The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Cologne, May 11, 1913

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

If we look back at the way in which souls celebrated the summer solstice festival before the Mystery of Golgotha – what we now call around St. John's Day – and at how they felt and experienced that time, we arrive at very different feelings from those which the souls of the present experience at this moment of the year. In the past, the souls – and these are, after all, our own souls – lived with nature as a reality. The falling of snowflakes, the whispering of the wind in the forest, the light that flashes from lightning, the rolling of thunder, the patter of rain, all this was the speech of the gods for the souls of that time; and they understood that language and lived the life of the gods. When the sun barely showed itself during the winter around Christmas time, it also became lonely and dark inside them, and with the falling snowflakes they felt how they were cut off from the activities of the gods. And when spring came and everything began to sprout and sprout, the souls themselves came to life again, and it became warm in the souls. And in proportion as the sun sent its rays to the earth, they could again listen to the conversation of the gods; then they felt at one with nature and with everything that spoke from it. But the same souls can no longer hear the same, no longer experience it. The gods are becoming more and more silent, and we see the seasons changing without feeling more connected to them. Why is that?

This is because, after the mystery of Golgotha, everything had to change. That which used to affect people from the outside is now supposed to work within the person themselves. All those forces that once worked directly on people in nature are still working, but now they work on people from within. With our inner soul forces, which are to become stronger through the descent of the I into us, we must find the forces within ourselves that once spoke to us from outside in thunder and lightning, in rain and wind. Now they speak to us in our knowledge, now they bring forth moral strength and wisdom in us, now they warm us inwardly and enable us to understand all people, to speak from person to person and to establish the love that shall bind all souls together, so that humanity will rediscover itself as one great unity, since the whole of humanity lies spread out in each person's heart.

The festivals that people now celebrate with the changing seasons are no longer external festivals, where people cheered or became silent together with nature, but have now become internal celebrations. And the hope arises that one day, in full realization, we will fully experience them. When the young green sprouts up and all spring shoots awaken, then the feeling awakens within us that the slumbering seed of the spirit will awaken in us, and we celebrate Easter in this warming hope. And when we approach the Feast of Pentecost and thus the high point of the year, we expect that this spirit, as the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Truth, will come into us and bring us knowledge and wisdom. Those people who set the dates of the holidays in the post-Christian era did so out of the deepest wisdom and intuition.

The Luciferic spirits wanted to give man that which they already had on the old moon, the spirit self or the fifth principle, before man was quite ready with the development of the fourth principle or the I. Thus, man received the fifth principle in an immature state. The true form of the fourth principle is shown to us by Christ, and this is indicated to us in the forty days, or four times a small cycle of ten days, which elapse between the resurrection and the ascension. Only then can the fifth principle come to people in the right way. And that is indicated in the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, which in turn comes ten days later - or as a fifth cycle - after the Ascension.

We know that the Elohim want to give us the powers of the ego on earth, through which we can absorb spiritual wisdom into our minds. However, this can only happen slowly and gradually, and all further development will be available for this purpose. The Luciferic spirits, who had already absorbed the powers of the I in the ancient world and were therefore far ahead of man, now want to give man the fifth principle. They do this by directing attention to the possibilities of the earth that can be fully grasped by the intellect. All arrogant natural science comes from Lucifer's will. He wants to permeate man with the fifth principle, bypassing the fourth. The ego-powers are used to sharpen the intellect for earthly purposes; they lead it further and further away from contact with the gods, who want to impart their wisdom to us, just as it now flows down from the occult world in the theosophical teachings. If we absorb the teachings that are issued from this temple, then the wisdom that they contain will gradually be able to be processed by our minds and the powers of our ego will grow, so that we will increase in inner moral strength, which will bring us true freedom, which is determined from within the human being.

There is nothing in the experience of the “I” itself by the human being that is stimulated by a sensory process. On the other hand, the I incorporates the results of the sensory processes into its own experience and builds the structure of its inner being, the actual “I-human”, from them. This “I-human” thus consists entirely of experiences that originate outside the I and yet persist in the I after the corresponding sensory experiences. They can therefore be transformed into ego experiences. We can gain an idea of how this happens by looking at the experiences of the so-called sense of touch. In this sense, nothing comes from an object in the external world into the ego experiences. The ego, so to speak, radiates its own essence to the point of contact with the external object and then allows this own essence to return in proportion to the touch. The returning own essence forms the content of the tactile perception. Why does the I not immediately recognize the tactile perception as its own content? Because this content has received a counter-impact from the other side, from the outside, and now returns as this impact has shaped it from the outside world. The I-content thus returns with the imprint it has received from the outside. Thus, the I receives a certain peculiarity of the external world in the nature of its own content. The fact that these are truly inner I-experiences, which have only taken on the peculiarity of the external world, can only be determined by judgment. Now, suppose that the I's experience cannot come into contact with the external object. The external object radiates its essence; and the I-experience must recoil from the contact. Then, within the I, an experience similar to the sense of touch arises; only that, through the weaker resistance of the I, something like an influx from the outside occurs in its experience. In fact, the experience of smell can be characterized as such a process. If the impact from outside is so strong that the external radiation digs into the experience of the I, then the influx from outside can happen, and only when the inner experience, so to speak, puts up resistance can it close itself off from the nature of the outside world. But then it has absorbed the current from outside and now carries it within itself as its own inner essence. The sense of taste can be characterized in this way. But if the I does not apply its own original experience to external existence, but instead applies to it the kind of entity that it has itself taken in from outside, then an inner experience can be imprinted from the outside that has itself originally been taken in from the outside. The external world then imprints itself on an inner experience that has itself only been internalized from an external source. This is how the sense of sight presents itself. With it, it is as if the external world were dealing with itself within the experiences of the I. It is as if the external world first sends a part of its essence into the human being and then imprints its own nature on this part. One now further assumes that the external world, with what it has sent into the inner being as a sense organ, completely fills the I-experience, as it were; then the inner being will relive the peculiarity of an external event in the sense perception, although inner experience and external world are juxtaposed. And a radiance from the outer world will then reveal itself as something that is similar to an inner experience. The I will experience the outer and inner as similar. This is the case with the sense of warmth. Now compare the experiences of the sense of warmth with the life process of warming. An impression of warmth must be recognized as something similar to the warmth experienced within and filling the inner self.

With the sense of smell, taste and sight, we can speak of an influx of the outer world into the experiences of the self. Through the sense of warmth, the inner life is filled with the character of the outer world. A sense of the inner life manifests itself in the sense of equilibrium, the sense of one's own movement and the sense of life. Through them, the self experiences its inner physical fulfillment.

Another takes place in the sense of hearing. There the external being not only allows the I-experiences to approach it as in the sense of touch; nor does it dig into them as in the sense of smell, taste and sight, but it allows itself to be irradiated, as it were, by the I-experiences; it allows them to approach it. And only then does it counter them with its own forces. The I must thereby experience something that is like a spreading out into the external world, like a laying of these I-experiences outwards. Such a relationship can be recognized by the sense of hearing. (Those who do not make abstract comparisons will not object that, for example, such a spreading out also takes place with the sense of sight. The perception of sound is of a fundamentally different nature than the perception of sight. Color does not contain the sense of self in the same sense as sound.) This spreading of the sense of self into the environment is even more pronounced in the sense of sound and in the sense of concept.

Report in the “Dresdner Nachrichten” of December 2, 1909

Christ and spiritual science was the topic of the lecture that Dr. Rudolf Steiner gave on Tuesday to a large audience at Meinholds Sälen. The speaker is a frail, ascetic figure, but has a pleasant, sonorous voice and speaks fluently and quite freely. Spiritual science, he explained, is a science of real spiritual, real life. It wants to open the sources in which the beginnings of the physical world lie, and to give us knowledge of the supersensible spiritual world that lies behind our sensual world. Only in the last ten years has spiritual science slowly and gradually been penetrating people's minds. Some people believe that spiritual science or theosophy has something to do with ancient superstition. But this is not the case. Nor does spiritual science want to replace any other religious beliefs of mankind with a new religion. It serves to understand religious beliefs, it is an instrument with which one can understand the various religious beliefs, but it wants to be science in the most serious sense. Those who stand firmly on the ground of a religious belief are only led deeper into it by spiritual science. Nor is it a matter of introducing an oriental religious belief, such as Buddhism, into our society. Anyone who wanted to undertake such a task would misunderstand the basis of our entire Western culture. This basis is Christianity. Even those who fight Christianity have received their best from it. The speaker then explained the goals and tasks of spiritual science. The aim is to answer the questions of what the soul is, how it relates to the temporary phenomena of human life, and how it is connected to the supersensible world. The sources of knowledge of spiritual science are quite far removed from our present-day thinking and imagination, but we see with open eyes that not only is there more in the world than meets the senses and is grasped by the mind, but there is also a wealth of spiritual facts and entities. Just as one born blind denies our world full of color and light, so does one whose spiritual eye has not yet been opened deny the spiritual world. There is a rebirth of man, after which the spiritual world appears to him. Finally, the speaker addressed the questions: What is the nature of the presentation of spiritual science and how is the evidence for it provided? In a highly poetic form, he presented an imagined conversation between a superior person and a disciple who is to be introduced to the mysteries of spiritual science by that person. “Die and become!” was the watchword. The black cross entwined with red roses was the symbol of the new life. The audience, which was largely recruited from members of the Theosophical Society, listened devoutly and applauded the speaker enthusiastically.

Question & Answer Session [question not recorded in writing]

Rudolf Steiner: The Gospel of John says of Christ that he is the incarnate Logos because he brought the impulse into the world to fully conquer the human ego, to take up this ego into the spiritual world. Man can experience a threefold Christ. The first Christ is the Christ of Intuition. Expressed in mighty images in the Documents, He speaks of that Entity which actualizes the ideal of the individual ego. This Christ is found independently of every document and external tradition when one ascends to Intuition. As spirit, the same as every I, one finds through intuition Christ, the most perfect original I; incarnated at the beginning of our time. A completely new spiritual research has become possible through the fact that the human being can take his I, the Logos, with him into the spiritual world. The event of Golgotha brought the first impulse for the fullest self-knowledge of the human being. Man can behold his own I and therein see an image of the divine. The word of Christ: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58) – when man has grasped the meaning of this word, then he has grasped in himself the Logos, the divine original I. Thus spiritual science finds the Christ, who said yes:

I am with you always.

This Christ is always there: the first Christ, the Christ of intuition. The second Christ is the Pauline Christ. How did the Christ come into the world as knowledge? Who was the first to give him to humanity as knowledge? Paul. He was the one who did not allow himself to be converted through external physical experience, but through a clairvoyant inspiration, through the event of Damascus. To him, Christ revealed himself from the transcendental world. He believed in Christ and proclaimed him with all his strength.

The third Christ is the one of the gospels. There are naive people who take what is written in the Gospels literally. Then there are the clever people who say: the Gospels are for an imperfect stage of human development. And then there is a third type of person who says: the Gospels mean all sorts of things symbolically; they speak of a Christ myth, a Peter myth, and so on – they interpret the Gospels symbolically and allegorically. Finally, there is a fourth level, the spiritual-scientific view of the Gospels, where one starts from what can be known through spiritual research about the events in Palestine. Then, when you read the Gospels, you say: Now you understand them for the first time. And you know what those who wrote them wrote into them. You discover that the Gospels are the most powerful documents of humanity. And you see into a future where, through spiritual science, people will live more and more deeply into the Christ and the mystery of Golgotha.

Patience, or the ability to wait, is the inexorable demand in all departments of life. Failures are inevitable, and we must not grieve over them. Nature is not concerned over her countless failures, for the beings behind Nature know that the higher spiritual law is bound to bring to pass the things which have been determined. Even so must students of Anthroposophy learn to wait in faith for events which are to mature in the womb of time. And the central point of this faith, its firm foundation, is the symbol of the Cross—as elucidated by a comprehension of the Christ principle. If we have come to know the reality of the Christ principle, we understand that this Christ principle is a force, a living force, and that it has been connected with human life on earth since the time that in the body of Jesus of Nazareth it united itself with one special human being. Since that time it has been with us, working among us, and we may become participators of its working if we endeavour to apply all means at our disposal to its understanding, in such a way that we make it the very life of our own souls.

When, however, we understand the Christ principle in this way, and know it to be in humanity, here on earth, and are able to come to it and draw water of life from the source, we then have the kind of belief which knows how to wait, not alone for everything which has to mature in the womb of time, but also for that which surely and certainly will mature for us human beings, if we but have patience. When within this transitory existence we grasp the Christ principle, there will mature for us—in the womb of the transitory—the intransitory, the eternal, the immortal. Out of the womb of time there is born for us human beings that which is beyond time. If we stand on this firm support, we base upon it, not a blind belief, but a belief permeated by wisdom, truth and knowledge, and we may say: What must, will come; and nothing prevents us from throwing our best energies into what we believe to be inevitable. Belief is the real fruit of the cross; it is that, which always calls out to us: ‘Look at your failures, which seem to imply the death of your creative work; then look from your failures to the cross, and remember that on the cross hung the source of boundless eternal life, which defeats death not only for itself but for all mankind.’ From belief spring courage and perseverance. But courage, perseverance and belief alone are not sufficient; another necessary factor will have to be established more and more the further we progress towards the future, and must form an increasing part of everything that may be achieved for the future of humanity. And this is that we must become capable of never being confused about an idea when once we have recognised its correctness. We may have to admit a thousand times that it cannot be realised immediately, that we must wait in patience and without faltering, though we believe that the Christ-force is working in the unfolding life of humanity in a way which will bring everything to birth at the right moment in the womb of time. We must, notwithstanding this, be able to judge of the rightness, of the indubitable rightness of the contents of our spiritual life. If we can wait for results, the occasions on which we have merely to wait when it is a question of deciding what is true, wise and right, will become fewer and fewer. The cross alone gives vital courage and belief to our right understanding; but the star of the light-bearer, the star of Lucifer, if we surrender ourselves to it, can enlighten us every moment as to the rightness and the indubitableness of the spiritual ideas within us. That is the other centre of force on which we must take a firm stand; we must be capable of acquiring knowledge which goes into the depths of life, which goes behind the outer, material appearances, which sends its rays from the place where there is light, even when to human eyes and understanding all is dark. It was necessary for the progress of humanity that darkness should reign for a time, and the next chapters will show more and more clearly how necessary it was. This necessity is indicated in a profound way in the Gospel of St. John. This darkness was illumined by what we call the Christ principle, the Christ.

A wonderfully beautiful legend tells us that when Lucifer fell from heaven to earth a precious stone fell from his crown. This precious stone—so the legend proceeds—became the vessel from which Christ Jesus took the holy Supper with His disciples; the same vessel received the Christ's blood when it flowed on the Cross, and was brought by angels to the western world, where it is received by those who wish to come to a true understanding of the Christ principle. Out of the stone, which fell from Lucifer's crown, was made the Holy Grail. This precious stone is in a certain respect nothing else—I will just mention it here, as the fact will be laid more plainly before your souls in the course of the next chapters—than the full power of the Ego. In darkness this human Ego had to be prepared for a new and more intelligent beholding if the radiance of Lucifer's star. This Ego had to school itself by means of the Christ principle, it had to ripen by the aid of the stone fallen from Lucifer's crown, that is to say through Anthroposophical wisdom, in order to become capable once more of bearing the light which comes not from without. This light, which only shines in us when we ourselves have the power to do what is requisite for acquiring it, must shine again in the world. Thus people who look at the future with full understanding know that anthroposophical work is work on the human Ego, which will make it into a vessel capable of again receiving the light which lives in a region where today our sight and intellect apprehend merely darkness and night. An old legend tells us that night was the original ruler. This night, however, is what today is filled with darkness. But if we permeate ourselves with the light which rises for us when we understand the light-bearer, the other spirit Lucifer, then will our night be turned into day. Our eyes cannot see if the outer light does not illuminate the objects round us; our intellect fails if asked to penetrate beyond the outer nature of things. The star of Lucifer, however, which comes to us when clairvoyant investigation speaks, throws its light on what only seems to be night and changes it into day. And this also takes from us all deadening and paralysing doubt. Then we understand the cross of the Christ in the star of Lucifer. It may be said to be the mission of anthroposophical spiritual life for the future to give us on the one hand certainty and strength whereby, firmly rooted in spiritual life, we may become recipients of the light of the Light-bearer, and on the other hand to make us lean firmly on the rock of unquestioning conviction that nothing which is due to happen through the interaction of forces which are in the world shall fail to happen. Only through this two-fold certainty shall we be able to accomplish what we have to do in the world; only through this two-fold certainty shall we succeed in transplanting Anthroposophy into life.

Therefore we must clearly recognise that we have not only the task of understanding the star of Lucifer, as it shone throughout human evolution till the precious stone fell out of Lucifer's crown, but that we have to receive this precious stone in its transformed character as the Holy Grail, that we must understand the Cross in the star; we must know that we have to understand the luminous wisdom which shone in the world during primeval ages, and which we deeply revere as the wisdom of pre-Christian times. To this we must indeed look up in full devotion, and add to it that which could be given to the world through the mission of the Cross. Not the least fraction of pre-Christian wisdom, of the light of the East, must be lost to us. We look up to Phosphoros, the Light-bearer; and indeed we revere this Light-bearer as the being through which alone we learn to understand the whole of the deep, inner meaning of the Christ; but side by side with Phosphoros we see Christophoros, the Christ-bearer, and we try to conceive of the mission of Anthroposophy in such a way that it only can be fulfilled if the symbols of these two worlds really ‘unite themselves in love.’ If this is our conception of the mission of Anthroposophy, Lucifer will guide us to the safety of a luminous spiritual life, and the Christ will guide us to the inner warmth of the soul which trusts and believes that that will come about which may be called the birth of the Eternal out of the Temporal.

And we shall further recognise that there is a light of the West, that shines in order to make that which originates in the East more luminous than it is through its own power. A thing becomes luminous through the light by which it is illuminated. Therefore let no one say that any falsification whatever of Eastern wisdom takes place when the light of the West shines on it. It will appear that what is beautiful and sublime seems most beautiful and sublime when illuminated by the noblest light. If we feel this idea and receive it into our souls, letting it fill them, we shall be able to learn in small things, through feeling and realisation, what will come to pass in great matters. We shall say: we stand firmly rooted in our truths and wait patiently for their realisation, however long deferred it may be.

Thus we work from one point of time to another in the firm belief that if we comprehend our mission rightly; we are working for that for which man ought to work, for eternity. For as far as human work is concerned, Eternity is the birth of that which has matured in Time.

Instruction session without location or date given

The “Iron Sea” refers to pure, untroubled human nature. The three treacherous companions are doubt, superstition and the illusion of the personal self. By descending into earthly incarnation, man came to doubt his spiritual nature, to have false mental images. That is superstition, for example the idea that he is a being standing alone, not part of the great whole, the illusion of the personal self. These three traitors destroy the originally pure human nature. The fire of passions springs from it.

From the 22nd lesson in Cologne, December 22, 1907.

The Iron Sea, if it had come about, would have made the Earth a transparent, clear planet. Now the three companions have destroyed the casting. Doubt, superstition and belief in the personal self have clouded the casting. In the human etheric body, there are three points - heart, spleen and in the back - that are particularly significant. The one at the back means the Iron Sea in the microcosm. In the case of a person who still has doubts, superstition and belief in the personal self, this point is clouded, traversed by clouds, like a smoky topaz. Our task is to transform it into a radiant, clear one.

Cain, in the center of the earth, still possesses the pure divine Elohim power. Hiram Abiff descends to him and receives the original creator word, written on the golden triangle.

Place and date of these remarks unknown, according to a transcript by Mathilde Scholl, dated Landin, August 31, 1906.

Hiram Abiff could not create the Iron Sea until man had passed through the fire of passion, until he had not completely descended into the earthly fire. Until then, the Sea of Bronze could not become firm. It had to remain billowing, for if one wanted to solidify it in this way, it would have to burst. Passion, having become power, is the destructive principle that leads everything to ruin. But after Hiram Abiff had plunged into the fire, into the embers of the Sea of Bronze, and emerged from it again, bringing with him the Golden Triangle - the higher principles of wisdom, beauty and power (Manas, Budhi, Atma) - he was able to lead the Sea of Bronze to completion. The Iron Sea is the fusion of the lower and higher principles in physical existence, in the mineral round. It could only be fully restored after a complete descent into the mineral world, into the solidification of the physical.

The Iron Sea is the solidification of the astral. The astral was not allowed to solidify as it was before the physical solidified. By passing through the solidified physical, the astral was so purified that it could emerge pure afterwards, and only then was it allowed to solidify. Only then can the word be found that stands on the golden triangle. For only when the astral has been purified can the word arise anew, the etheric body in its new form, expressing the Christ principle.

Man's education is one of freedom. In order for the I to dwell in man and develop his individuality, it was necessary for it to take hold of a part of all the world's forces. That is why the development of egoism was a necessity from the middle of the Lemurian race onwards. Until the development of egoism, man had no kama of his own; all kama was only present cosmically. After the division into two sexes, the Kamic entered into the individual human being; the superfluous Kama was excreted in the moon. Now the development of Kama took place in the individual human being. The more the human being solidified physically, the more concentrated the Kama became in him, because he now increasingly confronted the outside world, increasingly learning to distinguish his ego from the rest of the world. He finally forgot that he was part of the rest of the world and therefore treated his environment as an enemy. (Cain kills his brother Abel.) From then on, he wanted to have everything for himself, to take possession of everything, because he felt the great difference between what he himself was and what did not belong to him, what belonged to his environment. This is how the power of Kama was taken to extremes.

While, on the one hand, man became more and more violent in his greed for possessions, he had to learn, on the other hand, that he cannot possess everything. He had to learn to renounce many things. He had to learn that in this way, as he wanted it - outwardly - he could never take possession of everything, and through death he was shown that even if he can apparently take possession of many things, he must renounce everything again when death tears him away from the physical world. So man learned resignation. Through many lives he had to learn the difference between the transitory and the eternal. He had to learn that all external possessions are impermanent. Then he looked for the imperishable, which he found in the higher worlds. Thus he learned to direct his desire to the imperishable. He learned to renounce external possessions. Now he began to build himself up inwardly. But as long as there was still any desire for his own possessions, he could not bring this work of inner development to completion.

First, the power of the kamasutra had to be pushed to the extreme by entering into mineral solidification, but then, precisely by passing through the mineral-objective world, it had to be purified again and emerge as selfless human love. Thus, cosmic warmth became individual warmth, individual power. This is initially found in devotion. Devotion brings order to unbridled passion. It shapes it into harmony and beauty. Devotion was the missing beam on the Temple of Solomon that was to connect the two columns. It had to be found before the temple could be built. Only after man had attained piety, devotion to the Higher, could humanity be led to perfection. He could only learn this devotion to the Higher by passing through the consciousness of the ego and by solidifying it in the physical world. Piety also leads him to find the Master Word, which leads him to perfection. After he has brought his astral body into harmony through devotion, he has attained the Master Word, the wisdom with which he transforms his etheric body into an eternal one, into the sounding word, which is productive.

Man was given the columns of Boaz (strength, physical body) and Jakin (wisdom, etheric body) and also the means to achieve his own perfection (astral body Kama - the fire).

He had to learn to work with fire: outside in nature with physical fire and inside in man with the soul fire (Kama). Outside, with the help of physical fire, he had to work with the mineral kingdom, shaping it into harmony, into a work of art; in the soul, with the help of the power of Kama, he had to develop first self-awareness and then inner harmony, devotion, enthusiasm (to be in God), to dive completely into passion and then emerge again like Hiram Abiff with the golden triangle, the higher forces. Only after he had transformed passion into devotion within and fire into beauty without, could he connect the columns Jakin and Boas. That is, he could develop himself up to wisdom and strength, to Budhi and Atma, because he had worked through Kama manasically. He attains wisdom by purifying his kama through devotion. In this way, his kama becomes pure human love and, on the other hand, he transforms it into enthusiasm by permeating his manas, the power of knowledge, with the purified kama. Thus, the kama is illuminated by manas, and the warmth of the kama moves into the manasic.

Thus the crossbeam laid across the two columns leads on the one hand to higher wisdom (Budhi) through piety, love, Christ, and on the other hand to creative power (Atma) through knowledge, enthusiasm, Lucifer. Thus the two columns of the temple are connected.

The transformation of the mineral kingdom into an outer temple goes hand in hand with the transformation of the surging astral body into harmonious human love. Thus the iron sea is built in the outer and in the inner. The mineral world will ultimately become an expression of human love. Love within, beauty without: that will become the image of the world.

The following is added to the above notes under the heading “Supplement”:

The three companions of Hiram Abiff are the three lower principles; Hiram Abiff is the I. These three must help him, but they must not become masters. They destroy the iron sea. The three lower principles are initially an obstacle for man in building up the higher, in developing the ego to freedom. Hiram Abiff plunges down into the interior of the earth by throwing himself into the sea of fire. He descends through the kamic fire into the physical. There he is endowed with the three higher principles: the Golden Triangle. But when he comes up again, he is attacked and killed by the three companions. This represents the struggle that the three lower principles wage against the higher ones in man. The I is the East through which the higher principles enter. (Like the sun, they rise in man.) The three companions come from the three other quarters of heaven.

Before he dies, Hiram Abiff writes the Master Key on the Golden Triangle and sinks it into a deep well. He thus points to the time when man will have purified his astral body to such an extent that the iron sea is fixed, that passion rests and his physical and astral body then forms the solid ground on which he can stand in his further development. At the time of Hiram Abiff, just after the emergence of the ego with self-consciousness, when the environment became objective, the Golden Triangle could not yet be erected over the Iron Sea. This could only happen after the complete purification of the astral body.

I. Report in the “Weimarische Zeitung” of April 19, 1903

Second lecture by the Secretary General of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, on: “The Main Theosophical Teachings”. Even more attentive listeners than at the first lecture gathered yesterday evening in the “Erholung” hall to listen to the excellent, convincing and fiery presentation. The following is a brief summary of the interesting topic:

The origin of the theosophical movement lies, as we all know and as the oldest traditions prove, in the earliest ages, as the theosophical activity of the Essenes and Pythagoreans amply confirms. In the so-called mystery schools (secret schools), which already existed in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th centuries of our era, the secrets of human existence were taught at that time. An example of the interest with which the study and development of the wisdom of God was pursued in earlier times is given by Redner, who recounts the event of how an Indian scholar, who gave a theosophical lecture from the point of view of the natural science of the time, was asked by a member of the audience what would remain when all the ethereal, physical components of the human being had dissolved. The speaker suggested that the public was not the place to answer this question, and therefore invited the questioner to join him in solitude, in order to introduce him to the secrets of his own soul life and to explain to him the existence of the divine being in his ego. The explanation of reincarnation and karma is based on the firm conviction that everything in the world is based on karma, on activity. As even Goethe once said so aptly: “Function is existence conceived in activity.” Both our highly developed and our still imperfect organs of animals have never been what they are now from the very beginning. Even today, there are living creatures that lack eyes altogether, for example, that have only the most primitive skin openings connected to the optic nerves, and that have only the very slightest insight into the outside world around them. And yet the time will come for these imperfect creatures, too, when their visual organs have developed to the same extent as in other, more perfect animals. The necessity and the need to gain further insights into the light will, through the continuous interaction and the incessant activity, also make the visual organs of these undeveloped animals the same as those of other animals, when the soul of the animals has lived through and perfected itself through countless generations. Further proof of perpetual activity and development is that there is, for example, a species of fish in America, the newt fish, in which, during the time of their existence, breathing organs in the form of lungs have , which later, due to a lack of water, has become an unavoidable necessity for them, as they originally only spent their lives in the water. The activity of the organs came to their aid, and today these fish can spend part of the waterless summer on land, while as soon as water is available, they live only in it. And just as the natural scientist did not observe and research this development of forces inherent in the body, so too our inherent spirit has come about through the never-ceasing soul activity in our own ego. And if there are still people today who are as spiritually immature as some primitive peoples, who even today devour their fellow human beings, it is precisely because their soul activity has been a slow one that has not developed the spirit to the extent that they would be aware of their actions. And the presence of the soul even in plants was also recognized and discussed by Goethe in conversation with Schiller, in which he confessed that even the most perfectly developed plant had emerged from the primal plant and that, when he looked at every flower and plant, the soul of the same seemed to him to be present, as it were. But the most significant, the most sublime, the immeasurable difference in the soul life of bodies is the individuality of the human being. Every human being, even the most imperfect and insignificant, has his biography, which another being, however perfect, lacks. And in this individuality we find the essence of reincarnation, of re-embodiment, to the explanation of which we may add: That which you think today you will be in later time; what we grasp intellectually today was first seen in an earlier life, to which we now look back. And since a cause also belongs to the spiritual effect, we see the earlier lives in us as the cause of the spiritual effect. The constant perfection of our soul wisdom, the study of the human soul, will give us insight into the astonished questions [of the Belgian Maeterlinck]: How are we to do justice to our tremendous needs? Within our ego lie the spiritual powers; in our causal body we find the cause of individuality, the eternal activity that produces cause and effect. With the principle: the soul was present, it is present and will remain present, we characterize the eternal existence of life. And in this sense, we must agree with the former remarks of the scholar Fichte, who explained to his Jena students: “Break over me, world; fall upon me, rocks; devour me, earth and sea; I stand fearless and undaunted, for I feel the divine immortal power in my ego, in my soul, which lifts me above all the terrors of physical mortality.

Undivided applause from the silently enthralled audience rewarded the speaker, who finally announced that in the last lecture on Monday, any of the attendees who had appeared could ask questions related to the topic, which the speakers intended to answer in all respects, so that part of the evening would might be held within the framework of a discussion.

II. Report in “Germany”, second page, dated April 19, 1903

On Friday evening, Dr. Steiner gave his second lecture on Theosophy in the recreation room, again to a large audience. This time, it was about the main theosophical teachings (reincarnation and karma). The speaker began his lecture with a story about the Indian sage Jaina Walkia, who was firmly convinced of the doctrine of reincarnation and already shared it with others. Man is an organic being with developed limbs and organs, but the latter did not suddenly appear as we see them today, but rather, through their own activity, they have reached this perfection over a long period of development. All this activity can be summarized in the word karma. Just as completely different beings have developed from imperfect animals over the centuries, adapting to their needs, so has the soul life of man been in constant activity and development. It is absolutely correct to assume that the human spirit always experiences re-embodiment and remains still after the organic limbs have died off until a being for it can be found again. Thus, every single human spirit has already lived an infinite number of times, constantly developing and perfecting itself. For example, the spirit of Goethe and Mozart was already present in the boys of youthful age, and it will also return, because it is unthinkable that after the death of the organic body these highly developed individualities should not continue to live; nor can it be assumed that, for example, Goethe's spirit emerged from nothing. Nor should one believe in a different inheritance from generation to generation, because often siblings are fundamentally different in their individuality and even twin brothers, who were under the same organic influence, would be endowed with the most divergent character traits. The spirit or individuality in man has emerged from the primal soul and in the words “from God to God” lies the content of all wisdom. The origin and purpose of all existence is the core that underlies all religious knowledge. Everything that exists has emerged from the primal power and carries the divine essence within itself; from this view arises the individual continuation of the soul, which today is called immortality. Everything that emerges from the primal power and returns to it must continue to exist until the cycle is complete. The aim of all development is, of course, perfection and completion during the journey back to the primal power. The highly developed animal also has a certain knowledge, as does the completely undeveloped human being, only the animals lack the individual essence, the feeling of personal “I”; this is highly peculiar to humans. One can always speak of an animal species as a whole, whereas the concept of a human being always applies only to one individual, since a second person has a different individual disposition. We can indeed form a perception through our transient organs, but knowledge arises from the source of the spirit. Matter does not produce the spirit, but the spirit emerges from the Primordial Spirit — God — in order to return to Him one day. Every human being contains an individual spirit, and when the organic body dies, it leaves behind the further developed spirit, just as a plant decays and leaves behind a viable seed for new development. The Theosophical movement seeks to awaken the consciousness of the divine essence in each individual, and this then allows for the conscious realization and rational comprehension of the individual path of development, the resulting inner spiritual view. From this arises the striving for the complete development of the spirit. Karma, however, means the active development of the individual soul life to perfection. From this arises the proof that the soul cannot perish, but goes through and completes its process of development long before us and long after us. At the end of his lively lecture, the speaker recalled a saying of the Jena philosopher Fichte, who exclaimed: “You mountains fall upon me, you waters engulf me, I am not afraid, for I know that my spirit lives on and is not lost!” Dr. Steiner also said that next Monday, after the lecture, he would be happy to provide any answers to questions addressed to him and to clarify any ambiguities.

The impulses of regeneration given to mankind in this series of lectures, Art as Seen in the Light of Mystery Wisdom,¹ will only be understood by those who are able to assimilate the nature of spiritual science fully in such a way that for them the concreteness of the spiritual world, its richness of form and being, has become a self-evident fact. Rudolf Steiner, fully equipped with the most modern scientific methods and with the utmost singleness of thought, has brought the reality of the spiritual world close to his contemporaries and has shown them how the ego of mankind is placed at the focal point of the development of consciousness and how mankind must grasp this ego with full knowledge. One path towards the grasping of the ego in the fullness of life's experience, but also in sun-filled contemplation, is the path of art. It is one of the healthiest and most revealing and most direct; it was the last to leave its source in the temple of mystery wisdom and has not been so quickly buried as has the path of religion by the passion of the church for power or the path of science by the rigidity of thought born out of the materialistic age. For these three paths once more to find each other, for art, science and religion once more to unite and intermingle—it was for this that Rudolf Steiner worked among us. He turned his fullest attention to each of these paths; in their living synthesis he saw the salvation of mankind. They worked together once in the ancient, holy mysteries, bringing into existence and filling with light and nourishment all the cultural epochs of the earth; in the same way they must again be brought together and reunited through the knowledge of their undivided spiritual origin.

Man must now awaken within himself a knowledge of this living and essential union. This he can do in complete freedom through careful investigation and practice, if he does not timidly close his being in the face of superior and as yet unknown powers, if he does not bow before the restraining influence of the church, nor before the authority of dogmatic science. The stages along the path have been revealed to man under the wise and entirely impersonal guidance of one who knows it and who, in conformity with the demands of our time, has not appealed to the human craving for submission and devotion but only to men's capacity for knowledge.

The first stage is study; the basis for understanding what is presented in this series of lectures is the study of spiritual science. The works of Rudolf Steiner can supply this basis for penetrating the mysteries which are the foundation of man's artistic creativity. Their impulses, acting from the super-sensible sphere, must now be led from the dullness of the subconscious into the wakefulness of ego-consciousness. Art is beginning to wither; art, too, has already choked the flow from its living spiritual source. Observation through the senses, imitation of fortuitous situations on the physical plane, over-emphasis of the personality: along these paths art has moved right away from its spiritual origin. To tie the torn threads together again, to recover the original spirit, once more to tread the lost road in freedom and the joy of knowledge with the newly-acquired forces of the awakened personality: this is the task of mankind today. It is hoped that the deep wisdom, the beauty and the strength speaking out of the words of Rudolf Steiner published in this book will be a help to this end!

A renewal of art will never be brought about by dallying with modern decadence or by compromise, but only by a return to the spiritual founts of life. How great is the responsibility of anyone who has drunk at these springs. Surely he cannot see mankind thirsting without pointing out the remedy which could restore health?

The remedy lies in unlocking the wisdom of the mysteries and presenting it to humanity in a form adapted to contemporary demands. The new initiation science must call upon man's power of thought, his sense of art and style, and also the eternal essence of his being, by summoning him to conscious alertness in all these domains.

Through words, pictures and deeds Rudolf Steiner summoned human beings to wakefulness in each of these three spheres. He has created works that give art a new orientation. He has delivered it from rigidity and brought movement into it; he has restored life to what had been strangled. Perhaps his manifold obligations in other domains would never have given him the chance to revive all the realms of art as he did, if the erection of the Goetheanum² had not demanded it of him and if the World War, by curtailing some of his other activities, had not given him the time.

In the Goetheanum, Rudolf Steiner was able to realise his living thoughts about architecture. He could entrust them to wood, the most alive of all building materials. A work of inexpressible beauty came into being, deeply affecting to the beholder by reason of the stirring force which went forth from its forms in their succession of organic developments and from the counterbalancing relations of direction—the proportions of upward movement and downward movement. Number, dimension and weight were triumphant in a triad of sweep, elevation and direction. The building stood as man, and man as building. The genesis of worlds, the genesis and deeds of mankind, the deeds of the gods were all inscribed in it; they were revealed in the waves of colour in the dome, in the organic growth of motifs in columns and architraves, in the luminous creation of the windows. Sculpture and painting passed beyond their own sphere, conquered line and were transformed into movement. Colour created form from within by virtue of its own creative soul quality. In the newly-blossoming art of eurythmy, tone and speech became movement and were made visible through the instrument of the human body. The creative forces of speech thus made visible were reflected back to the other forms of art, reviving them and kindling the fire of spiritual creativity. The inner tone of creativity was able to grasp the physical tone that moulds the air, filling it with spiritual substance and elevating it to higher spheres. Rudolf Steiner called his building the House of Speech. All forms of art, together with science and mystery wisdom, had found a home there. The synthesis of art, science and religion was once more accomplished.

Such a building cannot rise again, unless perchance it shall be granted to the individuals who executed the artistic work to transform what they have learned and experienced into another structure like it.

Otherwise a work that even by this time might have been an immense help for the spiritual development of mankind will sink back as a memory into the past, yet bearing within it a spiritual germ for a new future. The flames on the eve of the New Year 1923 have for the present destroyed a mighty impulse for progress.

The retarding powers have willed it so. They incited the mob against Rudolf Steiner and are still at work trying to blacken his memory. But the resounding clamour is impotent to destroy his spiritual work. For it is rooted too firmly in the soil of spiritual reality and in the needs of contemporary souls.

For the new building,³ the most rigid material has been employed: concrete. Like a fortress it stands, but not withdrawn in defiance. An abode for spiritual striving, it radiates over the landscape, welcoming all who desire to strive for that noblest of treasures, the knowledge of the world and of man.

The new Goetheanum does not claim to compete in form or effect in any way with its predecessor which was destroyed by fire. Nevertheless, its external form strives impressively upwards with a bold and harmonious beauty, a final gift left to us by the deceased master of the impulses of beauty. When he had created this form he laid down hammer, trowel and plumb-line and worked at the word in stillness for a little while before leaving us. The work upon the building is now being carried on by his pupils according to their gifts.

It was the master's last bequest. But they have been restricted by the hard constraint of inadequate funds; at the stubborn behest of financial insufficiency they have had to sacrifice their own intentions and often even specific directions given by the master. Involuntarily the thought arises: How different it might have been had there been sufficient funds to carry out also inside the building what would be required by the force of mystery impulses rooted in esoteric wisdom. Involuntarily again and again the thought forces it way into our minds: When and where, in what country and at what time will it be possible to erect a building to concentrate within itself and to radiate out again these eternal impulses that united every detail of the burnt Goetheanum into one world-embracing whole, bringing to expression in their forces man and the universe, microcosm and macrocosm, thus working with spiritual creativity and soul-fashioning force?

• 1. Art as Seen in. the Light of Mystery Wisdom: In the set of publications, the following eight lectures were published in six numbers: I. ‘Impulses of Transformation for the Artistic Evolution of Mankind’, 29th and 30th December 1914 (in the present volume); II. ‘The Supersensible Origin of the Artistic’, Dornach, 12th September 1920 (in Kunst und Kunsterkenntnis, Bibl. No. 271, GA 1961); III. ‘Human Utterance through Tone and Word’, Dornach, 2nd December 1922 (in Das Wesen des Musikalischen und das Tonerlebnis im Menschen, Bibl. No. 283, GA 1975); IV. ‘Truth, Beauty, and Goodness’, Dornach, 19th January 1923 (in Lebendiges Naturerkennen, Bibl. No. 220, GA 1966); V. ‘The Realisation of Tone in the Human Being’, Stuttgart 7th March 1923 and 8th March 1923 (in Bibl. No. 283, GA 1975); VI. ‘The World of the Hierarchies and the World of Tone’, Dornach, 16th March 1923 (in Bibl. No. 222, GA 1976). Numbers VII, VIII and IX followed later with Rudolf Steiner's GA291/English/RSPC1935, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1983.
• 2. The first Goetheanum, destroyed by fire on New Year's night, 1922–3.
• 3. The second Goetheanum, now the centre of the General Anthroposophical Society.

At the close of yesterday's exposition we indicated the intention to consider next the cardinal issue within the Christ impulse: the Death on the Cross and its significance. But before turning to a delineation of the death of Christ, and thus to the climax of this study cycle, we must discuss today the true meaning and significance of much that we find in the John Gospel itself, as well as its relation to what the other Gospels offer. In the last few days we have been endeavoring to comprehend the Christ impulse and to establish it as an actual event in human evolution by means of quite a different source: by clairvoyant reading of the akashic record; and in a sense we referred only to those passages in the Gospels which appear to confirm what clairvoyant research justifies us in stating as truths.

Today, in order to follow up our studies, we shall consider the John Gospel itself and characterize this important document of mankind from a certain aspect. We said yesterday that the theological research of our time, in as far as it is affected by materialism, can find no points of contact with this John Gospel, is unable to see its historical value; but regarded with the vision of spiritual science this Gospel proves to be one of the most marvelous documents possessed by the human race. It is not too much to say that not only as a religious document but—to use a profane expression—among all purely literary works in existence it is one of the greatest. Let us now approach it from this literary angle.

From the very first chapters—if rightly understood and if one knows what all lies concealed in the words—this Gospel of St. John shows a rounded beauty of style equal to any in the world, although a superficial study does not reveal this fact. What superficial observation discloses first is that in enumerating the miracles the writer of the John Gospel, whose back-ground we now know, mentions precisely seven up to the Lazarus event proper. (The significance of the number seven will be treated in the following lectures.) What were these seven signs?

1. The sign in connection with the Marriage in Cana in Galilee.

2. The sign given in the healing of the nobleman's son.

3. The sign given in the healing of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years by the Pool of Bethesda.

4. The sign given in the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

5. The sign given in the vision of Christ walking on the sea.

6. The sign given in the healing of the man born blind. And finally:

7. The greatest of the signs, the initiation of Lazarus, the transformation of Lazarus into the writer of the John Gospel.

These are the seven signs. But now we must ask ourselves, What about these signs, this question of miracles? If you listened attentively to a number of things that were told you in the foregoing lectures you will remember having heard that the state of human consciousness has kept altering throughout the entire course of evolution. We cast our gaze back to remote times and found that men did not issue from a merely animalistic stage of development, but from a form in which they possessed the power of clairvoyance as a congenital endowment. People of that time were clairvoyant, even though their consciousness still lacked the ability to say “I am”. The capacity for self-consciousness was something they had to acquire gradually, and for this they had to forfeit their old clairvoyance. In the future the time will come again when all men are clairvoyant, but without loss of self-consciousness, of the “I am”. Those are the three stages which humanity has in part passed through, in part still has ahead of it.

In Atlantis men still lived in a sort of dream consciousness, but this was clairvoyant. Then they gradually achieved self-consciousness, outer objective consciousness, in exchange for which, however, they gave up the old gift of dim clairvoyance. And finally, what man will have in the future is clairvoyant consciousness coupled with self-consciousness. Thus man traverses the path from an ancient dim clairvoyance through an opaque objective consciousness, finally ascending to conscious clairvoyance.

But in addition to consciousness, everything else about man has changed as well. The belief that conditions must always have been as they are today is due to nothing but human shortsightedness. Everything has evolved. Nothing has always been as it is today, not even men's relation to each other. You have already gathered from intimations in the last lectures that in older epochs—up to the time when the Christ impulse entered human evolution—the influence of soul upon soul was much stronger. Such was human disposition at that time. A man did not merely hear what was told him in externally audible words: in a certain way he could feel and know something that the other felt and thought vividly, livingly. Love meant something quite different from what it does today, albeit in those times it was largely a matter of blood ties. Nowadays it has taken on more of a psychic character, but it has lost its strength. Nor will it regain this until the Christ impulse shall have entered all human hearts. In olden times active love possessed at the same time a healing property, a powerful balm, for the soul of its recipient.

Coincident with the development of the intellect and of cleverness, qualities that came into being only gradually, these ancient direct influences of soul upon soul dwindled away. The gift of acting upon the other's soul, of causing one's own soul force to stream into it, was unquestionably peculiar to the older peoples; and you must therefore imagine the force that one soul could receive from another as much greater, the influence one soul could exert upon another as much stronger, than is the case today. The external historical documents may report nothing of all this, the tablets and monuments may not mention it; but clairvoyant study of the akashic record nevertheless discloses the fact that in olden times the healing of the sick, for example, was extensively accomplished through a psychic influence passing from the one to the other. And the soul possessed many other powers as well. Though today it sounds like a fairy tale, it is a fact that in those times a man's will, if he so desired and had specially trained himself for the purpose, had the power to act soothingly upon the growth of a plant, to accelerate or retard it. Today but scanty remnants of all this are left.
Human life, then, was very different at that time. No one would have been surprised—given the right mutual relationship—at the passing over of a psychic influence from one person to the other.

It must be kept in mind, however, that two or more are needed if the exercise of a psychic influence of that sort is to take effect. We could imagine the possibility of a man imbued with the power of Christ entering our midst nowadays; but those with the requisite faith in him would be very few in number, so that he would not be able to achieve all that can be accomplished by the influence of one soul upon another. For not only must the influence be exerted: someone must be present who is sufficiently developed to be affected by it. Remembering that formerly those who could receive such influences were more numerous, we should not be surprised to learn that for the healing of the sick there indeed existed the means by which psychic influences could take effect; but also, that influences which today can be transmitted only by mechanical means were at that time applied psychically.

We should keep in mind that the Christ event entered human evolution at a very special point in time. Only the very last remnants, so to say, of those soul currents that flowed from man to man were left as a heritage of the old Atlantean age. Humanity was about to descend ever deeper into matter, and the possibility for such psychic currents to be effective constantly diminished. That was the moment at which the Christ impulse had to enter, the impulse which in its nature could accomplish so very much for those who were still sufficiently receptive.

Those who are really familiar with evolution as it applied to mankind will therefore find it quite natural that the Christ Being, having once entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth in about the thirtieth year of His life, could unfold very special powers in this sheath, for the latter had been developing since time immemorial. We mentioned yesterday that this individuality of Jesus of Nazareth had in one former life been incarnated in ancient Persia, and then, passing through one incarnation after another, had continued to rise in its spiritual development. That is why the Christ could dwell in such a body, and why this body could be sacrificed to Him. This the Evangelists knew well, hence they presented the entire narrative in such a way as to be wholly comprehensible for spiritual research. Only, we must take everything in the Gospels literally—that is, we must first learn to read them. As has been said, the deeper meanings of the miracles we shall learn in due time; but here we can ask, for example, why, precisely in the first of the miracles, it is specially emphasized in dealing with the Marriage in Cana of Galilee that this took place in Cana “of Galilee”. Seek as you will, you can find in old Palestine within the radius then known no second Cana; and in such a case it would seem superfluous to specify the locality. Why, then, does the Evangelist tell us that this miracle occurred in Cana "of Galilee"? Because the important point to be stressed was that something occurred which had to take place in Galilee. It means that nowhere else but in Galilee could Christ have found just those people whose presence was indispensable. As I said, an influence implies not only the one who exerts it, but the others as well—those who are appropriately fitted to receive it. Christ's first appearance would not have been possible within the Jewish community proper, but it was possible in Galilee with its mixture of many different tribes and groups. Just because members of so many peoples from various parts of the world were assembled in one spot, there was far less blood relationship, and above all, far less faith in it, than in Judea, in the narrow circle of the Hebrew people. Galilee was a heterogenous racial mixture.

But what was it to which Christ, in view of His impulse, felt Himself particularly called? We have said that one of His most significant utterances was,

Before Abraham was, was the I am

;

and the other,

I and the Father are one

.

By this He meant: among those who cling to the old forms of life the ego is entrenched in a system of blood relationships. The words I and Father Abraham are one aroused a very special feeling in the true confessor of the Old Testament, a feeling nowadays very difficult to share. What a man calls his own self, circumscribed by birth and death, he sees as transitory. But one who had true faith in the Old Testament, who was influenced by the widespread teachings of that time, asserted—not allegorically, but as a fact: As regards myself I am isolated; but I am a member of a great organism, of a great living whole reaching back to Father Abraham. Just as my finger can remain a living member only as long as it is part of my body, so my memory is contingent upon my feeling myself a member of the great folk organism that goes back to Father Abraham. I am part of the great complex, exactly as my finger is part of my body. Cut off my finger and it ceases to be a finger: it is safe only as long as it is part of my hand, my hand part of my arm, and my arm part of my body; it ceases to have meaning if severed from my hand. And in like manner, I myself have meaning only when I feel myself a member of all the generations through which the blood flows down from Father Abraham. Then I feel sheltered. My individual ego is transient and fleeting, but not so this whole great folk organism way back to Father Abraham. When I sense and feel myself wholly embraced by it I conquer my temporally transient ego: I am sheltered in one great ego, the ego of my people that has come down to me from Father Abraham through the blood of the generations.

That represents the conviction of the Old Testament adherents: all the great events narrated in the Old Testament, everything that today seems miraculous, occurred through the power of the inner experience contained in the words, I and Father Abraham are one. But the time came when men were destined to relinquish this state of consciousness for another, hence it gradually disappeared. That is why Christ could not address those who, on the one hand, had lost the magic power of influencing by means of blood ties, and on the other, still believed only in the common bond with Father Abraham. Clearly, among these Christ could not find the faith necessary for enabling His soul to flow actively into other souls; and for this purpose He had to turn to those who, owing to their mixed blood, no longer clung to this old belief: to the Galileans. That is where His mission had to commence. Even though the old state of consciousness was generally on the wane, still He found in Galilee a medley of peoples that stood at the beginning of the era in which blood became mixed. From all quarters tribes assembled here that had previously been governed solely by the forces of the old blood ties. They were on the point of finding the transition. They vividly retained the feeling that their fathers were still endowed with the old consciousness states, that they possessed the magic powers which act from soul to soul. Among these people Christ could inaugurate His new mission, which consisted in endowing man with an ego consciousness no longer bound to blood relationship; an ego consciousness which could say, It is within myself that I shall find the connection with the spiritual Father Who, instead of letting His blood flow down through the generations, radiates His spiritual force into each individual soul. The ego which is within me, and which is in direct communion with the spiritual Father, was before Abraham was. It is for me, then, to infuse into this ego a force that will be strengthened through my being aware of my connection with the spiritual Father force of the world. I and the Father are one. No longer I and Father Abraham—that is, a physical ancestor.

Such were the people to whom Christ turned, people who had arrived at the point of understanding this, people who, having broken away from the blood ties by intermarriage, needed to find the strong force—not in consanguinity, but in the individual soul: the force that can lead men gradually to express the spiritual in the physical.—Do not ask, Why do we not see things happening today as they happened then? Aside from the fact that he who has the will to see them can see them, we must remember that men have emerged from that state of consciousness and descended into the world of matter; that the period in question represented the boundary line; and that Christ used the last representatives of the previous epoch of human evolution in whom to demonstrate the power of spirit over matter. The signs that were done while the old state of consciousness was still present, but disappearing, were intended as an example and a symbol—a symbol of faith.

Now let us turn to this Marriage in Cana of Galilee itself. If I were to develop in detail all the implications indicated in the John Gospel, in the entire Gospel content, fourteen lectures would certainly not suffice: several years would be needed. But such a literal development of the subject would only serve to confirm what I can suggest in brief elucidations.

The first thing we are told in connection with this first sign is:

There was a marriage in Cana of Galilee

.

Here we must stop to realize that the John Gospel contains not one word that has not a definite meaning. Well, then: why a marriage? Because a marriage brings about on a single occasion what the Christ mission effects with such far-reaching results: it brings people together. And then, a marriage “in Galilee”? It was in Galilee that the ancient blood ties were severed, that mutually alien bloods came to mingle. Now, Christ's task was intimately connected with this mixing of blood, so we are here dealing with intermarriages having the object of creating progeny among people who are no longer related by blood.

What I am now about to say will seem very strange to you. What would people have felt in such a case in very old times when there still prevailed the close or endogamous marriage, as one is inclined to call it in the spiritual-scientific sense? We must realize that the transformation of this close marriage into a distant or exogamous marriage is very much a part of human evolution, and that what I have already said explains what an endogamous marriage means. Among all people of ancient times it was contrary to law to marry outside of the tribe, away from consanguinity. People related by blood, members of the same tribe, intermarried; and this custom of marrying within the tribe, within blood relationship, resulted in the marvel of engendering intense magical force. This can be verified at any time by means of spiritual-scientific research. The descendants of a blood-related tribe possessed, as a consequence of such intermarriage of relatives, magical powers that permitted one soul to act upon another.

Let us imagine that in ancient times we had been asked to attend a wedding, and that the customary drink—in this case, wine—had given out. What would have happened? Provided the right relations existed among the blood-related members of this wedding party, it would have been possible, through the magical power of love arising out of consanguinity, for the water—or whatever was offered later in place of wine—to be sensed as wine as a result of the psychic influence of the people present. Wine is what they would have been drinking if the right magical influence had been exerted by the one person on the rest. Do not tell me this wine would still have been but water! A sensible person would reply to that: For the human being, things are of the nature in which they communicate themselves to his organism: they are what they become for him, not what they look like. I believe that even today many a wine lover would like water if, by means of some influence or other, it appeared to be changed into wine; that is, if it tasted like wine and produced the same effect in his organism. Nothing else is necessary than that a man should take water for wine.—What, then, was required in olden times to render possible such a sign as that of the water in the vessels becoming wine when it was drunk? The magical power deriving from blood relationship, that is what was required. And furthermore, those assembled at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee possessed the psychic capacity for sensing that sort of thing. Only, a transition had to be brought about.

The story continues in the John Gospel:

And the mother of Jesus was there: and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.

And since they lacked wine, the mother of Jesus drew attention to this, and said to Him:

They have no wine.

I said that a transition must be effected if such an event is to take place: the psychic force had to be assisted by something. By what, then? Here we come to the utterance which, as it is usually translated, is really a blasphemy; for I believe it will strike any sensitive person as offensive when, to the statement “they have no wine”, Jesus replies: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” From any angle it is impossible to accept that in a document of this sort. Imagine the ideal of love, as the Gospels describe the relations between Jesus of Nazareth and His mother, and then try to imagine Him using the expression, "Woman, what have I to do with thee"! It is not necessary to say more: the rest must be felt. But the point is, these words are not in the text. Examine this passage in the John Gospel and then look up the Greek text. This contains nothing more than the words employed by Jesus of Nazareth in indicating a certain event:

Woman, this passeth over from me unto thee.

What He referred to was that subtle, intimate force which passed from soul to soul, from Him to His mother; and that is what He needed at this moment. Greater signs He was as yet unable to perform: for this the time must gradually ripen. Therefore He says: My time—the time when I shall work through my own force—is not yet come.—For the present, that magnetic psychic union between the soul of Jesus of Nazareth and His mother was still indispensable.

“Woman, this now passeth over from me unto thee.” Otherwise—well, after an utterance like “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” why would she turn to the servants and say, “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it”? She had to possess the old forces of which nowadays people can have no conception; and she knew that He referred to the blood tie between them, to the bond that should then pass over into the others. Then she knew that something like an invisible spiritual force held sway, capable of effectuating something.—And here let me beg you to read the Gospel—really to read it. I ask how anyone can come to terms with the Gospel who believes that something happened at that wedding—I really don't know what—that six ordinary jars stood there “for the purifying of the Jews”, as we are told; and that according to ordinary observation—without reference to anything such as we have just been considering—the water turned into wine. How could such a thing have come about externally?

What is the meaning of this miracle? And what is the belief in it held by him who stands before you—in fact, the only faith anybody can have in a miracle? Can it be that here one substance was transformed into another for the benefit of those present? No ordinary interpretation will get us far.—We must assume that the jars which stood there contained no water, for nothing is said about their being emptied. But it says they were filled, so if they had been emptied and then refilled—assuming the water had really been changed to wine as by a sleight of hand trick—one would really have to believe that the water which had previously been in the jars had been turned into wine. You see, this does not help: nothing squares.

We must understand that the jars must obviously have been empty, because a special significance attached to the filling of them. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” the mother had told the servants. What sort of water did Christ need? He needed water fresh from the sources of nature; and that is why it was necessary to specify that the water had just been drawn. The only water suitable for Christ's purpose was such as had not yet lost the inner forces that are inherent in any element so long as it is united with nature. As has been said, the John Gospel contains not one word that is not fraught with deep meaning. Freshly drawn water had to be used because Christ is the Being Who had but recently approached the earth and become associated with the forces that work in the earth itself. Now, when the living forces of the water work, in turn, with “that which flows from me unto thee”, it becomes possible for the event described in the Gospel to take place. The governor of the feast is called, and he is under the impression that something unusual has occurred. He does not know what this was—it is specifically stated that he had not seen what happened—only the servants had seen it; but under the influence of what has taken place he now takes the water for wine. That is stated clearly and distinctly, so we know that through psychic force even an outer element—that is, the physical component of the human body—was affected.

And what did the mother of Jesus of Nazareth herself have to possess in order that at this moment her faith might be sufficiently great to produce such an effect? She needed just what she did indeed possess: the realization that He Who was called her son had become the Spirit of the Earth. Then her strong force combined with His, with that which acted from Him upon her, developed so mighty an influence as to produce the effect described.

Thus we have shown, through the whole constellation of conditions surrounding this first sign, how the unison of souls which results from blood ties produces an effect even in the physical world. It was the first sign, and the Christ force is shown at its minimum: it still needed the intensification resulting from contact with the mother's psychic forces, as well as the additional strength residing in certain forces of nature that remained intact in the freshly drawn water. The active force of the Christ Being is here shown at its least; but what is stressed as especially important is its influence upon the other soul and its calling forth from it an activity which the latter is fitted to perform. The essential point is that the Christ force had the power to render the other soul capable of exerting influences: it engendered in the wedding guests as well the ability to taste the water as wine.—But every real force increases through its own exercise, and the second time it is called upon it is already greater. Just as any ordinary force increases with exercise, so is especially a spiritual force strengthened when it has once been successfully applied.

The second of the signs, as you know from the John Gospel, is the healing of the nobleman's son. By what means was he healed? Here again the right answer will be found only by reading the Gospel in the right way and by concentrating on the crucial words of the chapter in question. In the fiftieth verse of the fourth chapter, after the nobleman had told Jesus of Nazareth his story of distress, we read:

Jesus saith unto him, Go thy way, thy son liveth.
And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken
unto him, and he went his way.

Again we have two souls in accord, the soul of the Christ and that of the boy's father. And when Christ said, Go thy way, thy son liveth, what effect did this have? It enkindled in the other soul the force to believe all that Christ's words implied. These two forces worked together. Christ's utterance had the power so to kindle the other soul that the nobleman believed. Had he not believed, his son would not have recovered. That is the way one force acts upon another: two are needed. And already here we find a greater measure of the Christ force. At the Marriage in Cana it still required the support of the mother's force in order to function at all. Now it has progressed to the point of being able to impart the kindling word to the nobleman's soul. We behold an intensification of the Christ force.

Passing to the third sign, the healing at the Pool of Bethesda of the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, we must again seek the most important words that throw light on the whole subject. They are these:

Jesus saith unto him, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk.

Speaking of his being forced to remain prone, the sick man had previously said that he could not move:

Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool: but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.

But Christ spoke to him—and it is important that it was on the Sabbath, a day of general rejoicing and great brotherly love—clothing His injunction in the words, Rise, take up thy bed, and walk. This utterance we must take in conjunction with the other equally important one in which He tells him:

Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.

What does that mean? It means that there was a connection between the man's sickness that had persisted for thirty-eight years, and his sin. We need not enquire at the moment whether the sin had been committed in this life or in a former one. The point is that Christ infused into the other's soul the force to accomplish something that reached right down into his psycho-moral nature. Here again we see an intensification of the Christ force. Previously, all that was involved was something intended to produce only a physical effect; but here it is a question of a sickness of which Christ Himself said that it had to do with the man's sin. At this moment Christ was able to intervene in the sick man's very soul. The previous sign still required the presence of the boy's father, but here the Christ force acts directly on the sick man's soul.

A special magic is lent this event by reason of its having been enacted on the Sabbath. Present-day man no longer has any feeling for such things, but the fact that this happened on the Sabbath meant something to a believer in the Old Testament: it was something out of the ordinary; hence the reason why the Jews were so indignant at the sick man was that he carried his bed on the Sabbath. That is an extraordinarily significant detail—people should learn to think when they read the Gospels. They should not consider it a matter of course that the sick man could be cured, that one now walked who for thirty-eight years had not been able to walk. What they should do is ponder a passage such as the following:

The Jews therefore said unto him that was cured, it is the sabbath day: it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed.

What struck them was not that the man had been cured, but that he carried his bed on the Sabbath.

So it was an integral part of the healing of this sick man that the whole scene should play on the hallowed day. Christ Himself harbored the thought, If the Sabbath is indeed to be dedicated to God, the souls of men must enjoy special strength on this day by virtue of the divine force.—And it was by means of this force that He worked upon the man before Him; that is, it was transmitted to the sick man's own soul. Hitherto the latter had not found in his soul the force that would overcome the consequences of his sin, but now he has it as an effect of the Christ force. Another intensification.—As I have said, the essential nature of the miracles will be dealt with later, and for the moment we will pass on.

The fourth sign is the Feeding of the Five Thousand. Again seeking the most significant passage, we must bear in mind that an event of this sort should not be viewed in the light of present-day consciousness. Had those who wrote about Christ at the time the John Gospel was written believed what our materialistic age believes today, their narratives would have been very different, for quite other things would have struck them as important. In this case they were not particularly surprised even at the phenomenon of five thousand being fed from so small a supply; but what is most important and specially emphasized is the following passage:

And Jesus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.

Just what is it that Christ Jesus does here? In order to bring about what was to take place He makes use of the souls of His disciples, of those who had been with Him and had by degrees matured to the level of His stature. They are a part of the procedure. They surround Him; and in their souls He can now evoke the power of charity: His force flows forth into that of the disciples. Of the manner in which this event could take place we will speak later, but here we must again observe an increase in the Christ force. At the previous sign He infused His force into the man who had lain sick for thirty-eight years, whereas here it acts upon the force of His disciples' souls. What is active here is the intensification of forces that proceeds from the soul of the master to the souls of the disciples. The force has expanded from the one soul to the souls of others: it has grown.

Already at this point, then, there dwells in the disciples' souls the same principle that dwells in the soul of Christ. Anyone inclined to ask what happens as a result of such an influence should observe the facts, should consider what actually occurred when Christ's powerful force acted not alone but kindled the force in other souls, so that it then worked on. There are none today with such living faith: they may believe theoretically, but not with sufficient strength. But not until they do so will they be able to observe what occurred there. Spiritual research knows very well what occurred.

So we observe a step-by-step increase of the Christ force.—The fifth sign, told in the same chapter, begins:

And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea, and entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid.

Modern publishers of the Gospels assign to this chapter the highly superfluous title, “Jesus walks on the sea”—as though that were stated anywhere in this chapter! Where does it say, “Jesus walks on the sea”? It says, “The disciples saw Jesus walking on the sea.” That is the point. The Gospels must be taken literally. It is simply a case of the Christ force having again increased in strength. So powerful had it become as a natural result of its exercise in the previous deeds that not only could it now act from one soul upon another—not only could the soul of Christ communicate itself, in its force, to other souls—but the Christ could live in His own form before the soul of another who was ripe for it.

The event, then, occurred as follows: Someone who is absent possesses so great a force that it acts upon men at a distance, far away. But the influence of the Christ force is now so powerful that it does more than set free a force in the disciples, as had been the case with those who had sat with Him on the mountain: there the force had merely passed over into the disciples in order that the miracle might be performed. Now, although their physical sight could not reach the Christ, they had the power to see Him, to behold His very form. Christ could become visible at a distance to those with whose souls His own had united. His own form is now sufficiently advanced to be seen spiritually. At the moment when the possibility of physical vision disappeared, there arose in the disciples all the more intensely the ability to see spiritually—and they saw the Christ. But the nature of this seeing at a distance is such that the image of the object in question appears in the immediate vicinity.—Again an increase of the Christ power.

The next sign is the healing of the man born blind; and this narrative, as it appears in the John Gospel, is again particularly distorted. Doubtless you have often read the story:

And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did this sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

And then He healed him.

We need only ask, could any Christian attitude interpret the matter as follows? Here is a man born blind; his blindness is not a result of his parents' sin, nor of his own; but he was rendered blind by God in order that Christ might come and perform a miracle for the glory of God. In other words, in order that a miraculous act might be ascribed to God, God had first to make the man blind.

The original passage was simply not read correctly. It does not say at all that “the works of God should be made manifest in him”. If we would understand this miracle we must examine the old usage of the word “God”. You can do this most readily by turning to another chapter in which Christ is positively accused of asserting of himself that He and God were one. How does He reply?

Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are Gods?

What Christ meant by this answer was that in the innermost soul of man there is the potential nucleus of a God: something divine. How often have we not pointed out that the fourth principle of the human being is the potential human capacity for the divine! “Ye are Gods.” That is, something divine dwells in you. It is not the human being but something different, not the person of a man as he lives on earth between birth and death; and it is different also from what man inherits from his parents. Whence derives this element of divinity, this human individuality? It passes through repeated earth lives from incarnation to incarnation: it comes over from an earlier earth life, from a previous incarnation. Hence we read, not the man's parents have sinned, nor has his own personality—the personality one ordinarily addresses as “I”; but in a previous incarnation he created the cause of his blindness in this life. He became blind because out of a former life the works of the God within him revealed themselves in his blindness. Christ Jesus here points clearly and distinctly to karma, the law of cause and effect.

What principle in man had to be worked upon if this kind of sickness was to be healed? Not upon what lives as a transitory ego between birth and death: the forces must penetrate deeper, must enter the ego that continues from one life to another. Again the Christ force has increased. Hitherto we have seen it influencing only what is directly before it; now it acts upon the principle that survives human life between birth and death, that continues from life to life. Christ feels Himself the representative of the I Am. As He pours His force into the I Am—as thus the exalted God of Christ communicates Himself to the God in man—the blind man receives the force enabling him to heal himself from within. Now Christ has penetrated to the innermost being of the soul. His force has acted upon the eternal individuality of the sick man and strengthened it by causing His own force to appear in this individuality, thereby influencing even the consequences of former incarnations.

What intensification still remains for the Christ force to achieve? None but the ability to approach another and awaken in him the capacity for enkindling the Christ impulse in himself, so that his whole being is saturated with it and he becomes another, a Christ-permeated man. And that is what occurred in the Raising of Lazarus, where we find still another increase in the Christ force. It has progressed step by step throughout.

Where else in the world could you find a lyrical document of such glorious composition? No other author has mastered composition on such a plane. Who would not bow down in reverence when reading the marvellous step-wise upbuilding in the narrative of these events! Even contemplating the John Gospel only as an artistic composition we cannot but feel deep reverence. It all grows step by step and rises steadily.

One point remains to be elucidated. We have pointed out a number of isolated features tending to show the intensification in the sequence of signs, of miracles; but the narrative embraces a great deal in between, and we must examine the organization of the whole. Tomorrow it will be our task to show that, in addition to the admirable intensification in the miracles, there is definite purpose in the way all the connecting links are embodied: we realize that these could not possibly have been filled in better than was done by the writer of the John Gospel. Today we have considered its artistic composition and found it unthinkable that a work of art could be more perfectly or beautifully composed than is the John Gospel up to the description of the Raising of Lazarus; but only one who can read aright and knows what is essential senses its great and mighty meaning. It is the mission of anthroposophy to bring this meaning before our souls. But this John Gospel contains more. Our expositions of it will be followed by others imbued with a wisdom loftier than ours; but this wisdom will in turn serve to find fresh truths, just as during the past seven years our wisdom has served to find what cannot be found without anthroposophy.

Yesterday I had to point out how a kind of reversal of the forces which led to a densification of the body is taking place in the human organisation. As an example of this I drew attention to a kind of etherisation of the coarser physical substance of the blood which emanates all the time from our system of heart-and-blood circulation, with the result that the finest elements of the blood are passing over all the time into the same substance as that of which the human ether body consists. And we have seen that these etheric elements stream upwards from the heart in quite distinct currents and permeate the brain; we have seen further that it is in fact because this newly-formed element of our etheric body streams through the brain that we are able to develop knowledge which goes beyond the completely egotistic knowledge of what takes place within our own organisation. I tried to make it clear that unless these etheric streams were to rise up from the heart to the brain, only ideas, concepts, feelings connected with our own bodily organisation could find expression through the instrument of the brain.

The whole future evolution of mankind is involved in this process of which I have just told you. Let me remind you once more that Earth evolution was preceded by the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and that these preceding evolutions had resulted in the formation of an etheric man in the period of Earth-development prior to Lemuria. Before man entered upon his Lemurian development he was, even as regards his physical forces, a purely etheric form. A physically solid man such as we have today, with his thick physical blood, his system of nerves and bones and so on, did not exist before Lemuria. All the forces which we also have, in the physical body today, were at that time still in etheric form. This etheric human form was shadowy and phantom-like in comparison with the later man, it barely hinted at what was to crystallise out later as the denser man; and it has taken the Lemurian, the Atlantean and the post-Atlantean epochs to complete the densification.

Now in order to understand fully what is meant by ‘Wonders of the World, Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit’ we must look somewhat closely into this formation of man, we must see just how man gradually solidified out of that original shadow-form. Today let us try to picture to ourselves what the human being was like in this pre-Lemurian era. At that time man had only a kind of shadowy form, merely hinting at what came later. Into this Phantom¹ there entered the most diverse currents; the Beings of the higher hierarchies were working within it. At that time man did not walk upon the earth with his feet, he hovered as a Phantom in the periphery; it was only later that he so to say stepped down upon the earth.

The Earth itself was as yet in a more rarefied condition. All that the higher hierarchies wrought upon man poured into him in all kinds of currents, but while man lived upon the Earth in this way in phantom-form, the Earth too continued to develop, since it was by no means the solid lump of matter described by the geologists or the mineralogists or the physicists. To describe the Earth as the physicists and the mineralogists do is as if in describing man one were to confine oneself to the skeleton. What physical science describes is only a part of the Earth, it is its skeleton. There are yet other forces, quite other substantial things connected with the Earth, and these constitute it as an organism in which we are embedded.

Thus the Earth too has pursued its evolution, and during the course of the Lemurian, Atlantean and post-Atlantean evolutions other forces have streamed continuously towards man out of the Earth itself. We will now examine these forces more closely. First we must pay attention to certain forces which through the spiritual Beings of the higher hierarchies belong to the sub-earthly current to which I referred yesterday. These forces actually stream into man from below, they are directed upon man (if we are to express it spatially) from the Earth upwards. During the course of Earth evolution the forces of the higher hierarchies penetrated into man from below; these forces which, particularly during the Lemurian epoch but continuing also afterwards, streamed into man and co-operated in his formation—these forces are recognised by ordinary science as well as by Spiritual Science as in their nature working through the Earth. Everywhere on the Earth's surface, wherever one goes, these forces are present. They had another task in Earth evolution as well, but let us begin by trying to throw light on them in relation to beings of another kingdom, in the formation of which they were conspicuously active.

The zoologists and the naturalists will one day be very astonished to find how complicated has really been the formation out of the spiritual world of all that they represent by their abstract and tidy genealogical trees, from a certain aspect quite correctly. The relationships which they quite rightly recognise have been brought about as the result of very complicated currents arising from widely different spiritual directions. Actually it is quite wrong to describe the animals which are known in zoology as mammals as the Darwinists do. It is quite wrong to believe that one can draw a straight line from the very simplest mammals to the most complicated. In two different species of mammal very different formative forces are at work. The mammals which we have around us and which belong to the category of the ruminants—mainly domestic animals as you know—have in the course of their development been subjected to quite different spiritual conditions from, for example, the feline, the lion-like animals. We have to think of the spiritual forces as working specifically upon the group-souls of the animals and through the group-souls upon their physical forms. The influences which resulted the lion species did not begin to work upon the Earth until the approach of the Atlantean time and during that time, and these influences reached the Earth as if driven outward from its centre towards its surface. But the influences which worked during the Lemurian time—and which also worked upon the human being—are connected with what worked as formative force upon our ruminants, influences which esotericism summarises under the symbol of the bull. All this began at that time to exercise an influence upon man himself, working into his formation as if from the depths of the Earth towards its surface.

You must not be shocked if I say that if nothing else had worked upon man he would in his external form have resembled the bull. If these forces alone had worked upon man their effect would have been to make him like a bull. But little by little other forces working from within the Earth outwards laid hold of the human organisation. They are the same forces which exercised the main influence upon the other order of mammals. In esotericism these influences are summarised under the name lion. These forces enter into Earth evolution somewhat later. If the earlier forces had not been there, if these forces alone had worked upon man, his appearance would have resembled that of the lion, with all the characteristics of the leonine organisation. The complex human form has come into existence because it has been influenced not only by one current, but by several currents one after another.

You can now form some idea of why the animals resembling the bull remained bull-like, and those resembling the lion became lion-like; it is because the shadowy forms which underlay them were not organised in the same way as the preLemurian Phantoms of human beings had been. As a result of their preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions the human Phantoms were so organised that they always waited for the right moment, that they allowed a variety of successive streams to work upon them one after another, in order that one stream should neutralise the other and thereby bring about a higher harmony. A bull would not remain a bull were the lion nature to work upon it and to modify its structure. The human being approached the Earth in such a way as to enable all these influences to work upon him.

It was not until Atlantis that something else happened which will throw a flood of light upon zoology when once it is recognised and made fruitful for external science. During the course of the Atlantean epoch quite other conditions came about. I have already said that these bull forces and these lion forces worked as if from the depths of the Earth towards its surface. The forces which were now to unite with these came from without, came from the periphery. During Atlantis we have to think of forces entering into man and fashioning him from below upwards, and other forces from cosmic space flowing into him in the downward direction. Thus the human Phantom again became exposed to fresh forces which now worked upon man from another, and an opposite, direction.

To get an idea of what these forces are like which stream upon the Earth from cosmic space we must ask ourselves which are the creatures upon whom they worked with especial intensity, unhampered by other forces. We can point to certain creatures in our environment upon which the bull forces and the lion forces coming from within the Earth have little influence, upon which on the contrary the forces working into the substance of the Earth from cosmic space are almost exclusively active. They are the creatures belonging to the bird kingdom. Our abstract zoology will one day be very much astonished to have to admit that the forces at work in the mammals are quite different from those which work mainly on the bird kingdom, and, in a broader field upon all things that propagate themselves by laying eggs outside their own bodies. In the case of all creatures in which reproduction takes place in this way, but especially in members of the bird kingdom, forces streaming in from cosmic space are predominantly at work. In esotericism these forces are comprised under the name eagle.

Now if we think of these forces, which come to expression pre-eminently in the formation of the bird world, as harmonised in man with the lion forces and the bull forces, so that they all become part of the original Phantom, then this harmony results in the present-day human form. If you consider the totally different world of the birds, you will not long be in any doubt that the whole structure of the bird is completely different from that of the mammal. Today I will not go into the structure of the other members of the animal kingdom. In the structure of the bird there is something very striking, even to clairvoyant sight. Whereas in the case of the mammals, wherever we turn our clairvoyant gaze, we find the astral body very strongly developed, in the case of the birds the most outstanding feature which meets the clairvoyant eye is the etheric body. For example, it is the etheric body, stimulated by cosmic forces coming in from space, which brings to expression the feathers, the plumage. The plumage is formed from without, and a feather can only come into being because the forces which work down upon the Earth from cosmic space are stronger than the forces coming from the Earth. The framework of the feather, what one may call its quill or spine, is of course subject to certain forces coming from the Earth, but it is the cosmic forces which contribute what is attached to the quill and constitute the bird's plumage.

It is quite different as regards creatures covered with hair. Forces working upward from the Earth, forces working in the opposite direction from those in the feathers of the birds, are predominantly at work in hair, and hair cannot become feather, because in the case of animals and men forces coming from cosmic space affect their hair but little. This seeming paradox fully expresses the reality, and if one cared to elaborate it one could say that every feather has the tendency to become a hair, but is not a hair because the forces of cosmic space work inward on the feather from all sides; and every hair has the tendency to become a feather, but does not become a feather because the forces which work from the Earth upwards are stronger than the forces which work from without inwards. If one takes such paradoxes seriously one discovers certain fundamental secrets in the constitution of our world.

Let us suppose that a man endowed with the ancient clairvoyance wanted—not simply to describe man, who really distorts the several streams which flow into him by harmonising them—but precisely to make manifest these different currents, he would have to say: ‘Something forms the foundation of the human being which cannot be seen physically, the archetypal Phantom which today only appears in physical form because man has harmonised the eagle, bull and lion influences.’ Anyone who wants to study the evolution of man must study man's archetypal Phantom as a super-sensible form. But in order to do this he would have to separate out again what has flowed together in man. He would have to realise that an etheric shadow-form lies behind the whole of human development, and that into this there enters and intermingles a bull-influence, a lion-influence and a bird-influence, in such a way that in the finished man of today they are no longer to be distinguished.

Suppose a culture-epoch—for instance, that of ancient Egypt—were trying to represent human evolution, were trying to put before man the immense riddle of human evolution, then the real man, the archetypal Phantom, which arose as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, would have to remain invisible; but, as if out of the invisible, a composite figure would have to be formed, put together out of the forms of bull and lion, with wings such as an eagle has, such as birds in general have. If you recall the all-embracing significance of the figure of the Sphinx, which was intended to represent the great riddle of human evolution, then you have in fact what a clairvoyant culture, which was inwardly aware of the truth about humanity, put before this humanity. The features which stand out separately in the Sphinx are in human nature inwardly interwoven. For clairvoyant sight the human form has a very strange appearance. If one allows such a sphinx, made up of a lion-form and a bull-form, together with the wings of a bird, to work upon the clairvoyant vision, and if one completes it by adding the human Phantom which underlies it, if one weaves these elements together, then the human form as we have it today comes into being before us. The clairvoyant consciousness cannot then look upon a sphinx—which to begin with does not resemble a man at all—without saying to himself: ‘Thou art I myself!’

Now it should be noted that in the course of this study we have also thrown light upon the four members of man from another standpoint. A Phantom, a shadow-form, designated in esotericism as Man, came over as the product of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. In the process of the densification of this Phantom the influences named in esotericism, lion, bull and eagle are at work. And here we have the four esoteric symbols which together make up the human being and which have a profound meaning for human evolution.

We have said that in the course of humanity's evolution on the Earth, forces from without, cosmic forces, were at work, both upon the human being himself, and upon other creatures, especially the bird creation. That in fact came about during the Atlantean time; so that one can say that an influence from cosmic space came down into those parts of the human organisation to which normal human consciousness no longer reaches. This influence was at work in Atlantis, and of course it has also continued in the post-Atlantean time. This was the current coming from what I called yesterday the upper gods, the gods who were in a sense the representations of the sub-earthly, the Chthonic gods. They are Beings who were encountered by the pupils of the Greek Mysteries, who had to wrestle with the great riddle of the Sphinx. They had to behold the unconscious part of the human being in such a way that through self-knowledge they also arrived at the four-foldness of humanity.

What since the time of Atlantis had streamed into the subconscious from cosmic space, even into its baser elements, now at the Baptism by John in the Jordan began to flow into man's higher, more purified parts. That is a most significant event. These forces from cosmic space which since the time of Atlantis have worked continuously upon the formation of the Earth and of humanity, begin to stream in the purest way not only into the unconscious part of the human being, but in such a way that they can influence consciousness. That is why a pictorial image, one of the great symbols which have come down to us through occult and religious scriptures—the symbol of the dove, which we find in the Gospels—had to make its appearance.

How was it possible to describe this instreaming in its purest form from above? We know of course what took place in the Baptism in the Jordan. We know that at that time the threefold body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been prepared through the two Jesus children, as is described in my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, was abandoned by its ego, which was the ego of Zarathustra, and on its departure there entered into this body the purest part of that stream which had been pouring in all the time from cosmic space, but hitherto only into that part of man which is today unconscious. Hence it was correctly symbolised in the form of a bird, the figure of the pure white dove, which represents as it were the purest extract of what in the ancient figure of the Sphinx was the eagle or cherubic element. That this cosmic stream should flow into the conscious part of the human being is essential to the perfection of humanity upon the Earth. In the picture of Jesus of Nazareth on the banks of the Jordan with the dove hovering over him we have in fact the expression of the Mystery which had now been brought to a certain conclusion.

Yesterday we were able to follow a little the cosmic history of this inward streaming from cosmic space. Why was this cosmic instreaming able to transmute itself into that Christpower, that Christ Impulse which, as it continues to work further upon the Earth, will permeate the human being completely? As man inwardly receives this Impulse he will more and more feel the truth of St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but Christ in me!’ As contrasted with the other three currents which were there as the outcome of earlier evolution, this new influence, which is the purest stream from above, will take hold of the human being, will encompass him to a greater and greater extent, will also liberate him ever more and more from what binds him to the Earth. Yesterday we spoke of the historical development of this stream and said that it was only able to be what it has in fact become because it had been prepared for upon the Old Sun.

Whereas the upper gods, those who, in the sense we explained yesterday, were the representations of the others, only wished to live in the finer elements—in the warmth, light, chemical and life elements—, this Being, who later through the Baptism by John in the Jordan descended to Earth, out of the most profound wisdom took with Him the forces to which our Earth evolution had already advanced on the Old Sun. We know from Spiritual Science that the condensation of the warmth element to air (warmth being the essential feature of the Saturn evolution) had already taken place during the Sun evolution. Whereas the other Beings among the upper gods refused to take the air element with them when they withdrew from development as a whole into cosmic space, this Being did take the air-element with Him, so that He remained related to the Earth. Thus through this Being there was outside in cosmic space all the time for all future evolution an element akin to the Earth—the element which had already on the Old Sun condensed to air or gas. If we gaze up into space, gaze up to the sun, as though with the eye of Zarathustra of old, we have to see it primarily as a survival of the ancient Sun, so to say as the ancient Sun planet come to life again, repeating in the present what existed during the Sun evolution.

Thus, expressed in terms of Spiritual Science, we have in the first place to see in the sun the dwelling place—or part of it at any rate, for this dwelling-place extends to the other planets as well—the most essential part of the dwelling-place of the upper gods, whom we designated yesterday as one stream of the divine world. But if you look at this whole sun with the clairvoyant eye, you see that everything in it which is those upper gods is there only in etheric form, from the warmth ether upwards to the light ether, the chemical ether and the life ether. But the sun as it moves in space today is not only there for clairvoyant sight as an etheric structure, it is also a globe of gas, it is condensed to the state of air. The sun would never have condensed to the state of air had not the Being of whom I spoke yesterday, the Being who descended to Earth with the dove in the Baptism by John in the Jordan, during the Sun evolution detached Himself from the Sun in a body of air and not merely in an etheric body. Thus when we look up at the sun we have to say: ‘The warmth, light and chemical impulses in the sun are connected with the other Beings, those who are only the ideas or representations of the lower gods; but the gaseous element in the sun is actually the body of Christ.’

Our modern materialistic science will one day come to learn once more the ancient doctrine of Zarathustra, will one day have to say to itself: ‘The sun as a globe of vapour outside in space is not merely what our astro-chemistry makes of it, not merely what our spectral-analysis reveals, but the sun as a globe of air or vapour there outside in the heavens is the pristine body of Christ, who was associated with the other upper gods, but was also connected with the being of the Earth.’—That is what Zarathustra perceived when he expressed the Mystery of the Christ in the sun by the word Aura or Ahura Mazdao—the great wisdom-filled Spirit, the great wisdom, the great aura. And then what up to that time had existed solely in the sun, and yet was akin to the nature of the Earth, did in fact take possession in the mysterious moment of the Baptism by John in the Jordan, of the physical, etheric and astral bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In the body of Jesus of Nazareth for the first time upon our Earth, the purified stream from cosmic space united with the newly arising etheric body streaming from the human heart to the brain. During the Baptism by John in the Jordan there took place a union between what was indeed a real stream that came from without, from cosmic space—being moreover permeated with airy substance—and the stream which rises upwards continuously as the finest etheric constituents of the heart-blood towards the head. This is what first gave to every human soul the possibility of permeating itself with that element out of cosmic space which is represented to us in the sign of the dove at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. In fact, through that event an intercourse was created between the entire universe, so far as it is accessible to us, and its purest extract, which previously, provisionally we might say, had co-operated in what is called esoterically the eagle-stream. It was a communication, an interaction, between all that streamed from the Earth and formed the human body from below upwards and what as macrocosmic stream worked into man from without. From this you see how we can enter ever more deeply into the Mystery which took place in Palestine. The more we ourselves advance in knowledge of what the world is, the better we come to understand the Mystery of Palestine.

Now we are bound to ask why the human being no longer sees or feels anything at all of this ctheric stream which flows upwards from his heart to his brain. Modern science is superficial, hence its attitude to history is also superficial, and it often takes age-old truths to be age-old errors. If you studied the Greek philosopher Aristotle you would find in his writings a remarkable teaching about the nature of man, a remarkable description of that ‘wonder of the world’, the human being. You would find a description of how extremely fine etheric elements flow from the heart to the head and there, as they contact the brain, cool down. Modern science of course says ‘Aristotle was certainly very intelligent for a Greek, but today every schoolboy knows that this was not so.’ But it is those who speak in this way of Aristotle who are in the wrong. The truth is that though Aristotle had not himself the clairvoyant consciousness which enabled him to know it for himself, he knew from old traditions what in still earlier times it had been possible to observe through an original, natural clairvoyance. This consciousness of etheric currents rising from the heart to the head was certainly to be found until far on into the Middle Ages, right on into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We find a certain awareness of it even in the works of Descartes. But according to historians of philosophy ‘Descartes has some fantastic tale about the vital spirits which flow from the heart to the brain, but that is just an old-wives' tale. Happily we know better than that.’

But it is not an old-wives' tale, it is the truth, a truth which originated in the time when such things could be perceived by a natural clairvoyance. How then must we put the matter from the point of view of modern clairvoyance, modern occult science? We may perhaps feel somewhat uneasy with the way in which Aristotle puts it, since of necessity he only drew upon tradition, the old clairvoyant forces being no longer at his disposal. But if by means of the esotericism which has been available since the thirteenth century one undertakes an investigation of the whole human being, then one perceives that in fact there is such an etheric current from the heart to the head.

One observes also something else. Not only does an etheric current go from the heart to the head, but astral currents are also present in this stream. If one looks closely at these currents it becomes clear that they contain both etheric elements, substances of the human etheric body, and substances of man's astral body. A substance streams from heart to head in which substantial elements both of the etheric and of the astral body of man are present. Now the brain is a most remarkable instrument of human nature. Owing to the way it has been formed since the last third of the Atlantean epoch, it has acquired one very peculiar quality. It arrests the astrality which rises up, prevents the astral current from passing through it, while it does allow the etheric current to pass. I repeat—the brain as physical instrument is an organ in which part of the current which comes from the heart is dammed up. The brain is permeable for the etheric current, but not for the astral one. The astral current is arrested in our brain; in the region of the head the seer perceives that astral currents rising upwards from the body spread out in the brain but are held up there, are allowed to pass through the brain not at all, or only to a very small extent. These upward astral currents which are arrested by the brain have a certain power of attraction for the external astral substantialities which are always around us in the astral substance of the Earth. Hence the astral body of man in the region of the head is as though knit together out of two astralities, out of the astrality which continually streams towards us from the cosmos, and the astrality in the human body which comes up from below and is attracted by the outer astrality.

Thus the astral body around the head, quite near the skin of the head, has a thickening, something like a cap—to put it rather grotesquely—made of astral substance—a cap which we wear all the time. We have in the region of the head an astral covering consisting of the thickening which arises through the knitting together of the inner and the outer astralities. The rays of the etheric body pass through this astral hood or cap, since they are not arrested by the brain, and the purer they are—that is, the less they still contain of the instincts, desires, passions and emotions of human nature—the lighter and more brilliant they appear. Thus the human aura, when seen from the front, acquires a kind of coronet, a wreath of astrality, through which the rays of the etheric body pass. That is the halo which those gifted with the ancient clairvoyance perceived in those whose etheric aura shone brightly because of the purity of their being. This is what we see depicted in pictures. That is what is meant by the halo, that is what becomes visible to the clairvoyant who clearly sees the aura round the head. The inner astral aura, the inner astral substance, through a peculiar characteristic of the brain, is retained and disposed around the head.

Please try to grasp this process very clearly. Etheric-astral substance in man flows from below upwards. This ethericastral substance expands in the brain in such a way as to fill it, but is held back there, just as a ray of light which falls upon a mirror is arrested and thrown back. Here we have the true mirroring-process. Because the astral stuff of the brain is held back, it reflects itself, and what in this way enters into you and is reflected, is your thought, your conscious feeling, what you normally experience as your soul-life. And it is only because this astral part is so to speak tied together or sewn together by the etheric currents streaming through the brain, which thus effect a union between the inner astrality and the outer, that knowledge of the outer world comes about. Everything that we know of the outer world we know because the outer astrality unites with the inner astrality by virtue of the strange astral cap or hood which everyone has.

Yes, my dear friends, even the history of civilisation will still be greatly enriched by means of occultism. Let me draw your attention to the fact that in ancient times men actually saw such things, and that the aura which was in olden times still visible was copied in men's clothing. Men adopted helmets because they were shaped like the astral cap or hood which crowns every man. All clothing originated in this way, through man's imitating in his dress the etheric or the astral element which he had around him. If we want to understand ancient garments, priestly robes in particular, if we want to know why this or that originated, we only need to be able to look clairvoyantly upon what surounds men as their etheric or astral auras. For the form of these auras was reproduced in ancient garments, and is still represented in the vestments connected with religious cults or rituals. Nowadays—I say this by the way—we have become so corrupted by materialism that we ignore the aura and will have nothing to do with the kind of clothing which represents what man bears within him. The craze for nudism has emerged in our time because the materialistic mind is no longer aware of those higher etheric and astral auras which men bear around them, and from which they have derived the shape of their garments. In olden times, though not so very long ago, the colours of these auras were reproduced in human clothing. If you look at pictures by the old masters the colour of the garments still bears witness to a vestigial consciousness of the aura. Notice how Mary is usually depicted with undergarment and cloak of specific colours. The painter could not give to Mary the yellow robe of the Magdalene! Why not? Because the aura of a Magdalene is quite different from that of a Mary! The painter of old brought very clearly to expression that the raiment represented what the human being carries around him supersensibly as a kind of clothing. And if you look at what the figures of the Greek gods wear, you see that not only their clothing, but also their helmet-shaped headdresses and the like—as apparent for example in the case of Pallas Athene—are due to the way the Greek sculptors were conditioned to think of the auras of their gods.

Thus you see that the man who has progressed to real spiritual knowledge of human nature has to admit: ‘All that you see around you is only a very superficial expression of your true being.’ When a man feels his consciousness strong within him he is driven to say: ‘This consciousness of mine only grasps a very small part indeed of human nature; there is something else working in me all the time.’

Now we are in a position to carry to completion what we have already said about the brain. If we go farther and consider the human being clairvoyantly in respect of other regions of his being, we find something most remarkable. Whereas the etheric and astral elements mount upwards as far as his brain, where the astral part is arrested and the etheric part protrudes beyond as a kind of corona, we see that the ego-part of man has been arrested earlier as a kind of inner aura in the region of the heart. The true inner ego-aura is already arrested in the region of the heart, it only presses upward as far as the heart, and there unites with a part of the outer aura, unites with the corresponding part of the macrocosmic aura. Two elements in fact are entwined in the heart—the element which enters from the cosmos, and the ego-aura which mounts up from below, but is dammed back in the heart. Just as the astral aura is arrested in the brain, so is the ego-aura held back in the heart, where it makes contact with an element of ego-aura coming from without. Hence the fact is that the real ego-consciousness of man does not take place in the brain. What I have said about the man of Atlantis, that his ego was drawn into him, must be thought of more explicitly as an incoming of the external cosmic ego, which since the time of Atlantis has advanced as far as the heart, where it has united with another stream which comes up from below and reaches the heart. Thus the heart is organically the place where through the instrument of the blood the real ego of man as it manifests in our consciousness comes into being.

Everything that I have just been telling you shows the place man holds in the macrocosmic world. We are all that; all that is in us. All that is taking place in us and the normal consciousness of present-day man grasps only so much of it as everybody of course knows, that is to say, only what lies on the surface. When you realise that the world-wonder—man contains such immensities, you can well imagine how complex and manifold is the world that lies about us and how our conscious knowledge merely skims the surface of the three kingdoms of Nature which are our environment. Yes; we must face the fact that our ordinary life of soul, our consciousness, stays on the surface and gives us knowledge of only the tiniest important part of the human being.

A time comes when what I have just been saying in such a matter of fact way penetrates and oppresses the man who is striving for higher knowledge, for super-sensible knowledge. He suddenly becomes aware: ‘The knowledge you have had hitherto has tended rather to conceal than to reveal.’ There he stands in all his human weakness before the wonders of the world. It is the very essence of what we must call the ordeals of the soul that this consciousness should not render him faint-hearted, impotent, that he should find that confidence to persevere of which I spoke yesterday. Strong, forceful energy, hope and confidence bring the soul through each trial, for these qualities enable it to face all that we have called the world-wonders—the riddles of the world. And the world displays ever more ‘wonders’ the further we penetrate into the super-sensible. But since each fresh marvel presents us with a fresh unknown, we are perpetually faced with new challenges. In everyday life for example it would be a test if, after having known a man for some time, believing him to be what he seemed to be, we were suddenly to discover him to be something quite different. We could then either break with him or rise above this difficulty and remain true to him. In that case we should have stood the test of friendship. Trials of this kind exist too as regards the world-wonders. We face them with all the ideas and feelings which our soul has acquired about them, but we are progressing and—not that the world is changing, but because we are penetrating further and further into it—fresh things are continually meeting us, and again and again we have to say ‘What you have perceived hitherto is maya.’ Then we can be assailed by doubt. Above all we can begin to feel that we have pressed on too fast—as Johannes Thomasius does in the last scene but one of The Soul's Probation. Hitherto he has made a certain picture of Lucifer which accorded with his soul's development, but it is only an image, a shadow. As he progresses further a deeper, more significant Lucifer appears to him, and he has to retrace his steps in order to get to know him in his fulness, and no longer as a shadow.

In the same way a man who has advanced to what for him is the next higher stage of clairvoyance can advance still further and say to himself, ‘What I have reached so far is nevertheless still only shadow, image; it must become more solid.’ Because we are all the time advancing we are faced by ever new configurations of the world. We can enter into these new configurations with stout souls, then we shall withstand the challenge and be able to derive from it ever fresh spiritual revelations. Every time a fresh spiritual revelation comes to us there will be a fresh test to surmount. At every stage of progress new ordeals arise, and we have to see it as the impulse for all higher development that our souls never need give up, but can undertake ever higher and perhaps severer tests. But if the soul withstands the test, spiritual revelations are never lacking; though it may be only after a long time that spiritual revelation gives to the soul what it has to go through ordeals to attain.

Thus we see that such ordeals are the goad which drives us upwards, and moreover that spiritual revelations coming from above are always the reward of effort. For this reason we must never rashly regard what can be attained at any one stage as the final goal. For example, we should be quite wrong to look upon what was expressed in our first Rosicrucian Mystery Play as our end. A man can be very expert in seeing images in the higher worlds and yet realise one day that he has only seen images and not realities. Then he is faced by the severe trial which Johannes Thomasius has yet to face when the second Mystery Play comes to an end. He then becomes aware that what he has seen is image, that he has not come to know reality sufficiently even on the physical plane to fill out his picture with reality. Then the soul is assailed by trials in which it has to learn how to develop the strength to impart content to what is at first merely image. We have to realise that we must not shrink from such trials, for every new configuration of the world which is presented to us furnishes us with new ordeals to be overcome; to come to an end of these trials would mean the death of true spiritual life. We have to recognise that we should not shrink from the trials, because they make us strong, strong to rise up into the spiritual world.

• 1. In the Cycle From Jesus to Christ, given at Carlsruhe a few weeks later, Dr. Steiner repeatedly used the word ‘Phantom’ when speaking of this shadow-form.

It may appear peculiar that spiritual science deals with such a topic like the question of women's rights, an urgent question that almost touches the issues of the day. For spiritual science commonly looks for the deepest riddles of the human existence and the world. One takes the view in many circles, which deal with spiritual science, or in such circles, which have heard something of the spirit of this worldview, that spiritual science is said to be something that does not care about the issues of the day, about the interests of the immediate life. One believes—namely the one reproaches that and the other credits it highly for it—that spiritual science should deal only with the big questions of the eternal that it should hover over the everyday events. One regards it as something impractical in the good and in the bad sense. However, if spiritual science should fulfil a task and mission in our time, it must intervene in that which moves the heart, and then it must be able to take a stand on those questions, which influence our everyday thinking and our everyday striving and hope. It must have a say in something that takes place in our time. Why should it not be that today the questions, which come as near to the human soul as the question of women's rights, which should occupy us today, why should it not be that a worldview assesses the big problems of existence? One often criticises spiritual science just for this rightly that it has not found the way to the real life praxis. Nothing would be more wrong, if spiritual science led more and more into an ascetic direction, in a direction hostile to life. On the contrary, it will prove itself establishing a real basis of the life praxis. It must not live in the cloud-cuckoo-land, it must not lose itself in mere abstractions, and it must have something to say to the present human beings.

Just as we have spoken here about the social question, we also want to speak about the question of the women's rights from the great cultural point of view, from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Of course, nobody should imagine that spiritual science speaks about the question of women's rights in the same way as the day-to-day politics or journalism. However, one must not believe that only that is practical which signifies a kind of parish-pump politics.

Somebody has always turned out to be a real practitioner who is able to look out at the immediate present. Who was the practitioner at that time when in the last century the postage stamp was invented and introduced in life which reshaped our whole system of communications, our whole social life since that time? It is somewhat more than fifty years ago. At that time, the idea of this institution whose practical relevance nobody doubts today did not come from a practitioner. The Englishman Hill (Rowland H., 1795-1879) was no postal practitioner. Someone who was a practitioner said these witty words: one cannot believe that this institution can cause such a big reversal in the system of communications; however, if it were the case, the post-office buildings would no longer be sufficient for the transportation of the letters.

Another example. When the first railway should be built from Berlin to Potsdam, the general postmaster Nagler (Karl Ferdinand Friedrich von N., 1770-1846) said, if people absolutely want to pour their money down the drain, they should prefer to do this directly. I let two stagecoaches drive daily, and nobody sits in them.—You know the other thing that happened in the Bavarian Medical Board: there one asked the learnt gentlemen because of unhealthy effects whether it is good for the nervous system if one builds railways. The gentlemen said that it would be impractical to the highest degree, because this would cause serious impairments of the nervous system.

This as an illustration of the relation of the practitioners, if it concerns the questions of the day, to those who look out with a more farsighted look at the future. The latter notorious idealists who are not stuck in that which is usual since time immemorial are the real practitioners. From this point of view, the spiritual-scientific worldview also appears as an engine for the practise of many questions and of ours. Hence, somebody who treats the questions from a higher point of view may accept such a reproach quietly and remember the other examples where people who believe to have the monopoly of practise judged in such a way.

Few people deny that the question of women's rights is one of the biggest questions of our present civilisation, because this has become a fact today. There are opponents of certain views in the question of women's rights, but nobody denies that it exists. Nevertheless, if we look back at times not so long ago, even important people regarded the question of women's rights as something fantastic, as something that had to be suppressed by any available means.

One example: I would like to remind you of the explanations of a significant man, the anatomist Albert (Eduard A., 1841-1900, Bohemian surgeon), who vehemently opposed the licensing of the women to the academic professions 25 years ago. He wanted to prove from the point of view of his anatomical-physiological science that it is impossible that women get licensing to the academic professions that they would be able to fill the medical profession one day. With the big authority of the physical science, one cannot be astonished at all that one gives those credit for a judgement, who were in the know of the human being because of their scientific views. Still recently, the witty pamphlet has appeared here in Germany, On the Physiological Mental Deficiency of the Woman. This pamphlet is due to a man who is, however, by no means a quite unimportant physiologist, Möbius (Paul Julius M., 1853-1907, neurologist), who has said some good things, who has not disgraced himself but his physiological science, while he made various important persons of the world-historical development of the last time like Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche appear as pathological phenomena. He did that so absurdly and radically that one would have to ask with every genius of the spiritual life: where is insanity in him, actually?—Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, they all are treated from the point of view of psychiatry, of the psychological pathology.

If one goes deeper into these matters, they all fall in a category that is characterised by the example of a famous naturalist who wanted to deduce the minor talent of the woman from the lower weight of the female brain some time ago. It is no fable: the man stated that the size of the mind depends on the size of the brain, and that on average women have smaller brains than men have. It really happened that one applied the method of this scholar to him. One weighed his brain after his death, and it came to light that he had just an abnormally small brain, a much smaller brain than those women had whom he had just regarded as inferior because of their lower cerebral weight. It would be somewhat malicious if one tried to examine such a pamphlet once from the psycho-pathological point of view, like this about the physiological mental deficiency of the woman, and if one tried to use the result against the concerning author as against the professor Bischoff (Theodor von B., 1807-1882, physician, biologist).

Thus, you see that the question of women's rights does not exactly testify that those were very judicious who opposed it. The question of women's rights is much more comprehensive than the question of the licensing of the women to the learned professions, than the educational question of the women; the question of women's rights encloses an economic, social, and psychological aspect and still some other matters. However, just the educational question of the women has shown wonderful fruits in the facts. Almost all theoretical judgements have been disproved by the practise in this field.

Bit by bit the women have ground out the licensing of the most professions against the opinions of the men's world, to those of the lawyers, doctors, philologists et cetera. The women took up these professions under substantially more unfavourable conditions than the men. One must only take into consideration, under which unfavourable conditions the women recently have approached the universities. It is easy with the normal pre-educational background; however, the women came with an insufficient preparatory training. They have overcome all difficulties in a large part not only with tremendous diligence but also with comprehensive abilities. They were in no way inferior to the men, concerning sobriety or diligence, or the mental abilities, so that the practise has solved this matter completely differently than some people theoretically imagined twenty to thirty years ago. Various professors, led by their prejudices, denied the women the access to the universities. Today many women with completed professional training know what life is about and they are as judicious and reasonable as the men are.

However, this only lights up the external situation, and it just shows us that we have to look deeper into the human being, into the being of the woman if we want to understand the whole matter. For there is nobody today who is not touched anyhow by the importance of this question. Even if the woman has ground out the licensing to the learned professions, also to numerous other occupations, even if in practice a big part of the question of women's rights is solved: if we want to advance consciously and reasonably, if we want to discuss this question in all directions, we have to look deeper into the human being.

What has one not spoken about the difference between man and woman! You can read it already everywhere in short overviews how differently one assessed the difference between man and woman and how one wanted to form a view about this question from these assessments. A lot has been written about the psychological aspect of the question of women's rights. There is no better book about this aspect, as far as a non-theosophist has written it, than that of a spirited woman who is generally active in the present literature: To Critics of Femininity by Rosa Mayreder (1858-1938, Austrian author, feminist). You can find the judgements somewhere else, let only some of them pass by. There we have a man Lombroso (Cesare L., 1835-1909, Italian physician, criminologist). He characterises the woman in such a way: her feeling of devotion and dependence is in the centre of her mental character. George Egerton (pen name of Mary Chavelita Dunne Bright, 1859-1945, feminist) says that any woman, considering a man impartially, looks at him as a big child and that just from that her domineering nature comes, so that the domineering nature moves into the centre of the woman's soul more and more. A great naturalist, Virchow (Rudolf V., 1821-1902), says that, if one studies the woman externally physiologically, one finds gentleness, mildness, and calmness at the bottom of her being. Havelock Ellis (1859-1939, physician), a good expert of the matter as well, says that the characteristic of the female soul is a choleric temperament, initiative, and bravado. Möbius finds the characteristic of the woman's mind in conservatism. Being conservative is the real life element of the woman's soul. Let us confront that with the judgement of an old, good soul expert, Hippel (Theodor Gottlieb H., 1741-1796, author, On Improving the Status of Women, 1792). He says that the woman is the real revolutionist of humanity. Go to the people, there you find a quite peculiar, but quite popular judgement about the relation between reason, passion, and soul with man and woman. On the other side, have a look at Nietzsche's judgement. He says that the woman preferably has reason, the man soul and passion. Compare this with the popular judgement, it is just the opposite.

We could talk a lot that way and register those judgements on one side, which attribute all passive, all weak qualities to the woman, on the other side those judgements, which just say the opposite. Nevertheless, certainty is lacking if so different judgements are possible.

Also the natural sciences have dealt a lot with the question and they are held in high esteem. However, also the statements of the naturalists contradict themselves concerning the real basic character of the woman. If we go over from the naturalists and psychologists to the history of civilisation and adhere to that which is always said: the man is the actually creative one, the woman is more the companion, the reproducing one, then such a judgement, would be impaired by the fact that one considers too short an interval. One needs only to look around a little bit with those peoples who show old cultural leftovers, or with primitive tribes, and one needs only to pursue the developmental history of humanity, then one sees that there were times and that there are even today such peoples where the woman participates in the male workings most eminently.

Briefly speaking, the assessments fluctuate in every direction. It must appear even more conspicuous to us that the woman of a nation differs from the man of the same nation much less than the woman of this nation from the woman of another nation. We can conclude from this that we are not allowed to say: man and woman, but that beside the gender character possibly something may be that is much more important in the human society than the gender character and that is independent of this gender character. Just if one looks impartially at the human being, one can normally differentiate what is necessarily connected with the relations of the genders and what goes beyond these relations and points to quite different regions. Indeed, a materialistic view of the world and the human being which at first only sees the palpable and obvious, sees the big physiological differences of man and woman, of course. Somebody, who is stuck in this materialistic view, simply overlooks what is much bigger and more drastic than the gender differences; he overlooks the individuality that goes beyond the gender, beyond that which is dependent on the gender. It must be the task of a worldview directed to the spirit to consider the human being correctly.

Before we consider the question of women's rights from this point of view, we want to present something to us of that which the question of women's rights constitutes today. One speaks of a question of women's rights in the general, but also this is an impossible generalisation like the concept of the woman. One should not speak, actually, of the question of women's rights in the general, because this question changes according to the different social classes of humanity. Does the same question of women's rights exist possibly in the lower classes, in the classes of the labourers, as in the educated ones? The lower classes, the real labourers, strive with all available means for getting the women from the factory and from the trade to give them to the family. The higher classes strive for exactly the opposite. They strive for the possibility that the women in the families get the possibility to work in the public life. This is something of the social aspect of the question of women's rights.

Of course, the general social question of women's rights exists besides which demands the same rights for the women in political and cultural respect as the men have them. People have the view today that one speaks, actually, of matters that would have to result from the nature of humanity itself. However, one does not think that the life of humanity changes much faster than at the first glance. A man who dealt from his political point of view also with the question of women's rights, Naumann (Friedrich N., 1860-1919, Protestant pastor and liberal politician), endeavoured once to study the negotiations of the St. Paul's Church of 1848 concerning this matter in which many human rights were discussed. One debated the natural rights of the human beings back and forth. However, he could nowhere find that these rights should be applied to men and women in the same way. This crossed nobody's mind. The question of women's rights came to this direction only in the second half of the 19th century. Hence, it probably seems justified to put the other question: where from does it result that this aspect of the question of women's rights has only been rolled up in our time?—Let us realise this completely.

One shows the question of women's rights from the male and female view in such a way, as if only now the woman must get a significant influence on all areas of life. In certain respects, the arguments reveal a big short-sightedness, because you must ask yourselves, did the women not have any influence in former times? Were they always enslaved beings only? It would be a lack of knowledge if one wanted to argue that way. Let us look at the Renaissance age and consult one of the most common books, Burckhardt's (Jacob B., 1818-1897, Swiss historian of art) book about the Renaissance (The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, 1860). There we see which deep influence the women had got, for example, on the whole spiritual life of Italy, how the women stood in the foreground of this spiritual life, how they were equal to the men and played great roles. Finally, would one have spoken about the women's lack of influence in the first half of the 19th century compared with such a personality as Rahel Varnhagen (1771-1833, writer) was? She would have been highly surprised that one raises such a subject. She would not have understood at all how one gets around to thinking in such a way.

But many a man who exercises his general voting right today or even debates in the parliament and delivers long speeches is really a mere nobody if one considers the whole cultural process which the above-mentioned woman caused. Who studies the spiritual life of the first half of the 19th century and sees, which influence this woman had on the men of the 19th century is no longer tempted to say that the woman was a being without influence at that time. The matter is simply based on the fact that the views have changed. At that time, one did not believe that one needs a general voting right that one has to debate in the parliaments that one has to study at the university to have great influence on the cultural process. One had other views in any direction. I do not say that with a conservative intention, but as evidence of the fact that the whole question is a product of our present civilisation and can be put only today as it is put, and can be put only in all areas of life today, not only in the field of education, of the higher spiritual education.

Have a look at the relation of man and woman in former times when still other economic conditions existed. Have a look at the farmer and his wife in former centuries. One cannot say that the farm woman had less rights than the farmer, or a lower sphere of activity. She had to care for a certain realm and he for another. The same applied to the craft. What has become, actually, the question of women's rights today in the working classes has originated because during the last centuries, and in particular in the last century our civilisation has become a decidedly male civilisation. The machine age is a product of the male civilisation, and simply the way of this civilisation limits the activity of the woman more than the former economic life limited it. The woman does not fit into the factory, and completely different calamities result from it compared with the conditions when she was occupied in the farmyard, at home or in the old craft as a manager or co-worker.

Also in relation to the learned professions, everything has changed in our whole life, in our view. The whole esteem of the learned professions has become another one. It is not yet long ago that that which one understands today as a learned profession was more or less a kind of a higher craft only. It was a way to be professionally active in the law, medicine, and it would not have crossed anybody's mind before relatively short time to derive a kind of religious worldview from that which medicine, law, natural sciences offered. It is the special science of that which is investigated in the laboratory, which has become bit by bit the domain of the men from which a higher worldview is attained. Against this, once religion and philosophy hovered like a spirit over all matters that were done in the faculties, and a higher education was only to be found in them.

The actually human, that which spoke to the soul, that which spoke about his longing for eternity, that which gave the human being strength and assurance in his life that was common to man and woman. This arose from another spring than from the laboratory or from the physiological investigation. One could come without any university education to the highest heights of philosophical and religious education. One was able to do this any time, also as a woman. Only because the materialistic age has made the so-called positive sciences with their so-called facts the basis of the higher problems, a train of the heart, a longing of the soul had to drive the woman to look herself into the secrets, which the microscope, the telescope, the investigations of physiology and biology reveal to us. As long as one did not think that anything about life and immortality could be decided by the microscope, as long as one knew that this truth must be taken from completely different sources, such a desire for scientific studies could not arise as it is today. We must hold this against ourselves that the direction of our time has produced this drive for the university education, and that generally the question of women's rights is put in the whole way of the civilisation of our time.

However, a movement almost disregarded up to now, the spiritual-scientific view, opposes everything that this new age has brought, that is founded on an only material base. The spiritual-scientific worldview has to solve the vital question and has to co-operate in all cultural currents and cultural attempts of the future. One cannot misjudge this worldview more than believing that it is nothing but the chimera of some daydreamers. It is the result of the spiritual research of those who know the needs and the longing of our time best of all and take it most seriously. Only those who want to know nothing about the needs of our time can keep off this eminently practical world movement intervening in all questions. Spiritual science is nothing that indulges in an infertile criticism, nothing conservative. It considers it as something beneficiary and reckons that materialism has appeared last century.

It was a necessity that the old religious feelings and traditions lost their validity compared with the claims of the natural sciences. Spiritual science understands how it happened that the physiologist and the biologist deny immortality even if he also does not concede it. That had to happen this way. However, humanity will never be able to live without looking up, without knowledge of the real supersensible spiritual things. A short time only one will be able to go on working as it has come about today with the specified science and with that which often comes from this direction as a religious result or non-result. However, the time will come when one feels that the springs of the spirit must be disclosed in life. Spiritual science is the outpost of this struggle for development of the real spiritual springs of humanity. On a much broader base spiritual science is able to tell humanity again about the being of the soul, about that which towers above the transient and passing. On a broader base than it ever was the case in the popular world, spiritual science will announce what gives assurance, strength, courage and perseverance in life what can light up those questions which occupy the everyday life and are to be solved not only from the material side.

It is a peculiar chance—some will understand it—that at the starting point of the theosophical movement a woman stood, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. One experienced the incredible example, just here, that a woman with the most comprehensive sense, with the most urgent power and with mental energy composed writings compared with which really everything that the intellectual culture has otherwise produced is a trifle. Believe nothing of that which you can read about so-called esoteric doctrines, which insights of the spiritual world you read possibly in Isis Unveiled or in the so-called Secret Doctrine by Blavatsky. Believe nothing of that, but consult the book and ask yourselves how many spirits of the present have known anything more powerful about so many matters than Blavatsky did. The two immense volumes of the Secret Doctrine give information about almost all fields of the spiritual life, about ancient cultures, ancient religions, about all possible branches of the natural sciences, about the social life, about astronomy, physiology. May that be wrong, which you read therein, but I ask you who is able to say even wrong things about all these fields proficiently and to show with it that he has familiarised himself emphatically with all that? You need not only consider the correctness, but also the comprehensiveness of the mind which you cannot deny, then you have the example of a woman who has shown not only in any branch of the intellectual culture, but in the whole spiritual life what the female mind can perform concerning a higher worldview. Even if one reads Max Müller's (1823-1900, Orientalist) religious-historical treatises and compares their contents with the comprehensive of the Secret Doctrine, one sees how much the latter towers over the first. Thus, it is a peculiar chance that a woman stands at the starting point of this theosophical movement. One may explain that just from those matters which have also shown us the question of women's rights as a birth from our present spiritual life.

If we look deeper into the spiritual development of the human beings, then that, which can, astonish us otherwise, may appear to us as a necessity in the history of thought. However, to be able to do this in fertile way, we have to go into the human nature briefly. We want to outline the human nature with a few brief strokes.

The spiritual-scientific research, theosophy, regards that which materialism and the everyday worldview know of the human being only as a part of the human being. I can only give you some outlines today, not daydreams, but matters that are as certain as mathematical judgements for the mathematicians. What the usual science knows of the human being is his physical body. This physical body has the same physical and chemical forces, principles, and substances, which one finds outdoors in the so-called lifeless nature. The forces that form the dead stone outdoors and the “life” in the stone are the same in the physical body of the human being.

However, the spiritual-scientific worldview still sees additional members of the human nature, at first the second member that the human being has together with all plants. Modern science already speaks speculating about something that spiritual science aims at, about a particular life principle, because the reasonable scientists have overcome the laws of materialism, which still applied to many people fifteen years ago. Nevertheless, the modern physical research will only extrapolate this second human member speculatively. However, the theosophical spiritual research refers to the testimony of those who have higher intuitive faculties who relate to the usual average human being as a sighted person relates to a blind one. It refers to the testimony of such persons who know this second human member as something real, as something that exists. Someone who knows nothing does not have the right to judge, as little as the blind person has a right to judge about colours.

Any talking of the limits of the human knowledge is nonsense. One should ask, is the human being not able to rise to a higher level of knowledge? May that not be real which one calls spiritual eyes and ears? There have always been human beings who developed certain slumbering abilities and who can thereby see more than others can. Their testimony must apply exactly the same way as the testimony of those who look through the microscope. How many people have seen what the evolution theory teaches? I would like to ask you, how many human beings have seen that about which they talk? How many people, for example, have clear proofs of the development of the human embryo? If they introspected, they would see what a belief controls them. If it is a justified belief, that belief is also justified, which rests on the testimony of the initiates who speak about their spiritual experience.

We speak of the second member of the human being. We find the same in the Christian religion with Paul, who called it spiritual body. We speak about the etheric or life body. A certain sum of chemical and physical forces would never crystallise to life if they were not formed in particular by that which penetrates every living body as a life body or etheric body. The human being has it in common with the whole plant and animal realms. However, a plant does not have impulses, desires, and passions. A plant feels no joy and sorrow, because one cannot speak of any sensation if one sees that a being only reacts to something external. One can speak of sensation only if the external stimulus is reflected inside, if it is there as an internal experience. This part of modern physiology, which speaks of a sensory body of the plant, only shows a tremendous dilettantism in the view of such concepts.

Where the animal life begins, where joy and sorrow, where impulses, desires and passions begin, one speaks of the third member of the human being, of the astral body. The human being has it in common with the whole animal realm. Now there is one thing that reaches within the human being beyond the animal realm and makes him the crown of creation. We realise it best considering it subtly.

There is a name within the German language, which differs from all other names. Everybody can say “table” to a table. However, one name cannot be applied that way. Nobody can say to me “I”, so that it would signify me. “I” can never sound to our ears if it signifies me. One felt this always as something essential. Even in the popular older religions, one found that there is an important point of the soul. Where the soul starts feeling the divine in itself, where it starts saying in this dialogue with itself to itself “I,” speaking with itself in such a way as from the outside cannot be spoken, there the divine being of the soul begins its development in the human being. The god in the human being announces himself there. The old Hebrew secret doctrine had felt this. Therefore, one called this name the inexpressible name of God that means, “I am the I-am.”

According to the Old Testament, the name signifies the announcement of the godhead in the human soul. Therefore, immense emotions and sensations penetrated the crowd when the priest announced this name of the godhead in the soul: Jahveh.

This is the fourth member in the human being where his external nature ends and his divinity begins. We have now seen how the human being is led as it were by external forces up to the “I”, the ego. There he stands, and from there he starts working in himself. This ego works down into the three other parts of the human being. Realise the difference between the human beings from this point of view. Compare a savage to a European average person, to a noble idealist, possibly Schiller (1759-1805, German poet) or Francis of Assisi (1181/1182-1226, Italian Catholic friar and preacher).

If the astral body is the bearer of desire and passion, we have to say, the astral body of the savage is surrounded by the powers of nature; however, the European average person has worked something into his astral body.

He says of certain passions and desires to himself: you are not allowed to follow them.—He has reshaped his astral body. Such a personality like Schiller transformed it even more, even more such a personality that is not related to the passions like Francis of Assisi who was completely purified and who was master of all impulses and desires in his astral body. Thus, you can say that the astral body of someone who worked on himself consists of two parts. One part is given by nature, by divinities; the other part is that which he himself has produced therein. We call this second part, transformed by the ego, the spirit self or manas.

Now there are matters that go deeper into the human nature where the ego works only in the astral body. As long as you tame your vices with the mere principles of morality or law, with logical principles, you work on your astral body. However, there are other cultural means, namely the religious impulses of humanity by which the ego works on itself. What comes from religion is a working engine of the spiritual life, is more than external principles of law and morality. If the ego works because of religious impulses, it works into the etheric body.

Also, if the ego is merged in the consideration of a piece of art and receives an inkling that behind the sensuous existence anything everlasting, anything concealed may be embodied, then the artistic image works not only in the astral body, but the human being improves and purifies the etheric body. If you were able to observe as practical occultist how an opera by Wagner (Richard W., 1813-1883, German composer) works on the different human members, it would persuade you that the vibrations of music deeply penetrate the etheric body.

The etheric body is also the bearer of everything that is more or less remaining in the human nature. You have to realise which difference is between the development of the etheric body and the astral body. Let us remember our own lives. Think about what you have learnt since your eighth year; this is very much. Consider the contents of your soul: principles, ideas et cetera. These are transformations of your astral bodies. Now think how little customs, temperaments, and abilities of most human beings change in general.

If anybody has a bad temper, this became apparent early on and has changed a little. If one was a forgetful child, he is a forgetful person even today. One can use a small example of this disparate development. This development behaves in such a way, as if the changes of the astral body are shown by the minute hand and the changes of the etheric body by the hour hand of the clock. What the human being changes in his etheric body, what the ego has made of the etheric body, one calls buddhi or—if one wants to use an English word—life spirit.

However, there is an even higher development, which the chela experiences, because one becomes another human being in the etheric body. If the usual human being learns, he learns with the astral body. If the student of the esoteric science learns, he becomes another human being. There his habits and his temperament must change. For this makes the difference that allows us to behold into other worlds. His etheric body is gradually transformed there.

It is the most difficult for the human being to learn to work into his physical body. One can also become master of the blood circulation; one can get influence on the nervous system, influence on the respiratory process et cetera. One can also learn that. If the human being is able to work into his physical body and learns to be connected with the universe, then he develops his atman. This is the highest human member, and because it is associated with the development of the respiratory process, one says atman (Sanskrit, German atmen = breathe). Then the spirit man is found in the physical human being.

Thus, we have seven human members, just as the rainbow has seven colours and the scale has seven tones. So the human being consists of the physical body, secondly of the etheric body, thirdly of the astral body, in fourth place of the ego, fifthly of manas, sixthly of buddhi, seventhly of atman. When the human being arrives at the highest level of development, when he makes his physical body, then we have the spirit man.

Concerning our today's question, we have to look closer at this being, at this nature of the human being. There a riddle of the relations between man and woman is solved out of the human nature in a peculiar way. Just esotericism or this intimate consideration of the human nature leads into the physical body, into the etheric body, into the astral body, into the ego and into that which the ego has made.

With every human being—this is a fact—the etheric body is dyadic, and the etheric body of the man as it lives among us presents itself with female qualities, and the etheric body of the woman with male qualities. Plenty of facts in our life are explained if we know that in the man something is of the female nature, and just that which we have discussed as dependent on the etheric body has more female nature with the man and more male nature with the woman. Hence, one can understand that certain traits can appear with the man. In truth, we never have in the physical material human being something else before us than a physical expression of a complete personality. The human soul builds the body as the magnet has two poles. It forms a male part and a female part, once one part as a physical body, the other time as an etheric body. Hence, the woman shows apparently male traits connected with the etheric body: devotion, bravery, and love; the man shows rather female traits sometimes. However, with reference to all traits which are connected more to the physical body the consequence of the gender appears in the external life.

Therefore, it must seem explicable that we have in every human being—if we want to look at him completely—an appearance before us with two parts, an open material one and a concealed one, the spiritual one. Somebody is only an entire human being who is able to connect inside a female nice character with external masculinity. The greatest spirits, in particular the mystics, always felt this in our past cultural life.

This is an important point. The man played a great role, because materialism pushed to the external civilisation. This external civilisation is a male civilisation because it should be a material civilisation. However, we have to be clear to ourselves that also in the world-historical evolution the culture epochs take turns, and that this one-sided male civilisation must find its complement by that which lives in every man. One felt this just in the time of the male civilisation. Hence, the mystics if they spoke about the deepest of their souls also called this soul something female. That is why everywhere you find the comparison of the soul with the woman receptive to the world, and on that, Goethe's saying is based in the Chorus Mysticus (Faust II):

All that is transitory
is only a symbol;
what seems unachievable
here becomes fact;
what's indescribable
here it is done;
the eternally-female
draws us upwards.

It is nonsense to interpret the saying trivially. In the sense of Goethe and of true mysticism one interprets it correctly saying, someone who has known something of noble spiritual culture has also pointed to the female character of the soul. Just from the male culture the saying originated, “the eternally-female draws us upwards.” Thus, one imagined the macrocosm, the universe, as male and the soul as female, which is fertilized by the universal wisdom.

What is this peculiar attitude, the logics, developing in the man for millennia? If we want to look into its depth, we have to see something female, the imagination, which the male principle has to fertilise.

Thus, we see the higher nature of the human being, if we consider what outgrows the gender difference. Man and woman have to regard their physical bodies as tools, which enable them to be active as a totality in the physical world in one or other direction. The more the human beings feel the spiritual in themselves, the more the body becomes the instrument, however, the more they also learn to understand the human being, if they look into the depth of the soul.

Indeed, this gives you no solution of the question of women's rights, but a perspective. You cannot solve this question with trends and ideals! You have to solve it in the reality, creating that soul image, that soul constitution, which makes it possible that man and woman understand each other from the view of the totality of human nature. As long as the human being is prejudiced in the material, a fertile consideration of the question of women's rights is not possible.

Therefore, you must not be surprised that in an age which has born the male culture the spiritual culture, which began in the theosophical movement, should almost be born from a woman. Thus, this theosophical or spiritual-scientific movement will turn out to be eminently practical. It will guide humanity to overcome the gender in itself and to rise to a point of view where spirit-self and atman are which are transpersonal and beyond the genders, the purely human. Theosophy does not speak about the general humanisation, but about the general human, so that it is recognised gradually. Thus, a similar consciousness awakes in the woman gradually as it has awoken in the man during the male culture.

As someone of those who have deeply spoken about the soul said: the eternally female draws us upwards, those will understand spiritual-scientifically who feel the other side of the human being as a woman in themselves. They speak about it in the correct practical sense, about the eternally-male in the female nature, and then true understanding and true mental solution of the question of women's rights is possible. For the external nature is a physiognomy of the soul life. We have nothing else in our external culture than that which the human beings have created what they have transformed in machines out of their impulses, in industrial matters, in the law. As the soul develops, the external institutions develop. However, an age that stuck to the external physiognomy wanted to build barriers between man and woman. An age which does no longer stick to the external, to the material but has the knowledge of the inside beyond the genders, wants to improve and embellish the sexual, without wanting to crawl away to the wasteland, to asceticism or to deny the sexual, and wants to live in that which is beyond the genders. Then one will understand what brings the true solution of the question of women's rights because it offers the true solution of the everlasting human question at the same time. One will no longer say when one speaks of things of the everyday life: the eternally female draws us up, one will also no longer say, the eternally male draws us upwards, one will say with deep understanding: the eternally-human draws us upwards.