The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] For the form of the experience of spirit which I then desired to establish upon a firm foundation within me, music came to have a critical significance. At that time there was proceeding in the most intense fashion in the spiritual environment in which I lived the “strife over Wagner.” During my boyhood and youth I had seized every opportunity to improve my knowledge of music. The attitude I held toward thinking required this by implication. For me, thought had content in itself. It possessed this not merely through the percept which it expressed. This, however, obviously led over into the experience of pure musical tone-forms as such. The world of tone in itself was to me the revelation of an essential side of reality. That music should “express” something else besides the tone-form, as was then maintained in every possible way by the followers of Wagner, seemed to me utterly “unmusical.”

[ 2 ] I was always of a social disposition. Because of this I had even in my school-days at Wiener-Neustadt, and then again in Vienna, formed many friendships. In opinions I seldom agreed with these friends. This, however, did not mean at all that there was not an inwardness and mutual stimulus in these friendships. One of these was with a young man pre-eminently idealistic. With his blond hair and frank blue eyes he was the very type of a young German. He was then quite absorbed in Wagnerism. Music that lived in itself, that would weave itself in tones alone, was to him a cast-off world of horrible Philistines. What revealed itself in the tones as in a kind of speech – that for him gave the tone-forms their value. We attended together many concerts and many operas. We always held opposite views. My limbs grew as heavy as lead when “oppressive music” inflamed him to ecstasy; and he was horribly bored by music which did not pretend to be anything else but music.

[ 3 ] The debates with this friend stretched out endlessly. In long walks together, in long sessions over our cups of coffee, he drew out his “proofs” expressed in animated fashion, that only with Wagner had true music been born, and that everything which had gone before was only a preparation for this “discoverer of music.” This led me to assert my own opinions in drastic fashion. I spoke of the barbarism of Wagner, the graveyard of all understanding of music.

[ 4 ] On special occasions the argument grew particularly animated. At one time my friend very noticeably formed the habit of directing our almost daily walk to a narrow little street, and passing up and down it many times discussing Wagner. I was so absorbed in our argument that only gradually did it dawn upon me how he had got this bent. At the window of one of the little houses on the narrow alley there sat at the time of our walk a charming girl. There was no relationship between him and the girl except that he saw her sitting at the window almost every day, and at times was aware that a glance she let fall on the street was meant for him.

[ 5 ] At first I only noticed that his championship of Wagner – which in any case was fierce enough – was fanned to a brilliant flame in this little alley. And when I became aware of what a current flowed from that vicinity into his inspired heart, he grew confidential in this matter also, and I came to share in the tenderest, most beautiful, most passionate young love. The relation between the two never went much beyond what I have described. My friend, who came of people not blessed with worldly goods, had soon after to take a petty journalistic job in a provincial city. He could not think of any nearer tie with the girl. But neither was he strong enough to overcome the existing relationship. I kept up a correspondence with him for a long time. A melancholy note of resignation marked his letters. That from which he had been forced to cut himself off was still living and strong in his heart.

[ 6 ] Long after life had brought to an end my correspondence with this friend of my youth, I chanced to meet a person from the same city in which he had found a place as a journalist. I had always been fond of him, and I asked about him. This person said to me: “Yes, things turned out very badly for him; he could scarcely earn his bread. Finally he became a writer in my employ, and then he died of tuberculosis.” This news stabbed me to the heart, for I knew that once the idealistic, fair-haired youth, under the compulsion of circumstances, had in his own feelings severed his relation with his young love, then it made no difference to him what life might further bring to him. He considered it of no value to lay the basis for a life which could not be that one which had floated before him as an ideal during our walks in that little street.

[ 7 ] In intercourse with this friend my anti-Wagnerism of that period came to realization in even more positive form. But, apart from this, it played any way a great rôle in my mental life at that time. I strove in all directions to find my way into music which had nothing to do with Wagnerism. My love for “pure music” increased with the passage of years; my horror at the “barbarism” of “music as expression” continued to increase. And in this matter it was my lot to get into a human environment in which there were scarcely any other persons than admirers of Wagner. This all contributed much toward the fact that only much later did I grudgingly fight my way to an understanding of Wagner, the obviously human attitude toward so significant a cultural phenomenon. This struggle, however, belongs to a later period of my life. In the period I am now describing, a performance of Tristan, for example, to which I had to accompany one of my pupils, was to me “mortally boring.”

To this time belongs still another youthful friendship very significant for me. This was with a young man who was in every way the opposite of the fair-haired youth. He felt that he was a poet. With him, too, I spent a great deal of time in stimulating talk. He was very sensitive to everything poetic. At an early age he undertook important productions. When we became acquainted, he had already written a tragedy, Hannibal, and much lyric verse.

[ 8 ] I was with both these friends in the “practice in oral and written lectures” which Schröer conducted in the Hochschule. From this course we three, and many others, received the greatest inspiration. We young people could discuss what we had arrived at in our minds and Schröer talked over everything with us and elevated our souls by his dominant idealism and his noble capacity for imparting inspiration.

[ 9 ] My friend often accompanied me when I had the privilege of visiting Schröer. There he always grew animated, whereas elsewhere a note of burden was manifest in his life. Because of a certain discord he was not ready to face life. No calling was so attractive to him that he would gladly have entered upon it. He was altogether taken up with his poetic interest, and apart from this he found no satisfying relation with existence. At last he had to take a position quite unattractive to him. With him also I continued my connection by means of letters. The fact that even in his poetry he could not find real satisfaction preyed upon his spirit. Life for him was not filled with anything possessing worth. I had to observe to my sorrow, how little by little in his letters and also in his conversation the belief grew upon him that he was suffering from an incurable disease. Nothing sufficed to dispel this groundless obsession. So one day I had to receive the distressing news that the young man who was very near to me had made an end of himself.

[ 10 ] A real inward friendship I formed at this time also with a young man who had come from the German Transylvania to the Vienna Hochschule. Him also I had first met in Schröer's Seminar periods. There he had read a paper on pessimism. Everything which Schopenhauer had presented in favour of this conception of life was revived in that paper. In addition there was the personal, pessimistic temperament of the young man himself. I determined to oppose his views. I refuted pessimism with veritable words of thunder, even calling Schopenhauer narrow-minded, and wound up my exposition with the sentence: “If the gentleman who read the paper were correct in his position with respect to pessimism, then I had rather be the wooden board on which my feet now tread than be a man.” These words were for a long time repeated jestingly about me among my acquaintances. But they made of the young pessimist and me inwardly united friends. We now passed much time together. He also felt himself to be a poet, and many a time I sat for hours in his room and listened with pleasure to the reading of his poems. In my spiritual strivings of that time he also showed a warm interest, although he was moved to this less by the thing itself with which I was concerned than by his personal affection for me. He was bound up with many a delightful friendship, and also youthful love affairs. As a means of living he had to carry a truly heavy burden. At Hermannstadt he had gone through the school as a poor boy and even then had to make his living by tutoring. He then conceived the clever idea of continuing to instruct by correspondence from Vienna the pupils he had gained at Hermannstadt. The sciences in the Hochschule interested him very little. One day, however, he wished to pass an examination in chemistry. He had never attended a lecture or opened a single one of the required books. On the last night before the examination he had a friend read to him a digest of the whole subject-matter. He finally fell asleep over this. Yet he went with this friend to the examination. Both made “brilliant” failures.

[ 11 ] This young man had boundless faith in me. For a long time he treated me almost as his father-confessor. He opened up to my view an interesting, often melancholy, life sensitive to all that is beautiful. He gave to me so much friendship and love that it was really hard at times not to cause him bitter disappointment. This happened especially because he often felt that I did not show him enough attention. And yet this could not be otherwise when I had so many varieties of interests for which I found in him no real understanding. All this, however, only contributed to make the friendship a more inward relationship. He spent his summer vacation at Hermannstadt. There he sought for students in order to tutor them by correspondence the following year from Vienna. I always received long letters at these times from him. He was grieved because I seldom or never answered these. But, when he returned to Vienna in the autumn, he hurried to me like a boy, and the united life began again. I owed it to him at that time that I was able to mingle with many men. He liked to take me to meet all the people with whom he associated. And I was eager for companionship. This friend brought into my life much that gave me happiness and warmth.

[ 12 ] Our friendship remained the same till my friend died a few years ago. It stood the test of many storms of life, and I shall still have much to say of it.

[ 13 ] In retrospective consciousness much comes to mind of human and vital relationships which still continues to-day fully present in my mind, united with feelings of love and gratitude. Here I cannot relate all this in detail, but must leave quite unmentioned much which was indeed very near to me in my personal experience, and is near even now.

[ 14 ] My youthful friendships in the time of which I am here speaking had in the further course of my life a special import. They forced me into a sort of double mental life. The struggle with the riddle of cognition, which then filled my mind more than all else, aroused in my friends always, to be sure, a strong interest, but very little active participation. In the experience of this riddle I was always rather lonely. On the other hand, I myself shared completely in whatever arose in the existence of my friends. Thus there flowed along in me two parallel currents of life: one which I as a lone wanderer followed, the other which I shared in vital companionship with men bound to me by ties of affection. But this twofold life was on many occasions of profound and lasting significance for my development.

[ 15 ] In this connection I must mention especially a friend who had already been a schoolmate of mine at Wiener-Neustadt. During that time, however, we were far apart. First in Vienna, where he visited me often and where he later lived as an employee, he came very close to me. And yet even at Wiener-Neustadt, without any external relationship between us, he had already had a significance for my life. Once I was with him in a gymnasium period. While he was exercising and I had nothing to do, he left a book lying by me. It was Heine's book on the romantic school and the history of philosophy in Germany. I glanced into it. The result of this was that I read the whole book. I found many stimulating things in the book, but was vitally opposed to the manner in which Heine treated the content of life which was dear to me. In this perception of a way of thought and order of feeling which were utterly opposed to those shaping themselves in me, I received a powerful stimulus toward a self-consciousness in the orientation of the inner life which was a necessity of my very nature. [ 16 ] I then talked with my schoolmate in opposition to the book. Through this the inner life of his soul came to the fore, which later led to the establishing of a lasting friendship. He was an uncommunicative man who confided very little. Most people thought him an odd character. With those few in whom he was willing to confide he became quite expressive, especially in letters. He considered himself called by his inner nature to be a poet. He was of the opinion that he bore a great treasure in his soul. Besides, he was inclined to imagine that he was in intimate relation with other persons, especially women, rather than actually to form these ties into objective fact. At times he was close to such a relation, but he could not bring it to actual experience. In conversation with me he would then live through his fancies with the same inwardness and enthusiasm as if they were actual. Therefore it was inevitable that he experienced bitter emotions when the dreams always went amiss.

[ 17 ] This produced in him a mental life that had not the slightest relation to his outward existence. And this life again was to him the subject of tormenting reflections about himself, which were mirrored for me in many letters and conversations. Thus he once wrote me a long exposition of the way in which the least or the greatest experience became to him a symbol and how he lived in such symbols.

[ 18 ] I loved this friend, and in my love for him I entered into his dreams, although I always had the feeling when with him: “We are moving about in the clouds and have no ground under our feet!” For me, who ceaselessly busied myself to find firm support for life just there – in knowledge – this was an unique experience. I always had to slip outside of my own being and leap across into another skin, as it were, when I was in company with this friend. He liked to share his life with me; at times he even set forth extensive theoretical reflections concerning the “difference between our two natures.” He was quite unaware how little our thoughts harmonized, because his friendly sentiments led him on in all his thinking.

[ 19 ] The case was similar in my relation with another Wiener-Neustadt schoolmate. He belonged to the next lower class in the Realschule, and we first came together when he entered the Hochschule in Vienna a year after me. Then, however, we were often together. He also entered but little into that which concerned me so inwardly, the problem of cognition. He studied chemistry. The natural scientific opinions in which he was then involved prevented him from showing himself in any other light than as a sceptic concerning the spiritual conceptions with which I was filled. Later on in life I found in the case of this friend how close to my state of mind he then stood in his innermost being; but at that time he never allowed this innermost being to show itself. Thus our lively and long arguments became for me a “battle against materialism.” He always opposed to my avowal of the spiritual substance of the world all the contradictory results which seemed to him to be given by natural science. Then I always had to array everything I possessed by way of insight in order to drive from the field his arguments, drawn from the materialistic orientation of his thought, against the knowledge of a spiritual world.

[ 20 ] Once we were arguing the question with great zeal. Every day after attending the lectures in Vienna my friend went back to his home, which was still at Wiener-Neustadt. I often accompanied him through the streets of Vienna to the station of the Southern Railway. One day we reached a sort of climax in the argument over materialism after we had already arrived at the station and the train was almost due. Then I put together what I still had to say in the following words: “So, then, you maintain that, when you say ‘I think,’ this is merely the necessary effect of the occurrences in your brain-nerve system. Only these occurrences are a reality. So it is, likewise, When you say ‘I am this or that,' ‘I go,’ and so forth. But observe this. You do not say, ‘My brain thinks,’ ‘My brain sees this or that,’ ‘My brain goes.’ If, however, you have really come to the opinion that what you theoretically maintain is actually true, you must correct your form of expression. When you continue to speak of ‘I,’ you are really lying. But you cannot do otherwise than follow your sound instinct against the suggestion of your theory. Experience offers you a different group of facts from that which your theory makes up. Your consciousness calls your theory a lie.” My friend shook his head. He had no time to reply. As I went back alone, I could not but think that opposing materialism in this crude fashion did not correspond with a particularly exact philosophy. But it did not then really concern me so much to furnish, five minutes before the train left, a philosophically convincing proof as to give expression to my certitude from inner experience of the reality of the human ego. To me this ego was an inwardly observable experience of a reality present in itself. This reality seemed to me no less certain than any known to materialism. But in it there is absolutely nothing material. This thorough-going perception of the reality and the spirituality of the ego has in the succeeding years helped me to overcome every temptation to materialism. [ 21 ] I have always known “the ego is unshakable.” And it has been clear to me that no one really knows the ego who considers it as a form of phenomenon, as a result of other events. The fact that I possessed this perception inwardly and spiritually was what I wished to get my friend to understand. We fought together many times thereafter on this battlefield. But in general conceptions of life we had so many similar sentiments that the earnestness of our theoretical battling never resulted in the least disturbance of our personal relationship.

During this time I got deeper into the student life in Vienna. I became a member of the “German Reading Club” in the Hochschule. In the assembly and in smaller gatherings the political and cultural phenomena of the time were thoroughly discussed. These discussions brought out all possible – and impossible – points of view, such as young people hold. Especially when officers were to be elected, opinions clashed against one another quite violently. Very exciting and stimulating was much that there found expression among the youth in connection with the events in the public life of Austria. It was the time when national parties were becoming more and more sharply defined. Everything which led later more and more to the disruption of the Empire, which appeared in its results after the World War, could then be experienced in germ.

[ 22 ] I was first chosen librarian of the reading-room. As such I found out all possible authors who had written books that I thought would be of value to the student library. To such authors I wrote “begging letters.” I often wrote in a single week a hundred such letters. Through this “work” of mine the library was very soon much enlarged. But the thing had a secondary effect for me. Through the work it was possible for me to become acquainted in a comprehensive fashion with the scientific, artistic, culture-historical, political literature of the time. I was an eager reader of the books given.

Later I was chosen president of the Reading Club. This, however, was to me a burdensome office. For I faced a great number of the most diverse party view-points and saw in all of these their relative justification. Yet the adherents of the various parties would come to me. Each would seek to persuade me that his party alone was right. At the time when I was elected every party had favoured me. For until then they had only heard how in the assemblies I had taken the part of justice. After I had been president for a half-year, all turned against me. In that time they had found that I could not decide as positively for any party as that party wished.

[ 23 ] My craving for companionship found great satisfaction in the reading-room. And an interest was awakened in a broader field of the public life through its reflection in the occurrences in the common life of the students. In this way I came to be present at very interesting parliamentary debates, sitting in the gallery of the House of Delegates or of the Senate.

[ 24 ] Apart from the bills under discussion – which often affected life profoundly – I was especially interested in the personalities of the House of Delegates. There stood every year at the end of his bench, as the chief budget expositor, the keen philosopher, Bartolemäus Carneri. His words were a hailstorm of accusations against the Taaffe Ministry; they were a defence of Germanism in Austria. There stood Ernst von Plener, the dry speaker, the unexcelled authority in matters of finance. One was chilled while he criticized the statement of the Minister of Finance, Dunajewski, with the coldness of an accountant. There the Ruthenian Thomeszuck thundered against the politics of nationalities. One had the feeling that upon his discovery of an especially well-coined word for that moment depended the fostering of antipathy against the Minister. There argued, in peasant-theatrical fashion, always intelligently, the clerical Lienbacher. His head, bowed over a little, caused what he said to seem like the outflow of clarified perceptions. There argued in his cutting style the Young Czech Gregr. One felt in him a half-demagogue. There stood Rieger of the Old Czechs, altogether with the deeply characteristic sentiment of the organized Czechs as they had been built up during a long period and had come to self consciousness during the second half of the nineteenth century – a man seldom shut up to himself, a powerful mind and a steadfast will. There spoke on the right side of the Chamber in the midst of the Polish seats Otto Hausner – often only setting forth the results of reading spiritually rich; often sending well-aimed shafts to all sides of the House with a certain sense of satisfaction in himself. A thoroughly self-satisfied but intelligent eye sparkled behind a monocle; the other always seemed to say “Yes” to the sparkle. A speaker who, however, even then often spoke prophetic words as to the future of Austria. One ought to-day to read again what he then said; one would be amazed at the keenness of his vision. One then laughed, to be sure, over much which years later became bitter earnest.

The word health means something very precious to every human being, and rightly so. Not only must we recognize health itself as a precious thing, which is only a product of selfish sentiment, but we also feel that health is connected to something that flows from the depths of our inner being. Health is a means to external vitality, to the fulfillment of our duties, to the performance of every activity, etc. And from this point of view, health must be placed at the center as something of the highest value. However, when we consider what health is, we arrive at a gloomy judgment when we look around the world and see how health and illness are judged by the competent and the incompetent in the most diverse ways, how all kinds of shades of parties are spoken of, and how the healing process of this or that is disputed. When we consider all this, it does indeed seem that one of our most precious possessions is at the mercy of all these different schools of thought.

Before I try to tell you what spiritual science has to say about health, we must first be clear that spiritual science or theosophy cannot have the task of interfering in this or that party line; the point of view must be gained that neither approves nor condemns this or that world view. What is said here will not fully satisfy the adherents of either party, for in the case of party doctrines it is not a matter of something being absolutely true or false, but of something being not quite true or not quite false. And those who want to look up to the unseen behind things see that, with all the shades of parties, we are not dealing with an either-or, but with a both-and.

And in particular, as far as our question today is concerned, we see how fanatically the one party of medicine fights the other. There is a broad movement that does not think favorably of what is official for today's general human thinking. In many cases, this official health teaching is attacked. Spiritual science is not there to take a layman's point of view and fight the official line. Spiritual science will always be inclined to recognize how official health science is able to provide the means to reach a judgment in a truly magnificent way. It is just that official science, in this particular field, is tied up in a certain dogma, so that the majority of those who are called upon to form an opinion cannot but consider what spiritual science has to say as foolish, fantastic, or even worse. But regardless of the judgments, the question must be discussed.

First, let us consider how partiality has delivered judgment. We can only agree on the principle, on the current, only on what the popular view is in this area. It is completely imbued with materialistic thinking. Much has changed in recent decades; we will see what is being neglected; we will see that reference will have to be made to the higher aspects of human nature; we will see that there is no awareness of these aspects at all in our time. And we may say that it has only become so in the course of the last few decades.

I would like to mention just one symptom. I would like to remind you of a personality, the once really very famous anatomist Hyrtl. Not only did he write excellent books on anatomy, but he was also one of the best teachers. He presented anatomy in a way that made it seem less dry; but he presented it in his own, unique way. He had a prerequisite for his students; he always said that he had written his books so that readers would read the parts they already knew before listening to his lectures, so that they could skip over what they already knew. But when he explained the entire structure of the human organism, it was as if one saw the creative hand at work; that which is composed came to life, and that was because this architect really exists, because the etheric body really exists, because Hyrtl spoke as if from these forces. The spirit of his description was permeated by these forces. This anatomist had, so to speak, expressed the invisible essence of human nature between the words.

A saying of Hyrtl's may be in the memory of his listeners in the 1970s. He said: Only a doctor can recognize an illness, but only someone who knows what helps can heal an illness. The spirit that hovered over the whole has given way in such a way that today's approach is only concerned with understanding the human body as it presents itself as a sum of processes that can be examined, perhaps more thought of as chemical or physical processes. The approach that views health from such a perspective has produced extraordinary results because the physical body is what is really there, and because it has provided the most wonderful means.

If we want to establish a principle, it is that there are certain antidotes for illnesses that make the causes of illness disappear. So we speak of illnesses and specific remedies; we speak of the fact that the human organism must be protected by various means, by water and air treatment, etc. From this point of view, we point out the progress that has been made recently. And one would be mistaken if one were to deny this point of view outright; one need only point to the mortality rates of cities, for example, and one will see what official science has achieved; one need only point to what has been added to the store of remedies in recent times. So it is not to deny the fertility of official medicine that these considerations are intended.

But there is a dark side to this progress. Imagine what would happen to humanity if it had to live according to the will of those who would exploit the fear of germs to create social institutions! Take, for example, tetanus. It is caused by a germ that does not need its carrier, the sick person himself, only the person who comes into contact with the sick person. Now imagine that everyone who has come into contact with someone suffering from lockjaw is checked. Imagine the tyranny that would result! Of course, all these things are right, but it is impossible to base anything on them in social life.

Now, spiritual science is not one of those currents of contemporary thought that seeks to deny that there are specific remedies for certain diseases that are “poisons”. The word “poison” has a kind of suggestion, and many feel within themselves when it is said that certain medicines are poisons, as if something tremendously striking against medicine were being said. But it must be realized that one should not allow oneself to be suggestively influenced by a word.

What exactly is a poison? Those who have been subjected to the suggestion of this word will not be able to answer this easily. We can form a rough idea if we bear in mind that belladonna, for example, is a poison for humans, but rabbits can eat it without harm; in the same way, hemlock does not harm goats. This gives you the whole relativity of the concept of “poison”. And in this respect, spiritual science will never go against official experience.

Let us now contrast this approach with another, namely naturopathy or homeopathy. These differ in many ways in the way they think about illness. One says: When a disease process is present, we have to look at it as something that should not be there and that we have to fight against. The other says: It is not a matter of fighting directly; what presents itself to us as an illness is an attempt by the person to fight against the cause lying within. One has to support a disease process so that nature, the symptom, can take effect. – That can be said in many respects. But the remedy that causes illness in a healthy person can have a healing effect on a sick person.

Now, however, we have to say that when this view is theoretically applied, when it is advocated, those people say something very specific that comes close to what spiritual science must advocate, namely that beyond the physical body lies something much more real, the actual builder, the etheric body. But in many respects it is actually impossible for those who want to be considered important in the conventional world view to admit that there is an invisible part of the human being. Spiritual science that wants to be valid must today point out that behind all physical processes there is something as a system of forces, the etheric body, permeating everything that is physically visible with forces. It may well be that the causes of illness lie in the etheric body.

We so often hear people compared to a machine or a mechanism. Of course, in a certain sense, this is true; but what is a machine without the person who builds it or the one who operates it? There is no visible builder or guide in the human body, but there are invisible guides. When we die and the etheric body separates, the physical body succumbs to physical and chemical processes.

Just as there is damage in the physical body, there is also such damage in the etheric body, in the astral body and in the I. One must not only theoretically admit the spirit, so to speak – it may be enough for the soul egoism – but if one is unable to apply the spirit in one's true behavior, then the spirit is an empty theory. What matters is that we are able to put what happens in the spiritual world at the service of life. We will show in a moment how this comes into play when we talk about health. When we speak in this context, we must not think of external injuries such as a broken leg; these are things that belong in the realm of external healing methods. But there are injuries where we have to say: the causes are to be sought in the spiritual realm; and there we must also seek the healing methods. For such things it is not enough to say that the invisible limbs are at work, that they bring about the damage.

I would like to follow up on the last lecture given here on “Nutritional Issues”, in which we saw how what a person takes in as food is significant for the strength or weakness of the human organism. Today, we want to realize that by taking in food, we enter into a relationship with the processes of the environment. In this way, he ceases to merely allow processes to take place within him. Depending on whether we take this or that food, we are dependent on the processes that they trigger in us. We must be able to process what we take in from the outside within us. This other aspect is no less important; depending on how we eat, we are connected with our organism to the spiritual world. On the one hand, we are devoted to the whole outside world, and on the other hand, we withdraw into ourselves to devote ourselves to the spirit. The organism enters into an exchange. There it takes up these spiritual products just as it takes up the physical products in the physical world. When a person devotes himself to the spiritual world in the right way, his spiritual organs become the right tools for digesting the spirit. If he does it in the wrong way, they become unsuitable for processing what is taken up materially; he must become ill.

There is a definite relationship between what a person does and what happens to his spirit. You can visualize this if you consider the astral body to be a good and accurate indicator of what a person experiences in relation to the outside world. There are parents who think this or that is good and now expect their child to share the same view. This is the most misguided method of education there is. When the child is young, its organism has a yardstick by which to measure what arouses its antipathy and sympathy, what gives it pleasure and pain. We should therefore carefully examine the sympathy and antipathy of childhood.

This is not to say that the child should not be disturbed by the naughtiness; you should only choose the right way. First of all, it is a matter of creating pleasure, that is, one should first act on the astral body. By the indirect route of pleasure and pain, we come to what can now be absorbed by us in the appropriate way. You see, anyone who looks at our social life today knows that countless pathological conditions are connected with it. When we look at the human organism, we see the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. Let us assume that a person has a task to perform that becomes habitual for him. What happens then? The physical body and the etheric body are involved in such work. When something becomes habitual for a person, when he does it, so to speak, because he has to do it, then the astral body is not involved. Observe the countless people sitting and working here or there, who hardly involve the astral body at all, except at most through annoyance and displeasure. Under the influence of such activities, a process takes place that we can call a process of solidification of the astral body. The astral body is in a healthy state when it can actively engage with the physical and etheric bodies. If you have made the astral body rigid and hardened, it is as if you have a machine in front of you that you cannot control. When the etheric body and the physical body switch off the astral body, it is not present during activities. The fact that it encounters resistance means that such a person feels the resistance not only as an illness, but as having this or that illness.

Thus, the simple fact is that the non-consideration and non-participation of the astral body in countless disease processes is the cause of the present situation. These are not counteracted in the right way. Of course, a great deal of emphasis is placed on all kinds of useful things, such as gymnastics, for example. But the way it is done in our time does not promote intensive health care. The focus is too much on the physical body, on the idea that a limb must move in a certain way and that a person must perform this gymnastic exercise in a certain way, because it promotes the physical body. It will be understood that if one envisages that a very specific feeling of pleasure must be associated with each exercise, then one is, as it were, doing gymnastics in the astral body. Then harmony is established with the astral body. I knew a gym teacher who was an example of how gymnastics should not be done. He was a person who was proud that he understood anatomy. The man himself could not do gymnastics, he could only show how things should be done. His instructions indicated that he only looked at people from the outside, only as a composition of bones and muscles.

Gymnastics should be spiritualized, so to speak. At some point, every gymnastics exercise will have a very specific name, and you will feel that you are imitating something very specific. You do an exercise, for example a little ship, and you feel that you are imitating something. This is spiritual gymnastics. If young people do this, it also has the side effect of ensuring that they never suffer from poor memory in old age. If you look at it this way, spiritual science can have an extremely fruitful effect.

All that we have mentioned now shows how spiritual science can be applied in health practice. If you consider that people today lead two lives, one in the outer world and one in the inner world, in feelings of pleasure and displeasure, you will see the whole disharmony of the inner and outer human being. Harmony can only come about when one knows how the astral and etheric bodies can work healthily. When the instincts and desires are directed in a certain way, let us say, according to the general laws of the world, then the astral body will find within itself the strong power to rule over the etheric body and the physical body. If a person is gloomy, if pain constantly touches the soul, then the astral body will be weak. A varied life of ideas and feelings has a healthy effect on the astral body under all circumstances.

It is remarkable how human culture has always worked towards shaping all means to achieve the goal of having a healthy effect on human nature. Aristotle said that drama should present a series of actions that arouse fear and compassion. So, emotional processes should be evoked in us, but they should be such that they allow a catharsis, a purification of the passions to occur. Thus, he shows that he sees a healing process in the emotional process that is stimulated in a person. Yes, the astral body becomes stronger as a result. From this we see that it is not irrelevant how the whole process plays out in the astral body. Depending on whether we alternate exciting or calming feelings, storm or calm, we will have an effect on the etheric body and the physical body if we do it in the right way. One of the most beautiful ways of stimulating the human astral body for a certain class of people is the very ordinary circus games with the clown. The lust with which people see the clown's antics is extraordinarily healthy. Feeling superior, seeing the absurd, makes one healthy. It is precisely these things, which make us able to counteract destruction, that have unconsciously been used in the natural process of human development. One can say that events in which nonsense is obviously presented are just as effective as saying, “You should drink this or that water, breathe this or that air.”

Furthermore, the I is involved to a very extraordinary degree in how a person tolerates the outside world. If we do not see the functions taking place properly because they cannot tolerate this or that, the interests of the person are misdirected, then we can find disturbances in digestion, etc., as an effect. If we understand this connection with interests and the direction of attention, what is already there could also be introduced.

Human beings express their feelings through two actions that you do not find in animals, namely laughing and crying. The ape may have a certain grin, but it is not human laughter because the animal has no I. You also know that just as slowly as the child comes to self, so too does laughter and crying come to him, only from about the 40th day onwards. Why is that? It is because when a person laughs, a relationship exists in which the astral body expands. We see how the ego takes on a superior relationship to what is happening in the environment. Just as one breathes, one must have this feeling of superiority. When crying, the whole ego contracts. Therefore, crying is a certain voluptuousness; it is basically an antidote to what one has experienced. Thus we see how the ego changes the organism, attacks it. In the discharge of the tear water, a secretion of the blood, we have a very material effect on a mental process. Thus, the spiritual works continuously in all possible details.

I will give an example to show how tremendously enlightening spiritual science will be. There is a certain rhythm, a rhythm that encompasses many things. Take the human ego; it goes through a very specific rhythm within 24 hours. When you wake up, you experience the same thing exactly 24 hours later. Thus the ego remains in a rhythmic activity. Just as the I has a rhythm in 24 hours, so does the astral body in 7 days. Just as the I returns to a starting point after 24 hours, so does the astral body after 7 days. And finally, the etheric body goes through a similar rhythm in 28 days. So you see again that the human being is a very complicated being. We can compare these rhythms with the hands of a clock; the rhythm of the I with the rotation of the second hand, the slower rotation of the minute hand with the rhythm of the astral body; with the even slower rotation of the hour hand, the rhythm of the ether body. Just as the minute hand is above the hour hand at a certain time, so it is with the movements, the rhythmic movements of the human etheric and astral bodies. The etheric body has only made a quarter of the astral body's full revolution.

The position of the etheric body in relation to the astral body is therefore different, so a lot depends on the state of the person when a particular event occurs. If, for example, fever occurs in a very specific position of the etheric and astral bodies, when the etheric and astral bodies collapse after seven days, the fever can be combated again by the etheric body. From this you can see that it is connected with this behavior of the etheric and astral bodies that the fever drops after seven days in the case of pneumonia.

This phenomenon that we are confronted with is a very specific effect of the whole human nature and its rhythms. And such behaviors exist for each individual system, whether it is the lung system, heart system or any other. If we recognize this as a truth, it will have an enormous influence and the groping in the dark will end. Of course, it is necessary to be vividly aware that one can also work on the spirit. When one speaks of the influence of this or that light, one has only the physical processes in mind and not the spiritual effects.

A start has just been made here in Munich by our dear member Dr. Peipers. This is important because it involves taking into account the higher bodies in man, that the blue or red has a certain effect on them. It must be made clear that this matter cannot be compared to any color theory, but that the perception of colors triggers healing processes and thus has a healing effect. And it is reckoned here that there is a spiritual world, and it is placed in human life.

Just as colors, tones and very specific thought complexes are used for the recovery of the person, because they evoke very specific processes in the person. For example, it has a very specific influence on a person whether he indulges in ideas that are linked to reality. Today, one is instructed to use, as far as possible, ideas that are only a photographic image of reality. These are the most unhealthy. Those ideas that are in the realm of natural science kill the human spirit all the more, the more central they are, and the consequence is that the human being cannot overcome the physical body, and the further consequence is that this or that illness must occur. In contrast, ideas that are produced by the spirit itself have an invigorating effect. When imaginative thinking takes place in a lawful way, it is healing. Directing attention in the right way is also health-giving. This is of tremendous importance, for no person can suffer from a digestive disorder, for example, who is filled with such interest. And such interest can only be evoked by the whole world appearing before us, guided and directed by the spiritual.

When humanity will one day realize that educating oneself about the riddles of existence pours all the vitality into our soul and gives such joy and pleasure that no storms can change it, then one will understand that spiritual science itself is the original remedy for all diseases. Those who do not want to come to it will rush from one impression to another and get bored. Nothing is more unhealthy than this rushing about. When the correctly guided interest of life goes to the center, then there is neither boredom in the world nor rushing from one sensory impression to another. The one who is guided by spiritual science finds something interesting in even the smallest thing. One does not always have to beg the outside world to interest me. - Because one finds a source within oneself that creates interest. And this makes the person healthy.

Spiritual science must not be accused of alienating life; no, it contains the only elixir of life. It has the right effect on everyone because it leads to the center of the world; it is a source of health. However, we may say that through a failed inner life, man creates the cause of the disease that takes him furthest away from the goal. Therefore only spiritual science will be able to answer the question, because it takes into account the whole human being. And so spiritual science will give us a health care that makes man the master of his organism. Even if one will establish a dogmatic medicine, where the dogma was always there, one will not be able to force people to keep themselves healthy. Therefore, the question to be answered in the near future will be important: How do we keep ourselves healthy? And this will be possible for the person who is able to repair what can be disturbed by the causes of illness. He knows that inner strength accomplishes more than what can be done from the outside. And so Theosophy is able to give people health in such a way that they acquire the ability to live and the security to fulfill their tasks and duties in life.

You have seen from the preceding lectures that a study of man's faculty of memory can give us valuable insight into the whole of human life and its cosmic connections. So today we will study this faculty of memory as such, in the various phases of its manifestation in human life, beginning with its manifestation in the ordinary consciousness that man has between birth and death.

What man experiences in concrete, everyday life, in thinking, feeling and willing, in unfolding his physical forces, too—all this he transforms into memories which he recalls from time to time.

But if you compare the shadowy character of these memory-pictures, whether spontaneous or deliberately sought, with the robust experiences to which they refer, you will say that they exist as mere thoughts or mental presentations; you are led to call memories just ‘pictures’. Nevertheless, it is these pictures that we retain in our ego from our experiences in the outer world; in a sense, we bear them with us as the treasure won from experience. If a part of these memories should be lost—as in certain pathological cases of which I have already spoken—our ego itself suffers injury. We feel that our immermost being, our ego, has been damaged if it must forfeit this or that from its treasury of memories, for it is this treasury that makes our life a complete whole. One could also point to the very serious conditions that sometimes result in cases of apoplectic stroke when certain portions of the patient's past life are obliterated from his memory.

Moreover, when we survey from a given moment our life since our last birth, we must feel our memories as a connected whole if we are to regard ourselves rightly as human souls.

These few features indicate the role of the faculty of memory in physical, earthly life. But its role is far greater still. What would the external world with all its impressions constantly renewed, with all it gives us, however vividly—what would it be to us if we could not link new impressions to the memories of past ones! Last, but not least, we may say that, after all, all learning consists in linking new impressions to the content borne in memory. A great part of educational method depends on finding the most rational way of linking the new things we have to teach the children to what we can draw from their store of memories.

In short, whenever we have to bring the external world to the soul, to evoke the soul's own life that it may feel and experience inwardly its own existence, we appeal to memory in the last resort. So we must say that, on earth, memory constitutes the most important and most comprehensive part of man's inner life.

Let us now study memory from yet another point of view. It is quite easy to see that the sums of memories we bear within us is really a fragment. We have forgotten so much in the course of life; but there are moments, frequently abnormal, when what has been long forgotten comes before us again. These are especially such moments in which a man comes near to death and many things emerge that have long been far from his conscious memory. Old people, when dying, suddenly remember things that had long disappeared from their conscious memory. Moreover, if we study dreams really intimately—and they, too, link on to memory—we find things arising which have quite certainly been experienced, but they passed us by unnoticed. Nevertheless, they are in our soul life, and arise in sleep when the hindrances of the physical and etheric organism are not acting and the astral body and ego are alone. We do not usually notice these things and so fail to observe that conscious memory is but a fragment of all we receive; in the course of life we take in much in the same form, only, it is received into the subconscious directly, where it is inwardly elaborated.

Now, as long as we are living on earth, we continue to regard the memories that arise from the depths of our soul in the form of thoughts as the essential part of memory. Thoughts of past experience come and go. We search for them. We regard that as the essence of memory.

However, when we go through the gate of death our life on earth is followed by a few days in which pictures of the life just ended come before us in a gigantic perspective. These pictures are suddenly there: the events of years long past and of the last few days are there simultaneously. As the spatial exists side by side and only possesses spatial perspective, so the temporal events of our earthly life are now seen side by side and possess ‘time-perspective’. This tableau appears suddenly, but, during the short time it is there, it becomes more and more shadowy, weaker and weaker. Whereas in earthly life we look into ourselves and feel that we have our memory-pictures ‘rolled up’ within us, these pictures now become greater and greater. We feel as if they were being received by the universe. What is at first comprised within the memory tableau as in a narrow space, becomes greater and greater, more and more shadowy, until we find it has expanded to a universe, becoming so faint that we can scarcely decipher what we first saw plainly. We can still divine it; then it vanishes in the far spaces and is no longer there.

That is the second form taken by memory—in a sense, its second metamorphosis—in the first few days after death. It is the phase which we can describe as the flight of our memories out into the cosmos. And all that, like memory, we have bound so closely to our life between birth and death, expands and becomes more and more shadowy, to be finally lost in the wide spaces of the cosmos.

It is really as if we saw what we have actually been calling our ego during earthly life, disappear into the wide spaces of the cosmos. This experience lasts a few days and, when these have passed, we feel that we ourselves are being expanded too. Between birth and death we feel ourselves within our memories; and now we actually feel ourselves within these rapidly retreating memories and being received into the wide spaces of the universe.

After we have suffered this super-sensible stupor, or faintness, which takes from us the sum-total of our memories and our inner consciousness of earthly life, we live in the third phase of memory. This third phase of memory teaches us that what we had called ourself during earthly life—in virtue of our memories—has spread itself through the wide spaces of the universe, thereby proving its insubstantiality for us. If we were only what can be preserved in our memories between birth and death, we would be nothing at all a few days after death.

But we now enter a totally different element. We have realised that we cannot retain our memories, for the world takes them from us after death. But there is something objective behind all the memories we have harboured during earthly life. The spiritual counterpart, of which I spoke yesterday, is engraved into the world; and it is this counterpart of our memories that we now enter. Between birth and death we have experienced this or that with this or that person or plant or mountain spring, with all we have approached during life. There is no single experience whose spiritual counterpart is not engraved into the spiritual world in which we are ever present, even while on earth. Every hand-shake we have exchanged has its spiritual counterpart; it is there, inscribed into the spiritual world. Only while we are surveying our life in the first days after death do we have these pictures of our life before us. These conceal, to a certain extent, what we have inscribed into the world through our deeds, thoughts and feelings.

The moment we pass through the gate of death to this other ‘life’, we are at once filled with the content of our life-tableau, i.e. with pictures which extend, in perspective, back to birth and even beyond. But all this vanishes into the wide cosmic spaces and we now see the spiritual counter-images of all the deeds we have done since birth. All the spiritual counter-images we have experienced (unconsciously, in sleep) become visible, and in such a way that we are immediately impelled to retrace our steps and go through all these experiences once more. In ordinary life, when we go from Dornach to Basle we know we can go from Basle to Dornach, for we have in the physical world an appropriate conception of space. But in ordinary consciousness we do not know, when we go from birth to death, that we can also go from death to birth. As in the physical world one can go from Dornach to Basle and return from Basle to Dornach, so we go from birth to death during earthly life, and, after death, can return from death to birth. This is what we do in the spiritual world when we experience backwards the spiritual counter-images of all we have undergone during earthly life. Suppose you have had an experience with something in the external realm of Nature—let us say, with a tree. You have observed the tree or, as a woodman, cut it down. Now all this has its spiritual counterpart; above all, whether you have merely observed the tree, or cut it down, or done something else to it, has its significance for the whole universe. What you can experience with the physical tree you experience in physical, earthly life; now, as you go backwards from death to birth, it is the spiritual counterpart of this experience that you live through.

If, however, our experience was with another human being—if, for example, we have caused him pain—there is already a spiritual counterpart in the physical world; only, it is not our experience: it is the pain experienced by the other man. Perhaps the fact that we were the cause of his pain gave us a certain feeling of satisfaction; we may have been moved by a feeling of revenge or the like. Now, on going backwards through our life, we do not undergo our experience, but his. We experience what he experienced through our deed. That, too, is a part of the spiritual counterpart and is inscribed into the spiritual world. In short, man lives through his experiences once more, but in a spiritual way, going backwards from death to birth.

As I said yesterday, it is a part of this experience to feel that beings whom, for the present, we may call ‘superhuman’, are participating in it. Pressing onwards through these spiritual counterparts of our experiences, we feel as if these spiritual beings were showering down their sympathies and antipathies upon our deeds and thoughts, as we experience them backwards. Thereby we feel what each deed done by us on earth, each thought, feeling, or impulse of will, is worth for purely spiritual existence. In bitter pain we experience the harmfulness of some deed we have done. In burning thirst we experience the passions we have harboured in our soul; and this continues until we have sufficiently realised the worthlessness, for the spiritual world, of harbouring passions and have outgrown these states which depend on our physical, earthly personality.

At this point of our studies we can see where the boundary between the psychical and the physical really is. You see, we can easily regard things like thirst or hunger as physical. But I ask you to imagine that the same physical changes that are in your organism when you are thirsty were in a body not ensouled. The same changes could be there, but the soulless body would not suffer thirst. As a chemist you might investigate the changes in your body when you are thirsty. But if, by some means, you could produce these same changes, in the same substances and in the same complex of forces, in a body without a soul, it would not suffer thirst. Thirst is not something in the body; it lives in the soul—in the astral—through changes in the physical body. It is the same with hunger. And if someone, in his soul, takes great pleasure in something that can only be satisfied by physical measures in physical life, it is as if he were experiencing thirst in physical life; the psychical part of him feels thirst, burning thirst, for those things which he was accustomed to satisfy by physical means. For one cannot carry out physical functions when the physical body has been laid aside. Man must first accustom himself to live in his psycho-spiritual being without his physical body; and a great part of the backward journey I have described is concerned with this. At first he experiences continually burning thirst for what can only be gratified through a physical body. Just as the child must accustom himself to use his organs—must learn to speak, for example—so man between death and a new birth must accustom himself to do without his physical body as the foundation of his psychical experiences. He must grow into the spiritual world.

There are descriptions of this experience which, as I said yesterday, lasts one-third of the time of physical life, which depict it as a veritable hell. For example, if you read descriptions like those given in the literature of the Theosophical Society where, following oriental custom, this life is called Kamaloka, they will certainly make your flesh creep. Well, these experiences are not like that. They can appear so if you compare them directly with earthly life, for they are something to which we are so utterly unaccustomed. We must suddenly adapt ourselves to the spiritual counter-images and counter-values of our earthly experience. What we felt on earth as pleasure, is there privation, bitter privation, and, strictly speaking, only our unsatisfying, painful or sorrowful experiences on earth are satisfying there. In many respects that is somewhat horrible when compared with earthly life; but we simply cannot compare it with earthly life directly, for it is not experienced here but in the life after death where we do not judge with earthly conceptions.

So when, for example, you experience after death the pain of another man through having caused him pain on earth, you say to yourself at once: ‘If I did not feel this pain, I would remain an imperfect human soul, for the pain I have caused in the universe would continually take something from me. I only become a whole human being by experiencing this compensation.’

It may cost us a struggle to see that pain experienced after death in return for pain caused to another, is really a blessing. It will depend on the inner constitution of our soul whether we find this difficult or not; but there is a certain state of soul in which this painful compensation for many things done on earth is even experienced as bliss. It is the state of soul that results from acquiring on earth some knowledge of the super-sensible life. We feel that, through this painful compensation, we are perfecting our human being, while, without it, we should fall short of full human stature. If you have caused another pain, you are of less value than before; so, if you judge reasonably, you will say: In face of the universe I am a worse human soul after causing pain to another than before. You will feel it a blessing that you are able, after death, to compensate for this pain by experiencing it yourself.

That, my dear friends, is the third phase of memory. At first what we have within us as memory is condensed to pictures, which last some days after death; then it is scattered through the universe, your whole inner life in the form of thoughts returning thereto. But while we lose the memories locked up within us during earthly life—while these seek the cosmic spaces—the world, from out of all we have spiritually engraved upon it, gives us back to ourselves in objective form.

There is scarcely a stronger proof of man's intimate connection with the world than this; that after death, in regard to our inner life, we have first to lose ourselves, in order to be given back to ourselves from out of the universe. And we experience this, even in the face of painful events, as something that belongs to our human being as a whole. We do, indeed, feel that the world takes to itself the inner life we possessed here, and gives back to us again what we have engraved upon it. It is just the part we did not notice, the part we passed by but inscribed upon spiritual existence with clear strokes, that gives us our own self again. Then, as we retrace our life backwards through birth and beyond, we reach out into the wide spaces of spiritual existence.

It is only now, after having undergone all this, that we enter the spiritual world and are really able to live there. Our faculty of memory now undergoes its fourth metamorphosis. We feel that everywhere behind the ordinary memory of earthly life something has been living in us, though we were not aware of it. It has engraved itself into the world and now we, ourselves, become it. We have received our earthly life in its spiritual significance; we now become this significance. After travelling back through birth to the spiritual world we find ourselves confronting it in a very peculiar way. In a sense, we ourselves in our spiritual counterpart—in our true spiritual worth—now confront the world. We have passed through the above experiences, have experienced the pain caused to another, have experienced the spiritual value corresponding to an experience with a tree, let us say; we have experienced all this, but it was not self-experience. We might compare this with the embryonic stage of human life; for then—and even throughout the first years of life—all we experience does not yet reach the level of self-consciousness, which only awakens gradually.

Thus, when we enter the spiritual world, all we have experienced backwards gradually becomes ourself, our spiritual self-consciousness. We are now what we have experienced; we are our own spiritual worth corresponding thereto. With this existence, that really represents the other side of our earthly existence, we enter the world that contains nothing of the ordinary kingdoms of external Nature—mineral, plant and animal kingdoms—for these belong to the earth. But in that world there immediately come before us, first, the souls of those who have died before us and to whom we stood in some kind of relationship, and then the individualities of higher spiritual beings. We live as spirit among human and non-human spirits, and this environment of spiritual individualities is now our world. The relationship of these spiritual individualities, human or non-human, to ourselves now constitutes our experience. As on earth we have our experience with the beings of the external kingdoms of Nature, so now, with spiritual beings of different ranks. And it is especially important that we have felt their sympathies and antipathies like spiritual rain—to use yesterday's metaphor—permeating these experiences during the retrospective part of the life between death and birth that I have described to you schematically. We now stand face to face with these beings of whom we previously perceived only their sympathies and antipathies while we were living through the spiritual counterpart of our earthly life: we live among these beings now that we have reached the spiritual world. We gradually feel as if inwardly permeated with force, with impulses proceeding from the spiritual beings around us. All that we have previously experienced now becomes more and more real to us, in a spiritual way. We gradually feel as if standing in the light or shadow of these beings in whom we are beginning to live. Before, through living through the spiritual worth corresponding to some earthly experience, we felt this or that about it, found it valuable or harmful to the cosmos. We now feel: There is something I have done on earth, in thought or deed; it has its corresponding spiritual worth, and this is engraved into the spiritual cosmos. The beings whom I now encounter can either do something with it, or not; it either lies in the direction of their evolution or of the evolution for which they are striving, or it does not. We feel ourselves placed before the beings of the spiritual world and realise that we have acted in accordance with their intentions or against them, have either added to, or subtracted from, what they willed for the evolution of the world.

Above all, it is no mere ideal judgment of ourselves that we feel, but a real evaluation; and this evaluation is itself the reality of our existence when we enter the spiritual world after death.

When you have done something wrong as a man in the physical world, you condemn it yourself if you have sufficient conscience and reason; or it is condemned by the law, or by the judge, or by other men who despise you for it. But you do not grow thin on this account—at least, not very thin, unless you are quite specially constituted. On entering the world of spiritual beings, however, we do not merely meet the ideal judgment that we are of little worth in respect of any fault or disgraceful deed we have committed; we feel the gaze of these beings resting upon us as if it would annihilate our very being. In respect of all we have done that is valuable, the gaze of these beings falls upon us as if we first attained thereby our full reality as psycho-spiritual beings. Our reality depends upon our value. Should we have hindered the evolution that was intended in the spiritual world, it is as if darkness were robbing us of our very existence. If we have done something in accordance with the evolution of the spiritual world, and its effects continue, it is as if light were calling us to fresh spiritual life. We experience all I have described and enter the realm of spiritual beings. This enhances our consciousness in the spiritual world and keeps us awake. Through all the demands made upon us there, we realise that we have won something in the universe in regard to our own reality.

Suppose we have done something that hinders the evolution of the world and can only arouse the antipathy of the spiritual beings whose realm we now enter. The after-effect takes its course as I have described and we feel our consciousness darken; stupefaction ensues, sometimes complete extinction of consciousness. We must now wake up again. On doing so, we feel in regard to our spiritual existence as if someone were cutting into our flesh in the physical world; only, this experience in the spiritual is much more real—though it is real enough in the physical world. In short, what we are in the spiritual world proves to be the result of what we ourselves have initiated. You see from this that man has sufficient inducement to return again to earthly life.

Why to return? Well, through what he has engraved into the spiritual world man has himself experienced all he has done for good or ill in earthly life; and it is only by returning to earth that he can actually compensate for what, after all, he has only learnt to know through earthly experience. In fact, when he reads his value for the world in the countenances of these spiritual beings—to put it metaphorically—he is sufficiently impelled to return, when able, to the physical world, in order to live his life in a different way from before. Many incapacities for this he will still retain, and only after many lives on earth will full compensation really be possible.

If we look into ourselves during earthly life, we find, at first, memories. It is of these that, to begin with, we build our soul-life when we shut out the external world; and it is upon these alone that the creative imagination of the artist draws. That is the first form of memory. Behind it are the mighty ‘pictures’ which become perceptible immediately after we have passed through the gate of death. These are taken from us: they expand to the wide spaces of the universe. When we survey our memory-pictures we can say that there lives behind them something that at once proceeds towards the cosmic spaces when our body is taken from us. Through our body we hold together what is really seeking to become ‘ideal’ in the universe. But while we go through life and retain memories of our experiences, we leave behind in the world something still further behind our memories. We leave it behind us in the course of time and must experience it again as we retrace our steps. This lies behind our memory as a third ‘structure’. First, we have the tapestry of memory; behind it, the mighty cosmic pictures we have ‘rolled up’ within us; behind this, again, lives what we have written into the world. Not until we have lived through this are we really ourselves, standing naked in spirit before the spiritual universe which clothes us in its garments when we enter it.

We must, indeed, look at our memories if we want to get gradually beyond the transient life of man. Our earthly memories are transient and become dispersed through the universe. But our Self lives behind them: the Self that is given us again from out of the spiritual world that we may find our way from time to eternity.

It has been a task of special difficulty to weld into book form these lectures which originally depended so much upon the living co-operation of lecturer and demonstrators. These lectures were not meant as an encyclopaedic recapitulation of the whole sphere of eurhythmy; they were given just at that point in the evolution of eurhythmy where it became necessary to review all that had been accomplished during the course of many years’ activity, and which had already been carried out into the world by the various teachers; The intention was to examine and correct the results of this work and ‘to gather together a number of guiding lines, developed entirely from out of the nature of eurhythmy itself.’ Rudolf Steiner says in the last lecture of this course that his intention was to give his lectures such a form that they would show ‘how eurhythmy arises out of the feeling life, out of the soul; how a eurhythmic technique must be won from out of the love of eurhythmy, just as everything must in reality arise out of love.’ And indeed his own words streamed forth from a fountain of love, bringing help and aid to the work already accomplished,—the work which from then on was to be based on an even surer foundation. Up to this time there had been no shorthand reports of the teaching by means of which Rudolf Steiner introduced this art to the world. In the year 1912 he gave ten lessons to a seventeen year old girl, who, through the death of her father, was faced with the necessity of assisting in the maintenance of her younger brothers and sisters. She greatly wished to devote herself to some art of movement which was not based upon the materialistic tendencies of the age. This concrete fact proved the impulse for that teaching which has resulted in eurhythmy. I was invited to take part in these lessons; they consisted in the rudiments of sound-formation, and a number of exercises in reality belonging to the educational aspect of eurhythmy,—that is to say the basic principles of standing, walking and running, certain postures and gestures, and a number of staff exercises and rhythmic exercises. From these basic principles several girls, pupils of the first eurhythmist, worked out the educational aspect of eurhythmy; later they passed on to the expression of poems by means of movements corresponding to the sounds. This was the first phase of eurhythmic development. Every now and again, when the work was shown to him, Rudolf Steiner explained and corrected, answering any questions put to him. A second phase of eurhythmic development began when this new art found a foothold in Dornach, at the Goetheanum. The first group of young teachers requested and received a further course, in which more especially teaching about the formation of words, word-relationships, the nature of speech, the structure of poetry was given, as also new group forms. The work was carried out into the world, but the war soon checked its activity. In order to save this art and to rescue the eurhythmists from their enforced inactivity, it became necessary for me to take the work in hand. Destiny brought this task to me quite naturally, for a new style of recitation was necessary for eurhythmy, and I had to find my way into this new method, to understand and develop it. I recognized the great significance of eurhythmy as a regenerating source for all branches of art, and deeply regretted the fact that the eager work of these young eurhythmists should be rendered fruitless by the war. There is no better remedy against the errors of taste of the present day than this new art, which leads us back to the primeval forces, to the creative forces of the universe. It is of untold benefit to mankind. Thus I worked half of the year in Germany with one group of eurhythmists, and the other half of the year at the Goetheanum in Dornach, always supported and assisted by Rudolf Steiner, to whom we could turn with all our questions. The instruction we received from him in the course of time has been gathered together in book form by Annemarie Dubach-Donath, one of our best and most experienced eurhythmists, the second in that line of young girls who devoted themselves to the study of eurhythmy. This book, entitled The Basic Principles of Eurythmy, and published by the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag, sets forth and explains these principles, thus building a foundation which is, absolutely necessary if eurhythmy is to be understood, and without which it would always remain incomplete.

We met together to take part in this course as if uniting in a common festival. Many were the questions put to Rudolf Steiner; he recapitulated the teaching, clearing up many things about which we held differing opinions. The whole nature of this course was that of spontaneous improvisation; diagrams were rapidly sketched on the board, exercises demonstrating certain points were carried out by the eurhythmists; everything bore the character of intimate conversation and co-operative work, not of pedantic instruction. This was often the case with the teaching given by Rudolf Steiner to his pupils, but never to such a degree as in this course on eurhythmy. He himself, in all probability, wished the content of these lectures first to be assimilated and experienced, and then later on cast into another form and given to the world through the agency of some other person. Now, however, when he has gone from us, his own words are what we value most. Even here,—when the effect cannot be other than fragmentary, constantly interrupted as the lectures were by practical example and demonstration,—many subtle relationships are brought to light, and we are moved to the heights and depths of our being in a way which would be impossible through the words of another. During his lectures, as he himself delivered them, the cadences of his voice seemed to stream out from spiritual depths, revealing radiant glimpses of cosmic mysteries. And now, even after his death, he still makes for us that sacrifice which he had to make throughout his whole life,—the sacrifice, that is to say, of allowing the disjointed fragments of his spirit to be preserved and written down by another hand. Those who drew life from his spirit demanded this sacrifice. None knew what it cost him. But the sacrifice was made. It has saved for our age the wisdom which reveals the relationship of universe and man; it has preserved for present-day humanity,—no longer able to remember the word of the spirit without the aid of the written record,—that store of knowledge which can raise man ever more and more to the consciousness of the concrete reality of the spirit; it contains the kindling, life-awakening spark.

Among the many branches of the spiritual work of Rudolf Steiner eurhythmy was one of those which he held most dear. It developed quite organically from the smallest beginnings, adding shoot to shoot, and reaching goodly proportions, thanks to the health-giving nurture and tireless labours of its creator. It ennobled those who gave themselves to its study, compelling them more and more to put aside all that is personal; it left no room for caprice. Its inherent laws were rooted in a spiritual necessity; these laws were gladly acknowledged, for in them one experienced necessity, one experienced God. This is why eurhythmy was able to arouse such heartfelt enthusiasm; many eager students banded themselves together in selfless work, so that the field of activity grew ever wider and wider. Side by side with the development of recitation, eurhythmy entered into the realm of music and in this domain also it opened up fresh channels and gave fresh possibilities of expression. A new art of stage lighting came into being, following the laws of eurhythmy, and a new style of dress, simpler, more impersonal, more dignified; these were based upon the experience of the colours, upon what might be called a eurhythmy of colour. In its connection with the drama, eurhythmy led to a means of representing those beings which otherwise had to be represented in a more or less materialistic way. The portrayal of the super-sensible and sub-sensible in earthly life now became possible. Thus, as the years went by, we were able to produce on the stage of the Schreinerei at the Goetheanum all those scenes in Faust in which the supersensible plays a part and which otherwise are either omitted or mishandled. The romantic Walpurgisnacht revealed undreamed of life and intricacy of detail, and the classical Walpurgisnacht also, with its manifold ghostly happenings. Elves, angels, the hosts of heavenly beings were represented in these performances with simplicity and dignity, and in a way entirely convincing. The greater our activity and work the greater was our gain. Every effort which resulted in deeds was rewarded by fresh gifts from our generous teacher. So many possibilities of work arose that we could not keep pace with them in the time at our disposal.

After several years of tireless training and a good deal of stage experience before friendly audiences, the time came for eurhythmy to be carried out into the world. The result was striking; it was received with enthusiastic appreciation or violent opposition,—never with indifference. We were threatened with the ostracism of the cultured world; the press representatives were usually instructed to write from an antagonistic point of view, even if, as they often asserted, they themselves were enthusiastic. Representatives of other branches of art were often deeply impressed, often, also, aggressively ironical. Members of such societies as aim at reforms of all kinds felt their nebulous systems threatened by an unknown but assured and powerful force. Unprejudiced onlookers thanked God that there could be so true and pure an art. Children frequently asked if those were the angels of whom they had been told, and loud ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’ of wonderment were often the eloquent testimony of their impressions. This art worked into the quagmire of our modern civilization as a purifying light or flame; the lovers of darkness gave vent to their opprobrium,—those who wished to rise up out of the low-lying levels of our civilization felt as if cleansed and purified. The power of the spirit manifested itself in this art and its effect was purifying and invigorating.

It so chances that I am writing these words in England. The life of London, the capital of the world, has been working upon me, the quintessence of that element in our modern civilization which has produced the predominance of all that is physical in life, of all that can serve our material well-being. The business life of this world-centre, its industrial and commercial life, rushes noisily on its way. That to-day is a matter of course. But the menace to humanity is this: everywhere one hears the shrill sound of the wireless, the rasping of the gramophone, the whirring of the film; machinery has conquered on all sides, even in the realm of art; the most vital impulses are liable to waver and become mechanized. A performance which I witnessed in the Rudolf Steiner Hall in London, with its beautiful stage, a performance consisting of the interpretation of the music of early composers played on old instruments, had the effect of pictures from a past age. The performers (who were not Anthroposophists), attired in costumes of the period, produced a reposeful music full of feeling and inwardness, a music demanding leisure, which is not to be hurried, which deepens the contemplative life. The effect of such music is somewhat antiquated; but if one can persuade one’s modern nerves to adapt themselves to an earlier attitude, curbing their restlessness, it has a beneficent influence. It has about as much resemblance to the hustle of modern music as the long, flowing dresses of earlier times, still admired by painters, have to the lanky legs of to-day, where the hem of the dress comes well above the knee. The effect of these legs on the stage, when looked at from the stalls of a theatre, is terribly obtrusive. They are shown off with determination; they are meant to be seen. The qualities formerly regarded as feminine and charming are but little in evidence in a modern drawing-room. An actress, if playing the part of a young girl, likes to loll about on some padded sofa; she thrusts out her legs, crossed over each other, and beyond that one has in perspective a little bobbed or shingled head. When one is faced with a whole row of such attitudes, the aesthetic element must really be said to be lacking!

But this is only lack of beauty. What is still worse is that the very speech and gesture has been affected by this mechanical, noisy music, which rattles from all the gramophones, from the wireless, from the pianolas, and which even in many of the best London theatres has taken the place of the orchestra. They carry on their ceaseless noise during the intervals, drumming their hard sounds into the head and deadening the consciousness of the ego. When, at the end of a performance the conventional phrase of ‘God save the King’ is played and the audience rises to its feet, without the slightest pause the music falls into some wild jazz. Where is the need of breathing space or a moment’s consideration?—the machine needs no such thing. But the lack of any transition between two contrasted moods has a stultifying effect upon the soul. Young girls enter the stage, or drawing-room, even in Paris, with that rolling movement of hips and shoulders which negro dances have made second nature. They themselves do not notice this eternal rolling movement of the limbs: the effect is almost that of a wound-up doll, or of hypnosis. In woods, on the sea-shore, everywhere one is horrified by the sound of the gramophone and the sight of partners indulging in this sliding, rolling motion. Dancing, which seemed to be dying out when the decorative elegant French dances lost their charm, when even the waltz and the polka had failed to interest, has come to life again in the crude and primitive form of imitated negro dances. ‘We like the rhythm’ several girls replied, when I inquired what was so fascinating about these dances.—But this rhythm is in reality no rhythm. It is anti-rhythmic, it is an earth force which whirls upwards, an over-emphasized or furtive and indistinct beat, an increased blood pulsation coupled with lowered consciousness. One only needs to look at the figures of the dancers, with their vacant, expressionless faces, to be convinced that this is so,—especially so with the men, who now, young and old alike, have suddenly developed a passion for dancing. These dances appeal to the lower instincts, and for this reason they have as adherents even the most blasé, and those whose souls have become lifeless and barren. But that which was merely animal nature in the case of the negro has with us become mechanical. The demons of machinery here find means of access; they gain a hold on the human being through his movement, through his vitality. They do not only influence his brain, but enter into this externalizing of that which should remain as inner mood of the soul. The mechanical musical instruments exercise their powerful, soul-deadening forces, doing away with all atmosphere and feeling. And this non-rhythmic, mechanical element is even rejected in the manner of speech of modern actors on the stage. The sentences are shot out in a way which is jerky, rough and disjointed; they seem scarcely to belong to the human being, but only to his bony structure. The human being is not himself, active, but is only an automaton functioning through intellect and senses. When, added to this, there is nervous, hysterical emotion, the producer’s requirements may be said to be fulfilled. All this works its way into the souls of our young people, making them barren and empty. What will be the result? What is the outlook for future generations if no reaction sets in? A London newspaper is lying before me; a picture attracts my attention. The picture entitled ‘Urchin Humanity’ depicts a street arab,—cheeky, impertinent, with an old face,—drawing a cart. In the centre of this cart sits Science, holding a gun: Poison Gas. On one side is the figure of Literature, eagerly perusing a book: Detective Romances; on the other side the figure of Art,—she is holding the apparatus for producing films; and below her sits Music, with a gramophone on her knee.—This is our age. Self-knowledge is shown by such a picture, and self-realization,—the only path which can lead to salvation.

One might despair; one might give way to the most drastic Spenglerism, if, in this time of need, the means of salvation had not also been given. Salvation lies in the spiritual work of Rudolf Steiner. He sounded the awakening call which can free humanity from the dangers of becoming animalized, stupefied and mechanized.

That which once, in the ancient Mysteries, was offered to men as Wegzehrung (Sustenance by the Way), as they traversed the path leading to the unfolding of the personality, is now offered to them anew. It is offered at this moment when the personality might be annulled, when that which is human threatens to sink to the level of the sub-human if this gift is not grasped and assimilated in its very essence. The intellect alone cannot aid us here; understanding, left to itself, has led us to Agnosticism, to ‘Ignoramibus’, to ‘Spenglerism’. But if man opens himself to that which is spiritual, if he allows the spiritual to reveal to him his path, the creative forces of the spirit will conquer the seeds of death and transmute those forces of destruction which are now at work in ‘urchin humanity’.

In order to see that which is of really great dimensions one must wait for the discovery of a new apparatus; otherwise it can as little be observed as that which is minute can be observed without the aid of the microscope. The distances of time alone may sometimes give the necessary perspective. The work of Rudolf Steiner towers so immeasurably over what may be grasped and understood at the present day that it is only the moving passage of time, with its widened outlook, which will first make possible a true valuation. It is our duty to apply ourselves to the many and various branches of the work, gradually bringing them into the range of vision; for here, on all sides may be found the life-belts to which we may ding in the surrounding waters of destruction and disintegration.

That which is seemingly limited often proves to be of the greatest significance. Let us begin with education by means of and in art; leg us trace the path leading back to the source from which art had its first beginning. Truly this origin was no mean one. It was the dance of the stars and its reflection in the human sphere that was known as the dance of the planets, as Temple Dancing. Here the creative forces streamed into the human body, building its form, directing it in space, and conjuring up those forces which give to man the possibility of working creatively upon himself.

And out of these forces there arose in man the faculty of leading his inner activity over into works of art, plastic and musical. Such works of art were channels which allowed the divine to radiate down into matter. They were a reflection of the cosmos.

But when the onslaught of materialism silenced the divine forces within man, rendering them powerless, when the human brain became the coffin for dead thinking and was no longer able to grasp the spiritual, then arose a deliverer. He spiritualized the intellect; he freed it from its rigidity; he restored to it its living mobility.

Indeed he brought movement into all domains of human activity. We, however, had no recollection of movement in a spiritual sense, for the movement of matter, which we had laid hold of and mastered, sufficed us, intoxicating us with its rapid motion. We did not notice that the spiritual part of our being was left passive, and that as a substitute we were intoxicating ourselves with the specific movements of sport. By this means also we alienated ourselves ever further from the spiritual impulse of movement.

We must retrace our steps with awakened consciousness; we must observe for ourselves the mighty forces of movement and whither they tend to lead us; then we shall perceive a gathering together of creative activity, the forces of which give form to the organs, and we shall gain the possibility of developing new spiritual organs in ourselves.

In this way we shall conquer the rigidity, the lifelessness, the barrenness, which to-day lead people even of the finest intelligence to the extremes of pessimism.

Once more chance has put a paper into my hand,—in Hanover, where I am writing the conclusion of this foreword. Here one may read: ‘Culture (Kultur), so long as it is strong and full of motive power, works unconsciously. We are compelled to absorb and cultivate a conscious civilization. Is not this from the very outset the signal of an incurable and sterile weakness? Is it not the destruction of that seed from which springs all creative force, so that at most one may only expect a feeble echo of that which may truly be called culture? Is the circle of real culture already completed, so that there only remains for us a civilized mechanism, with perhaps some romantic glimmer remaining from the fullness of light of better days,—which also may soon fade into nothingness?’ (from the Niedersachsenbuch, 1927).

In earlier times the inhabitants of Lower Saxony unconsciously followed a spiritual guidance, and they conquered the land of the Celtic Breton and the Gael.—As Englishmen theirs was the task of developing the consciousness soul, in so far as this is bound up with the actual personality and with physical, earthly surroundings. If the German people could raise the forces of consciousness up into the sphere of the divine ego in man, then they would have fulfilled the task of the German civilization. Then they would give to the world a new culture for which all humanity would render thanks,—whereas people turn from them when, untrue to their mission they imitate the mechanistic civilization, carrying this to its furthest extremes.

The greatest herald of the spirit of Germany proclaimed this to the German people with warning voice ever and again during the catastrophe of the world war, and he uttered these stirring words:

Der deutsche Geist hat nicht vollendet,
Was er im Weltenwerden schaffen soll
Er lebt in Zukunftssorgen hoffnungsvoll,
Er hofft auf Zukunftstaten lebensvoll.
In seines Wesenstiefen fuhlt er machtig
Verborgnes, das noch reifend wirken muss.
Wie darf in Feindesmacht verstandislos
Der Wunsch nach seinem Ende sich beleben,
So lang das Leben sich ibm offenbart
Das ihn in Wesenstiefen schaffend halt!

(The German Spirit has not completed
Its destined gift to World-Becoming.
Hope-filled, it lives in cares which fill the future,
Life-filled, it hopes for deeds on which the future must depend,
And in its deepest being feels
A hidden might which yet must work to ripeness.
Opposing powers, with lack of understanding,
Desire its end. Yet of this wish how shall there be fulfilment
So long as there is manifest that life
Which in the depths sustains creative power!)

This life must be grasped by the German. It does not, however, lie in ‘keeping the race pure’, as the slogan has it. It lies in the realization of his inherent ego forces, of his divine ego forces. But the path to this leads through the realm of consciousness. The consciousness of the personality, metamorphosed and raised up to the undying ‘I’ possesses creative forces; it conceals the spirit in itself and will produce, not the mere echo of past culture, but a virile culture of its own.

It may seem that I have strayed far from the subject of the book which I am introducing, and yet this path leads us back to the inner regions of the temple from which the ancient civilizations arose, at first in Word and in Art,—not unconsciously, but guided by the most exalted spirits. They will come to our aid also, at this epoch when it has become necessary for each individual Spirit-Consciousness to work towards the gradual transmutation of itself into a universal Human-Ego-Consciousness. If we allow ourselves to receive this aid, we shall be in a position to open ourselves to the spirit in every sphere of activity,—in that sphere also which this book illumines with spiritual revelation and human knowledge. Then we shall no longer need to stimulate our slackened nerves by means of decadent negro dances which are hammered into us by machinery, turning us into machines and gradually killing out our finest human qualities; but we shall gain an understanding for a noble art of movement, having its source in the spirit, an art of movement which is the reflection of the Dance of the Stars, and which makes the language of the stars sound visibly within us in purity and truth.

Marie Steiner.
November, 1927.

We have seen how the Mysteries provided human beings with a conscious connection to the world in such a way that this connection could be portrayed in the yearly cycle of festivals. In particular we have seen how Easter developed out of the principle of initiation. It should be obvious from all that has been said that the Mysteries played a highly significant role in humanity's development. Indeed, in ancient times essentially all of humanity's spiritual life and development originated within the Mysteries. To put it in modern terms, the Mysteries wielded great power in the overall guidance of spiritual life.

Human beings, however, were destined to achieve freedom, which meant that the Mysteries' powerful influence had to diminish and for a time leave human beings more or less to their own devices. Although today it can hardly be said that we have already achieved true inner freedom and are ready to proceed with the next evolutionary step, still a significant number of people have gone through incarnations in which the power of the Mysteries has been less palpable than it was in earlier times. The fruit of these incarnations, although not yet ripe, is alive in peoples' souls. And when an age finally dawns that is once again more spiritual, the current ignorance will be overcome. People will then freely greet with esteem and reverence the spiritual knowledge and experience that can be achieved through modern initiation. For without esteem and reverence, neither knowledge nor humanity's spiritual life would be possible.

One of the purposes of the festivals is to try to cultivate this reverence in ourselves by understanding how the spiritual has developed throughout human history. Through the festivals we can learn to look very intimately at how historical events pass spiritual contents on from one age to another. For even though human beings are the most fundamental link in the chain of historical development, in that they reincarnate and thereby carry experiences of earlier epochs into later ones, nevertheless each life is lived in a particular milieu, of which the Mysteries are of course a highly significant part. A most important factor for the progress of humanity is the carrying of the contents of Mystery experiences into later incarnations, where they are encountered again, either in new Mysteries, which in turn have their effect upon humanity as a whole, or in some other form of knowledge.

It is in some other form of knowledge that past Mystery wisdom must be experienced in our time, for the actual Mysteries have all but disappeared from outer life, and must rise again. I might say that if the impulse originating from the Christmas Conference that was held here at the Goetheanum truly takes hold within the Anthroposophical Society, then the Society, inasmuch as it leads to the Classes, which have already begun to be established, will become the basis for a renewal of the Mysteries. [The School for Spiritual Science, which was founded at the Christmas Conference in 1923, was divided into subject sections. In addition, the esoteric training was to progress through three classes, only the first of which had been established before Rudolf Steiner died in 1925. ] The Anthroposophical Society must consciously cultivate this renewal. The Society was, after all, witness to an event that, like the burning of the Temple at Ephesus, can be turned to good historical account. In both cases a grievous wrong was perpetrated. However, what is a terrible wrong on one level can turn out to be useful for human freedom on another level. Such harrowing events can indeed call forth a true step forward in human evolution.

To understand such matters we must examine them, as I mentioned before, on as intimate a level as possible. We must look at the particular way in which the world's spirituality lived within the Mysteries.

As I indicated yesterday, the fixing of Easter's date grew out of a spiritual appreciation of the constellation of the sun and the moon. I also indicated that moon-beings observe the planets, and that these observations guide human beings in their descent from pre-earthly into earthly life, guide them in the formation of their etheric bodies. Now in order to understand how the lunar forces or, one might say, the spiritual observatory on the moon makes etheric forces available to human beings, we can look to the cosmos; for, as we have had occasion to see, it is inscribed there, it exists there as a fact. However, it is also important to appreciate the interest human beings have taken in these matters throughout history. And that interest was nowhere more sincere than in the Mysteries at Ephesus.

Every aspect of the service to the goddess of Ephesus, known exoterically as Artemis, was designed to give an experience of the creative spiritual forces pervading the cosmic ether. When the participants in the Mysteries approached the statue of the goddess, they had the sensation of hearing her speak, in words such as this: “I delight in all that bears fruit within the vast cosmic ether.”

To hear the goddess thus express her heartfelt delight in everything that grows, buds, and sprouts within the cosmic ether was a truly profound experience. Indeed, the spiritual atmosphere of Ephesus was aglow with heartfelt sympathy for all budding and sprouting things. The Mysteries there were instituted in such a way that nowhere else could one find such sympathy with vegetative growth, with the budding and sprouting of the earth into the plant world.

One consequence of this was that the lessons, if I may call them that, that dealt with the mystery of the moon, of which I spoke yesterday, could be given at Ephesus with particular force and clarity. As a result of such instruction, each student was able to experience himself as a figure of light formed by the moon. One exercise in particular directly placed a person capable of performing it into a process of building himself up out of sunlight transformed by the moon. In the midst of this the sounds I, O, A * rang forth, as if emanating from the sun.

[*Translator's note: Pronounced as in English “eagle,” “boat,” “father.”]

These sounds, the Mystery student knew, enlivened his ego and astral body. I, O: ego, astral body, and with A, the approach of the luminous etheric body: I, O, A. As these sounds vibrated within him, he experienced himself as ego, as astral body, and as etheric body. Then, as if resounding from the earth, for the student was now outside the earth, came the sounds eh-v, which mingled with the I, O, A.

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In this word, IehOvA, the Mystery student experienced himself as a complete human being. Through the consonants, he felt a premonition of his earthly physical body. These consonants are bound up with the vowels, I O A, which express the ego, astral body, and etheric body.

It was through such immersion in the word IehOvA that the Ephesian apprentice was able to experience the final stages of his descent out of the spiritual world. As he did so, however, he felt himself living within the light. Now truly human, he was a sounding ego and sounding astral body within a light-filled etheric body. Sound within light—such is the cosmic human being.

In this way it was possible to take in what is visible in the cosmos, just as what happens in the earth's physical surroundings can be taken in through the eyes.

While carrying I O A within himself, the Ephesian student felt himself transported to the sphere of the moon, where he shared in the observations that could be made from there. In this condition he was still a human being in general, undifferentiated; only upon descending to earth did he become man or woman.

It was a pre-earthly state into which the student was transported, a state preparatory to the descent to Earth. In the Ephesian Mysteries this self-elevation into the sphere of the moon was an especially vivid experience, which the initiates inwardly cherished, and whose content might be expressed in the following words:

Every Ephesian bore this reality within himself, counting it among the most important things that permeated his being. Indeed, he felt himself to be truly human when these verses sounded in his ears, to use a somewhat trivial expression. For he associated them with a newly-awakened consciousness of his connection with all the planets through his etheric body's forces. The verses, pregnant with meaning, were addressed by the cosmos to the etheric body:

The human being is experiencing himself here within the power of the shining moon.

Creative tones resonate forth from Mars. Then comes the force that animates our limbs, makes us into beings of movement:

Jupiter sends forth its rays:

As does Venus:

So that Saturn may gather all together and complete our inner and outer development, preparing us to descend to Earth and to clothe ourselves in a physical body, so that we might live on Earth as physical beings who carry the god within us:

From these descriptions you may gather that a brilliant inner light permeated the spiritual life of Ephesus. In fact, all that had ever been known about humanity's true stature within the cosmos was gathered and preserved there in the concept of Easter.

Yesterday I mentioned that certain people wandered from place to place in order to experience the totality of Mystery wisdom. Of these, many expressed wonder at the richness of the spiritual life at Ephesus. They assure us repeatedly that nowhere but there could they perceive so clearly and richly the harmony of the spheres as heard from the standpoint of the moon. The most brilliant astral light of the cosmos appeared to them there: they sensed it in the sunlight glimmering around the moon, pervading that light with spirit in the same way that the human soul pervades the physical body. Nowhere else than in Ephesus could they experience this, at least not with the same sense of joy or artistic vision.

Such was the Mystery center that went up in flames through the deed of a criminal or a madman. Ephesian initiates later reincarnated in Aristotle and Alexander, as I mentioned at the Christmas Conference. [Alexander the Great, 356–323 B.C., king of Macedonia 336–323, conqueror of Greek city-states and of the Persian empire. Pupil of Aristotle.
Aristotle, 384–322 B.C. Greek philosopher, pupil of Plato. Tutor of Alexander the Great.] These individualities then came into contact with what remained of the Mysteries of Samothrace.

As an example of how a seemingly meaningless outer coincidence can actually be of great significance in the world's spiritual evolution, I may mention, as I have before, indeed for many years now, that the temple at Ephesus was burning at the very moment as Alexander the Great was born. As it burned, however, something else happened as well.

Consider for a moment how much the devotees of the temple had experienced throughout the centuries, how much spiritual light and wisdom had passed through its halls. All that was passed on to the cosmic ether by the flames. One might indeed say that the temple's continuous, concealed celebration of Easter was henceforth inscribed, although in somewhat less legible characters, into the vault of the heavens, to the extent that that vault is etheric. This is also true of much other human wisdom as well. Surrounded in ancient times by temple walls, it later escaped and was written into the cosmic ether, where those who have risen to true Imagination may perceive it directly. Because of this, Imagination may be said to be an interpreter of the secrets of the stars. It is the key to former temple secrets now inscribed into the cosmic ether.

The same thought may be expressed in another way. Imagine that you are looking at a crystal clear night sky, allowing your perceptions to sink deep into your soul. Provided you are properly prepared, the forms of the constellations, the movements of the planets will all begin to transform themselves into something like a cosmic script. And by reading this script you will grasp the outlines of the mystery of the moon, which I set forth yesterday. Such things can be read in the cosmic script, provided the stars are no longer seen merely as objects of mathematical and mechanical calculation, but as letters of a cosmic alphabet.

To continue with the Ephesian Mysteries: as I mentioned, Aristotle and Alexander came into contact with the Cabeirian Mysteries in Samothrace at a time when all the ancient Mysteries were in decline. At Samothrace, however, these Mysteries were remembered and preserved, even practiced. Under their influence, Alexander and Aristotle experienced something akin to a memory of Ephesus, in whose spiritual life both had of course participated in an earlier incarnation. Once more the I O A sounded forth for them, as well as the verses:

Cosmic-born being, thou clothed in light,
Strengthened by sun in the realm of moon's might,

Blessed art thou by Mars' creative ringing
And Mercury's swiftness, mobility bringing,

Illumined by wisdom from Jupiter raying
And by Venus's beauty, love portraying—

So that Saturn's venerable spirit-ways
Might consecrate thee to the world of space and time.

But this was more than just a memory of times past. Rather, it gave them the strength to create something new, something unusual and hence little regarded by humankind. Before I reveal it, you must understand just what kind of creation it was.

Take any significant work of literature, for example, the Bhagavad Gita, or Goethe's Faust, or Iphigenia, in short, any work that you admire, and think about its richness and powerful content. Now, how is that content transmitted to you? Let us assume that it was transmitted in the usual way, that is, that at some point in your life, you read it. Physically speaking, what precisely did you have before you? Nothing but combinations of letters of the alphabet on paper. The entire magnificent content comes to you through mere combinations of the twenty odd letters of the alphabet. But provided you can read, something comes to life through these twenty odd letters that enables you to experience the entire rich content of Goethe's Faust.

On the other hand, you may decide that the alphabet is a frightfully boring thing, that such a concatenation of letters is the most abstract thing imaginable. And yet these little abstract letters, properly combined, can give you all of Goethe's Faust!

When Aristotle and Alexander heard the celestial harmonies once again at Samothrace, they realized what the burning of the temple at Ephesus had meant. They perceived that the Ephesian Mysteries had been carried out by the flames into the vast cosmic ether. At that moment they became inspired to found the cosmic script, which is composed not of letters of the alphabet, but of thoughts.

Thus the letters of the cosmic script were discovered, which in their own way are as abstract as the alphabet:

What we have here is a collection of concepts, first introduced by Aristotle to his pupil Alexander. One can learn to use them in much the same way that one learns to use the letters of the alphabet and read the cosmic script with them.

In later times, particularly in the abstract phase of scholastic logic, a very unusual thing occurred. Imagine a school in which the students are taught not to read, but rather only to learn the various letters of the alphabet in every imaginable combination—ac, ab, ae, and so on. In essence, this is what happened to Aristotelian logic. Works on logic would enumerate the above concepts, called categories. Students would learn them by heart, but not know what else to do with them next. It was as if they learned the alphabet but never learned to spell.

In a way, the concepts of quantity, quality, relation, and so on, are as simple as the letters of the alphabet, but knowledge of them is required in order to read in the cosmic script, just as to read Faust one must know the alphabet. And in essence, all past and future achievements of anthroposophy are experienced in terms of these concepts. For all the secrets of the physical and spiritual worlds are contained in them. These simple concepts, in other words, constitute the alphabet of the cosmos.

Starting in the time of Alexander, the earlier, direct perceptions characteristic of practices at Ephesus were replaced by something deeply hidden, something esoteric, that really began to develop only during the Middle Ages and that is embodied in the above-mentioned eight concepts (they may actually be expanded to ten). We are learning to live more and more with these, but we must strive to keep them as alive in our souls as the letters of the alphabet are when we read any rich and spiritual work of literature.

And so you see how ten concepts, whose illuminating and effective power has yet to be rediscovered, came to embody an enormous wisdom known instinctively for thousands of years. And although this light-filled wisdom lies, as it were, in the grave, someday it will rise again. People will then be able to read once again in the cosmic script, and to experience the resurrection of what has been hidden in the time between the two spiritual epochs.

It is of course our mission, my dear friends, to bring to light what has been hidden. We are here, after all, to find the human meaning of Easter. On another occasion I said that anthroposophy is a Christmas experience, but in all its endeavors it is also an Easter experience, a resurrection experience, bound up with the experience of the grave. It is essential, particularly at an Easter gathering such as this, to experience something of the solemnity, if I may put it that way, of our anthroposophical striving. We should sense the presence of a spiritual being just beyond the threshold to whom we can go and say: “How blessed mankind once was by divine-spiritual revelation! How glorious that revelation was in the temple at Ephesus! Now all that is buried; where must I dig for it?” To which the being beyond the threshold will reply, just as another did on a similar occasion, “What you seek is no longer here; it is in your hearts, if only you know how to open them.”

Anthroposophy is indeed in people's hearts, and these hearts need only be opened in the right way. That should be our conviction, and if it is, we shall be led back, not instinctively as in ancient times but in full awareness, to the wisdom that lived and shone in the Mysteries.

I offer you these Easter words in the hope that they might reach your hearts, for by devotedly cultivating the solemn mood that anthroposophy can enkindle within our souls, we reach up into the spiritual world. At the same time, this solemn mood is connected with the Christmas impulse given at Dornach, which must not be allowed to remain abstract or intellectual, but must issue from the heart. Avoiding both joylessness and sentimentality, it must be a natural expression of the solemn facts.

Just as the fire of Ephesus flared anew within the hearts of Aristotle and Alexander, after scorching the cosmic ether and revealing to them the secrets that they compressed into the simplest of forms, just as they used the burning of Ephesus, so too must we—and this may be said in all modesty—be able to make use of what the flames of the Goetheanum carried out into the ether as the substance of our anthroposophical aims, both past and to come.

It was in keeping with this, my dear friends, that at Christmas time, at the beginning of the new year, the very time of year in which our misfortune occurred, we were permitted to let issue forth a new impulse from the Goetheanum. Why? Because we could feel that a previously earthly concern had been carried out by the flames into the vastness of the cosmos, and that because of this misfortune, what we represent is no longer a merely earthly concern, but rather of significance for the whole cosmic-etheric world. This world, filled with spiritual wisdom, has adopted the Goetheanum's cause, which was carried out by the flames. The Goetheanum impulses with which we imbue ourselves now stream in from the cosmos.

Take this any way you like; take it as a picture. But as a picture it points to a profound reality. To put it simply, since the impulse at Christmas all anthroposophical endeavor must be infused with esotericism. This is because impulses are now working their way in from the cosmos as a result of the astral light that streamed up from the burning Goetheanum. These impulses can strengthen the anthroposophical movement, provided we are in a position to receive them. If we are, then everything anthroposophical, including the Easter mood, will be sensed as an essential part of the whole that is anthroposophy.

The anthroposophical Easter mood convinces us that the spirit never dies, that though it may die to the world, it always rises again. Anthroposophy must base itself upon this spirit that rises ever anew from its eternal foundations.

Such is the feeling and concept of Easter that we may take into our hearts. And from this gathering, my dear friends, we shall carry away courage and strength for our work in other places.

We have placed the Apocalypticer's concluding perspective before our souls. If we understand it correctly we see that this last perspective is described in a way which is in complete agreement with everything one can say about evolution from the viewpoint of the most exact spiritual science. We saw that the building of cultural phenomena and of the human body changed from a below upwards mode to an above downwards mode, and that this is reflected in the Apocalypse. At the end of the last lecture I pointed out that if one honestly tries to understand the Apocalypse one must become acquainted with the things which can be said about world evolution from the viewpoint of spiritual research.

However, we see that a meaning is incorporated in certain places in the Apocalypse which one will find one can only grasp if one goes into the knowledge of the human being which is found in Anthroposophy. This is definitely the case when one has to do with a revelation which is based on experiences of the spiritual world. Of course one has to be able to see that the images which are presented in the Apocalypse are revelations from the spiritual world. Here one will disregard the question as to whether the Apocalypticer would really have been able to present all of the details which we rediscover in his work in an intellectualistic way, that is, whether he understood them to that extent. For that is not important at all. The only important thing is whether he is a real seer. He looks into the things in the spiritual world, but it's not he who makes them true, they are true through their own content, and they have this content and reveal it through themselves and not through him. So that even outer, rationalistic experts could come and could prove: The one who gave us the Apocalypse had this or that amount of education, and one cannot really expect him to have had these wide perspectives of things through his own soul. I don't want to discuss whether the writer of the Apocalypse had them here; I: just want to point out that this is not important. We must place the Apocalypticer's pictures which are revelations of the spiritual world before; our soul and we must let their content work upon us.

Now we have the magnificent concluding picture of the new Jerusalem before us, which has the experiential backgrounds of which I spoke. We will do well to go backwards from this picture a little bit. Here we have the important passage where another magnificent picture appears before our soul, namely, that magnificent picture where the Apocalypticer sees what he calls heaven open, and where a power approaches him on a white horse of whom he speaks in such a way that we become aware: he doesn't just have the trichotomy or the threefoldedness of the Godhead in his intellectuality—he has it in his whole I human being. He speaks in such a way that he is really still aware with his whole soul that one has the three forms of the one God before one, and that if one places oneself outside of the physical world one can alternately speak of the one or the other of them, because they intermingle.

Of course, when they're put into the physical World one gets a picture of three persons, so that one has to distinguish between the Father God who underlies all facts of nature, including the ones which work into human nature, the Son God who has to do with everything which leads to freedom in the soul's experience and the Spirit God who lives in a spiritual, cosmic order which is far away from nature and foreign to nature. This is how sharply contoured the three persons of the Godhead appear here upon the physical plane.

Now when man crosses the threshold to the spiritual world, he gets into the condition which I described in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds? where he splits up into three beings, so that thinking, feeling and willing become somewhat independent. However, if we go to higher worlds from the physical plane we see the triune Godhead approaching us ever more as a unity. And so of course, the Apocalypse must be read in this light. One shouldn't distinguish between the Father God, the Son God and the Spirit God as directly as one would do this in the physical world.

Thus the one who approaches us on a white horse in that magnificent Imagination is none other than the unified God. And in the form in which he is' the Son of God, we have to see Him more in the free soul development of human beings on earth. But now something very strange occurs, which is what makes the picture that comes before the concluding one seem very magnificent. It is quite natural and a matter of course that John sees heaven open—I will call the one who wrote the Apocalypse John—for the new thing which is descending from the spiritual world. The whole culture must be arranged in such a way that it comes down from the spiritual world to the physical world. Now if we place this before our soul correctly, then of course the condition which must precede this is that John looks into the spiritual world. But this means: heaven is opened for him. However, he wants to indicate a future situation which will exist for human beings. He's actually saying nothing less than the following.

Before that state of affairs will arise on earth where the spiritual ingredients for the building up of the new Jerusalem will sink down from the spiritual world and will be received by men—just as men previously raised material ingredients from the earth upwards—before this state will come, before men become aware that they must build from above downwards—as I said recently, he considers this state to be a real one—before this will come, the state of affairs where man is mainly engaged with his will will be replaced by another one where he is only concerned with knowledge and where he has to look into the spiritual world: heaven is opened. The one who underlies the beings of the world in a radiating and creative and sanctifying way appears. And now the significant reason which makes the picture so magnificent: He has a name written on him which is known to no one besides himself. That is very significant. When one comes to the place in the Apocalypse where this is written, one sees another clear sign that one is dealing with one of the greatest spiritual revelations. The name which is given to the ego varies considerably in various languages, but I have pointed to the spiritually trivial fact that the name for the ego can never be spoken by someone in such a way that it can be given to someone else. I cannot say I to someone else; this distinguishes the name of the self from all other names. They are given to objects, to either inner or outer objects. But when I say “I” in any language I can only say it to myself; I can only say it to another person if I have slipped into him—which must be a real spiritual process; but there is no need to speak about that now.

Now let's imagine the things which describe the self in various languages the self was not given a name in the older languages; it was in the verb. The ego was not a direct designation. One described oneself through what one did in a kind of demonstrative way, but no name for the self-existed. This name for the self of one's human being only began to be used later; it's a significant symbolic fact that the German word for I—“ich”—contains the initials of Jesus Christ. But now let's think of an enhancement of this fact that we have a name in our languages which every one can only say in connection with himself. The enhancement consists in what is now said in the Apocalypse—that He who comes down from the supersensible world has a name written on Himself where He not only is the only one who can use it to refer to Himself, but where He is the only one who understands it; no one else understands it.

Now just think that this Revealer approaches John showing him in a prophetic picture what will later occur for humanity. There He comes down in future times the one who has the name which He alone understands. What can all of this really mean? If one honestly wants to understand it, the whole thing seems to be meaningless at first. Why does He come, the one who is to bring the salvation of the world, the justice of the world all of this is written in the Apocalypse—, “who shall make faith and knowledge true;” not what the (King James version has: “was called Faithful and True”) but “who shall make faith and knowledge true.” This is really like hide-and-seek, for if He has an inscribed name which only He understands, what is that supposed to mean? It makes us ask a question which goes deeper. What is this really all about?

Imagine it quite vividly: He has a name which only He understands. How can we relate to this name? It should really acquire a significance for us; this name should really be able to live in us. How can this occur? It can occur if the being who understands this name becomes united with us and enters our own self, then this being in us will understand the name and we will understand it also. We will have Him in us and we will continually have the awareness of Christ in us. He is the only one who understands the things, which are connected with His being; but He understands them in us, and the Christ-insight of the Christ being in us gives the light which is rayed out in us, because He becomes this light in us, in our own being. It will be an insight which dwells in men.

You see, something has occurred thereby. The first thing which has occurred is an intended, necessary consequence of the Mystery of Golgotha. This being who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, this being who must enter us, so that we comprehend the world with his understanding and not with our understanding, this being wears a garment which is sprinkled with blood, the blood of Golgotha. And we take in this picture. However, John the Apocalypticer tells us that this garment which is sprinkled with the blood of Golgotha has a name. This is not the same name he was talking about before; this is the name of the garment which is sprinkled with blood. And the name of this vesture dipped in blood is the logos of God, the Logos, God, the word of God. Thus the one who should live in us and should give the light in us through his own understanding fills us with the word of God.

The pagans read the word of God in natural phenomena. They had to receive it through outer manifestations. Christians must receive the word of God or the Creative word by taking the Christ into themselves. The time will come when all human beings who take Christianity into their souls in an honest way will know through the course of the events that the word of God is with Christ, and that this word of God has its seed in the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha and of the garment which is sprinkled with blood. Thus we have the Christ, enclosed in the Mystery of Golgotha in the language of the Apocalypticer.

However, a third thing appears. Christ in three forms: firstly, through himself, secondly through his garment, and thirdly through the deeds which he does for men on earth. Here again a condition is described which must set in, and which will of course not begin in such a way that one can point to a particular year but Christian development must move in that direction.

The third thing that our attention is drawn to is the sword with which he works, which is the sword of his will, the sword of his deeds, the sword of what he has done among human beings upon earth by living in them. But what he's doing now, what he does in his comings and goings, as it were, bears the third name: King of all Kings, Lord of all Lords. That is the third form. What is the nature of a king or the nature of a lord? If we go into the real inner meaning of the Latin word dominus, we arrive at what linguistic usage indicates in this case, quite independently of spiritual investigation: A lord is someone who is designated to give guidance to some other being on earth or in the whole world. 3ut how long will external lords be necessary upon earth? How long will one need the commands of outer lords upon earth and even the commands of external spiritual lords above the earth? Until that point in time when Christ lives in men with the name which only he understands. Then everyone will be able to follow Christ in his own being and in his own soul. Then everyone will try to realize in himself what man's will wants to realize out of inner love. Then the Lord of lords and King of kings will live in each individual.

Seen from an inner spiritual viewpoint, this is really the time in which we're living now. The fact that we're living in it is concealed by the fact that men are continuing to live in their old ruts, and they're really denying this indwelling of the Christ as much as possible, denying it as much as possible, they're denying it as much as possible in all fields. One can certainly say that a great deal exists in a large number of people today which is preparing in the right way for the etheric appearance of the Christ, who is a being that came down from the divine world. But men must prepare themselves by finding the source of their actions and deeds in themselves.

Therewith we really touch upon a difficulty with the present-day activities of priests out of the spirit of the Apocalypse. A priest should guide and direct in a certain sense. A priest has the faithful before him, and his priestly dignity presupposes that he, the leader, is a king over the ones he is to lead' in a certain way. He is the giver of the sacraments; he is the minister. On the other hand, we live in a time where men have the potential to take in the Christ to such an extent that they can become their own leaders ever more.

You see, this is the situation which the one who wants to become a priest gets into today. And yet the ordination of priests is fully justified today, completely justified. It's fully justified because although men really do bear something in them as an essence, it must be brought out of them, it must really be brought out of them. And one really needs everything which lies behind priestly dignity in order to bring out what is in human beings today. For we live in a time which really requires something quite definite. The outer world cannot really completely confront what is required here. For the outer world must deal with men insofar as they are bearers of a physical body. But it would be a terrible prospect if men—the way they are through our civilization, which hasn't arrived at the standpoint on which man is standing—would live over into the next earth life in this form.

We know that one tries to avoid this in the Anthroposophical sphere. Human souls are offered something whereby they are supposed to live over into the next incarnation with the things men are supposed to take in today. But this must become universally human. Men must develop an ego or an individuality with which they can live over into the next incarnation. This is only possible if what is given through the grace of sacrifice, through the grace of a sacrament is added to men's experiences. This doesn't separate men from their karma but it does separate them from what is clinging to them in a very intensive way today. Human beings are walking around with masks on. They're going around masked. And it can lead to tragic conflicts if the need arises at some point to really see human beings and their individualities.

Such a tragic conflict arises with Hölderlin, who once said: when he looks around in the world he sees Germans, Frenchmen, Turks and Englishmen, but no human beings, young, mature and old people but no human beings. And he enumerates more types. Men bear an extra-human stamp, as it were.

We need a priestly activity today which speaks to human beings as human beings and which cultivates humanity. Of course none of the present-day confessions can really do this. Just consider how dependent the confessions are. The community for Christian renewal must get beyond the dependency of these confessions. It must do this through its own destiny. No one who grows out of Anthroposophy is in the same position that priests are. That is a quite special position. And it is perhaps quite right to point to what is present here out of the spirit of the Apocalypse. Just consider that in every other activity which grows out of Anthroposophy today, people become dependent upon the outer world in some way through the powers that be.

If someone becomes a teacher out of Anthroposophy, one can see the tremendous obstacles which are put in their way. People deceive themselves about this. But we won't get a second Waldorf school, because they will set up the condition everywhere that all the teachers one hires must be approved by the state in some way. The Waldorf School could only come into existence because we started at a time when no such school law existed in Württemberg yet.

Take doctors: we cannot make doctors out of people in the Anthroposophical movement from scratch without further ado. To be sure, we could make doctors. But they wouldn't be recognized, they would not be accredited. To some extent we even have this difficulty in artistic things. It won't be very long before things will tend in the direction of what is happening in Russia, and people will demand a stamp from the state. A priest who grows out of the Anthroposophical Society is the only one who can strip everything off, as it were. It's all right if he learned something, but he throws off everything in his work. He's really laying the first foundation stone of the new Jerusalem in the theology which he supports; for he represents a theology which doesn't have to be recognized by anyone besides himself. That is the important thing.

You are the only ones who are in this position. You should also feel that you are in this position, and you will feel the specific quality of your priestly dignity. If one is dealing with a country like Russia they can drive out certain kinds of priests, but people in such a country will never do anything which would make it necessary for priests to get an official stamp of approval. For one will either leave priests the way they are, or one will not want them, which has already been realized in Russia as far as the tendency goes. Thus priests are the first ones who will be able to feel the approach of the new Jerusalem, the approach of the indwelling Christ, the Christ who becomes the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords.

Hence it is very good for a priest to dwell on this passage \in the Apocalypse, to dwell on it with an ardent heart and to develop the entire enthusiasm of his priestly soul which he should develop at this place in the Apocalypse. For the Apocalypse should not be a teaching; the Apocalypse should be life which works in each of our souls. We should feel that we are united with the Apocalypse. We should be able to place what we're working and living with into the stream of prophetic things in the Apocalypse. Here we see ourselves gathered around John the Apocalypticer, who has the vision Heaven has been opened, the one who only understands his name himself comes, the one whose garment bears the name the “word of God,” the one who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords—he comes. The priesthood which gathers around the John who sees this, the priesthood that unites itself with the cultic rite which has been drawn from the spiritual world, that raises up the transubstantiation in the sense of the Holy Spirit again, that has the new act of, consecration of man, the transformed old one which has taken the valid things from the old one, but which has taken on the form which flows out of the spiritual world today—this priesthood may gather around John the Apocalypticer, who looks up into the opened heaven.

For we are permitted to look at the inauguration which took placed in the room which the fire then took hold of—, we should look at it in the light which rays out here when heaven opens—the white horse comes out with the one who sits upon it and who only knows his name himself, who must be incorporated into us if this name is to mean something to us, and who has the other characteristics which are mentioned. This is how one should understand the Apocalypse, for the Apocalypse must be understood in a living way and not just with the top of one's head.

However, I would like to say that very deep wisdom is connected with the magnificent Imagination that appears here. Just consider what appears in close proximity to this significant vision, as it were. The reader is told how active the beast that I described is—the beast which induces human beings to go down from the spiritual to the physical, which the Apocalypticer divided into three stages; the beast whose one form is a materialistic way of living and not just a materialistic view of life. However, the Apocalypticer refers to two points in time. He tells us how the beast is overcome, and on the other hand he tells us that the adversary of mankind, the stronger adversary of mankind, is bound for a thousand years and is then released again for a short time. Thus we really have to do with two adversaries of the good principle, with the beast and with what is traditionally referred to as Satan.

Now the beast is overcome with respect to the outer physical world, in the sense that a spiritual world view can always be opposed to materialism. And Satan is chained at the present time in a certain way. But he will be released again. Satan is fettered, and anyone who sees through the important things in evolution knows that he is fettered. For if Satan was not chained at the present time and if everything which could really pour out the vials of wrath would appear—if Satan was not bound,—the connection between the materialistic way of living and the materialistic view of life which is present on earth today would show up in the outer world in a ghastly way. Then the people who proclaim materialism as a truth with the deepest inner cynicism today would arouse such a desire in the unbound Satan that one would see this extraction of the materialistic view and a materialistic way of living and their acquisition by Ahrimanic powers, one would see this as the most horrible and most terrible diseases.

If Satan was not bound one would not only have to speak of materialism as a view and a way of living, one would have to speak of materialism as the worst kind of a disease. Instead of this people go through the world with the cynicism and frivolity of materialism and even with religious materialism, and nothing happens to them. But the only reason nothing happens to them is because Satan is bound and the Godhead still makes it possible for one to come to spiritual things without succumbing to Satan. If Satan was here, many a teacher who is standing in some confession and is infected by materialism would be a terrible, gruesome sight for mankind. The idea which arises when one points to the possible disease of materialism, to the leprosy of materialism which would really be there if Satan were not bound, if one points to this, it certainly gives rise to a terrible mental image.

However, anyone who is aware of his spiritual responsibility towards knowledge today will not make use of such an idea within any other context than the context of the Apocalypse. I myself would not speak of the leprosy of materialism in any other context than in the one I'm speaking of it here, where I have to connect things with the Apocalypse and where the one who becomes familiar with the ideas of the Apocalypse has these gruesome pictures before him, which however definitely correspond to the real state of the spiritual affairs.

The Apocalypse should not only permeate, our life, it should also permeate our words. If we take in the Apocalypse it is not only an enlivening element in priests' work, it is something that, permits us to point to things which we otherwise point to in exoteric life. The Apocalypse should not only live with our ego, if we want to understand it, the Apocalypse also wants to speak in our words: and if you are real priests there will be some things which you will say to each other when you are in a room with other priests so that they will live in you and remain amongst yourselves. Then you will gain the strength to say the right words when you are standing before your faithful followers.

Priests are priests today because they are the first ones who may speak about the Apocalypse freely amongst themselves. This Apocalypse is a priestly thing, that is, it is a priests' book which is appended to the Gospels. You will become priests all the more, the more you find your way into the inner spirit of the Apocalypse. We will speak about this some more tomorrow.

[ 1 ] In the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as ‘himself’.

[ 2 ] Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego.

The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the present which point to the past only through their content.

[ 3] Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth becomes something present at the moment.

[ 4 ] But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the ‘imaginative’ consciousness knows the activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism.

[ 5 ] The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising from the depths of the soul which before had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the ‘imaginative’.

The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience of a visionary kind.

[ 6 ] In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has ‘imagination’ has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a different being.

[ 7 ] Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls imaginative experience at every moment. The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual ‘stepping-out’ from the physical organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical organism.

We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a visionary nature. It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses ‘imaginative cognition’ is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary way.

[ 8 ] When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial content. Only what is introduced into consciousness by imagination is found to be the substantial content of this ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking may indeed be compared to a mirrored picture. But while the mirrored picture rises in the ordinary consciousness the imagined picture is alive unconsciously.

We imagine also in our ordinary psychic life, but unconsciously. If we did not imagine we should not think. The conscious thoughts of ordinary psychic life are the reflections of unconscious imagining mirrored by the physical organism. And the substantial part of this imagining is the etheric organism which is manifest in the development of man's earthly life.

[ 9 ] A new element enters the consciousness with inspiration. In order to attain inspiration the individual human life must be abstracted, as has been described in the previous studies. But the power of activity which the soul has won for itself by imagining still remains. Possessing this power the soul can attain pictures of that which in the universe underlies the etheric organism just as this underlies the physical.

[ 10 ] And thus the soul is faced with its own eternal nature. In the ordinary consciousness it happens that the soul can only give its activity a conceptual form by grasping the physical organism. It dives into it and there finds the pictured reflections of that which it experiences with its etheric organism. This latter, however, the soul does not experience in its activity. This etheric organism is itself experienced in imaginative consciousness. But this happens through the soul having gone further back with its experience to the astral organism. As long as the soul merely ‘imagines’ it lives unconsciously in the astral organism, and both the physical and etheric organisms are contemplated; as soon as the soul attains ‘inspired’ knowledge the astral organism is also brought into contemplation; for the soul now lives in the eternal centre of its being, and can contemplate this by means of the continuation of ‘intuitive’ cognition. Through this it lives in the spiritual world, as in ordinary existence it lives in its physical organism.

[ 11 ] The soul learns in this way how the physical, etheric and astral organisms grow out of the spiritual world. But it can also observe the continued activity of the spiritual in the organization of the earthly being—man. It sees how the spiritual centre of man's nature sinks into the physical, etheric and astral organism. This sinking is not really a merging of something spiritual into something physical, so that the former dwells in the latter. But it is a transformation of part of the human soul into the physical and etheric organization. This part of the soul disappears during earthly life by being transformed into the physical and etheric organism. It is this part of the soul which is experienced through thought by the ordinary consciousness in its reflection. But the soul emerges again elsewhere.

This is the case with that part of it which in earthly existence is experienced as volition, which has a different character from thought. Volition even during wakefulness contains a section which is asleep. The soul receives a thought clearly. Actually man when he thinks is fully awake, which is not the case with volition. The will is stimulated by thought. Consciousness extends as far as thought. But then the act of volition sinks into the human organism. If I deliberately raise my hand I have the causal thought in my ordinary consciousness to start with, and the sight of my raised hand with all the accompanying sensations is the result of my act of will. What is between remains unconscious. What happens in the depths of the organism when a man puts his will into action escapes the ordinary consciousness just as do the events of sleep. Man has always a part of himself asleep even when he is awake.

[ 12 ] This is the part in which continues to live during earthly existence as much of the Spirit-Soul as had not been transformed into the physical organism. One perceives this when true intuition has been achieved by the exercises of the will previously described. Then we recognize behind the will the eternal part of the human soul, which is transformed into the head-organization; and disappears in its form-life during earthly existence, rises again on the other side to pass through death and to become ready once more to help in a future physical body and earthly life.

This brings this study to the event of death which is to be further touched upon in the next. For by the views I have put before you to-day we are led only to the continuity of the Will and to a knowledge of that part of the soul from the past, which is transformed into human head-organization. We have not reached the destiny of the ego-consciousness, which can only be treated in conjunction with the Christ-problem. Therefore that study will again lead us back to a consideration of the mysteries of Christianity.

[ 13 ] The customary Philosophy of Ideas consists of thoughts; but they have no life, no substance. The substance comes by leaving behind the physical organism in ‘Imagination’. As I have shown, formerly the ideas of Philosophy were only mirrored pictures. If these are built up into a Philosophy, and if one studies them without prejudice, one must feel their unreality. One feels vaguely the moment here described as the one in which all remembered thought entirely disappears.

Augustine and Descartes have felt this, but have inefficiently explained it to themselves as ‘doubt’. But Philosophy acquires life when the unity of life is substantiated in the soul.

Bergson perceived this, and has expressed it in his idea of ‘Duration’. But he did not proceed beyond this point.

Starting with this as a basis, we shall proceed to consider its bearing upon Cosmology and Religious cognition.

Our meditations should gradually bring it about that we press into higher worlds body-free and learn to know and see things there. It's not just a matter of getting into higher worlds but of how we do this—the attitude with which we enter higher worlds must be a good and moral one. Now to begin with it's the case that a man as a sensory-physical being on earth is abandoned by good. He doesn't feel the moral element, the good that could and should speak to him out of the whole of creation any more. To give man freedom Lucifer has as it were pulled the moral element out; a man must now awaken it in himself, find it again and then bring it back to the spiritual, divine worlds.

When a man looks at the sun rising and setting today he doesn't feel any moral impulses streaming to him from it. If it wasn't for Lucifer he would feel: forces flow from the sun that pulse through me in such a way that I know and feel that I'm an I. If a man looks at the moon with what astronomy gives him he then knows that in the time from new moon to full moon and back again there are certain equilibrium constellations, where one first sees a quarter, then a half and then a whole illumined surface. What a man no longer feels is that if the constellations were completely different, if the moon would change its position very slightly beings like men would no longer be able to live in their physical bodies; for reproductive forces flow from the moon. If a man stares at Mercury he can no longer see that without Mercury no connection between sun and moon forces, between ego and reproductive forces would be made. Likewise with Venus he does not feel that without its mild light none of the love relations that make him happy would exist.

Lucifer has completely permeated man's astral body with egoism. This is necessary for the sake of a development towards freedom and independence of the individual. But things should not go so far that a man becomes insensitive to moral things. However this is the case with respect to nature, to the elements, for instance. A man would have to feel from air, fire, water, earth that they're there to create a punishing adjustment for human sins, that living in elemental forces there's a sickening force that we should and must let work on us in order to purify ourselves.-The same words are true or false depending on whose mouth they come from. In Lucifer's mouth “nature is sin, spirit is devil” is mockery. But it's true in the sense developed above, that material nature is supposed to punish us for our sins and that we should feel the spirit in nature as something that makes us sick and brings us suffering. For pains, suffering is the God-given means to recognize egoism and to overcome it. In Lucifer's mouth the word “Ye shall be as Gods” is a lie, but understood correctly it's true. Christ says: “Ye are Gods”—sons of the Godhead. A man is called upon to become a God. What does a modern materialist who divides the world into physical, material atoms want to do? He wants to perpetuate forces of sin. For matter is condensed injustice. Matter must dissolve into spirit again through spiritual development. We must wrest the morality that's placed in nature by divine, world wisdom from it again. Rosicrucian wisdom saw this whole materialistic development coming and so it gave means and showed ways to a heightened morality without which one shouldn't enter higher worlds, for one's own good. Otherwise one might get in, but then one doesn't find Lucifer there as he should approach one as a guide in knowledge of higher worlds, but all the more as a seducer who shows and simulates all kinds of divine spiritual things to one that don't really exist.

We should say Ex Deo nascimur and look up to the moon with an elevated soul, as to the giver of the opportunity to incarnate repeatedly and to perfect oneself on earth in a physical body. In Christo morimur, while looking up to the sun in order to feel oneself as an ego-being, as a spiritual-divine being through Christ, the spirit who is connected with the sun. Per Spiritum Sanctum reviviscimus, while looking up to Mercury and Venus that don't appear in physical copies but become manifest purely spiritually. Because the power of the spirit that teaches men about spiritual love is divided between them and the other planets. Plato still felt as an echo that man is abandoned by the good, that the good lives withdrawn in the deep lap of the Gods when he said: God is good. Christ Jesus said: No one is good except God.

We want to strive ceaselessly towards higher morality so that we become capable of feeling moral impulses out of nature, sun, moon, stars and of bringing the moral element back to the spiritual world, that was taken out of it by Lucifer for the sake of our freedom.

What the original state of what is called “ancient wisdom” was and how it came to earth is today's topic.

There are two kinds of knowledge and realization. Let us imagine the inventor of a clock: he makes one, two, three clocks according to the plan that was originally present in his mind. First there was the thought, then the actual reality. This is one way of knowing something.

To get to know the other way, let us imagine that the watchmaker has died; the watches are there and someone else studies them, figures out the plan and makes other watches. He has the same knowledge but has obtained it in a different way; for him, the sensory perception was first, then the idea; for the other man, the idea was first.

These two ways of acquiring knowledge also exist in the great universe. Such a thought, which corresponds to the laws of reality and is there before the sensory object, is called “intuitive thought”. It is born of the spirit itself, a child of the mental world. The other is a child of the sensory world, it is called “inductive thought.

Now let us see how the difference between the above and the disciples would manifest itself. The inventor will be able to communicate his thoughts because he is the shaper, the creator, because he was there when the sensual arose from the mental. The one who has imitated will also / gap in the transcript /

The same difference is between the first teachers of humanity and all later ones. For the first teachers of humanity were involved in creation, were among those who formed, they participated when the world was still a cosmic thought. They [gap in the transcript]

The first Arhat or Maha were involved in the creation of the world. In the middle of the third root race, when the human kingdom came into being, A also embodied himself.

They brought knowledge from the workshop with them, and that is “ancient wisdom”; they brought with them what they had experienced.

The knowledge that one gains afterwards is the same as that which the original great spirits have from the laws of creation themselves. [Gap in the transcript] If you really know something, then you also have the laws by which the world is created. Manas and Mahat are therefore the same in content. Only Manas is in us: I. And Mahat is spread out as a tableau over the whole world. Only the way they are is different, the content is the same. The more we increase in knowledge, the more /gap in the transcript]

What was taught at that time from the creative activity of the sculptors was the first wisdom, and it is therefore more than all science can acquire. This occult sentence, that the world has its origin in cosmic thoughts and that knowledge culminates in human thought formation.

The I enters into the formation of the world; outside of the I - Mahat. The I, the creator, encompasses Mahat. The development consists in the I expanding its sphere over the whole of Mahat, and in the end Mahat itself is within the I. What is the difference? Beginning: Mahat is outside of the I, end: Mahat is in the I.

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the ego sacrificed itself as a special being and, as a result of this sacrifice, acquired Mahat as its content.

The process of world formation consists in the fact that the I, which was previously excluded from Mahat, afterwards has Mahat as its content. Not Mahat, but the I has undergone a development. Meaningful sentence: The world is enclosed in cosmic thought formation [gap in the transcript], the I is outside.

This is only partly true, because in reality the ego is a part of Mahat. With us, every thought is a part of Mahat; let us try to symbolize one as content. Let us take the sentence: Evolution consists in the fact that each part of Mahat grows to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The assimilation of all individuals to the whole Mahat takes place. The great sacrifice takes place. The whole Mahat gives its essence to all parts, that is development. The purpose of the world is that the whole gives its essence to each of its parts. It is certain that the whole was perfect at the beginning; but if it had no parts, it would remain as it is. Since it has them, it has given each of the parts its whole being, so that its own perfection is ultimately contained in each of its parts.

Beginning: Mahat is outside the “I”

End: Mahat is in the “I”

The only difference between the beginning and the end is that the “I” sacrificed itself as a separate being and, as the result of this sacrifice, received Mahat as its content.

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Evolution consists of each part of Mahat growing to such an extent that it becomes identical with the whole Mahat. The “great sacrifice” takes place: the whole Mahat gives its essence to all its parts. This is development.

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Again and again we must make clear to ourselves that this sojourn in Devachan is nowhere else than where we ourselves are in physical life. For Devachan, the astral and the physical world are nothing other than three interpenetrating worlds. We can form the most correct idea of Devachan if we think of the world of electric forces before electricity had been discovered. There was a time when all this was contained in the physical world, only it was then an occult world. Everything that is occult has at some time to be discovered. The difference between life in Devachan and that in the physical world is that man in his present epoch is endowed with organs enabling him to perceive the physical world but not with organs that enable him to behold the phenomena of Devachan.

Let us imagine ourselves in the soul of someone living between two incarnations. He has given over his physical body to the forces of the earth and relinquished his etheric body to the life-forces. Furthermore he has given back that part of his astral body into which he himself has not worked. He then finds himself in Devachan. He no longer has as personal possession what the gods had worked into his etheric and astral bodies; all this has been cast aside. He now possesses only what he himself has achieved in the course of many lives. In Devachan this remains his own. All that man has done in the physical world serves the purpose of making him more and more conscious in Devachan.

Let us take the relationship of one person to another. It can be said that this is simply a natural one, for instance the relationship between brothers and sisters who have been brought together through natural circumstances. It is however only partially natural, for moral and intellectual factors are continually playing in. Through his Karma man is born into a particular family; but not everything is conditioned by Karma. The natural relationship, into which nothing else is intermixed, we have in the case of the animals. In the case of human beings there is always a moral relationship also, through Karma. The relationship between two people can however also exist without this being conditioned by nature. For instance a bond of intimate friendship can arise between two people in spite of outer hindrances. As a rather extreme case let us assume that they were at first mutually somewhat unsympathetic to one another and that they found the way to each other on a purely intellectual and moral basis, soul to soul. Let us contrast this with the natural relationship between members of a family. With the relationship of soul to soul we have a powerful means of developing devachanic organs. In no way can devachanic organs be more easily developed at present than by such relationships. Such a relationship is unconsciously a devachanic one.

What a person develops in his present life in the way of soul faculty through friendship of a purely soul nature, in Devachan is wisdom, the possibility of experiencing the spiritual in action. To the extent to which someone enters livingly into such connections he is well prepared for Devachan. If he is unable to form such relationships he is unprepared; for just as colour escapes a blind man, so does soul experience escape him. To the degree to which man fosters purely soul relationships do organs of vision develop in him for Devachan. So that the statement holds good: Whoever lives and moves here in the life of the spirit, will over there perceive just as much of the spiritual as he has gained here through his activity. Hence the immeasurable importance of life on the physical plane. In human evolution no other means of awakening the organs for Devachan exists other than spiritual activity on the physical plane. All this is creative and comes back to us as devachanic sense organs for the devachanic world. As preparation there is nothing better than to have a purely soul relationship with other human beings, a relationship whose origin is in no way based upon natural connections.

This is why people should be brought together into groups, in order to unite on a purely spiritual basis. It is the will of the Masters to pour life in this way into the stream of humanity. What takes place with the right attitude of mind signifies for all the members of the group the opening of a spiritual eye in Devachan. One will then see there everything which is on the same level with what one had united oneself with here. If on the physical plane one has attached oneself to a spiritual endeavour, this actually is among those things which retain their existence after death. Such things belong just as much to the dead as to the one who has survived him. He who has passed over remains in the same connection with the one still on earth and is indeed even more intensely conscious of this spiritual relationship.

Thus one educates oneself for Devachan. The souls of the dead remain in connection with those who were dear to them. The earlier relationships become causes which have their effects in Devachan. This is why the devachanic world is called, the world of effects and the physical world the world of causes. In no other way can man build his higher organs than by implanting the seeds for these organs on the physical plane. For this purpose man is transferred to earthly existence. What the much quoted phrase, ‘To overcome separate existence’ means, will now become clear to us. Before we descended to physical existence we lived with the content of our astral body which was brought about by a Deva. In earlier times sympathy and antipathy in the human being were stimulated by the Devas; he himself was not responsible. Then at the next stage man said to himself: Now I have entered into the physical world as a being who must find his own way. Formerly I was not able to speak the word ‘I’, now I have become for the first time a separate entity. Previously I was indeed a separate entity, but also a member of a devachanic being. On the physical plane I am a separate entity for myself, an ego, because I am enclosed in a physical body.

The higher bodies flow into one another: for instance Atma is in truth a one-ness for the whole of humanity, like an atmosphere shared in common. Nevertheless the Atma of the single human being is to be understood as if each one were to cut a piece for himself out of the common Karma, so that, as it were, incisions are made in it. But the separateness must be overcome. This we do when we form human attachments of a purely soul nature. By so doing we do away with the separateness and recognise the unity of Atma in everything.

By establishing such human relationships I awaken sympathy within me. I then undertake the task of selflessly fitting myself into the world plan. Through this the Divine is awakened in man. That is why we look out into the world.

Today we are surrounded by physical reality, by sun, moon and stars. What man had around him in the Old Moon existence, he has today within himself. The forces of the Moon now live within him. Had man not existed on the Old Moon he would not have possessed these forces. This is why the Egyptian occult teaching in esoteric centres called the Moon Isis, the Goddess of Fertility. Isis is the soul of the Moon, the precursor of the Earth. Then all the forces lived in the environment which now live in plants and animals for the purpose of reproduction. As now fire, chemical ether, magnetism and so on are around us and surround the Earth, so the moon was surrounded by those forces which enabled man, animal and plant to propagate. The forces which at present surround the Earth will in the future play an individualised role in man. What now constitutes the relationship between man and woman was on the Old Moon external physical activity, such as volcanic eruptions are today. These forces surrounded man during the Moon existence and he drew them in through his Moon-senses, in order to evolve them now. What man developed on the Old Moon through involution emerged on Earth as evolution. What man developed after the Lemurian Age as the sexual forces, is due to Isis, the soul of the Moon, which now lives on further in man. Here we have the relationship between the human being and the present moon. The moon has left its soul with man and has therefore become a mere slagheap.

While we are gaining experiences on the Earth we are gathering the forces which during the next Planetary Evolution will become our own being. Our present experiences in Devachan are the preparatory stages for future epochs. Just as man today looks up to the moon and says: ‘You have given us the forces of reproduction,’ so in the future he will look up to a moon that has arisen out of our present physical earth and as a soul-less body of slag will circle round the future Jupiter. On Future Jupiter man will develop new forces which today on the Earth he takes into himself as light and warmth and all physical sense perceptions. Later he will ray out everything which he had previously perceived through the senses. Whatever he had taken in through his soul will then be reality. So the theosophical conception does not lead us to underrate the world on the physical plane, but to understand that we must draw out of the physical plane what we need to have, experiences which will later radiate outwards. The warmth of the earth, the rays of the sun, which now stream towards us, will later stream out from us. As at the present time the sexual forces emanated from us, so it will be with these new forces.

Now let us make clear to ourselves the significance of the Devachan conditions which follow one another. At first Devachan is only short. But ever more and more spiritual organs are being formed in the Mental Body, until at last when his comprehension has embraced the wisdom of the Earth, man will have completely fashioned the organs of the devachanic body.

This will come about for the whole of mankind when all the World-Rounds are completed. Then everything will have become human wisdom. Warmth and light will then have become wisdom. Between the Earth Manvantara and the following Planetary Evolution man lives in Pralaya. Outwardly there is nothing whatever, but all the forces which man has drawn forth from the Earth are within him. In such a Life-Period the outer turns inwards. Everything is then present as seed and its life is carried over to the next Manvantara. Broadly speaking this is a similar condition to that in which we, in the moment of retrospect, forget all that is around us and only remember our experiences in order to preserve them in memory and later make use of them. So in Pralaya mankind as a whole remembers all experiences in order to put them to use once more.

There are always such intermediate conditions which, as it were, consist of memories, and so the devachanic state is also an intermediate one. The initiate already now sees before him those facts which man only gradually has around him in Devachan. It is an intermediate condition. All similar conditions are of an intermediate nature. The initiate describes the world as it is on the other side, in Devachan, in the intermediate state. When he gets beyond Devachan and reaches a still higher condition he again describes an intermediate state.

The first stage of initiation consists in the pupil learning to penetrate through the veil of the external world and to look at the world from the other side. The initiate is homeless here on the earth. He must build himself a home on the other side. When the disciples were with Jesus ‘on the mountain’, they were led into the devachanic world, beyond space and time; they built themselves a ‘tabernacle’—a home. This is the first stage of initiation.

At the second stage of initiation something similar occurs, but on a higher level. At this stage the initiate has a state of consciousness corresponding to the intermediate period between two conditions of form (Globes), a state of Pralaya that comes about when everything is achieved that can be achieved in the physical condition of form and the Earth is metamorphosed into a so-called astral condition of form (Globe).

The third stage of initiate-consciousness is that which corresponds to the intermediate state between two Rounds, from the old Arupa-Globe of the previous Round to the new Arupa-Globe of the following Round. The initiate is in the Pralaya between two Rounds when he raises himself into the third stage. He is then an initiate of the Third Degree. So we can now understand why Jesus had to reach the third stage before he could place his body at the service of Christ. Christ stands above all the spirits who live in the Rounds. The initiate who had raised himself above the Rounds could place his body at the service of Christ.

The human ego-consciousness was to be purified and healed through Christianity. Christ had to raise and purify the self-centred ego, so that when it has reached self-consciousness it may die selflessly. This he could only do in a body which had become one with ... [Gap in text ...]. Thus only an initiate of the third grade could sacrifice his body for the Christ.

In our time it is extraordinarily difficult to attain to a complete awareness of these lofty conditions. The profoundly wise Subba Row⁴⁷ had his own knowledge; he describes three such stages of discipleship.

We see the moon as the lifeless residue of ourselves and we ourselves have in us the forces which once gave the moon its life. That is also the reason for the special sentimental mood in all poets who sing the praises of the moon. All poetical feelings are faint echoes of living occult streams deeply hidden in man.

A being can however become entangled in what should actually remain behind as slag. Something must remain behind from the Earth that is destined to become later what the moon is today. This must be overcome by man. But someone can have a liking for such things and so unites himself with them. A person who is deeply bound up with what is purely of the senses, of the lower instincts, connects himself ever more strongly with what should become slag. This will come about when the number 666⁴⁸ is fulfilled, the number of the Beast. Then comes the moment when the Earth must draw away from further planetary evolution. If however the human being has connected himself too strongly with the forces of the senses, which should now detach themselves, if he is related to them and has not found the way to attach himself to what is to pass over to the next Globe, he will depart with the slag and become an inhabitant of this body of slag, in the same way as other beings are now inhabitants of the present moon.

Here we have the concept of the Eighth Sphere.⁴⁹ Mankind must go through Seven Spheres. The Seven Planetary Evolutions correspond to the seven bodies.

Old Saturn corresponds to the physical body
Old Sun corresponds to the etheric body
Old Moon corresponds to the astral body
The Earth corresponds to the Ego
Future Jupiter corresponds to the Manas
Future Venus corresponds to the Buddhi
Future Vulcan corresponds to the Atma

Beside these there is an Eighth Sphere to which everything goes that cannot make any connection with this continuous evolution. This already forms itself as predisposition in the devachanic state. When a human being uses the life on earth only to amass what is of service to himself alone, only to experience an intensification of his own egotistical self, this leads in Devachan into the condition of Avitchi. A person who cannot escape from his own separateness goes into Avitchi. All these Avitchi men will eventually become inhabitants of the Eighth Sphere. The other human beings will be inhabitants of the continuing chain of evolution. It is from this concept that religions have formulated the doctrine of hell.

When man returns from Devachan, the astral, etheric and physical forces arrange themselves around him according to twelve forces of karma which in Indian esotericism are called Nidanas:

They are as follows:

In the next lecture we shall study these important aspects of karma in more detail.

• 47. His teachings appeared published as Esoteric Writings.
• 48. See Rudolf Steiner The Apocalypse of St. John lecture 11 (1908).
• 49. More details in The Occult Movement in the 19th century and its relationship to World Culture (1915).
• *. In the Sanscrit words j is pronounced as dj.