The Rudolf Steiner Archive

If we make a survey of what takes place in the civilized world today, of what is present in it, we actually find—indeed, we may say this after the many explanations which have already been given—that civilization is increasingly falling into ruin. If we understand what spiritual science can tell us about the secrets of the universe, we must realize quite clearly that everything that takes place outside in the physical world has its source in the spiritual world. The causes for what takes place at any time in the historical development of mankind also lie in the spiritual world. Another truth, which cannot be called to mind too frequently, is that in the present moment of time, humanity's condition requires each individual to contribute something toward the reconstruction of culture from his own inner being. We no longer live in an age in which it suffices to believe that the gods will help. In the present time, the gods do not count on human beings recognizing them and their intentions, and much that a short time ago was not yet left to mankind is left to men's decisions today.

Such a truth must be grasped in all its gravity, and basically by each one individually. To do this it will be necessary, above all, to understand a number of things that we have outgrown. Gradually, in the course of the materialistic age, one might say that the human being has reached the point of grasping everything from a certain absolute standpoint, a standpoint, moreover, that differs according to the human being's age. When a person is twenty-five years old today, he feels called upon to judge everything. He believes that it is possible to have a final opinion about everything without undergoing any kind of development. Perhaps when he reaches the age of fifty, he may Look down with a certain sense of superiority upon his faculty of judgment twenty-five years ago. At age twenty-five, however, he will in no way feel drawn as a result of his upbringing to seek and reckon with the more mature judgment of a man of fifty.

Among the causes underlying our present chaos, the one just outlined is by no means the least important; instead, it is one of the most significant, though admittedly one that had to exercise its influence upon the whole evolution of mankind. Only by man's feeling completely emancipated in a certain sense from the whole world context; by adopting an absolute standpoint not only personally in the life between birth and death, but at any given moment of this life; by assuming the standpoint that he is able to judge everything in a sovereign manner; only because this illusion was added to the many other illusions of life—and in the merely physical world everything is in a sense illusion—the course of human development will gradually lead the single human being toward freedom.

We should bear in mind, however, the great difference between our present epoch, which sets out from this standpoint, and the past epochs in which entirely different life impulses lay at the foundation of human existence. We must pay heed to the life impulses of former times, which in turn are intended to become those of the future, to which all efforts in the present should be directed again. Indeed, such earlier life impulses must be observed. They only disappeared slowly and gradually in the course of human evolution, and we underestimate the whole tempo of modern spiritual development if we do not perceive the speed with which, in a few centuries, materialistic impulses have melted away a tremendous amount of the spirituality that once existed.

In order to gain some starting points for a real study of the present, which we shall pursue tomorrow, let's turn our minds back to, say, the best period of ancient Egyptian life. Naturally, in the life of ancient Egypt or ancient Chaldea, there certainly existed social institutions in the outer world as well. These social structures were inaugurated and implemented by certain human beings. However, these individuals did not make judgments by pursuing thoughts in their wise heads on how to come up with the best social arrangements, or by following their opinions on what might be right for the communal life of people. Instead, they turned to the initiation centers. In actual fact, the sage who was initiated into the mysteries of the universe in these centers was the actual leading advisor of the highest social rulers, who, depending on their rank and maturity, were in large part themselves initiates into the cosmic secrets. When one was supposed to make provisions concerning the affairs of the social order, one did not consult the clever human brain—in the literal sense of the word—but one consulted those who were capable of interpreting the heavenly signs. For one knew that when a stone falls to the ground this is connected with the forces of the earth; when it rains that has to do with the forces of the air—the atmosphere. If, on the other hand, human destinies should be fulfilled that are supposed to interact with each other, this has nothing to do with any natural laws that can be figured out in the above manner. It has to do with those laws that could be traced in the cosmos by means of what makes the course of the stars evident. So, the course of the stars was read in the same way we read the time of day from a clock. We do not say, “One hand of my clock is down here on the right, the other is on the left.” Rather, we say, “We know that this position indicates that the sun has set so many hours ago, and so forth.” Likewise, these individuals who could read the course of the stars said to themselves, “This or that constellation of the stars signifies to us one or the other intention on the part of those divine spiritual beings who guide and direct everything we may call human destiny.” One beheld the intentions of those accompanying spiritual beings of the cosmos by looking up to the course of the stars. One was clearly aware that not everything that man has to know reveals itself here on earth; indeed, the most important things he has to be aware of, the forces that work in his social life, reveal themselves in manifestations observable in the cosmos outside the earthly sphere. One knew that the concerns of humanity here on earth cannot be managed unless one investigates the intentions of the gods in the realm outside earth. Therefore, everything that was to be accomplished here within the social order was connected with the sphere outside the earth.

Where do we find any inclination today to investigate these great signs visible in the cosmos outside the earth, when here or there the belief arises again that some reform movement should be introduced? A far more important symptom than materialism, than anything which has arisen in the form of natural scientific materialism, is the fact that man no longer consults the cosmos outside the earth in regard to his earthly concerns. One does not become spiritual by setting up theories concerning the human being or anything in the universe; one will only become spiritual if one understands how to connect humanity's earthly concerns with the cosmos outside the earth.

In that case, however, one has to be convinced, above all, that the affairs of this world do not allow themselves to be arranged according to the judgments acquired by mere natural scientific education. Then, one has to be able to introduce into the whole civilizing education the capacity to connect the sphere transcending the earth with earthly concerns once more. Then, it was necessary, above all, to discern more clearly how this capacity was lost in the course of human evolution, and how we gradually arrived at the point of wanting to judge everything only from an earthly standpoint. Let us consider something that is now prevalent in the world, a component of social agitation.

You have all heard of the effort appearing everywhere to introduce compulsory labor—to require a person to work by means of some social order based on the legal decrees of this social order—no longer to appeal merely to what obliges man to work, namely, hunger and other motivations, but in fact to establish compulsory labor legally.

We see how, on one side, this compulsory labor is demanded by socialistic agitation. We note how, in Soviet Russia, this compulsory labor has already led to a downright rigid form, with human life taking on the aspect of life in the barracks. We also find that radical socialists enthusiastically uphold compulsory labor. We see also how the sleeping souls of the present receive news such as this, how government officials here or there have even determined to introduce compulsory labor. One reads this like any other news item, and does not pay it much attention. One rises in the morning as one usually does, eats breakfast, has lunch, goes into the country for the summer holidays, returns again and, in spite of the fact that the most important and fundamental events are taking place in the world, one behaves as one has always been accustomed to behave. Yet, mankind should not insist on clinging to old habits. Mankind should take seriously what it is that matters today, namely, having to relearn about all conditions of life. Even when we see that the demand for compulsory labor is being opposed, what are the viewpoints from which these matters are attacked? We have to admit that the opponents are as a rule not much brighter than those who advance these demands. For the most part, they will ask, “Well, can a person still find joy in his work?”—or something like that. All the reasons cited for and against the above are worth more or less the same, because they arise from the same judgments that are limited only to what takes place here between birth and death; they do not originate from a sufficient insight into life. When the spiritual scientist comes and says, “Go ahead and introduce compulsory labor, but in ten years you will have terrible results, for suicides will increase at an alarming rate,” people will view such a statement as fantasy. They will not recognize that this conclusion is derived from an inner knowledge of the relationships existing in the universe. They will not be willing to study spiritual science and to discover the basis from which one can find such a judgment justified. Instead, people will go on living as usual—some getting up in the morning, breakfasting and lunching, traveling into the country for the summer and more of the same, others sleeping away their time in some other manner, refusing to take these questions seriously. Still others will found clubs, social associations, women's associations, and so forth—things that are admittedly quite nice—but when such efforts are not connected to the actual cosmic order, they lead nowhere. Our age is much too conceited to abandon absolute standpoints which assume that, at any age, one definitely has a conclusive judgment about all things.

During these days and in the last few weeks I explained the way in which the various branches of the threefold social organism have originated in the different territories of earth evolution. I said that, fundamentally speaking, all our spiritual life is only a transformation of what originated a long time ago in the orient. But when we look into what was described on numerous occasions in the past few weeks from one aspect, and investigate it in regard to the standpoints which I have indicated just now, we find that, insofar as it referred to human destiny, all this knowledge of the Orient was deciphered from the course of the stars, from what exists outside the earth, and the Greek concept of destiny was the last ramification of such extraterrestrial wisdom.

Then came the knowledge arising from the Middle region. As we indicated, this was a more juristic knowledge; it was something that man drew more out of his own being. It was not linked with observations of the cosmos outside the earth. I told you that the higher-world outlook of the Occident has been permeated with a juristic element, how the events that run their course in humanity's development were placed under juristic concepts. Punishment is meted out by a cosmic judge just as the human judge hands down a penalty for some external misdeed. It was a juristic view, a juristic manner of conception, that permeated the entirely different form of the Oriental conceptions concerning the spiritual world.

This view of the spiritual world was connected with the fact that in the initiation centers those who were found to be sufficiently mature were initiated into the nature of that which was sent down to earth from invisible realms by what was revealed in the visible. Then, the events that were to take place on earth were guided according to the intentions of initiation. Naturally, in the case of such a knowledge it is necessary to take into consideration more than the singular standpoint of any given age, by which one believes oneself able to make an absolute judgment on all sorts of matters. From the viewpoint of initiation, the whole evolution of man must be considered, also what the human being brings into earthly existence through birth, and what can reveal itself to him when, in earthly life, he beholds a revelation of the super-sensible existence.

In recent times, something that was basically a science of the heavens has become permeated with a juristic element. This celestial science itself and its fate must be considered a little now. The sacred knowledge of the Orient was something that was cultivated in its purest form in the initiation centers perhaps 10,000 years ago in the Orient. Later on, although no longer in such pure form, it was cultivated in Egypt in a still relatively pure manner. Having become popularized in a certain sense, it was used by swindlers and conjurers on the streets of the later imperial Rome, although transformed into visible magic tricks. This is, after all, the course of world events; something that is sacred in one epoch can turn into the most unholy thing in a later age. While the highest Oriental knowledge belonged to the streets in the later imperial Roman time, juristic thinking was developing out of Romanism itself on the basis of the Tate Egyptianism, and subsequently dominated the world. In the ages that followed, but only slowly and gradually, what had once been brought down from the stars as human wisdom in the Orient grew dim and finally died out. For, even in the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas⁹¹ still said, “Human destiny, all of destiny occurring in the sublunar world, is guided by the Intelligences of the stars. It is, however, by no means something inevitable for man.” So this Catholic-Christian church father of the thirteenth century does not refer to stars, to planets, merely as physical planets; instead, he speaks of the Intelligences that dwell in these planets who are the actual rulers of what should be called human destiny. What had once arisen in the Orient was really still present in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth centuries, although in its last ramifications, as an aspect of the Christian Catholic Church. It is simply a terrible misrepresentation of the present Catholic Church to withhold these matters from the faithful, so that the church can declare it a heresy, for example, to assume that the individual stars and planets are ensouled and permeated with spirit. By doing this, the Church not only denies Christianity; it even denies its last teachers who still had a more direct connection with the sources of the spiritual life than does the present age in any sense. Therefore, one must point out that it was not so very long ago that the conception was completely abandoned which still pictured the world as permeated with spirit. If people would teach the truth today concerning what still held sway in the spiritual life of the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; if, following preconceived opinions, they would not distort what prevailed in those times, then even this would still have a fructifying effect for a spiritualization of the present world-view. The materialism, the natural scientific materialism, or the materialism of the mystics or theosophists, particularly the materialism of the Catholic Church, could not exist. For what is contained in the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church originated from the purest spiritual science; and this pure spiritual science beheld the spirit everywhere in the universe.

All that was beheld as spirit in the universe by the eye of the soul has been discarded. The universe became pervaded with materialism. For that reason, naturally, nothing remains except words of faith. For example, behind the Trinity, the doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, stand the most profound mysteries. On the other hand, there is nothing contained any longer in what is taught today as the dogma of the Trinity. On one side, there is the doctrine, the belief of the religious denominations, on the other side, natural science devoid of spirit. Neither can save humanity from the misery into which it has fallen. In order to render rescue possible, it is necessary that a sufficiently large number of people rouse themselves inwardly. For, particularly in the present epoch, the possibility exists in man's inner being to pick up those threads of a soul-spiritual kind which, if their power is inwardly experienced in the proper way, lead to an understanding of what can be gathered from spiritual science for an illumination of the life of nature as well as the social life. One should not wish to retain at all costs the bad habits of one's inner life, however they have developed during the past few centuries. These bad habits are based on the opinion that if one can keep quiet and be passive, the gods will eventually enter into one, reveal everything within, and mystical depth will be illuminated by an inner light, and so forth. The present age is not suited for that. It demands an inner activity of soul and spirit from the human being; it demands that man turn and look at what is trying to reveal itself within. Then, he will find under all circumstances what wishes to reveal itself within, but he must be willing to unfold such inner spiritual activity. One must not believe, however, that much can be gained by some inner pseudomystical doings; above all else, one has to trace the spirit in the external things of the world.

I have called your attention to what happened, for example, in the East, in Asia. Once upon a time, so I told you, conditions in Asia were of a kind that the human being felt his heart expand, felt his soul grow warm, when, guided by the thought of the sacred Brahman, he directed his glance to the mighty external symbol of the swastika, the hooked cross. It made his inner life unfold. This inner mood of soul meant a great deal to him. Today, when an Oriental receives an ordinary Russian 2,000 ruble note—which is not worth much, for small change will no longer do for buying anything, only thousand ruble notes—he sees on it the beautifully printed swastika. Those thousand-year-old feelings that once upon a time inwardly beheld the sacred Brahman when the eye was directed to the swastika are certainly stirring. Today, the same emotional qualities arise on seeing the 2,000 ruble note.

Do you believe that one has a spiritual view of the world if one does not look at something like that and say to oneself, “Those are the Ahrimanic powers who are at work here; herein lies a super-earthly intelligence, even though it is an Ahrimanic intelligence?” Do you believe that it suffices merely to say, “Oh, that is the external material world! We direct our glance heavenward to spiritual things; we don't pay any attention to things for which people only have words?” If you seek for the spirit, you must look for it even where it turns up in the mighty aberrations of external world evolution itself, for there you can find the starting point for other aspects.

It is the tragedy of modern civilization that people believe that only human forces are at work everywhere, forces which arise between birth and death. Actually, our world is permeated all over by super-sensible forces, spiritual powers which manifest themselves in the various events that take place. If one wishes to do something, if one tries to realize intentions so that this or that result may come about, one needs to look to those benign spiritual powers capable of working against other spiritual powers; and the spiritual powers that can oppose the others have to be born in man through his own inner activity.

In regard to all this, however, one actually does need to look up into the spiritual world. This is something that is most inconvenient to many people. This is why the great majority of people in the world find even talk of initiation science unpleasant. For there is one thing that initiation science must make clear, under all circumstances, to the human being. Man is organized, in the first place, in the direction of his intellect. Certainly, there are other aspects to his organization such as digestion, metabolism, heartbeat, breathing, and physiological processes. He bears instincts within, hence, soul entities, and so forth. In addition, he bears within him what is termed intelligence, and the present age is especially proud of this intelligence. But where does our intelligence come from? Materialism believes that our intelligence is derived from those processes that occur below in the liver, in the heart; they then become more refined and turn into the processes within the brain. These processes in the brain are just a little different from those that take place in the liver or the stomach, but these same processes produce thinking. We know that this is not so. Those processes that run their course in the brain just as those in the liver or the stomach would cause no thinking at all. Up in the brain something takes place; out of the constructive processes destructive ones are constantly developed.

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Here, not only upbuilding, but disintegrating processes are at work; matter is forever falling out into nothingness. Thus, we are not dealing with an upbuilding in the brain. Any constructive process only serves to nourish the brain, not to produce thinking. If you wish to focus on those brain processes that have something to do with thinking, and you wish to compare them to the remaining organism, you must not compare them to the constructive processes, the processes of growth, but to the processes of elimination. The brain is constantly involved in elimination, and, as I said, the processes of destruction, of disintegration, of death, are the accompanying phenomena of intelligence. If our brain were incapable of elimination, we would be unable to think. If our brain would only contain upbuilding processes, we would exist in a dull, instinctive condition; at most, we could attain to quite dir dreams. We arrive at clear thinking precisely because the brain secretes and eliminates substances. Thinking only functions parallel to processes of elimination. It is only because the human organization eliminates what is useless to it that thinking establishes itself out of the spiritual world.

Now take the thinking that has developed especially since the middle of the fifteenth century, the thinking of which modern man is so proud. It comes into being because we destroy our brain, because we bring about in it processes of disintegration, of elimination. Suppose that you are Trotsky or Lenin, traveling to Russia—transported there on orders of Ludendorff⁹² in a sealed railway carriage and escorted by Dr. Helphand⁹³ (it was such a train, going from Switzerland through Central Europe, which brought Lenin accompanied by people like Dr. Helphand to Russia under Ludendorff's protection)—suppose you are such a person and you believe that out of the processes representing intelligence—the only processes from which natural scientific thinking of the past few centuries has emerged—the social order could be developed. What kind of a social order will that turn out to be? It will be a reproduction of what takes place within the brain during the thinking processes. Do not think that what we develop without is different from what we develop within, if the only processes employed are thinking processes! If you try to establish a social order with them, it will be something destructive, just as thinking processes in the brain cause destruction—exactly the same thing. Thinking, applied to reality, destroys. One can gain insight into such matters only when one Looks into the deeper secrets of the being of man and the whole world. This is why humanity needs to pay attention to these things if any sort of valid judgment concerning public affairs is to be rendered. It does no good at all today to base discussions about any social concerns on the suppositions of the past few centuries, for they no longer hold water. It is important here to realize that completely different processes must come to pass in the human spiritual life; again, the science of initiation must step in and draw from spiritual resources what can never be gleaned from mere sources of human intelligence. A social science of the present can only emerge as a consequence of spiritual science. This can and must be grasped from its very foundation.

This is what is in fact important for modern man, namely, that he does not attain a relationship with spiritual science merely in some superficial manner, but that he learns to recognize how completely spiritual science is linked to human destiny for the future.

In order that a person can gauge something like this, a feeling must develop in the human being for what is asserting itself with profound earnestness out of the spiritual resources. For such a feeling to come about, however, much must be eliminated, above all else the generally prevailing frivolity. Recently, in a lecture that I gave for local teachers, I indicated a Symptom in which such frivolity appears today. One of our friends in London made efforts to arrange a gathering of a number of artists here in August. It was for the purpose of their becoming acquainted with our building and forming a sort of center from which the impulse could go out that is now so necessary if the building is ever to be completed. An English journalist was informed, not one from an ordinary daily paper but from a magazine that calls itself “Architect,” in other words, a publication that wishes to be taken more seriously. The journalist was even given a description in writing of what was intended. This fellow was so flippant and frivolous, however, that he wrote, “A visit to Dornach is anticipated by such and such persons. Dr. Steiner himself has promised to acquaint the visitors with what is going on there, and it is believed that ten days will suffice for this excursion. Of this time, four days will be spent on travel, and during the remaining six days, the visitors will be able to recuperate from the shock they will have experienced following their first impression of Dornach.” So, this frivolous character has no idea what he is supposed to write about, and for his penny-a-line, is only capable of making a stupid joke so that his readers can accordingly continue to maintain a frivolous mood.

Things have gone so far that the general mood of people is spoiled from the very outset, spoiled by this kind of journalist; there is no longer any question of anything being accomplished. The only thing such journalists can do is seize the opportunity to make some stupid, frivolous joke. No progress will be made if the earnestness with which such matters should be discussed is not understood. One will get no further if such matters are considered to be insignificant; if, from a certain jaded standpoint, one says, for example, “Oh, one cannot take such a journalist so seriously!” From a certain point of view, one certainly need not give much credit to such penny-a-lining, but it must be evaluated according to what effect is has in the world.

These matters are indeed serious and of such a nature that they induce us again and again to say, “This building here is intended to be a Landmark for what should take place for the sake of mankind's ascent!” To be sure, from certain quarters, no effort has been spared to make the building what it is now. Destiny, too, contributed its necessary share. It is, alter all, true that at the outset this building was erected here chiefly as the result of efforts made by the Central European countries. But when Central Europe's financial resources began to touch rock bottom, the neutral countries were ready in a most significant, commendable manner to do something for this building. Those from Central Europe who were able to do something for the building spared no effort throughout the time of the war psychosis, stirred up by hate and opposition, to maintain this site in such a manner that people from every part of the world, from all nationalities, could gather together here. This building was saved and maintained throughout all the years of chauvinism; nobody was denied the opportunity here to encounter others in a spirit of friendship, no matter what part of the world he came from. All this, however, demonstrates the impossibility of completing this building by relying on the earlier resources; it shows the necessity for efforts by those countries that are in a financially favorable position, for they are at the beginning of a period where they are not encumbered by financial disaster and are certainly in a position to do something for the building. One would hope that a message like the following will not one day spread through the world: A landmark for the dawning spiritual life was to be erected. Those people who were swept away by the cataclysmic world events and then perished left behind as a last legacy as much as they could accomplish. Those, on the other hand, who were not swept away, who could have begun the new life, did not realize what those who were doomed left for them.

• 91 . Thomas Aquinas: 1226–1274; compare Rudolf Steiner: The Redemption of Thinking, GA 74 (Spring Valley, Anthroposophie Press, 1983).
• 92 . Erich Ludendorff: 1865–1937, German general.
• 93 . Alexander Helphand, died in 1924, Russian socialist, for a time a political refugee in Germany. He played an important role in bringing about the Bolshevic revolution as well as the peace of Brest-Litovsk (1918).

The author whom I discussed here the last time should really provide much food for thought for those very people who count themselves in the Anthroposophical Movement; for Oswald Spengler is a personality who has a scientific mastery of a very large part of all that can be known today. It can be said that he has complete command of the great variety of thoughts that have become the possession of civilized humanity in the course of recent centuries. Spengler can be regarded as a man who has assimilated a large number of the sciences, or at least the ideas contained in them.

The thought-combinations he achieves are sometimes dazzling. He is in the highest degree what may be called in Central Europe a brilliant man—not in France, but in Central Europe; Oswald Spengler's thoughts are too heavy and too dense for western—that is, French—genius; but, as has been said, in the Central European sense he may undoubtedly be regarded as a brilliant thinker. He can hardly be called an elegant thinker in the best meaning of the word, for the investiture of his thoughts, in spite of all his cleverness, is certainly extremely pedantic. And it can even be seen in various places that out of the sentence-meshes of this gifted man the eye of a Philistine unmistakably peers forth. In any case, there is something unpolished in the thoughts themselves.

Well, this is more what might be called an esthetic consideration of the ideas; but the important point is this: we confront here a personality who has thoughts, and they are in keeping with the spirit of the time, but he really has a poor opinion of thinking in general. For Oswald Spengler regards as decisive for the real happenings in the world not what results from thinking, but in his opinion the more instinctive life-impulses are the deciding factors. So that with him thinking really floats above life, as something of a luxury, we might say; and from his point of view, thinkers are people who ponder on life, from who's pondering however nothing can flow into life. Life is already there when thinkers appear who are ready to think about it. And in this connection, it is entirely correct to say that in the world-historical moment when a thinker masters the special form of present-day thoughts with something of universality, at that very moment he senses their actual sterility and unfruitfulness. He turns to something other than these unfruitful thoughts, namely, to what bubbles up in the instinctive life, and from the point of view thus provided he sees the present civilization. This really appears to him in such a way that he says: Everything that this civilization has brought forth is on the way to ruin. We can only hope that something instinctive will emerge once again from what Spengler calls “the blood,” which will have nothing to do with what constitutes present civilization, will even crush it, and put in its place a far-reaching power arising only from the instinctive realm.

Oswald Spengler sees that people of the modern civilization have gradually become slaves of the mechanistic life; but he fails to see that just through reaction, human freedom can result within this mechanistic life—that is, technical science in general—because it is fundamentally devoid of spirit. He has no notion of this; but why is this so?

You know that in the last lecture I quoted the passage in which Spengler says: The statesman, the practical man, the merchant, and so on, all act from impulses other than those that can be gained from thinking; and I said more or less jokingly: Oswald Spengler never seems to have noticed that there are also father-confessors, and others in similar positions. Neither has Spengler adequately observed something else, in regard to which the relation to the father-confessor represents only a decadent side-issue, from a world-historical point of view.

When we go back in humanity's evolution, we find everywhere that the so-called men of action, those people who have outwardly something to do in the world, turned, in later times to the oracles, and in earlier times to what can be recognized in the Mysteries as the decrees of the spiritual world. We need only to observe the ancient Egyptian culture to see that those who learned in the Mysteries the decrees of the spiritual world transmitted what they discovered by spiritual means to those who wished to become, and were intended to be, men of action. So that we have only to look back in the evolution of humanity to find that it is out of the spiritual world, not out of the blood—for this whole theory of the blood is about as mystically nebulous as anything could be—it is not, then, out of the obscure depths of the blood that the impulses were derived which entered into earthly deeds, but out of the spirit. In a certain sense the so-called men of action of that time were the instruments for the great spiritual creations whose directions were learned in the spiritual research of the Mysteries. And I might say that echoes of the Mysteries, which we see everywhere in Greek history, play a part in Roman history, and they are also unmistakably to be found even in the early part of the Middle Ages. I have called your attention, for instance, to the fact that the Lohengrin-legend can be understood only if one knows how to follow it back from the external physical world into the citadel of the Grail in the early, or properly speaking, in the middle part of the Middle Ages.

It is, therefore, a complete misunderstanding of the true progress of humanity's evolution when Oswald Spengler supposes that world-historical events originate in any way in the blood, and that what the human being acquires through thoughts has nothing to do with these events. Looking back into ancient times we find that when people had tasks to perform, they were to a large extent dependent upon research in the spiritual world. The designs of the Gods had to be discovered, if we may so express it. And this dependence upon the Gods existing in ancient times made the human being of that time unfree. Men's thoughts were completely directed toward serving as vessels, as it were, into which the Gods poured their substance—spiritual substance, under whose influence men acted.

In order that men might become free, this pouring of substance into human thoughts on the part of the Gods had to cease; and as a result, human thoughts came more and more to be images. The thoughts of the humanity of earlier times were realities to a far greater degree; and what Oswald Spengler ascribes to the blood are those very realities which lay hidden in the thoughts of ancient humanity, those substances which still worked through men in the Middle Ages.

Then came modern times. The thoughts of men lost their divine, substantial content. They became merely abstract thought-images. But it is only thoughts of this kind that are not constraining and coercive; only by living in such thought-images can man become free.

Now throughout recent centuries and into the twentieth century there was organically present in man scarcely more than the disposition to fashion such thought-images. This is the education of man toward freedom. He did not have the atavistic imaginations and inspirations of ancient times: he experienced only thought-images, and in these he could become ever more and more free, since images do not compel. If our moral impulses manifest in images, these impulses no longer compel us as they once did when they lay in the ancient thought-substance. They acted upon human beings at that time just as nature-forces; whereas the modern thought-images no longer act in this way. In order, therefore, that they might have any content whatsoever, the human being had, on the one hand, either to fill them with what natural science knows through ordinary sense-observation, or, on the other, to develop in secret societies, in rites or otherwise, something which was derived more or less from ancient times through tradition. By means of sense-observation he thus gained a science which filled his thoughts from without, but these thoughts rejected more and more anything from within; so that if man's thoughts were to have any inner content at all, he was compelled to turn to the ancient traditions, as they had been handed down either in the religious denominations or in the various kinds of secret societies which have flourished over the whole earth. The great mass of mankind was embraced in the various religious denominations, where something was presented whose content was derived from ancient times, when thoughts still had some content. Man filled his thoughts from without with a content of sense-observation, or from within with ancient impulses which had become dogmatic and traditional.

It was necessary for this to occur from the sixteenth century up to the last third of the nineteenth; for during that time human cooperation throughout the civilized world was still influenced by that spiritual principle which we may call the principle of the Archangel Gabriel, if we wish to employ an ancient name (it is only a terminology; I intend to indicate a spiritual Power); this Being, then, influenced human souls, albeit unconsciously in modern times. Human beings had themselves no inner content, and because they accepted a merely traditional content for their spirit-soul life, they were unable to feel the presence or influence of this Being.

The first really to become aware of this utter lack of spiritual content in his soul-life was Friedrich Nietzsche; but he was unable to reach the experience of a new spirituality. Actually his every impulse to find a spirit-soul content failed, and so he sought for impulses as indefinite as possible, such as power-impulses and the like.

People need not merely a spiritual content which they may then clothe in abstract thoughts, but they need the thorough inner warming which may be occasioned by the presence of this inner content. This spiritual warming is exceedingly important. It was brought about for the majority of people through the various rituals and similar ceremonies practiced in the religious denominations; and this warmth was poured into souls also in the secret societies of more recent times.

This was possible in the time of Gabriel, because practically everywhere on the earth there were elemental beings still remaining from the Middle Ages. The farther the nineteenth century advanced the more impossible it became—entirely so in the twentieth century—for these elemental beings, which were in all natural phenomena and so forth, to become parasites, as it were, in the human social life. In most recent times there has been much which has unconsciously resisted this condition.

When in these secret societies which followed ancient tradition—it is really unbelievable how “ancient” and “sanctified” all the rituals of these societies are supposed to be—but when rituals were arranged or teachings given, in the sense of ancient tradition, when something was developed in these societies which had been carried over as an echo of the ancient Mysteries, no longer understood, conditions were exactly right for certain elemental beings. For when people went through all sorts of performances—let us say, when they attended the celebration of a mass, and no longer understood anything about it, the people were then in the presence of something filled with great wisdom; they were present, but understood nothing at all of what they saw, although an understanding would have been possible. Then these elemental beings entered the situation, and when the people were not thinking about the mass, the elementals began to think with the unused human intellect. Human beings had cultivated the free intellect more and more, but they did not use it. They preferred to sit and let something be enacted before them from tradition. People did not think. Although conditions are becoming entirely different, it is still true today that people of the present time could do a vast amount of thinking if they wished to use their minds; but they have no desire to do this; they are disinclined to think clearly. They say rather: Oh, that requires too much effort; it demands inner activity.

If people desired to think they would not enjoy so much going to all sorts of moving pictures, for there one cannot and need not think; everything just rolls past. The tiny bit of thinking that is asked of anyone today is written on a great screen where it can be read. It is true that this lack of sympathy with active inner thinking has been slowly and gradually developed in the course of modern times, and people have now almost entirely given up thinking. If a lecture is given somewhere which has no illustrations on the screen, where people are supposed to think somewhat, they prefer to sleep a little. Perhaps they attend the lecture, but they sleep—because active thinking does not enjoy a high degree of favor in our time.

It was precisely to this unwillingness to think, lasting through centuries, that the practices of the various secret societies were in many ways adapted. The same kind of elemental beings were present that had associated with human beings in the first half of the Middle Ages—when experiments were still going on in alchemistic laboratories, where the experimenters were quite conscious that spiritual beings worked with them. These spiritual beings were still present in later times; they were present everywhere. And why should they not have made use of a good opportunity?

In most recent centuries a human brain was gradually developed which could think well, but people had no wish to think. So these elemental beings approached and said to themselves: If man himself will make no use of his brain, we can use it. And in those secret societies which cherished only the traditional, and always kept emphasizing what was old, these elementals approached and made use of human brains for thinking. Since the sixteenth century an extraordinary amount of brain-substance has been thus employed by elemental beings.

Very much has entered human evolution without man's cooperation—even good ideas, especially those appertaining to human social life. If you look around among people of our time who would like to be more or less informed about civilization, you will find that to them it has become an important question to ask what it is, really, that acts from man to man. People should think, but do not; what does act, then, from man to man? That was a great question, for instance, with Goethe, and with this in mind he wrote his Wilhelm Meister. In this story your attention is constantly drawn to all sorts of obscure relations of which people are unconscious, which nevertheless prevail, and are half unconsciously taken up by one and another and spread. All kinds of threads are interwoven; and these Goethe tried to find. He sought for them, and what he could find he aimed to describe in his novel, Wilhelm Meister.

This was the condition existing in Central Europe throughout the nineteenth century. If people today had any kind of inclination to spend more time with a book than between two meals—well, that is speaking figuratively, for usually they go to sleep when they have read one-third between two meals; then they read the next third between the next two meals, and the final third between the next two—and in that way, it is somewhat scattered. It would be good for people if even those novels and short stories that can be read between two meals, or between two railroad stations, stimulated reflection. We can hardly expect that at the present time; but if, for example, you should look up Gutzkow, and see how in his book, The Magician of Rome, and in his The Champions of the Spirit he has searched for such relations; if you take the extraordinarily social concatenations sought by George Sand in her novels, you will be able to notice that in the nineteenth century those threads, arising from indeterminate powers and working into the unconsciousness, everywhere played a part; you will notice that the authors are following up these threads, and that in their efforts they—George Sand, for example—are in many ways absolutely on the right track.

But in the last third of the nineteenth century it gradually came about that these elementals—who in the first place thought with the human brain and then, when they had taken possession of human minds and brought about the social conditions of the nineteenth century, really spun these threads—that these beings now at last had enough. They had fulfilled their world-historical task—we might better say, their world-historical need. And something else occurred which particularly hindered their continuing this kind of parasitic activity. This proceeded exceedingly well at about the end of the eighteenth century, then remarkably so in the nineteenth—but after that point of time these elemental beings attained their aims less and less; this was because an increasing number of souls descended from the spiritual world to the physical plane with great expectations regarding the earth-life.

When people have screamed and kicked as little children—and now in more recent times have had their meager education, they have by no means become conscious that they were equipped with very great expectations before they descended to earth. But this lived on nevertheless in the emotions, in the entire soul-organization, and still continues to live today. Souls really descend to the physical world with exceedingly strong expectations; and thence come the disillusionments which have been unconsciously experienced in the souls of children for some time past, because these expectations are not satisfied.

Chosen spirits who had especially strong impulses of anticipation before descending to the physical plane were the ones, for example, who observed this physical plane, saw that these expectations are not being satisfied here, and who then wrote Utopian schemes of how things should be, and what could be done. It would be exceedingly interesting to study, with regard to entrance through birth into physical existence, how the souls of great Utopianists—even the lesser ones and the more or less queer fellows, who have thought out all kinds of schemes which cannot even be called Utopian, but which reveal much goodwill to form a paradise for people on earth—how these souls who have descended from spiritual worlds were really constituted with regard to their entrance upon the physical earth-plane.

This descent filled with anticipation is distressing for the beings who are to make use of such human brains. They do not succeed in using the brain of the human being when he descends to earth with such anticipation. Up to the eighteenth century those descending had far less expectation. Then the use of the brain by those other beings, not human, went well. But just during the last third of the nineteenth century it became exceedingly uncomfortable for the beings who were to make use of the brains of people descending with such expectations, because these led to unconscious emotions, which were felt in turn by the spiritual beings when they wanted to make use of the human brain. Hence, they no longer do this. And now it is a fact that there exists in modern humanity a very wide-spread and increasing disposition for human beings to have thoughts, but to suppress them. The brain has been gradually ruined, especially among the higher classes, by the suppression of thoughts. Other beings, not human, who formerly took possession of these thoughts no longer approach.

And now—now human beings have thoughts, it is true, but they have no idea how to use them. And the most significant representative of the kind of people who have no understanding of what to do with their thoughts is Oswald Spengler. He is to be distinguished from others—well, now how shall we express it in order not to give offense when these things are repeated outside, as they always are—perhaps we must say that others completely neglect their minds in their early years, so that their brains tend to allow thoughts to disappear in them. Spengler differs from others in that he has kept his mind fresh, so that it has not become so sterile; he is not absorbed only in himself, occupied always with himself alone.

It is true, is it not, that a great part of humanity today is inwardly jellied (yersulzt, if I may make use of a Central European expression that perhaps many may not understand. Sulze is something that is made at the time of hog-slaughter from the various products of the killing which are not of use otherwise, mixed with jelly-like ingredients—what cannot even be employed for sausage-making is used for Sulze.) And I might say that as a result of the many confusing influences of education the brains of most people become thus versulzt. They cannot help it; and of course, we are not speaking at all in an accusing sense, but perhaps rather in an excusing sense, feeling pity for the jellied brains.

I mean to say, when people have only the one thought: that they have no idea what to do with themselves; when they are as if squashed together, compressed and jellied—then these thoughts can be very nicely submerged in the underworlds of the brain, and from there plunged more deeply into the lower regions of the human organization, and so on. But that is not the case with such people as Oswald Spengler. They know how to develop thoughts. And that is what makes Spengler a clever man: he has thoughts. But the thoughts a man may have amount to something only when they receive a spiritual content. For this result a spiritual content is needed. Man needs the content that Anthroposophy wants to give; otherwise he has thoughts, but is unable to do anything with them. In the case of the Spenglerian thoughts it is really—I might almost say—an impossible metaphor comes to me—it is as if a man, who for the occasion of a future marriage with a lady has procured all imaginable kinds of beautiful garments—not for himself, but for the lady—and then she deserts him before the wedding, and he has all those clothes and no one to wear them. And so you can see how it is with these wondrously beautiful thoughts. These Spenglerian thoughts are all cut according to the most modern scientific style of garment, but there is no lady to wear the dresses. Old Boethius still had at least the somewhat shriveled Rhetorica and Dialectica, as I said some weeks ago. These no longer had the vitality of the muses of Homer and of Pindar, but at any rate all seven arts still figured throughout the Middle Ages. There was still someone upon whom to put the clothes.

I might call what has arisen, Spenglerism, because it is something significant; but with it the time has arrived when garments have come into existence, so to speak, but all the beings who might wear these beautiful thought-garments are lacking—in other words, there is no lady. The muse comes not; the clothes are here. And so people simply announce that they can make no use of the whole clothes-closet of modern thoughts. Thinking does not exist at all for the purpose of laying hold on life in any way.

What is lacking is the substantial content which should come from the spiritual worlds. Precisely that is wanting. And so people declare that it is all nonsense anyway; these clothes are here, after all, only to be looked at. Let us hang them on the clothes-racks and wait for some buxom peasant-maid to come forth out of the mystical vagueness, and ... well, she will need no beautiful clothes, for she will be what we may look for from the primordial Source.

This represents Spenglerism: he expects impulses from something indeterminate, undefined, undifferentiated, which need no thought-garments, and he hangs all the thought-garments on wooden racks, so that at least they are there to be looked at; for if they were not even there to be seen, no one could understand why Oswald Spengler has written two such thick books, which are entirely superfluous. For what is anyone to do with two thick books if thinking no longer exists? Spengler allows no occasion to become sentimental, or we should find much that is amusing. A Caesar must come! but the modern Caesar is one who has made as much money as possible, and has gathered together all sorts of engineers who, out of the spirit, have become the slaves of technical science—and then founded modern Caesarism upon blood-borne money or upon money-borne blood. In this situation thinking has no significance whatever; thinking sits back and occupies itself with all sorts of thoughts.

But now the good man writes two thick books in which are contained some quite fine thoughts; yet they are absolutely unnecessary. On his own showing, no use whatever can be made of them. It would have been far more intelligent if he had used all this paper to ... let us say, to contrive a formula by which the most favorable blood-mixtures might come into existence in the world, or something like that. That is what anyone with his views should do.

What anyone should do corresponds not at all with what he advocates in his books. Anyone reading the books has the feeling: Well, this man has something to say; he knows about the downfall of the West, for he has fairly devoured this whole mood of destruction; he himself is quite full of it. Those who are wishing to hasten the decline of the West could do no better than make Oswald Spengler captain, even leader, of this decline. For he understands all about it; his own inner spirit is completely of this caliber. And so he is extraordinarily representative of his time. He believes that this whole modern civilization is going to ruin. Well, if everyone believes likewise, it surely will! Therefore, what he writes must be true. It seems to me that it contains a tremendous inner truth.

This is the way the matter stands; and anyone whose basis is Anthroposophy must really pay attention to just such a personality as Oswald Spengler. For the serious consideration of spiritual things, the serious consideration of the spiritual life, is precisely what Anthroposophy desires. In Anthroposophy the question is certainly not whether this or that dogma is accepted, but the important thing is that this spiritual life, this substantial spiritual life, shall be taken seriously, entirely seriously, and that it shall awaken the human being.

It is very interesting that Oswald Spengler says: When he thinks, a man is awake (that he cannot deny), but anything truly effective comes from sleep, and that is contained in the plant and in the plantlike in man. Whatever in the human being is of a plantlike nature, he really brings forth in a living state: sleep is what is alive. The waking state brings forth thoughts; but the waking existence results only in inner tensions.

Thus it has become possible for one of the cleverest men of the present to indicate something like this: What I do must be planted in me while I sleep, and I really need not wake up at all. To awake is a luxury, a complete luxury. I should really only walk around and, still sleeping, perform what occurs to me in sleep. I should really be a sleep-walker. It is a luxury that a head is still there continually indulging in thinking about the whole thing, while I go about sleep-walking. Why be awake at all?

But this is a prevailing mood, and Spengler really brings it to very clear expression, namely: The modern human being is not fond of this being awake. All sorts of illustrations come to me. For instance: When, at the beginning of the Anthroposophical Society years ago, a lecture was given, there were always in the front rows people who even outwardly accentuated sleeping a little, so that proper participation might be visible in the auditorium, so that properly devoted participants might be visible. Sleeping is really exceedingly popular, is it not? Now most people do it silently: on the occasions I have mentioned the people were well-behaved in this regard; if there are no specific sounds of snoring, then people are well-behaved, are they not? That is, they are at least quiet. But Spengler, who is a strange man, makes a noise over what other people are quiet about. The others sleep; but Spengler says: People must sleep; they should not be awake at all. And he makes use of all his knowledge to deliver an entirely adequate thesis for sleep. So what it comes to is this: that an exceedingly clever man of the present time really delivers an adequate thesis for sleep!

This is something to which we must pay attention. We need not make a noise about it, as Spengler does; but we should consider this, and realize how necessary it is to understand the waking state, the state of being more and more awake, which is to be attained precisely through something like the spiritual impulses of Anthroposophy.

It must be emphasized again and again that it is necessary for wakefulness, actual, inner soul-wakefulness, gradually to become enjoyable. Dornach is really felt to be unsympathetic, because its purpose is to stimulate to wakefulness, not to sleep, and because it would like to take the waking state quite seriously. It would really like to pour awakeness into everything, into art, into the social life, and most of all into the life of cognition, into the whole conduct of life, into everything to which human life is in any way inclined.

You may believe me, it is indeed necessary to call attention to such things now and then; for at least in such moments as this, when we are together again only to interrupt these lectures for a short time until my return from Oxford, it must be pointed out, as so often, that precisely among us a certain inclination to be awake must gain a footing. There must be an appropriation of what Anthroposophy contains, in order to relate it to man's waking existence. For that is what we need in all spheres of life: to be truly awake.

The whole meaning of a philosophical poem such as the Bhagavad Gita can only be rightly understood by one to whom such things as are laid down therein, or in similar works of the world's literature, are not merely theories, but a destiny; for man's conceptions of the world may become destiny.

We have in the last few days made acquaintance with two different conceptions of world-philosophy (not to mention a third, the Vedantic) two different nuances of world-philosophy which, if we look at them in the right way, show us most strikingly how a world-philosophy may become a destiny for the human soul. With the concept of the Sankhya philosophy one may connect all that a man can attain to in knowledge, perception of ideas, survey of the world-phenomena; all in which the life of the soul expresses itself. If we describe that which at the present day still remains to the normal man of such knowledge, of a world-philosophy in which the concepts of the world can be expressed in a scientific form, if we describe that which stands at a lower level spiritually than Sankhya philosophy we may say that even in our own age, in so far as our destiny permits, we can still feel the effects of Sankhya philosophy. This will, however, only be felt by one who, as far as his destiny allows him, gives himself up to a one-sided study of such a branch of world-philosophy; a man of whom it might in a certain respect be said: He is a one-sided scientist, or a Sankhya philosopher. How does such a man stand as regards the world? What does he feel in his soul? Well, that is a question which can really only be answered by experience. One must know what takes place in a soul that thus devotes itself one-sidedly to a branch of world-philosophy, using all its forces to acquire a conception of the world in the sense just characterised. Such a soul might study all the variations of form of the world-phenomena, might have, so to say, the most complete understanding of all the forces that express themselves in the world in the changing forms. If a soul in one incarnation confines itself to finding opportunity through its capacities and its karma so to experience the world-phenomena that, whether illuminated by clairvoyance or not, it chiefly acquires the science of reason, such a tendency would in all circumstances lead to a certain coldness of the whole soul life. According to the temperament of that soul, we shall find that it took on more or less the character of ironical dissatisfaction concerning the world phenomena, or lack of interest and general dissatisfaction with the knowledge that strides on from one phenomenon to another. All that so many souls of our time feel when confronted with a science consisting merely of learning; the coldness and barrenness which then depresses them, all this we see when we investigate a soul-tendency such as is presented here. The soul would feel devastated, uncertain of itself. It might say: What should I have gained if I conquered the whole world, and knew nothing of my own soul, if I could feel nothing, perceive nothing, experience nothing; if all were emptiness within! To be crammed full of all the science in the world and yet to be empty within; that, my dear friends, would be a bitter fate. It would be like being lost among the world phenomena; it would be like losing everything of value to one's own inner being.

The condition just described we find in many people who come to us with some sort of learning or of abstract philosophy. We find it in those who, themselves unsatisfied and realising their emptiness, have lost interest in all their knowledge, and seem to be suffering; we also meet it when a man comes to us with an abstract philosophy, able to give information about the nature of the Godhead, cosmology and the human soul in abstract words, yet we can feel that it all comes from the head, that his heart has no part in it—his soul is empty. We feel chilled when we meet such a soul. Thus Sankhya philosophy may become a destiny, a destiny which brings it man near being lost to himself, a being possessing nothing of his own and from whose individuality the world can gain nothing.

Then again let us take the case of a soul seeking development in a one-sided way through Yoga, who is, so to say, lost to the world, disdaining to know anything about the external world. “What good is it to me,” says such a person, “to learn how the world came into existence? I want to find out everything in my own self; I will advance myself by developing my own powers.” Such a person may perhaps feel an inward glow, may often appear to us somewhat self-contained, and self-satisfied. That may be; but in the long run he will not always be thus, on the contrary, in time, such a soul will be liable to loneliness. When one having led a hermit's life while seeking the heights of soul-life goes forth into the world, coming everywhere in contact with the world-phenomena, he may perhaps say: “What do all these things matter to me?” and if then, because of his being unreceptive to all the beauty of the manifestations and not understanding them he feels lonely, the exclusiveness leads to a fateful destiny! How can we really get to know a human being who is using all his power towards the evolution of his own being and passes his fellowman by, cold and indifferent, as though he wished to have nothing in common with them? Such a soul may feel itself to be lost to the world; while to others it may appear egotistical to excess.

Only when we consider these life-connections do we realise how the laws of destiny work in the conceptions of the world. In the background of such great revelations, such great world-philosophies as the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we are confronted by the ruling of these laws of destiny. We might say: if we look behind the Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, we can see the direct ruling of destiny. How can we trace destiny in the Epistles?

We often find indicated in them that the real salvation of soul-development consists in the so-called “justification by faith” as compared to the worthlessness of external works; because of that which the soul may become when it makes the final connection with the Christ-Impulse, when it takes into itself the great force that flows from the proper understanding of the Resurrection of Christ. When we meet with this in the Epistles, we feel, on the other hand, that the human soul may, so to say, be thrown back upon itself, and thus be estranged from all external works and rely entirely on mercy and justification by faith. Then come the external works; they are there in the world; we do not do away with them because we turn from them; we join forces with them in the world. Again destiny rings out to us in all its gigantic greatness. Only when we look at things in this way do we see the might of such revelations to mankind.

Now these two revelations to humanity, the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, are outwardly very different from one another; and this external difference acts upon the soul in every part of these works. We not only admire the Bhagavad Gita for the reasons we have briefly given, but because it strikes us as something so poetically great and powerful; because from every verse it radiates forth to us the great nobility of the human soul; because in everything spoken from the mouths of Krishna and his pupil, Arjuna, we feel something which lifts us above everyday human experiences, above all passions, above everything emotional which may disturb the soul. We are transported into a sphere of soul-peace, of clearness, calm, dispassionateness, freedom from emotion, into an atmosphere of wisdom, if we allow even one part of the Gita to work upon us; and by reading the Gita we feel our whole humanity raised to a higher stage. We feel, all through, that we must first have freed ourselves from a good deal that is only too human if we wish to allow the sublime Gita to affect us in the right way. In the case of the Pauline Epistles, all this is different. The sublimity of the poetical language is lacking, even the dispassionateness is lacking. We take up these Epistles and allow them to influence us, and we feel over and over again how what is wafted towards us from the mouth of St. Paul comes from a being, passionately indignant at what has happened. Sometimes the tone is scolding, or—one might say—condemnatory; in the Pauline Epistles this or that is often cursed; there is scolding. The things that are stated as to the great concepts of Christianity, as to Grace, the Law, the difference between the law of Moses and Christianity, the Resurrection—all this is stated in a tone that is supposed to be philosophical, that is meant to be a philosophical definition but is not, because in every sentence one hears a Pauline note. We cannot in any single sentence forget that it is spoken by a man who is either excited or expressing righteous indignation against others who have done this or that; or who so speaks about the highest concepts of Christianity that we feel he is personally interested; he gives the impression that he is the propagandist of these ideas. . Where could we find in the Gita sentiments of a personal kind such as we find in the Epistles in which St. Paul writes to this or that community: “How have we ourselves fought for Christ Jesus! Remember that we have not become a burden to any, now that we laboured night and day that we might not be a burden to any.” How personal all this is! A breath of the personal runs through the Pauline Epistles. In the sublime Gita we find a wonderfully pure sphere-an etheric sphere-that borders on the superhuman and at times extends into it. Externally, therefore, there are powerful differences, and we may say that it would be blindest. prejudice not to admit that through the great Song that once was given to Hinduism, flows the union of mighty fateful world-philosophies, that through the Gita something of a noble purity, quite impersonal, calm and passionless, was given to the Hindus; while the original documents of Christianity—the Epistles of St. Paul—bear, as it were, an entirely personal, often a passionate character, utterly devoid of calm. One does not attain knowledge by turning away from the truth and by refusing to admit such things, but rather by understanding them in the right way. Let us, therefore, inscribe this antithesis on a tablet of bronze, as it were, during our subsequent considerations.

We have already pointed out in yesterday's lecture, that in the Gita we find the significant instruction of Arjuna by Krishna. Now who exactly is Krishna? This question must, above all, be of interest to us. One cannot understand who Krishna is if one does not make oneself acquainted with a point which I have already taken the opportunity of mentioning in various places; that is, that in earlier ages the whole system of giving names and descriptions was quite different from what it is now. As a matter of fact, it does not now in the least matter what a man is called. For we do not in reality know much about a man in our present time by learning that he bears this or that well-known name, that he is called Miller or Smith. We do not really, know much about a man—as everyone will admit—by hearing that he is a Privy Councillor, or anything else of the kind. We do not necessarily know much about people because we know to what social rank they belong. Neither do we know much of a man today because he has to be addressed as “your honour” or “your Excellency” or “my lord”; in short, all these titles do not signify much; and you may easily convince yourselves that other designations that we make use of today are not very important either. In bygone ages this was different. Whether we take the description of the Sankhya philosophy or our own, we can start from either and make the following reflections.

We have heard that, according to Sankhya philosophy, man consists of the. physical body, the finer elemental or etheric body, the body that contains the regular forces of the senses, the body which is called Manas, Ahamkara, and so on. We need not consider the other, higher principles, because they are not, as a rule, developed yet; but if we now consider human beings such as we see them in this or that incarnation, we may say: Men differ from each other, so that in one that which is expressed through the etheric body is strongly predominant, and in another that which is connected with the laws regulating the senses, in a third that which pertains to the inner senses, in a fourth Ahamkara. Or, in our own language, we may say that we find people in whom the forces of the sentient soul are particularly prominent; others in whom the forces of the intellectual or mind-soul are more particularly active; others in whom the forces of the consciousness soul predominate and others again in whom something inspired by Manas plays a part, and so on. These differences are to be seen in the whole manner of life which a man leads. They are indications of the real nature of the man himself. We cannot at the present time, for reasons which are easily understood, designate a man according to the nature which thus expresses itself; for if one were, for instance, to say at the present day, men's convictions being what they are, that the highest to which a man could attain in the present cycle of humanity was a trace of Ahamkara, each one would be convinced that he himself expressed Ahamkara more clearly in his own being than other people did, and it would be mortifying for him if he were told that this was not the case, that in him a lower principle still ruled. In olden times it was not thus. A man was then named according to what was most essential in him; especially when it was a question of putting him over others, perhaps by giving him the part of a leader, he would be designated by dwelling especially on the essential part of his being just described.

Let us suppose that in olden times there was a man who, in the truest sense of the words, had brought Manas to expression within him, who had certainly in himself experienced Ahamkara, but had allowed this as an individual element to retire more into the background and on account of his external activity had cultivated Manas; then according to the laws of the older, smaller, human cycles—and only quite exceptional men could have experienced this—such a man would have had to be a great law-giver, a leader of great masses of people. And one would not have been satisfied to designate him in the same way as other men, but would have called him after his prominent characteristic, a Manas-bearer; whereas another might only be called a senses-bearer. One would have said: That is a Manas-bearer, he is a Manu. When we come across designations pertaining to those olden times, we must take them as descriptive of the most prominent principle of a man's human organisation, that which most strongly expressed itself in him in that particular incarnation. Suppose that in a particular man what was most specially expressed was that he felt divine inspiration within him, that he had put aside all question of ruling his actions and studies by what the external world teaches through the senses and by what reason teaches through the brain, but listened instead in all things to the Divine Word which spoke to him, and made himself a messenger for the Divine Substance that spoke out of him! Such a man would have been called a Son of God. In the Gospel of St. John, such men were still called Sons of God, even at the very beginning of the first chapter.

The essential thing was that everything else was left out of consideration when this significant part was expressed. Everything else was unimportant. Suppose we were to meet two men; one of whom had been just an ordinary man, who allowed the world to act upon him through his senses and reflected upon it afterwards with the intellect attached to his brain; the other one into whom the word of divine wisdom had radiated. According to the old ideas we should have said: This first one is a man, he is born of a father and mother, was begotten according to the flesh. In the case of the other, who was a messenger of the Divine Substance, no consideration would be given to that which makes up an ordinary biography, as would be the case with the first who contemplated the world through his senses and by means of the reason belonging to his brain. To write such a biography of the second man would have been folly. For the fact of his bearing a fleshly body was only accidental, and not the essential thing; that was, so to speak, only the means through which he expressed himself to other men. Therefore we say: The Son of God is not born of flesh but of a Virgin, he is born straight from the Spirit; that is to say, what is essential in him, through which he is of value to humanity, descends from the Spirit, and in the olden times it was that alone which was honoured. In certain schools of initiation it would have been considered a great sin to write an ordinary biography, which only alluded to everyday occurrences, of a person of whom it had been recognised that he was remarkable because of the higher principles of his human nature. Anyone who has preserved even a little of the sentiments of those old times cannot but consider biographies such as those written of Goethe as in the highest degree absurd. Now let us remember that in those olden times mankind lived with ideas and feelings such as these, and then we can understand how this old humanity was permeated with the conviction that such a Manu, in whom Manas was the prevailing principle, appears but seldom, that he must wait long epochs before he can appear.

Now if you think of what may live in a man of our present cycle of humanity as the deepest part of his being, which every man can dimly sense as those secret forces within him which can raise him up to soul-heights; if we think of this, which in most men exists only in rudiment, becoming in a very rare case the essential principle of a human being-a being who only appears from time to time to become a leader of other men, who is higher than all the Manus, who dwells as an essence in every man, but who' as an actual external personality only appears once in a cosmic epoch; if we can form such a conception as this, we are getting nearer to the being of Krishna. He is man as a whole; he is—one might almost say—humanity as such, thought of as a single being. Yet he is no abstract being. When people today speak of mankind in general, they speak of it in the abstract, because they themselves are abstract thinkers. The abstract being is we ourselves today, ensnared as we are in the sense-world, and this has become our common destiny. When one speaks of mankind in general, one has only an indistinct perception and not a living idea of it. Those who speak of Krishna as of man in general, do not mean the abstract idea one has in one's mind today. “No,” they say, “true, this Being lives in germ in every man, but he only appears as an individual man, and speaks with the mouth of a man once in every cosmic age. “But with this Being it is not a question of the external fleshly body, or the more refined elemental body, or the forces of the sense-organs, or Ahamkara and Manas, but the chief thing is that which in Budhi and Manas is directly connected with the great universal cosmic substance, with the divine which lives and weaves through the world.

From time to time Beings appear for the guidance of mankind such as we look up to in Krishna, the Great Teacher of Arjuna. Krishna teaches the highest human wisdom, the highest humanity, and he teaches it as being his own nature, and also in such a way that it is related to every human being, for all that is contained in the words of Krishna is to be found in germ in every human soul. Thus when a man looks up to Krishna he is both looking up to his own highest self and also at another: who can appear before him as another man in whom he honours that which he himself has the predisposition to become, yet who is a separate being from himself and bears the same relationship to him as a God does to man. In this way must we think of the relationship of Krishna to his pupil Arjuna, and then we obtain the keynote of that which sounds forth to us out of the Gita; that keynote which sounds as though it belonged to every soul and can resound in every soul, which is wholly human, so intimately human that each soul feels it would be ashamed if it did not feel within it the longing to listen to the great teachings of Krishna. On the other hand, it all seems so calm, so passionless, so dispassionate, so sublime and wise, because the highest speaks; that which is the divine in every human nature and which yet once appears in the evolution of mankind, incorporated, as a divine human being. How sublime are these teachings! They are really so sublime that the Gita rightly bears the name of the “Sublime Song” or the “Bhagavad Gita.” Within it we find, above all, teachings of which we spoke in yesterday's lecture, sublime words arising from a sublime situation; the teaching that all that changes in the world, although it may change in such a way that arising and passing away, birth and death, victory or defeat, appear to be external events, in them all is expressed something, everlasting, eternal, permanently existent; so that he who wishes to contemplate the world properly must raise himself from the transitory to this permanence. We already met with this in Sankhya, in the reasoned reflections as to the permanent in everything transitory, of how both the conquered and the victorious soul are equal before God when the door of death closes behind them.

Then Krishna further tells his pupil, Arjuna, that the soul also may be led away from the contemplation of everyday things by another path, that is, through Yoga. If a soul is capable of devotion, that is the other side of its development. One side is that of passing from one phenomenon to another and always directing the ideas, whether illuminated by clairvoyance or not, to these phenomena. The other side is that in which a man turns his whole attention away from the outer world, shuts the door of the senses, shuts out all that reason and understanding have to say about the world, closes all the doors to what he can remember having experienced in his ordinary life, and enters into his innermost being. By means of suitable exercises he then draws up that which dwells in his own soul; he directs the soul to that which he can dimly sense as the highest, and by the strength of devotion tries to raise himself. Where this occurs he rises higher and higher by means of Yoga, finally reaching to the higher stages which can be attained by first making use of the bodily instruments; he reaches those higher stages in which we live when freed from all bodily instruments, when, so to say, we live outside the body, in the higher principles of the human Organisation. He thus raises himself into a completely different form of life. The phenomena of life and their activities become spiritual: he approaches ever nearer and nearer to his own divine existence, and enlarges his own being to cosmic being, enlarges the human being to God inasmuch as he loses the individual limitations of his own being and is merged in the ALL through Yoga.

The methods by which the pupil of the great Krishna may rise by one of these ways to the spiritual heights are then given. First of all, a distinction is made between what men have to do in the ordinary world. It is indeed a grand situation in which the Gita places this before us. Arjuna has to fight against his blood-relations. That is his external destiny, it is his own doing, his Karma, which comprises the deeds which he must first of all accomplish in this particular situation. In these deeds he lives at first as external man; but the great Krishna teaches him that a man only becomes wise, only unites himself with the Divine Eternal if he performs his deeds because they themselves in the external course of nature and of the evolution of humanity prove to be necessary; yet the wise man must release himself from them. He performs the deeds; but in him there is something which at the same time is a looker-on at these deeds, which has no part in them, which says: I do this work, but I might just as well say: I let it happen. One becomes wise by looking on at what one does as though it were being done by another; and by not allowing oneself to be disturbed by the desire which causes the deed or by the sorrow it may produce. “It is all one,” says the great Krishna to his pupil Arjuna, “whether thou art in the ranks of the sons of Pandu, or over there among the sons of Kuru; what ever thou doest, thou must as a wise man make thyself free from Pandu-ism and Kuru-ism. If it does not affect thee whether thou art to act with the Pandus as though one of them, or to act with the Kurus as though thou were thyself a son of Kuru; if thou canst rise above all this and not be affected by thine own deeds, like a flame which burns quietly in a place protected from the wind, undisturbed by anything external: if thy soul, as little disturbed by its own deeds, lives quietly beside them, then does it become wise; then does it free itself from its deeds, and does not inquire what success attends them.” For the result of our deeds only concerns the narrow limitations of our soul; but if we perform them because humanity or the course of the world require them from us, then we perform these deeds regardless as to whether they lead to dreadful or to glorious results for ourselves. This lifting oneself above one's deeds, this standing upright no matter what our hands may carry out, even—speaking of the Gita situation—what our swords may carry out or what we may speak with our mouth; this standing upright of our inner self regardless of all that we speak with our mouth and do with our hands, this it is to which the great Krishna leads his pupil Arjuna. Thus the great Krishna directs his pupil Arjuna to a human ideal, which is so presented that a man says: “I perform my deeds, but it matters not whether they are performed by me or by another—I look on at them: that which happens by my hand or is spoken by my mouth, I can look on at as objectively as though I saw a rock being loosened and rolling down the mountain into the depths. Thus do I stand as regards my deeds; and although I may be in a position to know this or that, to form concepts of the world, I myself am quite distinct from these concepts, and I may say: In me there dwells something which is, it is true, united to me and which perceives, but I look on at what another is perceiving. Thus I myself am liberated from my perceptions. I can become free from my deeds, free from my knowledge and free from my perceptions. A high idea of human wisdom is thus placed before us! And finally, when it rises into the spiritual, whether I encounter demons or holy Spirits, I can look on at them externally. I myself stand there, free from everything that is going on even in the spiritual worlds around me. I look on, and go my own way, and take no part in that in which I take part, because I have become a looker-on. That is the teaching of Krishna.

Now having heard that the Krishna teaching is based upon the Sankhya philosophy, it will be quite clear to us that it must be so. In many places one can see it shining through the teaching of Krishna; as when the great Krishna says to his pupil: The soul that lives in thee is connected in several different ways; it is connected with the coarse physical body, it is connected with the senses, with Manas, Ahamkara, Budhi; but thou art distinct from them all. If thou regardest all these as external, as sheaths surrounding thee, if thou art conscious that as a soul-being thou art independent of them all, then hast thou understood something of what Krishna wishes to teach thee. If thou art aware that thy connections with the outer world, with the world in general, were given thee through the Gunas, through Tamas, Rajas, and Sattva, then learn that in ordinary life man is connected with wisdom and virtue through Sattva, with the passions and affections, with the thirst for existence through Rajas; and that through Tamas he is connected with idleness, nonchalance and sleepiness. Why does a man in ordinary life feel enthusiasm for wisdom and virtue? Because he is related to the basic nature characterised by Sattva. Why does a man in ordinary life feel joy and longing for the external life, feel pleasure in the external phenomena of life? Because he has a relation to life indicated through Rajas. Why do people go through ordinary life sleepy, lazy and inactive? Why do they feel oppressed by their corporality? Why do they not find it possible continually to rouse themselves and conquer their bodily nature? Because they are connected with the world of external forms which in Sankhya philosophy is expressed through Tamas. But the soul of the wise man must become free from Tamas, must sever its connection with the external world expressed by sleepiness, laziness and inactivity. When these are expunged from the soul, then it is only connected with the external world through Rajas and Sattva. When a man has extinguished his passions and affections and the thirst for existence, retaining the enthusiasm for virtue, compassion and knowledge, his connection with the external world henceforth is what Sankhya philosophy calls Sattva. But when a man has also become liberated from that tendency to goodness and knowledge, when, although a kindly and wise man, he is independent of his outward expression even as regards kindness and knowledge; when kindness is a natural duty and wisdom as something poured out over him, then he has also severed his connection with Sattva. When, however, he has thus stripped off the three Gunas, then he has freed himself from all connection with every external form, then he triumphs in his soul and understands something of what the great Krishna wants to make of him.

What, then, does man grasp, when he thus strives to become what the great Krishna holds before him as the ideal-what does he then understand? Does he then more clearly understand the forms of the outer world? No, he had already understood these; but he has raised himself above them. Does he more clearly grasp the relation of the soul to those external forms? No, he had already grasped that, but he has raised himself above it. It is not that which he may meet with in the external world in the multitude of forms, or his connection with these forms, which he now understands when he strips off the three Gunas; for all that belongs to earlier stages. As long as one remains in Tamas, Rajas, or Sattva, one becomes connected with the natural rudiments of existence, adapts oneself to social relationships and to knowledge, and acquires the qualities of kindness and sympathy. But if one has risen above all that, one has stripped off all these connections at the preceding stages. What does one then perceive, what springs up before one's eyes? That which one perceives and which springs up before one is what these are not. What can that be which is distinct from everything one acquires along the path of the Gunas

This is none other than what one finally recognise as one's own being, for all else which may belong to the external world has been stripped away at the preceding stages. In the sense of the foregoing, what is this? It is Krishna himself; for he is himself the expression of what is highest in oneself. This means that when one has worked oneself up to the highest, one is face to face with Krishna, the pupil with his great Teacher, Arjuna with Krishna himself: who lives in all things that exist and who can truly say of himself: “I am not a solitary mountain, if I am among the mountains I am the largest of them all; if I appear upon the earth I am not a single man, but the greatest human manifestation, one that only appears once in a cosmic age as a leader of mankind, and so on; the unity in all forms, that am I, Krishna.”—Thus does the teacher himself appear to his pupil, present in his own Being. At the same time it is made clear in the Bhagavad Gita that this is something great and mighty, the highest to which a man can attain. To appear before Krishna, as did Arjuna, might come about through gradual stages of initiation; it would then take place in the depths of a Yoga schooling; but it may also be represented as flowing forth from the evolution of humanity itself, given to man by an act of grace, as it were, and thus it is represented in the Gita. Arjuna was uplifted suddenly at a bound, as it were, so that bodily he has Krishna before him; and the Gita leads up to a definite. point, the point at which Krishna stood before him. He does not now stand before him as a man of flesh and blood. A man who could be looked upon as other men would represent what is nonessential in Krishna. For that is essential which is in all men; but as the other kingdoms of the world represent, as it were, only scattered humanity, so all that is in the rest of the world is in Krishna. The rest of the world disappears and Krishna is there as ONE. As the macrocosm to the microcosm, as mankind, as a whole, compared to the small everyday man, so is Krishna to the individual man.

Human power of comprehension is not sufficient to grasp this if the consciousness of it should come to man by an act of grace, for Krishna, if one looks at the essential in him—which is only possible to the highest clairvoyant power—appears quite different from anything man is accustomed to see. As though the vision of man were uplifted above all else to perceive the vision of Krishna in his highest nature, we catch sight of him for one moment in the Gita, as the great Man, compared with whom everything else in the world must appear small; He it is before whom stands Arjuna. Then the power of comprehension forsakes Arjuna. He can only gaze and haltingly express what he beholds. That is to be understood: for by means of the methods he has used until now, he has not learned to look at such as this, or to describe it in words; and the descriptions that Arjuna gives at this moment when he stands before Krishna, must be thought of thus. For one of the greatest artistic and philosophical presentations ever given to humanity is the description of how Arjuna, with words which he speaks for the first time, which he is unaccustomed to speak, which he has never spoken before because he has never come within reach of them, expresses in words drawn from the deepest parts of his being what he feels on seeing the great Krishna: “All the Gods do I perceive in Thy, body, O God, so also the multitude of all beings. Brahma the Lord, on His Lotus-seat, all the Rishis and the Heavenly Serpent. With many arms, bodies, mouths and eyes, do I see Thee everywhere, in countless forms, neither end, middle nor beginning do I see in Thee, O Lord of everything! Thou appearest to me in all forms, Thou appearest to me with a diadem, a club, a sword, as a flaming mountain radiating out on all sides, thus do I see Thee. My vision is dazzled, as radiant fire by the brilliance of the sun, and immeasurably great. The Everlasting, the Highest that can be known, the Greatest Good; thus dost Thou appear to me in the wide universe. The Eternal Guardian of the Eternal Right art Thou. Thou standest before my soul as the Eternal Primeval Spirit. Thou showest me no beginning, no middle and no end. Thou art eternally everywhere, infinite in force, infinite in the distances of space. Thine eyes are, as big as the moon, yea, as big as the sun itself, and out of Thy mouth there radiates sacrificial fire. I contemplate Thee in Thy glow and I perceive how Thy glow warms the universe which I can dimly sense between the ground of the earth and the breadth of heaven, all this is filled with Thy power. I am alone there with Thee, and that world in Heaven wherein the three worlds dwell is also within Thee, when Thy wondrous, awful Figure displays Itself to my sight. I see whole multitudes of Gods coming to Thee, singing praises to Thee, and I stand there afraid, with folded hands. All the hosts of seers call Thee blessed, and so do the multitude of saints. They praise Thee in all their hymns of praise. The Adityas, Rudras, Vasus, Sadkyas, Visvas, Aswins, Maruts, Ushmapas, Ghandarvas, Yakshas, Siddhas, Asuras, and all the Saints praise Thee; they look up to Thee full of wonder: Such a gigantic form with so many mouths, arms, legs, feet; so many bodies, so many jaws filled with teeth; the whole world trembles before Thee and I too tremble. The Heaven-shattering, radiating, many-armed One, with a mouth working as though it were great flaming eyes, thus do I behold Thee. My soul quakes. I cannot find security or rest, O great Krishna, Who to me art Vishnu Himself. I gaze into Thy menacing innermost Being, I behold It like unto fire, I see how It works, how existence works, what is the end of all times. I gaze at Thee so, that I can know nothing of anything whatever. Oh! be Thou merciful unto me, Lord of Gods, Thou House in which worlds do dwell.” He turns towards the sons of the race of Kuru and points to them: “These sons of the Kuru all assembled here together, this multitude of kingly heroes, Bhishma and Drona, together with our own best fighters, they all lie praying before Thee, marvelling at Thy wondrous beauty. I am fain to know Thee, Thou Primal Beginning of existence. I cannot comprehend that which appears to me, which reveals itself to me.” Thus speaks Arjuna, when he is alone with Him Who is his own being, when this Being appears objectively to him. We are here confronted with a great cosmic mystery, mysterious not on account of its theoretical contents, but on account of the overpowering sensations which it should call up within us if we are able to grasp it aright. Mysterious it is, so mysterious that it must speak in a different way to every human perception from how anything in the world ever spoke before.

When Krishna Himself caused to sound into the ears of Arjuna that which He then spoke, it sounded thus: “I am Time, which destroys all worlds. I have appeared to carry men away, and even if thou shalt bring death to them in battle, yet all these warriors standing there in line would die even without thee. Rise up, therefore, fearlessly. Thou shalt acquire fame and conquer the foe, Exult over the coming victory and mastery. Thou wilt not have killed them when they fall dead in the battle; by Me they are all killed already, before thou canst bring death to them. Thou art only the instrument, thou fightest only with the hand The Dronas, the Jayadanas, the Bhishmas, the Karnas, and the other warrior heroes whom I have killed, who are already dead—now kill thou them, that my actions may appear externally when they fall dead in Maya; those whom I have already killed, kill thou them. That which I have done will appear to have been done by thee. Tremble not! Thou art not able to do anything which I have not done already. Fight! Those whom I have already killed will fall by thy sword.” We know that all there given in the way of instruction to the sons of Pandu by Krishna to Arjuna, is related as though told by the charioteer to Dritarashtra. The poet does not directly relate: “Thus spake Krishna to Arjuna ”; the poet tells us that Sandshaya, the charioteer of Dritarashtra, relates it to his blind hero, the king of the Kurus. After Sandshaya related all this he then spoke further: “And when Arjuna had received these words from Krishna, reverently with folded hands, tremblingly, stammering with fear and bowing deeply, he answered Krishna: “With right doth the world rejoice in Thy glory, and is filled with reverence before Thee. The Rajas” (these are spirits) “flee in all directions, furious. The holy Hosts all bow down before Thee. Wherefore should they not bow down before the First Creator, Who is even greater than Brahma? Truly we are confronting a great cosmic mystery; for what says Arjuna when he sees his own self before him in bodily form? He addresses this own Being of his as though it appeared to him higher than Brahma Himself. We are face to face with a mystery. For when a man thus addresses his own being, such words must be so understood that none of the feelings, none of the perceptions, none of the ideas, none of the thoughts used in ordinary life must be brought to bear upon the comprehension. Nothing could bring a man into greater danger than to bring feelings such as he may otherwise have in life to bear upon these words of Arjuna. If he were to bring any such feelings of everyday life to bear upon what he thus expresses, if this were not something quite unique, if he did not realise this as the greatest cosmic mystery, then would lunacy and madness be small things compared to the illness into which he would fall through bringing ordinary feelings to bear upon Krishna, that is to say, upon his own higher being. “Thou Lord of Gods, Thou art without end, Thou art the Everlasting, Thou art the Highest, Thou art both Existence and Non-existence, Thou art the greatest of the Gods, Thou art the oldest of the Gods, Thou art the greatest treasure of the whole universe, Thou art He Who knowest and Thou art the Highest Consciousness. Thou embracest the universe, within Thee are all the forms which can possibly exist, Thou art the Wind, Thou art the Fire, Thou art Death, Thou art the eternally moving Cosmic Sea, Thou art the Moon, Thou art the highest of the Gods, the Name Itself, Thou art the Ancestor of the highest of the Gods. Worship must be Thine, a thousand, thousand times over, and ever more than all this worship is due to Thee. Worship must come to Thee from all Thy sides, Thou art everything that a man can ever become. Thou art full of strength as the totality of all strength alone can be, Thou perfectest all things and Thou art at the same time Thyself everything. When I am impatient, and taking Thee to be my friend, I call Thee Krishna: call Thee Yiva, Friend; ignorant of Thy wonderful greatness, unthinking and confiding I so call Thee, and if in my weakness I do not reverence Thee aright, if I do not rightly reverence Thee in Thy wanderings or in Thy stillness, in the highest Divine or in everyday life, whether Thou art alone or united with other Beings, if in all this I do not reverence Thee aright, then do I implore pardon of Thy Immeasurableness. Thou Father of the world, Thou Who movest the world in which Thou movest, Thou Who art more than all the other teachers, to Whom none resembles, Who art above all, to Whom nothing in the three worlds can be compared; prostrating myself before Thee I seek Thy mercy, Thou Lord, Who revealest Thyself in all worlds. In Thee I gaze at That which never has been seen, I tremble before Thee in reverence. Show Thyself to me as Thou art, O God! Be merciful, Thou Lord of Gods, Thou Primal Source of all worlds!”

Truly we are confronted with a mystery when human being speaks thus to human being. And Krishna again speaks to his pupil: “I have revealed Myself to thee in mercy, My highest Being stands before thee, through My almighty power and as though by enchantment it is before thee, illuminating, immeasurable, without beginning. As thou now beholdest Me no other man has ever beheld Me. As thou beholdest Me now, through the forces which by my grace have been given to thee, have I never been revealed, even through what is written in the Vedas, thus have I never been reached by means of the sacrifices. No libation to the Gods, no study, no ceremonial whatsoever has ever attained unto Me, no terrible expiation can lead to beholding Me in My form as I now am, as thou now beholdest Me in human form, thou great hero. But fear must not come to thee, or confusion at the sight of My dreadful form. Free from fear, full of high thoughts thou shalt again behold Me, even as I am now known unto thee, in My present shape.” Then Sandshaya further relates to the blind Dritarashtra: When Krishna had thus spoken to Arjuna, the Immeasurable One—without beginning and without end, sublime beyond all strength—vanished, and Krishna showed Himself again in his human form as though he wished by his friendly form to reassure him who had been so terrified. And Arjuna said: “Now I see Thee once more before me in Thy human shape, now knowledge and consciousness return to me and I am again myself, such as I was.” And Krishna spoke: “The shape which was so difficult for thee to behold, in which thou hast just seen Me, that is the form for the sight of which even Gods have endlessly longed. The Vedas do not indicate My shape, it will neither be attained by 'repentance, nor by charity, neither by sacrifice, nor by any ritual whatsoever. By none of these can I be seen in the form in which thou hast just seen Me. Only one who knows how to go along the way in freedom, free from all the Vedas, free from all repentances, free from all charities and sacrifices, free from all ceremonials, keeping his eyes reverently fixed upon Me alone, only such an one can perceive Me in such a shape, he alone can recognise Me thus, and can also become entirely one with Me. Whosoever behaveth thus, as I put it into his mind to behave, whosoever loveth and honoureth Me, whosoever doth not care for the world and to whom all beings are worthy of love, he comes to Me, O thou, My son of the race of Pandu.”

We are confronted with a cosmic mystery of which the Gita tells us that it was given to mankind at a most significant cosmic hour, that significant cosmic hour when the old clairvoyance which is connected with the blood, ceases: and human souls must seek new paths to the everlasting, to the intransitory. Thus this mystery is brought to our notice so that we may at the same time realise by means of its presentation all that can become dangerous to man when he is able to see his own being brought to birth out of himself. If we grasp this deepest of human and cosmic mysteries—which tells of our own being through true self knowledge—then we have before us the greatest cosmic mystery in the world. But we may only put it before us if we are able to reverence it in all humility. No powers of comprehension will suffice, none will enable us to approach this cosmic mystery; for that the correct sentiment is necessary. No one should approach the cosmic mystery that speaks from out the Gita who cannot approach it reverentially. Only when we can feel thus about it do we completely grasp it. How, starting from this point of view one is able in the Gita to look at a certain stage of human evolution, and how, just by means of what is shown to us in the Gita, light can also be thrown upon what we meet with in a different way in the Epistles of St. Paul—that it is which, is to occupy us in the course of these lectures.

The spiritual content of the gospel should become more and more accessible to people through the theosophical movement in our time. And this is all the more necessary as the biblical records, especially in our time, are beginning to be more and more fragmented and frayed by historical-scientific research, which is a good thing in and of itself. Modern man has lost sight of spiritual realities.

The external historical research in our days has come to the conclusion that the three synoptic gospels must be understood in a certain way as historical events. In view of the contradictions present in them, this research seeks to make it credible that they came about because these gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, but that the stories were passed from mouth to mouth and only later written down. According to one assumption, the Synoptics should come from an Aramaic source and be oral messages about the events in Palestine. The one who wrote the Gospel of John should not want to give a historical event, but only a confession presented in external images.

But the gospels will be lost to humanity if criticism continues on this path. Only through spiritual research can we find the true facts. This research does not ask for some fantastic Aramaic source, but for the real sources from which the gospels emerged.

Only by examining these can we achieve a deeper understanding. We must turn not to any external documents, but to the mysteries of the past if we are to understand the Gospels. In these mysteries there was something that could be called an initiation ceremony. The person's need for development was known to the Hierophant, and the methods used to lead him into the spiritual world were not as well known and described in ancient times as they are in our days. People were at a different level of development then, and therefore needed different methods than the ones we use. Careful instruction preceded every initiation for years. The content of the instruction given in the Egyptian and Pythagorean places of initiation was somewhat similar to what we today call

The first degree, which followed the preparation, was called “imagination” or “knowledge”. The second degree was called “enlightenment” or “inspiration” and the third “completion through ‘intuition’ or ‘direct spiritual vision’.

These three degrees were not intimate inner experiences as in later times, but purely external actions in which the inner development was reflected. The disciple was prepared by certain sensual models, great symbolic figures that were shown to him in the mystery temples and that were supposed to have a certain magical effect on him. He was also to experience certain dramatic situations and undergo certain physical trials that were intended to awaken and release forces that were still dormant in his soul. These symbolic figures and dramatic situations were intended to make him aware of all the temptations that a person can encounter in the world and show him how far a person can fall if left to his own devices. To escape this, the soul must free itself from everything that binds it. By observing external, often quite drastic situations, the student should be cleansed of all his “urges, desires and passions.” And through this catharsis or cleansing, all that is noblest in the soul should be drawn from the innermost part of the soul. After that, he was ready to enter the first degree, the world of imagination.

This catharsis was all the more necessary because otherwise the pupil would have been exposed to all the dangers in the new world that was opening up to him. The external world was no longer the same, he could no longer live on the account of his surroundings. He could no longer have the help of all these precepts and generally accepted views that build a society, a family. Horrifying images arose in his soul. If he had not been given some firm principles and supporting thoughts through education, he could have fared very badly. From the depths of his soul, quite objective images of all the instincts and desires that he carried within him arose – not only those of which he was aware, but also others that he did not even know. Their effect could make him worse than before if he had not first undergone a process of purification that penetrated to the very core of his soul, a catharsis. In this way, the disciple was slowly led through a number of external means to the second and then to the third degree.

What interests us most is the last degree of initiation, which was the same in the most diverse mysteries. Let us now first look back at the Egyptian mysteries. There we find that the disciple was placed in a lethargic state for a period of three and a half days, during which time he neither saw nor heard with his external senses. He lay as if dead in his coffin or on a cross. During ordinary sleep, as we know, the etheric body remains in the physical body, while the astral body and the ego are drawn out. But in the cataleptic state, the etheric body unites with the other two, and the physical body is left alone. So it was a literal killing of the father principle and a union with the mother principle. This enabled the disciple to have experiences in the spiritual world that underlies the physical, that is, the etheric world, and then, based on his own experience, he could speak of it as its messenger.

But the etheric body was not allowed to move too far away from the physical body, because then it could happen that it could not be recalled at all. The hierophant had to watch over this and recall the disciple at the right time. The disciple then returned to the world with the memory of everything he had experienced, and was then able to put into words what he had seen and heard, and become a witness of the spiritual world. This happened during the Egyptian initiation.

The last act of the initiation took place in a different way in the countries that spread like a broad belt from the Persian Gulf, the Black and Caspian Sea to the west to France and Great Britain. Here it was the Zoroaster religion that left its mark on the peoples. After the disciple had undergone the first two degrees in the Druid or Drotten mysteries, for example, and had been instructed in the mysteries, he was finally introduced to the actual world of ethereal processes, to the spiritual world that surrounds us. The events that are reflected in the cosmos could have a direct effect on him there. Meanwhile, everything that had moved in him before was silenced and poured out into the whole cosmos. [While in the Egyptian initiation the disciple completely stepped out of the context of the outer world and stepped completely into his soul, descended to Persephonaia, the disciple of the Drotten Mysteries was moved up into the cosmic worlds and could pour out his being up to the twelvefold, up to the Zodiac. He knew that the things spoke differently, depending on whether this or that constellation was above the others. Herein lay the difference with the Egyptian initiation. This path was adapted to the different constitution of the people.]

Destined for different peoples, these paths - both the outer and the inner one - led to the same result. In the Christ, they were to unite, flow together into a single path and form the unified Christian initiation. Therefore, anyone who reads the Gospel correctly will find the most important mysteries in it. The Christ Himself had initiated Lazarus and brought him the last act of the Egyptian initiation drama, but He also had him live through the most important part of the Nordic initiation. This can be seen from a passage in the Gospel of John, where something is related that the evangelist could not have seen with his physical eyes, and that only someone who had been initiated by the Christ Himself could have related. “The next day,“ it says, ‘John the Baptist and two of his disciples were standing there with him, and he saw Jesus coming and said, ’Behold the Lamb of God,' and the” - others - “two disciples heard him speak and followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned around... ‘and so on, whereupon the evangelist adds: ’And it was in the tenth hour.”

How should we understand this? Spiritual research is much more realistic than historical research, which, for example, interprets this passage to mean that the evangelist was standing nearby and observed all this. But that is not correct. The words “It was the tenth hour” indicate that the author of the Gospel of John was clairvoyant, so that the positions of the constellations affected him. He was far away, but a certain constellation made it possible for him to turn his clairvoyant gaze to this event. It is impossible to explain this addition in any other way - “It was the tenth hour. Only at this hour was a certain constellation such that he could see this clairvoyantly.

There is nothing in the Gospels that is not based, and the more closely you examine them, the clearer they become. And if we could imbibe the general sense of the incredible depth of the Gospels, we would have gained a great deal.

Now, however, Lazarus and the man who wrote the Gospel of John are the same person. The fact that he becomes clairvoyant through the influence of the constellations indicates that he has undergone the Nordic initiation, and by being raised from the dead he is also an Egyptian initiate. Partly because of this double initiation, and partly because Jesus himself had initiated him, his gospel has such a particularly great significance. The evangelists have all described in their own special way the initiation drama as it takes place in the various temples. Through preparatory scenes and symbolic images, which were different in the various temples, the disciples were introduced to the spiritual world.

But there was something else taught as well. What was depicted in the mysteries, it was taught, should become a reality in the outer physical world. The drama of initiation was to be relived by a son of God, and it was by this very fact that he would be recognized. When Ahura-Mazdao descends and incarnates as a human being, he will experience in real life everything that had previously only been enacted inside the temple. When this happens, the Son of God has come to us. The evangelists knew that this fact had occurred with Christ Jesus. They knew that the mysteries enacted inside the temple had become reality through the event in Palestine. That is why they were also able to describe the initiation ceremony. At the same time, they described it as it had actually occurred. For the event in Palestine coincides with the ancient mysteries and reflects them. It is here, in the ancient mysteries of the past – and not in some Aramaic documents – that we must seek the real source of the Gospel.

The evangelists understood and recognized that once upon a time a man lived on earth whose whole outer life was in everything an image of what was proclaimed in the temples, and that is why they were able to write about it at the same time as they described the ancient methods of initiation.

Writing a biography in the same sense as in modern times was not the point here. You can never find the essence of a person's life in letters and notes that the people concerned have carelessly left behind and that are the main things people look for nowadays. That is not how the story of Jesus was written in those days. The evangelists followed a better method. For them, the essential thing was the events of his life that corresponded to the initiatory drama, and that he, as an historical personality, had really lived through this. For them, he was the greatest of the initiates because he had been awakened to life by virtue of his own divine self, not by the hierophant in an underground temple.

All this was grasped by the three first evangelists and described in connection with their various initiations. Lazarus, who had been initiated by the Christ Jesus himself, had experienced everything as a spiritual eyewitness, and therefore he, who knew best the innermost causes of the great drama, could give the most intimate descriptions of it. He did not need Egyptian documents; the document he followed was given to him by the Christ Jesus himself. We find, therefore, that the Gospels give us, on the one hand, historical reality and, on the other, pictures of the initiation dramas of the mysteries.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, he was actually performing an initiation ceremony before [all] the people, and in this fact we have the reason for the fierce persecution by the Jewish authorities. Otherwise it is impossible to understand why they wanted to kill him precisely because he had raised a man who was thought to be dead, yes, why they even wanted to kill the one who had been raised. “This man does many signs,” they said among themselves, “we cannot live with him.” Conservative as they were with regard to their old teaching, they wanted to keep the secrets of the mysteries.

Until now, only a few had known the way to the spiritual world, but now the secrets of the temple had been brought to light. [Now it should be possible to relive the initiation process. The process should be presented to the whole world. First in an exemplary way through the resurrection of Lazarus, then on the cross.] Outside the temple, the great initiation drama had taken place, and in the sight of the people, the initiate had been called to life; this was clear to all who understood what had happened. In the eyes of the conservatives, it was a betrayal of the mysteries and should be punished by death. It was therefore not surprising that the priests said that they could not live with this man.

[One might object: If the initiation process involves dangers, was it allowed to be published? As it had happened, yes. — If it had only been described up to the Lazarus event, it would have been dangerous; but after the twelfth chapter comes the account of what had to happen so that the public would not be endangered.

If we understand the whole Gospel of John, we find in it what made it possible to hint at the initiation process.

[ 1 ] With the admirable boldness characteristic of him, Plato expresses this mistrust of experience: the things of this world, which our senses perceive, have no true being at all; they are always becoming but never are. They have only a relative existence, they are, in their totality, only in and through their relationship to each other; one can therefore just as well call their whole existence a non-existence. They are consequently also not objects of any actual knowledge. For, only about what is, in and for itself and always in the same way, can there be such knowledge; they, on the other hand, are only the object of what we, through sensation, take them to be. As long as we are limited only to our perception of them, we are like people who sit in a dark cave so firmly bound that they cannot even turn their heads and who see nothing except, on the wall facing them, by the light of a fire burning behind them, the shadow images of real things which are led across between them and the fire, and who in fact also see of each other, yes each of himself, only the shadows on that wall. Their wisdom, however, would be to predict the sequence of those shadows which they have learned to know from experience.

[ 2 ] The Platonic view tears the picture of the world-whole into two parts, into the mental picture of a seeming world and into a world of ideas to which alone true eternal reality is thought to correspond. “What alone can be called truly existing, because they always are, but never become nor pass away are the ideal archetypal images of those shadow images, are the eternal ideas, the archetypal forms of all things. To them no multiplicity can be ascribed; for each is by its very nature only one, insofar as it is the archetypal picture itself, whose copies or shadows are all the single transitory things which bear the same name and are of the same kind. To them can also be ascribed no arising and passing away; for they are truly existing, never becoming, however, nor' perishing like their copies which vanish away. Of them alone, therefore, is there actual knowledge, since only that can be the object of such knowledge which always and in every respect is, not that which is, but then again is not, depending on how one looks at it.”

[ 3 ] The separation of idea and perception is justified only when one speaks of how human knowledge comes about. The human being must allow things to speak to him in a twofold way. They tell him one part of their being of their own free will. He need only listen to them. This is the part of reality that is free of ideas. The other pan, however, he must coax from them. He must bring his thinking into movement, and then his inner life fills with the ideas of things. Within the inner life of the personality is the stage upon which things also reveal their ideal inner life. There they speak out what remains eternally hidden to outer perception. The being of nature breaks here into speech. But it is only due to our human organization that things must become known through the sounding together of two tones. In nature one stimulator is there that brings forth both tones. The unbiased person listens to their consonance. He recognizes in the ideal language of his own inner life the statements which things allow to come to him. Only someone who has lost his impartiality will interpret the matter differently. He believes that the language of his inner life comes out of a different realm from the language of outer perception. Plato became conscious of what weight the fact has for man's world view that the world reveals itself to the human being from two sides. Out of his insightful valuation of this fact, he recognized that reality cannot be attributed to the sense world, regarded only by itself. Only when the world of ideas lights up out of his soul life, and man, in looking at the world, can place before his spirit idea and sense observation as a unified knowledge experience does he have true reality before him. What sense observation has before itself, without its being shone through by the light of ideas, is a world of semblance. Regarded in this way light is also shed by Plato's insight upon the view of Parmenides as to the deceptive nature of sense-perceptible things. And one can say that the philosophy of Plato is one of the most sublime edifices of thought that has ever sprung from the spirit of mankind. Platonism is the conviction that the goal of all striving for knowledge must be to acquire the ideas which carry the world and which constitute its foundation. Whoever cannot awaken this conviction within himself does not understand the Platonic world view.—Insofar as Platonism has taken hold in the evolution of Western thought, however, it shows still another side. Plato did not stop short at emphasizing the knowledge that, in human perception the sense world becomes a mere semblance if the light of the world of ideas is not shone upon it, but rather, through the way he presented this fact, he furthered the belief that the sense world, in and for itself, irrespective of man, is a world of semblance, and that true reality is to be found only in ideas. Out of this belief there arises the question: how do idea and sense world (nature) come together outside the human being? For someone who, outside of man, can acknowledge no sense world devoid of ideas, the question about the relationship of idea and sense world is one which must be sought and solved within the being of man. And this is how the matter stands for the Goethean world view. For it, the question, “What relationship exists outside of man between idea and sense world?” is an unhealthy one, because for it there is no sense world (nature) without idea outside of man. Only man can detach the idea from the sense world for himself and thus picture nature to be devoid of idea. Therefore one can say: for the Goethean world view the question, “How do idea and sense-perceptible things come together?”, which has occupied the evolution of Western thought for centuries, is an entirely superfluous question. And the results of this stream of Platonism, running through the evolution of Western thought, which confronted Goethe, for example, in the above conversation with Schiller, but also in other cases, worked upon his feelings like an unhealthy element in man's way of picturing things. Something he did not express clearly in words but which lived in his feelings and became an impulse that helped shape his own world view is the view that what healthy human feeling teaches us at every moment—namely how the language of observation and that of thinking unite in order to reveal full reality—was not heeded by the thinkers sunk in their reflections. Instead of looking at how nature speaks to man, they fashioned artificial concepts about the relationship of the world of ideas and experience. In order to see the full extent of the deep significance of this direction of thought, which Goethe felt to be unhealthy, within the world views confronting him and by which he wanted to orient himself, one must consider how the stream of Platonism just indicated, which evaporates the sense world into a mere semblance and which thereby brings the world of ideas into a distorted relationship to it, one must consider how this Platonism has grown stronger through a one-sided philosophical apprehension of Christian truth in the course of the evolution of Western thought. Because the Christian view confronted Goethe as connected with the stream of Platonism which he felt to be unhealthy, he could only with difficulty develop a relationship with Christianity. Goethe did not follow in detail how the stream of Platonism which he rejected worked on in the evolution of Christian thought, but he did feel the results of it working on within the ways of thinking which confronted him. Therefore a study of how these results came to be in these ways of thinking which developed through the centuries before Goethe came on the scene will shed light on how his way of picturing things took shape. The Christian evolution of thought, in many of its representatives, sought to come to terms with belief in the beyond and with the value that sense existence has in the face of the spiritual world. If one surrendered oneself to the view that the relationship of the sense world to the world of ideas has a significance apart from man, then, with the question arising from this, one came into the view of a divine world order. And the church fathers, to whom this question came, had to form thoughts for themselves as to the role played by the Platonic world of ideas within this divine world order. One not only stood in danger thereby of thinking that what unite in human knowing through direct perception, namely idea and sense world, are separated off by themselves outside of man, but one also stood in danger of separating them from each other, so that ideas, outside of what is given to man as nature, now also lead an existence for themselves within a spirituality separated from nature. If one joined this mental picture, which rested on an untrue view of the world of ideas and of the sense world, with the justified view that the divine can never be present in the human soul in full consciousness, then a total tearing apart of the world of ideas and nature resulted. Then one seeks what always should be sought within the human spirit, outside it, within the created world. The archetypal images of all things begin to be thought of as contained within the divine spirit. The world becomes the imperfect reflection of the perfect world of ideas resting in God. The human soul then, as the result of a one-sided apprehension of Platonism, becomes separated from the relationship of idea and “reality.” The soul extends what it justifiably thinks to be its relationship to the divine world order out over the relationship which lives in it between the world of ideas and the seeming world of the senses. Augustine comes, through a way of looking at things such as this, to views like the following: “Without wavering we want to believe that the thinking soul is not of the same nature as God, for He allows no community but that the soul can, however, become enlightened through taking part in the nature of God.” In this way, then, when this way of picturing things is one-sidedly overdone, the possibility is taken away from the human soul of experiencing, in its contemplation of nature, also the world of ideas as the being of reality. And experiencing the ideas is also interpreted as unchristian. The one-sided view of Platonism is extended over Christianity itself. Platonism as a philosophical world view stays more in the element of thinking; religious sentiment immerses thinking into the life of feeling and establishes it in this way within man's nature. Anchored this way within man's soul life, the unhealthy element of one-sided Platonism could gain a deeper significance in the evolution of Western thought than if it had remained mere philosophy. For centuries this development of thought stood before questions like these: how does what man forms as ideas stand with respect to the things of reality? Are the concepts that live in the human soul through the world of ideas only mental pictures, names, which have nothing to do with reality? Are they themselves something real which man receives through perceiving reality and through grasping it with his intellect? Such questions, for the Goethean world view, are not intellectual questions about something or other lying outside of man's being. Within human contemplation of reality these questions solve themselves with inexhaustible liveliness through true human knowing. And this Goethean world view must not only find that within Christian thoughts there live the results of a one-sided Platonism, but it feels itself estranged from genuine Christianity when the latter confronts him permeated with such Platonism.—What lives in many of the thoughts which Goethe developed within himself in order to make the world comprehensible to himself was rejection of that stream of Platonism which he experienced as unhealthy. The fact that besides this he had an open sense for the Platonic lifting of the human soul up to the world of ideas is attested to by many a statement made in this direction. He felt within himself the active working of the reality of ideas when, in his way, he approached nature through contemplation and research; he felt that nature itself spoke in the language of ideas, when the soul opens itself to such language. But he could not agree that one regard the world of ideas as something isolated and thus create for oneself the possibility, with respect to an idea about the nature of plants, of saying: that is no experience, that is an idea. He felt there that his spiritual eye beheld the idea as a reality, just as the physical eye sees the physical part of the plant being. Thus that Platonism which is directed into the world of ideas established itself in all its purity in Goethe's world view, and the stream of Platonism that leads away from reality is overcome in it. Because his world view took this form, Goethe had also to reject what presented itself to him as Christian views in such a way that it could only appear to him to be transformed one-sided Platonism. And he had to feel that in the forms of many a world view which confronted him and with which he wanted to come to terms, one had not succeeded in overcoming within Western culture the Christian-Platonic view of reality which was not in accordance with nature nor with ideas.

Last time I talked to you about the moon flying out of the earth and how that is connected to life on earth in the first place. I can already imagine that you will have many questions. We can deal with them next Saturday. Think about some of them by then. But today I still have a few things to discuss. Some questions may arise.

We have said: As long as the moon was inside the earth, what can be called the reproductive power of animal beings was quite different than later, after the moon had flown out. I have told you that in the time when the moon was still inside the earth, the moon gave the earth those forces that are, so to speak, maternal forces, feminine forces. So we can imagine that there was a time when the moon was still inside the earth. I will sketch this out for you very schematically.

When the moon was still inside the earth, it was not in the center, but a little to the outside (see drawing, left). If you look at the Earth today, you will also notice that on one side, more towards where Australia is located, there is a lot of water on the Earth, while on the side where Europe and Asia are located, there is a lot of land. So the Earth actually does not have land and water equally distributed, but the Earth is such that on one side it actually has the most land and on the other side the most water. So the material on Earth is not evenly distributed (see drawing $.149, right). It was also not evenly distributed when the moon was still inside the Earth. The moon was just lying on the side where the Earth has the inclination to be heavy. Of course, if there is a solid material, it is heavy there. So I have to draw it the way I have marked it there with white chalk.

Now you have to imagine that at that time fertilization took place in such a way that the moon, which was inside the earth, gave these giant creatures the strength to, so to speak, provide reproductive material. You can't say that back then the animals would have laid real eggs. These giant oysters were actually just a slimy mass themselves, and they just secreted a piece of themselves. So that such a gigantic oyster, as I described to you last time, which could originally have been as large as the whole of France, had a mighty shell on which one could have walked around, and towards the interior of the earth a mass of slime. The lunar forces worked on this slime, and a piece of it was secreted. That then swam further into the earth. And when the sun shone on it again – I have explained this to you vividly using the example of the dog – an egg shell was formed, and because this egg shell was formed, the slimy mass of the oyster was again inclined to secrete a piece of itself, and then a new animal could arise. So the female forces came from the moon, which was in the earth, and the male forces from the sun, which shone on the earth from the outside. Now, gentlemen, I am describing a very specific time, the time when the moon was still inside the earth.

Now you have to imagine the following. Today, when the moon is outside, outside the earth, it has a completely different effect. You also know that when carbonic acid is inside a person – I told you this last time – it has a completely different effect than when it is outside, where it is a poison. If you recall animal reproduction today, you must say: the animals have to produce eggs, and these eggs must then be fertilized in some way. So what the moon used to give when it was inside the earth is now in the animals. The animals have these lunar forces within them.

And the moon also gives forces from the outside. I told you last time: even poets know that the moon gives forces to the earth. But these are forces that stimulate the imagination, that make you more alive inside. These are forces that no longer affect reproduction, but that radiate in from the outside and can no longer effect reproduction at all.

So you have to imagine it: what the moon was able to give the earth when it was still inside, these reproductive powers, the animals have appropriated them, inherited them, and now they plant them from one animal to another. So when you look at the eggs of the animals, you have to say to yourself: the lunar forces are inside. But those lunar forces are still inside that worked when the moon was still in the earth. Today the moon can no longer do much other than stimulate the head. So today the moon works on the head. But in those days it worked precisely on reproduction. You see, that is a considerable difference. It makes a big difference whether something is inside the earth or outside of it.

Reproduction is a very strange thing. But again, we have to say that all understanding of nature depends on understanding reproduction. Because through it, the individual animals and the individual plants still arise today. If it were not for reproduction, everything would have died long ago. If you want to understand anything about nature, you have to understand reproduction. But reproduction is something peculiar on earth.

Just imagine: the elephant has the peculiarity of only being able to produce a single young at around fifteen or sixteen years of age. Take an oyster, on the other hand; it is a small, slimy animal. If you imagine this as being huge, you will have roughly the same creatures that I showed you for that time. So, you can learn something from an oyster. But the oyster is not like the elephant, which has to wait so many years to produce a young one. A single oyster can produce a million oysters in a year. So an oyster has a different relationship to reproduction than an elephant.

Now, gentlemen, another interesting animal is the aphid. You know that it occurs on the leaves of trees and can be found as a rather harmful population of the plant world. People suffer a lot from it. An aphid is, as you know, much smaller than an elephant, but it can produce several thousand million offspring in just a few weeks – a single aphid! An elephant, for example, needs about fifteen or sixteen years to produce a single offspring, but the aphid can reproduce in just a few weeks to produce several million from a single individual.

And then there are tiny animals called vortices. If you look at them through a microscope, they are just a tiny lump of mucus, and they have a thread that they wriggle along. They are very interesting animals, but they consist only of a tiny lump of mucus, like if you took a thread out of an oyster, and they swim around like that. These little Vorticelles are now able to produce a hundred and forty trillion offspring in four days – a single one! – so many zeros would be needed to write it on the blackboard. The only thing that can compete with that now is Russian currency!

So you see, there is a considerable difference in reproductive capacity between an elephant, which has to wait fifteen or sixteen years to produce a single young, and such a small Vorticella, which in four days multiplies to such an extent that one hundred and forty trillion offspring grow.

So you see, there are really very significant natural secrets here. And there is a very interesting French tale, which on the surface doesn't have much to do with it, but inwardly it does. There was an important French poet — his name was Racine. And this Racine, it took him seven years to write a play like “Athalie”. So he wrote a play like 'Athalie' in seven years. And in his time there was another poet who was terribly proud compared to Racine and said: Racine needs seven years to write a play; I write seven plays in one year! And so he came up with a fable, a story, and this story, this fable goes: the pig and the lion were once arguing; and the pig, who was proud, said to the lion: I have seven young ones every year, but you, lion, you only produce one in a year. — Then the lion said: Yes, but the only one is a lion, and your seven are pigs. And with that, didn't Racine want to brush the poet aside. He didn't exactly want to tell him that his plays were pigs, but he compared them, because he said: Well, you do seven plays like that every year, but in seven years I do one Athalie – which is world-famous today.

You see, you can say: Even in a fable like that, in a story like that, there is something to be said for taking fifteen or sixteen years, like an elephant, to have a young one, rather than being a Vorticelle, which reproduces in four days to have a hundred and forty trillion young. People already talk a lot about the fact that rabbits have so many young; if they only started talking about the Vorticelle – it's impossible to imagine such a reproductive capacity!

Now, we have to find out why such tiny animals produce so many young, while it takes an elephant so long.

Now I have told you: the sun is the actual basis for fertilization. So, even today, we still need the sun for fertilization. And I have also told you: if there is a heavenly body outside, like the moon, it only affects the head at most, but no longer affects the abdominal organs, so no longer directly affects the reproductive powers. Today, the reproductive powers must be inherited from one being to another. But, gentlemen, in a certain sense, what happens in today's reproduction is still dependent on the moon. And I will explain this to you in the following way, by going back to the sun again.

You see, we have to ask ourselves: Why does an elephant need fifteen or sixteen years to develop its reproductive ability to the point where it can have a calf? Now you all know that the elephant is a pachyderm, and because it is a pachyderm, it takes so long. A thick skin allows the sun's forces to pass through it less strongly than if you were a plant louse and were very soft and the sun's forces could get in everywhere. So the elephant's low fertility is actually related to its thick skin.

You can also tell by the fact that Think back to those huge floating oysters. Yes, a second oyster would never come into being if it only depended on the sun shining on that scale armor, on that thick skin! But this oyster, as I told you, releases a little mucus; the mucus does not yet have an oyster shell, so the sun can come upon it. And by drying the mucus and thereby creating a new oyster, it has a fertilizing effect on that oyster. Yes, when the sun's rays come from the outside, gentlemen, they can only create shells. How is it that the forces of the sun can still have a fertilizing effect?

You see, we have to look at something else to help you understand how the story actually fits together. You may know that when the farmers have harvested the potatoes, they dig quite deep pits and put the potatoes in them. Then they cover the pits again. And then later, when the winter is over, they dig up the potatoes from these pits again, because they have remained good in there. If they had simply kept the potatoes in the cellar, they would have perished. They stay quite good in there.

Where does this actually come from? It is a very interesting thing. The farmers don't know much about it. But, gentlemen, if you were a potato yourself and were buried in this pit, you would actually feel extremely good in there, if you didn't need something to eat. You see, the warmth of the sun in summer remains in there, and what the sun shines on the earth in summer, that draws more and more downwards. And if you dig into the earth in January, the warmth of the sun and all the other solar forces from summer are still there at a depth of one and a half meters.

That is the strange thing. In summer, the sun is out and warms from the outside, and in winter, the sun's power moves down and can be found further down. But it cannot go very deep down; it flows back up again. If you were a potato and were lying down there, you would be quite comfortable; you wouldn't need to heat up, because first of all there is still the warmth from the summer inside, and secondly it comes up quite warmly from below because the solar forces radiate back again. And these potatoes are actually terribly comfortable. It is only there that they really enjoy the sun. In summer they don't get much of the sun, it's even unpleasant for them. If they had heads, they would get headaches when the sun shines on them; it is actually unpleasant for the potatoes. But in winter, when they are buried in the earth, they can really enjoy the sun.

From this you can see that the sun does not only work when it shines on something, but it continues to work when its energy is absorbed and stopped by something.

Yes, gentlemen, now a peculiarity occurs. I have told you: When a body is outside the earth, it has a killing effect, either - like carbonic acid - like a poison, or like the sun here, which produces dandruff when it shines on it; it hardens the living being on which it shines. But in winter, it is not true that the sun works from the outside; it works from inside the earth. There it leaves its strength behind, working in the interior of the earth. And there it also renews the reproductive forces in the interior of the earth, so that the reproductive forces today, in our time, also come from the sun, but not from direct sunlight, but from what remains in the earth and then radiates back in winter.

It is a very interesting thing. It is just like when we breathe in carbon dioxide: then it is a poison. But when the carbon dioxide is inside our body and goes through the blood, we need it. Because if we had no carbon, we would have nothing at all inside us. We need it inside; then it is beneficial; from the outside it is a poison. Sunlight from the outside causes peeling in animals; sunlight absorbed from within and reflected back generates life and makes the animals capable of reproduction.

But, gentlemen, now imagine that you are not a potato but an elephant. You would have an awfully thick skin and would only let a little of the warmth that the earth has from the sun in. That is why it would take you an awfully long time to produce an elephant calf if you were an elephant. But imagine you were a plant louse or an oyster; in that oyster you would be just a mass of mucus near the earth's surface. The elephant is not such a mass of mucus. The elephant is closed off on all sides by its skin, so it lets this warmth, which comes from below, into itself only very slowly.

Now, you see, it is like this: animals like aphids, which also live close to the ground and on plants, have no thick skin at all; they can absorb what evaporates from the earth with the spring with terrible ease, so their reproductive powers are always quickly refreshed. And the vortices even more so, because they live in the water and water retains the warmth of the sun much more intensely, so that the stored solar warmth in the vortices produces the hundred and forty billion at the right season; that is, when they have absorbed enough of what the warmth of the sun is in the water, they can reproduce themselves terribly quickly. So we can say: Today, the Earth gives its beings the ability to reproduce by storing the forces of the sun within itself during the winter.

Now let us move on from there to the plants. You see, with plants it is like this: you know that plants also reproduce through so-called cuttings. So when a plant grows out of the earth, you can cut a cutting somewhere. You have to cut it out properly, then you can plant it and it will grow into a plant. Certain plants reproduce in this way. Where does that come from? The reason why plants have the power to reproduce even through a piece of themselves is because they have the seed in the earth during the winter. That is a very important thing for plants. If you want to somehow encourage plants to grow properly, it is the case, isn't it, that they actually have to be in the ground during the winter. They have to grow out of the ground at all. There are summer fruits, and we could talk about them later. But in the main, the plants have to develop their seeds in the soil, and then they can grow. Sometimes you can also make bulbous plants grow in water, but you have to take special measures for that, don't you. In nature, it is mainly the case that plants have to be placed in the soil and have to get their strength to grow from there.

What happens, gentlemen, when a seed is placed in the earth? There this seed is really placed in the beneficence of absorbing these forces given by the sun to the earth. The plant seed, in particular, really absorbs these forces that come from the sun into the earth.

With animals, it is much more difficult. Those animals that are actually in the earth, such as earthworms and the like, also easily absorb this power. That is why they all reproduce very prolifically, all the animals that are either very close to the earth or in the earth. Worms are also such that they have an awful lot of offspring, and for example just such worms, which unfortunately can also get into the human intestines, produce an awful lot of offspring, and man must constantly exert his own powers so that these worms do not produce an awful lot of offspring. So that if you have worms inside you, you have to use almost all your vital forces to kill these horror stories that you have inside you.

Yes, but plants are able to grow out of the ground (see drawing); down there is the root, then they grow out of the ground, and then they have the leaves, then they develop the flowers and new seeds. But, gentlemen, you know very well that when the flower begins to develop, the plant no longer grows upwards. That is very interesting. The seed of the plant, the germ, is placed in the soil; the stalk grows out of it, leaves, green leaves, and then the flower comes. There the growth is stopped, and the plant now quickly produces the seed. If it did not produce the seed quickly, the sun would use all its strength on these petals, which would be infertile. The plant would get a huge, beautiful flower at the top, with many colors, but the seed would not be able to develop. The plant finally gathers all its strength to produce the seed quickly.

You see, the sun that comes from outside has the peculiarity of making plants beautiful. When we find beautiful plants in the meadow, it is the external sun with its rays that brings out these beautiful colors. But it would make the plants die with it, just as it makes the oyster die with the oyster shell, dries up.

That is why you can see this all over the world. You can see this effect of the sun particularly well when you come to hot, equatorial regions; there all the birds are in the most wonderful colors. That is the effect of the external sun. These feathers are all beautifully colored, but they no longer contain any life force. The life force is most dead in the feathers.

And so it is with the plant. When it grows out of the ground, it has abundant life force. Then it loses more and more of it and in the end it has to gather all its strength; it still puts the very little bit of life force into the seed. And the sun makes beautiful leaves, colorful flowers, but in doing so it kills the plant. There is nothing of reproductive capacity in the colored petals.

But what does the plant do when its seed is placed in the earth? It does not just allow itself to be placed in the earth, but it brings forth growth in the leaves; it brings that forth. If I draw something green, the forces of the sun, that is, warmth, light and so on, develop it. So the forces of the sun rise up in the plant. The plant takes these with it in the seed, while the solar forces that come from outside kill the plant, so that a very beautiful flower arises. But in the middle of it all there is still the seed, which comes from the solar warmth stored up in the middle of winter. The seed does not come from this year's sun. That is just a misconception. The beautiful blossom comes from this year's sun; but the seed comes from the solar warmth of the previous year, which still has the strength that the sun first gave to the earth. The plant carries this through its entire body.

This would not be so easy for animals. The animal depends on the fact that this solar warmth comes more from outside, more from the earth, and is only refreshed. This is because the animal does not absorb the forces of the sun as directly as the plant. But the plant carries the warmth of the previous year's sun through its own body up to the seed in the flower, which has accumulated in the earth.

If you look at this story correctly – it is extraordinarily interesting, wonderfully interesting – then you say to yourself: plants and animals reproduce. They could not reproduce if the sun did not work. If there were no sun, they could not reproduce. But the sun, which is out there in the sky, apart from the earth, it is precisely what kills the ability to reproduce. It is the same as with carbonic acid: when we inhale carbonic acid, it kills us; when we have it inside us, it invigorates us. When the earth receives the sun's rays from outside, its animals and plants are killed; when the earth can give the animals and plants from its interior what is in the sun, they are invigorated and stimulated to reproduce. You can see that in plants; they develop seeds capable of reproduction only from the power of the sun, which they take with them from before, from the previous summer. What makes the plant beautiful this year comes from this year's sun. It is like that in general: the inner life grows from the past, and one becomes beautiful through the present,

Now, gentlemen, the elephant with its thick skin, but the little warmth from the earth and the little sun inside, which he gets from the earth, would be of little use to him, because he is a pachyderm. These forces do not pass through him so easily. He must have stored up a great deal of his own semen from earlier. He has stored up lunar forces. He needs them, of course, for maternal, for female reproduction. He has stored them up. The moon has emerged from the earth, and the animals that reproduce have the lunar forces within them.

You see, there is something that must be taken into account. Of course, someone could come and say: There is such a stupid fellow who says about the former, the earlier lunar forces, that such old forces still live in the eggs, in the reproductive forces. This stupid fellow claims that the present reproductive forces are from the past. – I would simply say to that person: Have you never seen that something that is alive now has something in it that is from the past? – I would show him a boy who looks so much like his father that he is, as they say, the spitting image. Yes, if you then go back – the father could even have already died; someone could have known the father when the father himself was a boy as small as the boy is now, and the person in question could say: Yes, the boy is the spitting image of his father. – But he looks just like him, the way the father was when he himself was a little boy. What you saw there thirty or forty years ago is still in the little boy now! The forces of the past are always still in what lives in the present. And so it is with the reproductive forces. What is in the present comes from the past.

You know, it was considered a particularly strong superstition that the moon should affect the weather. Well, there is also a great deal of superstition in that. But once upon a time there were two scholars in Germany, at the University of Leipzig, one of whom – his name was Fechner – said to himself: perhaps there is a grain of truth in this superstition that the moon affects the weather. So he made a note of what the weather was like at full moon and what the weather was like at new moon, and found that There is a difference; it rains more when the moon is full than when it is new. That is what he found out. You don't have to believe that yet. Such notes are not very convincing. In real science, you have to work much, much more precisely. But he did say that you just have to continue such investigations and see if it doesn't come out that the moon affects the weather.

Now at the same University of Leipzig was another man who thought he was much cleverer – Schleiden was his name. He said: Now even my colleagues are starting to talk about the moon having an effect on the weather. Gosh, that's not true, we have to fight against that with all our might! – Then the Fechner said: Well, the dispute will remain between us men, but we also have women. – You see, that was still in earlier times. When the two university professors lived in Leipzig, the university professors' wives still had an old custom in the city. They put their troughs, their vats, in the rain to get water to wash in. They collected it because water was not easy to come by in old Leipzig. There were no water pipes back then. So Professor Fechner said: Yes, our wives should sort this out. Professor Schleiden and Professor Fechner should do it this way: so that they always get the same amount of rainwater, Professor Schleiden can put out her troughs at the new moon, and my wife can put out her troughs at the full moon! — He said to himself: according to my calculations, she will then get the most rainwater.

Well, you see, the women didn't go along with it. They didn't want to go along with their husbands' science. They couldn't be convinced at all. So it came about in a curious way that a person, even when science is in the form of a man, does not believe in it, like Mrs. Schleiden, and does not say to herself: I get just as much water at the new moon as at the full moon. Instead, she wanted to put out her watering troughs even at the full moon, despite her husband's terrible ranting against Fechner.

That is something that proves nothing. But, you see, it is strange that even today, high and low tides are still connected with the sun and moon. So that one can say: tides occur quite differently during one quarter of the moon than during any other quarter of the moon. That is connected. But, gentlemen, it does not happen because the moon shines on the sea somewhere and that causes a flood, but that is an old story.

When the moon was still inside the earth, it developed its powers and caused the tides. And the earth still has these remnants of the forces themselves, through which the tide arises. No wonder, the earth is already doing it independently. Today it is a superstition to believe that the moon has an effect on the earth. But it once had an effect on the earth when it was still inside, when everything still had an effect on the earth; and the earth is still in this context inside. That is why it determines the tides. But that is only seemingly the case. Just as I look at my watch, I also say: it throws me out at ten o'clock to the hall. — So today the phases of the moon coincide with the tides, because once they were interdependent.

And so it is with the reproductive powers, insofar as they depend on the moon, insofar as they are feminine. And so it is with the reproductive powers, insofar as they depend on the sun, that is, they come from the solar power that is inside the earth.

But all the animals that reproduce so prolifically, up to the trillions, that is, those that can use these solar forces stored up by the sun through the earth, are lower animals. The higher animals and humans have these reproductive powers protected within. Some of the solar power still comes in and constantly refreshes these powers. Without this refreshment, they would not be there either. But from what solar power is inside the earth today, they would not be able to have their reproductive powers properly.

The plant can have them because it carries what lives in the earth from winter into summer through its own body. The plant has the reproductive power from the previous year.

But the elephant cannot have them from the previous year. It has it from a time millions of years ago, and it has it in its reproductive seed, which it in turn inherits from the elephant father to the elephant son. There it is inside. But from what time does it have it inside! Well, just as the plant has the reproductive power of the previous year within it, so the elephant has the reproductive power of millions of years within it. That is why the plant and the lower animals can reproduce from it, because they can still use the power stored up by the earth. These are tremendously strong reproductive powers. Those animals that depend on storing very ancient forces within themselves can only reproduce weakly.

But let us now go back to the time when there were such giant oysters: No sooner had such an oyster reached the point of being illuminated by the sun than it lost its inner strength and could only use the one that came from the earth. But it could still use it because the oyster was open at the bottom. When this oyster was as large as present-day France, it was open at the bottom and could absorb the earth forces that came from the sun. When these animals had then transformed themselves into megatheriums, into ichthyosaurs, when the sun shone on them from above, and they were no longer open from below, they were dependent on the reproductive power that they had within themselves, which was at most refreshed by the sun.

Yes, gentlemen, there must have been a time when animals acquired reproductive powers that they could not get when the sun shines from outside. There must have been a time when the sun was inside the earth, when not just a little of the sun's energy came into the earth, which remains in the earth in winter, for example, for the potatoes; but there was a time when the whole sun was inside the earth.

Now you will say: But the physicists say that the sun is so terribly hot, and if the sun were inside the earth, it would have burned everything. — Yes, gentlemen, you only know that from the physicists. But the physicists would be extremely astonished if they could see what the sun really looks like. If they could build a balloon and go up there, they would not find that the sun is so hot, but the sun is full of life forces, and it develops heat as the sun's rays pass through air and everything. That's where it develops heat first. So when the sun was once inside the earth, it was full of life forces. It could not only give the little life force that it can give today, but when the sun was once inside the earth, these living beings, animals and plants that were there at the time, could get enough of what the sun gave them, because the sun was inside the earth itself. But then these oysters did not develop any shells either, but were just slime.

And now imagine: there was the Earth, the Moon in it, the Sun was inside the Earth, oysters developed that had no shells, but were slime. Mucus formed; it smeared off, separated, and an oyster formed again, and again an oyster formed, and so on. But they were so huge that they could not be distinguished from each other. They were adjacent to each other. What must the earth have looked like back then? It was similar to our brain, where the cells also lie next to each other. There, too, one cell lies next to the other; only that they die, whereas in the past, when the sun was inside the earth, oyster cells, huge cells, were one next to the other, and the sun developed its powers, which it was constantly developing because it was inside the earth. Yes, gentlemen, now consider this: there was the earth (see drawing), here a giant oyster, there another giant oyster, again one, all such giant slime balls next to each other, and they were always reproducing. And today's oysters reproduce so quickly that they can have a million offspring in a short time; the oysters of that time reproduced even more quickly. Gosh, no sooner had the old oyster arrived than the young were already there, and they had young of their own and so on. The old ones had to dissolve again. If someone had looked at it from the outside, how this huge lump of earth was there like a big brain, of course much softer, much slimier than a brain today, how a giant oyster reproduced so quickly - but each one could have had a million offspring again - he would have seen: everyone had to defend themselves against the others because they bumped into each other. And if someone had come, an especially curious one, and had watched from a foreign star, he would have seen: There below, floating in space, is a giant body, but it is all life, constantly producing life, not just consisting of millions of nested oysters, but constantly reproducing. And what would he have seen? Exactly the same thing – only on a gigantic scale – as can be seen today when a human being's tiny egg is examined in the early stages! There, too, it is only a very small-scale process. There are also these small cell mucus vesicles that multiply rapidly.

166 otherwise the human being would not be able to reach his size in the first few weeks in which he is carried. The cells are so small that they have to multiply very quickly. If you had looked at the earth at that time, you would have seen the image of the earth: a giant animal, and within it the forces of the sun and the moon, in the whole earth inside.

You see, I have now shown you how to go back to the time of the earth's development when the earth, sun and moon were still one body. But, gentlemen, I would like to say: in Faust, if you have read or ever read it, Gretchen, who is sixteen years old, says to Faust when he is explaining his religion: “The pastor also says something like that; but it is a little different.” So you could also say: “Yes, the professors also say something like that, but it is a little different.” You say: “Once the sun was one body with the earth and the moon.” — That's what they say; because they say, isn't it: This sun, it was a giant body; then it turned, and then the earth split off as it turned. Then the earth turned further, and then the moon split off again. —- So basically, they also say that all three were once one body.

Then people come and say: That can be proved; it is already being proved to schoolchildren. It can be demonstrated terribly nicely. You take a small drop of oil – which floats on water – and then you take a sheet of card and cut out a small circle, push a pin through the top; afterwards you put it into the water and turn the head of the pin. The little oltröpfelchen split off and go around like that. There you have it, they say, there you see it: that happened once in the world! There was a huge gas ball in the world, just gas; but the story turned, and it was mobile. And then the outer things were just split off, our earth from the sun, just as these oltröpfchen were split off. They can prove that in school. And the children, who believe in authority, say: It happened quite naturally; there was once a huge ball of gas that was rotating, and that's how the planets were split off. We saw it ourselves, how the droplets were split off.

But now you must also ask the children: Did you see the schoolmaster up there turning the pinhead? So you have to imagine a giant schoolmaster who turned the gas ball at that time, otherwise the planets would not have been able to split off! — The giant schoolmaster - in the Middle Ages he was depicted: that was the Lord God with the long beard. That was the giant schoolmaster, and these people forget him.

But it is no explanation to assume a giant gas ball that rotates, and that could only rotate if a giant world schoolmaster had once existed. That is no explanation. But, gentlemen, it is an explanation when you come to the conclusion that the sun and the moon were connected to the earth and that it moved itself. That could move. A ball of gas cannot move by itself. But what I have explained to you here could move. In those days it did not need a world school master, but it was alive in itself. The Earth was once a living being, and indeed one such as a seed is today, and it contained the Sun and the Moon. The Sun and the Moon emerged from the Earth, leaving their inheritance behind, so that today the germinating power, protected in the maternal and paternal bodies of the human being, these powers, which once could come directly from the Sun, still reproduce and today develop the animals, the seeds and eggs in themselves, carry the ancient solar power in their egg and seminal fluids, carry it within themselves as an inheritance from ancient times, from the times when the earth itself still had the sun and moon within it.

You see, that is a real explanation, and only if you understand it that way can you really understand. Then you realize that there was once a time when the moon flew out and the earth flew out of the sun with the moon. We will discuss this matter further next Saturday at nine o'clock. It will still be a bit difficult, but nevertheless I believe that history looks like this so that you can understand it.

During these last days we have taken leave of a dear friend and loyal collaborator who has left the physical plane, Herman Joachim. He could be seen here in our circle practically every week during the war years. When we contemplate the event of death of someone near to us—filled with sentiments engendered by knowledge which we seek through spiritual science—we may find through this event also our own relation to the spiritual world. We look back on the one hand to the time we were privileged to share with him, but we also look forward into that world which is receiving the soul of the one with whom we were together. We remain united with him, for the bonds that bind us together are spiritual and cannot be severed through the event of physical death.

The name Herman Joachim is like a beacon, throwing its light far and wide, ahead of the one we have lost as far as the physical plane is concerned. It is a name that is very much connected with the development of art in the 19th century; particularly in the sphere of aesthetic interpretation of music. Indeed there is no need for me to explain here what this name stands for in recent cultural achievements. However, if Herman Joachim—who has gone into the spiritual world with all his incomparable and beautiful qualities—had come among us as someone unknown, even then, those whose good fortune it was to know him and share with him their endeavours, would have counted him among the most valuable personalities of their lives. The strength of his personality, the greatness and radiance of his soul would ensure it.

There came to expression in his human relationships with others a cultural artistic quality of a high order, passed on to him from his father. One could say that on the one hand this artistic influence came to expression in everything Herman Joachim thought and did, but it was carried and enhanced by the spirituality of his own will, his own feelings and by his striving for spiritual insight. While his father's great influence held sway in the blood so was there something in Herman Joachim's spiritual makeup which had a beautiful beginning in his life by the fact that Herman Grimm—this distinguished and unique representative of Central European cultural life—held his hand in blessing over him when a child. For Herman Grimm was godfather to Herman Joachim. I was very pleased to learn this as you will understand after the many things I have said, especially in this circle, in appreciation of Herman Grimm's contributions to cultural life in recent times. When a dear friend of his, the unique personality Walter Robert Tornow died, Herman Grimm wrote: “He departs from the society of the living and is received into the society of the dead. One feels one ought to announce to the dead just who it is that joins their ranks.” Herman Grimm did not intend these words to apply only to the one for whom he spoke them. He meant them in the sense that they express a feeling which is present in human beings in general, when someone near departs from the physical into the spiritual world.

When we look back to characteristic experiences which we were privileged to share with someone who has died, then these experiences become windows through which we can follow the further life of a now infinite being. For every human individuality is an infinite being and the experiences we shared can be compared to windows through which we look out on an unlimited landscape. However there are moments in a human life which are of special significance, it is then possible to look deeper into a human individuality. In such moments the secrets of the spiritual world reveal themselves with particular power. It is also in such moments that much of what in ordinary life is the goal of noble, intense striving, is revealed in comprehensive thought pictures permeated with feeling.

I venture to describe a moment of this kind because I consider it symptomatic of Herman Joachim. He had been connected with our movement for years when in Cologne, not long after we had become personally acquainted, we had a conversation. During this conversation it was revealed to me how this man had related his innermost soul to the spiritual powers which live and weave through the cosmos.—Perhaps I can put it in these words: I was able to recognize that he had discovered that there is an important link between responsible human souls and those Divine-spiritual powers whose wisdom governs worlds. In significant moments of his life an individual may come face to face with these powers. In such moments when he puts to himself the question: How do I unite with the world-guiding spiritual powers that are revealed to my inner sight? How can it become possible for me to think of myself as a responsible link in the world's spiritual guidance which, in my innermost self, I know I am meant to be?—Thus it was revealed to me what Herman Joachim consciously felt and experienced with all the deep seriousness of his being in such moments when man's relation to the spiritual world becomes manifest to him.

Herman Joachim had gone through many difficulties. When this endless calamity under which we all suffer broke out^* it brought him great hardship. He was in Paris where he had lived for years and where he had found his dear life companion. But now his duty obliged him to return to his former profession as a German officer. Nevertheless it was a duty with which he also had a deep inner connection. He had already fulfilled his task as officer on important occasions, doing his duty not only with expertise but with compassion and self-sacrifice. There are many who have grateful memories because they have benefitted from the true humaneness and social friendliness with which he fulfilled his calling. For myself I often remember the conversations we had during these three years of grief and human suffering, conversations in which he revealed himself as a man who was able to follow with far-reaching understanding the events of our time. There was no question of his objective judgement being clouded by thoughts of either hatred or love for the one or the other side. His intelligent assessment made him fully aware of the gravity of the situation facing us all. Nevertheless, because of his trust in the spiritual guidance of the world he was full of hope and confidence.

Herman Joachim belongs to those who accept spiritual science in a completely matter-of-fact way as something self-evident; while at the same time this matter-of-factness protects them from superficial surrender to anything of a spiritualistic nature. Such souls are not easily led astray into what can be the greatest danger: fanciful illusions and the like. After all, such illusions have their roots in a certain self-indulgent egoism. Herman Joachim had no inclination whatever towards egotistical mysticism but all the more towards great ideals, towards powerful, effective ideas of spiritual science.

He was always concerned about what each individual can do in his own situation in life, to make spiritual science effective. As a member of the Freemasons he had looked carefully into the nature of masonic practices and had resolved to do all he could to bring the life of spiritual knowledge into masonic formalism. His high position within Freemasonry enabled him to make his own, to an exceptional degree, all the profound but now formalized and rigidified knowledge accumulated over centuries. Just because of his high position he saw the possibility to bring the life and spiritual power which can only come from spiritual science into this rigidified knowledge. His aim was to enable it to enter rightly into the stream of human culture. Anyone who is aware how hard he worked towards this goal during these difficult years, how he pursued it with earnestness and integrity; anyone who realizes the strength of his will and the volume of his work in this sphere will also know how much the physical plane has lost with Herman Joachim.—I am often reminded in cases like this of someone, regarded as belonging to the intelligentsia, who is recorded as saying: No man is irreplaceable; if one goes, another steps forward to take his place. It is obvious that such an expression reveals a gross ignorance of real life; for real life shows in fact the opposite. The truth is rather that in regard to what a man accomplishes in life no one can be replaced. This truth strikes us all the more in exceptional cases such as the present one. The death of Herman Joachim strongly reminds us of the working of karma in human life. Only an understanding of human karma, the comprehension of the great karmic questions of destiny, enables us to come to terms with the death of someone, at a comparatively early age, leaving behind an important and necessary life task.

I have followed day by day the soul of our dear friend slowly leaving this realm, in which he was to accomplish so much, and entering another realm where we can find him only through the strength of our spirit, a realm from which he will be an even stronger helper than before. During this time of taking leave I was strongly aware of something else; namely, that human beings themselves demand the necessity of karma; demand it with all their inner courage and strength of spirit. It becomes evident to one's inner sight when experiencing a death of this kind. In these circumstances things must often be spoken of which can be spoken of only in our circles, but then, it is also within our spiritual movement, that human beings can find the great strength which reaches beyond death, the strength that encompasses both life and death.

Herman Joachim's soul stands clearly before me. So it stood clearly before me when, out of his own free will, he took on a spiritual task. And it comes vividly before me how he is taking hold of this task now. His death is revealed to me as something he freely chose because, from that other world his soul is able to work more actively and with stronger forces; forces more appropriate to what is necessary. Under these circumstances one may even speak of the death of an individual as a necessity, as a duty, at a quite specific moment. I know that not everyone will find what I am saying a consoling or a strengthening thought; but I also know that there are souls today to whom these thoughts can be a support when they are faced with the kind of difficulties which in our time must be endured with pain and sorrow, difficulties that one comes up against when trying to solve important and necessary tasks, difficulties that arise from the fact that we are in the physical world, incarnated in physical bodies in a materialistic environment. Yet in all our pain and sorrow we may gradually come to value the thought that death, as far as the physical plane is concerned, was chosen by someone in order to be better able to fulfill his task.

We may balance this thought against the pain which our dear friend, the wife of Herman Joachim, is suffering. We may balance it against the pain we ourselves feel over our dear friend, we may attempt to enoble our pain by thinking of him in the light of a sublime thought such as the one I have just put before you. This thought may not ease or tone down the pain, but its spiritual insight can shine like a sun into the pain and illumine our understanding for the necessity that governs man, the necessity of human destiny. Thus the event of the death of someone near to us can become an experience which brings us into contact with the spiritual world. For if our thoughts about him strengthen our soul's propensity towards the realms in which the departed sojourns then we shall not lose him; we shall remain actively united with him. Furthermore, if we grasp the full implication of the thought that someone who loved his life more than most, nevertheless accepted death because of an iron necessity, then that thought will truly express our spiritual-scientific view of the world. If we honor our friend in this way we shall remain united with him. And his life companion, left here on the physical plane, shall know that we remain united with her in thoughts of the loved one; that we, her friends, remain close to her.

The death of our dear friend Herman Joachim is one of several bereavements suffered within our society during this difficult time, one which was for me especially sad, one I have not yet been able to speak about. The great personal loss and close involvement prevents me from touching on many aspects of this bereavement.

A great many of those present will remember with love a dear and loyal member whom we have also lost from the physical plane in recent months, Olga von Sivers, the sister of Marie Steiner. She was not a personality one would come to know immediately at first encounter; she was a thoroughly modest and unassuming person. But my dear friends, setting aside the pain Marie Steiner and I suffer over this irreplaceable loss I venture to say something else about Olga von Sivers. She belongs to those among us who, from the beginning, went straight to the root of our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. She took it up with deep understanding and warmth of soul. When Olga von Sivers devoted herself to such matters she did so with her whole being for that was her nature. And she was indeed a human being in the fullest sense as everyone connected with her will know. She strongly rejected everything which nowadays, as a kind of mystical Theosophy, distorts man's inner path and leads spiritual life into wrong channels. She had a keen sense of discernment when it came to distinguishing between those spiritual impulses which belong to our time and advance man's inner progress; and others which arise from quite different impulses. The latter are often disguised as theosophical or other mystical striving. Olga von Sivers is an outstanding example of someone taking hold, in a fundamental way, of the spiritual truths which we in our movement especially strive to attain. Despite her full participation in our work it was not in her nature to neglect or disregard in any way the many and often difficult duties imposed upon her by external life. She absorbed the content of spiritual science from the start with complete understanding and was able to pass it on to others. Whenever this was granted her she undertook the task in exemplary fashion. She knew how to endow the ideas she conveyed to others with the kindness and enormous good will of her nature.

Her work continued also when she was separated from us by the frontiers which today so often and so cruelly come between human beings who are close to one another. But no frontiers prevented her from working for our cause also in regions which are now, in Central Europe, considered to be enemy country. She knew tragic experiences, all the horror of this frightful war in which she carried out truly humanitarian work right up to her last illness. She never thought of herself but was always working for others whom the horrors of war had brought into her care. She carried on this Samaritan work in the noblest sense, permeating all she did with the fruits of what she herself had accomplished within our spiritual movement. Although she is closely related to me I venture to speak with deep feeling about this aspect of Olga von Sivers, who, ever since the founding of our movement was a self-sacrificing member. To Marie Steiner and myself it was a beautiful thought that she should be physically with us once more when better times had replaced our bleak present. But here too iron necessity decided otherwise.

This again is a case when death of someone near can clarify and illumine life if we seek to understand it with spiritual insight. Certainly there are things in our society which are open to criticism, often they are things which the society itself brings to light. But we also see all around us other things which are direct results of the strength that flows through our Anthroposophical Movement, things which belong to our most beautiful, loftiest and significant experiences. Today I venture to speak of examples of this kind.

Many of you will also remember someone who, though she did not belong to this branch, I would nevertheless like to remember today because, together with her sisters she often did appear here and will be known to many of you: our Johanna Arnold who not long ago went from the physical plane into the spiritual world. One of her sisters who was equally a loyal and devoted member of our movement died two years ago.

I have in these days been working on a pamphlet to answer the spiteful attacks on our movement by professor Max Dessoir, and I constantly come across statements to the effect that I know nothing of science and that my supporters have to renounce all thoughts of their own.—Well, a personality like Johanna Arnold is a living proof that such statements coming from this ignorant professor are utter lies. Johanna Arnold's deep devotion to spiritual science contributed to the nobility of her life and also to the nobility with which she died. She is indeed a living proof that the most valuable people are among those who recognize and cultivate spiritual science. Her life brought many trials but it was also a life that developed strength of personality and brought out all the greatness of her soul. During the years in our movement she was a vigorous supporter in her branch and neighbouring circles. She did in fact, together with others, a most valuable work throughout the Rhine region. One of the others was Frau Maud Künstler who also died recently. She too was much appreciated and was also intimately connected with our movement.

Not only in her work within our movement did Johanna Arnold give evidence of her strong vigorous character. At the age of seven she, with great courage, saved her older sister from drowning. Part of her life was spent in England. She gave ample proof that not only is life a great teacher but it can also make a soul strong and powerful. Moreover in her case life revealed to her the divine spiritual for which the human soul longs. Through her inner mobility and strength Johanna Arnold became a benefactress to the Anthroposophists whose leader she was. To us who saw the extent of her commitment to our movement she became a dear friend. During these last years since the beginning of this dreadful war—in her attempt to understand what is happening to mankind—Johanna Arnold would ask me significant questions. She was constantly occupied with the thought as to the real meaning of this most difficult trial of the human race and concerned about what each one of us can do in order to go through it in a positive way. None of the daily occurrences of the war escaped her notice. But she was also able to see them in their wider context, bringing them into relation with mankind's spiritual evolution in general. In her attempt to solve the riddle of mankind she made a close study of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Robert Hamerling.

There are indeed many examples in our movement which can show how spiritual science affects man's whole life, his way of working, his inner development. And Johanna Arnold is a living proof, if such is required, that it is a blatant lie to say that individual thought must be renounced in our movement. She was looked up to as an example by those who knew her, not only through her devotion and loyalty to our spiritual-scientific movement but also because she sought through earnest independent thinking, to fathom the secrets of man's existence.—I am personally grateful to all those who so beautifully expressed their appreciation at the funeral of our friend. Her sister who is with us today has witnessed within a short time the death of Johanna Arnold as well as that of another sister; to her we would say that we shall remain united with her in loyal thoughts of those who have gone from her side into the spiritual world. We shall cherish their memory and retain a living connection with them.

These thoughts concerning departed friends, linked as they are with sorrowful experiences, also belong to our studies—using the word here free from all pedantry. We know that for the human soul there is survival and new beginning, but does the same apply to the many hopes and expectations we witness that come to nothing especially in our times? Why is it, we may ask, that even those who have a measure of insight into mankind's evolution nurture unjustified hopes and expectations? The answer is that we must nurture them, for they are forces, effective forces. Any doubt we may have as to whether they will be fulfilled should not prevent us from cherishing them because while we do they act as forces and produce effects whether they are fulfilled or not. We must accept it if, for the time being, they come to nothing. How gladly we set our hopes on many a person when he shows the first signs of warm understanding for the spiritual world. One has such hopes despite the fact that in our materialistic age they are often shattered. In recent lectures I have described deeper reasons as to why such hopes are shattered.

In this connection we must be clear that what we call human courage, which we see today in such abundance in many spheres of external life, is very seldom found in relation to spiritual life. This is why the personalities I spoke of today are really models even in regard to more external aspects of our society and movement. It is dawning on many people today that materialism will not do. But what I have often referred to as man's love of ease prevents them from committing themselves to spiritual science. Yet nothing else can save human civilization from plunging into disaster. There are people who are often quite near the point of crossing the threshold into spiritual science; that they do not is basically due to indolence. It is love of ease that prevents them from making their soul receptive and pliable enough to grasp ideas that quite concretely explain the spiritual world. There are many today who enthuse in general about the mystical unity of worlds, vaguely declaring that science alone does not explain everything; faith must come to its aid. But the courage to penetrate earnestly into the descriptions and explanations of the spiritual world that lies at the foundation of the sense world, that courage is greatly lacking.

Last winter I spoke about Hermann Bahr, about his path of knowledge. His latest books, “Expressionism” and the novel “Ascension,” suggested that he was at the point of becoming conscious of the spiritual world. There is no doubt that despite his vacillations and changes of direction he was at last striving towards the spirit. But his very latest writing which he has just sent me is very curious. Its title is “Reason and Knowledge”^* and it deals with the way modern humanity, in contrast to former times, relies more on reason when seeking spiritual insight, when trying to understand the World Order. Hermann Bahr begins by asking what reason has achieved. In the 18th Century, striving to develop reason was synonymous with so-called enlightenment which also played a decisive role in the 19th Century. He begins by saying that: “Before the war the West imagined that its peoples shared a feeling of community. They were cosmopolitans or else ‘good’ Europeans. There was the glittering world of millionaires, there were the dilettante and the aesthetes and also the international set, the uprooted vagabonds, spending their lives in sleeping cars and in grand hotels by the sea. And there were the proud communities of scientists and artists. Furthermore we had people's rights, we had humanitarianism. Internationally we shared the fruits of industry, commerce, money, thoughts, taste, morals and humour. All the nations in the West had aims and goals in common. They even thought they had also a means in common by which to attain these shared goals: the means of human reason! The hope was that, through united effort and human reason, mankind would attain what was perhaps beyond the reach of single individuals: ultimate truth. We have been robbed of all this by the war; it has all vanished.”

Thus Hermann Bahr, looking at the state of the world, concludes that modern man places a one-sided emphasis on reason. He recalls an interesting episode in Goethe's life. In Bohemia Goethe observed a strangely shaped mountain, the Kammerbühl and he concluded that the mountain must be of volcanic origin. He was convinced it had been formed in an ancient volcanic eruption. But others did not share his view; they presumed the mountain had originated through sedimentation which had been driven upwards by the force of water. Goethe was unable to convince these people that his assumption was the right one. He felt an inner impulse which convinced him that the mountain was of volcanic origin. The others were equally certain it had come about through sedimentation. This argument suggested to Hermann Bahr that impulses, quite different from reason, influence man's judgments; he saw them as impulses at work behind reason. Hermann Bahr concedes that not everyone is a Goethe; nevertheless, it seems to him that while people think they are following reason they are in fact determined by impulses. Earlier, in the Middle Ages, people were exhorted to have faith, to base their thoughts about the world on faith. But faith has become a mere phrase, it has lost its influence except in aspects of life in which science plays no role. Thus to Hermann Bahr man seems to be determined by his impulses. He asks: What kind of impulses are at work in modern man? He goes on to enumerate some impulses and emotions which delude people into believing they are following solely their reason. He says that Americans for example have a particularly strong impulse towards pragmatism. They want what is useful and practical, hence the famous pragmatism of William James.¹⁴ However Hermann Bahr now asks: What has come of this urge toward the useful? He is of the opinion that: “there are two main urges in Western man.” He then points to the much quoted expression that in the Middle Ages science was the handmaid of Theology; looking at modern culture he concludes that reason is certainly not the handmaid to Theology, rather has it become the handmaid of Greed. He then goes into still deeper problems; the individual, he says, cannot exist by himself, he must live in a community. This community is the State in which the individual has his place. This observation inevitably leads Hermann Bahr to ask if, here again, are not emotions the determining factors within the various States? At this point he attempts to link a spiritual element to the individual human soul. This spiritual element he tries to find first in Goethe and Kant; and he finally comes to the following thought: We see inner impulses at work in our lower life, impulses which draw reason along with them. It is therefore not reason which proves to us whether something is true or untrue. We judge things according to our inner impulses, according to what we want them to be. Thus Goethe wanted the Kammerbühl to be of volcanic origin while his opponents wanted it produced by sedimentation. Hermann Bahr came to the conclusion that there must be impulses in man other than those which stem from the lower nature. This thought brings him to the idea of Genius. What is done by a genius is also done out of impulse, but not a lower one. A genius is someone who is influenced by an element of a cosmic nature. However, the word genius almost makes Hermann Bahr split hairs. He consults Grimm's dictionary to get to the bottom of what the word Genius means; he familiarizes himself with what Goethe, Schiller, the Romantics and others, meant by it. He comes to see that the word genius cannot be applied indiscriminately. For example, if it is used to denote the highest impulse in the pursuit of knowledge then all professors would claim to be geniuses and there would be as many of them to venerate as there were professors. Hermann Bahr had no wish for that, so he looks for another way out. He comes to the conclusion that Goethe was quite right in applying the word genius only to a few special individuals. If applicable only to a few then it cannot be considered as an impulse for scientific endeavour. In short Hermann Bahr reaches a point where he senses that the soul of man has a connection with the spiritual world. He says: “You may tear me to pieces but I cannot explain the logical connection between the impact on the human soul of the hymn: ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ (‘Come Holy Ghost’) and the meaning of genius in the Goethean sense. The connection is there and is sublime, powerful and real, yet I cannot explain it.”

However, there is one thing that Herman Bahr does want to explain; namely, that relying merely on reason does not help; reason as such, he says, does not lead man to truth. He rejects what in the age of enlightenment had been seen as the supremacy of reason, had been seen as reason's ability to explain everything observed and investigated. He wants to dethrone reason for in his view it has become subservient to external trade and technology and it simply follows man's impulses.

One thing these inner impulses of man do demonstrate is how a man like Hermann Bahr is able to reach the portal of spiritual science and then, because of lack of initiative to get to grips with spiritual science he holds back. He remains at the point of view that reason on its own is helpless, faith must step in to guide it. Thus the impulses that are to guide man must come, not from his lower nature but from God. He must receive them through faith. Knowledge must be guided by faith, reason alone can attain nothing. Hermann Bahr makes great effort to find confirmation of this idea. For example he makes an interesting reference to Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi¹⁵ who in a letter once expressed the perceptive idea that when it comes to the human soul's ability to grasp truth it is as if it were capable of elasticity, of expansion. This is a very ingenious idea of Jacobi's. I expressed the same thing somewhat differently in my Philosophy of Freedom where I spoke of an organism of thought, wherein one thought grows out of the preceding one. Whenever one arrives at the "elasticity" of man's inner nature, thinking continues, through its own power, the line of thought. When this happens one is experiencing the power of the spirit in one's own soul. Both Jacobi and Hermann Bahr point to the fact that something of a spiritual nature lives and acts in the human soul. What is so remarkable about Hermann Bahr is that he attempts to find in man the higher, the divine man, by demonstrating that reason is subservient to faith. In so doing he denies validity to the very impulse, i.e., reason that governs modern scientific endeavour.

One impulse Hermann Bahr does not discover: the Christ impulse which lives, or at least can live, in modern man. He points to Christ in only one place—two other places where he mentions Christ have no significance—and what he says there does not come from him but is a quotation from Pascal.¹⁶ It comes from Cascali “Pensus” when he says that “we human beings only know ourselves through Jesus Christ; that we know life and death only through Jesus Christ; through ourselves alone we know nothing either of our life or our death; nothing of either God or ourselves.”—Here Pascal is pointing to an impulse that comes from within man yet does not stem from himself; i.e. the Christ impulse. To understand it a sense of history is needed, for it has only been on earth since the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus Hermann Bahr gets no further than Harnack and others. He comes as far as the idea of a universal God who speaks through nature, but not to a living understanding of Christ. This, once more, is an example of someone who is striving for truth yet cannot find the Christ and is unaware that he does not find Him. Hermann Bahr is at pains to show that throughout the evolution of the world man's striving is in evidence. He says beautiful things about Greek and Roman culture and even about Mohammed. The only thing he leaves out is the Mystery of Golgotha. He speaks of Christianity only in a reference to St. Augustine. But no amount of preoccupation with reason and the like can lead to Christ; it can lead only to a universal God. Christ, the God who descended from cosmic heights into earthly life, lives in us as truly as our own highest being lives in us. As Pascal indicated, we can attain knowledge of life and death; of God and ourselves only through being permeated by Christ. This truth can be recognized and understood only through spiritual science.

Goethe did pave the way to spiritual science. But when Hermann Bahr—in order to justify why he finally turned to faith—tries to explain the value of all kinds of statements by Goethe, all he says is: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teaching of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” Here we see the influence of an external power which at present clearly indicates its intention to increase that power. Yet people remain deaf and blind to the signs of the times; they let what can explain the signs of the times pass them by. Hermann Bahr in his own way is well able to read these signs. He knows of the many things that induce modern man to say things like: “It will not be necessary for me to testify that I acknowledge the teachings of the Vatican and the views of Goethe and Kant.” It is a supreme example of how indolence can make a man come to a standstill in his endeavour. I love Hermann Bahr and have no wish to say anything against him. I only want to indicate what in such a characteristic way can influence a talented and significant personality of our time.

It is easy enough to blame reason, much can be said against it. It can be accused of not leading man to truth. However, blaming reason simply shows that the matter has not been thought through. Sufficient exploration will reveal that it is only when reason is permeated by Ahriman that it leads away from truth. Similarly if faith is permeated by Lucifer it also leads away from truth. Faith is in danger of being saturated with Lucifer, reason with Ahriman. But neither faith nor reason as such lead to untruth or error. In the religious sense they are gifts of God to man. When they follow their rightful path they will lead to truth, never to either error or untruth. Deeper insight reveals how Ahriman comes to insinuate himself into reason and bring about confusion. This knowledge can be obtained however, only by penetrating into the actual spiritual world. To do this requires one to make the effort to grasp the ideas, the descriptions which depict the spiritual world. If man persists in living in arid abstractions he sins against reason and remains ignorant of the fact that through the development of reason in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch man's ‘I’ is to enter the consciousness soul. People talk about man's relation to the spirit like the blind talk about colors. However, no matter how much the ignorant accuse one of contradictions—when speaking from the point of view of spiritual science—it is essential, as already explained, to stand by the results obtained when the spirit is investigated by spiritual means. One has a personal responsibility for the spirit.

This is the kind of responsibility I was able to speak about earlier in connection with special personalities whose example illustrates man's greatness when he feels responsible, not only for his actions, but also for his thoughts and feelings. By contrast you here have someone with no feeling of responsibility; without trying to discover what the present needs, he links onto influences in man's evolution which belong in the past. Consequently Hermann Bahr can say: “If anyone is interested in the path that led me to God, he may refer to my publication ‘Taking Stock’ and ‘Expressionism’ but I must ask the reader not to generalize my personal experiences; they have helped me but may not necessarily help others” and “Should the reader come upon any passage which deviates from the fundamental issue I must ask him to balance it against my good intentions. Any unfortunate ambiguous phrase caused by negligence is against my will and to my regret.” In other words if one simply accepts whatever decree that goes out from the Vatican there is no need to be personally responsible for one's actions.

It may be a good thing when someone openly and sincerely makes such a confession. However what it implies could not be further from the attitude of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science. What Hermann Bahr is confessing actually expresses a fundamental condition demanded by that spiritual stream which is again trying to assert itself. A condition one could sum up by saying: “The authority of the Vatican decrees what the world in general should believe and profess. And I concede from the start that what as a single individual I hold dear, my belief, my view of things are not the concern of the world in general. I may add my voice but only to the extent it finds approval with the Vatican.”

I do not know to what extent it is still fashionable to make confessions of this kind. What I do know is that spiritual science must rest on its own independent research and take full responsibility for that research. It must also accept disillusions and shattered hopes no matter how often they occur, also when they are, as in the case of Hermann Bahr, completely unexpected.

• *. The first World War
• *. “Vernunft and Wissenschaft”
• 14. William James 1842–1910 American Philosopher, founder of Pragmatism
• 15. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi 1743–1819 Philosopher and Novelist.
• 16. Blaise Pascal 1623–1662 French Natural Philosopher

When we are engaged in the study of one or other of the Gospels and trying to explain it, it would doubtless be best to leave the other Gospels altogether out of account. By this means it would be possible to reach the purest and best understanding of the prevailing tone of each. But it is obvious that such an approach could lead to misunderstandings, unless a ray of light were thrown upon it from one of the other Gospels. And precisely what we called yesterday the “greatest monologue in world history” can easily be misunderstood if someone were to consult in a superficial and not too accurate manner what had, for example, to be said in connection with the similar passage in the Matthew Gospel in the lectures I gave in Bern.¹ Indeed, an objection made from such a standpoint would really in a deeper logical sense be the same as if the statement were made that a man once stood on this platform and on his left was a bouquet of roses. Then another statement would be made that a man once stood on this platform and on his right was a bouquet of roses, and a man who had not been present proceeded to object, saying that there must be a mistake since one time the bouquet of roses was on the right and the other time on the left. It all depends on where the observer in question was standing, for both statements can be correct. So it is with the Gospels, where we are not concerned simply with an abstract biography of Christ Jesus, but with a rich world of external and occult facts that are presented in them.

In order to picture to ourselves this viewpoint let us now consider again what we called yesterday the “greatest monologue in world history,” the soliloquy of the God. We must recognize that the whole episode was especially concerned with the relationship between Christ Jesus and His closest disciples. And we must include in such a study most particularly what was said yesterday, that the spirit of Elijah, after it had been freed from the physical body of John the Baptist, was actually active as a kind of group soul of the disciples. What happened then cannot just be related in a simple external way since it took place in a much more complicated manner. To a certain extent there was a deep and inner connection between the soul of the Christ and the souls of the Twelve. Everything that took place within the soul of Christ was made up of processes of significance for that time, rich and manifold processes. But all that took place in the soul of Christ took place again in a kind of reflected image, a reflection in the souls of the disciples, but divided into twelve parts. In this way each of the Twelve experienced, as in a reflected image, a part of what happened in the soul of Christ Jesus; but each of the Twelve experienced it somewhat differently. What took place within the soul of Christ Jesus was like a harmony, a great symphony, reflected in the souls of each of the Twelve, in much the same way as twelve instruments can give forth a harmony. So any event that concerns one or more of the disciples in particular may be described from two sides. It is possible to describe how the event in question appeared within the soul of Christ, as, for example, in the case of the great world-historical monologue of Christ Jesus. It is possible to describe how it was experienced within His soul, and then it appears as it was described yesterday. But it also takes place in a certain reflected image in the soul of Peter. Peter has the same soul experience. But, whereas in the case of Christ Jesus it encompasses the whole of mankind, Peter's identical experience encompasses only a twelfth part of all mankind, a twelfth, a single zodiacal sign of the entire Christ spirit. For this reason it must be pictured differently when it concerns Christ Jesus Himself.

It must be spoken of in this way if we are to describe it in the sense of the Mark Gospel, for most remarkable things are described in it, and especially what is presented as having taken place within the soul of Christ Jesus Himself. By contrast the Matthew Gospel pictures more what has reference to the soul of Peter, and what Christ Jesus added to explain what took place within Peter's soul. If you read the Gospel carefully, you will notice how in the Matthew Gospel certain words have been added which give us the picture as perceived from the side of Peter. Otherwise, why should the words have been added, “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed it to you but my Father in the heavens.” (Matt. 16:17)? In other words the soul of Peter felt something of what the soul of Christ had been feeling. But while Peter's soul felt that his master was Christ, this should be understood as meaning that Peter was for a time raised upward to an experience in his higher “I,” and that he was overwhelmed by this experience and then fell back, as it were, afterward. Nevertheless it was possible for him to penetrate through to a knowledge which, with a different aim and purpose, came about within the soul of Christ. Because Peter was able to do this, there followed the handing over of the power of the keys mentioned in the Matthew Gospel (Matt. 16:19), about which we spoke in our interpretation of that Gospel. By contrast, in speaking of the Mark Gospel we have emphasized, forcefully and simply, those words that indicate that the event, quite apart from what happened within Peter, took place at the same time and in a parallel manner as the monologue of God.

This is how we must look at these things, enabling us to feel how Christ Jesus deals with His own, how He leads them on from stage to stage, and how after the spirit of Elijah-John had passed over into them He could lead them more deeply than He could earlier into the comprehension of spiritual secrets. And one of our first impressions is that it is significant that the passage we discussed at the end of our last lecture, the monologue of the God, should be closely followed by the so-called Transfiguration or Transformation scene. That is also a significant element in the dramatic composition of the Mark Gospel. In order to shed light on the Transfiguration we need to point out a few facts that are related to many things necessary for the understanding of the picture presented in the Gospels. Let us begin by referring to one of these.

You can read often in the Mark Gospel, as well as in the other Gospels, how Christ Jesus speaks of how the Son of Man must suffer many things, that He would be set upon by the scribes and high priests, that He would be put to death and after three days would be raised. You will notice how up to a certain point the apostles are unable to understand at first what is meant by the suffering, death and raising of the Son of Man, how they experience a real difficulty particularly in understanding this passage (Mark 9:31-32). Why are we confronted with this peculiar fact? Why is it precisely with reference to the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha itself that the apostles experience these difficulties? What then is the Mystery of Golgotha? We have already spoken of this. It is nothing else but the drawing forth of initiation from the depths of the mysteries onto the plane of world history. Of course there is a crucial difference between the average initiation and the Mystery of Golgotha. This difference consists in the following.

All those who were initiated into the mysteries of the various peoples had in a certain sense experienced the same thing. An initiate was made to suffer, and one could say that he was apparently dead for three days, during which his spirit remained in the spiritual worlds outside his body. Then his spirit was brought back into his body in such a way that the spirit in his body could remember what it had undergone in the spiritual world, and could then appear as a messenger, proclaiming the secrets of the spiritual world. Thus we can say that initiation is a journey into death, though in such a death the spirit is not separated entirely from the body, but only for a limited time. Initiation involves remaining outside the physical body and returning into it, thereby becoming a messenger for the secrets of the divine world. It took place after careful preparation, and after the candidate had reached a condition where his soul forces were so concentrated within him that he could live without using the instrument of his physical body. Then after these three and a half days he had to unite himself again with his physical body. We may say that the initiate passed through this by withdrawing into a higher world unconnected with ordinary historical events.

Although the Mystery of Golgotha was, to outward appearance, similar, it differed in its inner nature. The events that occurred during the period when the Christ dwelt in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had actually resulted in the genuine physical death of the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. The spirit of Christ remained for three days outside the physical body but it then returned. And now it was not in the physical body but in the concentrated etheric body, concentrated in such a way that it was possible for the disciples to perceive it, as described in the Gospels—with the consequence that Christ could walk and become visible also after the event of Golgotha. Thereby initiation, which formerly took place in the depths of the mysteries, hidden from external eyes, was presented as a historical event, a unique event, before all mankind. Through this, initiation was, in a sense, lifted out of the mysteries; it had been accomplished by the one Christ before the eyes of everyone. And precisely with this event the ancient world came to an end and the new era began.

From the picture that has been given you of the prophets you have seen that the prophetic spirit, and what was given by this prophetic spirit to the ancient Hebrew people, differed from the spirit of initiation prevalent among other peoples. These other peoples had their initiates, who were initiated in the manner we have just described. This was not the case with the ancient Hebrew people. With them it was not a question of initiation of the same kind as among the other peoples. Here we have to do with an elemental emergence of the spirit within the bodies of those who appeared as prophets; something resembling “geniuses of spirituality” appeared. To enable this to happen we see that in the middle prophetic period souls appear in the ancient Hebrew people who in earlier incarnations had been initiates among the other peoples, so that they experience everything they give to the ancient Hebrew people as a memory of what they themselves had received in their initiation. For this reason spiritual life did not shine into the ancient Hebrew people in the same way as it did into other peoples. In the case of these other peoples it occurred through an act, through initiation, whereas in the case of the Old Testament people it came by virtue of the gifts that had been implanted in those who worked actively as prophets among the people. Through the activity of their prophets the Hebrew people were made ready to experience that unique initiation which was no longer that of a human individuality but of a cosmic individuality, if, indeed one may speak of an initiation at all in this case, which is no longer correct. Through this the Hebrew people were prepared to receive something that was to take the place of the old initiation: they were made ready to view the Mystery of Golgotha in the right way. But one consequence of this was that the apostles, who belonged to the Old Testament people, had at first no understanding of the words that characterize initiation. Christ Jesus spoke about initiation when He expressed himself in such terms as hastening toward death, remaining in the grave for three days and being raised from the dead. This is a description of initiation. If He had described it in a different way they would have understood Him. But because such a way of speaking of initiation was foreign to the Old Testament people the Twelve could not at first understand His description. So it is quite correctly pointed out to us that the disciples were astonished and did not know to what He was referring when He spoke of the suffering and death and raising of the Son of Man.

Such things are therefore entirely in accord with the spiritual content of the events as they are historically presented. When the ancient initiate experienced his initiation it is true that he was in a higher world while he was outside his body; he was not in the ordinary sense-perceptible world. We may say that while he was outside his body he was at one with the realities of a higher plane. While he was free of his body in the spiritual world, returning later to his body, what had he experienced? It was memory. He had to speak in such a way that he could say, “I remember my experiences when I was free of my body, in the same way as in ordinary life one can remember what one experienced yesterday or the day before.” He could bear witness to them. As far as these initiates are concerned it did not amount to much more than that they bore in their souls the secrets of the spiritual worlds in the same way that the human soul retains in memory what it experienced yesterday. And as the soul is united with what it retains as memory, so the initiates were united with the secrets of the spiritual world that they carried within themselves.

What was the reason for this? It was because before the Mystery of Golgotha human souls on earth were not adapted to allowing the kingdoms of the heavens, the super-sensible worlds, to penetrate into the ego. They could not approach the true ego, could not unite themselves with it. Only if a man could see beyond himself or could glimpse the divine by means of the clairvoyance that existed in those ancient times, if, as I might put it, he dreamt himself away or were freed from his ego through initiation, could he enter the super-sensible worlds. But within the ego there was no comprehension, no understanding of the higher worlds. This is how it was in those ancient times. Before the Mystery of Golgotha man could not unite himself with the spiritual worlds even by making use of all the forces pertaining to his ego.

The secret that was to be revealed to the people through the baptism of John was that the time had now come near when the kingdoms of heaven were to shine right into the ego; they were to approach the ego, the earthly ego. In truth it has been indicated all through the ages how what man could experience as his soul element could not in ancient times enter the super-sensible worlds. In ancient times there was something like a disharmony between the way in which the true home of man, the spiritual world, was experienced, and that which, if we wish to describe the old soul nature as “ego,” was active in the inner being of man. This human inner self was separated from the spiritual world, and only in exceptional conditions could it be united with it. And when all the might of what was later to become the ego and to live within man, when all the power and the impulses of the ego filled him, for example through initiation, or through remembering the experience of initiation in a former incarnation in a later one—when the power and might of the ego prematurely penetrated into his bodily nature, what happened then? It has always been pointed out that in the pre-Christian era the ego force, too powerful for the human bodily nature, could find its proper place in the body, and broke through what was destined for the ego.

For this reason those human beings who bear within themselves more of the super-sensible world, bearing within themselves in pre-Christian times something of what would in a later age become the ego, such persons split apart their human bodily constitution with this ego force because this force is too strong for the pre-Christian era. This is clearly alluded to, for example, in the case of certain individualities during a particular incarnation who possess this ego force in themselves, but this ego can remain within them only because the body is in some way wounded, or vulnerable, wounded and having a vulnerable spot. It is in this spot that the individuality is exposed to danger from his surroundings more than in any other part of his body. We need only recall the vulnerability of Achilles' heel, of Siegfried and Oedipus whose bodies are split asunder by the force of the ego. These examples of wounds demonstrate to us how only a damaged body is compatible with the greatness of the ego, and the superhuman ego force that is within it.

Perhaps the significance of what I am trying to place before our souls could be grasped better if I formulate it in a different way. Let us suppose that someone in pre-Christian times were to be filled, not necessarily consciously, with all those impulses and forces that later on will penetrate the ego, and that these forces which I might call a superego force, a superhuman force, were to dive down into his body. He would have to break apart his body and not perceive it as it was when it had its weak ego, its weak inner self, within it. A man of olden times would necessarily have seen it differently if he possessed within himself the whole power of the ego, enabling him to rise up out of his body. He would have seen the body as it actually was, broken under the influence of the superego. He would have seen it with every kind of wound imaginable because in ancient times only a weak ego, a weak inner self, penetrated the body so slightly that it could remain whole.

What I have just said was indeed stated by the prophets. The passage (Zechariah 12:10) is so formulated that it runs approximately as follows, “A man who unites in himself the full force of egohood and is confronted with the human body, sees it wounded, pierced through with holes. For the higher ego force which in ancient times could not yet live within the inner self, pierces through, penetrates and makes holes in the body.” This is an impulse that runs through the evolution and development of mankind for the reason that as a result of the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman in pre- Christian times only a portion of the ego could be bestowed on man. And because the body is adapted only to the smaller portion and not to the whole force of the ego, it is worn down. It was not because this took place in the pre-Christian era but because in the case of Christ Jesus the full power of the ego entered all at once, and entered with the utmost strength into His bodily being, that this body had to appear not only with a single wound, as was the case with so many human individualities who carried a superego, but with five wounds. These were necessary because the Christ-Being, that is, the full ego of man, projected far beyond the bodily form appropriate for those times. It was for this reason that the cross had to be erected on the physical plane of world history, that cross that bore the body of Christ, a human body such as that of man would be if for a moment the whole of man's nature, a large part of which has been lost through the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman, were to live within one single human being.

It is a profound mystery that is given to us by occult science in the picture of the Mystery of Golgotha. Anyone who understands the true nature of the human being and of humanity, and the nature of the earthly ego and its relation to the form of the human body, knows that when the human body is entirely penetrated by the earthly ego such a penetration would be abnormal for the ordinary man as he walks about on earth. But when a man goes out of himself and sees himself from outside and is able to ask the question, “How would this body be if the totality of egohood were to enter into it?” then his answer must be that it would be pierced by five wounds. The form of the cross on Golgotha with Christ upon it with His wounds is derived from the nature of man and from the very being of the earth itself. From our study of the nature of man it is possible for the picture of the Mystery of Golgotha to arise for us out of our own knowledge. Strange as it may seem, it is actually possible to see how the cross is raised on Golgotha, how the crucifixion takes place, and to perceive directly the truth of this historical event, and all this without the use of clairvoyance when such a vision would be natural. Because of the Mystery of Golgotha it is possible for the human intellect to approach so closely to this mystery that if it is used with sufficient sharpness and subtlety it can be transformed into an imagination, into a picture that then contains the truth. If we understand the nature of Christ and His relation to the human bodily form, our imagination can be guided in this way in such a manner that the picture of Golgotha itself arises for us. The older Christian painters were often guided in this way. Even though they were not perhaps in all cases clairvoyant, their knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha was so powerful that it impelled them so far that they were able to picture it in such a way that they could paint it. It was just at this great turning point of human evolution that the understanding of the being of Christ, in other words, the primal ego of man, emerged out of clairvoyance and rose up into the ego-soul of man.

It is possible to see the Mystery of Golgotha through clairvoyance outside the body. By what means? If while within the body a relationship has been established to the Mystery of Golgotha, it is possible also today to perceive it in the higher worlds, and in so doing to receive a full confirmation of the truth of this great nodal point in the evolution of mankind. It is, however, also possible to comprehend the Mystery of Golgotha, and the words I have just spoken ought to make this understanding possible. It is, of course, necessary to reflect and meditate on them for a long time. If anyone should feel it difficult to grasp what has just been said, such a feeling is perfectly justifiable, for it goes without saying that anything that can lead the human soul to a full understanding of the highest and most significant event that has ever happened on earth is bound to be difficult. In a certain way the disciples had to be led toward this understanding; and of all those who had to be led gradually to a new understanding of the evolution of mankind, Peter, James, and John proved to be the most suitable.

It is good for us to picture to ourselves from as many sides as we can the significant epoch that began at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore it was especially helpful that you were able to hear this morning how Hegel² envisaged this turning point of time. We need everything that human understanding can contribute if we are to grasp the significance of what entered into human evolution at that time, something that had been maturing during the preceding centuries and took place about the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, thereafter slowly preparing and conditioning the further evolution of humanity. It manifested itself in various parts of the earth and we can trace it not only in Palestine where the Mystery of Golgotha itself occurred, but in other parts of the earth where the Mystery of Golgotha did not occur. If we proceed in the right way we can trace how as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha mankind descended and then reascended, and was uplifted as the Mystery of Golgotha spread throughout the Western world. In particular we can trace the descent of mankind, and this indeed is especially interesting.

Let us consider once again the land of Greece, and picture to ourselves what happened there half a millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha. In the East, where Krishna appeared, people were in a certain way ahead of their time in the period when the old clairvoyance was dying out. Indeed, there was something remarkable about the culture of ancient India. During the time immediately following the Atlantean age with the great cultural flowering of the first post-Atlantean epoch, the human soul still had the possibility of seeing into the spiritual world in the purest manner. In the case of the Rishis this faculty was accompanied by the wonderful ability to present what they had seen in such a way that it could influence later ages. Then when the clairvoyance disappeared, what they had given could be preserved in such significant revelations as those given out by Krishna; although the true clairvoyance already had been extinguished by the end of the third epoch. But what had been perceived in this earlier age was preserved in wonderful words through Krishna and his pupils, with the result that what at an earlier time had been seen could now be expressed in writing. So what happened further west, for example in Greece, never happened in India at all.

If we perceive correctly the Indian world we may say that the old clairvoyance died out, and because it died out some men, among whom Krishna was the most important, wrote down in wonderful words what had formerly been seen. This, then, appears in the Vedas, in the word; and anyone who immerses himself in the word experiences an echo of it in his soul. But this is quite different from what came forth, for example, in Socrates or other philosophers. What may be called Western intellect, Western power of judgment, never appears in Indian souls. Nor can there be found one example in India of what we today speak of in the fullest sense as the inborn power of the ego. As a result just as the old clairvoyance was dying out there came an urge toward Yoga, a new means of ascending into the spiritual worlds through training as a compensation for the loss of natural clairvoyance. Yoga therefore became an artificial clairvoyance, and the philosophy of Yoga appeared without a time interval, such as that during which, in Greece, for example, a rational philosophy appeared. Nothing of this appeared in India; an interim phase was totally lacking. If we take up the Vedanta philosophy of Vyasa we may say that it is not distinguished for its ideas and intellect as are the teachings of the Western world conceptions, but it appears to have been brought down from higher worlds though expressed in human speech. What is remarkable about it is that it was not achieved through human thinking, nor is it thought out like the characteristic teachings of Socrates and Plato. It was, indeed, the product of clairvoyant perception.

It is difficult to come to a clear idea about such matters. Nevertheless, there is a possibility even at the present time to experience the difference between these two kinds of philosophy. Take up any book on philosophy, any presentation of some Western philosophical system. How has anything that can be regarded as a serious philosophy been achieved? If you could see into the workroom of anyone who can be regarded today as a serious philosopher you would see how it is through the power of logical thinking and logical judgment that such systems are created, and each is built up step by step. But those who work out their philosophies in this way are quite unable to understand that their kind of conceptual weaving can also to a certain extent be perceived clairvoyantly, that a clairvoyant can see it in front of him through his clairvoyance. If therefore, instead of passing through all the individual stages of thought we were to survey clairvoyantly, in one fell swoop so to speak, a number of philosophical theses that have been woven together by the sweat of one's brow, concept by concept, then we shall experience much difficulty in making ourselves understood. Yet the concepts of the Vedanta philosophy are concepts of this kind, and they were seen clairvoyantly. They were not acquired by the sweat of the brow, like the concepts of European philosophers, but were brought down clairvoyantly. They are just the last remnants of the ancient clairvoyance, diluted into abstract concepts. Or else they are the first fragile conquests of Yoga in the super-sensible worlds.

Those people who lived more to the West went through different experiences. There we see remarkable and important inner events in the evolution of mankind. Let us take the case of a remarkable philosopher of the sixth century before the Christian era, Pherecydes of Syros.³ He was indeed a remarkable philosopher, though present-day philosophers do not count him even as a philosopher at all. There are books on philosophy which actually say—I will quote a few words verbatim—that all he gives are childish symbols, childish descriptions. So does a man today speak who imagines himself to be greatly superior to those ancient philosophers. He calls these notions “childish and ingenious.” Nevertheless, half a millennium before the Christian era a remarkable thinker emerged in Syros. Certainly he describes things differently from other thinkers, who were later to be called philosophers. For example, Pherecydes says, “Underlying everything visible in the world is a trinity: Chronos, Zeus and Chthon. From Chronos comes the airy, the fiery and the watery element. Ophioneus, a kind of serpent being, comes into conflict with all that stems from these three powers.” Even if we have no clairvoyance but only some imagination it is possible to see in front of us everything that he describes. Chronos is put forward not merely as abstract passing time but as a real being in a perceptible form. It is the same with Zeus, the limitless ether, as a living self-perpetuating being; while Chthon, who draws down to earth what once was heavenly, draws together into the planet earth all that is woven in space, in order to make earthly existence possible. All this happens on earth. Then a kind of serpent being interferes, and introduces, so to speak, a hostile element. If we examine what this remarkable Pherecydes of Syros describes, it can easily be understood without the aid of spiritual research. He is a last straggler endowed with the clairvoyance of earlier times. He sees behind the sense world to the real causes, and these he describes with the aid of his clairvoyance. Naturally this does not at all please those who prefer to juggle concepts. He sees the living weaving of the good gods and how hostile powers interfere in their work; and all this he describes from the viewpoint of a clairvoyant. He sees how the elements are born out of Chronos, out of Time seen as a real being.

So we have in this philosopher Pherecydes of Syros a man who still sees into the world with his soul, gazing into the world disclosed by clairvoyant consciousness, and describing it; and we are able to follow his description. Thus he stands before us in the Western world as late as the sixth century, B.C. while Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander and Heraclitus,⁴ who are almost his contemporaries, stand there in a quite different manner. Here two worlds actually come together. But how does it appear within the souls of these men? The old clairvoyance has been extinguished, paralyzed in them, and at most all that is left is a longing for the spiritual worlds. What, then, do they experience in place of the living vision that the sage of Syros still possessed, a man who could still look into the world of primal causes? This world has closed to them; they can no longer see into it. It is as if this world wished to close itself to them, as if it was still half present for them but nevertheless eluded them, with the result that they replace the old clairvoyance with abstract concepts that belong to the ego. This is how it appears in the souls of these men. Indeed within these Western souls there was a very remarkable condition of soul at that time. It is moving in the direction of intellect and judgment, which are precisely the characteristics of the ego. We see this within individual souls, as, for instance, in Heraclitus who still describes the living weaving fire as the cause of everything, with, we could say, a last trace of true clairvoyant vision. Thales spoke of water, but he did not mean physical, material water any more than Heraclitus meant physical material fire. But it remains something from the elemental world, which they can still half see through while at the same time it half eludes them, so that all they can give out are abstract concepts. In looking into these souls we can understand how something of the soul mood of these men can still echo into our own time.

If only our contemporaries were not so prone to skim thoughtlessly over so much that is of value! It is so easy to skim lightly over a passage in Nietzsche that can profoundly move us, take possession of us and shake our souls. The passage occurs in his posthumous work Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks, where he describes Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Right at the beginning of this work there is a passage where, if we truly enter into it, we can see that Nietzsche perceived something of what these first lonely Greek thinkers experienced in their souls. Look up the passage in Nietzsche where he says, “How must it have been with the souls of those heroes of philosophy who had to make the transition from the period of living vision (of which Nietzsche knew nothing but that he was able to sense) to an age when what had formerly been alive in their souls was superseded by dry, abstract, prosaic concepts; when ‘being,’ that cold, abstract, prosaic notion, appeared, as a ‘concept,’ replacing the full aliveness of clairvoyant consciousness?” And Neitzsche feels, “It is as if our blood would freeze in our veins when we cross over from the realm of life into the world of concepts in Thales or Heraclitus who use such concepts as ‘being’ and ‘becoming,’ so that we pass from the warm realm of becoming over into the icy region of ‘concepts.’ ”

We must transport ourselves in feeling into the age in which these men were living, and how they stood when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching. We must enter into their being in such a way that we can perceive how there is still within them a dim echo of former times, yet how they must content themselves with the power of abstract judgment that lives in the human ego, a power that was unnecessary in earlier times. And whereas in later eras the world of concepts became richer and richer, in the first period when the world of concepts was coming closer the Greek philosophers could grasp nothing but the most simple of them. How they tormented themselves with such concepts as abstract “being,” especially the philosophers of the Eleatic school! But it was in this way that the present-day abstract qualities of the ego were prepared.

Let us now think of a soul which is rooted in the West, prepared for the mission of the West, and yet bears within itself the powerful echo of ancient clairvoyance. In India these echoes have long since died away, but they are still present in the West. The soul has the impulse to enter the elemental world, but it is prevented by its consciousness. A mood such as that of the Buddha could not arise in such souls. The Buddha mood would have said, “We are brought into the world of suffering. Let us free ourselves from it.” But Western souls wanted to take hold of what was ahead of them. They could not go back into what lay behind them. But in the world in front of them they could find only cold, icy concepts. Consider such a soul as Pherecydes of Syros who was the last to be able to see into the elemental world. Now let us think of one of the other souls who cannot see how the elements are born in a living way out of Chronos. It is unable to see how Ophioneus, the serpent-being, enters into conflict with the higher gods, but it is able to glimpse that something is at work in the physical material world. It cannot see through to Chronos, but it sees the imprint of Chronos in the world of sense, in fire, water, air and earth. It is not able to see how the higher gods are opposed by the lower gods, and how Lucifer, the serpent-god, rebels; but it does see how harmony and disharmony, friendship and enmity prevail. It sees love and hate as abstract concepts, and fire, water, air, and earth as abstract elements. The soul beholds all that still at that time penetrated into it, but what had been seen earlier by contemporaries is now hidden.

Let us think of such a soul still standing within the livingness of the earlier era, but unable to see into the spiritual world, able only to grasp its external counterpart, a soul which because of its special mission found that what had previously brought bliss to human beings was hidden from it. Yet this soul has nothing from the new world of the ego save a few concepts to which it feels obliged to cling. What we have before us is the soul of Empedocles. If we wish to comprehend the inner being of such a soul, then it is the soul of Empedocles that stands before us. Empedocles is almost a contemporary of the sage of Syros; he lives scarcely two-thirds of a century later. But his soul is constituted quite differently. It had the task of crossing the Rubicon that separated the old clairvoyance from the abstract comprehension of the ego. We see here two worlds suddenly clashing with one another. Here we see the dawning of the ego and how it advances toward its fulfillment. We see the souls of the ancient Greek philosophers who were the first to be condemned to take up what we now call intellect and logic; and we see at the same time how their souls were emptied of the old revelations. Into these souls the new impulse, the impulse of Golgotha, had to be poured.

Thus were their souls constituted when the new impulse was born. But they had to yearn for a new fulfillment; without such a yearning they could not understand it. In Indian thinking there is scarcely any transition comparable with what we find in the lonely Greek thinkers. Therefore Indian philosophy which had just made its transition to the teaching of Yoga hardly offers any possibility of discovering the transition to the Mystery of Golgotha. Greek philosophy was prepared in such a way that it thirsted for the Mystery of Golgotha. Consider the Gnosis, and how it longed in its philosophy for the Mystery of Golgotha. The philosophy of the Mystery of Golgotha rests on a Greek foundation because the best of the Greek souls longed to receive into themselves the impulse of Golgotha.

In order to understand what happened in mankind's evolution we must have good will. We might then be able to perceive something that might be described as a call, and an answering call from the very soil of the earth. If we look at Greece and then further toward Sicily and look into such souls, among whom Empedocles is one of the most outstanding, then we become aware of an astonishing kind of appeal. How can we characterize this for ourselves? What are such souls saying? If we look into the soul of Empedocles we hear something like this, “I know of initiation through history. From history I know that the super-sensible world entered into human souls through initiation. Initiation can no longer come alive in us. Now we are living in a different phase of evolution, and we have need of a new impulse that reaches into the ego. Tell me, Impulse, where are you, you who are to take the place of the initiation of the past that we are no longer able to experience, whose task is to place before the new ego the same mystery that was once contained within the old clairvoyance?”

To this appeal there came in answer the cry from Golgotha, “By obeying the gods and not human beings I was permitted to bring down the mysteries and set them before all mankind, so that what could hitherto be found only in the depths of the mysteries might now be bestowed on all mankind.”

What was born in Greek souls in southern Europe comes to us as a request from the Western world for a new solution of the world riddle. And as the answer, an answer that can be understood only in the West, comes the great monologue of the God, of which we spoke at the conclusion of yesterday's lecture, and of which we shall speak again tomorrow.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner gave his cycle on the Matthew Gospel in Bern in September, 1910. The last edition of this cycle in English was published in London by Rudolf Steiner Press in 1965. The question about the handing over of the power of the keys was discussed in Lectures 11 and 12.
• 2. The lecture given by Michael Bauer was entitled “How did Hegel see the great Turning-Point in Time?” Among Hegel's more important works was his Philosophy of History.
• 3. Pherecydes of Syros, 6th century B.C. Only fragments of his cosmogony have been preserved. For this reason and the “unphilosophical” nature of these fragments his name does not even appear in most histories of philosophy.
• 4. Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes (c. 636–546 B.C.; c. 611–547 B.C.; 6th century B.C.) were all from Miletus in Asia Minor and are regarded as the first true philosophers, Thales being, as Aristotle called him, the Father of Philosophy.
  
  Heraclitus of Ephesus, c. 535–c. 475 B.C. Rudolf Steiner who discusses him at length in Christianity as Mystical Fact calls him an initiate priest as well as a philosopher.
  
  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1844–1900. German philosopher, author of The Birth of Tragedy, and Thus Spake Zarathustra.
  
  Parmenides of Elea, born about 514 B.C., who held that true change was impossible and all apparent change was illusory.
  
  Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, c. 500–428 B.C. Philosopher who is credited with founding the study of philosophy in Athens.

The theme I intend to speak about during these [next] 4 days seems to me to be especially important in view of the times and conditions in which we live. I would like to emphasize from the start that it is not due to a wish for sensationalism or similar things that the theme is The Fifth Gospel. For I hope to show that in fact, given our present circumstances, it is especially important, in the sense that is meant, that no other name is more appropriate than “The Fifth Gospel”. This Fifth Gospel, as you will hear it, does not yet exist in a recorded document, although in the future of humanity it will certainly exist in a specific record. But in a certain sense this Fifth Gospel is as old as the other four Gospels.

In order that I may speak about this Fifth Gospel, however, an introduction is necessary in order to clarify certain important points for a complete understanding of what we will now call the Fifth Gospel. And I want to start by saying that the time is not too far distant in which in the lowest school levels, in the most primitive instruction, the content of the subject usually called History will be taught in a quite different way than is the case today. Namely the concept of Christ will play a different and a much more important role in the future of historical considerations – even in the most elementary historical considerations—than has been the case until now. I realize that in saying this I am describing an enormous paradox. But let's just consider that we can go back to a not so far distant time when countless hearts directed their feelings to Christ in a much more intensive way than is the case today by the most learned faithful in western countries. That was the case to a huge extent in the past.

If we study today's books and observe what interests contemporary people, where their hearts are, we have the impression that the enthusiasm, the emotion and feelings for the Christ idea is in abatement, especially where claims to contemporary learning are involved. Nevertheless, as I have already emphasized, the Christ idea will play a much more important role in future historical considerations than has been the case until now. Does this seem to be a contradiction?

Let's then approach the other side of these thoughts. I have often spoken here in this city about the meaning of the Christ idea. And in books and lecture cycles we find diverse elaborations from spiritual science about the secrets of the Christ Being and the Christ concept. Each must come to the conclusion that when he absorbs what is contained in our books and lecture cycles a large amount of knowledge is required for a full understanding of the Christ Being; that one must depend on the profoundest concepts and ideas for a full understanding of what Christ is and what the impulse is which has traversed the centuries as the Christ-Impulse. One could even come to the conclusion – were it not otherwise contradicted – that it is necessary to know all of Theosophy or Anthroposophy in order to work one's way up to a correct concept of Christ.

If we put that aside though, and look at spiritual development during the past centuries, we see from century to century a detailed, well-grounded science with the goal of understanding Christ and his appearance on earth. For centuries men have utilized their highest, most meaningful ideas in order to understand Christ. Here also it would seem that only the most significant intellectual activity would be sufficient to understand Christ. Has it been the case though? A very simple consideration can prove that it has not.

Let us place on a spiritual balance all that has contributed until now to the understanding of Christ by scholarship, science, also Anthroposophy. Let us place all that on one scale of the spiritual balance and let us place on the other scale in our thoughts all the deep feeling, all the impulses in people's souls which have aimed at what we call Christ, and we will find that all the science, all the scholarship, even all the Anthroposophy which we can muster to explain Christ, surprisingly springs up, and all the deep feelings and impulses which have directed people to the Christ Being push the other scale far down. It is no exaggeration to say that a tremendous impact has come from Christ and that the knowledge of Christ has contributed least to this impact.

It would have gone most badly for Christianity if people had to depend on all the learned disputes of the Middle Ages, the Scholastics, the Church fathers; or if people were only to depend on what we are able to muster through Anthroposophy for an understanding of the Christ idea. If that were all, it would be very little indeed. I don't think that anyone who has objectively followed the path of Christianity through the centuries could seriously contest these thoughts.

Let us direct our attention to the times when Christianity did not yet exist. I need only remind you of what most of you are familiar with. I need only remind you of the Greek tragedies in ancient Greece, especially in their older forms, when they presented the battling gods, or the men in whose souls the battling gods acted; also how the divine forces were directly visible on the stage. I need only to indicate how Homer thoroughly weaved his significant poetry with the working of the spirit; I have only to point to the great figures of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle. With these names a spiritual life of the highest order appears before our souls. If we put all else aside and look only at the great figure of Aristotle, who lived centuries before the founding of Christianity, we realize that in a certain sense no increase, no advancement has taken place up to our time. Aristotle's thinking, his scholarliness is so awesome that it is possible to say that he reached a peak in human thinking which has not been improved upon until now.

And now for a moment we would like to consider a curious hypothesis, one which is necessary for the following days. Let us imagine that there are no Gospels from which we can learn something about Christ. We want to imagine that the documents known as the New Testament do not exist, that there are no Gospels. We will ignore what has been said about the founding of Christianity and will only consider the facts about Christianity's historical process in order to see what occurred during the following centuries. This means that without the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Pauline Letters and so forth, we only want to consider what has really happened. This is of course only a hypothesis. What has happened?

If we look first at Southern Europe, we find a profound spiritual development at a certain point in time, as we have just seen in its representative Aristotle – a highly developed spiritual life, which in the subsequent centuries went through a special schooling. Yes, at the time Christianity began to make its way through the world there were many people educated in the Greek way, people who had absorbed Greek culture. Even including a certain unusual man who was an energetic opponent of Christianity, Celsus, and who later persecuted the Christians. We find in the Italian sub-continent up to the second, third Christian century, highly educated men who adopted the profound ideas which we find in Plato, whose brilliance really appears as a continuation of Aristotle's brilliance – refined, strong figures with Greek culture – Romans with Greek culture, which added Greek cultural delicacy to Roman aggressiveness.

The Christian impulse pushed itself into this world. At that time the representatives of the Christian impulse were truly uneducated people in respect to intellectuality, to knowledge of the world, compared to the many Greek-Roman educated people. People without education pushed into the middle of a world of mature intellectuality. And now we can observe a strange scene: those simple, primitive natures who were the bearers of early Christianity were able to propagate it in a relatively short time in Southern Europe. And when we approach these simple, primitive souls who at that time spread Christianity, we may say: Those primitive natures understood the Being of Christ. (We don't have to consider the great cosmic Christ thoughts, but only much simpler Christ thoughts.) The bearers of the Christ impulse who entered into the arena of highly developed Greek culture didn't understand it at all. They had nothing to bring to the market of Greek-Roman life except their personal inwardness, which they had developed as their personal relationship to their beloved Christ; for they loved as a member of a beloved family just through this relationship. Those who brought Christianity to Greece and Rome were not educated theosophists; they were unlettered. The educated theosophists of that time, the Gnostics, had elevated ideas about Christ, but they could only give what we would have to place on the rising scale of the weighing balance. If it had depended on the Gnostics, Christianity would surely not have made its way through the world. It was no particularly educated intellectuality which came from the east and in a relatively short time brought ancient Greece and Rome to their knees. That's one side of the story.

From the other side we see intellectually superior people such as Celsus, Christianity's enemy, and even the philosopher on the throne, Marcus Aurelius, who used every contrary argument imaginable. Look at the immensely learned Neo-Platonists, who formulated ideas compared to which contemporary philosophy is child's play, and which surpasses our current ideas in profundity and horizon. And look at how these highly cultured people argued against Christianity, how they argued from the standpoint of Greek philosophy, and we have the impression that none of them understood the Christ-impulse. We see that Christianity was spread by bearers who understood nothing of the essence of Christianity; it was fought against by a high culture which could not understand what the Christ-impulse meant. It is noteworthy that Christianity entered the world in such a way that neither its adherents not its enemies understood its underlying spirit. Nevertheless those people had the strength in their souls to spread the Christ-impulse triumphantly throughout the world.

And such as Tertullian, who represented Christianity with a certain greatness. We see in him a Roman who was in fact, when we look at his language, almost a re-creator of the Roman language, who with an unerring accuracy enlivened words to the extent that we recognize him as an important personality. When we ask ourselves, however, about Tertullian's ideas, it's something else. We find that he showed very little intellectuality or high culture. Even Christianity's defenders didn't accomplish much. Nevertheless, such as Tertullian were effective, effective as personalities, for which reason educated Greeks could not really do much. He was awe-inspiringly effective through something. But what? That is the important thing. We feel that this is really all important. Through what did the bearers of the Christ-impulse work when they themselves didn't understand much about what the Christ-impulse is? Through what did the Christian Church Fathers work, even Origenes, who is considered unskillful. What is it that even Greek-Roman culture could not understand about the essence of the Christ-impulse? What is it all about?

But let's go farther. The phenomenon becomes more pronounced as we consider subsequent history. We see how over the centuries Christianity spread within Europe to peoples who, like the Germanic, derived from completely different religious traditions and who were united as a people, or at least seem to be united in their religious traditions. Nevertheless they accepted the Christ-impulse with all their strength, as though it were their own life. And when we consider the most effective messengers of faith in the Germanic peoples – were they the scholastic theologically educated ones? By no means! They were relatively primitive souls who went about among the people and in a primitive way, using ordinary ideas, speaking to the people, and captured their hearts completely. They knew how to use words in such a way that they touched the deepest heart strings of their listeners. Simple people went out to all regions, and it was they who worked most effectively.

So we see the spread of Christianity over the centuries. But then we wonder at how this same Christianity is the grounds for so much significant scholarship, science and philosophy. We don't underestimate this philosophy, but today we want to direct our attention to an extraordinary phenomenon—that up until the Middle Ages Christianity spread among peoples who had quite other ideas in their minds, until it belonged to their souls. And in the not too distant future still other things will be emphasized about the spread of Christianity. When we consider the effect of the Christian impulse, it is easy to understand that in a certain time enthusiasm arose through the spreading of Christianity. But when we come to modern times this enthusiasm seems to be muted.

Let us consider Copernicus and natural science up to the nineteenth century. It could seem that this natural science, which since Copernicus has penetrated western culture, was opposed to Christianity. Certain facts can substantiate this. The Catholic Church, for example, placed Copernicus on the so-called Index until the twenties of the nineteenth century. But that didn't change the fact that Copernicus had been a canon. And when the Catholic Church burned Giordano Bruno at the stake, it didn't change the fact that he was a Dominican. Both of them came to their ideas through Christianity. They acted from the Christian impulse. Those who held to the Catholic Church and thought that these things weren't the fruits of Christianity, understood wrong. It only proves that the Catholic Church did not understand the fruits of Christianity.

Whoever looks more deeply will recognize that everything the peoples did, also in later centuries, is a result of Christianity; that through Christianity humanity looked up from the earth to the vastness of the heavens, as a result of the Copernican Laws. That was only possible within Christian culture and the Christian impulse. And he who does not consider only the surface, but delves into the profundities of spiritual life, will find something which seems paradoxical, but is nevertheless true. For such a deeper consideration, it would seem impossible that a Haeckel could appear in all his animosity towards Christianity without his having appeared from out of Christianity. Ernst Haeckel is not even possible without the prerequisite of Christian culture. And modern natural scientific development, despite being so occupied with animosity towards Christianity, is a child of Christianity, a direct continuation of the Christian impulse.

Once the teething problems of natural science have been overcome, humanity will realize what it means that the starting point of modern natural science, logically followed, leads directly to spiritual science, that there is a logical path from Haeckel to spiritual science. When that is understood, it will be accepted that Haeckel has a Christian mentality, even though he doesn't realize it. Not only what is called and has been called Christian has been brought forth by the Christian impulse, but also what has agitated against Christianity has been brought forth from the Christian impulse. One must not only investigate things according to their concepts, but also according to their reality in order to arrive at this knowledge. Darwin's Theory of Evolution leads directly to the teaching of repeated earth lives, as you can read in my book “Reincarnation and Karma”.

In order to stand on solid ground in relation to these things, one must in a certain sense observe the force of the Christian impulse impartially. Whoever understands Darwinism and Haeckelism and is familiar with what Haeckel does not know (Darwin knew quite a bit), knows that the Darwinist movement is only possible as a Christian movement. Understanding that, one comes quite logically to the reincarnation idea. And if he has the help of a certain clairvoyant power, he will arrive on this path quite logically to the spiritual origin of the human race. It is of course a detour, but when clairvoyance is added, it is a true path from Haeckelism to the spiritual origin of the earth.

But it is also possible that one takes Darwinism as it is presented today, but without being conversant with the principles of life in Darwinism itself; in other words, if you accept Darwinism as an impulse and don't realize the profound understanding of Christianity which lies in Darwinism, something very peculiar happens. What can happen is that you have as little understanding of Christianity as you have of Darwinism. One may then be abandoned by the good spirit of Christianity as well as by the good spirit of Darwinism. If one is imbued with the good spirit of Darwinism, however, then one can be ever so materialistic, and still be led back to a point in the history of the earth where it becomes clear that man never evolved from lower animal forms, that he must have had a spiritual origin. One goes back to a point in time and sees man as a spiritual being hovering over the earth. A logical Darwinism will lead to that.

If on the other hand one is abandoned by the good spirit and goes back in time as a believer in reincarnation, one can think that he once lived as an ape during an incarnation. If one can believe that, it means that he has been abandoned by the good spirits of both Darwinism and Christianity and understands nothing of either. For logical Darwinism could never lead one to believe that. This means that the reincarnation idea must be quite openly transmitted to this materialistic culture. It is certainly possible to divest Darwinism of its Christianity. If not, however, one will find that the Darwinist impulses were born of Christianity, and that the Christian impulses also work where they are denied.

So we have not only the phenomenon that Christianity spread during the first centuries irrespective of scholarship and the knowledge of its followers and believers; that it spread during the Middle Ages with very little help from the scholastics; then we have the paradoxical phenomenon that Christianity appeared as a kind of counterpart in Darwinism. And the greatness of the idea in Darwinism derives its force from Christian impulses. The Christian impulses which underlie it will lead this science away from materialism.

There is something curious about the Christian impulses! Intellectuality, knowledge, learning appear not to have been present during the spreading of these impulses. One could say that Christianity spread regardless of what people think for or against it, so much so that it seems to have found its antithesis in modern materialism. What is it then which spreads? Not Christian ideas, not the science of Christianity. One could still say that the moral feelings which are planted through Christianity are spread. One has only to observe the rule of morality in these times and one will find much justification for the anger of the representatives of Christianity against real or alleged enemies of Christianity. Also the morals which could reign in the souls of the less educated do not impress us much when we observe to what extent they are Christian. What is it then which spreads? What is so curious? What is it which marches through the world like a victorious procession? What worked in the people who brought Christianity to the Germanic, to the foreign world? What works in modern natural science, where the teaching is still veiled? What works in all those souls, if it isn't intellectual, not even moral impulses? What is it? It is Christ himself, who goes from heart to heart, soul to soul, who traverses the world over the centuries, whether or not people understand him!

We are obliged to put aside our ideas and our science and point to the reality, in order to show how mysteriously Christ himself changes into many thousands of impulses, immersing in thousands and thousands of souls and suffusing humanity. It is Christ himself who strode in the simple men through the Greek and Italian world; it is Christ himself who stood at the side of the later teachers who brought Christianity to the Germanic peoples. It is He, the real, true Christ, who goes from place to place, from soul to soul, regardless of what the people think of Christ, and immerses in their souls. I would like to use a trivial comparison. How many people are there who know nothing about the composition of food, yet eat according to all the rules of the art. They would starve if they had to know about nutrients before they could eat. Eating has nothing to do with the knowledge of foodstuffs. The spread of Christianity over the earth had nothing to do with the knowledge brought to bear on it. That is what is curious. This is a mystery, which can only be clarified if the answer is given to the question: How does Christ work in human minds and feelings? And if spiritual science, clairvoyant observation, poses this question, it will be guided to an event which in reality can only be revealed through clairvoyant observation, which is in complete agreement with all I have said today. Firstly, the time is over in which Christ worked as I have characterized, and the time has come when people must understand and recognize him.

Therefore it is necessary to answer the question: Why during the time which preceded ours, could the Christ-impulse spread without an understanding of it? And the event to which clairvoyant consciousness points is the so-called Pentecost event, the sending out of the Holy Spirit. Therefore the clairvoyant gaze, inspired by the true Christ-Impulse in an anthroposophical sense, is directed to the Pentecost event, the sending out of the Holy Spirit.

What occurred at that moment in the evolution of the world on earth, which is presented as the Holy Spirit descending upon the apostles, which at first seems quite unintelligible to us? When one views this clairvoyantly, investigates [it], one arrives at a spiritual scientific answer as to what is meant with: Simple people, which the apostles were, suddenly began to speak in various tongues about what they had to say from the depths of spiritual life, and which was not expected of them. Yes, then Christianity, the Christian impulses, began to spread independently of the people's understanding of them.

The stream which has been described flowed out from the Pentecost event. What was then the Pentecost event? The question was asked of spiritual science, and with the answer to this question, the spiritual scientific answer to the question: What was the Pentecost event? the Fifth Gospel begins.

It is a grievous time in which we live, a time more of effective actions full of courage and sacrifices, on one side, a time of severe ordeals for the human souls, on the other side. To stimulate some sensations just in view of our destiny-burdened time may be my task at the end of these considerations. Since we are allowed to be together in such a time, we want to let culminate our sensations at the end of our considerations according to this time. I may start from something that can spread light just about various matters which speak significantly to our souls in this time.

Since we started considering the world spiritual-scientifically, we call the four members of our human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We know that the ego or rather that in the human being which we name ego by which we express the ego which is the youngest, but is also for us the most significant member of the human being. If the human being only consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, he would not be a human being. The human being is a human being because he received his ego from the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the earth evolution. He develops this ego in the course of his successive incarnations in different human communities, through peoples and periods, until the earth arrives at the goal of its development and the human being also arrives at his goal developing his ego. However, we also know that there are higher spiritual beings—we use for them the word “higher,”—who belong to the higher hierarchies which stand as it were above the human being. We speak of the hierarchy of the angels or angeloi, of the hierarchy of the archangels or archangeloi, the archai or spirits of the age and so on, upward rising. We call them with these names, we could use other names just as well, but the names are introduced in the West.

How have we to imagine, actually, these spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies in relation to the human being here on earth? We go out from the surroundings of the human being. We know, it is the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human being has to consider the human realm as the highest after all he can observe. So that we can say: if we take the visible realms on earth, we have the realms of the minerals, the plants, the animals and that of the human beings. Above these realms, as it were, as a continuation upwards, the realms of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai et cetera appear. We can simply imagine that the realms are not closed with the human realm, but also extend farther upwards, only that the higher realms cannot be seen with the outer senses.

It could seem remarkable if we go upwards from the realms of nature to the realm of human beings that above the human realm invisibility begins at once. However, this will be remarkable only as long as one does not think that the animals do not see the human being in such a way as a human being sees the other. That is completely clear to somebody who is able to transport himself into the animal view. If the animals could speak, they would only speak of visible realms, of the mineral realm, the plant realm, and the animal realm. They would consider themselves as the highest visible realm. The fact that the animals see the human being like a human being sees the other is only a prejudice.

We are human beings of a supersensible, ghostly existence to the animals; and if the animals had only such a perception as we have it, they would not see the human beings, but they would be as invisible for them as the realm of angels for the human beings. Only because they have a certain kind of dreamy clairvoyance, the animals see the human being as a ghost, as a supersensible being. The human being can have no idea directly of the image which an animal has of him. In return, the animals see something also downwards, or properly speaking, perceive something downwards that the human being does not perceive any more. Since the animals perceive not only like the human being perceives the mineral world, but still perceive—the lower animals most intensely—something else. If an animal, for instance, a snail creeps on the ground, and then it perceives the whole peculiarity of the ground. This would disturb the human being perpetually if he, while he goes on the surface of the earth, perceived this in the same way as a snail or a tortoise. With the higher animals which have warm blood it is somewhat different, but just the lower animals really perceive the whole peculiarity of the ground on which they creep. They perceive the whole peculiarity of the air; they perceive everything that is round them in another way as the human being. The animal knows whether it is on a soil which is marshy, or whether it moves on a sandy soil, because it perceives the whole peculiarity of the soil. Namely this is as similar as we hear the things in our surroundings. The whole mineral world is infiltrated with forces which make it shake and which the human being does not perceive. The animal perceives this fine shaking, these forces in such a way that it feels something as sympathetic, something not. If the animal turns back, for example, from one soil type to the other, it is not so that the animal sees it like the human being, but because something is a little bit painful to it, because the fine movements go on reverberating in it, because it feels as if it belongs to it. This is a kind of instinctive hearing like a hearing of that which takes action in the ground or this is like smelling. So that we can say: the animal perceives an elemental realm, and the higher hierarchies begin already with the human being for it.—We are put in the middle in the world which we know as the external sensory world, the external realms of the sensory world, and the world of the higher hierarchies. We call the lower visible hierarchies the realms of nature; we call the invisible ones the higher hierarchies.

We also know that such a being of the higher hierarchies, for example, an angel, once also experienced the level of humanity. This took place, while the earth went through the old Moon evolution. There the human being was not yet a human being; for he had no ego; he was on the preparatory level of humanity only and had the astral body as his highest member. The beings who belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi went through their human level during the old Moon evolution. The spirits to whom we turn as the guarding spirits of the individual human being are these beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi. To each of them, as it were, a human being is assigned. “Spirits of your souls” are those who stand immediately in the hierarchy above the human being who really spread out their protecting wings, symbolically spoken, over the human beings namely over the individual human being.

We come then to the hierarchy of the archangeloi. They also were human beings once. During the old Sun evolution the beings we call archangeloi today were on the human level. They were not so formed as the human beings today, of course not, they were formed quite differently, but they were on their human level in that time. We are not allowed to imagine that during the old Sun evolution the archangeloi looked as the human beings today, but concerning their development they were on their human level. The spirits of personality or spirits of the ages were on their human level during the old Saturn evolution.

Now, we pick out the spirits we call archangeloi. There we have such spirits as archangeloi who went through the human level during the old Sun evolution, ascended to the level of the angels during the Moon evolution, and today they have ascended to the level of the archangeloi. We leave these spiritual beings put before our souls at first, as it were, standing two levels above us; later we will come back to them. Then we have the spiritual beings who were human beings during the old Saturn evolution, today they are spirits of the ages, they are three levels above us. We let them put again. Now we want to look at our relation to these both types of spiritual beings.

When the human being goes through an incarnation, then stand above us the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the angels, then the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangeloi, and those we count to the hierarchy of the archai, spirits of the ages or spirits of personality. However, they also develop. Let us pick out the archai, the spirits of personality or spirits of the ages. We go through our incarnation, and then we go through the gate of death, come into a spiritual world after death, go through a certain purely spiritual development between death and a new birth and come to an earth existence by a new birth again. Now we can ask: what does this depend on that we move down to the earth again after a certain number of years? In public talks this question is often put. Then one can already give an answer from certain points of view, but intimately speaking in our branches we can give a more objective answer pointing to reality.

While we live here in the physical body, the spirit of the ages has a certain level of development. He does something that is connected with the development of the human beings on earth, and he experiences a development on his part. If this spirit of the ages has come in the course of a development so far that we all let flow into ourselves that which he has worked through on his part, then we are ripe, as it were, to come down to an earth incarnation. If he has advanced to a certain level and we have developed by the spiritual worlds up to a certain level, we can enter an earth development again. Let us understand well in this regard and refrain from our own development first of all. Let us look at the spirit of the ages developing in a very long period.

I may say the following. If we consider the development of the earthly humankind in such a way that we go back to the foundation of the ancient Rome, about eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that there a certain spirit of the ages started his development. Another spirit of the ages was leading and steering the destiny of the earth before. This spirit of the ages who took over the leadership of the spiritual earthly development in those days was leading up to the 16th century. A spirit of the ages leads the destiny of the earth for such a period. Since the 16th century, another spirit of the ages is there. We deal with two spirits of the ages. The human being who was, for example, in the third century before the Mystery of Golgotha in any incarnation on the earth experienced that which this spirit of the ages caused for the earth. For the time after his death if this human being has died in the third century or also in the second century, the spirit of the ages can give him nothing at first. He gave him what he could give him. Now the spirit of the ages must go through a number of years again, until he is able to give something new to the human being. This human being comes again down to the earth who was between death and birth in a spiritual world, when the spirit can give him something new.

Now, however, it is arranged that way that the human being comes down several times on average, because the spirit of the ages is not able to give the human being everything that he could give him because of the imperfection of the human beings. That is why the human being comes down repeatedly in the time in which a spirit of the ages develops. But basically it depends on the fact that the spirits of the ages regulate the successive incarnations of the human beings. Now, however, the spirits of the ages regulate this whole course of the human destiny, as it were, by their subordinates. These are the archangels. Such archangels govern in subordinated positions for a much shorter time than the spirits of the ages.

While the spirits of the ages rule as long as I have stated just now, we can assume a spirit of the ages from the foundation of Rome up to the 16th century, the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangels rule only for three to four centuries. They alternate in such a way that about six or seven come one after the other, while a spirit of the ages is ruling. So that we have that archangel we call Oriphiel in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel rule successively; and now since 1879 we have the government of that archangel we call Michael. So we have, if we look at the spiritual worlds, the higher government of the spirits of the ages and subordinate to them, the successive governments of archangels. Because the human being cannot take up everything that the spirit of the ages would give him, he does not take it directly from the hands of the spirit of the ages, but from the hands of the less powerful archangel. Keep in mind: our personal guardians belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi. Above them there are the spirits who regulate the interrelations of the human beings. Above them there are the archai or spirits of personality or spirits of the ages.

If I talk in such a way, it always concerns those beings who went through their development properly. But not all the spirits develop regularly. There are spiritual beings who were archai already during the Saturn evolution who lagged behind, however, on the level of the archai at that time, the level of humankind. They have not gone beyond their Saturn level during the earth development. They did not ascend to the level of the regular development. They maintained their human character, are supersensible Saturn beings on one side, however, are on the level of humankind. There are also beings of the hierarchy of the archai who stopped on the human level during the Sun evolution and stand there now in the supersensible world still as human beings. We term these beings that lagged behind the luciferic beings or ahrimanic beings with collective names. We cannot get involved in the difference between luciferic and ahrimanic beings today. These are spirits who lagged behind.

We have now to answer the question: how does the human being conceive, here in his earthly incarnation, the influence of the spirits who have properly progressed, the spirits of the ages, the archai, and the archangeloi who are their servants? These beings are supersensible; the human being cannot get a relationship to them like to the sensory world. Hence, the human being does not know as a rule if he only relies on the sensory world that he has been put in a development which is directed by the archai and archangeloi above him. He does not know it; but these supersensible beings intervene in his whole nature. Also those spiritual beings we call folk-spirits who lead whole peoples are among the archangeloi, the archangels. And in so far as we have the people to which we belong to thank for that which we are, we have to look at that what the nation's being gives us as a gift of the corresponding being of the hierarchy of the archangeloi. It is the inspiration of the archangeloi which comes to us because we are put into a people. Now we only need to think what it means for the human being to be put into a people. In the people's being there flow mental qualities, but also customs; a certain configuration of the being flows into the human being. One cannot imagine at all that somebody would have become that who somebody is in an incarnation because of the gift of the folk-spirit, in reality of the gift of an archangel.

Except that we stand within a people and receive, inspired by an archangel, certain configurations of our whole being, we stand in the development of the whole humankind. There we are exposed to the intuitions into which the spirit of the ages of the hierarchy of the archai leads us. Imagine that we receive something today in our present spiritual culture that goes beyond any national differentiation; what we have because we live from the 19th to the 20th centuries what we would not have had if we had lived during the Roman or Greek times. We have the spirit of the ages to thank for this. You can strictly make a distinction between the gift of the spirit of the ages and the gift of the folk-spirit. If only this were there which is a regular development of the human being, of the angel, of the archangel or that of the spirit of the ages then we would receive, every individual human being, the gift always from our spirit of the ages and from our corresponding folk-spirit and would develop by means of this gift. The human beings on earth would develop side by side. All members of the different peoples would receive the gift of their folk-spirits in such a way, as if five pictures would hang completely differently from each other in a gallery which would show miscellaneous things, but which would not disturb each other in the slightest.

Thus individual human beings would receive the gift of their folk-spirits on earth side by side. They would not disturb each other if their development had proceeded regularly. But there are beings who lagged behind. Among the guiding archangeloi are those who began their development properly on the Sun and have become right archangeloi up to the earth evolution, but also those who stopped on the Sun level who are basically only on the level of human beings. These beings are on the same level as the folk-spirits, and, nevertheless, they lagged behind them, have the qualities of invisible supersensible human beings, not those of archangels. They make the same claims to the world like the archangeloi in a certain way, but they have not reached the level of the archangeloi on earth. Hence, they must work with the same forces as on the Sun. The result is that they do not seize the human beings as the archangels do directing them from above, but penetrate them as invisible human beings. They do not lead the human being from above, but go into the human nature. These spirits, who compete with the really leading folk-spirits, cause that the nations feud with each other, do not live in peace with each other.

The human being would not be tempted at all to identify his personality, his humanness with his nation, but he would look at the person as something that feeds him spiritually. However, he would not stand up as a fighter for his nation, not identify his person with it. The human being would not say, I am of this or that nationality, but: nationality is there, and I have to get my spiritual food indirectly via this nationality into which I have been born. But while the archangel stimulates him to think that way, the other comes who is on the level of humankind, actually, and is basically a luciferic spirit, and leads him into his nationality.

The result is that the archangel-like does not come down as a gift to the human being, but that the human being identifies himself with the nation like with a completely personal affair, and thereby this quarrel of the nationalities comes into being on the earth. That must absolutely be clear to us: because we were not only exposed to the influence of the leading archangel, but also to the influence of the retarded archangel, we identify ourselves with the nationality as we do on earth. That is just the spiritual-scientific feeling that we as human beings are able to rise above the only national to find access to the general humanness. Then we can be national in the most remarkable sense. As well as the one human being may do that or the other may do something different as art, and the former doing his art does not need to be the adversary of the other, one did not need to be the adversary of the other concerning nationality if there were no retarded archangels who cause the identification. One has to presuppose that if one generally speaks about the basis of the human development with reference to the national or other differentiations.

Concerning the spirit of the ages you will still see further details, in which way the luciferic element works into the regular element if we consider the following. A spirit of the ages works for a certain time. Since the 16th century a new spirit of the ages is there. This spirit of the ages has a particular task. He has the task to add the whole materialistic skill and understanding of the world to the former impulses of development. Hence, materialism made so big progress since the 16th century in the world. Therefore, we do not need to look at the materialistic understanding as something more inferior to the former kind of understanding if we identify ourselves not only unilaterally with it. What will somebody who looks at the matters that way say about the government of the different spirits of the ages? He says: we are now controlled by the particular spirit of the ages; before we were controlled by another spirit of the ages. The human beings had other ideas, other impulses then. If the human being now were able to be influenced by the properly developing spirits of the ages, he would say: we must now adapt ourselves to this spirit of the ages, while we penetrate more the laws of the evolution of the world, of the materialistic thinking. Then another spirit of the ages comes after a time; he causes another attitude of mind in the human thinking.

I emphasised it often that we as supporters of spiritual science must say: today we announce spiritual science using particular words, ideas and concepts, but it is not correct that we believe, that what we say today holds good for the whole earth future, but it changes. When two thousand years are over, our knowledge of spiritual science today is announced with other words, just as we talk differently than in the Greek epoch; nothing remains of the kind of our words. We do not rely on anything that externally remains but we know that one spirit of the ages replaces the other and that they all stand equally side by side.

Somebody who is influenced by the retarded spirits of the ages of the Saturn and identifies himself with their influence says: at that time all the other human beings were silly; this was the nursery of humankind. We have advanced so far today; we have found completely valid truth for all future.—One becomes humbler, more modest in the field of spiritual science. Somebody who identifies himself with the spirit of the ages says: Copernicus found the right thing finally; something different was once believed. Now the human beings will say forever: the earth and the planets move in ellipses around the sun. The sun is in its centre.—Spiritual science already knows today that this is a one-sided teaching. It is very good for our materialistic time to imagine the world, but it is wrong. It is not true at all that the sun is in one focus of the ellipse and the earth moves around. It is, actually, a materialistically calculated apparent movement. In truth it is in such a way that the sun moves and the earth and the other planets run after it in a helical movement. Because certain positions originate in this helical movement, the earth stands once here, another time there. That appears as an ellipse. In truth it is another line. The time will come when the external science knows this, too.

One becomes more modest if one knows that truth is announced in a certain way for certain times. We never state as correct supporters of spiritual science: from now on into all future all human beings say, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But the future speaks quite differently, because everything is developing. The ideas of yesterday are as justified as the ideas of today. We can be controlled not only by a spirit of the ages who leads us to believe that all previous knowledge was a pack of lies and we have advanced so wonderfully far. With reference to the spirit of the ages you see people possessed by the luciferic spirit saying: how wonderfully far we have advanced. How imperfect everything was what one thought and said about the world once. What we have found since the 16-century remains as eternal truth.

The folk-spirit is basically a complicated being on the whole. He is the regular folk-spirit who floats above us and if we only followed him we would follow in such a way that we take up his gifts because we are in his sphere. But he is impaired perpetually in his effectiveness by his luciferic companion who obsesses us and induces us to identify ourselves as individual human beings with the whole nationality. However, the individual human being does this differently. It is very important that one really sees that in the middle of Europe a people has to develop that has another relationship to its folk-spirit as the peoples have in the periphery of Europe. We have to learn this insight. What takes place under the surface of the human consciousness and what depends really on the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies is extremely important.

The materialistically thinking human being regards it still an insanity if one says that such impulses go out from the spiritual beings like this is one in Central Europe who stimulates the unaware people to such a feeling towards the divine or—because in Central Europe Christ is working—to the Christ Impulse. So that the Central European human being learns to feel Christ in such a way as He speaks to the core of the soul. This came nowhere else into being as in Central Europe. Still during the Roman time of the Christian development one understood, for example, Christ as a being who came to earth and worked for the human beings. Indeed, the advanced human beings and partly those who thought already in such a way, as we think today who we are in the possession of spiritual science felt as Paul thought: “not I, but Christ in me.” However, it is a difference compared with a feeling as we find it with Master Eckhart, with Tauler, with Angelus Silesius and similar minds. How these spirits took up the Mystery of Golgotha. We only need to ask Angelus Silesius; and he answers us with the nice saying:

Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you would be lost forever.

It depends on the commiseration of the Mystery of Golgotha in the own soul. These Central European human beings tried to internally experience something that is an internal picture, an internal expression of the Mystery of Golgotha. And how wonderful is it when Angelus Silesius says once about death: everything that happens in me happens in the end because God is in me and carries out the matters in me. And if I die, I do not die, but, actually, God dies in me.—Imagine what a wonderfully intimate idea of immortality already is given when one says: God dies in me.—Since God is immortal, of course. If God dies in me, death is only apparent; then one feels like Angelus Silesius felt: God dies only apparently in me, because God cannot die. So is death not that it seems externally, it is only a fact of life. Because God cannot die—but dies in anyone,—one already feels immortality with it.

This most intimate being together with God whether one feels it as something divine or as something Christian was prepared for long times in the course of the Central European development. There the Central European folk-spirits worked, so that it found an external symbolic expression, a real symbolic expression. Except in Central Europe nowhere anybody says “ich,” if he means his own self, his own being. The whole development was led by the folk-spirit who manifests himself as a spirit of language in such a way that the own being was expressed with the word ICH. But ICH, “I-Ch,” is Jesus Christ. It lies in Jesus Christ. Because in “ICH” Christ Jesus is expressed in His initial letters, it is expressed allegorically what in the Central European spiritual being is as it is connected with the most intimate experience. Whenever somebody pronounces “Ich,” he pronounces the initial letters of “Jesus Christ.” If one turned the spiritual eyes only once to such matters which are really considered even today as fantastic, somebody would already think that the spirits of the higher hierarchies work unconsciously in the human development, and would then find something significant in the matters which one takes for granted today.

I want only to mention a really significant fact. One calls a certain group of European human beings Germanic people or Teutons. And while one speaks in Central Europe of Germanic people (“Germanen”), one includes England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and still others. One expands the concept of the Germanic people. I do not talk out of agitation, but out of that which is given in the language. The English do not speak of themselves as Germanic people, because they call only the Germans Germanic people. The German calls himself “deutsch,” and if he speaks of Germanic people, he encloses a bigger group of human beings. The English apply the term Germans only to the Germans, to those who are not like “him.” This is a tremendously significant fact. It is something that is in the deepest sense typical for the kind in which way on the one side and on the other the folk-spirit works; he works in Central Europe to embrace a bigger entity and the folk-spirit of the English people takes care to put away that and only to apply it to the other.

That will be obvious to the human beings gradually in a wonderful way which the language teaches as the outflow of the effective folk spirituality. Now one is little understood if one speaks about the different European peoples as I tried it some years before this war—not caused at all by the war—in the cycle The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology. This is understood in such a way, as if I wanted to express any value judgments. But I do not want to express value judgments, but only a characteristic. We can now characterise the West-European peoples expressing exactly what I expressed in this lecture cycle.

We know that the soul of the human being consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or mind-soul and the consciousness-soul, and the ego which works in these three soul nuances. If we look at the Italian nation with its folk-spirit, we find the peculiarity that there the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. This is the typical of the Italian people, that the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. If now something is possessed by the luciferic folk-spirit, it is also the folk-spirit. Imagine that on one side the brilliant aspect of the Italian people is based on the fact that the sentient soul is inspired. Think of Dante, of all the great Italian artists. But this people also identify themselves, on the other hand, with something superhuman that lagged behind luciferically in all the passionate impulses of development which appear within the Italian people. I do not pronounce any value judgment, but I characterise it only.

We can see everywhere with the French people the folk-spirit inspiring the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

With the British people it is the consciousness-soul. The consciousness-soul is for the present human cycle that which connects the human being mostly with the external physical world. Hence, this nation which is inspired in the consciousness-soul is entrusted above all with the task of furthering the materialistic civilisation. No value judgment is expressed again, but it is characterised only that just the British nation has a vocation to get the consciousness-soul inspired. In so far as the individual human being belongs to his nation, in so far as he is inspired by the luciferic folk-spirit, he identifies himself with the purely materialistic civilisation of the present. We find this really in the British culture. Like the individual human being positions himself in the British nation, this comes out what is just the materialistic spirit of the British nation, this peculiar spirit who waged thirty-four wars of conquest from 1856 up to 1900 and made fifty-seven million people new British subjects, and who pretends to stand up for the liberty of single human groups in our time.

If we consider such a time like ours, we must absolutely be clear to us that just this time teaches people very much to feel like an admonition what one puts up now as the contrast of the single national groups of Europe or of a big part of the earth. The members of thirty-four nationalities—apart from minor tribal differences—are in war with each other. One should regard this as an admonition to refrain really from that which one has called history up to now. But this approach is used just for the time being still up to nonsense. We find it really driven up to nonsense what the individual nations of Europe reproach each other for everything. One weighs up the single external facts to discover the causes of this dreadful war. But just this war will teach people that one finds nothing in its external causes, but at most external symptoms of that which exists deeply hidden in the human groups by the guidance of advanced and retarded spiritual beings. The ordeals of this time force us to appeal to the spiritual subsoil in which the causes of the external events in the world can be found today.

From the most different sides one can show how in the subsoil of the consciousness that works which appears externally. I want to point, although most of the friends already know this example, once again to the fact that the whole map of Europe was determined towards the end of the Middle Ages by the Maid of Orleans who intervened in the war between England and France. Everybody who looks understanding at our external history has to recognise that the map of Europe would have turned out quite differently if at that time England had not been defeated by France because the Maid of Orleans intervened in the fight. But the Maid of Orleans was not a qualified strategist; she was no one who stood at the summit of education. She was a simple human child—a farmer girl. But the spirits of the higher hierarchies worked through her in the way as they had to work in this time. It has been absolutely necessary up to our time that these spirits worked in the subconscious because the human beings could not yet understand what must now be understood spiritual-scientifically.

The intervention of spiritual beings in the subconsciousness is often nicely expressed in legends. And rightly, not because of superstition, but because it really corresponds to facts, one set particular store by the time when the external world has withdrawn mostly from the year, the time from Christmas up to the sixth January. If one does not want to attain spiritual knowledge in the way, as we do today using the instructions given in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but in a more elementary way, one could be inspired in these thirteen nights. This is expressed, for example, very nicely in the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson. This legend relates that Olaf Åsteson goes to the church before Christmas; that he falls asleep before the church and sleeps during thirteen nights. He wakes up at the Epiphany day and is really able to tell his experience. What he tells there figuratively in a clear, but primitive way corresponds to that we call the passage through the soul-world and the passage through the spirit-land. Olaf Åsteson experienced that in the time in which Christmas was rightly put. This makes it clear to us that the clairvoyance of a nature child could be developed best of all during these thirteen nights from Christmas till Epiphany.

Because the Maid of Orleans was such a nature child, one could assume that she would have experienced the world in these thirteen nights in a sort of dreamy state of which she spoke when she led the French army against the English that she would have been inspired in these thirteen nights. This happened in a peculiar way. Every human being experiences a sleeping state, a state when the senses do not yet speak, namely in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. This is still a kind of sleeping state, and the ripest state is that during the last thirteen days before birth. This is the great thing and fills our souls with such amazement: the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. She went through the inspiration actually in the thirteen nights, but before she opened her eyes to the earth light. That is why the sixth January is noted as the birthday of the Maid of Orleans intentionally in our calendar. We have to understand that in its big world-historical connection; since it can say to us how mysterious the connections are in the world and how mysterious forces work in the world. Mysterious powers worked in those days on the sixth January, because people gathered in the little village where the Maid of Orleans was born in the morning; where the animals themselves behaved so wonderfully. On this sixth January, an inspiration could be finished. In thirteen nights a being could be inspired which was disposed by its own karma. Of course, not everybody who is born on the sixth January is disposed, but karma has to coincide with the other conditions.

I wanted to give this example of the Maid of Orleans which shows us so surely how subterranean powers intervene in the historical development. Indeed, the materialistic development of the following centuries came then. It is completely comprehensible that this had to consider such tips to historical backgrounds as insanity. This does not harm; even it does not harm at all if today people still look at this spiritual science like insanity. This spiritual science will be accepted finally.

But such significant events, within which the human beings of the present time live and in which they themselves incarnated to take part in them in one or another way, do not always mean the same in the historical development. Today these destiny-burdened events mean an admonition to the human beings. Such a flood of literature has been written about this war, but in everything that appeared in books, pamphlets and so on we do not yet find this from which one has to assume, actually, that it is found and that it must be found bit by bit. One often hears: one can talk about the causes not really, maybe after the war, maybe people find the true causes of this war from documents only after decades and know who was to blame for it.—You can read this in every third newspaper. But that does not concern, it concerns that which one finds—and just as a result of this time—that the real causes are not to be seen in these external occasions, but that one has to look for the causes in the spiritual world. One will find that this war was the significant karma of materialism which must be experienced, so that the human beings take up a sum of convictions in them leading from materialism to spiritualism. Humankind must experience this ordeal.

What does happen basically today in such a distressing way round us?—We know, when the human being goes through the gate of death, he leaves his physical body behind in the physical world. He enters in the spiritual world with his etheric body, astral body and ego. He soon takes off the etheric body which is given to the remaining world. Then he goes with astral body and ego through the soul-land, through the spirit-land. But imagine now that today a big number of human beings goes through the gate of death in relatively short time and with a particular consciousness; that they take off etheric bodies which could have supplied, so to speak, their lives normally still for decades. If a human being dies between the twentieth and thirtieth years, he takes off an etheric body which could have supplied his physical body for sixty to seventy years. The forces are in the etheric body, because nothing gets lost also in the spiritual world. All human beings, who go today in the prime of life through the gate of death, hand over to the world etheric bodies which could still have maintained their lives for a long time. These forces are there in the spiritual world. How are they there, these forces?—I may give you an illustrative example of the significance of such a phenomenon which is taken from our circle itself.

Last autumn, a family belonging to our anthroposophical circle lost a little son, a dear boy of seven years. The external circumstances were exceptionally tragic ones. The father had been called up to the army as a German citizen; he just fell ill and was in the military hospital. One evening, even as a lecture took place in Dornach where our construction is built, somebody informed us that the little seven-year-old boy was missing. He had not come home since the evening. I have to mention that the family has settled down in Dornach as a gardener family. I had come from Germany to Switzerland shortly before. The boy had already met me before the construction and shaken my hand; it was a sunny very dear child. In that evening, we were informed that the boy was missing. Now one could imagine nothing else, as that a removal van, which had brought pieces of furniture for our members, had toppled over and fallen on the boy near the construction. You must also take into consideration that since countless years no removal van went at that place or since that time. You must think further: the boy lived with his mother who manages the garden. He was such a dear boy that he said to his mother when the father had to go; now he would muck in, because the father is not there any more.

That evening, he had been sent to the so-called canteen to get something for his mother. It was not far at all; it is only a short way between the canteen and the flat of the mother. On this short way is a crossroad, so that the removal van had to do a bend. Now the boy intended to leave, actually, ten minutes sooner, was detained by somebody who wanted to go with him. If he had left sooner and through the door through which he was used to leave, he would have passed the carriage sooner and on its left side, while he went now on the right. Because he left later, through another door and on the right side of the removal van, the carriage when it tipped over fell just on the boy. People had looked at this, also those who were busy with the horses. Nobody anticipated that the boy had got under the carriage. Then one said: The carriage is too heavy to lift it still this evening, tomorrow we do this.—Between five and six o'clock p. m. this had happened. We had definitely to lift the carriage a quarter past ten o'clock. At twelve o'clock it was lifted; and we recovered the dead child.

The first thing I would like to mention is that just such an example is suited to show how wrongly people think concerning life. I would like to give an often used comparison for this wrong thinking. Assuming, you see a person in some distance who goes along a riverside. Suddenly you see the person falling into the river. You run to that place and you find a stone at the same place. Of course, you say, the person tripped over the stone, fell into the water, and found his death that way. However, the matter can be completely different; it could be the other way round. The man could have experienced a heart failure. He fell into the water, because he was dead before; and he did not find his death, because he fell into the water. This mistake is done any minute, in the natural sciences in particular. One does not notice it, of course, if it is well hidden.

That was also the case concerning this child. The karma of this child had run off. The removal van went there because of the child. The spiritual beings who exist behind the secret arranged the matter in such a way that the child could find its death. The boy was seven years old. The rather youthful etheric body would have supplied life for many decades, its forces were there. Now, I will always confess what it means that since some time our Dornach construction is embedded in the enlarged etheric body of the little boy Theodor Faiss. The etheric body is increased—it grows after death,—and the etheric body of this little seven-year-old Theo forms something like an aura of the construction since that time. If one deals with the construction, if one needs to find ideas for the construction which put himself rightly in the spiritual world, since the death of this boy he knows that he is co-inspired by the etheric body which is involved in the aura of the construction, the etheric body of the little Theo Faiss.

Of course, no longing to appear original could inveigle me into denying that a lot is co-inspired by that which contributed to the construction since that time, because the aura of this etheric body is round the construction, and one has, as it were, this help that this unused etheric strength works in favour of the construction. Imagine which important internal facts are behind the external facts: a family moves their residence near to the construction. There is a boy, especially gifted by his soul-being; he sacrifices his etheric body, so that the construction is wrapped up in the strength of this etheric body. There we have such an example at which we see that unused sacrificed etheric bodies have their task in the world.

There only that begins basically which should flow as the sentient content from our spiritual science. That one knows, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, that one goes through different lives on earth—one knows that in theory, it does not matter really. But it matters that which is inserted in our real experience by these views. One tries to bring life also into our movement and to overcome the difference between the living and the dead not only theoretically by teaching, but by life. When recently a very dear assistant, Fritz Mitscher, was snatched away from us just in his thirtieth year, and I had to hold the address at the cremation in Basel, an important word consisted in the fact that I turned to this soul, I would like to say, begged him to continue working among us after death. For we do not only need the so-called living, but we need the cooperation of those who have gone through the gate of death. They will co-operate in a double way. On one side, a big number of etheric bodies co-operate in the next time which the human beings have taken off going through the gate of death in the destiny-burdened events.

Youthful unused etheric bodies form a big aura in which we live. On the other side are the individualities themselves who work on from their etheric bodies. We can look at the unused etheric body at the example of the little Theo Faiss where the etheric body becomes the inspirator for something that was achieved in the construction. I would look at the individuality of Fritz Mitscher in my address. It is the task of our spiritual science to feel how the abyss between life and death is filled. It must become conscious content of our earth times not only to know in theory, but to penetrate vividly that which the dead are to us like the living that the dead give something like the youthful, unused etheric bodies. In these etheric bodies, which belonged to the human beings who have now found their death as a result of the big destiny-burdened events, the echoes live of everything that is felt if one considers death as a sacrifice for the events demanded by this time—more or less consciously. This goes into these etheric bodies.

Looking for death, or properly speaking, foreseeing death and nevertheless knowing that this death has a meaning, this will be the case with the numerous human beings going through the gate of death in the present. One can be a materialist; if one exists in such a way, one may say: folk-souls, folk-spirits are only names for something that in the abstract holds together a group of human beings of the same language and the same characteristics. Speaking of folk-spirits as of real beings is a weirdie.—Some people going now through the gate of death may speak that way according to the words; because they go through death they agree unconsciously to that which spiritual science has to say that a folk-soul, a folk-spirit is a real being. For what would it mean if folk-spirits, folk-souls were not real beings and the human beings stand on all sides in this bloody war?

Provided a materialistic world creation it would be impossible to imagine that. If the individual human being sacrifices himself for the folk-spirit, if the folk-spirit is a real being to him, it has the deepest sense that such events have befallen the human beings. Thus we will feel the next time in which many unspent etheric bodies float in the spiritual atmosphere admonishing everybody that there is something spiritual. These etheric bodies are good assistants in future to deepen the human world view spiritually. The human beings have only to feel the dead calling in their souls. When again peace holds sway over the fields on which now the dreadful events take place, the human beings who live then will work much better if they hear the voices of the dead. But this is meant not only symbolically. The unspent etheric bodies are calling. The world cannot exist in future without the human beings feeling their connection with the spiritual world. Humankind of the future would turn out lifeless if it were not able to hear the admonitions of the dead.

In physics, everybody admits that energy does not get lost; one speaks of the transformation of energy. That also applies to the spiritual realm. The forces the unused etheric body carries through the gate of death do not disappear; they will be there. They can be taken up in the souls of the future, and these souls can receive strength and confidence for their spiritual work from the connection with the soul leftovers which remained from unused etheric bodies.

Beside many things this war can say to us, it is for us as supporters of spiritual science above all that we already look up in spirit at the atmosphere of the unused etheric bodies. However, here below souls have to be who have a feeling for the admonitions of the dead. It belongs to our task as supporters of spiritual science to bring about that. We must already find a spiritual point of view also towards such events, not the point of view of an abstract thinking. But we must really imagine the future population of the earth in such a way that below souls exist who are in the physical bodies, and from above forces of unused etheric bodies work; and that these souls below can say: we have no doubts that better times come for the spiritual cognition, because the unused etheric bodies help us with their forces.—If we take this specifically, not in the abstract, we have understood something of the admonitions which this destiny-burdened time can give us in particular as supporters of spiritual science. It must take place that way, because real effects in the human development are necessary. We would have to work on for long times if we had to intellectually convince people of that which the spiritual-scientific world view wants to give. With the Maid of Orleans a subconscious initiation took place. In the future, spirituality works in another way in the human development. The unused etheric bodies support us and also those who as individualities want to work on the physical plane.

It is sometimes strange what people can understand also today. On account of the given example you will admit that at the time of the Maid of Orleans the strategists, the generals did not bring about that which was brought about. I have sometimes given another example: when at a determining hour the army of Constantine marched against Rome, these were not also the generals who brought about the victory and defeated the five times stronger army of Maxentius who led his armies before the gates of Rome against Constantine. Constantine followed not his generals, but a dream that said to him, he should make his armies carry the monogram of Christ. Dreams and Sibylline oracles brought the armies together at a particular place and decided everything in those days. However, because Constantine was victorious, the map of Europe got its corresponding appearance. Who steered the events in those days taking place under the threshold of consciousness? It was the Christ Impulse, but the Christ Impulse, as it was real, not as human beings understood it.

We do not get to know the Christ Impulse listening to the squabbling of the theologians. The Christ Impulse did not work in that which the human beings accomplished consciously which the human beings understood; but it worked in joining together the events with Constantine and Maxentius, and later again with the Maid of Orleans. Also in this time one experiences something, even in little facts. You can compare the little thing with the big one sometimes.

An excellent philosopher wrote a longer article about the spiritual-scientific world view represented by me some years ago in a South German monthly magazine. This article had a big effect; it was written in an opposing way, infiltrated with many a benevolent judgment about theosophy on the whole, even some acknowledging notes. For example, I got the advice instead of using my talents for such matters to find out finally whether Mickiewicz¹ is really the reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans and so on. Nevertheless, on the whole, the article was very suitable to show how our spiritual-scientific world view has to be regarded so that an inadequate impression was aroused.

The philosopher who had written the article was regarded as a great Platonist, as a great logician. He himself said that he devoted himself to no other task than to announce the truth, and, therefore, he would be able to know the truth. The editor of the magazine seemed to be very satisfied to publish such authoritative an article about this spiritual science. This was already some years ago. Then the war came. The person concerned does not belong to those who sympathise with Central Europe, but he sympathises in determined way with England and France and even with those who also fight on the side of England and France. Now what happens? He writes a number of letters to the same man, the editor of the magazine. This editor of the mentioned magazine also publishes these letters because they are too typical, in another magazine, the South German Monthly Magazine. He even reminds of the fact that he is the same man—it is Karl Muth—who publishes the magazine Hochland and printed the article about the “Steinerean theosophy,” as he says. In these letters, a West-European minded person rants at the Central European population as much as he can do. Among other things, this man explains: black people are free aristocrats compared to people who do not know anything they are fighting for. One had to compare the British Empire with Central Europe, the former were established like the Catholic Church by God and would never have done anything but what is according to the divine world order.

Printing this letter is a matter of course. The mentioned editor adds to this: in whole Central Europe nobody could be found except in madhouses who could support such a view.—Now the dear Mr. Muth admits that the man whom he had chosen to let him loose on our spiritual-scientific world view is ready, actually, for the lunatic asylum. Of such a quality are the objections generally which are raised against our spiritual-scientific world view. Only Mr. Muth would already have had to know in those days that the man is ready for the lunatic asylum. But he needed the admonition of the war. His view had to be challenged only by that which he could easily see now. Some people who are ready for the lunatic asylum walk around and criticise our world view, only it does not come to the fore so absurdly.

I said that this example shows that the reason which people have today would limp for a long time if it concerns the spiritual-scientific world view and that one must say: not only the living but also the dead are necessary that a certain quantity of spirituality comes into the world. Those belong to the best helpers who had to stand up with their souls and lives for the course of our present destiny-burdened events. That is why we would want that such considerations remain not only something theoretical in the souls, but become a deeply honest feeling, the feeling that we may bear witness of spiritual science in such a way that we know attentively that there are admonishing voices in the spiritual world saying to us: let us dead be a landmark of the spiritual deepening which must come to the human beings, because we have gone through this death with consciousness—not for our matter, but for that which is independent from us, so that we have thereby confirmed the confession of something that goes beyond the individual material human life.

If among the supporters of spiritual science those are who anticipate, feel or know the serious murmur of the dead, then something real is achieved that has to be achieved by spiritual science in the feelings of the human souls; in other words, if souls are inspired by spiritual science who know to turn their senses to the realm of spirits, because a lot is said to the human beings from the realm of spirits in the times to come.

It is this that I wanted to suggest to you for your feelings, because the circumstances were such that we can be together just in this time also in a branch meeting. One would want that at such meetings not only a knowledge as a germ is given, but that that which is spoken in such meetings would work like a living germ which is planted in the ground of the feeling soul. What you carry on from such a consideration, this is the central issue.

That is why we want to close these considerations, while we think of that which might be assigned to us from the destiny-burdened events of this time:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet, stood up for the liberation of the Polish people from the Russian rule.