The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the preceding remarks, I allowed myself to cite a number of objections and refutations of spiritual research or anthroposophy. It would be a misunderstanding if anyone were to believe that today's lecture was intended to refute these refutations, for it should be stated from the outset that this is not a game of thought, nor a dialectical game with reasons and counter-reasons. The spiritual research that is to be discussed here and has always been discussed is intended to work in full harmony with the science and education of the present day. Therefore, the latterly mentioned replies have not been cited in the sense that one could easily dismiss them out of hand, but they have been cited in the sense that they do, to a certain extent, legitimately arise in the soul of today, in the soul that takes into account the achievements of our spiritual science, the progress of our spiritual culture up to the present day. They have been put forward, not as unjustified objections, but as objections that are justified within certain limits. The feeling should be awakened of the seriousness with which spiritual research would like to work and of the awareness that it can take full responsibility for itself from its sources, itself, although this spiritual research fully understands — that should be said mainly with these objections — that it is, so to speak, dependent only on itself in what one might call the main opposition of three, which it faces.

One opposition arises from contemporary science, or at least from that science which often believes that it is built without contradiction on this contemporary science. The second opposition arises from various religious denominations, and the third arises from the ordinary consciousness of the day, which instinctively rebels in many respects against what spiritual science and spiritual research has to say.

It could easily appear as if the question were justified: How does spiritual research prove its assertions against the objections raised? How does it prove what it has to say? — In the course of these winter lectures, we will hear a great deal about the content of this spiritual research, about the actual results of research into the supersensible world. In these first two lectures, I must be allowed to speak in a way that some people may find difficult to understand or uninteresting, even though it is meant to be abstract. For even if it is not possible to follow all of my remarks in the first and second lectures, it is still possible to gain the feeling that a truly good foundation is being sought for this spiritual research. Therefore, some questions may be raised today that may be found uninteresting by those who would be more interested in immediately receiving this or that story from the supersensible world. The question may be raised: Is it at all possible to apply to the foundation of a world view what is usually called proof in the sense in which it is often believed? Can proof be regarded as something that, when it is present, includes the compulsion for every person to be convinced?

Anyone who seriously professes any worldview usually believes that he can prove it, and he will certainly cite his proofs for this worldview if he wants to be taken seriously. In the face of this widespread belief, I would first like to quote a word from a vigorous, energetic German philosopher, the word of Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who says: What kind of philosophy one has depends on what kind of person one is.

If we want to get to the bottom of a saying like Fichte's here, if we want to ask in other words what he meant, we have to say to ourselves: it is not just a matter of evidence, but of which evidence one considers decisive, which evidence has the weight for a person according to the development of his soul, if he wants to gain insight into this or that. Thus, even a philosopher like Fichte points us to the human soul when it comes to evaluating evidence. It is, as it were, demanded that man, through his soul development, has acquired the ability to understand the weight of evidence. To put it trivially, I would like to say: What use is all this evidence in the end to someone who cannot believe in it? And we can see how it is with so-called proofs in many cases by studying the methods of some world-views that appear to be built entirely on the firm foundation of scientific facts.

When I say something like I am about to say now, I must, however, always add at the outset: I do not believe that anyone can have more respect and recognition for the progress of natural science in our time than the genuine spiritual researcher. And today I would like to add in particular that all the objections that were raised eight days ago are meant in such a way that they are justified, in that the spiritual researcher's immediate objections to what was said eight days ago would be unjustified. For the spiritual researcher does not deny what the natural scientist asserts, and rightly so. He fully recognizes it. This fact must also be taken into account.

Spiritual research is constantly being opposed by natural science; on the other hand, spiritual research itself does not oppose natural science at all, if one is able to appreciate the true state of affairs. But there are many scientific facts that are used by certain schools of thought today in such a way, and seemingly put in such a light, that one can fully agree with the facts, but not with the way in which certain world views sometimes want to prove something on the basis of these facts. The facts that arise from natural science are mostly confirmed by spiritual research, and it may be said that the time will come when that which is justified in Darwinism and in the modern theory of evolution will find the right appreciation precisely through spiritual research.

Thus it can also be clear, in particular through spiritual research, that the soul of man, in order to prove itself effective in the external physical world, must make use of certain spiritual functions of certain parts, certain sections of the brain, just as one must make use of other hand movements. Just as the hand is assigned to certain human activities, so certain parts of the brain are assigned as tools to the soul's experience. Spiritual research will enable us to see the true meaning and significance of this relationship, and there is no contradiction between spiritual research and the views of natural science in this respect. On the other hand, the so-called proofs that are adduced often appear very fragile to anyone who understands the value of evidence. For example, when it is repeatedly stated that certain parts of the brain are involved in mental life, and that the disease of these parts of the brain switches off the mental activity in question, and it is therefore not possible to perceive that the soul accomplishes certain tasks, such as speech, so that the speech center is switched off.

For those who understand the value of evidence, such evidence truly meets the objection of the famous, if non-existent, Professor Schlaucherl, who, as some of you may know, wanted to prove how a frog feels. To do this, he put a frog on the experimental table and knocked on the table, and lo and behold, the frog jumped away – so it had heard it. Now he pulled out the frog's legs and tapped on the table again. Now the frog did not jump away because its legs had been pulled out. But from the fact that it could no longer jump away, Professor Schlaucherl concluded that the frog hears with its legs, because if it has no legs, it cannot be shown that it can hear.

When such a thing is stated, one must, of course, apologize. But it is logically and methodically quite in line with what is often cited today for evidential purposes, which are not to be doubted in the slightest by spiritual science, which are even true. But the evidence cited will never be able to truly convince those who are able to judge conclusive human statements.

Thus it is with much of what has just been stated in the previous lecture, as it is a weighty objection that can be made in the scientific sense by serious and worthy researchers of contemporary natural science, that people in the past came up with the life force and tried to explain everything that happens in the living body on the basis of this life force. But the nineteenth century has shown that this life force cannot be used for anything and that, if one only assumes the usual forces in certain substances, one can show, as soon as one proceeds in a laboratory, how certain composite substances, which were previously believed to be produced only in the living organism by the life force, can be produced in the laboratory without this life force. So that the ideal of science must be to assume that one day it will be possible to actually produce more complicated substances of the living in this way. Now the spiritual researchers come along and claim that there is a special life body or ether body in the living organism that is necessary for the living phenomena to come about. But this is nothing more than a rehash of the old life force. It could only have come from dilettantish souls who, out of convenience, seek an explanatory principle where they do not know how to take into account the advances of true science due to their lack of knowledge.

I would first like to explain, by means of a kind of historical testimony, how this whole conclusion affects a soul that is not prejudiced by the, let it be said, justified progress of science, and which does not readily surrender to its conclusions. I would like to show it first through something historical. It is believed that the assumption of an etheric body or life body has been refuted by the argument that it must be regarded as an ideal of science to assemble the living substance from its individual substances in a laboratory ; therefore, one could no longer believe in a basis for life through something supernatural, but one must see it as an effect in the purely material when working in the laboratory and combining the composite substances from the simple ones.

There was a time when people truly believed more than today's serious scientists dare to believe, that not only a single living substance but also the lowest living creatures, even a small human being, the well-known homunculus, could be put together in a laboratory. The time when people firmly believed that the homunculus could be created in the laboratory did not take this belief at all as if it meant that the supernatural nature of life phenomena had been eliminated; on the contrary, it was precisely then that people really believed in the supernatural nature of life phenomena. This is a historical objection to the claim that it is incompatible for human thinking to believe in the supersensible origin of life and at the same time to fully support the natural scientist's view that life could be reproduced in the laboratory. The two things are compatible, and to prove that they are compatible, one must perhaps again bring forward a rather trivial train of thought, but this is no less significant for those who not only do not allow themselves to be hypnotized or influenced by a scientific world view, but who are able to respond to the whole structure of the human soul.

We see certain substances before us. We put them together. We see – we hypothesize – how living substance arises from them. Are we therefore justified in concluding that from what we have seen of the individual substances before us, the life of that substance has actually formed? No, we are not! And we are no longer justified in doing so from the moment we admit that the flies that appear after a certain time have not developed from the food remains in a room. If we see a room full of flies, we can say that these flies are there because the room is in disarray and food remains have been left behind. These food remains were the condition, but they did not make the flies. But the flies will always appear when the conditions are there, and when the conditions are there, life will appear. But no-one can claim that it emerged from this, but only that they were the cause that life appeared.

A supernatural process can also be assumed when things fit together in a laboratory-like manner. Therefore, it would be quite wrong on the part of spiritual research if it wanted to base itself on the fact that it wanted to rise in a more or less ironic or ingenious way above what science strives for as its ideal. It fully agrees with this. But that does not get out of the way what spiritual research contributes to the real, complete understanding of things.

Let us take as another example the objection raised in the first lecture against spiritual research, in so far as it explains the phenomena of sleeping and waking by saying that there is something supersensory in man that rises out of the physical body and etheric body when a person falls asleep, goes into a special spiritual world and submerges again into it when he wakes up. We have mentioned the important objection, which is absolutely convincing, that natural science attempts to explain the phenomenon of sleep by demonstrating a kind of self-regulation of the organism, by showing how the stimuli exerted by the impressions of daytime life destroy, so to speak, consume the organic substance, so that a point is reached where this organic substance, the substance of life, must be restored. While it is being restored, dullness covers the consciousness, and when the restoration is complete, the external stimuli can take effect again. So we would be dealing with a self-regulation of the organism and could say: What need is there of a special spiritual research that indulges in a special description of what is supposed to go out of a person during sleep in order to be in another world - when the phenomenon of sleep can be explained from the human body itself?

The following consideration shows the weight to be attached to the scientific description, which is true within certain limits. Even if the individual facts that I present can only be outlined, they are in harmony, if not in all details, then at least with the general spirit of present-day scientific research.

So what happens when the organism is at rest during sleep, even according to the scientific view? We have to say, according to the scientific view, that the organic substances used up by the impressions of the senses and by the other external impressions are repaired. So there is an inner process, a process that is entirely determined by the nature and the essence of the human body, of the human organism, and we can explain what happens so internally, of course, only from what lies in the laws of the human body, in the laws of the organism. But these laws of the organism can never, in the present or in the future, give us anything other than what the lungs, for example, give us for the respiratory process. Anyone who studies the human respiratory process will be able to understand it completely from the laws of lung life. But what the human being will not be able to understand is the nature and the effect of oxygen. This will have to be researched outside the lungs, it must first enter the lungs from the outside, and anyone who thought that by researching the lungs they would get to know the nature of oxygen would be greatly mistaken.

The lung process, everything that happens in the organism, can be experienced from within the life of the lungs. To understand the whole process of breathing, it is necessary that we go out of the life of the lungs and understand the nature of oxygen outside of it, and we gain nothing in knowledge about the nature of oxygen from the process of lung life. Nor do we gain any knowledge of everything that takes place in the waking consciousness from morning to evening, in which drives, passions, affects, ideals, and so on, rise and fall, by examining what happens in the organism during sleep. Just as the life of the lungs is not the same as the nature of oxygen, just as oxygen must enter the lungs from the outside, it is just as certain that everything contained in the phenomena of consciousness must unite with what comes into it from the outside, which we can study and observe internally during the sleep process as internal bodily processes.

However, it will not be possible to see through such a train of thought immediately. But if you follow it, it is not a mere analogy; it is more than that: it is a kind of educational tool for really looking at the things that we encounter in the characterized phenomenon in life together. And anyone who really enlightens themselves about the relationship between oxygen, which is outside and enters the lungs, and what happens in the lungs, will learn from such a concept, from such an idea, how to about what is outside the physical organism during sleep and about the processes that take place in the physical organism during sleep, just as oxygen must be added to the internal organic processes of the lungs if a breathing process is to occur in a truly vital way, so must consciousness be added if it is to be experienced.

The things that can be called a “founding of spiritual science” are not at all as simple as one often believes. Because they are not, it often seems as if they can be easily refuted. In the Fichtean sense, the recognition of reasons and counter-reasons in this field is really a matter of what kind of person one is, that is, what state of soul one brings with one in order to see things in their true light. How often do we hear people say: Oh, there come these spiritual researchers or anthroposophists and say that the human being, who is perceived as a unified being and for whom we have gained the insight that he is a unified being, is divided into different members or parts, into a physical body, an etheric body or life body, an astral body and an ego. Yes, everything can be categorized. But the point is not to divide at all, but to carry out such research methods according to the justified demands of a thinking that really penetrates into things. If someone has water in front of him, he will not be wrong in agreeing with the chemist who tells him: As long as you let this be “water”, you will never be able to determine what the chemical components of this water are; to do that, you have to break it down into hydrogen and oxygen.

As long as one remains in such a specific area, one will perhaps not hear the objection: You are committing a mortal sin against monism, because water is a monon. You must not divide it into hydrogen and oxygen, otherwise you become a superstitious dualist. In such a specific area, you may not hear such an objection because here the necessity for such a division is too obvious. What is the main characteristic that justifies such a division, considering not only water but the entire field of being under consideration here? The essential thing is that oxygen cannot be only in water, but, as the chemist thinks, also in other substances, with which it can combine completely, and that hydrogen can also combine with other substances, so that water can be divided, and the individual parts can enter into completely different combinations and have their special destinies in these combinations.

If the aim of spiritual research were only to distinguish between what presents itself as a human being, let us say the etheric body and the physical body, without mentioning the other, then one could say: You are just making a division. But follow spiritual research - not everything can be mentioned today - it is just the same as in chemistry, for example. We do not dissect the human being into a physical body and an etheric body because it is so convenient for us to separate the types of manifestation in this way in relation to this human being, but because we actually have to show: just as hydrogen and oxygen, when separated from their watery state, undergo different fates in different substances, so the physical body undergoes its own particular fate at death, as does the etheric body, and the astral body also enters into other connections. Just as the chemist follows water, not regarding it as a monad but understanding it as the duality of hydrogen and oxygen, and showing that hydrogen can take completely different paths from oxygen, so the spiritual researcher follows the paths of the physical body, the ether body or life body, the astral body and the ego in the most diverse areas of life. This entitles him to speak of a real division. An objection that he would thus violate monism would be equivalent to saying that anyone who separates water into hydrogen and oxygen violates monism.

It is therefore a matter of man's understanding, through real insight into the facts, the value, the justification of the objections and also the limits of the objections. One will recognize that one is dealing with true, genuine, serious spiritual science when one engages with it, that it does not lightly dismiss the objections, but that it tries to find the concepts for its results precisely by carefully considering the pros and cons. But if it has already been repeatedly pointed out today that Fichte said, “One has a philosophy that arises depending on one's nature as a human being,” then one could also say what was said eight days ago : there everything is traced back to an inner subjective source, and the power of conviction is sought, not in what is given externally, but in the way in which man could relate to the phenomena of the world. Then we come to the discussion of what was pointed out in the first lecture: the sources of spiritual-scientific knowledge. It was said that these sources arise through an evolution of the human soul. We shall speak again about how this evolution takes place, which paths the soul has to travel in order to truly ascend to knowledge and insights into the supersensible world. Today, we shall only say that the soul has to undergo inner processes that are referred to, for example, as meditation, as concentration of the inner life. What is achieved through such processes?

If someone who really wants to become a spiritual researcher wants to make his soul, so to speak, an apparatus for spiritual research, he must artificially create a similar state in himself to that which otherwise occurs in a state of sleep. That is to say, he must artificially be able to induce, through sharp concentration of will, what otherwise only occurs as a state of sleep through fatigue. He must be able to exclude all external sense impressions, must also be able to suppress all thinking bound to the brain, and yet he must avoid that state which otherwise occurs during sleep: the complete emptiness of consciousness. He avoids this by devoting himself to very specific ideas - we will characterize them later - that are suitable for concentrating his soul powers, contracting them so that they become stronger than they otherwise are. During sleep, when they leave the physical body, they are otherwise, as it were, thin and therefore unable to perceive anything of themselves or the world, their inner power of perception is too weak. Through meditation and concentration, however, they become stronger and denser. The person then withdraws from ordinary thinking not so much that he knows nothing of himself, as is the case in ordinary sleep, but so that he is able to consciously hold himself and, through the nature of this state, experiences: Now you hear nothing through the ears, see nothing more through the eyes, think no longer through the brain-bound thinking, but now you experience yourself in the pure spiritual and have a reality in the pure spiritual.

It is said that an ordinary and again justified objection to such an assertion of spiritual research is: Through such a development of the soul, for example, one can come to inner worlds of imagination, which are seen as an expression of a supersensible world. One can also have the opinion, based on the way these types of ideas arise, that they point to something real. But it can be said that it is known that the person who has hallucinations, delusions, visions also believes in these hallucinations and so on with all his might, and that it is therefore quite impossible to find a distinction in truth between hallucinations, delusions and so on and what arises in the spiritual researcher. Why should not what the spiritual researcher comes to in this way also be seen as a more refined, but still a mere hallucination? Apart from the fact that one can say that what is experienced inwardly is only subjective and cannot be checked by another at any time, as is the case, for example, in a physical experiment.

But now it must be pointed out that it is not at all in the nature of all truths that they can be found or even confirmed by external events. It may be said that the concepts of mathematics could be convincing in the extreme sense for anyone who just wants to think, because they are gained inwardly. To understand this, we need only refer to the ordinary mental image of three threes being nine. To understand this, all that is needed is an inner mental image of the soul, and it is nothing more than a sensualization when someone, for example, visualizes through three times three peas that three times three is nine. It depends on the inner development of the soul when someone has the realization that three times three is nine, and he does not need to confirm it first through an external process. He knows what he has experienced, he knows it without any external control. There is therefore an inner soul-searching for which external control is nothing more than an illustration that is exhausted in what is illustrated, and it can be seen that this inner experience is true.

In a very similar way, only at a higher level, is the difference experienced between error and truth in the supersensible world. The spiritual researcher must want to go through all the things that can lead him to knowledge: where do hallucinations, visions and illusions end, and where does supersensible reality begin? Where one ends and the other begins can only be understood in a similar way to how mathematical truths can be understood. But it can be understood. Anyone who is a genuine spiritual researcher and who knows the nature that really leads to spiritual research will not entertain the world with his visions, and if you find someone who entertains people about the supernatural world by sharing his visions, you can always assume that he is very far from being a true spiritual researcher. For the true spiritual researcher knows that all imaginary, visionary life known in the outer world is nothing but a representation of one's own soul life, that it represents nothing other than a projection of one's own soul into one's own space. And it is not in this space, not in what one actually means when one speaks of the imagination of the spiritual researcher as a non-knower, that what his science is based on lies, but in that which lies only behind this supposed space, after he has gone through the process of objectifying his soul life and breaking through the wall that first arises as a reflection of our inner soul processes.

It is precisely this that is important for the spiritual researcher: to have recognized the nature of hallucinations, visions and illusions in their connection with the inner soul life and to be able to say to oneself for a long time: what appears in this way is not to be understood as the objective determining factor, but purely as inner soul processes. And it is not so much a requirement of a true spiritual science training to use certain exercises, which can be read about in the book “How to Know Higher Worlds”, to get the soul to have experiences free from the body, to step out of the body; but it is more important that the soul gains a correct judgment about these experiences outside of the physical body, in the purely spiritual.

From a certain point onwards, the soul knows from what it experiences that it is no longer experiencing subjective processes, but that it has shed its subjectivity and is entering into an objective reality that is objective for everyone, just as mathematics is objective even though its validity can only be experienced internally. The mistake that people make who believe in their illusions is that they cannot maintain their resistance to the illusory world long enough, that they believe too soon in what they experience, that they do not say to their experiences not say to themselves long enough: This initially only appears to be a reflection of yourself, and only when you have stripped away everything subjective, as you do in mathematics, do you enter the sphere of objective reality.

This also eliminates the objection that one is dealing with something subjective in spiritual research experiences. One is dealing with something subjective just as little as one is dealing with something subjective when dealing with mathematical truths. When spiritual science is imparted, it is not actually a matter of providing evidence. If it is a matter of that, then one must understand the nature of proof above all. If it had never happened in the world that someone had seen a whale, no one would be able to prove that a whale exists. He could never prove the existence of a whale from all the knowledge he has, because a whale is a fact, and facts cannot be proved, but only experienced. This says something extraordinarily weighty about logic, but one must first be convinced of this weightiness.

From this point of view, the messages of spiritual research are not about providing evidence for the supersensible world or, for example, for the immortality of the soul, but about something completely different. Those who participate in the true work of spiritual research for a longer period of time will be convinced of this. It is not a matter of logical speculation, but of getting to know and communicating supersensible facts. When the spiritual researcher, through the already described development of the soul, has come to understand the life between death and the next birth, it is then a matter of him communicating the facts that he has to adduce for the life of the soul in the time between death and the next birth, of him communicating what he experiences in the supersensible world. In the case of the former, it is a matter of communicating experiences and facts that he encounters in his soul.

In the case of the latter, we may say that it arises from these communications. When it is shown how the soul remains enclosed in itself when the parts of the body disintegrate, how the soul then undergoes certain processes, how it experiences something in a purely supersensible world and gathers the forces for a new life in order to enter into physical existence again in a body when that is stated in all its details, then it is indeed shown how the soul lives when it has passed through the gate of death. Then reference is made to facts. It is a matter of such reference to facts, of such communication of facts, and not of abstract proof.

Now one could say: But then such a becoming acquainted with the corresponding facts would only have a meaning for someone who can see into the spiritual world, who has an evolved soul. Oh, such an objection looks extremely convincing, and this should not be denied. But anyone who knows the real life of the soul will also have a completely different relationship to this objection than many believe. Here we must ask the question: Are we at all convinced in our souls in ordinary life by someone's providing abstract proofs? Let us take an example. Let us take a picture, for example, the Sistine Madonna. Someone who has no idea of what lies in such a picture stands before it. Another person stands beside him and begins to prove to him what is in it. Yes, the listener does not understand at all what the other person is talking about. He can “prove” at length that there is something special about this picture; the listener cannot believe in his proofs. Because the fact that one provides proofs is not yet the essential, but the essential is that the listener has the possibility to believe in these proofs. Another stands before this picture; a second person comes up to him and speaks to him, and the listener now has the opportunity to perceive something that is to be expressed by the picture. Then, through what he has recognized, the other person stimulates in him what he believes is in the picture. He may not speak in a demonstrative way. He only describes what is working in him, only describes what is speaking in him, and once the listener has grasped in his soul what the other person is talking about, and then looks at the picture, he sees the other person in the picture, and it works in such a way that he knows: it is inside the picture. It does not depend on an abstract proof, but on the fact that someone approached us who knows what is in the picture, and that we can really absorb what is in the picture if we want to gain an insight into what is in it.

This is how it is when a person encounters the world and human phenomena, and the spiritual researcher approaches him. If the spiritual researcher were to want to use abstract arguments, then someone who is incapable of reliving in his soul what the spiritual researcher says could never be convinced by any argument. The spiritual researcher, however, proceeds as did the interpreter of the picture, of whom I spoke last. He explains what has arisen in his soul, which he first made an instrument for spiritual truths, as standing in the background of spiritual and human life. He gives the facts that he has experienced. And if the other person is able to absorb these concepts and facts into his entire soul life, he will now see the world in such a way that what the spiritual researcher has to say emerges as his own soul content through what the researcher has to say.

Of course, this cannot always be the case. If the spiritual researcher or student comes to the listener with very distant assertions, which may be truths of experience for himself, if he tells him - and no matter how much he has experienced in the spiritual world - what kinds of beings there are and what they do, then of course the listener, when he hears it for the first time, does not have the slightest inner obligation to believe what he hears. He will not and cannot believe it. Why can he not believe it? Because the distance between what is experienced in the soul and what such a spiritual seer has experienced in the soul is too great.

It would be equally unjustified for someone to believe that they could say that in thirty years a new world savior or a new world messiah would come, who could be waited for and who would impart very special great truths. Such a claim could only be made by someone who had no respect for the human soul and the achievements of human culture, and would only be made to someone who was not prepared for it. But there is a way to do everything differently, by taking up what really everyone with an unbiased soul can follow in a certain way. Therefore, it must be said again and again that the objection is unjustified that spiritual research only applies to those who, through their developed soul, can enter the spiritual world themselves. That is not true. One can only research the spiritual world if one transforms this soul into an instrument of perception in the spiritual world. But what one experiences there, one is, as it were, obliged to cast into such concepts that can be understood by any unbiased soul, according to the relevant period of time, if one just devotes oneself to them impartially and does not resist them through anything, for example, through a supposed or false erudition. Therefore it matters much more how the facts of the clairvoyant consciousness are communicated to some age than that such facts are communicated at all.

For example, anyone who has only read a book can be seen to believe that through spiritual research he has gained a judgment and is justified in saying: these spiritual researchers always begin to use the word “esoteric” when they run out of terms. But perhaps it could also be that when someone says something like this, the word esoteric always results in a kind of emptiness in his concepts, so that the word esoteric has a concept-erasing effect on him. So when someone resists in this way and does not call upon what is in his soul in order to let the results of spiritual research take effect on him, then, as we saw eight days ago, it is natural for the most fundamental objections to spiritual research to be raised. But when the soul devotes itself to spiritual research with an open mind, then common sense, healthy unprejudiced thinking, is enough to experience — not what is lost on the untrained soul, but what can be understood by it. For how does every human soul relate to the soul of the spiritual researcher, who has formed an opinion on certain concrete facts of the supersensible world because he has entered into them? Every soul relates to the soul of the spiritual researcher as a germ of life does to a fully developed life. And just as the germ of life, for example an egg, already contains the complete living creature, so every soul contains within it what only the spiritual researcher of that soul can ever say. Just as it can be shown in the undeveloped germ of life how the individual emerges from it, so the individual soul, when it receives the results of spiritual research, can gain insight into the spiritual worlds in a germinal way, but with complete conviction and insight.

Therefore, it is never justified to reproach the person who does not rely merely on his intellectual power of logical reasoning, but on his entire soul strength, for having to be a gullible person when he embraces what the spiritual researcher has to say. The intellect alone will not be able to comprehend it; but the whole soul will be able to accept it. Therefore, a real examination of spiritual research is possible, has always been possible and always will be. It is not a matter of accepting authority.

It should be noted that I did not call today's lecture “How to Prove Spiritual Research?” but “How to Justify Spiritual Research?”, that is, where to get it from and how can the human soul gain a relationship to it? This relationship will indeed be difficult for many people to find, for the reason that many objections to this spiritual research seem to carry weight. How could it not carry weight – and here I come back to a point where I have to speak in more abstract and uninteresting terms – when someone says: The spiritual researcher claims that in his supersensible consciousness he can follow the soul back to the time after birth or conception, how it lives between death and the next birth, and how it then lives into the present life. Now, it can be shown, so it could be objected, how certain peculiarities that the soul develops during life are prefigured in childhood or prefigured in the mother's womb before birth! Perhaps among the objections to spiritual research, there is nothing of such weight for many as such an objection. Those who have often heard such lectures will know that I myself also make such objections, for example, that so and so many great and minor musicians have lived in the Bach family, so that one could point out with a certain justification how the human being receives purely in the physical line of inheritance what makes him a musician. Thus one can point out how, through inheritance or through appropriation during one's lifetime, that which a person later displays as his special characteristics and as his individuality comes to him. Oh, such an objection is very significant when one occupies oneself with it, when one surrenders to its suggestive power, and every spiritual researcher will understand that there are people who cannot get away from such objections, who are extremely strongly affected by the force of the facts that can be adduced.

But there is something else involved in surrendering to such a force of evidence, namely, to recognize that causes, right causes, can be present and yet not really be the cause, not really the occasion for something to actually come into being. I am saying something seemingly very paradoxical, and for anyone who lets the weight of the spiritual-scientific facts work on his soul, it is not at all necessary to go into it. But here it is a matter of entering into it in relation to the age, in order to point out what can show from the philosophical point of view that causes can be there and yet cause nothing.

Why does a chicken, when it comes into being, have feathers, a beak or this or that bodily characteristic? Someone can certainly say: it has inherited these from its parent chicken, and for the particular shape of the beak and so on, the inherited characteristics are the causes that we find in the chicken from which the one in question descended. But now one must recognize that something special is needed if the properties of having feathers, of having a certain beak, and so on, which are present in the mother chicken, are also to appear in the daughter chicken: something can be a completely correct cause, but it is necessary for a certain germ to arise under certain things in order for the causes to become “causes”. What is important is not that we point from the following to the definite causes, but that we show how the causes can also become causes.

We have now reached the point where spiritual science can use its own facts to develop a relationship with, for example, Darwinism. No one who is not a curious but serious spiritual researcher will dispute the facts and serious arguments of Darwin and the Darwinians. He will even agree when Darwin asks: Why does the kitten snuggle up so when a person comes near it? The scientist points out that it is already snuggling up to its mother on her bed, and from this one can see how the later is connected to the earlier. One can point out the causes of how a person has this or that characteristic, which he may have received from his mother before he was born. One can point this out, but nothing has been said about how the causes have now become causes. Everything that can be said of a world view that appears to be firmly based on science, that can be explained by inherited traits and so on, is readily admitted by spiritual research, and those who raise objections from that point of view usually live under the assumption that they will not be admitted. They are admitted, but the other does not go into the fact that causes must first become causes, so that it is therefore something much deeper than he has in mind. This is generally the case today, that what spiritual research seeks to draw from the depths of existence is always judged only according to the surface that one is able to survey oneself. If this did not always happen, then, for example, a feature article such as the one that appeared in the “Berliner Tageblatt” last Sunday could not be written. I would just like to ask what will be said to a person who has formed a final opinion about chemistry, for example, based only on a single book? But that is what our contemporaries do. It may be said that spiritual research still has weighty reasons to feel vindicated in the present.

For those who have listened to these lectures for a long time, I may well say that much has been said here from the philosophical development. Those who are familiar with this may perhaps come to the conclusion that many philosophers have provided evidence for the immortality of the human soul. I myself must confess that I have never felt entirely comfortable with the proofs of the immortality of the soul or of a supersensible world that have been brought forward by philosophers, for what philosophers usually have in mind are only the concepts of things. Thus, even of the human ego, philosophers have only the concept of the ego. But it should be as clear to everyone that nothing real can be inferred from the concept of the ego as it is clear that a mere painter cannot paint a picture. Likewise, it should be clear that the image of the ego says nothing to the ego itself. Anyone who engages with spiritual science will see that conviction of the reality of the ego is gained through something entirely different, namely through the whole way in which the ego lives on after death.

Thus, one cannot feel comfortable with what well-meaning philosophers bring forward in this direction. But from what those who, as opponents, often really rail against, the one who sees things more deeply gains quite good proof of the nature of the ego. For there are indeed philosophers who say that they can only grasp the ego as a summary of all possible physiological, etc. activities. Then we see that these investigators adduce all kinds of evidence, but what they adduce cannot be related to the I. In this they are in the same sense, only in reverse, as the school of thought that seeks to explain the phenomena of life by the life-force. For just as the vital force is the fifth wheel on the wagon, so the explanations that are provided for the soul life not only explain nothing, but are even quite superfluous when it comes to truly exploring the soul. It is then seen that such explanations really leave the soul untouched and do not approach it at all, so that the soul remains on its own and proves to be something that external explanations cannot approach. Only when the feeling arises in the consciousness of the times that spiritual research cannot be judged superficially, but only by going deeply into it, only then will no judgment that comes from outside of spiritual research be able to be decisive.

The same applies to the objections raised in the first lecture from a moral or religious point of view as to the scientific objections raised against spiritual research. If, for example, it is said that it is infinitely more valuable when someone, out of pure unselfishness, does good even at the prospect of being destroyed in death, only out of the insight and the will that it passes into the general good – as if he did it with a view to making up for it in a future life, then such a judgment is absolutely true and should not be denied. It is true when it is said that a person only does a good deed out of selfishness, if he believes that karma will then reward him with a good deed in his new life as some kind of retribution, or if he refrains from evil because it could manifest itself as a kind of punishment in his new life. It is certain that such an assertion can be seen as justifying selfishness, and therefore it may be said with full justification: So it is precisely through what spiritual research has to say about man that selfishness among men is fostered.

Schopenhauer once said, and you know that I do not agree with him on everything: “It is easy to preach morality, but to found morality is difficult.” What does it mean to found morality? It means to bring about a state of mind in which a person can act morally. Anyone who is familiar with the life of nations knows that preaching morals is not only easy, but mostly very useless; because one can very well know quite good moral principles – and act quite badly. If it were just a matter of listening to sermons, there would certainly be many more moral people than there are.

Someone might say, for example, that a couple would do everything they could to ensure that their children become decent and hardworking people. Because, as the parents say, if we make them into proper, hardworking people, they will be able to support us in our old age and we will be able to get everything we need from them. If the parents educate their children from this point of view, it is undoubtedly a highly selfish point of view. But let us now assume that the children turn out well, so that they are hardworking people when they grow up. Then the parents have indeed done something selfish, but they have not preached morality themselves, but they have justified morality, and it could turn out that if they make the children into good people and the latter then later show something quite different from what they had imagined, they may still come to a quite different ethical view. Then morality would also be justified for the parents, not preached.

Let us assume that a person has no opportunity to calculate the compensation for bad actions for his next life on earth. But by committing acts under the influence of such a view of karma, a moral world view will gradually develop. It will be based on human nature. Someone who is still at a lower moral level will certainly act from a more selfish view of karma. But he who has attained a higher point of view and therefore also has a higher conception of karma will fulfill within himself a selfless moral demand.

Thus, the point is not to point to something abstractly by calling a karma idea selfish, but to show how it leads man upwards to a higher development. This could be further explained and shown how spiritual research goes to the real, the actual, of human nature. If someone were to raise the other objection that many could say to themselves: I have later lives ahead of me, so I only need to become a proper person in later lives; now I still have time, now I can still be an improper person - that would be an objection that can also be refuted theoretically. But to take the right attitude towards it, you need to know the practical circumstances. You have to know that someone who thinks he does not need to be an orderly person in his present life, that he wants to become one only in the next life, has worked this into his next life through such an intention. If he does not decide now to become an orderly person, then he will not have the necessary foundations for this in the next life either. So he is already depriving himself of the ability to be a decent person later on; he is robbing himself of the strength to do so. In this way, the justified moral objections could be discussed piece by piece.

The religious objection has also been taken into account. It is said: Here spiritual research must explain that there is a spark of the divine in every soul and that from life to life the human being develops this divine spark more and more. So the spark of the divine is placed in the human breast.

How one feels about this matter, when one knows how to put it in the right perspective, I tried to show in the first scene of my mystery drama 'The Trial of the Soul'. Of course, one could say that in such a view, what can be called the religious principle is lost, the feeling of dependence on the divine, outside of which man stands, the childlike looking up to this divine that is outside of him. But now take what is to be said from the other point of view, that man fully realizes that the Divine has placed a spark in him, which he must experience and bring to fruition; that he is actually able to realize: You carry a divine spark within you, and if you leave it undeveloped, you allow it to wither away! This being-together with the divine, and yet again the necessity of having to develop this spark first, that is an impulse of an infinitely greater strength than any other religious impulse.

Anyone who engages with spiritual science will see that it is not opposed to any religious belief. Because religious beliefs are so quick to turn against anthroposophical spiritual science, people believe that spiritual science will now turn against religious beliefs. But just as with the scientific objections characterized earlier, it is precisely with this religious objection: spiritual science does not come into the way of any religious confession, because it has to do with the relationship of the human soul to the supersensible worlds, while religion has to do with the relationship to the individual soul.

Those who are truly able to see will see how it is quite possible for a person to pursue spiritual research while remaining fully within a religious belief that is natural to him. But the true foundation of spiritual research, when it is accepted by the world, will be able to give man what can be called a deeper understanding of the life of the soul, both of the individual life of the soul and of the life of the souls together. Anyone who can be even a little convinced that all external human coexistence can only be an external image of how the souls relate to one another will understand the enormity of what arises for the soul when it comes to the realization of how the individual soul relates to the other, how the individual soul can relate to the other when it has correctly grasped what the destinies of the individual soul are in relation to the other soul in the life between death and the next birth, what the destinies are for the individual soul, what it means to be separated from another soul, what it means to gain a new relationship with the departed soul, if the soul that remained here can know something of the supersensible world. New light will be shed on all human knowledge and on all other aspects of human life if what can be brought from the depths of the supersensible world for each individual soul can be sunk into the soul. A living into, not just a thinking into, belongs to the recognition, to the beholding, to the understanding of spiritual truths.

This has not only been recognized through the spiritual research of modern times, but has basically always been recognized wherever one has spoken from a real knowledge of the spiritual world. I do not want to say what I have to say about the position of spiritual research in relation to those who reject it without really knowing it, but I would like to say it about Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If there is much that is serious, perhaps even hurtful to some, in this statement, one should bear in mind that it comes from a man who, full of enthusiasm for spiritual research, wanted to vent his anger at all those who, without really wanting to gain insight into spiritual research, reject it and feel they have to fight it. To them Fichte cries:

"They cannot help but furiously resent that shameful conviction of a higher self in man and all phenomena that seek to confirm this conviction; they must do everything possible to keep these phenomena away and to suppress them; they fight for their lives, for the finest and most intimate root of their lives, for the possibility of enduring themselves. From the beginning of the world until this day, all fanaticism and all furious expressions of it have originated from the principle: if the opponents were right, then I would be a miserable person. If this fanaticism can achieve fire and sword, then it attacks the hated enemy with fire and sword; if these are not accessible to it, then it has (one must also say this latter for our present time) “the tongue, which, even if it does not kill the enemy, can very often strongly paralyze its activity and effectiveness outwardly. One of the most common and favorite tricks of this tongue is to attach a generally hated name to the cause that is hated only by them, in order to defame it and make it suspicious. The store of these tricks and these names is inexhaustible and constantly growing, and it would be futile to strive for completeness here. I will mention only one of the most common and hated terms: the saying that this teaching is mysticism.

Note here, first of all, with regard to the form of this accusation, that if an unprejudiced person were to answer: Well, let us assume that it is mysticism and that mysticism is a false and dangerous doctrine. He may still present his case, and we will listen to him; if he is wrong and dangerous, this will probably come to light on that occasion, — they, who, according to the categorical decision, with which they believe to have thereby rejected us, would have to answer: there is nothing more to be heard; already a long time ago, probably since one and a half human lives, mysticism has been decreed as heresy and banned by the unanimous decisions of all our review councils.

Thus Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Fichte's words are still more or less applicable today when considering the relationship between spiritual research and, say, those who only want to trust their senses and who want the world to be organized according to what their senses tell them. Fichte compares such people — although this comparison is perhaps not entirely justified — who only want to trust their senses and do not want to admit that there is a closer knowledge of the truth, with deaf-mutes and the blind-born, who also do not want to admit sounds and colors when they are spoken to by the seeing. Now, one cannot compare those born blind and deaf with those who do not want to accept what can be given through clairvoyant research, because every soul is capable of relating to supersensible truths. But Fichte says:

"The fact that the deaf-mute and the blind are also taken care of and that a way has been devised to bring them instruction is worth all thanks – from the deaf-mute and the blind. But if this method of teaching were to be made the general method of teaching, including for the sighted, because there might always be deaf-mutes and blind-born among them, and then one would be sure to have taken care of everyone; if the hearing person, without any regard for their hearing, were to learn to speak with the same effort and to recognize the words on the lips as the deaf-mute, and the seeing, without any regard for his sight, read the letters by touching them, this would deserve very little gratitude from the healthy; regardless of this, the institution would of course be made as soon as the institution of public education was made dependent on the opinion of the deaf-mute and the blind-born."

Perhaps one could say, if one wanted to object to this statement by Fichte, that it would not even be like that for the blind and deaf-mute. But if it were up to those who rely only on their senses and reason to determine how the world should be shaped, they would not shape it in the way that the seeing perceive it. They would indeed rail against and rebel against all spiritual interpretation of the world by others, but they would declare themselves infallible with regard to what they know about the world. They would laugh in scorn if it were demanded that only those who know about a matter should speak about it, and that those who know nothing about it should say nothing about it. The main reason for all those who deny spiritual research is only that they know nothing about it. Logically, the first requirement would be that only those who know something should speak about a matter. But such reasons for denying something one knows nothing about are only used to reject a spiritual scientific world view in our time. |

But anyone who can relive in their soul what was said in the first lecture, who does not need to wait for the objections that they can experience within themselves and are able to understand in their spiritual life, will always find a way to justify spiritual research, so that what I also said in the first scene of “The Test of the Soul” and can summarize in the whole constitution of consciousness what knowledge of the supersensible worlds can give us, can give for our hope in life, for our strength in life, for our security in life, for everything we need for a dignified human existence. Everything that can be said, that can be said as rising in the soul, as experienced and felt in the soul, can be summarized in the words: You are not alone with your thinking, feeling and willing. Just as you live with your body in the substances that are spread throughout the universe, so you live with your thinking, feeling and willing in something that is spread throughout the cosmos, in the vastness of space. That is, the saying that I said at the designated place in my mystery drama can become conviction:

"In your thinking live world thoughts,
In your feeling weave world forces,
In your will work world beings.
Lose yourself in world thoughts,
Experience yourself through world forces,
Create yourself from will-beings.
Do not end with what is far from the world
Through the play of thought-dreams;
Begin in the expanses of the mind
And end in the depths of your own soul:
You will find divine goals,
Recognizing yourself within yourself.

In the last lecture we pointed out the significance of the fact that the Gospel of St. Mark begins by introducing the grand figure of John the Baptist, who is contrasted in a marked manner with that of Christ Jesus Himself. If we allow Mark's Gospel to influence us in all its simplicity, we receive a significant impression of John the Baptist; but only when we consider the Baptist against the background of spiritual science does he appear, so to speak, in his full greatness. I have often pointed out that we must interpret the Baptist in the light of the Gospel itself, for we know that he is clearly described in it as a reincarnation of the prophet Elijah (cf. Matt. 11:14). According to spiritual science, if we wish to investigate the deeper causes of the founding of Christianity and of the Mystery of Golgotha, we must look for the figure of the Baptist against the background of the prophet Elijah. I shall only allude briefly here to the topic of the prophet Elijah since I took advantage of the opportunity provided by the last general meeting of the German section of the Theosophical Society in Berlin to speak more fully on this subject (Turning Points in Spiritual History, London, 1934, Lecture 5). All that spiritual science and occult research have to relate concerning the prophet Elijah is fully confirmed by what is contained in the Bible itself. But many passages will undoubtedly remain inexplicable if we read the chapters relating to him in the ordinary way. I will draw your attention only to one point.

We read in the Bible that Elijah challenged all the followers and peoples of King Ahab among whom he lived, and how he pitted himself against his opponents, the priests of Baal, setting up two altars and causing them to lay their sacrifice on one of them while he laid his own sacrifice on the other. He then showed the triviality of what his opponents had said about the priests of Baal because no spiritual greatness was manifested by the god Baal, whereas the greatness and significance of Yahweh or Jehovah appears at once in the case of the sacrifice of Elijah. This was a victory won by Elijah over the followers of Ahab. Then in a remarkable way we are told that Ahab had a neighbor called Naboth who was the owner of a vineyard. Ahab coveted this vineyard, but Naboth would not sell it to him because he regarded it as sacred since it was an inheritance from his father. The Bible then tells us of two facts. On the one side Jezebel, the Queen, was an enemy of Elijah and proclaims that she will have him put to death in the same way as his opponents, the priests of Baal, were put to death because of his victory at the altar. But according to the biblical account, Elijah's death was not brought about through Jezebel. Something else took place. Naboth, the king's neighbor, was summoned to a kind of penitential feast, to which other important persons of the state were also called, and on the occasion of this feast of penitence, he was murdered at the instigation of Jezebel (I Kings 21).

Now we might say that the Bible seems to relate that Naboth was murdered at the urging of Jezebel. Yet Jezebel does not announce that she intends to murder Naboth but rather Elijah. There is an evident discrepancy in the story. Now occult research begins and shows us the real facts in the case, that Elijah was a great spirit who roamed invisibly through the land of Ahab. But at times he entered into and penetrated the soul of Naboth. So Naboth is the physical personality of Elijah; when we speak of the personage of Naboth, we are speaking of the physical personage of Elijah. In the biblical sense, Elijah is the invisible figure, and Naboth his visible image in the physical world. All this I have shown in detail in my lecture entitled, “The Prophet Elijah in the Light of Spiritual Science.”¹

But if we wish to consider the whole spirit of Elijah's work, and the whole spirit of Elijah as it is presented in the Bible, and allow it to influence our souls, we may say that in Elijah we are confronted by the spirit of the whole ancient Hebrew people. All that lives and is interwoven in this people is encompassed within the spirit of Elijah. We may refer to him as the folk spirit of the ancient Hebrew folk. Spiritual science shows him to have been too great to dwell altogether in the soul of his earthly form, in the soul of Naboth. He hovered over him like a cloud; and he not only lived in Naboth but went around the whole country like an element of nature, active in rain and sunshine. This is revealed ever more clearly the more we go into the whole narrative, which begins by saying that drought and barrenness prevailed, but that through Elijah's relationship to the divine spiritual worlds the drought was ended and the needs of the land at that time were fulfilled. He worked as an element of nature, a law of nature itself. We could say that the best way to learn to recognize what worked in the soul of Elijah is to let the 104th Psalm influence us, with its description of how Yahweh or Jehovah works in all things as a nature-divinity. Of course Elijah is not to be identified with this divinity itself; he is the earthly image of that divinity, an earthly image which is at the same time the folk soul of the Hebrew people. Elijah was a kind of differentiation of Jehovah, an earthly Jehovah, or, as he is described in the Old Testament, the “countenance” of Jehovah.

If we look at it in this way, the fact becomes especially clear that the same spirit that lived in Elijah-Naboth now reappears as John the Baptist. How does he work in John?

According to the Bible, and especially as is shown in the Gospel of St. Mark, he works through what is called baptism. What in reality is baptism? Why was it administered by John the Baptist to those who allowed themselves to be baptized? Here we must examine what was the actual effect of baptism on those who were baptized. The candidates were immersed in water. Then there always followed what has often been described as happening when a man receives the shock of being threatened by death, for example by falling into the water and nearly drowning, or by nearly falling over a precipice. A loosening of the etheric body takes place; it partly leaves the physical body. As a consequence, something happens that always happens immediately after death, i.e., a kind of retrospect of the past life. That is a well known fact and has often been described even by the materialistic thinkers of the present time. Something similar took place during the baptism by John in the Jordan. The people were plunged into the water. This baptism was not like the usual baptism of today. The baptism of John caused the etheric bodies of the candidates to be loosened and they saw more than they could comprehend with their ordinary powers of understanding. They saw their life in the spirit and the influence of the spirit on this life. They saw also what the Baptist taught, that the old age was fulfilled and that a new age must begin. In the clairvoyant observation that was possible for them for a few seconds during the baptismal immersion they saw that mankind had come to a turning point in evolution, and that what humanity had possessed in former times when it was in a group-soul condition was now in the process of completely dying out; quite new conditions had to come in, and they saw this while in their liberated etheric body. A new impulse, new capacities, must come to humanity. The baptism of John was therefore a question of knowledge. “Transform your minds, but don't merely turn your gaze backwards as would still be possible. Turn your gaze now to something else, to the God who manifests in the human `I.' The kingdoms of the divine have approached you.” The Baptist did not only preach that; he made it manifest to them by bestowing the baptism on them in the Jordan. Those who had been baptized knew then as a result of their own clairvoyant observation, even though it lasted but a short time, that the words of the Baptist expressed a world-historical fact.

Only when we consider this connection does the spirit of Elijah, which also worked in John the Baptist, appear to us in the right light. Then we see that Elijah was the spirit of the old Jewish people. What kind of spirit was this? In a certain respect it was already the spirit of the “I.” However, it does not appear as the spirit of the individual human being but as the collective folk spirit of the whole people. That which later was to live in each individual man was, so to speak, still in Elijah the group soul of the ancient Hebrew people. That which was to descend as the individual soul into every individual human breast was at the beginning of the Johannine age still in the super-sensible world. It was not yet in every human breast, and it could not yet live in this way in Elijah. So it entered into the individual personality of Naboth but only by hovering over it. Yet in Elijah-Naboth it manifested itself more distinctly than it did in the individual members of the ancient Hebrew people. This spirit, hovering, as it were, over man and man's history, was now about to enter more and more into every bosom. This was the great fact now proclaimed by Elijah-John himself when he said, as he baptized the people, something like the following, “What until now was in the super-sensible worlds and worked from these worlds you must now take into your souls as impulses that have come from the kingdom of heaven right into the hearts of men.” The spirit of Elijah itself shows how in multiplied form it must enter human hearts, so that in the further course of world history they may gradually take up ever more and more of the Christ Impulse. The meaning of the baptism by John was that Elijah was ready to prepare the way for the Christ. This was contained in the deed of the baptism by John in the Jordan, “I will make a place for Him; I will prepare the way for Him into the hearts of men. I will no longer merely hover over men, but will enter into human hearts, so that He also can enter in.”

If this is so, what may we then expect? If it is so, there is nothing more natural than to expect something to come to light in John the Baptist that we have already observed in Elijah. It becomes clear how in this grand figure of the Baptist there is not only his individual personality at work, but something more than a personality, which hovers over the individuality like an aura but has an efficacy that transcends it, something alive like an atmosphere among those within whom the Baptist is working. Just as Elijah was active like an atmosphere, so we may expect that as John the Baptist he would again be active like an atmosphere. Indeed, we may expect something further, that this spiritual being of Elijah, now united with John the Baptist, would continue to work on spiritually even if the Baptist were no longer there, if he were away. What does this spiritual being desire? It wishes to prepare the way for the Christ! We can also say that the physical personality of the Baptist may perhaps have left, but his spiritual being like a spiritual atmosphere may remain in the region where he was formerly active, and this spiritual atmosphere actually prepares the very ground on which the Christ could now perform His deed. This is what indeed we might expect. It could perhaps be best expressed if we were to say, “John the Baptist has gone away but what he is as the Elijah-spirit remains, and in this Christ can work best. Here He can best pour forth His words, and in that atmosphere that has remained behind, the Elijah-atmosphere, He can best perform His deeds.” That we can expect. And what does Mark's Gospel tell us?

It is very characteristic that twice allusion is made in the Mark Gospel to what I have just indicated. The first time it is said that “immediately after the arrest of John, Jesus came to Galilee and there proclaimed the teaching of the kingdoms of the heavens.” (Mark 1:14.) John therefore was arrested, that is to say, his physical personality was then prevented from working actively. But the figure of Christ Jesus entered into the atmosphere created by him. And it is significant that the same thing occurs a second time in the Mark Gospel, and it is a grandiose fact that it should occur a second time. We must only read the Gospel in the right way. If we pass on to the sixth chapter we hear fully described how King Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. But it is strange how many assumptions were made, not only after the physical personality of John had been arrested, but when he had been removed through death. To some it seemed that the miraculous forces through which Christ Jesus Himself worked were due to the fact that Christ Jesus Himself was Elijah, or one of the prophets. But the tortured conscience of Herod arouses a strange foreboding in him. When he hears all that has occurred through Christ Jesus he says, “John, whom I beheaded, has been restored to life!” Herod feels that, though the physical personality of John had gone away, he is now all the more present! He feels that his atmosphere, his spirituality—which was none other than the spirituality of Elijah, is still there. His tormented conscience causes him to be aware that John the Baptist, that is, Elijah, is still there.

But then something strange happens. We are shown how, after John the Baptist had met his physical death, Christ Jesus came to the very neighborhood where John had worked. I want you to take particular notice of a remarkable passage and not to skim over it lightly, for the words of the Gospels are not written for rhetorical effect, nor journalistically. Something very significant is said here. Jesus Christ appears among the throng of followers and disciples of John the Baptist, and this fact is expressed in a sentence to which we must give careful attention: “And as Jesus came out He saw a great crowd,” by which could be meant only the disciples of John, “and He had compassion on them ...” (Mark 6:34.) Why compassion? Because they had lost their master, they were there without John, whose headless corpse we are told had been carried to his grave. But even more precisely is it said, “for they were like sheep who had lost their shepherd. And He began to teach them many things.” It cannot be indicated any more clearly how He teaches John's disciples. He teaches them because the spirit of Elijah, which is at the same time the spirit of John the Baptist, is still active among them. Thus it is again indicated with dramatic power in these significant passages of the Mark Gospel how the spirit of Christ Jesus entered into what had been prepared by the spirit of Elijah-John. Even so this is only one of the main points, around which many other significant things are grouped.

I will now call your attention to one thing more. I have several times pointed out how this spirit of Elijah or John continued to act in such a way as to impress its impulses into world history. And since we are all anthroposophists assembled together here, and able to enter into occult facts, it is permissible to discuss this subject here. I have often mentioned that the soul of Elijah-John appeared again in the painter Raphael.² This is one of those facts that call attention to the metamorphoses of souls that take place under the impetus given by the Mystery of Golgotha. Because it was also necessary that in the post-Christian era such a soul should work in Raphael through the medium of a single personality; what in ancient times was so comprehensive and world encompassing now appears in such a different personality as that of Raphael. Can we not feel that the aura that hovered round Elijah-John is also present in Raphael? That in Raphael there were such similarities to these two others that we could even say that this element was too great to be able to enter into a single personality but hovered round it, so that the revelations received by this personality seemed like an illumination? Such was indeed the case with Raphael!

I could also say that there exists a proof of this fact, though it is a somewhat personal one, to which I already alluded in Munich.³ I should like to refer to it again here, not for the purpose of bringing out the personality of John the Baptist, but the full being of Elijah-John. For this purpose I will venture to speak of the further progress of the soul of Elijah-John in Raphael. Anyone who wishes honestly and sincerely to investigate what Raphael really was is likely to have his feelings aroused in a very remarkable way.

I have drawn attention to the modern art historian Hermann Grimm,⁴ and have mentioned that he was able to produce a biography of Michelangelo with comparative facility, but that on three separate occasions he tried to prepare a kind of life of Raphael. And because Hermann Grimm was not a so-called “learned man”—such a man of course can do anything he sets out to do—but a universal man who threw his whole heart sincerely into whatever he wanted to investigate and understand, he was forced to admit that when he had finished what he had intended to be a life of Raphael it did not turn out to be a life of Raphael at all. So he had to begin to do it again and again, but he was never satisfied with his work. Shortly before his death he made one more attempt, which is included in his posthumous works. In this he tried to approach Raphael and understand him in the way his heart wished to understand him, and the title his new work was to bear was indeed characteristic of him. He proposed to call the book Raphael as World-Power. For it seemed to him that if one approaches Raphael honestly, he cannot be described in any way other than as a world-power, unless one fails to see through to what is actively at work in world history. It is very natural that a modern author should experience some discomfort in choosing his words if he is to write as freely and frankly as did the evangelists. Even the best writers of modern times are embarrassed if they set to work in this way, but the figures that have to be described often force them to use the appropriate words. So it is very remarkable how Hermann Grimm wrote about Raphael shortly before his death in the first chapters of his book. It is really as if one can sense in the heart of Hermann Grimm something of the circumstances surrounding such a figure as that of Elijah-John, when he said, “If by some miracle Michelangelo were called back from the dead to live among us, and I were to meet him, I would respectfully stand aside to let him pass by. But if Raphael were to come my way I would go up behind him to see if by chance I might hear a few words from his lips. In the case of Leonardo and Michelangelo we can confine ourselves to relating what they once were in their own time; but with Raphael one must begin with what he is to us today. A slight veil has been cast over the others, but not over Raphael. He belongs among those whose growth will continue for a long time yet. We may imagine that Raphael will present ever new riddles to future generations of humanity.” (Fragments, Vol. II, page 170.)

Hermann Grimm describes Raphael as a world-power, as a spirit striding on through centuries and millennia, as a spirit who could not be encompassed within one individual man. And we may read yet other words by Hermann Grimm, wrung from the honesty and sincerity of his soul. It seems as if he wanted to express that there is something about Raphael like a great aura enveloping him, just as the spirit of Elijah enveloped Naboth. Could this be expressed in any other way than in these words of Hermann Grimm, “Raphael is a citizen of world-history; he is like one of the four rivers which, according to the belief of the ancient world, flowed out of Paradise.” (Fragments, Vol. II, page 153.)

That might also have been written by an evangelist, and it might almost have been written of Elijah! Thus even a modern historian of art, if his feelings are honest and sincere, is able to feel something of the great cosmic impulses that live through the ages. Truly nothing further is required to understand spiritual science than to come close to the soul and spiritual needs of those men who strive longingly to discover the truth about the evolution of humanity.

So does John the Baptist stand before us, and it is good if we can feel him in this way when we read the opening words of the Mark Gospel, and again later in the sixth chapter. The Bible is unlike a book of modern scholarship in which it is clearly emphasized what people ought to read. The Bible conceals beneath the grandiose artistic and occult style many of the mysterious facts it wishes to proclaim. And it is precisely in relation to the facts in the story of John the Baptist that the artistic and occult style does indeed conceal such things. Here I want to draw your attention to something that you can perhaps experience as truth only through your life of feeling. If you admit that there can be truths other than rational ones you may be able to see that the Bible tells us how the spirit or soul of Elijah is related to the spirit or soul of John the Baptist. Let us as briefly as we can see how far this is the case by allowing ourselves to be affected by the description of Elijah as it appears in the Old Testament:

So Elijah arose and went toward Zaraphta. And when he came to the gate of the city, there was a widow woman gathering wood. And he called to her and said “Bring me, I pray thee, a little water in a pitcher that I may drink.” And as she was going to fetch it, he called out to her and said “Bring me also a mouthful of bread.”

And the woman said, “As sure as the Lord your God liveth I have no bread, only a handful of flour in a bin and a little oil in a cruse. And see, I have gathered a few pieces of wood, and I am about to go inside and I want to make them ready for me and my son that we may eat and then die.”

Elijah said to her, “Fear not, go in and do as you have said. But first make a small cake and bring it out for me. Then afterwards you can make something for you and your son. For thus says the Lord, ‘The flour in the bin shall not be consumed nor the oil cruse run dry until the day when the Lord makes it rain upon the earth.’ ”

So she went in and did as Elijah had said. And he ate, and so did her household for a time. The flour in the bin was not eaten up, and the oil cruse did not run dry, according to the word he had spoken through Elijah. (I Kings 17:10-16.)

What do we read in the story of Elijah? We read of the coming of Elijah to a widow, and of a marvellous increase of bread. Because the spirit of Elijah was there it came about that there was no want in spite of the shortage of bread. The bread increased—so we read—the moment Elijah came into the presence of the widow. What is described here as an increase in bread, as the giving of bread as a gift, comes about through the spirit of Elijah. We can say therefore that the fact shines out from the Old Testament that the increase of bread is effected through the appearance of Elijah.

Now let us turn to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel. Here we are told how Herod caused John to be beheaded, and how Christ Jesus then came to the group of John's followers.

And when He came out He saw a great crowd, and had compassion on them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. And as it had become quite late His disciples came to Him and said, “This is a desolate place and it is already late. Let them go so that they may go to the farms and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But He answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to Him, “Should we go there and buy bread for two hundred denarii and give them something to eat?” He answered them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and look.” And after they had obtained the information they said, “Five loaves and two fishes.”

And he ordered them all to sit down on the green grass as if it had been a table. And they lay down as if for bed, by hundreds and by fifties. And he took the five loaves and the two fishes, looked up to heaven, blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before them; in the same way he divided the two fishes among them. And they all ate and were satisfied. (Mark 6:34-42.)

You know the story; again there was an increase in bread brought about by the spirit of Elijah-John. The Bible does not actually speak “clearly” as we understand the word today, but it expresses what it has to say through its composition. Whoever understands how to value the truths of feeling will wish to let his feeling dwell on the passage where it is related how Elijah came to the widow and increased the bread, and where the reincarnated Elijah leaves his physical body and Christ Jesus brings about in a new form what is described as an increase of bread. Such are the inner developments, the inner correspondences in the Bible. They demonstrate how fundamentally empty the scholarship is that talks about a “compilation of biblical fragments,” but also how it is possible for us to recognize the one single spirit composing it throughout, irrespective of who this single spirit is. That is how the Baptist is presented to us.

Now it is very remarkable how the Baptist himself is again introduced into the work of Christ Jesus. On two occasions it is indicated to us that Christ Jesus really entered the aura of the Baptist just when the physical personage was withdrawing more and more into the background, finally leaving the physical plane altogether. But it is shown in very clear words precisely through the very simplicity of the Mark Gospel how through the entry of Christ Jesus into the element of Elijah-John a wholly new impulse enters the world. In order to understand this we must envisage the whole description given in the Gospel from the moment when Christ Jesus appears after the arrest of John the Baptist and speaks of the divine kingdom, to the passage where the murder of John by Herod is related, and continue on with the subsequent chapters. If we take all these stories down to the story of Herod and consider them in their true character we find that the intention of all of them is to reveal in a correct manner the qualities that are characteristic of Christ Jesus. Yesterday we spoke of His characteristic way of acting so that He is recognized also by the spirits which live in those possessed by demons. In other words, He is recognized by super-sensible beings and this is presented to us in a sharply accentuated manner. And then we are faced with the fact that that which lives in Christ Jesus is something in reality quite different from what dwelt in ElijahNaboth for the reason that the spirit of Elijah could not wholly enter into Naboth.

The purpose of the Gospel of St. Mark is to show us that the being of Christ entered fully into Jesus of Nazareth and entirely filled his earthly personality. What we recognize as the universal human ego was working in Him. What then is so terrible to the demons who were in possession of human beings when they were confronted by Christ Jesus? The devils are compelled to say to Him, “You are He who bears the God within You.” They recognize Him as a divine power in the human personality, thus compelling the demons to allow themselves to be recognized and to come forth from the human beings who were possessed through the power of what lives in the individual personality of man (Mark 1:24; 3:11; 5:7). This is why in the early chapters of the Mark Gospel the figure of Christ is worked out so carefully, making Him in a certain way a contrast to ElijahNaboth, and also to Elijah-John. For whereas that which was active in them could not wholly live in them, this activating quality was wholly contained within Christ Jesus. For this reason, although a cosmic principle lives in Him, Christ Jesus as an individual personality confronts other human beings quite individually, including those whom He heals.

It is true that at the present time people generally take descriptions that come from the past in a peculiar way. In particular many of the modern learned students of nature—monists, as they also call themselves—take these descriptions in a very peculiar way when they wish to present their conceptions of the world. We could characterize this attitude by saying that these learned savants and excellent natural philosophers are secretly of the opinion, though they might be too embarrassed to say so, that it would have been better if the Lord God had left the organizing of the world to them, for they would really have established it better.

Take, for example, the case of such a learned student of natural philosophy of our time who maintains that wisdom has come to mankind only in the last twenty years, while others believe it has only been during the last five years, and regard earlier ideas as mere superstition. Such a man would profoundly regret that at the time of Christ there was no modern school of scientific medicine with its various remedies. According to their notions it would have been much more clever if all these people, for example Simon Peter's mother-in-law and others, had been cured with the aid of modern medical remedies. To their minds he would have been a really perfect God if he had created the world in accordance with the conceptions of a modern knowledge of nature. He would not have allowed humanity to have been deprived so long of the knowledge of nature possessed by modern savants. The world as established by God is indeed bungled by comparison with what a modern natural scientist would have created. They are embarrassed to say it so openly, but it is possible to read between the lines. These things that whirr around in the minds of materialistic natural scientists should be called by their right names. If we could for once talk confidentially with one of these gentlemen we might hear him voice the opinion that it is hard to avoid being an atheist when one sees how little success God had at the time of Christ in curing human beings by the methods of modern natural science.

But one thing is not considered: that the word “evolution,” about which people speak so often, ought to be taken seriously and honestly. Everything about evolution must be understood if the world is to reach its goal, and it is pointless to go looking for a plan such as modern natural scientists would produce if they were able to create a world. Because they think in this way, men do not correctly realize that the whole constitution of man, the unity of the finer bodies of man, were formerly quite different. In earlier times nothing at all could have been achieved with the human personality through the methods of natural science. For then the etheric body was much more active, much stronger than it is today; hence the physical body could be worked on indirectly through the etheric body in a very different manner. To express it quite dryly, at that time there was quite a different effect when one healed by means of “feeling” from what it would be today. At that time feeling was poured out from one person into another. When the etheric body was really much stronger and still governed the physical body, psychospiritual methods of healing acted quite differently. Human beings were constitutionally different, so there had to be a different method for healing. If a natural scientist does not know this he will say, “We no longer believe in miracles, and what is said here about healing is really a question of miracles, and these we must leave out of consideration.” And if one is a modern enlightened theologian one is faced by a very special dilemma. He would like to be able to retain these ideas, but at the same time he is filled with the modern prejudice that there is no such thing as healing of this kind, and that such cures are necessarily miracles. Which leads on to the effort to make all kinds of explanations as to the possibility or impossibility of miracles. But one thing he does not know. Nothing described up to the sixth chapter of the Mark Gospel was at that time regarded as a miracle, any more than when today some function of the human organization is affected by one medicament or another. No one at that time would have thought of it as a miracle if someone stretched out his hand and said to a leper, “I will it, become clean.” The whole natural being of Christ Jesus that was poured forth here, was in itself the cure. It would no longer work today because the union between the physical and etheric body is quite different. In those days physicians usually healed in that way, so it was not something that should be particularly emphasized that Christ Jesus cured lepers through compassion and the laying on of hands. Such a thing was then a matter of course. What is worthy of note in this chapter is something quite different, and this we must picture to ourselves correctly.

Let us then first glance at the manner in which the great physicians and even the lesser ones were trained. They were trained in schools that were part of the mystery schools, and they were able to attain to powers that worked down through them from the super-sensible world. Such physicians were thus in a sense mediums for the transmission of super-sensible powers. Through their own mediumship these men transmitted super-sensible powers, and they had been trained for this in the medical mystery schools. When in this way a physician laid his hands on a person it was not his own powers that streamed down but powers from the super-sensible world. It was through his initiation in the mystery schools that he could become a channel for the working of super-sensible powers. It would not have seemed especially remarkable to a person of that time if he heard that a leper or someone suffering from a fever had been cured through such psychical processes. The significant aspect was not that someone appeared capable of curing in this way but that someone who had not been trained in a mystery school could heal in this manner, and that in the heart and soul of this man the power which earlier flowed from the higher worlds was present, and such powers had now become personal individual powers. The truth was to be made clear that the time was fulfilled, and that from now onward men were no longer to be channels for super-sensible forces, that this had come to an end. This had also become clear to those who had been baptized by John in the Jordan, that the old time was coming to an end and everything in the future must be done through the human “I,” through that which is to enter into the divine inner center of the human being. They recognized that now among the people there stands one who does out of His own self what others before had done with the help of beings who live in the super-sensible world and whose powers worked down on them.

So we by no means grasp the meaning of the Bible if we picture to ourselves the curative process as being something special. In the fading light of the era that was passing away, when such cures were possible, it is said that Christ performed cures during this era of the fading light, but that He healed with new forces which would be present from that time onward. Thus it is very clearly shown, with a clarity that cannot be obscured, that Christ Jesus works entirely from man to man. This is everywhere emphasized. It could scarcely be more clearly expressed than when Jesus comes in contact with a woman described in the fifth chapter of the Mark Gospel. He heals her because she approaches Him and touches His garment, and He feels that a current of force has gone out from Him. The whole story is related in such a way as to show that the woman draws near to Christ Jesus and takes hold of His garment. At first He does nothing else Himself, but she does something; she takes hold of His garment, whereupon a current of force leaves Him. How? Not in this instance because He has released it, but because she draws it forth, and He notices it only later. This is very clearly shown. And when He does notice it what does He say? “Daughter, your faith has aided you. Go in peace and be healed from your plague.”

He only then became aware Himself, as He stood there, how the divine kingdom was streaming into Him, and streamed out from Him again. He does not stand there before those who are to be cured as the healers of earlier times stood before those from whom they were to drive out their demons. Whether the sick person believed or did not believe, the power that streamed from the super-sensible worlds through the medium of the healer streamed into him. But now, when it depended on the ego, this ego had to participate in the process; everything now became individualized. The main point of this description was not that one could influence the body through the soul—in that epoch that would have been a matter of course—but that insofar as the new age was just beginning, one ego must henceforth be in direct relationship with another ego. In earlier times the spiritual lived in the higher worlds, and it hovered over the human being. Now the kingdoms of heaven came near and were to enter into the hearts of men, were to live within the hearts of men as in a center. That is the point. In a world view such as this the outer physical and the inner moral flowed together in a new way, in such a way that from the time of the founding of Christianity until today there could only be faith, which from now onward can become knowledge.

Let us take the case of a sick person in ancient times as he stood facing his physician who was to heal him in the way I have just described. Magical forces were brought down from the spiritual worlds through the medium of the physician who had been prepared for this in the mystery schools, and these forces streamed through the body of the physician into that of the patient. There was at that time no link with the moral element, for the whole process did not affect the ego. Morality had nothing to do with it, for the forces flowed down magically from the higher worlds. Now a new era begins, and the moral and the physical aspects of the healing worked together in a new way. Knowledge of this fact will enable us to understand another story.

Some days had passed when He came again to Capernaum. When it was reported that He was in the house many people gathered there, so that there was no longer any room for them, even in front of the door, and He preached the word to them. Then they came to Him with a paralytic carried by four men. And when they were unable to come close to Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof of the house where He was and let down the litter on which the paralytic was lying through the gap. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you.” (Mark 2:1-5.)

What would a physician have said in earlier times? What would the scribes and Pharisees have expected when a healing was to take place? They would have expected such a healer to have said, “The forces now pouring into you and into your paralyzed limbs will enable you to move.” But what did Christ say? “Your sins are forgiven you.” That is the moral element in which the ego participates. It was a language the Pharisees were incapable of understanding. They could not understand it; for someone to speak like this was a blasphemy to the Pharisees. Why? Because to their minds God could be spoken of only as living in the super-sensible worlds, and He works down from there; and sins could be forgiven only from the super-sensible worlds. They could not understand that forgiveness of sins had something to do with the person who healed. Therefore Christ went on further to say: “Which is it easier to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘Stand up, take up your litter and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins on earth” (turning to the paralytic) “I tell you to stand up, take up your litter and go home.” And at once he stood up, took his litter and went out in full view of everyone. (Mark 2:9-12.)

Christ combines the moral and magical elements in His healing, and in this way made the transition from the ego-less to the ego-filled condition, and this can be found in every single description. This is how these matters must be understood, for this is the way they are told. Now compare what spiritual science has to say with all that biblical commentaries have to say about the “forgiveness of sins.” You will find there the strangest explanations, but nowhere anything satisfying because it was not known what the Mystery of Golgotha actually was.

I said that it had to be taken on faith. Why on faith? Because the expression of the moral in the physical element is not developed in one incarnation. When we meet someone today we must not look upon a physical defect as the bringing together of the physical and moral elements within one incarnation. Only when we go beyond one individual incarnation do we find the connection between the moral and physical elements in his karma. Because karma was very little emphasized up to the present time or not at all we can now say, “Until now the connection between the moral and physical elements could be discerned only through faith.” But now, when we are approaching the Gospels in a spiritual scientific way, faith is replaced by knowledge. Christ Jesus stands here beside us as an enlightened one, telling us about karma, when He makes known, “This person I may cure, for I perceived from his personality that his karma is such that he may stand up and walk.”

In such a passage as this you can see how the Bible is to be understood only if it is provided with the means given by modern spiritual science. It is our task to show that in this book, this cosmic book, the profoundest wisdom concerning the evolution of man is truly embodied. Once we are able to grasp what cosmic processes unfold on the earth—and this we shall emphasize increasingly in the course of these particular lectures since the Mark Gospel especially points to them—then we shall discover that what can be said in connection with this Gospel in the future can in no way be offensive to any other of the world's creeds. True knowledge of the Bible will, because of its own inner strength, stand firmly on the ground of spiritual science, attaching equal value to all the religious creeds of the world. This is because true knowledge of the Bible, for the reasons given at the end of our last lecture, cannot be truthfully confined within one denomination or another, but must be universal. In this way the religions will be reconciled. What I was able to tell you in my first lecture about the Indian who gave the lecture, “Christ and Christianity,” seems like the beginning of such a reconciliation. This Indian, no doubt subject to all the prejudices of his nation, nevertheless looked up to Christ in an interdenominational sense. It will be the task of spiritual scientific activity within the different religious confessions to try to understand this figure of Christ. For it seems to me that the task of our spiritual movement must be to deepen the religious creeds so that the inner nature of the different religions can be understood and deepened.

I should like in this connection to indicate something I have often pictured for you in the past, e.g., how a Buddhist who is an anthroposophist would conduct himself in relation to an anthroposophist who is a Christian. The Buddhist would say, “Gautama Buddha, who after first being a Boddhisattva then became a Buddha, after his death reached such a height that he no longer needs to return to earth.” The Christian who is an anthroposophist would reply, “I understand, for if I find my way into your heart and believe what you believe, I myself believe that about your Buddha.” This is what it means to understand the religion of the other person, to bring oneself to the other's religion. The Christian who has become an anthroposophist can understand everything that the other man says.

And what would the Buddhist who has become an anthroposophist say in reply? He would say, “I am trying to grasp what the innermost core of Christianity is. That with Christ we do not have to do with a founder of religion but with something different. In the case of the Mystery of Golgotha we have to do with an impersonal fact. Jesus of Nazareth did not stand there as the founder of a new religion, but the Christ entered into him, and He died on the Cross, thus accomplishing the Mystery of Golgotha. What is really the issue is that the Mystery of Golgotha is a cosmic fact.” And the Buddhist will say, “In future I shall no longer misunderstand, now that I have grasped the essence of your religion, as you have grasped mine, which was the issue between us. I will never picture the Christ as someone who will be reincarnated. For you the central question is what happened there. And I should be speaking in a very odd manner if I were to say that Christianity could be improved upon in any respect—that if Christ Jesus had been better understood He would not have been crucified after three years, that a religious founder should have been treated differently, and the like. The point is precisely that Christ was crucified, and the crucial consequences of that death on the Cross. There is no point in thinking that an injustice occurred at that time and that Christianity today could be improved upon.” No Buddhist who is an anthroposophist could say anything else than, “As you truly strive to understand the essence of my religion, so will I truly strive to understand the essence of yours.”

And what would be the result if people of different religions were to understand each other in such a way that the Christian were to say to the Buddhist, “I believe in your Buddha just as you do,” and if the Buddhist were to say to the Christian, “I understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the same way you do?” If something like this were to become general among human beings, what would be the consequence? There would be peace, and mutual acceptance of all religions among men. And this must come. The anthroposophical movement must consist of a true mutual understanding of all religions. It would be contrary to the spirit of anthroposophy if a Christian who became an anthroposophist were to say to a Buddhist, “It is untrue that Gautama after he became a Buddha will no longer reincarnate. He must appear in the twentieth century again as a physical human being.” Whereupon the Buddhist would say, “Can your anthroposophy lead you only to deride my religion?” And as a result instead of peace discord would arise among the religions. In the same way a Christian would have to tell a Buddhist who insisted on speaking about the possible improvements in Christianity, “If you can maintain that the Mystery of Golgotha was a mistake, and that Christ could return in a physical body so that He could succeed better than before, then you are making no effort to understand my religion, you are deriding it.” It is no task of anthroposophy to deride any religion, old or new, that is worthy of respect. If this were the task of anthroposophy it would be founding a society on mutual derision, not on the understanding of the equality of all religions!

In order to understand the spirit and the occult core of anthroposophy we must write this in our souls. And we can do this in no better way than by extending the strength and love that are working in the Gospels to the understanding of all religions. The later lectures in this cycle will show us how this can be achieved most particularly in connection with the Gospel of St. Mark.

• 1. Berlin, December 14th, 1911. English translation in Turning Points in Spiritual History (London: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co., 1934).
• 2. Raphael. Raffaello Santi, 1483–1520, Italian painter, famous especially for his Madonnas and for his paintings in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, especially The School of Athens and the Disputä.
• 3. ... proof to which I already alluded in Munich. In a lecture of August 31, 1912, not translated, entitled, “Theosophy and the Spiritual Life of the Present.”
• 4. Hermann Grimm, 1828–1901. The books on Raphael written by him appeared under the title Das Leben Raphael (The Life of Raphael) 1872, 1885 and 1896. Raphael als Weltmacht (Raphael as World Power) appears in his posthumously published Fragments, Vol. II.

To speak from the point of view of Anthroposophy today still means, quite understandably, to have great opposition, for Anthroposophy wants to speak about things of life and reality in a way that seems to many in our time to be something quite outlandish. And in particular, when a subject is discussed, such as the one that has been chosen for this evening, the immortality of the soul, then very powerful voices immediately rise up from the more scientifically educated circles of our time, who believe that such things cannot be discussed at all from the point of view of knowledge, because these things must be left to the beliefs, the revelations of human feeling, which is not based on direct knowledge, and because in relation to them man has insurmountable limits to his knowledge.

Now, however, anthroposophy assumes that it can speak about precisely such things of life in the same way that today, with strict methods and with a discipline that is aware of its responsibility, it speaks from the point of view of the natural sciences. It is only a question of anthroposophy having to address itself to forces of knowledge which are certainly present in ordinary life and in ordinary science, but which are present only for the starting points of their development, not for the further steps. And these further steps must be taken in order to penetrate the spiritual realms of life precisely from the point of view of real knowledge, not from that of nebulous mysticism. The starting point must be what I would call a union of intellectual modesty on the one hand and absolute trust in the perfection of the human powers of cognition on the other. By seeking to unite these two soul impulses, anthroposophy is able to explore the so-called supersensible realm with the same certainty as the senses and the natural sciences are used today to penetrate the realm of the sense world, of physical existence, with such great success and certainty.

What should be called intellectual modesty in this context? We know that within our soul life we have started from the childlike state of soul. We can very well compare this childlike state of soul with dreaming, even in a certain respect with sleep. And just as we awaken every morning from ordinary sleep, so we have awakened from our childlike state of soul to that which is our capacity for knowledge for science and for the purposes of practical life. If we now take the standpoint of intellectual modesty, we say to ourselves: Those powers which you had then as a small child, you have perfected through education and through the influence of life and your surroundings, and you have developed to that point of view from which you today gain your knowledge and your impulses for human life. This is not said with full intensity without intellectual modesty. Rather, one says: From the point of view that I have once acquired, I must be able to say yes and no to all sorts of things, if only I apply the correct methods that are common today. I must also be able to decide what is recognizable and what is to be relegated to the realm of mere belief. -- Anthroposophy counters this by asserting that it is perhaps possible to go beyond the powers of the soul that one has acquired as an adult, just as one can go beyond the cognitive abilities of the dreamy soul of a small child. Of course, it depends entirely on whether such a progression really succeeds, and I would like to speak to you this evening about this progression with reference to the field of soul immortality.

On the other hand, however, anthroposophy has full and intense confidence that the powers of cognition attained by each person can be perfected more and more. Thus it ventures on such a path of perfection, and it begins by saying something like the following: Today we have achieved a certain concept of knowledge through the great successes of the natural sciences. But has this concept of knowledge really been taken out of the full depths of life? It is certainly justified for everything that we strive for in its field. But is it taken out of the full depths of life by considering precisely those questions of human existence that are connected firstly with the deepest longings of human life, secondly with everything that man calls the consciousness of his human dignity, thirdly with everything from which he derives the actual meaning of life: the moral impulses?

All this nevertheless leads us to take certain borderline areas and borderline phenomena of life into consideration when it comes to gaining insights into precisely these most intimate needs and questions, especially those of the soul's existence.

Not in order to say anything valid for knowledge from the outset, but to gain a comparative starting point, let me point out something that presents itself as a dark area and yet as an area that challenges many riddles in life. It is the area that man knows well, the area of dreaming as man experiences it while asleep. I would like to emphasize this explicitly: Nothing is to be made out for knowledge by my mentioning dreams and sleep, but only a starting point is to be gained for our present understanding. Let us imagine in front of our soul these manifold and colorful worlds of images that dreams conjure up for us. We can be sure that they come from the same depths of human life from which our 'daytime imaginings usually emerge. But even during waking we are quite aware that in this extraordinarily interesting 'dream world we are dealing at most with a relative reality, which we can only understand if we understand it from the point of view of waking life. After all, one can at first imagine hypothetically that man dreams throughout his whole life, that he has never experienced anything in his consciousness other than the colorful, manifold dream images. Couldn't life nevertheless proceed in the same way as it does today? We could be driven by certain forces of nature or spiritual powers, without having an awake consciousness, to our daily work and - even if it may seem reprehensible to some listeners - perhaps even to scientific activity; we could carry out this activity, as it were, sleepwalking. Within ourselves, however, nothing could take place except that which we know as the dream world; the outer world would then be completely different from that which we have in our inner consciousness.

If you think about it properly, you come to say to yourself: This world of dreams, we never know it when we are in it ourselves. We would regard the dream world as our reality, which we would dream from the beginning to the end of our lives in the manner described above. That we recognize the subordinate reality value of the dream depends on the fact that we go through the life-jolt from sleep to awakening, that we become conscious of it - I am not speaking now in philosophical consideration, but from the standpoint of popular consciousness - through this life-jolt. Through it we switch that which is our human nature, namely that which is of a volitional nature, into our physical body. Anyone who observes closely also knows that everything that is conveyed to us through the senses in waking life is based entirely on the unfolding of real life in the physical body during waking. Through this involvement of our will in the physical body we arrive at the point of view from which we distinguish the subordinate reality value of dreaming from that reality value which the sense world has for our awakening consciousness. We now know that we are in contact with an external reality through the will inserted into our body. Again, I do not want to speak about this in philosophical considerations, but entirely from the standpoint of popular consciousness.

Now the question arises: Could there perhaps be a second awakening, a second life-jolt out of this ordinary day-waking on a higher level, through which we switch on our life forces into a new element, just as we switch on our will when we come out of dreaming into ordinary wakefulness? - Of course, this is only a question, and the answer to it depends entirely on whether we can set out on a path that is, firstly, inwardly safe and, secondly, can be walked by every person through their own efforts. If we were to come to such a second awakening, then through this second awakening we would gain a point of view through which we would recognize the reality value of our waking life, observing it from a higher perspective, as we observe it in dreams from the higher perspective of ordinary consciousness.

In order to bring about a second awakening, anthroposophy turns first of all to soul forces as they are present in ordinary life, but which already indicate through their ordinary nature that they are capable of development. Now even philosophers admit that what we call human memory points to a more spiritual nature of the human soul; that we cannot treat memory in the same way as we treat those soul faculties which are directly bound to the impressions of the outer sense world. Again, let us not adhere to philosophical considerations, but, as we do in ordinary consciousness, to that which plays a role as memory in man. Through memory we can call up images of experiences we went through many years ago. Depending on our disposition, these images may be more vivid or more shadowy, but they are there before us. When we indulge in ordinary sensory observation, that which we imagine must be present; that which memory gives is not present, it may be long gone. Through our imaginative power we conjure up, as it were, from our own inner being something before our soul which was once there, but which is no longer there, which cannot have a present existence. In this way we gain the insight that we are able to drive out of the human inner being forces of cognition which imagine something that does not exist in the present. And the question arises: Can perhaps through a certain further development of the powers of the soul, as we have developed them since our first childhood, that which underlies our power of memory be further developed? Can it be developed in such a way that we not only imagine what is not there at present but was once there during our life on earth, but that we imagine something that is not there at all? Then we would make the leap of life into a higher reality, into a reality from which ordinary earthly life would appear as the dreaming life does to the waking consciousness.

Anthroposophy now makes such an attempt to develop that which underlies the ability to remember, in order to arrive at this second awakening through the inner practice of life. It addresses itself to the human powers of thought. After all, they are the ones who conjure up in our imagination what we have once experienced. And anthroposophical research proceeds in such a way that it does something with thought that is not actually done with thought in the present age. Today's thinking is - and rightly so from certain points of view - more oriented towards surrendering to the outside world. To allow the impressions of the external world to act first on the senses, to process them by counting, measuring, weighing, to combine them with thinking, is passive thinking, a thinking that man considers all the more secure with regard to knowledge, the more passive it is, the more it surrenders to what the external senses and organs say. Indeed, in order not to gain a fantastic knowledge as some philosophers do, anthroposophy turns to thinking in such a way that it seeks to develop this thinking further than it is in ordinary life. To this end, easily comprehensible ideas, which at first are not even considered in terms of what they mean, are placed at the center of ordinary consciousness and the whole life of the soul is concentrated on such ideas. The life of the soul is completely withdrawn from external impressions and external life by seeking more and more to make this life of the soul stronger and stronger on one or a series of manageable ideas. The result is something that lasts shorter for one person and longer for another, depending on their soul disposition. One person needs three months, another many years. If you repeat these exercises in rhythmic succession, after a while you will notice something in your soul life that I would like to compare with something in your outer life: If you strain a muscle again and again, it strengthens and becomes strong. In the same way, one feels the soul's imaginative faculty strengthening by always concentrating on an easily comprehensible idea; and finally one feels how the whole thinking becomes active, how real life, inner life in the true sense, moves into this thinking. One gradually feels the great difference, which is not only a figurative but a real one, between dead and abstract thinking and that towards which we strive and which we want to absorb into an inner life in the thinking element.

I said that one must start from a manageable idea. In what I am going to tell you today about the exercises of the life of the soul, it is a question of following each step with full human prudence, as otherwise only the mathematician follows his steps, or the geometer, who is aware, when he brings one out of the other, how figure follows figure, how number follows number. This consciousness, which the anthroposophical researcher feels like the strict mathematician: to be accountable as a researcher - this consciousness must prevail.

Of course, all self-suggestions, everything somehow subjective must be excluded. But this can never be ruled out if we take up arbitrary ideas from our mental life; they have many echoes of life in them, they often suggest something to us. But if we put together ideas that perhaps have no external meaning for us at all, such as “light - wisdom” - and concentrate again and again on such an idea, whose reality value remains indifferent to us, with the whole life of our soul, then the thinking ability in us strengthens. In this way we come to know - as I said, for one person it takes less time, for another it takes longer - what this means: life in thinking; for a kind of detachment of a higher person from the person we know lives in our physical body does indeed gradually take place. Just as we become aware in our physical body that it is something living when we move our legs, move our hands, so we become aware through such an exercise: It is something real, living, real, life-real, when I move in the strengthened thinking.

One could roughly say: We finally come to experience a higher person in us through these power phenomena, through which one gropes spiritually, as one otherwise gropes physically with one's fingers. In this way we gradually experience how a higher man, who is experienced in this thinking, is torn away from the physical man; and we have arrived at the supersensible experience, at the experience of the supersensible man, in so far as he passes through earthly life between birth and death. By the fact that one has risen to observation in the inner ability to think, one comes to the fact that one overcomes space through this ability to think, overcomes the present in general and comes to an experience in time. Yes, one feels that which one experiences as the second, detached human being, not actually as a spatial human being. This is the physical human being. One finds that one experiences the second in this way as a human being fluctuating only in time. And that which one experiences there is structured into a kind of tableau which, in a relatively short time, allows one to survey life on earth from earliest childhood to the point in time one has just reached.

There is a big difference between the two things: the life tableau and my memories. You could say: I can also put together this earthly life from my memories. I can put together from my memory what I experienced a short or long time ago. And if I make the effort and if I take my time, then I will have an overall memory of my life on earth. And it could be that I am deceiving myself that in such an examination I have something in my life tableau, which is manageable in a short time, which with the help of subconscious soul forces would bring something similar to a conscious memory picture before my mind. - But one gradually realizes that there is a great difference between what one puts together in one's memory and such a tableau of the soul's life, which stands before the soul as a first supersensible knowledge, initially as a self-knowledge. For when you compile your experiences as a memory picture, you actually always see in front of you what has had an effect on you from the outside. You see people, natural events, the external things that are of interest to you.

This life tableau is completely different. There you have much less of an eye on what has come to you from the outside, so to speak, and more of an eye on what has worked from within. If I have gotten to know a person in life, I remember much less through this life tableau how he or she came across to me, but rather what longings were aroused in my own breast in order to find something special about this person. If I have any natural phenomenon in this life tableau, it is not so much the interesting aspects of the natural phenomenon that make themselves felt, but those impulses from my own human life that follow this natural phenomenon with particular sympathy or antipathy. That which stands before my soul in this tableau is myself, how I have behaved in relation to what I have gone through. One could say, if one wants to draw rough comparisons: This memory tableau that I have described, which can only be obtained after such an examination, is as different from an ordinary memory tableau brought about by memory as the impression in the seal is from the impression in the sealing wax. It is like the negative image to the positive image of that which we can put together through the ordinary memory image.

Thus, when we have gone through the first stage of spiritual practice, we have come to a true self-knowledge of our earthly life. For such self-knowledge is there. There are always nuances mixed in. In this memory tableau you see what has brought you forward; then you say to yourself: “There is something that has made you imperfect, that has brought you back. -- One places oneself in this tableau of memory with human worth and human dignity, and through the realization that is first awakened one attains an idea of that which one is actually only now entitled to call the “ether” of the world in relation to external reality and the sensual forces. The ether of the world, which lives only in the temporal and which to a certain extent gives us a piece of what I have now described as the first form of the higher human being detached from the physical.

But one has not been long enough with this first step. If you want more, you must undertake to continue these exercises of the soul. The next soul exercises consist in using a strongly activated inner will to remove the ideas from the consciousness, just as one has used one's will to place such ideas into the consciousness to strengthen the being and to concentrate on them. As I said, there must be complete prudence, as with the mathematician. For it must be said: We are in a certain way taken in with our whole soul-life by the conception which soon moves into the center of consciousness. And especially when thinking has already become so vivid that we have only this idea itself in consciousness, and that not only such ideas are there, but that our own inner experience appears as in powerful pictures in the tableau described - then we are strongly taken in by what we have before the soul in such a picture heightened to vividness. A greater power is necessary to remove such images from the consciousness than is necessary to remove ordinary images from the consciousness. One knows, by the way, what it means to remove ordinary ideas from the consciousness. Try to admit this to yourself honestly.

When the senses are silent, moreover when the sensually perceived is silent, when the combination of thoughts is silent and the ideas and sensations are, as it were, removed from the consciousness, then man falls asleep. If there is no stimulation from the imagination, he does not have the strength to maintain the waking state. But if one has that strength of soul which is necessary for what I have described, then one also has the strength to take away the acquired ideas which come into us in this way through an inner strengthened life, to keep the whole consciousness empty of imagination and yet to remain awake. Just being awake, imagining nothing, that is what must be striven for as a second state: A waking consciousness empty of content! But this contentless waking consciousness, one can become aware of it inwardly, but it does not remain so for long. Once it has been established, however, the second stage of spiritual cognition occurs. Then one not only becomes aware of what has just been described, which lives in the human being, then the spiritual content of our world environment forces its way into this waking, content-free consciousness, into this empty consciousness. And the second human being, who has first detached himself from the physical, corporeal human being, who was conscious of himself in the course of his entire life on earth, will now not only be conscious of himself, but through this higher self-consciousness he will absorb a spiritual world of his surroundings. Again something appears before our soul which seems strange and foreign to the present man, but which is nevertheless contained in what I have called the second stage of man's spiritual knowledge, inspiration. An exact inspiration occurs there; just as everything I have described here must not be confused with what is often called clairvoyance in a nebulous mysticism. If one wishes to use this expression, one may only speak of an exact voyance, which is only based on the development of the soul forces, like mathematical thinking, which has no external reality in itself, but only one that is formed internally, and to which only mathematical thinking must be added when it extends to the sensory world, as in measuring, counting, weighing and so on.

To this, what one has conceived in an inwardly living thinking, which is modeled on the particular mathematical thinking, must be added what I have described to you here. And through this spiritual work one arrives at knowledge in the same way that we arrive at knowledge through measuring, counting and weighing. And that which occurs is a state of soul life which is not known in ordinary consciousness because it is not necessary. I would like to make clear what state of soul life occurs when awake, empty consciousness is reached.

First we think of ourselves in a modern metropolis, with all its noise, its din; we ourselves do not come to rest, we ourselves are absorbed in this noise, in this din. Then we move away from this cosmopolitan city - the din, the noise become quieter and quieter; if we move further away, even quieter. We imagine ourselves in the solitude of the forest. There is a silence that we can describe as zero in relation to the noise of the city. Silence around us, silence within us. But now something else can occur, although it is not observed in ordinary life. We have to use a second comparison. As you know, if someone has a certain amount of wealth, this wealth can be spent little by little; he owns less and less. If he earns nothing extra, if he continues to spend, then he is down to zero. If he has nothing at all and continues to spend, he is in debt; then he has less than zero. Mathematicians call this negative values, minus. Now imagine that: We have descended from the loud roar, the noise of the big city to silence zero and descend further, and it becomes quieter and quieter than silence and silence zero, so that we have less around us than mere silence, that it is quieter, quieter than quiet. This is the state of soul that gradually occurs when we pass through the empty but still awake consciousness. Little by little we feel quite clearly what I would like to call the deep silence of the human soul. This deep silence is not just silence, it is more or less, as you like, than silence. In terms of tranquillity, it goes below tranquillity zero. But then, when this deep silence of the soul is really experienced, everything that is of spiritual essence around us emerges from this deep silence of the soul. And the full inspiration occurs.

Then we are put into the position, when we have experienced this deep silence of the soul, to actually also now hear spiritually that what lives in the spiritual world. And the ordinary sensory world becomes a means for us to hint at what lives in this spiritual world. I would like to speak quite concretely of real spiritual knowledge. Something sounds out of the deep silence of the soul that makes an impression on me: it excites me, it strikes me with a certain liveliness. I say it is something that makes an impression on me, just as the yellow color of a lively soul life makes an impression on me. Then I have something in the sensory world through which I can express what I have experienced in the spiritual world. I describe this knowledge by saying: It has an effect on me like the yellow color of the sense world, or like the tone C or C sharp, like warmth or cold. In short, that which I have experienced in the sense world becomes for me a material, just as what appears to me in the spiritual world can be described in ordinary words. The whole sense world becomes something like a language to express what one experiences in the spiritual world. This is not understood by those who want to make progress too quickly and therefore stop at superficial judgment. The investigator encounters an experience that makes the same impression on him as the sensual color, and therefore he describes what he experiences spiritually through colors, sounds and so on. Just as one should not confuse the word “table” with the real table, so now one should not confuse it with that by which it is described, the spiritual world itself, which sprouts from the deep silence.

Once one has reached this point of view, one comes to extinguish this whole tableau of life, which one first conjured up, within oneself; not only to evoke empty consciousness towards individual ideas, but towards the whole earthly life of man, and indeed precisely in his inner form. One then, so to speak, extinguishes oneself as an earthly human being. But by now having the possibility to experience the deep silence of the human soul after the extinction of the earthly self, which is bound to the physical body of man, one now experiences that which one has become as a spiritual-soul man before one has descended from the spiritual world and has clothed the physical body around oneself. Out of the deep silence of the soul one experiences the spiritual-soul that one was in the pre-earthly existence. And just as one arrived at one's physical surroundings in the physical body, so, by placing oneself in that which one was in the spiritual-soul world, one arrives at recognizing how one was in the pre-earthly existence in the surroundings of spiritual-soul beings, even as a soul-spiritual being, as a similar being. One enters fully into that spiritual world from which one has descended to earthly existence.

You can realize that in ordinary life the eternity of the human soul is only explored in one direction, the immortality of the soul. But this immortality of the soul has another side, for which the older language still had a word, but no longer the modern language. This soul immortality has not only one side, that of immortality, but also that of unbornness, and it is only from unbornness and immortality that the full soul immortality is composed. Thus one does not arrive through metaphysical speculation, but by awakening the soul itself, and out of the deep silence of the soul to that which is eternal in the human soul, was eternal and was spiritually present before man descended to earthly existence, and remains eternal by dwelling in the physical human body between birth and death.

But we can only approach the eternal character step by step, also through anthroposophical spiritual research. As the third stage I must mention something that may cause a slight shudder, perhaps an inner mockery, especially for those who are sitting here with the usual scientific ideas. I can understand this very well, as I can understand all opposing objections to anthroposophy. Something that we already have in ordinary life can be further developed into a higher power of cognition, like the powers of a child into what we have developed in our adult state, and that is the power of love. Loving is something quite different when it is bound to the human body, when it surrenders to the passions that live themselves out in loving, than when, as I have described, after the physical ego, even the earthly ego from birth to death, has been stripped away, when the human being lives himself out of the physical existence into the state in which he faces the purely spiritual. When he thereby develops the powers of love, of complete surrender, then that which he has experienced in the pre-earthly state, which he now fully realizes, is transformed into knowledge. He experiences what it means to experience full consciousness with reality outside his physical body. And when he experiences this surrender to spiritual experience in this way, then his ego is returned to him in a new way. The ego, which in earthly life lives in selfishness and egotism, which is overcome by acquiring such self-knowledge as is acquired when this ego is twice extinguished, thus develops full love on a soul-spiritual level, and something then confronts you which at first appears to you like a complete stranger, like a completely alien personality. If you strive for this, it will happen in the least. One should strive for the love I have described. Then, because one can go completely out of oneself, one is confronted by what one is oneself, but like a foreign personality, and one only then realizes what this self was like in the past life on earth, which one went through before one came to this life on earth; one only then realizes how the ego was present in the earlier stage of existence on earth, when one is able to feel like a second person through increased, strengthened love. One looks back to a certain point in the development of time where the ego as ego had a beginning, where the repeated earth lives had a beginning. But we cannot speak of that now. We can only speak of the fact that we can look back on a series of earth lives, which are passed through to full human life, between which there are always lives in pre-earthly or post-earthly existence between death and a new earthly birth.

This is the one thing one experiences of the eternal and immortal character of the soul when one has made up one's mind to the recognizing view. The other thing, however, which one acquires through the love that has increased to knowledge, is to be able to experience the higher human being outside of his physical body. That which one acquires further is that one sees how this being is without a body, and the realization of how the body becomes a corpse in death, how this body falls away, how the human being enters the after-earthly life. Just as one has a view of the pre-earthly life, of the unborn, one now has a view into immortality, into the after-earthly life. The moral impulses one has acquired as an earthly human being, which one carries through the gate of death, and how one prepares a new earthly existence together with the spiritual world in order to descend to earth as an earthly human being, this now appears before the soul in vivid vividness, which is based on intellectual modesty, but also on a certain trust in the powers of the human soul.

This leads knowledge to that area of life which is so close to the longings and needs of man. We look at those whom we have loved in life, who are close to us through blood ties or soul ties; we look at the gate of death and ask: What will become of the ties that the blood has spun and of the ties that the soul and spirit have woven when a person has passed through the gate of death? If one has this insight, one knows how the outer physical shell of the physical body falls away from what man is as an eternal being, how man rises into the spiritual world with those laws and lives there with the forces which he has already brought down and with which he has lived in his physical life on earth. We then experience how that which we have in common with other people as blood ties, as bonds of friendship, as bonds of love, falls away from our communities just as the physical body of man itself falls away; and we know from the realization that we meet again the souls with whom a bond has connected us, in pure communion of the spiritual world, because the physical obstacles are no longer there. That what men do not demand to know out of a curious instinct, that what was human dignity, the fate of the souls, that becomes in this way a real knowledge.

And still other things become a real knowledge. The reality of the outer physical world eludes the dream because the will is not involved in the physical body. In dreams man takes the world of images for reality; thus we take much for reality before we awaken in the manner described to the deep silence of the soul, to the spiritual life. When we wake up to the waking spiritual life, after we have gone through the second life-jolt and the physical reality experienced awake appears to us as mere dreaming, then many things that were reality to us in the physical-bodily life appear to us in the higher sense, in the sense of the physical-spiritual life, as a dream. Just as the dream reality is captured by the physically tangible reality, so that which we experience in physical life as moral or religious people is now captured by that to which we awaken through the second life pressure. And we become aware of what was actually meant by people like Knebel, Goethe's friend, who said as an old man: “When one has grown old, one finds that in the face of the decisive events of existence everything seems as if it had been prepared long ago. Everything seems to have been planned by man himself, which has had a profound influence on him as a man or as a youth. And all his steps as a youth seem to point to this experience. - This idea continues to develop and becomes true in the process of formation. If one penetrates this idea further with the knowledge that one gains in the way described, one sees that this is indeed the case in life. One experiences something quite decisive. One is led to a person with whom the further course of life is to be walked together. You look at the steps that have led you to this person. They come from the longing to experience precisely what you can experience with this person until you reach the goal that corresponds to a longing of the soul, a test of the soul in the right way. That which lives in man, through which he conjures up his destiny as if out of himself, must be connected to the view of the earthly lives lived through, in which one was a morally such and such a person, did this and that. And one sees that what one does now seems instinctive in this life, like chance; it is fatefully linked to what one was in the previous earthly life.

This seems to be a devastating thought. But just as little as the fact that we have blond or black hair, blue or brown eyes, lean or full hands affects our freedom, dignity and full responsibility as human beings, so little does it affect what we are as free, responsible human beings when we know that it is the soul that configures us, that as free human beings we have to carve out our life's destiny on a fated basis. But life becomes comprehensible when man learns to look at it, imbued with this idea of destiny, which is quite compatible with freedom, that he does not stand in life in such a way that every moment is like chance to him, but that he feels himself placed in the world of natural necessity, as in the world of a real spirituality, in which he stands as a higher man with his moral, fateful powers. In this way, such knowledge leads man from outer life to the immortality of the soul.

One can still object: Yes, individual spiritual researchers can indeed recognize this, but what does it mean for the ordinary person? - It means just as much as an artistically painted picture to someone who has not become a painter. It would be sad if you had to be a painter to understand a work of art. You only need a certain healthy feeling to experience the artistic, and only healthy human judgment to experience what the spiritual researcher describes. Only if one throws the unfortunately so numerous prejudices in one's own way, then one places oneself before the pictures which the anthroposophical spiritual researcher sketches, as one places oneself before a picture in which, instead of seeing a world, one sees nothing but splashes of color placed side by side. This world is also fully comprehensible to those who live a simple, ordinary life from the description of the anthroposophical spiritual researcher, although he is always able to understand it through books such as “How does one attain knowledge of the higher worlds? “ he is always able to go so far on the path of spiritual research without influencing his outer life that he can check what the anthroposophical spiritual researcher tells him, that he can check whether this anthroposophical spiritual researcher is speaking out of fantasy or whether his view is something that has been firmly acquired, just as mathematical judgments, measuring, counting, weighing and so on are themselves firmly acquired.

This is what spiritual science wishes to introduce into the present spiritual life of mankind. It is that which it must believe corresponds to the numerous innermost needs of the soul. For it is so that today many people instinctively, unconsciously, precisely through what one has become through education, out of the natural scientific prerequisites, gain the longing to know something in a similar way, encompassing the experiences, about that which is so close to the soul and of which I have only spoken today as an example of the immortality of the soul and that which is connected with immortality.

But of course this puts something into the world that is like the Copernican world view compared to the one we were used to at that time. But it is so that what appears to be a human “folly” gradually becomes a matter of course. The Copernican world view even had to wait a very long time before it became self-evident. Anthroposophy can wait. But it must say, out of an obligation to culture and civilization, that it is fully understandable to it when ordinary natural science, which considers itself sovereign with its means, has arrived at a doctrine of the soul without a soul through an ordinary pursuit of the life of the soul with the external means of calculating, counting, weighing, and that it finds an ideal in it. Anthroposophy, however, would like to add to that which it does not deny the justification of on the one hand, to a doctrine gained from natural science, through developed full comprehension of the innermost essence of the human soul, what is soul-spiritual in man as eternal life, what is soul-spiritual in the whole world, in the whole cosmos as eternal life, so that man can recognize himself as eternal, intimately connected with the eternal in the cosmos, as immortal in the cosmos. Anthroposophy therefore wishes to give knowledge of the present human life and the human life of the near future, so that it meets a necessity of the time by adding to the present teaching of the soul without soul a teaching of the soul awakened vividly out of the human soul, which then follows from such a teaching again a teaching of the world permeated by soul, permeated by spirit. And this will be needed more and more.

Before we come to the question of human karma, a number of preliminary considerations are necessary. Yesterday we gave a kind of description of the conception of karma, and to-day we shall have to say something about karma and the animal kingdom.

What might be called external evidence of the reality of karmic law will be found in the course of these lectures in places where there will be occasion specially to point out this external evidence. On these occasions also we can acquire the ability to speak about the foundations of the idea of karma to those outside who may raise questions about one thing or another, or who may question the whole idea of karma. But for all this a few preliminary observations are necessary.

What is more natural than to ask how animal life and animal fate are related to what we call the course of human karma? In this we shall find included what are, to mankind, the most important and profound questions of destiny.

The relation of man on the earth to the animal kingdom differs with the various epochs and also with the various peoples. It is certainly not without interest to see that in the case of the peoples who have preserved the best parts of the ancient sacred wisdom of humanity there is a deeply sympathetic and loving treatment of animals. For example, in the Buddhistic world which has preserved important parts of the old conceptions of the world held by mankind in ancient times, we find a very sympathetic treatment of animals, a treatment and a feeling towards the animal kingdom which many people in Europe cannot understand.

You will find it among other peoples too, especially where a nation has preserved some of the old conceptions which came to them as heirlooms in one place or another, you will find a kind of friendship, something approaching a human treatment of animals. An instance is the Arab and his treatment of his horse. On the other hand one may say that in those countries in which there is being prepared the future conception of the world, that is, in the west, there is little understanding of such sympathy with the animal kingdom. It is characteristic too that in the Middle Ages and on into our own times, precisely in those countries where Christianity has spread, the idea has arisen that animals cannot be considered as beings having their own special soul life, but rather as something like automata. It has also been pointed out, perhaps not unjustly, although not always with great understanding, that the idea often advanced by western philosophy that the animals are automata and do not really possess a soul, may have been taken up by the common people who have no sympathy for the animals and often know no bounds in their cruel treatment of them. Indeed, the matter has gone so far that the thoughts of a great philosopher of modern times, Descartes, regarding the animal kingdom, have been thoroughly misunderstood.

Of course, we must clearly understand that the idea of animals as mere automata has never been put forward by the really eminent souls of recent culture, neither did Descartes hold this view, although in many books on philosophy you may read that he did so. It is true he does not ascribe to the animals a soul which is able to develop to where it can prove, for instance, the existence of God out of its own self-consciousness; nevertheless he does say that the animal is permeated and animated by the so-called Spirits of Life, which, though they do not present such a complete individuality as the Ego of man, do nevertheless work as soul in the animal organisation. It is indeed characteristic that one should have been able to misunderstand Descartes so completely, for this shows us that in past centuries there has been the tendency in our western development to ascribe to the animal something merely automatic. We should not have misunderstood this had we gone to work conscientiously, but we have read it into Descartes. It is the peculiarity of western civilisation that it had to be developed out of the elements of materialism; one may even say that the dawn of Christianity took place in such a way that this important impulse in human evolution was first exercised in a materialistic western spirit. The materialism of modern times is only a consequence of this materialistic conception of Christianity, the most spiritual religion in the west. It is the fate of the peoples of the west—if we may say so—that they have to work up from materialistic foundations, and in the conquering of these materialistic views and tendencies they will develop the forces which will lead to the highest spiritual life. It is a consequence of this destiny, this karma, that the peoples of the West have a tendency to consider the animals only as automata. He who cannot penetrate into the working of spiritual life and can only judge by what surrounds him in the external world of the senses would, from the impressions of that world, easily arrive at an idea about the animal kingdom which places the animals at the lowest scale. On the other hand, conceptions of the world which contain elements of the primordial spiritual truths, the ancient wisdom of humanity, preserved a kind of knowledge of what exists spiritually in the animal kingdom; and in spite of all this misunderstanding, in spite of all that has crept into their views of the world and destroyed their purity, they have not been able to forget that spiritual activities and spiritual laws are active in the life and development of the animal kingdom. Thus, if, on the one hand, because of our lack of spiritual conceptions we are compelled to admit ignorance concerning the animal soul nature, we must not on the other hand deceive ourselves by applying directly to the animal kingdom that idea of karma which helps to understand human fate and human karma; for this would be the result of a purely materialistic conception This must not be done.

We have already pointed out that it is necessary to consider the idea of karma with exactitude, and we should go astray if we sought in the animal kingdom for instances of the recoil of an action on the being from which the cause has proceeded. Now we can only comprehend the vast ramifications of karmic law if we go beyond a single human life between birth and death, and follow man through his consecutive reincarnations; then we shall find that the recoil of a cause which we have set in motion in one life can only come into action in a later one. The regular law of karma stretches from life to life, and the effects of causes need not operate—indeed, when we consider karma on the whole, quite certainly do not operate—in the same life between birth and death.

Now from the more elementary teaching of Spiritual Science we already know that in the case of animals we cannot speak of a reincarnation such as takes place with man. In the animal kingdom we find nothing resembling that human individuality which is preserved when a person passes through the gate of death and lives a particular life in the spiritual world during the period from death to re-birth in order then to enter existence again by a new birth. We cannot conceive of animal death in the same way as we conceive of human death, for all that we describe as the fate of the human individuality after a person has passed through the gate of death is not the same in the animal kingdom. And if we were to believe that in an individual animal which we have before us we could look for the reincarnated being of an animal which had previously existed on the earth—as we can do in the case of man—we should be entirely wrong. At the present time, when one is inclined to consider all one finds in the world solely from its external side and not from the inner, the great contrasts and most important differences between man and animal remain unperceived. From a purely materialistic point of view the outward phenomenon of death seems to be the same in man as in the animal. So one may easily believe, when observing the life of an animal between its birth and death, that the several phenomena in the individual life of the animal are comparable with those in the personal life of a man between birth and death. But this would be quite wrong. Therefore to begin with we should show by individual examples the essential differences between animal and man.

These differences between man and animal can only be apprehended by one who makes use of the facts which are revealed to him both by his external senses and by his speculative thought. We find a phenomenon to which attention is also drawn by natural investigators but of which those of the present day can make nothing, namely, the phenomenon that man has really to learn the simplest things. In the course of his history man has had to learn the use of the most primitive instruments, and our children have still to learn the simplest things, and have to spend a certain time in order to learn them. Man has to make efforts to produce even the simplest things, or to manufacture his instruments and tools. When, on the other hand, we observe the animals we are obliged to admit how much easier it is for them in this respect. Think how the beaver builds its complicated dwelling. It does not need to learn; it knows how to do it, because it brings the knowledge with it as an indwelling law, just as we human beings bring with us the power of changing our teeth at about seven years of age. No one needs to learn that. In the same way, such animals as the beavers bring with them the capability to build their houses. If you observe the animal kingdom you will find that the animals bring with them definite capacities by which they can achieve things which human art, great as it is, is far from achieving.

The question may now arise: How does it come about that when a human being is born he is more incapable than, for example, a hen, or a beaver; and that he has first, with much pains, to acquire what these creatures already bring with them? For it is much more important for our world-conception that we should be able to put the right question than that we should acquire masses of knowledge. Facts may be right, but they need not always be essential to our conception of the world. Now, although we shall today go into the causes of these phenomena from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, it would carry us too far if we were to show in detail why this is so. But we may, to begin with, refer to it in a few words.

If with the aid of Spiritual Science we go back into human evolution in the primeval past we shall find that the forces which are at the disposal of the beaver or of any other animal, in order that they should bring such artistic powers into the world, were at one time at the disposal of man. It is not that man in a primordial past missed this endowment of capabilities while the animals took them all to themselves; he also received these powers, indeed in a far greater degree than the animals. For although the latter bring a certain great artistic skill into the world with them, this is, however, limited in extent. Fundamentally at birth man can do nothing at all, and he has first to learn everything which concerns the outer world. This is somewhat strongly expressed, but you will understand what I mean. Now, when a man learns, it is soon shown that he can become many-sided, and that as regards the development of certain artistic capacities, etc., this can be far richer than that of an animal. So man originally brought with him more abundant powers, which he does not bring today. The peculiar phenomenon comes to life, that originally man and animal were similarly endowed; and if we were to go back to the old Saturn evolution, we should find that there was absolutely no difference between human and animal development. All these capabilities were common to both. What then has happened in the meantime that the animal now brings with it into existence all sorts of capacities, while man is really a clumsy being when he comes into the world? How has man behaved in the meantime that he now no longer possesses all he once brought with him? Has he foolishly wasted it in the course of evolution, while the animals have preserved it like thrifty house-keepers? These are questions that may be raised on the basis of actual facts.

Man has not wasted these powers which to-day the animal manifests as external capacities; he has only transformed them, but into something which differs from what the animals possess. They have applied them to external works; beavers build their homes and wasps their nests, but man has transformed and incorporated within himself the same forces which the animals manifest outwardly, and by this means he has brought into being what we call his higher human organisation. In order that man should be able to walk upright, in order that he should have a more perfect brain, and, in general, a more perfect inner organisation, certain forces were necessary, and these are the same forces with which the beaver constructs his dwelling. The beaver builds his home, but man has turned the forces inwards upon himself, to his brain, etc., and so he has nothing left over with which to work outwardly. So if we, at the present time move among the animals with a more perfect constitution, it is due to the fact that we have applied inwardly all the forces that the beaver expends in an outward way. We have our beaver-building within us, and therefore we are no longer able to manifest these forces outwardly in the same way. When we take a comprehensive view of the world, we understand the origin of the various capacities which exist in creation, and how they appear to us to-day.

Why had man to turn towards an inner organisation the special forces which we see manifested in the external achievements of animals? Because only by acquiring this inner organisation could man become the vehicle of what at the present day is the Ego which progresses from incarnation to incarnation. No other organisation could have become this bearer of the Ego, because it depends altogether upon the external shrine whether an Ego individuality is able to be active in the earthly existence or not. It could not do so if the external organisation were not suited to the Ego-individuality. Everything contributed to making this organisation thus suitable, and to this end a particular arrangement had to be made, the essentials of which we already know.

We know that the Moon evolution preceded the Earth evolution. Before that again was the Sun evolution which was preceded by a Saturn evolution. When the ancient Moon evolution came to an end, man was at a stage of development—as regards his external life—which may be described as animal-humanity. At that time this external human organisation had not progressed far enough for it to become the vehicle of an Ego-individuality. It was the Earth evolution of man which had the task of embodying the Ego in this organisation. But this could only come about by regulating our Earth evolution in a very special way. When the old Moon development came to an end, everything dissolved, so to speak, into chaos. Up to a certain time of cosmic dawn, the new cosmos of our Earth evolution came forth. In it was contained everything which, as our solar system, is connected with us and the Earth. From this whole, from this cosmic unity there split off all the other planetary bodies belonging to our special Earth existence. We need not go into the manner in which the other planets, Jupiter, Mars, etc., split off. We have only to point out that at a certain period in our Earth-phase of evolution, our Earth and our Sun separated. While the Sun had already separated and was sending down its activities to the Earth from outside, our Earth was still united with the present Moon, so that the substances and spiritual forces which at the present day belong to the Moon, at that time were still united with the Earth.

Now we have often touched upon the question as to what would have happened if the Sun had not split away from the Earth, and passed over into that condition in which it works on the Earth from outside as it does now. In the beginning when the Earth was still united to the Sun, the conditions were quite different and the whole cosmic system included the ancestors of the human organisation making one unity. It is absurd to look at modern conditions and say: ‘What nonsense those Anthroposophists talk! If that had been so, all beings would have been burnt up!’ But these beings were so organised that at that time they could exist under conditions quite different from those of this epoch. Now if the Sun had remained in union with the Earth, forces very different and much more violent would have remained with the Earth; and the consequence would have been that the whole evolution of the Earth would have progressed with such violence and speed that it would have been impossible for the human organisation to develop as it should. Therefore it was necessary that the Earth should be given a slower tempo, and denser forces placed at its disposal. This could only be brought about by the withdrawal of the violent and stormy forces from the Earth. The forces of the Sun worked less violently when acting from outside after withdrawal from the Earth. Through this, however, something else took place. The Earth was now in a condition in which mankind could again not progress in the right way. The state of the Earth was now too dense, and it exercised a drying and petrifying action on all life. If conditions had remained so, man would have again been unable to develop. This was remedied by a special arrangement. Some time after the exit of the Sun the present Moon left the Earth, and took away the retarding forces which would have brought all life to a slow death. Thus the Earth remained behind between Sun and Moon, selecting exactly the right tempo for the human organisation, and enabling it to take up an Ego, and to be the bearer of the individuality which goes on from incarnation to incarnation. The human organisation as it exists to-day was produced from the cosmos under no other conditions than through this process—first the separation of the Sun and then that of the Moon.

Someone might perhaps say: ‘If I had been the Almighty I would have done it differently; I would very soon have produced such a combination that the human organisation would have been able to progress in the manner it had to progress! Why was it necessary that the Sun had first to go out and then after a time the Moon?’

The person who thinks in this way thinks much too abstractly. He does not reflect that when in the universal order so complex a thing as the human organisation is to be produced, a special arrangement is necessary for each single part. One cannot convert into reality what human thought invents and imagines. Abstractly one can think anything, but in true Spiritual Science one has to learn to think concretely so that one says: The human organisation is not a simple thing; it consists of a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. These three parts had first to be brought into a particular equilibrium, so that the several parts should be correctly related to one another. This could only take place through this threefold process: First, the formation of the unitary cosmos—the entire cosmic unity of Earth, Sun and Moon together. Then something had to be done that would work in a retarding way on the human etheric body which would otherwise have consumed all evolution too fiercely—this was accomplished by the withdrawal of the Sun. Then again the Moon had to be withdrawn, because otherwise through the astral body the human organisation would have died. These three processes had to take place because of man's threefold organisation.

Thus we see that man owes his existence and his present qualities to a complicated arrangement in the cosmos. But we also know that the evolutions of all the kingdoms of nature do not by any means proceed at the same rate as the general evolution. From various lectures given in preceding years, we know that on each of the planetary incarnations of the earth, certain beings have always remained behind the general evolution. Then, as evolution proceeds they live in conditions which do not fully correspond to this evolution. We also know that fundamentally all evolution can only proceed in the right way through the remaining behind of these entities. During the old Moon evolution certain beings remained behind as the luciferic beings, and through them much that is evil has resulted; but to them we also owe what makes human existence possible, namely, the possibility of freedom, of the free development of our inner being. Indeed, we may say that in a certain sense the remaining behind of the luciferic beings was a sacrifice. They remained behind so that during the Earth existence they could exercise certain activities; they could bestow on man the qualities which pertain to his dignity and the ordaining of his destiny. We must accustom ourselves to entirely different ideas from those which are customary; for according to the usual ideas one might perhaps say that the luciferic spirits failed to progress and had to remain behind; and we could not excuse their negligence. But it was not a question of the negligence of the luciferic beings; in a certain sense their remaining behind was a sacrifice, in order that they might be able to work on our earthly humanity through what they acquired by this sacrifice.

From the last lecture you already know that not only beings but also substances remained behind and preserved laws which in previous planetary conditions were the right ones, and then carried those laws into the later evolution. Thus phases of evolution belonging to ancient times mingle and interpenetrate with those of modern times. And it is this which brings about such great complexities in life, which offers us degrees of existence [that are] the most diverse. The animal kingdom could never have developed alongside the human kingdom to-day if certain beings had not remained behind at the end of the Saturn period in order, while mankind on the Sun was already developing a stage higher, to form a second kingdom and come forward as the first ancestors of our present animal kingdom. Thus this remaining behind was absolutely necessary as a base for later formations.

Now a comparison may explain why beings and substances had to remain behind. The development of man had to progress by degrees, and it could only do this in the same degree to which man refined himself. Had he always worked with the same forces with which he had worked during the Saturn phase, he would not have progressed, but would have remained behind. For this reason he had to refine his forces. As an illustration, let us suppose we have a glass of water in which some substance is dissolved. Everything in this glass from top to bottom will be of the same colour, the same density, etc. Now let us suppose that the grosser substances settle to the bottom; then the purer water and the finer substances remain above. The water could only be refined by separation of the grosser parts. Something like this was also necessary after the Saturn evolution had run its course, so that such a sediment appeared, and the whole of humanity separated from something, retaining all the finer parts. That which was left formed later the animal kingdom. By means of this separation man was able to refine himself, and rise a stage higher. At each step certain beings have to be separated, in order that man may rise higher and higher.

Thus we have a humanity which has only become possible through man's freeing himself from the beings which live around him in the lower kingdoms. At one time we were bound up with these beings, with all their forces, in the stress of evolution like the denser constituents in the water. We have uplifted ourselves from them and in this way our development has been made possible. Thus we look down upon the three kingdoms of nature around us, and see in them something which had to become a basis for our development. These beings have sunk in order that we might be able to rise. In this manner we look upon the subordinate kingdoms of nature from the proper aspect.

The study of the Earth development will help us to understand the details of this process still more clearly. We must quite understand that all the facts in our earthly development have certain relationships and connections. We have seen that the separation of the Sun and Moon from the Earth really came about in order that during the Earth evolution the human organisation might be able to develop to the extent of becoming an individuality; and in conjunction with this the human organisation was made pure. But through this separation in the universe for man's sake, through this great change in our solar system, the other three kingdoms of nature were also affected—especially the animal kingdom. If we wish to understand the influence exercised upon the animal kingdom through the processes of the separation of the Sun and Moon, this is what we arrive at as a result of spiritual investigation:—

Man was at a certain stage of evolution when the Sun separated. Now had he been obliged to keep to this stage at which he was during the period when the Moon was still united to the Earth, he would not have been able to attain his present organisation; he would have been confronted with a certain wasting and drying up. The Moon forces had first to go out. The possibility of this human organisation we owe only to the circumstance that during the period when the Moon was still part of the Earth, man had preserved an organisation which could still be pliable; for it might have been possible for his organisation to become so set that the exit of the Moon could no longer be of any use. Only the ancestors of humanity were at that pliable stage at which the organisation was still possible. Therefore the Moon had to separate at a particular time. Now what took place up to the time of the exit of the Moon?

The human organisation became grosser and grosser. Man did not, indeed, look like wood—that would be too gross a conception. The organisation at that time in spite of its grossness was still much finer than is our present organisation; but for that period between the exit of the Sun and that of the Moon, the organisation of man was so gross that the more spiritual part of him, which in a certain sense lived alternately within and without the physical body came at length to the crisis that when it wanted to re-enter its physical body it found this so dense, owing to events that had taken place on the earth that it could no longer enter into it as its dwelling. Hence it also came about that the spiritual and soul part of many of our human ancestors departed altogether from the earth, and for a certain time took refuge on other planets belonging to our solar system. Only a small number of the physical bodies could be used and maintain themselves over this time. As I have said, by far the greater number of human souls went out into space, but the onward stream of human evolution was maintained by a small number of those who were more robust and who were able to struggle and conquer. These robust souls carried the evolution over the critical period.

During the whole of this process the human individuality was still not evolved. There was still more of the character of the species soul, and when some souls withdrew they went into the soul groups.

Then came the exit of the Moon which made it possible for the human organisation to be further refined. It could then take up the souls which had previously soared away, and these souls gradually—up to and during the Atlantean Epoch—came down again and entered into the human bodies below. But certain organisms had reproduced themselves during this critical time and they could not become the vehicles of the human soul as they were too gross. Through this it came about that side by side with those organisations which were able to be refined and to become the vehicles of human individuality there had also been propagated organisms which could not, and these were the successors of the organisms which had been abandoned by the human soul during the time when the Sun had already withdrawn and the Moon was still united with the earth.

Thus side by side with man we see a kingdom of organisms actually developing, which, by preserving the Moon character had become incapable of being the vehicles of human individuality.

These organisms are essentially those which have become our present animal kingdom. It may seem curious that the grosser organisms of the present animals have certain capacities whereby they are able to act wisely, as is instanced in the work of the beaver, etc.; but this can be fully explained if we do not think too superficially. It is precisely the organisation of these beings which have not been entered into by human souls, which has developed the external arrangements of the animal structure—a nervous system, etc., that has made it possible for them to place themselves entirely in harmony with the laws of the Earth existence. For those beings which did not evolve the capacity for taking up human souls, remained united with the earth the whole time. The other organisations which later refined themselves, so that they could take in human individualities, certainly were also with them on the earth, but because they had to undergo certain changes later on when the Moon was outside, they lost these capacities, or rather transmuted them in refining themselves, and in having to go through other changes.

Thus we notice that when the Moon had separated, there were upon the earth certain organisations which had simply reproduced in themselves the old conditions such as existed when the Moon was formerly united with the Earth. These organisations had remained gross, had preserved the laws which they had before, and had become so set that when the Moon detached itself, no change took place in them. They simply propagated themselves rigidly further. The other organisations which were to become the vehicles of human individualities could not perpetuate themselves rigidly as the grosser organisations did. They had to change themselves in such a way that those beings which meanwhile had not been united with the Earth, and must now return to it, could now work into them. Here we have the difference between the beings which have preserved the old rigid Moon character and those which have changed themselves. Now, in what did the change consist?

When those souls which had gone away from the earth returned, and once more took possession of bodies, they began to make alterations in the nervous system, the brain, etc. They applied their forces, as it were, to inward construction. There could be no change now in the other beings which had hardened. Different beings now took possession of these latter organisms, beings which had remained behind at a previous stage and which were not sufficiently evolved to operate on the organism from within. They worked rather from the outside as the Group-Souls of the animals. Thus the human soul came into possession of the organisations which were suited to them after the exit of the Moon, and these beings then worked up the organisation into what led to a perfect human structure. Those organisations which remained rigid during the Moon period could no longer be changed, certain souls then took possession of these, such souls as had not on the whole developed far enough to set to work in an individuality, but had remained behind at the Moon stage, developing as far as was then possible. They therefore now took possession of these lower organisations as ‘Group-Souls.’

Thus the difference between man and animal is explained by cosmic events. Through cosmic processes in the Earth's evolution two kinds of organisations have been produced. Had we been obliged to remain with a structure such as that of the beings immediately below mankind we should now be obliged to hover around the earth because our organisation would have been too rigid. We could not, therefore, have come down into them, and although we had become more perfect beings, we should have had to remain where the organisation of the group-souls of the animals are. As, however, our organisations were able to refine themselves, we could enter into them and use them as our dwelling place; that is we could descend into bodily incarnations. The group-souls did not need to do this; they act on these beings from the spiritual world.

Thus in the animal kingdom surrounding us we see something that we also should have been to-day, if our present organisation had not been transformed. Let us now ask how the animals with their more rigid organisations have appeared on the earth. They came down through us. They are the descendants of the bodies which we no longer wished to occupy after the exit of the Moon. We left those bodies behind in order to find others later and we should not have been able to find others later, if we had not forsaken those at that precise time. For only after the exit of the Sun could we continue our progress on the Earth. We left behind us as it were, certain beings, in order that we ourselves might find the possibility of rising higher. In order to rise higher we had to go to other planets and leave the bodies below to go to ruin, and in a certain sense we owe what we are to what remains below. Indeed, what we owe may be described still more minutely. We may ask how it was possible for us to leave the Earth during the critical period, for a being cannot go just where it likes.

During the Earth evolution there came for the first time something we owe to the luciferic spirits. They were our leaders and took us away from the Earth evolution at the critical period. It was as though they said to us: ‘Down below a critical time is now coming and you must leave the Earth.’ We left the Earth under the guidance of the Lucifer spirits, the same beings who brought into our astral body of that time the luciferic principle, the tendency in us to all that we call the possibility of evil; but with it also at the same time came the possibility of freedom. Had they not taken us away from the Earth at that time we should always have been chained to the form that we had then created, and we should now, at the most, only be able to float above that form without ever being able to enter. So they took us away and united their own being with our being.

If we bear this in mind we shall understand that during the time we went away we took in the luciferic influences. Those other organisations which did not share in this destiny whereby we were led to certain regions of the world, remained down below without the luciferic influence. They had to share our earthly fate, but they could not share our heavenly fate. And when we came back to the earth we had the luciferic influence in us—but those other beings had not. Thereby it became possible for us to lead a life in a physical body and yet a life independent of it, so that we might become more and more independent of the physical body. But these other beings which had not the luciferic influence represent what our astral bodies were in the interval between the exit of the Sun and that of the Moon, namely that from which we liberated ourselves. We look upon the animals and say: ‘All that the animals manifest in the way of cruelty, voracity, and all animal vices, besides the skill which they have we should have had within us, if we had not been able to eject them. We owe this liberation of our astral bodies to the circumstance that all the grosser astral bodies have remained behind in the animal kingdom and the earth.’ We may, indeed, say that it is well for us that we no longer have the cruelty of the lion, the slyness of the fox, etc., but that these are withdrawn from us and lead an independent existence outside us.

Thus the animals have the astral body in common with us, and are therefore able to feel pain. But from what has now been said we see that they do not possess the power to evolve through pain and through the conquest of pain, for they have no individuality. The animals are on this account much more to be pitied than us. We have to bear pain, but each pain is for us a means to perfection; through overcoming it we rise higher. We have left behind us the animal as something that already has the capacity to feel pain but does not yet possess the power to raise itself above pain, and to triumph by means of it. That is the fate of the animals. They manifest to us our own former organisation when we were capable of feeling pain, but could not yet, through overcoming the pain, transform it into something beneficial for humanity. Thus in the course of our earthly evolution we have left off our worst to the animals, and they stand around us as tokens of how we ourselves came to our perfection. We should not have got rid of the dregs if we had not left the animals behind. We must learn to consider such facts, not as theories, but rather with a cosmic world feeling. When we look upon the animals we should feel: ‘You animals are outside. When you suffer, you suffer something of which we reap the benefit. We men, however, have the power to overcome suffering while you must endure it. Having received suffering we have passed it on to you, and are taking to ourselves the power to overcome it.’

If we develop this cosmic feeling out of the theory, we then experience a great and all-embracing feeling of sympathy for the animal kingdom. Hence when this universal feeling sprang from the primeval wisdom of humanity, when mankind still possessed the remembrance of the original knowledge which told each one by a dim clairvoyant vision how things once were, there was preserved with it sympathy for the animal kingdom also, and this to a high degree. This sympathy will come again when people accustom themselves to take up Spiritual Science, and when they again see how the karma of humanity is bound up with the world karma. In the so-called dark ages when materialistic thought held sway, one could not have the right perception of this connection. At that time one observed only what was side by side in space, without taking into consideration the fact that whatever is side by side in space has a common origin, and has only separated in the course of evolution. It was natural that one should cease to feel the connection between man and animal; and in those parts of the earth where it has been the mission to hide the spiritual knowledge of this connection, replacing it by a consciousness concerning itself only with outward physical space, man has paid in a strange fashion his debt to the animals. He has eaten them.

These things show us how world conceptions are connected with the human world of perception and feeling. The latter are the consequences of the former and as the conceptions and ideas change, the perceptions and feelings of humanity also change. Man could not do otherwise than evolve. It is due to this that he had to push other beings into the abyss so that he could rise higher himself. He could not give them an individuality which compensates karmically for what the animals have to suffer; he could only give them pain, without being able to give them the karmic compensation. But what he could not give them before, he will give them when he has come to the freedom and selflessness of his individuality. Then he will consciously apprehend the karmic law in this realm and will say ‘It is to the animals that I owe what I have now become. As the animals have fallen from an individual existence to a shadow existence I cannot repay to them what they have sacrificed for me, but I must make this good, so far as is possible, by the treatment I extend to them.’ Therefore with the progress of evolution there will come again through the consciousness of karma a better relationship between man and the animal kingdom than there is now, especially in the west. There will come a treatment of the animals whereby man will again uplift those he has pushed down.

Thus we see that there is a certain relationship, between karma and the animal kingdom, although we cannot, if we wish to avoid the confusion of thought, compare what the animal experiences as its fate, with human karma. But if we consider the whole Earth development, we shall see that we can indeed speak of a relation between the karma of humanity and the animal kingdom.

Anthroposophical comprehension of spirit is not intended to be a merely theoretical world-philosophy, but rather to be the full content and energizing power of life.

And it fulfills its mission only if we so strengthen our anthroposophical apprehension of the world that it becomes fully alive within us.

For in thus uniting our souls with the anthroposophical conception of spirit we have become, in a certain sense, guardians who watch over definite and significant processes in human evolution.

Apart from Anthroposophy, whether men are followers of one system or of another they are as a rule convinced that thoughts and ideas, besides what they are in their own minds, are not also something else in their connection with the outer world. They expect thoughts and ideas, as ideals, to become operative in the world only in proportion as titan, by his deeds in the realm of the senses, succeeds in establishing their value.

The whole anthroposophical attitude presupposes our clear understanding that our thoughts and ideas must find still other means of realization besides the results of our deeds in the outer sense-world.

In the very recognition of this vital necessity lies the demand that the anthroposophist bear his part in watching over the signs of the times. Much is happening in earthly evolution; and upon malt, and particularly upon man in our own time, lies the obligation to gain a genuine under-standing of what occurs in the evolution of the world in which he has been placed.

With regard to a single individual everyone knows that his development must be taken into account, and not the mere outer facts that are about him. Just consider, roughly speaking, the present external facts surrounding human beings who are five years, ten years, twenty, thirty, fifty, or seventy years of age. Vet no one who is reasonable will demand the same attitude towards these things from the five-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, the twenty-year-olds as from men of fifty or seventy. What a man’s reaction to his environment should be can be determined only by taking into consideration his personal development. This is universally admitted in regard to individuals.

But as the individual man is subject to a definite development, having a different kind of powers in childhood, middle life, and old age, just so has general humanity different powers at different periods of its evolution. One is, as it were, sleeping in the midst of the world evolution if one fails to note that humanity, in its essence, is different in the twentieth from what it was in the fifteenth century, or even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and earlier. Ignoring of this fact—the idea that one may speak of a mail or of general humanity abstractly, without consideration of their continuous evolving—belongs to the greatest errors, defi-ciencies, and aberrations of our time.

Now it may be asked: How is man to arrive at a more exact insight into these things? You know that we have often discussed one important point in regard to this evolution. The Greco-Latin period, from the 8th century B. C. to about the 15th century of our own era, we have to count as the so-called culture period of the Intellectual or Mind Soul; and the time since the 15th century as the culture period of the Consciousness Soul. This is an essential factor in the evolution of humanity precisely as regards our own time. Thus we know that the principal force in human development from the 15th century until the third millennium is the Consciousness Soul.

But in Spiritual Science, in real Spiritual Science one may never stop at generalities and abstract statements; one must seek at all times to grasp concrete facts. Abstractions are useful only when one is curious in a very ordinary sense. If it is intended to make Spiritual Science into life’s content, into a life-force, you must be more serious than curious, and you must not stop at such abstractions as I have just described. That we are living in the period of the Consciousness-Soul, that the development of the Consciousness-Soul is counted upon, is quite correct and extraordinarily important too, but we must not stop at that.

If we wish to attain to a definite view of these things we must first of all consider somewhat more exactly the essential constitution of man. As men we are divided, in the sense of Spiritual Science and counting from above downward, into the ego or 1, the astral body, the etheric body (which I have latterly called also the body of formative forces,) and the physical body. Among these different members of our human nature we live, for the time being, psychically and spiritually, only in the ego or I. The ego is given to us through our earthly evolution and the Spirits of Form who direct it. Everything, really, that enters our consciousness enters it through our ego. If the ego does not so unfold that it can maintain its connection—even though by means of the bodies—with the outer world, then we have as little consciousness as during sleep. The ego connects us with our environment. The astral body was given to us during the Moon-evolution that preceded the present Earth-evolution: our etheric body during the still earlier Sun-evolution; the physical body, in its inception, during the Saturn-evolution.

But when you go through the description of these bodies in Occult Science you will see in what a complicated way the adjustment of these four members was brought about in order to make man what lie is today. Do we not learn from the facts described in Occult Science that in the formation of the three sheaths of the human being spirits from all possible hierarchies took part? Do we not see that what enfolds its as physical body. etheric body, astral body is of a very very complicated nature? But not only did these hierarchies work together in bringing our vehicles into existence—they are still working within them. And no one understands man who believes him to be only a conjunction of flesh, blood, bones. etc., which natural science, physiology, biology, and anatomy describe.

Approaching the truth of this human sheath-being, seeing him in his reality, we perceive that beings from the higher hierarchies are working together wisely, as predetermined, in all that takes place unconsciously in his bodies. You may gather from the rather sketchy outlines which I have given in my Occult Science that this co-operation of individual spirits from the higher hierarchies in fashioning man must be very intricate in its details. But, nevertheless, if you wish to understand man you must come at these things ever more concretely, more in detail.

Now in this field of research it is extremely difficult even to focus the attention upon a concrete question; they are tremendously complicated, these concrete questions. Just suppose someone were to ask: What is the hierarchy of the Seraphim or of the Dynamis doing in the etheric body of man in the year 1918 of the present cycle of human evolution? For one can as easily ask this question as to ask, for instance, whether it is raining at the moment in Lugano. Of course, one can answer neither of these questions by mere thinking or by mere theories, but only by ascertaining the facts. Just as one must find out by a letter or telegram whether or not it is raining in Lugano, so we must inform ourselves through a real penetration of the facts regarding the present task, let us say, of the Spirits of Wisdom or the Thrones in the human etheric body. Such a question is of extraordinary complexity, and we can only persevere in our gradual approach to the spheres where such questions properly arise. And in this field of inquiry care is taken that man’s wings shall not grow up into the sky, and he become arrogant and proud, in his striving for real knowledge!

The nearest vistas, so to speak, which concern us most directly, are those upon which we can form a definite opinion. But these we ought to see clearly if we do not wish to remain asleep in regard to our own place in human evolution.

So I shall speak to you of a question which is not as vague and indefinite as the question: What are the Dynamis or the Thrones doing in our etheric body?—although this also is very concrete. Instead I shall put before you a question which really concerns men of the present day. This is: What are the angels (those active beings closest to man) doing in this present age within the astral body?

When we look into our inner being we see that the astral body lies nearest to our ego, so it is to be hoped that the reply to this question may vitally concern us. The angels are the hierarchy directly above the human hierarchy itself. So we are asking a moderate question, and later we shall see how we can answer the inquiry: What is being done by the angels in the human astral body, right now in the present age of mankind, which is passing through the 20th century, the period which began in the 15th century and will last into the beginning of the 3rd millennium?

Now what can be said as to the means of answering such a question? One can only say that spiritual research, if earnestly pursued, is not a trifling with concepts or words, but really works into the sphere where the spiritual world becomes perceptible. And anything so close to us may certainly be observed, but this question may be answered profitably only in the age of the consciousness-soul itself.

You might easily think that if this question could have come up in earlier ages and an answer been demanded, that this answer would now be at hand. But neither in the age of atavistic clairvoyance, nor in the Greco-Latin period could this question be answered, for the reason that the soul-pictures obtained by atavistic clairvoyance obscured the observation of the angelic activity in our astral body. There was nothing to be seen, just because of these atavistic pictures; and in the Greco-Latin period, thinking was not yet as forceful as it now is ... thinking has been strengthened, particularly through the era of natural science. So the age of the consciousness-soul is the one in which such questions may be consciously and effectively considered.

The productive quality of our Spiritual Science must be shown in that we do not put people off with theories, but are able to offer knowledge that is definitely applicable to life.

What are the angels doing in our astral body? We can convince ourselves of what they are doing only by rising to a certain degree of clairvoyant observation, so that we see what takes place in our astral body. We must attain at least to a certain degree of imaginative cognition if the formulated question is to be answered.

Then it becomes evident that these beings from the hierarchy of the angels—each angelic individual having its responsibility towards one 1w-man being, but also all working together—form pictures in the human astral body. They produce pictures tinder the guidance of the Spirits of Form

Unless we rise to imaginative cognition we do not realize that images are induced continuously in our astral body. They arise, these pictures, and then fade away. Were they not so created there would he in the future no development for man that would express the intention of the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form propose to accomplish with us during and beyond the Earth evolution they must first model, as it were in images, and later their objective reality will appear in a transformed humanity.

Today the Spirits of Form are already creating these images in the astral body through the angels. The angels form pictures in the astral body upon a plane which man may reach by raising his thinking to clairvoyance. And if we can follow up these pictures, then we see that they are constructed according to definite impulses and principles, and in such a way that in the manner of their inception lie certain forces for the future development of mankind. If we watch the angels at their work (however strange this may sound, we can only express it in that way), if we watch, we shall notice that the angels have in their work a very definite intention in regard to future social conditions on earth. They aim to implant in the astral bodies such images as will bring about in the future certain determined social conditions in the united life of humanity.

Men may resist the admission that angels are releasing within them ideals for the future, but it is nevertheless true. And there is a fundamental principle in this picture-forming by the angels: the fundamental rule that in the future no one is to find peace in the enjoyment of good fortune while others beside him are unhappy. There reigns an impulse of the most perfect fraternity—of brotherhood rightly understood—of the most absolute unification of the human race with relation to social conditions in physical life. That is one standpoint, according to which the im-ages are formed by the angels in the human astral body.

But there is a second impulse with reference to which the angels form these images. They have certain objectives, not only in relation to the outer, social life, but also in relation to the soul itself, and to the soul-life of men. Through pictures imprinted upon the astral body they aim to so affect the soul-life that in the future every man shall see in his neighbor a hidden divinity.

Mark well, my dear friends: the angels intend through their work to bring about changes. These will be such that we shall no longer consider man, either in theory or practice, as a highly developed animal—according to his physical qualities alone. Instead we shall approach everyone with the fully developed realization that in every man something appears that takes its rise in fundamental divine sources, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive of man as a manifestation, a revelation from the spiritual world, as earnestly as possible, as strongly as possible, as intelligently as possible—all this is being put into their pictures by the angels.

When this comes true it will have quite definite results. All the free religious instinct that will unfold in humanity will be founded upon the fact that in every man the image of God will he acknowledged in immediate life practice rather than in mere theory. Then there will be no religious coercion; none will be needed, for then every meeting between men will be as a matter of course a religious act, a sacrament, and no one will need any particular church organization upon the physical plane to support his religious life. The church, if it rightly understands itself, can have but one object: to render itself unnecessary upon the physical plane in that all life is being made into an expression of the supersensible.

To pour out upon mankind complete freedom of the religious life underlies the impulses of the angels’ work.

There is also a third intention: to give to humanity the possibility of attaining to the spirit through thought, through thinking to leap across the chasm, and arrive at direct spiritual experience.

Spiritual Science for the spirit, religious freedom for the soul, fraternity for the body—that resounds like cosmic music through the work of the angels in human astral bodies. Man needs only to lift his consciousness to a different level to feel himself removed to this wonderful workshop of angelic activity.

Now the fact is that we are living in the age of the consciousness-soul, and in this age the angels work within the astral body as I have just described. Man is to come gradually to conscious comprehension of these things. This belongs to human development. 1-low then, does one come to say anything like that which I have just told you? Where, so to say, is this activity to be found?

Well, it is still found today in the sleeping man. It is found in the conditions of normal sleep, and it is also found in waking sleep conditions. I have often explained how men, though supposedly awake, sleep their life away in the midst of most important matters. And I can give you the not very cheering assurance that anyone who goes through life consciously finds today many many sleepers. What is happening in the world they permit to happen, without interesting themselves in it, or troubling themselves about it, or taking any part in it. Great world-events often pass by men, as that which takes place in the city passes by sleepers—although the people are apparently awake. Then, however, if such men, though waking, are wholly unaware of something important, we can see in their astral bodies—quite independently of what they do or do not wish to know—how this important work of the angels goes on, of which I have spoken.

Such things often proceed in a manner which must seem to humanity very puzzling, very paradoxical. Many a man is regarded as quite unworthy to enter upon this or that connection with the spiritual world. But in truth such an one is in this incarnation just a fearful sleepyhead, who dozes through everything that goes on around him. Yet in his astral body one of the company of angels is working for the future of mankind. The astral body is nevertheless made use of, and all this may be observed within it.

But the point is that such a thing as this must force its way into the human consciousness. The consciousness-soul must be lifted to recognition of that which may be found only in this way.

Having accepted these assumptions, you will understand when I now call to your attention that this epoch of the consciousness-soul presses forward to a definite event, and that since it is with the consciousness-soul that we have to do, it will depend upon men how this event takes place in human evolution.

You see, it may come a hundred years earlier or later, but it really would have to enter the sphere of human development. And this happening may be thus described: men must come, purely through their consciousness-soul, through their own conscious thinking, to actual sight of the way in which the angels prepare the future of mankind. What spiritual science teaches on this subject must become the practical worldly wisdom of humanity, so practical that men may be firmly convinced, and of their own knowledge, that the angels intend what I have indicated.

Now the human race is so far advanced in its approach to freedom that it depends upon man himself to face this event in full consciousness, or to sleep it away. What would it mean to meet it in full consciousness? This means the following: It is possible today to study spiritual science; it is there; and it is only necessary to study it. It will be an aid if, in addition, various meditations are used, and such practical directions as are given in Knowledge of she Higher Worlds and its Attainment. But all that is really necessary is to study spiritual science, and consciously and rightly understand it. Without the development of clairvoyance any man may study it understandingly who does not himself set up the obstacle of prejudice. And if men study it ever more and more, assimilating its concepts and ideas, then their consciousness will so awaken that, instead of dozing through important events, they will become aware of them.

These events may be more exactly characterized, for just to know what the angel is doing is only a preparation. The main thing is to realize the threefold truth which mankind is to receive through the angelic activity, and which will make its entrance earlier or later, according to man’s receptivity, or at worst—not at all.

First: It will be shown how man, by means of his most immediate interest can comprehend the deeper side of human nature.

Yes, my dear friends, a moment will come, which men should not lose by sleeping, when they will receive from the spiritual world through their angels a stimulating impulse, which will lead them to feel a much deeper interest in every man than we are inclined to feel today. This heightened interest in our fellow man is not to develop subjectively in man’s usual indolent fashion, but suddenly, as with a leap, through the spiritual infusion of a certain secret—what the other man really is. I mean by this something concrete, not a theoretical abstraction: men will learn something that will arouse their continuous interest in each other. This is the first point in this threefold truth, and it will profoundly affect our social life.

The second point in it will be that the Christ-impulse requires, besides all else, complete religious freedom, and that no Christianity is genuine which does not make this freedom possible. This will be shown to each man spiritually, irrefutably by his angel.

And the third is the indisputable insight into the spiritual nature of the world.

This event, as already stated, is to take place in such a way that the consciousness-soul may acquire a definite relation to it. This is imminent in human evolution, for to this end the angel is working through its images in the astral body.

But I now point out to you that this approaching event is dependent upon the human will. Men may leave many things undone, and many are failing today in much that should lead to a conscious experience of this great moment.

There exist, however, as you know, other beings in universal evolution that have an interest in turning man from his course: the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings. The divine evolution of mankind includes the development I have described. If man were left to his own nature he would arrive in time at the perception of what the angel is unfolding in his astral body, but the Luciferic influence tends to force man away from this insight into the work of the angels. The Luciferic beings do this by curbing his will. They try to darken man’s understanding of the exercise of his own free will while making him into a good, even a spiritual being—indeed from the point of view which I am considering. Lucifer desires for man goodness, spirituality—but wishes to make it automatic, without free will. Man is to be raised to clairvoyance, in accordance with good principles, but automatically: he is to act as a spiritual reflection, an image of the divine, but without free will and the possibility of evil.

This is connected with definite evolutionary secrets. The Luciferic beings, as you know, have stood still at different stages of development, and they introduce elements foreign to normal evolution. They are interested in taking such a hold upon man that he may not attain to free will because they have never won this for themselves. Free will can be gained only upon earth, and they want to have nothing to do with the earth. They wish only Saturn, Sun. and Moon development—and to stop at that. These Luciferic beings hate in a sense the free will of man. They act in a highly spiritual way, but automatically—this is most significant—arid they want to lift man to their own spiritual height. They want to make him automatic—spiritual, but automatic. From this arises the danger that if man should become an automatic spiritual being before his consciousness-soul functions fully he might miss in the drowsiness of insensibility the revelation that is to come.

But the Ahrimanic Icings also work against this revelation. They do not strive to render man especially spiritual, but rather to kill in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They try to induce in hint the belief that he is really only a completely developed animal. Ahriman is in reality the great teacher of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the teacher of all that technical and practical activity which admits the value of nothing beyond the external life of the senses, which desires an extensive technology only in order that man may satisfy, with greater finesse, hunger, thirst, and other animal needs. Working upon the consciousness-soul by all sorts of subtle scientific methods; the Ahrimanic beings strive to obscure, to kill in man the realization that he is an image of Deity.

In earlier ages it would have been useless for the Ahrimanic spirits to try in this way through theories to becloud the truth. Why? In the Greco-Latin period, and even more truly in earlier times, when man still possessed atavistic clairvoyance, the manner of his thinking was unim-portant, for he still had the pictures through which he looked into the spiritual world. Whatever Ahriman might have suggested about his relation to the animals would have had no effect upon his conduct. Thinking became powerful—powerful in its weakness, one might say—only in our own fifth post-Atlantean period. Only since the 15th century has thinking been competent to lead the consciousness-soul into spiritual realms—or, on the other hand, to hinder it from entering the spiritual world. Only now are we living in an age when a theory, a science, by a conscious method may rob man of his divinity, or his experiences of divinity. This is possible only in the period of the consciousness-soul. Therefore the Ahrimanic spirits are striving to spread a teaching that will obscure the divine origin of man.

From the description of these influences, adverse to man’s normal divine evolution, it may be gathered how he must order his life, so that he may not permit to pass unobserved the revelation that is to come. For otherwise a great danger will arise. And against this man must be on the alert. or else instead of this momentous event, which is intended to affect powerfully the future form of Earth-evolution, something may take place which would seriously impair it.

You see, certain spiritual beings, attain their own development through maps, concomitantly with man’s unfolding. The angels who produce their images in the human astral body do not 4o this as a game, but in order that thereby something may be achieved. Vet, since results must be sought within humanity, the whole thing would be rendered futile if man, having acquired the consciousness-soul, should deliberately disregard it. The whole thing would become play! The angels would be only playing a game in the development of man’s astral body! Only by coming to realization within humanity does it become, not a game but a matter of serious import.

From this you may learn that the work of the angels must remain earnest under all circumstances. Consider what might be behind the scenes of existence if men could reduce the angelic activity to play, simply through their drowsy insensibility.

And what if that should nevertheless happen! What if humanity should persist in remaining stolidly unaware of the important spiritual revelation of the future! If, for example, men permit to pass unnoticed the middle part—that relating to religious freedom—and so miss the repe-tition of the Mystery of Golgotha upon the etheric plane, of which I have often spoken, the reappearance of the etheric Christ, and other important things; if men should lose all this, then what should be accomplished through pictures in the astral body would have to be brought about by the angels in another way.

If man, by failing to become alert, should prevent what ought to be done in his astral body, then an effort would be made to reach the same results through sleeping human bodies. That which man would remain densely unaware of in his waking condition would be carried out-by the angels with the help of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. There, forces would be sought in order to produce effects unattainable when the waking soul is within these bodies, but which may be induced while man, who ought to have been awake to these things, is outside his physical and etheric bodies, with his I and astral body.

That is the great danger for the period of the consciousness-soul. That is what might occur if men should not turn to the spiritual life before the beginning of the third millennium! We are separated from it, as you know, by only a brief time, since the third millennium begins with the year 2000. It might come to pass that what the angels are to gain as the result of their labor they would have to seek in the sleeping bodies of men instead of in waking humanity. They might be forced to withdraw all their work from the astral body and submerge it in the etheric body in order to bring it to realization. But man would have no part in this. It would have to be accomplished during his absence from the etheric body, for if he were present in his waking state he would prevent it.

Now I have given you a general idea of the matter. But what would be the result if the angels should be obliged to carry out such work through man’s physical and etheric bodies during sleep without his conscious cooperation?

Its effect upon human evolution would be undoubtedly threefold. First of all there would be engendered in man’s sleeping bodies, in the absence of his Ego and astral body, something not aroused through his free choice, but which he would find present when he awoke in the morning. It would always be present, and it would be instinct instead of conscious freedom, and therefore detrimental. And certain instinctive knowledge, which is to enter human nature, regarding the mysteries of birth, conception, and the entire sexual life, truly threatens to become harmful tinder the dangerous conditions which I have described: that is, the danger that certain angels would themselves then undergo a change, of which I cannot now speak further, since this change belongs to the deeper mysteries of the science of initiation, of which nothing may be given out at present. It may be said, however, that the effect upon human evolution would be such that certain instincts relating to sexual life would arise, not wholesomely in clear waking consciousness, but in a pernicious, destructive way. These instincts would not be mere personal errors, but would pass over into social life, bringing about conditions—through the effects of this sexual life upon the blood—which would prevent men from developing any sort of brotherhood on earth, but instead would cause them to oppose it. This would all be a matter of instinct.

Thus there is coming a decisive point where one may turn to the right, remaining watchful and alert; or to the left—and sleep! But in this latter case instincts will appear that will be horrible!

What will the natural scientists says if such instincts appear? They will say that they are a normal development, an inevitable stage in human evolution. Man cannot be warned of such dangers by natural science for. from the scientific standpoint, it is equally explicable whether men become angels or devils. In regard to either, science says the same thing: the later is derived from the earlier—the great wisdom of the causal explanation! Natural science will he quite unaware of the event of which I have spoken: for if human beings become half-devils through their sexual instincts, science will look upon it as a necessity of nature. In short, the matter cannot he explained scientifically, although whatever may happen, science will regard it as susceptible of explanation.

Such things are to be comprehended only through spiritual insight, by supersensible cognition.

Such would be the first result of the changes evoked within the angelic activity. The second would bring to mankind an instinctive knowledge of certain remedies—but a destructive knowledge!

In a materialistic sense everything connected with medicine would make an enormous advance. Men would have instinctive insight into the curative power of certain substances and combinations, and by this knowledge would do fearful harm. But the harm would be called useful. That which is unhealthy would be called healthy, for it would be discovered that certain processes would have enjoyable results. Certain methods leading in unwholesome directions would simply be found agreeable.

The knowledge of the healing power of various processes would be increased, but would take a harmful direction, for through certain instincts it would also be discovered what kind of diseases could be brought forth by different substances and agencies. And a man could decide, according to his selfishness and egotism, whether to bring about illness or to refrain from doing so.

The third result would be mail’s acquaintance with definite powers by which, with the slightest stimulus—through the harmonizing of certain vibrations—great mechanical forces could be unleashed in the world. A sort of mental guidance of mechanism, of everything of a mechanical nature, would be developed in this way, and the whole technique be led into a vicious channel, which would, however, inordinately please and serve man’s egoism.

That, my dear friends, is a concrete statement of possible developments, and a conception of life and being which can be rightly appreciated only by those who realize that an unspiritual conception of life cannot clarify the situation. If a pernicious medicine were produced, if a terrible aberration of the sex instincts should develop, or an evil motive power in world-mechanics through the application of spiritual powers to natural forces, all unspiritual world-philosophy would not see through it, nor realize its deviation from the true path … just as little as a sleeper, so long as he sleeps, could see the approach of a thief who is coming to rob him. He sees what has happened only when he awakes in the morning—and what a terrible awakening would await mankind! Yet without this awakening man would continue to pride himself upon the broadening of his medical knowledge, and find such satisfaction in certain sex aberrations that lie would praise these errors as superhuman, as freedom from prejudice, as open-mindedness! Ugliness would be beautiful, and beauty ugly in some connections, and it would not be noticed because all this would be looked upon as a natural development. But it would be a wandering from the path which, within humanity itself, is prescribed for man’s essential nature.

I believe, my dear friends, if any feeling has been gained of the way in which spiritual science presses into our whole attitude of mind and soul, that one may also be possessed of the earnestness necessary for the reception of such truths as have been presented today. We may derive from them—as from all aspects of spiritual science—the recognition of a certain responsibility, a life-obligation. Whatever our circumstances, whatever we may have to do in the world, the important point is to be able to preserve this thought: that our actions must be saturated and irradiated by our anthroposophical consciousness. Then we shall contribute something towards the true progress of mankind.

A man is entirely mistaken if he ever believes that true spiritual science, seriously and rightly understood, could ever divert him from the practical, intensive work of life. True spiritual science brings awakening—awakening to the kind of things that I have pointed out today. My dear friends, if we may use the comparison that seeing into the spiritual world is a further awakening, just as ordinary awakening is an awakening from sleep, we can then, in order to understand the comparison, ask this other question: Can the waking state be harmful to our sleep?

Certainly, if it is not what it should be! If a man’s waking life is wholesome he will have healthy sleep, but if his waking hours are stupid, lazy, comfort-loving, without exertion, then his sleep will be unhealthy. And it is just the same with the waking life to which we are attuning ourselves through spiritual science. If through spiritual science we establish in ourselves a proper relation to the spiritual world, this will guide the interests of the ordinary sense-world in right directions, in the same way that a healthy waking life regulates our sleep.

Anyone who considers the life of our own times must indeed be asleep if he remain unaware of several things. How men have boasted, especially in recent years. of their efficiency! They have brought it about that those who most despise the realm of ideas, the mental, and spiritual, now occupy all the responsible positions. And one could go on declaiming about efficiency in this life so long as mankind has not been actually dragged into the abyss. Just now a few are beginning—in most cases only instinctively—to croak that a new time must conic, that all sorts of new ideals must arise! But it is only croaking. And should these things appear as instincts only, without conscious adaptation to the life of spiritual science, they would lead to the degeneracy of that which ought to be experienced in the waking state, rather than to any advantageous evolutionary transition.

He who appeals to people in familiar phrases may still meet with sonic success, but men will have to endure other words, unaccustomed expressions, in order that out of chaos a social cosmos may again emerge.

If in any age the men who should wake fail to do so, and do not recognize what ought to be done, then nothing authentic happens, but the ghost of the preceding epoch wanders around. In many religious organizations ghosts of the past move about, and our legal systems are still haunted by the ghost of ancient Rome. In the age of the consciousness-soul spiritual science is to free men from this bondage, and lead them to actual observation of a spiritual fact: What does the angel do in our astral body? To theorize about the angels, etc., is at best but a beginning. Progress requires us to speak factually, both in regard to our own period, and in an-swering the question which most immediately concerns us. It does concern us because the images that the angel is evoking in our astral body are to determine our future conditions, which must he brought to actuality through the consciousness-soul.

If we had no consciousness-soul we should not need to trouble ourselves, for other spirits, other hierarchies, would enter and work out what the angel is weaving; but since we are to develop the consciousness-soul no other spirits will step in to bring the angel’s work to realization.

Of course in the Egyptian age different angels performed this work of weaving. But soon other spirits entered, and to man this was darkened by his atavistic-clairvoyant consciousness. Thus men wove—these men, because of what they saw clairvoyantly—a (lark veil over the angels’ pictures. But now man himself is to unveil them. Therefore, he must not miss by sleeping that which will be brought into his conscious life during the period which is to close even before the third millennium. Let us extract from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not merely all sorts of doctrines, but also resolutions; and these will give us strength to be wakeful. We can accustom ourselves to being wakeful human beings. We can he mindful of many things.

We can begin at once with watchfulness, discovering that not a (lay passes in which some miracle does not take place in our lives. We may also reverse this statement. We may say: If on any given day we call find nothing wonderful in our experience, we have simply overlooked it. Try at night to look over your life. You will find in it some circumstance great or small, of which you may say to yourself: It entered my life most strangely, and was accomplished quite unusually. You will succeed in this if you think comprehensively enough, if you fix your soul’s eye upon the association of events. In ordinary life this is not done because people seldom ask themselves: What, for instance, was prevented by this or that?

We seldom trouble ourselves to consider the things which have been prevented and which, had they occurred, would have entirely altered our lives. Back of these things, which were removed in one way or another, there exists a great deal that may well educate us in wakefulness. How many things might have happened to me today? If I ask myself this question every evening, and then think over single circumstances that might have brought about this or that result, there will attach to such questions reflections that will lead to watchfulness and self-discipline. This is something which, once begun, will take us further and further, until at last we do not try to find out only what was meant by the fact that we, for example, wanted to go out some morning at half-past ten, and that just at the very last moment some man or other came who detained us…

We are annoyed by the delay, but we do not ask what might have happened if we had really gone at the time planned. What was altered thereby?

I have already spoken to you more explicitly of these practices. From observation of the negative in our lives (which, however, bears eloquent witness to the wisdom guiding us), up to observation of the angel weaving and working in our astral body, there is a direct path, a very direct path, and one which we may safely follow.

I have often pointed out how the need of modern mankind for a socialization of the social order arises precisely from the antisocial impulses of mankind, which are more prominent in the present than in earlier times. People today are much more antisocial in their emotional life, in general in their soul life, than in earlier times. And one would like to say: In relation to the more elementary, natural development of mankind, the antisocial impulses are increasing. It can also be said that in the course of the last four centuries people have more or less given themselves over to certain antisocial impulses in the wide circle of social life. And the countercurrent against this abandonment to antisocial impulses is the call for socialization. This call for socialization flares up in people's consciousness precisely because strong antisocial impulses awaken in people's subconscious.

Today this can be traced into the most intimate life of the soul. Never, however, has it been so difficult for people to convince themselves of anything that comes to them as an opinion, or even as the evidence of another; never has the stubbornness with regard to standing on opinions been so great as it is at the present time. And when it happens that someone draws attention to the one-sidedness of every human opinion, yes, also to the one-sidedness of everything that is called human truth, when it happens that someone illuminates things from different sides, then he is reproached for expressing one opinion and another. We will not come to healthy socialization, which is based on social understanding of people, if this ability of adaptation of the individual to the other does not also occur for the human soul.

Now, of course, it is deeply, deeply rooted in the historical development that this is the case today with the antisocial instincts. For people have been developing since the middle of the 15th century in the age of the consciousness soul. People should gradually place themselves on the basis of individual consciousness. Therefore, they can reach a social life only in a different way than in earlier ages, where still the group instincts, the group-egos played a much greater role than they play today. Therefore we see discrepancies everywhere today in the social life of people. We see strange non-coherence. Man always has something in him somewhere in the subsoil of his soul through which he understands everything that can reveal itself in any time. Only he is usually not far enough with his head understanding, with his intellect. Then the strange phenomenon can occur - which should be observed especially by those who join a spiritual-scientific movement - that just those who have learned too much in any direction, lag behind in the development. We experience this today in the most sufficient measure. We would be able to make much faster progress today in understanding what is socially necessary if the masses were not held back by those who have learned too much from the old, who live too much in old concepts, who have adapted themselves too stubbornly to the old concepts. On the whole, it can be said that today the broad mass of the proletariat would certainly have understanding for the most advanced impulses, if they were not held back by that leadership which for decades has fitted itself into quite definite rigid concepts and now cannot go any further. The holding back of people by those who have learned too much, just too much of what could be learned in the 19th century, that is something very significant for the psychological understanding of our time. Therefore, one will only slowly and gradually be able to see something, which, however, is very intensively necessary to see.

On what - this must be asked again and again - have the present leading people formed their concepts, their ideas, their feelings, also their social will? They have trained them on the scientific ideas that played such a great, such a decisive role in the 19th century. One must not be deceived about this. Scientific ideas have penetrated everywhere. But scientific ideas, as they have emerged in the last four centuries, are only applicable to the dead, to that which has died, to that which no longer has life. It is not an extraordinariness, but it is deeply rooted in the essence of the matter that the present ideas about the essence of man can only be applied to what is gained from the corpse, to what is gained in general outside the context of life. What scientific conceptions can give about man, that does not lead to man, not to Homo, that leads only to the homunculus. And that is why people, when they begin to think socially today, always think past reality. They think only of that which basically destroys the social organization, which dismantles it, and not of that which brings new fertilizing life to the social organization. Because people have not absorbed any ideas about the living during the last four centuries, they have not learned to supply fruitful life to the healthy organism. It is the tragedy of the present time that we live only from concepts about the dead, and that the social organism demands from us to assert impulses that are valid for life. But we have no concept of the living precisely within that which is today regarded as the formation of mankind. Does anyone today ask about the social organism as if it were a living thing? He does not.

I have already pointed this out to you the other day: Let us imagine that someone raises the question: Why should we always eat? We satisfy ourselves by eating, but we achieve nothing other than that we are hungry again afterwards; so we might as well keep hunger! - It is not true that it would be foolishness if someone thought in this way towards the natural organism; but according to this pattern of foolishness one actually always thinks with reference to the social organism! This has the effect that this social organism must again and again be shaken and trembled by shocks, which, if the misunderstanding of social life lasts very long, must become revolutionary shocks and even revolutions on a large scale. Because in the last centuries people have become entangled in all kinds of social illusions, that is why the terrible revolutionary train has arisen in our time. What can help there? It can only help to see social life as something really alive. What, then, is a revolution? You see, a revolution is nothing more than the sum of all the necessary small revolutions. There are always revolutions. As in the natural human organism, which also undergoes very significant revolutions from one saturation period to another, so there are always revolutions in the social organism. Why? Because it cannot be otherwise than that through the interaction of the individual human faculties, of the spiritual part of man with the economic life, the tendency arises continually for individual men to gain the upper hand over others. This tendency is simply always present in economic life and in spiritual life. In economic life, for example, there is always the tendency to form capital. If this tendency of economic life to form capital were not present, then economic life would have to die out altogether. For it is only through capital that it is possible that the complicated means of production exist in our advanced times.

But the performance of work on these means of production cannot be achieved by anything other than individual human abilities. When capital is formed, small revolutionary foci are naturally always formed. And government must consist in being vigilant against the formation of small revolutionary foci. We must constantly work against revolution, but not by asking: How can we prevent the creation of capital? -but: What must be done with capital when it has developed for a certain time in one place? - It must be transferred from one individuality to another! That is what matters. The way must be found, also for the material goods, which are expressed in the means of production, which, as I said to you the other day, is found to be the most feasible for the most wretched good, which today's mankind regards as the most wretched good. What one produces spiritually, is lost after some time for the family of the producer, it goes over into the 'general public. The material goods must find their transition into the social organism even at the moment when they no longer have any connection with the individual ability of man, so that they are in turn best utilized by other individual abilities. Socialist thinkers today ask quite wrong questions with regard to the social organism. Socialist thinkers today ask: How can private ownership of the means of production, including land, be prevented? That is, how to kill the life of the social organism? We have just seen in the course of the capitalist economic order that private capital in the means of production and in land produces great damage. The simplest question then seems to be this: How do we get rid of that which causes damage, how do we prevent it from arising in the first place? But this is a killing question. A living question is this: What is to be done with private capital so that it does not cause further damage? How can it be appropriately separated from the private capitalist and transferred to another producer when he himself no longer produces in the service of the social organism? The questions already have to be asked from a much deeper understanding than the present mankind even suspects. The present mankind actually lives in its illusions only because it does not draw the consequences of these illusions in reality. All kinds of professors of national economy in all universities of the world teach today many things according to the recipe: Wash my fur, but do not wet it. - This is the basis of these teachings, which aim at socialization. The very old antisocial teachings are still represented only by some old buttons. But that these good professors teach these things is only possible because they do not draw the consequences. The consequences of what these professors teach are drawn by Lenin and Trotsky. There is a continuous connection. And one should actually rise to a completely different thinking towards the social organism. One should not stop at the old habits of thought, but go over to new habits of thought, because the old habits of thought, consistently carried out, must lead to the robbery of the old social order. And this is what people find it so difficult to decide to embrace new habits of thought. This will perhaps not happen until people really think in a spiritual-scientific way, and until the thoughts they get used to in spiritual science will also be the teachers, perhaps better the disciplinarians, for the way they should think socially. It will always remain something half if one merely spreads social teachings today without imbuing them with the actual spiritual-scientific teachings which make thinking and feeling and imagining, above all judging, so flexible as we need it today if we want to fit into the great complication of life which has now necessarily come upon modern mankind.

Is it not necessary to ask: What is this human being who is to be integrated into the social organism, this human organism? Can one actually promise oneself to feel right about the social organism if one does not first feel right about man himself? For man is a member of this social organism. Now natural science, in spite of all its great progress, has led away from the understanding of the real man, not towards it. That is what must be considered.

If one says to people today: Look, the healthy social organism must consist of the three independent members, the spiritual organization, the political state and legal organization and the economic organization, and if one then points out that the natural man also consists of three members, of the nervous-sensory system, of the lung-heart or rhythmic system, and of the metabolic system, then the clever people come and say: Again such a game with analogies! But it is not a question of playing with analogies, it is a question of training the spirit on the one hand in a correct understanding of the natural man, so that with the spirit trained in this way one can also understand the social organism correctly. It is not a question of making conclusions from one to the other, as Schäffle did in the past, and Meray has done again, but of making one's thinking so flexible in relation to the human organism that one can really understand the social organism in its needs.

One of the basic phenomena of the future understanding of man will be precisely this, how man descends from a spiritual life through birth, how he lives in his physical existence between birth and death and lives a social life with society, and then returns to the spiritual world through death. There it is a question of understanding already once this man as such really in his threefoldness. The present anatomist, the present physiologist, has man before him; for him a muscle in the head is the same as a muscle in the arm. He does not divide man into his three parts, he knows nothing about it, this present natural scientist, how man's origin comes from three sources. He does not ask properly, therefore he does not come to a proper answer, for example, what man has from the mother and what from the father. We have often spoken about the matter, today we can again speak about the matter from a certain point of view. You know, when man lives in this ordinary life, he lives in two different states of life or consciousness. While awake, the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego interpenetrate each other. In sleep, the physical body and the astral body are in bed; in the spiritual world, the I and the astral body are in bed. In the morning the ego and the astral body again unite with the physical body and the atheric body. Consider the human being who, when he sleeps, lies in bed without the ego and without the astral body. Of course, this is not a human being; but it is something essential of the human being who lives on the physical earth. You can separate very precisely from the whole man that which is there of the man who lives on the physical earth when he sleeps, and which manifests itself in the physical body and etheric body. Let us now first look away from the whole man, let us look at that which lies in bed at night, when the ego and the astral body are gone, and let us ask about the origin of this man, which consists of the physical body and etheric body, which lies in bed at night, let us ask about its next origin: Where does it come from? It is only a piece of man, but where does it come from? - What lies there in bed comes according to its disposition, its powers, not as it is first formed in the full human being, in the adult human being, but according to its dispositions, its powers, it comes from the mother and is already with the mother before any fertilization. That which merely comes in through the woman is that which then lies fully grown in the bed of man when he sleeps. That is not a human being; but it cannot become a human being either, what comes only from the mother.

It is not arbitrary talk when one divides man into these limbs of which one usually speaks, but it points to very real things. When one speaks of the physical body and etheric body, one speaks of what is predisposed in the mother before fertilization, what is always predisposed in the mother. When man from spiritual heights, after he has lived for a while the life between death and new birth, again inclines to the physical life, then he feels, as it were, that in a female personality related to him that disposition is found into which he can pour that which has developed in him since the last life from the rest of the organism to the head. The human embryonic formation therefore starts from the head. The head is that which first develops in a certain perfection in the human embryonic formation. That which acts on this head formation, which actually comes from the cosmos, is already in the ego and in the astral body. And the fact that the ego and the astral body can be together with the physical body and the etheric body comes from fertilization. Fertilization mediates the coexistence between the ego and the astral body, and the physical body and the etheric body. What is the origin of fertilization? Fertilization is first of all concerned with the mere metabolic life of man. It is aimed at giving him a new metabolic and respiratory organism, because the forces of the head organism originate from the previous incarnation. All that, therefore, which brings man, who comes from the previous incarnation, together with the head organism, man owes to his relation to the spiritual world. Everything that, so to speak, enters the human being in embryonic life, when fertilization has taken place, the human being owes to the coexistence with the earth being, with the earthly being.

There you see how complicated that comes about, what the human being actually is. To a certain extent, man's limbs, to which the metabolic system also belongs, are given to him internally, from the earth. That which functions in the human head is given to him from the spiritual world. And that which is breathing and heart system, that is in between.

And now you can ask: What is the essence that we can inherit from our father and mother? In which system of the human being do the forces lie by which we can inherit something from our father and from our mother? - We inherit nothing for our head from our father and mother, because, what works in our head, we bring with us from the previous incarnation. We do not inherit anything for our metabolic system, because that is what the earth gives us after fertilization. We inherit only within the lung-heart system, we inherit only in all the forces that live in breathing and blood circulation; there we inherit. Only one limb, the middle limb of man, the respiratory-circulatory limb, is that which owes its origin to the two sexes. Man is so complicated. He is a tripartite being also according to his physical organism. He has his head, which he can only use for that which is not earthly; he has his limbs with the metabolic system, which he can only use for that which is earthly; and he has that which lies in breathing and circulation, through the relationship of man to man.

I can only indicate to you here what leads to a wide, wide field of knowledge of man. What I have indicated to you looks like a theory. But for our time it is not a theory, but there is something in man today which feels in the sense of what I have just said, There is something developing in the present time which feels in this tripartite sense in man. Today man has complicated feelings in the innermost part of his being, without being fully aware of it. He knows himself through his head as a citizen of an extraterrestrial, he knows himself through his lung-heart system in a relation of man to man. There is something inside the human being that says: When I meet another human being, this meeting is an image of that which was transplanted into me also from human being to human being, namely through father and mother. Through his lung-heart system the human being feels quite placed among people. Through his metabolic system man feels himself as a member of the earth, as belonging to the earth. These three kinds of feelings are already in man today. But the mind does not want to go along. The mind wants everything to be simple, the mind wants that everything can be traced back to some monon. And this is what the people of the present day suffer from. They will no longer suffer from it only when the tripartite feeling in the inner being, which is really already found in man, corresponds to a tripartite social organism, when man finds a mirror image of his being on the outside.

You see, this is the terrible thing that lies in the subconsciousness of people who today belong to the social movement, For three to four centuries the spiritual life and everything that dominates the social coexistence of people has developed in such a way that this spiritual life is a mirror of the material life. Inside, however, the longing pulsates, the outer life should be a mirror of the inner. Today's mankind suffers from this. It wants to form the outer life in such a way that the outer social organism is an image of man, whereas today man is an image of the outer world. And people in the present see past this, they find it complicated, they find it theoretical. They find it easier to put the human being as a whole. Of course, it is more complicated to have to answer someone to the question: What is man? - to answer: Look at the representative of mankind in the middle and above Lucifer and below Ahriman! All three belong together in the unity of man. But the man is just tripartite and differently you do not understand the man.

This is not a theory, but something that is very, very real, that occurs in the human nature. Because man begins to feel tripartite about himself and about the world, he demands in his subconsciousness a tripartite social organism, not only a uniform monistic state organism, which also includes economic life and state life: A spiritual organization for itself, a legal or political or state organization for itself, and an economic organization for itself. Only then will man find himself in this outer world. And the earthquake-like tremors of our time stem from the fact that a culmination, a highest point, has been reached with regard to the non-correspondence of the outer social organism with the human inner being. While people are basically striving to feel the independent threefoldness of the social organism, their leaders, the leaders of the socialists, appear and say: Everything will already result from the economic life, if we let the economic life develop correctly, if we only reverse it a little, so that that which has been below comes above, and that which has been above comes below; then the right thing will already develop.

Nothing right will develop out of economic life alone, but only if one admits the independence of economic life on the one side, and on the second side of political legal life, of security life, and on the other side of the spiritual organization as such. If one really places the spiritual life on itself, then it must form its reality out of itself. Otherwise the chasms will always remain between the human classes. Today one does not even suspect how these abysses have actually opened up. Sometimes one can be confronted with the most justified in the sense of contemporary culture, and one will not understand how that which one who belongs to a class must feel to be completely justified cannot be understood by the other.

Take, to choose an obvious example, a well-painted landscape, a quite artistically painted landscape. The member of the bourgeois class has acquired certain feelings, certain ideas, as to how a well-painted landscape should look. With these feelings, with these ideas, he places himself in front of a landscape picture that is clamped in a frame and admires it. The proletarian may be induced to admire it, too, because he is gradually persuaded that it belongs to "education" to admire such a thing; some who are not proletarians do not understand anything about a landscape painting and admire it because they have been persuaded that it belongs to education. But this even breeds untruthfulness, because if one does not belong to the class where, among those who work physically, some are also bred who are allowed to be physically tired so that they can paint, so that they can think up how to paint, he only remains true if he confronts such a landscape in such a way that he says: What for? Someone paints a piece of forest on a canvas with blots of color, and I see it every day when I walk through the forest, much more beautiful. You can never make a landscape painting as beautiful as it is outside in nature. Why do people, who don't want to look into nature to see the piece of landscape, hang a piece of landscape, which is only a clumsy imitation of nature, in a gold frame in their room? - That would be the true sensation. And this feeling rests on the soul of many people who are not brought up to admire things out of educational backgrounds. Certainly the admiration of a certain class is sincere; but the admiration of by far the greatest mass of people for such a landscape cannot be sincere, because they are not educated with the others.

One must touch on much deeper things in the life of feeling if one is to understand today what abysses lie between human souls. We will not awaken understanding for art - and you can transfer this to other branches of life - until, for example, one will also want to pursue in painting that which one cannot see every day outside in nature, but which must be brought down from the spiritual world. All people will understand this, and something else will come on this detour. The spiritual must be carried down from the spiritual world by people. Trust will again arise from person to person, because through one person this, through another person that must be carried down from the spiritual world. In another way than by carrying things down from the spiritual world, it will not be possible for soul to find itself again socially with soul.

So one must, I would say, speak more deeply into that which today pulsates through time than one usually does. Preachers full of unctuousness, who actually bring only a copy of what the Catholic pulpit orators can do better in their way, now go around a lot and talk about the fact that "inwardly" people should find each other again, after this terrible catastrophe of the last four and a half years has shown how little people are inclined to a harmonious life. Yes, but you can't let people find themselves inwardly by talking, you can only let them find themselves inwardly if you have the will today to really radically go over to other habits of thinking and feeling. The other day someone said that you have to get to know poverty in order to develop a social feeling in yourself. Today it is not enough to have looked at poverty, to have gone to some neighborhood in a big city and seen how ragged the people are, how little they have to eat; that is not enough today. Today it is enough to really know the souls of those who want to work their way up socially. Today it is necessary not only to know poverty, but to know the poor in their souls, in their innermost life. But there is no other way to achieve this than by finding a new way to the human soul, by really learning to penetrate into the innermost being of man. And then one will find that people can henceforth be nothing without finding the mirror of their own being in the social outer organism.

One must be able to lead people on the one hand to the highest heights of spiritual life and on the other hand to be able to really submerge the spirit in economic problems. Today, however, one has to say strange things. On the one hand, one must say: Take the schools away from the state, take the spiritual life away from it, base the spiritual life on itself, let it be administered by itself, then you will compel this spiritual life to lead the struggle continuously from its own strength. Then, however, this spiritual life will also be able to place itself in the right way to the constitutional state and to the economic life, for example, the spiritual life will be straight - I have explained this in my social writing, which will now be finished in the next few days -, then the spiritual life will also be the right administrator of the capital.

On the other hand: Let the economic life be turned in on itself. This is truly not a phrase in relation to concrete questions. If you turn economic life in on itself, if you take it from the state, then above all you must take something very, very concrete from the state, namely money, the administration of the currency. You must return the administration of the currency to economic life. In the various territories where people have worked their way up from the natural economy to the money economy, they have initially kept to a money representative who is something of a hybrid between a commodity and a mere instruction. The very learned people argue about whether money is a mere instruction, whether a banknote is a mere instruction, or 'whether money is a commodity. One can argue about it for a long time, because money is one thing and another. It is one thing because it mediates the economic process; that makes money a commodity. The other is that the state determines by its law the value of the coin in question. But money must be returned entirely to economic life. Then one thing will occur, but only gradually. In order for it to occur, the very thing I am touching on now must become international. This will take a long time, because the leading trading state, England, on which it really depends that we have the gold standard, will not easily let go of the gold standard. So it will take a long time. But the self-sufficient economic organization, to which also the currency is left, the monetary system, will no longer need to place a commodity "gold" between the other goods as a means of exchange. The economic organization does not need that. The economic organization will, however, also have money, but only for the distribution of the exchange of goods. For it will turn out that always that which is the solid, real basis of economic life, that this is the monetary basis also for money. Gold is money only because gold has gradually become a particularly popular commodity among people, because people have agreed to value gold. This looks dilettante when you say it, but it is much more correct than what the non-dilettantes, the scholars of today, say. The value of gold is merely based on the tacit agreement of people about this value of gold. Something else could come to such an estimate. But with the centralization of the three social links, something that actually has a mere apparent value will always come to this estimate in economic life. Gold, after all, has in reality only an apparent value. You cannot eat gold. You can be very rich in gold; if nobody gives you anything for it, you cannot live from gold, of course. This is based only on a tacit agreement among people. You don't need it at all in national traffic. In interstate traffic, it is needed only to bring about certain compensations that cannot otherwise be brought about because the necessary great trust does not exist. But this illusory value attributed to a certain metal will cease when the administration of money is handed over to the economic body and the state no longer has any say in the administration of money. Then the state remains on the ground of mere law, remains on the basis of what can only be agreed between man and man on a democratic basis.

Now, if certain money tokens, money orders are in circulation, the state has a certain gold treasure. What will then be there when truth will have taken the place of appearance through the threefold division? Then everything will be there as a cover for the money, which in truth will not belong to the individual, on which the individual will only work, but which has an equal value for all people who live in the social organism: The means of production will take the place of gold, that by which one can prepare something for the commodity character. By bringing the means of production into flux, as today only the spiritual productions are in flux, the character of the means of production as a monetary basis is gradually brought about.

These things are very difficult, and one must make very complicated national economic assumptions - which I naturally do not presuppose with you - if one wants to prove them scientifically; but they can be proved quite scientifically. But I would rather give you a concrete example of what I mean. You see, I once got to know a strange kind of money myself - I think I have already spoken of it here once. This strange kind of money consisted in Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts. I got to know a gentleman, no, several, who were actually quite clever as financiers. They began to buy Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts cheaply in the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties. You didn't have to pay much for them then. Now they had them. Now came the time when everything had already been bought up, when due to circumstances, the description of which would lead too far, Goethe letters and Goethe manuscripts acquired a great value. These letters and manuscripts were sold. That was a strange money, the value of which increased considerably in about thirty to forty years. I was assured even by one of the gentlemen who did that, that no stock exchange papers have fructified so, for a time, as Goethe letters. They were the best paper, and they had actually taken on a money character. One got a great deal for them. Now think what that depended on. It depended on the fact that constellations had occurred that were completely independent of the first coming into being. It's not true that when Goethe wrote his letters, these letters were perhaps worth a great deal to the recipient. Nobody bought them. They were not money at that time. You couldn't buy bread for them. Mr. von Loeper, who bought Goethe letters in the fifties, could buy a lot of bread in 1895 for these Goethe letters. They were like good money. The way in which ordinary money stands inside in the economic organism is also not different than this standing inside was with the Goethe letters. The value of these pieces of paper, on which Goethe's letters were written, was based on a social process, on a social process, on what had happened in connection with Goethe's personality from the fifties to the nineties. One has to know the social organism well if one wants to judge these strange processes, where something that at a certain time does not need to be worth anything special in the economic process becomes valuable.

The usual demand of the social democrats for the socialization of the means of production would naturally lead to the paralysis of the spiritual qualities, the spiritual talents of the people. This is something that is impossible to carry out. But just think, for example - of course, one can think of it in the most varied way -: Whoever has certain talents for some branch of the economy will be able to obtain capital in completely free competition, namely, saved capital, which he collects as a loan. Of course, there can be intermediaries; I reduce the process to the simplest form, so to speak. The person concerned will make certain claims for his intellectual achievement, for his leadership achievement, for his leadership. Once a real contract is concluded between employer and employee - the contract usual today is only a sham - the employee will realize that his interests are best represented if the entrepreneur manages the enterprise well with his individual powers, but without owning it. And this is possible precisely when the entrepreneur originally sets the demand for his intellectual performance on his own initiative and negotiates it with the workers. If this demand cannot be fulfilled, the entrepreneur must go down with his demand. But the demand must be made originally from completely free initiative. If the entrepreneur does not find any customers, he must go down, which goes without saying. But now it must remain so. He now draws from the enterprise nothing more than the agreed share, which, if his work increases, can be increased. But it remains interest. In addition, there is the productivity of the means of production itself, the profit that comes out of the enterprise. These are two quite different things, that which one acquires through one's intellectual effort and that which comes out of the enterprise. It is quite different to work with means of production than to put one's saved capital into means of production. These things are not distinguished today. These things will be distinguished in the healthy social organism.

If I put a certain capital, which I have saved myself, into a factory, that is something completely different than if I use this capital to buy a room. If I use the capital to put it into a factory, then I have worked for the social organism by saving the capital. If I use it to get myself room furnishings, I am making the social organism work for me. These things are distinguished in the healthy social organism. They are not distinguished in today's sick social organism. Of course, I am not saying that no one should buy a furniture. But buying furniture will mean something completely different in the healthy social organism than it means today. Today it can be exploitation; later it will be the use of the room furnishings as means of production, because one will have nothing from the room furnishings if one does not produce something for the social organism with the help of the room furnishings, whatever it may be. The term "means of production" is first put on a sound basis in the healthy social organism.

There you see that one can distinguish exactly between what someone draws as interest and what comes from the self-work of the means of production. As long as one uses the profit of the means of production to enlarge the enterprise, well, it remains so. But at the moment when something is gained from the means of production which is not used to enlarge the enterprise, to expand the enterprise, then the leader is obliged to transfer what is gained to another who can produce again.

There you have a circulation of capital. There you have the transfer to another individuality. Whoever does not consider himself capable of transferring his capital to another individuality, transfers it to a corporation of the spiritual organization, which may not use it itself, which in turn will transfer it to an individual or to a group of people, to an association. There you bring everything that is produced by the means of production into the social flow, into a real social circulation. That which circulates in this way in the social organism, which is in a perpetual circulation, has a permanent value, even though it is always changing. But it has a permanent value because what is worn out must be replaced again. If you read in national economic books today why gold is so well suited for money, you will find all kinds of beautiful properties of gold; first, that it is popular with all people, second, that it is durable, does not wear out, does not oxidize, and so on. All these beautiful properties have this ideal good, which circulates as a means of production. The future cover for the money notes will be, if in the economic organism, not in the state organism the money is created, the money is administered, will circulate, the cover will be the capital goods not accumulating in the private property, it will be the means of production, which can be really fructified in the economic process.

To believe in this, my dear friends, the Central European states and especially Russia will have to bite the bullet first. The Western states will not believe in it for the time being, as long as the reprieve lasts; they will still believe in gold. The Central and Eastern states will have to believe that their now completely derouted currency, their completely ruined currency, will not get back on its feet in any other way than by turning economic life over to itself. No matter how many projects for the improvement of the currency in the Central and Eastern States may arise, they will all be useless and will lead to nothing; only the transfer of the currency from the state to economic life will solve the currency question in these Central and Eastern States. Certainly, the economic organizations in the Central and Eastern States will have to work with gold as long as gold is insisted upon. But this will only be a sham. When trade with the Western states is resumed, the gold treasure will have to be there. But the real prosperity, the real cover for the money will have to lie in what are circulating means of production.

At a very concrete point this threefoldness begins to become an international matter. People so easily believe that this threefolding, of which I am always speaking now, is a mere domestic affair. And that is why I have just argued in the "Appeal" that a healthy negotiation of the Central States with the Western States, if it should ever occur, can only be based on the fact that in the Central States the delegates are elected independently by the economic body, the legal body and the spiritual body. After all, the Western states can be indifferent as to whom they have to negotiate with; they can say: They are all equal to us, that is not important. - But these middle states can only come to a real recovery by themselves, by coming to a real threefolding. For the time being, the Western states can still harbor illusions that they will go beyond the threefold structure. But there will be no other way in the world than for people to convert to this threefold structure in order to live in accordance with the forces of development that want to be realized in the civilized world in the next twenty to thirty years. It could be that just those states in which things are still relatively good, like Switzerland, would make themselves comfortable to take up such a threefold structure before things go haywire. But the others, the central and eastern states, should already realize that they must either continue to destroy or move toward threefolding. We will talk more about this tomorrow.

Also known as The Present Crisis in Man's Development and The Science of the Spirit, Education, and the Practical Life. From: Lectures on Spiritual Essence and Its Working. Lecture 13 of 18 from the volume: Man's Responsibility for World Evolution through His Spiritual Connection with the Planet Earth and with the Stars Above.

The times in which we live are so earnest that at present it is not in any way appropriate to think of personal matters. Allow me, first of all, to express briefly my heartfelt thanks to your esteemed president for her kind words and then to pass on to what I believe I must tell you, for it is a long time since we saw one another in Holland.

The times in which we live and its conditions are much more earnest than most people of the present are consciously aware of.

Here we can speak of these conditions of our times from those standpoints which result from a long study of the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. We know that we live in an epoch whose characteristic peculiarity began to be evident in the 15th century. It was then that it slowly began to develop its peculiarities. Those who are initiated into the spiritual conditions of human evolution and can therefore have an insight into this course of development, know that the second half of the 19th century indicates a specially low point of human evolution in the modern and particularly in European culture. This low point may be characterised as the rise of a particular inthrust of egoism in all branches of civilised humanity, an egoism of a kind that was never there before. This wave of a special course of development then sent its ramifications into the 20th century, and now these ramifications undoubtedly continue to hold mankind under their spell.

In saying that a wave of egoism came over the whole modern civilisation, I do not speak trivially of what one generally defines as egoism, but I speak of egoism in a special sense, into which we shall penetrate a little in the course of this morning's considerations, and in a way that will be evident to those who are initiated in the true mysteries of more recent human evolution.

We already know the members constituting human nature. We know that the soul-members of human nature have been engaged for a long time in a special process of transformation, in a special course of development. We know that when we go back to very ancient times of human evolution we have to do with a particular forming of man's etheric body, during a very old time of development in India; a particular forming of the astral body then began, and a certain intermediate course of development took place during that epoch of European development which began about the year 747 in the south of Europe and which closed in the first thirty years of the 15th century. That time was the beginning of that epoch of human evolution in which we are still living. In the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, began that phase of human evolution in which the so-called intellectual and understanding soul (Verstandes und Gemütsseele) unfolded. Everything that humanity still prizes to-day as Greek culture; developed through the fact that at that very time the intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. However, while the wonderful Greek culture was unfolding, that which we call intellectual or understanding soul was in an ascending line of development. It had not yet reached its climax. For such points are always in a certain way times of probation for the evolution of humanity. For the sake of their development, the Greeks had to pass through what one might call the youthful freshness of the intellectual or understanding soul. The Greek culture, so much admired by posterity, came into being out of this youthful freshness of an intellect that was not yet permeated by egoism, out of this youthful freshness of the human understanding. Of the characteristics pertaining to the intellectual soul, the Latin and Roman culture then took over something that was in a descending line of development and decadent. Those who have a deeper comprehension for that which lived in Roman culture know: There the intellect already reaches its culmination; there the intellect rises to a high point. On that account the Romans developed such abstract ideas; on that account the Romans developed something that did not as yet exist in the whole ancient East, that did not even exist, in the sense known in Europe, in the Greek culture: The Romans developed the ideas of jurisprudence, the juridical concepts.

To-day we consider the world very superficially and we translate our thoughts on “Jus”, on jurisprudence, which, in reality are the outcome only of the Roman intellectual soul, into something which we assume to have already existed in the ancient East, for instance in Hammurabi, and so forth. But that is not the case. The Decalogue, the Ten Commandments as well as the contents of other documents of that time, were, after all, something quite different from that which constitutes our modern juridical concepts. These are something abstract, something that is no longer so close to the human soul. Everything that thus constitutes the development of the intellectual soul reached its climax during a period in the civilisation of Europe which has really been studied very little from an external historical standpoint, although it is extraordinarily important and significant for those who wish to study human evolution in the meaning of spiritual science.

That striking year to which we can draw attention as being specially significant for European development is the year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha. The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha is the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. It is that point of time when a fluctuating knowledge of the universe lived in Europe simultaneously with a fluctuating knowledge of humanity. These had nothing of the penetrating character of the knowledge of the universe that the Greeks still possessed and no proper comprehension of man's inner world.

We find instead that man sways either towards the longing for an extensive knowledge of the universe, or towards the longing for self-knowledge, knowledge of his own self. The human soul of the European peoples indeed passed through a great deal during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. Roman life was then entering into its decay; it bequeathed to European humanity nothing but its language; it left behind its more or less fundamental material of culture. The life of humanity thus entered the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, lasting up to the 15^th century, when our present epoch began.

From the preceding epoch, in which most of us in some way passed through one or more earthly lives, we brought over—partly through physical heredity, but particularly through the fact that we ourselves formerly were those incarnated souls—into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch the inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, and we took over this inheritance. This inheritance of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch lives in everything that constitutes our present civilisation.

We worked the intellect, the thinking, into our consciousness soul. That means a great deal. At the beginning of the fifth epoch, the consciousness soul enabling man to really permeate, really grasp his ego, first took hold of his thinking, his life of representations and his intellect. Humanity thus became intelligent and clever, but clever within the consciousness soul; within the evolution of humanity, this implies the finest possible elaboration of EGOISM.

We should not only rebuke this epoch of egoism, we should not only fall upon it with criticism, but in spite of the fact that it brings with it so many temptations and leads man into great soul-dangers and even into external danger, we should recognise this age of egoism as the one in which ego-consciousness comes to the fore with special incisiveness.

Man can thus take into himself a real feeling of freedom. This feeling of freedom is something that none of us possessed in our previous incarnations, in the earlier epochs of human evolution. We had to pass through egoism, that presents so many temptations, in order to reach that longing for freedom which is the prerogative of modern humanity. One of the most important things in Anthroposophy is the knowledge that we had to take in something in order to climb over an important stage in human evolution: the stage leading to the DEVELOPMENT OF FREEDOM. For this very reason we should be aware that this crossing over is connected, with many temptations, with many dangers of humanity, both soul-spiritually and bodily. A knowledge going in the direction of Anthroposophy must enable us to take in fully the feeling of freedom, but at the same time to ennoble it, to permeate it again with a spiritual knowledge of the universe, which—in spite of the now existing mature ego-feeling, mature ego-consciousness—induces mankind to solve tasks that are not only egoistic tasks, but tasks pertaining to the whole evolution of humanity, indeed to the evolution of the whole earth, to the evolution of the whole universe.

In this connection we are now facing a great turning point in the whole civilisation of more recent times. The time of probation has indeed come! Great tasks confront mankind. But the recognition of these tasks is extremely difficult and is rendered still more difficult through the fact that we have just passed through the age of the great egoism.

We say that we sleep from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. That is right. We are then in a state of dulled consciousness. Most of you know sleep only in its negative aspect, that it dulls consciousness. Yet we do not judge the waking state in the same way. The time of being awake, the time from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, was really quite different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. To-day people believe that they are awake in the same way in which, for instance, the people living about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha were awake. That is not the case. Their whole soul-constitution was different. Man was then awake in a different way. He was much more strongly conscious of his body.

You see, modern man really knows very little indeed of his bodily processes. The Greeks, not the Greeks of a later time, but the Greeks of the pre-Socratic and pre-Platonic times, still knew a great deal of the processes of their own body. For example, the really cultured Greek looked up to the sun. From the sun he received the light. He received at the same time a feeling that he was drawing in something etheric, that the light was being led on into his inner being. And when he was thinking, he said: The light, the sun thinks within me. The Greek of pre-Socratic times still felt this in a living way. He did not think so abstractly about thinking as we do to-day. He thought: The sun thinks within me: it allows its light to be drawn in by me. The light that shines upon the things outside, that makes the things outside visible, is active within me, by reflecting itself, as it were, within its own being, so that thoughts spring up in me. For the Greek, the thoughts within him were the light of the sun. At the same time, they were for him that element which lived in the macrocosm thanks to the influence of divine-spiritual beings. At the same time, they were for him that which really raised him to the Divine, above his ordinary dignity as a human being. He felt himself lifted above the earthly, when he thus experienced the sun's light within him as thinking. And when a particularly cultured Greek ate, he indeed considered his food, in which he took in something that he did not receive directly from the sun, but that came from the earth, as a necessity of life, yet at the same time he felt himself changing into the food, that became he himself, as it passed through his mouth, his oesophagus and digestive organs. He felt that he was one with the food, in the same way in which he felt that he was one with the sunlight. While he was digesting, he felt the earth's gravity. He felt, as it were, similar to the serpent, that he did not as yet highly appreciate, but that he still observed rather timidly—the serpent that twists away from the earth and digests in a particularly visible way, after having swallowed its food. That is how the Greek experienced what went on in his body: whether he experienced what was thinking within him as the sun's bright light, or whether he experienced within himself what chained him to the earth; i.e. the taking in of food. Through the intimate way in which his understanding was connected with his body the Greek felt with particular energy that which also lived within him as physical human being. You may also deduce this from the following:

When we paint human beings to-day in the ordinary way, as numerous painters of the present generation have done year after year, decade after decade in painting portraits, we really lie. We look at people outwardly and believe that then we bring forth something of what we experience. It is not true at all that we can experience something in that way! We could experience it only if we were able to conjure up within us the whole way of identifying ourselves feelingly with the whole of Nature as human beings, as it was the case with the Greeks. First of all, we must learn this anew, along an entirely different path than that of the Greeks.

Since the middle of the 15th century, we have acquired in an abstract-theoretical way a soul-constitution that no longer allows us to really penetrate livingly into our body, but that lives instead in concepts that do not stand visibly before us, because we have conquered thinking for the egoity, for the ego. We should realise this. And we should realise that we must once more take in spirituality from an anthroposophical spiritual science, so that the ego may once more be filled with something, and so that that which really lives within us may once more—but now in a different way—enter our life: that which the Greeks experienced in an immediate, elemental way; but that could not continue.

When the Greek walked, he walked as if led by a necessity of Nature, like the lightning flashing through the clouds, or the rolling thunder! He knew nothing whatever of freedom, but he knew man! Indeed, he knew more about man than we think he did. For instance, he knew how to coin words clearly indicating that man still knew something of the connection between the soul-spiritual and the bodily-physical. The Greek words, or those derived from the Greek, indicate even to-day far more than those based on our therapeutic or pathological conceptions, that are no longer able to understand anything. Hypochondria for instance, means cartilaginosity of the abdomen. It is a name that the Greeks found through their full knowledge of the fact that in hypochondric people the activity of the soul-spiritual gives rise to cartilaginous formations in certain parts of the body. These names mean far more than modern men suppose, and more than can in any way be grasped through modern medicine, with its abstract way of thinking, even though it experiments, dissects, etc. We must first take up again everything that is real, that once more enables us to have an insight into the world! It is the task of a spiritual scientific deepening to reach once more real facts, realities.

You see, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, in which the human beings passed through what constitutes, as it were, a physical self-knowledge, an insight into the human body, during that time—one might say approximately, during the first third of that time, occurs the greatest event of the earth's evolution: the Mystery of Golgotha.

What is the condition of the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha occurred?—The further we go back, the more we find in ancient times—in the Greek epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Persian and the ancient Indian epoch—this immediate knowledge of the whole human being. Then, this knowledge of the whole human being disappears. The last remains of that knowledge may be found at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha appeared. Something of that instinctive, ancient knowledge of man still existed at that time. For instance, the personalities described in the Gospels as the Apostles, or the Disciples of the Lord, still possessed something of that old instinctive knowledge, which lived in their souls altogether instinctively, not clearly. Others too possessed such a knowledge. At that time it was to a great extent decadent, but at any rate it still existed. It was dying away, burning out, but enough remained of that ancient knowledge to enable a great number of men of that time to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha accordingly. This is particularly evident when the apostle Paul entered the evolution of the times, the apostle Paul who was initiated by divine powers and to whom the spiritual world became visible.

All this gave rise to conditions of time which still enabled man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in a certain naive, instinctive way. Many people had already entered a later phase of development. Particularly the cultured Greeks and the cultured Romans had concepts that were already far too abstract in order [to] grasp the Mystery of Golgotha in a really living way. Yet certain people had preserved the last remains of an old clairvoyant knowledge, particularly clairvoyant traditions, and they were still able to grasp that a super-earthly power, the Christ, had connected Himself with an earthly man, Jesus of Nazareth.

The year 333 after the Mystery of Golgotha, was, as it were, the year in which last stragglers of those who were still able to have a real understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha could be found in Europe. But these stragglers could not understand it, for instance, through our anthroposophical spiritual science, for this did not, of course, exist at that time. They grasped it through an old knowledge that had remained from the Gnosis, and such like. A certain spiritual knowledge still existed. An ancient human inheritance lived in the human soul and this enabled man to grasp the Mystery of Golgotha.

What has remained of the Mystery of Golgotha? Intellectual traditions!—The Gnosis became theology, a mere logical way of grasping the divine. Theo-Logy: a mere logical way of grasping the divine, no longer a contemplation of the divine!

Since the year 333, the capacity of contemplating the Mystery of Golgotha in a direct way became more and more decadent, until the fateful time of the 9th century, when, in the year 869, the Eighth General Oecumenic Council at Constantinople gave out the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and spirit, but that it is instead a Christian's duty to acknowledge that man consists only of body and soul, and that the soul possesses a few spiritual qualities. At that time, the trichotomy, as it was called, the only possible knowledge of the human being, according to which man consists of body, soul and spirit, was done away with dogmatically, and a dogma was enforced, according to which a Christian who truly believes must acknowledge that man only consists of body and soul.

Modern philosophers frequently state that their philosophy is based on an unprejudiced knowledge, and they speak on the one hand of the body, and on the other of the soul. They speak of the spirit in a very phraseological manner at the most, for they do not know the spirit. They would only know it, if they recognised the spiritual science of Anthroposophy. The “impartial philosophy” that is now being taught to such an extent—what is it, in reality?—It is the result of the dogma pronounced by the Eighth Oecumenic Council in the year 869.

We must see through this. We must be quite clear that when the modern civilisation arose, and even in the second half of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it was considered as dangerous to speak of the spirit and to draw attention to it. But at the present time it is necessary that we should draw mankind's attention to the spirit,—the spirit that has been declared to be the devil for a long, long time, within the civilisation of Europe! After the year 333, nothing but traditions remained of the old Christological knowledge—nothing but traditions!

Everything that constitutes art shows us even more clearly that it has remained tradition! Observe, for instance, Cimabue's paintings; there you will see a world that took on a completely different aspect in Giotto's paintings. In Cimabue's paintings lived something that may also be seen in Dante, something that could no longer be experienced by the human beings of a later time! Later on, this living within a spiritual world, that may still be seen in Cimabue, ceased. Later on, it was a hypocrisy to paint a golden background, but for a Cimabue this was quite natural. And now observe a Russian icon; it is not in any way painted after a model, for it is something in which the old traditions are still alive, traditions that come from a clairvoyance still existing at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and enabling man to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

Then came the time in which the traditions were maintained by using external instruments of power. And then came the 19th century, in which the ordinary soul-activity that brought forth such significant results in natural science and technology, was also applied to theology. But what became of theology through this? Christ-Jesus, the incarnation of a Being that does not belong to the earthly became “the simple man of Nazareth,” looked upon indeed as the most perfect man, but not as the bearer of a super-earthly Being. Theology became naturalistic. The more our modern theologians look upon Jesus of Nazareth as a human being, the less they feel induced to pursue Christological ideas, and the happier they are! Even in theology they do not wish to rise beyond the description of the man, Jesus of Nazareth, they do not wish to rise to an understanding of Christ as a super-earthly Being that dwelt in the man, Jesus of Nazareth.

To-day, those who have an insight into world-events from a spiritual standpoint, must see many things differently from the way in which they are judged by people who only see them outwardly. Central Europe, that is now passing through such a tragic destiny, was able—among other things which cannot be discussed here—to accept Adolf Harnack as a great scientist; the very man who reached the point of saying that God the Son should not be included in the Gospels! They should be read, he says, in such a way as to find in them only the man, Jesus of Nazareth, and this man's teachings concerning God the Father. Harnack's theology was intended to do away with our feelings of reverence for the spirituality of Christ. The theology which Harnack established in Central Europe really signifies the negation of Christianity, the denial of Christianity; it signifies the setting up of a world-conception clearly stating that we do not wish to have anything to do with the spirituality of Christ. It is significant to observe what has thus swept over modern humanity, with the result that the most distorted views now exist concerning the most important ideas of human life.

To-day we know what sleep is, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. Yet we do not, as a rule, observe the other kind of sleep, in which we live from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, when we walk about in our everyday life, steeped in illusions and dreams in regard to its most important facts. Indeed, in these modern times, we do not only sleep when we lie in our bed at night (this is actually the better kind of sleep), but we are also asleep in the sphere of egoism, when we lock ourselves up in our inner being, unwilling to know our human body and, at the same time, unwilling to progress to a spiritual self-knowledge. We sleep another kind of sleep during the time from falling asleep to waking up.

In order to understand this, we must indeed observe the nature of sleep from the moment of falling asleep to that of waking up. What does then take place with the human being? Why does the modern intellect believe that as far as the human constitution is concerned sleep is the same for modern man as it was for the ancient Greeks?—The Greeks were not awake in the same way as we, and the Egyptians even less so, nor did they sleep as we do. This soul-constitution in particular should be studied for every epoch of time.

When, during sleep, the human soul, that is to say, the ego and the astral body, loosens itself from the physical and etheric bodies that remain lying on the bed—where does the soul, that is the ego and the astral body, really dwell while we are asleep?

Superficial explanations that a cloud may be seen hovering over the physical body (which is quite true, as far as an altogether external form of clairvoyance is concerned), do not suffice. This is not sufficient, for we must observe what takes place inwardly. We must observe what the soul really experiences from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up. In these modern times, the human soul then passes through experiences that are also lived through by the souls that are not as yet incarnated on the earth. Consider the following: Take a case that came to my notice just now, before I began my lecture: A daughter was born to an anthroposophist; one year ago, this little girl lived in the spiritual world as body and soul, and has since then made the endeavour to descend to the physical world. All those decades, that make us so much older than this little newly born girl, during all those years it lived in the spiritual world. And while we were asleep, we lived from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, in the world in which the little girl dwelt before conception, or birth. That is the world in which we dwell, when we are asleep, and there, the souls that are not yet incarnated pass through many experiences. While we are asleep, we pass with them through the fifth post-Atlantean age and through events resembling their own experiences.

From the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live, on the other hand, in a world that we sleep away during our waking life; we live in everything that we inherited from our past earthly existences. We live together with what has remained behind from ancient India, Persia, or Egypt; we live with what we have experienced spiritually here on earth, and this is cramped together egoistically in our inner being. We bring it along with us into our present incarnation. During the day, we live with all these things, and sleep away the present. Indeed, the present contains many things that can only be grasped spiritually. We cramp ourselves egoistically in ideas that come from the past and adhere to them obstinately even in our language, in our speech. Languages contain a great store of ancient crystallized wisdom. Yet we rebel against any kind of influence that may be exercised upon our souls by this ancient store of wisdom. For instance, to-day we use the words “Messer”, knife, or “Schere”, scissors. When we use the word “Schere”, scissors, we do not as a rule think that it comes from a kind of “Scheren”, or shearing, that is announced in every barber's shop! And when we use the word “Messer”, knife, we do not think that it is really based on a moral idea, for it is connected with “Maass”, measure, and “Zumessen”, to mete out, or cut to measure. When a knife was used in ancient times, it was really used to “mete out” a gift for someone. A store of wisdom lies crystallized in the words we use, and this ancient spiritual life that is contained in the words now uttered so thoughtlessly, lives in the depths of our being. Whenever we speak, we really experience the life of ancient epochs.

Spiritually, we pass through ancient epochs of the earth, from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, but we pass through them in a sleeping condition. And from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we pass through events that are connected with the descent of human souls to their life on earth.

You see, these are realities, these are truths. These realities should be well impressed upon us, if we do not only wish to become acquainted with the forces of decay, but also with the forces of growth and progress. It would be so much better if, before going to sleep in the evening, a greater number of people were to do other things than those which they are accustomed to do! Consider what many people generally do, as last thing, before they go to bed! Yet a modern man should say to himself: I wish to enter the world that contains the forces of growth and progress, it is the world in which I can experience those forces that lead the human souls down to the earth, a world in which I can experience those forces spiritually.

From the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up we experience the forces pertaining to the future. For that reason, we should have a kind of craving for the teachings that speak of a spiritual world and that enable us to be conscious of the experiences of souls that are in a condition (but consciously) resembling that of souls who are asleep here on earth. The impulses for the progress of civilisation, for the healing of civilisation, must come from that world! The spiritual, political and economic impulses that should unfold as healing powers for our civilisation must come from that world! It is necessary, at the present time, that we should once more acquire the possibility of grasping the Mystery of Golgotha, of grasping it in a spiritual way.

What is the essential, or let us say, one of the essential things (for there are, of course, many essential things in it), in the Mystery of Golgotha?—That a God, a super-earthly Being, took up His abode in the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Beings of His kind have one characteristic quality: they cannot die. All those Beings of the higher Hierarchies, described in my “OCCULT SCIENCE”, the Angels, Archangels, etc. up to the highest Beings, the Cherubim, Seraphim, etc. do not die (read the description of their life's course in my books), they do not die as men die. What did Christ take upon Himself, Christ Who came from the higher Hierarchies?—He died within a human body. You see, here we have significant forces that pass over into the evolution of humanity upon the earth, Christ died in a human body; he passed through the experience of death, an experience unknown to the other gods who are connected with the earth. Up to the year 333, it was still possible to grasp this truth to a certain extent. Now we must learn to grasp it anew! We should grasp anew that a super-earthly Being shared with us the experience of death, thus passing over into the development of the earth. Yet at the same time we should have the great modesty of recognising that the experiences of this Being highly surpass what can be experienced through the soul-constitution of a human being.

The Christ descended from worlds where death is unknown. What Beings serve the Christ?—Among those who serve Him, there is not one who could make the same sacrifice, not one who could have come down to the earth, in order to pass through death. Beings that belong to the hierarchy of the Angeloi, right up to the higher Hierarchies, Beings connected with the evolution of the earth, are Christ's servants. We cannot perceive them, if we do not rise to a super-earthly knowledge of the higher Hierarchies. Through a knowledge of the spiritual worlds we should seek that which leads us to Christ. Spiritual science is needed above all in order to attain a new knowledge of Christ. For Christ is here, upon the earth, and He is surrounded by the world of the higher Hierarchies. Man's great temptation in modern times is the modern natural science with its great triumphs and its admission of purely external forces of Nature. Yet behind all these forces of Nature live the spiritual Beings! The assertions of natural science are certainly right, nevertheless the spiritual Beings that serve Christ live behind the forces of Nature, thinking and directing them. Christ lives in everything that constitutes the development of the earth. Super-earthly Beings serve Him—but these super-earthly Beings can only be recognised through spiritual science. Consequently an extremely important task evolves upon spiritual science: the renewal of Christianity.

All this shows you that to-day we cannot pursue spiritual science merely as a personal concern. To-day spiritual science concerns civilised humanity as a whole. Through an inner necessity, spiritual science was from the very beginning pursued in the circle that afterwards obtained the name of “Anthroposophical Society”, in a different way than in the Theosophical Society. The whole constitution of the Theosophical Society had, from the very outset, a sectarian character, something that reckoned with the egoism of modern times. Anthroposophy therefore had the task of taking into account the consciousness of modern times, that which constitutes the external culture of humanity, and of pouring into it the results of a spiritual manner of contemplation. Little differences and strifes are of no importance whatever in the face of such a task. It was essential for me to maintain the purity of a spiritual movement that reckons with the whole science of modern times. Whether this or that person may or may not accept one or the other truth, is of no importance to me. Even though the whole world may abuse spiritual science and criticize it, I do not consider this as essential, for the essential thing is that the spiritual science that I advance should really harmonize fully, with the modern, scientific mentality, with the moral conscience of modern times. For this reason, I had to publish my “Philosophy of Spiritual Activity” before revealing the truths of Karma. I have often listened with great pain to theosophists who said: If this or that man suffers, if he suffers socially and belongs to a lower class or caste, it is his Karma and he has deserved it. This interpretation of the idea of Karma corresponded to the egoistical requirements of men who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Yet they did not think that we do not only live through our present life on earth, but that we shall also live through a future life. To-day we should not always look back on what we once possessed in past lives on earth, but we should also consider that in future lives on earth we shall be looking back on what we are passing through now—and this will then be an entirely new experience. Freedom fully harmonizes with the idea of Karma ... Everything that appears in the account-book of life is karmically connected.

You see, if I reckon up the debit and credit sides of destiny and strike the balance, I obtain life's balance; but this does not entail that the single items are subjected to the necessity of Nature. Just as the single items of a commercial account book do not depend on diligence, and so forth, and finally enable us to strike a balance, so freedom can very well be connected with the idea of Karma. We should not adopt an easy fatalistic idea when advancing the view of Karma as a fully justified idea. Spiritual science should therefore be in full harmony also with the conscience and the moral attitude of modern humanity. For that reason it was necessary to work more extensively with spiritual science, also during the time in which the catastrophe broke out in regard to everything that has been caused by the egoism of modern humanity, both soul-spiritually and physically.

Would it have been honest and straightforward to continue preaching that spiritual science can help mankind, and yet advance no social ideas at a time when social requirements became as urgent as they are to-day? Would human love not have progressed in the direction of a social knowledge? Shall we content ourselves with declamations on human love? Or should we not rather progress to real social impulses?

The fact that we can only see Christ's ministering spirits, clearly when we look into the spiritual world, is a result and a fundamental knowledge of spiritual science, a result of what I have told you to-day concerning waking and sleeping, concerning sleeping wakefulness and the awakening from sleep through spiritual science. Spiritual science will also enable us to grasp once more the Mystery of Golgotha, in accordance with a modern mentality. And as a result, spiritual science must not restrict itself to some sectarian group, but if must be brought out into the world in the best possible way, according to our capacities and to our place in life! The centre at Dornach was not intended to be a sectarian centre, but one that renders fruitful every branch of science and life, social life and artistic life. Anthroposophy and its spiritual science must become a concern of the great masses of humanity, although its most important things and that which penetrates into the innermost depths of our heart, awakening our inner forces, are pursued within the narrower circles of our Groups. There, in those Groups, we gather forces, in order to develop a certain higher knowledge, which we must first take in there. It is a knowledge that must be developed, for to-day we live in a time in which mankind really does not know what it is seeking; it sleeps away the most important things of life. Nevertheless it is a time in which mankind seeks after a new knowledge of the spirit! Let us feel this deeply, as pioneers, I might say, of a spiritual renewal—as Anthroposophists.

For that reason I so warmly wish that also the Groups in Holland might pursue an earnest, diligent and untiring study of the knowledge that can be obtained in our movement, from out the spiritual worlds. I warmly wish that our Groups should study diligently. These studies should constitute the point of departure for bringing out Anthroposophy into the world—and each one must do this in his own way—so that mankind's longings may be satisfied through a spiritual contemplation directed towards Anthroposophy. For that reason, let us grasp the nature of the longings of modern man. Let us not think that we become materialistic, when we spiritualize matter! And let us clearly realise that mankind would face a great misfortune, if it fails to obtain the true knowledge that is able to avert that misfortune.

The Eighth Oecumenic Council of the year 869 drove away from human knowledge the contemplation of the spirit. Those who have an entirely materialistic mentality seek to prepare the next stage: they also wish to eliminate the soul and to establish the general dogmatic knowledge that man only consists of the body. Certain devilish initiates are now excogitating means of educating the human being materialistically, of preparing him materialistically as a body; they seek to attain their end not by means of psychic influences, but by means of ingredients and substances taken from Nature. They plan an experimental psychology and seek to adopt principles that are not those of the Waldorf School (for the Waldorf School principles are spiritual protests against modern materialism), and they already undertake all manner of experiments in order to test man's capacities. This is but a preliminary stage of what they really aim at. The child is no longer to be educated psychically, but with the aid of external, material means, so that its capacities may develop in a bodily way. Thus man would gradually become an automaton, unless we bear in mind at the right moment that the path that led to the elimination of the spirit must not be continued in the direction of the elimination of the soul as well. We must instead follow the opposite direction of the Eighth Oecumenic Council; we must once more follow the path enabling us to find the spirit anew, and to cultivate in human life, in every sphere of practical human life, only what we can discover through the spirit.

This is what I wish to implant into your souls, what I wish to implant into your hearts, my dear friends, after our long absence. Cultivate spiritual science first of all as a concern of the heart, in the way in which it should be cultivated individually, so that we may progress. Cultivate what you have thus taken in, and then bring it out to humanity in every sphere of life, bring out what you have thus taken in! You will then gradually find the path enabling you, in the present difficult and earnest time of probation, to do the right thing for humanity, according to your place in life.

The Christ Impulse as Conqueror of Matter.

In order to complete the task that we have envisioned, we must now study the character of our own time in the same sense in which we have studied the four post-Atlantean epochs up to the appearance of Christianity. We have seen how, after the Atlantean catastrophe, there evolved the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch, and the Egypto-Chaldean epoch. In the description of the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin, we have seen that in a certain connection man at that time worked his way into the physical plane and that this working into the physical world then reached its low point. Why is this time, which from one side we call the low point of human evolution, nevertheless so attractive, so sympathetic, for the modern observer'? Because this low point became the point of departure for many significant events of the present cultural epoch. We have seen how, in this Greco-Latin culture, a marriage was achieved between spirit and matter in Greek art. We have seen how the Greek temple was a building where the god could dwell, and that man could say, “I have brought matter so far that for me it can be an expression of the spirit, so that in every detail I can feel something of this spirit.” Thus it is with all Greek works of art. Thus it is with everything we have to say about the life of the Greeks. This world of artistic creations, into which the spirit was implanted, made matter so terribly attractive that among us in Middle Europe the great Goethe, in his Faust tragedy, sought to portray his own union with this epoch of culture.

If in the succeeding time the progress of culture had continued in the same direction, what would have been the result? We can make this clear through a simple sketch. In the Greco-Latin time man had descended to his lowest point, but in such a way that in no piece of matter was the spirit lost to him. In all the creations of this time, the spirit was incorporated in matter. When we look at the figure of a Greek god, we see everywhere how the Greek creative genius imprinted the spiritual on the external matter. The Greek had conquered matter, but the spirit had not been lost. The normal course of culture would have been that man should descend below this level, plunging down below matter so that the spirit would become the slave of matter. We need only turn an unprejudiced glance on our environment and we shall see that, on one side, this has actually happened. The expression of this descent is materialism. True, in no period has man mastered matter more than in our time, but only for the satisfaction of bodily needs. We need only consider with what primitive means the gigantic pyramids were built, and then compare this with the boldness and loftiness with which the Egyptian spirit moved among the mysteries of world-existence. We need only think of the deep sense in which, for the Egyptians, their pictures of the gods were images of what took place in the cosmos and on earth in the remote past. One who, at that time in Egypt, could look into the spiritual world, lived in something that became invisible in the Atlantean time but was a fact of evolution in the Lemurian time. One who was not an initiate, who belonged to the common people, could still participate in these spiritual worlds with his whole feeling and his whole soul. Yet how primitive were the means with which these men had to work externally on the physical plane. Compare this with our own time. We need only read the innumerable eulogies that our contemporaries write about the enormous strides made in modern times. The science of the spirit makes no objection to this. Human achievements are increasing through the conquest of the elements. But let us look at the thing from another side.

Let us look back to far-distant times when men ground their corn between simple stones, yet could look up into tremendous heights of the spiritual life. The majority of men today have no inkling of the heights that were surveyed at that time. They have no inkling of what a Chaldean initiate experienced when, in his special manner, he saw the stars, animals, plants, and minerals in connection with man, when he recognized the healing forces. The Egyptian priests were men to whom the physicians of today could not hold a candle. The men of today cannot penetrate into these heights of the spiritual world. Only through the science of the spirit can an idea be formed of what the ancient Chaldean-Egyptian initiates saw. For example, what we are offered today by way of interpretation of the inscriptions, in which deep mysteries are contained, is only a caricature of the ancient significance. Thus we find that in ancient times man had little power over the tools and equipment for labor on the physical plane, but he had enormous forces in relation to the spiritual world.

Man is descending ever more deeply into matter, and more and more he devotes his spiritual powers to conquering the physical plane. Can we not say that the human spirit is becoming the slave of the physical plane? In a certain way man descends even below the physical plane. Man has devoted enormous spiritual force to inventing the steamship, the railway, and the telephone, but what does he use these for? What a mass of spirit is thus diverted from life for the higher worlds. The spiritual scientist understands this and does not criticize in our time, because he knows that it was necessary to conquer the physical plane. Yet it is true that the spirit has plunged down into the physical world. Is it important for the spirit that, instead of grinding our own corn in a quern, we should be able to call Hamburg by long-distance telephone and order what we want to be sent from America by steamer? Great spiritual force has been applied to building up such connections with America and many other foreign lands, but we may ask whether the aim of all this is not the satisfaction of the material life, of our bodily needs. Since everything in the world is limited, there is not much spiritual force left over whereby man may ascend to the spiritual world after he has devoted so much to the material. The spirit has become the slave of matter. The Greek incorporated the spirit in his works of art, but today the spirit has descended very far. We have proof of this in the many technical and mechanical arrangements of our industry, which serve only material needs. Now let us ask whether this process is completed and whether man has descended too far.

This would have been the case were it not for the occurrence that we discussed in the preceding lectures. At the low point of human evolution something was infused into mankind, through the Christ-impulse, that gave the stimulus to a new ascent. The entry of the Christ-impulse into human evolution forms the other side of culture thereafter. It showed the way to the overcoming of matter. It brought the force through which death can be overcome. Thereby it offered to humanity the possibility of again raising itself above the level of the physical plane. This mightiest impulse had to be given, this impulse which became so efficacious that matter could be overcome in the magnificent way that is described in the Gospel of John, in the Baptism in Jordan and the Mystery of Golgotha.

Christ Jesus, who was foretold by the prophets, gave the most powerful impulse of all human evolution. Man had to separate himself from the spiritual worlds in order to attach himself to them again with the Christ-being. But we cannot yet understand this if we do not penetrate still more deeply into the connections of human evolution as a whole.

We must point out that what we call the advent of the Christ on earth is an event that could occur only at the low point, when man had sunk so far. The Greco-Latin period stands in the middle of the seven post-Atlantean epochs. No other period would have been the right one. When man became a personality, God also had to become a personality in order to save him, to give him the possibility of rising again. We have seen that in his Roman citizenship the Roman first became conscious of his personality. Earlier, man still lived in the heights of the spiritual world; now he had descended entirely to the physical plane, and now he had to be led upward again through God himself. We must go more deeply into the third, the fifth, and the intermediate period. We shall not study Egyptian mythology in an academic way, but we must pick out the characteristic points in order to get deeper into the feeling-life of the ancient Egyptians. Then we may ask how this illuminates our own time. There is one thing here that must be weighed carefully.

We have seen how, in the Egyptian myths and mysteries, all the mighty pictures of the Sphinx, of Isis, of Osiris, were memories of ancient human conditions. All this was like a reflection of ancient events on earth. Man looked back into his primeval past and saw his origin. The initiate could experience again the spiritual existence of his forebears. We have seen how man grew out of an original group-soul condition. We could point out how these group-souls were preserved in the forms of the four apocalyptic beasts. Man grew out of this condition in such a way that he gradually refined his body and achieved the development of individuality. We can follow this historically. Let us read the Germania of Tacitus.¹ In the times described there, in the conditions of the Germanic regions in the first century after Christ as there portrayed, we see how the consciousness of the individual is still bound up with the community, how the clan spirit rules, how the Cherusker, for example, still feels himself as a member of his clan. This consciousness is still so strong that the individual seeks vengeance for another of the same group. It finds expression in the custom of the blood-feud. Thus a sort of group-soul condition prevailed. This condition was preserved into late post-Atlantean times, but only as an echo. In the last period of Atlantis the group-consciousness generally died out. It is only stragglers whom we have just described. In reality the men of that time no longer knew anything of the group-soul. In the Atlantean time, however, man did know of it. Then he did not yet say I of himself. This group-soul feeling changed into something else in the following generations.

Strange as it may seem, in ancient times memory had an entirely different meaning and power. What is memory today? Reflect on whether you can still recall the events of your earliest childhood. Probably you can remember very little, and beyond your childhood you cannot go at all. You will remember nothing of what lies before your birth. It was not like this in Atlantean times. Even in the first post-Atlantean time man could remember what his father, grandfather, and ancestors had experienced. There was no sense in saying that between birth and death there was an ego. The ego reached back for centuries in the memory. The ego reached as far as the blood flowed down, from the remotest ancestors to the descendants. At that time the group-ego was not to be thought of as extended in space over the contemporaries, but as proceeding upward in the generations. Therefore, the modern man will never understand what appears as an echo of this in the tales of the patriarchs: that Adam, Noah, and others grew to be so old. They counted their ancestors through several generations upward to their ego. The modern man no longer can form any conception of this. In those days there would have been no sense in giving a single man a name between birth and death. In the whole series of ancestors the memory continued upwards for centuries. As far as man could remember through the centuries, so far was he given his name. Adam was, so to say, the ego that flowed with the blood through the generations. Only when we are acquainted with these actual facts do we know how things really were. Man felt sheltered in this series of generations. This is what the Bible means when it says, “I and Father Abraham are one.” When the adherent of the Old Testament said this, only then did he rightly feel himself as man within the line of ancestry. Among the first post-Atlanteans, even among the Egyptians, this consciousness was still present. Men felt the community of the blood, and this caused something special for the spiritual life.

When a man dies today he has a life in kamaloka, after which comes a relatively long life in Devachan. But this is already a result of the Christ-impulse. This was not the case in pre-Christian times; then a man felt himself connected with the times of his forefathers. Today a man must wean himself in kamaloka from the wishes and desires to which he has accustomed himself in the physical world; the duration of this condition depends upon this. We cling to our life between birth and death; in ancient times man clung to much more than this. Man was connected with the physical plane in such a way that he felt himself as a member of the whole physical series of generations. Thus, in kamaloka, one did not merely have to work out the clinging to an individual physical existence, but one really had to traverse all that was connected with the generations, up to the remotest ancestor. One experienced this backwards. One result of this was the deep truth underlying the expression: “To feel oneself sheltered in Abraham's bosom.” One felt that after death he went upward through the whole row of ancestors, and the road that one had to travel was called “the way to the fathers.” Only when one had traversed this path could he ascend into the spiritual worlds and travel the way of the gods. At that time the soul traveled first the path of the fathers and then the path of the gods.

Now the various cultures did not come to abrupt ends. The essence of the Indian culture remained, although it underwent a change. It was preserved alongside the following cultures. In the continuation of the Indian culture that was contemporaneous with the Egyptian, something similar arose. Today we easily confuse what was later with what was earlier. Therefore it was emphasized that I was giving indications only out of the remotest periods. Among other things, the Indians now took up the view of the path of the fathers and the path of the gods.

As a man became more initiated, freed himself more from dependence on home and the fathers, became more homeless, the path of the gods became longer and the path of the fathers became shorter. One who clung closely to the fathers had a long father-path and a short god-path. In the terminology of the Orient, the way of the fathers was called Pitriyana and the way of the gods was called Devayana. When we speak of Devachan, we should understand that this is only a distorted form of the word Devayana, the path of the gods. An old Vedantist would simply laugh at us if we came to him with descriptions such as we give of Devachan. It is not so easy to find one's way into the oriental methods of thinking and contemplating. As to those who pretend to give out oriental truths, these truths often must be protected from just such people. Many a person today who accepts something as Indian teaching has no idea that he is receiving a confused doctrine. The modern science of the spirit does not claim to be an oriental-Indian teaching. In certain circles people love what comes from far away, perhaps from America, but the truth is at home everywhere. Antiquarian research belongs to scholars, but the science of the spirit is life. Its truth can be checked everywhere at any time. We must keep this before our minds.

What we have just mentioned was practice as well as theory among the ancient Egyptians. What was taught in the great mysteries was also practical., Something special was connected with this, as we shall learn as we penetrate further. The mysteries of the ancient Egyptians strove for something special. Today we may smile when we are told how the Pharaoh was at a certain time a kind of initiate, and how the Egyptian stood in relation to the Pharaoh and to his state institutions. For the modern European scholar it is particularly comical when the Pharaoh gives himself the name, “Son of Horus,” or even “Horus.” It seems singular to us that a man should be venerated as a god; nothing more abstruse could be thought of. But the man of today does not understand the Pharaoh and his mission. He does not know what the Pharaoh-initiation really was. Today we see in a people, only a group of persons who can be counted. To the man of today a people² is a meaningless abstraction. The reality is simply a certain number of persons filling a certain area. But this is not a people for one who accepts the standpoint of occultism.³ As a single member such as the finger belongs to the whole body, so do the single persons within the people belong to the folk-soul. They are as it were embedded in it, but the folk-soul is not physical; it is real only as an etheric form. It is an absolute reality; the initiate can commune with this soul. It is even much more real for him than are single individualities among the people, far more so than a single person. For the occultist spiritual experiences are entirely valid, and there the folk-soul is something thoroughly real. Let us examine briefly the connection between the folk-soul and the individuals.

If we think of the single individuals, the single egos, as little circles, for external physical observation they will be separate beings. But one who observes these single individualities spiritually sees them as though embedded in an etheric cloud, and this is the incorporation of the folk-soul. If the single person thinks, feels, and wills something, he radiates his feelings and thoughts into the common folk-soul. This is colored by his radiations, and the folk-soul becomes permeated by the thoughts and feelings of the single persons. When we look away from the physical man and observe only his etheric and astral bodies, and then observe the astral body of an entire people, we see that the astral body of the entire people receives its color-shadings from the single persons.

The Egyptian initiate knew this, but he also knew something further. When he observed this folk-substance, the ancient Egyptian asked himself what really lived in the folk-soul. What did he see therein? He saw in his folk-soul the re-embodiment of Isis. He saw how she had once wandered among men. Isis worked in the folk-soul. He saw in her the same influences as those that proceeded from the moon; these forces worked in the folk-soul. What the Egyptian saw as Osiris worked in the individual spiritual radiations; therein he recognized the Osiris-influence. But Isis he saw in the folk-soul.

Thus Osiris was not visible on the physical plane. He had died for the physical plane. Only when a man had died was Osiris again placed before his eyes. Therefore we read in the Book of the Dead how the Egyptian felt that he was united with Osiris in death, that he himself became an Osiris. Osiris and Isis worked together in the state and in the single person, as his members.

Now let us again consider the Pharaoh, remembering that this was a reality for him. Each Pharaoh received certain instructions before his initiation, to the end that he should not grasp this with his intellect only, but that it should become truth and reality for him. He had to be brought to the point where he could say to himself, “If I am to rule this people, I must sacrifice a portion of my spirituality, I must extinguish a part of my astral and etheric bodies. The Osiris and Isis principles must work in me. I must will nothing personally; if I say something, Osiris must speak; if I do something, Osiris must do it; if I move my hand, Osiris and Isis must be active. I must represent Horus, the son of Isis and Osiris.”

Initiation is not erudition. But to be able to do something like this, to be able to make such a sacrifice, pertains to initiation. What the Pharaoh sacrificed of himself could be filled up with portions of the folk-soul. The part of himself that the Pharaoh relinquished was just what gave him power. For justified power does not arise through a man's raising his own personality; it arises through his taking into himself something that transcends the boundaries of personality, a higher spiritual power. The Pharaoh took such a power into himself, and this was externally portrayed through the Uraeus-serpent.

Again we have peered into a mystery. We have seen something much higher than the explanations that are given today when the Pharaohs are discussed.

If the Egyptian cherished such feelings, what would have to be his particular concern? It would be his particular concern that the folk-soul should become as strong as possible, rich in good forces, and that it should not be diminished. The Egyptian initiates could not reckon with, what man possessed through blood-relationship. But what the forefathers had accumulated as spiritual riches, was to become the property of the individual soul. This is indicated for us in the judging of the dead, where the man is brought before the forty-two assessors of the dead. There his deeds are weighed. Who are the forty-two judges of the dead? They are the ancestors.⁴ It was believed that each man's life was interwoven with the lives of forty-two ancestors. Therefore he had to answer to them as to whether he actually had taken up what they had offered to him spiritually. In this way, what was contained in the Egyptian mystery-teachings was something that was to become practical for life, but which could also be turned to good account for the time beyond death, for the life between death and a new birth. In the Egyptian epoch man was already entangled in the physical world. But at the same time he had to look up to his ancestors in the other world, and cultivate in the physical world what he had inherited from them. Through this interest he was fettered to the physical plane, since he had to continue working on what his fathers had created.

Now we must reflect that the souls of today are reincarnations of the ancient Egyptian souls. For the souls of today, who experienced it in their Egyptian incarnation, what is the significance of what happened at that time? All that the soul experienced at that time between death and a new birth has been woven into the soul, weaves within it, and has arisen again in our fifth period, which brings the fruits of the third period. These fruits appear in the inclinations and ideas of modern times, which have their causes in the ancient Egyptian world. Nowadays all the ideas emerge which at that time were laid down in the soul as germs. Therefore it is easy to see that man's modern conquests on the physical plane are nothing more than a coarser version of the transfer of interest to the physical plane that was present in ancient Egypt, only people are now even more deeply ensnared in matter. In the mummifying of the dead we have already seen a cause of the materialistic views that we now experience on the physical plane.

Let us imagine a soul of that time. Let us imagine a soul that then lived as a pupil of one of the ancient initiates. Such a pupil's spiritual gaze had been directed to the cosmos through actual perception. The way Osiris and Isis lived in the moon had become spiritual perception for him. Everything was permeated by divine-spiritual beings. He had taken this into his soul. He is again incarnated in the fourth and fifth periods. In the fifth period such a person experiences all this again. It comes back to him as a memory. What happens to it now? The pupil had gazed up at all that lived in the world of the stars. This sight comes to life again in a certain person of the fifth period. He remembers what he saw and heard at that time. He cannot recognize it again, because it has taken on a material coloring. It is no longer the spiritual that he sees, but the material-mechanical relationships emerge again and he recreates the thoughts in materialistic form as memory. Where he had previously seen divine beings, Isis and Osiris, now he sees only abstract forces without any spiritual bond. The spiritual relationships appear to him in thought-form. Everything arises again, but in material form.

Let us apply this to a particular soul which at that time acquired insight into the great cosmic connections, and let us imagine that there arises again before this soul what it had seen spiritually in ancient Egypt. This appears again in this soul in the fifth post-Atlantean period, and we have the soul of Copernicus. Thus did the Copernican system arise, as a memory-tableau of spiritual experiences in ancient Egypt. The case is the same with Kepler's system. These men gave birth to their great laws out of Their memories, out of what they had experienced in the Egyptian time. Now let us think how such a thing arises in the soul as a faint memory, and let us think also how what such a spirit truly thinks was, in ancient Egypt, experienced by him in spiritual form. What can such a spirit say to us? That it seems to him as though he looked back into ancient Egypt. It is as though he stated all this in a new form when such a spirit says, “But now, a year and a half after the first dawning, a few months after the first full daylight, a few weeks after the pure sun had risen over these most wonderful contemplations, nothing holds me back any longer. I shall revel in holy fire. I shall scorn the sons of men with the simple confession that I am stealing the sacred vessels of the Egyptians to build with them an habitation for my God, far removed from the borders of Egypt.” Is this not like an actual memory, which corresponds to the truth? This is Kepler's saying, and in his works we also find the following: “The ancient memory is knocking at my heart.” Wonderful are the connections of things in human evolution. Many such enigmatic sayings take on light and meaning when one senses the spiritual connections. Life becomes great and powerful, and we feel our way into a mighty whole when we understand that the single person is only an individual form of the spiritual that permeates the world.

I have already pointed out that what has arisen in our time as Darwinism is a coarser materialistic version of what the Egyptians portrayed as their gods in animal form. I was also able to show that if one understands Paracelsus correctly, his medical lore is a recrudescence of what was taught in the temples of ancient Egypt. Let us contemplate such a spirit as Paracelsus. We find a remarkable statement by him. One who has steeped himself in Paracelsus knows what a lofty spirit lived in him. He made a remarkable statement, saying that he had learned much in many ways; least of all in the academies, but much from old traditions and from the common people during his journeys through many lands. It is impossible here to give examples of the deep truths that are still present among the common people but are no longer understood, although Paracelsus could still turn them to account. He said that he had found one book containing deep medical truths. What book was it? The Bible! Thereby he meant not only the Old Testament, but also the New. One need only be able to read the Bible to find therein what Paracelsus found. What became of the medicine of Paracelsus? It is true that it is a memory of the ancient Egyptian methods of healing. But through the fact that he absorbed the mysteries of Christianity, the upward impulse, his works are saturated with spiritual wisdom, they are filled with Christ. This is the path into the future. This is what everyone must do who, in modern times, will pave the way back out of the fall into matter. We must not under-value the great material progress, but there is also the possibility of letting the spiritual flow into it.

One who studies what material science can offer today, who plunges into material science and is not too lazy to steep himself in it, such a man acts wisely also in relation to the science of the spirit. Much can be learned from the purely materialistic investigators. What is found there we can permeate with the pure spirit, which the science of the spirit offers. If thus we permeate everything with the spiritual, then this is properly understood Christianity. It is a slander of the science of the spirit when men say that it is a fantastic view of the world. It can stand firmly on the ground of reality, and it would be only a most elementary beginning in the science of the spirit if one were to concentrate on a schematic representation of the higher worlds. It is not important that the student should simply know the things, learning the concepts by heart. This is not all that counts. The important thing is that the teachings about the higher worlds should become fruitful in men, that the true spiritual-scientific teachings should be introduced into everything, into the everyday life.

It is not so important that one should preach about universal brotherly love. It is best to speak of that as little as possible. Speaking in such phrases is like saying to the stove, “Dear stove, it is your duty to warm this room. Fulfill your duty!” So it is with teachings that are given through such phrases. The important thing is the means. The stove remains cold if I simply tell it that it should be warm. It gets warm when it has fuel. People also remain cold when they are admonished. But what is fuel for the modern man? The specific facts of spiritual teaching are fuel for man.⁵ One should not be so lazy as to remain content with “Universal brotherhood.” People must be given fuel. Then brotherhood will arise of itself. As the plants stretch out their blossoms to the sun, so must we all look up to the sun of the spiritual life.

The important thing is that the matters we have examined here should not be accepted merely as theoretical doctrines, but that they should become a force in our souls. For every man, in every position in practical life, they can give impulses for what he must create. People who look today at the science of the spirit with a certain scorn feel themselves superior to its “fantastic” teachings. They find “unprovable assertions” therein and say that one should cleave to the facts. If the spiritual scientist were made pusillanimous rather than bold through his life in the science of the spirit, it would be easy for him to lose his sureness and energy when he sees how just those persons who should understand the science of the spirit are the ones who utterly fail to grasp it.

Our times easily look down on what the Egyptians recognized as their gods. The latter are said to be meaningless abstractions. But modern man is far more superstitious. He clings to entirely different gods, who are authorities for him. Because he does not actually bend the knee before them, he does not notice what superstitions he cherishes.

My dear friends, when we have thus been together again we should always be mindful that when we disperse we should not take with us only a number of truths, but we should take away a collective impression, a feeling, that can properly take the form of an impulse of will, an impulse to carry the science of the spirit into life and to allow nothing to disturb our confidence in it.

Let us place a picture before our soul. One often hears it said, “Oh, these seekers for the spirit! They assemble in their lodges and pursue all kinds of fantastic rubbish. A man of really modern views can have no part in that.” The adherents of the science of the spirit sometimes seem to be a sort of pariah class, regarded as uneducated and untrained. Should we be discouraged because of this? No. We shall place a picture before our souls and arouse the feelings that are connected with it. We can recall something similar in past times; how something similar occurred in ancient Rome. We can see how, in ancient Rome, primitive Christianity spread among a despised class of people. We look with legitimate delight today on such things as the Coliseum constructed by imperial Rome. But we can also look at the people who then regarded themselves as the choicest of their time; we can see how they sat in the Circus and watched while the Christians were burned in the arena and incense was kindled to quench the stink of the burning bodies.

Now let us look at those despised ones. They lived in the catacombs, in underground passages. There the spreading Christianity had to hide. There they erected the first Christian altars on the graves of their dead. There below they had their wonderful symbols and shrines. A strange feeling seizes us today when we walk through the catacombs, through that despised underground Rome. The Christians knew what awaited them. That first germ of the Christ-impulse on earth, confined to the catacombs, was despised. But what remains of imperial Rome? It has disappeared from the earth, while what then lived in the catacombs has been exalted.

Let us hope that those who today wish to make themselves the bearers of a spiritual world-view may preserve the confidence of the first Christians. The representatives of the science of the spirit may be despised by contemporary academic learning, but they know they are working for what will bloom and thrive in the future. Let them learn to endure all the vexations of the present day. We are working into the future. This we may feel confidently and without arrogance, firm against the misunderstandings of our time.

With such feelings let us try to give permanence to what has passed before our souls. Let us take it away with us as a force, and let us continue to work together fraternally in the right direction.

• 1. he passage referred to is probably the following (pages 293 and 295 in the Loeb Classical Library Edition): “Sisters' children mean as much to their uncle as to their father; some tribes regard this blood-tie as even closer and more sacred than that between son and father . . . The more relations a man has and the larger the number of his connections by marriage, the more influence has he in his age; it does not pay to have no ties. It is incumbant to take up a father's feuds or a kinsman's not less than his friendship.”
• 2. The German word Volk has no convenient English equivalent. We shall translate it as people or folk in different contexts.
• 3. Rudolf Steiner's fullest discussion of this subject appears in the cycle of lectures, Mission of the Folk-Souls, delivered at Oslo in 1910.
• 4. A full description of these 42 gods is to be found in Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, Volume I, pp. 316-317. For a fairly good picture, see pages 344-45 of the same work.
• 5. This thought is more fully expounded in Rudolf Steiner's booklet, Anthroposophical Ethics, comprising three lectures delivered in 1912 in Norrköping.

Let me first extend to you my heartfelt greetings. Friends in Norrköping have expressed the wish that on this occasion I should take a theme concerning that Being who in the realm of spiritual science is above all else near to us—the Christ Being. I have tried to meet this wish by undertaking to speak about the coming to life of the Christ Being in the human soul and the significance of this. We shall thus have the opportunity to speak of the most human and intimate significance of Christianity from the standpoint of spiritual science.

Let us consider the human soul. In the sense of spiritual science we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that the expression “human soul” signifies for us, points to something which for us men of Earth fills and permeates the soul element to its farthest limits—we have the short word “I”. In so far as we are men of Earth, our ego-being reaches as far as does our soul-nature. You know that by the name “I”, or ego, we denote one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being—the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the ego. And in order to have the starting-point for what we shall be considering in these lectures, we need recall only one thing: we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as explicable in terms of our present earthly environment.

We know that if we want to understand the physical human body we must go back to the three preceding embodiments of our Earth—the Saturn, Sun and Moon periods. In a remote, primordial past, during the Saturn embodiment, the germ of the physical body was already laid down. During the Sun embodiment the foundation of the etheric body was laid down; and during the Moon embodiment that of the astral body. In reality our Earth-evolution, in all its phases and in all its epochs, is none other than that which enables the ego to fulfill its whole being. We can say that just as the physical body had reached a significant stage of its evolution at the end of the Saturn period, the etheric body at the end of the Sun period, and the astral body at the end of the Moon period, so at the end of the Earth period our ego will have reached a significant point in its evolution.

We know that our ego develops through three soul members or principles, through the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind-soul, and the spiritual or consciousness-soul. All the worlds that come within the compass of these three soul members are also concerned with our ego. In the course of our Earth-evolution these three soul members first prepared for themselves the three external bodily members—the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body—through long Earth periods. In successive post-Atlantean epochs of civilization the three soul principles developed further, and in future Earth periods they will again adapt themselves to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, so that the Earth can be prepared to pass over to the Jupiter evolution.

If we take the expression comprehensively enough, we might also speak of man's Earth-evolution as his soul evolution. One could say that when the Earth began, the soul element also began, in conformity with law, to bestir itself in man. At first it began to work on the external sheaths, then it developed its own being, and from then onward it begins again to work on the external sheaths in order that preparation may be made for the Jupiter evolution.

We must keep before our mind's eye what man is meant to become in his soul during the Earth evolution. He is to become what may be designated by the word “personality”. This personality needs in the first place what may be called “free will”. But it needs also, on the other side, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the divine in the world. On the one side free will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; on the other side, the laying hold of the divine so that the divine penetrates into the soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Such are the two goals of man's evolution on the Earth; and to aid him in reaching them he has received two religious gifts. One of these gifts is destined to lay down in the human soul those forces which lead to freedom, to the capacity for distinguishing between the true and the false, the beautiful and ugly, the good and bad. And another religious gift had to be given to man during his Earth evolution in order that there might be laid in his soul the seed through which the soul can feel united to the divine within itself.

The first religious gift comes to meet us at the beginning of the Old Testament as the great picture of the Temptation and the Fall.

The second religious gift comes to us from all that the Mystery of Golgotha signifies.

The Temptation and the Fall have to do with the implanting of freedom in man, the gift of being able to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. The Mystery of Golgotha points to the possibility of man's soul finding again the path to the divine, of knowing that the divine can flash up within it and penetrate it. These religious gifts include everything that is most important in the Earth evolution—everything proceeding from the Earth evolution that the soul can experience in its uttermost depths, everything associated most profoundly with the being and becoming of the human soul. How far is there a connection between these two religious gifts and the being and becoming of the human soul—its inner experience?

I do not want to put these matters before you in an abstract way, so I will start from a certain scene in the Mystery of Golgotha as it stands before our eyes in historical tradition and has impressed itself—and should indeed have impressed itself even more—on the hearts and souls of mankind. Let us assume that we have in Christ Jesus that Being of whom we have often spoken in the course of our lectures. Let us assume that in Christ Jesus we have before our spiritual eyes that which must appear to humanity as the most important fact in the whole universe. And then let us set in contrast to this feeling the outcry, the fury, of the enraged multitudes in Jerusalem at the time of the condemnation before the crucifixion. Let us observe that the High Court of Jerusalem held it above all things necessary to question Christ Jesus as to His relationship with the divine, as to whether He claimed to be the Son of God. And let us bear in mind that the High Court held such a claim to be the greatest blasphemy that Christ Jesus could have uttered.

An historical scene is there before us—a scene in which the people cry out and clamor for the death of Christ Jesus. And now let us try to picture to ourselves what this shouting and rage signified historically. Let us ask: What ought these people to have recognized in Christ Jesus? They ought to have recognized that Being who gives meaning and significance to Earth life. They ought to have recognized that Being who had to accomplish the deed without which Earth humanity cannot find the way back to the divine. They ought to have understood that humanity has no significance apart from this Being. Men would have to strike out from the evolution of the Earth the world “man” if they wished to strike out the Christ Event. Now let it come home to us that this multitude condemned and were enraged against the Being who actually makes man Man upon the Earth; who is destined to give to the Earth its goal and purpose. What does this mean? Surely it means that in those who in Jerusalem at that time ranked as the representatives of human knowledge concerning the true being of man, the knowledge of man was obscured. They had no knowledge of what man is, what his mission on the Earth is to be. We are told nothing less than that humanity had reached a point where it had lost itself, where it had condemned that which gives purpose and significance to the Earth-evolution. And out of the cries of the enraged multitude could be heard, not the words of wisdom, but of folly: “We do not wish to be Man; rather do we wish to cast away from us that which gives us any further meaning as Man.”

When we reflect on all this, the relation of man to sin and guilt—in the sense of Pauline Christianity—assumes a different aspect. Man, in the course of his evolution could fall into sin which he was not himself able to wash away; that is what St. Paul means. And in order to make it possible for man to be cleansed of sin and debt, Christ had to come to the Earth. That is St. Paul's view. If this view requires any evidence, it is there in the fury and clamor of those who cried “Crucify Him!” For this implies that the people did not know what they themselves were to be on the Earth; they did not know that it was the aim of their earlier evolution to veil their being with darkness.

Here we come to what may be spoken of as the preparation of the human soul for the Christ Being. Through what it is able to experience within itself, the soul feels, even though it may not be able to express it in words: “Since the very beginning of the Earth I have developed in such a way that through what I possess in my own being I cannot fulfill the aim of my evolution. Where is there anything to which I can cling, which I can take into myself and with it reach my goal?” To feel as if the human being extends far beyond anything that the soul can achieve through its own strength by reason of its evolution on the Earth hitherto—such is the Christian attitude or mood of preparation. And when the soul finds that which it must recognize as essentially bound up with its being—but for the attainment of which it could not find the power within itself—when the soul finds that which bestows this power, it finds the Christ. The soul then develops its connection with the Christ, saying to itself: “At the very beginning of the Earth a certain nature was pre-ordained for me; in the course of Earth-evolution my true nature has been darkened, and when now I look into this darkness I feel that I lack the power to bring my true nature to fulfillment. But I turn my spiritual gaze upon the Christ, who gives me this power.” On the one hand the human soul feels this lack, and on the other hand it feels the approach of Christ and stands as if in a direct personal relationship to Him. The soul seeks Christ and knows that it cannot find Him if He does not give Himself to humanity through human evolution, if He does not approach from outside.

There is a well-known Christian Church Father who was not afraid to speak of the Greek philosophers, Heracleitos, Socrates and Plato, as Christians who lived before the founding of Christianity. Why does he do this? As we know, the doctrines professed today obscure much of what was at first an illuminating Christian teaching. St. Augustine himself said: “All religions have contained something of the truth, and the element of truth in all religions is what is Christian in them, before there was a Christianity in name.” St. Augustine dared to say that. Nowadays many a man would be regarded as a heretic if he were to say something similar within certain Christian congregations.

We shall most readily understand what this Church Father wished to convey, when he called the old Greek philosophers Christians, by endeavoring to enter into the feeling of those souls who in the first Christian centuries tried to determine their personal relationship to the Christ. These souls did not think of Christ as having had no relation to the Earth evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ has always been concerned with the evolution of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, His task, His mission, in the Earth-evolution was changed. It is not Christian to seek Christ in the evolution of the Earth only since the Mystery of Golgotha. True Christians know that Christ has always been connected with the evolution of the Earth.

Let us now turn to the Jewish people. Did the Jews know Christ? I am not asking whether the Jewish people knew the name of Christ or if they were conscious of all I have to say to you; I am asking whether those who really understand Christianity are justified in saying: “Judaism had Christ; Judaism knew Christ.” It is possible to have some person near one and to see his external form without being able to recognize or value truly his essential being, because one has not risen to real knowledge of him. In the true Christian sense, ancient Judaism had Christ, only it did not recognize Him in His true being. Is it Christian to speak in this way? It is indeed Christian, as truly as it is Pauline.

Where was Christ for ancient Judaism? It is said in the Old Testament that when Moses led the Jews out of Egypt into the wilderness, a pillar of cloud went before them by day and a pillar of fire by night. It is said that the Jews passed through the sea, that the sea parted in order that they might pass through, while behind them the Egyptians were drowned, for the sea closed in on them. It is also said that the Jews murmured because they had no water, but at the command of God Moses was able to strike a rock with his staff so that water poured forth for the Jews to drink. Moses led the Jews, he himself being led by God. Who was the God of Moses? We will in the first instance allow Paul to answer. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (X:1-4), we read: “Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud” (he means the pillar of fire) “and all passed through the sea and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea ... and all drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.” Thus who was it, according to Paul, who led the Jews and who spoke with Moses? Who was it who caused water to flow out of the rock and who turned away the sea from the path of the Jews? Only those who wish to declare that Paul was no Christian would dare pronounce it unchristian to see Christ in the guiding God of the Old Testament, in the Lord of Moses.

In the Old Testament there is a passage which must, I think, present great difficulties for all who reflect more deeply. It is a passage to which anyone who does not read the Old Testament thoughtlessly, but who wants to understand its connections, will return again and again. “What may this passage mean?” he asks himself. The passage (Numbers XX:11-12) is as follows: “And Moses lifted up his hand, and with his rod he struck the rock twice; and the water came out abundantly, and the congregation drank, and their beasts also. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron: ‘Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.’”

Take this passage in its context in the Old Testament. When the people murmured, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with a staff: Moses struck with his staff on the rock, and water flowed out; everything that the Lord commanded took place through Moses and Aaron, and yet, directly after this, we are told the Lord reproved Moses—if it is a reproof—for not having believed in Him. What does it mean? Turn to all the commentaries on this passage and try to understand it with their aid. You will then understand it as one understands a great deal in the Bible—really not at all—for behind this passage a great mystery is hidden. It is this: He who led Moses, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He who led the people through the wilderness and caused water to flow out of the rock, He was the Lord, Christ! But the time was not yet come; Moses himself did not recognize Him; Moses thought He was another. This is what is meant by Moses not having believed in Him who had commanded him to strike the rock with his staff.

How did the Lord—Christ—appear to the Jewish people? We are told that by day it was in a pillar of cloud and by night in a pillar of fire—and by His dividing the waters for their safety ... and many other things we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire, in the air, in the elemental events of nature He was active, but never once did it occur to the ancient Jews to say to themselves: That which appears in the pillar of cloud and in the pillar of fire, that which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears also in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into nature; it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly within itself, as the Jewish soul then was, it could not find Him.

There in the Old Testament we have the Christ. There He worked, but men did not recognize Him. How did the Christ work? Do we not see how He worked when we read through the Old Testament? The most significant thing Moses had to impart to his people through the mouth of Jahve was the Ten Commandments. He had received them out of the power of the elements from which Jahve spoke to him. Moses did not descend into the depths of his own soul; he did not ask in lonely meditation: “How does God speak in my own heart?” He went up the mountain and through the power of the elements the divine Will revealed itself to him. Will is the fundamental note of the Old Testament: this is often spoken of as the Law. Will works through the evolution of humanity and is expressed in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments. The God proclaimed his Will to man through the elements. Will holds sway in the Earth evolution. That is really the purport of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament, accordingly, calls for man's submission to this Will.

If we hold all this before our souls, we can sum it up by saying: The will of the Lord was given to men; but men did not know the Lord; they knew not the divine in such a way as to connect it with their own human souls.

Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. Did the heathen have Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their souls passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, it perceived in the spiritual world the secrets of existence. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for Initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside the body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ.

Christ was there for the heathen also, but for them he was there only in the Mysteries. He revealed Himself to them only when the soul was out of the body. Christ was there for the heathen, even if among them there was as little recognition of this Being as Christ as there was among the Jews of that Being of whom we have just spoken and before whom the disciples of the Mysteries were placed.

The Mysteries were instituted for the heathen. Those who were fit and ready were admitted into the Mysteries. Through these Mysteries Christ worked upon the pagan world. Why did He work thus? Because the soul of man, in its development since the beginning of the Earth, had lost the inherent power to find its true essence through itself. This true being had to reveal itself to the soul of man when the soul was unhampered by the bonds of human nature; when, that is, it was not bound up with the body. Hence Christ had to lead men by means of the fact that as initiates of the Mysteries they were as though divested of their human nature. Christ was there for the heathen too! He was their leader in the Mysteries. For never could man have said: “When I develop my own powers, then I can find the meaning and purport of the Earth.” This meaning was lost, obscured in darkness. The forces of the human soul had been pressed down into regions too deep for the soul of itself, through its own powers, to be able to realize the meaning of the Earth.

When we allow what was given in the pagan Mysteries to the disciples and candidates for Initiation to work upon us, it proves to be Wisdom. To the Jews was given Will, through the Law; to the disciples of the pagan Mysteries was given Wisdom. But if we look at the characteristics of this pagan Wisdom, can we not express it by saying: If he did not leave his body when he was a pupil of the Mysteries, the Earth-man could not, through Wisdom alone, recognize his God as such. As little through Wisdom as through Will could the divinity reveal itself to men. Indeed, we find an injunction that resounds most wonderfully through Greek antiquity, like a powerful demand upon mankind. At the entrance to the shrine of the Mysteries of Apollo stood the words, “Man, know thyself!” What are we told by the fact that these words, “Man, know thyself!” stood at the entrance to the sanctuary, like a summons to mankind? We are told that nowhere outside the sanctuary, where man remains what he has become since the beginning of the Earth, can he fulfill the commandment “Know thyself!” He must become something more than man; he must loosen in the Mysteries the ties which bind the soul to the body, if he is to know himself. These words, standing like a powerful demand before the Apollonian sanctuary, point to the fact that darkness had fallen upon humanity—in other words, that God could be reached through Wisdom as little as he could directly reveal himself as Will.

Even as the individual human soul feels that it cannot bring forth within itself the forces which impart to it the purport of the Earth, so do we see the human soul at such a stage of development among the Jews that even Moses himself, their leader, did not recognize who was leading him. Among the heathen we see that the demand “Know thyself” could be fulfilled only in the Mysteries, because man, as he had developed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, was unable with his connection of body and soul to unfold the power whereby he could know himself. The words “Not through Will and not through Wisdom is God to be known” sound to us from those ages. Through what, then, was God to be known?

We have often characterized the essential nature of the point of time when Christ entered into the evolution of Earth-humanity. Let us now consider exactly what it means when it is said that a certain darkening of the soul of man had set in, that the divine could be revealed neither through Will nor through Wisdom. What is the real meaning of this?

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the divine, and of the meaning which the human has within the divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the divine, or of anything else earthly to the divine. Today we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the divine through pure philosophy. But through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe he cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered today, you will be able to say to yourselves: What is at first revealed to the soul of earthly man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly, that leads to the divine-spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves, let us investigate the meaning of immortality.

In our day many people no longer have any knowledge of the real meaning of human immortality. Many today speak of immortality when they can merely admit that the being of the human soul passes through the gate of death and then finds some place or other in the universal All. But every creature does that. That which is united with the crystal passes over into the universe when the crystal is dissolved; the plant that fades passes into the universe; the animal at death passes over into the universe. For man, it is different. Immortality has a meaning for man only if he can carry his consciousness through the gate of death. Think of an immortal human soul that was unconscious after death; such immortality would have absolutely no meaning. The human soul must carry its consciousness through the gate of death if it is to speak of its immortality. Because of the way in which the soul is united to the body, it cannot find anything in itself of which it can say, “I carry that consciously through death”, for human consciousness is enclosed between birth and death; it reaches only as far as death. The consciousness that belongs at first to the human soul extends only as far as death. Into this consciousness there shines the divine Will, for example in the Ten Commandments. Read in the Book of Job as to whether this illumination could stimulate man's consciousness to such a point that it might say to itself: “I pass as a conscious being through the gate of death.” What a challenge to us there is in the words spoken to Job: “Reject God and die!” We know that he was uncertain whether he would pass with consciousness through the gate of death. And let us set beside this the Greek saying which gives expression to the dread felt by the Greeks in the face of death: “Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.” Here we have from paganism, also, a testimony to the uncertainty felt by man concerning his immortality. And how uncertain many people are even today. All those people who say that man, when he goes through the gate of death, passes into the universal All and is united with some universal being or other, take no heed of what the soul must ascribe to itself if it is to speak of its immortality.

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the attitude that man must take up with regard to his immortality. The word is Love. All that we have said concerning the word immortality we can now connect with what is denoted by Love. Love is not anything that we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; or anything that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom. Love dwells in the realm of the feelings. We must admit to ourselves that the human soul would fall short of its true nature if it were unable to be filled with love. Yes, when we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But let us now suppose that on passing through the gate of death we lost our human individuality and were united with some universal divinity. We should then be within this divinity; we should belong to it. Love would have no meaning if we were within the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can love another only if the other is separate from himself. If we are to carry our love of God through death, we must carry with us that which kindles love within us—our individuality.

If the meaning of the Earth was to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality had to be given him in such a way that his nature would be thought of as inseparable from love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give man what he needs; only Love can give it to him. What was it, then, that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path on Earth? Take the Jews or take the heathen: their consciousness of anything beyond death had been darkened. Between birth and death—consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth—darkness; of their bodily consciousness nothing more remained. “Know thyself!”—at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, stood this most holy demand of the sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: “If I remain bound to my body with my soul, as is the way with a man of Earth, I cannot recognize in myself an individuality which could love beyond death. I cannot do it.” The knowledge that man can love as an individuality beyond death—this is what had been lost for man.

Death is not merely the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that throughout every hour of life in the body man's consciousness were such that he knew what lies beyond death as certainly as he knows today that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him; death would not be what we call death; he would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by “death” the cessation of the physical body; by “death” he understood the fact that consciousness extends only as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Whenever Paul speaks of death, we might add: “Lack of consciousness beyond death.”

What did the Mystery of Golgotha give to man? Was it a series of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire, that stood before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man, Christ Jesus, stood before men. With the Mystery of Golgotha did any event drawn from the mysterious realms of nature take place—did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men; a man who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. By a man were these things done.

The Jew had to look into nature when he wanted to see him whom he called his divine Lord. Now it was a man who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that God dwelt in him. The pagan had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Being who is the Christ. On the Earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could know only that the Christ was outside the Earth. But He who had been outside the Earth came down to Earth, took on a human body.

In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men that Being who had formerly stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? It was the beginning of the course of events whereby the powers that man had lost ever since the start of the Earth evolution—the powers which assured him of his immortality—were restored to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. The overcoming of death on Golgotha gave birth to the forces which could rekindle in the soul the powers it had lost. And the path of man through Earth evolution will henceforth be this: Inasmuch as he takes the Christ more and more into himself, he will discover within himself the power which can love beyond death, so that he will be able to stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore, only since the Mystery of Golgotha has it become true to say: “Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.”

Will was given from out of the burning thorn-bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments. Wisdom was given through the Mysteries. But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the assurance that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a community of Love can be founded between God and man and all men among one another—the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what it had lost from the primal beginning of the Earth, in that its forces had become ever weaker and weaker.

Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love! In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

I wanted to bring these things before you from a certain aspect. Whatever may have seemed aphoristic in the explanations given today will find its context later on. But I believe we can inscribe deeply in our souls that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a veil, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this veil was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: “Through the Mystery of Golgotha a cosmic Being flowed into Earth-life, a super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.”

We shall speak in the following lectures of all that the human soul, with Christ, can experience within itself.

Let us once more call up before our souls whither modern Initiation leads, after the first steps to Imaginative knowledge have been successfully taken. A man then comes to the point where his previous abstract, purely ideal world of thought is permeated with inner life. The thoughts coming to him are no longer lifeless, passively acquired; they are an inward world of living force which he feels in the same way as he feels the pulsing of his blood or the streaming in and out of the air he breathes. It is therefore a question of the ideal element in thinking being replaced by an inward experience of reality. Then indeed the pictures that previously constituted a man's thoughts are no longer mere abstract, shadowy projections of the outside world, but are teeming with an inward, vivid existence. They are real Imaginations experienced in two dimensions, as indicated yesterday, but it is not as though a man were standing in front of a painting in the physical world, for then he may experience visions, not Imaginations. Rather is it as though, having lost the third dimension, he were himself moving about within the picture. Hence it is not like seeing something in the physical world; anything that has the look of the physical world will be a vision. Genuine Imagination comes to us only when, for example, we no longer see colours as we do in the physical world, but when we experience them. What does this mean?

When you see colours in the physical world, they give you different experiences. You perceive red as something that attacks you, that wants to spring at you. A bull will react violently to this aggressive red; he experiences it far more vividly than does man, in whom the whole experience is toned down.

When you perceive green, it gives you a feeling of balance, an experience neither painful nor particularly pleasant; whereas blue induces a mood of devotion and humility. If we allow these various experiences of colour to penetrate right into us, we can realise how it is that when anything in the spiritual world comes at us in the aggressive way red does in physical life, it is something corresponding to the colour red. When we encounter something which calls up a mood of humility, this has the same effect as the experience of blue or blue-violet in the physical world. We can simplify this by saying: we have experienced red or blue in the spiritual world. Otherwise, for the sake of precision, we should always have to say: we have experienced something there in the way that red, or blue, is experienced in the physical world. To avoid so many words, one says simply that one has seen auric colours which can be distinguished as red, blue, green, and so on.

But we must realise thoroughly that this making our way into the super-sensible, this setting aside of all that comes to us through the senses, is always present as a concrete experience. And in the course of this experience we always have the feeling I described yesterday, as if thinking had become an organ of touch extending throughout the human organism, so that spiritually we feel that a new world is opening out and we are touching it. This is not yet the real spiritual world, but what I might call the etheric or formative-forces world. Anyone who would learn to know the etheric must grasp it in this way. For no speculation, no abstract reflection, about the etheric can lead to true knowledge of it. In this thinking that has become real we live with our own formative-forces or etheric body, but it is a different kind of living from life in the physical body. I should like to describe this other way by means of a comparison.

When you look at one of your fingers, you recognise it as a living member of your organism. Cut it off, and it is no longer what it was; it dies. If this finger of yours had a consciousness, it would say: I am no more than a part of your organism, I have no independent existence. That is what a man has to say directly he enters the etheric world with Imaginative cognition. He no longer feels himself as a separate being, but as a member of the whole etheric world, the whole etheric cosmos. After that he realises that it is only by having a physical body that he becomes a personality, an individuality. It is the physical body that individualises and makes of one a separate being.

We shall indeed see how even in the spiritual world we can be individualised—but I will speak of that later. If we enter the spiritual world in the way described, we are bound at first to feel ourself as just one member of the whole etheric Cosmos; and if our etheric body were to be cut off from the cosmic ether, it would mean for us etheric death. It is very important to grasp this, so that we may understand properly what has to be said later about a man's passage through the gate of death.

As I pointed out yesterday, this Imaginative experience in the etheric, which becomes a tableau of our whole life from birth up to the present moment of our existence on Earth, is accompanied by an extraordinarily intense feeling of happiness. And the flooding of the whole picture-world by this inward, wonderfully pleasurable feeling is a man's first higher experience.

We must then be able—as I also mentioned yesterday—to take all we have striven for through Imagination, through our life-tableau, and make it all disappear at will. It is only when we have thus emptied our consciousness that we understand how matters really are in the spiritual world. For then we know that what we have seen up to now was not the spiritual world, but merely an Imaginative picture of it. It is only at this stage of empty consciousness that—just as the physical world streams into us through our senses—so the spiritual world streams into us through our thinking. Here begins our first real experience, our first real knowledge, of the objective spiritual world. The life-tableau was only of our own inner world. Imaginative cognition reveals only this inner world, which appears to higher knowledge as a picture-world, a world of cosmic pictures. The Cosmos itself, together with our own true being, as it was before birth, before our earthly existence, appear first at the stage of Inspiration, when the spiritual world flows into us from outside. But when we have arrived at being able to empty our consciousness, our whole soul becomes awake; and in this stage of pure wakefulness we must be able to acquire a certain inner stillness and peace. This peace I can describe only in the following way.

Let us imagine we are in a very noisy city and hear the roar of it all around us. This is terrible—we say—when, from all sides, tumult assails our ears. Suppose it to be some great modern city, such as London. But now suppose we leave this city, and gradually, with every step we take as we walk away, it becomes quieter and quieter. Let us imagine vividly this fading away of noise. Stiller and stiller it becomes. Finally we come perhaps to a wood where all is perfectly silent; we have reached the zero-point where nothing can be heard.

Yet we can go even further. To illustrate how this can happen, I will use a quite trivial comparison. Suppose we have in our purse a certain sum of money. As we spend it from day to day, it dwindles, just as the noise dwindles as we leave the town. At length comes the day when there is nothing left—the purse is empty. We can compare this nothingness with the silence. But what do we do next if we are not to grow hungry? We get into debt. I am not recommending this; it is meant only as a comparison. How much have we then in our purse? Less than nothing; and the greater the debt, the more we have less than nothing.

And now let us imagine it to be the same with this silence. There would be not only the absolute peace of the zero-point of silence, but it would go further and come to the negative of hearing, quieter than quiet, more silent than silence. And this must in fact happen when, in the way described yesterday, we are able through enhanced powers to reach this inner peace and silence. When, however, we arrive at this inner negative of audibility, at this peace greater than the zero-point of peace, we are then so deeply in the spiritual world that we not only see it but hear it resounding. The world of pictures becomes a world of resounding life; and then we are in the midst of the true spiritual world. During the moments we spend there we are standing, as it were, on the shore of existence; the ordinary sense-world vanishes, and we know ourselves to be in the spiritual world. Certainly—I will say more of this later—we must be properly prepared so that we are at all times able to return. But there is something else to come—an experience previously unknown. Directly this peace is achieved in the empty consciousness, what I have described as an inwardly experienced, all-embracing, cosmic feeling of happiness gives way to an equally all-embracing pain. We come to feel that the world is built on a foundation of cosmic suffering—of a cosmic element which can be experienced by the human being only as pain. We learn the penetrating truth, so willingly ignored by those who look outside themselves for happiness, that everything in existence has finally to be brought to birth in pain. And when, through Initiation-knowledge, this cosmic experience of pain has made its impression upon us, then out of real inner knowledge we can say the following:

If we study the human eye—the eye that reveals to us the beauty of the physical world, and is so important for us that through it we receive nine-tenths of the impressions that make up our life between birth and death—we find that the eye is embedded in a bodily cavity which originates from a wound. What was done originally to bring about the eye-sockets could be done to-day only by actually cutting out a hollow in the physical body. The ordinary account of evolution gives a much too colourless impression of this. These sockets into which the eyeballs were inserted from outside—as indeed the physical record of evolution shows—were hollowed out at a time when man was still an unconscious being. If he had been conscious of it, it would have involved a painful wounding of the organism.

Indeed, the whole human organism has been brought forth out of an element which for present-day consciousness would be an experience of pain. At this stage of knowledge we have a deep feeling that, just as the coming forth of the plants means pain for the Earth, so all happiness, everything in the world from which we derive pleasure and blessing, has its roots in an element of suffering. If as conscious beings we could suddenly be changed into the substance of the ground beneath our feet, the result would be an endless enhancement of our feeling of pain.

When these facts revealed out of the spiritual world are put before superficially-minded people, they say: “My idea of God is quite different. I have always thought of God in His power as founding everything upon happiness, just as we would wish.” Such people are like that King of Spain to whom someone was showing a model of the universe and the course of the stars. The King had the greatest difficulty in understanding how all these movements occurred, and finally he exclaimed: “If God had left it to me, I would have made a much simpler world.”

Strictly speaking, that is the feeling of many people where knowledge and religion are concerned. Had God left the creation to them, they would have made a simpler world. They have no idea how naive this is!

Genuine Initiation-knowledge cannot merely satisfy men's desire for happiness; it has to guide them to a true understanding of their own being and destiny as they come forth from the world in the past, present and future. For this, spiritual facts are necessary, instead of something which gives immediate pleasure. But there is another thing which these lectures should indeed bring out. Precisely by experiencing such facts, if only through knowing them conceptually, people will gain a good deal that satisfies an inward need for their life here on Earth. Yes, they will gain something they need in order to be human beings in the fullest sense, just as for completeness they need their physical limbs.

The world we meet in this way when we go on beyond Imagination into the stillness of existence, out of which the spiritual world reveals itself in colour and in sound—this world differs essentially from the world perceived by the senses. When we are living with it—and we have to live with the spiritual world when it is present for us—we see how all sense-perceptible, physical things and processes really proceed from out of the spiritual world. Hence as earthly men we see only one half of the world; the other half is occult, hidden from us. And through every opening, every happening, in the physical-material world, one might say, this hidden half reveals its spiritual nature first in the pictures of Imagination, and then through its own creative activity in Inspiration. In the world of Inspiration we can feel at home, for here we find the origins of all earthly things, all earthly creations. And here, as I have indicated, we discover our own pre-earthly existence.

Following an old image, I have called this world, lying beyond that of Imagination, the astral world—the name is not important—and what we bring along with us from that world, and have carried into our etheric and physical bodies, we may speak of as our astral body. In a certain sense, it encloses the Ego-organisation. For higher knowledge, accordingly, the human being consists of four members: physical body, etheric or formative-forces body, astral body, and Ego-organisation. Knowledge of the Ego, however, entails a further super-sensible step, which in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have called “Intuition”. The term Intuition may easily be misunderstood because, for example, anyone with imaginative, poetic gifts will often give the name of intuition to his sensitive feeling for the world. This kind of intuition is only a dim feeling; yet it has some relation to the Intuition of which I am speaking. For just as earthly man has his sense-perceptions, so in his feeling and his will he has a reflection of the highest kind of cognition, of Intuition. Otherwise he could not be a moral being. The dim promptings of conscience are a reflection, a kind of shadow-picture, of true Intuition, the highest form of cognition possible for man on Earth.

Earthly man has in him something of what is lowest, and also this shadow-picture of what is highest, accessible only through Intuition. It is the intermediate levels that are lacking in him; hence he has to acquire Imagination and Inspiration. He has also to acquire Intuition in its purity, in its light-filled inner quality. At present it is in his moral feeling, his moral conscience, that he possesses an earthly image of that which arises as Intuition. Hence we can say that when a man with Initiation-knowledge rises to actual Intuitive knowledge of the world, of which previously he has known only the natural laws, the world becomes as intimately connected with him on earth as only the moral world is now. And this is indeed a significant feature of human life on Earth—that out of a dim inner presentiment we connect with the highest realm of all something which, in its true form, is accessible only to enhanced cognition.

The third step in higher knowledge, necessary for rising to Intuition, can be achieved only by developing to its highest point a faculty which, in our materialistic age, is not recognised as a cognitional force. What is revealed through Intuition can be attained only by developing and spiritualising to the highest degree the capacity for love. A man must be able to make this capacity for love into a cognitional force. A good preparation for this is to free ourselves in a certain sense from dependence on external things; for instance, by making it our regular practice to picture our past experiences not in their usual sequence but in reverse order.

In ordinary passive thinking we may be said to accept world events in an altogether slavish way. As I said yesterday: In our very thought-pictures we keep the earlier as the earlier, the later as the later; and when we are watching the course of a play on the stage the first act comes first, then the second, and so on to a possible fifth. But if we can accustom ourselves to picture it all by beginning at the end and going from the fifth act back through the fourth, third, second, to the first, then we break away from the ordinary sequence—we go backwards instead of forwards. But that is not how things happen in the world: we have to strain every nerve to call up from within the force to picture events in reverse. By so doing we free the inner activity of our soul from its customary leading-strings, and we gradually enable the inner experiences of our soul and spirit to reach a point where soul and spirit break loose from the bodily and also from the etheric element. A man can well prepare himself for this breaking away if every evening he makes a backward survey of his experiences during the day, beginning with the last and moving back. When possible even the details should be conceived in a backward direction: if you have gone upstairs, picture yourself first on the top step, then on the step below it, and so on backwards down all the stairs.

You will probably say: “But there are so many hours during the day, full of experiences.” Then first try taking episodes—picturing, for instance, this going up and down stairs in reverse. One thus acquires inner mobility, so that gradually one becomes able to go back in imagination through a whole day in three or four minutes.

But that, after all, is only the negative half of what is needed for enhancing and training spiritually our capacity for loving. This must be brought to the point when, for example, we lovingly follow each stage in the growth of a plant. In ordinary life this growth is seen only from outside—we do not take part in it. We must learn to enter into every detail of plant-growth, to dive right down into the plant, until in our own soul we become the plant, growing, blossoming, bringing forth fruit with it, and the plant becomes as dear to us as we are to ourselves. In the same way we can go above the plants to picture the life of animals, and down to the minerals. We can feel how the mineral forms itself into the crystal, and take inward pleasure in the shaping of its planes, corners, angles, and having a sensation as of pain in our own being when the minerals are split asunder. Then, in our souls, we enter not only with sympathy but with our will into every single event in nature.

All this must be preceded by a capacity for love extending to mankind as a whole. We shall never be able to love nature in the right way until we have first succeeded in loving all our fellow-men. When we have in this way won through to an understanding love for all nature, that which made itself perceptible first in the colours of the aura, and in the resounding of the spheres, rounds itself out and takes on the outlines of actual spiritual Beings.

Experiencing these spiritual Beings, however, is a different matter from experiencing physical things. When a physical object is in front of me, for example this clock, I stand here with the clock there, and can experience it only by looking at it from outside. My relation to it is determined by space. In this way one could never have any real experience of a spiritual Being. We can have it only by entering right into the spiritual Being, with the aid of the faculty for loving which we have cultivated first towards nature. Spiritual Intuition is possible only by applying—in stillness and emptiness of consciousness—the capacity for love we can first learn in the realm of nature. Imagine that you have developed this capacity for loving minerals, plants, animals and also man; you are now in the midst of a completely empty consciousness. All around is the peace which lies beyond its zero-point. You feel the suffering on which the whole existence of the world is founded, and this suffering is at the same time a loneliness. Nothing yet is there. But the capacity for love, flowing up from within in manifold forms, leads you on to enter with your own being into all that now appears visibly, audibly, as Inspiration. Through this capacity for love you enter first into one spiritual Being, then into another.

These Beings described in my book, Occult Science, these Beings of the higher Hierarchies—we now learn to live in our experience of them; they become for us the essential reality of the world. So we experience a concrete spiritual world, just as through eye and ear, through feeling and warmth, we experience a concrete physical world.

If anyone wishes to acquire knowledge particularly important for himself, he must have advanced to this stage. I have already mentioned that through Inspiration pre-earthly spiritual existence rises up in our soul; how in this way we learn what we were before we came down into an earthly body. When through the capacity for love we are able to enter clairvoyantly into spiritual Beings, in the way I have described, there is also revealed that which first makes a man, in his inner experience, a complete being. There is revealed what precedes our life in the spiritual world; we are shown what we were before ascending to the last spiritual life between death and rebirth. The preceding earthly life is revealed, and, one after another, the lives on Earth before that. For the true Ego, present in all the repeated lives on Earth, can manifest only when the faculty for love has been so greatly enhanced that any other being, whether outside in nature or in the spiritual world, has become just as dear to a man as in his self-love he is dear to himself. But the true Ego—the Ego that goes through all repeated births and deaths—is manifest to a man only when he no longer lives egotistically for momentary knowledge, but in a love that can forget self-love and can live in an objective Being in the way that in physical existence he lives in self-love. For this Ego of former lives on Earth has then become as objective for his present life as a stone or a plant is for us when we stand outside it. We must have learnt by then to comprehend in objective love something which, for our present subjective personality, has become quite objective, quite foreign. We must have gained mastery over ourselves during our present earthly existence in order to have any insight into a preceding one.

When we have achieved this knowledge, we see the complete life of a man passing rhythmically through the stages of earthly existence from birth or conception till death, and then through spiritual stages between death and rebirth, and then returning again to Earth, and so on. A complete earthly life reveals itself as a repeated passing through birth and death, with intermediate periods of life in purely spiritual worlds. Only through Intuition can this knowledge be acquired as real knowledge, derived directly from experience.

I have had to describe for you—in outline to begin with—the path of Initiation-knowledge that must be followed in our time, at this present stage of human evolution, in order to arrive at true spiritual knowledge of the world and of man. But as long as human beings have existed there has been Initiation-knowledge, although it has had to take various forms in different evolutionary periods. As man is a being who goes through each successive earthly life in a different way, conditions for his inner development in the various epochs of world-evolution have to vary considerably. We shall be learning more about these variations in course of the next few days; to-day I should like to say only that the Initiation-knowledge which had to be given out in early times was very different from what has to be given out to-day. We can go back some thousands of years, to a time long before the Mystery of Golgotha, and we find how greatly men's attitude to both the natural world and the spiritual world differed from that of the present time, and how different, accordingly, was their Initiation-knowledge from what is appropriate today.

We have now a very highly developed natural science; I shall not be speaking of its most advanced side but only of what is imparted to children of six or seven, as general knowledge. At this comparatively early age a child has to accept the laws relating, let us say, to the Copernican world-system, and on this system are built hypotheses as to the origin of the universe. The Kant-Laplace theory is then put forward and, though this theory has been revised, yet in its essentials it still holds good. The theory is based on a primeval nebula, demonstrated in physics by an experiment intended to show the earliest conditions of the world-system. This primeval nebula can be imitated experimentally, and out of it, through the rotation of certain forces, the planets are assumed to have come into being, and the sun left behind. One of the rings split off from the nebula is thought to have condensed into the shape of the Earth, and everything else—minerals, plants, animals, and finally man himself—is supposed to have evolved on this basis. And all this is described in a thoroughly scientific way.

The process is made comprehensible for children by means of a practical demonstration which seems to show it very clearly. A drop of oil is taken, sufficiently fluid to float on a little water; this is placed on a piece of card where the line of the equator is supposed to come; a pin is run through the card and the card is whirled round. It can then be shown how, one after another, drops of oil detach themselves and rotate, and you can get a miniature planetary system out of the oil, with a sun left in the middle. When that has been shown to us in childhood, why should we think it impossible for our planetary system to have arisen out of the primeval nebula? With our own eyes we have seen the process reproduced.

Now in moral life it may be admirable for us to be able to forget ourselves, but in a demonstration of natural phenomena it is not so good! This whole affair of the drop of oil would never have worked if there had been no-one there to twirl the pin. That has to be taken into account. If this hypothesis is to hold good, a giant schoolmaster would have had to be there in the Cosmos, to start the primeval nebula revolving and keep it turning. Otherwise the idea has no reality.

It is characteristic of this materialistic age, however, to conceive only a fraction of the truth, a quarter, an eighth, or even less, and this fraction then lives with terribly suggestive power in the souls of men. Thus we persist to-day in seeing one side only of nature and of nature's laws.

I could give you plenty of examples, from different spheres of life, clearly showing this attitude towards nature: how—because a man absorbs this with the culture of the day—he considers nature to be governed by what is called the law of cause and effect. This colours the whole of human existence to-day. At best, a man can still maintain some connection with the spiritual world through religious tradition, but if he wishes to rise to the actual spiritual world, he must undertake an inner training through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition—as I have pictured them. He must be led by Initiation-knowledge away from this belief in nature as permeated throughout by law, and towards a real grasp of the spiritual. Initiation-knowledge to-day must aim at leading men from the naturalistic interpretation of the Cosmos, now taken for granted, to a realisation of its spirituality.

In the old Initiation-knowledge, thousands of years ago, the very opposite prevailed. The wise men of the Mysteries, the leaders in those centres which were school, church, and art-school at the same time, had around them people who knew nothing of nature in the Copernican sense, but in their soul and spirit had an instinctive, intimate experience of the Cosmos, expressed in their myths and legends, which in the ordinary civilisation of to-day are no longer understood. About this too we shall have more to say. The experience that men had in those early days was instinctive; an experience of soul and spirit. It filled their waking hours with the dreamlike pictures of imagination; and from these pictures came the legends, the myths, the sayings of the gods, which made up their life. A man looked out into the world, experiencing his dreamy imaginations; and at other times he lived in the being of nature. He saw the rainbows, the clouds, the stars, and the sun making its speedy way across the heavens; he saw the rivers, the hills arising; he saw the minerals, plants, animals.

For primeval man, everything he saw through his senses was a great riddle. For at the time of which I am speaking, some thousands of years before the Mystery of Golgotha—there were both earlier and later times when civilisation was different—a man had an inward feeling of being blessed when dreamlike imaginations came to him. The external world of the senses, where all that he perceived of rainbow, clouds, the moving sun, and the minerals, plants, animals, was what the eye could see, while in the starry world he saw only what the pre-Copernican, Ptolemaic system recorded. This external world presented itself to people generally in a way that led them to say: “With my soul I am living in a divine-spiritual world, but there outside is a nature forsaken by the gods. When with my senses I look at a spring of water, I see nothing spiritual there; I see nothing spiritual in the rainbow, in the minerals, plants, animals, or in the physical bodies of men.” Nature appeared to these people as a whole world that had fallen away from divine spirituality.

This was how people felt in that time when the whole visible Cosmos had for them the appearance of having fallen away from the divine. To connect these two experiences, the inward experience of God and the outer one of a fallen sense-world, it was not merely abstract knowledge they needed, but a knowledge that could console them for belonging to this fallen sense-world with their physical bodies and their etheric bodies. They needed a consolation which would assure them that this fallen sense-world was related to all they experienced through their instinctive imaginings, through an experience of the spiritual which, though dim and dreamlike, was adequate for the conditions of those times. Knowledge had to be consoling.

It was consolation, too, that was sought by those who turned eagerly to the Mysteries, either to receive only what could be given out externally, or to become pupils of the men of wisdom who could initiate them into the secrets of existence and the riddles that confronted them.

These wise men of the old Mysteries, who were at the same time priests, teachers, and artists, made clear to their pupils through everything contained in their Mysteries—yet to be described—that even in this fallen world, in its rising springs, in the blossoming trees and flowers, in the crystal-forming minerals, in rainbow and drifting clouds and journeying sun there live those divine-spiritual powers which were experienced instinctively in the dreamlike imaginations of men. They showed these people how to reconcile the godforsaken world with the divine world perceived in their imaginations. Through the Mysteries they gave them a consoling knowledge which enabled them once more to look on nature as filled with the divine.

Hence we learn from what is told of those past ages—told even of the Grecian age—that knowledge now taught to the youngest children in our schools, that the sun stands still and the earth circles around it, for instance, is the kind of knowledge which in the old Mysteries was preserved as occult. What with us is knowledge for everyone was for that age occult knowledge; and explanations of nature were an occult science. As anyone can see who follows the course of human development during our civilisation, nature and nature's laws are the chief concern of men today; and this has led the spiritual world to withdraw. The old dreamlike imaginations have ceased. A man feels nature to be neutral, not entirely satisfying, belonging not to a fallen, sinful Universe, but to a Cosmos that by reason of inner necessity has to be as it is. He then feels more sharply conscious of himself; he learns to find spirituality in that one point only, and he discovers an inner urge to unite this inner self with God. All he now needs—in addition to his knowledge of nature and in conformity with it—is that a new Initiation-knowledge shall lead him into the spiritual world. The old Initiation-knowledge could start from the spirit, which was then experienced by people instinctively, and, embodied in the myths, could lead them on to nature. The new Initiation-knowledge must begin with a man's immediate experience to-day, with his perception of the laws of nature in which he believes, and from there it must point the way back to the spiritual world through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition.

Thus, in human evolution, a few thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see the significant moment of time when men, starting out from an instinctive experience of the spirit, found their way to concepts and ideas which, as the most external form of occult science, included the laws of nature. To-day these laws of nature are known to us from childhood. In face of this indifferent, prosaic attitude to life, this naturalism, the spiritual world has withdrawn from the inner life of man. Today, Initiation-knowledge must point back from nature to the spirit. For the men of old, nature was in darkness, but the spirit was bright and clear. The old Initiation-knowledge had to carry the light of this brightness of the spirit into the darkness of nature, so that nature too might be illumined. Initiation-knowledge to-day has to start from the light thrown upon nature, in an external, naturalistic way, by Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and others. This light has then to be rescued, given fresh life, in order to open the way for it to the spirit, which in its own light must be sought on the opposite path to that of the old Initiation.