learn to find his way in the spiritual world without losing his I. Therefore Jesus says: He who is initiated in the same way as you, hears the spirit going there, but he does not know where it comes from. So Christ testifies that Nicodemus can perceive the spirit, but does not know where it comes from, because he cannot retain his ego. So something completely new had to come for the initiate as well.

This is the essential thing that confronts us in these first chapters of the Gospel of John. The modern man finds miracles in the gospel that do not follow [today's] natural laws. This view can only be held by someone who believes that the world has always looked the same as it does today. Our soul has lost clairvoyant gifts in order to conquer self-awareness in the time leading up to the ascent into future clairvoyance. Because people used to be clairvoyant, the soul could have a more direct and immediate effect on the soul. Today it can do so through the word. Those who develop through the methods of living themselves into spiritual worlds must, in order to be understood, seek and find receptivity in the other, and today this is found through the word.

This was not the case in ancient Persian and Egyptian times. A wish that one experienced had an effect on the soul of the other, and the soul had a stronger power over the body. By influencing through the will, namely through pictorial imagination, one could have a healing effect on the other person.

Therefore, when Christ appeared, people were not surprised that healing could take place through psychic influence. The most important thing for those around Him, including the unbelievers and the rulers in Palestine, was not that Christ worked miracles, but something else. What was it like in the old initiation? The dim old clairvoyance could work by looking; but it could not get to a point; not to the center of the I, because the I, the self-consciousness in this highest sense, had only come into the world through Christ. So: He saw into the I, the innermost part of the human spirit, from I to I, not [only] from soul to soul could He work.

At best, ancient clairvoyance was able to look into the soul of another if there was a blood relationship. The Christ looked into the other, the stranger. The conversation with the Samaritan woman is an example of this fact. How does she recognize that he is the one who is supposed to come? Not allegorical interpretations are the essence of such a story. She says: I believe him because he has seen my most intimate heart affairs, [because he] has penetrated into my very self.

What does it depend on? All ancient initiation was a popular initiation, so everything that was connected with the people was familiar. In Christ, we have the impulse that has gone beyond all barriers into the human being. The most individual is at the same time the most generally human. Christ went right into the most intimate part of the human being; his spiritual power was so strong because it went right into the ego. The others could heal the members of their own people. Christ heals the stranger, works beyond the barrier of the people. [Let us take as an example the] healing of the captain's son. Because the father has that impression of the soul that goes to the very core, this healing power works at a distance.

That which works in the innermost human being from incarnation to incarnation is what is connected with human well-being, with health and illness. Beyond the individual incarnation, that brings to expression in the body the moral qualities of the soul. He who only saw the soul could only grasp what was of a spiritual nature in the present incarnation, but not what concerned karma. Christ sees right into karma through the I and can say: Your sins are forgiven you. He does not only work in the feelings, but right into that center of the human being where karma lives itself out. That is an intensification.

One thing emerges from the stories of the Gospel of John: the Christ had to bring something to consciousness in order to be able to work anew. At the wedding at Cana, for example, it is the bond with His mother. Something else happens during the healing of the son of King Herod and the sick man of Bethesda. This is the bond that connects Him in His I with the I of every human being. This became conscious to Him in His conversation with the Samaritan woman.

The Gospel of John shows us in a powerful way how Christ grows. This is the artistically accomplished part of the structure of the Gospel of John. And now we see how John the Baptist speaks of Christ. He is supposed to say what kind of spirit lives in the Christ... He compares it to the spirit in the ancient initiations. This spirit has previously spoken “according to measure,” but now it does not - what is this? In the past, the initiate had to use a meter; he had to work in a mantric measure; this stimulated the soul of the other person. Now the spirit is to work directly, not according to an external syllabic measure. So here, too, we are given a hint of how the I of the Christ is to unfold in its direct divine activity.

That which can be taught about the Christ should be gradually absorbed by people, so that they educate themselves spiritually: First there was the I, which shows us how we should become. If we have applied each incarnation in the Christian sense, we will have been permeated by the goal of evolution on Earth. An impulse from the I, from the innermost center, will pass over to the innermost center of the other. Thus brotherhood will be achieved through the power of Christ. Therefore it is shown how the spirit takes the place of what previously only matter could do.

I am the bread of life. Taken symbolically on the outside: in the ancient Egyptian mysteries, it was known that bread was a symbol of wisdom; the real inner meaning: the I developed to the highest degree of strength should take the place of material activity. This was to be demonstrated in a great deed, in the feeding of the five thousand. It is said: When the loaves and fishes were brought to Christ, he blessed them – that is, he united them with his spirit – the spirit took effect in place of matter. The spirit brought about what otherwise matter brings about. They had been filled. With what? I am the bread of life, says Christ. The body of Jesus, as it gradually died, could overflow its powers through sacrifice.

From the center into the material existence, Christ Jesus could work. The effect of the body of Christ Jesus is eaten by the five thousand. In the mystery language, the body of man is divided into twelve members, which correspond to the twelve signs of the Zodiac: forehead - Aries, neck - Taurus, hands - Gemini, breastplate - Cancer, and so on.

What the people around had enjoyed was connected to the body of Christ; therefore twelve baskets were collected. It is a real event that the spirit had a physical effect, that of being filled; and through this the people around were imbued with the spirit and clairvoyantly saw the twelve parts of Jesus at that moment.

Thus, in these narratives, we always find a transition from the physical to the clairvoyant.

So we have an intensification in the fourth sign and also in the fifth sign. The writer of the Gospel of John describes the events so that we can take his words quite literally. But modern headlines are often wrong. It does not say “Jesus walks on the sea,” but that the disciples “saw how he walked.” The fact that he worked across, was really with them where they felt abandoned, was spiritually real with them, is hinted at. [Where his physical body was is never mentioned. This is also of no importance. The important thing was that he was with them in their need in his astral body, although he was absent with his physical body. And in this way we also always have Christ with us. - “I am with you always.”

Thus we can always experience Christ when we ascend to the spirit. He had emerged with His spirit and was with the disciples, overcoming space and time through the strong power of the ego.

The author of the Gospel of John describes how [one's own] consciousness in Christ is always increasing. How does man attain that power of love that enables him to work across? By increasing to the highest degree what is indicated to us in the discourses on judging. He never wants to let this self work, but only the great laws of the cosmic Father.

By killing his own fatherliness, his physical body, he attains to the Cosmic Father. This ascent is described to us in our own consciousness to an especially high degree in a powerful scene: an adulteress is brought before him. To understand the teaching of karma means to know that even the smallest thing we do finds expression in our life account. We only need to stand aside, then it takes effect by virtue of its own laws. The Christ does it... He sees what she has in her life account, but he does not judge. He writes on the earth what he has seen because the karma of man is working through the earth evolution. He says, “Leave the compensation to the earth evolution.” Thus, in this scene of judgment, the Christ extinguishes his own will and lets the Father work. In this way, He has the strength to transfer His ego power to the other person in such a way that it can change the other person's feelings. In this way, He makes Himself into someone who does not close anything off in Himself, but radiates everything into others.

Through this sacrifice, what humanity had done badly to itself is made good. It had worked into the inner being, striving into the ego, but had not yet had the opportunity to radiate its essence. The divinely radiating essence is light. “I am the light of the world.” Because he is this radiating light, he can help those who have become blind through karma, [thereby he can] work on such sufferings that the ego has brought with it from previous incarnations through its actions. [Jesus saw that at that moment the man's karma had expired and that he could see again, and he understood that by healing him, he was doing the will of the one whose instrument he was. But to give sight to a person who should not have it would not have been a good work.] He must work in such a way that his work is an expression of the divine work of the Father principle that permeates the cosmos. Christ does not want to work on his own initiative. Therefore, he works in the sense of karma. His presence brings about what happens in the sense of world justice.

The highest intensification is found where he lets his I pass over into the physical body of another, where he says, “I am the life.” Lazarus must become one in whom the I of Christ itself lives. Therefore, he has set up a new initiation in place of the old one. The last act of the old initiation was a letharic state of three and a half days... Hierophant awakened... [The last act of the initiation consisted of the initiate spending three and a half days in a cataleptic sleep, during which time the etheric and astral bodies were freed from the physical body. After that, the hierophant called him back to life, and he then became a teacher and a proclaimer of spiritual things, now that he could speak from his own experience. This took place in a crypt inside the temple and was done in secret. Now this resurrection took place before the whole world. Jesus loved the family in Bethany and often stayed there. He had brought Lazarus to the point that, according to the old initiation, only the last act was missing.

In Lazarus - the disciple whom Jesus loved - we are shown how, through the power of the presence of Christ Jesus, a keystone was to be laid for the old initiation; but the new one was to follow; after three and a half days, through Christ, the “I am” was to be awakened in Lazarus. Not the spiritual world in the old way, but as it lived in the spirit of Christ, the I-ness of Christ, perfected Atma, Budhi and Manas.... and what had flowed into him from higher worlds like an avatar. The world that lived in him was to shine forth as wisdom in Lazarus. So that Lazarus was imbued with the highest wisdom from the Christ himself through this initiation. He knew the mysteries through the Christ himself, and so he could share all the mysteries of the Christ event.

[In the Gospel of John, the name of the author is never mentioned. But when, at the end of the same, the author is spoken of, he is called “the disciple whom Jesus loved” – that is, he is referred to by the same expression that was always used for Lazarus before.]

He is John, the one who proclaimed the mysteries of the Christ Himself. Therefore, John is never mentioned before, just like Lazarus himself. The Lord loved him so much.

This is how Christ Jesus initiated the one who then became his proclaimer to the world.

In which the Attempt is made to form a Conception of the Guardian of the Threshold

[ 1 ] When the soul has attained the faculty of making observations whilst remaining outside the physical body, certain difficulties may arise with regard to its emotional life. It may find itself compelled to take up quite a different position towards itself from that to which it was formerly accustomed. The soul was accustomed to regard the physical world as outside itself, while it considered all inner experience as its own particular possession. To supersensible surroundings, however, it cannot take up the same position as to the outer world. As soon as the soul perceives the supersensible world around it, it must merge with it to a certain extent: it cannot consider itself as separate from these surroundings as it does from the outer world. Through this fact all that can be designated as our own inner world in relation to the supersensible surroundings assumes a certain character which is not easily reconcilable with the idea of inward privacy. We can no longer say, “I think, ” “ I feel, ” or “I have my thoughts and fashion them as I like.” But we must say instead, “ Something thinks in me, something makes emotions flash forth in me, something forms thoughts and compels them to come forward in an absolutely definite way and make their presence felt in my consciousness.”

[ 2 ] Now this feeling may contain something exceedingly depressing when the manner in which the supersensible experience presents itself is such as to convey the certainty that we are actually experiencing a reality and are not losing ourselves in imaginary fancies or illusions. Such as it is it may indicate that the supersensible surrounding world wants to feel, and to think for itself, but that it is hindered in the realisation of its intention. At the same time we get a feeling that that which here wants to enter the soul is the true reality and the only one that can give an explanation of all we have hitherto experienced as real. This feeling also gives the impression that the supersensible reality shows itself as something which in value infinitely transcends the reality hitherto known to the soul. This feeling is therefore depressing, because it makes us feel that we are actually forced to will the next step which has to be taken. It lies in the very nature of that which we have become through our own inner experience to take this step. If we do not take it we must feel this to be a denial of our own being, or even self-annihilation. And yet we may also have the feeling that we cannot take it, or if we attempt it as far as we can, it must remain imperfect

[ 3 ] All this develops into the idea: Such as the soul now is, a task lies before it, which it cannot master, because such as it now is, it is rejected by its supersensible surroundings, for the supersensible world does not wish to have it within its realm. And so the soul arrives at a feeling of being in contradiction to the supersensible world; and has to say to itself: “I am not such as to make it possible for me to mingle with that world, and yet only there can I learn the true reality and my relation to it; for I have separated myself from the recognition of Truth.” This feeling means an experience which will make more and more clear and decisive the exact value of our own soul. We feel ourselves and our whole life to be steeped in an error. And yet this error is distinct from other errors. The others are thought; but this is a living experience. An error that is only thought may be removed when the wrong thought is replaced by the right one. But the error that has been experienced has become part of the life of our soul itself; we ourselves are the error, we cannot simply correct it, for, think as we will, it is there, it is part of reality, and that, too, our own reality. Such an experience is a crushing one for the “self.” We feel our inmost being painfully rejected by all that we desire. This pain, which is felt at a certain stage in the pilgrimage of the soul, is far beyond anything which can be felt as pain in the physical world. And therefore it may surpass everything which we have hitherto become able to master in the life of our soul. It may have the effect of stunning us. The soul stands before the anxious question: Whence shall I gather strength to carry the burden laid upon me? And the soul must find that strength within its own life. It consists in something that may be characterised as inner courage, inner fearlessness.

[ 4 ] In order now to be able to proceed further in the pilgrimage of the soul, we must have developed so far that the strength which enables us to bear our experiences will well up from within us and produce this inner courage and inner fearlessness in a degree never required for life in the physical body. Such strength is only produced by true self-knowledge. In fact it is only at this stage of development that we realise how little we have hitherto really known of ourselves. We have surrendered ourselves to our inner experiences without observing them as one observes a part of the outer world. Through the steps that have led to the faculty of extra-physical experience, however, we obtain a special means of self-knowledge. We learn in a certain sense to contemplate ourselves from a standpoint which can only be found when we are outside the physical body. And the depressing feeling mentioned before is itself the very beginning of true self-knowledge. To realise oneself as being in error in one's relations to the outer world is a sign that one is realising the true nature of one's own soul.

[ 5 ] It is in the nature of the human soul to feel such enlightenment regarding itself as painful. It is only when we feel this pain that we learn how strong is the natural desire to feel ourselves, just as we are - to be human beings of importance and value. It may seem an ugly fact that this is so; but we have to face this ugliness of our own self without prejudice. We did not notice it before, just because we never consciously penetrated deeply enough into our own being. Only when we do so do we perceive how dearly we love that in ourselves which must be felt as ugly. The power of self-love shows itself in all its enormity. And at the same time we see how little inclination we have to lay aside this self-love. Even when it is only a question of those qualities of the soul which are concerned with our ordinary life and relations to other people, the difficulties turn out to be quite great enough. We learn, for instance, by means of true self-knowledge, that though we have hitherto believed that we felt kindly towards some one, nevertheless we are cherishing in the depths of our soul secret envy or hatred or some such feeling towards that person. We realise that these feelings, which have not as yet risen to the surface, will some day certainly crave for expression. And we see how very superficial it would be to say to ourselves: “Now that you have learned how it stands with you, root out your envy or hatred.” For we discover that armed merely with such a thought we shall certainly feel exceedingly weak, when some day the craving to show our envy or to satisfy our hatred breaks forth as if with elemental power. Such special kinds of self-knowledge manifest themselves in different people according to the special constitution of their souls. They appear when experience outside the body begins, for then our self-knowledge becomes a true one, and is no longer troubled by any desire to find ourselves modeled in some such way as we should like to be.

[ 6 ] Such special self-knowledge is painful and depressing to the soul, but if we want to attain to the faculty of experience outside the body, it cannot be avoided, for it is necessarily called forth by the special position which we must take up with regard to our own soul. For the very strongest powers of the soul are required, even if it is only a question of an ordinary human being obtaining self-knowledge in a general way. We are observing ourselves from a standpoint outside our previous inner life.

We have to say to ourselves: “I have contemplated and judged the things and occurrences of the world according to my human nature. I must now try to imagine that I cannot contemplate and judge them in that way. But then I should not be what I am. I should have no inner experiences. I should be a mere nothing.” And not only a man in the midst of ordinary everyday life, who only very rarely even thinks about the world or life, would have to address himself in this way. Any man of science, or any philosopher, would have to do so. For even philosophy is only observation and judgment of the world according to individual qualities and conditions of the human soul-life. Now such a judgment cannot mingle with supersensible surroundings. It is rejected by them. And therewith everything we have been up to that moment is rejected. We look back upon our whole soul, upon our ego itself, as upon something which has to be laid aside, when we want to enter the supersensible world. The soul, however, cannot but consider this ego as its real being until it enters the supersensible worlds. The soul must consider it as the true human being, and must say to itself: “Through this my ego I have to form ideas of the world. I must not lose this ego of mine if I do not want to give myself up as a being altogether.' There is in the soul the strongest inclination to guard the ego at all points in order not to lose one's foothold absolutely. What the soul thus feels of necessity to be right in ordinary life, it must no longer feel when it enters supersensible surroundings. It has there to cross a threshold, where it must leave behind not only this or that precious possession, but that very being which it has hitherto believed itself to be. The soul must be able to say to itself: “That which until now has seemed to me to be my surest truth, I must now, on the other side of the threshold of the supersensible world, be able to consider as my deepest error.”

[ 7 ] Before such a demand the soul may well recoil. The feeling may be so strong that the necessary steps would seem a surrender of its own being, and an acknowledgment of its own nothingness, so that it admits more or less completely on the threshold its own powerlessness to fulfil the demands put before it. This acknowledgment may take all possible forms. It may appear merely as an instinct and seem to the pupil who thinks and acts upon it as something quite different from what it really is. He may, for instance, feel a great dislike to all supersensible truths. He may consider them as day dreams, or imaginary fancies. He does so only because in those depths of his soul of which he is ignorant he has a secret fear of these truths. He feels that he can only live with that which is admitted by his senses and his intellectual judgment. He therefore avoids arriving at the threshold of the supersensible world, and he veils the fact of his avoidance of it by saying: “ That which is supposed to lie behind that threshold is not tenable by reason or by science.” The fact is simply that he loves reason and science such as he knows them, because they are bound up with his ego. This is a very, frequent form of self-love and cannot as such be brought into the supersensible world.

[ 8 ] It may also happen that there is not only this instinctive halt before the threshold. The pupil may consciously proceed to the threshold and then turn back, because he fears that which lies before him. He will then not easily be able to blot out from the ordinary life of his soul the effect of thus approaching it. The effect will be that weakness will spread over the whole of his soul's life.

[ 9 ] What ought to take place is this, that the pupil on entering the supersensible world should make himself able to renounce that which in ordinary life he considers as the deepest truth and to adapt himself to a different way of feeling and judging things. But at the same time he must keep in mind that when he again confronts the physical world, he must make use of the ways of feeling, and judging that are suitable for this physical world. He must not only learn to live in two different worlds, but also to live in each in quite a different way, and he must not allow his sound judgment, which he needs for ordinary life in the world of reason and of the senses, to be encroached upon by the fact that he is obliged to make use of another kind of discernment while in another world.

[ 10 ] To take up such a position is difficult for human nature, and the capacity for doing so is only acquired through continued energetic and patient strengthening of our soul-life. Any one who goes through the experiences of the threshold realises that it is a boon to the ordinary life of the soul not to be led so far. The feelings that awaken are such that one cannot but think that this boon proceeds from some powerful entity, who protects man from the danger of undergoing the dread of self-annihilation at the threshold. Behind the outer world of ordinary life there is another. Before the threshold of this world a stern guardian is standing, who prevents man from knowing what the laws of the supersensible world are. For all doubts and all uncertainty concerning that world are, after all, easier to bear than the sight of that which one must leave behind when we want to cross the threshold.

[ 11 ] The pupil remains protected against the experience described, as long as he does not step forward to the very threshold. The fact that he receives descriptions of such experiences from those who have trodden or crossed this threshold does not change the fact of his being protected. On the contrary, such communications may be of good service to him when he approaches the threshold. In this case as in many others, a thing is done better if one has an idea of it beforehand. But as regards the self-knowledge which must be gained by a traveler in the supersensible world nothing is changed by such preliminary knowledge. It is therefore not in harmony with the facts, when many clairvoyants, or those acquainted with the nature of clairvoyance, assert that these things should not be mentioned at all to people who are not on the point of resolving to enter into the supersensible world. We are now living in a time when people must become more and more acquainted with the nature of the supersensible world, if the life of their soul is to become equal to the demands of ordinary life upon it. The spread of supersensible knowledge, including the knowledge of the guardian of the threshold, is one of the tasks of the moment and of the immediate future.

There were a few directives that I could give to better understand this momentous work. Today, we want to deal with a single issue of human development, because it will shed light on the whole development.

There are seven periods in post-Atlantean culture, and we are currently in the fifth. Each period has a specific task in relation to the human being. The human being is reborn because the conditions on Earth have changed. The great developmental epochs really work on the human being. Let us bear in mind that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. When the human being began his development on Earth, he had developed the first three bodies. The task on Earth is to develop the I.

Let us look back at Atlantis, at the last third. In the last third, man had received the first seed to say “I” to himself. That was only a first seed. The two previous post-Atlantean thirds had to draw this “I” to themselves bit by bit. The main moment for the development of the “I” is the event of Golgotha. What is the fact that man received his “I” in the last third of Atlantis? Before man had arrived at this germ of the I, the connection between the physical body and the etheric body was quite different than later. Today, the etheric body of the head has approximately the same size and shape, which was not the case in Atlantis, where the etheric body still protruded. A certain point of the etheric head had to enter in order to connect with a point in the forebrain. Through this “mating”, the human being became mature enough to gradually develop his ego. To educate this ego, the human being needed the processing of the entire physical body, and all the rest of the Atlantean development was used to make the human physical body a carrier of the ego.

It was only after the Atlantic catastrophe that the human brain was so dense that it could become an ego carrier. The hydrocephalus is an atavism from ancient times. A firm, compact head was made by the etheric head going inside. And so the Indian culture could arise, in which a similar brain was already present. But the etheric body inside the physical body had not yet been educated to become a complete I-bearer. That is why the Indian longed to get out of this world.

Thus, in post-Atlantic culture, people begin to make changes to their etheric body that make it possible for the body to develop into an I-bearer. The I works from the inside out to transform the other bodies. Because the work of reworking the physical body begins with regulating the breath, the spiritual person is called “Atm”. Thus we can speak of seven basic parts. If we want to go into more detail in the sense and spirit of post-Atlantean culture, then we have to base it on the division into nine limbs as in my “Theosophy”. In Nordic mysteries, the division into nine was always taught.

In a sense, the future conscious work with the lower members must be anticipated. It must be preceded by unconscious work. This already took place in the Atlantean body – and also now. Only the initiated work quite consciously. First, therefore, there is an unconscious transformation of the astral body through the influence of higher powers of the ego. The result of this unconscious transformation of the astral body is now called the sentient soul. The transformed etheric body is the mind soul, and the transformed physical body is what we call the consciousness soul.

But even under the guidance of higher spiritual beings, the human being then begins to work more consciously and to develop the spirit self.

Physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, spirit self, life spirit, spiritual man – these are the nine members of the human being. These were the nine members taught in the old Nordic mysteries. What is formed between the astral body and the spirit self is developed step by step. In the first impulse, the I-radiation in the Atlantean time transformed it into the consciousness soul. This consciousness soul must educate the others in order to educate itself; then it must allow the Christ principle to permeate it in order to develop the spirit self.

In Indian culture, the etheric body is permeated by the Christized I.

In Persian culture, the sentient body
In Egyptian culture, the sentient soul
In Greco-Roman culture, the mind soul
In our culture, the consciousness soul.

In Philadelphia [the apocalypse], the first spark of the spirit self is struck under the influence of the Christ principle.

We are therefore in the culture that develops the consciousness soul and have to prepare ourselves to receive the Christed spiritual self. In Philadelphia, Christ will appear again in a finer body that will be visible to those who have prepared themselves.

In this way, the theosophical movement enables people to see Christ. This is how this processing of the bodies is gradually and thoroughly carried out. This is how we, through the wisdom of Theosophia, lead people to rise above themselves, to not get stuck in the personal, and thus become able to recognize Christ. Because it was necessary in terms of the evolution of the earth, Theosophy has entered our lives.

In the sixth period, meteorical phenomena that have materialized are evoked, and the others begin to ascend higher. But the sub-periods in it, which are characterized by the horses - white clothes and so on - do not pass by human development without leaving a trace. The three bodies interpenetrate more intimately with the three souls and with what will be acquired as a spiritual self. So what has happened in the sixth period? The four members and the finer differentiations of the I will have been worked through to a completely different extent. The three souls will have grown into the three bodies, they will have grown into them intimately.

What does it mean when we say that these members have grown together? They will have acquired the ability to create expression in the physical body. This ability is acquired through the fact that the person has worked through three periods of time. The fact that the person brings with them a development in the sixth period of time, in which they have worked on their soul, means that they have endeavored to spiritualize themselves. The third and the fourth will become intimately interwoven when they have completed the three cycles or epochs. This passage through a cycle, in which he has truly absorbed everything that a cycle offers, is called ©. Man is then finished with the completion of the cycle to its end.

They have achieved the interpenetration of the three with the four.

Sensitive soul / intellectual soul / consciousness soul.

First the number seven. Then, for the next period, the characteristic number is twelve, the multiplier. The twelve-thousanders emerge after completing the three cycles. Three zeros next to the twelve: 12,000.

And I heard the number of those who were sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from all the generations of the sons of Israel: of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand sealed; of the thousand of the tribe of Levi were sealed; of the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed. [Rev 7,4-8]

Now the various groups of people with 12 and 3 zeros who have joined the brotherhood of Philadelphia are designated. 144,000 are multiplied by the twelve groups (12x12) that have thus formed. Those who have developed the power over their soul will also have the power in the other souls. When soul works its way into soul, the deeds of men multiply. Thus, the apocalyptic shows us in depth that he knows the whole secret of human development. The truth is told in such a way that the human being is educated to penetrate from the cover into the real form, so that the consciousness soul is also developed. It is important to find certain things for oneself. That is why theosophy is presented later in a different form of wisdom. Even what is said today is still veiled.

Those who were initiated at the time of the apocalypse have already received the meaning. But what is esoteric in one age later becomes exoteric. That is the meaning of development. The esoteric transforms into the exoteric in the course of human development. This is also the case with the secret of Golgotha. The last act in the initiation of the mysteries. Awakening from the lethargic death and crucifixion, entombment and resurrection of the one to be initiated. Then it emerged, became an external historical fact, the historically evolved mystery wisdom of ancient times. The conservative mind always resists what is esoteric being carried out into the world. Christ was regarded as one who brought the mysteries into public life. The inner will appear more and more in the outer, unfolding splendor and color. If they had been able to follow the apocalypticist, they would have heard exactly the same thing when he spoke to his intimate disciples.

The sixth period has something of a decision everywhere. Philadelphia culture over into another time. The sixth seal brings the number twelve. The sixth trumpet also brings something crucial. 5 Jupiter Earth, 6 Venus Earth - overcoming the great Babylon.

Saved all who can be saved. It is decided who has to wait until the next time.

Repetition of Saturn 1, Sun 2, Moon 3, Earth 4, Jupiter 5, Venus 6, Vulcan 7.

When the Earth is forming into a world body for the sixth time, having completed five rounds, the sixth state is there, but the seventh is not yet. Therefore, for the time when Babylon is overcome, we are told:

Here is wisdom.

Five have fallen, that is Saturn, Sun...

They are gone for the elect - only sputum as beast -, and the sixth is, and the seventh has not yet come.

Up to this, the apocalypticist characterizes exactly.

One more thing: we have seven states, these are the proper ones that are gone through to ascend. But those who have proven to be immature are also placed under Sorat. What happens to them? They now have to separate a world of their own, on which they continue their development. So a special sphere separates, it falls out.

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A small colony of the wicked, the black magicians, settle there. Read in the theosophical literature about the mysterious eighth sphere, which goes left, while the other goes right. He will remain there for a time, and the beast is the eighth and has come from the seventh and leads to destruction. The apocalypticist also knows that in addition to the seven balls, there is also an eighth. All theosophy could be extracted. The more development progresses, the more strength is needed to lead those who have turned away from spiritualization back to it. Therefore, an attempt must be made to save what can still be saved through the best. That is why Moses and Elijah are called upon. And we see them saying Wisdom in a later epoch on Earth. Moses and Elijah are among those who are initiated very early on. Therefore, they have to work later. Karma is at work in the world. The highest and the lowest are subject to it. Those who are initiated before Golgotha must attain the karmic correspondence. What happened earlier?

Lived in a lethargic state in the physical body for three and a half days. What was done? Nothing. Left to the outer powers. These three and a half years drop out of the development of these initiates. These are the only three and a half years that the old initiate has ignored in the work of his ego. Such a thing must also find its karmic balance. There, where they occur in their state of development, they must again leave their physical body to the outer world for three and a half days. Therefore we read:

And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is called spiritually “Sodom and Egypt”, because there also the Lord was crucified. And they of the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations shall lie three days and a half, and their dead bodies shall not be left in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they went up into heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. [Rev 11, 7-12].

And so we have the karmic fulfillment of leaving the body to external powers. Even deeds that are done as sacrifices must find their karmic compensation. Except for the names, we find in the Apocalypse what Christ is. Christ is the deepest impulse that enters into the I of man. The I takes the Christ. We can characterize the I through intimate contemplation. Everyone can call all external things by their name. The name of the I must resound from within. The Christ plunges into this principle of the human being and gradually permeates it. A name that is not written in the external world, that only the one with the name can fertilize, who has it - recognize.

And he had a name written that no one knew [recognized] except himself.

That in the end the earth will be spiritualized in the sun, that everything will be spiritualized in the outer Jerusalem, is expressed:

And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. [Rev 21,23]

First the apocalyptic seer sees the leader who guided our Earth as Vishnu Karma, then as Ahura Mazdao and so forth. He sees him as the one who carries the seven stars, who has the brazen rod, the spirits of development in his hand and the sword in his mouth. The word [gap in the transcript]

Everything undergoes a certain transformation. Even the organs, for example the heart muscle; it is on the way to becoming an arbitrary muscle. The larynx is on the way to becoming a reproductive organ. Through the voice, human beings will produce their own kind. Today, human beings can only communicate that which inspires their soul by communicating with the air. But more and more of the human being is communicated in this way. And man will multiply out of himself through the voice. “In the primeval beginning” and at the end will be the Logos - creating word. And so the mighty vision of the sword from the mouth is at a higher level the reawakening of Atlantis.

Vision: Lamb instead of four animals. Sorat pushed down by an archangel - Sorat. “In brief” is a wrong translation: the apocalypticist does not mean “in a short time”, but “in a brief outline”. Theosophy is the commentary on the Apocalypse - and in our time it is the only possible commentary.

Dear attendees! The question of the Christ is arousing interest in the widest circles today. In our so enlightened age, this question is about to become one of the most significant. If one looks at the character of our entire culture, this interest is understandable. The figure of Christ was one that gave the deepest impulse to Western culture for many centuries. In the present time, in certain considerations, this figure seems to be disappearing, to be falling out of hands. Before the gaze of historical research, the figure of Christ is, as it were, dissolving. In contrast to this, there is the tendency to seek only a deeper understanding of the essence of Jesus of Nazareth. But this figure is even doubted in its historical existence. “Did Jesus live?” is a question often asked today. Such a question deeply affects all minds. As with all historical phenomena, one may ask whether the Christ Jesus was a historical being. But the Gospels are not documents like others, [like ordinary historical documents]. From the point of view of present-day historical research, there is a certain justification for the belief that the figure of Christ must be simply shattered in those who seek a historical basis. This is one reason why [in the past] the impulse had such a profound effect on people and why [today] such great interest must be shown in this research: precisely because of [people's] fear of losing a well-founded belief in the figure of Christ.

Now, from the spiritual scientific point of view, something, even if only a sketch, is to be said about this problem that has just been characterized. [But what this spiritual science has to say is that from it arises the well-founded hope that The Christ, who was irretrievably taken away from people outwardly, can be given back to them again.] The figure of Christ, as it emerges from spiritual science, is something that goes against the general convictions and judgments, it is downright repugnant to them. What is to be said this evening will not only meet with opposition, but it will also be taken as a flight of fancy, as a fantasy. It is not possible to gather everything on this question in the context of a single lecture, but by communicating what spiritual science has found, one or two things may come out afterwards. Actually, the question only becomes clear when we look back over the centuries at the different conceptions that people have had of the Christ.

It must be admitted: the Christ conception of the first centuries has something strange for present-day people; [this was already the case then, and to gain an understanding later on [in the course of time] is becoming more and more impossible. So the present point of view has developed: with regard to Christ, spiritual science comes to a similar conclusion as the Gnostic science of the first centuries. The Gnostics are often called sects, but they rose to the highest heights of human thought and feeling, which today's people cannot have much interest in. The followers of Gnosticism were far from adopting monistic views – a noble word for “materialistic”. The Gnostic does not find the original human being in the animal kingdom, but [for him] he is still a spiritual being; this being has not externally assumed a carnal body in the animal kingdom, but as a spiritual human being has brought himself more and more into alignment with the laws of the physical body. Incorporation has brought man to the situation in which he now is.

[And so the Gnostics asked:] How do we find the [original] human being? Each one [in] himself? On the one hand, we find what we have also become in terms of our soul life; on the other, we find a striving, a belief in a higher human nature. This enables the human being to unleash certain powers within himself so that he can uplift himself. He discovers [his] higher nature. Thus a sum of forces is hidden in the higher human nature. This is the view of the Gnostics: man is destined for a life in higher spheres; his life on earth is lower, lies below what he could be in spirit. Man's [physical] life does not correspond to his higher nature; but it is not lost; it is only important for physical progress [on earth]. The higher self has been preserved in the spiritual world. Eventually, this superhuman being was able to descend and work in human nature; at a certain point in time, a primeval human being, so to speak, was able to descend and work in human nature, who had been preserved in the spiritual world until then. This being is what Gnosticism conceived of as the Christ. He contains within himself the impulse to the highest that man can achieve. This moment [of descent] coincides, symbolically speaking, with the baptism of John.

[From the point of view of Gnosticism] people are sometimes more and sometimes less advanced. Gnosticism revered Jesus of Nazareth as the highest, most outstanding person in the development of the earth. We can characterize what happened to him at the age of thirty without shocking people: A person grows up, shows this or that development, until a certain point in life when a break occurs, something completely new enters the soul life, for which there seems to be no preparation at all. Some present this as something impossible, but there are upheavals, radical breaks in human life. Imagine such an upheaval - taken to the highest degree. Even if this turnaround is made on the smallest scale, the person feels like a new being, which he was not before. (The Gnostics assume such a turnaround when they speak of what occurred in Jesus of Nazareth at the age of thirty.)

The original man has found his way into the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. He was like an outer vessel; in the sense of the Gnostics, he is seen as the bearer of Christ. Thus, one cannot say that the Christ is identical with Jesus of Nazareth. But there was no new developmental epoch in the life of Jesus of Nazareth: that which had always been there in the heights of heaven, which had been preserved from the beginning, descended to earth and lived in the body of Jesus for three years. This is the infinite spiritual depth of the thought: the development of humanity has ascended to the Most High with God, has been saturated with the power of the Most High. A small circle of Gnostics could grasp the great significance of what had been given back to humanity.

We cannot go through all the individual stages of the Christ-ideas, but we can name a few, for example, in the case of the deep thinkers of the Middle Ages. They had the most intense faith, but it was not possible for them to elevate it to Gnostic ideas. It was impossible to think about Christian Gnosticism in the Middle Ages. Such thinking would have appeared to be fantasy. In the Middle Ages, the view was limited to what lies below the sphere of the Gnostics. They drew from Aristotle, [from the world of thought created by him] four hundred years before Christ; Aristotle was then the “tone-setter”. Spiritual flight was attributed to [the realm of] faith. Aristotle said: Everything that underlies the realms of nature is spiritual; only he did not accept the reincarnation of the human soul. He was interested in what can be recognized according to law, he was only interested in a unified God. [According to his view] the human soul separates from the unified divine substance with every birth. But after death, the soul does not return to the divine, but remains in the spiritual world as an individual human being. For Aristotle, the entire transcendental world is purely cognitive. Man looks back on his life on earth [after his death] and then finds his reward or his torment, eternal punishment and reward. This is related to the science of Aristotle – Franz Brentano, [a great connoisseur of Aristotle, has commented on it at length in his works]. The medieval scholars did point to a knowledge of the spiritual world, but for them [the cognitive approach to the spiritual] was excluded – that is the realm of gnosis, which is attained through knowledge.

[And so one can ask:] What is missing from the faith of medieval man? Well, what he lacks is the awareness, the conscious realization that man has also fallen intellectually. From this unconscious, spiritual science wants to raise him; this is then a new Christ consciousness, apart from all mythological and legendary aspects. The penetration of the ruling spirit into Jesus of Nazareth was only faith, but not knowledge. Thus humanity came to no longer be able to imagine what it means when the Christ takes possession of Jesus; it is nonsense for the materialistic thinking of the new age that from spiritual heights [the Christ presence as] something real descended to men. Only Jesus of Nazareth remains as an excellent human being.

Now, contradictions arose with ease when one sought clarification in the four documents [the gospels] and found differences. It is really child's play to show that they [in many ways] do not agree. [And one wonders:] Didn't they notice that earlier? It is easy to ascribe any folly to our ancestors, [as if] they had never read the Gospels. Thus Jesus of Nazareth became more and more blurred, [for many in modern times] he is only an exceptionally good person. That is flattering for the modern person; for him, Jesus of Nazareth is a person like all the others, only a little higher: like Plato, Socrates. Thus Jesus became the “simple man of Nazareth.” The simpler, the more general [his image became], the more people liked it, the more they believed that it corresponded to the historical truth. That is called “impartial research.” Only what is recognized as objective is objective. The greatest theologians believed that one should approach the subject without prejudice, assuming nothing to be true, but [what do they do?] They go and simply cross out [what is not apparent to them in the gospels]. Hence the question arises: “Did Jesus live?” No other result was possible [with such a way of thinking]. Outwardly, historically, the existence of Jesus cannot be proven. [Professor] Drews cum suis is absolutely right in the way he presents it. [He is consistent in his thinking]. Anything else would be like struggling for something that cannot be proven.

Spiritual science places itself in the context of culture; [it uses certain methods to gain insights into the spiritual course of human development], as discussed in the book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. This title was not chosen at random: it is not Christian mysticism that is meant, but rather that the Christ impulse is to be understood as the driving force of that which is found in external, physical reality. The most important impulse in the development of the earth is the Christ impulse; it is the center of gravity of this entire historical development. Spiritual science ties in again with what Gnosis wanted, but it does so from its own resources, quite independently. In pre-Christian times, the human soul functioned quite differently than it does today. It is a bad habit not to want to recognize that the human soul was different. [...] In the past, dream-like clairvoyance was a third state between sleeping and waking. Man knew then that there are spiritual beings, just as he knows today that there are plants and animals. The old legends and myths are images of what man has seen. The myths are transposed old clairvoyant experiences. But this clairvoyance had to be lost, because it was a prelude to the development of the ego in human evolution, to the development of the full ego of man in the physical world, of man's self-built existence.

This is the course of human development: from dim clairvoyance, it is to come to clear, conscious clairvoyance, firmly grounded in the future. In ancient times, there was no knowledge of the reasons for existence that was acquired other than through clairvoyance. [Although] Deussen [claims the opposite, it must be said] that only since the Greek period did [intellectual] knowledge of the external world emerge, actually only with Thales; Thales was the first. What comes from atavistic clairvoyance is not [philosophy]. In ancient times, the places where man rose above the ordinary state were the mystery schools, [from today's perspective, something between a university and a church. In these mystery sites, people could gain initiation]. The initiates recognized: the spirit reveals itself only in the ego, not in the powers of the soul; the ego is the center of the soul's being. But at first the spirit revealed itself only as God, who lived in all the people, as with the ancient Hebrews. Man's deepest being is directly divine; body and soul are only indirectly so. Through certain practices and exercises, the soul life can become independent of the body. The divine lives in the ordinary human being as he is in life; it reveals itself from the core of his being, the I. There were various initiation instructions, essentially four. The mysteries become an historical fact in the mystery of Golgotha - that was the Christ impulse! The Christ is the universal spirit; his life took place on the physical plane before all humanity, and is not lived out in a small way - as insignificant, before individuals, before the apostles and others - but representatively before all humanity. Thus there was a replacement of the old mysteries by the One. In the I, in the innermost being of the soul, lies the highest power of humanity. So we can rise again from the Fall.

The time since the I has been dependent on itself was preceded by the Christ impulse by only six hundred years. From this point on, man is completely placed in the world, which is perceived only through the outer senses. In natural development, we are dealing with leaps everywhere, and this also applies to the development of humanity. Thus, every time is a time of transition and our time is very special.

Some old forms are fading away, both moral and intellectual. Man is placed at the pinnacle of his own personality. Until today it was a time of preparation, [you could take it to heart or not]; but now increased powers must play in human nature. Souls are experiencing an increase of their powers. The last time this happened was in Greek times, six hundred years before Christ; then [this impulse] entered into human development [as the beginning of independent thinking]. Today we are at a similar point in time as six hundred years before Christ. But then the human soul was guided outwards into the physical world, now its only support is the ego; and in this ego of man the Christ consciousness must be established. It is a kind of repetition, but now inwards, internalized.

The center of the world is in this I. With our internalization, the highest impulses that can live in a person at all will arise - [it is] a spiritual return of the Christ within; [soul powers are developed] that can grasp the Christ in a new form; [can be experienced] by spiritual perception, not in the physical world. [This experience is not identical with the experience of the inner, mystical Christ, that is, with something that was already there.] Spiritual science shows us the inner, mystical Christ and the historical Christ. Anyone who only wants to believe in the inner, mystical Christ, not in the historical Christ, is mistaken. One also needs the historical Christ, because there would be no inner, mystical Christ without the historical Christ. The Christ-feeling in us depends on the spiritual sun as the eye depends on the light: it depends on the historical Christ. Without the latter there is no possibility of the inner Christ – it is the historical Christ who created the organ for the Christ-experience in the hearts of men.