The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The individuality that embodied itself in the body of John the Baptist, which had previously been the Zarathustra ego, had, because it was such a high individuality, no less ability to suffer and feel pain. On the contrary.

This must be emphasized because many people believe that the one who incarnated at the baptism of John was a higher individuality and therefore suffers less. But that is not the case. Which individuality embodied itself? The Zarathustra individuality left the three bodies, then another individuality moved in. Only slowly and gradually can one bring oneself to understand the one who lived on earth for these three years. [This being had never been on earth before.] Zarathustra had once proclaimed that behind the physical sunlight stands Ahura-Mazdao, the spiritual light. We do not have to imagine something abstract, but a real spiritual being, an individuality that has never incarnated itself earlier or later. A complete idea is obtained when one ascends to even higher levels than we have tried to suggest. [Because: to understand it, man must first begin to understand himself.]

Man must say to himself: Gradually I have become what I am today from an imperfect being. But gradually I will become more and more perfect. There is something in me as a seed that will come out later. [Step by step he has developed into the sentient, willing and thinking being that he is now. But we also find hidden within us potential, seeds that have not yet sprouted and that point to a continued development in the ages to come. The more man develops in this way, the richer his knowledge of the world becomes, the deeper his understanding of the mystery of life.]

Thus man can compare his being with that of the great world. What does he seek from incarnation to incarnation? I will find more and more knowledge and feelings about the world in my soul. He who says he can find this in his soul and it is not outside, should just say he would drink water from a glass in which there is nothing. Whatever thoughts and feelings a person ultimately allows to arise in his soul must be contained in it. Everything we will still find in the future must underlie the world. Spiritual content is in the world. What a person can ultimately find in himself was contained in the world in the very beginning.

What does a person find outside?

1. The world of minerals, which obeys the so-called lifeless laws of nature.
2. He finds plants and says that he has the same within him. 3. He also has the same as is in the animals.

But he has something that the others do not have, and he must develop it ever higher. The animal can rise to the sound, which is an expression of inner pain, but not to what configures our sound so that it is a manifestation of our thoughts. This is how man can feel like the crown of earthly creation. And what produces this sound, he can call his “I”. In man is the thought-imbued, thought-interwoven word, which radiates as if from the ego. This word has therefore always been regarded. When man can see into a distant future, so that ever higher things can interweave his word,

[If we look back to the most ancient times, we find the I spread throughout the world, and if we go back even further, we find the world-word as an expression of the world-I, we find that the world-word has sprung from the world-I.

Just as the human body is the physical expression of the I living in it, so the universe is the physical expression of the world word. Ahura-Mazdao is what Zarathustra called the world word that is behind the world light. In Greek, this world word was called the Logos, so that Zarathustra pointed beyond the light to the world word. And John the Baptist was called to recognize when this world word should manifest itself. He was to say when it would be embodied: Until now, the world word has only been poured out into the whole extent of the universe; now it has first seized a soul.

Thus we see that in the thirtieth year of life, the Zarathustra ego leaves the body and enters what underlies our cosmos as its spiritual content.

The one whom the Christ has appointed as his messenger has said: [gap in the transcript.] In the beginning, the word of the world was not in man, only spread throughout the world, but it was /gap in the transcript.] In the very beginning, however, the Logos was not with a human being, but with God. And little by little the Logos poured itself out into humanity, very gradually. First of all, by the Logos becoming life - in what originally was the physical human body. Then came the time of the influences of Lucifer. If they had not come, the human being would have been permeated by the Logos in relation to the etheric body as well; only a part was permeated. The astral body in the astral light would have become radiant in man if the luciferic influences had not come; so it was darkened. The light did not shine so that man could perceive it as shining light. It shone in the darkness. It fully shone at the moment of John the Baptist's baptism: And the Logos was flesh and dwelt among men. The Logos had entered a human body and taken upon Himself everything that human beings have made of themselves by descending ever deeper into matter. Thus He had taken upon Himself all pain. Through this, one can gradually come to understand what happened at the baptism of John.

But that was not all he was to experience, what one experiences from incarnation to incarnation, but what one feels in the human body through initiation. This was not written by the evangelist John, because he had to describe the Christ as he was recognized; the others had to describe him as he lived in the astral body: Matthew and Luke.

Matthew describes the Solomon-like Jesus up to the twelfth year. Even if the Zarathustra-ego was later in the other, the Nathan-like Jesus, it had nevertheless developed in the first, awakening all the feelings in it; therefore, what it had experienced in this body remained with it. Matthew described in particular the Christ Jesus as a human being. Luke was the one who had to describe the astral body in particular. The seers Matthew and Luke described the human being Jesus, Matthew from the outside, Luke from the inside.

The seers Mark and John had other things to write. Mark had to direct his gaze to the Logos as He permeates all things, to the Logos on the periphery, as He shines forth in Jesus of Nazareth; therefore, he describes what happened after the baptism.

John wanted to describe how this Logos has become the inner essence when I have shone forth.

The human side is described by the seers Matthew and Luke. The human being with an outer appearance, permeated by the Christ presence: Mark; the inner Logos: John. How He comes from the outside and becomes the inner being: Mark; how He becomes flesh and pours out on the outside: John.

Now it should be described how the man who carried the Christ in himself experienced not only the human side, the temporal side, but the initiate, the eternal side - Mark.

The others describe, as true seers, what must be overcome. John describes what the I means when it has been overcome - the highest perfection. In the times before Christ Jesus lived, there were two ways of experiencing initiation: the more Egyptian and [the more Persian - Mithras]. Egyptian: developing towards the inner soul, turned away from the outer world, towards the inner self. All that surges up and down in the astral body is Maya, and only when we descend into deeper reasons do we come to the spiritual.

Let us imagine a soul that has been initiated in Egypt. It had to find everything that had mixed into this soul from incarnation to incarnation, and that was bad. Today we call this the tempter or the little guardian of the threshold. It is the expression of the Luciferic entity in the soul: arrogance, lies. The human being had to free himself from this.

Man can only free himself from that which he faces eye to eye. He must see all sources of pride and vanity in himself if he wants to be free of them; he must experience all possibilities of illusion, all possibilities of lies. At this stage, the temptation arises easily in him to believe that he has already found the spiritual reality, that he already knows something, possesses something. Here he encounters the little Dweller of the Threshold. This is what the person to be initiated had to do in the Egyptian mysteries: encounter all that the luciferic entities had made of the soul. In the Greek mysteries it was called Diabolos.

In the Persian initiation, which aimed to lead the person out, the person did not have to descend into themselves, but come out of themselves, fall into ecstasy. There was another power to be seen: the one that prevents him from finding the spirit in the outer world, the one that makes him believe that the veil of the senses is the only reality. To believe that the physical is a reality is just as foolish as seeing the mirror image as the truth.

But the luciferic forces have seduced man into regarding the opaque veil of Maya as the truth. Zarathustra knew how to tell of that second kind of force that prevents man from attaining to the spirit: Ahriman, who was able to oppose himself after the luciferic forces had woven the veil. When man enters into ecstasy, he brings with him the error that the external world is not a veil. This is what the second guardian of the threshold protects him from: belief in materiality appears before his eyes like a mirage. The great guardian is the one who asks to distinguish this brought illusion from the true spiritual world.

Two stations are to be distinguished: either the human being must have the strength to resist, to hurry past, or he remains with the Guardian of the Threshold, does not advance further. Therefore, there is the possibility to remain with vanity and lies, with Diabolos. While the outer tempter, who presents the illusions, is called Satan. We meet Satan as tempter when we follow the way outwards; we meet Diabolos when we follow the way inwards. The great Guardian of the Threshold leads us out over the temptations of Satan.

In Christ Jesus both initiations should be united, therefore he had to overcome both tempters.

The tempter who projects the illusions – Satan – is described by the seer Mark; and the writers of the human side of Christ Jesus had to describe how, through descending into the soul, the other tempter arose. Read the scenes of temptation in Matthew and Luke and you will see that they differ greatly from Mark's, and with good reason: Satan in the case of external initiation, Diabolos in the case of internal initiation. It is no coincidence that they are described in this way, but it is well founded. Consequently, the scene of temptation is also described differently.

“Turn these stones to bread,” says Luke and Matthew; and the tempter, the Diabolos, speaks to vanity: “All this I will give you, that you may rule over it.” - The egoistic person who merely wants to build a world for himself within and does not believe that one must penetrate the world that is spread all around us is portrayed here.

And Markus – the initiate who goes outwards – what does he experience? In the outer world there are two kingdoms of nature, the mineral and the vegetable, which have not permeated each other with an astral body. Only in the astral body and I lies the possibility of vanity and error, the possibility of falling. We can carry this into the outer world; so in which forms will our errors take shape? In animal forms, not in plant forms. The possibility of error about the outer world is expressed in animal forms, which we must overcome. Only by seeing the angelic form of the great Guardian of the Threshold beside him does man overcome the animal forms that he might otherwise mistake for truths of the spiritual world. This is why Mark expresses it so beautifully: “He was led into the wilderness, and he was with the animals and the angels served, that is, they led him upward.

Where two gospels describe different things, we can prove that they have reason to say different things. So the way inwards is via the temptations and the little guardian of the threshold, which destroys self-delusion. The way of Mark is outwards.

Thus the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke do not describe what the ordinary person has to go through on earth, but rather the initiates of every kind.

But how the Christ becomes an overcomer, who is able to live with the life of the whole world, had to be described by the writer of the Gospel of John. The ideal of the future is exemplified by Christ Jesus. Such an individuality does not live selfishly within, but in every being. Therefore, it can evoke in every being the strength to live in the same way. I am the light and the life. He can therefore pour this light and life over into another individuality. In the resurrection of Lazarus we have the description of that power, whose life can flow over into the other individuality. His death will appear as life, because I am the life.

Because he wanted to describe this powerful individuality, the writer of the Gospel of John does not first describe the temptations, but the overcomer. And he has become an overcomer at the price that the Christ Jesus had made himself the Lamb of God, who wants to be nothing but the expression of God, nothing but what can provide an opportunity for the working of the will of the world.

In this way, John the Baptist is also convinced by the impression of how truly the One standing before him is the Lamb - ready for the task.

The theosophist can recognize the truths more and more independently of the Gospels, and they shine out to him from the Gospels. Therefore, we see that those who wrote the Gospels were seers. This is the result when we first find the truths independently.

“The part that interprets the evolution of humanity in symbolic terms”, as taught in the first degree.
Text based on the original manuscript by Rudolf Steiner.

At the beginning of the evolution of the earth, one of the spirits of light or Elohim descended from the realm of the sun to the earthly realm and united with Eve, the primal mother of all that lives. From this union arose Cain, the first of the earth-dwellers. Thereafter, another of the Elohim, Jahve or Jehovah, formed Adam; and from the union of Adam and Eve arose Abel, Cain's stepbrother. The inequality of descent between Cain and Abel (sexual and asexual descent) caused discord between Cain and Abel. And Cain slew Abel. Abel had lost his connection to the spiritual world through sexual descent, Cain through the moral fall. Jehovah gave Seth, a substitute son, to Abel's parents as compensation. Two types of people descended from Cain and Seth. The descendants of Seth were able to see into the spiritual world in special (dream-like) states of consciousness. The descendants of Cain had lost this ability completely. They had to work their way up through the generations by gradually developing the human powers of the earth in order to regain their spiritual abilities.

One of the descendants of Abel-Seth was the wise Solomon. He had inherited the gift of dream-like clairvoyance; indeed, he had inherited it to a particular degree as a disposition; so it was that his wisdom was so widely known that it is symbolically reported of him that he sat on a throne of gold and ivory (gold and ivory symbols of wisdom).

From the line of Cain came men who, in the course of time, were increasingly concerned with the upward development of human powers on earth. One of these men was Lamech, the keeper of the T-books, in which, as far as was possible for human powers, original wisdom was restored, so that these books are incomprehensible to uninitiated people. Another descendant of the Cain humanity is Tubalkain, who made great progress in the working of metals, and even knew how to form metals into musical instruments in an artistic way. And as a contemporary of Solomon, Hiram Abiff or Adoniram, a descendant of Cain, lived who had advanced so far in his art that it bordered directly on the vision of the higher worlds, and for him there was only a thin wall to break through to initiation.

The wise Solomon conceived the plan of a temple, the formal parts of which were to symbolize the development of mankind. Through his dream wisdom, he was able to conceive the thoughts of this temple in every detail; but he lacked the knowledge of the earth forces for the actual construction, which could only be gained through the training of the earth forces in the Cain race. Therefore, Solomon connected with Hiram-Abiff. He now built the temple that symbolized the development of humanity.

Solomon's fame had reached as far as the Queen of Sheba, Balkis. One day she went to the court of Solomon in order to marry him. She was shown all the glories of Solomon's court, including the mighty temple. From the mental images she had formed up to that point, she could not comprehend how a master builder who had only human powers at his disposal could have accomplished such a thing. She had only learned that the leaders of workers, through the possession of atavistic magical powers, were able to gather sufficient crowds of workers to erect the old, mighty buildings. She demanded to see the strange, remarkable master builder. When he met her, his eye immediately made a deeply significant impression on her. Then he was to show her how he led the workers by mere human agreement. He took his hammer, climbed a hill, and at a sign with the hammer, large crowds of workers rushed to the scene. The Queen of Sheba realized that human powers could develop to such significance.

Soon afterward, the queen and her nurse (the nurse is symbolic of a prophetic person) were walking outside the city gates. They encountered Hiram Abiff. At the moment the two women saw the master builder, the bird Had-Had flew out of the air onto the arm of the Queen of Sheba.

The prophetic nurse interpreted this to mean that the Queen of Sheba was not destined for Solomon, but for Hiram Abiff. From that moment on, the queen thought only of how she could break off her engagement to Solomon. It is further related that now, “in her intoxication,” the engagement ring was pulled from the king's finger, so that the queen could now consider herself the bride destined for Hiram Abiff. (The significance of this feature of the legend lies in the fact that in the Queen of Sheba we see the ancient wisdom of the stars, which was connected with the ancient atavistic soul powers symbolized in Solomon. Occult legends express this in the symbols of female persons, and wisdom is that which can unite with the male part of the soul. The time of Solomon marks the epoch in which this wisdom is to pass over from the atavistic old forces to the newly acquired powers of the I on earth. The “ring” is always the symbol of the “I”. Solomon is still conceived as having a not fully human ego, but one that is only the reflection of the “higher ego” of the angels in the atavistic dream-clairvoyant consciousness. The “intoxication” indicates that this ego is lost again within the semi-conscious soul forces through which it was acquired. Hiram is only in possession of a real-human “I”.)

From this point on, King Solomon is seized by a violent jealousy against his master builder. Therefore, three treacherous companions find it easy to gain the ear of the king for an act by which they want to destroy Hiram Abiff. They are his opponents because they had to be rejected by him when they demanded the master's degree and the master's word, for which they are not ready.

These three traitorous fellows now decide to spoil the work for Hiram Abiff, which he is to accomplish as the crowning achievement of his work at the court of Solomon. This is the casting of the “Brazen Sea”. This is an artificial casting made of the seven basic metals (lead, copper, tin, mercury, iron, silver, gold) in such proportions that it is completely transparent. The thing was finished, except for one very last impact, which was to be made before the assembled court - also before the Queen of Sheba - and by which the still cloudy substance was to be transformed to complete clarity. Now the three treacherous journeymen mixed something wrong into the casting, so that instead of it clearing, sparks of fire sprayed out of it. Hiram Abiff tried to calm the fire with water. This did not work, but the flames leapt in all directions. The assembled people scattered in all directions. But Hiram Abiff heard a voice from the flames and the glowing mass: “Plunge into the sea of flames; you are invulnerable.” He plunged into the flames and soon realized that his path was heading towards the center of the earth. Halfway there, he met his ancestor Tubalkain. The latter led him to the center of the earth, where the great ancestor Cain was, in the state he was in before the sin. Here Hiram Abiff received from Cain the explanation that the vigorous development of human powers on earth would ultimately lead to the height of initiation, and that the initiation attained in this way would replace the vision of the Abel-Seth sons in the course of the earth, which would disappear. Symbolically, the power to confer the Mother Gift, which Hiram Abiff receives from Cain, is expressed by the statement that Hiram received a new hammer from Cain, with which he returned to the earth's surface, touched the Sea of Bronze, and thereby brought about its complete transparency. (This symbolism is given by that which, in appropriate meditation, elevates to the imagination the inner essence of human development on earth. The Iron Sea can be seen as a symbol of what man would have become if the three treacherous forces in the soul had not taken hold: doubt, superstition, and the illusion of the personal self. Through these forces, the evolution of mankind on earth has come to a display of fire in the Lemurian period, which cannot be dampened by the watery evolution of the Atlantean period. Rather, such an evolution of human forces on earth must take place that the original state is restored in the soul, which was present in Cain before the fratricide. The dream-like soul powers of the children of Abel-Seth cannot prevail against the powers of the earth, but only the descendants of Cain, who have come to full, real development of the ego.)

A further transcript of the Temple Legend
Text according to the original manuscript by Rudolf Steiner

[The first part is missing]

From this time on, Solomon became jealous of his master builder. Three treacherous journeymen, who in their vanity had demanded the master builder's word and degree from the master builder, whom he could not give them because they were still immature, supported him in this. They decided to take revenge in the following way.

Hiram Abiff was to perform the so-called Sea of Bronze as the crowning glory of his work at the court of Solomon. It was to be a wonderful metal casting in which all the metals of the earth were poured in such harmony that a magnificent, harmonious whole resulted. Everything about it was completed by Hiram Abiff, down to the last move. This was to be done at a special celebration. The entire court was assembled for the occasion, including the Queen of Sheba. At the decisive moment, the three treacherous journeymen added an unrighteous touch to the casting; and instead of the whole thing bringing itself to a harmonious conclusion, sparks flew out of the casting. Hiram Abiff tried to calm the flames by adding water. But then terrible masses of flames arose from the casting. Everything that had been gathered by people scattered. But Hiram Abiff heard a voice from the fire that told him: do not be afraid, plunge into the flames; you are invulnerable. He plunged into the sea of flames. He soon realized that his flight was to the center of the earth. Halfway there he met Tubalkain, who led him to his ancestor Cain in the center of the earth. Cain was in the form before the commission of sin. He gave Hiram Abiff a new T-sign and told him that with it he would restore the casting when he returned to the surface of the earth. And from him would come a race that would conquer Adam's children on earth and reintroduce the great service of fire, as well as lead mankind back to the divine word of creation.

There is also a deeper meaning in this part of the legend. Before man descended from the bosom of the deity into earthly embodiments, he was in a spiritual environment that he could perceive. He heard the divine creative word. He embodied himself in the metal masses, which were still liquid in the fire at that time. Before this happened, three companions could not harm him: doubt, superstition and the illusion of personal self. He could not have doubt about the spiritual world, because it was around him. He could not be overcome by superstition, because he saw the spiritual in its true form. But superstition consists in the mental image of the spiritual in the wrong form. The illusion of personal self could not affect him, because he knew himself in the general spirituality; he was not yet separated from this general spirituality by being enclosed in his body. If these three treacherous companions had not been on his heels, his body would have become a pure harmonious connection of substances. They mixed in the impact that made him forget the divine-spiritual creative word. The casting was destroyed by this. The descent of Hiram Abiff into the center of the earth then represents man's advance on the occult path. In this way mankind comes into possession of the T, the divine creative word, and gets to know human nature (Cain) as it was before the Fall and how it can create in purity.

[IMAGE REMOVED FROM PREVIEW]

Another imagination is the following:

The eye is the divine eye of power behind all transient existence, even behind the seven-part nature of man. One can form a mental image of this if one recalls the words of St. Augustine:

"Man sees things as they are.

They are as God sees them.

Human vision is passive; things must be there for a person to see them. God's vision creates things in the act of looking. The triangle around the eye is

spirit itself (manas)
spirit of life (budhi)
spirit man (atma)

The rays are the “I” - the upper trinity shines through the I into the lower members of human nature.

These are symbolized:

1. by the illuminated part of the clouds: the astral body
2. by the unilluminated part of the clouds: the etheric body
3. the surrounding darkness: the physical body.

The temple legend and this radiant eye should be a constant subject of meditation for the*. He should remember them again and again; see them as images (imaginations) in his mind. Then, if he devotes the necessary energy and patience to them, he will become aware that they awaken forces and abilities that were dormant in him, and by awakening them he can see into the higher worlds. For man does not attain to the supersensible organs of perception through tumultuous, external means, but through such intimate means as those mentioned, which are applied in inner, quiet soul work, inwardly restlessly and energetically.

Acquire expressions
for: right angle
turn direction
alternately speaking letters

holy. word
password
apron
trowel and trowel tape.

[ 1 ] When the ordinary consciousness sets Will in action there is a part of the astral organism at work which is more loosely connected with the physical organism than the part which corresponds with feeling. And already this part of the astral organism corresponding with feeling is more loosely connected with the physical organism than is the part corresponding with thinking. At the same time we have in the astral organism of the will the true nature of the Ego. While something psychic-spiritual which is continually active in the rhythmical part of the physical organism corresponds with feeling, the will-part of the soul continually permeates the metabolic organism and the organization of the limbs. But it is only actively connected with these parts of the human body while in the act of volition.

[ 2 ] The connection between the thinking part of the soul and the head-organization is a surrender of the psychic-spiritual to the physical. The connection between the feeling soul with the rhythmical organization is an alternate surrender and drawing-back. But the connection of the will-part to the physical is at first felt to be something unconsciously psychic. It is an unconscious longing for the physical and etheric event. This will-part is by its own nature prevented from being resolved into physical activity. It stands back from it and remains psycho-spiritually alive. Only when the thinking part of the soul extends its activity into the metabolic and limb-organization, the will-part is stimulated to surrender itself to the physical and etheric organization and to be active in it. [ 3 ] The thinking part of the soul is founded on a destructive activity of the physical organism. During the making of thoughts this destruction extends only to the head-organization. When the will ordains something the destructive activity of metabolism and of the limb-organization takes charge. The thought-activity flows into the organization of trunk and limbs, where a corresponding destructive activity of the physical organism takes place. This stimulates the will-part of the soul to oppose this destruction with a re-building and the dissolving organic activity with a constructive one.

[ 4 ] Thus life and death are warring together in the human being. In thought is manifest an ever dying activity while will stands for something life-awakening, life-giving.

[ 5 ] Those exercises of the soul which are undertaken as exercises of the will, aiming at supernatural vision, are successful only when they become an experience of pain. The man who succeeds in raising his will to a higher level of energy will feel sorrow. In former epochs of the development of mankind this pain was directly occasioned by ascetic practices. They reduced the body to a state which made it difficult for the soul to absorb herself in it. This caused the will-part of the soul to break away from the body and to be stimulated to independent experiences of the spiritual world. [ 6 ] This kind of practice is no longer suitable to the human organization which has reached the present moment of earthly development. The human organism is now so constituted that the presentation of the ego-development in it would be disturbed if we went back to the old ascetic practices.

At present we must do the opposite. The soul exercises now wanted to set free the will-part of the soul from the body have been characterized in the previous studies. They do not achieve the strengthening of this soul part from the direction of the body, but from the direction of the soul. They strengthen the soul and spiritual part of man and leave the physical part untouched.

[ 7 ] Our ordinary consciousness makes us realize already how the experience of sorrow is connected with the development of psychic experience. Whoever has gained any kind of supernatural knowledge will say: The happy, joy-giving events of my life I owe to fate; but my really true knowledge of life I owe to my bitter and sorrowful experiences.

[ 8 ] If the will-part of the soul has to be strengthened as is necessary for the attainment of ‘Intuitive cognition’ we must first strengthen the desire which in ordinary human life is satisfied through the physical organism. This is done by the exercises described. If this desire becomes so strong that the physical organism in its earthly form cannot be a foundation for it, then the experience of the will-part of the soul enters into the spiritual world and intuitive vision is attained. And then in this vision the spiritual-eternal part of the soul grows conscious of itself. Just as the consciousness living inside the body realizes the body in itself, so spiritual consciousness realizes the content of a spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In the alternating processes of destruction and construction of the human organization, as they are manifested in the thinking, feeling and willing organization of mankind, we must recognize the more or less normal course of human life on earth. It differs in childhood from that of the grown-up man. The task of the true pedagogue is a perception of the effect of the destructive and constructive activities in childhood and of the influence of education and tuition upon them.

A true educational science can only arise from the supernaturally-derived knowledge of the human nature complete in its physical, psychic and spiritual being. A knowledge keeping solely within the limits of what is attainable to natural science cannot be called a foundation of a true educational science.

[ 10 ] In illness the more or less normal course of the inter-relation between the constructive and destructive elements is disturbed throughout the whole organization—or in separate organs. We get there an overbalancing either of construction in a prolific life or of destruction in shifting forms of single organs or processes. What exactly happens in this case can only be seen in the whole by someone who has complete knowledge of the human organization, according to its physical, etheric and astral organism, as well as to the nature of the ego; and the cure can be found only by means of such knowledge. For in the realms of the outer world are to be found mineral and herbal things in which constructive knowledge recognizes forces which counteract certain kinds of too strongly stimulating. or too actively lowering forces in the organism. In the same way such a counteraction can be found in certain functions of the organism itself, which in a state of health are not applied or stimulated. A genuine medical knowledge, a real Pathology and Therapy can be built up only on a knowledge of the human being which embraces spirit, soul and body, a knowledge, moreover, which knows how to value the products of Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. The demand for such a medical science is to-day called childish, because we view everything from the ground of a physical science. From this point of view this is quite intelligible, because according to it one has not the least idea how much more is a complete knowledge of the human being than mere knowledge of the human body. We can genuinely say that Anthroposophy is aware of the objections of its opponents and knows how to appreciate them. But just for this reason we also know how difficult it is to convince these opponents.

[ 11 ] The will part of the soul experiences also what passes in the feeling parts, unconsciously as far as the ordinary life of the soul is concerned; but in the depths of man's organization it occurs as a combination of facts. The evaluation of human earth-activity completed through feeling and will is there transformed into an effort to contrast in further experiences a more worthy deed with a less worthy one. The whole moral quality of the man is unconsciously experienced; and from this experience is formed a kind of spiritual-psychic being which during life on earth grows up in the unconscious region of the human being. This spiritual-psychic being represents whatever earthly life produces as a desirable objective, unattainable however by man in earthly life, because his physical and etheric organism with their forms predestined from former earth life, make it impossible. Therefore man strives through this spiritual-psychic being or nature to form another physical and etheric organism, through which the moral results of the earth-life can be transformed in the subsequent existence.

[ 12 ] This new form can be achieved only if man carries with him this spiritual-psychic nature through the gates of death into the supernatural world.

[ 13 ] Immediately after death the psychic-spiritual man retains for a short time the etheric organism. In his consciousness at this point he has no more than an indication of the moral value which has unconsciously arisen during earth-life in the spiritual and psychic part of him. For man is there completely pre-occupied with the vision of the etheric cosmos. In the following longer state of experience (which I have called the Soul-world in my Theosophy) a clear consciousness of this moral valuation is actually present, but not yet the strength to begin working at the construction of the spirit-cell which is to be a future physical earth-organism. Man then still has a tendency to look back at his earthly life because of his moral qualities acquired there. After a certain time man can find the transition to a state of experience in which the tendency is no longer there. (In my Theosophy I have called the region here traversed by man the real domain of the spirit.) From the point of view of the supernatural thought-content to which man attains—after death—in the cosmic consciousness—we might say: For a short while after death man lives turned towards the earth and is permeated with those spiritual activities which have their outward reflection in the physical phenomena of the moon. Outwardly he has been separated from the earth, but he is indirectly connected with it through a spiritual-psychic content. Everything of world-spiritual value that man during his presence on earth has developed into a real value in his astral organism (or as expressed above: in the unconscious region of his soul-life according to feeling and willing), all this is permeated by the spiritual moon-activities already described. This moral being with its spiritual quality is related by content with the spiritual moon-activities, and it is they which hold man bound to earth. But for the development of the spirit-cell for the future physical organism he must also sever himself psycho-spiritually from the earth. This he can only do by cutting himself loose at the same time from the region of the moon-activities. There he must leave behind that moral quality-being with which he is related. For the working for the future physical organism in conjunction with the spiritual beings of the supernatural world must take place unhampered by that quality-being.

[ 14 ] Man cannot obtain this severance from the region of the spiritual moon-activities through his own psycho-spiritual powers. But it has to be done nevertheless.

[ 15 ] Before the mystery of Golgotha the science of initiation could speak to man as follows: At a certain period of existence after death, human experience has to be withdrawn from the lunar sphere which keeps man within the region of planetary life. Man cannot himself bring about this withdrawal. Here it is that the being, whose physical reflection is the sun, comes to man's aid, and guides him into the sphere of pure spirit in which he, himself and not the spiritual moon beings are active. Man then experiences a stellar existence in such a way as to view the spiritual patterns of the fixed star constellations from the farther side, as it were; from the periphery of the cosmos. This vision is non-spatial even though the stars are made visible to him. With the powers now permeating man his ability to form the spirit-cell of physical organism out of the cosmos grows. The divine in him brings forth the divine. Once the spirit-cell has ripened, its descent to earth begins. Man enters once more into the lunar sphere and finds there the being of moral-spiritual quality which he left behind at his entry into the pure stellar existence; he adds it to his psychic-spiritual being to make it the foundation of his destined future life on earth.

[ 16 ] The Initiation-science of Christianity finds something else. In the absorption of the strength accruing to the soul through the contemplative and active sympathy with the earthly life of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha, man gains, already while still on earth and not aided only by the solar-being after death, the faculty of withdrawing from the lunar activities at a certain point after his earthly existence, and of entering into the pure stellar sphere. This faculty is the spiritual counterpart, experienced after death, of the freedom brought about in earthly life by the ego-consciousness. Man then takes over in the period between death and re-birth his moral-spiritual quality-being, left behind in the lunar sphere, as the designer of his fate which he can thus experience in freedom in his new existence on earth. He also carries within him in freedom the earthly after-effect of his god-filled existence between death and rebirth as religious consciousness.

[ 17 ] A modern science of Initiation can recognize this and can see the activity of the Christ in human existence. It adds to a living Philosophy and to a Cosmology which recognizes also the spirit cosmos, a religious knowledge which recognizes the Christ as the mediator of a renewed religious consciousness and as the leader of the world in freedom.

[ 18 ] In these studies I have not been able to do more than sketch a possible beginning of a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religious Cognition. Much more would have to be said if the sketch were to be converted into a coloured picture with all its colours.

Today's discussion is a kind of continuation of what we were only able to touch on in broad, sketchy lines yesterday, a topic of great importance. Yesterday we spoke of the delusion surrounding being ill, so today we will deal with something that seems quite similar: the health fever.

There are so many things available today to maintain or improve our health. Here is an example: a friend who felt overworked went to a sanatorium to recover. He showed me a note of his daily activities there. Every hour was filled with something different. So I asked him: “When did you have more to do, now or during your usual working hours?”

Everyone seeks to find health, and the ways to do so are constantly changing; even experts admit that. Whether someone tries it in a “Christian scientific” or unchristian way is irrelevant. No one is to be blamed for seeking health. The only question is: [What is] the right way? Is this “feverish” search for health really justified?

Let me choose an analogy. There are two ways of pursuing prosperity. One is to acquire prosperity in order to have the opportunity to serve others. However, it is different if you accumulate money for the sake of money. Then it does not fulfill its purpose in the world. Similarly, the pursuit of health becomes an end in itself and thus an enemy of health. The underlying reason for this is that today people are no longer aware that there is a spiritual world. However, it is not enough to know the seven basic parts of the human body. It is dry theory if it is not put into practice in life.

What is the use of just looking for health? Does anyone today think of asking about the etheric or astral body in order to test the correctness of a food? In many cases today, nutrition is discussed from a purely materialistic point of view. Today we want to do this from a spiritual scientific point of view.

We must be clear that the physical body is only a chemical structure. What is the function of the etheric body? When we study plants, we can see how many stages a form of existence repeats through, how the same species reappears year after year. Repetition is the essence of the forces that are in the etheric body. The principle of the etheric body is based on similarity or partial similarity and partial modification. In the human being, an organ only changes gradually. You can observe this in the human spine, how the ring-shaped bones of the spine gradually change until they form the vertebra in the head, where they enclose the brain. This repetition is interrupted by the forces of the astral body. The astral body must restrict them and therefore produces pleasure and pain. This restriction gives rise to sensation in animals and humans.

However, we must distinguish between animals and humans. Man has, so to speak, a two-part astral body; man has a body permeated by an ego. Because man has a two-part astral body, man can be subject to completely different symptoms than animals.

What must the physical body carry within itself to be complete? It must be able to properly carry out physical and chemical processes. The etheric body must express its power; it must reproduce and bring forth again. If it cannot do this, it will be the source of illness. The astral body is the source of pleasure, suffering and joy. Every elevated mood also expresses the thriving mood of the etheric body. Just as the etheric body is only healthy when it can bring forth, so the astral body is healthy when it is able to experience comfort and enjoyment. These three things must harmonize with each other.

Let me give you an example to show how animals and humans differ from each other. The animal has an astral body - the lion, tiger, monkey - from which no limb can be removed or reshaped. In humans, however, a transformation is constantly taking place. The part that is shaped by the ego must be brought into the right relationship with these lower limbs. Culture changes the human being; the animal cannot step out of its living conditions because its astral body has a certain form. The human being must reshape everything from his ego, and this has an effect on himself. Monkeys are healthy in the wild; they cannot tolerate captivity, they become tubercular. Why? Because their astral body has a certain form and cannot adapt to artificial conditions. If a human being were in the same situation, a state of culture would be impossible. How must a human being work in his culture? He must find ways to ensure that his astral body has an effect on his other two bodies: the etheric and physical bodies.

We want to start here with the consideration of external facts. Science – and that is good – proceeds with microscopic examinations. I will give you some connections from spiritual science. The human being consists of soft tissues that gradually develop into muscles, cartilage and bones. Lower animals have only soft tissues. The cartilage mass is there so that bone mass can be inserted. In the course of development, this ossification has been initiated. The ossification of the human being is very important; it is a disadvantage if it does not reach its correct goal. The ossification of the human being is completed by the age of seven. From then on, a different period of life begins. From birth onwards, the ossification must proceed in the right way, the soft parts must lag behind. If his organism is such that he cannot build enough into this etheric body, this shows most drastically in the teeth; they become defective. But it is not only related to the teeth. There is something wrong with the etheric body. Bad teeth and childbed fever are connected.

Human development must progress. In animals, development stops. Six thousand years ago, the brains of humans were formed quite differently, even the ossification. The change is seemingly small, but for the nature of man it is very big. The development ties in with the ossification. All human beings have a certain struggle in their own bodies – spiritually trained people can see this: soft tissue has the tendency to hold back ossification. Wherever something is wrong, you can see the tendency towards effeminacy – rickets. Here it is the skipping of a certain principle that is necessary for development.

This is also the case with something else – the external appearances are of no concern to us in relation to the spiritual: the form of the disease as tuberculosis. Here, as it were, a skipping, an over-snapping has taken place. The process of hardening is a correct principle, only here it is distorted into exaggeration.

The following is an important consequence: the human being must adapt to the process of civilization, although this adaptation can also go too far in one direction or the other. What are the causes of disease? These are connected with the process of progress, which is a source of disease-causing agents. The ego must find the right balance here. As a trained occultist, one can indicate what should be done so that there is no overburdening of the forces. The human organism is not designed to return to natural conditions; the person would have to deny the process of civilization.

Now I want to state a categorical sentence: it is not at all important to fight the causes of illness, but to strengthen the person to endure these conditions of illness, to create the most favorable conditions possible to transform their existence. If a person has lost their hand, they must be given the opportunity to live with this defect as well as possible, while remaining healthy and strong. There is a standard that is necessary for the self. I am linking this to vegetarianism.

It is quite good for a person to live this way, but it is only a stopgap. In the true, occult sense, there is only one reason and that is that one cannot eat meat. People eat without understanding, without doing so in the sense of devoutness in the occult sense. Gobbling is as unoccult as possible. One should enjoy food with thoughts of how it arises in nature, what path it has taken to maturity. Then one eats spiritually. It is not about putting so and so much material into the body. Man must eat with soul and spirit: the sun has shone on the leaf and the herb, the root has sunk into the earth and so on. Harmony arises when man eats thoughtfully. It is non-occult to see matter only as matter. Matter is condensed spirit. It is a good thing for people to pray before eating, that the divine is in it, that one eats the spirit of the world. This creates a feeling of elevation.

There is a certain point in occult knowledge where you know the nature of incarnation; you can no longer eat it, it disgusts you because you recognize what meat is. It depends on an unspoiled taste. The animal has it, man must first acquire it again, must arouse comfort and enjoyment in him, which is healthy for him, disgust for what is harmful to him. Man will learn what he must have.

All this feverish hunting for externally prescribed rules and laws is contrary to a truly healthy view of life. If sunbathing is really pleasant for you, it is helpful for you. If someone travels to the south, he may have short-term success. But what matters is to create living conditions that fill people with enjoyment and comfort. Enjoyment is the creator; it brings back into balance what was thrown out of balance in the astral body. A healthy sense of comfort must be achieved. Asceticism does not do it. It depends on what one is comfortable with. If people feel comfortable frequenting dives, it is no use trying to get them out of them. You have to make it so that they no longer feel comfortable there. If we find spiritual satisfaction, then we belong in the spiritual sphere. If we want to promote health, we must teach people comfort, pleasure and joy for the spiritual.

We can cultivate the etheric body by stimulating the creative power. After the seventh year, we should be careful not to give the child concepts, but images; these stimulate. Religious writings, which have a thousand-fold meaning, make the child creative. Expose children to artistic creations: Laocoon, a statue of Zeus, Pallas Athena and the like; later on, let them read classical works. How the versatility of thought is stimulated! So much has been written about Goethe's “Faust”, and how different it all is! Thank God that people can argue about it, that everyone can still think for themselves. Where there is free, spiritual movement, there is invigorating power. Everything must awaken the feeling. Let us do gymnastics, let us move outdoors – everything that is beneficial for my health must awaken the feeling in us: I become strong, I grow.

The ancient Greek games were so captivating; even the entire watching population was drawn into this feeling. Michelangelo had such a vivid sense of space! How the space is distributed in the [Sistine] Chapel in Rome, how the painting is adapted to the spatial conditions, how it connects to the towering ceiling. When you feel the work of art in this way, the etheric body is transformed.

Here I would like to draw on the sunbath. It is only useful insofar as it evokes a sense of comfort and a sense of life in us. We need to feel the power of the sun as an invigorating force.

We would live much healthier lives if we could harmonize the feeling of growth with our lives. We should go there, we should do that, which makes us feel stimulated. We can best promote health when it is not an end in itself and when we seek out what awakens pleasure and joy in being. One must seek to transform the human being so that he adapts to the circumstances. Ultimately, it must come to pass that the human being can be the measure of his own health. The more independent and free, the better. The more we seek to regard the human being as a given, the better it is for us. If we are able to make the human being more joyful in life, then we are truly working for his health. We should think like Paracelsus, who says: “The physician must be an artist who considers each individual case on its own merits.

One must recognize the living conditions that go beyond life. Thus, our contemplation points us to the spirit, and we recognize that theosophy is something that has a profound effect and will serve people.

Answer to question

[Questions not provided.]

Answer: As a rule, coffee has an instant stimulating effect; over time, it weakens. It promotes logical thinking; one thought is carried out and another is logically connected. It is quite natural, for example, for a journalist to visit cafes; in fact, coffee helps him to develop ideas.

Tea enjoyment does not result in the coupling of thoughts, but in the jumping of thoughts, making witty people feel witty. It is the drink of diplomats. However, the effects are different for different peoples. The Russians are still a youthful people; tea has a different effect on them than on older peoples. Smoking tobacco is fairly indifferent for occult training. In fact, the smoke even helps to drive away elemental beings.

Alcohol is poison for occult training.

Milk is life-promoting; although it comes from animals, milk formation follows very special paths.

Meat has a withering effect, because meat is a product of decay. Those who eat pork really enjoy something of the character of the pig, thus eating the whole pig.

When we eat fish, we eat – enjoy – the entire animal kingdom.

Question: Monks, who at least in the monasteries had occult training, enjoyed plenty of fish?

Answer: It was just in an earlier time, where wine was drunk by the monks, they drank a lot of wine. Occult training also changes.

{Question not handed down.

Answer: If children want to, let them eat meat. But all of humanity will develop in the direction of not eating meat anymore. You can't quibble over works of art, that's brooding or pondering; they simply have to affect us.

When speaking about the spiritual worlds as we are doing in these lectures, we should keep the following well in mind: the clairvoyant consciousness which the human soul can develop in itself will change nothing in the nature and individuality of a person, for everything entering that consciousness was already long present in man's nature. Knowing a thing is not the same as creating it; a person learns only to perceive what is already there as a fact. Obvious as this is, it has to be said, for we must lead our thoughts to realize that the nature of the human being is hidden in the very depths of his existence; it can be brought up out of those depths only through clairvoyant cognition. It follows from this that the true, inmost nature of man's being cannot be brought to light in any other way than through occult knowledge. We can learn what a human being actually is not through any kind of philosophy but only through the kind of knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness. To the observation we use in the sense world and to the understanding limited to the sense world, the being of man, the true, inmost nature of man, lies in hidden worlds. Clairvoyant consciousness provides the point of view from which the worlds beyond the so-called threshold have to be observed; in order to perceive and learn, quite different demands are made on it from those in the sense world. This is the most important thing: that the human soul should become more or less accustomed to the fact that the way of looking at and recognizing things that for the sense world is the correct and healthy one is not the only way.

Here I shall give the name elemental world to the first world that the soul of a human being enters on becoming clairvoyant and crossing the threshold. Only a person who wants to carry the habits of the sense world into the higher super-sensible worlds can demand a uniform choice of names for all the points of view the higher worlds can offer.

Fully new demands meet the life of soul when it steps over the threshold into the elemental world. If the human so insisted on entering this world with the habits of the sense world, two things might happen: cloudiness or complete darkness would spread over the horizon of the consciousness, over the field of vision, or else—if the soul wanted to enter the elemental world without preparing itself for the peculiarities and requirements there—it would be thrown back again into the sense world. The elemental world is absolutely different, from the sense world. In this world of ours when you move from one living being to another, from one happening to the next, you have these beings and events before you and can observe them; while confronting and observing them, you keep your own distinct existence, your own separate personality. You know all the time that in the presence of another person or happening you are the same person that you were before and that you will be the same when you confront a new situation; you can never lose yourself in another being or happening. You confront them, you stand outside them and you know you will always be the same in the sense world wherever you go.

This changes as soon as a person enters the elemental world. There it is necessary to adapt one's whole inner life of soul to a being or event so completely that one transforms one's own inner soul life into this other being, into this other event. We can learn nothing at all in the elemental world unless we become a different person within every other being, indeed unless we become similar, to a high degree, to the other beings and events.

We have to have, then, one peculiarity of soul for the elemental world: the capacity for transforming our own being into other beings outside ourselves. We must have the faculty of metamorphosis. We must be able to immerse ourselves in and become the other being. We must be able to lose the consciousness which always—in order to remain emotionally healthy—we have to have in the sense world, the consciousness of ‘I am myself.’ In the elemental world we get to know another being only when in a way we inwardly have ‘become’ the other. When we have crossed the threshold, we have to move through the elemental world in such a way that with every step we transform ourselves into every single happening, creep into every single being. It belongs to the health of a person's soul that in passing through the sense world he should hold his own and assert his individual character. But this is altogether impossible in the elemental world, where it would lead either to the darkening of his field of vision or to his being thrown back into the sense world.

You will easily understand that in order to exercise the faculty of transformation, the soul needs something more than it already possesses here in our world. The human soul is too weak to be able to change itself continuously and adapt itself to every sort of being if it enters the elemental world in its ordinary state. Therefore the forces of the human soul must be strengthened and heightened through the preparations described in my books Occult Science and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds from these the life of soul will become stronger and more forceful. It can then immerse itself in other entities without losing itself in the process. This being said, you will understand at once the importance of noting what is called the threshold between the sense world and the super-sensible world. We have already said that the clairvoyant consciousness of a human being on earth must go back and forth continually, that it must observe the spiritual world beyond the threshold while it is outside the physical body and must then return into the physical body, exercising in a healthy way the faculties which lead it to the right observation of the physical sense world.

Let us suppose that a person's clairvoyant consciousness, when returning over the threshold, were to take back into the sense world the faculty of transformation it has to have in order to be at all aware of the spiritual world. The faculty of transformation I have been speaking about is a peculiarity of the human etheric body, which lives by preference in the elemental world. Now suppose that a person were to go back into the physical world keeping his etheric body as capable of transformation as it has to be in the elemental world. What would happen? Each of the worlds has its own special laws. The sense world is the world of self-contained forms, for here the Spirits of Form rule. The elemental world is the world of mobility, of metamorphosis, of transformation; just as we continually have to change in order to feel at home in that world, all the beings there are continually changing themselves. There is no enclosed, circumscribed form: all is in continual metamorphosis. A soul has to take part in this everchanging existence outside the physical body if it wants to unfold itself there. Then in the physical sense world we must allow our etheric body, as an entity of the elemental world capable of metamorphosis, to sink down into the physical body. Through this physical body I am a definite personality in the physical sense world; I am this or that distinct person. My physical body stamps my personality upon me; the physical body and the conditions of the physical world in which I find myself make me a personality. In the elemental world one is not a personality, for this would require an enclosed form. Here, however, we must note that what the clairvoyant consciousness recognizes in the human soul is, and always has been, present within it. Through the forces of the physical body, the mobility of the etheric body is restrained only for the time being. As soon as the etheric body sinks back into the physical encasement, its powers of movement are held together and adapted to the form. If the etheric body were not tucked into the physical body as if into a tote bag, it would always be impelled to continuous transformation.

Now let us suppose that a soul, becoming clairvoyant, were to carry over into the physical world this desire of its etheric body for transformation. Then with its tendency towards movement it will fit rather loosely into the physical body, and thus the soul can come into contradiction with the physical world that wants to shape it into a definite personality. The etheric body, which always wants to move freely, can come back over the threshold in the wrong way, every moment wishing to be something or someone else, someone that may be quite the opposite of the firmly imprinted form of the physical body. To put it even more concretely: a person could be, say, a Scandinavian bank executive, thanks to his physical body, but because his etheric brings over into the physical world the impulse to free itself from physical constraints he may imagine himself to be the emperor of China. (Or, to use another example, a person may be—let us say—the president of the Theosophical Society, and if her etheric body has been loosened, she may imagine that she has been in the presence of the Director of the Universe.)

We see that the threshold that sharply divides the sense world from the super-sensible world must be respected absolutely; the soul must observe the requirements of each of the two worlds, adapting and conducting itself differently on this side and that. We have emphasized repeatedly that the peculiarities of the super-sensible world must not unlawfully be carried over when one comes back into the sense world. If I may put it more plainly, one has to understand how to conduct oneself in both worlds; one may not carry over into one world the method of observation that is right for the other.

First of all, then, we have to take note that the essential faculty for finding and feeling oneself in the elemental world is the faculty of transformation. But the human soul could never live permanently in this mobile element. The etheric body could as little remain permanently in a state of being able to transform itself as a human being in the physical world could remain continually awake. Only when we are awake can we observe the physical world; asleep, we do not perceive it. Nevertheless we have to allow the waking condition to alternate with the sleeping one. Something comparable to this is necessary in the elemental world. Just as little as it is right in the physical world to be continually awake, for life here must swing like a pendulum between waking and sleeping, so something similar is necessary for the life of the etheric body in the elemental world. There must be an opposite pole, as it were, something that works in the opposite direction to the faculty of transformation leading to perception in the spiritual world. What is it that makes the human being capable of transformation? It is his living in imagination, in mental images, the ability to make his ideas and thoughts so mobile that through his lively, flexible thinking he can dip down into other beings and happenings. For the opposite condition, comparable to sleep in the sense world, it is the will of the human being that must be developed and strengthened. For the faculty of transformation, thinking or imagination; for the opposite condition, the will.

To understand this, we should consider that in the physical sense world the human being is a self, an ego, an ‘I’. It is the physical body, as long as it is awake, that contributes what is necessary for this feeling of self. The forces of the physical body, when the human being sinks down into it, supply him with the power to feel himself an ego, an ‘I’. It is different in the elemental world. There the human being himself must achieve to some degree what the physical body achieves in the physical world. He can develop no feeling of self in the elemental world if he does not exert his will, if he himself does not do the willing. This, however, calls for overcoming something that is deeply rooted in us: our love of comfort and convenience. For the elemental world this self-willing is necessary; like the alternation of sleeping and waking In the physical world, the condition of ‘transforming oneself into other beings’ must give way to the feeling of selfstrengthened volition, just as we have become tired in the physical world and close our eyes, overcome by sleep, the moment comes in the elemental world when the etheric body feels, ‘I cannot go on continually changing; now I must shut out all the beings and happenings around me. I will have to thrust it all out of my field of vision and look away from it. I now must will myself and live absolutely and entirely within myself, ignoring the other beings and occurrences.’ This willing of self, excluding everything else, corresponds to sleep in the physical world.

We would be mistaken if we imagined that the alternation of transformation with strengthened ego feeling were regulated in the elemental world just as naturally as waking and sleeping are in the physical world. According to clairvoyant consciousness—and to this alone it is perceptible—it takes place at will, not passing so easily as waking here passes into sleep. After one has lived for a time in the element of metamorphosis, one feels the need within oneself to engage and use the other swing of the pendulum of elemental life. In a much more arbitrary way than with our waking and sleeping, the element of transforming oneself alternates with living within with its heightened feeling of self. Yes, our consciousness can even bring it about through its elasticity that in certain circumstances both conditions can be present at the same time: on the one hand, one transforms oneself to some degree and yet can hold together certain parts of the soul and rest within oneself. In the elemental world we can wake and sleep at the same time, something we should not try to do in the physical world if we have any concern for our soul life. We must further consider that when thinking develops into the faculty of transformation and begins to be at home in the elemental world, it cannot be used in that world in the way that is right and healthy for the physical world. What is thinking like in our ordinary world? Observe it as you follow its movement. A person is aware of thoughts in his soul; he knows that he is grasping, spinning out, connecting and separating these thoughts. Inwardly he feels himself to be the master of his thoughts, which seem rather passive; they allow themselves to be connected and separated, to be formed and then dismissed. This life of thought must develop in the elemental world a step further. There a person is not in a position to deal with thoughts that are passive. If someone really succeeds in entering that world with his clairvoyant soul, it seems as though his thoughts were not things over which he has any command: they are living beings. Only imagine how it is when you cannot form and connect and separate your thoughts but, instead, each one of them in your consciousness begins to have a life of its own, a life as an entity in itself You thrust your consciousness into a place, it seems, where you do not find thoughts that are like those in the physical world but where they are living beings. I can only use a grotesque picture which will help us somehow to realize how different our thinking must become from what it is here. Imagine sticking your head into an anthill, while your thinking comes to a stop—you would have ants in your head instead of thoughts! It is just like that, when your soul dips down into the elemental world; your thoughts become so alive that they themselves join each other, separate from each other and lead a life of their own. We truly need a stronger power of soul to confront these living thought-beings with our consciousness than we do with the passive thoughts of the physical world, which allow themselves to be formed at will, to be connected and separated not only sensibly but often even quite foolishly. They are patient things, these thoughts of our ordinary world; they let the human soul do anything it likes with them. But it is quite different when we thrust our soul into the elemental world, where our thoughts will lead an independent life. A human being must hold his own with his soul life and assert his will in confronting these active, lively, no longer passive thoughts. In the physical world our thinking can be completely stupid and this does not harm us at all. But if we do foolish things with our thinking in the elemental world, it may well happen that our stupid thoughts, creeping around there as independent beings, can hurt us, can even cause real pain.

Thus we see that the habits of our soul life must change when we cross the threshold from the physical into the super-sensible world. If we were then to return to the physical world with the activity we have to bring to bear on the living thought entities of the elemental world and failed to develop in ourselves sound thinking with these passive thoughts, wishing rather to hold fast to the conditions of the other world, our thoughts would continually run away from us; then hurrying after them, we woud become a slave to our thoughts.

When a person enters the elemental world with clairvoyant soul and develops his faculty of metamorphosis, he delves into it with his inner life, transforming himself according to the kind of entity he is confronting. What is his experience when he does this? It is something we can call sympathy and antipathy. Out of soul depths these experiences seem to well up, presenting themselves to the soul that has become clairvoyant. Quite definite kinds of sympathy and antipathy appear as it transforms itself into this or that other being. When the person proceeds from one transformation to the next, he is continually aware of different sympathies or antipathies, just as in the physical world we recognize, characterize, describe the objects and living beings, in short, perceive them when the eye sees their colour or the ear hears their tones, so correspondingly in the spiritual world we would describe its beings in terms of particular sympathies and antipathies. Two things, however, should be noted. One is that in our usual way of speaking in the physical world we generally differentiate only between stronger and weaker degrees of sympathy and antipathy; in the elemental world the sympathies and antipathies differ from one another not only in degree but also in quality. There they vary, just as yellow here is quite different from red. As our colours are qualitatively different, so are the many varieties of sympathy and antipathy that we meet in the elemental world. In order therefore to describe this correctly, one may not merely say as one would do in the physical world—that in diving down and entering this particular entity one feels greater sympathy, while in immersing oneself in another entity one feels less sympathy. No, sympathies of all sorts and kinds can be found there.

The other point to note is this. Our usual natural attitude to sympathy and antipathy cannot be carried over into the elemental world. Here in this world we feel drawn to some people, repelled by others; we associate by choice with those who are sympathetic and wish to stay near them; we turn away from the things and people who are abhorrent and refuse to have anything to do with them. This cannot be the case in the elemental world, for there—if I may express it rather oddly—we will not find the sympathies sympathetic nor the antipathies antipathetic. This would resemble someone in the physical world saying, ‘I can stand only the blues and greens, not the red or yellow colours. I simply have to run away from red and yellow!’ If a being of the elemental world is antipathetic, it means that it has a distinct characteristic of that world which must be described as antipathetic, and we have to deal with it just as we deal in the sense world with the colours blue and red—not permitting one to be more sympathetic to us than the other. Here we meet all the colours with a certain calmness because they convey what the things are; only when a person is a bit neurotic does he run away from certain colours, or when he is a bull and cannot bear the sight of red. Most of us accept all the colours with equanimity and in the same way we should be able to observe with the utmost calmness the qualities of sympathy and antipathy that belong to the elemental world. For this we must necessarily change the attitude of soul usual in the physical world, where it is attracted by sympathy and repelled by antipathy; it must become completely changed. There the inner mood or disposition corresponding to the feelings of sympathy and antipathy must be replaced with what we can call soul-quiet, spirit-peacefulness. With an inwardly resolute soul life filled with spirit calm, we must immerse ourselves in the entities and transform ourselves into them; then we will feel the qualities of these beings rising within our soul depths as sympathies and antipathies. Only when we can do this, with such an attitude toward sympathy and antipathy, will the soul, in its experiences, be capable of letting the sympathetic and antipathetic perception appear before it as images that are right and true. That is, only then are we capable not merely of feeling what the perception of sympathies and antipathies is but of really experiencing our own particular self, transformed into another being, suddenly rising up as one or another colour-picture or as one or another tone-picture of the elemental world.

You can also learn how sympathies and antipathies play a part in regard to the experience of the soul in the spiritual world if you will look with a certain amount of inner understanding at the chapter of my book Theosophy that describes the soul world. You will see there that the soul world is actually constructed of sympathies and antipathies. From my description you will have been able to learn that what we know as thinking in the physical sense world is really only the external shadowy imprint, called up by the physical body, of the thinking that, lying in occult depths, can be called a true living force. As soon as we enter the elemental world and move with our etheric body, thoughts become—one can say—denser, more alive, more independent, more true to their own nature. What we experience as thought in the physical body relates to this truer element of thinking as a shadow on the wall relates to the objects casting it. As a matter of fact, it is the shadow of the elemental thought-life thrown into the physical sense world through the instrumentality of the physical body. When we think, our thinking lies more or less in the shadow of thought beings. Here clairvoyant spiritual knowledge throws new light on the true nature of thinking. No philosophy, no external science, however ingenious, can determine anything of the real nature of thinking; only a knowledge based on clairvoyant consciousness can recognize what it is.

The same thing holds good with the nature of our willing. The will must grow stronger, for in the elemental world things are not so obliging that the ego feeling is provided for us as it is through the forces of the physical body. There we ourselves have to will the feeling of ego; we have to find out what it means for our soul to be entirely filled with the consciousness, ‘I will myself’; we have to experience something of the greatest significance: that when we are not strong enough to bring forth the real act of will, ‘I will myself’, and not just the thought of it, at that moment we will feel ourselves falling unconscious as though in a faint. If we do not hold ourselves together in the elemental world, we will fall into a kind of faint. There we look into the true nature of the will, again something that cannot be discovered by external science or philosophy but only by the clairvoyant consciousness. What we call the will in the physical world is a shadowy image of the strong, living will of the elemental world, which grows and develops so that it can maintain the self out of its own volition without the support of external forces.We can say that everything in that world, when we grow accustomed to it, becomes self-willed.

Above all, when we have left the physical body and our etheric body has the elemental world as its environment, it is through the innate character of the etheric body that the drive to transform ourselves awakens. We wish to immerse ourselves in the other beings. However, just as in our waking state by day the need for sleep arises, so in the elemental world there arises in turn the need to be alone, to shut out everything into which we could transform ourselves. Then again, when we have felt alone for a while and developed the strong feeling of will, ‘I will myself’, there comes what may be called a terrible feeling of isolation, of being forsaken, which evokes the longing to awaken out of this state, of only willing oneself, to the faculty of transformation again. While we rest in physical sleep, other forces take care that we wake up; we do not have to attend to it ourselves. In the elemental world when we are in the sleeping condition of only willing ourselves, it is through the demand of feeling forsaken that we are impelled to put ourselves into the state of transformation, that is, of wanting to awaken.

From all this, you see how different are the conditions of experiencing oneself in the elemental world, of perceiving oneself there, from those of the physical world. You can judge therefore how necessary it is, again and again, to take care that the clairvoyant consciousness, passing back and forth from one world to the other, adapts itself correctly to the requirements of each world and does not carry over, on crossing the threshold, the usages of one into the other. The strengthening and invigorating of the life of soul consequently belongs to the preparation we have often described as necessary for the experience of super-sensible worlds.

What must above all become strong and forceful are the soul experiences we can call the eminently moral ones. These imprint themselves as soul dispositions in firmness of character and inner resolute calm. Inner courage and firmness of character must most especially be developed, for through weakness of character we cripple the whole life of soul, which would then come powerless into the elemental world, this we must avoid if we hope to have a true and correct experience there. No one who is really earnest about gaining knowledge in the higher worlds will therefore fail to give weight to the strengthening of the moral forces among all the other forces that help the soul enter those worlds. One of the most shameful errors is foisted on humanity when someone takes it on himself to say that clairvoyance should be acquired without paying attention to strengthening the moral life. It must be stressed once and for all that what I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds as the development of the lotus flowers that crystallize in the spirit body of a student/clairvoyant may indeed take place without attention to supportive moral strength, but certainly ought not to do so.

The lotus flowers must be there if a person wants to have the faculty of transformation. That faculty comes into existence when the flowers unfold their petals in a motion away from the human being, in order to grasp the spiritual world and adhere to it. Whatever a person develops as the ability to transform himself is expressed for the clairvoyant vision in the unfolding of the lotus flowers. Whatever he can acquire of a strengthened ego-feeling becomes inner firmness; we can call it an elementary backbone. Both of these must be correspondingly developed: the lotus flowers so that one can transform oneself, and an elementary backbone so that one can unfold a strengthened ego in the elemental world.

As mentioned in an earlier lecture, what develops in a spiritual way can lead to a high order of virtues in the spiritual world. But if this is allowed to stream down into the sense world, it can bring about the most terrible vices. It is the same with the lotus flowers and elemental backbone. By practising certain methods it is also possible to awaken the lotus flowers and backbone without aiming for moral firmness—but this no conscientious clairvoyant would recommend. It is not merely a question of attaining something or other in the higher worlds, but of knowing what is involved. At the moment we pass over the threshold into the spiritual world we approach the luciferic and ahrimanic beings, of whom we have already spoken; here we meet them in quite a different way from any confrontation we might have in the physical world. We will have the remarkable experience that as soon as we cross the threshold, that is, as soon as we have developed the lotus flowers and a backbone, we will see the luciferic powers coming towards us with the intention of seizing the lotus flowers. They stretch their tentacles out towards our lotus flowers; we must have developed in the right way so that we use the lotus flowers to grasp and understand the spiritual events and so that they are not themselves grasped by the luciferic powers. It is possible to prevent their being seized by these powers only by ascending into the spiritual world with firmly established moral forces.

I have already mentioned that in the physical sense world the ahrimanic forces approach us more from outside, the luciferic more from within the soul. In the spiritual world it is just the opposite: the luciferic beings come from outside and try to lay hold of the lotus flowers, whereas the ahrimanic beings come from within and settle themselves tenaciously within the elementary backbone. If we have risen into the spiritual world without the support of morality, the ahrimanic and luciferic powers form an extraordinary alliance with each other. If we have come into the higher worlds filled with ambition, vanity, pride or with the desire for power, Ahriman and Lucifer will succeed in forming a partnership with each other. I will use a picture for what they do, but this Picture corresponds to the actual situation and you will understand that what I am indicating really takes place. Ahriman and Lucifer form an alliance; together they bind the petals of the lotus flowers to the elementary backbone. When all the petals are fastened to the backbone, the human being is tied up in himself, fettered within himself through his strongly developed lotus flowers and backbone. The results of this will be the onset of egoism and love of deception to an extent that would be impossible were he to remain normally in the physical world. Thus we see what can happen if clairvoyant consciousness is not developed in the right way: the alliance of Ahriman and Lucifer whereby the petals of the lotus flowers are fastened onto the elementary backbone, fettering a person within himself by means of his own elemental or etheric capacities. These are the things we must know if we wish to penetrate with open eyes and with understanding into the actual spiritual world.

It may be presumed, in regard to the two ideas which are to form the subject of our present lecture, namely, the curability and incurability of diseases, that there will be clearer conceptions and—one might say—concepts more acceptable to humanity, when the ideas of karma and karmic connections in life have gained ground in wider circles. One may indeed say that in regard to the ideas of the curability and incurability of diseases there have been various opinions in different centuries, and one need not go so very far back to find how greatly these have changed.

We find a time at the turning point between the Middle Ages and modern times, about the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, when the idea gradually gained ground that forms of disease could be strictly limited, and that for every disease there was some sort of herb or mixture by which the disease in question could be cured. This belief lasted for a long time, even into the nineteenth century, and when we as laymen, or as those who have accepted the ideas of the present day, read of the treatment of disease from the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of the nineteenth centuries and for some time later, we are astonished at the remedies and recipes which were largely used at that time: teas, mixtures, more dangerous medicines, blood-letting, etc.

In the nineteenth century this view was reversed into the exact opposite in medical circles, and indeed in distinguished medical circles. I may say that during the earlier years of my life many of these opposing views came before me in various forms. The opportunity for this came to all who followed the progress of the ‘nihilistic school of medicine’ which was started in Vienna about the middle of the nineteenth century and which won more and more favour. The commencement of a radical change in the views on the curability and incurability of diseases was due to what the renowned physician Dietel brought to light in regard to pneumonia and similar diseases. From all kinds of observations he came to the conclusion that fundamentally there is absolutely no real effect to be noticed from the use of various remedies on the course of this or that disease. Under the influence of the school of Dietel, the young doctors of that day learned to think of the healing value of the remedies which had been used for centuries in such a way that they almost outdid what is conveyed in the well-known saying:—‘When the cock crows on the dung-heap the weather will change—or it will remain as it is!’ They were of the opinion that it made little difference to the course of this or that disease whether one administered a certain remedy or not. Now Dietel was one who, for that period, collected very convincing statistics showing that in his so-called ‘wait and see’ treatment, approximately as many people who were suffering from pneumonia were cured or died as was the case in the earlier treatment with time-honoured remedies. The waiting treatment founded by Dietel, and continued by Skoda consisted in bringing the patient into a condition in which he was best able to stimulate the self-healing powers and to draw them forth from his organism. The doctor had little more to do than watch the course of the disease and to be at hand if anything happened, so that he could give practical help with human needs. For the rest, he confined himself to watching the disease come, so to speak, and waiting to see how the self-healing forces came out of the organism, until after a time the fever subsided and self-healing came about.

This school of medicine was called, and is still called, ‘The Nihilistic School,’ because it rested on a statement by Professor Skoda who said approximately:—‘We may perhaps learn to diagnose diseases, to describe them, perhaps even explain them, but we cannot heal them!’ I give you these details of developments in the course of the nineteenth century so that you may realise how ideas have changed on this subject. But because this or that is related in purely narrative form it is not implied that you should take sides in any way, for obviously the statement of the celebrated Professor Skoda was a kind of radicalism, the limits of which are quite easy to define. There was, however, one point or aspect which was repeatedly emphasised by this particular school of medicine. Although they had no means of proving it and had not even the words to describe exactly the content of their conception they repeatedly affirmed that there must be in man some element which determines the appearance and the course of his illness, and which is fundamentally beyond the reach of any human intervention.

Thus a reference was made to something beyond human aid; and if one really goes to the bottom of these things, this indication cannot relate to anything other than the law of karma and its activity in human life. If we follow the course of a disease in human life, how it develops, and how the healing powers spring forth from the organism itself; if we follow the process of healing impartially—particularly if we reflect how in one case a cure takes place, while in another it fails—we shall then be driven to search for a deeper law determining this. Can this deeper law be sought for in the previous earth-life of man? That is a question for us. Can we say that a person brings with him certain predispositions which in one particular case called forth the healing powers from his organism, but which in another case, in spite of every effort, held these forces back?

It will be remembered from the last lecture that in the events which take place between death and a new birth, particular forces are taken into the human individuality. During the period in kamaloca the events of a person's last life, the good and evil deeds he has done, the qualities of his character, etc., come before his soul, and through the vision of his own life he acquires the tendency to bring about the remedy and compensation for all that is imperfect in him and which has manifested as wrong action. He is moved to acquire those qualities which will bring him nearer to perfection in various directions. He forms intentions and tendencies during the time up to a new birth, and goes into existence again with these intentions. Further, he himself works upon the new body which he acquires for his new life, and he builds in conformity with the forces he has brought from previous earthly lives, and from the time between death and re-birth. He is furnished with these forces, and builds them into his new body. From this it may be seen that this new body will be weak or strong according as the person is in the position to build weak or strong forces into it.

Now it must be clearly understood that a certain consequence will come when, for example, during the life in kamaloca, a person sees that in the last life, he did many actions under the influence of the emotions of anger, fear, aversion, etc. These actions now stand vividly before his soul in kamaloca, and in his soul is formed the thought (the expressions which we have to use for these forces are of course coined from the physical life): ‘You must do something to yourself, so that you will become more perfect in this respect, so that in the future you will no longer be inclined to commit such actions under the dominance of your emotions.’ This thought becomes an integral part of the human-soul individuality, and during the passage through to a new birth, it is imprinted still further as a force in the new body. Thus this new body is penetrated with the tendency so to act on the whole organisation of the physical body, the etheric body and astral body, that it will be prevented from performing certain actions resulting from the emotions of anger, hate, envy, etc. He will be impelled to fresh actions which will compensate for previous ones. Thus from a reason which extends far beyond his ordinary rationality, the person is imbued with a strong desire for a higher perfection in certain directions, and with the desire also to compensate for certain deeds. If we consider how manifold life is, and how day by day we perform actions which require compensation of this sort, we shall understand that when the soul enters into a next existence on earth, it contains many such thoughts waiting to be balanced, and that these manifold thoughts and tendencies cross one another, making the human physical body and etheric body receive a complex warp and woof of such tendencies and desires. To illustrate this, let us take a striking case, and I must again repeat that I avoid speaking from any sort of theory or hypothesis, and that when I give examples I give only those that have been tested by Spiritual Science.

Let us suppose that in his previous life a person acted from an Ego-feeling which was much too weak, and which allowed of too much influence from the outer world—so much so that it gave to his actions a lack of independence, a lack of character which no longer fits the present state of humanity. Thus it was this lack of feeling of self which led him in one incarnation to perform certain actions. During the kamaloca period, he had before him the actions which have proceeded from this atrophy of his Ego and from this he acquires the tendency: ‘You must develop within you forces which increase your feeling of personality; in your next incarnation you must seek for opportunities to strengthen this feeling, to train it, as it were, against the opposition of your body, against the forces which will come to you in your next incarnation from your physical body, etheric body and astral body. You must make a body which will show you the consequences of a weak personality.’

The effect of this in the next incarnation will not be able fully to enter into the consciousness; it will run its course more or less in a sub-conscious region. The person in question will strive for an incarnation in which he will encounter the greatest opposition to his Ego-consciousness, so that he has to exert these feelings to the highest degree. This striving draws him, as if magnetically, to places and circumstances where he meets with great hindrances, so that his Ego is stimulated into action in opposition to the organisation of the three bodies. Strange as it may sound, the individualities who have this karma, coming into existence by birth in the way we have described, seek opportunities where, for instance, they will be exposed to an epidemic such as cholera, for this gives them the opportunity of meeting with the opposition we have described above. The activity which is thus experienced in the inner being of the person who is ill owing to the opposition of the three bodies, can then so work that in the next incarnation his feeling of self will be much stronger.

Let us take another striking instance, and so that we may perceive the connection, we will purposely take exactly the opposite case. During the kamaloca period, a person sees that he has acted from too strong a feeling of self. He sees that he must be more temperate as regards this feeling and that he must subdue it. So he will seek an opportunity whereby in the next incarnation his threefold organism will so condition him that his Ego-consciousness, however much it strives, will find no limitations, and he will be led to the unfathomable and to absurdity. These opportunities come to him when karma brings him malaria.

Here you have a case of disease brought about by karma which explains that fundamentally man is led by a higher kind of reason than he perceives with his ordinary consciousness to circumstances which in the course of his karma are favourable to his development. If we bear in mind what has just been said, we shall find it much easier to understand the epidemic nature of diseases. We could bring forward many different examples showing how, because of his experience in the kamaloca period, a man actually seeks for the opportunity to get a certain illness, in order that by overcoming it and by developing the self-healing forces, he may gain strength and power which will lead him upward on the path of evolution.

I said previously that if a person has done many things under the influence of his passions, he will in the kamaloca period live through actions which have also come about under such an influence. This will arouse in him the tendency in his next incarnation to experience some obstacle in his own body and by overcoming this, he will be in the position to compensate for certain actions in his previous life. Especially is this the case in the form of illness which in these modern times we call diptheric, which in many cases appears when there is a karmic complication due to previous acts which were dominated by the emotions and passions.

In the course of these lectures, we shall have to speak on the causes of various illnesses, but we must now go still more deeply if we wish to answer the question: ‘If a person enters into existence in such a way that, through his karma, he brings with him the tendency whereby he overcomes suffering to gain some other thing, how, then, does it come about that one succeeds in overcoming the disease and acquiring forces which bring him higher, while another succumbs, and the disease is the victor?’ Here we have to go back to the spiritual principles which allow disease to be possible in human life.

If a man can fall ill, and can through karma even seek illness—this is due to a certain principle that has come already before us in our studies of Spiritual Science. We know that at a certain point in the Earth's evolution there penetrated into the development of humanity the forces we call luciferic, which belong to beings who remained behind during the ancient Moon evolution, and who did not advance far enough to reach, as it were, the normal point of their development. Thereby was implanted into the astral body of man, before his Ego could work in the proper manner, a principle which streamed from these luciferic beings. So the influence of these beings was once exercised on man's astral body, and he has retained it throughout his evolution. This influence plays a great part in human evolution; but for our present task it is important to point out that as a result of these forces, he had within him that which led him to be less perfect than he would otherwise have been if such influence had not come. It also gave him the tendency to act and judge more from his emotions, passions and desires, than he would have done if the luciferic influence had not entered. This influence produced a change in the real individuality of man who became more subject to what we may call ‘World of Desire’ than would otherwise have been the case, and it is because of this influence that man has become much more identified with the physical earthly world than he would otherwise have been. Through the luciferic influence man has entered more into his body and has identified himself more with it, for if the influence of the luciferic beings had not been there, many of the things that allure man to desire this or that would not have come. Man would have been quite indifferent to these allurements. But allurements of the external world of the senses came through this influence of Lucifer, and man yielded to them. The individuality which was given by the Ego was permeated with the activities proceeding from the luciferic principle, and so it came about that in his first incarnation on earth man succumbed to the allurements of the luciferic principle, and carried these enticements with him into later lives. We can say that the way in which he succumbed to the allurements of the luciferic principle, became an integral part of his karma.

Now, if man had taken only this principle into himself he would have succumbed more and more to the allurements of the physical earth world; he would gradually have been obliged to resign the prospect of breaking loose again from this world. We know that the Christ influence which came later opposed the luciferic principle and balanced it again, as it were, so that in the course of evolution man again received the means by which to rid himself of the luciferic influence. But with this influence something else was given at the same time. The fact that this influence had penetrated into his astral body made the whole of the external world into which he entered appear different to him. Lucifer entered into the inner being of man, who then saw the world around him through Lucifer. His vision of the earthly world was thereby clouded and his external impressions were mingled with what we call the ahrimanic influence. Ahriman could only insinuate himself and make the external world into illusion because we had previously created from within the tendency towards illusion and maya. Thus the ahrimanic influence which came into the external world was a consequence of the luciferic influence. We may say that when once the luciferic forces were there, man enmeshed himself more in the sense-world than he would have done without this influence; but thereby he absorbed the ahrimanic influence with every external perception. Thus in the human individuality which goes through incarnations on the earth, there is a luciferic influence, and, as a result of this, the ahrimanic influence. These two powers are continually fighting in the human individuality which has become their field of battle.

Man in his ordinary consciousness is still exposed to the allurements of Lucifer which work from the passions and emotions of his astral body; also he is subject to the enticements of Ahriman which come to him from outside in the way of error, deception, etc., in regard to the outer world. As long as a person is incarnated on the earth his ideas put an obstacle in the way, so that what comes from Lucifer and Ahriman cannot penetrate deeper, but finds a hindrance in his concepts, his acts being subservient to his moral or intellectual judgement. But when a person between birth and death sins against morality in following Lucifer, or against logic or sound thinking in following Ahriman, that concerns only his ordinary conscious soul life. When, on the other hand, he passes through the portal of death, the life of idea which is bound to the instrument of the brain ceases, and a different form of consciousness begins; then, all the things which in the life between birth and death were submitted to the moral or rational judgement, penetrate down into the foundation of the human being, into that which, after kamaloca, organises the next existence and imprints itself into the plastic forces, which then construct a threefold human body. Errors resulting from devotion to Ahriman develop into forces of disease which affect man through his etheric body. Faults which were the object of a moral judgement between birth and death develop into causes of disease which work more from the astral body.

From this we see how, in fact, our errors from the ahrimanic forces within us, including such voluntary errors as lies, etc., develop into causes of disease, if we do not merely consider the one incarnation, but observe the effect of one incarnation on the next. We see also how the luciferic influences in the same way become the causes of disease, and we may in fact say, ‘our errors do not go unpunished. We bear the stamp of our errors in our next incarnation.’ But we do this from a higher reason than that of our ordinary consciousness—from a consciousness which during the period between death and a new birth directs us to make ourselves so strong that we shall no longer be exposed to these temptations. Thus in our life, disease even plays the part of a great teacher. If we study illnesses in this way we shall see unmistakably that an illness is a manifestation of either luciferic or ahrimanic influences. When these things are understood by those who under the guidance of Spiritual Science wish to become physicians, the influence of these healers on the human organism will be infinitely more profound than it can be today.

We can examine certain forms of disease from this standpoint. Let us take pneumonia for example; it is a karmic effect which follows when during his life in kamaloca the person in question looks back to a character which had within it the tendency towards sexual excess, and a desire to live a sensual life. Do not confuse what is now ascribed to a previous consciousness with what appears in the consciousness in the following incarnation. This is quite a different matter. Indeed, that which a person sees during his life in kamaloca will so transform itself that forces are imprinted in him by means of which he will overcome pneumonia. For it is exactly in the overcoming of this disease, in the self-healing which is then striven for that the human individuality acts in opposition to the luciferic powers and wages a pitched battle against them. Therefore in the overcoming of pneumonia is given the opportunity to lay aside that which was a defect in the character in a previous incarnation. In this complaint we see unmistakably the war of man against the luciferic powers.

Now the case is different in the so-called ‘tuberculosis of the lungs,’ when we see the singular phenomenon whereby the self-healing forces become active, and the injurious influences are surrounded and framed in by a calcareous matter with a tissue which is then filled in and which forms solid concretions. A person may have these concretions in his lungs, and many more people have such things than is usually supposed, for these are the persons in whom a tuberculous lung has been healed. Where such a thing has taken place, a war has been waged by the human inner being against what the ahrimanic forces have produced. It is a defensive process from within against what has been brought about by external materiality, in order to lead to the independence of the human being in this special sense.

We have shown how, in fact, the two principles—the ahrimanic and the luciferic—are at work at the very foundation of a disease. And in many ways it can be pointed out that in the various forms of disease one distinguishes essentially two types, the ahrimanic and the luciferic. If this were considered, the true principles would be discovered by which to find a suitable remedy for the patient; for luciferic diseases will require entirely different remedies from the ahrimanic. To-day external forces are used for the purposes of healing in a way which betrays a certain want of judgement—forces such as electro-therapy, the cold water treatment, etc. Much light could be thrown by Spiritual Science on the suitability of one method or another, if it were first decided whether a luciferic or ahrimanic illness is being treated. For example, electro-therapeutics ought not to be used in illnesses which originate from luciferic causes, but only in ahrimanic forms of illness. For electricity, which has no connection whatever with the activities of Lucifer, is useless in treating luciferic forms of disease; it belongs to the sphere of the ahrimanic beings, although, of course, other beings beside the ahrimanic make use of the forces of electricity. On the other hand, warmth and cold belong to the sphere of Lucifer. Everything which has to do with making the human body warmer or colder, or that which makes it warmer or colder through external influences, belongs to the sphere of Lucifer; and in all the cases in which we have to deal with warmth or cold we have a type of luciferic form of disease.

From this we see how karma works in illness and how it works to overcome illness. It will now no longer seem incomprehensible that in karma there also lies the curability or incurability of a disease. If we clearly understand that the aim—the karmic aim of illness is the progress and the improvement of man, we must presume that if a man in accordance with the wisdom which he brings with him into this existence from the kamaloca period contracts a disease, he then develops the healing forces which involve a strengthening of his inner forces and the possibility of rising higher. Let us suppose that man in the life before him, owing to his other organism and his remaining karma were, to have the force of progressing during this life itself by means of that which he has acquired through illness. Then the healing has an object. The person comes forth healed from the illness, having gained what he was to gain. Through the conquest of the illness he has acquired perfect forces where previously he had imperfect forces. If through his karma he is equipped with such powers, and if through the favourable circumstances of his former fate he is so placed in the world that he can use the new forces, and can work so as to be of use to himself and others, then healing comes about and he recovers.

Now let us suppose a case in which a person overcomes a disease, develops the healing forces, and then is confronted with a life which exacts from him a degree of perfection he has not yet gained. He would, indeed, gain something through the conquered disease, but it is, however, impossible—because the rest of his karma does not admit it—with the little he has gained to assist others. Then it comes about that his deeper subconsciousness says:—‘Here you have no opportunity of receiving the full force of what you really ought to have. You had to go into this incarnation to gain the degree of perfection which you can only attain in the physical body by overcoming the disease. That you had to acquire; but you cannot develop it further. You have now to go into conditions in which your physical body and the other forces do not disturb you, where you can freely work out what you have gained through the illness.’ Such an individual seeks for death so as to use further, between death and another birth, what he cannot use in life. Such a soul goes through the phase between death and re-birth in order to construct an organisation with the stronger forces it has gained by overcoming disease. In this way through the presence of an illness, a payment on account, as it were, may be made, and the payment is completed after passing through death.

When we consider the matter in this way we shall say: It undoubtedly seems to be founded on karma that one illness ends in being cured and another terminates in death. If we see illnesses terminated in this way, we shall obtain through karma, from a higher standpoint a kind of reconciliation, a profound reconciliation with life; for we shall know that it lies within the law of karma that—even if an illness terminates in death—man progresses, and that even in such a case the illness has the object of bringing the person higher. Now no one must draw from this the conclusion that we ought to wish that death should take place in certain cases of illness. No one may say this, because the decision regarding what ought to happen, whether healing or otherwise, belongs to a higher power of judgement than the one included in our ordinary consciousness. In the world which lies between birth and death, and with our ordinary consciousness, we must humbly let such questions stand over. With our higher consciousness we may, however, even take the standpoint that death is the gift of the higher spiritual powers. But that consciousness which is to help and set to work in life must not presume to place itself along with this higher consciousness, for we might then easily err and we should interfere unjustifiably in something which must never be interfered with, namely, the sphere of human freedom. If we can help a person to develop the self-healing forces, or assist him to aid nature, so that a cure may come about, we must do it. And if the question should arise as to whether the patient ought to live on further, or whether he would be more helped if he died, our assistance must nevertheless always be given towards healing. If this is done we help the human individuality to use its own powers, and the medical assistance only supports him in this. It does not work into the human individuality. It would be quite different if we were to help on an incurable disease in a person in order that he should seek his further progress in another world. We should then interfere with his individuality, and deliver this up to another sphere of action. We should be imposing our will upon the other and we must leave this to the other individual himself. In other words, we must do everything possible for him to be cured; for all the deliberation which leads to a cure comes from the consciousness which is ripe for our Earth, and all other measures would reach beyond our Earth sphere. Other forces than those which belong to our ordinary consciousness would then have to work.

Thus we see that a true karmic understanding concerning the curability and incurability of disease leads to our doing everything possible to help the person who is ill, and, on the other hand, it also leads to our being comforted if a different decision comes from another sphere. We do not require anything else as regards this other decision. It is necessary for us to find a point of view from which the incurability of a disease does not depress us, as though the world contained only what is imperfect and evil. The conception of karma does not paralyse our activities in regard to healing. On the contrary, it will again bring us into harmony with regard to the hardest fate, with regard to the incurability of a certain illness.

Thus we have seen today how the understanding of karma alone makes it possible for us to comprehend the course of an illness in the right way, and to understand that in our present life we see the karmic effects of our previous life. Detailed examples will be given later when we discuss the other subject. We have now to distinguish between illnesses which come from the inner being of man, which appear as the result of karma, and those illnesses which come to us apparently by chance, through our being exposed to some accident or other. In brief, we shall now see how we may arrive at a karmic understanding of accidents, as, for example, when one falls under the wheels of a railway train. How are we to understand so-called accidents in connection with karma?

The sacrifice of the substance by the Thrones, Kyriotetes, Dynamis, and Exusiai. Jehovah and the Elohim, and their co-operative activity in the stages of human development.

In earlier lectures we have seen that the conditions of our earth have gradually developed out of the cosmos; that in a far distant past the earth was one with the orb which shines in the heavens today as the sun, and that at a certain period this body separated off from the earth.

Now, I have already stated that the Beings who at first sent their own forces down from the sun to the earth, thus bringing about the evolution of humanity, are the Spirits of Form. They are the Beings nearest to earthly evolution. After the separation of the sun the leader of the Spirits of Form remained with the earth, and later departed from it with the moon. We can therefore speak of a moon-deity; he is that deity who in the Biblical records is called Jehovah, and the Sun Powers, those who sent light to earth from outside, are called in the Bible the Elohim, or Spirits of Light. Under the influence of the Elohim on one hand and Jehovah on the other, balance was maintained in the evolution of man. You have learnt that not only man goes through development, but that all the Beings in the cosmos are undergoing development also. Those exalted Beings who sent down their forces to us with the light—the Spirits of Form—have also passed through a development; previously they were at a lower stage and have gradually struggled upwards to their present position.

What was said just now regarding the Elohim and Jehovah applies to the most mature of these spirits, those who have made themselves fully capable of carrying on their development from the genesis of the earth, either upon the sun or the moon; but there are Beings everywhere who have fallen behind at some stage. Yesterday we heard that planets, such as Venus and Mercury, owe their existence to the circumstance that Beings have remained behind, between man on the one hand and exalted Sun-Spirits on the other. They required a dwelling-place more exalted than the earth, but were unable to inhabit the sun because they were not sufficiently mature. These beings are far beyond the evolution of humanity, but have not yet reached the condition of the Sun spirits. They form a very important group of beings as regards human evolution. On one hand we have very mature Beings, on the other, between them and mankind, are others whom we designate generally the Luciferic Beings, after their leader Lucifer.

Now we must try clearly to understand how Jehovah and the Elohim on one hand, Lucifer and his hosts on the other, are concerned with the evolution of man. Through the cooperation of the Sun-Gods with the Moon-God a duality arose, and we shall best understand what entered evolution at this point if we consider what the evolution of man had been previously.

Once more we will remind ourselves that the earth passed through an incarnation, that of Saturn, when conditions were primeval; then, after having passed through a state of rest, it entered the Sun incarnation, then the Moon incarnation, and lastly that of our Earth.

Man in the course of his evolution has been connected with all these embodiments of the earth. As we know him he is a very complicated Being; he consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, and these four principles play one into the other in a very complicated manner.

If any Being in our physical world had only a physical body it would be a stone—a mineral; in fact our mineral kingdom here on the earth does only possess a physical body. A Being possessing in addition to a physical body an etheric body has a plant-nature; our vegetable kingdom consists of such Beings. A Being having physical etheric, and astral bodies is at the animal stage; and only that Being which in addition to these possesses an ego is at the stage of human existence on earth. Now it is only a rough way of speaking to say that man has these four principles within him; and we shall understand how sketchy it is if we cast a glance over his long, very long, evolution.

Let us enquire which of these four principles is the oldest? It might easily be supposed that as the human ego is the highest, that which first makes man, man, it would be the oldest principle; but this is not the case. Neither the ego nor the astral body nor the etheric body was owned first by man, but the physical body—it is the oldest. The first rudiments of the physical body were formed as far back as on ancient Saturn, but you must not imagine that this body looked then anything like the body of today. When you consider the present physical body you observe in the first place something solid, a skeleton, that firmly constituted part described as “solid”; next you observe fluid constituents of many kinds; further, the physical body is permeated by air or gas; lastly, you find in it something which, considered occultly, is substantial—namely, warmth, inner warmth.

Let us now consider man as regards this inner warmth and his outer environment. His warmth does not depend upon his environment, in a cold environment he does not, like the minerals, become cold, he is not forced to regulate himself according to his environment, he has within him the source of his own heat. Were you now to think everything solid away from man, also everything liquid and everything gaseous; if you imagine his physical body formed only of warmth, such warmth as pulses in your blood, you will have what was present on ancient Saturn. But that body was not formed as it is now, it had only the most rudimentary germs of a form. This was particularly the case in the middle of the Saturn period, for Saturn had initial, middle, and final conditions. It would be very difficult to describe the early condition of Saturn, because few people have developed the capacity which would enable them to think of the conditions of Saturn before it became condensed to the consistency of warmth.

When in spirit you transport yourselves to those times of a primeval past, you must not imagine that had you been able to observe Saturn from somewhere in space you would have seen anything. Saturn had no light, it did not shine; only towards the end of its development did it begin to do so. Had you approached it in the middle of its evolution you would only have perceived its warmth, it was like an oven without external limits, but which limited itself: you would have entered an area of warmth.

You must not imagine this body of warmth as being uniform or homogeneous; if you had been sensitive to differences of warmth you would have found that there were lines of warmth within it in all directions, that they stretched on every side; you would have “felt out” warmth formations. The whole of Saturn consisted of forms of warmth alone, and these were the original foundations of the human physical body. Saturn did not go beyond this in any way that was fruitful for human evolution.

We will now pass on to the Sun evolution. After a period of rest Saturn changed into the Sun formation. Externally it is the case that in the middle of the Sun period a condensation of its substance took place. The Sun consisted not only of warmth, but also of gas and air (in the occult sense), and everything within the Sun passed through its evolution under conditions only possible in warmth and air.

To begin with, the following took place: The human being, who as he consisted only of warmth could not assume an etheric body, was permeated on the Sun by an etheric body; he now consisted of two principles, namely, a physical body and an etheric body. Man's physical body on the Sun was, however, quite different to what it is now. Let us try to form an idea, if only a rough one, of the physical body upon the ancient Sun. Imagine that we have breathed in air and that the breathed-in air has passed into us. This air is now permeated with a certain degree of warmth. Now think away everything but the in-breathed air, which in effect forms an image of the whole human body; think away all the solid and the liquid parts, keeping only the air and the warmth in mind. You then have in imagination a form before you such as would appear if you considered merely the in-breathed air and its activity. If you observed the form of this in-breathed air and the warmth the human being contains you would have approximately the form man had at the middle of the Sun period.

You might now ask: If we have lines of warmth and, in addition to these, currents of gas which form the physical body, how does the clairvoyant see this gas in the Akashic Record? He perceives it in a special way. When the warmth condenses into air and no other conditions are present (as is the case now on earth, where the sun pours in from outside) the moment this gas or air separates from the form of warmth it begins to shine. Hence upon the Sun the physical body was a kind of germinal body of warmth, composed of gaseous or airy currents, which glittered in the most wonderful way and shone with varied colours. The entire Sun-globe consisted of shining warmth-bodies, which were the primary rudiments of our human physical bodies. On the Sun man rose a stage higher; he added an etheric body to the physical body. It was man himself who, as part of the structure of the Sun, radiated forth the illuminating power of light into space; his physical body, through taking into itself the etheric body, became luminous. The physical body was now at the second stage of its progress towards perfection, but the etheric body, which first became luminous on the Sun, was only at its first stage.

Let us now follow man's further progress. The Sun gradually passed over into the Moon incarnation, having meanwhile entered into a condition of rest. On the material side the airy formation condensed to a watery one, and thus the fluid element arose. The ancient Moon was in fact a fluidic body, in it you might again have found physical human bodies as plastic structures, consisting now of flowing sap, or watery constituents, in which currents of air coursed just as breath and warmth intermingle in man's body today. The physical body now consisted of three parts water, gas or air, and warmth; and the etheric body which it had previously possessed now passed over with it into the Moon period. Man was now in a position to assimilate an astral body, and from this time onwards he consisted of three principles: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body.

During the Moon period it was not possible for all the Beings connected with it to maintain the same rate of progress in their development. It was not only during the development of our Earth, but also earlier, during the Moon development, that the Sun separated off from the common world-body; so that in the middle of the Moon period we have two spheres—the Moon (earth plus moon) and the Sun, which as you know had departed along with the most advanced of the Spiritual Beings. Through the withdrawal of the finer forces and higher Beings the grosser had been left behind upon the Moon; this planet therefore (Earth plus Moon) began to densify and harden. You must realize that even during the ancient Moon period the Sun with its Beings worked for a time from outside upon the backward Moon-body.

It will now be necessary to describe more in detail these bodies which had remained behind after the departure of the Sun, for we went through a portion of our evolution upon them.

On Saturn there was only the physical body of man; he was at the mineral stage. Upon the Sun he raised himself to the vegetable stage, he had then physical body and etheric body, but at this stage certain beings became backward, they did not rise so high as to the human-plant existence upon the ancient Sun, they remained at the Saturn stage. These were the forerunners of certain animals of the present day. Man's past reaches back to ancient Saturn, whereas the forerunners of a certain portion of our present animal kingdom had its origin only on the Sun as a second kingdom to that of man. From the same cause (the remaining behind of certain beings) man, when he had worked himself upward on the Moon to a condition when he was the possessor of three principles, was surrounded by two other kingdoms; one a kingdom which on the Moon had remained behind at the stage of plants, and one that was still at the stage of minerals, these last were the forerunners of our present plants.

Our mineral kingdom did not as yet exist on the Moon. It came into existence last, as a sort of deposit from the other kingdoms. Of course anyone who affirms such things knows very well that it seems nonsense according to present ideas to say that plants could originate without the basis of a mineral kingdom, but formerly conditions were entirely different. In fact, upon the ancient Moon man developed in the animal kingdom; animals in the vegetable kingdom; and at the time when the Moon was separated from the Sun all the kingdoms were arranged in the following way:—

1. The human kingdom (really animal kingdom, consisting of physical body, etheric, and astral bodies).
2. The animal kingdom (really vegetable kingdom, consisting of physical and etheric bodies).
3. The vegetable kingdom (really mineral kingdom, because it consisted only of a physical body).

Our present mineral kingdom did not as yet exist.

Now, when the Moon and Sun separated the Beings and forces of the Sun were completely liberated from the gross material of the Moon, so that they could act all the more strongly. The result was that all three kingdoms were raised about half a stage higher. The human astral body was lifted out of its close connection with the lower principles, so that viewing man at the beginning of the Moon period with his physical, etheric, and astral bodies, one would later have perceived a change. Through the Sun having departed and having begun to shine from outside, the astral and etheric bodies were partly liberated. The consequence was that something happened which we must try to picture in the following way: Imagine that the man of today consisted only of physical body, etheric body, and astral body; and that there now came an external force which pushed out man's etheric and astral bodies; to the clairvoyant these would now exist outside him, but through these two bodies being liberated from the weight of the physical body man could be raised about half a stage upward in evolution.

Something like this took place at the time of which I am speaking; man was lifted up, he became a Being standing midway between the present man and the present animal. In a Spiritual sense he was, however, guided and directed by the exalted Sun-Powers.

In like manner the two other kingdoms were raised about half a stage, so that about the middle of the Moon period we do not find our present kingdoms, but intermediate ones: we have a human-animal kingdom, an animal-vegetable kingdom, and a vegetable-mineral kingdom.

We on the earth walk upon a solid mineral ground; the Beings of the ancient Moon walked on what was the lowest kingdom of the Moon—the vegetable-mineral. This basic substance of the Moon was not a mineral substance such as we have on the earth, but something that was half-alive. One has an approximate idea of what this basic substance of the Moon was if we think of something resembling a mossy bog or boiled spinach, a kind of mush, but living, bubbling. There were no rocks projecting out of this mass, but there was something like dense, woody, vegetable masses, horny structures; and these took the place of our present rocks. To clairvoyant vision it appears as if man moved upon a vegetable-mineral foundation which later underwent condensation and became the stones of today. From out this substance grew the animal-plants. These were more or less firmly rooted; they were more movable, it is true, than plants are now, but they grew out of this viscous element and had a certain degree of sensation when touched. Animal-man rose from out the finest substances; he by no means reached down into the grossest, but formed his physical body from the finest substances.

This physical body, which was in a continual state of transformation, had a very strange appearance: the clairvoyant is unable to discover upon the ancient Moon a human head such as man possesses today. Although the physical body was still soft and fluidic, he can find only animal-like heads, and from out this animal-head formation the etheric and astral bodies projected.

To physical sight all these animal-men had various forms that recall our present animals, but they only remind us of these; it is only when we rise from physical sight to astral vision that we perceive the higher nature of the animal-man of the Moon. Such were the denizens of the ancient Moon.

When we examine closely the course of human development and culture, in so far as it is of a mental and spiritual nature, we find in many instances that the myths and legends that have been handed down to us are in many respects wiser than our present-day science. When more is known about the spiritual foundations of the world men will recognize in many of the myths, legends, and fairy tales a truly deep wisdom, deeper than science, which has apparently progressed so far.

Let us return for a moment to the ancient Moon, in the basic substance of which only the ancient animal-plants could flourish, and let us leave the study of the further development of the Moon itself. We must clearly understand that all these Moon-beings were the forerunners of the present Earth-beings. Our present mineral kingdom has sprung from the vegetable-mineral of the Moon epoch, from the animal-plants have sprung our present plants, and from the backward animals, men. From those men who do not progress have sprung the largest portion of our present day animals. Thus we see that our minerals, our plants, our animals, and our human beings are really the descendants of the Beings of the ancient Moon.

There is today a remarkable plant which does not thrive in a mineral soil, namely, the mistletoe. It is remarkable because when observed clairvoyantly it is seen to be different from other plants. It exhibits rudiments of an astral body passing into the mistletoe, as is the case with animals. Although this plant has no sensation it has something appertaining to the outer form of animals. This is because it belongs to those backward plant-animals of the Moon period, which were unable to become plants, and on this account cannot thrive on a mineral soil, but require other plants on which to take root.

The mistletoe has preserved the condition of the ancient Moon. The ancestors of some of the European peoples knew this fact and embodied the knowledge in a wonderful legend. The Germanic and Norse peoples recognized in Loki a power still belonging to those forces which passed from the field of activity on ancient Moon to the Earth. When the earth became Earth it came under the influence of other forces, which these ancient peoples symbolized in the God Baldur. He represents all those forces which work upon mature earth-beings, but those who had remained at the Moon stage felt an inner relationship to Loki, the Moon-God. Hence arose the wonderful legend telling how once upon a time when the Gods were playing, all creatures swore an oath that they would not injure Baldur; the mistletoe alone did not take this oath. Why? Because it is not related to the earth forces incarnated in Baldur, but is a backward Moon-creation, and so has power to injure the basic earth-force—Baldur. Loki had to be served by a being belonging to himself. This legend has its origin deep down in the hidden foundations of the world. Further, when we know that in many respects what is opposed to healthy development must be of service to unhealthy development, we understand the wise intuition of our forefathers which led them to look to the mistletoe for special curative forces and juices. They knew that of which we have just spoken, hence the role they gave to the mistletoe. From this example we can see that profound wisdom regarding the evolution of the world is frequently hidden in myth and legend.

Through the withdrawal of a part of the etheric and astral body of the animal-man upon the Moon the necessity arose, even at that time, for a change of consciousness. But we must first speak of another development which ran parallel with this.

Each of the stages of development—that on Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth—was at the same time a stage in the development of consciousness. Upon Saturn, consciousness was dim ... it was at the first stage. Such consciousness as we have in dreamless sleep—the consciousness possessed by eternally sleeping plants—is clearer than that which man had upon Saturn, which may be compared to the consciousness of minerals. Only on the Sun did man rise to a consciousness such as is possessed by plants; through the astral body, which he received upon the Moon, his consciousness rose one degree higher, to that which we designate picture-consciousness. This may be compared in a certain sense with our present dream-consciousness, although our dreams have meaning only in exceptional cases. Upon the Moon this was different, the pictures which then rose and disappeared signified something. When another being approached a man he was unable to perceive its outer form and colour, but he perceived something which rose within himself (much as is now the case in dreams); a picture rose within him of the inner nature of the approaching being, and in accordance with the colour and character of this picture he knew whether this being was friendly towards him or the reverse—whether he should remain or flee.

As already stated, a change of consciousness took place upon the Moon during the time when the Sun was outside; there were periods of alternating consciousness, times when consciousness was more vivid, and times when it was dimmer. Today we have interchanging periods of day and night. In the morning man draws into his physical body and etheric body, and the eternal world with its beings and objects rises before him. Everything around him becomes light and clear because he makes use of his senses, but at night when he goes forth with his ego and astral body, he has no instruments wherewith to perceive; everything is dark around him.

In the same way, dreamless-sleep consciousness, which was first given to man on the Sun, alternated with the waking, earth-consciousness. These conditions were already prepared for on the ancient Moon. At that time the etheric and astral bodies were not continuously outside man, there were periods when they sank into his physical body; for the ancient Moon already moved round the Sun, and this rotation brought about conditions in which man was shone upon by the Sun at certain times, and not at others. Through this an exit and entrance of the etheric and astral bodies into the physical body were brought about. The change was certainly not so strongly contrasted as at present.

During the periods of the withdrawal of these bodies from the Moon, when man was shone upon by the forces of the Sun, he was in clear consciousness—in spiritual consciousness he perceived that which was spiritual clearly, and when his etheric and astral bodies sank back into the physical body his consciousness became darkened. You see, it was the reverse of present conditions.

For long, long periods of time, alternating states of clear and dim consciousness occurred upon the Moon, and it was in the dim state of consciousness that—without man being aware of it—what is called fructification took place. In order that the powers of reproduction might be developed, and that man might bring forth, his higher being had to sink down into the physical body, and when it was released it rose again into the higher world. At that time preparation was gradually made for what has since been fully developed upon earth. Through the separation of the Sun, and because of its having given stronger forces to its creatures, man along with all the other beings was able to develop more highly. If the Sun had been limited for a longer period by the ancient Moon it could not have acted so powerfully; but once it was released from the hindrance of the Moon-substances, the Moon and all its denizens were advanced rapidly. After a time the Moon had attained such maturity that it could again be absorbed by the Sun. This was followed by a condition when all the planets which had been separated could also be again absorbed, when they all reentered the spiritual state of rest which we call Pralaya.

After this pause there came forth once more what we may call the first etheric germs of the Earth-body, out of which at a later period—everything was again differentiated.

Now let us enquire: Whence came the physical body upon Saturn, whence came the etheric body on the Sun, and the astral body on the Moon?

These questions go to the very root of the matter. Anthroposophists do not enquire like many who imagine they are enquiring philosophically. For there are people who ask: Whence comes this or that? and when answered they ask further and further without end. This is only done as long as the inquirer has not risen to a spiritual observation of the world. Reasonably, one must come at last to a point where the significance of questions ceases. One might ask: Whence come these furrows on the road? The answer is: A cart passed this way. Then comes the further question: Whence came the cart? And one might answer: A man on certain business was using it. They then ask: What kind of business? At length the questions would come to an end; you would have been led so far that you would have arrived in quite different realms. If the subject of the interrogation is concerned with an idea, one only arrives if one remains in abstractions, at endless questions. But in concrete observations one arrives at last at Spiritual Beings, and one then inquires no longer: Why are they doing this? But one asks: What are they doing? It is necessary that one should educate oneself to see the limitations of questions.

Occult observation reveals that in the beginning, when ancient Saturn began to be formed, certain Spiritual Beings poured forth the fundamental substance of Saturn—warmth—from their own substance as a sacrifice. They had matured so far that they did not need to absorb anything as nourishment, they were even in a position to sacrifice themselves to pour out their own substance. These Beings are the Thrones. It is they who through their sacrifice formed the foundations of the human physical body. One who can occultly observe the physical body on Saturn can say: It has flowed forth from the substance of the Thrones. The physical body changes from stage to stage, it develops ever higher, but that which we bear within us is always the transformed substance of the Thrones.

We will now pass on to the Ancient Sun. Here the etheric body was added to the physical body. Here again are Spiritual Beings lower than the Thrones, whom we call Spirits of Wisdom. They had not developed far enough on Saturn to be able to pour out their own being, but on the Sun they had progressed far enough, and there now flowed from them the substance of their etheric body. Since the Sun period we carry within us our etheric bodies; these are of the substance of the Spirits of Wisdom.

Upon the Moon the astral body was added to us. Here again there were Spiritual Beings who sacrificed their substance. These were the Spirits of Motion. Lastly we pass from the Moon to the Earth.

Here other Beings pour their force into us—we receive the Ego. To the three members we already possess is now added the “I.” This is bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form or Exusiai; they are the Elohim, who give to us their Sun-light, also Jehovah, who, from the moon, gives form to the human spirit. Herein we see the cooperation of the two categories of Spirits of Form who from outside endow man with the rudiments of his Ego.

Thus we find that from stage to stage Spiritual Beings incorporate within human evolution: on Saturn the Thrones; on the Sun the Spirits of Wisdom; on the Moon the Spirits of Motion or Dynamis; and on the Earth the Spirits of Form—Jehovah and the Elohim. From all these Beings man has received his present shape and formation, they have allowed their own Being to pour into him. In the Bible we are clearly shown how the Being of one of the Spirits of Form streamed into the Being of man. Profound secrets lie behind what is found in the Torah.

Imagine that one of the Spirits of Form united himself to the Moon as Jehovah, that from thence he worked as a Spirit of Form upon man, and, bestowing on him that which gave to him his divine form, “God made man after His Own image.” He gave to him the form of the Gods. The Spirits of Form gave to man the human form, that is, the divine form. The Elohim poured the sun-force as light upon the earth. The God Jehovah renounced the outer form of light; he streamed to earth as a darker God, thus limiting Himself to the period between birth and death. Through the air, which the light penetrates, the Spirits of the air made themselves his companions. If we wish to form a picture of what streams physically and spiritually from the sun to the earth we have to see the sun's rays caught by the moon and returned to man; we have to see these rays bringing with them that which streams to us from the Jehovah Spirit; and how with them comes also that which exists spiritually in the air.

The moment in which Jehovah poured forth His principle of force, permitting part of His Being to flow into man, is indicated in the Bible in the words: “Jehovah poured into man the living breath, and he became a living soul.”

Such a statement ought to be taken quite literally, and we must try to understand what it really contains. A thrill of awe pervades us when we begin to understand such a statement, and when we learn its meaning; telling as it does that after the Thrones on Saturn, the Spirits of Wisdom on the Sun, the Spirits of Motion on the Moon had poured their principles into man, then—on the Earth—the Spirits of Form pervaded him. It is this mighty moment that is referred to in words of the Bible quoted above.

In the next lecture we shall learn further of the Elohim and Jehovah, and how they cooperated with Luciferic Beings throughout the Atlantean epoch and on into our own.

We have come together for the study of anthroposophical truths for many winters, and for a little group of you, it is now quite a good number of winter seasons that have found us united for such studies. For reasons which we will perhaps discuss in our next General Meeting, we may look back just at this time at our common anthroposophical life of the past. There are still among you a few who, in a certain respect, form a kind of nucleus for this gathering together here. They have brought over from earlier times their fundamental spiritual conviction, have united with us six or seven years ago, and have formed the nucleus around which those others who were seeking have gradually, so to speak, crystallized. We may say that in the course of these years, not only the increased number of these meetings may tell us something, but that in another direction, and with the help of those spiritual Powers, who are always present when the work of spiritual science is carried out in the right sense, we have succeeded in following a certain inner system in our work.

Remember how six or seven years ago, we began as a small circle and how quite slowly and gradually, as well as in inner contents, we have created the ground on which we stand today. We began, with the aid of the simplest basic concepts of spiritual science, to seek first to create a fundamental feeling, and we have gradually reached the point that last winter—at least in our Group-meetings—we could speak of things of the various regions of the higher worlds as one speaks of events and experiences of the ordinary physical world. We have been able to learn about the various spiritual beings and those worlds, which are, in fact, supersensible in regard to our sense-world. And not only could we introduce an inner system into our Group-work, but we could also hold two Courses last winter and enable those who had gradually joined the nucleus to find the definite link with our studies.

It has already been said here, and often emphasized, that we have now come to the point of speaking about the higher worlds as about something—one might say—self-evident, and those who have joined inwardly in our Group meetings have in this way reached a certain anthroposophical maturity. This maturity does not lie in theories or in some conceptual grasp, but in an inner attitude of mind, which one acquires in the course of time. One who has really absorbed inwardly for a length of time what spiritual science has to give, will feel that he can listen to things as actual facts, as self-evident facts that would have affected him earlier quite differently.

And so in this introductory lecture today, we will begin straight-away and without hesitation to speak on a certain chapter of the higher worlds that will lead us to a deeper understanding of man's character and personality. For after all, what purpose is served by all our studies of the higher worlds? We talk about the astral world, about the devachanic world. In what sense do we members of the physical world talk about them in the first place? We talk of these higher worlds not at all with the consciousness that they are quite foreign to us and stand in no kind of connection with the physical world. Rather are we conscious that the higher worlds, as we call them, lie all around us, that we live in them, that they project into our physical world, and that in these higher worlds lie the causes and grounds for facts that take place before our physical eyes and senses. And so we learn to know this life around us with its human beings and nature-events, only when we look at what is invisible but reveals itself in the visible; that is, when we look at what belongs to other worlds in order to be able to form a judgment as to where it plays into our physical world. Normal and abnormal phenomena of ordinary physical life first become clear to us when we learn to know the spiritual life lying behind it—the spiritual life that is far richer and more extensive than the physical life, which forms only a small section of it. The human being stands, and must stand for all our studies, is the central point. Understanding human nature means, really, to understand a great part of the world. But human nature is difficult to understand, and we shall gain a small piece of this understanding of the human being, if we speak today of a few facts, only a few facts of the astral world. The contents of the human soul are very manifold. We will learn about a part of this soul-content today. To begin with, we will set before us certain characteristics of the soul.

We live in our soul-life in the most manifold feelings, perceptions, ideas, concepts, and impulses of will. These all take their course in our soul-life from morning to evening. If we observe man superficially, this soul-life appears to us to be something self-contained, enclosed in itself, and this view is justifiable. Observe how your life flows along with the first thoughts formed in the morning, the first feelings moving through you, the first will-impulses arising. Observe how feeling is linked to feeling, will-impulse to will-impulse, until the evening when the consciousness sinks in sleep. That all looks like a progressing stream. Observed in a deeper sense, however, it is by no means just a progressing stream, for through our thoughts, feelings and perceptions, we stand in a continual relation—to most people quite unconsciously—to higher worlds. Today let us consider this relation as regards the astral world.

When we have some kind of feeling, when joy or terror flashes through our soul, that, to begin with, is an event in our soul-life, but it is not merely that. If someone can test that clairvoyantly, it will be seen that something goes out of the soul like a current, like a shining current, which goes into the astral world. It does not go in casually, however, and without direction, but it takes its way to a being of the astral world. Let us suppose a thought arises in our soul; let us say we ponder on the nature of a table. Inasmuch as the thought shimmers through our soul, the clairvoyant can observe how a current proceeds from this thought to a being of the astral world. And so it is for every thought, every concept, every feeling. From the whole stream that flows away before the soul, currents continually go towards the most diverse beings of the astral world. It would be quite an erroneous idea if you thought that all these currents went to one single being of the astral world. That is not the case. From all these different thoughts, feelings and sensations proceed the most diverse currents, and they go to the most diverse beings of the astral world. That is the peculiarity of this fact: as individuals, we stand in connection, not with one such being, but we spin the most diverse threads towards the most diverse beings of the astral world. The astral world is peopled by a great number of beings just as the physical world, and they stand in connection with us. If, however, we want to realize the whole complexity, we must take something else into consideration.

Let us suppose that two individuals see a flash of lightning and have a quite similar sensation. Then a current goes out from each, and now both currents go to one and the same being of the astral world. We can say, therefore, that there is a being, an inhabitant of the astral world, with whom both beings of the physical world put themselves in connection. And it can happen that not only one person, but 50, 100, 1000 human beings, having a similar sensation, send out currents to one single being of the astral world. In so far as these 1000 beings people agree on one point, they stand in connection with the same being of the astral world. But think what other and differing sensations, feelings, thoughts are possessed by the individuals who, in the one case, have the same sensation! Through these, they stand in connection with other beings of the astral world, and in this way the most diverse connecting threads pass from the astral world into the physical world.

Now, it is possible to distinguish certain classes of beings in the astral world, and it will be easier to form an idea of these classes if we take an example. Imagine a large number of people of the European world, and let us take from the soul-contents of these people the concept of justice. These people may otherwise have the most varied experiences and thereby stand in connection in the most complex way with the most differing beings of the astral world. But since these people think similarly about the idea of justice, have acquired this idea in the same way, they therefore all stand in connection with the same being of the astral world. We can look on this being exactly like a center, a middle point, from which rays go out to all the people concerned. As often as they bring to mind the concept of justice, they stand in connection with this one being. Just as human beings have flesh and blood and are composed of them, so does this being consist of the concept of justice: it lives in it. In the same way there is an astral being for the concept of courage, of goodwill, of bravery, of revenge, etc. Thus beings exist in the astral world for our human qualities, the contents of our souls. And in this way a sort of astral net is spread out over a considerable number of persons. All of us who have the same idea of justice, for example, are embedded in a body of an astral being, whom we can actually call the “Justice-being”. If we have a concept of courage, valor, we stand in connection with another being. Thus in everyone, there is a kind of conglomeration, for we can regard everyone as receiving currents from astral beings on all sides. We are all a confluence of currents that come out of the astral world.

Now we shall be able to show more particularly how human beings, who are individually in this way a confluence of these currents, concentrate them in themselves round their ego-centers. For that is the most important thing for our soul-life; we must collect all these currents round a center that lies in our self-consciousness. This self-consciousness is so important, because the self must act as a controller in our individual inner being, collecting the different currents flowing into us from all sides and uniting them in itself. For the moment the self-consciousness would slacken and give up, it could come about that a person would cease to feel its self to be a unity, and that all the different concepts of courage, valor, etc, would fall apart. People would then no longer be conscious of the self as a unity; they would feel as if they were distributed in all the different currents. There is a possibility—and there it shows us how we can penetrate into the understanding of the spiritual world through knowledge of the true, the right—there is a possibility that we can lose the directing control over what streams into us. As an individual person, you have a certain life behind you, have experienced many things, have had a number of ideals from youth on that have gradually evolved. Each ideal can differ from the others, you have had the ideal of courage, valor, etc. In this way you have come into the currents of most diverse astral beings. One can also come in another way into such a varied succession of astral beings.

Let us suppose that in the course of life an individual man has had a number of friendships. Under the influence of these friendships, quite definite feelings and sensations have developed, especially in youth. In this way, currents passed to a definite being of the astral world. Then the man formed a new friendship, and he was then united with another being of the astral world, and so on for the whole of life. Now let us suppose that through a sickness of the soul, it came about that the ego lost control over the different currents; it could no longer group them. Then the man would reach the state of no longer feeling himself as ego, as enclosed entity, a self-conscious unity. If he should lose his ego through a process of soul-sickness, he would then perceive these currents as if he were not aware of himself, but of the separate currents, as if he flowed into them. You will be able to understand an especially tragic case if we consider it from this point of view, from the aspect of the astral world—Friedrich Nietzsche.

Many of you will certainly know how Friedrich Nietzsche became insane in the winter of 1888/89. It is interesting to read in his last letters how he became divided, split up in different currents in the moment when he lost his ego. He writes to this or that friend—or to himself: “There lives a person in Turin who was once a professor of philosophy in Basle, but he is not egotistic enough to have remained one.” (Thus he had lost his ego and clothed the fact in such words). “And the god Dionysos strides to the River Po and looks down at all his ideals and friendships, which are wandering below him.” He appears to himself now as King Humbert, now as someone else, now even as one of the criminals about whom he had read at that time, during the last days of his life. There were two notorious cases of murder just then, and in the moments of his illness he identified himself with these women-murderers. For he did not experience his ego but, rather, a current that went into the astral world. Thus in abnormal cases, what is otherwise held together through the center of self-consciousness rises to the surface. It will become more and more necessary for people to know what is at the base of the soul. For we would be infinitely poor beings if we were not able to form many such currents into the astral world, and we would also be very limited beings if we were not able gradually to become master over all these currents through the deepening of our spiritual life. We must realize that we are not confined within our skin, but project everywhere into other worlds and that other beings project into our world. A whole web of beings is spun out over the astral world. Now we will observe a little more closely the beings standing in connection with us in this way. They are beings, who by way of comparison, present themselves to us somewhat like this:

The astral world surrounds us. Let us think that here is such a being—one, if you like, that has to do with the concept and feeling of courage. It stretches its tentacles towards all sides and they go into human souls; and inasmuch as men develop courage, the connection is established. Other men are different. All those, for instance, who develop a definite form of anxiety or a feeling of love are connected with another being of the astral world. If we make a study of these beings, we come to what we can call the constitution, the social life in the astral world. People, as they live here on the physical plane, are not merely individuals. Here, too, we are all connected in a hundred, a thousand different ways. We are connected by the law, in friendships, and so on. Our connections on the physical plane are regulated by our ideas, concepts, representations, etc. In a certain way, the social connections of those beings on the astral plane, of whom we have been speaking, must also be regulated.

Now then, do these beings live with one another? They have no such dense physical bodies of flesh and blood as we humans have; they have astral bodies, are at most of etheric substance. They stretch out their feelers into our world; but how do they live together? If these beings were not to work together, our human life, too, would be quite different. In fact, our physical world is only the external expression of what takes place on the astral plane. Now, do these beings arrange things among themselves? One could easily be tempted to think that the social life on the astral plane is similar to the life on the physical plane. But the joint life on the astral plane differs essentially from a working together on the physical plane. People who group the different planes above one another and characterize the higher worlds as if things were just the same there as here in the physical world, do not give a right description of the higher worlds. There is an immense difference between the physical world and the higher worlds, and this difference increases the higher up we come. Above all, a definite peculiarity exists in the astral world, which is not to be found at all on the physical plane. That is the penetrability of the substance of the astral plane. It is impossible here to place yourself on the spot where someone else is already standing; impenetrability is a law of the physical world. In the astral world it is not; there, the law is penetrability. And it is absolutely possible—it is even the rule—for beings to penetrate each other, and where already one being is, another presses in. Two, four, hundreds of beings can be on one and the same spot in the astral world. But that results in something else, namely, that the logic of common life on the astral plane is quite different. You will best understand how the logic of the astral plane is quite different from the logic of the physical plane—though not, perhaps, the logic of the act, of the common life—if you take the following example.

Suppose that a town had decided to build a church on a definite site. Then, of course, the wise council of the town must first consider how the church is to be built, what arrangements must be made, and so on. Now let us suppose that two parties arise in the town. The one party wants to build a church on this site in a definite style and with a certain architect, etc. The other party wishes to build a different church with a different architect. On the physical plane, the two parties will not be able to carry out their intention. Before anything at all is begun, it will be necessary for one of the parties to be victorious and gain the upper hand, and that the style of the church is decided on. You know, of course, that actually far the greater part of mankind's social life is passed in such consultations and mutual arguments before something is carried out, before people come to an agreement about what is to be done. Nothing indeed would be done unless in most cases one or other party gains the upper hand and remains in the majority. But the party in the minority will not straightaway say: “We have been wrong,” but will go on believing they have been right. In the physical world it is a matter of discussing the proposals, which must be decided purely within the physical world, because it is impossible for two plans to be carried out on one and the same spot.

In the astral world, it is quite different. It is perfectly possible there to build—let us say—two churches on one and the same spot. Such actually happens continually in the astral world, and it is the only right thing there. One does not argue as in the physical world. One does not hold meetings and try to get a majority for this or that. In fact, it is not at all necessary there. When a city council holds a meeting here and 40 out of 45 people are of one opinion and the others of another, then the two parties may inwardly want to murder each other on account of their different opinions. That is not so bad, however, because externally the things are at once dealt with. Neither party tries without consideration of the other party to build their church immediately, because on the physical plane thought can remain a possession of the soul, it can remain in the soul.

On the astral plane, that is not so; it is like this: When the thought has been formed, it also stands in a certain respect already there. So that if such an astral being as the one I have just spoken about has a thought, it immediately stretches out the corresponding “feelers” that have the form of this thought, and another being stretches out from itself the substance. Both now mutually interpenetrate each other and are in the same space as a newly-formed being. In this way, there is a continual interpenetration of the most varying opinions, thoughts, and feelings. In the astral world, the most completely opposite ideas can interpenetrate each other. It must be said that when things are discussed in the physical world, contradiction prevails, but in the astral world what prevails at once is conflict. For, as a being of the astral world, one cannot keep back one's thoughts to oneself, they become deeds immediately; the objects are there at once. Now, to be sure, churches such as we have on the physical plane are not built there, but let us suppose that a being of the astral plane wanted to realize something and another being wanted to cross it. Discussion is not possible there, but the principle holds good that a thing must be preserved! So when the two "feelers" are really in the same space, they begin to fight each other; and the idea that is the more fruitful, which is therefore right (i.e., the one that can endure), will annihilate the other and vindicate itself. So that there we have a continual conflict of the most varying opinions, thoughts, feelings. On the astral plane each opinion must become deed. There, one does not oneself fight; one lets the opinions fight, and the one that is the most fruitful routs the other from the field. The astral world is, so to say, the much more dangerous, and a great deal of what is said about its danger is connected with what has just been stated. Thus, everything there becomes deed, and all opinions must fight with each other, not discuss and argue.

I will now touch upon a matter that is doubtless shocking to the modern materialistic age, but which nevertheless is fact. I have often emphasized that our present age grows more and more accustomed to the mere consciousness of the physical world, to the characteristics and peculiarities of the physical world. So that when discussions arise, everyone would like to annihilate the one who is not of his or her opinion, or else takes him for a fool. That is not how it is in the astral world. There a being will say, “I do not concern myself with other opinions.” The most complete tolerance obtains. If one opinion is more fruitful than the others, it will drive them out of the field. One lets other opinions stand just as one's own, because things have to right themselves through conflict. One who gradually becomes familiar with the spiritual world must learn to adjust oneself to the customs of the spiritual world. The first part of the spiritual world is the astral world, where such usages prevail as have just been described, so that in a person who becomes familiar, with the spiritual world, the customs, too, of the beings of that world in a certain respect take root. And that is also right. Our physical world should become more and more an image of the spiritual world, and we shall bring more harmony into our world if we make it our purpose that life in the physical world should resemble life in the astral world. We cannot, of course, build two churches on the same spot, but where opinions differ, one lets them mutually prevail as regards their fruitfulness in the world. The opinions that are the most fruitful will assuredly carry off the victory, as it is in the astral world.

So, the characteristic qualities of the astral world can extend into the physical world precisely within a spiritual movement. That will be a great field of education, which the spiritual-scientific movement will have to cultivate—to create on the physical plane an image of the astral world. However much it shocks the person who only knows the physical plane and accordingly believes that only one opinion can be advocated and that all who hold other opinions must be blockheads, yet it will become increasingly obvious to the adherents of a spiritual world-conception that an absolute tolerance of opinions must prevail, not a tolerance consequent on a sermon, but one which takes root in our soul.

This penetrability that has been described is a very important and essential quality of the astral world. And no being of the astral world will develop such a concept of truth as we know in the physical world. The beings of the astral world look upon discussion, etc., in the physical world as quite unfruitful. Goethe's words, “What fruitful is, alone is true!” hold good for them, too. We must learn to know truth not through theories, but through its fruitfulness, through the way in which it vindicates itself. Thus, a being of the astral world will never contend with another as human beings do. It will say to the other, “Fine; you do as you think, I will do as I think!” It will soon be shown which idea is the more fruitful, which idea will drive the other from the field.

If we transpose ourselves into such a way of thinking, we have also gained something of practical knowledge. One must not imagine that the growth of human beings into the spiritual world occurs in some tumultuous way; it happens inwardly, intimately. If we can pay attention to it and make our own what has just been described as the peculiarity of the astral world, then we shall increasingly come to regard such feelings as the astral beings possess as model feelings for ourselves. And if we take as our guide the character of the astral world, we shall have a hope of gradually living into the spiritual world. The spiritual worlds gradually dawn for us in this way. This is what proves to be the more fruitful for mankind in the matter.

What has been said today is in many respects to be considered a kind of preparation for what we shall deal with in the next lectures. If we have now spoken of the beings of the astral world and their particular character, yet we must already point out that the astral world differs much more sharply from the higher worlds—let us say from the devachanic world—than one would be inclined to believe. It is true that the astral world is there where our physical world is, too; it interpenetrates our physical world, and all that we have often spoken about is always around us in the same space as physical facts and physical beings are. But there is also the devachanic world. It differs through the fact that we experience it in a different state of consciousness from that in which we experience the astral.

Now you could easily think: Here is the physical world and it is penetrated by the astral world, the devachanic, etc., but it is not quite so simple. In order to describe the higher worlds more exactly than we have done earlier, we must realize that there is yet another difference between the astral and devachanic worlds. Our astral world, in fact, as we live in it and as it permeates our physical space, is in a certain respect a double world, whereas in a certain way the devachanic is a single one. That is something we will mention today as a preparation.

There are, as it were, two astral worlds and their difference lies in the fact that one is, so to say, the astral world of the good, the other the astral world of evil. It would be incorrect to make such an abrupt difference in the devachanic world. If we consider the worlds from above downwards, we must say: devachanic world, astral world, physical world. Even so, we do not consider the totality of our worlds; we must consider worlds still deeper than the physical. There is a lower astral world lying below our physical world. In practice, these two interpenetrate, the good astral above, the evil below. Now the most diverse currents pass over to the beings of the astral world, and amongst them are currents from the good and evil qualities of humanity. Those that are good pass to a good being and the evil currents to a corresponding evil being of the astral world. If we take the totality of all the good and the bad beings of the astral world, we have, in a certain way, two astral worlds. When we consider the devachanic world, we shall see that there, that is not the case in the same degree. Thus, there are two worlds in the astral world, mutually interpenetrating and having in the same way a relation to humanity. Above all, these two worlds are to be distinguished from each other in regard to their origin.

If we look back in the earth's evolution, we come to a time when the earth was still connected with the sun and moon. In a still earlier time, the earth was itself moon and was a body that was outside the sun in the Moon-evolution. At that time, before the earth had become our present earth, there was already an astral world. This astral world would have become the good astral world if it could simply have developed further without hindrance. Through the fact, however, that the moon had separated itself from the earth, the evil astral world has been incorporated into the general astral world, and today we are still at this stage. In the future, an evil part will be incorporated into the devachanic world, as well.

Provisionally, we must clearly keep in mind that there is not one astral world but two, one into which pass all the currents fruitful for human progress and further evolution, and one into which pass all the currents that hinder man's evolution—to which, at the same time, Kamaloca belongs. In both these worlds are beings whom we have learnt to know today in a more abstract way, how they exercise an influence on us, how they live with one another. In our next lecture, we will gain more exact knowledge of the inhabitants of the higher worlds, of their condition and constitution.

Let us compare what we learn through direct experiences about our relation to life between birth and death with what we must feel inwardly about the connection between our moral behaviour, thoughts and acts and the consequences of this behaviour. We began these evening lectures with just such studies and we will conclude with the same theme.

When on the one hand we consider how our moral deeds proceed from our purposes, from our whole attitude of soul, we realise that if we observe ourselves without prejudice, one category of our actions must be described as morally good, fit to become part of the world-order; the other category is of actions that must be described as morally bad, morally imperfect, unworthy to become part of the world-order. But whatever comes to pass through men cannot have a momentary significance only—this is admitted by everybody. And the same applies to the world of Nature. Everything has its effects, its consequences, becomes the cause of something or is itself the effect of something. Human life would certainly not be in keeping with the course of world events if what it embraces were not also cause and effect. But whereas we can be completely satisfied when we observe Nature and clearly perceive cause and effect, we certainly cannot be satisfied about the connection between our moral experiences and the course taken by the world-order. There appears to be no direct connection in the physical happenings between what ought to be the result of the moral disposition of our soul and what actually comes to pass in the course of physical life. And if we consider happenings in wider circles of people we see that a man who in respect of his soul-life seems to be morally good, encounters misfortune and evil in the world, while a man who seems inwardly weak and immoral may encounter external events that are in no way a requital for what is harboured in his soul. In short, we find no connection between what a man experiences as his destiny and the essential quality of his will. It could be called an irresponsible illusion if anyone were to deceive himself that in the one life on Earth the destiny he encounters is in any way the effect of his moral will. The bad can be fortunate, the good unfortunate. These two statements really summarise that characteristic of earthly life which makes it incomprehensible, to begin with, to human faculties. And we shall see from this that man, as he is now placed in the world, is himself not in a position to bring about the consequences answering to his deeds. In the single life on Earth morality remains an inner disposition, an inner attunement of the soul; it cannot become directly manifest in outer physical reality. Admittedly, the inner disposition of the soul can be a direct result of the moral attitude. We can be inwardly contented with our good conduct, in spite of being hit by misfortune that is in crass contrast to what we have actually done; but the experience brought about in this way remains in the realm of the soul. Man must acknowledge that in physical life he is not in a position to bring to outward manifestation in the world the inner, moral content of his soul.

When we study karma as we have been doing during the last few days, seeing how earlier lives work over into later incarnations, we realise that in the moral sphere of the life of soul the earlier is inwardly connected with the later. Put briefly, however, this means that here, in physical life on Earth, man has a constitution which forces back his moral conduct into the realm of soul, does not allow it to take effect in one earthly life. In a single earthly life man is powerless to give effect to the moral content he bears in his soul. His physical corporality, his etheric substantiality, make him powerless. In the life between death and a new birth, however, he becomes as powerful as here in physical life he is powerless. But if in his physical life the physical and etheric bodies render him powerless, there must be something in the life between death and a new birth that enables him to give effect to this soul-content, to make it a reality there, and physical reality too in later lives on Earth. On Earth we live in our physical and etheric bodies amid the kingdoms of Nature and it is what we have to take from Nature for these bodies that renders us powerless. With our own being of soul-and-spirit which passes through the gate of death we become powerful after death because we are then united with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, just as on Earth we are united with the kingdoms of Nature. The Beings of the Hierarchies belong, as we know, to three realms: to the lowest realm belong the Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi; to the middle realm belong Exousiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes; to the highest realm belong Thrones, Cherubim, Seraphim. In the course of these lectures we have learnt how man lives between death and a new birth with the inmost essence of the stars and hence with these higher Hierarchies. But in order that the moral content of the soul may come to expression in life on Earth, the following must take place.

It is true that, to begin with, we have to retain in our soul the effects of our moral attitude of thought, feeling and will; we have to wait until in the life between death and a new birth we are vouchsafed the help of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. What lies in our soul is first carried through the spiritual world, emerges again in a new earthly life and appears then in the form in which it is right to appear. For what should we be if in earthly life we could bring to direct fulfilment the moral content of our soul? We should not be typical men of terrestrial life! Just imagine that you bore within your soul a moral content that quite justifiably you considered could be capable of creating a favourable world-situation and that you could actually bring it about. What would you be then? You would be magicians, not typical men of the Earth! For when a power of spirit-and-soul is brought to direct expression, that is an essentially magical achievement. In our present cycle of existence man is no magician in the single life between birth and death. But he is a magician when, together with the Beings of the Hierarchies, he is active between death and a new birth and is able to continue these activities when he again descends into life on Earth. The karmic development through these two entirely different modes of existence is in fact the process where the human being works magically. The physical human being standing before us in external life is membered—as I have shown at the end of the book Von Seelenratseln (Riddles of the Soul)¹—into the nerves-senses man, the rhythmic man and the metabolic-limb man. Metabolism and limbs are connected; when we use our limbs, metabolism is activated and must continue; forces in man must be used up. Metabolism must continue in inner experience too. But both are related. When we observe the human metabolic system as it operates in the physical body, we may be tempted at first to regard it as man's lowest system. There are people who claim to be idealists because they have accustomed themselves to look down with a certain superciliousness upon the metabolic-limb system. It is the lowest system, the system that the respectable idealist would prefer to be without. But without it earthly life would be impossible; it is the system that represents man in his imperfection in earthly life.

Now the facts of the matter are these. In the physical human form the metabolic-limb system is the lowest and therefore has little to do for what is essentially human in earthly life, but it is connected in this earthly life with the Beings of the highest Hierarchy, the Thrones, the Cherubim, the Seraphim. As we move about the world or work with our hands, in this mysterious activity the activity of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim is present. These Beings remain helpers when man's life continues between death and a new birth. They remain helpers. Now it is quite erroneous to believe that the moral content of the soul proceeds from the head. In reality, regarded from a higher point of view, man's head is by no means such a tremendously important organ. The head is really more or less a mirror of the external world, and if we had the head alone we should know about nothing except the external world. The head simply reflects the external world. The experiences of the head are mirrorings, reflections of the external world. Our inner, moral impulses do not proceed from the head but from the region of the metabolic-limb system, not, however, from the physical system but from its constitution of soul-and spirit wherein Thrones and Cherubim and Seraphim are living.

And so to acquire a right view of man we must picture the following.—(a drawing was made). This third member of man's constitution, the metabolic-limb system, seems at first to be imperfect, indeed it might be said that in respect of its physical and etheric organisation it is unworthy of the human being. But something else lies within it, or rather this system lies within something else; the Thrones live within it, the Cherubim weave within it, the Seraphim flame within it. When man passes through the gate of death, everything that underlies the physical metabolic-limb system falls away from him and with his ego he remains in the realm wherein he previously existed, namely in the realm of the Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim. He then separates from them but they continue to develop the moral quality of the soul. Here on Earth man looks upwards, to the Heavens, in order to divine a higher reality, a spiritual-super-sensible reality. He does this as long as he is on the Earth. If he is living between death and a new birth he looks downwards and beholds what the moral content of his soul becomes as a result of the deeds of the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones. There below, when he descends again to the Earth, the consequences are fulfilled; there the Cherubim, Seraphim and Thrones are working to bring about the fulfilment of the spiritual reality.

And so, after we have become attentive to it, we see how in a magical way man sends the consequences of his deeds of the present into the next earthly life.

Now that we have considered the metabolic-limb system, let us turn our attention to its polar opposite, the nerves-and-senses system. This, of course, extends through the whole organism but is established primarily in the head. We will therefore consider the human head. It is a fact that through the head man experiences only a reflection of the existing external world. His thoughts, his mental conceptions in which alone, as I have said, he is really awake, are actually only reflections from outside by way of the head. But when a man masters Initiation Science, at first through Imaginative knowledge, then, as you know, through its metamorphosis into knowledge through Inspiration and then through Intuition, he is able to look into his earlier lives on Earth—but he sees them then in their spiritual form. In the spiritual world, knowledge itself is reality. And the experience of a man who with genuine Initiation-knowledge is able to look into earlier earthly lives is that he is living not only, say, on June 15th, 1924, but is himself present through the course of the earlier lives; he not only looks into those earlier lives but he looks back upon his whole being. It is not abstract, theoretical observation but direct identification with his own former existence. His inner life is greatly stirred when he begins to experience his earlier earthly lives. But this experience makes it possible to change the focus of his world-outlook. What is the usual focus of a world-outlook? The usual focus is the head. This head with its physical organisation as the foundation, this head which was yours in previous earthly lives and in the immediately preceding life, cannot be made the focus of your world-outlook when you have once experienced earlier incarnations, for it has long since passed away. Only the spiritual principle that was present in the head can be made the focal starting-point of a world-outlook. Initiation therefore consists in this: through going back into his former existence on Earth, man spiritualises himself. All clairvoyance in the best sense of the word actually means going back into earlier earthly lives. To be initiated means not to remain within the limits of the present life but to look at the things of the world with the faculties that were ours in earlier earthly existence. Whereas in the ordinary course we are such imperfect beings in earthly life that we see only the external physical world, the beings we were in earlier existences had already become clairvoyant. And as a rule when we experience the immediately preceding incarnation we make the discovery that the person we were then was already much nearer perfection.

How does it come about that what we could have become after the earlier life has not been achieved? Why is this? You see, if as human beings having nothing but a head we were to pass from one earthly life to another, we should be as perfect in the later life as in the former, but we have the other systems as well as the head. And since the magical principle in man lies in the metabolic-limb system which in turn works in karma, karma brings the head across from one earthly life to another. Thus karma is directly active in the formation of the head. And if we begin to develop an unprejudiced view of man in this field, we shall gradually learn to read a great deal about his karma from the physiognomy of his head. To look at the human head with the ordinary consciousness of today is just the same as taking Goethe's Faust and beginning “I—h-a-v-e—s-t-u-d-i-e-d—a-l-a-s...” because then one knows only the letters and cannot read. When we have learnt to read we shall understand what these strange signs mean. As I said once before, this trivial fact brings it about that whereas we should otherwise see only about thirty different shapes of letters in books, we have Goethe's Faust, Hegel's Logic, the Bible, and so on, simply because we have learnt to read. In the same way we can learn to read the living things around us. The progress from merely spelling the form of the human head and reading it leads into the secrets of the karma of that particular person. As regards the outwardly perceptible form of the head we may say that every human being has his own particular head; no single individual has exactly the same shaped head as another. Although individuals often look alike, they are not alike in respect of their karma. In the head-formation the karma of a man's past is revealed to physical sense-perception. In the metabolic-limb system lies future karma; spiritually concealed, invisibly it is there. So that if we speak of man in the spiritual sense we can say: Man is so constituted that on the one hand he makes his past karma visible and on the other hand he bears his future karma invisibly within him.

In this way we can eventually acquire an inwardly spiritual view of the human being. Man's metabolic-limb system is inferior in respect of its physical and etheric nature only, for in that system live the Beings of the highest Hierarchy. When we consider the physical-material aspect of the head it is undoubtedly the most perfect system because it bears within it, externally and visibly, what works over spiritually from earlier earthly lives. The head is generally the most highly valued, but it is not the most perfect in a spiritual respect. For whereas Thrones, Cherubim and Seraphim live in the metabolic-limb system, in the head-system live Archai, Archangeloi, Angeloi. It is they who stand behind everything we experience with our head in the physical world of sense. They live in us, in our head-system, and are active behind our consciousness; they encounter the effects of the physical world and mirror them back, and we become conscious only of the reflections. What we are aware of in our head-system is only the semblance of the activities of the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi. (A drawing was made). If I am to continue this diagram I must say: the Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi are working, at the other pole, in the head-system.—I always use the nomenclature of the earlier Christian world-conception in which the spiritual connection was still intact, although the spiritual Beings may just as well be given other names.

Between the nerves-and-senses system which is based primarily in the head and the metabolic-limb system, man has the rhythmic system in which everything that is active between the lungs and the heart is contained. In all this activity live the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Exousiai. Dynamis, Kyriotetes.

In concluding our studies of karma we are led again to the realisation that while man faces the three kingdoms of Nature here on Earth, behind him are the spiritual kingdoms of the Hierarchies, one above the other. And as here on the Earth his physical body encompasses him and prevents him from bringing to fulfilment by magic the moral forces of his soul, after death the world of the Hierarchies receives him and enables him to make effective magically for the next incarnation what he cannot achieve in one earthly life. When a man passes over from one earthly life to the next he would in all circumstances, if his further evolution were to proceed consistently, develop clairvoyance with the head-system yielded by the former life; Archai, Archangeloi and Angeloi would lead him to clairvoyance. Hence if a man is to have insight into spiritual reality—insight that without an iota of superstition or charlatanry can be called clairvoyance—he must be able to project himself with a certain cosmic consciousness into his previous life on Earth, although in the external world he has progressed to his present incarnation.

Thus, if someone is living, let us say, in the twentieth century, he uses the body which this century can provide and for knowledge he must avail himself of the head. He cannot be clairvoyant. But let us suppose he were transported into a previous earthly life, say in the tenth or eleventh century, as the result of his meditative exercises now, in this twentieth century. He is not the same person as he was at that earlier time, but through his own forces he has brought it about spiritually that now, in the twentieth century, he is the man he was in that earlier epoch—a clairvoyant personality. Clairvoyance can reveal this clearly to Initiation-knowledge during life in the physical world. When we look closely into human life, however, it is revealed to clairvoyant consciousness that in the deeper impulses of a man's nature, in the deeper foundations of his soul, what was present in a former incarnation rises up again in a different form. It is therefore essential, if we wish to approach in earnest such matters as the working of karma, that earthly experience must be of a more spiritual character than is usual.

I will elaborate what I have been saying by means of an example. You know from the way in which I have given such examples that they are the findings of spiritual investigation undertaken with a deep sense of responsibility.

A certain individual lived in the European-Asiatic Orient, somewhat earlier than the founding of Christianity, with a task that was far from his liking. It was in an epoch when slavery was still prevalent and his task was to supervise a number of slaves belonging to a certain owner. Supersensible vision leads us to a situation where a human soul, incarnated at that time in the body of a slave-overseer, was obliged to carry out whatever the cruel owner of these slaves decreed. The slaves were in the care of the overseer and relationships of an ethical nature developed between them. But there was deep conflict in the soul of this overseer. It went against the grain to carry out the often cruel, disciplinary punishments ordered by his master. Nevertheless he obeyed, because he was accustomed to these circumstances and because it was natural at that time to act in such a way. Now just consider for a moment: are people to-day always what they would like to be? They do not often think about this; they deceive themselves about the disharmony between what they are and what they would like to be. This individual too was not what he would have liked to be, but intrinsically he had deep sympathy, deep love, for all the unhappy slaves upon whom he was obliged to inflict these cruelties. Social customs, so to say, caused him to hurt the slaves in many ways. He therefore shared the responsibility, although the master and owner of the slaves was primarily the culprit.

Both individualities were born again in the middle of the Middle Ages, and now as a married couple. The former slave-owner came again in a male incarnation, the overseer came as a woman. In the middle of the Middle Ages the reincarnated slave-owner held a position in a certain village commune, a position that was by no means pleasant, for he was a kind of police jailer and was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune; he felt that life was full of hardships. If we look for an explanation we find that these villagers were for the most part reincarnations of the slaves whom he had formerly owned and whom he had caused to be ill-treated by his overseer. The karmic result turned out to be that the former slave-owner, although he had become a fairly high official, was nevertheless the village jailer, who together with his wife was held responsible for whatever happened in the commune. But at the same time, because the wife shared in all the suffering that the one-time slaves caused her husband, the karma was fulfilled between her—the former overseer—and the slave-owner. The bond between these two was dissolved but not the tie between the one-time overseer, now incarnated as a woman, and the members of the commune. They came together again in the nineteenth century. The earlier overseer, who in a certain way had adjusted his relation to the former master, came again as the great educational reformer Pestalozzi, and those who had been the slaves under him were the children who received such infinite benefit from his educational principles.

These things must be viewed not merely with the prosaic intellect, but with soul, with feeling and with love which must become as clear and brilliant as the intellect and be able to develop genuine knowledge. The intellect can develop only pictures of outer Nature, and anyone who thinks that he gets something more than pictures deceives himself. It is possible to get more only if soul, feeling and love become forces of knowledge, and it is only by going back to earlier karma that we are gradually able to realise how karma works. But the whole soul must participate, and the content of these explanations of karma must be grasped by the whole being of man.

It really amounts to this: the soul must penetrate into the very essence of the Anthroposophical Movement. A short time ago I was deeply moved by a certain incident. What I have told you about Pestalozzi I had also said in a lecture in Dornach, and later on had occasion to visit an official in Basle, accompanied by another member of the Dornach Executive. The well-known picture of Pestalozzi among the children was hanging on the wall in the waiting-room. It was known to the member of the Vorstand who was with me. He was deeply moved by it and he said: When one looks at this faithful portrayal of Pestalozzi, one realises that such a situation can only have come about in the way that is revealed through Anthroposophy. This kind of thing is just what ought to occur more often, this realisation in direct experience of what has been discovered by anthroposophical investigations.

These indications of karma which I have now been able, to my great satisfaction, to give you, cannot make demands merely upon your intellect. What has been presented during these eight days calls not merely upon intellect but upon heart, upon the whole soul. And only when you have gathered together all that I have said about the reincarnation of historical personalities, about observation of individual karma, about the influences of sleeping and waking life in the development of karma and let it all work in your hearts and souls, will a comprehensive grasp of the working of karma in individual personalities result from these studies.

Our civilisation will be rescued from the grip of its present decline only if what is so readily taken to-day merely in an intellectualistic sense penetrates into the whole being of man. What does an Oriental say nowadays about Western man? The spirituality of an Oriental at the present time is not of a kind that we can adopt forthwith, but it is a spirituality which in the ancient past was able to gaze deeply into the super-sensible worlds. To-day only traces have remained but in his soul an Oriental still has the feeling of what was once experienced in the East, namely, living communion with the spirit inherent in all things. Such is the experience of those who are not entirely steeped in materialism. One Oriental who had a feeling for the spirituality in Eastern wisdom said the following as he contemplated Western civilisation: ‘Its essential characteristic is that it is only façade and has no foundations. The façade stands on the ground without any solid foundations.’—And this Oriental went on to say: ‘Yes, in nearly everything that belongs to his civilisation, Western man actually starts from the standpoint of his ego, the ego that is enclosed within a single life and therefore has no reality. It has reality only when it emerges from its bounds and leads into the successive earthly lives.’ Realisation of existence in successive earthly lives is regarded by the Oriental as the foundation-structure and remaining with the ego that is enclosed between birth and death he regards as the façade. Have we not heard to-day that when a man looks into spiritual reality he will look back into the past? If he contemplates karmic development with its magical processes he must have accepted the principle of successive incarnations. Then the ego widens out and will no longer be egotistic. The Oriental says that the European can recognise the ego only within the limits of birth and death and this he calls the egotism of the European. So he says that European, indeed Western civilisation as a whole, is only façade and has no foundation-structure; moreover that if this state of things continues and Western civilisation persists in recognising only the ego living between birth and death, the separate stones of the façade might one day fall apart as the façade has no foundation. This picture of the single stones crumbling away from the façade has actually arisen in many oriental souls, living as they do, largely in Imaginations. It is insight into such matters as have been studied here during these last few days that can add the foundation-structure and supplement the mere façade. Contemplation of the karma which reaches from earthly life to earthly life leads man beyond the restricted activity that is limited to a single life on Earth.

In what must be our final lecture, I should now like to place before your souls a vista into the cultural task of Anthroposophy. If it works on within you, revealing many things, you will become co-workers in the task of creating the foundation-structure for a true and genuine façade of Western civilisation. I have nothing to add to what has often been said by men of the East. What they really mean is this: the West has departed too far from the spirit, it can no longer find the foundation-structure; the East must contribute what it still possesses from ancient times in order that civilisation on Earth may not perish.

Whether this terrible fate that is prophesied for Western civilisation by all clear-sighted Orientals can be avoided, depends upon endeavours such as those of Anthroposophy. Resolute will is needed to penetrate into the spiritual world, in order that its forces may again be received into the hearts of men. Hence a community of human beings who have come together, as you have done, for spiritual activity, has grasped what this truly means only if the resolution is taken to apply all the forces of the will to the task of furthering, for the sake of humanity, experience of the spirit. My purpose in these lectures was to point the way to experience of spiritual reality and thus to the moral principle that is everywhere implicit in it. For this reason I wanted in these hours when we could be together again, to give you just what I have given. But in Anthroposophy spiritual things should be taken in earnest at all times, during every moment, not only during every lecture-hour. In Anthroposophy, therefore, it is true to say that when we are beside one another in space, we are together physically, but because we recognise spiritual reality we know that we are also together even when physically apart. And as I know that some of you here must travel back after the lecture, I will add this.—As we make our farewells let us say to ourselves that we will be true anthroposophists by remaining together in our souls through the spirit which becomes alive in us through our view of life. Let those of us who are now going away again say to our friends of the Breslau Group: we too will think about what we have been able to acquire for our own souls and those of others while working together with you. We will feel that we are with you even when we have gone away from this room and we hope that the Breslau friends too will think of those who were so glad to have been among them at this time.

• 1. See The Case for Anthroposophy. Steiner/Barfield, (Rudolf Steiner Press).

[ 1 ] In future there will be found in these columns something in the nature of anthroposophical ‘Leading Thoughts’ or principles. These may be taken to contain advice on the direction which members can give to the lectures and discussions in the several Groups. It is but a stimulus and suggestion which the Goetheanum would like to give to the whole Society. The independence of individual leading members in their work is in no way to be interfered with. We shall develop healthily if the Society gives free play to what leading members have to offer in all the different Groups. This will enrich and make manifold the life of the Society.

[ 2 ] But it should also be possible for a unity of consciousness to arise in the whole Society—which will happen if the initiative and ideas that emerge at different places become known everywhere. Thus in these columns we shall sum up in short paragraphs the descriptions and lines of thought given by me in my lectures to the Society at the Goetheanum. I imagine that those who lecture or conduct the discussions in the Groups will be able to take what is here given as guiding lines, with which they may freely connect what they have to say. This will contribute to the unity and organic wholeness of the work of the Society without there being any question of constraint.

[ 3 ] The plan will become fruitful for the whole Society if it meets with a true response—if the leading members will inform the Executive at the Goetheanum too of the content and nature of their own lectures and suggestions. Then only shall we grow, from a chaos of separate Groups, into a Society with a real spiritual content.

[ 4 ] The Leading Thoughts here given are meant to open up subjects for study and discussion. Points of contact with them will be found in countless places in the anthroposophical books and lecture-courses, so that the subjects thus opened up can be enlarged upon and the discussions in the Groups centred around them.

[ 5 ] When new ideas emerge among leading members in the several Groups, these too can be brought into connection with the suggestions we shall send out from the Goetheanum. We would thus provide an open framework for all the spiritual activity in the Society.

[ 6 ] Spiritual activity can of course only thrive by free unfoldment on the part of the active individuals—and we must never sin against this truth. But there is no need to do so when one group or member within the Society acts in proper harmony with the other. If such co-operation were impossible, the attachment of individuals or groups to the Society would always remain a purely external thing—where it should in fact be felt as an inner reality.

[ 7 ] It cannot be allowed that the existence of the Anthroposophical Society is merely made use of by this or that individual as an opportunity to say what he personally wishes to say with this or that intention. The Society must rather be the place where true Anthroposophy is cultivated. Anything that is not Anthroposophy can, after all, be pursued outside it. The Society is not there for extraneous objects.

[ 8 ] It has not helped us that in the last few years individual members have brought into the Society their own personal wishes simply because they thought that as it increased it would become a suitable sphere of action for them. It may be said, Why was this not met and counteracted with the proper firmness? If that had been done, we should now be hearing it said on all sides, ‘Oh, if only the initiative that arose in this or that quarter had been followed up at the time, how much farther we should be today!’ Well, many things were followed up, which ended in sad disaster and only resulted in throwing us back.

[ 9 ] But now it is enough. The demonstrations which individual experimenters in the Society wished to provide are done with. Such things need not be repeated endlessly. In the Executive at the Goetheanum we have a body which intends to cultivate Anthroposophy itself; and the Society should be an association of human beings who have the same object and are ready to enter into a living understanding with the Executive in the pursuit of it.

[ 10 ] We must not think that our ideal in the Society can be attained from one day to the next. Time will be needed, and patience too. If we imagined that what lay in the intentions of the Christmas meeting could be brought into existence in a few weeks' time, this again would be harmful.

Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts given out as suggestions from the Goetheanum

[ 11 ] 1. Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe. It arises in man as a need of the heart, of the life of feeling; and it can be justified only inasmuch as it can satisfy this inner need. He alone can acknowledge Anthroposophy, who finds in it what he himself in his own inner life feels impelled to seek. Hence only they can be anthroposophists who feel certain questions on the nature of man and the universe as an elemental need of life, just as one feels hunger and thirst.

[ 12 ] 2. Anthroposophy communicates knowledge that is gained in a spiritual way. Yet it only does so because everyday life, and the science founded on sense-perception and intellectual activity, lead to a barrier along life's way—a limit where the life of the soul in man would die if it could go no farther. Everyday life and science do not lead to this limit in such a way as to compel man to stop short at it. For at the very frontier where the knowledge derived from sense perception ceases, there is opened through the human soul itself the further outlook into the spiritual world.

[ 13 ] 3. There are those who believe that with the limits of knowledge derived from sense perception the limits of all insight are given. Yet if they would carefully observe how they become conscious of these limits, they would find in the very consciousness of the limits the faculties to transcend them. The fish swims up to the limits of the water; it must return because it lacks the physical organs to live outside this element. Man reaches the limits of knowledge attainable by sense perception; but he can recognise that on the way to this point powers of soul have arisen in him—powers whereby the soul can live in an element that goes beyond the horizon of the senses.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 14 ] 4. For certainty of feeling and for a strong unfolding of his will, man needs a knowledge of the spiritual world. However widely he may feel the greatness, beauty and wisdom of the natural world, this world gives him no answer to the question of his own being. His own being holds together the materials and forces of the natural world in the living and sensitive form of man until the moment when he passes through the gate of death. Then Nature receives this human form, and Nature cannot hold it together; she can but dissolve and disperse it. Great, beautiful, wisdom-filled Nature does indeed answer the question, How is the human form dissolved and destroyed? but not the other question, How is it maintained and held together? No theoretical objection can dispel this question from the feeling soul of man, unless indeed he prefers to lull himself to sleep. The presence of this question must incessantly maintain alive, in every human soul that is really awake, the longing for spiritual paths of World-knowledge.

[ 15 ] 5. For peace in his inner life, man needs Self-knowledge in the Spirit. He finds himself in his Thinking, Feeling and Willing. He sees how Thinking, Feeling and Willing are dependent on the natural man. In all their developments, they must follow the health and sickness, the strengthening and weakening of the body. Every sleep blots them out. Thus the experience of everyday life shows the spiritual consciousness of man in the greatest imaginable dependence on his bodily existence. Man suddenly becomes aware that in this realm of ordinary experience Self-knowledge may be utterly lost—the search for it a vain quest. Then first the anxious question arises: Can there be a Self-knowledge transcending the ordinary experiences of life? Can we have any certainty at all, as to a true Self of man? Anthroposophy would fain answer this question on a firm basis of spiritual experience. In so doing it takes its stand, not on any opinion or belief, but on a conscious experience in the Spirit—an experience in its own nature no less certain than the conscious experience in the body.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 16 ] 6. When we look out on lifeless Nature, we find a world full of inner relationships of law and order. We seek for these relationships and find in them the content of the ‘Laws of Nature.’ We find, moreover, that by virtue of these Laws lifeless Nature forms a connected whole with the entire Earth. We may now pass from this earthly connection which rules in all lifeless things, to contemplate the living world of plants. We see how the Universe beyond the Earth sends in from distances of space the forces which draw the Living forth out of the womb of the Lifeless. In all living things we are made aware of an element of being, which, freeing itself from the mere earthly connection, makes manifest the forces that work down on to the Earth from realms of cosmic space. As in the eye we become aware of the luminous object which confronts it, so in the tiniest plant we are made aware of the nature of the Light from beyond the Earth. Through this ascent in contemplation, we can perceive the difference of the earthly and physical which holds sway in the lifeless world, from the extra-earthly and ethereal which abounds in all living things.

[ 17 ] 7. We find man with his transcendent being of soul and spirit placed into this world of the earthly and the extra earthly. Inasmuch as he is placed into the earthly connection which contains all lifeless things, he bears with him his physical body. Inasmuch as he unfolds within him the forces which the living world draws into this earthly sphere from cosmic space, he has an etheric or life-body. The trend of science in modern times has taken no account of this essential contrast of the earthly and the ethereal. For this very reason, science has given birth to the most impossible conceptions of the ether. For fear of losing their way in fanciful and nebulous ideas, scientists have refrained from dwelling on the real contrast. But unless we do so, we can attain no true insight into the Universe and Man.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 18 ] 8. We may consider the nature of man in so far as it results from his physical and his etheric body. We shall find that all the phenomena of man's life which proceed from this side of his nature remain in the unconscious, nor do they ever lead to consciousness. Consciousness is not lighted up but darkened when the activity of the physical and the etheric body is enhanced. Conditions of faintness and the like can be recognised as the result of such enhancement. Following up this line of thought, we recognise that something is at work in man—and in the animal—which is not of the same nature as the physical and the etheric. It takes effect, not when the forces of the physical and the etheric are active in their own way, but when they cease to be thus active. In this way we arrive at the conception of the astral body.

[ 19 ] 9. The reality of this astral body is discovered when we rise in meditation from the Thinking that is stimulated by the outer senses to an inner act of Vision. To this end, the Thinking that is stimulated from without must be taken hold of inwardly, and experienced as such, intensely in the soul, apart from its relation to the outer world. Through the strength of soul thus engendered, we become aware that there are inner organs of perception, which see a spiritual reality working in the animal and man at the very point where the physical and the etheric body are held in check in order that consciousness may arise.

[ 20 ] 10. Consciousness, therefore, does not arise by a further enhancement of activities which proceed from the physical and etheric bodies. On the contrary, these two bodies, with their activities, must be reduced to zero—nay even below zero—to ‘make room’ for the working of consciousness. They do not generate consciousness, they only furnish the ground on which the Spirit must stand in order to bring forth consciousness within the earthly life. As man on Earth needs the ground on which to stand, so does the Spiritual, within the earthly realm, need a material foundation on which it may unfold itself. And as a planet in the cosmic spaces does not require any ground beneath it in order to assert its place, so too the Spirit, when it looks—not through the senses into material—but through its own power into spiritual things, needs no material foundation to call its conscious activity to life.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 21 ] 11. The Self-consciousness which is summed up in the ‘I’ or ‘Ego’ emerges out of the sea of consciousness. Consciousness arises when the forces of the physical and etheric bodies disintegrate these bodies, and thus make way for the Spiritual to enter into man. For through this disintegration is provided the ground on which the life of consciousness can develop. If, however, the organism is not to be destroyed, the disintegration must be followed by a reconstruction. Thus, when for an experience in consciousness a process of disintegration has taken place, that which has been demolished will be built up again exactly. The experience of Self-consciousness lies in the perception of this upbuilding process. The same process can be observed with inner vision. We then feel how the Conscious is led over into the Self-conscious by man's creating out of himself an after-image of the merely Conscious. The latter has its image in the emptiness, as it were, produced within the organism by the disintegration. It has passed into Self-consciousness when the emptiness has been filled up again from within. The Being, capable of this ‘fulfilment,’ is experienced as ‘I.’

[ 22 ] 12. The reality of the ‘I’ is found when the inner vision whereby the astral body is known and taken hold of, is carried a stage further. The Thinking which has become alive in meditation must now be permeated by the Will. To begin with we simply gave ourselves up to this new Thinking, without active Will. We thereby enabled spiritual realities to enter into this thinking life, even as in outer sense perception colour enters the eye or sound the ear. What we have thus called to life in our consciousness by a more passive devotion, must now be reproduced by ourselves, by an act of Will. When we do so, there enters into this act of Will the perception of our own ‘I’ or Ego.

[ 23 ] 13. On the path of meditation we discover, beside the form in which the ‘I’ occurs in ordinary consciousness, three further forms: (1) In the consciousness which takes hold of the etheric body, the ‘I’ appears in picture-form; yet the picture is at the same time active Being, and as such it gives man form and figure, growth, and the plastic forces that create his body. (2) In the consciousness which takes hold of the astral body, the ‘I’ is manifested as a member of a spiritual world whence it receives its forces. (3) In the consciousness just indicated, as the last to be achieved, the ‘I’ reveals itself as a self-contained spiritual Being—relatively independent of the surrounding spiritual world.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 24 ] 14. The second form of the ‘I’—first of the three forms that were indicated in the last section—appears as a ‘picture’ of the I. When we become aware of this picture-character, a light is also thrown on the quality of thought in which the ‘I’ appears before the ordinary consciousness. With all manner of reflections, men have sought within this consciousness for the ‘true I.’ Yet an earnest insight into the experiences of the ordinary consciousness will suffice to show that the ‘true I’ cannot be found therein. Only a shadow-in-thought is able to appear there—a shadowy reflection, even less than a picture. The truth of this seizes us all the more when we progress to the ‘I’ as a picture, which lives in the etheric body. Only now are we rightly kindled to search for the ‘I’, for the true being of man.

[ 25 ] 15. Insight into the form in which the ‘I’ lives in the astral body leads to a right feeling of the relation of man to the spiritual world. For ordinary consciousness this form of the ‘I’ is buried in the dark depths of the unconscious, where man enters into connection with the spiritual being of the Universe through Inspiration. Ordinary consciousness experiences only a faint echo-in-feeling of this Inspiration from the wide expanse of the spiritual world, which holds sway in depths of the soul.

[ 26 ] 16. It is the third form of the ‘I’ which gives us insight into the independent Being of man within a spiritual world. It makes us feel how, with his earthly-sensible nature, man stands before himself as a mere manifestation of what he really is. Here lies the starting-point of true Self-knowledge. For the Self which fashions man in his true nature is revealed to him in Knowledge only when he progresses from the thought of the ‘I’ to its picture, from the picture to the creative forces of the picture, and from the creative forces to the spiritual Beings who sustain them.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 27 ] 17. Man is a being who unfolds his life in the midst, between two regions of the world. With his bodily development he is a member of a ‘lower world’; with his soul-nature he himself constitutes a ‘middle world’; and with his faculties of Spirit he is ever striving towards an ‘upper world.’ He owes his bodily development to all that Nature has given him; he bears the being of his soul within him as his own portion; and he discovers in himself the forces of the Spirit, as the gifts that lead him out beyond himself to participate in a Divine World.

[ 28 ] 18. The Spirit is creative in these three regions of the World. Nature is not void of Spirit. We lose even Nature from our knowledge if we do not become aware of the Spirit within her. Nevertheless, in Nature's existence we find the Spirit as it were asleep. Yet just as sleep has its task in human life—as the ‘I’ must be asleep at one time in order to be the more awake at another—so must the World-Spirit be asleep where Nature is, in order to be the more awake elsewhere.

[ 29 ] 19. In relation to the World, the soul of man is like a dreamer if it does not pay heed to the Spirit at work within it. The Spirit awakens the dreams of the soul from their ceaseless weaving in the inner life, to active participation in the World where man's true Being has its origin. As the dreamer shuts himself off from the surrounding physical world and entwines himself into himself, so would the soul lose connection with the Spirit of the World in whom it has its source, if it turned a deaf ear to the awakening calls of the Spirit within it.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 30 ] 20. For a right development of the life of the human soul, it is essential for man to become fully conscious of working actively from out of spiritual sources in his being. Many adherents of the modern scientific world-conception are victims of a strong prejudice in this respect. They say that a universal causality is dominant in all phenomena of the world; and that if man believes that he himself, out of his own resources, can be the cause of anything, it is a mere illusion on his part. Modern Natural Science wishes to follow observation and experience faithfully in all things, but in its prejudice about the hidden causality of man's inner sources of action it sins against its own principle. For the free and active working, straight from the inner resources of the human being, is a perfectly elementary experience of self-observation. It cannot be argued away; rather must we harmonise it with our insight into the universal causation of things within the order of Nature.

[ 31 ] 21. Non-recognition of this impulse out of the Spirit working in the inner life of man, is the greatest hindrance to the attainment of an insight into the spiritual world. For to consider our own being as a mere part of the order of Nature is in reality to divert the soul's attention from our own being. Nor can we penetrate into the spiritual world unless we first take hold of the Spirit where it is immediately given to us, namely in clear and open-minded self-observation.

[ 32 ] 22. Self-observation is the first beginning in the observation of the Spirit. It can indeed be the right beginning, for if it is true, man cannot possibly stop short at it, but is bound to progress to the further spiritual content of the World. As the human body pines away when bereft of physical nourishment, so will the man who rightly observes himself feel that his Self is becoming stunted if he does not see working into it the forces from a creative spiritual World outside him.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 33 ] 23. Passing through the gate of death, man goes out into the spiritual world, in that he feels falling away from him all the impressions and contents of soul which he received during earthly life through the bodily senses and the brain. His consciousness then has before it in an all-embracing picture-tableau the whole content of life which, during his earthly wanderings, entered as pictureless thoughts into his memory, or which—remaining unnoticed by the earthly consciousness—nevertheless made a subconscious impression on his soul. After a very few days these pictures grow faint and fade away. When they have altogether vanished, he knows that he has laid aside his etheric body too; for in the etheric body he can recognise the bearer of these pictures.

[ 34 ] 24. Having laid aside the etheric body, man has the astral body and the Ego as the members of his being still remaining to him. The astral body, so long as it is with him, brings to his consciousness all that during earthly life was the unconscious content of the soul when at rest in sleep. This content includes the judgements instilled into the astral body by Spirit-beings of a higher World during the periods of sleep—judgements which remain concealed from earthly consciousness. Man now lives through his earthly life a second time, yet so, that the content of his soul is now the judgement of his thought and action from the standpoint of the Spirit-world. He lives it through in backward order: first the last night, then the last but one, and so on.

[ 35 ] 25. This judgement of his life, which man experiences in the astral body after passing through the gate of death, lasts as long as the sum-total of the times he spent during his earthly life in sleep.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 36 ] 26. Only when the astral body has been laid aside—when the judgement of his life is over—man enters the spiritual world. There he stands in like relation to Beings of purely spiritual character as on Earth to the beings and processes of the Nature-kingdoms. In spiritual experience, everything that was his outer world on Earth now becomes his inner world. He no longer merely perceives it, but experiences it in its spiritual being which was hid from him on Earth, as his own world.

[ 37 ] 27. In the Spirit-realm, man as he is on Earth becomes an outer world. We gaze upon him, even as on Earth we gaze upon the stars and clouds, the mountains and rivers. Nor is this ‘outer world’ any less rich in content than the glory of the Cosmos as it appears to us in earthly life.

[ 38 ] 28. The forces begotten by the human Spirit in the Spirit-realm work on in the fashioning of earthly Man, even as the deeds we accomplish in the Physical work on as a content of the soul in the life after death.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 39 ] 29. In the evolved Imaginative Knowledge there works what lives as soul and spirit in the inner life of man, fashioning the physical body in its life, and unfolding man's existence in the physical world on this bodily foundation. Over against the physical body, whose substances are renewed again and again in the process of metabolism, we here come to the inner nature of man, unfolding itself continuously from birth (or conception) until death. Over against the physical Space-body, we come to a Time-body.

[ 40 ] 30. In the Inspired Knowledge there lives, in picture-form, what man experiences in a spiritual environment in the time between death and a new birth. What Man is in his own Being and in relation to cosmic worlds—without the physical and etheric bodies by means of which he undergoes his earthly life—is here made visible.

[ 41 ] 31. In the Intuitive Knowledge there comes to consciousness the working-over of former earthly lives into the present. In the further course of evolution these former lives have been divested of their erstwhile connections with the physical world. They have become the purely spiritual kernel of man's being, and, as such, are working in his present life. In this way, they too are an object of Knowledge—of that Knowledge which results with the further unfolding of the Imaginative and Inspired.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 42 ] 32. In the head of man, the physical Organisation is a copy, an impress of the spiritual individuality. The physical and the etheric part of the head stand out as complete and self-contained pictures of the Spiritual; beside them, in independent soul-spiritual existence, there stand the astral and the Ego-part. Thus in the head of man we have to do with a development, side by side, of the physical and etheric, relatively independent on the one hand, and of the astral and Ego-organisation on the other.

[ 43 ] 33. In the limbs and metabolic part of man the four members of the human being are intimately bound up with one another. The Ego-organisation and astral body are not there beside the physical and etheric part. They are within them, vitalising them, working in their growth, their faculty of movement and so forth. Through this very fact, the limbs and metabolic part of man is like a germinating seed, striving for ever to unfold; striving continually to become a ‘head,’ and—during the earthly life of man—no less continually prevented.

[ 44 ] 34. The rhythmic Organisation stands in the midst. Here the Ego-organisation and astral body alternately unite with the physical and etheric part, and loose themselves again. The breathing and the circulation of the blood are the physical impress of this alternate union and loosening. The inbreathing process portrays the union; the out-breathing the loosening. The processes in the arterial blood represent the union; those in the venous blood the loosening.

Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society

[ 45 ] 35. We understand the physical nature of man only if we regard it as a picture of the soul and spirit. Taken by itself, the physical corporality of man is unintelligible. But it is a picture of the soul and spirit in different ways in its several members. The head is the most perfect and complete symbolic picture of the soul and spirit. All that pertains to the system of the metabolism and the limbs is like a picture that has not yet assumed its finished forms, but is still being worked upon. Lastly, in all that belongs to the rhythmic Organisation of man, the relation of the soul and spirit to the body is intermediate between these opposites.

[ 46 ] 36. If we contemplate the human head from this spiritual point of view, we shall find in it a help to the understanding of spiritual Imaginations. For in the forms of the head, Imaginative forms are as it were coagulated to the point of physical density.

[ 47 ] 37. Similarly, if we contemplate the rhythmic part of man's Organisation it will help us to understand Inspirations. The physical appearance of the rhythms of life bears even in the sense-perceptible picture the character of Inspiration. Lastly, in the system of the metabolism and the limbs—if we observe it in full action, in the exercise of its necessary or possible functions—we have a picture, supersensible yet sensible, of pure supersensible Intuitions.