The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In order to get ahead in our esoteric life we must become more attentive to things that usually escape our everyday consciousness. We must also revise our ideas about what we'll experience. For instance we complain that thoughts storm into our meditation that bother and disturb us. If we would think about it we would see that it's progress that we've become more sensitive, because we notice that these thoughts are stronger than we are. They induce us to use more strength in our meditation, for it's luciferic beings who bring up our own thoughts in us. Luciferic beings are always in us, but they're drowned out by the surging of everyday life. When we walk through a quiet woods at night we'll hear the leaves falling, animals flitting by and distant footsteps, but in a city's bustle such quiet noises will be imperceptible.

That's how things are with our meditation also. The quiet that we create let's us notice what submerges in the everyday hubbub. All kinds of things can enter our consciousness, such as physical pains that we don't feel otherwise. We can concentrate on our body—although this is only a good idea in special cases—and look for all of its pains. One begins somewhat over the head, excludes all other thoughts and concentrates on this one point. Then one goes further down, focuses on one part of the brain, and so on. Here one will notice that one can have pains in various parts of the body. The more egotistical a man is the more distinctly he'll feel pains here and there. But we shouldn't get hypochondriacal or scared about this—we should stay cool. We also have to do this with other things, for strange and surprising things can happen to us, but we have to get to the bottom of them. The relation between members of our being changes through meditation. Even when we do it ever so badly and awkwardly we nevertheless pull the ego, astral body and part of the etheric body out of the physical body, and so we can have strange experiences in our etheric body in the moments after meditation. This body is a faithful preserver of everything we encountered in life, consciously or not. For instance as a child we may have experienced that a dog was run over by a train. Over the years we have overcome the horrible scene. But the etheric body preserved it and through our development 30 or 40 years later we can suddenly perceive the yelping and whimpering out of us, or it can even be the case that the person concerned can make yelping sounds himself and then of course is rather scared about this. This happens when the etheric body is loosened in development, appears suddenly with especially strong force and works on the physical body.

Another example: An esoteric can have pains from an inflammation of the middle ear that lead to visions of a gruesome scene, and he can't explain its origin. This comes about as follows. Pains are seated in the astral body and not in the physical body. We know that the astral body can experience great pain in kamaloca. These pains in the astral body are reflected in the etheric body. The esoteric experiences the vibrations that are generated in the etheric body thereby, but also vibrations of a similar kind that were generated in it during childhood through soul pains, when he experienced the horrible scene. He had forgotten the latter long ago, but the experience emerges from the etheric body through his esoteric training and the outer earache.

Something even stranger is possible. Say we live on the other side of a house's wall with a family that liked to read and tell tall tales. Our physical ear didn't hear them, but our etheric body took them in. And in spiritual development it can happen that we experience them in our etheric body. Such things can scare us if we don't understand them. Say that someone goes to sleep in a public lecture through lack of interest. His ego and astral body are nevertheless there. Then when he wakes up it may happen that the physical body does not want to adapt itself to what the ego and astral body took in. Thereby the person is dissatisfied with himself, reproaches himself severely or even feels pain from his physical body. Or it may happen that someone takes in esoteric teachings with great attentiveness and does his exercises well, but he has to be among people who reject theosophy and esotericism either silently or openly. This has an effect on the esoteric, and it can happen after meditation that voices within him say: “That's all nonsense” or much more terrible things that give him great pain. It's the thoughts of his environment that he may not have heard with physical ears but with which he's obsessed. When we lift out the ego we take all of our good qualities with us and refine them more and more; the bad qualities we push down and they acquire a kind of independent life. Then it may happen that we begin to scold and to use expressions that we're too well trained to use in ordinary life. This then fills us with amazement and horror, and we may tell ourselves: I'm not like that at all, I'm too decent a person for that. But we should, admit that we are like that, for such things only disappear when we finally put them aside. And yet all of these experiences are steps forward, and it's just a matter of knowing their significance. It's especially important to realize that it's our own fault that it's so hard for us to press into spiritual worlds. But when we get up there we meet the one who took our sins upon him through the Mystery of Golgotha. He took our weaknesses upon him; that's a true word in the Bible, as everything in the Bible is true. And one who refuses to have his sins expiated by the Christ hasn't pressed to the depth of this truth, just as little as one who believes in it as a “good Christian” but who thinks that the matter is very simple. World evolution is very complicated and hides riddles in every little thing, and every little thing can become a whole world. The example of otitis media can teach us this. What is experienced there in the etheric body arose like a world out of a small thing.

Inspirations for the material world can also come from higher worlds. A thing that's noted too little, that many people read over when they read the life of Darwin's friend Wallace is that a thought that led to one of the most important discoveries in connection with physical heredity came to him in a feverish dream. That this thought came to him in a condition in which his physical brain was unsuited for thinking should give the materialists who consider thinking to be a function of the brain much to think about. Darwin also travelled a lot in the tropics and it's quite possible that he made some discoveries about physical conditions in a fever.

One will only notice such things when things are found in such abnormal states, as if through inspiration that can be used materialistically, when for instance someone discovers something that can make him rich. Up till then one will consider all such things to be figments of a sick fantasy. Let's continue our meditation with industry, perseverance and energy, for the help of the one who brought his impulse into earth evolution will always come to meet us. This help is always there.

The Gospel of John differs in many respects from the others. Thus, nothing is presented there [in direct] narrative. It always says that one or the other has seen something, that one or the other has been seen. How are we to understand this?

A large part of what is described in the Gospel of John is to be regarded as abstract, inner experiences, as instances of spiritual clairvoyance. When it says, for example, that Nicodemus “came to Jesus by night, this should not be taken literally. It is trivial to interpret it as if he came at night because he was ashamed to come during the day. We are dealing here with an astral experience. Nicodemus went to Jesus in his astral body at night, while his physical body slept, to receive instruction. This event took place not as a physical personality, not with physical steps, but in the astral world; Nicodemus experienced it as a sleeper. He had the conversation that is described to us in the night in the astral. Nicodemus was exceptionally clairvoyant. He was able to travel astrally to Christ Jesus and have that conversation. That which Christ was could therefore take place in a special experience for those who were meant to perceive it.

In this way, through strange experiences, it became clear to many who Jesus actually was. Thus, John the Baptist had also clairvoyantly seen Jesus as the Lamb of God - as the sacrificial animal of God - that is, the ego in man. This ego in the symbol of the lamb had been sacrificed unceasingly in pre-Christian times; in other words, man had to sacrifice his ego in order to do God's will. This I or Lamb of God was now to be transformed through Christ into the Son of Man.

[Using the Nicodemus narrative as a model, we need to understand why, upon the testimony of John the Baptist, it is revealed that Jesus is the Christ, the God of our cosmos. Therefore, the Gospel of John does not tell us that the Spirit descended upon Jesus, nor does it vividly describe the baptism, but rather says that John the Baptist describes his experience in such a way that he saw clairvoyantly how the dove descended. - Otherwise one would not understand why the Gospels seemingly contradict each other if they are not understood to mean that seers describe their spiritual experiences here.]

The gospel of John does not describe the baptism, but only the astral experience of the Baptist, when he, as a seer, saw Jesus inspired by the spirit in the form of a dove. This must be particularly taken into account if one wants to understand the spiritual meaning of this gospel. The Baptist was only clairvoyant at times, he could not look back on his previous incarnations. His mission was to show people that they should now acquire their clear sense of self, because now was the time to do so. But John the Baptist had to pay for this mission by having his own sense of self limited to the time between birth and death. Hence his strange answers to the questions of the Jews. When they asked if he was the Christ, he replied, “I am not.” And when they asked if he was Elijah, he said, “No.” Contrary to these words of his, Jesus solemnly testifies that John the Baptist was the reincarnated Elijah.

What is the source of this contradiction? John did not know people by their past lives, he did not know that he was Elijah returned. To fulfill his mission in the world, he had to sacrifice that dark, half-dreaming clairvoyance through which people in former times were directly connected to the spiritual world and could look back on their past forms of existence. Therefore, true to his mission, he pointed to Jesus as a human being in whom a higher consciousness was already developed and who therefore carried the Heavenly Kingdom within himself and could help people to regain the consciousness they had had before.

In order for the ego to develop, it was necessary for people to concentrate their energies and learn to make the most of their lives on earth and understand its great significance. Therefore, a veil had to fall over the past so that people could no longer see their earthly lives as a small link in a long chain. By the time of the Baptist, however, self-awareness had been fully developed and was now to be developed into an even higher consciousness.

In the Gospel of John, we can follow step by step how Jesus himself rises from direct self-awareness to God-awareness by uniting with and merging into all other living beings. The power of his insight and will comes across to us here as in no other gospel. Significant in this regard are Jesus' words to Nathanael when he is first led to him. Jesus calls him a “true Israelite.” What did he mean by that? To understand this expression, we have to go back to the ancient mysteries for a moment.

For example, if we examine the Persian Mithraic mysteries, we find that the three great stages of initiation were divided into seven degrees. The initiates of the first degree were called the “messengers of the raven” – “raven” corresponds to “messenger”;

- the initiates of the second degree, the 'occult man';
- the initiates of the third degree, the 'soldier';
- the initiates of the fourth degree, the 'lion';
- the initiate of the fifth degree, a 'true Persian';
- the initiate of the sixth degree, the 'solar hero';
- the initiate of the seventh degree, 'father, magician'.

The initiate of the first degree had to learn everything there was to learn; he still had one foot in the outer world. Through his studies in the spiritual world, he could be a messenger between this world and the outer world. That is why it is said of Wotan that he was always accompanied by his ravens.

The initiate of the second degree, the <«occult man», had experiences in the spiritual world through imaginations, but he did not have the right to share his occult experiences with others. In general, the various degrees and the legitimacy of the students were strictly observed. Thus, for example, the occult man had to mature before he was given the opportunity to share with others what he had learned through occult means. Only after he had matured spiritually could he enter the third degree and become a “warrior,” an enunciator, an apostle of the spiritual world.

The initiate of the fourth degree - or of the “Lion” - had to be completely free of all self-assertion; in relation to the truth, he was not allowed to have his own point of view or his own opinion. This view is in complete conflict with what is considered correct in our days, since everyone has to have their point of view and their opinion. Mathematics is currently the only field in which individuals no longer believe that they can assert their own opinions. The initiate of the fourth degree, on the other hand, was never allowed to let his own thoughts and feelings interfere when it came to spiritual truths; because only those who do not have their own opinions can penetrate to the truth, as an old sage says. Considering himself as the instrument of the truth, as the vessel of the truth, he should not speak his own thoughts, but only what he had been taught. His standard should be: What does the truth think about it?

Then he was ready to ascend to a higher degree, the fifth degree. Until then, he had only been an expression of the feelings and thoughts of individual people. The initiate of the fifth degree should embody the spirit and soul of the people. The astral, the etheric and the ego in the individual human being are, so to speak, embedded in the national spirit, which is a concrete individuality, although without an outer physical body. The national spirit gives expression to everything that happens in a single nation, to all its feelings and characteristics – just as Buddha's Nirmanakaya gives its etheric body to various individualities and lives in them. In the Mithras Mysteries, such an initiate was called a “true Persian”. He was, so to speak, a mouthpiece for the entire nation, and those who heard him knew that the national spirit was speaking through him. But when such a high individuality has had all the experiences that he can have through a particular nation, he withdraws from that nation, which then falls into degeneration and decline. The spirit of a nation actually lives a more real life than the individual human being, but it usually speaks only through the whole nation. But if it ever speaks through an individual human being, it is always through someone who is not expressing his or her own individual opinion. The initiate in Palestine was called a “true Israelite” in the fifth degree, like Nathanael.

The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “solar hero” because not only the spirit of a people, but the spirit of an entire solar system spoke through him. He could not deviate from his path any more than the sun itself could, and he was subject to the solar system, to the laws of the solar spirit, just as the initiate of the fifth degree was subject to the laws of the spirit of the people.

Those who had penetrated the farthest came to the father of the solar system. Through them spoke the Father Spirit - the Spirit of the All-Father and they were an expression of his will and his law. There were places where these initiation methods were strictly followed, but even in the time of Jesus much of it had degenerated into empty ceremonies. Therefore, when Jesus said to Nathanael that he was a true “Israelite”, we learn not only that Jesus knew that Nathanael was a fifth-degree initiate, but also that at the time of Jesus there was a temple of initiation in Israel. But to know that Nathanael was an initiate, Jesus himself had to be an even higher initiate, which he also confirms when he says that he had met Nathanael under the fig tree.

What is meant by this statement? The fig tree or buddhi tree is a symbol of the family tree of humanity, whose branches, twigs and leaves are symbols of the individual ethnic groups, families and human souls. To sit under the fig tree means to identify with one's tribe, to feel at one with one's people, and indicates the initiate's position in relation to his people.

On the astral plane, that is, by clairvoyant means, Jesus had seen Nathanael as a fifth-degree initiate, and that is why he said he had seen him under the fig tree. Nathaniel immediately understands that no one other than a high initiate could have known this about him, and that is why he calls Jesus “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel.” But not only was Nathaniel allowed to see the souls of the people afterward, but he also saw angels ascending and descending from heaven. This means that his eyes were opened to the spiritual reasons and all the secrets of the cosmos.

This story thus suggests that there was indeed spiritual knowledge in Israel at the time of Jesus, and that this people had their mysteries, but also that Jesus knew about them and had this spiritual knowledge himself.

But the Gospel of John not only shows us that Jesus knows everything, but also that his will is strong enough to merge with others and work in them. Basically, every human being is a limited and isolated being. It was Christ who gave humanity the first impulse towards spiritual brotherhood. Through this impulse, people were to be brought closer together, and a bond was to be formed between souls that would gradually awaken a sense of belonging between different peoples over the centuries. Before Christ, nothing like this had been possible. Love did exist, but it was in the blood and never extended beyond the family and tribe within which all marital ties were formed. But if self-awareness was to be developed, this point of view had to be abandoned.

The blood ties that had so strongly bound people to tribes and peoples gradually began to dissolve as people increasingly entered into “distant relationships” outside of their tribe and people. As a result of the fragmentation that arose from this, people increasingly fell into unkindness and selfishness. In this case, the history of Rome gives us a typical picture of the prevailing situation. If the Christ had not come at that time and given the world a mighty impulse of spiritual brotherly love, people would have become more and more separated from each other and ultimately quite estranged from each other. With the Christ, however, the world received a new impulse. The blood tie was not to be dissolved, but love for father, mother and brother was no longer to be the only tie between people. Something new had been added, something much higher and more powerful than the old, namely, universal love for one's fellow man, the kinship of souls that unites souls with each other. “He who cannot value spiritual love more than love for father and mother cannot be my disciple.”

But in order for this new impulse of love to flow into and permeate people, it was necessary for Jesus to have the greatest willpower. At the wedding at Cana, he gave proof for the first time of this willpower, which was so strong and so pure that it could, as it were, pass into other people and determine the impressions [of those] who received it. How should we understand this? Let us assume that two people are standing next to each other and one of them drinks a glass of water. If the other person is capable of a strong volitional impulse, he can influence the taste organ of the other person in such a way that the water in his mouth tastes like something completely different, like wine, for example. For our experiences do not depend so much on the material that conveys the impressions, but rather on our way of reacting to the impressions we receive. Thus, wine or water becomes something completely different for us, depending on whether we look at it from a materialistic or a spiritual point of view.

In my book Grundlage einer Erkenntnistheorie (The Foundation of an Epistemology), I thoroughly discuss my thoughts on this question. Behind matter stands the spiritual.

Therefore, if a powerful will imbued with love were to make people taste wine in the water of a well, they would drink this water as willingly as wine. Matter is only a maya – an illusion. The spiritual content that we give to matter is the main thing. In everything that surrounds us, we therefore find not only coarse matter, but also the spirit that is the content of the world. (Changing sensations, that is the content of our world.)

This cannot only be stated by anyone who is clairvoyant, but can also be proven completely logically through theosophy. In the Gospel of John, this spirituality is particularly emphasized. The spirit that works in the God-man Christ Jesus is so strong that it can not only influence other people, but also command their feelings. That is why it is said that Jesus, through his willpower, influenced the water that was poured into the jugs in such a way that it had the same effect on the guests as wine. The guests really felt it – they drank wine. This story shows us what a powerful will, transformed into love, is at work in Christ, for only such a will can shine in others in this way.

It may be said, in a way, that the Gospel of John is full of mystery and can only be fully understood with the help of occult research. For example, it is never mentioned who wrote it, it only speaks of him as a “disciple of the Lord”. Nor does one learn the name of Jesus' mother.

In the story of the wedding at Cana, it is stated that Jesus' mother was there; and she is also mentioned in other places by the name of “Mother of Jesus”. She is never called Mary. If we read the passage about the crucifixion carefully, we see that three women were standing under the cross: Jesus' mother, the sister of his mother, Mary, the wife of Cleophas, and Mary Magdalene. So the sister of Jesus' mother was called Mary, and it is hardly credible that two sisters would have the same name.

If we then turn to the Christian mysteries, we do not find 'Mary' as the name of Jesus' mother there either. There she was always called 'Sophia', which means 'wisdom'. There is a mystery behind this fact. At the wedding at Cana, Jesus makes a strange comment to his mother: “Woman,” he says, “what is this that you have brought me?” The usual translation, “Woman, what have I to do with you?” is wrong and directly offensive to the Christian sensibility.

Jesus' words point to a mysterious bond that existed between him and his mother and that he felt strongly at that moment. His mother's words, “Do whatever he tells you,” also suggest a mutual understanding. Just as it takes only a half-hint for two friends to understand each other when there is a secret between them that no one else knows, so it was in Jesus' relationship with his mother.

We have already heard how a change took place in Jesus of Nazareth through baptism. The words that were spoken then, “This is my beloved and faithful Son; in him I am well pleased,” mean in the occult language, which is probably the only language that gives a reasonable explanation of this passage, that the individuality of Christ emerged at that moment in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

At the same time, however, a change also took place in the stepmother of Jesus, the mother of the child Solomon. The father of this child had died early. When the ego of Zarathustra passed into the child Nathan and the child Solomon died, the mother of the child Nathan died shortly afterwards. The mother of the Solomonic child then moved with her children to the father of the Nathanic child and thus became the stepmother of Jesus. At the moment when the individuality of Christ took possession of the body of Jesus, a transformation also occurred in his mother. She was enlightened and radiant through the deceased, spiritualized mother, who entered the Solomonic mother as a spiritual individuality. Thereby she regained her virginity. This mother, who lives without birth, is Sophia.” The

Virgin Mary - is the Sophia of the mysteries, the divine wisdom or the Virgin Mary - Madonna.

This is the mystery of the mother of Jesus. It was this Mother Sophia, the divine wisdom, who was in Cana. Between her and Jesus there was a bond of love, a power of love that could be transferred to others and could influence them. At the basis of this bond between Jesus and his spiritualized mother, his own power of life and will could be transmitted to other people. Consequently, the Madonna is the union of the ego of the Solomon-like mother with the pure and spiritualized etheric and astral body of the Nathan-like mother. The old masters were right when they depicted the Madonna as childlike and absolutely pure, for example, in Michelangelo's Pietà.

In these days when death is so constantly a source of pain, I want to deal with certain aspects of Spiritual Science in connection with the problem of death. Today I shall give a kind of introduction to these problems; tomorrow I shall go more closely into the subject and on Sunday pass over from these problems to more general questions of the artistic conception of Life. This will then lead us back to matters connected with our Building.

Manifold indeed are the connections within which we are placed in life. Just as the life before birth is a preparation for its reflection in this life, so this reflection between birth and death is a preparation for the spiritual life which comes afterwards, between death and a new birth. The more we are able to carry over from this life into the life between death and a new birth, the richer may be the development in that life; for the actual concepts which must be acquired of that life, the concepts of the truths of existence between death and a new birth must be very different from the concepts we must acquire of earthly Maya if we want to understand this Maya. Some of the necessary concepts will be found in the lecture-course given last year in Vienna. (The Inner Life of Man between Death and a New birth.) You will find there what new concepts must be acquired for understanding the other side of man's life which takes its course between death and a new birth. It is often exceedingly difficult to work out the concepts and ideas that are applicable to this other kind of life, and in reading such a lecture-course you will realise that it has been a question of wrestling for terms which in some way give expression to these totally different conditions.

At this time especially when the deaths of very dear Members are occurring in our anthroposophical life, I want to call attention to the following.—

The part played in the life between death and a new birth by the moment of death is different from the part that is played by the moment of birth in our present life between birth and death. The moment of birth is that point which, in ordinary circumstances, is not remembered by the human being. In Ordinary life, birth is not remembered. But the moment of death is the point which leaves behind it the very deepest impression for the whole of life between death and a new birth; it is the point that is remembered most of all; in a certain sense it is always there, but in a quite different form from that in which it is seen from this side of life. From this side of life, death appears to be a dissolution, something in face of which the human being has a ready fear and dread. From the other side, death appears as the light-filled beginning of experience of the Spirit, as that which spreads a sun-radiance over the whole of the subsequent life between death and a new birth; as that which most of all warms the soul through with joy in the life between death and a new birth. The moment of death is something that is looked back upon with a deep sense of blessing. Described in earthly terms: the moment of death, viewed from the other side, is the most joyful, the most enrapturing point in the life between death and a new birth.

If, out of materialism, we have pictured that the human being loses consciousness with death, if we can form no true idea of the continuation of consciousness—(I emphasize this today because the incentive is community with dear ones who have recently gone away from us through death.) if it is difficult to picture that consciousness exists beyond death, if we believe that consciousness is darkened (as appears to be the case after death)—then we must realise: it simply is not true. The truth is that the consciousness is excessively bright and it is only because the human being is still unaccustomed, during the very first period after death, to live within this excessively clear consciousness, that there sets in, to begin with, immediately after death, something like a kind of sleep.

This state of sleep, however, is the very opposite of the state of sleep through which we pass in ordinary life. In ordinary life we sleep because consciousness is dimmed; after death we are, in a certain sense, unconscious because the consciousness is too strong, too forceful; because we live wholly in consciousness. And what we have to do during the first days is to live over into this condition of excessive consciousness. We have to find our bearings and orientation within this condition of superabundant consciousness. When we succeed in so finding our bearings that, as it were, out of the fullness of the cosmic thoughts, we feel: thou wast that ... the moment when, out of the fullness of the cosmic thoughts, we begin to distinguish our past earth-life within this abundance of consciousness, then the moment is experienced of which we can say: we awaken. It may be that we are awakened by an event that has been particularly significant in our earthly life and is also significant in the happenings after our earthly life.

It is, therefore, a process of getting accustomed to the supersensible consciousness, to the consciousness that does not rest upon the foundation and support of the physical world, but that is working and active in itself. This is what we call the “Awakening” after death. This awakening consists in the will stretching out to find its bearings, the will, which as you know and can realise from the lecture-course already mentioned, may unfold strongly after death. I spoke of will that is coloured by feeling, of feeling that is coloured by will: when this life of feeling that is coloured by will stretches out to find its bearings in the supersensible world, when the first sally is made, then the awakening has come.

If we want to think of the experiences that are connected with the problem of death, we must realise, above all, that the real being, the being who rules and weaves within man, is profoundly unknown to him. This true being is not only unknown in respect of the deeper side of a man's own hidden existence, but it is unknown too, in respect of many things that play very significantly indeed into the experiences of everyday life. We must be absolutely clear that even with the most important instruments of knowledge we possess for the physical world—with the senses—we look almost entirely from outside, and that in this looking from outside, what may be called our skin shuts us off from beholding our real, true being. As soon as we begin to judge of our true being, as soon as we try to form a picture of this true being, we are obliged to apply our intellect, our power of forming mental images. In the course of our development within the physical body, however, both these faculties are strongly influenced from the Ahrimanic as well as from the Luciferic side; and the nature of all these influences that are exercised from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic sides upon our intellect, in so far as it is bound to the brain, is such, that they are able in the highest degree to cloud the judgment we form about our own being.

All self-knowledge is really comparable with the extreme case I quoted in the last lecture, of the university professor who himself tells the story of how, in his youth, he crossed the street and suddenly saw coming towards him a young man with a dreadfully unsympathetic face; he tells of the shock he received when he realised that he was seeing himself through two mirrors that were revealing his own physiognomy, as if it were coming towards him. This shows that he had no inkling of his external appearance, which was exceedingly unsympathetic to him: I have told you how he narrates a second similar instance. But really it is no different with what we call our more intimate self-knowledge. Our Ego and astral body which set out on the journey through the worlds when the date of Death has been passed—these members of our being are removed from our sphere of observation during physical life, for when we wake from sleep the Ego and astral body are not revealed to us. They are not revealed to us in their true form but in such a way that they are mirrored by the pictures of the Ego and astral body that are sketched by the etheric body and physical body. Between sleeping and waking we should be able to see our astral being and our Ego in their true form if we were not in the unconscious condition of sleep. The dreams, too, which occur in ordinary life are only faulty interpreters of our real being, because they are, after all, reflections of what goes on in the astral body around the etheric body, and because it is essential, first, to understand the language of dreams if we are to get at their correct meaning. If we understand the language of dreams, we can, certainly, acquire knowledge about our true being from the processes of dream. But in ordinary life we are accustomed simply to accept the pictures presented by the dream. This, however, is no more sensible than if we were simply to follow the signs of printed letters and not really read at all.

Our true being is withdrawn from us during life between birth and death. We must realise here that in our astral body—and in our Ego too—there lie all those feelings and all those stirrings of will which lead us to our actions, to our deeds, but also to our judgments, to our conceptions of things in the world. There, in the depths of our being, there at the seat of our astral body and our true “I”, we have a whole world of emotions, a whole world of feelings, of impulses of will; but what we form in everyday life as our own view of these emotions, impulses of will and feelings, stand mostly—mostly, I say—in a very distant connection with what we truly are, in our innermost being.

Take the following case—It may happen in life that two people live together for a long time and that through the strange forces playing out of the unknown regions of the astral body and Ego of the one person into the astral body and Ego of the other (these forces remain in the hidden regions), the one has in relation to the other a real desire for torment, a kind of need for cruelty. It may be that the one person who has this desire for torment, this need for cruelty, has no inkling whatever of the existence of these emotions in the astral body and Ego; he may build up about the things he does out of this urge to cruelty, a whole number of ideas which explain the actions on quite other grounds. Such a person may tell us that he has done this or that to the other person for one reason or another; these reasons may be very clever and yet they do not express the truth at all. For in ordinary life, what we all-too-often picture as the motives of our own actions, indeed of our own feelings, frequently stands, as I say, in a very, very distant connection with what is really living and weaving in our inner being. It may be that the Luciferic power is actually preventing the person concerned from realising the nature of this urge for cruelty, of these impulses to do all kinds of things to the other person, and that under the influence of this Luciferic power everything he says about the reasons merely spreads a cover over what is actually present in the soul. The reasons we devise in our consciousness may often be cut out for hiding from us, disguising what is actually living and working in the soul. These reasons are too often of a character which indicates a desire for self-justification, for we should find ourselves just as antipathetic as the professor of philosophy of whom I told you. We should not at all like what is in our soul if we had to acknowledge what kind of instincts and emotions are really holding sway. And because we have to protect ourselves from the sight of our own soul-being, we discover, with the help of these reasons, all kinds of things that guarantee us protection, because they deceive us about what is actually the ruling force in the soul. Just as it is true that the external world becomes a Maya to us because of the peculiar character of our faculty to form mental pictures, it is also true that what we have to say about ourselves in ordinary life is, to a very, very great extent, Maya.

Certain instincts and needs of our innermost being in particular mislead us into constantly deceiving ourselves about our own being. Take the case of a person who is terribly vain, who suffers from a form of megalomania. Such people are by no means few in number. This is admitted. If, however, as described above, a mask were not laid over what really is in the soul, it would be much more generally admitted that vanity and megalomania exist in many souls who have not the very slightest inkling that it is so.

Megalomania gives rise to many wishes ... but when I say ‘wishes’, you must understand what I mean.—the wishes do not become conscious, they remain wholly in the depths. Such a person may wish to exercise a controlling influence upon someone else, but because he would have to admit that this desire for control over the other is born of vanity and megalomania, he will not admit it. He then appeals—unconsciously of course,—to those powers of seduction which Lucifer is able to exercise all the time upon the human soul. And under the unconscious influence of Lucifer, such a person never gets to the point of saying to himself: ‘What I have in me, producing the desire for action, is really vanity, megalomania.’ He never says this, but on the contrary, he will often discover, under the influence of Lucifer, a whole system for explaining the feelings of which he is darkly aware but the true character of which he will not admit. He may have certain feelings for some other person but he cannot acknowledge them, because what he really wants is to control this other person and he is unable to do so because this other person, perhaps, will not allow himself to be controlled. Then, under the influence of Lucifer the soul discovers a system, discovers that the other person is planning something malicious; the first person then proceeds to paint a mental picture of the details that are being planned against him; he finally feels that he is being persecuted. The whole system of judgments and ideas is a mask that is there merely for the purpose of covering with a veil what must be prevented from emerging out of the inner life of soul.—It is a real Maya.

In connection with a series of actions, a man once said to me that he had done them out of an iron sense of duty, out of infinite devotion to the cause he represented. I was bound to say to him in reply: “The opinion you have about the motives of your procedure and of your actions is no criterion whatever. Only reality is the criterion, not the opinion one may have. The reality shows that the impulse, the urge to these actions was to gain influence in a certain direction.” I said to the man quite baldly: “Although you believe that you are acting out of an iron sense of duty, you are really acting under the impulse to acquire influence and you misinterpret this way of acting as being selfless, done purely out of a sense of duty. You are not acting out of this motive but because it pleases you to act so, because it brings you certain pleasure—again, therefore, out of a certain inner impulse.”

Our opinion, our mental picture of ourselves may be extremely complicated; it may not resemble in the very remotest degree what is really dominating and weaving in the soul. It may be extremely complicated. You will admit at once that such things must be known when it is a question of living in a world of truth and not in a world of Maya; you will also admit at once that it is necessary now and then to speak of such things in a radical way! The reasons which as genuine, true reasons, drive us to our actions, can only become clear to us slowly and by degrees, when through Spiritual Science, we really have knowledge of the secret connections existing between the human being and the world.

Let us take a definite case,—You will all know that there are people in the world who are called gossips, chatterboxes. If we ask these chatterboxes why they flock together in their cafes or elsewhere and talk, talk, talk, talk (they often talk a great deal more than they can answer for,) we shall hear many reasons why it is necessary for them to discuss this, that or the other. We can get to know people whom we then meet rushing along the street, hurrying somewhere or other in order to arrive quickly ... and when we find out what they are after, we discover that it is nothing but the most futile, useless, silliest chatter. If such people are asked about their reasons, they will give reasons which often sound exceedingly laudable and fine, whereas the most that can be said is that these reasons are well able to conceal the real facts of the case. And now we will consider these “real facts of the case.”

What is happening when we gossip or chatter? (when we speak, it is, of course, the same.) What is happening? Through our organs of breathing and speech we set the air into movements which correspond with the forms of the words. We generate in ourselves those physical waves—and naturally the corresponding ether-waves too, for when we speak something very significant is happening in the etheric body—we generate these waves in the air and ether which corresponds with our words, which give expression to our words. Picture it quite precisely to yourselves: While you are sitting there—no, pardon me, not you!—while a man is chattering with his cup of coffee before him on the table, he is bringing his whole inner organism into movement, that inner organism which corresponds with the form of expression, with the external physical and etheric form of expression of his words. Something is actually welling up and weaving in him; he generates this in himself, but he also is aware of it, he feels it. He feels this self-movement of the physical and etheric bodies because the astral body and the Ego are continually coming up against it. The astral body is continually coming up against the ether-waves and becoming aware of them; and the Ego is continually coming into contact with the physical waves of the air; so that while we are speaking, astral body and Ego are continually contacting something, touching something. in this contact, in this impact, we become aware of our Ego and of our astral body, and the most agreeable sensation the human being can have is that of self-enjoyment. when the astral body and the Ego contact the etheric body and the physical body in this way, the process is similar to what happens on a small scale when a child licks a sweet—for the pleasurable sensation in licking the sweet consists in the fact that the astral body is coming into contact with what is happening in the physical body, and the human being becomes aware of himself in this way. He becomes aware of himself, has self-enjoyment in this process. Those who sit down at a table in a cafe in order to gossip and chatter for an hour or two, simply hurry there to find self-enjoyment. It is self-enjoyment that is being sought in such cases.

We cannot become aware of these things if we do not know that man's being is fourfold and that all the four members are involved in every activity in the external world.

There are other, different examples. From the example of chattering we have seen how the human being has the urge to self-enjoyment caused by the impact of his astral body and Ego upon the etheric body and the physical body. But he also, frequently feels the need for his astral body merely to contact the etheric body, just the etheric body. In order that the astral body may contact the etheric body, this etheric body must produce movement, it must produce inner activity. These processes go on even more in the subconsciousness than do other processes. There is an impulse in the human being, of which he is not conscious, to make an impact with his astral body upon his etheric body. This impulse lives itself out in very curious ways. We find that certain young men—and in recent times young ladies too—simply cannot rest until what they write is printed. People sometimes find it exceedingly pleasant to see their writings in print, but it is pleasant chiefly because they succumb to the worst possible illusion, namely, to the illusion that what is printed is also read: It is by no means always the case that writings are read when they are printed, but it is at least believed that they are, and this is an exceedingly pleasant sensation. Many young men and, as I say, many young ladies too, simply cannot bear it, they are constantly on edge ... until their writings are printed. What does this mean?

It means this,—When writings are printed and actually read—which happens in the rarest cases today—when writings are printed, our thoughts pass over into other human beings, live on in other human souls. These thoughts live in the etheric bodies of the other human beings. But in us the idea takes root: ‘The thought you yourself had in your etheric body is now living out there in the world.’ We have the feeling that out there in the world our own thoughts are living. If the thoughts are really living in the world, if they are actually present there—in other words, if our printed writings are also read—then this exercises an influence upon our own etheric body and we impact what is living out there in the world. Inasmuch as it is living in our own etheric body, an impact takes place with our own astral body. This is quite a different impact from when we merely impact our own thoughts; the human being is not always strong enough to do this, because these thoughts must be called forth from the inner being by dint of energy. But when the thoughts are living in the world, when we can have the consciousness that our own thoughts are living out there in the world, then our astral body—to the best of our belief at least—comes into contact with a part of ourselves that is living in the outside world. This is the supreme self-enjoyment. But this form of self-enjoyment lies at the basis of all seeking for fame, all seeking for recognition, all seeking for authority in the world. At the root of this impulse for self-enjoyment there lies nothing else than a need to impact with our astral body objective thoughts of our etheric body, and in the impact to become aware of ourselves. You see what a complicated process between astral body and etheric body lies at the root of things that play a certain role in the outer world.

Naturally these things are not said for the purpose of making moral judgments into scarecrow. They are not of this nature at all, for everything that has been mentioned belongs to the category of characteristics that are quite normal in life. When we speak, it is absolutely natural that there should be self-enjoyment—even when speaking does not consist in gossiping. It is quite natural too that when we allow something to be printed, not out of thirst for fame but because we feel it a duty to say something to the world,—that then too we impact the thoughts of our etheric body; in such a case the same process is at work. We must not draw the conclusion that these processes are always to be shunned, always to be regarded as something lacking in morality,—for I simply mean them to be taken in a symbolic sense. If the human being were to flee from everything that presses in upon him from the side of Lucifer and Ahriman, he would have to come out of his skin as soon as he realised it—I mean this symbolically too: Lucifer and Ahriman exercise no other forces upon us than those that are justified, normal forces in human life; only it is the case that Lucifer and Ahriman put them into operation in the wrong place. I have said this in different lecture-courses.

If you think of all these things you will perceive the infinite variety and complexity of those threads in life which play over from human soul to human soul and again outwards from the human soul into the world. How infinitely complicated it all is but at the same time you will realise how little, how very little real knowledge the human being derives from what he perceives and pictures concerning his relations to other human beings and to the world. The picture we have of ourselves is only a tiny fragment drawn from what we experience. And this picture, to begin with, is Maya. Only when we make Spiritual Science into an actual asset of life, not into mere theory, do we really get behind Maya and reach some enlightenment upon what is actually going on within us. But things do not change by our possessing a tiny and mostly untrue fragment of the web in which we are involved in relation to the world; the things are as they are. All these hidden forces, this hidden web from soul to soul, from the human being to the various agents of the world—it is all there, and every minute of sleeping and waking life it is playing into the human soul. You will be able to judge from this how much has to be done in order to reach a true knowledge of the being of man.

Studies of this kind have to do with those shades of feeling which are requisite for a true experience of what belongs, not to earthly incarnation, but to eternity. For by unfolding such shades of feeling we become aware of the basis of the conflicts which appear in life. These conflicts that are brought by life and rightly become subjects for treatment in literature and the other arts, are due to the fact that there is an unknown, hidden ocean of will in which we are swimming in life, and that only a tiny fragment—mostly distorted at that—comes into our consciousness. But we cannot live in accordance with this tiny fragment; we must live with our whole soul in accordance with the great and manifold ramifications which exist in life. And this brings the conflicts. How can the tiny fragment that is also in many cases distorted, how can this tiny fragment come into a true relationship to human life, how can it really understand what is actually going on in human life: Because it is incapable of this, the human being inevitably comes into conflict with life. But where reality is in play, there too is truth. Reality does not direct itself according to the pictures we take of it. And the moment there is opportunity for it reality pitilessly corrects the Maya of our ideas. And this kind of corrective which reality bestows upon the Maya of our ideas, supplies most significant material for treatment in art, in poetry.

In pursuance of the line of thought contained in this lecture, I want now to start from a point that is connected with a work of art; in the lecture tomorrow we shall pass on to a study of the life between death and a new birth, and then on Sunday to a theme dealing with art in connection with our building. I do not want to start from a work of art chosen at random but from something that gives a very concrete picture of what I shall present to you as knowledge of the reality of the spiritual life. The reason for choosing this particular example is that, for once, reality has been hit upon in a certain small, but excellent piece of writing. An occultist alone is able to judge about the reality, but in this small work we see how when the human being as a clairvoyant tries to penetrate into the deeper problems of life, he simply cannot avoid touching the occult sides of life, he cannot avoid touching those depths which send their waves up into the life we often pierce so shallowly with the Maya of our thoughts. What I regard as important from the point of view of art and of occultism really occurs only at the end of a tale of which I want to speak merely as an example. Therefore I shall merely give a brief outline of the tale and read the concluding passage only. It is not a question of speaking merely of a piece of literature but of speaking of this particular work, because here for once a writer has presented something that might actually happen, in absolute accordance with true occult laws.

As the tale was written in the sixties of the 19th century, you will gather from what I say, how what we speak of as Spiritual Science has really always been prepared for and reflected in a certain way in human consciousness. Unconsciously, at least, in many a soul there has been reflected what must enter into the culture of the Earth and become more fully conscious through Spiritual Science. It may be that such a soul actually knew something about this, but the time was not ripe for voicing this knowledge in a form other than the unpretentious form of literature. At the present day people are much more ready to condone the introduction of occult truths in the form of stories or poems ... in the age of materialism they are much more ready to condone this than they will condone somebody who comes out with the direct truth and declares that such things are realities. If people can say to themselves: “Well, after all, this is only romance,” they will often accept it. The tale that was written in the sixties of last century is more or less as follows.—

It is written as if one of the characters were narrating it himself; it is a “first person” story, as we say. This character tells of his acquaintance with Mlle. de Gaussin in Paris (which is the scene of the tale). He tells how at a certain period he paid daily visits to the house of this Mlle. de Gaussin who is a much-feted singer; he gets to know all kinds of people who are admirers of the lady of the house—among them a man who is practically always to be found in Mlle.de Gaussin's salon. The narrator perceives that the feelings of this other man for her are more than mere friendship, and he also realises that these feelings are not reciprocated by the singer. Everything that happens results in a conflict.—There is a man who ardently loves the singer; his love is not returned, but he is not actually rejected; in reality he is brought nearer and nearer to her, but as a result of this he becomes more and more restless and inwardly shaken.

The narrator of the story (it is, as I say a ‘first person’ tale), notices all this. He is friendly with the other, and as he (the narrator) is engaged and is to be married during the next few weeks, it is quite natural, as the other man is also friendly with him, that there is no question of jealousy. One day the narrator has it all out with the other man whose eyes are then opened and he feels bound to have a talk with the singer. The result of this talk is that he goes no more to the house—but, although he has promised not to think about the lady any more, and to forget her, he is incapable of seriously turning his mind to other things, of getting rid of his inner restlessness; the thoughts that were there during his friendship with the lady keep on returning. He leaves the town and lives away for a time. During this period the narrator of the story has married and has been obliged to go on a journey. On this journey he meets the other man in a hotel, in a pitiful state. The other man tells him how he has left Paris and how he tried for a time to live alone; how he went for a ride one day outside his estate and had the ill-luck to come across the lady with her traveling company who were also away from Paris; how all his feelings came to life again and how he now goes about with two revolvers in order one day to put an end to his life.

The narrator still has kindly feelings towards the other man and invites him to his new home, hoping to get him to think of other things. The man accepts the invitation which is just the thing to provide him with a sympathetic milieu as a guest; but he simply cannot get hold of himself, he gets more and more depressed, and finally reaches the point where he has resolved to commit suicide. The two friends have a talk together and the narrator succeeds in getting the other to promise that he will defer his intention. The narrator says that he himself has to go away and because he does not want to say: ‘wait until I come back’—fearing that the other might not wait but might shoot himself in the meantime—he gets the other to make him a solemn promise. He says: “Look after my wife until I get back.”

When the other man has given the promise, the narrator goes off to Paris with the idea of asking the singer to come to the country and do something to make the situation less miserable. He reaches Paris and travels back with the singer to the country. They get to the hedge around the narrator's country estate. At this moment the narrator notices that a man who had been standing at the hedge, has run back. As they approach, there is a shot. The other man had kept his promise, had faithfully looked after the wife, but had sent a peasant to keep watch at the hedge. The peasant signals: ‘Now he is coming’—and then the man shoots himself. The narrator brings the singer into the house—and from this point I will read you the words themselves.¹

“We reached the chateau in the evening. When I got to the park, a peasant who was waiting for us ran with lightning speed towards the house, and hardly had we got half-way up the avenue, than a shot rang out. So set was I upon the success of my project that the meaning of this shot never entered my head. Amazement was not long to be withheld from me; we went on; nobody came out; the driver cracked his whip and I sprang out, Mlle. de Gaussin after me. The first thing we heard was a scream from my wife's maid who came towards us deathly white, with the cry: ‘He has shot himself dead’. We hurried to the Marquess' room which was full of people; I sent them all out, shut the door and stood with Manon de Gaussin beside the young man's body which lay on the ground. She stared at it for some minutes, then gave a scream and sank to the ground on her knees beside the body. She did not faint. She took his hands, laid hers on his forehead (the wound was in the middle of the chest), looked at me, then at him, and suddenly began to sing in a loud voice. This filled me with dread; I thought she had lost her reason.

Meanwhile one of my agents who knew a little about first-aid and was accustomed to render simple medical assistance, had arrived. I shall never forget the fear that came over his face when he saw the dead Marquess and the singer beside him. She was now silent, stood up, looked at me a long time and left the room. I followed to find out what she might want. She said: ‘I must have a room in which I am quite alone.’ I led her to the first good room, sent to fetch her maid and hurried to my wife. I heard to my relief that she had gone for a walk; I went to meet her and told her what had happened. As we had often talked about the Marquess and had anticipated the possibility of an end like this, she was less shocked than troubled. I led her back to the chateau and proceeded to give orders about the Marquess. The body had been placed on the bed and his servant was sitting by it, weeping bitterly. He said: ‘My master told me that he must not shoot himself until you had returned. This reassured me. Then he arranged secretly with the man John that he should wait for the carriage. The man did this and had hardly run back with the news that the carriage had entered the park than my master stood up, made a mark in the book he was reading, put his hand in his pocket, gave John a coin, took the pistol from the table and went into the other room; the moment he had closed the door behind him, he was dead.’

I began to reproach myself. Perhaps I might have been able to save him if I had acted more quickly. If Manon de Gaussin had arrived at the right moment this tragedy might, possibly, have been avoided. And I also thought: Perhaps providence has wished to protect him from something that would have been still worse, if the singer had decided to marry him, as I believe she would have done,—although she told me only afterwards that the disastrous consequences of such a step would have been unendurable and would simply have brought misery.

I went to Manon de Gaussin. She was calm and collected. There was nothing very unusual about her. She talked to me about the Marquess's frame of mind and his natural disposition towards such a sad ending of his life. So calm and collected was she that I felt the inner shock must have been very great, and I feared the reaction. I introduced her to my wife; we dined together and then retired.

The next morning I was struck by the change that had come over her. She said she felt well, but there was something so strained about her appearance, and in herself she seemed so broken, that her statement belied itself. She talked about leaving soon and asked if she might be given a different room for that night. This was arranged; we spent the day quietly and she only went to bed when all arrangements for her departure had been completed.

The next day she did not come down to breakfast. her maid asked me to go to her mistress in her room. She received me with a faint smile and was so pale and hollow-eyed that I could not conceal my amazement.

‘Dear friend,” she said, “You find me looking ill and don't want to say so?’

‘Don't you think that is natural?’

‘Yes, you are always full of feeling, reserved. But no secrecy helps now. I feel death within me.’

‘Dearest friend!’—I cried out in dismay.

‘I feel death; for two nights now I have seen the Marquess—awake—coming here—he is drawing me to him!’

I looked at her attentively. There was no over-strain in her eyes, nothing maniacal in her voice.

She went on: ‘When I saw him lying there in his blood, the feeling that I was the cause of this tragedy became so strong in me that I cried out because I could bear it no longer. It was as though something were shouting with unbelievable strength into my ears: “You are guilty: You have killed him!” In order not to hear this voice I began to sing louder and louder, but yet I did not deafen the voice. I heard it unceasingly. During the night I could not sleep, I lay and looked at the shadows cast by the furniture in the light of the lamp. Then the door sprang open. A narrow, dark streak appeared. Through this streak the Marquess entered, as it were through a thread of cloud as thin as paper; his eyes were closed, he hovered or came slowly towards me, stood beside the bed, as corporeal as you, and with closed eyes. I did not want to look at him but he forced me to do so; I was compelled to turn my eyes towards him. Then he suddenly opened his and looked at me. I could not bear it, and I lost consciousness. Last night it was the same. I can bear it no longer. I feel that he is sucking the life out of me with his eyes.’

I tried with all the arguments of physics, philosophy and religion to get her to dismiss the phenomenon from her mind. She remained resolute ... ‘I am determined to go away,’—she said. ‘Perhaps his shade is fettered only to this house.’ I opposed this. I could not allow her to travel alone and I could not leave my wife who was expecting her confinement. I therefore proposed to Manon de Gaussin that she should move into my agent's house and I promised to watch by her bed the next night. She finally let herself be persuaded into this, got up and walked around the room like a wraith.

In the evening when she had gone to bed, her maid called me to her. I put a table with night-lights near the bed, with a screen around it, and after talking to her for a little, began to read a book. She seemed to be sleeping; the lights burnt badly. I cleaned them, drank some wine and water and looked at the door. Suddenly—it was made of wood and was not firm—it sprang open; the catch may not have been working. I was about to go over softly and shut it noiselessly when, turning to Manon de Gaussin, I saw her sitting upright in bed with staring eyes. She stretched out her arms towards mine and pointed straight in front of her with her finger:

‘There he comes!’

There was absolutely nothing to be seen.

‘Where?’ I said.

I released myself from her and went to the corner.

‘Here?’

‘Come,’ she screamed, ‘he is standing in front of you!’

With one leap I was by her side.

‘Hold my eyes closed, I cannot bear it he is standing there, he is touching your knee!’

I pressed both her hands over her eyes. She breathed with effort, but there was nothing to be seen.

After a while she took her hands away. ‘I must see if he is still there’, she said softly.

‘Dear friend there is nothing here,’ I answered, and released her. She looked around.

‘He has gone away again: O, if he comes once again it will be better for him. We will slip through the doors together.’

This idea made me shudder. She lay back and declared that the next day she would certainly go away into a convent. I tried to talk her out of this.

‘Go to Paris,’ I said—‘You will forget there.’

She interrupted me.—‘I have deserved it; I have also deserved that you should make such a proposal to me. That I shall never forget! Him perhaps I shall forget, if he ceases to torment me, but my guilt—that is fast smelted!’

‘Your guilt amounts to nothing,’ I said. ‘That he loved you was destiny; the fact that you did not love him was not in your power to change. That you were able to believe you had cured him was only too natural in his deranged state.’

‘O’ she cried, ‘can a mother who lets her child fall into the water ever console herself? Do you think that guilt is only constituted by evil intent? If it were so, could one not wash away all regret with the thought of higher necessity? If God makes us guilty, it is also his will that we shall bear the consequences. It has been decreed that I shall hear these chains rattling to all eternity.’

I had soon exhausted my arguments. She left the chateau, and I did not accompany her. The birth of a son tore me away from all dark thoughts. I gave a feast in honour of this joyful event; the christening, and care for my wife took up my time so completely that everyone will understand why I did not make enquires about the unhappy, beautiful creature of whom, however, I thought from time to time. One day I received a packet from Paris. It had been addressed to me in the care of my business manager. It contained a little case and a letter, both sealed. I opened the letter first; there were only a few lines.

Dearest friend:

When you receive this I shall be dead. I knew that the Marquess would call me to him. Although he came no more to disturb my nights, I had some thing in my soul that took the place of him. Tell your wife that I have no pleasanter memory than that of her kindness to me. Guard your son from people like me. Give me a quiet little corner for the photograph enclosed. You need not break the seal. I do not want to destroy it; it must not fall into wrong hands. If you do look at it, think that perchance, even I had a heart

Manon de Gaussin.

I opened the case and the face of the unhappy girl who had announced her death to me in advance streamed out with all the magic she had possessed in the days of her prime. Tears started into my eyes and I thought of all the happy hours I had spent in her house.

Here we have a true description of the etheric body of a dead man appearing to someone else. It is an absolutely true description. Immediately after the death, Manon de Gaussin saw the wandering etheric body of the dead man. I simply wanted to show you how this phenomenon is treated in a story written in the sixties of last century. It is the phenomenon of the appearance of the etheric body of a dead man, and it can teach us about the secret, hidden relationships that may hold sway between human beings. We will pass on tomorrow to further studies. Try to feel how behind what existed in Manon de Gaussin's consciousness as a fragment of Maya, a wide realm was playing, and how out of this wide realm, in the hours she lived through directly after the Marquess' death, a phenomenon appeared to her in the form of a meeting with the etheric body of the dead man.

Truly, the etheric body is more intimately connected with the manifold circumstances in which we are interwoven within the universe than the pictures we bear in our self-knowledge and in our consciousness.

• 1. “Tales” by Herman Grimm: “The Singer.”

In these two lectures I should like to speak to you from the point of view of Spiritual Research, on the question so frequently and urgently put: “What is the meaning of life?” If in these two evenings we are to get anywhere near this subject we shall have to create first of all a kind of foundation or basis, on which to construct the edifice of knowledge, and from this deduce the answer in outline.

When we contemplate the things around us, those which exist for our ordinary sense-perception and our ordinary experience, and then turn to our own life, the result is at best the formulation of a question—the presentation of an oppressive, a painful problem. We see how the beings of external nature arise and decay. We can observe every year in spring how the earth, stimulated by the forces of the sun and the universe, bestows on us the plants which sprout and bud and bear fruit through the summer. Towards autumn, we see how they decay and pass away. Some remain indeed throughout the year, some for very many years, for instance, our long-lived trees. But of these also we know that even though in many cases they may outlive us, they also pass away at last, disappear and sink down into that which, in the great world of nature, is the realm of the lifeless. Especially do we know that even in the greatest phenomena of nature there rules this growth and decay: even the continents on which our civilisations develop did not exist in times past, for they have only risen in the course of time, and we know for certain that they will one day pass away.

Thus we see around us growth and decay; we can trace it in the plant kingdom and in the mineral kingdom as well as in the animal kingdom. What is the meaning of it all? Ever an arising, ever a passing away all around us! What is the meaning of this arising and this passing away? When we consider our own life, and see how we have lived through years and decades, we can recognise there also this coming into being and decay. When we call to mind the days of our childhood: they are vanished and only the memory of them remains. This stirs within us anxious questionings about life. The most important thing is that we ourselves have progressed a little through it, that we have become wiser. Usually, however, it is only when we have accomplished something, that we know how it ought to have been done. If we are no longer in a position to do a thing better, we still know how much better it might have been done, so that actually our mistakes become a part of our life; but it is just through our mistakes and errors that we gain our widest experiences.

A question is put to us, and it seems as if that which we can grasp with our senses and our intellect is unable to answer it. That is the position of man to-day; all that surrounds him confronts him with the problem, with the question: “What is the meaning of existence as a whole?” and particularly “Why has man his peculiar position within this existence?”

An extremely interesting legend of Hebrew antiquity tells us that in those old Hebrew times there was a consciousness that this anxious question which we formulated as to the meaning of life, and especially as to the meaning of man, occurs not only to man, but to beings quite other than man. This legend is extremely instructive and runs as follows:—When the Elohim were about to create man after their own image and likeness, the so-called ministering angels, certain spiritual beings of a lower grade than the Elohim themselves, asked Jahve or Jehovah: “Why is man to be made in the image and likeness of God!” Then Jehovah collected—so continues the legend—the animals and the plants which could already spring forth on earth before man was there in his earthly form, and He gathered together the angels also, the so-called ministering angels—those who immediately served Him. To those He showed the animals and plants and asked them what they were called, what were their names? But the Angels did not know the names of the animals and plants. Then man was created, as he was before the Fall. And again Jehovah gathered around him Angels, animals and plants, and in the presence of the Angels he asked man what the animals whom He made to pass by in succession before man’s eyes, were called, what their names were. And behold! Man was able to answer: “This animal has this name, that animal has that, this plant has this name, that plant has that,” Then Jehovah asked man: “And what is thine own name?” And man said: “I must be called Adam.” (Adam is related to Adama, and means: “Out of the earth: earth-being”). Jehovah then asked man: “And what am I myself to be called?” “Thou shalt be called Adonai,” man replied, “Thou art the Lord of all created beings of the earth.” The Angels now began to have an idea of the meaning of man’s existence on the earth. Though religious tradition and religious writings often express the most important riddle of life in the simplest way, there are many difficulties in understanding them, because we have to get behind their simplicity. We must first penetrate into the meaning behind them. If we succeed in this, great wisdom and deep knowledge are revealed. It may well be so with this legend, which we shall just keep in mind for a moment, for these two lectures will give us, in some sort, an answer to the question which it contains.

Now you know that there is a religion which has put the question as to the meaning and value of life by placing it in a wonderful form into the mouth of its own founder. You all know the story of the Buddha, how it tells us that when he left the palace in which he was born, and came face to face with the real facts of life, of which in that incarnation he had as yet learned nothing, he was most profoundly dismayed, and pronounced the judgment: “Life is suffering,” which as we know comprises the four statements: “Birth is suffering—disease is suffering—old age is suffering—death is suffering,” and to which is added “to be united with those we do not love is suffering, to be separated from those we love is suffering, not to be able to attain that to which we aspire is suffering.” We know then that to the adherents of this religion the meaning of life can be summed up by saying: “Life, which is suffering, only acquires a meaning when it is conquered, when it transcends itself.” All the various religions, all philosophies and views of life, are, after all, attempts to answer the question as to the meaning of life. Now, we are not going to approach the question in an abstract, philosophical way. Rather we shall review some of the phenomena of life, some of the facts of life, from the point of view of Spiritual Science, in order to see if a deeper occult view of life furnishes us with something wherewith to approach this question as to the meaning of life. Let us take the matter up again at the point we have already touched—the annual growth and decay in physical nature, the life, growth and decay in the plant world. In Spring we see the plants spring up out of the earth, and that which we see there as germinating, budding life, calls forth our joy and delight. We become aware that the whole of our existence is bound up with the plant world, for without it we could not exist. We feel how that which springs up out of the earth at the approach of Summer is related to our own life. We feel in the Autumn how that which in a certain sense belongs to us, again decays.

It is natural for us to compare with our own life that which we see germinating and decaying. For an external observation based only on what can be perceived by the senses and judged by the intellect, it is very natural to compare the vernal springing up of the plants with, let us say, man’s awakening in the morning; and the withering and decaying of the plant world in Autumn with man’s falling asleep at night. But such a comparison is quite superficial. It would leave out of account the real events with which we can already become acquainted through the elementary truths of occultism. What happens when we fall asleep at night? We have learned that we leave our physical and etheric bodies behind in bed. With our astral body and our ego we withdraw from our physical body and etheric body. During the night, from the moment of our falling asleep to the moment of our waking, we are with our astral body and our ego in a spiritual world. From this spiritual world we draw the forces which we require. Not only our astral body and our ego, but our physical and etheric bodies go through a kind of restorative process during our sleep at night, when the latter lie in bed, separated from the astral body and ego.

When one looks clairvoyantly down from the ego upon the astral, the etheric and physical bodies, one sees what has been destroyed by waking life; one sees that that which finds its expression in fatigue, is present as a destructive process and is made good during the night. The whole conscious life of the daytime is in fact, if we look at it in its connection with human consciousness and in its relation to the physical and etheric bodies, a kind of destructive process as regards the physical and etheric bodies. We always destroy something by it, and the fact that we destroy expresses itself in our fatigue. That which is destroyed is made good again at night.

Now if we look at what happens when we have withdrawn our astral body and our ego out of the etheric and physical bodies, it is as if we had left behind us a devastated field. But in the moment we are out of them, out of the physical and etheric bodies, they begin gradually to restore themselves. It is as if the forces belonging to the physical and etheric bodies begin to bud and blossom, and as if an entire vegetation should arise on the scene of destruction. The further night advances and the longer sleep lasts, the more do the forces in the etheric body bud and blossom. The nearer morning approaches and the more we re-enter our physical and etheric bodies with our astral body, the more a kind of withering or drying up sets in as regards the physical and etheric bodies.

In short, when the ego and the astral body look down from the spiritual world on the physical and etheric bodies, they see at night, at the moment of falling asleep, the same phenomenon which we see in the great world outside, when the plants bud and germinate in Spring. Therefore, to make a real comparison, we must compare our falling asleep and the earlier part of the sleep condition at night with Spring in nature; and the time of our awakening, the time in which the ego and the astral body begin to re-enter the physical and etheric bodies, with Autumn, in external nature. Spring corresponds to our falling asleep and Autumn to our awakening.

But how does the matter stand, when the occult observer, he who really can look into the spiritual world, directs his gaze to external nature and watches what takes place there in the course of the year? That which then presents itself to the occult vision teaches us that we must not compare things in an outward, but in an inward way. Occult observation shows that just as the physical and etheric bodies of man are connected with his astral body and his ego, so is there connected with our earth what we call the spiritual part of the earth. The earth also must be compared with a body, a widespread body. If we consider it only as far as its physical part is concerned, it is just as if we were to consider man with regard to his physical body only. We consider the earth completely when we consider it as the body of spiritual beings, in the same way in which, in the case of man, we consider the spirit as being connected with the body, yet there is a distinction. Man has a single nature controlling his physical and etheric bodies; a single psycho-spiritual nature belongs to that which is his physical human body and etheric human body. But there are a great many spirits belonging to the Earth-body. What in man’s psycho-spiritual nature is a unity, is, as regards that of the earth, a multiplicity. This is the chief distinction. With the exception of this difference everything else is in a certain way analogous. To occult vision is revealed how in the same measure as green plants come forth from the earth in Spring, those spirits whom we call the earth-spirits, withdraw from the earth. Only here again they do not, as is the case with man, absolutely leave the earth; they move round it, they pass in a certain way to the other side of the earth. When it is Summer in one hemisphere it is Winter in the other. In the case of the earth, the spiritual part moves from the northern to the southern hemisphere when Summer is approaching in the north. But that does not alter the fact that to the occult vision of a man who experiences the Spring on any given part of the globe, the spirits leave the earth; he sees how they rise and pass out into the cosmos. He does not see them move to the other side, but he sees them go away, in the same way as he sees the ego and the astral body leave man at the moment of his falling asleep. In the Autumn the earth-spirits approach and re-unite themselves with the earth. During the Winter, when the earth is covered with snow, the earth-spirits are directly united with the earth. In fact something similar then begins for the earth to what is found in man: a kind of self-consciousness. During the Summer the spiritual part of the earth knows nothing of what goes on around it in the universe. But in Winter the spirit of the earth knows what is happening in the universe around, just as man, on waking, knows and beholds what is taking place around him.

The analogy is thus complete, only it is the reverse of that which the outer consciousness draws. It is true that if we wish to go into the question fully, we cannot simply say: “When, in Spring, plants bud and spring from the earth, the earth spirits go away,” for with the budding and sprouting of plants there arise, as if out of the depths, out of the interior of the earth, other and mightier spirits. Therefore the mythologies were right when they distinguished between the higher and the nether gods. When man spoke of the gods who left the earth in Spring and returned in Autumn, he spoke of the higher gods. But there were mightier, older, gods, called by the Greeks the Chthonic gods. These arise in Summer when everything is budding and flourishing, and they descend again when in Winter the real earth spirits unite with the body of the earth.

Now, I should here like to mention that a certain idea, taken from scientific and occult research, is of immense importance for human life. For this shows us that when we consider the individual human being, we have really before us something like an image of the great Earth-being itself. What do we see when we turn towards plants which are beginning to sprout and bud? We see exactly the same as takes place in man when his inner life is active, we see how the one exactly corresponds to the other. How single plants are related to the human body, what their significance is for the human body, can only be recognised when such connections are understood. For it is in fact true that, on close examination, one sees how, when man falls asleep, everything begins to sprout and bud in his physical and etheric bodies: how a whole vegetation springs up in him: how man is in reality a tree or a garden in which plants are growing.

Whoever follows this with occult vision sees that the sprouting and germinating within man corresponds to what is germinating and budding in nature without. Thus you can form an idea of what will be possible when, in the future, Anthroposophy—often considered as foolishness to-day—is applied to life and made fruitful. We have for example, a man who has something wrong in his bodily life-activities. Let us now observe, when he falls asleep, what kind of plants are wanting when his physical and etheric bodies begin to develop their vegetation. When we see that on earth whole species of plants are missing, we know that something must be wrong with the life of the earth. And it is the same with the deficiency of certain plants in the physical and etheric bodies of man. In order to make good the defect we have only to seek on the earth for the plants which are missing in the man in question, and introduce their juices either in the form of diet or medicine and then we shall find the relation between medicine and disease. From this example, we see how Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science will intervene directly in life, but we are only at the beginning of these things.

In what I have just said I have given you, in a comparison drawn from nature, some idea of the composition of man and the connection of his whole being with the environment in which he is placed. We shall now look at the matter from a spiritual point of view. Here I would like to call attention to a matter that is of great importance, namely, that our anthroposophical outlook on life, while letting its gaze range over the evolution of mankind from the point of view of occultism, in order to decipher the meaning of existence, gives no preference to any one special creed, or any one view of life over any other. How often has it been emphasised in our occult movement that we can point to that which our earthly humanity experienced and developed immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe—the Flood. We passed through, as the first great post-Atlantean civilisation, the sacred civilisation of Ancient India. Here, at Copenhagen, we have already spoken of this old sacred Indian civilisation, and we laid stress upon the fact that it was so lofty, that that which has survived in the Vedas or in written tradition is only an echo of it. It is only in the Akashic Records that we can catch glimpses of the primeval teachings that issued from that time. There we gaze on heights which have not been re-attained.

The later epochs had quite a different mission. We know that a descent has taken place since then, but we know also that there will be again an ascent and that, as already mentioned, Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science has to prepare this ascent. We know that in the seventh post-Atlantean age of civilisation, there will be a kind of renewal of the ancient, holy Indian civilisation. We do not give preference to any religious view or creed, for all are measured with the same measure, in every particular they are described: in each the kernel of truth is sought.

The important thing is that essentials be kept in view. We must not allow ourselves to stray in the consideration of the nature of each separate creed, and if we keep this in mind, in approaching the various points of view, we find one fundamental difference. We find views on life which are of a more oriental nature, and others which have permeated our Western civilisation. Once we make this clear to ourselves, we have something which throws light on the meaning of existence. We then find that the ancients were already in possession of something which we have to regain with difficulty, viz., the doctrine of reincarnation. The oriental stream possessed this as something springing from the profoundest depths of existence. You can still realise how the oriental mind shapes the whole of life from this doctrine, when you look at the relation of the oriental to his Bodhisattvas and his Buddhas. If you keep in view how little it concerns the oriental to select a single figure with this or that definite name, as the ruling power in human evolution, you see at once how he attaches much more importance to tracing the individuality which goes on from life to life. Orientals say that there are such and such a number of Bodhisattvas, high beings who have sprung from men, but who have gradually evolved to a height which we can describe by saying: A Being has passed through many incarnations, and then has become a Bodhisattva, as did Gautama, the son of King Sudhodana. He was Bodhisattva and became Buddha. The name Buddha, however, is given to many, because they passed through many incarnations, became Bodhisattva, and then ascended to the next higher stage, that of Buddhahood. The name Buddha is a generic name. It denotes a degree of human attainment, and has no sense apart from the spiritual being who goes through many incarnations. Brahmanism fully agrees with Buddhism in regarding the individual who goes through the different personalities, rather than the single person. It comes to the same whether the Buddhist says:—“A Bodhisattva is destined to ascend to the highest degree of human attainment, and for this he has to go through many incarnations; but for me the highest is the Buddha.” Or whether the adherent of Brahmanism says: “The Bodhisattvas are indeed highly developed beings, who ascend to Buddhahood, but they are inferior to the Avatars, who are higher spiritual individualities.” You see, consideration of the persisting spiritual entity is what characterises both these oriental points of view.

But now let us turn to the West, and see what is the thing of greatest importance there. In order to enter a little more deeply into this connection, we must consider the ancient Hebrew point of view, where the personal element enters. When we speak of Plato, of Socrates, of Michelangelo, of Charlemagne, or of others, we are always speaking of a person: we place before men the separate life of the personality with all that this personality has done for mankind. In our Western life we do not direct our attention to the life which has gone from personality to personality, for it has been the mission of Western civilisation to direct attention for a time to the single life. When in the East the Buddha is spoken of, it is understood that the designation “Buddha” is an honourable title which may be applied to many personalities. When, on the contrary, the name “Plato” is uttered, we know that this refers only to a single personality. This has been the education of the West.

Let us now turn to our own day. In Western civilisation, mankind has been trained for a time to direct his attention to the personality, but the individual element, the “individuality” has now to be added to the personal element. We stand now at the point where we must reconquer the individual element, but strengthened, vivified, by the contemplation of the personal.

Let us take a definite case. In this connection we look back to the old Hebrew civilisation, which preceded that of the West. Let us turn our attention to the mighty personality of the prophet Elijah. To begin with, we may describe him as a personality. In the West he is seldom regarded in any other way. If we leave aside details and look at the personality from a wider point of view, we see that Elijah was something very important for our evolution. He gives the impression of a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

On looking back to the time of Moses, we see how something had been proclaimed to the people; we see that the God in man was proclaimed. “I AM the God Who was, Who is, Who is to come.” He has to be comprehended as in the ego, but among the ancient Hebrews He was comprehended as the Folk-soul of the race. Elijah went beyond Moses, though he did not make clear that the ego dwells in the single human individual as Divinity, for he could not make clear to the people of his time more than the world was then able to receive. While even the Mosaic Culture of the old Hebrews was conscious of the fact that “the Highest lies in the Ego,” and that this Ego found expression in the time of Moses in the Group-Soul of the people, we find Elijah already pointing to the individual human soul. We see a forward leap in evolution. But a further impulse was needed, and again a forerunner appeared, whom we know as the personality of John the Baptist. Once more it was in a significant expression that the quality of John the Baptist as a “Forerunner” found expression. A great occult fact is here indicated that man, as primeval man, once possessed ancient clairvoyance, so that he could look into the spiritual world—into Divine activity—but he gradually approached towards materialism; the vision of the spiritual world was cut off. To this fact John the Baptist alludes when he says: “Change the attitude of your soul; look no longer at what you can gain in the physical world: be watchful, a new impulse is at hand (he means the Christ-Impulse). Therefore I say unto you, seek the spiritual world that is in your midst; there the spiritual element appears with the Christ-Impulse.” Through this saying John the Baptist became a forerunner of the Christ-Impulse.

Now we can direct our gaze to another personality, to the remarkable personality of the painter Raphael. This remarkable personality presents itself to us in an unusual way. In the first place, we need only compare Raphael to—let us say—Titian, a painter of a later period. Whoever has an eye for such things, even if he look at the reproductions, will find the distinction. Look at the pictures of Raphael and at those of Titian! Raphael painted in such a way that he put Christian ideas into his pictures. He painted for the people of Europe as Christians of the West. His pictures are comprehensible to all Christians of the West, and will become so more and more. Take, on the other hand, the later painters. They painted almost exclusively for the Latin race, so that even the schisms of the Church found expression in their pictures.

With which pictures was Raphael most successful? With those in which he was able to demonstrate the impulses that lie in Christianity. He is at his best where he could represent some relationship of the Jesus-Child to the Madonna, where this Christ-relation appears as something that is an impulse to feeling. These are the things which he really painted best. We have for instance, no Crucifixion of his, but we have a Transfiguration. Wherever he can paint the budding and germinating aspect, that which is self-revealing, he paints with joy and there he paints his greatest and best pictures.

It is the same with the impression which his pictures produce. If some day you come to Germany and see the Sistine Madonna in Dresden, you will realise that that work of art—of which it is said that the Germans may rejoice to have such a celebrated picture among them, Yes! that they may even regard it as the flower of the painters’ art—you will realise that this work discloses a mystery of existence.

When Goethe in his time traveled from Leipsic to Dresden, he heard something quite different about the picture of the Madonna. The officials of the Dresden Gallery said something like this to him: “We have also a picture of Raphael’s, but it is nothing particular. It is badly painted. The look of the Child, the whole Child itself, everything to do with the Child, is common. The same with the Madonna. One can only think that she is painted by a dauber. And then these figures down below of which one does not know whether they are meant for children’s heads or angels!” Goethe heard this coarse opinion, so that at first he had no right appreciation of the picture. Everything which we hear about the picture at the present time only came to be understood later on, and the fact that Raphael’s pictures made their triumphal march through the world in reproductions, is a result of this better appreciation. We have only to call to mind what England has done for the reproduction and circulation of these pictures. But what was effected in England by the trouble which has been taken for the reproduction and circulation of Raphael’s pictures, will only be recognised when people have learned to look at the matter from the point of view of spiritual science.

Thus through his pictures, Raphael becomes for us the forerunner of a Christianity which will be cosmopolitan. Protestantism has long regarded the Madonna as specially Catholic; but to-day the Madonna has penetrated everywhere into Protestant countries and we are rising more to the occult interpretation, to a higher inter-denominational Christianity. So it will be more and more. If we may hope for such results as regards interdenominational Christianity, what Raphael has done will also help us in Anthroposophy.

It is remarkable that the above three personalities confront us in this manner: all three have the quality of being forerunners of Christianity. Now let us direct occult observation to these three persons. What does it teach us? It teaches us that the same individuality lived in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael. However impossible it may seem, it is the same soul which lived in Elijah and in Raphael.

When it is revealed to occult vision—which searches and investigates and does not merely compare in a superficial way—that it is the same soul that is present in Elijah, in John the Baptist and in Raphael, we may ask how it is possible that Raphael the painter becomes the vehicle for the individuality which lived in John the Baptist? One can conceive that this remarkable soul of John the Baptist lived in the forces which were present in Raphael.

Occult research comes in here again, not merely to put forth theories, but to tell us how things actually are in life. How do people write biographies of Raphael to-day? Even the best are so written that they simply state that Raphael was born on Good Friday of the year 1483. It is not for nothing that Raphael was born on a Good Friday. This birth already proclaimed his exceptional position in Christianity and shows that in the deepest and most significant way he was connected with the Christian Mysteries. It was on a Good Friday that Raphael was born. His father was Giovanni Santi. He died when Raphael was eleven years old. At the age of eight years his father sent him as a pupil to a painter, who was, however, not of any special eminence. But if one realises what was in Giovanni Santi, Raphael’s father, one gets a peculiar impression which is further strengthened when the matter is investigated in the Akashic Records. There it appears that there lived in the soul of Giovanni Santi much more than could be expressed in his personality and then we can agree with the duchess, who at his death said: “A man full of light and truth and fervent faith has died.” As occultist, one can say that in him there lived a much greater painter than appeared outwardly. The outer faculties, which depend on the physical and etheric organs, were not developed in Giovanni Santi. That was the original cause why he could not bring the capacities of his soul to full expression; but really a great painter lived in him.

Giovanni Santi died when Raphael was eleven years old. If we now follow what takes place, we see that man certainly loses his body, but that the longings, the aspirations, the impulses of his soul continue to exist, and continue to be active where they are most closely connected.

There will come a time when Anthroposophy will be made fruitful for life, as it can already be made fruitful by those who have grasped it vitally and not merely theoretically. Permit me here to interpolate something before going on with Raphael. What I tell you in the examples I give is not mere speculation; on the contrary, it is always taken from real life. Let us suppose that I had children to educate. Whoever pays attention to the capabilities of children can notice the individual element in every child, but such experiences can only be made by those who educate children. Now if one of the parents of a child dies while the child is still young and the other parent is still living, the following may be noticed: Certain inclinations will show themselves in the child which were not there before and which consequently cannot be explained. But one who has charge of children has to occupy himself with these things. Such a one would do well if he said: “People generally look upon what is in Anthroposophical books as mere folly: I will not take this for granted, but will try whether it is right or not.” Then he will soon be able to say “I find forces at work which were already there and again there are other forces playing into those which were already there.” Let us suppose that the father has passed through the gates of death and there now appears in the child, with some strength, certain qualities which had belonged to the father. If this assumption is made and if the matter is looked upon in this way, the knowledge which comes to us through Anthroposophy is applied to life in a sensible way, and then, as is soon discovered, we find our way in life, whereas before we did not. Thus the person who has gone through the gateway of death, remains united, through his forces, with those with whom he was connected in life. People do not observe things closely enough, otherwise they would see more often that children are quite different before the death of their parents from what they are afterwards. At present there is not enough regard for these things, but the time is coming when they will receive attention.

Giovanni Santi, the father, died when Raphael was eleven years old; he had not been able to attain great perfection as a painter, but powerful imagination was left to him and this was then developed in the soul of Raphael. We do not depreciate Raphael, if, while observing his soul, we say: Giovanni Santi lives on in Raphael, who appears to us as a completed personality, as one incapable of higher attainment because a dead man gives life to his work.

We now realise that in the soul of Raphael are reborn the vigorous forces of John the Baptist and in addition, there live in his soul the forces of Giovanni Santi; that together these two were able to bring to fruition the result which confronts us as Raphael. It is true that to-day we cannot yet speak publicly of such extraordinary things, but in fifty years’ time this may be possible, because evolution is progressing quickly, and the opinions held to-day are rapidly approaching their decline. Whoever accepts such things, sees that in Anthroposophy our task is to regard life everywhere from a new point of view. Just as in the future people will heal in the way to which I have referred, so they will reflect on the strange miracle of life wherein men attract to their assistance, from the spiritual world, the achievements of those who have passed through the gates of death.

I should like to draw your attention to two things, when speaking on the riddles of life; things which so truly can illuminate the meaning of life. One is the fate that has befallen the works of Raphael. Whoever looks to-day at the reproductions of his pictures, does not see what Raphael painted. And if he travels to Dresden or to Rome, he finds them so much spoiled that he can hardly be said to see the pictures of Raphael. It is easy to see what will become of them when we consider the fate of Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper,” which is falling more and more into decay. These pictures, in times to come, will fall into dust, and everything which great men have created will disappear. When these things have vanished, we may well ask: “What is the meaning of this creation and decay!” We shall see that really nothing remains of what the single personality has created.

Still another fact I should like to put before you, and that is the following: If when to-day, with Anthroposophy as an instrument, we desire to understand, and must understand, Christianity as an Impulse that works for the future, we have need of certain fundamental ideas through which we know how the Christ-Impulse will continue to work. This we require. And we can point to a development of Christianity for which Anthroposophy is necessary. We can point to a person who presents Anthroposophical truth in special form—namely, that of aphorisms. When we approach him we find much that is significant for Anthroposophy. This person is the German poet Novalis. When we study his writings, we find that he describes the future of Christianity from out of the occult truths it contains. Anthroposophy teaches us that we have here to do with the same individuality as is in Raphael, John the Baptist and Elijah.

We have here again to glance into the further development of Christianity. That is a fact of an occult nature, for no one reaches this result by reasoning. Let us once more put the different pictures together. We have the tragic fact of the destruction of the creations and works of single personalities. Raphael appears and allows his interdenominational Christianity to flow into the souls of men. But we have a foreboding that some day his creations will be destroyed, that his works will fall to dust. Then Novalis appears to take in hand the fulfilment of the task and continue the work he had begun. The idea is no longer now so tragic. We see that just as the personality dissolves in its sheaths, so the work dissolves, but the essential kernel lives on and continues the work it had begun. Here once again it is the individual to which our attention is directed. But because we have kept firmly in mind the Western view of life and therewith the personality, we are able to grasp the full significance of the individuality. Thus we see how important it is that the East directed its attention to the individuality, to the Bodhisattvas, who go through many incarnations; and how important it is that the West first directed its attention to the contemplation of the single personality, in order, later on, to grasp what the individuality is.

Now I think there are many Anthroposophists who will say: “Well, this is something we have just to believe, when Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis are mentioned.” For many the main thing is that they must just believe. It is essentially the same as when from the scientific side some fact is asserted that many people have to believe, such as that this or that spectrum appears when certain metals are examined by spectrum analysis, or when for instance, the nebula in Orion is so examined. Some people have certainly investigated it, but the others, the majority, have to believe. But that is after all not the essential point. The essential point is that Anthroposophy is at the beginning of its development, and will bring souls to the point of examining for themselves such matters as we have discussed to-day. In this respect, Anthroposophy will help forward human evolution very rapidly.

I have put before you a few instances, which I submit as resulting from the occult point of view regarding life. Take only the three points which we have considered and you will see that by knowing in what way life is related to the Spirit of the Earth, the art of healing can be given a new direction and supplied with new impulses; how Raphael can only be understood when not only his personal forces are taken into account, but also those forces which came from his father. The third point is that we can educate children when we know the interplay of forces acting on them. Outwardly people admit that they are surrounded by numberless forces which incessantly influence them, that man is continually influenced by air, the temperature, his surroundings and the other Karmic conditions under which he lives. That these things do not interfere with his freedom everyone knows. They are the factors with which we have to reckon to-day. But that man is continually surrounded by spiritual forces and that these spiritual forces must be investigated is what Anthroposophy has to teach men: they will have to learn to take these forces into account and will have to reckon with them in important cases of health and disease, of education and life. They will have to be mindful of such influences as come from without, from the super-sensible world, when, for instance, some one’s friend dies and he then shares those sympathies and ideas that belonged to him. What has been said does not hold good for children only, but for all ages. It is not at all necessary that people should know with their ordinary consciousness in what way the forces of the super-sensible world are active. Their general frame of mind may show it, even their state of health or illness may show it. And those things which signify the connection of man’s life on the physical plane with the facts of the super-sensible worlds have a still wider bearing.

I should like to put before you a simple fact which will show you the nature of this connection, a fact which is not invented, but has been observed in many cases. A man notices at a certain time that he has feelings which formerly he did not know; that he has sympathies and antipathies which formerly he did not know; that he succeeds easily where before he found difficulties. He cannot explain it. His surroundings cannot explain it to him, nor do the facts of life itself give him any clue. In such a case it can be found, when we observe accurately (it is true that one must have an eye for such things), that now he knows things which he did not know before and does things which he could not do before. If we examine matters further and have had experience of the teachings of Anthroposophy, it may be that we shall hear something like the following from him: “I do not know what to think of myself. I dream of a person whom I have never seen in my life. He comes into my dreams, though I never had anything to do with him.” If we follow the matter up it will be found that till now he had no occasion to occupy himself with this person. But this person had died and now first approaches him in the spiritual world. When he had come near enough to him he appeared to him in a dream which was yet more than a dream. From this person, whom he had not known in life, who, however, after death, gained influence on his life, came the impulses which he had not known before. It is not a question of saying: “It is only a dream.” It is far more a question of what the dream contained. It may be something which, although in the form of a dream, is nearer to reality than the outer consciousness. Does it matter at all whether Edison invents something in a dream or in clear waking consciousness? What matters is whether the invention is true, is useful. So also it does not matter whether an experience takes place in dream-consciousness or in physical consciousness; what is of importance is whether the experience is true or false.

If we now summarise what we are able to understand from what has just been said, we may say “It is clear to us when we learn to apply Anthroposophy, that life appears to us in quite a different light from before.” In this respect people who are very learned in materialistic ways of thought are but children. We can convince ourselves of this at any time. When to-day I came here by train I took up the pamphlet of a German physiologist in its second edition. In it the writer says that we cannot speak of “active attention” in the soul, of directing the attention of the soul to anything, but that everything depends on the functioning of the various ganglia of the brain; and because the tracks have to be made by thoughts, everything depends on how the separate brain cells function. No intensity of the soul intervenes, it depends entirely upon whether this or that connecting thread in our brain has been pulled or not. These learned materialists are really children. When we lay our hands on anything of this kind one cannot help thinking how guileless these people are! In the same pamphlet one finds the statement that lately the centenary of Darwin was celebrated, and that on that occasion, both qualified and unqualified people spoke. The author of the pamphlet thought himself of course quite specially qualified. And then follows the whole brain-cell theory and its application. But how is it with the logic of the matter? When one is used to considering things in accordance with truth and then sees what these great children offer people concerning the meaning of life, the thought occurs to one that after all it comes to the same as if someone should say that it was simply nonsense that a human will had any part in the way the railways intersect the face of Europe! For it is just the same as if at a given time one considered all the engines in their varied parts and functions, and said that these are organised in such and such a way and run in so many directions. But the different roads meet at certain junctions and through them the engines can be turned in any direction. What would occur if this were done would be a great disarrangement of trains on the European railways. Just as little, however, can it be asserted that what takes place in the human brain cells as the life of human thought depends only on the condition of the cells. If such learned people then happen, without previous knowledge, to hear a lecture on Anthroposophy, they look upon that which is said as the most utter nonsense. They are firmly convinced that a human will can never have anything to do with the mode and manner in which the European engines run, but that it depends on how they are heated and driven.

So we see how at the present day we stand confronted by questions regarding the meaning of life. On the one side there is darkness, on the other the spiritual facts press in upon us. If we grasp what has been said to-day we can, with this as a basis, put the question before our soul in the way in which it has to be put in Anthroposophy, namely: What is the meaning of life and existence, and especially of human life and human existence?

Yesterday I spoke to you about initiation in the sense of the Rosicrucian spiritual world current, about the stages of knowledge, of feeling, of will impulses, of activities that a person has to undergo if they want to move up the path of knowledge and towards higher levels of humanity. Today let us try to deal with a chapter of this Rosicrucian theosophy ourselves. Not that this Rosicrucian wisdom is anything but the common spiritual wisdom of all peoples and times, as must be emphasized again and again. It is only adapted to our modern way of thinking, to the modern temporal need. It is born out of the realization that our epoch needs a special way of speaking in order to proclaim the eternal truths of all times, so that they can live themselves into the very configuration of today's humanity in Europe and America.

It is perhaps a very distant chapter that is chosen here, yet it is one of the most essential. For nothing shows us man's origin and goal as much as the realization of this chapter and at the same time points us to the forces that we are to unfold in ourselves in order to become co-workers in the service of human evolution. We cannot look at the great evolution of the cosmos any other way than by starting with the human being and his or her essence. And I will say nothing other than what is a common theosophical and Rosicrucian wisdom, what anyone would say who speaks from these sources. There is no contradiction. Many already know what I would like to say here again.

We distinguish seven members of human nature. This morning we heard that one could also take another number as a basis: three times three. It does not matter that I will combine the three middle members into one name today, and if you summarize these three members under what I will call the fourth today, then the explanations will be completely consistent.

We divide the human being in such a way that we say that the human being first has his physical body; it is what hands can touch and eyes can see, what the human being has in common with all of nature and what is subject to physical and chemical laws. The second is the so-called etheric or life body. It is that which the chemical and physical forces and substances call to life and which leaves the connection of physical and chemical substances in death. Occultism says: The human physical body is such a combination of substances and forces that it cannot exist as a physical body by itself; only by having an etheric body inserted into it and as long as it is inserted, it is protected from the disintegration of physical substances and forces. In the moment when the etheric body leaves the physical forces, death occurs, the physical body is a corpse. Therefore, it is also said that the etheric body is what protects us from death at every moment. In every moment, there is a great struggle in the etheric body against that which would otherwise cause our chemical substances to disintegrate. The third link is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, feelings and emotions, which we call the astral body. It is the link of the human being that man has in common with animals, just as he has the ether body in common with the plant and animal world and the mineral body with the whole outer world. The name astral body has been in use since the earliest times. There is no more appropriate name for this part of the human being than astral body. And there is perhaps no better definition of why this body is called the astral body than the one given by the great theosophist Paracelsus. Just as the etheric body leaves the physical body at death, so the astral body leaves the etheric body some time after death. But the astral body also leaves the physical and etheric bodies every night. Then it is outside of us. Where is it then?

Paracelsus rightly asks: Where is it, and what does it do during the night? Does it rest, does it have a task? Yes, it has a task. Although those who do not have clairvoyant powers cannot see into the activity of the astral body during the night. But everyone feels the consequences of this activity. They all go to bed tired in the evening. The fatigue is an expression of disharmony in the composition of our physical and etheric bodies. It must arise if the astral body does not have the power to bring harmony into the other two, the physical and etheric bodies. And as man is today, such disharmony must necessarily arise during the waking hours of the day, were our physical and etheric bodies merely under the control of the astral body - how the forces are to be joined together - then there would always be harmony in our etheric and physical bodies. But as it is, not only does the astral body live in the physical body, but at the level of consciousness that humanity has reached on the Earth, the whole environment of physical, sensually perceptible objects has an effect on the human being. Impressions from the eye and ear and the other senses flow into it from the outside. During the waking hours, disharmony will inevitably arise in every person who has not yet reached a certain higher level of spiritual development. If this astral body could never dwell in any other place than in our physical and etheric bodies, it would itself become disordered. Then its power currents would not remain as they should be if a real etheric and physical body is to be formed. During the day, the inner harmony of the astral body is disturbed, and the expression of this disorder is fatigue. The moment you feel tired, the inner disharmony is there. Where is the astral body during the night?

Paracelsus rightly said: When the lines of force that connect it to the physical body during the day begin to loosen, it then comes into contact with the entire harmonious system of forces that flows through the starry sky. At the moment when a person falls asleep, he rests in the harmony of the spheres, and from there he brings the forces to balance what has been used during the day. Thus, the astral body rests during the night in the world of the stars; that is its true home. And when it returns, it brings with it the powers of the stars to help remove the substances that cause fatigue. That is why sleep is a good doctor, because order and harmony can then be restored when the astral body rests again for some time in the world that contains the laws for the starry sky, and these are the laws for the spiritual world in general. If a person does not sleep, their health will be undermined because the astral body has not rested in the starry world for a while. That is why the astral body has been given this name. In the past, names were not given that did not correspond to the essence of the matter. And before we correct occult names and designations, we must first think about the name, why it was given. Today, when a comet or a minor planet is discovered, one opens a mythology encyclopedia and gives the star a name. The principle of naming in spiritual times was to let the essence of the thing itself resonate in a name: it sounded in the name of the connection with the world.

In the fourth aspect of his being, man has something that makes him the crowning of earthly creation of planetary existence. Follow me for a short time in a subtle observation. In the whole range of the German language, there is a name - and in other languages it is similar - that is fundamentally different from all other names. Each of you can say “table” to the table, “picture” to the picture, and so on. But there is one name which we cannot use in the same sense, and that is the name I. None of them can say “I” to another. Each one is a “you” to every other, and you are a “you” to everyone else. If this name is to describe ourselves, no sound in the external world can embody it; it must resound from within ourselves. This has been felt at all times by those religions that had an impulse from the secret teaching. In the secret teaching, therefore, one says the name for the being, and in the Hebrew secret teaching, the unpronounceable name of God, the name of Yahweh, is nothing other than the name for the ego. In truth, the name of Yahweh is the name for that which begins to hold a monologue in the soul - to live in its self. It was felt that in those worldviews and religions that were built on spiritual foundations, one said: In the I, in the innermost part of the soul, God begins to speak. It is a beginning, but it must be made, and this I - this single central point - is what makes up the most essential distinguishing feature of man from all the beings that surround us on this planet. Sensible people have always felt this. Jean Paul tells us how, as a very young child, he stood in the courtyard of his parents' house and he knew exactly how he first felt: you are a self-being! And he adds that there is no possibility of error and that others have added something to this memory. Because at that time, says Jean Paul, I looked into the hidden holy of holies of my inner being; at that time I knew that I was immortal because I had found the connection with God.

If we now go outwards from the I, we come to the point where we can consider the mutual relationships of the human being. Human evolution consists in the I working on the three bodies, within which it appears like the core of a fruit in its shell. And how does this I work?

If we want to understand this, we must remember primitive peoples. Take a people who today stands at a lower level of culture. You see that this people is ruled by its feelings and instincts, by drives and passions, much like the animal: they devour each other. Now compare this savage with the members of a more highly developed culture, with a Francis of Assisi. What is the difference between the two forms of development?

If we want to answer this question, we must be aware that the human being – through the many incarnations through which he develops – does his work from his I: first on the astral body, then on the etheric body and then also on the physical body. This is human development: this emanation of the I into the three bodies. The savage follows all the instincts and passions that live in him. The cultured man says to himself, “I must not follow certain instincts”; he denies himself certain instincts and passions. The still higher idealist not only denies himself, but out of himself generates ideals that add something new to what the instincts of the astral body constitute at a primitive level of culture. Thus, in the clairvoyant view, we see the astral body as consisting of two parts: what was originally in it and then what the ego itself has made of it. If you look at a highly developed idealist, this part [it is drawn] is larger than in others due to the work of the ego, and in a person like Francis of Assisi you can see how little is left of what the person called his own when he embarked on his first incarnation. In Theosophy, this practically transformed part of the human astral body, over which man has gained control, is called the German word “Geistselbst”, which is otherwise referred to in Theosophical literature as “Manas”; it is a transformed part of the astral body.

But the human being also works on his etheric body from his I. What does it mean to work on the etheric body? Let us make this clear with an example. You can do this in your own development. Remember what you knew as a seven-year-old child in terms of concepts and ideas, and what you know today, what you have learned and changed in your imaginative life. You will find a great deal. But now compare what you have learned with what has changed in other things that are also in you, in temperament, memory, certain basic characteristics of human nature. If you were hot-tempered as an eight-year-old child, this hot temper will still show through at times. If your temperament was melancholy, then perhaps this coloring will remain throughout your life. So that we can say comparatively: what a person actually learns moves forward like the minute hand of a clock; but what a person's basic inclinations are, that moves forward more slowly, like the hour hand. And as slowly as the hour hand of a clock, the etheric body transforms. The etheric body is denser than the astral body; therefore, the work of the ego on the etheric body is essentially more difficult than the work on the astral body. And only when the ego not only works on its intellectual ideas but begins to transform its temperament, then this is accompanied by a transformation of its etheric body. For many, this is only possible during the transition from one incarnation to another. But that is precisely the essence of occult training: everything you can learn is only preparation for occult training, and you have done more if you have tried to get rid of any basic mood, for example, if you have transformed your melancholy temperament into a harmonious one. The moment we begin to change not only our feelings and impulses but our fundamental nature, we begin to work on the etheric body. The part of the human etheric body that has been reshaped by the ego in this way is in turn a new link in human nature. Today, very few people can consciously bring about this transformation of the etheric body, but only those who are in occult training. For example, one of the laws of the Pythagorean school was that the astral body must first be completely purified before work on the etheric body could begin. But one must distinguish between conscious and unconscious schooling of the etheric body. The part that is permeated by the work of the ego is called the “life spirit” in the German language; it is the same in its fundamental essence as what is called “buddhi” in theosophical literature.

The third and most significant thing is when the human being not only begins to become master over the forces of his etheric body, but when he begins to work down into the physical body. It might seem as though the work of the I on the physical body is the basest; but it is in fact the highest. And the work on the physical body is more difficult than the work on the etheric body. When a person consciously begins to work on mastering the forces that work in the physical body through the I, then something else occurs to him. What works in the physical body are the same forces that work in the cosmos. When a person learns to control the forces of his blood and his breathing, he learns the magic of the cosmos. Then what he can do flows out of his physical body and into the universe, and that is a real, true work that can only begin when a person has reached a certain level of work on the etheric body. And because we begin with the regulation of our neighbor, with the regulation of breathing, the name breathing is also taken from 'Atma'. The more a person transforms in his inner physical nature, the more there is of the 'spirit man', of 'Atma'; there is a part of spirit matter in him that has been transformed.

This is not an ascetic escape from the physical world; rather, we have the task of entering the physical world in order to transform it into a spiritual one. That is the great law of redemption. This physical body is a part of the spiritual body that has become what it has become so that we could reach our present stage of development. We now have the task of spiritualizing this physical body again, of redeeming it. This principle lies behind the word redemption. There you have the mutual relationship of the seven members of human nature, as one must have them if one wants to utilize them in practical theosophical work.

Now let us consider the evolution of man. A materialist, who, being acquainted only with the physical body, has only an abstract idea of the evolution of man. But he who realizes how complicated man is, also sees how complicated the evolution of man is. Which of these four members is the oldest and most perfect? Some may be surprised to hear that the oldest and most perfect link in the human being is the physical one; it is the one that took the longest time to develop. The etheric body is younger, and the astral body is even younger. The baby is the I. It is only unfair to call the physical body an imperfect part of the human being. Just consider, for example, the structure of the thigh bone: a wonderful work of art. The beams are laid with such wisdom that no human engineering could achieve it, and they are laid in such a way that the upper body is supported with the least expenditure of energy. Let us now move from this limb to the construction of the human heart. Anyone who delves into what our physiologists teach us about the heart and also about the other organs knows that these limbs are so wisely constructed that no human wisdom can even penetrate these physical forms. The physical body would be good for all people. But now let us look at the astral body, which it does throughout life. Through the activity of its astral body, man continually introduces heart poisons to the physical body, for example to the heart; but the heart is so wisely constructed that it can withstand the attacks of the astral body for quite some time. Only in the future will the astral body be found just as wise as the physical body is today. The physical body is the oldest part of the human nature, which required the longest time to evolve. The parts of the human nature are, however, connected with the whole environment. Just as a single finger can only exist if it is a part of the whole hand, so man is only conceivable in connection with the whole cosmos. If you lift him a few miles above the earth, then he will experience the same fate as the finger if you cut it off. And just because man can walk around on the earth, this dependence is not admitted.

Look back at times long past! And when you look ahead to future times, you see that the shape of its limbs is constantly changing. But they can only change if everything around the person changes. Just because man, despite his advanced science, looks back over such a short span of time, he believes that things have always been as they are. But anyone who looks further knows that our planet must change from form to form if we ourselves want to change. But it is not enough just for the changes that the earth itself is undergoing to happen, but in a certain respect man was already there before the earth could be called “earth” in the cosmos. As man progresses in the cosmos, so do the planets or the beings that inhabit them. Our planet is the reincarnation of another planetary state, and we can trace three preceding incarnations of our Earth and look forward to three subsequent ones. What we call planetary evolution is nothing more than an analogy to our human evolution. The three preceding planetary states through which our Earth had to pass are called in Rosicrucian terms Saturn, Sun, Moon, so that we have to imagine: the Earth was, before it became Earth, Moon, and before it became Moon, it was Sun, and before the Sun it was Saturn; and the later states, which we are looking at, are called Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan. What does it mean that the Earth has passed through these states?

We are today in the fourth incarnation of our own planet, and this is intimately connected with human evolution. On the first planetary form - that is, on Saturn - the first structures of the human physical body were already present. At that time, however, the human physical body was such during the entire Saturn development that no independent etheric body was yet incorporated into it. Through the stages of the sun and moon, down to the stage of the earth, this physical body became more and more perfect, so that we can say: the physical human body today stands on the fourth stage of its development, it stands today at the point of the earth's development. It was only in the second incarnation of our earth that an independent ether body was incorporated into this physical body. The physical body became more perfect, as it were, through the working of an etheric body within it. Then the third reincarnation of the earth — the moon — led to the incorporation of the astral body into the two others, so that the inhabitant of the moon, the ancestor of today's earth man, consisted of three bodies — the physical, the etheric and the astral body. And the meaning of evolution on Earth is this: to integrate the I into these three members, the worker, who then begins to transform what has come to him from the past. Thus we see that the physical body is older than the others, and the I is only at the first stage of its development. One can even know from the configuration of the physical body what comes from the state of Saturn in us. The highest part of our physical body is the sensory organs, and the germ of our sensory organs was laid on Saturn. And so limb by limb was built up, becoming more and more perfect in stages with the other limbs of human nature.

What is called Saturn and Sun here is not the present-day Sun and Saturn, but rather denotes phases of development. Nevertheless, what our Earth has gone through in its development is related to present-day Saturn. Present-day Saturn is to the Earth as a boy is to an old man. The same conditions that Saturn is going through today are the same conditions that our Earth went through in the past. This is why in real occultism we do not speak of Saturn, the Sun and so on, but of a Saturn, a Sun and so on. Our Earth is an older Saturn.

Now we must still be clear about the meaning of this whole development. If we look back to that Saturn development, where man was still without etheric body, astral body and I - insofar as they were independent beings -, we get the best difference of those ancient conditions from today's by referring to the “consciousness”. A state of consciousness is connected with every state of development. There are seven states of consciousness. The present human being is in the fourth; no being can have this state that cannot say “I” to itself. Therefore, the human being developed the form of consciousness that he now has only on earth. The purpose of evolution on Earth is to develop the waking consciousness. On the earlier planetary conditions, there were only imperfect states of consciousness for humans. On Saturn, the human ancestor in his primitive form had a consciousness like that of minerals, or rather: the human physical ancestor is that consciousness. We can hardly find words for it easily; we can only hint at it. This consciousness is a very, very dim, deep trance-like, sleepy consciousness, dull and dusky, but which in a way had an advantage: it encompasses a much larger scope, is much more universal; a mineral consciousness knows of the whole solar system.

Then this consciousness was narrowed down to that of the plant. But it is now a somewhat brighter consciousness than that of the mineral. Man was in this consciousness when the earth was in the sun. The third form of consciousness is pictorial consciousness, also called primary psychic consciousness. It differs from the present one in that it works in images, but in such a way that it conveys the psychic of the other. Imagine a being - and the human ancestor on the moon was like that - that does not yet have sensory consciousness and can cover objects with colors when it wakes up: you have a last remnant of such consciousness in the dream world. The dream world is not the astral consciousness. The present dream consciousness is to the moon consciousness what some atrophied limb is to the form it was in when it still had its tasks in the human being; for example, certain muscles that could move the ears have lost their purpose in the human being. The present-day world of dreams has remained as a vestige of the astral pictorial consciousness of the moon; that is why it also works in the same way as the astral imaginative consciousness works. Imagine someone dreaming that he is catching a tree frog. He sees it jump and grabs it. Then the sleeper wakes up and sees that he had the corner of the bed cover in his hand. Or another dream that really happened. A farmer's wife dreams that she is going to church. She listens devoutly. Then the pastor moves his arms violently and, lo and behold, he gets wings. It was not too strange for the pious farmer's wife that a pastor who preaches from heaven occasionally gets wings too. But what happens? The pastor begins to crow loudly in the pulpit. At the same moment, the farmer's wife wakes up and outside in the yard, the cock crows.

What has happened here, where a whole dramatic action is taking place? In the symbolic image, something is expressed that you would have perceived as an external object in the waking day consciousness. Something is formed symbolically that is not present in this way. But if you retain the symbol in form – think that people use it to have perceptions of the real psychic world, then you have what I am talking about now. A symbolic consciousness that is true and real was the consciousness of the moon. Imagine a human being without our present-day object-consciousness. He approached another being. He does not see the limited form in this being, but a color formation appears before him. When there is sympathy, he sees a very definite color, and likewise when there is antipathy. This is something other than color today: it is the expression of sympathy or antipathy for the other being. And someone who has moon consciousness does what corresponds to moon consciousness: he bases his actions on the symbols. If he perceives a certain color, he knows that something hostile is happening, and he will withdraw.

A later stage of development is that which develops under the influence of the ego, where consciousness no longer perceives the psychic phenomenon, but where what has arisen as a coloration is superimposed over the objects. The colors that you see spread over the objects today are the old colors that once arose as psychic phenomena.

If modern man had, in addition to today's consciousness, that of the moon, so that he fully perceives the psychic world as well as the physical, he would have expanded the present consciousness into the imaginative one. A higher form would be if he had added to this the consciousness that plants have today and that humans had dimly and dully during their solar incarnation. And the highest form would be where man would also have the consciousness that the mineral has today, which in turn would enable him to merge into the universal cosmos. This last consciousness hovers before us as the ideal of man, and it is called spiritual consciousness.

The purpose of planetary evolution is therefore that states of consciousness succeed one another; but for this to happen, the planetary arena must also change completely each time. However, we only understand the complete evolution if we know that within each planetary state, seven stages must be traversed. Thus Saturn, Sun, Moon and now Earth had to cover seven stages. These are called “rounds” in Theosophy, “realms” in Christian esotericism. Each of the planets that the Earth passes through has seven smaller cycles; for each consciousness, if it is to ascend, has degrees, from the most imperfect to the most perfect. They are also called states of life. Each of these realms or states of life, however, must in turn pass through seven different states of revelation or seven states of form: arupa, rupa, astral, physical, plastic, intellectual, spiritual (archetypal).

Thus we have 7 times 7 times 7 = 343 states; they describe the 343 planetary incarnations in their entirety. The development of one state of consciousness encompasses 49 of these states. So you can see how we can glimpse into an enormous cosmic development.

When man still lived on the sun and had only developed his etheric and physical bodies, he was still a completely different being. One could not call him a plant, but in a certain figurative sense one could say that he was then in the plant existence. In relation to his position on earth, he was turned around: what today projects freely into the ether, the head, was then directed towards the center of the earth. The development of consciousness is simultaneously linked with the reversal of the entire human form. This is why the sun man is also called a man directed towards the center of the earth, and in the same sense the man of the moon age is called an orbiting man. If one had drawn a tangent to the moon's surface... [gap in the transcript]. And the earth man is the reverse of the sun man.

Thus everything moves forward. When we look back at lunar evolution, we must realize that what we call affects today could only develop on the moon as an astral impact. But at that time the I had not yet developed. Because the ego did not develop until the earth, the moon man did not yet feel pain as his individual pain; it was the pain of the moon. This physical-etheric-astral moon ancestor was not independent. Unindividual passions, affects and pains arose from this. For example, it was so on the moon — one may express it today, even if so few believe it — that at certain seasons of the year the whole world, all living beings, began to scream, to utter sounds, surrounded by an astral body; this was connected with a certain development in animal life. A vestige of this can still be seen in the mating call in the sexual life of certain animals, where cries are associated with it at certain times.

Now the law of evolution is such that in later states certain earlier ones are always repeated. Thus the earth had to go through the repetition of the Saturn, Sun and Moon existence. Now the earth is in its most essential existence. You can get an idea of what was called the sun here if you stir all the beings that are on the sun, moon and earth today into a pulp; all of this once existed on the sun. During the solar age, the sun, moon and earth were one body. Then the sun had developed into the moon's existence and only then were the sun and moon divided. And during the repetition on earth, first the sun and then the moon separated again, and the actual becoming-ego of the human being is linked to the separation of the moon. The moon contains the forces that prevent the other parts of the human being from becoming the carrier of an ego. I can only suggest that the point in time that occurred for our earth's development in the ancient Lemurian period could only occur because first the sun broke away and then the moon. When the earth had become independent, it could only then bring forth the human form from which today's human being has developed.

Thus, human evolution is most intimately connected with cosmic evolution. If you look back to the ancient Atlantean times, the predecessor of our present time, when man lived on Atlantis – which science has at least already discovered for the animal world – you have the human ancestor who does not yet possess the same consciousness as the human being of today, who can calculate and manufacture industrial objects. But another faculty was highly developed. The Atlantean man had an excellent memory, of which one can no longer really imagine today. Something else was connected with this. You would find that physically, too, this old Atlantis differs quite considerably from the configuration of the earth today. What we call air and water today was not yet there. All the air was filled with a fine water vapor. The water was still dissolved. That is why the old German saga has preserved the name 'Nifelheim'. It means that people in those days lived in a kind of water-laden air, and only in such an air could the image consciousness of man at that time live. The myths and legends of Germanic mythology arose out of this consciousness. Anyone who really knows the people knows that they do not create poetry as today's scholarship claims. The myths and legends were the remnants of an ancient ethereal pictorial consciousness, the expression of an ancient, dim clairvoyance, and people have only forgotten their origin after they have advanced to today's bright day consciousness.

So you can see how the development of mankind is tied to the cosmos. On a round earth, where the air is saturated with water, man perceives the world quite differently. For the Atlanteans, the sound of the wind was a language they understood. There were no commandments or laws in those days. There were still times when, if man wanted to know how he should behave, he went out and listened to the spring as it trickled: that told him something. And when he went out to listen, he listened to a fundamental and underlying tone that was present like a musical keynote that the Atlantean understood. It is a simple, multi-syllabic syllable; it lived in the entire environment of the Atlantean; it went through everything, and the Atlantean said to himself: “In this fundamental tone, the god speaks to me.” And when he wanted to address his prayer to his God, it was in this fundamental tone. The wisdom of the ancient Atlanteans had to change into our own in order for man to progress. But in the process of development we will again have to gain the consciousness of the Atlanteans, in addition to our own. Sometimes we have to make the sacrifice that the old must lie dormant for a time.

Thus the evolution of man is connected with the evolution of the cosmos. Just think how far man has strayed from the sources of wisdom that lie in the world itself! How far he has strayed from direct contact with nature! But what we have lost we shall regain in what we have conquered. This consciousness that we have arises from the consciousness of the individual, concrete facts that in the Rosicrucian method were designated as the “wisdom of the world”. It permeates the whole life of man. If we imbibe it, we feel what the teacher wanted, to whom the name “Rosenkreutz” is linked, who, as a leading individuality, guides and directs the spiritual movement through the centuries.

It seems far-removed when we consider the human being in the context of the whole world; but if it penetrates our hearts, it becomes a force within us that will bless us if we want to work on the transformation and transformation of the cosmos. One has the duty to integrate oneself into the cosmos. Just as a single stone does not seek to dispense itself from the house, so man must not dispense himself from the Cosmos. One must recognize that it must be one's duty to serve within the great evolution of the world. Then that which is eternal in us will integrate itself into the world existence. There will be a reflection of it in our most everyday life, so that man can express this wisdom in every movement of his hand. Then the Cosmos will truly partake of the human being, for everything is in the process of transformation. Everything must be transformed again through beings who are placed in the movement of the world. If we work in this way, we will feel vividly how true it is. And truth will be the impulse for our actions. Thus a beautiful saying of a highly inspired poet will be fulfilled:

Time is a blooming meadow,
Nature is one great living being,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed!

When a subject such as our present one is discussed from the standpoint of spiritual science, this is not done by basing the facts upon some document or other exposition come into being in the course of human development, and by then illuminating the facts in question on the authority of such a document. That is not the way of spiritual science. On the contrary, entirely independent of all documents, spiritual science investigates what has occurred in human evolution; and only then—after the spiritual scientist has completed his research by means independent of any documents, and knows how to describe what he has found—only then is the document in question examined with a view of discovering whether it agrees with what had first been disclosed without reference to any tradition whatever. So all the statements made in these lectures concerning the course of this or that event are by no means to be taken as merely deriving from the Bible, from one of the four Gospels, but rather as the conclusions arrived at by spiritual research independent of the Gospels. But no opportunity will be missed to show that everything the spiritual scientist can fathom and observe is to be found in the Gospels, particularly in the Gospel of St. John.

We have a curious utterance by the great mystic Jacob Boehme which puzzles all who are not in touch with spiritual science. Jacob Boehme once drew attention to his way of discussing past epochs in human evolution—say, the figure of Adam—as though they had been within the scope of his own experiences, and he said: “Many might ask, Were you then present when Adam walked the earth?” And Jacob Boehme answers unequivocally: “Yes, I was present.” Now, that is a noteworthy statement; for actually, spiritual science is in a position really to observe with the eyes of the spirit whatever has occurred, be it ever so far back; and in these introductory remarks I should like to touch briefly upon the reason for this.

Everything that happens in the physical sensorial world has, of course, its counterpart in the spiritual world. When a hand moves there is present not only what your eye sees as a moving hand, but behind this moving hand, this visible image of the hand, there are, for example, my thought and my will: the hand is to move. In short, a spiritual element underlies it all. But while the visible image, the sense impression of the hand motion, passes, its spiritual counterpart remains inscribed in the spiritual world and always leaves a trace; so if our spiritual eyes are opened we can trace all things that have happened in the world by the imprints left by their spiritual counterparts. Nothing can occur in the world without leaving such traces.

Suppose the spiritual scientist gazes back to Charlemagne, or to the time of Rome, or to Greek Antiquity: everything that took place there has been preserved in the spiritual world as imprints of its spiritual prototypes, and can be seen there. This seeing is called reading the akashic record. There exists this living script which the spiritual eye can see; and when the spiritual scientist describes the events of Palestine or the observation of Zarathustra he is not describing what is found in the Bible or in the Gathas, but what he himself is able to read in the akashic record. Only then does he investigate whether the disclosures of the akashic record are to be found in the documents as well—in our case, the Gospels.

The attitude, therefore, of spiritual research toward documents is wholly unhampered; and for this very reason spiritual research will be the true judge of what documents have to tell. But when we find the same information in the documents as we were able to glean from the akashic record we infer first, that the documents are true, and second, that someone must have written them who was also able to read in the akashic record. Many religious and other documents of the human race are retrieved by spiritual science in this way.—What has just been said shall now be clarified by the study of a special chapter in human evolution, the Gospel of St. John, and its relation to the other Gospels. But you must not imagine that the akashic record, the spiritual history which lies open like a book before the seer's eyes, resembles any script of the ordinary world. It is a living kind of script, and we will try to understand this through what is to follow.

Suppose the seer gazes back in time—say, to the time of Caesar. Caesar did certain deeds, and in so far as they occurred on the physical plane his contemporaries witnessed them. But they all left their traces in the akashic record; and when the seer looks back he sees them as spiritual shadow-pictures or prototypes.—Call to mind again the movement of the hand: as a seer you do not perceive the picture this presents to the eye, but you will always see the intention to move the hand, the invisible forces that move it. In the same way is to be seen everything that went on in Caesar's thoughts, be it certain steps he intended to take or some battle he planned. Everything seen by his contemporaries originated in the impulses of his will and was executed by the invisible forces underlying the sense images. But the latter really appear in the akashic record as the Caesar who moved and had his being, as the spiritual image of Caesar.

Here someone inexperienced in such matters might object: Your tales are nothing but day-dreams—you know from your history what Caesar did, and now your mighty imagination makes you believe you are seeing all sorts of invisible akashic pictures.—But those who have experience in these things know that the less familiar one is with such events through outer history, the easier it is to read in the akashic record; for outer history and a knowledge of it are actually confusing for the seer. When we have reached a certain age we are hampered by various aspects of our education connected with the age in which we live. In the same way the seer, equipped with the education provided by his epoch, arrives at the point when he can give birth to his clairvoyant ego. He has studied history; he has learned how things are handed down in geology, biology, archeology, and the history of culture. All this actually interferes with his vision and may bias him in his reading of the akashic record; for in outer history one can by no means expect to find the same objectivity and certainty that are to be achieved in deciphering the akashic record.

Consider for a moment what it is that causes this or that event to become what is called history: it may be that certain documents have been preserved relating to some events, while others—and perhaps the most important ones—have been lost. An example will show how unreliable all history can be. Among a number of poems Goethe had planned but did not finish—and for the deeper student these constitute a beautiful supplement to the great and glorious finished works he left us—there is the fragment of a poem on Nausicaa. There exist only a few sketches in which Goethe had noted how he intended to deal with this poem. He often worked that way, jotting down a few sentences of which frequently but little is preserved. That was the case with the Nausicaa. Now, there were two men who endeavored to complete this work, both of them research men: Scherer, the literary historian, and Herman Grimm. But Herman Grimm was not only a researcher but an imaginative thinker—the man who wrote The Life of Michelangelo and the Goethe. Herman Grimm went about the task by trying to find his way into Goethe's spirit, and he asked himself: Goethe being what he was, how would he have conceived of a figure like the Nausicaa of the Odyssey?—Whereupon, with a certain disregard of that historical document, he created a Nausicaa in the spirit of Goethe. Scherer on the other hand, who always sought what was to be found among the documents in black and white, argued that a Nausicaa begun by Goethe must be completed purely on the basis of the material available; and he, too, tried to construct a Nausicaa, but exclusively out of what these scraps of paper had to offer. Of this procedure Herman Grimm remarked: What if Goethe's servant used some of these scraps of paper—perhaps just the ones containing something very important—for Iighting the fire? Have we any guarantee that the surviving scraps of paper are of any value at all compared with those that may have been used for lighting the fire?

All history based on documents may be analogous to this illustration, and indeed it often is. When building on documents we must never lose sight of the possibility that just the most important ones may have perished. Indeed, what passes for history is nothing more nor less than a fable convenue. But when the seer is hampered by this convention and at the same time sees everything quite differently in the akashic record, it is difficult for him to have faith in the akashic picture; and the public will voice its resentment when he tells a different story out of the akashic record. Hence one who is experienced in these things likes best to speak of ancient times of which there exist no documents, of the remote stages in the evolution of our earth. There are no documents relating to those epochs; and that is where the akashic record reports most faithfully, because the seer is not confused by outer history.—You will be able to gather from these remarks that it could never occur to anyone familiar with these matters that the pictures provided by the akashic record might be an echo of what is already known to him from outer history.

If we now search the akashic record for the great event to which we alluded yesterday, we find the following salient points. The whole human race, in as far as it lives on the earth, is descended from a divine realm, from a divine-spiritual existence. It can be stated that before any possibility existed for a physical eye to see human bodies, for a hand to touch human bodies, man was present as a spiritual being; and in the earliest ages he existed as a part of the divine-spiritual beings: the Gods are the ancestors of men, so to speak, and men the descendants of the Gods. The Gods had need of men as their issue, because without them they would have been unable to descend, as it were, into the sensorial physical world. In that remote time the Gods had their being in other worlds, acting from without upon man who gradually evolved upon the earth.

And now men had to overcome, step by step, the obstacles placed in their path by their earth life. What is the nature of these obstacles? The aspect of evolution essential for mankind was the need for the Gods to remain spiritual, while men, as their descendants, became physical. All the obstacles presented specifically by physical existence had to be surmounted by man, who possessed spirit only as the inner phase of the physical, and who as an outer being had become physical. It was within the confines of material existence that he had to develop; and it was in this way that he progressed upward step by step, steadily maturing until he should become increasingly able to turn to the Gods in whom he had his genesis. A descent from the Gods, and then a turning back to them, in order to reach and re-unite with them, that is man's path through life on earth. But if this evolution was to come about, certain human individualities always had to develop more rapidly than the rest, to hurry on ahead in order to become their leaders and teachers. Such men, then, have their being in humanity's midst and find their way back to the Gods, as it were, in advance of others. We can picture it in this way: In a given epoch men have attained to a certain degree of maturity in their development. They may have the premonition of a return to the Gods, but they have a long way to go before achieving it. Every man has within him a spark of the divine, but in the leaders it is always brighter: they are closer to that divine principle to which man must ultimately attain again. And this that dwells in the leaders of mankind is perceived, by those whose eyes have been opened to the spirit, as their essence and chief attribute.

Let us suppose some great leader of mankind confronted another man, not his equal but above the average. The latter feels vividly that the other is a great leader, permeated to a high degree by the spirituality to which other men must eventually attain. How would such a man describe this leader? He might say: Before me stands a man, a man in a physical body like everyone else; but his physical body is negligible, it need not be taken into account. When, however, I observe him with the eye of the spirit, I see united with him a mighty spiritual being, a divine-spiritual being which predominates to such an extent that my whole attention is focussed on it—not on what appears as body which he has in common with others.

To spiritual sight, then, there appears in a leader of mankind something which in its nature towers above the rest of humanity, and which must be described in quite a different way: the description must be of what the spiritual eye sees. Nowadays public men whose word is law would undoubtedly be amused at the idea of such surpassing leaders of mankind: we already have the spectacle of various erudite scientists regarding the shining lights of humanity as psychiatric cases. Such a leader would only be recognized as such by those whose spiritual vision had been sharpened; but these would indeed know that he was neither a fool nor a visionary, nor simply a very gifted person, as the more benevolent might designate him, but rather, that he was among the greatest figures of human life in the spiritual sense.

That is the way it would be today; but in the past it was a different matter, even in the none too remote past. Human consciousness, as we know, has undergone various metamorphoses, and formerly all men were endowed with a dim, shadowy clairvoyance. Even at the time when Christ lived on earth clairvoyance was still developed to a certain degree, and in earlier centuries even more so, though it was but a shadow of the clairvoyance common in the Atlantean and the first post-Atlantean epochs. It disappeared only gradually. But a few isolated individuals still had it, and even today there are natural clairvoyants whose dim higher vision enables them to distinguish the spiritual nature of men.

Let us turn to the time in which Buddha appeared to the ancient Indian people. Conditions were very different at that time. Today the appearance of a Buddha, especially in Europe, would arouse no particular respect. But in those old days it was a different matter, for there were very many who could discern the true nature of the event, namely, that this Buddha birth meant a great deal more than does an ordinary birth. In oriental writings, especially in those treating the subject with the deepest understanding, the birth of Buddha is described in the grand manner, as one might put it. It is related that Queen Maya was “the image of the Great Mother”, and that it was foretold she would bring a mighty being into the world. This being was then born prematurely—a very common means of launching an outstanding being in the world, because thereby the human being in which the higher spiritual being is to incarnate is less closely amalgamated with matter than when the child is carried the full time of gestation. It is then further related in the notable records of the Orient that at the moment of birth Buddha was enlightened, that he opened his eyes at once and directed his gaze to the four points of the compass, to the north, south, east, and west. We are told that he then took seven steps, and that the marks of these steps are engraved in the ground he trod. It is further recorded that he spoke at once, and the words he spoke were these: “This is the life in which I shall rise from Bodhisattva to Buddha, the last incarnation I shall have to pass through on this earth!”

Strange as such a communication may appear to the materialistic-minded man of today, and impossible as it is to interpret offhand from a materialistic viewpoint, it is nevertheless the truth for one who is able to see things with the eye of the spirit; and at that time there still existed men who, by means of natural clairvoyance, could discern spiritually what it was that was born with Buddha. Those are strange excerpts I have quoted from the oriental writings: nowadays they are called legends and myths. But he who understands these things knows that something of spiritual truth is hidden therein; and events such as the Buddha birth have significance not only for the intimate circle of the personality in question but for the world as well, for they radiate spiritual forces, as it were. And those who lived at a time when the world was more receptive to spiritual forces perceived that at the birth of Buddha spiritual forces were actually rayed forth.

It would be a trivial question to ask: Why does that sort of thing not still occur today? As a matter of fact, it does happen; only it requires a seer to perceive it. It is not enough that there should be one to radiate these forces: there must also be someone there to receive them. When people were more spiritual than they are today they were also more receptive to such radiations. So again a profound truth underlies the story that healing and reconciling forces were at work when Buddha was born. It is not a legend but a report based on deep truths which tells us that when Buddha came into the world, those who had previously hated each other were now united in love, those who had quarreled now met with expressions of mutual esteem, and so forth.

To one who surveys the development of mankind with the eye of the seer this does not appear as it does to the historian—a level path, at most overtopped a bit here and there by figures accepted as historical. Men will not admit that spiritual peaks and mountains exist—that is more than they can bear. But the seer knows that there are lofty heights and mountains towering above the path of the rest of mankind: these are the leaders of humanity. Now, upon what is such leadership built? Upon having gradually passed through the stages leading to life in the spiritual world. One of these stages we pointed out yesterday as the most important one: the birth of the higher ego, the spiritual ego; and we said that this was preceded and followed by other stages. It is evident that what we designate the Christ event is the mightiest peak in the range of human evolution, and that a long preparation was indispensible before the Christ Being could incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth.

In order to understand this preparation we must visualize the same phenomenon on a smaller scale. Let us suppose a man starts on the path to spiritual cognition in any one of his incarnations—that is, he carries out some of the exercises (to be described later) which render the soul more and more spiritual, more receptive to what is spiritual, and guide it toward the moment when it bears the higher, imperishable ego that can see into the spiritual world. Many experiences are passed through before that moment arrives. One must not imagine that anything pertaining to the spirit can be hurried: everything of the sort must be absolved with patience and perseverance. Let us suppose, then, that someone starts a training of this kind. His aim is the birth of the higher ego, but he only succeeds in reaching a certain preliminary stage. Then he dies; and in due time he is born again. Here one of two things can happen: either he can feel the urge to seek a teacher who will show him how he can rapidly repeat what he had previously passed through and attain to the higher stages, or else, for one reason or another, he does not take this way. In the latter case, as well, the unfolding of his life will often be different from that of the lives of other men. The life of one who has trodden the path of enlightenment at all will quite of itself provide something resembling effects of the stage he had already reached in his previous incarnation. He will have experiences of a different nature, and the impression of these on him will be different from that received by other men. Then he will attain anew, by means of these experiences, to what he had previously achieved through his efforts. In his former incarnation he had to strive actively from step to step; but now that life brings him as a recurrence, so to speak, what he had once acquired through effort, this approaches him from without, as it were; and it may be that he will experience the results of his previous incarnations in quite a different form.

Thus it may happen that even in his childhood some experience can make upon his soul an impression of such a nature as to re-engender the forces he had acquired in his previous life. Suppose such a man had attained to a certain degree of wisdom in a given incarnation. He is then born again as a child, like everyone else. But at the age of seven or eight he has some painful experience, and the consequence is that all the wisdom he had once acquired comes to the fore again: he is back at the stage he had reached before, and thence can advance to the next one. Now we will suppose further that he endeavors to proceed another few steps, and dies again. In his next incarnation the same thing can happen again: once more some outer experience can put him to the test, as it were, again revealing first, what he had achieved in his next to the last incarnation, and then, in his last one. And now he can climb another step.

You will see from this that only by taking account of such events can we understand the life of one who had already passed through certain stages of development. There is one stage, for instance, that is soon reached by serious striving along the path of enlightenment: the stage of the so-called Wanderer, of him who has outgrown the prejudices of his immediate surroundings and has cast off the fetters imposed by his environment. This need not make him irreverent: we can become all the more reverent; but he must be free of the prejudices of his immediate surroundings. Let us assume that this man dies at a stage in which he has already worked his way through to a modicum of freedom and independence. When he is born again it can happen that comparatively early in his life some experience will re-awaken this feeling of freedom and independence in him. As a rule, this is the result of losing his father or someone else to whom he is closely bound; or it might be a consequence of his father's reprehensible behavior toward him—he might have cast him out, or something of the sort. All this is faithfully reported in the legends of the various peoples, for in matters of this kind the folk myths and legends are really wiser than is modern science. Among the legends you will often find the type in which the child is cast out, is found by shepherds, nourished and brought up by them, and later restored to his station (Chiron, Romulus and Remus). The fact that their own home plays them false serves to re-awaken in them the fruits of former incarnations. The legend of the casting out of Oedipus is in this category, too. You will now understand that the more advanced a man is—whether at the stage when his higher ego is born or even farther—the richer in experience his life must be if he is to be capable of a new experience, one he had not yet had.

He who was destined to embody in Himself the mighty Being we call the Christ could naturally not assume this mission at any random age: he had first to mature very gradually. No ordinary man could undertake this mission: it had to be one who in the course of many lives had attained to lofty degrees of initiation. What was here demanded is faithfully told us in the akashic record. This relates how a certain individuality had striven upward throughout many lives step by step to high degrees of initiation. Then this individuality was born again, and in this earthly embodiment passed first through preparatory experiences. But in this embodiment there lived an individuality who had already passed through high stages of initiation, an initiate destined in a later period of his life to receive into himself the Individuality of the Christ. And the first experiences of this initiate are repetitions of his former degrees of initiation, whereby all the previous achievements of his soul are re-evoked.

Now, we know that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But we also know that in the course of human life only the physical body is born at physical birth, and that up to the seventh year the etheric body is still enclosed in a sort of etheric maternal sheath which is then discarded, at the time of the change of teeth, in the same way as is the physical maternal sheath when the physical body is born into the outer physical world. Similarly, at puberty, an astral sheath is thrown off and the astral body is born. And approximately in the twenty-first year the ego is born, but again only gradually.

Having considered the birth of the physical body, of the etheric body in the seventh year, and of the astral body in the fourteenth or fifteenth year, we must similarly take into account a birth of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the consciousness soul; and the ages at which these births occur are approximately the twenty-first, the twenty-eighth, and the thirty-fifth year respectively. From this it is evident that the Christ Being could not incarnate in a man of this earth, could not find room in such a man, before the intellectual soul was completely born: the Christ Being could not embody in the initiate into whom He was born before this initiate had reached his twenty-eighth year. Spiritual science confirms this. It was between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years that the Christ Being entered the individuality who walked the earth as a great initiate, and who gradually, in the light and radiance of this great Being, unfolded all that otherwise man develops without this radiance, this light; namely, the etheric body, the astral body, the sentient soul, and the intellectual soul. Thus we can say that up to this age we see before us in him who was called to be the Christ bearer a lofty initiate who gradually passed through the experiences that finally evoked all he had undergone in previous incarnations—the sum of his conquests in the spiritual world. Only then could he say, Now I am here; now will I sacrifice all that I have. I no longer desire an independent ego, but will make of myself the bearer of the Christ: henceforth He shall dwell in me, shall fill me completely.

All four Gospels stress this moment when the Christ incorporated in a personality of this earth. However much they may differ in other respects, they all point to this event of the Christ slipping into the great initiate, as it were: the Baptism by John. In that moment, so clearly defined by the author of the John Gospel when he says that the Spirit descended in the form of a dove and united with Jesus of Nazareth, in that moment occurred the birth of Christ: as a new and higher Ego the Christ is born in the soul of Jesus of Nazareth. And the other ego, that of a great initiate, had now attained to the lofty plane on which it was ripe for this event.

And Who was it that was to be born in the Being of Jesus of Nazareth? This was indicated yesterday: the God Who was there from the beginning, Who had remained aloof in the spiritual world, so to speak, leaving mankind to its evolution. He it was Who descended and incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. Can we find this indicated by the writer of the John Gospel? We need only take the words of the Gospel very seriously; and with this in mind let us read the beginning of the Old Testament:

In the (primordial) beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

Let us visualize the situation: The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Below, the earth with its kingdoms as the issue of the divine Spirit; and among these one individual evolves to the point of being able to take into himself this Spirit that moved upon the face of the waters. What does the author of the John Gospel say? He tells us that John the Baptist recognized the Being spoken of in the Old Testament. He says:

I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him.

He knew that upon whomsoever the Spirit should descend was He that was to come: the Christ. There you have the beginning of world evolution: the Spirit moving upon the face of the waters; and there you have John who baptized with water, and the Spirit that in the beginning moved upon the face of the waters and now descends into the individuality of Jesus of Nazareth. It would be impossible to connect in a more grandiose way the event of Palestine with that other event, told at the beginning of the same document whose continuation is the Gospel.

But in other ways as well we find the John Gospel linked with this oldest of documents. The writer effects this by pointing out that with Jesus of Nazareth is merged the same principle that from the beginning worked creatively at all earth evolution. We know that the opening words of the Gospel of St. John read:

In the beginning was the Word (or Logos), and the Word (or Logos) was with God, and a God was the Word (or Logos).

What is this Logos, and in what sense was it with God? Let us turn to the beginning of the Old Testament, to the passage presenting this Spirit of whom it is written:

And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And the divine Spirit said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Let us keep that in mind and express it somewhat differently; let us listen to the divine Spirit intoning the creative Word through the world. What is this Word? In the beginning was the Logos, and the divine Spirit called out, and what the Spirit called out came to pass. That means that in the Word there was life; for had there been no life in it, nothing could have come to pass. And what was it that came to pass? We are told:

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.

Turn back here to the John Gospel:

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

Now the Word had streamed into matter, where it became the outer form of the Godhead, as it were.

In it was life; and the life was the light of men.

In this way the author links his Gospel to that oldest of documents, the Book of Genesis. He refers to the same divine Spirit, only in different words. Then he makes it clear that this is the divine Spirit Who appears in Jesus of Nazareth. All four Evangelists agree that with the Baptism by John the Christ was born in Jesus of Nazareth, and that for the consummation of this event Jesus of Nazareth had needed comprehensive preparation. We must understand that everything previously told us concerning the life of Jesus of Nazareth is nothing but the sum of experiences portraying his ascent into the higher worlds during previous incarnations: the gradual preparation of everything embraced in his astral body, etheric body, and physical body for the eventual reception of the Christ.

The Evangelist who wrote the Gospel of St. Luke even says, somewhat paradigmatically, that Jesus of Nazareth had prepared himself in every respect for this great event, the birth of Christ in him. The individual experiences that led him upward to the Christ event will be discussed tomorrow. Today I shall merely point out that the author of the Luke Gospel told us in a single sentence that he who received the Christ into himself had indeed prepared himself in the previous years: that his astral body had achieved the virtue, nobility and wisdom indispensable for the birth of the Christ in him; and furthermore, that he had brought his etheric body to such a degree of maturity, and had developed such pliancy and beauty in his physical body, that the Christ could dwell in him.—One need only understand the Gospel aright. Take the second Chapter of Luke, verse 52. True, the wording of this verse in most of the Bible translations will not tell you what I just said. There it says:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and age¹, and in favor with God and man.

It would still make sense if such a man as the writer of the Luke Gospel had related of Jesus of Nazareth that he increased in wisdom; but when he reports as a solemn fact that he increased in age—well, that is not clear on its face, for it is a circumstance calling for no special emphasis. That it is nevertheless mentioned suggests that something more must be involved. Let us examine the verse in question in the original text:

Kai Jesous proekopten en to Sophia, kai helekia kai chariti Para theo kai anthropois.

As a matter of fact, here is what this means: “He increased in wisdom” signifies that he developed his astral body; and anyone who knows what the Greek mind associated with the word helekia can tell you that the term refers to the development of the etheric body, whereby wisdom gradually becomes skill. As you know, the astral body develops the qualities called upon for individual occasions: we understand something once and for all. The etheric body, on the other hand, shapes what it develops into habits, inclinations, and capabilities. This occurs by means of constant repetition. Wisdom becomes a habit: it is practised because it has become second nature. So what this "increase in age" means is an increase in maturity: just as the astral body has grown in wisdom, so the etheric body has increased in pure habits in the realm of goodness, nobility, and beauty. And the third quality that increased in Jesus of Nazareth, charis, really means that which manifests itself and becomes visible as beauty. No other translations are right. In translating this verse we must indicate that Jesus gained in gracious beauty; in other words, that his physical body, too, grew in beauty and nobility.

And Jesus increased in wisdom (in his astral body), in maturity of disposition (in his etheric body), and in gracious beauty (in his physical body), in a way manifest to God and man.

There you have the delineation given by St. Luke. Clearly, he knew that he who was to receive the Christ into himself had first to develop the threefold sheath—physical body, etheric body, and astral body—to its highest capacity.

In this way we shall learn how one can rediscover in the Gospels what spiritual science tells us independent of them. For this reason spiritual science constitutes a cultural current capable of recapturing the religious documents; and this recapture will not remain a mere milestone in human knowledge and cognition, but will stand as a conquest of soul and mind in the realm of feeling and sentience. And that is precisely the sort of understanding we need if we are to grasp the intervention of the Christ in the evolution of humanity.

• 1. In Luther's translation “age” is the word that corresponds to the “stature” of our King James version. It is retained here in order to avoid altering the term adhered to by Dr. Steiner.

A study of the genealogy of Jesus as it is given in the Gospel of St. Luke will show that what the writer wished to convey is in accordance with the statements made in the previous lecture. We saw that in the same way as a Divine Power (Kraftwesenheit) was to permeate the etheric and physical bodies of the Solomon Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, so also was a Divine Power to permeate the astral body and Ego (or the vehicle of the Ego) of the personality we know as the Nathan Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel. It is clearly indicated in the latter Gospel that this Divine Power flows down through all the successive generations, in an unbroken line, from that stage in the existence of the Earth when man had not as yet descended for the first time into a physical incarnation. The ancestry of Jesus is traced back through the generations to God. Adam is named as the Son of God. 'This means that in order to find the Divine Principle within the astral body and the Ego of the Nathan Jesus we must look to that pristine state of existence experienced by man before he descended into physical incarnation on the Earth, while he still lived in the divine-spiritual realms and can truly be called a Godlike being. To this period, when man's divine nature was as yet unaffected by Luciferic influences, the Gospel of St. Luke traces back the lineage of the Jesus of whom it tells. All anthroposophical investigation indicates that this period was in the Lemurian Age.

In those Mystery schools where the pupils were trained for the Initiation characterized yesterday as the attainment of knowledge of the great secrets of the Cosmos, the aim was to lead man out of and beyond everything earthly and beyond what he had himself come to be as the result of earthly influences. He was to be taught what vista of the Universe can be revealed to him when he deliberately refrains from using the instruments of cognition he has possessed since the time of the Luciferic influence. The first great question for the pupils of these Mysteries was this: What vista of the Universe lies before clairvoyant vision when a man frees himself from perceptions given through the physical anti etheric bodies and from all the surrounding earthly influences? Such freedom had been man's natural state before he first entered earthly incarnation and became the ‘earthly Adam’—speaking now in the Biblical sense and particularly that of the Gospel of St. Luke. Thus we can see that there are two conditions only in which man can rightly be regarded as a divine-spiritual being: one is that conferred through the lofty Initiation attained in the Great Mysteries; the other is that which was present at an elementary stage of human existence and cannot be fulfilled at any optional Earth-period. It obtained before the descent of the Divine Man in the Lemurian epoch into the 'man of the Earth', as the Bible describes him; for ‘Adam’ signifies ‘earth-man’, that is to say, a being whose nature is no longer purely spiritual but is now clothed in the elements of the earth, of the ‘dust’.¹

It may cause surprise that only 77 generations or stages of hereditary are enumerated in the Gospel of St. Luke. In the Gospel of St. Matthew too it may well cause even more surprise that only 42 generations are mentioned from Abraham to Christ, when a simple calculation will show that the number of years usually reckoned to one generation, multiplied by 42, would not reach back to Abraham. To be accurate, such calculation would have to take account of the fact that in the Patriarchal Age before Solomon and David, longer periods Were reckoned to a generation—and rightly so—than was the case later on. To get the historical dates even approximately correct WC must not reckon to three generations—for example, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob—what would now be an average number of years; about 215 years would have to be allowed for the three generations. This is also confirmed by occult investigation. The fact that the period of a generation in those early times was longer than it is to-day holds good even more emphatically for the generations from Adam to Abraham. In respect of the lineage from Abraham onwards it will be obvious to everyone that a single generation was once of longer duration, for it is at an advanced age that heirs are born to the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Just as it is usual now to reckon 33 years to a generation, so those who compiled the Gospel of St. Matthew were right in assigning 75 to 8o years, and even more, to one generation. It must be emphasized that back to Abraham, this Gospel is referring to individuals. The names of Abraham's predecessors given in the Gospel of St. Luke, however, do not refer to single individuals. In this case it is essential to remember something that is a fact, although it may seem incredible to materialistic minds.

What we to-day call our memory, our recollective consciousness of the unchanging identity of our inmost being, goes back in the normal way only into the early years of our childhood. If a man of the present time follows his life back into the past, he will find that memories cease at some point. One person will remember more of childhood, another less; but in any case memory to-day is limited to the one personal life, and indeed does not even embrace the whole of that life back to the day of birth. If we realise what the soul-faculties and characteristics of man's consciousness were in ancient times, recalling that in past epochs of evolution a certain clairvoyant state of consciousness was normal, it will not surprise us to find that in periods not far distant, consciousness was connected with memory to an altogether different extent than was the case later on.

Before the epoch of Abraham, man's whole constitution of soul was different from what it subsequently came to be, and this applies above all to the power of memory. During the still earlier epoch of Atlantis, the difference in this power was far greater still. A man did not, as he does to-day, remember the experiences of his own personal life only, but his memory extended through his own birth and beyond that to what his father, grandfather and other ancestors had experienced. Memory was something that flowed in the blood through a series of generations and only later came to be limited to a single period and to the single life.

Now the connotations of a name in ancient times were not such as arc associated with a name to-day. Indeed, the giving of names in ancient times is a subject that would now require very special study, for what modern philology has to say about it is often sheer nonsense. In the past it would have been impossible to conceive that names could be attached to beings or things in the purely external way that is customary nowadays. A name was once a reality connected essentially with the being who received it, and it was intended to express in sound or tone the inner nature of that being. The name was meant to be an echo of the being in the tone. (Our modern age has no inkling whatever of what this implies; if it had, books such as Fritz Mauthner's Kritik der Sprache could never have been written. This book contains a masterly review of modern research, of all scholarly treatises recently written on the subject of language, but makes no mention of its intrinsic character in antiquity.) In those times when the faculty of memory was different, a name did not apply merely to an individual human being in his personal lifetime but extended to all that was strung together through the memory; therefore the same name was in use as long as this retrospective experience endured. The name ‘Noah’, for example, did not signify a single individual; it signified what, in the first place, an individual remembered of his own life and then, beyond his birth, of the life of his father, of his grandfather and so on, as long as the thread of memory continued. The same name was used for the succession of individuals whom the thread of memory connected. Therefore names such as ‘Adam’, ‘Seth’, ‘Enoch’, comprised as many personalities as were united through memory. Thus when it is said that the name of some individual belonging to times of antiquity was ‘Enoch’, we may understand it to mean that a new thread of memory has come into existence in an individual who was the son of someone bearing a different name; the memory of the former individual did not carry back into that of his predecessors. The new thread of memory is not severed, however, with the death of the first individual to bear the name of 'Enoch' but continues through the generations until again a new thread of memory appears, and, with it, a new name which will be•;used until the new thread is broken. Thus when ‘Adam’ is referred to, the one name designates several successive personalities in the sequence of generations.

It is in this sense that names are used in the genealogical table in St. Luke's Gospel. The intention of the writer is to convey to us that the divine-spiritual Power that entered into the Ego (Ego-bearer) and into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus must be traced back to the stage when man first descended into earthly incarnation. In St. Luke's Gospel, there-fore, we find, firstly, the names of single individualities and then, after we reach the name of Abraham, we come to the epoch when memory embraces the longer period and several individualities are included under one name, combined as it were into one Ego by the memory.

It will now be easier for you to realise that the 77 names enumerated in St. Luke's Gospel extend over very long periods, actually reaching back to the time when the Being we may denote as the divine-spiritual entity in man was incarnated for the first time in a human physical body. The other aspect presented in the Gospel is this.—One who in passing through the 77 stages in the Great Mysteries had succeeded in purifying his soul from everything absorbed by humanity in Earth-existence, attained the state that is possible to-day only when a man is free of his physical body and can live entirely in the astral body and Ego. He is able, then, to pour his being over the whole surrounding Cosmos from which the Earth itself arose. Such was the aim of the Initiation in these Mysteries. A man had then reached the level of the Divine-Spiritual Power which drew into the astral body and Ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus.

The Nathan Jesus was to exemplify that which man receives, not from earthly but from heavenly conditions of existence. Hence the Gospel of St. Luke describes the Divine-Spiritual Power by which the astral body and Ego of the Nathan Jesus had been permeated. The Gospel of St. Matthew describes the Divine-Spiritual Power through which the inner organ for the Jahve-consciousness had been brought into existence in Abraham; and this same Power was working in the physical body and etheric body through 42 generations, constituting a line of heredity.

These were the teachings—especially those in St. Matthew's Gospel concerning the derivation of the blood of Jesus of Nazareth—which were cultivated and studied in the communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, among whom Jeschu ben Pandira worked to prepare for the coming of Christ Jesus. It was his mission to prepare at least a few, by imparting to them the knowledge that at the end of a definite period of time, namely 42 generations after Abraham, the development achieved by the Hebrew people would make it possible for the Zarathustra-Individuality to incarnate in a branch of the lineage of Abraham in the Solomon line of the House of David. This was a teaching given in advance. Not only was it taught at that time in the Schools of the Essenes but there were pupils in those Schools who had lived through the 42 stages in actual experience and were therefore themselves able to behold in clairvoyant vision the nature of the Being who was descending through the 42 stages. Knowledge of this was to be given to the world through appropriate teachings and it was the task of the Essenes to ensure that among a few human beings at least, there would be understanding of what the coming of Christ would be for the Earth.

We have already heard of events connected with the history of that human Individuality who incarnated in the specially prepared blood of which the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks. The wisdom which in very early times this great Teacher—known by the name of Zarathustra or Zoroaster—had imparted in the East, fitted him for the later incarnation. He was, as we know, the inaugurator of the Hermetic culture of Egypt, inasmuch as to this end he had given up his astral body, then to be borne by Hermes. He had also given up his etheric body, which was preserved for Moses. As the creator of the Mosaic civilization, Moses bore within him the etheric body of Zarathustra. Zarathustra himself incarnated later on in other astral and etheric bodies. Of particular interest to us is his incarnation as Zarathas or Nazarathos in ancient Chaldea in the sixth century B.C., where the Chaldean sages were his pupils and where the wisest among the pupils of the occult schools of the Hebrews at the time of the Babylonian captivity came into contact with him. The pupils of the Chaldean occult schools were then occupied throughout the following six centuries with the traditions, rites and cults originating with Zarathustra in the personality of Zarathas or Nazarathos. All the generations of pupils—Chaldean, Babylonian, Assyrian and so on—who were living in those regions of Asia, deeply revered the name of this great Master. They waited with longing for his next incarnation, for they knew that after six hundred years he would come again. The secret of his coming was known to them and was like a beacon light shining in from the future.

And as the time approached when the blood would be suitably prepared for the new incarnation of Zarathustra, the three envoys, the three wise Magi, set out from the East; they knew that the revered name of Zarathustra himself would lead them as a Star to the place where his new incarnation was to take place. It was the Being of the great Teacher himself who as the ‘Star’ led the three Magi to the birthplace of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.—Ordinary philology itself will confirm that the word ‘Star’ was used in ancient times to denote human individuality. It is not only spiritual research which from its own sources tells us more clearly than anything else that the three Magi at that time were led by Zoroaster, the ‘Golden Star’, to the place where he was to reincarnate, but it follows from the very use of the word ‘Star’ for human Individualities of lofty development that the Star by which the Wise Men were guided was Zarathustra himself.

Thus six hundred years before the Christian era the Magi of the East had come into contact with the Individuality who subsequently incarnated as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel. Now Zarathustra himself led them to Palestine and they followed in his track. For it was the Star of Zarathustra moving towards Palestine that guided the Magi along their way from the Chaldean Mysteries in the East, to Palestine, where Zarathustra was about to incarnate.

This secret of the coming incarnation of Zarathustra, of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was known in the Mysteries of Chaldea. But the secret of the blood of the Hebrew people which was that when the time was ripe it would be suitable for the new bodily constitution of Zarathustra—this was a teaching of the Essenes, who in their Mysteries were trans-ported in soul through the 42 Stages.

Thus there were, to begin with, two groups who knew something about the secret of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel: the Chaldean Initiates, who possessed knowledge relating to the Individuality of Zarathustra and his coming incarnation in Hebrew blood, and the sect of the Essenes, which was concerned with another aspect of the physical constitution, of the blood of the coming Being. In the Schools of the Essenes, teaching had been given for rather more than a hundred years on the approaching advent of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, in whose being would be found, wholly fulfilled, not only those conditions of which I have already spoken, but others too which can be characterized as follows.—

In these Schools a pupil underwent a lengthy period of training for the purpose of achieving, by exercises and other methods, the purification of soul necessary to him before he was led through the 42 stages in order to behold the secrets of the etheric body and the physical body. But it was known in these communities that the Being for whom they were preparing would descend from the heights already possessing those qualities which were a prerequisite for development of the faculties capable of perceiving these secrets.

The system employed by the Essenes for the purification of the soul was, in effect, a continuation of the ancient Nazarite discipline.² This form of occult training had existed in Judaism from times immemorial. Long before the advent of the Therapeutae and the Essenes, certain Hebrews had dedicated themselves to it, adopting very special methods for the furtherance of development in soul and body. First and foremost, the Nazarites subjected themselves to a diet that in a certain respect is still useful to-day if anyone desires to make more rapid progress in soul-development than is otherwise possible. They abstained altogether from eating flesh and drinking wine. This made conditions easier for them because the eating of flesh may actually retard development in one who is seeking for the spirit. It is the case—though this is not intended as propaganda for vegetarianism—that abstinence from meat-eating makes everything easier; it is possible to develop greater inner resistance to obstacles, greater strength for the overcoming of hindrances arising from the physical and etheric bodies, and a greater power of endurance. Naturally, this is not due entirely to abstinence from meat-eating but first and foremost to the fact that such a man is strengthening his soul. The avoidance of meat as food merely brings about a change in the physical body; but if the element from the side of the soul is absent and does not permeate the body as it should, there is no particular purpose in abstaining from the eating of flesh.

These practices of the Nazarites were continued, but in a much stricter form, by the Essenes who also resorted to quite other usages of which I spoke to you yesterday and the day before. Above all, however, they practised the very strictest abstinence from meat-eating, with the result that they learnt, comparatively speaking more quickly, to expand their memory beyond 42 generations and to gaze into the secrets of the Akashic Chronicle. They became what may be called a ‘sprout’ or a ‘shoot’ on a branch, on a tree, or on a plant—a sprout that endured through many generations. They were not detached from the tree of humanity but were conscious of the branches uniting them with it. In a certain respect they were different from men who severed themselves from the tribal stock and whose memory was limited to the life of the single personality. The name given to the former individuals in the communities of the Essenes too, was a word meaning ‘a living branch’, in contrast to a severed branch. They were men who felt themselves integrated in the line of generations, in no way severed from the tree of humanity. The pupils who cultivated particularly this trend in Essenism and who had passed through the 42 stages in their own experience were called ‘Netzers’.

Jeschu ben Pandira, of whom I spoke yesterday as the great Teacher in the communities of the Essenes—he is a figure fairly well known to occultists—had a faithful and particularly close disciple from this class of Netzers. Jeschu ben Pandira had five pupils or disciples, each of whom took over a special branch of his general teaching and continued to develop it. The names of these five pupils were: Mathai, Nakai, the third was given the name Netzer because he came especially from that class, then Boni and Thona. These five pupils of Jeschu ben Pandira who himself suffered martyrdom on account of alleged blasphemy and heresy, a hundred years B.C., propagated his teachings in five different sections. Spiritual-scientific investigation finds that after the death of Jeschu ben Pandira the teaching relating to the preparation of the blood for him who was to be the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel was propagated especially by Mathai. The teaching concerning the inner qualities and nature of the soul—a teaching connected with the old Nazarite but also with Netzerism in its later form—was continued by Netzer, the other great pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Netzer was specially chosen to be the founder of a little colony. There were many such colonies in Palestine, a particular branch of Essenism being cultivated in each of them. The cultivation of Netzerism, the special concern of the pupil Netzer, was to be the primary aim in the colony which led a secluded existence and which then, in the Bible, received the name ‘Nazareth’. There, in Nazareth—Netzereth—an Essene colony was established by Netzer, the pupil of Jeschu ben Pandira. Those whose lives were dedicated to the ancient Nazarite order lived there in fairly strict seclusion. Hence after the happenings of which I have still to speak, after the flight to Egypt and the return, nothing was more natural than that the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel should be brought into the atmosphere of Netzerism. This is indicated in St. Matthew's Gospel where it is said that after the return from Egypt, Jesus was taken to the little city of Nazareth, ‘that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets: He shall be called a Nazarene’. There have been many different interpretations of these words because none of the translators knew what was really meant—namely that here there was a colony of Essenes where the early years of Jesus' life were to be spent.

Before going into other details and into the relationship with the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel, we will now speak in broad outline of certain matters connected with the life of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel.

Everything presented in the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel derives from the secrets taught by Jeschu ben Pandira among the Essenes and subsequently propagated by his pupil Mathai. All the processes with which these teachings were concerned had to do with the preparation of the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel, although needless to say it was also a matter of influences being exercised upon the astral body too through the 42 generations. But if we say that during the first 14 generations it was the physical body that comes into consideration, during the second 14 generations the etheric body and during the third 14 generations—since the Babylonian captivity—the astral body, it must nevertheless be held firmly in mind that what was rightly prepared in this way for Zarathustra could be fully used by this great Individuality only in so far as it belonged to physical body and etheric body.

And now remind yourselves of the development of an individual human being: from birth until about the seventh year it is paramountly the physical body that is in process of development, during the next seven years, from the second dentition until puberty, the etheric body; and only then does the free development of the astral body begin. In the case of the physical and etheric bodies prepared for Zarathustra through the generations beginning with Abraham, this process of development was to reach culmination and into these bodies Zarathustra was to descend in the new incarnation. But when the development of the etheric body had reached its conclusion, what had been prepared for him was no longer adequate and he had now to proceed to the development of the astral body.

To this end there now took place a wonderful, awe-inspiring happening, without some understanding of which it is impossible to grasp the depths of the great Mystery of Christ Jesus. During boyhood the Zarathustra-Individuality evolved in the physical body and etheric body of the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel until the twelfth year. In the case of this Individuality and also on account of the climate, the point of development occurring in our regions at the age of 14 to 15 fell somewhat earlier. By the twelfth year everything that could possibly be attained in the suitably prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon lineage had actually been attained. And then the Zarathustra-Individuality forsook the bodies to which the Gospel of St. Matthew is primarily referring and passed over into the Jesus of the Gospel of St. Luke. From the Lecture-Course on the latter Gospel we know the explanation of the story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the Temple. When the parents of Jesus were suddenly unable to understand him because he had so completely changed, what had happened was that there had passed into him the Zarathustra-Individuality who had lived until then in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus.—Such things do occur in life, difficult though it is for materialistic thought to give credence to them. The fact that an Individuality passes out of one body into another does actually occur, and this was the case when the Zarathustra-Individuality left the original body and passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel in whom the astral body and Ego-vehicle had been specially prepared.

From the twelfth year onwards, therefore, Zarathustra was able to continue his development in the astral body and Ego-vehicle of the Nathan Jesus. This is magnificently presented to us in the Gospel of St. Luke, in the passage referring to the astounding scene where the 12-year-old Jesus is sitting among the learned Rabbis and saying things that sound utterly strange. How could Jesus of the Nathan line be capable of this? The explanation is that at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into him. Until the twelfth year Zarathustra had not spoken out of the boy who had been brought to Jerusalem at that time and the change of character was therefore so great that the parents did not recognize the boy when they found him sitting among the learned scribes.

Thus we have to do with two sets of parents, both named ‘Joseph' and Mary’—common names at that time—and with two boys, each named Jesus. But to infer anything from the names ‘Joseph' and 'Mary’ as names are understood to-day would be at variance with the findings of all genuine investigation. The genealogy given in St. Matthew's Gospel is that of the one child—Jesus of the Solomon line of the House of David. And St. Luke's Gospel tells of the other child—Jesus of the Nathan line—who is the son of different parents altogether. The two boys grew up in close proximity to each other until they were twelve; years old. This can be read in the Gospels; what they relate is everywhere correct. But as long as it was desired that people should not learn the truth or the people themselves did not want to hear it, the Gospels were withheld from them. It is only a matter of understanding what the Gospels say—for they speak truly.

Jesus of the Nathan line grew up with a deeply inward nature. He had little aptitude for acquiring external wisdom and assimilating facts of ordinary knowledge. But the depths of his soul were fathomless and he had a boundless capacity for love, because in his etheric body was contained the power that streamed down from the time when man had not yet entered into earthly incarnation, when he was still leading a Divine existence. This Divine existence manifested in this boy in the form of an infinite capacity for love. It was therefore natural that he should have been ill-adapted for everything acquired by men in the coursh of incarnations through the instrumentality of the physical body, while on the other hand an untold warmth of love pervaded his inner life. To those who knew of it, one episode in particular was a sign of the boy's inner faculties. A faculty that otherwise can be awakened in the human being only by outer stimuli, functioned from the beginning in the case of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel; directly after his birth he spoke certain words that were intelligible to those around him.³ In respect of all inward qualities he was infinitely great; unskilled, however, in respect of whatever can be acquired through the generations of mankind on the Earth.

What wonder that the parents were amazed in the Temple when suddenly there was before them a boy who, having grown up in this body, was now filled with a wisdom otherwise attainable by external means only. This sudden, radical change was possible because at that moment the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over from the Solomon Jesus into the Jesus of the Nathan line. It was Zarathustra (or Zarathas) who was now speaking out of the boy at the time described to us, when his parents were searching for him in the Temple.

Zarathustra had naturally acquired all the faculties it is possible to acquire by using the instruments of the physical body and the etheric body. He had necessarily to choose the lineage from Solomon, for in the bodily constitution produced by this blood there were strong, highly developed forces. From this bodily constitution he drew whatever he could make part of his own being and now united it with the deep inwardness made manifest in the nature of the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel and deriving from an age before man's earthly incarnations began.

Thus two streams became one. There was now one Being. In the Gospel our attention is specially called to the following.—Not only did the parents notice a startling change, detecting something they could not possibly have expected, but this change also showed itself outwardly. When the boy Jesus had been found by his parents among the scribes in the Temple, it is specifically said: ‘And he went with them and came to Nazareth... And Jesus increased in physical stature, in the noblest habits, and in wisdom.’ Why are these particular attributes mentioned? It was because they could be part of his nature in a very special sense now that the Zarathustra-Individuality was in him.—I must call particular attention here to the fact that the words referring to the three attributes in certain translations of the Bible are sometimes as follows: And Jesus increased in wisdom and age and in favour with God and man.' Do we really need a Gospel to tell us that age increases in a boy of twelve? Weizsäcker's translation is: ‘And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man.’ But this does not convey the real meaning. The real meaning is that in the Nathan Jesus-boy there was now a different Individuality—one whose nature was not, as had previously been the case, purely inward, but who, having developed hitherto in a perfected physical body, was able to make himself manifest in the external physical stature as well. Furthermore, habits that are acquired from life and develop in the etheric body as their special province, had previously been absent from the nature of the Nathan Jesus. His capacity for love was so great that it could be the foundation on which to build; but this capacity was a spontaneous reality and could not imprint itself into habits acquired from life. Now, however, the other Individuality was present, having in his own nature the powers resulting from mature development of the physical and etheric bodies, and in these conditions it was possible for habits to come to visible expression and be impressed into the etheric body. That was the second attribute. The third increase ‘in wisdom’ 'in the ordinary sense of the word is easier to understand. Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was not ‘wise’; he was capable of infinite, supreme love. The increase in wisdom was due to the presence in him of the Zarathustra-Individuality.

In speaking about the Gospel of St. Luke I referred to the fact that it is quite possible for a human being from whom the Individuality has departed and who has then only the three sheaths—physical, etheric and astral—to go on living for a time, But he of whom the early chapters of St. Matthew's Gospel speaks—Jesus of the Solomon line—wasted away and died, comparatively soon after his twelfth year. At first, then, there were two boys; then the two became one.

In very ancient records there are often remarkable utterances which cannot be understood unless the relevant facts are known. Later on we will go into the more intimate aspect of the union of the two boys; at the moment I will refer only to the following .—

In the so-called ‘Gospel of the Egyptians’ there is a passage which already in the early centuries of our era was regarded as extremely heretical, because Christian circles either did not want to hear the truth or did not want the truth to come to light. Something was nevertheless preserved in an apocryphal writing where it is said in effect that salvation (the Kingdom) will come to the world when the Two become One and the Outer becomes as the Inner. This sentence exactly expresses the occult reality of which I have told you. Salvation depends upon the Two becoming One. And the Two became One in very truth when in the twelfth year of his life the Zarathustra-Individuality passed over into the Nathan Jesus and qualities that at first had been entirely inward became outward. The inwardness of soul in the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel was profound beyond all telling. But this quality manifested outwardly too whwn the Zarathustra-Individuality, whose development had proceeded in the physical and etheric bodies of the Solomon Jesus, permeated that inwardness with the forces engendered by his contact with those bodies. An impulse of such power then pervaded the physical and etheric bodies of the Nathan Jesus from within that the outer could become an expression of the inner—of the inner nature as it had been before the Zarathustra-Individuality had passed into the Jesus of St. Luke's Gospel.—The Two had become One.⁴

We have now followed Zarathustra from his birth as the Jesus of St. Matthew's Gospel to his twelfth year, when he left his original body and passed into the bodily constitution of the Nathan Jesus; this he now developed to such a lofty stage that he was able, later on, to offer it as his own three sheaths into which the Being we call Christ might be received.

• 1. I Cor. XV, 47. ‘The first man is of the earth, earthy...’
• 2. The ‘law of the Nazarite’ is found in Numbers VI, 1-21. A recent study of this subject from exoteric sources will be found in Matthew Black, The Scrolls and Christian Origins (Nelson, 1961).
• 3. See The first Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ, Chapter I, 1-3. (From the Apocryphal New Testament, published in London. 1820, editied by William Hone.) See also the Koran. Chapter XIX.
• 4. The passage concerning the Two becoming One occurs in the Gospel of the Egyptians and also in the Second Epistle of Clement where it is followed by the reference to the outer becoming as the inner.

In the present group of lectures I have wanted particularly to indicate that the entire constitution of the human soul is undergoing transformation. This becomes evident to anyone who observes the evolution of humanity carefully from a spiritual scientific point of view, of humanity even in historical times, which is what we have been chiefly considering. People's way of comprehending their conception of the world, their impulses to act: everything pertaining to the human soul-constitution is changing in such a way that the slightest idea of it is beyond the understanding of external science. For science works in this realm with utterly inadequate means. Yesterday we tried to show that especially what may be called the center of human soul-life, real ego-consciousness, appears to more intimate observation to have been entirely different in ancient times from the ego-consciousness of later epochs, and that again from our present. I tried to characterize these differences by saying that in ancient times, particularly the pre-Christian, man's consciousness of self still possessed elements of reality, while in our own era, which involves principally the development of the consciousness-soul, there is only a reflection of the true ego in what we consciously call our ego. I have referred to this fact in public lectures by saying that a man of our time, especially if he thinks he is a philosopher, does not arrive at the truth because he is confused by a philosophic maxim that plays a great role in today's world view, a role that is becoming disastrous, namely, the maxim “I think, therefore I am.” This Augustinian and Descartian maxim is not true for present-day man. The true form should now be: “I think, therefore I am not.” A human being in our time should be fully conscious of the fact that in all he includes in the word “I” or “I am,” in all he holds in his consciousness when he observes his inner soul-being, he possesses only a reflection. This reflection even includes all the concepts directly connected with his ego, concepts that must be worked through by his ego. As humanity of this present age we no longer have anything of reality in our inner soul-life. The reality, our true being, only shines into us—I explained yesterday how it shines in—and what we bear within us is merely the reflection. This fact will only become clear when we inquire into the science of initiation and observe the difference between the way a human being in ancient times could penetrate into the supersensible worlds on paths of supersensible training, and the way this is accomplished in our day. We will then be able to see that as we move on from the present into the future the paths into the supersensible world will be completely different from those of ancient times. This is especially what I wanted to make clear yesterday.

Some time ago I pointed to the objective fact underlying this whole evolution. I pointed out that if we ask what impulses, what forces are active in the evolution of the earth and the evolution of humanity, we learn that certain divine- spiritual Beings are active whom the Bible calls the Creators, the Elohim. (One could just as well take their title from another source.) We call them the Spirits of Form. I have shown, however, from various points of view that these Spirits of Form have to a certain extent—if I may use a trivial expression—finished playing their role on behalf of the most important concerns of mankind, and that other spiritual beings have taken it over.

Anyone with sufficient feeling for this fact that presents itself to supersensible research, namely, that the time- honored Gods, or God, must now be replaced in human consciousness by other impulses, will realize that indeed very much has happened in the evolution of mankind, even during historical times. Such an inner transformation of the whole human consciousness as is now taking place, and which will become more and more apparent, has certainly never occurred within historical times. As you know, I am not inclined to agree with the oft-repeated phrase: we live in a time of transition. I have often remarked that anyone can say of any time that one lives in an age of transition; and if he fancies the notion, he can consider the transition he has in mind the most important in world evolution. That is not the meaning intended in what I have said. Any time is a time of transition, but the important thing is to know what is in transition, what is undergoing metamorphosis. From other points of view other transitions may have been more significant; but for the inner soul-life of man the transition to which I am now referring, directed toward our immediate future, is the one most fraught with meaning of any in historical times.

Let us consider this further from a somewhat different point of view. When we call to mind clearly the soul-constitution in the time of ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, it appears first of all not to have had a twofold structure as does the soul of present-day man. Perhaps we would better say that a twofold structure is now in preparation; indeed, it is in vigorous preparation, and can already be recognized in objective facts. What was formerly a mingling of soul-forces, so to speak, that worked together in the human soul, has been dividing since the fifteenth century. To a critical observer of human evolution this is quite evident. The conceptual life and the will-life were much more closely united in former times than they are now. They will separate more and more. The conceptual life, which is absolutely all we can lay hold of with our present consciousness (the ordinary, not the clairvoyant consciousness), is nothing more than a reflection of reality; and this life of conceptions also comprises all that we can grasp of our ego. On the other hand, we experience our will-life as in sleep. A man is as unconscious of what actually pulsates in his will as he is of events during sleep; but just as he knows that he has slept, in spite of knowing nothing about himself during sleep, so he knows about his will with his ordinary consciousness even though he sleeps through everything that he wills. If you have a white surface that reflects light, with some black spots on it that do not reflect the light, you see the black spots too, even though they do not reflect the light. Similarly, if you follow your life in retrospect, not only do you see your waking periods, but the periods of sleep appear in the course of your life as black spots. It is correct to say that you know nothing of yourself in sleep; but in a survey of your entire plane of consciousness the intervals of sleep may be said to appear as black spots. A person deceives himself if he thinks he knows more of his will than he does of his sleep. Man is conscious of his life of conceptions, and into this life of conceptions slip the black spots; these are the impulses of will. But man experiences these will-impulses as little as he experiences the sleep periods.

The will-life was less obscure to the consciousness of pre-Christian ancient times than it is today. Man was not so sound asleep with regard to his will; the instinctive will functioned, illuminated by the life of conceptions. On this account conceptions were not such pale reflections as they are today. Now we have on the one hand the conceptual life, which is only a reflection of reality, and on the other hand the will-life, which is a sort of sleep-condition punctuating our conscious life.

I said that what is contained in man's soul-constitution is also apparent objectively. Let us consider two phenomena that are extreme opposite poles. The rest of human life, so far as it is influenced by the human soul-constitution, resembles these phenomena. One of them is to be found today in the views which are especially developed in the so- called secret societies of the English-speaking peoples. (Such societies existing among other peoples, for instance, the Freemasons and similar organizations, depend entirely upon their original founding among the English-speaking peoples.) This is one extreme phenomenon. The other is to be found in the so-called Christian Church, wherever this has dogmas and rituals. These are two extreme, diametrically opposed phenomena.

There are other phenomena that are similar: for instance, what we call modern science resembles the secret-society view of the English-speaking peoples. Humanity is hardly aware that modern science is essentially similar to the views existing in these secret societies. I do not say influenced by them, but similar to them—for these things develop from different roots and then the trees become similar. It is the same with much that one finds in popular world conceptions. Today many people whose thinking does not conform to any kind of scientific world view have nonetheless similar aims. Among the scientific conceptions, philosophy alone—from an inner view—is still dependent upon the view of the Roman Catholic Church. Even the organization of man as body and soul, which philosophers regard today as unprejudiced science, is (as I have often stated) merely an outcome of the eighth Ecumenical Council of Constantinople,¹⁴ when the spirit was abolished by the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, “unprejudiced” philosophy is nothing but the elaboration of a Church Council resolution. There are individuals who do not look at things as they are painted by the universities of our time, but who really penetrate to the facts. To them, a philosophy that accepts this dualism of body and soul, and fails to stand for the true organization of man as body, soul, and spirit, is nothing but abstract superstition originating in that Church Council—unconsciously, of course. Now if you take these two opposite views, you may find them in modified form in science and in the popular world view—as the cold of the North Pole is modified in the Temperate Zone—but if the extremes are kept in mind, the matter will become perfectly clear. You see, the secret-society view of the English-speaking people, looking up to what it considers as underlying the whole cosmic process, emphasizes particularly the so-called Architect of the worlds, the great Master Builder of the worlds. These people picture to themselves in all sorts of symbols and rites the way the great Architects of all worlds work within the cosmic process. No one recognizes that this view persists as a ghost in modern science; but it does. It is a view tending to focus exclusively upon a mere reflection of the world, upon what is only a reflection of reality.

There you have the one extreme, which takes into account only the reflection of reality and when it becomes a dogmatic world conception, it is really something entirely outside reality. That is why so much mischief can be done with these things; it is why rites and symbols, very seriously intended, or seriously proclaimed, can become a masquerade or mere ostentation. It is something a human being consciously enjoys; it gives him a lively sensation, just because it takes account of the present-day consciousness, the consciousness that is a reflection of reality, that contains the reflection of reality.

The other extreme is offered by the Church. It is radically different from the world-conception “nerve” of the secret-society view. What the Christian Church offers reckons with the other pole, the pole of the will, with those human impulses that enter the consciousness only as sleep does at night. It reckons with a reality, to be sure, but a reality that is slept through. That is the reason also for the curious development of the Christian churches, which consists in their having gradually resolved the very different concepts of ancient times into their so-called concept of faith. Anyone who knows how the followers of almost all Christian views constantly turn away from knowledge and toward faith will feel something of sleep in this practice of faith. Their desire is to prevent at all costs any clearly conscious illumination of what strives to enter the human soul from those regions where sleep also originates. Therefore, what I have described as the content of the ancient Gnosis was reduced in earlier centuries to completely abstract dogmas, which were not intended to be comprehended but only to be accepted. And in Protestantism, knowledge has been reduced to a mere subjective belief, which has its special characteristic in its being based on something that cannot be proved, something beyond the province of science. There you have the two extremes that developed in the human soul-constitution as they are now related to objective facts.

Now we may ask what really underlies this splitting of the human entity into two-poles: the conceptual life, which has become a mere reflection of images; and the will-life, which has been forced down into realms of unconsciousness where it is asleep? The underlying cause is this, that in the historical evolution of humanity the impulse for freedom is struggling upward in the development of the human being. Even freedom, dear friends, is a product of evolution! Earlier times were not ready to awaken humanity to a real impulse for freedom.

This present time in which we live can be characterized on the one hand as I have just indicated: by the fact that the Spirits of Personality are replacing the Spirits of Form. Subjectively the struggling forth from the human soul of the impulse for freedom accompanies this outer, objective fact of evolution. Whatever course events may be taking externally, however chaotic all outer happenings may become, still at the same time we have in the present and the near future the struggle of the human being, in this very age of the consciousness soul (in which we have been living since the fifteenth century) the struggle of the human being to win through to an experience of the impulse for freedom. An understanding of this impulse is being sought by modern humanity, and will be sought more and more.

But this impulse can only break out of the human soul if the soul is capable of it. In earlier times freedom in its full range was not possible, for the simple reason that before the age of the consciousness soul every impulse was instinctive. Man cannot be free if he can only take into his consciousness what plays in from an instinctively conscious reality. Modern science still reckons on this absence of freedom, on inner necessity, because it is ignorant of the fact that in our consciousness as it is developed today, in the only kind of consciousness that can be developed through modern science, no real impulses can exist. (The contemporary scientific concepts show this reflection-consciousness to the highest degree.) Nothing exists in our consciousness that springs from some reality of our own body, soul, or spirit. Reality exists in it, to be sure—especially if we develop what in my The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I have called pure thought—but it only exists in reflection. As soon as you find yourself within a reality, you are impelled by it, for reality is something; even if it acts upon you quite feebly, it is an element of necessity, it constrains you, and you must follow it. This is not the case when a reflection works upon your soul, for a reflection contains no activity, no force; it is a mere image that does not urge the soul or compel it. In this age in which the consciousness tends to have reflections, the impulse for freedom can be developed at the same time. By anything else a man would be urged to do something; but when his conscious conceptions are images and nothing but images, which reflect a reality but are not the reality, there is no reality to oppress him. He is able in this age to develop his impulse for freedom. This is a mysterious fact that underlies the life of our present time. That people have become materialists in this age can be traced to their feeling, when they contemplate their inner life, that they find no reality there, only images. And, of course, everything else is sought in the sense-world. It is true that we can find no reality, either spiritual or physical, within our soul; we find only images. This was not always so; it is only true for our age. Our age is suited to develop materialism because it has become nonsensical to say, “I think, therefore I am.” We should say, ‘‘I think, therefore I am not.” That means that my thoughts are only images. In the act of conceiving myself in thinking, I am not, I am only an image. This being-an-image, however, is what gives me the possibility of developing freedom.

This is another fact revealed by outer phenomena to those who survey life, may I say, according to certain leitmotivs; but its truth will only be fully revealed when we again take up initiation science, true spiritual science. You must realize, however, that today whenever people are active in philosophic or scientific pursuits, they are living very much on concepts inherited from an earlier time.

This can be seen very clearly in one of the contrasting phenomena we were considering. You can observe how the secret-society ideas of the English-speaking peoples have spread over the earth; and you will find that in these secret societies what is ancient is emphasized with a certain partiality. The more the age of any rite or dogma in this realm can be played up, the more—pardon the expression—they lick their fingers with pleasure. And when someone wants especially to captivate people with some sort of occult science, he at least announces that it is Rosicrucian, or even Egyptian—but surely old; it must be something or other old. That corresponds pretty well to the fact that in those societies knowledge that has been obtained in the immediate present is not cultivated. (Some direct research is carried on, to be sure, but only according to the rules of ancient, antiquated occult science.) On the contrary, anything such as we do here—spiritual science acquired by working directly out of the impulses of the present—anything of this sort is opposed with might and main. Opposition to anything modern is the fixed tradition of these extreme phenomena. And—leaving aside Goetheanism, which is something entirely new—if one considers thoughtfully the customary, trivial natural science and its mode of conception, one knows that all the real concepts with which it works, even all ideas (not the single laws of nature, but the forms of the laws of nature) are, fundamentally, inherited concepts. The experiments contain something new, the observations also; but the concepts are new in no sense whatever: they are inherited. And when we call the attention of one or another scientist to this fact, they become really indignant, fearfully angry, and they deny this source of their concepts.

Whence, then, comes modern thought that fancies itself so enlightened? My dear friends, it is merely the child of an ancient religion! To be sure, the religious conceptions have been discarded. People no longer believe in Zeus or in Jahve—many not even in Christ—but the mode of thought from the age when Zeus, Jahve, Osiris, Ormuzd, were believed in, the manner of human thinking has remained. It is applied today to oxygen, hydrogen, electrons, ions, Herzian waves; the object makes no difference, the mode of thought is the same. Only through spiritual science can a new kind of thinking be employed for the supersensible world and for this world as well. As I have often said, Goethe provided an elementary beginning in natural science with his morphology, which consequently is also combatted by the antiquated views. With his physics too Goethe created a beginning, but the fruitfulness of that beginning is still hardly recognized. Thus people work with what is left over—which, of course, is comprehensible. For in an age when the consciousness is filled, not with elements of reality, but with only reflected images, it is unable, if it is thrown entirely on its own resources as ordinary, everyday consciousness, to acquire much in the way of content.

On the other hand, how were the religious conceptions acquired? It is childish to suppose that the ancient theologians thought up the contents of the Old Testament, or more recent theologians those of the New Testament, in the way present-day philosophers turn out their inherited concepts. That is a childish way of thinking. What stands in the Old Testament and the New Testament, and in the other religious books of the various peoples, came from supersensible visions, but only from the very ancient supersensible visions. It was all revealed through supersensible knowledge; and as the revelations were accepted from the supersensible world, the thought-forms were accepted too. So that today a good zoologist or a good surgeon is—unconsciously—using the thought-forms, the kind of concepts, that the seer of the Old Testament or New Testament had gained in his way by his own effort. And from the visions he obtained, the seer also developed his mode of forming concepts. Naturally it angers people today when we say to them: Even though you are zoologists, or physiologists, and certainly work in a different field, you are nevertheless using the thought-forms that originated from the visions of the ancient prophets or the evangelists. In the course of the last four hundred years, since the rise of Copernicanism and Galileism, very few new concepts have been acquired, and still less concept-forms of any sort, or trends of thought. The little that has been gained is precisely what provides the foundation for again finding supersensible paths of knowledge—through the real, anthroposophically oriented science of the spirit. Therefore, as early as the eighties of the last century I indicated clearly in my introduction to Goethe's Morphology—and I had the words printed in italics—that I considered Goethe the Kepler and Copernicus of organic science. I intended in this way to point out the path that leads directly into supersensible realms, and that starts from the good elementary foundation which he created. Thus the kind of thoughts that continue to haunt human heads today came from ancient vision, that is, from atavistic supersensible perception. During this entire evolution of human consciousness the Creators of old, the Spirits of Form, were active; they revealed themselves to the supersensible consciousness. Now it is no longer these Spirits who are revealed to one who stands within the modern life of spirit: it is the Spirits of Personality.

You may ask, what is the difference? This is shown precisely in initiation science. The modern spiritual scientist is still someone very strange to the popular consciousness, even to the general scientific consciousness, because the latter contains only a spark of Galileism, Copernicanism and Goetheanism, and even that in very elementary form, for it is still commonly dominated by the mode of thought of the ancient seers. It was the Spirits of Form who had furnished the ancient visions, who then brought to life in man the conceptions that were active in the ancient religions and even in Christianity up to the present time. These Spirits of Form, whom we call Creators, manifested themselves, to begin with, in imaginations that arose in man involuntarily. That was their initial mode of revelation; then out of the imaginations grew the conceptions of all the ancient religions. You know that imagination is the first stage of supersensible knowledge, then comes inspiration, and then intuition. All those who wanted to reach supersensible knowledge in the ancient sense started from imaginations; they had to find their way to the Spirits of Form.

Today the way has to be found to the Spirits of Personality. Here, then, is a tremendous difference. For the Spirits of Personality do not give imaginations to whoever wants them: a man must work them out himself; he must go to meet the Spirits of Personality. It was not necessary to go to meet the Spirits of Form. Formerly a man could be what one may call favored by divine grace, because the Spirits of Form gave him their imaginations in the form of visions. Many still seek this path today, because it is easier—but it is only attainable now in a pathological condition. Mankind has evolved, and what was psychological in earlier times is pathological now. Everything in the nature of visions, everything that depends upon involuntary imaginations, is pathological in our time and pushes a man down below his normal level. What is demanded today of anyone who wishes to push forward to initiation science, or actually to initiate vision, is that he shall develop his imaginations in full consciousness. For the Spirits of Personality will not give him imaginations; he must bring the imaginations to them. And something else occurs today. When you develop, when you elaborate valid imaginations, then you meet the Spirits of Personality on your supersensible path of knowledge, and you find the power to verify your imaginations, to bring them to objectivity for yourself.

The most elementary course for the spiritual researcher today will usually be to seek imaginations from the soundest results of modern knowledge. I have pointed out that modern science is the best preparation for spiritual research, because it offers the possibility of rising to fruitful pictorial concepts, especially if it is carried on in the Goethean sense. Of course anyone can invent images that are merely fantastic; one can patch together all sorts of stuff into arbitrary imaginations. The images one makes must first be verified by the approach of the Spirits of Personality bringing inspirations and intuitions. These are really received from the Spirits of Personality. One knows with certainty that one is in communication with those Spirits, who reveal themselves to present-day humanity from remote depths of spirit; but they will remain unproductive for one unless one brings a language to them. They keep the imaginations for themselves. Earlier, the Spirits of Form placed imaginations before a person who had supersensible vision; but the Spirits of Personality keep them in their possession, and one must come to an understanding with those Spirits—just as one would with another human being with whom one should be having thoughts in common and interchange of these thoughts. One should have free converse in the same way with the Spirits of Personality. The entire inner structure of spiritual life has been changed. The involuntary character which was the basis of the ancient revelations has been transformed into an impulse which is experienced in free activity. Someone who is not superficial, who wants to find out what really can occur, will become aware as he follows world events today (perhaps at first from something quite superficial) that a new world-plan is seeking to be realized, that behind outer events something is trying to take place spiritually. This may be sensed from world- happenings, but thoughts about it are still very vague.

Especially in social life many people may have the feeling that something is trying to be realized, something wills to happen. But if one wishes to understand what it is that wills to occur, he must approach it with something that only he himself can bring to it. What I have indicated as one kind of social impulse that is needed—but only one kind, because it is not a program, but reality—has been learnt in this way. I can say, therefore, that it is not something thought out, or fashioned from some ideal (what is called an ideal today), but it is a conception of something that presses to be realized, and that will be realized. One can only put it into concepts if one has first acquired the ability to form imaginations, and then has had them verified, proved, confirmed by the Spirits of Personality who are weaving the new world-plan.

This present-day development demands of us that we strip away all that is out of date in current science, and really find our way into new thought-forms, so that in them we may reach not antiquated visions, but imaginations built up with all our will, which we may then offer to the objective process of the spiritual world and receive back verified. This is so completely, so radically different from all earlier methods of gaining supersensible knowledge that the numerous individuals who depend upon the earlier methods resist it with all their might. For something is demanded of persons seeking to gain supersensible knowledge, something that is radical, primal, elementary, that intends to penetrate to sources, something that must be reconciled with all that is, consciously or unconsciously, antiquated. That is the reason why the spiritual science presented here attaches so little value to all that is traditional. These traditional things are certainly worthy of respect, but the fact remains that we stand at the turning-point of human evolution; and we must fully recognize that the traditional is obsolete, and that something new must be won. Hence, in a spiritual science that takes today's conditions into account, there can be no thought of faith in the old sense, nor any inclination toward the so-called Master Builder of all worlds. For both pertain only to external consciousness. When one attains a consciousness that is outside the body and outside the course of life, that is really in the spiritual world, then will and conceptions flow together again into one reality. And what was mere architecture, mere form—lifeless forms and lifeless symbols—receives inner life. Empty, obscure faith becomes knowledge, concrete self-transforming knowledge. The two unite and become a living thing. This is what must be experienced by humanity. The ancient symbols and ancient rites must be felt to be out of date. The whole earlier mode of thought must be felt as something antiquated; and the rigid forms in that mode of thought must be given life.

Just think how much use is still made today of those antiquated concepts! Certainly something useful can be done with them in many fields; but humanity would become stiff and paralyzed and withered if our antiquated ideas did not yield to something else, something containing inner life. We can no longer continue to work under the symbol of world-architecture, with rigid forms, traditional symbols, traditional dogmas. Something must bring mankind and the world together, and it must be a spontaneous, living thing.

At the beginning of our Christian era, for example, it was not yet true even of Christianity that its development was founded on something living. I have often called attention to the fact that those who first wrote about Christianity did so from the standpoint of the ancient Egypto-Chaldean science. Even the dates were not historically established. Festival dates, for instance, were determined astrologically, also the dates of the birth and death of Christ Jesus. The whole Apocalypse rests on astrology. The latter was alive in ancient times, but today it is dead, it is simply mathematical reckoning. It will only come to life again when things are comprehended with living insight: when, for instance, the birth-year of Christ Jesus is not figured out by the stars, but is seen with the vision that can be gained today in the way described. With that, things come to life. There is no life today in a calculation that determines whether some star is in opposition or in conjunction with another, and so on; but there is life when the nature of the opposition is experienced, when this is experienced livingly, inwardly—not simply externally through mathematics. In saying this, no particular objection is intended to external mathematics; it can even shed light on many things—darkness on many things, too!—but it has nothing to do with humanity's real, immediate necessity. Nor can these things be perpetuated in the old way; they would bring nothing but aridity and paralysis to the development of mankind. Of course, in judging such things people are influenced by the thought that although they themselves need not become seers—for just healthy commonsense can grasp spiritual science—yet even this kind of thinking can only be acquired with effort, while on the other hand they can easily adopt the ancient traditions and methods, and still more easily believe the church dogmas.

Now we come to a fact that we have treated repeatedly from various points of view: namely, the change that is taking place in the constitution of the human soul. It indicates on the one hand the streaming forth of the revelation of the Spirits of Personality; on the other hand, it indicates the liberation within the depths of men's souls of the impulse for freedom—a fact reflected now so urgently in the great demands mankind is raising. Today's social demands can only be understood if one is able to perceive this evolution in the constitution of the human soul. Call to mind a remark I made yesterday: that people are beginning—at least beginning, I said—to sense their true ego when they come in contact with other people. The man of old understood “Know thou thyself!” in the external world. For supersensible cognition it is different; but the man of ancient times, when speaking of his ego, had something real in the external world, the world in which the human being lives with his ordinary consciousness between birth and death. Modern man has only a reflection of his true ego; but something of his true ego shines into him when he comes in contact with other people. Another person who is connected with him karmically, or in any other way, gives him something real. To express it radically: it is characteristic of human beings of our present age to be inwardly hollow—and we should acknowledge it. If we practice life-retrospection honestly and faithfully, we find that the influences other people have had upon us are much more important than what we ourselves have supposedly acquired. Present-day man, of himself, gains extraordinarily little unless he obtains knowledge from supersensible sources. He need not be clairvoyant. A person is driven to daily social intercourse because actually he is only real in someone else, in his relation to another person. As we approach the sixth post-Atlantean epoch, of which embryonic impulses are now present in Russia, this fact will become so potent that a current axiom will be: No happiness is possible for one individual without the happiness of all—just as a single organ in man can only function if the whole functions. In the future this will be recognized as an axiom simply because it will be a fact of consciousness. We are still far from it—you may make your minds easy!—for a long time to come you will be able to consider your own personal happiness even though it may be built upon much human misery. But that is the direction in which humanity is developing. It is simply a fact, as when a man has a cold he must cough. He finds that unpleasant. Just so, a few thousand years from now, there will be unpleasant soul-conditions aroused when a man wishes as an individual to have any sort of happiness in the world without its being shared by others. This interdependence of mankind is inherent in human evolution, and is making itself felt today in the social demands. This is simply the direction in which the human soul is developing.

In earlier times when a man looked within, he could still find something real, even in the life between birth and death. Today, materialism is actually not unjustified in this life between birth and death if we observe man only outwardly; for what the ordinary consciousness can trace within the human being in his earthly life has only to do with material facts. Supersensible facts underlie these, but, as I said yesterday, they cease soon after birth and leave a man to take a material course until his death, when the supersensible struggles forth again. It is not from mere charlatanism that contemporary scientific research is materialistic, it is from taking into account instinctively the conditions actually existing in man today. But the people do not see beyond this life between birth and death. As soon as they begin someday to see beyond it, natural research will end as a matter of course.

Man must for once dive down into this purely material life, so that, independent of it, he may gain the spiritual. Thus, to understand what is pulsating in the most urgent demands of our time, it is absolutely necessary to look into this transformation of the human soul-constitution. And it is only possible to observe it when one is willing to do so through the science of initiation.

• 14. Council of Constantinople: 869 A.D. See Rudolf Steiner, Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, GA 175 (London, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972).

First of all, my dear friends, I want to say that I am very glad we are meeting here at this branch of the Anthroposophical Society today. I remember with great pleasure our meeting last year, and my greeting at the beginning of this lecture is as sincere and heartfelt as that memory.¹

Today I want to talk about a subject closely connected with the core of our anthroposophical movement. All the results of our spiritual movement are based on research that may be called clairvoyant. While I have often emphasized that our heart, mind, and feelings are primarily affected by anthroposophical truths, we cannot ignore that these truths depend on clairvoyant research, which is an expression of a soul condition different from that of everyday life. It appears to lead us away from the things that seem so important to us in daily life, but in reality, clairvoyant research leads us right into the heart of truly human life.

Today, I do not want to speak about the paths to clairvoyant research since I have already described them in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.² Rather, I would like to characterize the condition and mood of soul that develops as a consequence of this research.

Indeed we must bear in mind that if we follow the paths to clairvoyant research, we will feel completely different from our usual self. What happens to our soul when it becomes clairvoyant can be compared with our dreams, which are like surrogate clairvoyance. When we dream, we live in a world of images, which contains nothing of what we call “the sensation of touching an object outside us.” In our dreams there is usually nothing we can compare with normal ego consciousness. If any aspect of our ego does appear in our dreams, it seems to be separate from us, almost like another being outside us. We face our ego like a separate entity. Thus, we can speak of a doubling of the ego. However, in dreams we perceive only the part of ourselves that has separated, not the subjective ego. All statements apparently contradicting what I have just said can be traced to the fact that most people know of their dreams only from memory, and cannot remember that in the actual dream the subjective ego was extinguished.

The images of clairvoyant research resemble dreams because in both the sense of touch and the subjective ego are absent. A clairvoyant recalling his or her experiences must feel that the clairvoyant reality is permeable and, unlike physical objects, offers no resistance to touch. In the physical world we have ego awareness because we know: I am here, the object is outside me. However, in clairvoyant perception we are inside the object, not separated from what we perceive. Consequently, the individual objects are not fixed and distinct as physical ones, but are in continuous movement and transformation. Objects in the physical world are fixed because we can touch them and because they offer us boundaries, which objects of clairvoyant perception do not have. The same thing that causes our ego to fuse with the objects of clairvoyant perception also forces us to be very careful when we encounter what we call in the physical world another ego, another human being.

Let us first look at what happens when we encounter a person who has died through our clairvoyant faculties. Such an encounter can come about when the figure of the deceased approaches us in clairvoyant perception like a very vivid dream image, looking every bit as we remember the person looked in life. However, this is not the usual type of such encounters, but a rare exception.

Another possibility is that we clairvoyantly perceive a dead person who has taken on the form of either a living or another dead individual, and thus does not appear in his own form. The appearance of the deceased, then, is of very little relevance in identifying him. Perhaps we were particularly fond of another dead person or have a particularly close friendship with a living one; the deceased approaching us can then take on the form of either of those other individuals. In other words, we lack all the usual means of identifying the ego and appearance of a person in the physical world. It will help us find our way to remember that the appearance or form is not at all important; a being is meeting us in one form or another, and we need to note what this being does. If we take our time and carefully observe the image before us, we will realize that, based on everything we know about the individual in question, this person could not act the way he does in the clairvoyant sphere; his actions are totally out of character. We will often encounter a contradiction between the person appearing to us and his actions.

If we allow our feelings to accompany these actions, ignoring the individual's appearance, we will get a sense in the depths of our soul telling us what being we are actually dealing with. Let me repeat that we are guided by a feeling that rises up from the depths of our soul, for that is very important. The individual's appearance in the clairvoyant sphere seems to resemble a physical figure but can be as different from the being really present as the signs for the word “house” are from the actual house. Since we can read, we do not concentrate on the signs that make up the word “house” and do not describe the shape of the letters, but instead we get right to the concept “house.” In the same way, we learn in true clairvoyance to move from the figure we perceive to the actual being. That is why we speak of reading the occult script, in the true sense of the word. That is, we move inwardly and actively from the vision to the reality it expresses just as written words express a reality.

How can we develop this ability to go beyond the appearance, the immediate vision? We do so, above all, by looking at new ideas and concepts we will need if we want to understand the clairvoyant sphere—new, that is, in contrast to the ideas we use in the physical world.

In the physical world we look at an object or a being and say, quite rightly, I perceive that being, that object. We perceive the plant, mineral, and animal kingdoms, the realm of physical human beings, as well as clouds, mountains, rivers, stars, sun, and moon. The feeling expressed in the words “I perceive” undergoes a transformation when we enter the clairvoyant sphere.

Let me try to explain this with an analogy, though it may sound simplistic. If you were a plant, how would you relate to people perceiving you? If this plant had consciousness and could speak, it would have to say: People look at me, I am perceived by them. Of course, we say: I perceive the plant, but at its level of consciousness, the plant would have to say that it was perceived by human beings. It is this feeling of being perceived, being looked at, we must acquire in relation to the beings of the clairvoyant sphere. For example, concerning the beings of the first hierarchy, the angels, we must be aware that strictly speaking it is not correct to say “I perceive an angel,” but we have to say “I feel an angel perceiving me.”

Based on our Copernican world view, we know full well that the sun does not move. Nevertheless, we say that it rises and moves across the sky, thus contradicting our better knowledge. Similarly, in everyday language we can say that we see an angel. But that is not the truth. We would actually have to say that we feel ourselves seen or perceived by an angel. If we said we experience the being of an angel or of a dead person and can feel it, we would speak the truth from the clairvoyant point of view.

Perhaps an example from clairvoyant observation will help you understand this. More than ten years ago, at the beginning of our work with spiritual science, a dear friend of ours worked with us for a short time.³ This individual possessed not only enthusiasm for what we could give her in the early stages of spiritual science, but also a profound artistic sensitivity and understanding. One could not help but love this person, a love that may well be described as objective because of her qualities. Having worked with us for a relatively short time and having learned a great deal about the results of spiritual science, she left the physical world. There is no need to go into the next four or five years after her death, so let me get directly to what happened after that. In 1909, we presented our mystery plays in Munich, preceded, to our great delight, by Children of Lucifer by our highly respected friend Edouard Schuré.⁴ Whatever you may think about the way the plays were produced then and later, we had to present them the way we did. The circumstances under which we had to work on the performances were such that we needed an impulse from the spiritual world, an impulse that also included the artistic aspect we wanted to incorporate. Now, I can assure you that even at that time, in 1909, and even more so in later years, I always felt a specific spiritual impulse as I was working on the arrangements for the performances.

You see, when we have work to do in the physical world, we need not only intellect and skills but also the strength of our muscles. Our muscles objectively help us; they are given to us, unlike the intellectual capacities we ourselves dwell in. Now, in dealing with matters of the spirit we need forces from the spiritual world to combine with our own, just as we need the strength of our muscles for physical action. In the case I mentioned, the impulse from the individual who had left the physical world in 1904 entered more and more into our artistic work on the Munich plays. To describe what happened, I would have to say the impulses from this individual came down from the spirit plane and flowed into my intentions, into my work. She was the patron of our work.

We develop the right feelings toward the dead if we become aware that their spiritual gaze—if I may use that expression—and their powers focus on us; they look at us, act in us, and add to our strength.

To experience such a spiritual fact in the right way, we need to develop a very specific type of selflessness and a capacity for love. That is why I stressed that one could love that person objectively, as it were, because of her qualities; one had to love her because she was as she was. A subjective love, a love arising out of personal needs, can easily be egotistical and can potentially keep us from finding the right relationship to such a dead individual. The difference between the right love, the selfless love we have for such a person, and selfish love becomes perfectly obvious in clairvoyant experience.

Let us assume such a person would want to help us after her death, but we cannot develop true selfless love for her. Her spiritual gaze, her spiritual will streaming toward us would then be like a burning sensation, causing a piercing, burning feeling in our soul. If we can feel and maintain a selfless love, this stream, her spiritual gaze as it were, flows into our soul like a feeling of warm mildness and pours itself into our thoughts, imagination, feeling, and willing. It is out of this feeling that we recognize who the dead person is and not on the basis of his or her appearance, because the dead may manifest in the guise of a person we feel close to at the moment. The form in which the beings of the higher world appear to us—and after death we are all beings of a higher, spiritual world—depends on our subjective nature, on what we habitually see, think, and feel. The reality is what we feel for the being manifest before us, how we receive what comes to us from this being. Regardless of what Joan of Arc said about the appearance of the higher beings in her visions, the occultist who is able to investigate these things knows that it was always the genius of the French nation who stood behind them.⁵

I described how we can feel the gaze of spiritual beings resting upon us and their will flowing into our souls. To learn this is analogous to learning to read on the physical plane. Those who merely want to describe their visions would be like people describing the shape of the letters on a page rather than their meaning. This shows you how easy it is to have preconceived notions about the experiences in the spiritual realm. Naturally, it seems most obvious to attach great importance to the description of what the vision looked like. However, what really matters is what lies behind the veil of perception and is expressed in the images of the vision.

Thus, in the course of occult development, the soul immerses itself in specific moods and inner states different from those of our everyday life. We have entered the world of the hierarchy of angels and the hierarchy, or we could also say hierarchies, of the dead as soon as our occult exercises have brought us to the stage where the sense of touch characteristic of the physical world no longer exists, and where a person's appearance is no longer characteristic of the I concerned. Then our thinking changes and we no longer have thoughts in the sense we have them here in the physical world. In that world, every thought takes on the form of an elemental being. In the physical world, our thoughts can agree or contradict each other. In this other world we enter, thoughts encounter other thoughts as real beings, either loving or hating each other. We begin to feel our way into a world of many thought beings. And in those living thought beings, we really feel what we usually call “life.” Here life and thinking are united, whereas they are completely separate in the physical world.

When we speak on the physical plane and tell our thoughts to someone, we have the feeling that our thoughts come from our soul, that we have to remember them at this particular moment. Speaking as a true occultist and not someone who just tells his experiences from memory, we will feel that our thoughts arise as living beings. We must be glad if we are blessed at the right moment with the approach of a thought as a real being.

When you express your thoughts in the physical world, for example, as a lecturer, you will find it easier to give a talk for the thirtieth time than you did the first time. If, however, you speak as an occultist, thoughts always have to approach you and then depart again. Just as someone paying you the thirtieth visit had to make his way to you thirty times, the living thought we express for the thirtieth time has to come to us thirty times as it did the first time; our memory is of absolutely no use here.

If you express an idea on the physical level and someone is sitting in a corner thinking, “I don't like that nonsense, I hate it,” you will not be particularly bothered by it. You have prepared your ideas and present them regardless of the positive or negative thoughts of someone in the audience. But if as an esotericist you let thoughts approach you, they could be delayed and kept away by someone who hates them or who hates the speaker. And the forces blocking that thought must be overcome because we are dealing with living beings and not merely with abstract ideas.

These two examples show that as soon as we enter the sphere of clairvoyance, we are immersed in living and weaving thoughts. It is as if these thoughts are no longer subjective and as if you yourself are no longer within yourself, as if you are living outside in the wide world. When you are in this world of living and weaving thoughts, you are in the hierarchy of angels. And just as our physical world is everywhere filled with air, the world of the hierarchy of angels is filled with the mild warmth I spoke about earlier that the beings of this hierarchy pour out. When our inner development has brought us to the stage where we can live in this spiritual atmosphere of streaming mildness, we feel the spiritual eyes of the hierarchy of angels resting on our souls.

Now, in our earthly life, we have certain ideals and think about them abstractly. As we think of them, we feel obligated to pursue these ideals. In the clairvoyant sphere, however, there are no abstract ideals. There ideals are living beings of the hierarchy of angels and flow through spiritual space, looking at us with warmth.

In the physical world, we may have ideals, know them well, and yet we may not do anything to apply them. Our emotions, and perhaps passions, can tempt us to shirk them. However, if we knowingly ignore an ideal in the clairvoyant sphere, we feel the spiritual gaze of a being of the hierarchy of angels directed at us with reproach, and this reproach burns. In the spiritual world, ignoring an ideal is thus a reality, and a being of the hierarchy of angels reproaches us. Their gaze makes us feel the reproach; it is the reproach we feel.

You see, learning to develop a real feeling for ideals is one way of entering the world of the hierarchy of angels. Limiting our consciousness to the physical plane may lead us to think that nothing will happen if we are too lazy to act on our ideals. However, we can learn to feel that if we do not act on an ideal, then, regardless of other consequences, the world becomes different from what it would have been had we followed our ideal. We are on the way to the hierarchy of angels when we begin to see that not acting on our ideals is something real, and when we can transform this insight into a genuine feeling. Transforming and vitalizing our feelings allows our souls to grow into the higher worlds.

Through continued esoteric training, we can rise to an even higher level, that of the hierarchy of archangels. If we ignore the angels, we feel reproach. With the archangels we feel reproach as well as a real effect on our being. The strength and power of the archangels works through our I when we live in their world.

For example, a few months ago we lost a very dear friend when he left the physical plane. A profound poet, he had quickly found his way into the anthroposophical world view in the last five years, and the feelings it evoked in him are beautifully reflected in his recent poetry.⁶ From the time he joined us, and even before that, he had been struggling with an infirm and deteriorating body. The more his body deteriorated, the more his soul was filled with poetry that reflected our world view. Only a short time has elapsed since his death, and so one cannot yet say that this individual possesses a clearly existing consciousness. Nevertheless, the first stages of his development in the existence after death can be seen. The astral body, now separated from the physical and living in the spiritual world, reveals the most wonderful tableaux of cosmic development as we understand it in spiritual science. Having left the deteriorated physical body, the astral body has become so illuminated, comparatively speaking, that it can present the clairvoyant observer with a complete picture of cosmic evolution.

Let me use an analogy to explain what I mean. We can love nature and admire it, and still appreciate a beautiful painting that recreates what we have seen in nature. Similarly, we can be uplifted when what we have seen in the clairvoyant sphere lights up again, as a cosmic painting, so to speak, in an astral body of a person who has died. The astral body of our departed friend reveals after death what it absorbed, at first unconsciously but later also consciously, in the course of his anthroposophical development when the beings of the hierarchy of archangels worked actively on the poetical transformation of his anthroposophical thoughts and ideas.

Our progress in our esoteric development can be called mystical, because it is initially the inner progress of the soul. We transform our ordinary personality and gradually reach a new state. This step-by-step growth of the soul is mystical progress because at first it is experienced inwardly. As soon as we can perceive the mildness looking down from the spiritual world, we are objectively in the world of the angels, which reveals itself to us. And as soon as we can recognize that real forces of strength and power enter into us, we are in the realm of the archangels. With each stage of inner mystical progress we have to enter another world.

However, if we fail to develop selflessness and reach the stage of living in the world of the angels while remaining selfish and unloving, then we carry the self intended for the physical world into their realm. Instead of feeling the mild gaze and will of the angels upon us, we feel that other spiritual powers are able to ascend through us. Instead of gazing at us from outside, they have been released by us, shall we say, from their underworld while we were raised to a higher world. Instead of being overshadowed, or rather illuminated, by the world of the angels, we experience the luciferic beings that emerge from us.

Then, if we reach the stage of mystical development allowing us to enter the world of the archangels—without, however, having first developed the wish to receive by grace the influences of the spiritual world, we carry our self up into their realm. As a result, instead of being strengthened and imbued with the power of the archangels, the beings of the ahrimanic world emerge from us and surround us.

At first glance, the idea that the world of Lucifer appears in the realm of the angels and the world of Ahriman in that of the archangels seems terrible. However, there is really nothing awful about this. Lucifer and Ahriman are in any case higher beings than we are. Lucifer can be described as an archangel left behind at an earlier stage of evolution, Ahriman as a spirit of personality also left behind at an earlier stage. The terrible thing is not that we encounter Lucifer and Ahriman, but that we encounter them without recognizing them for who they are. Encountering Lucifer in the world of the angels really means encountering the spirit of beauty, the spirit of freedom. But the all-important thing is that we recognize Lucifer and his hosts as soon as we enter the world of the angels. The same is true of Ahriman in the realm of the archangels. Lucifer and Ahriman unleashed in the higher worlds is terrible only if we do not recognize them as we release them, because then they control us without our knowledge. It is important that we face them consciously.

When we have advanced in our mystical development to the level of living in the world of the angels and want to continue there with really fruitful occultism, we have to look for Lucifer as soon as we expect the spiritual gaze of the angels to rest on us. Lucifer must be present—and if we cannot find him, he is within us. But it is very important that Lucifer is outside us in this realm, so that we can face him.

These facts about Lucifer and Ahriman, angels and archangels, explain the nature of revelation in the higher worlds. From our viewpoint in the physical world, we are easily led to believe that Lucifer and Ahriman are evil powers. But when we enter the higher world, this no longer has any meaning. In the clairvoyant sphere, Lucifer and Ahriman have to be present just as much as the angels and archangels. However, we do not perceive them the same way. We identify the angels and archangels not by their appearance, but we know the angels by the mildness that flows from them into us, and recognize the archangels by allowing their strength and power to flow into our feeling and will. Lucifer and Ahriman appear to us as figures, merely transposed into the spiritual world; we cannot touch them, but we can approach them as spiritual projections of the physical world. Clearly, it is important that we learn in our mystical clairvoyant development to see forms in the higher world and to be aware that we are seen, that a higher will focuses on us.

You see, higher development does not consist merely in acquiring clairvoyant faculties, but in developing a certain state of soul, a certain attitude or relationship to the beings of the higher world. This new attitude and state of soul must be developed hand in hand with the training of our clairvoyant faculties. In other words, we must learn not only to see in the spiritual world but also to read in it. Reading is not meant here in the narrow sense of a simple learning process, but as something we acquire through transforming our feelings and sensations. It is important to keep in mind that a split of our personality occurs when clairvoyance begins, and we reach a revelation of the higher worlds. Our earthly personality is left behind, and a new one is acquired on ascending into a higher world. And just as the beings of the higher hierarchies look at us in the higher world, so we perceive our own ordinary personality from a higher perspective. Our higher self discards the lower one and observes it. So, to make valid statements about the higher worlds we had better wait until we are able to say: That is you; the person you see in your clairvoyant vision is yourself. “That is you” on the higher level corresponds to “this is I” on the physical one.

Now remember when you were eight or thirteen or fifteen years old and try to reconstruct from your memory a small part of your life at that time. Try to recall as vividly as possible your thinking in those years. Then concentrate on your current feelings about the girl or boy you were at eight, thirteen, or fifteen. As soon as we move from the physical level to the higher world, the present moment we live in now becomes a memory of the kind we have just recalled. We look back at our current existence on the physical level and at what we may still become during the remainder of our physical life in the same way you look back to your experiences at eight, thirteen, or fifteen from your vantage point in the present moment.

Everything we consider part of ourselves on the physical level, such as our feelings, thoughts, ideas, and actions, becomes a memory as soon as we enter the higher world. We look down at the physical world and become a memory to ourselves when we live in the higher world. We have to keep our experiences in the higher worlds separate from those in the physical realm, just as we distinguish between our present situation and an earlier one. Imagine a person who is forty years old and vividly remembers the feelings and abilities he or she had as an eight-year-old boy or girl. For instance, the person might be reading a book now, at the age of forty, and all of a sudden he or she begins to relate to the book as an eight-year-old would. That would be a confusion of the two attitudes, the two states of soul, and is analogous to what happens when we confuse our state of soul on the physical level with what is required in the higher worlds.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that every unbiased person can understand what I say about the higher worlds; in other words, we do not merely have to believe these descriptions, but we can understand them if we approach them without preconceived ideas. People may object that we cannot describe the higher worlds with concepts, thoughts, and ideas from the physical world because the former are completely different from the latter. This objection makes as much sense as saying that we cannot give people an idea of what we mean by writing h-o-u-s-e; for them to understand that concept, we have to bring them a house.

We talk about physical facts and objects by means totally independent of the object or fact. So we can also describe phenomena of the spiritual world with what we understand on the physical plane. However, we cannot understand the higher worlds with our everyday concepts and ideas, but need to acquire others and expand our thinking. People who honestly tell us about the higher world must also extend our concepts beyond our everyday life; they must give us concepts that are new and different and yet comprehensible on the physical plane.

People find it difficult to understand genuine spiritual science and serious esotericism because they are so reluctant to expand their concepts. They want to understand the higher world and its revelations with the ideas they already have and don't want to create new ones. When people in our materialistic age hear lectures on the spiritual world, they believe all too easily that the esoteric world can be understood simply by looking at it. They think the shapes there may be slightly more delicate and more nebulous than in the physical world, but similar nevertheless. It may seem inconvenient to some that the serious occultist is expected to do more than merely follow instructions on how to see angels. A change in thinking is necessary, and the concept “angel” must include that we are perceived by them, that their spiritual gaze is focused on us.

Mystical development, or ascending to the higher worlds, cannot be separated from enriching and giving greater scope to our ideas, feelings, and soul impulses. To understand the higher worlds, we must not let our life of ideas remain as impoverished as it is on the physical plane.

To provide esoteric help for this enrichment, we are constructing our modest building in Dornach in a completely new style. That building is, of course, nowhere near the ideal, but it is a humble beginning. After all, we have only limited means at our disposal, despite the fact that our friends have done everything within their power for this project.

The spiritual impulses behind the building styles that developed in the third, the fourth, and in the current fifth post-Atlantean epoch included the task of guiding humanity to knowledge of the physical world. For example, Egyptian architecture initiated this development with its succinct geometrical forms. Greco-Roman architecture is like a marriage of soul and spirit with etheric and physical body. Here soul and spirit on the one hand and etheric body and physical body on the other connect in a state of complete equilibrium. The rising, pointed arches of the Gothic style are the first architectural attempt to rise again from the physical into the spiritual world.

If anthroposophy is to be represented in a building the next step must be to bring to life the living and weaving thought patterns themselves, flowing, and pouring into space. Then we will see in physical form what Imagination and Inspiration reveal directly of the spiritual world. That is why the forms of the Dornach building are such that it is pointless to ask in materialist fashion what they symbolize and what their shapes stand for. They have to be taken on their own merit, since they are nothing more than immediate spiritual experiences poured out into spatial forms. We have attempted to transform everything that can be seen and experienced in the spirit into artistic form. So if people ask what a form stands for, they have misunderstood the building; for every form signifies only itself, just as our hands or head stand only for themselves and nothing else. Such a question also indicates a complete misunderstanding of our position in regard to occultism. We will be glad to leave behind the old theosophical nonsense of examining every fairy tale, every figure, and every myth for what it signifies and symbolizes.

All our forms really exist in the spiritual world and therefore express only themselves and nothing else. They are not symbols, but spiritual realities. You will not find a single pentagram throughout the building, no form of a pentagram, nothing to make you wonder what this or that form means. At most, there is one place where subtle forms could be interpreted as a pentagram, but so can every five-petaled flower. People may ask what our fourteen pillars mean, which are not shaped as pentagrams, but are five-sided for aesthetic reasons. They may wonder what the pillars supporting the cupolas mean besides representing spatial relations perceptible in the spiritual world. In reply we can only point out how materialistic our age is when even spiritual intentions must be clothed in materialist garments.

Our building will be understood if people stop asking what it symbolizes and instead think about what it is. They will understand our building when they realize it is better not to use any of the usual terms and the old verbal images to help our materialist age comprehend it. Spiritual science can at most be a synthesis of religions; unlike the ancient religions, it does not build temples, but rather a structure that expresses its innermost nature. This building can only be understood gradually, and only if we do not apply old words to this new development.

We know only too well that we can realize our intentions in Dornach only in the most modest, rudimentary way. But I ask only that you make a real effort to understand this humble beginning from the perspective and significance of our spiritual science. Try to understand what this simple beginning, paid for with considerable sacrifices, is aiming at. Any other attitude would be most disheartening.

Enough grand words and pompous phrases have been bandied about in the so-called occult movement. All we want is that even if our way of expressing things no longer exists fifty years from now, people will still say of our movement that it endeavored with every fiber to be totally sincere and honest. And the more modestly and simply, but thus perhaps the more objectively, we discuss what we wish to do, the better we serve our cause. Every word that is superfluous or returns to the old, convenient concepts does untold damage to what we are striving to achieve—please excuse me for saying this—honestly. If people understand us in this way, then perhaps the mood will arise that we need if we are really, in December at the earliest, to inaugurate our modest building without pomp and fuss.⁷ The mood we need will be there only if we concentrate on our goals, even if we do not create a stir in our materialist age.

Please accept these words in the spirit of the serious intentions of our movement. They must fill our souls if this spiritual impulse is really to take root in our age. There is a real need for an honest spiritual movement that truly promotes the mystical life of the soul and allows revelations of the higher worlds to flow into this materialist age. Only when our friends understand this purpose and attitude of our spiritual movement, then and only then shall we be able to fulfill the task given us by the wise, guiding individualities in the spiritual world.

Based on what I have tried to explain today, I will speak to you the day after tomorrow about the progress in our understanding of Christ through the ages and about the position of our movement concerning the Christ.⁸

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner, Die Welt des Geistes und ihr Hereinragen in das physische Dasein, Vol. 150 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1972), lecture of May 5, 1913. There are no transcripts of the lectures of May 4 and 9, 1913, in Paris.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, repr., (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press 1986).
• 3. Steiner here refers to the actress Maria von Strauch-Spettini, 1847–1904. See Lecture Two, note 7.
• 4. Edouard Schuré, French writer. His play Children of Lucifer was performed in German in Munich on August 22, 1909, under Rudolf Steiner's direction. See Steiner The East in the Light of the West and Schuré, Children of Lucifer, both in one volume, (Blauvelt NY: Spiritual Science Library, 1986).
• 5. Joan of Arc, 1412–1431, French national heroine and saint.
• 6. Morgenstern, see Lecture Two, note 8.
• 7. Due to complications and delays caused by World War I (1914–1918), the building neared completion only in 1920. The inauguration ceremony never took place because of the fire that destroyed the Goetheanum. A “provisional inauguration” took place on September 26, 1920, on the eve of the first event held in the building, the “first anthroposophical academic course,” which lasted from September 27 to October 16, 1920.
• 8. Rudolf Steiner, Vorstufen zum Mysterium von Golgotha, Vol. 152 in the Collected Works, (Dornach, Switzerland: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1964), Lecture of May 27, 1914.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are I in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out of the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards. -Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy, might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self -chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

(Continued in Lecture 5).