The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I told you the story of Manon de Gaussin because it gives an actual description of the working of the etheric organisation, the etheric body, after death. One cannot, of course, quote every novelistic description in such a connection because, naturally, a writer might evolve the most unreal ideas and one would then be quoting something that is incorrect. But I chose an example where, in a way that accurately corresponds with the facts of such a case, the working of an etheric body is described.

The first truth encountered by spiritual-scientific knowledge is that when the human being passes through the gate of death, etheric body, astral body and Ego are loosened from the physical body; a kind of intermediate condition then sets in, a condition in which, on the one side, the physical body is still there and, on the other side, with a connection between them; etheric body, astral body and Ego.

We know that then, after a comparatively short time, the etheric body frees itself, and the Ego, together with the astral body of the human individuality, has to enter upon the further journey through the cosmos in the period between death and a new birth.

We must realise that the etheric organisation, the etheric body, is destined to maintain the earthly body of the human being through the whole maximum age of life. A human being who has reached advanced age, has of course, the same etheric body as when he was a child. When a human being has to leave the physical plane prematurely in some incarnation and the etheric body has then separated from the astral body and the Ego, then this etheric body is in a different condition from the etheric body of a human being who has reached a certain maximum age and who has therefore been able to use the forces of this etheric body through many decades of his earthly life. when a human being dies prematurely, the forces that are still present in the etheric body would, if his karma had allowed him to remain on the earth, have been used during the further course of his life. The using of these forces denotes a continual wearing out of the etheric body. Therefore an etheric body which separates from one who has died early, contains many unused forces; these forces are preserved in the etheric body. They are forces which have gone over into the spiritual world but which would have been able, for a long time yet, to maintain a physical life.

Naturally, these forces are not destroyed when a human being has passed through the gate of Death. For nothing—and still less in the spiritual world than in the physical world—is destroyed. All the forces in existence change into other forms. The law of the conservation of force has assumed great significance in physical science since the year l842 when it was discovered by Julius Robert Mayer. A force is applied in the simplest action, for example, when the hand is rubbed over some surface. This force is not lost; the surface gets warm; the force of the pressure and of the rubbing is changed into warmth. No force is lost; forces change their character. Similarly, no force is lost in the spiritual world. So that we may say: forces of the etheric bodies of those who have died prematurely pass over into the spiritual world and, as they have not been used for the earthly life, are used for the purpose of the human individuality who is living on as Ego and astral body.

These forces which would otherwise have been used for the individuality in his life on the Earth, are used in the spiritual world and remain in the elementary world. (The etheric body itself is dissolved within the elementary world.) In the elementary world they form a real source and reservoir of force. This is very significant, for it sheds light, in a most concrete way, upon the connection between the physical world and the spiritual world.

For real knowledge it is not enough to picture merely in the abstract that the physical world is connected with the spiritual world, and that the spiritual world is behind the physical world. There is variety and differentiation in the spiritual world which lies behind the physical world. Art that is born of clairvoyance and has an important part to play in human evolution on the earth owes a great deal to these unused etheric bodies. Significant stimuli for clairvoyant knowledge and for the knowledge that is inspired by Spiritual Science are provided by these etheric bodies in the elementary world.

Please realise this thoroughly.—In a certain sense we have to thank those who have died prematurely for the fact that their etheric bodies have been given over to the elementary world and that many spiritual influences can therefore proceed from these etheric bodies. I think I need hardly say that such influences can proceed only from souls whose end has come in the course of natural karma and never from a soul who has in any way willed his own death, through suicide. In such a case things are entirely different; fruitful forces of the etheric body are destroyed by decisions emanating from that maya of consciousness of which I spoke yesterday—and all decisions taken during earthly life in regard to death emanate from this Maya. I say this only in parenthesis.

In a very special way the etheric bodies of which I have spoken are at the basis of the spiritual stimuli which may come to us. The spiritual movement we serve will owe, as we may well realise, a very very great deal to what it is able to receive from this side. Perhaps it is not necessary for me to indicate how significantly our knowledge can be enriched in the direction of the love and the reverence we bring to our Dead by the realization of such facts and by our learning to understand how we have to thank those who have died in early youth, and how we have to thank those who have died in mature age, who have taken up into their individuality those forces which, in other circumstances, are unused forces of the etheric body.

When somebody dies in advanced age—and we have also had to experience such a case recently—he has taken up into his astral body forces which would otherwise still be in the etheric body. He has, as it were, made human what, under other circumstances is cosmic. And because this is so, there goes out from him, from his individuality, the stimulus of which I have spoken; he can be particularly influential because these stimuli can then be received by specific human hearts, also by the hearts of those who do not proceed from Spiritual Science or from clairvoyance but abandon themselves to the ordinary impulses of life. into the souls of such men too there can be received—I say ‘there can be received’—those forces—now less cosmic but just because of that, more human—which flow into the spiritual world in which the soul is always imbedded.

We have now mentioned one detail that is connected with the “Death Spectrum” as I will call it—this etheric organisation which remains when Ego and astral body are released. I will call it the “Death Spectrum” ... it contains the forces I have described, but much else as well. In order to study what else is contained in this death spectrum we must resort to such matters as I tried to bring before you yesterday, derived from Grimm's tale.

It will have been clear to you from what I said, and also from the whole treatment of the subject in that case, that between Manon de Gaussin and the man who shot himself, there existed a karmic tie which was, of course, the outcome of previous earthly lives spent together. Karmic connections of this kind are indicated in nearly all imaginative writings. Such writings—above all, the most impressive of them—take their start from the fact that these karmic connections arising from previous earthly lives have not been wholly lived out. Manon de Gaussin meets the man who loves her. She does not understand his love and out of the maya of her consciousness she resists the full and complete living-out of karma. Hence there arises that conflict which is very adaptable to artistic treatment; out of the maya of consciousness human beings rebel against what is karmically predestined.

They cannot, of course, do away with it. I am not saying that karma can be got rid of, for it must certainly be lived out in a subsequent incarnation. The human being certainly cannot escape from karma, or at least only in the very rarest cases, and in such cases the karma has to be transformed. But in one incarnation the soul may resist the full living-out of karma. Consequences then arise such as those which are dealt with in this tale. The one human being leaves the physical plane, and karma has not taken the shape it should have taken. But this “should” of karma is inscribed in the nature of the man. Karma should have been fulfilled in a certain way. We may resist karma in one incarnation because we do not recognise it, and then we postpone it until a later incarnation. Nevertheless it was there within us ... it was actually within us. We wipe karma away, as it were, from the one life, wipe it away from the happenings of the life between birth and death.

And so what Manon de Gaussin and the man who loved her would have experienced if they had fully lived out their karma, is wiped away from their lives. It is wiped away from the physical events of life. But from the death spectrum it cannot be wiped away or effaced. It remains in the death spectrum as will, and then it happens that after the death of the human being concerned this death spectrum follows the will of the karma that has not been lived out. So that when Manon de Gaussin seeks and finds rest at the proper moment, this death spectrum comes to her because there is living in it the will which should have brought about the union of the two. The death spectrum—so far as this is possible—fulfils what ought to have been but has not been fulfilled.

The connection described in the tale has, in this respect, been truly portrayed. This death spectrum, therefore, also contains the karma that has not been lived out, and after the death of the human being something takes shape in the elementary world that is like a picture of this karma. We have to do with two aspects—please realise this—When a human being dies with karma that has not been lived out, he will have to live out this karma in a subsequent incarnation ... this will happen at some time in the future. But in the death spectrum there arises something that is like a prophetic picture of what will have to come about at some time, what ought to have come about but has not. Clairvoyant vision of the death spectrum therefore brings an experience of destiny, of karma that has not been lived out.

It may be said that in the etheric spectrum of the human being after death something happens that could have happened in life, but has not. A picture of happenings which could have been happenings of life may be experienced in this death spectrum. This is a very significant esoteric connection. The human individuality (Ego and astral body) passes over almost immediately after death to a kind of cosmic existence and for some days is still connected with the death spectrum (the etheric body), so that the karma-will of the individuality is playing from the cosmos into the death spectrum. Then, after a few days, what belongs to the cosmic spheres is loosened from what has received its specific, unique character from the connection with the physical human being and has only assumed the form of the physical human being because it has been enclosed within the human physical body. The Ego and the astral body have not this physical form of the human being; but the death spectrum, the etheric body has, in a certain respect, also the physical form of the human being. The death spectrum loses this human form only in the course of days. When the soul has been freed from the physical body it loses this human form. The physical body, through its forces, has preserved this death spectrum in its form; but now that the spectrum is outside the physical body, it takes on other forms, determined by the external forces of the cosmos.

It is therefore understandable that a true description of the emergence of the human individuality together with the etheric body from the physical body must indicate the death spectrum rising up, as it were, in the form which has been that of the physical body. if, therefore, somebody wants to describe the moment of death truly, he will describe how the etheric body rises up like a kind of cloud, still manifesting the form of the physical body with its arms and other limbs, and how this gradually dissolves into the more spiritual forces working in from the cosmos. This is a transformation, a metamorphosis, a transition.

The picture revealed by clairvoyance is difficult for us, because in physical life the human being is bound to time and space, and indeed to those forms of time and space which are at our disposal precisely when we are in the physical body, namely, ordinary three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time, with its past, present and future. And so, many people are inclined to connect with purely spiritual perceptions, three-dimensional space and one-dimensional time with its past, present and future. We can speak of time and space in connection with the spiritual world too; but there they are altogether different. The difficulty is that words coined for the physical world are inadequate and imperfect when used for portrayal of the spiritual world.

In conceptions of time in the physical world, the past is ... well, the past. The past lies behind us and we can only preserve it in memory. It is only the present that can be there before us in immediate perception. In the spiritual world it is not like this, nor even in the elementary world; there the past can be before us just as the present is before us in the physical world.

In the spiritual world, therefore, we can look at what is past, what has happened, what can only be preserved by the physical individuality in memory. When we have passed through the Gate of Death we can look from a later point of time at an earlier point of time. It is just as if, from a later period, we were looking at what is physically past as something that is immediately present, just as from this point where I am standing I can look, physically, into the corner. The past is actually there, living before us, surrounding us.

This conception is made particularly vivid by events like one that happened among us recently, when we attended the cremation of a dear friend, and when her consciousness first came to itself at the moment when the fire seized the physical body. At this moment the consciousness began to be active. But before the physical body was given over to cremation the burial service was held, and it could be seen that this burial service was vividly present to the Dead, as vividly as when something is before us in space. [‘Rudolf Steiner and our Dead.’ Phil. Anthr. verlag (not yet in translation)]

Such things belong, of course, to the very deepest esotericism among us. But in the course of many years we have been striving to make it possible to speak among ourselves of things that are veiled in mysteries just as one speaks of ordinary everyday occurrences. What may be said now is this: that when these difficult days of the war are over, our esoteric life at all events will have to assume a much stronger and more intimate character then, things called forth by the suffering through which humanity has passed—I do not mean the individual suffering which springs from egotism but the general suffering undergone by mankind as a whole. Because of this general suffering it will be possible for much to be deepened in other directions, in directions upon which silence has perforce now to be maintained because human beings are living in a time of general transition.

Let us think more intimately still of the emergence of the human individuality—of the Ego and the astral body with the etheric body—let us think of the emergence of the threefold man from the physical body. This is a process which lasts for days, beginning when the human being passes through the gate of Death. This process shows very vividly indeed how cosmic forces may exist in the human etheric body, but it also reveals, as we have seen, the karma that has not been lived out. This is a process that is individually different in different human beings; it is not the same in two human beings. That is why it is so difficult to describe these things. They are not the same in two cases; they are everywhere different.

It is of course the case that other elements, as well as this process, are contained in the death spectrum, but I cannot describe everything at once. If we know of two characteristic phenomena contained in this death spectrum we already have a more intimate picture than when we are only able to associate the term ‘etheric body’ with this death spectrum. Karma that has not been lived out is contained within this death spectrum—and this makes it possible to deal with conflicts in written works of art, to connect this karma that has not been lived out with processes that take place after death. All that a purely exoteric writer can do is to portray the conflict that has taken place in life, and then let his characters die. But when—as for example in Shakespeare's works—account is taken of esoteric connections in life (as I have said on different occasions in indicating what was behind Shakespeare), when a writer shows how things are connected with deeper laws of life and his descriptions take account of what lies behind the external happenings, then a work like Hamlet can come into being. in what comes from the spirit of Hamlet's father we see a great deal of karma that has not been lived out, that is being transformed. The dramatic conflict for the main character of the play, for Hamlet, begins through the intervention of the father's karma which has not been lived out. So an artist who is convinced of the connection of the physical with the spiritual world will often feel compelled not to let his human characters simply fade out at death—as monistic and materialistic thinkers picture to themselves—but to indicate that this passing through death is a beginning of new events and happenings that are still more concrete than the concrete happenings of life between birth and death.

In order to show how art can seek enrichment by using earthly life as the starting-point for the continuation which then proceeds in the spiritual life, I have spoken about the tale from which I also read an extract yesterday. It is interesting to find how the experience of karma that has not been lived out can come to a man, how he can describe it. And he may feel compelled to say at the end of his work: ‘Here I feel the karma that has not been lived out.’ Then he may feel the urge to portray, in an elementary, real Imagination, how this karma lives itself out. This can be done if life is taken in its totality and not merely in its physical aspect.

In this connection I want to speak of yet another writing although I can indicate its content only very briefly, still more briefly than yesterday, because it is a novel of two volumes (“Invincible Powers”, by Herman Grimm). You will see that what is said here also portrays an element of karma that has not been lived out. I will indicate as briefly as possible how the story gives expression to this.

A mother comes with her daughter from America to Europe. The father died some time ago in America. on their journey in Europe they meet a man who is a descendant of an old noble family, a family firmly rooted in the traditions of aristocracy. Many things happen from which it at once becomes evident to those who observe the spiritual connections of things that between the man "“Arthur” and the two women whom he happens to see in the street while they are going to a theatre, there are karmic links. Anyone who watches the events from the point of view of Spiritual Science observes this immediately. These karmic ties lead to very intricate situations. They take their course in such a way that the whole present age, European culture that has grown old and the still young American culture, are described in a great tableau. The whole present picture of Europe and America is described with poignant concreteness and self-surrendering love. The representatives of these two kinds of culture are Arthur and the two other personalities who have been mentioned. The whole of the present time is described in these souls and many things happen which, to those who bear the spiritual connections in mind, immediately appear as consequences of the karma playing between them. The external milieu, pictured in the interplay between the American outlook upon life and the atavistic European outlook, is connected on the one side with the new, fresh, untouched culture of America, and, on the other, with the atavistic European culture that is simply subsisting on tradition. In this whole milieu there is something that is reflected in the souls of the characters and causes conflict after conflict. Arthur's father who has died, owned an estate; his whole outlook had been imbued with old traditions of the aristocracy; with his money, or rather, with the disappearance of his money, he was a product of the old traditions of aristocracy, he had been obliged to sell the estate—as happens so frequently in Europe today. The estate has been sold, so that Arthur does not inherit it. In the noblest way—which is not always the case in such affairs—an improvement is brought about in the situation as a result of the attitude taken by the Americans to European conditions. Naturally, Emmy has money and she is able to retrieve the estate for Arthur. This happens, at all events is about to happen. But an upstart of uncertain origin has remained on the scene; he is not quite sure of his parentage but he goes about on the estate like a tramp. The estate does not, of course, belong to him, but he has a delusion that he is the master of it—and now the idea comes into his head that the estate must become his property. His point of view is that as the estate has been re-acquired, his rights have been violated. But his ‘rights’ are only a decadent delusion—he regards himself as the master of the estate which has long been mortgaged to the Bank. He goes about as mentally deranged people are allowed to go about when they are not dangerous. A conflict begins, in that this man is furious about the acquisition of the property and actually shoots Arthur on the estate when opportunity offers. Now Emmy has already had terrible experiences; this other experience is added to them and as a consequence of it an illness already present in germ, develops. She is in her twenties. Her mother brings her to Montreux and in her illness she is cared for there by an American who is extraordinarily well portrayed, a Mr. Wilson and some others who are in Montreux. The description of this Mr. Wilson is a wonderful piece of writing; the whole of North America seems to be personified in him ... it is all made wonderfully alive. But in spite of the care she receives—from the doctor too, who comes into her life and is a kind of rival to Arthur, an old friend of his—she cannot be cured. She dies ... and her death is described. In the light of Spiritual Science, therefore, let us observe that here we have, in the sense, a case of karma which in many respects has not been lived out; we have to do with conflicts arising, in the main, between America and Europe; it is a case of karma that simply has been brought to an end by a shot from a gun. Anyone who realises this will naturally ask, if he is not materialistically minded:—“Where is the reality, what happens to this unlived-out karma immediately after death, where will it continue?”—This further continuance of karma that has not been lived out will be felt by a man who is not a materialist. If he is an artist he will feel compelled to give some indication about it, and we actually find such an indication at the end of the writing. I need only read a few lines.—Arthur is dead, he has been shot. Mother and daughter go to Montreux. Emmy is ill for some time and in her last dream Arthur appears to her. It is evident at once that this is no ordinary dream-picture but an actual intervention of the real Arthur in the physical world. The moment of death is described as follows:—

“Between midnight and dawn she thought she had wakened.

Her first glance at the window through which the faint light was streaming into the room, was free and clear, and she knew where she was. Her mother who was sleeping near her, heard her breathing. The next minute, however, with a weight she had never before experienced, overwhelming fear came over her. It was no longer the thoughts that had been troubling her the last days, but it was as if a gigantic hand were holding all the mountains of the earth over her on a thin thread. And at any moment the hand might open and hurl down the great masses which would lie upon her for all eternity. She tried to look within herself and outside herself, seeking for a glimmer of light; but none came. The light from the window had vanished, her mother's breathing was no longer to be heard, and a suffocating loneliness surrounded her. It was as if she would never reach life again. She wanted to call out but could not; she wanted to move but no limb obeyed her. Everything was still and dark and no thought would come in this terrible monotonous state of fear in which even remembrance had departed ... and then, finally, one thought returns: Arthur!

Wonderful to tell, it was as though this single thought had changed into a point of light, visible to the eye. And as the thought grew to infinite longing, so did this light grow and expand, and suddenly seemed to divide, unfold and take on a form ... Arthur was there before her she saw, and finally recognised him. It was certainly he himself. He smiled and was close beside her. She did not notice whether he was naked or clothed, but it was he; she knew him too well; it was he himself, no phantom who had assumed his shape. He stretched his hand towards her and said: ‘Come:’

Never had his voice seemed so sweet and attractive as now.

With all the power of which she was capable, she tried to raise her arms towards him; but she could not.

He came still nearer and stretched his hand closer to her: ‘Come!’ he said once again.

To Emmy it was as though the power with which she tried to bring one word through her lips would have been able to move mountains, but she could not utter even this one word. Arthur looked at her and she at him. One movement of a finger now and she would have touched him. And now the most terrible thing of all: he seemed to be going away again: ‘Come!’ he said for the third time. With the feeling that he had spoken for the last time, that the dreadful darkness would again hide the heavenly vision of him, she was filled now with a fear that split her as the frost splits trees and made the final effort to raise her arms to him; but the weight and coldness which held her captive were not to be overcome. And then, as a bud breaks and a flower grows before our eyes, shining arms came forth from her own arms, shining shoulders from her shoulders; these arms stretched towards Arthur's arms and he, grasping her hands with his hands and slowly hovering backwards, drew her with him, together with the whole shining form that has arisen from the body of Emmy.”

This moment of death, this emergence of the etheric body, the passing over of the death spectrum into the cosmic realms, is wonderfully described. In this death spectrum, spiritually and concretely described as it emerges from the body, there is contained the will that is taking shape; this death spectrum contains the karma that was not lived out between Arthur and Emmy. I quote this second example because you saw from the tale yesterday how the death spectrum comes to the still living personality. But here we have to do with two purely spiritual entities, with the etheric body of Arthur which has already undergone many transformations in the spiritual world and with Emmy's emerging death spectrum. It is therefore an old relationship, karma that has not been lived out, that is playing between Arthur's etheric body and Emmy's death spectrum which is just passing into the spiritual world. Something that has not been played out in life, something that is unlived-out karma, is proceeding here in the spiritual world.

We must really try to grasp in its reality what is present as the first moment after the human individuality has passed through the gate of Death. The unlived-out karma is freed from the individuality—the individuality can only live out his karma in a subsequent incarnation—it is freed, and becomes cosmic: cosmic happenings are the result of it. And in much that happens in the clouds, on the mountains, in the springs, but also in much that happens in the subconscious processes of the soul-life of human beings living on the earth, unlived-out karma is being expressed, karma that has taken over into the spiritual world and is like a wellspring in this death spectrum. For these cosmic happenings play continually into human life; we are permeated by them, interwoven in them.—Thus we must distinguish between what becomes cosmic when the human being passes through the gate of Death, and what remains individual. What remains of the physical body becomes preeminently cosmic, this passes over—slowly in earth burial more quickly in cremation—into the elementary, the more physical-elementary world of earth; and it is a gross, materialistic idea to believe that this then simply disappears or functions like the chemical elements. This is nonsense, and we shall see tomorrow how it goes on living in the planet, how significant it is for the planet.

It lives on in the planetary life. The chemists' knowledge of what becomes of the physical body amounts to nothing at all; for the earth has its essential subsistence from the fact that human beings have died upon it—its more important forces are derived from this source. The earth has its subsistence from the physical nature of human beings who have died. here, therefore, something becomes cosmic from the physical body; the other becomes cosmic from the etheric body. And I have tried today to indicate what becomes cosmic from the ether-aura; what remains, and has become cosmic lives on as individuality in the higher spiritual world. You will find it mentioned in more detail in the books “Theosophy” or “An outline of Occult Science.” This lives on as individuality and I will speak about it tomorrow. But we must realise that what lives on individually begins to live in new conditions which differ essentially from the ordinary conditions of earthly existence.

Careful study of the Vienna lecture-course on the life between death and a new birth will give you a conception of what happens during this period. We cannot really understand the nature of the conditions which prevail between death and a new birth if we have not made these conceptions alive within us. The Time that is presented to our physical outlook as past, present and future, continuing onwards in a straight line, is really a physical Maya. At death we enter into a different world, where the past exists not only in memory, but is actually present; it is all around the human being who is living in conditions where his inner being is revealed as his outer being; his inner being of soul is there in direct manifestation—the being who has shaped the body as well as the physical incarnation between birth and death.

The way in which we must approach one who has passed through the Gate of Death is not an act of external perception but an inner sharing of his experiences. The individuality is fully present when the Gate of Death has been passed, although, as I have said, the human being has to find his bearings and direction within his superabundant consciousness. But what he is in himself, the essential core of his being, is there as a real presence, although it may not as yet be connected with his consciousness. It is there. What a man is in his essential being can be seen, and the experiences shared.

When I have spoken during the sad occasions caused by the recent loss of dear friends, I have always tried to speak out of their being. I will give one or two indications—as far as this is permissible here—concerning the last three friends who have died. I have tried simply to speak out of these souls themselves, as it were to let them speak with me. And when I look back I realise that there were very good reasons for speaking quite differently in each of the three individual cases—for human beings are individually different. I admit quite frankly that this was not in my consciousness when the words were coined. It came entirely out of the situation itself. Moreover words which have to be coined for Spiritual Science and also for the life into which Spiritual science leads us, are coined and unfold in the best and truest way when they are absolutely uncolored by any wish emanating from life. if we are to sneak truly and accurately in the domain of Spiritual Science we must keep entirely aloof from any wish to coin this or that in a particular way. We must hold at a distance every wish that things might be this or that.

When it is a question of speaking at the cremation of a dear friend there is naturally no wish to speak the words that were actually uttered. In such circumstances the words will certainly not be spoken out of any wish, but only out of the necessity. For naturally, the only wish that could be present in such a case is that such words should not have to be spoken. This attitude helps the coining of the words. To me it was very significant—and I say this without any pretensions whatever that in the case of dear Frau Grossheintz I had to speak simply as the organ of expression for this soul.

A soul who had passed through a long earthly life, who in her last years, with so much determination and energy, had united all her forces with the impulses of Spiritual Science ... united them in a way that perhaps only a few among us have done ... who had made Spiritual Science one with her own initiatives in life—such a soul then passes through the Gate of Death into a life that arises not as a theoretical life but as a life of real and vital impulses, born of Spiritual Science. This life is actually there, even if the soul has not yet wakened sufficiently to be aware of it. It is the characteristic element in the being who is becoming free. And so you will admit that the words I had to speak (at the cremation) actually contain what I will call: transformed Spiritual Science, Spiritual Science that has become will, that has become feeling. This soul had had a long earthly life and passed through the gate of Death with mature etheric forces. One was compelled in this case, to speak entirely out of the soul itself. The main words necessarily took a form as if the soul itself were speaking:

In Weltenweiten will ich tragen
fuhlend Herz, dass warm es werde
Im Feuer heil 'gen Kraftewirkens;

In Weltgedanken will ich weben
Das eigne Denken, dass klar es werde
Im Licht des ew'gen Werde-Lebens;

In Seelengrunde will ich tauchen
Ergeb'nes Sinnen, dass stark es werde
Fur Menschenwirkens wahre Ziele;

In gottes Ruhe streb'ich so
Mit Lebenskampfen und mit Sorgen,
Mein Selbst zum hohern Selbst bereitend;

Nach arbeitfreud'gem Frieden trachtend,
Erahnend Welten-Seins im Eigensein,
Mocht' ich die Menschenpflicht erfullen;

Erwartend leben darf ich dann
Entgegen meinem Seelensterne,
Der mir im Geistgebiet den Ort erteilt ...

The inner mobility and life of this soul is revealed in that the first time (at the beginning of the service) the words had to be: “Entgegen meinem Seelensterne,” and at the end of the service: “Entgegen meinem Schicksaltsterne.”

It is the nearness one must have to the soul who has passed through the Gate of Death which calls forth such words—words which are characteristic of the being of the individuality after death.

What I have to say concerning the other two cases will be said tomorrow.

In continuing our studies on karma, we are under the necessity, at the outset, of casting a glance at the manner in which karma intervenes in the evolution of man, how destiny, which intervenes with the free deeds of man, is really fashioned in its physical reflection out of the spiritual world.

To begin with, I shall have to tell you today a few things about that which is connected with the human being in as far as he lives on earth. This earthly man—during these lectures we have been studying him in regard to the various members of his being. We have distinguished in him the physical body, the ether body, the astral body, the ego organism. We can, however, by directing our gaze upon him, just as he stands before us in the physical world, perceive the membering of the human being in yet another way.

Today we intend—quite independently of what we have already been discussing—to consider a certain membering of the human being, and we shall try to build a bridge between what we discuss today and that which we already know.

If we consider the human being as he stands before us on the earth, simply according to his physical form, then this physical form has three clearly differentiated members. This differentiation is, however, not usually observed, because that which asserts itself as science nowadays really looks at things and facts in a merely superficial way. It has no sensibility for what reveals itself when things and facts are considered with a perception inwardly illumined.

We have, to begin with, the human head. Even outwardly considered, this human head shows itself as something quite different from the remainder of the human form. We need but turn our attention to the formation of the human being out of the human embryo. The first thing we can see developing in the body of the mother as human embryo is the head organization.

The whole human organization takes its start from the head, and everything else in the human being which afterwards flows into his configuration is, actually, an appendage-organ of the human embryo. As physical form, the human being is a head in the beginning. The rest are appendage-organs. And the functions which these appendage-organs assume in later life—such as breathing, circulation, nutrition—are, in the first period of the embryonic existence, activities proceeding not from within the embryo, but from without inward, out of the body of the mother, through organs which afterwards fall off, organs which are no longer present later in the human being.

Figure IX

The human being is, at the outset, entirely head. The rest is appendage-organ. We do not exaggerate in the following sentence: The human being is in the beginning head; the rest is, so to speak, appendage-organ. Since that which at first was appendage-organ later on grows and gains in importance for the human being, his head finally loses its sharp distinction from the rest of the organs.

But this gives only a superficial characterization of the human being. For in reality he is, also as physical form, a threefold being. All that which actually constitutes his first form—the head—remains throughout his earthly life a more or less individual member. We fail merely to recognize this; nevertheless, it is a fact.

You will say: Indeed, one ought not to divide the human being in such a way that we behead him, as it were, chop off his head. That this happens in Anthroposophy was only the belief of Professor “Blank” who reproached Anthroposophy for dividing men into head, chest organs, and limb organs. But this charge is not true; it is not at all a fact; for in what is outwardly head configuration, lies only the main outer expression of the head configuration. Man remains completely “head” throughout his whole life. The most important sense organs—the eyes, ears, the organs of smell, the organs of taste—are, to be sure, in the head, but the sense of warmth, for example, the sense of pressure, the sense of touch, are spread out over the whole human being. That is precisely because the three members of the human organism are not to be differentiated spatially, but only in such a way that the head formation mainly appears in the outwardly formed head, while in reality it permeates the entire human being. And this is true also for the rest of the members. The head is, throughout man's earthly life, in the big toe, in so far as the big toe possesses a sense of touch or a sense of warmth.

Thus we have characterized, to begin with, the one member of the human being's essential nature, that human nature which confronts us as something sensuous. In my books I have designated this organization also as the nerve-sense organism in order to characterize it more inwardly. This, then, is one member of the human being, the nerve-sense organism.

The second member of the essential nature of the human being is all that manifests in rhythmical activity. You cannot say of the nerve-sense system that it finds expression in rhythmic activity, for example, in the perception of the eye; for in that case you would have to perceive one thing at a certain moment, then another, then a third, then a fourth, and then return again to the first, and so on. In other words, there would have to be a rhythm in your sense perception. But that is not the case. Observe on the other hand the main characteristic of your breast organism. There you will find the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of circulation, the rhythm of digestion, and so forth. There, everything is rhythm.

Rhythm, with its organs of rhythm, is the second thing to develop in the human being; and it also extends over the whole human being, though its chief external manifestation is in the organs of the breast. The whole human being, again, is a lung; yet lung and heart are localized, so to speak, in the organs so named. The whole human being, indeed, breathes; you breathe in every spot of your organism. People speak of skin respiration. Only, in the activity of the lung is respiration mainly concentrated.

The third human organism is that of the limbs—the limb organism. The limbs terminate in the breast organism. In the embryonic stage of existence, they appear as appendages. They are the latest to develop. They are, however, the organs which are chiefly connected with metabolism. The metabolic process finds its chief stimulus through the fact that these organs are put into motion, perform most of the work in the human being. We have thus characterized the three members that appear to us in the human form.

But these three members are intimately connected with the soul life of the human being. His soul life can be divided into thinking, feeling, and willing. Thinking finds its physical expression chiefly in the head. But it has its physical organism also in the entire human being, because the head exists, in the way I have just described, throughout the entire human being.

Feeling is connected with the rhythmic organism. It is a prejudice, indeed even a superstition on the part of modern science to assume that the nervous system has directly to do with feeling. The nervous system has nothing directly to do with feeling. The respiration and circulation rhythms are the organs of feeling, and the nerves only transmit the fact that we cognize our feelings, that we experience them. The feelings have their organism in the rhythmic system, but we should know nothing of our feelings if the nerves did not procure for us percepts of them. And because the nerves procure for us these percepts of our feelings, modern intellectualism creates the superstition that the nerves themselves are tin* organs of feeling. This is not the case.

But, when we consciously observe our feelings, as they arise out of our rhythmic organism, and compare them with the thoughts which an* bound to our head, to our nerve-sense organism, then—if we are able to observe at all—we shall perceive the same difference between our thoughts and our feelings that exists between our daytime thoughts which we have in waking life and our dreams. Our feelings have no greater intensity in consciousness than dreams. They only have a different form; they only make their appearance in a different way. When you dream in pictures, your consciousness lives in pictures. But these pictures, in their picture character, have the same significance—although in another form—as our feelings. Thus, we may say that we have the clearest consciousness, the most illumined consciousness in our visualizations, in our thoughts. We have a kind of dream consciousness in regard to our feelings. We only believe that we have a clear consciousness of our feelings; we have no clearer consciousness of our feelings than we have of our dreams. If on awaking from sleep we recollect our dreams and form of them wide-awake visualizations, we do not seize hold of the dream. The dream is far richer than our visualization of it afterwards. In like manner is the world of feeling infinitely richer than our mental pictures of it, which we make present to our consciousness.

Figure X

And completely immersed in sleep is our willing. This willing is bound to the limb-metabolic organism, to the motor organism. All that we really know of our willing are the thoughts. I form the visualization: I shall take hold of this watch. Just try to think quite sincerely that you form the visualization: I shall take hold of this watch. Then you do take hold of it. What proceeds from your visualization, your thought, right down into the muscles and finally leads to something which again appears as a visualization—your taking hold of the watch, which is a continuation of the first visualization—what lies between the thought of the intention to act, and the thought of its fulfilment, what occurs in your organism, all these activities remain just as unconscious as your life in the deepest dreamless sleep.

We do at least dream of our feelings, but from our impulses of will we have nothing but what we have from our sleep. You may say: I have nothing at all from sleep. Well, I do not speak now from the physical standpoint; even from the physical standpoint it is, indeed, entirely senseless to say that you have nothing at all from sleep. But psychically, too, you have a great deal from your sleep. If you were never to sleep, you would never reach your ego consciousness.

You need only realize the following: When you remember the experiences you have had, then you say that you are going back in time, that from the present you go further back in time. Indeed, you imagine that it is a fact that you go further back in time. But it is not so at all. In reality you only go back to the moment when you awoke from sleep the last time. (See Figure X.) Then you have fallen asleep. What lies there between is eliminated. And then in the interval from the last time you fell asleep back to the time before the last when you woke up, memory appears again. So the matter continues on, back in time. And by looking back, you must really always insert the periods of unconsciousness. In doing so we must insert unconsciousness for one third of our life. We do not pay attention to this. But it is just as if you had a white plane with a black hole in the center. (See Figure XI.) You see the black hole, in spite of the fact that there are no forces present. Thus, in looking back in memory, in spite of the fact that it contains nothing from life's reminiscences, you see, nevertheless, the blackness—the nights, through which you have slept. There your consciousness strikes against this blackness continually, and that impels you to call yourself an I, an ego.

Figure XI

If this really continued on and you were to knock against nothing, you would never gain an ego consciousness. Thus we can, indeed, say that we benefit from sleep. And just as we benefit from our sleep in the ordinary earth life, do we benefit from the sleep which rules in our willing. We sleep through that which really takes place in us with every act of will. But in it there lies the true ego. Just as we receive our ego consciousness through the black void (see Figure XI), so does our ego lie in that which sleeps in us during the act of will—the ego, however, which passed through our former earth lives.

That is where karma holds sway. Karma rules in our willing. In our willing all the impulses from our preceding earth life hold sway; only, even in the waking human being, they are sunk in sleep.

Thus, when we visualize the human being as he confronts us in earth life, a threefold membering of his organism is observable: the head organism, the rhythmic organism, and the motor organism. That is a schematic division. Each member belongs in turn to the whole man. Visualizing is bound to the head organism, feeling is bound to the rhythmic organism, and willing to the motor organism. Our state while visualizing is wakefulness, while feeling is dreaming. Our state in which willing, in which the will impulses take place is sleep, even during our waking life.

Now, in the head—that is, in our visualizing—we must distinguish two things; we must discover, as it were, a more subtle membering of the head. This more subtle membering leads us to distinguish what we have as momentary visualization by virtue of our having intercourse with the world, from what we have as memory.

You go through the world, constantly forming visualizations, mental images, according to the impressions you receive from the world. But it remains possible for you to call up these impressions again out of your memory. The visualizations you form in your intercourse with the world at present are not differentiated inwardly from the visualizations aroused to life when memory becomes active. In one case they come from without, and in the other from within. It is, indeed, a naive thought to imagine that memory works in the following way: I now confront a thing or event, form a visualization, a mental picture of it; this visualization sinks down into me somewhere, into some sort of pigeon-hole, and, when later I remember, I take it again out of the pigeon-hole. There are, indeed, whole philosophies which are able to describe how the visualizations sink down beneath the threshold of consciousness, then are fished out again in the act of recollecting. These are naive concepts.

There is, of course, no such pigeon-hole in which our visualizations lie when we remember them. Nor is there any such place in us where they are moving about and whence, when we remember them, they walk up again into our head. All these things are utterly non-existent, nor is there any explanation in their favor.

The facts are rather as follows, you need only to reflect on the following: When you wish to exercise your memory, you often do not work merely with your powers of visualizing, but you bring to your aid very different means. I have seen people memorizing who exercised their power to visualize just as little as possible, but carried on vehement outer movements accompanying their speech (arm movements) again and again:

And it undulates, surges, and roars and hisses

[Und es wallet und woget und brauset und zischt.
A well-known line of German poetry. (Tr.)]

Thus, people memorize in this way, and in so doing the least possible thinking occurs. And in order to add a further stimulus—And it undulates, surges, and roars and hisses—they beat their forehead with their fists. Even this happens. It is definitely a fact that the visualizations we form as we occupy ourselves with the world are as evanescent as dreams. On the other hand, what emerges out of memory are not visualizations which have sunk below into us, but something quite different. Were I to give you some notion of it, I should have to draw it thus (see Figure XII). This is, naturally, only a kind of symbolic figure. Imagine the human being as a seeing being. He sees something. I shall not describe the process more exactly; that could be done, but for the moment we do not need it. The human being sees something. It passes through his eye (see Figure XII), through the optic nerve into the organs into which the optic nerve then merges.

We have two clearly distinct members of our brain: the more external brain, the gray matter; and, beneath it, the white matter. The white matter terminates in the sense organs, the gray matter lies within it; it is far less developed than the white mass. “Gray” and “white” are, of course, only approximate terms. But even thus crudely anatomically considered, the matter is as follows: The objects make an impression on us, pass through our eyes, and on into the processes that take place in the white matter of the brain.

On the other hand, our visualizations have their organs in the gray matter (see Figure XII) which, incidentally, has quite a different cell structure. Therein our visualizations glimmer and vanish like dreams. They glimmer, because the impressions are occurring underneath.

If you were dependent upon having the mental images sink down into you, and you then had to call them up again in memory, you would remember nothing at all, you would have no memory. The fact is like this: At the present moment, let us say, I see something. The impression of it—whatever it may be—sinks into me, the white matter of the brain acting as the medium. The gray matter functions by dreaming in its turn of the impressions, making pictures of them. These are only transitory pictures; they come and go. That which remains we do not visualize at all at this moment, but that goes down into our organism. And when we remember, we look within; down there below, the impression remains.

Thus, when you see something blue, then an impression of blue sinks down into you (below, in Figure XII), here (above, in Figure XII) you form the visualization of blue. It is transitory. Then, after three days, you

observe in your brain the impression which has remained. Now, by looking inward, you visualize the blue. The first time, when you saw the blue from without, you were stimulated from outside by the blue object. The second time, when you remember, you are stimulated from within, because the blueness portrayed itself within you. In both cases, the process is the same. It is always a perception. Memory, too, is a perception. So that our day-waking consciousness is actually to be found, as it were, in the visualizing process; but, beneath the visualizing, certain processes are going on which also rise into consciousness through visualizing, namely, through the memory visualizations. Below this visualizing lies perceiving,

Figure XII

the actual perception, and only below this lies feeling. Thus, we can distinguish more intimately between the processes of visualizing and perceiving in our head organism, our thought organism. That which we have perceived we can then remember. But it remains, indeed, very unconscious; only in memory does it rise into consciousness. What really takes place in the human being is actually no longer experienced by him. When he perceives, he experiences the visualization. The effect of the perception penetrates him. Out of this effect he is able to awaken the memory. But then the unconscious has already begun.

In reality it is only here, in this region—where in waking-day consciousness we visualize—there only do we ourselves exist as human beings. There only are we really aware of ourselves as human beings (see Figure XIII). Where we do not reach down with our consciousness (we do not even reach the causes of our memories) there we are not aware of ourselves as human beings but are incorporated into the world. It is just as it is in the physical life. You inhale, the air you now have within yourself was a short while ago outside, it was the air of the outer atmosphere; it is now your air. After a short time, you give it back again to the world; you are one with the world. The air is now outside you, now inside you, now without, now within. You would not be a human being were you not united with the world in such a way that you possess not only that which is

Figure XIII

present within your skin, but that by means of which you yourself are connected with the whole surrounding atmosphere. And just as you are thus connected on your physical side, so are you connected on your spiritual side—the moment you descend into the nearest sub-conscious region, the region out of which memory arises—so are you connected with that which we call the third Hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai. Just as you are connected through your breathing with the air, so are you connected through your head organism, the lower head organism, with the third Hierarchy. The outer lobes of the brain, consisting of gray matter, only and solely belong to the earth. What is beneath (the white matter) is connected with the third Hierarchy, Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai.

Now let us descend into the region, psychologically speaking, of feeling; corporeally speaking, of the rhythmic organism, out of which the dreams of our feeling life arise. There we do not at all possess ourselves as human beings; there we are connected with what constitutes the second Hierarchy—the spiritual beings who do not incarnate in any kind of earthly body, but who remain in the spiritual world. They, however, send unceasingly their currents, their impulses, that which streams from them as forces, into the rhythmic organism of the human being. Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes—these are the beings whom we bear within our breast.

Just as we bear our human ego only in the outer lobes of our brain, so do we bear the Angeloi and Archangeloi, directly beneath this region, but still within the head organism. That is the scene of their earthly activities; there the starting-points of their activity are to be found.

In our breast we bear the second Hierarchy—Exusiai, and so forth; there in our breast are the starting-points of their activity. And if we now descend into the sphere of our motor organism, if we enter our movement organism, then in this sphere the beings of the first Hierarchy are active—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones.

The transmuted food-stuffs, the food-stuffs we have eaten, circulate in our limbs, undergo there a process which is a living combustion process. For, if we take just a single step, there arises in us a living process of combustion, a burning up of that which was outside us. We are connected with it. Through our limb and metabolic organism, we are connected as human beings with the lowest, and yet it is precisely through the limb organism that we are connected with the highest. With the first Hierarchy, with the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, we are connected by that which permeates us with spirit. Now the great question arises—it may sound trivial in that I clothe it in earthly words, but there is nothing else I can do—the question arises: With what are they occupied—these beings of the three successive Hierarchies, while they are among us—with what do they occupy themselves?

The third Hierarchy—Angeloi, Archangeloi, and so forth—concerns itself with that which has its physical organism in the head; this Hierarchy occupies itself with our thinking. Were it not concerned with our thinking, with that which takes place in our head, we would have no memory in ordinary earth life. The beings of this Hierarchy retain in us the impulses which we receive with our perceptions. They underlie the activity which manifests itself in our recollection, manifests itself in memory. They lead us through our earth life within this, our first unconscious region.

Now let us proceed to the beings of the second Hierarchy—Exusiai, and so forth. They are the beings we encounter when we have passed through the gate of death, in the life between death and a new birth. There we encounter the souls of the departed human beings who lived with us on earth; but we encounter there, above all, the spiritual beings of this second Hierarchy also, it is true, those of the third Hierarchy, but the second Hierarchy is more important. We work with them during the time between death and a new birth upon all that we have felt in our earth life, all that we have transplanted into our organism. In union with these beings of the second Hierarchy, we elaborate our next earth life.

When we stand here on the earth, we have the feeling that the spiritual beings of the divine world are in us. When we are there beyond in the sphere between death and a new birth, we have the reverse thought. The Angeloi, Archangeloi and so forth, who guide us through our earth life in the manner indicated, live on the same plane with us, so to speak, after our death. Directly underneath are the beings of the second Hierarchy. With them we work on the forming, the shaping, of our inner karma. And all that I told you yesterday about the karma of health and disease we elaborate with these beings, the beings of the second Hierarchy.

And if we look still deeper in the time between death and a new birth, that is, if we, as it were, look through the beings of the second Hierarchy, then below we discover the beings of the first Hierarchy, Cherubim, Seraphim, and Thrones. As earthly human beings, we seek the highest Gods above us. We seek as human beings between death and a new birth in the profoundest depths below us for the highest Divinity attainable by us. And while we are working with the beings of the second Hierarchy, dab- orating our inner karma between death and a new birth, that inner karma which afterwards appears reflected in the healthy or diseased constitution of our next earth life, while we are engaged in this work, while we work with ourselves and with other human beings upon the bodies which will then appear in our next earth life, the beings of the first Hierarchy are occupied below in a peculiar way. We behold that. They stand within a certain necessity in regard to their activity, in regard to a part, a small part, of their activity. They must imitate—for they are the creators of the earthly—that which the human being has molded during his earth life but imitate it in a quite definite way.

Think of the following: In his will, the human being performs certain deeds on earth. The will belongs to the first Hierarchy. Be these deeds good or bad, wise or foolish, the beings of the first Hierarchy—Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones—have to mold the counterparts of these deeds in their own sphere.

You know, my dear friends, we live together. No matter, whether the things we do together are good or evil, for all that is good, for all that is evil, the beings of the first Hierarchy must shape the corresponding counterparts. Among the first Hierarchy all things are judged, but also shaped and fashioned. While we work on our inner karma with the second Hierarchy and with the departed human souls, we behold between death and a new birth what Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones have experienced through our earthly deeds.

Indeed, my dear friends, here upon earth the blue sky with its cloud formations and sunshine arches overhead, and at night, as the starry heavens, it vaults above us. Between death and a new birth, the activity of the Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones vaults beneath us. And we gaze down upon these Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones just as we here look up to the clouds, to the blue heaven, to the star-strewn heaven. Beneath us we behold the heavens formed of the activity of Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones. But what kind of activity is it? While we live between death and a new birth, we behold the Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones performing the activity which results as the just and compensating activity from our own deeds on earth—our own and the earthly deeds lived through with other human beings. The Gods are obliged to exercise the compensating activity, and we behold it as our heavens which are now beneath us. In the deeds of the Gods we behold the consequences of our earthly deeds, whether good or bad, wise or foolish. And by looking downward we relate ourselves, between death and a new birth, to the reflection of our deeds in the same way as in earthly life we relate ourselves to the vaulting heaven above us.

We carry our inner karma into our inner organism. We bring it back with us onto the earth as our faculties and talents, our genius and our stupidity. What the Gods fashion there beneath us, what they must experience in consequence of our earth lives, confronts us in our next earth life as the facts of destiny which come to meet us from without. We may say that what we pass through to which we are asleep carries us into our destiny in our earth life. But in this lives what the Gods in question, those of the first Hierarchy, had to experience as the consequences of our deeds in their domain during the time between our death and a new birth.

One always feels the need of expressing such things in pictures. Let us imagine ourselves standing somewhere in the physical world. The sky is overcast; we behold the clouded sky. Soon thereafter, a rain begins to trickle down; the rain is falling. What previously hovered above us we now see on the dripping fields, on the dripping trees. If we look back, with the eye of the initiate, from human life into the time we passed through between our last death and our last birth, we then see therein, first of all, the forming of divine deeds, the consequences of our own deeds in our last earth life. We then see how this spiritually rains down and becomes our destiny.

If I meet a human being who has significance for me in earth life, who has a determining influence upon my destiny, what occurs with (his meeting of the other human being has been previously experienced by the Gods as a result of what I have had in common with him in a former earl h life. If I am transferred during my earth life to some locality important to me or placed in some important calling, all that comes to me thus as outer destiny is a likeness of what the Gods have experienced—Gods of the first Hierarchy—as a consequence of my former earth life, during the time when I was myself between death and a new birth.

Indeed, if you think abstractly, then you think: “There we have the former earth lives; the deeds of the former earth lives work across into the present. Previously they were causes; now they are effects.” With this we cannot think very far; we have actually little more than words when we make this statement. But behind what we thus describe as the law of karma lie the deeds of the Gods, experiences of the Gods; and behind all that lie the other facts.

If we human beings approach our destiny only through feeling, then we look up, according to our faith, either to the Gods or to some Providence, upon which we feel the course of our earth life depending. But the Gods—those whom we know as the beings of the first Hierarchy, Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones—have, as it were, a reverse religious confession. They feel their necessity lies with men on earth whose creators they arc. The aberrations human beings suffer, and the progress they enjoy, must be equalized by the Gods. And what the Gods prepare for us as our destiny in a subsequent life they have already lived through before us.

These truths must be found again through Anthroposophy. Out of a consciousness not fully developed, they were perceived by mankind in an erstwhile instinctive clairvoyance. The ancient wisdom contained such truths. Then only a dim feeling about them remained. In much that meets us in the spiritual life of mankind, there is still a dim feeling for these things. You need only remember the verse by Angelus Silesius which you will also find quoted elsewhere in my writings. To a narrow religious understanding it sounds like an impertinence:

Without me, God could not a moment live at most.
Came I to naught, must He from need give up the ghost.

Ohn' mich könnt' Gott ein Nu nicht leben.
Würd' ich zunicht, müsst' er vor Not den Geist aufgeben.

Angelus Silesius went over to Roman Catholicism and as a Catholic wrote such verses. To him it was still clear that the Gods are dependent on the world, just as the world is dependent on the Gods, that this dependence is something mutual, and that the Gods must direct their life according to the life of human beings. But the divine life acts creatively and has its effect in turn in the destiny of human beings. Angelus Silesius, dimly feeling, but not knowing the exact truth, said:

Without me, God could not a moment live at most.
Came I to naught, must He from need give up the ghost.

World and Godhead depend on one another and work into one another. Today we have seen this interactivity in the example of human destiny, of karma.

Yesterday I attempted to show the methods employed by Eastern spirituality for approaching the spiritual world and pointed out how anybody who wished to pursue this path into the super-sensible more or less dispensed with the bridge linking him with his fellow men. He chose a path different from that which establishes communication within society by means of language, thought, and perception of the ego. And I showed how it was initially attempted not to understand through the word what one's fellow man wished to say, what one wants to understand from him, but to live within the words. This process of living within the word was enhanced by forming the words into certain aphorisms. One lived in these and repeated them, so that the forces accrued in the soul by this process were strengthened further by repetition. And I showed how something was achieved in the condition of the soul that might be called a state of Inspiration, in the sense in which I have used the word, except that the sages of the ancient East were, of course, members of their race: their ego-consciousness was much less developed than in later epochs of human evolution. They thus entered into the spiritual world in a more instinctive manner, and because the whole thing was instinctive and thus resulted, in a sense, from a healthy drive within human nature, in the earliest times it could not lead to the pathological afflictions of which we have also spoken. In later times steps were taken by the so-called Mysteries to guard against the rise of such afflictions as I have described to you. I said that those Westerners who desire to gain knowledge of the spiritual world must approach this in another way. Humanity has progressed in the interim. Different soul faculties have evolved, so that one cannot simply renew the ancient Eastern path of spiritual development. Within the realm of spiritual life one cannot long to return in a reactionary manner to prehistoric or earlier historical periods of human evolution. For Western civilization, the path leading into the spiritual worlds is that of Imagination. This faculty of Imagination, however, must be integrated organically into the life of the soul as a whole. This can come about in the most varied ways, just as the Eastern path of development was not unequivocally predetermined but could take numerous different courses. Today I would like to describe the path into the spiritual world that conforms to the needs of Western civilization and is particularly suited to anyone immersed in the scientific life of the West.

In my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, I have described an entirely safe path leading to the super-sensible, but I describe it in such a way that it applies for everybody, above all for those who have not devoted their lives to science. Today I shall describe a path into the super-sensible that is much more for the scientist. All my experience has taught me that for such a scientist a kind of precondition for this cognitional striving is to take up what is presented in my book, Philosophy of Freedom. I will explain what I mean by this. This book, Philosophy of Freedom, was not written with the same intent as most books written today. Nowadays books are written simply in order to inform the reader of the book's subject matter, so that the reader learns the book's contents in accordance with his education, his scientific training, or the special knowledge he already possesses. This was not my primary Intention in writing Philosophy of Freedom, and thus it will not be popular with those who read books only to acquire Information. The purpose of the book is to make the reader directly engage his thinking activity on every page.

In a sense, the book is only a kind of musical score that one must read with inner thought activity in order to progress, as the result of one's own efforts, from one thought to the next. The book constantly presupposes the mental collaboration of the reader. Moreover, the book presupposes that which the soul becomes in the process of such mental exertion. Anyone who has really worked through this book with his own inner thinking activity and cannot confess that he has come to know himself in a part of his inner life in which he had not known himself previously has not read Philosophy of Freedom properly. One should feel that one is being lifted out of one's usual thinking [Vorstellen] into a thinking independent of the senses [ein sinnlichkeitsfreies Denken], in which one is fully immersed, so that one feels free of the conditions of physical existence. Whoever cannot confess this to himself has actually misunderstood the book. One should be able to say to oneself: now I know, as a result of the inner thought activity I myself have expended, what pure thinking actually is.

The strange thing is that most Western philosophers totally deny the reality of the very thing that my Philosophy of Freedom seeks to awaken as something real in the soul of the reader. Countless philosophers have expounded the view that pure thinking does not exist but is bound to contain traces, however diluted, of sense perception. A strong impression is left that philosophers who maintain this have never really studied mathematics or gone into the difference between analytical and empirical mechanics. Specialization, however, has already grown to such an extent that nowadays philosophy is often pursued by people totally lacking any knowledge of mathematical thinking. The pursuit of philosophy is actually impossible without a grasp of at least the spirit of mathematical thinking. We have seen what Goethe's attitude was toward this spirit of mathematical thinking, even though he made no claim himself to any special training in mathematics. Many thus would deny the existence of the very faculty I would like those who study The Philosophy of Freedom to acquire.

And now let us imagine a reader who simply sets about working through The Philosophy of Freedom within the context of his ordinary consciousness in the way I have described: he will, of course, not be able to claim that he has been transported into a super-sensible world. For I intentionally wrote The Philosophy of Freedom in the way that I did so that it would present itself to the world initially as a purely philosophical work. Just think what a disservice would have been accorded anthroposophically oriented spiritual science if I had begun immediately with spiritual scientific writings! These writings would, of course, have been disregarded by all trained philosophers as the worst kind of dilettantism, as the efforts of an amateur. To begin with I had to write purely philosophically. I had to present the world with something thought out philosophically in the strict sense, though it transcended the normal bounds of philosophy. At some point, however, the transition had to be made from a merely philosophical and scientific kind of writing to a spiritual scientific writing. This occurred at a time when I was invited to write a special chapter about Goethe's scientific writings for a German biography of Goethe. This was at the end of the last century, in the 1890s. And so I was to write the chapter on Goethe's scientific writings: I had, in fact, finished it and sent it to the publisher when there appeared another work of mine, called Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age. The book was a bridge between pure philosophy and an anthroposophical orientation. When this work came out, my manuscript was returned to me by the publisher, who had enclosed nothing but my fee so that I would not make a fuss, for thereby the legal obligations had been met. Among the learned pedants, there was obviously no interest in anything—not even a single chapter devoted to the development of Goethe's attitude toward natural science written by one who had authored this book on mysticism.

I will now assume that The Philosophy of Freedom has been worked through already with one's ordinary consciousness in the way described. Now we are in the right frame of mind for our souls to undertake in a healthy way what I described yesterday, if only very briefly, as the path leading into Imagination. It is possible to pursue this path in a way consonant with Western life if we attempt to surrender ourselves completely to the world of outer phenomena, so that we allow them to work upon us without thinking about them but still perceiving them. In ordinary waking life, you will agree, we are constantly perceiving, but actually in the very process of doing so we are continually saturating our percepts with concepts; in scientific thinking we interweave percepts and concepts entirely systematically, building up systems of concepts and so on. By having acquired the capacity for the kind of thinking that gradually emerges from The Philosophy of Freedom, one can become capable of such acute inner activity that one can exclude and suppress conceptual thinking from the process of perception and surrender oneself to bare percepts. But there is something else we can do in order to strengthen the forces of the soul and absorb percepts unelaborated by concepts. One can, moreover, refrain from formulating the judgments that arise when these percepts are joined to concepts and create instead symbolic images, or images of another sort, alongside the images seen by the eye, heard by the ear, and rendered by the senses of warmth, touch, and so on. If we thus bring our activity of perception into a state of flux, infusing it with life and movement, not as we do when forming concepts but by elaborating perception symbolically or artistically, we will develop much sooner the power of allowing the percepts to permeate us as such. An excellent preparation for this kind of cognition is to school oneself rigorously in what I have characterized as phenomenalism, as elaboration of phenomena. If one has really striven not to allow inertia to carry one through the veil of sense perception upon reaching the boundary of the material world, in order to look for all kinds of metaphysical explanations in terms of atoms and molecules, but has instead used concepts to set the phenomena in order and follow them through to the archetypal phenomena, one has already undergone a training that enables one to isolate the phenomena from everything conceptual. And if one still symbolizes the phenomena, turns them into images, one acquires a potent soul forte enabling one to absorb the external world free from concepts.

Obviously we cannot expect to achieve this quickly. Spiritual research demands of us far more than research in a laboratory or observatory. It demands above all an intense effort of the individual will. If one has practiced such an inner representation of symbolic images for a certain length of time and striven in addition to dwell contemplatively upon images that one keeps present in the soul in a way analogous to the mental representation of phenomena, images that otherwise only pass away when we race from sensation to sensation, from experience to experience; if one has accustomed oneself to dwell contemplatively for longer and longer periods of time upon an image that one has fully understood, that one has formed oneself or taken at somebody else's suggestion so that it cannot be a reminiscence, and if one repeats this process again and again, one strengthens one's inner soul forces and finally realizes that one experiences something of which one previously had no inkling. The only way to obtain even an approximate idea of such an experience, which takes place only in one's inner being—one must be very careful not to misunderstand this—is to recall particularly lively dream-images. One must keep in mind, however, that dream-images are always reminiscences that can never be related directly to anything external and are thus a sort of reaction coming toward one out of one's own inner self. If one experiences to the full the images formed in the way described above, this is something entirely real, and one begins to understand that one is encountering within oneself the spiritual element that actuates the processes of growth, that is the power of growth. One realizes that one has entered into apart of one's human constitution, something within one; something that unites itself with one; something that is active within but that one previously had experienced only unconsciously. Experienced unconsciously in what way?

I have told you that from birth until the change of teeth a soul-spiritual entity is at work structuring the human being and that this then emancipates itself to an extent. Later, between the change of teeth and puberty, another such soul-spiritual entity, which dips down in a way into the physical body, awakens the erotic drives and much else as well. All this occurs unconsciously. If, however, we use fully consciously such measures of soul as I have described to observe this permeation of the physical organism by the soul-spiritual, one sees how such processes work within man and how man is actually given over to the external world continually, from birth onward. Nowadays this giving-over of oneself to the external world is held to be nothing but abstract perception or abstract cognition. This is not so. We are surrounded by a world of color, sound, and warmth and by all kinds of sense impressions, By elaborating these with our concepts we create yet further impressions that have an effect on us. By experiencing all this consciously we come to see that in the unconscious experience of color- and sound-impressions that we have from childhood onward there is something spiritual that suffuses our organization. And when, for example, we take up the sense of love between the change of teeth and puberty, this is not something originating in the physical body but rather something that the cosmos gives us through the colors, sounds, and streaming warmth that reach us. Warmth is something other than warmth; light something other than light in the physical sense; sound is something other than physical sound. Through our sense impressions we are conscious only of what I would term external sound and external color. And when we surrender ourselves to nature, we do not encounter the ether-waves, atoms, and so on of which modern physics and physiology dream; rather, it is spiritual forces that are at work, forces that fashion us between birth and death into what we are as human beings. Once we tread the path of knowledge I have described, we become aware that it is the external world that forms us. We become best able to observe consciously what lives and embodies itself within us when we acquire above all a clear sense that spirit is at work in the external world. lt is of all things phenomenology that enables us to perceive how spirit works within the external world. It is through phenomenology, and not abstract metaphysics, that we attain knowledge of the spirit by consciously observing, by raising to consciousness, what otherwise we would do unconsciously, by observing how, through the sense world, spiritual forces enter our being and work formatively upon it.

Yesterday I pointed out to you that the Eastern sage in a way disregards the significance of Speech, thought, and the perception of the ego. He experiences these things differently and cultivates a different attitude of soul toward these things, because language, perception of thoughts, and perception of the ego initially tend to lead us away from the spiritual world into social contact with other human beings. In everyday physical existence we purchase our social life at the price of listening right through language, looking through thoughts, and feeling our way right through the perception of the ego. The Eastern sage took upon himself not to listen right through the word but to live within it. He took upon himself not to look right through the thought but to live within the thought, and so forth. We in the West have as our task more to contemplate man himself in following the path into super-sensible worlds.

At this point it must be remembered that man bears a certain kind of sensory organization within as well. I have already described the three inner senses through which he becomes aware of his inner being, just as he perceives what goes on outside him. We have a sense of balance by means of which we sense the spatial orientation appropriate to us as human beings and are thereby able to work inside it with our will. We have a sense of movement by means of which we know that we are moving even in the dark: we know this from an inner sensing and not merely because we perceive our changing relationship to other objects we pass. We have an actual inner sense of movement. And we have a sense of life, by means of which we can perceive our general state of well-being, the constant changes in the inner condition of our life forces. These three inner senses work together with the will during man's first seven years. We are guided by our sense of balance, and a being who initially cannot move at all and later can only crawl is transformed into one who can stand upright and walk. This ability to walk upright is effected by the sense of balance, which places us into the world. The sense of movement and the sense of life likewise contribute toward the development of our full humanity. Anybody who is capable of applying the standards of objective observation employed in the scientist's laboratory to the development of man's physical body and his soul-spirit will soon discover how the forces that worked formatively upon man principally during the fast seven years emancipate themselves and begin to assume a different aspect from the time of the change of teeth onward. By this time a person is less intensively connected to that within than he was as a child. A child is closely bound up inwardly with human equilibrium, movement, and life. Something else, however, is evolving simultaneously during this emancipation of balance, movement, and life. There takes place a certain adjustment of the three other senses: the senses of smell, taste, and touch. It is extremely interesting to observe in detail the way in which a child gradually finds his way into life, orienting himself by means of the senses of taste, smell, and touch. Of course, this can be seen most obviously in early life, but anybody trained to do so can see it clearly enough later on as well. In a certain way, the child pushes out of himself balance, movement, and life but at the same time draws more into himself the qualities of the sense of smell, the sense of taste, and the sense of touch. In the course of an extended phase of development the one is, so to speak, exhaled and the other inhaled, so that the forces of balance, movement, and life, which press from within outward, and the qualitative orientations of smell, taste, and touch, which press from without inward, meet within our organism. This is effected by the interpenetration of the two sense-triads. As a result of this interpenetration, there arises within man a firm sense of self; in this way man First experiences himself as a true ego. Now we are cut off from the spirituality of the external world by speech and by our faculties of perceiving thoughts and perceiving the egos of others—and rightly so, for if it were otherwise we could never in this physical life become social beings—in just the same way, inasmuch as the qualities of smell, taste, and touch encounter balance, movement, and life, we are inwardly cut off from the triad life, movement, and balance, which would otherwise reveal itself to us directly. The experiences of the senses of smell, taste, and touch place themselves, as it were, in front of what we would otherwise experience through our sense of balance, our sense of movement, and our sense of life. And the result of this development toward Imagination of which I have spoken consists in this: the Oriental comes to a halt at language in order to live within it; he halts at the thought in order to live there; he halts at the perception of the ego in order to live within it. By these means he makes his way outward into the spiritual world. The Oriental comes to a halt within these; we, by striving for Imagination, by a kind of absorption of external percepts devoid of concepts, engage in an activity that is in a way the opposite of that in which the Oriental engages with regard to language, perception of thoughts, and perception of the ego. The Oriental comes to a halt at these and enters into them. In striving for Imagination, however, one wends one's way through the sensations of smell, taste, and touch, penetrating into the inner realm so that, by one's remaining undisturbed by sensations of smell, taste, and touch, the experiences stemming from balance, movement, and life come forth to meet one.

It is a great moment when one has penetrated through what I have described as the sense-triad of taste, smell, and touch, and one confronts the naked essence of movement, balance, and life.

With such a preparation behind us, it is interesting to study what Western mysticism often sets forth. Most certainly, I am very far from decrying the elements of poetry, beauty, and imaginative expression in the writings of many mystics. I most certainly admire what, for instance, St. Theresa, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and others have to tell us, and indeed Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler. But all that arises in this way reveals itself to the true spiritual scientist as something that arises when one traverses the inward-leading path yet does not penetrate beyond the region of smell, taste, and touch. Read what has been written by individuals who have described with particular clarity what they have experienced in this way. They speak of a tasting of that within, of a tasting regarding what exists as soul-spirit in man's inner being; they also speak of a smelling and, in a certain sense, of a touching. And anybody who knows how to read Mechthild of Magdeburg, for instance, or St. Theresa, in the right way will see that they follow this inward path but never penetrate right through taste, smell, and touch. They use beautiful poetic imagery for their descriptions, but they are speaking only of how one can touch, savor, and sniff oneself inwardly.

For it is far less agreeable to see the true nature of reality with senses that are developed truly spiritually than to read the accounts given by voluptuous mysticism—the only term for it—which in the final analysis only gratifies a refined, inward-looking egotism of soul. As I say, much as this mysticism is to be admired—and I do admire it—the true spiritual scientist must realize that it stops halfway: what is manifest in the splendid poetic imagery of Mechthild of Magdeburg, St. Theresa, and the others is really only what is smelt, tasted, and touched before breaking through into the actual inner realm. Truth is occasionally unpleasant, and at times perhaps even cruel, but modern humanity has no business becoming rickety in soul by following a nebulous, imperfect mysticism. What is required today is to penetrate into man's true inner nature with strength of spirit, with the same strength we have achieved in a much more disciplined way for the external world by pursuing natural science. And it is not in vain that we have achieved this. Natural science must not be undervalued! Indeed, we must seek to acquire the disciplined and methodical side of natural science. And it is precisely when one has assimilated this scientific method that one appreciates the achievements of a nebulous mysticism at their true worth, but one also knows that this nebulous mysticism is not what spiritual science must foster. On the contrary, the task of spiritual science is to seek clear comprehension of man's own inner being, whereby a clear, spiritual understanding of the external world is made possible in turn.

I know that if I did not speak in the way that truth demands I could enjoy the support of every nebulous, blathering mystic who takes up mysticism in order to satisfy his voluptuous soul. That cannot be our concern here, however; rather, we must seek forces that can be used for life, spiritual forces that are capable of informing our scientific and social life.

When one has penetrated as far as that which lives in the sense of balance, the sense of life, and the sense of movement, one has reached something that one experiences initially as the true inner being of man because of its transparency. The very nature of the thing shows us that we cannot penetrate any deeper. But then again one has more than enough at this initial stage, for what we discover is not the stuff of nebulous, mystical dreams. What one finds is a true organology, and above all one finds within oneself the essence of that which is within equilibrium, of that which is in movement, of that which is suffused with life. One finds this within oneself.

Then, after experiencing this, something entirely extraordinary has occurred. Then, at the appropriate moment, one begins to notice something. An essential prerequisite is, as I have said, to have thought through The Philosophy of Freedom beforehand. This is then left, so to speak, to one side, while pursuing the inner path of contemplation, of meditation. One has advanced as far as balance, movement, and life. One lives within this life, this movement, this balance. Entirely parallel with our pursuit of the way of contemplation and meditation but without any other activity on our part, our thinking regarding The Philosophy of Freedom has undergone a transformation. What can be experienced in such a philosophy of freedom in pure thinking has, as a result of our having worked inwardly on our souls in another sphere, become something utterly different. lt has become fuller, richer in content. While on the one hand we have penetrated into our inner being and have deepened our power of Imagination, on the other hand we have raised what resulted from our mental work on The Philosophy of Freedom up out of ordinary consciousness. Thoughts that formerly had floated more or less abstractly within pure thinking have been transformed into substantial forces that are alive in our consciousness: what once was pure thought is now Inspiration. We have developed Imagination, and pure thinking has become Inspiration. Following this path further, we become able to keep apart what we have gained following two paths that must be sharply differentiated: on the one hand, what we have obtained as Inspiration from pure thinking—the life that at a lower level is thinking, and then becomes a thinking raised to Inspiration—and on the other hand what we experience as conditions of equilibrium, movement, and life. Now we can bring these modes of experience together. We can unite the inner with the outer. The fusion of Imagination and Inspiration brings us in turn to Intuition. What have we accomplished now? Well, I would like to answer this question by approaching it from another side. First of all I must draw attention to the steps taken by the Oriental who wishes to rise further after having schooled himself by means of the mantras, after having lived within the language, within the word. He now learns not only to live in the rhythms of language but also in a certain way to experience breathing consciously, in a certain way to experience breathing artificially by altering it in the most varied ways. For him this is the next highest step—but again not something that can be taken over directly by the West. What does the Eastern student of yoga attain by surrendering himself to conscious, regulated, varied breathing? Oh, he experiences something quite extraordinary when he inhales. When inhaling he experiences a quality of air that is not found when we experience air as a purely physical substance but only when we unite ourselves with the air and thus comprehend it spiritually. As he breathes in, a genuine student of yoga experiences something that works formatively upon his whole being, that works spiritually; something that does not expend itself in the life between birth and death, but, entering into us through the spirituality of the outer air, engenders in us something that passes with us through the portal of death. To experience the breathing process consciously means taking part in something that persists when we have laid aside the physical body. For to experience the breathing process consciously is to experience the reaction of our inner being to inhalation. In experiencing this we experience something that preceded birth in our existence as soul-spirit—or let us say preceded our conception—something that had already cooperated in shaping us as embryos and then continued to work within our organism in childhood. To grasp the breathing process consciously means to comprehend ourselves beyond birth and death. The advance from an experience of the aphorism and the word to an experience of the breathing process represented a further penetration into an inspired comprehension of the eternal in man. We Westerners must experience much the same thing—but in a different sphere.

What, in fact, is the process of perception? It is nothing but a modified process of inhalation. As we breathe in, the air presses upon our diaphragm and upon the whole of our being. Cerebral fluid is forced up through the spinal column into the brain. In this way a connection is established between breathing and cerebral activity. And the part of the breathing that can be discerned as active within the brain works upon our sense activity as perception. Perception is thus a kind of branch of inhalation. In exhalation, on the other hand, cerebral fluid descends and exerts pressure on the circulation of the blood. The descent of cerebral fluid is bound up with the activity of the will and also of exhalation. Anybody who really studies The Philosophy of Freedom, however, will discover that when we achieve pure thinking, thinking and willing coincide. Pure thinking is fundamentally an expression of will. Thus pure thinking turns out to be related to what the Oriental experienced in the process of exhalation. Pure thinking is related to exhalation just as perception is related to inhalation. We have to go through the same process as the yogi but in a way that is, so to speak, pushed back more into the inner life. Yoga depends upon a regulation of the breathing, both inhalation and exhalation, and in this way comes into contact with the eternal in man. What can Western man do? He can raise into clear soul experiences perception on the one hand and thinking on the other. He can unite in his inner experience perception and thinking, which are otherwise united only abstractly, formally, and passively, so that inwardly, in his soul-spirit, he has the same experience as he has physically in breathing in and out. Inhalation and exhalation are physical experiences: when they are harmonized, one consciously experiences the eternal. In everyday life we experience thinking and perception. By bringing mobility into the life of the soul, one experiences the pendulum, the rhythm, the continual interpenetrating vibration of perception and thinking. A higher reality evolves for the Oriental in the process of inhalation and exhalation; the Westerner achieves a kind of breathing of the soul-spirit in place of the physical breathing of the yogi. He achieves this by developing within himself the living process of modified inhalation in perception and modified exhalation in pure thinking, by weaving together concept, thinking, and perceiving. And gradually, by means of this rhythmic pulse, by means of this rhythmic breathing process in perception and thinking, he struggles to rise up to spiritual reality in Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition. And when I indicated in my book The Philosophy of Freedom, at first only philosophically, that reality arises out of the interpenetration of perception and thinking, I intended, because the book was meant as a schooling for the soul, to show what Western man can do in order to enter the spiritual world itself. The Oriental says: systole, diastole; inhalation, exhalation. In place of these the Westerner must put perception and thinking. Where the Oriental speaks of the development of physical breathing, we in the West say: development of a breathing of the soul-spirit within the cognitional process through perception and thinking.

All this had to be contrasted with what can be experienced as a kind of dead end in Western spiritual evolution. Let me explain what I mean. In 1841 Michelet, the Berlin philosopher, published posthumously Hegel's works on natural philosophy. Hegel had worked at the end of the eighteenth century, together with Schelling, at laying the foundations of a system of natural philosophy. Schelling, as a young firebrand, had constructed his natural philosophy in a remarkable way out of what he called “intellectual Intuition” [intellektuale Anschauung]. He reached a point, however, where he could make no further progress. He immersed himself in the mystics at a certain point. His work, Bruno, or Concerning the Divine and Natural Principle in Things, and his fine treatise on human freedom and the origin of evil testify so wonderfully to this immersion. But for all this he could make no progress and began to hold back from expressing himself at all. He kept promising to follow up with a philosophy that would reveal the true nature of those hidden forces at which his earlier natural philosophy had only hinted. When Michelet published Hegel's natural philosophy in 1841, Schelling's long-expected and oft-promised “philosophy of revelation” had still not been vouchsafed to the public. He was summoned to Berlin. What he h ad to offer, however, was not the actual spirit that was to permeate the natural philosophy he had founded. He had striven for an intellectual intuition. He ground to a halt at this point, because he was unable to use Imagination to enter the sphere of which I spoke to you today. And so he was stuck there. Hegel, who had a more rational intellect, had taken over Schelling's thoughts and carried them further by applying pure thinking to the observation of nature. That was the origin of Hegel's natural philosophy. And so one had Schelling's unfulfilled promise to bring forth nature out of the spirit, and then one had Hegel's natural philosophy, which was discarded by science in the second half of the nineteenth century. It was misunderstood, to be sure, but it was bound to remain so, because it was impossible to gain any kind of connection to the ideas contained in Hegel's natural philosophy with regard to phenomenology, the true observation of nature. It is a kind of wonderful incident: Schelling traveling from Munich to Berlin, where great things are expected of him, and it turns out that he has nothing to say. It was a disappointment for all who believed that through Hegel's natural philosophy revelations about nature would emerge from pure thinking. Thus it was in a way demonstrated historically, in that Schelling had attained the level of intellectual intuition but not that of genuine Imagination and in that Hegel showed as well that if pure thinking does not lead on to Imagination or to Inspiration—that is, to the level of nature's secrets ... it was shown that the evolution of the West had thereby run up against a dead end. There was as yet nothing to counter what had come over from the Orient and engendered skepticism; one could counter with nothing that was suffused with the spirit. And anyone who had immersed himself lovingly in Schelling and Hegel and has thus been able to see, with love in his heart, the limitations of Western philosophy, had to strive for anthroposophy. He had to strive to bring about an anthroposophically oriented spiritual science for the West, so that we will possess something that works creatively in the spirit, just as the East had worked in the spirit through systole and diastole in their interaction. We in the West can allow perception and thinking to resound through one another in the soul-spirit [das geistig-seelische Ineinanderklingenlassen], through which we can rise to something more than a merely abstract science. It opens the way to a living science, which is the only kind of science that enables us to dwell within the element of truth. After all the failures of the Kantian, Schellingian, and Hegelian philosophies, we need a philosophy that, by revealing the way of the spirit, can show the real relationship between truth and science, a spiritualized science, in which truth can really live to the great benefit of future human evolution.

Before Christ came to earth and became a man so much darkening had taken place that even masters in physical life no longer had the clear knowledge of super-sensible things that they had previously. After Christ became flesh things brightened up slowly. That's why some initiates didn't have a clear idea of the importance of the Mystery of Golgotha, and this was true of a great initiate who had known practically all the spiritual things that a man could know in his Egyptian initiation.

First higher beings reveal something to mankind's great initiates, and then the latter must pass this on as teachings. And no one can arrive at knowledge unless what was already revealed is first given to him as a teaching. That's quite impossible. That's why in esoteric schools they always taught things that can let a pupil come to knowledge. That's why teachings that can be given publicly are given in theosophy to give those who long for it a chance to arrive at a knowledge of truth, to get to Christ.

The childhood of great initiates differs little from that of other men, although a few points might indicate what kind of spirit lives in the child. They have to learn and enrich their knowledge like others an thereby reacquire what they had been in earlier incarnations. This was also the case with Christian Rosenkreutz. Some men may have been surprised that he didn't see the importance of the Event of Golgotha right away. This was because the ego of Christ Jesus had been placed in him, just as the etheric body in Francis of Assisi. But since it was the ego it first had to work through to knowledge to then become fully effective. Therewith he had a high and important mission.

The true and only name of Christ is “I am”; anyone who doesn't know and understand this and calls him something else doesn't know anything about him at all. I am is his only name.

Today we are going to explain how Karma works and make clear to ourselves how it is connected with the so-called three worlds. All other worlds, with the exception of these three, hardly come into consideration when it is a question of human development; the relevant three are the physical, astral and mental worlds. During the day condition of consciousness, we are in the physical world; there, in a certain sense, we have purely and simply the physical world before us. We must only direct our senses outwards in order to have the physical world as such before us. But the moment we look on the physical world with interest, approach it with feeling, we are already partly in the astral world and only partly in the physical world. Only the beginnings of living purely in the physical world are present today in human life; for example, when one simply contemplates a work of art without experiencing any wish to possess it. Such a contemplation of a work of art is an important act of the soul, when, forgetful of self, one works as though on a spiritual task. This living purely in the physical world, forgetting oneself, is very rare. It is only seldom that nature is looked at in pure contemplation, for usually many other feelings are involved. Nevertheless, this selfless living in physical nature is of the very greatest importance; for only so can man have a true consciousness of self. In all other worlds the ordinary man is still immersed in a world of unconsciousness.

In the physical world man is not only aware of his self, he can also become selfless. His day-consciousness is however not yet selfless if he is unable to forget himself. Here the physical world is not the hindrance, but the playing in of the astral and mental worlds. If, however, he forgets himself, the separateness vanishes and he finds his ‘self’ spread out into what is outside. But it is only in physical life that present day man can develop this consciousness of self without separateness. Consciousness of self we call the ego. Man can only become conscious of self within an environment. Only when he gains senses adapted to a particular world can he become self-conscious in that world. Now he only has senses for the physical world but the other worlds continually play into the consciousness of self and cloud it. When feelings play into it, it is the astral world; when one thinks, the mental world plays into the consciousness.

Most people's thoughts are nothing more than reflections of the environment. It is very rare to have thoughts which are not so connected. Man only has such higher thoughts when senses awaken for the mental world, so that he not only thinks the thoughts, but perceives them around him as beings. He then has the same consciousness of self in the mental world as that possessed by the Chela, the Initiate. When someone tries to eliminate first the physical world around him, then all impulses, passions, changes of mood and so on, usually no thoughts are left. Let us only try to picture everything that influences man inasmuch as he lives in space and time. Let us try to call up before the soul everything connected with the place where we live and the time in which we live. Everything that the soul continually has within it as thoughts is dependent on space and time. All this has a transient value. One must therefore pass on from the reflected impressions of the senses and allow an enduring thought content to live in one in order gradually to develop devachanic senses. A sentence such as that from ‘Light on the Path,’ “Before the eyes can see they must give up tears”,^* holds good for all times and all places. When we allow such a sentence to live within us, then something lives in us which is beyond space and time. This is a means, a force, which gradually allows devachanic senses to awaken in the soul for the eternal in the world.

Thus man has his share in the three worlds. It is only gradually however that he has come into this situation. He was not always in the physical world; only by degrees did he become physical and acquire physical senses. Previously he was on the higher planes. He descended from the Astral Plane to the Physical and before this from the Mental Plane. The latter we divide into two parts, the Lower Mental or Rupa Plane, where everything is already differentiated, and the Upper Mental or Arupa Plane, where everything's undifferentiated in a germinal condition. Man has descended from the Arupa Plane through the Rupa Plane and the Astral Plane to the Physical Plane. Only on the Physical Plane did he become conscious of self. On the Astral Plane he is not conscious of self and on the Rupa and Arupa Planes still less so. On the Physical Plane man for the first time came into contact with external objects in his immediate surroundings. Whenever a being encounters external objects, this marks the beginning of self-awareness. On the higher planes life was still completely enclosed within itself. When man lived on the Astral Plane the only reality he had arose out of his own inner life. This was in its very nature a picture consciousness. Even though this was a vivid experience it was nevertheless only a picture that arose within him. Of this, present daydreams are only a weak reminder. When for instance an astral human being approached salt, this affected him unconsciously and a picture of it would have arisen within him. If he approached someone who was sympathetic to him he would not have seen him externally, but a feeling of sympathy would have arisen within him. This life in the astral was one of absolute selfhood and separateness. Only on the physical plane can man relinquish his separateness, in that through the medium of his senses he perceives objects, merges himself with his surroundings, with the Not-I. Therein lies the importance of the physical plane. If man had not set foot on the physical plane, he would never have been able to relinquish his separateness and turn his senses outwards. This is actually where work on the development of selflessness begins. Everything except pure contemplation of physical things belongs more to the Ego. One must accustom oneself to live on higher planes just as selflessly as man has begun to do on the physical plane, albeit up to now but rarely. The objects of the physical plane compel man to become selfless and to give something to the object, which is Not-I. In regard to wishes, to that which lives in the soul, man still orders his life in accordance with his desires. On the physical plane he must learn to renounce, to free his wishes from self. That is the first step.

The next step is to order himself not according to his own wishes but according to those coming to him from outside. Further, when man consciously and out of his own will does not act in accordance with the thoughts that arise within him, but surrenders himself to thoughts which are not his own, then he soars upwards to the Devachanic Plane.

We must therefore seek in the higher worlds for something lying outside us in order to relate ourselves to it as we do to objects in the physical world. Hence, we must consider the wishes of the Initiates. The occult student learns to know the wishes which are right for humanity and he orders himself in accordance with them, just as through external compulsion one orders oneself according to sense objects. Culture and the education of wishes lead us to the Astral Plane.

When one becomes selfless in thoughts, allowing the eternal thoughts of the Masters of Wisdom to pass through our souls—through concentration and meditation on the thoughts of the Masters—then one also perceives the thoughts of the surrounding world. The occult student can already become a Master on the Astral Plane, but on the Mental Plane this is only possible for the higher Masters.

In the first place man stands before us in his physical nature. He lives at the same time in the Astral and Mental Worlds, but has self-awareness only in the physical world. He must traverse the entire physical world until his awareness of self has absorbed everything that the physical world can teach him. Here man says to himself: ‘I’. He connects his ‘I’ with the things around him, learns to expand his ‘I’ through contemplation; it flows outwards and becomes one with the objects which he has completely comprehended. If we had already comprehended the entire physical world we should no longer need it, for then we should have it within us. At present however man has within him only a part of the physical world. The human being who is born as a Lemurian in his first incarnation, who is just at the point of directing his ego towards the physical world, knows as yet but little of it. When however he comes to his last incarnation, he must have united the entire physical world with his ‘I’.

In the physical world man is left to himself, here nobody leads him, he is in very truth god-forsaken. When he came forth from the astral world the Gods forsook him. In the physical world he had to learn to become his own master. Here therefore he can only live, as he actually does live, swinging pendulum-wise between truth and error. He must grope about and seek his way for himself. Now for the most part he is groping in the dark. His gaze is turned outwards; he has freedom of choice, but he is also exposed to error. On the Astral Plane man had no such freedom; there he was subject to compulsion from the powers standing behind him. Like a kind of marionette he still dangled on the strings of the Gods; they still had to guide him. In so far as man today is still a soul being, the Gods still live in him. Here freedom and unfreedom are strongly mixed. His wishes are continually changing. This ebb and flow of wishes proceeds from within. Here it is the Gods who are working in man.

Man is still less free on the Rupa Plane of the Mental World, and even less free on the Arupa Plane of the Higher Mental World. Man gradually becomes free on the Physical Plane the more, through knowledge, he has become incapable of error.

To the same degree that he works on the Physical Plane and learns to know it, he gains the faculty of carrying up into the Arupa Plane what he has learned to know in the physical world. The Arupa Plane is in itself formless, but gains form through human life. Man gathers the results of the lessons he has learned on the Physical Plane and carries these, as firmly established forms in the soul, up into the Arupa Plane. This is why in the Greek Mysteries the soul was called a bee, the Arupa Plane a beehive and the physical earth a field of flowers. This was taught in the Greek Mysteries.

Now what was it that drove the soul down on to the Physical Plane? It was desire, craving: in no other way does one descend to a lower plane except through desire. Previously the soul was in the Astral World; this is the world of wishes. Everything which the Gods in the Astral World have implanted into human beings was purely a world of wishes. The most outstanding attribute of these Pre-Lemurian beings was the wish for the physical. Man at that time had a real craving for the physical: he had within him an unconscious, blind craving for the physical. This craving is only to be appeased through its satisfaction. Through the ideas, through the aspects of knowledge which he gains, this craving for the physical disappears.

After death the soul goes to the Astral Plane and thence to the Rupa and Arupa Planes. What the soul has gained it deposits there. What it has not yet brought with it, what is still unknown, drives it down again; this engenders the longing for new incarnations. How long the soul remains on the Arupa Plane depends upon how much the human being has gained on the Physical Plane. In the case of the savage this is very little and so in his case there is only a weak flashing up on to the Arupa Plane. Then he descends again to the physical world. One who has learned everything in the physical world no longer needs to leave the Arupa Plane, no longer needs to return to the Physical Plane, for he has fulfilled his duty in the physical world.

In regard to his astral being, man today still half belongs to the astral world. The astral sheath has been half broken through and he perceives the world of the physical through his senses. When he succeeds in living on the Astral Plane as he now lives on the Physical Plane, when he learns to make observations there in a similar way, then he also carries the perceptions of the Astral Plane up to the Arupa Plane. What he then bears upwards from the Astral Plane streams however still higher from the Arupa Plane up to the next higher, the Buddhi Plane. That too which he achieves on the Rupa Plane through meditation and concentration he takes with him up to the Arupa Plane and there gives it over to still higher Planes.

That part of man which is astral is opened half towards the physical world and half towards higher worlds. When it is opened to the physical world he allows himself to be directed by the perceptions of the sense world. From the other side he is subject to direction from above. The same is the case with his mental body. The latter is also partly directed from outside and partly directed from the inner world by the Gods, the Devas. Because this is so man must dream and sleep.

Now we can also understand the nature of sleeping and dreaming. To dream means to turn towards the inner Deva-forces. Man dreams almost the whole night only he does not remember it. During sleep the mental body is continually guided by the Devas. Man has as yet no consciousness of self on the higher planes, hence in dream he is not self-conscious. He begins to be so on the Astral Plane. In deep sleep he is on the Mental Plane. There he has absolutely no self-consciousness. It is only on the Physical Plane that man is awake. Here his ego is present and finds its full expression. The astral ego cannot yet fully express itself on the Physical Plane and must therefore at times leave the body. Man must sleep in order that this can take place. The conditions of dreaming and sleeping are only a repetition of earlier development. On the Astral Plane he was in a state of dream, on the Mental Plane he slept. He repeats these conditions every night. Only when he has acquired senses for the other planes does he no longer dream and no longer sleep, but he then perceives realities. The occult pupil learns to perceive such realities on the Astral Plane. He then has a reality around him. Whoever carries his development to a still higher stage is surrounded by a reality even in deep sleep. Then begins continuity of consciousness.

One must understand this sequence of delicate concepts; then one comprehends why man, when he has been on the higher planes again descends. What he does not yet know, what he has not yet recognised, what the Buddhists call Avidja, not-knowing, drives him back into physical existence. Avidja is the first of the forces of karma. According to Buddhistic teaching there are twelve Karmic forces which drive man down. These together are called Nidanas. As man gradually descends, the way in which Karma takes hold becomes apparent. Avidja is the first effect. It is the opposite pole to what meets man on the physical plane. Because he treads the physical plane and there unites himself with something, a reaction is called forth. Action always calls forth reaction. Everything that man does in the physical world also produces a reaction and works back as Karma. Action and reaction is the technique, the mechanism of Karma.

• *. The original English of Mabel Collins is “Before the eyes can see they must be incapable of tears.”

In the previous lecture, we took a look at the essence of human nature. Today, we will continue this consideration. Once we have learned the meaning of human development, we will better understand the main idea of John's gospel. This developmental process of humanity is the theme of the opening chapters. It wants to say, firstly, that it is this Christ Jesus that I want to make you understand. Secondly, the developmental process of all humanity is influenced by this Christ in a very specific way. From Christ onwards, the developmental process of the individual human being also became quite different. We must clearly understand the parallel between the developmental process of all humanity and that of the individual human being.

In the human being, the three highest elements of being are still undeveloped today. The higher these elements are in nature, the later they are worked through by the human being. Let us take a look at the evolution of humanity on earth through the different races. The main races of prehistoric times are the polaric, the hyperborean and the lemuric. In the first main race, the physical body is developed, in the second main race the etheric body, in the third the astral body, the body of feeling. So far man has progressed in the Lemurian period.

During the Atlantean period, the fourth main race, the sentient soul is formed out of the sentient body, followed by the rational soul and finally, towards the end of Atlantis, the consciousness soul with the ego, with which the fifth main race began, our present race. Before the awakening of the consciousness soul, the main abilities of man were language and memory. He could not yet combine, reason logically or calculate. It is only with the dawning of consciousness that the fifth main race begins, whose mission is to integrate Manas, the spirit self, into the human being and to educate it. With the awakening of Manas, the first sub-race of our root race develops. It is the Indian pre-Vedic culture. It is followed by the Persian, then the Chaldean-Egyptian-Hebrew, and fourthly the Greek-Latin. We ourselves belong to the fifth sub-race. We are going through the fifth stage of the development of Manas. We will be followed by the sixth sub-race with still other, higher tasks of human development.

The task of expressing the principle of manas is common to all of them. Each of the races does this in a special way. In detail, it happens something like this:

In the first sub-race, the sentient body or astral body had to accomplish the general manasic work of empathy. Our present physical body comprises a manifold, complicated sum of organ systems. In the age in which we live, it includes the bone and muscle system. The entire sensory apparatus is formed by the forces of the physical body. The etheric body causes all vegetative functions, all organs that serve nutrition, digestion, and reproduction. The astral body builds the nervous system into this bodily complex. All unconscious movements, all reflexes depend on the sympathetic nervous system, which extends symmetrically on both sides of the spinal cord. We call the part that extends into the abdominal cavity the solar plexus. In the Lemurian period, the sympathetic nervous system was the actual astral organ of perception. At that time, it was of a different nature and served clairvoyance. Under the influence of the sentient soul, the spinal cord was incorporated, which then became the brain under the influence of the mind soul, with the two cords of the spinal cord puffing up and widening at their ends, as it were. The forebrain did not develop until the end of the Atlantean epoch. Parallel to this development was another, namely the higher development of breathing and blood circulation, the processes of nutrition and growth.

At the beginning of the fifth root race, the human being was strongest in the sentient body, so that in the first sub-race, the Indian, Manas is sunk into the sentient body. The leaders of this epoch sought to awaken the old power of clairvoyance within themselves. The higher powers of the intellect, which were not yet strong enough, were excluded. Thus, with the help of the sympathetic nervous system, a dream-like clairvoyance was developed. Manas descended into the sympathetic nervous system and thus into the sentient body. In this way the whole wonderful dream world of ancient India becomes understandable, the great and wide, but dim and dull grasping of Brahman, the being beside oneself of the ancient yoga system.

In the second sub-race, the manas rises higher, into the sentient soul. The ancient Persians represent this to us. For them, the spirit self or manas lives in the sentient soul. The first expression of this is the confrontation between world and soul, between world and ego. This is expressed in the contrast between the spirit figures of Ormuzd and Ahriiman. Man seeks to overcome the resulting conflict through labor. Chaos, the disorderly matter, is to be overcome by the good God, who leads to the spiritual.

The third sub-race lives in the Egyptian, Assyrian and Israelite peoples. The Manas or spiritual self rises up into the mind soul. Manas in it now seeks to understand the world around it rationally. Or in other words: man seeks to find Manas in the cosmos. From this the wisdom-filled systems of Chaldean astrology arise, the combinations between the eternal laws that guide and move the cosmos and human destinies. The Chaldean priest-sage looks up to the stars, and the wonderful knowledge of planetary motion arises. But the rule of manas applies to a particular extent in the case of the one people, the chosen people. The Israelites apply the manasic principle in such a way that the people themselves are organized according to reason, as a unified national community. The legislation of Moses is a reflection of the star wisdom of the Chaldean priests.

In the fourth sub-race, the Greco-Latin, the spirit self penetrates as far as the consciousness soul. It is the awakening of consciousness when it takes itself by the scruff of the neck, as it were. The fully awakened consciousness now not only puts its intellect and its mind into the world, as in Jehovah's law, but in Hellas it puts its whole ego into its gods, into pure images of man. But Rome recreates its idealized ego in its state. The Greek gods and the Roman state are thus the image of what the ego has within itself and now seeks to make objective.

The fifth sub-race is our Anglo-Germanic race, which is to express the spirit-self in the spirit-self, Manas in Manas. That is, man will learn to comprehend what the spirit-self actually is; man will stand within Manas. Manas will finally work within itself. Today, only a few people really understand the manas. To grasp thinking with thinking, to catch thinking in thinking, to completely round off the snake of eternity, that is the task of the fifth sub-race. Thinking is the organ where the human being first grasps himself at one point. To stimulate this in man is the purpose of my book 'The Philosophy of Freedom'.

The sixth sub-race is the future one. The spiritual self rises up to the level of the Budhi; there, as in Manas, a light from above, Budhi shines into man. But at first Budhi is still a gift from above. This illumination by Budhi corresponds to the Christian concept of Grace. The beginning of this inflow goes back to the fourth sub-race. We have to describe this point in time as the beginning of Christianity. And the one who brought Budhi into the earthly human world is the Christ Jesus. And the Christ Jesus appeared as the bringer of that power, which had been completely foreign until then.

To sum up: What man has acquired during the five races is Manas - Manas, the spiritual self. It is met, as a gift from above, by Budhi, which corresponds to the Christian basic idea of grace. This, then, is the theme of the Gospel of John. But how was the approach made to this? Two things must, had to come together in order for Budhi to really take effect: first, as the bearers of the previous development, people now had to have an organ for Budhi formed from Manas. They had to be thirsty for Budhi, thirsty to go beyond the intellect. Brain development, without connection to the higher limbs, always ends in a dead end; it does not go beyond manasic development, beyond astral things.

There were such people who, out of the manas, brought a highly developed soul organ to the Budhi. It must be so. No matter how much light there is, if there is no eye, it will not be perceived. It is the same with Budhi. There was a name for all those people who had developed such an organ, who were thirsty for Budhi, a generic name: John. It can also be applied to the Baptist. Christ and Budhi are the same spiritual current.

We must now also consider the other: Manas also transforms the physical man. Gradually, the organs grew stronger, the strengthening spinal cord gradually integrated itself, and new centers of power were constantly forming. As always, these spiritual processes had to be matched by physical ones. The task of the fifth main race was the establishment of Manas, and in the body, the formation of the brain. The sixth main race will see the establishment of Budhi; the perfection of the heart as a completely voluntary muscle. In the seventh main race: the establishment of Atman; the perfection of breathing.

We saw how the heart and respiratory organs formed. In the circulatory system, the development of the budhi is modeled on the heart. The heart is actually only at the beginning of its development. Anatomy is faced with a mystery, because it creates a hole in its theory. The heart is a striated muscle, like all voluntary muscles, but the heart is also an involuntary muscle. Thus it is now the case that it is destined to become an arbitrary muscle, and that is in the future, when Budhi is developed. The heart is organized for the future; it will then be an extremely important organ. Just as manas is nourished in man through the blood circulation, so manas will then work in the heart and from the heart.

Let us consider the historical development before and after the illumination of Budhi. Let us first turn our attention to the blood. The blood is influenced by the nervous system. It is only when the manasic development advances that the relationship to the blood changes. In the primeval times of all peoples we have the very special phenomenon of the so-called Nahehe. We have the small ethnic groups that all marry within their blood relationship. But in every people we find a transition to distant marriage, so that an intensive blood mixture occurs. Earlier groups of peoples were therefore related by descent; they had a common ancestor who was particularly revered, for example, among the Germanic tribes, the progenitor Tuisto.

The legends faithfully preserve the conflicts that arose from the breaking of the blood ties. The blood of such neighboring communities was influenced by the lower parts of the nervous system. This gave man clairvoyance and the intuitive distinction between good and evil; he had a sure moral instinct. The moment man steps out of nearness, it becomes impossible for him to delve into clairvoyance from within, from the sympathetic nervous system. With remoteness, instinctive guidance ceases and the external law begins. The original moral instinct disappeared with remoteness; the external law had to enter. Out of the night of the old instinct there dawned a moral guiding star. Then came the Mosaic Law religion as the custodian of morality. This will finally be replaced by a new light, the Christ-light, the spiritual guidance.

What the moral instinct was for the individual tribe, that is Budhi or the Christ Principle for all mankind. In Christ, this process has become flesh. Christ came when the tribal blood ties had loosened sufficiently for the tribal god to change into a god of all men, for blood brotherhood to become a duty towards every fellow human being, and for tribal loyalty to be extended to self- and god-loyalty. What sunlight is to matter, what intelligible truth to intellect, that is the Christ-light to the Budhi, the grace coming from above. Through the Budhi, the earlier is no longer decisive, neither the moral instinct given by blood ties nor the law of the priests, neither Moses nor tribal authorities at all, the last of which was Jehovah. Now the sentence applies: “Whoever does not leave father and mother and brother for my sake cannot be my disciple.” That is to say, anyone who does not forget the old tribal principles and does not extend blood love to all people cannot follow Christ. The old tribal gods had entered into indissoluble marriages with their peoples, and with their peoples they had to pass away. The Christ represents a completely new spirit in the world, which entered into humanity, and this spirit united with the human soul, which passes through the whole evolution. Those who bore the name John, the leading people of that time, were so far as to feel with the greatest strength the burning yearning for something that lies above mere legality and justice, that is, they thirsted for the new Son of Man. And the One Who satisfied this longing was the Christ, the Bridegroom of the soul of humanity in general, humanity itself being the Bride. Thus Christ or Budhi is indeed the only begotten Son of God: “He must increase, but I must decrease,” was the saying of John the Baptist. One of the greatest symbols of this wedding feast is the wedding at Cana in Galilee, a place where all kinds of peoples flocked together in a colorful, international mix. We see how a wedding feast is celebrated there. “And the mother of Jesus was also there,” it says. In the Gospel of John, the mother of Jesus is never called “Mary”, just as the author of the Gospel of John, the disciple whom the Lord loved, is never called “John”. The mother of Jesus is the human soul, and this must first mature before Christ can work in it. Hence the words: “Woman, what do I have to do with you? My hour has not yet come.” Never would such a high individuality as Christ have spoken thus to his mother.

The fourth chapter of the Gospel of John shows Jesus with the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well. Here you have Jacob, the representative of the tribal deity; the well: the old tradition from which one must draw and which does not satisfy. “Then the Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink of me, since I am a Samaritan woman?’ (For the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans).” Here you have the old law. But in place of what flowed through the tribal blood, a new principle of life was to come: the Budhi. “But whoever drinks the water that I give him will never thirst. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The man-God married the human soul, the Budhi descended into the Manas, and henceforth humanity could draw the consciousness of good and evil from another source, the source of the “living waters”, and no longer from the well of Father Jacob, the Mosaic legislation. For it is in this sense, and in no other, that the conversation of Christ Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman is to be understood.

Who was Christ? And what did he do for evolution? These are the big questions, and we will gradually approach their answers. Some of it may still be difficult to grasp, so we must first gradually strike notes that will resonate even more strongly.

So far Budhi radiates into it.

For the next, the sixth round, Budhi would have to do everything that Manas did in the fifth; on it the world pointer stopped at the end of the fifth main race and the fourth sub-race. In the seventh round, Atman would then have to be developed.

Human life alternates between waking and sleeping. At night, people sink into a state of unconsciousness or subconsciousness. If they want to consciously experience this, they must first be able to suppress the external sensory impressions. To do this, the soul must be artificially emptied of all external impressions. Then, through the will, powerful, strong thoughts must be evoked in the soul. They must flash through the soul. Without a third element, something like an earthquake would be experienced, a shock. Through the will, a state of complete calm, a state of complete stillness, must now be created in the soul. Then the spiritual researcher experiences something similar to what happens at a lower level to a person born blind, who undergoes an operation and gains sight. Color and light flow in. This is what the spiritual researcher experiences. This is the awakening or initiation for him. Now he can judge about what lies behind the sense impressions. These are not dreams of feverish souls. Thus the spiritual eye is opened, the spiritual ear. This is easily judged wrongly, somewhat like a shell when it is first seen in the limestone. It has not grown out of the rock, but has been created by a water shell animal.

What is sleep and dying for the spiritual researcher? He first considers the nature of man, which consists of four limbs. The lowest limb is the physical body. The etheric or life body continuously prevents the body from falling prey to physical and chemical forces as in death. It paralyzes decay; it is a faithful friend between birth and death. No science prevents the assumption of higher limbs of man. Even if positive research were to show that carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen could be combined to form living protein substance, this result could not refute the higher limbs; it would not be a reason to deny the etheric body. In the space that a person fills with his or her being, not only the physical body and the etheric body are present, but also pleasure and pain, perceptions, ideas, instincts, and so on. They also fill this space. And as a fourth link, the ego, that name that cannot be called from the outside, to whom he belongs, who is also the unspeakable name of God: Jehovah-Yahweh.

We feel tired as soon as the astral body withdraws. Who lifts the hand up? The astral body at the behest of the ego. We see with the astral eye through the instrument of the body. Tiredness sets in where we want to apply the astral body, but where the physical body cannot go with us.

The first organ to fail when we fall asleep is the organ of speech. The inner self can no longer move the outer organ of the tongue. Then the senses of sight, taste and smell fail; finally, hearing, the most spiritual sense, is the last to go. The astral body, which governs everything, gradually slips out. As a person falls asleep, he can feel how external impressions cease. Then a total feeling of one's own being sets in. Mistakes, shortcomings and so on, the spiritual world holds the exterior up to him like a mirror. Then a feeling of bliss; then a twitch as a sign of entering into the spiritual world. Then unconsciousness. Then something can be perceived as a fine rain out of the spiritual world into the physical and etheric body. This is the regeneration, the restoration of that which showed itself as fatigue.

There are certain hypotheses that attribute fatigue to so-called fatigue substances. But this is like two people seeing one person slap another. One says, “I saw how he was boiling inside”; the other describes it like this: “I saw how he raised his hand and slapped him.” The legitimacy of external natural science is admitted, but behind everything external there is nevertheless that which directs and guides it.

In order to rebuild our entire soul life, the astral body draws its strength from the spiritual world at night. Again and again it returns to the spiritual world and carries into it from our daytime consciousness that which can enrich us.

Between 1770 and 1815, events took place that left some people indifferent, but which others processed. However, experiences cannot be processed if they are only simply experienced. They must be sunk into the ground, as it were, as seeds, and then grow like plants. The function of sleep must intervene, as it does between learning something by heart and really knowing it. The experiences must be sunk into the ground in sleep and then picked as experiences in waking, otherwise they remain chaotic like erratic blocks as experiences without wisdom. If you sleep too long, too many of the invisible forces are poured in. Such long sleepers become mentally obese. In spiritual and mental terms, this means that one wants to process too much without having anything. This results in dullness and sluggishness of thought.

Dreams arise when the astral body and the I have connected with the etheric body and not yet with the physical body. This is not to be imagined spatially. The second face also arises as a kind of reflection, as a vision, when the physical and etheric bodies do not merge. The etheric and astral bodies work together. The ego loosens and the astral body submerges into its own world. It is an abnormal intermediate state. If the immersion of the astral body into the visual field is imperfect, then deceptive intuitions arise. If the astral body does not submerge, the connection between the astral body and the etheric body is not in order, then visions arise.

Thus there is an unschooled, disorderly connection of the limbs. In the development between birth and death, almost everything relates to the inner soul abilities. Similar to Francesco Redi's sentence “Living things can only come from living things”, the sentence “Spiritual-soul things can only come from spiritual-soul things” can be formulated. Thus the spiritual soul of man between birth and death comes from a spiritual soul that was already working before birth. Before birth, man worked on the still plastic and malleable physical and etheric body, as he did on the soul body between birth and death. At death, the human being takes an extract of the etheric body with them into the spiritual world as malleable material. There, freed from the physical being, they can accomplish what they were unable to do between birth and death. They can incorporate everything into the spiritual archetype of a new physical body, into spiritual material. The fruit of the previous life can be woven into the etheric body and physical body of the new earthly life.

We must want death to happen. We must be grateful to death. It destroys the scaffolding that would only be a hindrance to our ascent. Goethe said:

Nature invented death in order to have much life.

The spiritual essence has invented death to make a perfection of human life possible. A great poet said:

Man is initially a shadow of a dream.

He has only the shadow of the dream, only the dream of the shadow. That is man of the outer sense world. But if he has a ray of knowledge and light, it becomes as bright as day for him, and joy radiates through all life.

There is a beautiful saying of Hegel's: The deepest thought is connected with the figure of Christ, the historical and external one. And the great thing about the Christian religion is that it is there for every level of education. It can grasp the most naive consciousness and at the same time it is an invitation to the deepest wisdom.

That the Christian religion is comprehensible for every level of consciousness has already been taught by the history of its development. To show that it calls for penetration into the deepest wisdom teachings of humanity in general must be the task of the theosophical school of thought - or of spiritual science in general, if it understands its task. Theosophy is not a religion, but a tool for understanding religions. It relates to religious documents in the same way that mathematical teaching relates to documents that have appeared as mathematical textbooks.

You can understand mathematics through your own mental powers, you can see the laws of space without regard to that old book. But once you have seen them and absorbed the geometric teachings, you will appreciate all the more this old book, which was the first to present these laws to the human mind. This is the case with Theosophy. Its sources [are not in the records, are not based on tradition. Its sources] are in the real spiritual worlds; there one has to find them and grasp them by developing one's own spiritual powers, as one grasps mathematics by seeking to develop the powers of one's intellect.

Our intellect, which serves us to grasp the laws of the sensory world, is carried by an organ, the brain. To grasp the laws of spiritual worlds, we also need appropriate organs. How have our physical organs developed? Through the agency of external forces: the forces of the sun, the forces of sound. Thus the eye came into being, and so did the ear - from neutral dull organs that initially did not allow the penetration of the sensory world and only opened slowly. In the same way, our spiritual organs will open when the right forces work on them.

What, then, are the forces that are now assailing our still dull spiritual organs? During the day, such forces penetrate the astral body of modern man that work against his development, that even kill those organs that he had before the bright consciousness of day had not yet opened up to him. In the past, man perceived astral impressions directly. The world around him spoke to him through images, through the expression of the astral world. Vivid, structured images, colors floated freely in space as expressions of pleasure and displeasure, sympathy and antipathy. Then these colors enveloped the surface of things, as it were, and the objects took on firm contours. That was when man's physical body became more and more solid and structured.

When his eyes opened fully to physical light, when the veil of Maya lay over the spiritual world, the astral body of the human being received impressions of the environment through the physical and etheric bodies, and then transmitted them to the ego, from where they entered the consciousness of the person. He was thus constantly occupied, constantly active. But what worked on him in this way were not plastic, malleable forces, corresponding to his own nature. They were forces that consumed him, killed him, in order to awaken his sense of self.

Only at night, when he immersed himself in the homogeneous, rhythmic spiritual world, did he regain his strength and was he able to restore strength to his physical and etheric bodies. From the conflict of impressions, from the death of the astral organs that used to work unconsciously in man, the life of the individual ego, the ego consciousness, had emerged. From life to death, from death to life. The serpent's circle was closed. Now, out of this awakened self-awareness, the forces had to come that rekindled life in the dead remains of earlier astral organs, forming them plastically.

It is towards this goal that humanity is moving, and it is being guided towards it by its teachers, its leaders, the great initiates, whose symbol is also the serpent. It is an education towards freedom, therefore a slow and difficult one. The great initiates could, so to speak, make the task easier for themselves and for people if they worked on the astral body at night, when it is free, so that they could imprint the astral organs on it, working on it from the outside. But that would then be an influence within the dream consciousness of the person, an intervention in his sphere of freedom. The highest principle of man, the will, would never come to fruition.

Man is led step by step. There has been an initiation in wisdom, one in mind, one in will. Genuine Christianity is the sum of all stages of initiation. The initiation of antiquity was the prediction, the preparation. Slowly and gradually, the newer man emancipated himself from his initiator, his guru. The initiation took place first in full trance consciousness, but equipped with the means to imprint into the physical body the memory of what had happened outside the physical body. Therefore, there was the necessity to also release the etheric body, the carrier of memory, together with the astral. Both plunged into the sea of wisdom, into Mahadeva, into the light of Osiris. This initiation took place in the deepest secret, in complete seclusion. No breath of the outside world was allowed to intrude. The human being was as dead to the outer life, the delicate germs were cultivated away from the blinding light of day.

Then the initiation emerged from the darkness of the mysteries into the brightest light of day. In a great, powerful personality, the bearer of the highest unifying principle, the word that expresses the hidden Father, that is His manifestation, that, by taking human form, therefore became the Son of Man and could represent all humanity, [a] unifying bond of all “I”s: In Christ, the Spirit of Life, the Eternal Unifier, the initiation of all humanity took place historically - at the same time symbolically - at the level of feeling, of the mind. This event was so powerful that it was able to have an effect on each individual who experienced it, even physically, to the extent of the appearance of the stigmata, to the point of causing intense pain. And all the depths of feeling were shaken up. An intensity of feeling arose that has never before flooded the world in such mighty waves.

In the initiation on the cross of divine love, the sacrifice of the self for all had taken place. The physical expression of the self, the blood, had flowed in love for humanity and worked in such a way that thousands pushed themselves to this initiation, to this death and let their blood flow in love, in enthusiasm for humanity. How much blood has been poured out in this way has never been emphasized enough, and people no longer realize it, not even in theosophical circles. But the waves of enthusiasm that flowed down in this pouring out of blood and rose up have done their work. They have become powerful sources of inspiration. They have matured man for the initiation of the will.

And this is the legacy of the Christ.

Archetypal Self from whom we have proceeded
Primal Self who lives in all things
To you, you higher Self, we return.

To this we add the verse that expresses how this primal Self works on man, how it appears to men:

Truth, wisdom, immeasurablity, O God,
Bliss, eternity, beauty,
Peace blessedness, undividedness
On me
Peace, peace, peace.

The nature of the Trinity is expressed in the first part, and at the end the way in which this Trinity sinks down into a man's soul.

Mantra:

Primal Self from which everything proceeded
To which everything returns
Primal Self that lives in me
Towards you I strive.
AUM-peace, peace, peace, AUM.

Everything proceeded from this higher Self, even human bodies. We should not think that there's anything lowly or of little value in the world. Everything is divine. Even a grain of sand is something that came from the Godhead. In minerals we see the thoughts of the Godhead that have become form. The Godhead's thought comes to expression in all mineral forms.

Aside from form the Godhead also poured out its life in plants.

In addition to their life the Godhead has also poured feeling into animals and man's form and lower soul. Everything around us is an expression of God's power.

A man's body is the most perfect thing that the Godhead created for him. Man's body is the most perfect form that the Gods developed. It's an instrument through which man's soul looks out into the world. The human body is equipped in a wonderful way. Man's body is supposed to be a sacred temple for his soul. But the soul is not yet perfected. It's just beginning to develop. Man's body makes no mistakes; it's the imperfect soul that's constantly making them. Passions, desires, and drives live in it, and it uses the body to satisfy these desires.

But just as there are senses in man's body through which the soul looks out into the world, so organs will also gradually develop in the soul that will make it ever more perfect. Such organs are already developing in the soul.

We find a mighty drive in the animal kingdom that's independent of sense organs. If one brings a foreign pair of butterflies to Germany and releases the male in Frankfurt and the female say in Magdeburg, the two will reunite without fail. They do this with special organs that are even finer than sense organs. If we meet a total stranger whom we feel a great sympathy for, as happens between man and wife and also between friends, then this is a sign that these people belong together and that they have soul organs that tell them this and bring them together.

Men will develop such soul organs ever more as they purify their astral body and ennoble their other bodies. It's quite important to consider which foods are good for or harmful to higher development. Not everyone is in a position to pick out the foods that are favorable for his occult development. Sometimes it's better to renounce things that promote us inwardly. But it's nevertheless true that some foods have qualities that do not help men. A man must develop certain organs for his higher development. To this end certain concentrations are done in yoga exercises. When a man concentrates on a point between the eyes at the root of the nose with the thought “I am” he develops the organ that we call the two-petaled lotus flower and that makes him into an “I”. An animal can't say “I” to himself. When man's forebrain developed, the organ of the I was put into man's head at the root of the nose. The I lives there in man. But in animals the I is outside in front of the head and not in the skull. In animals it lives in the astral world. For instance all dogs have an ego in the astral world. In dogs a red stream from the astral plane streams in at the place where we have the organ of the I, and in a dog this ego becomes manifest in lower desires. In man the I streams out of this place.

But it isn't enough that the organ of the ego is developed in man. So that the higher self can stream into him to make him into a higher being, we find the organ for this where a vertical line from the top of the head crosses a horizontal line through the root of the nose, or a little above it. This organ is the pineal gland. Man makes a connection with the divine self in the world through the pineal gland. A third higher organ, the 16-petaled lotus flower, lies in man's larynx, and a fourth organ, the 12-petaled lotus is in the heart region. A man must choose his foods wisely so that these organs can develop in the right way. What's good for his inner development is what's connected with an animal's life process, namely, milk and what's made from it, and in plants what grows towards the sun above the ground.

A plant is an inverted man. When the sun was still united with the earth a plant's flowers stuck into the sun and its roots turned outwards. After the sun left the earth plants turned around and chastely turned their flow towards the sun with their roots in the earth. An animal is a half inverted plant, and man is a completely inverted plant since he turns all the organs that a plant turns towards the sun, away from it. Man's root, head or brain, is turned towards the sun. Plant, animal and man together form a cross.

Subterranean plant parts that are turned away from the sun aren't good for occult development, whereas everything that grows upward is good for men, especially fruit and grain that a plant gives us without us having to destroy it. Beans, lentils and other leguminous fruit pollute the etheric body (nitrogen). Milk is good for men because it's connected with an animal's life process and animals give it voluntarily. Whereas meat obtained by killing animals is bad for occult development, and so are all salts.

The higher self can enter a man if he prepares himself through a selfless life and through purification of his body. It's not enough to retreat within. The higher self is not in man at first but outside in nature and in his older brothers, the masters and leaders of mankind. From there it must go into him. Then he's overcome by the peace that's higher than all reason. That's what the formula: Truth, wisdom, immeasurability, O God ... refers to.

Satyam jnanam anantam brahma
Anandarupam amritam bibharti
Shatam sivam advaitam
Om, shantih, shantih, shantih.

Before we can begin with the esoteric lesson, I'm obliged to tell you something, namely that one of our members from the more intimate circle gave me a brochure, as if driven by a right impulse, and this induces me to say a few things As you know each esoteric pupil, depending on his predisposition, gets exercises that for deeper lying reasons and through their buildup and sequence of word bring about what a pupil needs for his development. The sequence of words is of the greatest importance, also which word is used and where it stands, so that what is intended is attained. Many of you have received the verse: In pure rays of light … as a morning exercise.

Now I just received a brochure that contains the following:

I see in the pure rays of light
The Godhead of the world;
In love to all beings radiates the divinity of my soul.
I live in the Godhead
And find myself again
In the Godhead of the world.

It is hard to determine how the writer of this brochure arrived at the formula, for it belongs exclusively to our esoteric school. It could be that one of our students was careless enough to tell it to outsiders. We could also imagine the other case—that actually happened several years ago—that someone meditated in a rooming house, and a man was in the adjacent room who took in these ideas clairvoyantly. We should always have the greatest sympathy for people like the first case mentioned, for as esoterics, we know that everything punishes itself, even if nothing bad was intended. The reason it must have this effect is that every word of the formula was put in its place with the greatest care, and if they are torn out of context, they'll have the opposite effect. One has created a contrary effect through an arbitrary change in the word sequence and through the use of the positive little word “I”—whereas everything was kept in flux and as if objective in the original formula, so that everything is supposed to work through the imaginative picture. Our meditations should always proceed from our inner moral impulses; the other world and especially our personal ego should be excluded completely. We should grasp the Godhead of the world and the way it streams through the world with its divine light in our thoughts quite objectively. Our ego shouldn't become obtrusive here or then the effect would become just the opposite. Quite differently constituted spiritual effects would then have to appear, namely Luciferic effects.

In the first line, I see in pure rays of light, the moral impulse that suppresses the ego in all humility and that should e completely devoted to the divine spirit of the world in which one rests while forgetting oneself, doesn't come out.

The egotistical principle also emerges strongly in the last lines:

I live in the Godhead
And find myself again
In the Godhead of the world

for something quite different is experienced in the I rest.

From this, one sees how very exact and careful we must be so that we also use the words of our meditation quite correctly in our thoughts.

We'll now pass on to several images that we can use for our esoteric training because they have a very strong effect. We know that the path to higher worlds first goes through Imagination and then via Inspiration and Intuition. The pictures that shall now be given strengthen the organs that lead to imaginative perception.

In our theosophical teachings we've often heard that the world is maya, that we ourselves are nothing but maya, and if even outer science is beginning to explain the world in this way, we should then take this saying even more seriously.

If we look at this rose, then, it has an upwards directed flower and a stem directed downwards. But what seems to be there is no true image. Science has taught us that what we see comes about through a crossing of light rays, so that the upside-down image of the rose appears in our eye, whereas we see the outer picture of the rose with the flower up. That's the mirror image of the real light phenomenon in us. From this we see that what we perceive outside is maya, and it's a reverse maya, where down is up. That's the way it is with everything around us; the whole world whose surface we think we see—and ourselves also—is really standing on its head. If we want to perceive the true shape of the world then we mustn't look for mirror images but we must look for the realities behind them before they become reflected in the outer world. Practically everything is the opposite of the way we imagine it. What seems to be up is down; what seems to be behind us is in front; what seems to be left is right, they're really coming from the left; if we see objects standing before us, then in reality forces are there that press towards us from behind. The same is true of the starry heavens. We see it before us when we look up; in reality, it's reflected to our eyes by forces that are behind us.

If we want to arrive at the truth in the world, we must ascend from the Spirit of Form to the Spirits of Movement, so that the latter can help us to see what is placed before us as a mirror image by Spirits of Form as the inversion of reality. We can use the following as a symbol to gain practice in this. When we see a rose with a flower on top, we move it down in our thoughts and therewith make a movement that the forces of the Spirits of Movement can symbolize for us.

But there is one thing in man that is no mere sensory illusion, that's no maya. This is the word that resounds from men, the living word, the logos. The word doesn't come to us from outside, it's something alive in us, it's our real being. It streams out of our soul life; we who let the word stream out over our lips are it ourselves with all of our feelings. And if we top to think that the word is the Logos and that everything that's spoken in the world is spoken out of this source, we'll then feel a deep responsibility towards the word.

Only what men have said in their words will survive the earth and pass over to the next planetary condition. As we said, what we hear from the left comes from the right, but the sound that we utter is the only thing that's no different from what it seems to be. It sounds forth from within and it really comes from within. Divine beings, the Logos, speak to us out of it.