The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Out of the whole spirit of our anthroposophical work, you will have seen, in the course of years, that its aim is not to work on, as it were, something directly sensational, but to follow tranquilly those facts connected with spiritual happenings, the knowledge and cognition of which can be important for our life. One does not merely serve the day, spiritually, by always speaking on what concerns the day, but one also serves it by assimilating a knowledge of the great connections of life. Our own individual life is fundamentally connected with the great events of existence, and we can only rightly judge our own life, when we estimate it by the greatest phenomena of life. Hence it arises, that within our seven-yearly cycle in the German Section of the Theosophical Society, for four years we have occupied ourselves with the foundation of our views, of our knowledge, and in the last three years we have tried to deepen these basic views with reference to world-embracing questions. And you will have seen from what has come to you in the explanations given in various lecture-cycles, that considerations concerning the Gospels belonged to the latter. Not merely because the material and content of the Gospels should be brought close to us, but because through their study, many things touching human nature can be learnt. And so today, something can be said about the Gospels, with various applications to the personal life of man.

These Gospels are regarded less and less by external science as a historical document for the knowledge of the greatest Individuality, of the greatest Impulse, which has entered the evolution of humanity—of Christ Jesus. The attitude to the Gospels in the first Christian centuries, and for a long time through the middle ages, was quite different from what it has become in recent times. The Gospels are first felt today as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing appears more natural today than to say: How can four documents be historical, when they contradict each other, as the four Gospels do, each of which professes to give us an account of what happened at the beginning of our era in Palestine.

Yet one thing could strike human thinking, unless it tries today to avoid seeing the most important matters. For example, it might be said: It does not really need very much today to realise that if the four Gospels are read consecutively they do indeed contradict themselves in that sense as one understands it today. Any child could see that, one might retort! But it might be added: Now the Gospels are in all hands, now everybody occupies himself with them. But there was a time before the invention of printing, before the modern spread of books, when these Gospels were by no means in all hands, when they were really read only by very few, and these few, they were just the people who stood at the peak of the spiritual life. Fundamentally, in the first centuries, only those had the Gospels in their hands who stood at the summit of the spiritual life. The content was imparted to the others, brought near so that they could grasp it. One might ask: Were then these few, who stood at the summit of the spiritual life, really such terrible fools, such mightily stupid people, that they could not see what any child can see today: that they do contradict each other, in the ordinary sense? Were then all those people, who endeavoured to grasp the gigantic Christ Event in the sense of the four Gospels, really such fools, such terribly stupid men, that they did not see what the critic sees, working in the modern sense with these contradictions? This is a question for oneself.

If we pursue such a question, we soon notice something else: i.e., that the whole world of man's feeling towards the Gospels stood differently to them than it does today. Today it is the critical intellect, which has learnt its whole training, its whole manner of thought, at the hand of external sense-reality, it is this which attacks the Gospels, and for this it is truly not difficult to find these intellectual contradictions; for they are childishly easy to find.

How, then, did those who stood at the summit of the spiritual life and centuries ago took the Gospels in hand get on with what one today calls contradictions? You see, these men of old had an infinite reverence, unthinkable today, for the great Christ Event through the four Gospels, and they felt extraordinarily that because they had four Gospels, they had all the more to revere and value this event. How is that possible? That was because these old judges of the Gospels kept in mind something quite different from what is kept in mind today. The modern critics do not proceed more cleverly than one who, perhaps, photographs a nosegay from one side—he thus gets a certain photograph of the nosegay. He now goes through the world with this photograph. People notice what the photograph looks like, and say: Now I have an exact idea of the nosegay. But then someone comes who photographs it from another side. The picture is quite different. He shows the picture of the same nosegay to people, but they say: That can't be a picture of the nosegay. The pictures contradict each other. And if the nosegay is photographed from four sides, then the four pictures do not appear similar, yet they are four views of the same thing. This was how the old judges of the four Gospels felt. They said: the four Gospels are representations of one event, from four different points of view, and because this is the case, they give us thereby a complete picture, because they are not alike—and first when we are in a position to form a complete representation from the four sides, do we then get a complete idea of the events of Palestine. And so these people said: We must look up with all the greater humility, when we see the events of Palestine presented from four sides. For this event is so great, that one cannot understand it, if it is only described from one side. We must be thankful that we have four Gospels, which describe this great event from four sides. We must only understand how these four different points of view have come together, and then, when we have convinced ourselves of this, can we form a perception of what the individual person can have from the four Gospels.

That which we call the Christ Event is a mighty happening in the spiritual evolution of mankind. How can we insert what took place then in Palestine in the whole of human evolution? We can regard it in such a way that we say: Everything, all that mankind previously experienced spiritually, which humanity had gone through spiritually, all that flowed together streamed together into the event of Palestine, in order from then to flow on farther in one common stream.

There we have—just to mention but one thing—let us say, the old Hebrew teaching, as is laid down in the Old Testament, if we understand it aright. That is one contribution. It flowed in, as the event of Palestine took place.

There was then another stream which proceeded from Zarathustra. This flowed into that which from then streamed on through the world as Christianity as a main stream.

There is that which we can call the Oriental spiritual stream, which found its most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That also flowed into the one great main stream, and still others, in order then to flow on together. All of these single streams are today within Christianity.

You are not shown what Buddhism is today by one who warms up again the teachings which Buddha gave out 600 years before our era. These teachings have flowed into Christianity. You are not shown what Zarathustrianism really is by one who takes the old Persian documents, and from thence will show the nature of Zarathustrianism today; for he who taught in ancient Persia what exists in the ancient Persian documents has evolved further, and has let his contribution flow into the spiritual life of mankind, and we must seek Zarathustrianism also within Christianity, as well as Buddhism, and the old Hebrew stream.

And now we must ask ourselves, in order to have, in a slight degree, a picture of the real relationship: How have these three streams of Buddhism, Zarathustrianism, and ancient Hebrewism, flowed into Christianity.

If we will understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, then we should call to mind something which has often been mentioned here: that that individuality whom we mention as Zarathustra, was the great teacher of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and first taught in the so-called ancient Persian people, and then incarnated again and again. After he ascended higher and higher through each incarnation, he appeared about 600 years before our era as a contemporary of the great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the old Chaldean-Babylonian sphere of culture. This Zarathustra was incarnated there, he was the teacher there of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea, in order to perfect himself in the right manner. Then this Zarathustra, who at that time 600 years before our era appeared under the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was born again at the beginning of our era, reborn so that he appeared in a body which sprang from the parental pair called Joseph and Mary, mentioned and described in the Matthew Gospel. We designate this child of Joseph and Mary, of the so-called Bethlehem parents, as one of the two Jesus children who were then born at the beginning of our era. Zarathustra incarnated in him. Therewith we have implanted in that old Palestine the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism, the one significant spiritual stream.

But not only this spiritual stream has to live again, in order to be able to stream into Christianity in a new form, but other spiritual streams also. Many different things had to come together and combine for this. For instance, it had to happen also that Zarathustra was born in a body, which as a body, through its physical organisation, made it possible for Zarathustra in that incarnation at the beginning of our era, to develop those faculties which he possessed, through having ascended so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must permit ourselves to say: If such a high individuality descended and found an unsuitable body (which could happen through his being unable to find a suitable body), then he would not be able to express the faculties which he possessed in soul and spirit, because the instruments were not there, in order to express on earth the corresponding powers. One must have a definitely formed brain, if one will express such powers as Zarathustra possessed. That means, one must be born in a body, which, as a body inherited from forefathers, has those qualities which render it a suitable instrument for the faculties which come over from an earlier incarnation. And so, in the case of that Jesus child described in the Matthew Gospel, care had to be taken, that he did not merely have inwardly, in that which reincarnated such a high psychic-spiritual organisation, that he could exercise that mighty effect which had to be exercised, but that also, this soul could be born in a perfect physical organisation, which was inherited. Zarathustra had to find forthcoming this suitable physical brain.

What was thus worked out as a perfectly adapted physical organisation was now the contribution which the ancient Hebrew people had to make to Christianity. A suitable physical body had to be created out of it with the utmost conceivable perfect physical instruments. A suitable body had to be created through purely physical heredity for him who incarnated here. Preparation had to be made for this throughout all the generations lying far back, so that the right qualities could be passed on to that body which was born at the beginning of our era. To transmit the right body was again the mission of the ancient Hebrew life.

Now we will form for ourselves an idea of how this life flowed into the great main stream of our present spiritual life. That means, just as we have seen the mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, so we will now seek the mission of the ancient Hebrew people for the entire civilisation of our earth.

Here it must be said that the more spiritual science progresses, the more it sees in the Bible, compared with what we have today as external history. What is unearthed in the latter really appears childish compared with what stands in the Bible, only one must read it rightly to understand it. This is really the more correct, to the eyes of true spiritual investigation. And so, among other things, it is correct that in a certain connection, that which was the later Judaism, arose from a tribal father, from the father Abraham or Abram. Something absolutely correct lies behind that if we go back along the generations, we come to a tribal father, to whom quite special powers are imparted from out of the spiritual world itself. And in the sense of spiritual science, we can speak of a tribal father of the Jewish people, of Abraham or Abram. Quite special powers were imparted to him from out of the spiritual world. What were these? If we want to understand what special faculties were imparted to him, then we must call to mind a little the various things we have already said here.

We have said: If we go back to earlier times, we find that human beings had other powers of soul, which we can designate as a kind of dim clairvoyance compared with those of today. They could not look out into the world in such a self-conscious intellectual way as modern human beings, but they still had the faculty to see the spirit which exists in the outer world, spiritual phenomena, facts and beings; even if this seeing, because it occurred in a dimmed consciousness, was more like a living dream, yet it had a living connection with reality. This old clairvoyance had to become weaker and weaker, so that man could educate himself to our present modern perception and intellectual culture.

The whole evolution of mankind is a kind of education of humanity. The various faculties are gradually acquired. Our present way of seeing, without our perceiving, for instance the astral body winding round a flower, when we behold it in ordinary consciousness—whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body round it—this modern perception, which beholds objects with the sharp contours of the intellect, had to be trained in man, through the disappearance of the old clairvoyance. But one definite law prevails in spiritual evolution. Everything which man acquires must take its starting point from one individuality. Faculties which are to become common to a large number of people must, as it were, first begin in one. Those faculties which relate especially to a combination turned away from clairvoyance, to the judging of the world according to measure, number, and weight, these faculties which tend especially not to see into the spiritual world, but to combine sensible phenomena, were first implanted from out of the spiritual world in that individuality who is designated as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen first to develop especially those powers which are bound in the most eminent degree to the instrument of the physical brain. Abraham or Abram is not for nothing called the discoverer of arithmetic, that means, that faculty which judges and combines the world according to measure and number. He was, as it were, the first of those, in whose soul-powers the old dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished, and whose brain was so prepared as a perfect instrument, that just that faculty which makes use of the brain, comes most to the fore.

And so in Abraham or Abram, there was a man, in whom the physical brain was so developed, that it was applied most of all to external perception on the physical plane, whereas all human beings earlier made less use of the physical brain, while they saw clairvoyantly in the outer world the spiritual world, without always using the physical brain. That was a significant, mighty mission which was especially allocated to Abraham.

And now this faculty, which was laid as a seed from out the spiritual world in Abraham, like any other seed, had to develop more and more. You can easily conceive that whatever appears in the world must develop. Similarly this power of considering the world through the physical brain had gradually to develop from the seed. The evolution of this faculty now occurred through the succeeding generations, while that which was given to Abraham was carried over to the succeeding generations through the times which followed. But something else had to happen than formerly when the mission of older people was carried over to the younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical body; the greatest missions especially were not bound to a physical brain. Let us take Zarathustra. What he gave to his disciples was a higher clairvoyant vision than other people had. That was not bound to a physical instrument; that was carried over from teacher to pupil, the pupil again became teacher, carried it over to his pupils, and so on. Now it was not a question of a teaching, of a method of clairvoyant perception, but of something bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Something of this nature can only be implanted into later times by being inherited physically. Therefore, what was given to Abraham as mission was bound up with its being inherited physically from one generation to the other. That means, this perfect organisation of the physical brain must be inherited from Abraham by his descendants from generation to generation. Because his mission consisted in the physical brain becoming more and more perfect, this had to happen from generation to generation.

Thus the mission of Abraham was something bound up with procreation, in order to become ever more perfect in the course of physical evolution. But now something else was united with this contribution which the old Hebraic people had to perform. This we will understand if we consider the following.

If we take the other people in other civilisations, with their old dim clairvoyance, then we must say: How did they receive that which was most important, which they venerated most of all in the world? They received it in such a way that it shone as Inspiration in their inner being, shone entirely inwardly. One did not have to investigate so far afield as today. Today man acquires his science by investigation outwardly, by experimenting, he derives his laws by combining external facts. The ancients did not experience what they sought to know in this way, for it shone in them as inspiration. They received it in the inward being. The soul had to give birth to it inwardly. They had to turn the gaze away from the outer world if they let the highest truths arise as inspirations. This had now become different in that people who derived their mission from Abraham or Abram. Abraham had to bring to men just that which can be won through observation outwardly, and through combination. If then a member of other civilisations, which were built on the old clairvoyance, looked up to the highest, then he said to himself: I am thankful to the God Who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away from outside, and the God becomes present to me in the spirit, if, without looking outwards, I let the inspirations of the Divinity shine within. That people which arose from Abraham, however, had to say: I will renounce the inspirations which merely come from within. I will prepare myself to turn my gaze into the world around. I will observe what reveals itself in the air, and water, in mountain and plain, in the starry world, there will I send my gaze, and then I will be able to ponder how one thing stands by another. I will combine the things outside with each other, and will see how I can win an all-embracing thought. And when I comprise what I see in the outer world with an all-embracing thought, bringing it into one single thought, then I will name that which the outer world says to me Jahve, or Jehova. I will receive the highest through a revelation from outside, through a revelation which speaks through the outer world. That was the mission of the Abrahamitic people: to give mankind that which came as revelation from outside, in contrast to that which the other peoples had to give. Therefore this instrument of the spiritual life had to be inherited so that it corresponded in its formations to the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner soul-powers had to correspond to the revelations from within.

Now let us ask ourselves: What happened there, when the old clairvoyants gave themselves to the revelations from within? Then they turned their gaze from outside, for what revealed itself in the external world could say nothing to them about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze from sun and stars, for they listened solely to what was within, and then the great inspirations about the secrets of the world revealed themselves. Then the perceptions appeared concerning the structure of the world. And that which they knew about the stars and their movements, about the laws of the starry world, about the spiritual worlds, was not acquired by them through external observation, these members of the ancient civilisations. They knew something of Mars, Saturn, etc., because the nature of these stars revealed itself in their inner being. Thus it was the laws of the entire cosmos, which as it were, were inscribed in the stars, were at the same time inscribed in the souls of these people. They revealed themselves there through inspiration. As the laws of the world which dominate the hosts of the stars revealed themselves in the soul, so now the external laws which rule the world should reveal themselves through external combination to the Abrahamitic people, which now should be won through external observation. For this, heredity had to be so guided that thereby the brain got those qualities through which it could see the right combinations there outside. That wonderful conformity to law was implanted in the seeds which were transmitted to Abraham, which could so develop through i.e. generations, that their development corresponded with the great world-laws. The brain had to be inherited so that its inner powers, its configuration, developed like the laws of number of the stars, out there in the cosmos. Therefore, it was said by Jahve to Abraham: Thou wilt see generations arise from thee, which in their ordering are arranged as the number of stars in the heavens. As the stars in the sky are arranged in harmonious relationships of number, so should the generations also be arranged in harmonious relationships of number. That means these generations should carry laws in themselves, like the starry laws in the heavens, There we have twelve constellations. An image of this had to appear in the twelve tribes, as they arose from Abraham, so that the corresponding faculties, which were implanted as seed in Abraham, could be led down through the generations. And so, in the whole organic structure of this people developing from age to age, an image was created of the number and measure in the heavens. A translation of the Bible has rendered this by saying: Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in heaven.... Whereas in truth, the passage should run: Thy descendants shall be arranged regularly in the blood relationship, so that their arrangement is an image of the laws of the stars in the heavens. O, the Bible is deep! But what is today offered as Bible is coloured by the modern view of the world. There it runs, “Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it is said: Everything shall be so regular in thy descendants that, for example, twelve tribes result, which correspond to the number twelve in the constellations of heaven.

And so the individual characteristics had to appear that all the time there came to expression the mission of the Abrahamitic people: I get as a gift from outside—not as something which shines in my innermost—that which forms my mission. There is given to me from outside that which I have to bring to the world. That is wonderfully expressed in the Bible, that the mission of Abraham is something given to him from outside, in contrast to the old revelations which were given from within. What had the mission of Abraham to be? The mission of Abraham had to be this: to provide the blood, and what flows through the blood, to Christ Jesus. That is the mission of Abraham. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be permuted in this. That had to work as if it came from outside, a gift from outside. Abraham had to give to the world the old Hebrew people. That is his mission. If that is to correspond to the whole nature of his mission, then this people itself, which is his mission, this people itself must be a gift from outside, must be given by him as a gift. Abraham had a son—Isaac—whom he had to sacrifice, as related in the Bible. And as he came to sacrifice him, this son was given anew to him by Jahve. What is thus given him? From Isaac originate the entire people. If Isaac had been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The whole people were thus given him as a gift. In the sacrifice of Isaac is this character of gift wonderfully expressed. The people itself is the mission of Abraham; and with Isaac, he receives the entire Hebrew people from Jahve as a gift.

The presentations in the Bible are thus deep, and all correspond in detail to the inner character in the progressive evolution of humanity. This old Hebrew people had to give up bit by bit the old clairvoyance, which the other civilisations comprised within themselves. This old clairvoyance was bound to faculties which came out of the spiritual world. One designated these clairvoyant faculties, according to their nature, by expressions derived from the starry constellations. The last faculty which was given up, for the old Hebrew people to be bestowed on Abraham, was the one connected with the starry sign of the Ram. Therefore a ram is sacrificed in place of Isaac. That is the external expression for the sacrifice of the last clairvoyant power so that the old Hebrew people could be bestowed on Abraham. Thus this people was chosen to develop just those powers which depend on the observation of the outer world. But atavistic relics of the earlier appear in all, and so it came about that again and again the old Hebrew people was forced to exclude what did not lie purely in the blood. The carrying over of these faculties directed externally that which still remained of the old clairvoyance. That which came as an inheritance from other peoples had always to be excluded.

We here touch a chapter which is only described with difficulty today, because it contains a truth which lies as far as possible from modern thinking. But it is nevertheless a truth, and one may make the demand, that those who have worked a longer time in anthroposophical groups, can bear such truths, withdrawn somewhat from modern habits of thought.

We must be clear that for certain human classes in ancient times, they retained older faculties into later ages, especially with reference to knowledge; the old clairvoyant powers were once with them in the soul. Man was more united with spiritual beings; they revealed themselves in him. That expressed itself in certain people, who represented as it were decadent products of this older humanity, that they maintained a lower form of this connection with the spiritual outer world. Whereas the really clairvoyant people were more bound up with the entire universe through spiritual intuition and inspiration, the human beings who were in decadence, were lower human types, who in their decadence developed their ancient connection with the surrounding world. They were not independent; the I-ness or Ego-hood, Ego-nature, did not come out in them, but also, the old clairvoyant faculties were no longer at their corresponding height. Such human beings constantly appeared, and in them was shown the connection between certain physical human organs, and the so-called ancient clairvoyant organs. And now comes that truth which must sound so strange. What one calls the old clairvoyance, this shining of world secrets in the innermost, must come by some path or other into the soul. What shone in man must stream in; that means, we have to conceive that “streamings-in” (influxes) occur in people. The ancient human being did not perceive these streams, but when they took place and shone in him, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Certain streams thus flowed into man from out his environment. These were later transformed in him. These streams in ancient times were purely spiritual streams, were, for instance, perceptible to a clairvoyant as pure astral-etheric streams. But later, these pure spirit streams dried up, as it were, condensed to etheric-physical streams. And what arose thus? The hair arose in this way. The hair is a result of the ancient streams. The hair today on a human body was formerly spiritual stream in man, coming from outside into his inner being. Our hair is a dried-up astral-etheric stream. And such things are only preserved where—one might say—the old truths have remained, purely externally, in writing, through tradition. Therefore, in Hebrew, the word HAIR and the word LIGHT are designated by approximately the same signs, because one had a consciousness of the relationship between the astral in-streaming light, and the hair; as, in general, in old Hebraic writings, originally, purely in the words themselves, the greatest truths are contained.

Thus one can say: there is a progressive evolution of mankind. With those human beings, however, who retained the old faculties in decadent form, these streamings-in indeed transformed themselves, dried up, as it were, but no new faculties appeared instead. They were in an old way bound with the new, and yet again, not bound, because these streams were dried up. Such people were very hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy, because new powers appeared instead of those which later condensed to hair.

Science will only come again to these significant truths after a long time. In the Bible they stand. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, still standing at the childish stage guarding its A.B.C. Just read the story of Jacob and Esau. Jacob is he who has progressed a stage, who has developed the faculty of the later age, Esau has remained at an earlier stage. It is he who is the simpleton, as it were, compared with Jacob. As the sons are presented to Isaac, the mother has covered Jacob with false hair, so that Isaac confuses the younger son with Esau. We should thereby be shown that the old Hebrew people still had something in them as an inheritance from other civilisations which had to be stripped off. Esau is thrust out; through Jacob is implanted what should live on as external combination.

And just as that which had been retained in a form remaining behind was thrust out in Esau, so were the old clairvoyant powers, which came to expression as an atavistic remnant in what Joseph represents, thrust out by his brothers, towards Egypt. He had dreams, and could interpret the world through them; that is the faculty which should not develop in the mission of the Abrahamitic people. Therefore he is thrust out, and must go to Egypt.

So we thus see how a stream is worked out in the old Hebrew people, which is built on blood relationship through the generations, and out of which by stages that which remains over as relics is expelled. The old Hebrew has this as its own peculiar tendency, to make that which is inherited down through the generations into an ever more and more perfect instrument, so that when the whole generations have run their course, that body can be evolved from it which can furnish the instrument for him who is to be incarnated again. If the old Hebrew people could not receive revelations from within, they must receive them from outside. Even that which the other peoples received through direct inspiration, had to be received by the old Hebrew people through an external revelation. That means, the Jews had to go over to another people—led by Joseph—who had the old inspirations. And while Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, they attained through external means what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something which shone to them from within. That was the mission of the old Hebrew people. Then, after they had assimilated what they had to absorb from outside, they withdrew with an externally acquired revelation—they returned back again to their Palestine.

And now, after this old Hebrew people had undergone all this, there should be shown how it gradually developed from generation to generation, so that finally the body which became the body of Jesus could be born from this people, whereby the old Hebrew stream flowed into Christianity.

Remember how we have discussed the development of tendencies in the case of single human beings. The life of the individual falls into periods of seven years. The first period extends from birth until the change of teeth, at the age of seven, and in this the physical body simply builds its forms. Then we have the second seven-yearly period to the age of puberty, in which the etheric body is active in the growth of form, in enlarging the forms. The forms are made definite till the age of seven, then the already definite forms merely enlarge, letting those tendencies prevail down in them. From 14 to 21, the astral body is especially predominant. And so we see in the twenty-first year the real “I” of man is first born, and becomes independent. Thus the life of the individual runs its course in certain periods, till the birth of the human “I” or Ego. Similarly, those germs or aptitudes must gradually develop in that people which as people had to provide a body for a most perfect Ego or “I.” In this case, what appears in man in the course of years, so develops here that it appears in the course of generations. A following generation must have developed other tendencies than a previous generation. Everything cannot develop all at once merely in one generation. To explain why this is so from occult bases would lead too far, but one can call to mind a quite ordinary phenomenon. Just remember that in heredity, certain qualities are not immediately inherited, but leap over one generation and it is the grandson who appears similar to the grandfather in inherited qualities. Thus it is in the inheritance of qualities in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. One generation had always to be leaped over. And so what corresponds in the single individual to one period of age, corresponds in the successive generations to two. We can therefore say: This people, like a great individual, must so develop from generation to generation, that what occurs in the case of the individual from birth to change of teeth, here requires 2 x 7 = 14 generations. Then a second period comes, again comprising 2 x 7 generations. This corresponds to the period between the change of teeth and puberty. Then a third period, again comprising 2 x 7 generations, corresponding to the age between 14 and 21, where the astral body is especially prominent. Then the “I” or Ego can be born. The “I” or Ego could be born in the Hebrew people after 3 (2 x 7) = 3 x 14 generations had elapsed. He who wanted to describe to us the body which was given as instrument to Zarathustra, had to show how, through 3 (2 x 7) generations, the seed which was given to Abraham developed, so that after 3 x 14 generations, the “I” could be born, just as in the individual, the “I” could be born in its threefold corporality after 3 x 7 years. The writer of the Matthew Gospel does this. He describes 3 X 14 generations, the generations from Abraham to David, those from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus.

Thus from the depths of knowledge, out of the Matthew Gospel, we have pointed to the mission of the old Hebrew people, how gradually the forces were developed which made it possible for the most perfect Ego or “I” which Zarathustra had attained to be born in a body from this people.

And if we now see what the destinies were of this old Hebrew people, we find that the Captivity appeared to the entire people where, in the individual after the fourteenth year, preparation takes place for individual life, where that springs up which can be accomplished in life, and what man absorbs between the ages 14 and 21; the hopes of youth; that the Captivity was the time when, as it were, the astral body of the old Hebrew people came into consideration, where that was implanted through the last fourteen generations, which gives it its impulse. Therefore the old Hebrew people are led into the Babylonian Captivity—there, where, 600 years before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was then in his incarnation, at that time the teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. Those who were the most prominent leaders of the old Hebrew people then came into contact with the great teacher of ancient times, with Zarathas. He there became their teacher, united himself with them, they took up there the great impulse which so worked that in the last fourteen generations this people were prepared for the birth of Jesus.

Events then went on further, as you know. And then we see something noteworthy. We see a law observed in the spiritual sphere by the writer of the Matthew Gospel, which will be recognised more and more as a law significant for all life. This is the law, that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher stage. Modern science has it already in a somewhat distorted form when it declares that what has been undergone at a lower stage throughout long epochs is repeated shortly in each single being. The writer of the Matthew Gospel shows us this in a magnificent way. He shows it by saying: The Ego of Zarathustra had to incarnate in a body which was gradually developed within the Abrahamitic people. Abraham proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, from the place where Babylonian civilisation started, and took his path through Asia Minor towards Palestine. His descendants were led farther south through the dreams of Joseph, towards Egypt, and after they had here received the Egyptian Impulse, returned to Canaan. That is the fate of the entire people. First, the whole people are led through Canaan, towards Egypt, and then back again to Canaan. What thus transpired as the fate of a people, had now shortly to be repeated. There, where the Ego is born for whom the vehicle had been thus prepared, after all had been developed that was laid down in Abraham, there this Ego again takes its starting point from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra was the secret teacher in his last incarnation, his spirit was united with Chaldea. What path does the soul of Zarathustra take, when it will incarnate in Bethlehem? Zarathustra had remained united with those who had been initiated in the Chaldean secret schools, with the Magi. They called well to mind how they had heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul who from the beginning was designated as Zarathustra—the golden star—would take his path at a definite point of time towards Bethlehem. And as the time came, they followed the path which this soul took, repeating the path of the old Hebrew people. As Abraham followed the path to Canaan, so that star took this path to Canaan: that means, the soul of Zarathustra; and the three Magi followed the star Zarathustra, and he led them to that place where he was born in that body destined for him from out the Abrahamitic people. Thus Zarathustra, the Ego of Zarathustra, was led along that path—repeating in spirit—which Abraham had traversed to Palestine. Then the old Hebrew people had had to seek the path to Egypt. It had been led over through the dreams of the elder Joseph. And now, that Ego which was born in the Bethlehemitic Jesus, was led through the dreams—again of a Joseph—led to Egypt, the same path which the Abrahamitic people had pursued through the dreams of the elder Joseph. This Ego of Zarathustra, repeating in Spirit, undergoes the whole destiny of the old Hebrew people in the body of Jesus. He goes to Egypt, and then again back to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit which is undergone by the soul of the Ego of Zarathustra. And that is an image of the fate of the old Hebrew people.

In the Matthew Gospel, out of the knowledge of the law, we have that faithfully described, that what appears at a higher stage, is a repetition in short of what was there earlier. Oh, how deeply these gospels describe the event that stands at the beginning of our era, that is so mighty, that four writers have said: Each one of us can only describe from his standpoint this great event. Each of these four has described the one event according to his own limited power. As when we picture a being from four sides, we retain but one picture, and through the combination of mutually contradictory pictures know the total being, so has the writer of the Matthew Gospel described what he knew about the law of 3 (2 x 7), about the preparation of the body for the great Ego of Jesus through the mission of the old Hebrew people, according to these secrets, of which he was conscious just through his initiation. The writer of the Luke Gospel has described according to the initiation of which he was conscious, whereby he presented how in another way the Buddha stream flowed into Christianity, in order to flow on farther into it. And the other gospel writers have described from out of the presuppositions of other initiations. The event they describe is so great, that we must be thankful when we find it described from four sides, from the aspects of four initiations.

Today we have only been able to indicate the inflow of the Zarathustra stream, and the contribution of the old Hebrew people. Next time we will discuss something else, which has been transmitted as a contribution in order to stream further into Christianity at a newly-arisen stage. Only some details were mentioned today from the spirit of the origin of Christianity, to show how our knowledge of the world grows, our knowledge of man grows, if we follow the greatest event in humanity. An idea should be awakened of how deeply this event is to be taken, and how deep the gospels are, when we really understand how to read them.

In the last lecture we retraced the past of man more particularly from the point of view of his form and his body. We will now consider the past as regards his states of consciousness.

The following questions often arise before the mind: Is man the only being upon Earth who possesses self consciousness? Or again: What is the relation between the consciousness of man and that of the animals, plants and metals? Have these lower kingdoms of life any consciousness at all?

Imagine that a tiny insect crawling on the body of a man could see only his finger. It could have no conception whatever of the organism as a whole, nor of the soul. We ourselves are in exactly the same position as regards the Earth and other beings indwelling it. A materialist has no conception of the soul of the Earth and, as a natural result, he is not aware of the existence of his own soul. Similarly, if a tiny insect is unaware of the soul of man, this is because it has no soul with which to perceive.

The Earth-soul is much more sublime than the soul of man and man knows nothing of it. In reality, all beings have consciousness but man's consciousness is quite different, inasmuch as in our age it is perfectly attuned to the physical world.

As well as the waking state (corresponding to the physical world), man passes through other conditions of consciousness. During dreamless sleep, his consciousness lives in the devachanic world. The consciousness of the plant is always devachanic. If a plant ‘suffers,’ the suffering brings about a change in devachanic consciousness. The animal has astral consciousness, corresponding to the dream-life of man.

These three states of consciousness are very different. In the physical world we evolve ideas simply by means of the sense organs and the outer realities with which these organs put us into touch. In the astral world, we perceive the surrounding milieu only in the form of pictures, feeling at the same time as if we were part of them.

Why does man, who is conscious in the physical world, feel himself separate from all that is not himself? It is because he receives all his impressions from a milieu which he perceives very distinctly outside his body. In the astral world, on the contrary, we do not perceive by means of the senses but by the sympathy which makes us penetrate to the heart of everything we encounter. Astral consciousness is not confined within a relatively limited field; in a certain sense it is liquid, fluidic. In the devachanic world, consciousness is as diffused as a gas might be. There is no resemblance whatever with physical consciousness, into which nothing penetrates except by way of the senses.

What was the object of this shutting-off of consciousness which followed the stage of imaginative consciousness? If such a shutting-off had not taken place, man could never have said ‘I’ of himself. The divine germ could not have penetrated into his being in the course of evolution if it had not been for the crystallisation of his physical body. Where, then, was this divine Spirit before the solidification of the Earth and of consciousness? Genesis tells us: “The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The divine Spirit, the spark of the Ego, was still in the astral world.

In higher Devachan, beyond the fourth degree, referred to in occultism as Arupa (without body), where Akasha (negative substance) has its rise—there is the home of the consciousness of the minerals. We must try to reach a deep and true understanding of the mineral kingdom and discover our moral link with it. The Rosicrucians in the Middle Ages taught their disciples to revere the chastity of the mineral,—“Imagine,” they said, “that while retaining his faculties of thinking and feeling, a man becomes as pure and free from desire as the mineral,—He then possesses an infallible power—a spiritual power.”—If we can say that the spirits of the several minerals are living in Devachan, we can say equally correctly that the spirit of the minerals is like a man who might live only with devachanic consciousness.

In other beings, then, the existence of consciousness must not be denied. Man has traversed all these degrees of consciousness on the descending curve of evolution. Originally he resembled the minerals, in this sense, that his Ego lived in a higher world and guided him from above. But the aim of evolution is to free man from being subject to beings endowed with a consciousness higher than his own and to bear him to a point where he himself is fully conscious in higher worlds.

All these levels of consciousness are contained within man today:

1. The consciousness of the mineral-corresponding to deep sleep.
2. The consciousness of the plant-ordinary sleep.
3. Animal consciousness-dream-life.
4. Physical, objective consciousness-the normal waking state. The two former states are atavistic survivals.
5. A consciousness which repeats the third stage but retains the acquired quality of objectivity. Images have definite colours and are realised as being quite distinct from the perceiver. The subjective sense of attraction or repulsion vanishes. In this new imaginative consciousness, the faculty of reason that has been acquired in the physical world retains its own powers.
6. Sleep itself—not the dream—here becomes a conscious state. We do not only behold images but we enter into the living essence of beings and hear their inner tones. In the physical world we give names to things but the names are merely outer appellations. Only man can express his own being from within by saying ‘I’—the ineffable name of conscious individuality. By this word we distinguish our own personality from the rest of the universe. But when we become conscious of the world of sound, each being, each thing communicates its own true name; in clairaudience we hear the sound which expresses its innermost being and rings forth as a tone in the universe that is distinct from all others.
7. One stage further and deep sleep becomes a conscious state. Description is impossible, for this condition passes beyond the limits of comparison. All that can be said is that it exists.

Such are the seven states of consciousness through which man passes, and he will pass through others too. There is always one central state, with three beneath and three above. The three higher states reproduce, in a higher sense, the three lower. A traveler is always at the centre of the horizon. Each state of consciousness develops through seven states of life, and each state of life through seven states of form. Thus seven states of form always constitute one state of life; seven states of life compose one whole period of planetary evolution, for example that of our Earth.

The seven states of life culminate in the formation of seven kingdoms, of which four are actually visible: the mineral, plant, animal and human kingdoms. In each state of consciousness, therefore, man passes through 7 x 7 states of form this brings us to 7 x 7 x 7 metamorphoses (343).

If we could envisage in one single tableau the 343 states of form, we should have a picture of the third Logos.

If we could envisage the 49 states of life, we should have a picture of the second Logos.

If we could envisage the 7 states of consciousness, we should have a conception of the first Logos.

Evolution consists in the mutual interaction of all these seven forms. In order to pass from one form to the other, a new spirit is necessary (the action of the Holy Spirit). In order to pass from one state of life to another, a new power is necessary (the action of the Son). In order to pass from one state of consciousness to another, a new consciousness is necessary (the action of the Father).

Christ Jesus brought a new state of life and was in very truth the Word made Flesh. With the coming of the Christ, a new force entered into the world, preparing a new Earth in a new relationship with the heavens.

We have followed the evolution of mankind back as far as Atlantis and will now proceed to the study of Lemuria and speak of the Lemurian human forms. These human beings are the first representatives of real men with bodies permeated by souls. Let us first consider the structure of the Lemurian continent and the type of human being who lived on it.

In the Lemurian age everything was filled with the kind of watery mass, out of which emerged islands which were all of a volcanic kind. Typical for Lemuria is the manifold change in Nature, in the forms and in life. The single forms and species underwent a rapid transformation. The Atlantean soul-characteristics were in the case of the Lemurians, still more strongly marked, especially the will, which also had the greatest influence on the form of the physical body. This consisted only of gelatinous, transparent substances, into which the present bones and muscles had still to be built in. An organ which plays a very great role to-day was then in its very first beginnings. This is very significant, for with the development of the lungs is connected the fact that man was endowed with a living soul.

This installment did not happen in a moment, but lasted throughout long epochs of time.—How was the human soul connected with the body, before giving life to this body which, according to present-day concepts was very misshapen? It was the same connection which now exists during sleep: the soul was outside the body, it soared above it and drew it with it to an earth which was at that time still permeated by powerful streams of life.

The Lemurian constantly lived in a sleep-like condition which may be compared with our dream-consciousness in which a living image-world appears. He could only perceive in this manner and he knew the meaning of the single images, thus recognizing the soul-aspect of things.

An important moment in evolution was when he first used his body for the purpose of perception. The human being moved about in swinging, soaring movements. For this purpose he had a special organ in his bodily cavity, a kind of swimming bladder. The lungs developed out of this bladder, under the influence of the soul that soared above the body. The soul entered the human body in the same measure in which man began to breathe through his lungs. He actually breathed in his soul, with the air he breathed. This process too is described with literal accuracy in Genesis, in the Six Days' Creation, with the words: And God breathed his breath into man and he became a living soul ...

At that time man had the outward appearance of a very soft-bodied dragon (the designation of snake does not quite correspond to the reality); his companions were toads, fish, frogs, etc., in short, a primeval world of reptiles and amphibians, though their present-day descendants can in no way be compared with them; for they are quite degenerate descendants. At that time there were no mammals. To-day no remains can be found either of these reptiles or of the human beings of that age.

How should the relation between animal and man be tought of? The theory of man's ascent from apes may be considered as obsolete, for it is based upon a false train of thought. Think of a morally degenerate and of a highly ethical man. The assertion that man is descended from apes is like saying that the perfect man descends from the imperfect one. They need not descend from one another at all, but they may have a common father and be brothers! The one developed upwards, the other became decadent. Also the relation between ape and man may be viewed in this light. On Atlantis, the human form was still ape-like. During the Lemurian age the sole possession of a body which was even less perfect. This body then took an upward course of development. But the ape-like forms have partly degenerated and have become the apes of to-day. The apes are therefore the degenerated bodily brothers of man.

In the Atlantean age the human race branched out; the one main stem to an ascending development and became the human being of to-day, whereas the other descended and became the ape of to-day. All animals which live among us are consequently human beings who were expelled and condemned to degeneration. The ascent of certain beings is only possible through the fact that others sacrifice themselves. The higher expels the lower, in order to rise still higher; later on there will be a compensation for those who were expelled.

In this connection we must speak of a cosmic event of greatest importance, without which the soul could never have incarnated. This is the exit of the moon from the earth. The moon severed itself from the earth and formed a secondary planet. Formally, moon and earth were one planet. Thus the evolution of the Earth and the evolution of man are closely connected. What the astronomer sees of the moon, is not the whole moon, for everything in the world also has a soul. So also the moon has its soul. The moon went out of the earth with all its forces, with its whole aura, or its astral part.

This event stands in closest connection with everything which one calls fecundation and procreation. The ancient Greek Mysteries still knew this. In the Lemurian age the sexes began to separate; before that time the human beings were hermaphrodites. There was no act of fecundation and conception; procreation took place in a manner which has been preserved in certain lower living beings. The separation of the sexes coincided with the separation of the moon. This applies to all living beings. At that time, certain forces were eliminated from the earth, which had given man the possibility to bring forth descendants without the aid of another being. These forces were eliminated through the exit of the moon. At that time earth plus moon circled round the sun. But the moon maintained the old movement of the earth-moon planet, for it does not turn around its own axis as does the earth. Even as the moon of to-day always turns the same side to the earth, its “sun” and never the back side, so at that time the earth-moon planet always turned the same side to the sun.

Sun, moon and planets are also inhabited by beings. In a still earlier time, sun, moon, and earth were one body, and everything which now exists in the form of human beings, animals and plants, still lived together with sun. At that time man still had a quite etheric form of a very fine substance and he lived a kind of plant-existence. Animal forms and human forms arose much later, for at that time everything still stood at one stage of planned-existence.

These sun-plants were of course entirely different from the plants of to-day. Nevertheless when they say with their blossom they strove towards the center of the planet, i.e. the sun, and that their roots stretched upwards. When the sun severed itself from the earth, the plants turned completely around and again turned their blossom to the sun. From that time onwards the blossom stretched upwards and the root downwards. the animals only made a right-angle turn, when the moon left the earth.¹ Man made a complete turn, so that he is a reversed plant, even as the plant is a reversed human being.

The life-soul passes through the three kingdoms of Nature. Plato therefore says that the world-soul is nailed on to the cross of the world. Also the human soul hangs on that cross, by passing through the three realms of Nature. This is the significance of the Cross in the ancient Mysteries.

From the world-historical aspect, the whole process of development exists for the sake of man. Life can only arise out of life, but life eliminates the lifeless. Everything lifeless has arisen out of life. The minerals are deposits of living substance. But life comes from the spirit. The spirit is consequently the first original source, from which everything descends. And man is the first-born of creation. He has thrown out animals, plants and minerals; the lower always comes from higher.

To-morrow we shall speak of the development of man towards higher stages of knowledge.

• 1. See in this connection: Rudolf Steiner: “Goetheanismus, ein Menschen-Umwandlungsimpuls und Auferstehungsgedanke” 1st Lecture: Die Antwort der Geistwissenschaft auf die wichtigsten Fragen der Zeit. (Philes.Anthrop.Publish. Company, Dornach)

When Goethe in ripe old age looked back upon the whole development of his life, he named three men who had had most influence upon him; Linné, the Naturalist, Spinoza, the Philosopher, and Shakespeare, the Poet.

To Linné he placed himself in opposition and through this reached his own point of view regarding the forms of plants and animals. From Spinoza he borrowed a mode of expression which enabled him to give out his ideas in a thoughtful language which was deeper and richer than that of Philosophers. In Shakespeare he found a spirit that fired his own poetic gift according to the inmost demands of his own being.

Anyone who can gain an insight to the soul strivings of Goethe as these comes to light in his Götz and Werther, where he reveals what he had gone through inwardly, can also see what took place in him when first he absorbed himself in Hamlet.

A vivid impression of this is to be obtained from his statement that Shakespeare is an interpreter of the World-spirit itself. Goethe holds that Shakespeare's genius openly reveals what the World-spirit hides within Nature's activities. His whole attitude towards Shakespeare is expressed in this statement.

It is only within the last five hundred years that what we to-day call Intellectualism has taken possession of our soul life. In the outlook which obtained earlier the soul of humanity was active in a different way. Understanding through thinking played a secondary part.

A battle against the overlordship of thought is visible in Goethe's soul. He still wishes to experience the world inwardly with different soul forces. But the mental life which surrounds him makes thought the basic element in the activities of the soul. So Goethe asks himself: Can one get into intimate touch with the surrounding world through thought? Such a possibility stirs him deeply and out of the overwhelming effect it has upon his soul, his Faust is born.

Goethe presents Faust to us as a teacher who had worked for ten years in a period which saw the advent of Intellectualism. As yet however Intellectualism had only a slight hold upon human nature, and in Philosophy, Jurisprudence, Medicine and Theology Faust does not as yet recognize it as a power which could carry conviction. He could, as a man of science, fall back upon the understanding of an earlier time when men realized spirit in Nature without the intermediary of intellectuality. He wishes to obtain direct vision of spirit. What Faust went through in vacillation between thinking experience and spiritual vision became for the young Goethe an inner battle.

Hamlet and other Shakespeare characters arose before Goethe's soul as he passed through this inner battle. Hamlet, who obtains his life's tasks through soul experiences which appear to him as expressive of relationship to the Spiritual world and who not only is thrown through doubt into inaction, but also through the power of his intellect. The deep abyss of the soul life is contained in Hamlet's words:

The native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.

The youthful Goethe had often looked into this abyss and the glimpses he had caught of it intensified his sympathy with Hamlet's character.

By following the soul life of Goethe one is led from the Hamlet frame of mind to that of Faust and thus one can experience a bit of Goethe biography. It has not got to be proved through documents, neither need it be historic in the ordinary sense of the term. And yet it will reflect history better than what is usually so named.

One gains a picture of Faust as he lived in Goethe, as the teacher born out of a soul condition which oscillates between intellectualism and spiritual vision. During ten years Faust instructs his pupils under these conditions of wavering and one can well imagine to oneself Hamlet as one of these pupils; not the Hamlet of the Danish Saga but Shakespeare's Hamlet. For Goethe has represented in his Faust the teacher who could have Hamlet's 'native hue of resolution sickled o'er with the pale cast of thought.' In this light Shakespeare is the poet who has before his soul a character born out of the waning of consciousness of the Middle Ages and a New Age. Goethe is the one who wants to penetrate into that world outlook in which such characters develop fully.

In many Shakesperian characters Goethe could feel the reflection of this waning consciousness. This brought Shakespeare so near to him, for it was connected with his feelings for Art. Into this feeling for Art Spinoza's intellectualism penetrated and in Spinoza there existed already that mental activity which gives the thought life of modern humanity its soul bearings.

This 'Spinoza-ism' became tolerable to Goethe only when he came to stand before Italian works of art and could feel in these works as an artist that necessity of material creating which Spinoza could clothe only in pure thought.

Together with Herder he had adopted Spinoza's philosophy but only in Italy could he write from the aspect of art what was impossible through reading Spinoza; 'There is necessity, there is God.'

In order to feel on sure ground in Art, Goethe realized the need of an outlook upon the world, but this outlook would have to include Art as one of its most important elements and not relegate it to an inferior place. The creative spirit in the world revealed itself to Goethe in Nature but he found in Shakespeare the artist who revealed the Spirit in his own creation.

Goethe felt deeply how from his inmost being man must strive toward scientific knowledge, but he felt no less deeply how in this striving thought can wander away in error. He felt himself thus in danger with Spinoza. With Shakespeare he felt himself within the world of direct, artistic outlook. Goethe has himself spoken of his relation to Shakespeare in these words: 'A necessity which excludes more or less or entirely all freedom, as with the ancients, is no longer endurable to our way of thinking; Shakespeare came near this however, for he made necessity moral and thus joined the old world to the new world to our joyful astonishment.'

In his youth Goethe found the way to the 'New World' through Shakespeare because Shakespeare understood in his dramatic characters how to hold the balance between the impelling necessity of Nature's activities in man and his freedom in his thought life. The mutual relationship of these two elements must be experienced to-day if we do not want to loose hold of reality through our life of thought.

NOTE BY EDITOR: In the last lecture of the recent course on dramatic art¹ Dr. Steiner put before us an interesting point of view regarding the representation of Hamlet's character on the stage.

It has always been the custom to make of Hamlet a deeply philosophic character and in rendering the great soliloquies this side of his being has always been brought into evidence. But Dr. Steiner in a reading which he gave of the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, showed a new aspect of the Hamlet mind which amplifies what he has written in the above article. Hamlet's mental penetration was not that of a New World philosopher. He did not 'reason out' as a modern thinker does. His thoughts oscillate as do his feelings and it is an error to attribute ponderous weight to the statements in this particular speech where the man himself was merely reflecting his passing, changing feelings and ideas. A modern thinker would never have spoken of death as 'the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns,' when but a few moments previously he had encountered and spoken with his dead Father.

Hamlet is typical of a transition state when the ascendancy of logical reasoning over inner feeling as a perceptive faculty was not established as it became in times nearer our own.

Dr. Steiner's rendering of the speech in what one might name a 'homely' way would probably offend such actors who only see the philosopher in Hamlet, but it is true to the historic aspect of human development in which Hamlet stands as a remarkably complete symbol.

The full significance and true aspect of Hamlet's outlook therefore can be grasped through Anthroposophy.

• 1. Speech and Drama, 19 lectures, Dornach, 5th to 23rd September, 1924.

While the empirical sciences seek to fathom and explain the context in the world of given objects and to explain the relationships between the individual empirical phenomena, philosophy sets out to explain the given in its entirety itself, to show how the finite, the limited, is connected to the infinite, the unlimited. For the empirical scientist, the world of phenomena is a foundation on which he thinks he stands firmly, but he does not venture to ask further questions about it. The philosopher, however, seeing the conditionality of this foundation, unhinges it in order to rebuild it and let it emerge from the only unchanging and absolute. What the human mind unconsciously created in an earlier period becomes its object in a later one. The inner becomes an outer for it and as such it is taken up and endowed with new life. Whenever the old is taken as an object and given new breath, then the human mind has reached a new level.

When minds inspired by old ideas are awakened and infuse new life into them, a new epoch in human history has begun. The longer ideas reproduce without the infusion of fresh life, the more rigid they become; they appear to be alive, but they are dead. This was the state of German culture in all its branches at the beginning of the last century. But then the time came when a new ray of sunshine warmed the frozen world and new life sprouted everywhere. In the realm of the beautiful there arose a Lessing, a Herder, a Goethe, a Schiller; in philosophy there was a Kant.

In 1746, the death of his father deprived him of the necessary funds to continue his university studies, and he was forced to leave the university. He left by publishing a treatise that already foreshadowed his ingenuity: “On the True Estimation of the Living Forces of Nature”.

Through the spirited [illegible word] Martin Knutzen, who introduced him to Newton, the studies on this great man were the immediate cause of the cited writing. Now he became a private tutor and remained in this position for nine years until he had sufficient material means to be able to pursue his career as an academic teacher. In 1755, he earned the degree of Magister with his treatise “A New Illumination of the First Principles of All Metaphysical Knowledge,” and at the same time he began his beneficial academic work as a private lecturer.

In the aforementioned treatise, he now presents himself to us fully as a philosopher. Although he still starts from the Leibniz-Wolffian direction, he is already standing completely independently, declaring the ontological proof of the existence of God to be fraudulent, showing the impossibility of assuming that a simple being could have the reason for its change within itself.

In 1762, he proves that the four syllogistic figures [two unreadable words] of contemporary philosophy are only false subtleties.

In 1763, he attempts to introduce negative quantities into world wisdom.

1764 he shows that if philosophy is to be more than a dead skeleton of the active and living world view, and correspond to reality, it must emulate the mathematical method, for this is the view that corresponds to reality [and is more true to life].

In 1766, in Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, he regards old metaphysics as nothing more than a form of enthusiasm, which he equates with the musings of Swedenborg, who was well known at the time.

In 1768, he also broke with Leibniz's assumption that space is nothing but the relationship between things that are next to each other; he attributed to it an independent and original significance.

And so the dilapidated house of old metaphysics was demolished piece by piece, and David Hume's skeptical investigations had left a deep impression.

Not as fast as in his inner philosophical views, he progressed in his external career. He had to remain a private lecturer for 15 years. His circumstances were not brilliant; this is proved by the fact that the only coat was so worn out that his friends would have bought him a new one if he had agreed. He had been proposed for a full professorship since 1756. But the then seven-year war was an obstacle to his aspirations. Only in 1762 was he offered a full professorship in poetry.

Those who have had even a small amount of contact with Kantian intellectual products will hardly be surprised when they hear that the philosopher turned down a position in which he would have had the obligation to [illegible word] all possible daily phenomena in the field of poetry, to make occasional poems and the like. He was proposed for a position that was next to be filled. And so he was brought to the royal castle in 1766 as a sub-librarian with an annual salary of - 62 thalers.

Meanwhile, however, his seeds had also found more fertile soil here and there in the rest of Germany, and in November 1769 he was called to Erlangen and in January 1770 to Jena. Already determined to accept the latter appointment, in March 1770 the long-awaited opportunity arose for him to take up the post of full professor in his native Königsberg; he became a full professor of logic and metaphysics.

In August 1770, he then [emerged] with the treatise “On the Principles of the Sensual and the Intellectual World” and in this, the transformation had already taken place, the old dogmatic philosophy was concluded and the foundation for the critical one was laid. Here it is already clearly stated that the conditions under which things can appear to us cannot at the same time provide the conditions of the possibility of things in themselves. And now he sets to work on the most famous of all philosophical works, the work by which he made himself immortal, the “Critique of Pure Reason”.

In February 1772, he writes to Herz in Berlin, the man who, in defense of the aforementioned essay, replied that he hoped to finish his work in three months.

In Nov. 1776, he does not think he will be finished by Easter, and he believes he will have to work all summer long; the systematic development presents enormous difficulties.

In Aug. 1777, he hopes to be finished by winter, and in August of the following year, he speaks of a handbook of metaphysics that is to be published by him soon. However, it is not until 1781 that the work appears under the title “Critique of Pure Reason”.

This was

not a critique of books and systems, but [the] of reason in general, in view of all knowledge to which it may aspire independently of all experience, and thus the decision of the possibility or impossibility of metaphysics in general and the determination of both the sources and the scope and limits of the same, all from principles

given. Wormy dogmatism, together with destructive skepticism, was thrown overboard, mere groping under mere concepts abandoned, the whole world view placed on different feet. Until then, it had been assumed that

all our knowledge must conform to the objects; but all attempts to determine a priori something through concepts by which our knowledge would be expanded came to nothing under this assumption.

Kant tried

therefore tried to see whether we would not get better results in the tasks of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must be based on our knowledge, which [so] better agrees with the desired possibility [of] knowledge of the same a priori, which is to establish something about objects before they are given to us. The situation here is similar to that of Copernicus's first thoughts, who, [after not much success in explaining the movements in the heavens when he assumed that the whole starry sky rotated around the observer, tried to see if he might not be more successful if he made the observer rotate and left the stars at rest. In metaphysics, we can now try a similar approach with regard to the perception of objects. If perception had to conform to the nature of objects, then I do not see how we can know anything about it a priori; but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the nature of our faculty of perception, then I can well imagine this possibility.

[breaks off]

We have to realize that the microcosm does to some degree relate to the macrocosm. Human beings have dual nature the way they present themselves today—body and soul from the outside, and the spirit which they have been developing from the inside, beginning in the middle of the Lemurian age. Soul and body are vestments for the evolving spirit. Human beings will gradually be more and more spiritual. The soul is the mediator between the physical aspect and the spirit. Today’s spirit human being had no part in the process in which hosts of sublime spirits worked to develop this organism with its body and soul. This has been created out of great wisdom. The most perfect photographic apparatus would be child’s play compared to the structure of the eye, which shows such wisdom, and this also holds true if we compare a piano with the structure of the ear, which also shows wisdom. The human skeleton is configured in a way showing the greatest wisdom. Every bone is made up of countless numbers of small struts that support one another. This is a much more profound wisdom than any wisdom human beings have ever gained through their activities in the outside world. How does the human being show his dual nature? Where the vestments are concerned, in a perfect structure; where the spirit is concerned, as the beginning of a gradual evolution.

The development of the human being is the work of two hosts of sublime cosmic builders.⁴⁸ They are gradually handing their work over to others. Wisdom is the essential quality of these cosmic builders. At the time when human beings began to develop the spirit, in the middle of the Lemurian age, one of these hosts really handed over to others who are now helping human beings to take mind and spirit onward through their incarnations. The wise cosmic builders who created the human being as a microcosm have also evolved further themselves, for everything is in evolution. They learned their task on the [old] Moon where they went through the highest level of evolution that was possible on the Moon. This enabled them to undertake the construction of the human body on Earth. In the middle of the Lemurian age the next higher quality developed in them. This was love. Their manas had been perfected on the Moon; now they rose to the level of budhi. Love is the outer macrocosmic form taken by budhi. On the Moon, they had learned everything that could be learned there, and they were therefore able to construct the wonderful edifices of the microcosm.

They developed their budhi in the middle of the Lemurian age, as they had developed their manas earlier, on the Moon. From then onwards the human race was no longer constructed out of wisdom coming from outside but guided out of love. The new task the macrocosmic spirits had taken on was to achieve ennoblement through love.

Higher development of any kind can, however, only be achieved by letting others lag behind. On the Moon, a group of spirits had lagged behind in their development. They entered into the phase of Earth evolution in a latent state and were only then able to develop further in their individual manas. They were only able to emerge very gradually. These are the spirits full of wisdom which in esoteric terms are called the luciferic principle. Lucifer, leader of the human intellect, was now intervening, whilst the other spirits were the leaders of love.

Let us consider the next level of planetary evolution, which is Jupiter. Everything mineral will then have vanished, been absorbed. Wisdom will have been transformed wholly into love. The result will be that because the macrocosm is love, the astral body will then be able to reach its highest level of development. The plant world will be the lowest then, and the human being will have such a soft astral body that the astral will be formcreator, law of nature. Karma will be a thing of the past and love will have become a reality. The consequence will be that everything people feel will also come to immediate expression in the world of form. The human being will reflect his karmic balance sheet. One will then be able to see what kind of karma he has brought with him. Love will be an immediate reality, as the law of nature is now. Budhi will thus come to expression at this fifth level.

At the sixth level, the macrocosmic atman will come to expression. The divine self will be present at first hand, coming to expression in manasic matter... [text missing]. Today the word can only exist physically in the spoken word. At the sixth level the word will flow through the world as an immediate presence, resounding. The human being will then have become sound. This is what the author of John's gospel referred to as the Logos. Just as with everything that is to come, one individual always develops in advance in order to assume leadership, and so the word has become flesh now in the Christ. At the sixth level, however, humanity will be word become sound.

To understand the position of the principle of spiritual evolution we have to consider a significant development in the Atlantean race. Spirits that had initially been [full of wisdom] now became rebels, agitators wanting to gain their independence. Suras became asuras. Until then they had been latent on Earth. They are the powers which now, at the present time, represent the intellectual and mental side of humanity. This aspect of Lucifer is also the one which represented Christianity in the early centuries.

Two documents relating to this exist—one in the Vatican, and a copy of it in the possession of the most initiated Christian in the West, the Count of St Germain.

This Lucifer-nature had also represented Christianity in the early centuries. Then Lucifer had gradually changed into a kind of adversary in the Christian tradition. Originally his position had been that of the human being’s friend.

Evolution thus means that the different streams in the universe do not develop at the same rate. Part has to go ahead, something else needs to catch up later. This lagging behind of evolutionary streams leads to opposing interests in the world. This is an important occult law. Certain evolutions have been shown as ascending and descending in theosophical books. We have 7 planets with 7 rounds each and always 7 form states, a total of 343 states. These were at about their halfway point by the middle of the Atlantean age. The ascent thus began with an intervention from the luciferic principle. In the descent, evolution became delayed, and in its ascent it came to be faster and faster. This accelerated development did not, however, address itself to the whole of the physical plane but only to individual spirits. The lords of wisdom had initially been in ascending evolution. They had reached a peak by the middle of Atlantean evolution. Where love is concerned they are at a beginning; they carved love into the macrocosm, but they are in the descending line and in delay. The lords of the luciferic principle, on the other hand, are in the ascending line of development. Because of this, intellectuality is increasing rapidly, whilst ennoblement through love is very slow. Example: piano maker working with loving care would be out of place in a concert hall; there you have to have the perfect virtuoso pianist. Disharmony would result if the former wanted to go on to do his hammering with the same loving devotion in the concert hall.⁴⁹

Two streams must therefore always come together. Relative evil arises when two streams, perfect in themselves, interact. Jesus said to his disciples: 'Why do you call me good? No one is good except God only.'⁵⁰ Nothing in the world is good, only the principle of the beginning, which is the Father. So this is how the godlike atman and budhi qualities develop macrocosmically in the hosts of the world's disposers.

• 48. See also Cosmic Memory (note 12, chapter on gender division), and lecture given in Berlin on 25 October 1905, in The Temple Legend (note 22).
• 49. See also lecture of 2 November 1904 in this volume, and the lecture of 23 May 1904 in GA 93 [in German].
• 50. See lecture of 18 November 1903 [in German] in GA 88.

From the aspect of modern thinking it may perhaps sound strange that we are arranging a study course for the Christmas holidays (Christmas Course for Teachers, 23rd December to 7th of January), because people generally think that during the great festivals of the year work should stop and that Christmas in particular should only be dedicated to religious exercises. Nevertheless a deeper insight into present conditions should not conceal the fact that this Christmas above all calls for other things than those which held good for such a long time. We live in another age and today it must seem frivolous to maintain old customs and traditions, without considering the difficult, distressing times in which we live, and untouched by what is taking place particularly in the present day both in the visible and in the invisible world. We see people making presents to each other at Christmas, they adorn the tree and do other things out of tradition, things which people have been accustomed to do for many centuries. But today in particular we should bear in mind that to keep up such old traditions and customs in almost … a crime.

Those who had a deeper share in the events of the past years feel as if they had lived for centuries, and they can only look with a certain feeling of sorrow upon that part of mankind which is still led by habit and has the same thoughts today which were to some extent justified until the beginning or the middle of the second decade of our century. To an unprejudiced mind everything coming from the events of the time must appear full of problems which touch the very elements of the whole life of man.

We frequently hear the reproach that many people more and more believe that Christianity consists in their calling out “Lord, Lord,” or in uttering the name of Christ as often as possible. But something quite different is needed today: A Christianization of our whole life, in which it does not suffice to utter the name of Christ, but entails that we should deeply and intimately unite ourselves with the Spirit of Christ. We see that almost in the whole world great problems of life are being advanced today. And we can already perceive that the region, the European region which has for many centuries been the stage of human civilization cannot remain so in future. We perceive that the world problems now extend to larger territories and in the present time we perceive above all through symptomatic phenomena that the great conflict between the West and the East announced itself in every sphere of life.

The West kindled the flame of a young spiritual life based upon a mechanical-naturalistic foundation. This spiritual life is only viewed in the right way by those who hold that it is in the beginning of its development. But from this young spiritual life in the West we should look across to the East; we become more and more connected with it, also geographically and historically, and the West must reckon with the East.

In the East there exists an ancient life of the spirit, a spiritual life that can be traced back thousands of years. Immense respect can be felt for what lives in the East; although it is already decadent; the greatest reverence can be felt for it when looking back from its present state of decadence to the primeval wisdom of humanity from which it sprang.

When we envisage the more spiritual aspects of life a word re-echoes from the East which always awakens a peculiar echo in our hearts, particularly when we adopt the standpoint of the West. It is a word which is meant to express in the language of the East the characteristic of the physical world which we perceive round about us through our senses. The East, beginning with India, has been accustomed to designate this physical-sensory world as MAYA, the great illusion – apart from the fact of it being expressed more or less clearly.

The East (but, as stated, this exists only in a decadent form) thus faces the external world perceived through the eyes and ears as a great illusion that confronts man, as Maya.

Those who learn to know the characteristics of the life conceptions of the East, must experience that this conception of Maya was not originally contained in the primeval wisdom of the Orient. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy above all enables us to gain insight into a development of the Oriental civilization stretching over thousands of years. We then look back into a time which lies 3000 years before Christ, and by going back still further into a remote antiquity, we find this conception of Maya less and less, this idea of the great illusion connected with the physical-sensory reality of the external world.

If we wish to indicate an approximate epoch, we may say: Only at the turn of the 3rd and 4th millennium B.C. this concept rises up in the East; the conviction rises up that the physical-sensory world which surrounds man is not a reality, but a great illusion, a Maya.

What is the cause of this immense change in the life attitude of the East? The cause lies deeply rooted in the soul development of humanity. If we consider the primeval wisdom of the East, the poetical form which it assumed later on in the Vedas, the philosophical form of the Vedanta philosophy and the Yoga doctrine into which it developed, if we notice, for example, the greatness and loftiness in which this eastern teaching is contained in the Bhagavad Gita, we find that once upon a time the essence of this Eastern teaching was that man perceived not only the external sensory world, but that in this physical world, in everything he saw through his eyes, heard through his ears or touched with his hands, he perceived a divine-spiritual essence.

For these primeval men the trees did not exist as prosaically as they do for us: In every tree, in every bush, in every cloud, in every fountain there was something which announced itself as a soul-spiritual, cosmic content of the world. Wherever they looked, they saw the physical permeated by the spiritual. The fountain did not only murmur in inarticulate sounds, but the murmuring fountain conveyed a soul-spiritual content. The forest did not only rustle in an inarticulate way; the rustling forest spoke to them the language of the everlasting Cosmic Word, of a soul-spiritual Being. Modern people can only have a very pale idea of the immensely living way in which man experienced the world in this remote, primeval time.

But this alert, spiritual way in which man lived in his surroundings gradually became paralyzed towards the 3rd millennium B.C. And if we transfer ourselves into the development of the times, we perceive that humanity, now taken as a whole, as it were, as humanity of the Orient, began to perceive the phenomena of the world with a certain feeling of longing and of sorrow, as if the gods had withdrawn from them. This feeling was voiced by many more profound souls almost in the form of a prayer by saying: the old gods have vanished and are now behind the surface of the external physical objects. The world has grown empty, it has lost the gods, and because of this emptiness, because it is without the gods, it is Maya, the great illusion. They did not speak of the world as a great illusion from the very beginning; but because it no longer contained the gods, they experienced it as a great illusion, as Maya.

If we wish to go back to the truly living essence of this conception we should go back even behind the Atlantean catastrophe, as far as the Atlantean race. For immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe civilization in general shows a faint trace of looking upon the external physical phenomena of the world as something not real.

Yet until the end of the 4th millennium B.C. there still existed in a strong measure the capacity to perceive the gods in the physical world. This faculty existed in so strong a measure that until that time people needed no consolation for what had up to that time been considered as unreality in the world. But such a consolation was needed after 4000 B.C. It was sought in initiation by the teachers and priests of the Mysteries. It was sought in the language of the stars. Here on earth – people said – there is no reality. But if we investigate the stars, they tell us in their language that reality is poured down to the earth from world-distant heavenly regions. If we listen to the language spoken by the stars Maya seems to obtain a true meaning. The great impression made upon mankind by the star wisdom of the ancient Egyptians consisted in the fact that people felt in this star wisdom something which gave Maya a foundation of reality. People said that here on earth only unreal things are to be found. But one had to look up to the eternal Cosmic Word that speaks to receptive souls in the movements and positions of the stars. Reality will then manifest itself in Maya. If anyone wished to know something important and significant in life, it was investigated in the stars and in their language. This was the human soul constitution until the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

What was real was announced to humanity by the sages of the mysteries, for people did not think that this reality could be found on earth. Those who understand the true essence of life in ancient Greece will perceive that something tragic weighs on it (although a certain superficial way of looking at things makes people say that in Greece life consisted in a childlike joy over the nature of reality); the Greeks yearned for a kind of redemption in human life. This is nothing but the echo of that Oriental feeling, which I have described to you just now. We modern people have reached the point where thought develops, as it were, in modern civilization as highest inner treasure; thought unfolds on every side. But we have not reached the point of recognizing thought as a reality. When submitting to the life of thought we feel as if we lived in something not real. Indeed, many people say that thought life is nothing but an ideology. This word “ideology” indicates in regard to the inner life of the soul, the same thing which was experienced in the Orient in regard to the external physical-sensory reality, which was designated as Maya. In the same way in which we speak of ideology, we may speak of Maya, but we must apply this to our inner soul life.

The soul-spiritual which was such an intense reality in the Orient for a certain epoch, became Maya for the Occident, and the Maya of the Orient, the external, physical-sensory world, became our naturalistic reality. We live by calling that which permeates us inwardly, maturing to the stage of thought, an ideology, or Maya. The Orientals once perceived gods in the external physical world of nature. But these gods vanished from their sight. The Orientals did not have thought in the form in which we have it now. The characteristic of the Occident is that it gained the faculty of thought, the purest, most light-filled form of soul life. But the divine element in thought has not yet dawned for us. We are waiting for the divine essence in thought which must rise up for us. The Orientals lost the divine essence in the external physical world, so that it became a Maya, but this divine essence does not as yet exist in our world of ideas, in our thoughts, in our inner world filled with thought. In the course of historical development the Orientals little by little saw that the external physical world no longer contained the gods. And our thought life does not yet contain the divine; it is without God. We can only grasp this by looking upon it as a kind of prophecy that one day the Maya of our thoughts will be filled by an inner reality.

The history of human evolution is thus divided into two important parts. One part develops from a life filled with the divine essence to a life deprived of this divine essence, of the gods; the other part – and we are now living in the beginning of this development – unfolds from a life deprived of the divine towards the hoped-for life filled with the divine. And in the middle - in between these two streams of development, the Cross is set up on Golgotha. How does it stand within the consciousness of humanity?

From the time of the Mystery of Golgotha we look back six centuries and come to Buddha, who gradually became an object of veneration on the part of a large community. We see Buddha abandoning his home and going out into the world, and among the manifold things which he perceives he sees a corpse. The sight of this corpse stirs up his soul, so that he turns away from the Maya of the external world. The corpse has a discouraging, frightening effect on Buddha. And because he had to look upon death, the corpse, he felt that he had to turn his gaze away from the physical world to another sphere, to the divine-spiritual which cannot be found on earth. The sight of the lifeless body was the true reason why Buddha left the world and fled into a sphere of reality outside the physical world.

Let us now turn to a historical moment about 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha. Many people look towards that great symbol: the cross with the corpse hanging upon it. They look upon the lifeless human being. Yet they do not look upon him in such a way as to flee from him and seek another reality, but in this lifeless human being they see something which is a real refuge to them. Mankind went through a great change in the course of twelve centuries: It learned to love death upon the cross, that death from which Buddha fled.

Nothing can indicate more deeply the great change which took place through the Mystery of Golgotha, which lies in the middle, in between these two historical moments. And by turning our thoughts to the Mystery of Golgotha we should remember what was really the object of reverence in accordance with early Christianity.

St. Paul, an initiate in the mysteries of his time, could not believe in the living Jesus; he opposed the living Jesus. But when he perceived the living Christ on his way to Damascus, the Christ that can even manifest Himself out of the world's darkness, then Paul believed in the risen Christ, not in the living Jesus, and he began to love the living Jesus because he was the bearer of the risen Christ. Out of this special insight into the connections of the world St. Paul gained certainty in regard to the divine-spiritual life, and this certainty sprang out of death.

What had taken place in the development of humanity was that people once found comfort when they looked up from the earth to the stars, whence the everlasting Word resounded, whereas later on they turned their gaze to the historical event upon Golgotha; they beheld a human sheath that contained the mystery of life.

The apostle St. John expressed this Mystery of Life in the words: “In the beginning was the Word.” Yes, in the beginning the Word spoke out of the path and position of the stars! This Word resounded from the cosmos. This Word could no longer be found upon the earth, but it came down to the earth from heavenly spaces, from the Home of the Father. The writer of the Gospel of St. John ventured to pronounce the words: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That is to say, what once lived outside in the stars took up its abode in the body which hung upon the cross. What was formerly sought outside in the cosmic spaces became visible in a human being. What formerly streamed down to the earth in the shining light, came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which came down to man! The whole way of looking upon life was inspired by a world-wide cosmology which led to a conception of the central human being filled by that which once shone down from the stars and was permeated by the living Cosmic Word.

The sense, the deeper meaning which is to be revealed by the Mystery of Golgotha is that it is also possible to look towards the origin of the world by looking into Jesus' inner being and by establishing an intimate connection between one's own inner being and the inner human being of Jesus, even as in the past a connection was established between the human being living on earth and the everlasting Cosmic Word speaking out of the stars. The Mystery of Golgotha is indeed the most important and incisive influence in the evolution of the earth and this is indicated in the New Testament.

It is immensely stirring and profound how the Gospels – now it is related by this one, now by the other – speak of the coming of Christ Jesus. On the one hand there are the three sages, the Magi from the Orient, the bearers of an ancient starry lore, who investigated the Cosmic Word in the star writing of the cosmos. They were endowed with the highest wisdom then accessible to man. And the Gospels indicate that the highest wisdom could at that time only state that Christ Jesus had appeared, for the stars had revealed it. It is the eternal Cosmic Word that lives in the stars which revealed to man that Christ Jesus would appear. The schools of wisdom proclaimed: Since the beginning of the present earthly existence of mankind, Jupiter completed his planetary orbit 354 times. A Jupiter year, a great Jupiter year, reached its close since the time which the ancient Hebrews, for example, fixed for the beginning of man's existence on earth. In accordance with the world conception of that time, an ordinary year only had 354 days. 354 Jupiter days elapsed, and these 354 Jupiter days are like a sentence speaking out of the cosmic wisdom, a sublime sentence, in which the single words indicate the revolutions of Mercury. There is a Mercury day 7 x 7 = 49 times, and this in the same length of time of a Jupiter day.

These were the connections sought by the ancient sages in the writing of the stars. And the inspirations which their souls received by deciphering the starry writing was interpreted in such a way that they were able to say: Christ Jesus is coming, for the times are fulfilled. The Jupiter time, the Mercury time are both fulfilled. This is what the Gospels relate on the one side. On the other side they tell of the revelation which was given to the poor shepherds on the field; without any wisdom, from the dream streaming out of their simple hearts, merely by listening to the simple, pious voice of the human soul, a revelation came to these poor shepherds out of the depths of the human heart. And it is the same message: Christ is coming. Highest wisdom and greatest soul simplicity unite in the words: Christ is coming. At that time the highest wisdom was already decadent, it was setting. Instead, there rises up something which comes from man's own inner being. Ever since, thought has risen out of man's inner being. We cannot yet raise it to the stage of reality; it is still a Maya, but it is necessary in an ever-growing measure to bear in mind that thought can become a reality. In pre-Christian times man looked up to the stars in order to experience reality. We must look towards Christ in order to have reality in regard to our inner being. Not I, Christ in me – this is the Word which will confer weight and inner reality to thought.

The theologians of the 19th Century gradually changed Christ Jesus into a merely human character which can also be recognized with the aid of history, ordinary history; Jesus, the simple, though highly developed man of Nazareth. The Christ has been lost. He will appear in His true shape when a world conception based on the super-sensible will rise up again, a life conception that turns from the physical-sensory to the super-sensible. In the same measure in which mankind has lost the spiritual from the physical, it must gain inner reality in the life of thought, which has to be sure advanced to the stage of being filled with light, but in an abstract way.

This inner reality will be gained by perceiving on the earth itself, in the things taking place in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, something which the human soul can only face through super-sensible conceptions. Christ will be born anew in the development of human civilization in the same measure in which we decide to gain an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, with the aid of super-sensible knowledge. By absorbing super-sensible knowledge man may hope for a perennial Bethlehem. A profound meaning lies in the words of Angelus Silesius: “Though Christ be born a thousand times in Bethlehem, but not in you, then you are lost for evermore.”

Christ must be born not only in empty words, but in every form of wisdom and knowledge. We must reach the point of envisaging what may be gained by looking at the world, as Paul did before he approached the event of Damascus, before he perceived that the earth is permeated by the forces of the living Christ. These forces of the living Christ should be brought into every form of knowledge. The cold abstract knowledge which led us into the misery of the present time must be filled with warmth. This is an important and significant task of the present times. We should feel that first of all we must reach Christ. A profound intimate deepening of the Christ idea must be gained. We should realize that the present misery is too great for the maintenance of old Christmas customs. We must rise to the conviction that it is a farce to keep them up in the face of the other conceptions which prevail in the present time. The great conflict between East and West must also take place in the spiritual sphere and the harmonization of the Maya of the East with the Maya of the West – the Maya of the external world and the Maya of thought. These must reach a harmonious agreement.

Let us not think that in the present time we already have Christ. We should feel like the poor shepherds who were conscious of their misery. Christ should be sought in the innermost depths of man's being, even as the shepherds sought him in the stable of Bethlehem. Sacrifices should be offered to Christ, who transforms the Maya of our thoughts into realities. We should be humble enough to realize that we must first rise to an understanding of Christ's birth. We should remember that we first have to gain an understanding of the Christmas idea before we are really able to appreciate Christmas in the right way. Every sphere of life should be permeated with the living forces of Christ. We must work. And the festivals will be celebrated best of all if in the present misery we strive to transform into a spiritual reality the symbol – but it is a symbol of reality – which faces us historically from Golgotha's place of skulls.

Let us grasp that the most significant thought which we can have at Christmas is the following: A real understanding of Christianity must bring about a Cosmic Christmas. This inner voice, this inner longing, can lead us over into a Christmas which is in keeping with the misery of the present time. For the consecrated holy nights, the Christmas festival at the end of the year, can only acquire life if we are filled with the longing to see in Christmas an inducement to gain insight into the needs of human development. The festive feeling which we have at Christmas will then ray out something of the truth that tells us that through the power of an inner understanding of that reality which is still a Maya for us, we can come to the resurrection of that divine-spiritual reality which came to an end in more remote ages and led to the conception of Maya. Mankind reached Maya, the external Maya. The true soul-spiritual reality must unfold out of the inner Maya. If we understand this, then the individual Christmas idea which we have during this festive season will be permeated by a true cosmic feeling, and this is needed today, if we are to experience the true value and dignity of man. The feelings which we have in connection with the different festivals of the year will then ray out something which will induce us to say: In these times of misery and distress, Christmas should be celebrated in such a way that we can see the NEW CHRISTMAS LIGHTS OF A NEW SPIRITUAL LIFE. We must learn to celebrate not only an individual Christmas, but a COSMIC, UNIVERSAL CHRISTMAS.

It was not without purpose that at the end of each of the two public lectures, I emphasised that Theosophy must not be regarded merely as a theory or a science, nor even a specific form of what is usually known as a body of knowledge, but must be something that can be transformed in the soul into actual life, into an elixir of life. What really matters is that we shall not only acquire knowledge through Theosophy but that there shall flow into us, from Theosophy, forces which help us not only in ordinary physical existence but through the whole compass of life—which includes physical existence and the discarnate condition between death and a new birth. The more we feel that Theosophy bestows upon us forces whereby life itself is strengthened and enriched, the more truly we understand it. When such a statement is made, people may ask: If Theosophy is to be a power that strengthens and infuses vigour into life, why is it necessary to absorb all this apparently theoretical knowledge? Why must we be troubled in our group-meetings with details about the preceding planetary embodiments of the Earth? Why is it necessary to learn about things that happen in remote ages of the past? Why are we also expected to familiarise ourselves with the more intimate, intangible laws of reincarnation, karma and so forth? ... Many people may think that Theosophy is just another kind of science, on a par with the many sciences existing in outer, physical life.

Now in matters of this kind, all considerations of convenience in life must be put aside; there must be scrupulous self-examination as to whether or not such questions are tainted by that habitual slackness in life which may all too justly be expressed by saying: Man is fundamentally unwilling to learn, unwilling to take hold of the Spiritual because this is inconvenient for him. We must ask ourselves: Does not something of this fear of inconvenience and discomfort creep into such questions? Let us admit that we really do begin by thinking that there is an easier path to Theosophy than all that is presented, for example, in our literature! It is often said light-heartedly that, after all, a man need only know himself, need only try to be a good and righteous human being—and then he is a sufficiently good Theosophist. Yes, my dear friends, but precisely this gives us the deeper knowledge that there is nothing more difficult than to be a good man in the real sense and that nothing needs so much preparation as the attainment of this ideal.

As to the question concerning Self-Knowledge—that can certainly not be answered in a moment, as so many people would like to think. Today, therefore, we will consider certain questions which are often expressed in the way indicated above. We will think of how Theosophy comes to us, seemingly, as a body of teaching, a science, although in essence it brings self-knowledge and the aspiration to become good and righteous men. And to this end it is important to study, from different points of view, how Theosophy can flow into life.

From among many pressing questions, let us take one in particular.—I am not referring to anything in the domain of science but to a question arising in everyday existence, namely, that of consolation for suffering, for lack of satisfaction in life. How, for example, can Theosophy bring consolation to people in distress, when they need consolation? Every individual must of course apply to his particular case what may be said about such matters. In addressing a number of people one can only speak in a general sense.

Why do we need consolation in life? Because something may distress us, because we have to suffer, to undergo painful experiences. Now it is natural for a man to feel that something in him rebels against this suffering. He asks: “Why have I to bear it, why has it fallen to my lot? Could not my life have been without pain, could it not have brought me contentment?” A man who puts the question in this way can only find an answer when he understands the nature of human karma, of human destiny. Why do we suffer? And here I am referring not only to outer suffering but also to inner suffering due to a sense of failure to do ourselves justice or find our proper bearings in life. That is what I mean by inner suffering. Why does life bring so much that leaves us unsatisfied?

Study of the laws of karma will make it clear to us that something underlies our sufferings, something that can be elucidated by an example drawn from ordinary life between birth and death.—I have given this example more than once. Suppose a young man has lived up to the age of 18 or so, entirely on his father; his life has been happy and carefree; he has had everything he wanted. Then the father loses his fortune, becomes bankrupt, and the youth is obliged to set about learning something, to exert himself. Life brings him many sufferings and deprivations. It is readily understandable that the sufferings are not at all to his liking. But now think of him at the age of 50. Because circumstances obliged him to learn something in his youth, he has turned into a decent, self-respecting human being. He has found his feet in life and can say to himself: “My attitude to the sufferings and deprivations was natural at that time; but now I think quite differently about them; I realise now that the sufferings would not have come to me if in those days I had possessed all the virtues—even the very limited virtues of a boy of 18. If no suffering had come my way I should have remained a good-for-nothing. It was the suffering that changed the imperfections into something more perfect. It is due to the suffering that I am not the same human being I was forty years ago. What was it, then, that came together within me at that time? My own imperfections and my suffering ... and my imperfections sought out the suffering in order that they might be expunged and greater perfection attained.”

This attitude can, after all, arise from quite an ordinary view of life between birth and death. And if we think deeply about life as a whole, facing our karma in the way indicated in the lecture yesterday, we shall finally be convinced that the sufferings along our path are sought out by our own imperfections. The vast majority of sufferings are, indeed, sought out by the imperfections we have brought with us from earlier incarnations. And because of these imperfections, a wiser being within us seeks for the path leading to the sufferings. For it is a golden rule in life that as human beings we have perpetually within us a being who is much wiser, much cleverer than we. The “I” of ordinary life has far less wisdom and if faced with the alternative of seeking either pain or happiness, would certainly choose the path to happiness. The wiser being operates in depths of the subconscious life to which ordinary consciousness does not extend. This wiser being diverts our gaze from the path to superficial happiness and kindles within us a magic power which, without our conscious knowledge, leads us towards the suffering. But what does this mean—“without our conscious knowledge?” It means that the wiser being is gaining greater mastery and this wiser being invariably acts within us in such a way as to guide our imperfections to our sufferings, allowing us to suffer because every outer and inner suffering expunges some imperfection and leads to greater perfection.

We may be willing to accept such principles in theory, but that, after all, is not of much account. A great deal is achieved, however, if in certain solemn and dedicated moments of life we try strenuously to make such principles the very life-blood of the soul. In the hurry and bustle, the work and the duties of ordinary life, this is not always possible; under these circumstances we cannot always oust the being of lesser wisdom—who is, after all, part of us. But in certain deliberately chosen moments, however short they may be, we shall be able to say to ourselves: I will turn away from the hubbub of outer life and view my sufferings in such a way that I realise how the wiser being within me has been drawn to them by a magic power, how I imposed upon myself certain pain without which I should not have overcome this or that imperfection.—A feeling of the peace inherent in wisdom will then arise, bringing the realisation that even where the world seems full of suffering, there too it is full of wisdom! This is something that Theosophy has achieved for life. We may forget it again in the affairs of external life, but if we do not forget it altogether and repeat the exercise steadfastly, we shall find that a kind of seed has been laid in the soul and that many a darkling mood of distress or weakness will change into brightness, into a sense of vigour and strength. And then we shall have acquired from such moments, greater harmony and energy in the life of soul.

Then we may pass on to something else ... but the Theosophist should make it a rule to devote himself to these other thoughts only when the attitude towards suffering has become alive within him. We may turn, then, to think about the happiness and joys of life. A man who adopts towards his destiny the attitude that he himself has willed his sufferings, will have a strange experience when he comes to think about his joy and happiness. It is not as easy for him here, as in the case of his sufferings. It is easy, after all, to find the consolation for suffering, and anyone who feels doubtful has only to persevere; but it will be difficult to find the right attitude to happiness and joy. However strongly a man may bring himself to feel that he has willed his suffering—when he applies this mood-of-soul to his happiness and joy, he will not be able to avoid a sense of shame; he will have a thorough sense of shame. And he can only rid himself of this feeling of shame by saying to himself: “No, I have not earned my joy and happiness through my own karma!” This alone will put matters right, for otherwise the shame may be so intense that it becomes sheerly destructive in the soul. The only salvation is not to attribute our joys to the wiser being within us. This thought will convince us that we are on the right road, because the feeling of shame passes away. It is really so: happiness and joy in life are bestowed by the wise guidance of worlds without our assistance, as something we must receive as Grace, recognising always that the purpose is to give us our place in the totality of existence. Joy and happiness should so work upon us in the secluded moments of life that we feel them as Grace, Grace bestowed by the supreme Powers of the world who want to receive us into themselves.

Whereas through pain and suffering we are thrown back upon ourselves, brought nearer to perfection, through happiness and joy we have the feeling of peaceful security in the arms of the Divine Powers of the world, and the only worthy attitude is one of thankfulness. Nobody who in quiet hours of self-contemplation ascribes happiness and joy to his own karma, will unfold the right attitude to such experiences. If he ascribes joy and happiness to his karma, he is succumbing to a fallacy whereby the Spiritual within him is weakened and paralysed; the slightest thought that happiness or delight have been deserved, weakens and cripples us inwardly. These words may seem harsh, for many a man, when he attributes suffering to his own will and individuality, will resolve to be master of himself, too, in experiences of happiness and joy. But even a cursory glance at life will indicate that by their very nature, joy and happiness tend to obliterate something in us. This weakening effect of delights and joys in life is graphically described by the lines in Faust: “And so from longing to delight I reel; and even in delight I pine for longing.” Anybody who gives a single thought to the influence of joy, taken in the personal sense, will realise that there is something in joy which tends to produce a kind of intoxication in life and obliterates the Self.

This is not meant to be a sermon against joy or a suggestion that it would be good to torture ourselves with red-hot pincers or something of the kind. Indeed it is not so! To recognise something for what it truly is, does not mean that we must flee from it. It is not a question of fleeing from joy, but of receiving it calmly and tranquilly whenever and in whatever form it comes to us; we must learn to feel it as Grace and the more we do so, the better, for thereby we enter more deeply into the Divine. These words are spoken, then, not in order to preach asceticism but to awaken the right attitude of soul to happiness and joy.

If anyone were to say: Joy and happiness have a weakening, deadening effect, therefore I will flee from them (which is the attitude of false asceticism and forms of self-torture)—such a man would be fleeing from the Grace bestowed upon him by the Gods. And in truth the self-torture practised by the ascetics and monks in olden days was a form of resistance against the Gods. We must learn to regard suffering as something brought by our karma and to feel happiness as Grace breathed down to us by the Divine. Joy and happiness should be to us the sign of how closely the Gods have drawn us to themselves; suffering and pain should be the sign of how remote we are from the goal before us as intelligent human beings. Such is the true attitude to karma and without it we shall make no real progress in life. Whenever the world vouchsafes to us the good and the beautiful, we must feel that behind this world stand those Powers of whom the Bible says: “And they saw that it [the world] was good.” But in our experiences of pain and suffering we must recognise what, in the course of incarnations, man has made of the world which in the beginning was good and what he must amend by educating himself to resolute endurance of these sufferings.

I have been speaking merely of two ways of accepting karma. From one aspect, our karma consists of suffering and happiness; and we accept our karma with the right kind of will—as if we ourselves have willed it—when we adopt the true attitude to the suffering and the happiness that come our way. But we can do still more.—And this will be the theme of the lectures today and tomorrow.

Karma does not reveal itself only in the form of experiences of suffering or joy. As our life runs its course we encounter—in a way that can only be regarded as karmic—many human beings with whom, for example, we make a fleeting acquaintance, others who as relatives or close friends are connected with us for a considerable period of our life. We meet human beings who in our dealings with them bring sufferings and hindrances along our path; or again we meet others who give us the greatest help. The relationships are manifold. We must regard these circumstances too as having been brought about by the will of the wiser being within us the will, for example, to meet a human being who seems to run across our path accidentally and with whom we have something to adjust or settle in life. What is it that makes the wiser being in us wish to meet this particular person? The only intelligent line of thought is that we want to come across him because we have done so before in an earlier life and our relationship had already then begun. Nor need the beginning have been in the immediately preceding life—it may have been very much earlier. Because in a past life we have had dealings of some kind with this man, because we may have been in some way indebted to him, we are led to him again by the wiser being within us, as it were by magic. Here, of course, we enter a many-sided and extremely complicated domain, of which it is only possible to speak in general terms. But all the indications here given are the actual results of clairvoyant investigation. The indications will be useful to every individual because he will be able to particularise and apply what is said to his own life.—A remarkable fact comes to light. About the middle of life the ascending curve passes over into the descending curve. This is the time when the forces of youth are spent and we pass over a certain zenith to the descending curve. This point of time—which occurs in the thirties—cannot be laid down with absolute finality, but the principle holds good for everyone. It is the period of life when we live most intensely on the physical plane. In this connection we may easily be deluded. It will be clear that life as it was before this point of time has been a process of bringing out what we have brought with us into the present incarnation. This process has been going on since childhood, although it is less marked as the years go by. We have chiseled out our life, have been nourished as it were by the forces brought from the spiritual world. These forces, however, are spent by the point of time indicated above. Observation of the descending line of life reveals that we now proceed to harvest and work over what has been learned in the school of life, in order to carry it with us into the next incarnation. This is something we take into the spiritual world; in the earlier period we were taking something from the spiritual world. It is in the middle period that we are most deeply involved in the physical world, most engrossed in the affairs of outer life. We have passed through our apprenticeship as it were and are in direct contact with the world; we have our life in our own hands. At this period we are taken up with ourselves, concerned more closely than at any other time with our own external affairs and with our relation to the outer world. But this relation to the world is created by the intellect and the impulses of will which derive from the intellect—in other words, those elements of our being which are most alien to the spiritual worlds, to which the spiritual worlds remain closed. In the middle of life we are, as it were, farthest away from the Spiritual.

A certain striking fact presents itself to occult research. Investigation of the kind of encounters and acquaintanceships with other human beings that arise in the middle of life shows, curiously, that these are the persons with whom, in the previous or in a still earlier incarnation, a man was together at the beginning of his life, in his very earliest childhood. The fact has emerged that in the middle of life—as a rule it is so, but not always—a man encounters, through circumstances of external karma, those persons who in an earlier life were his parents; it is very rarely indeed that we are brought together in earliest childhood with those who were previously our parents; we meet them in the middle period of life. This certainly seems strange, but it is the case, and a very great deal is gained for life if we will only try to put such a general rule to the test and adjust our thoughts accordingly. When a human being—let us say, about the age of 30—enters into some relationship with another ... perhaps he falls in love, makes great friends, quarrels, or has some different kind of contact, a great deal will become comprehensible if, quite tentatively to begin with, he thinks about the possibility of the relationship to this person once having been that of child and parent. Conversely, this very remarkable fact comes to light.—Those human beings with whom we were together in earliest childhood—parents, brothers and sisters, playmates or others around us during early childhood—they, as a rule, are persons with whom in a previous incarnation we formed some kind of acquaintanceship when we were about 30 or so; in very many cases it is found that these persons are our parents or brothers and sisters in the present incarnation. Curious as this may seem, let us only try to see how the principle squares with our own life and we shall discover how much more understandable many things become. Even if the facts are otherwise, an experimental mistake will not amount to anything very serious. Contemplation of life during hours of quiet seclusion infuses it with meaning and brings rich reward; but no attempt must ever be made to arrange life according to our own predilections. We must not deliberately go in search of people who may happen to be congenial to us, whom we should have welcomed as parents. Preconceptions and predilections must never be allowed to give rise to illusions. You will realise that a real danger lies here. Countless preconceptions lurk within us but in these difficult matters it is a very healthy exercise to try to get rid of them.

You may ask me: What is there to be said about the descending curve of life? The striking fact has emerged that at the beginning of life we meet those human beings with whom in a previous incarnation we were connected in the middle period of life; further, that in the middle of the present life, we revive acquaintanceships which existed at the beginning of a preceding life. And now, what of the descending curve of life? During that period we are led to persons who may also, possibly, have had something to do with us in an earlier incarnation. They may, in that earlier incarnation, have played a part in happenings of the kind that so frequently occur at a decisive point in life—let us say, trials and sufferings caused by bitter disillusionments. In the second half of life we may again be brought into contact with persons who in some way or other were already connected with us; this meeting brings about a shifting of circumstances and much that was set in motion in the earlier life is cleared up and settled. These things are diverse and complex and indicate that we should not adhere rigidly to any hard and fast pattern. This much, however, may be said.—The nature of the karma that has been woven with those who come across our path especially in the second half of life, is such that it cannot be absolved in one life. Suppose, for example, we have caused suffering to a human being in one life; the thought may come easily that in a subsequent life we shall be led to this person by the “wiser being” within us, so that we may make amends for what we have done to him. The circumstances of life, however, may not enable compensation to be made for everything—but often only for a part. This necessitates the operation of complicated factors which enable such surviving remnants of karma to be adjusted and settled during the second half of life.

This conception of karma can shed light upon our dealings and companionship with other human beings. But there is still something else in the course of our karma to consider—something that in the two public lectures was referred to as the process of ripening, the acquisition of a real knowledge of life (if the phrase does not promote arrogance, it may be used). It is well to consider how we grow wiser. We can become wiser through our faults and mistakes and this is something for which we can only be thankful. In one and the same life it is not often that we have the opportunity of applying the wisdom gained from our mistakes and it therefore remains with us as potential power for a later life. But the wisdom, the real knowledge of life that we may acquire—what is it, in reality? I said yesterday that we cannot carry our thoughts and ideas directly with us from one life into the other; I said that Plato himself could not have taken his ideas directly with him into a later incarnation. What we carry over with us takes the form of will, of feeling, and in reality our thoughts and ideas, just like our mother-tongue, come as something new in each life. For most of the thoughts and ideas are contained in the mother-tongue, whence we acquire them. This life between birth and death yields us thoughts and ideas which really always originate from that same incarnation. Yes, but if this is so, we shall have to say to ourselves that it depends upon our karma!—However many incarnations we pass through, the ideas that arise in us are always dependent upon the one incarnation as apart from the others. Whatever wisdom may be living in your thoughts and ideas has been absorbed from outside, it is dependent upon your karma. Very much lies in these words for they indicate that whatever we may know in life, whatever knowledge we may amass, is something entirely personal, that we can never transcend the personal by means of what we acquire for ourselves in life. In ordinary life we never reach the level of the “wiser being” but always remain at that of the less wise. Anyone who flatters himself that he can learn more of his higher Self from what he acquires in the world, is harbouring an illusion for the sake of convenience. This actually means that we can gain no knowledge of our higher Self from what we acquire in life. Very well, then, how are we to attain any knowledge of the higher Self? We must ask ourselves quite frankly: To what does our knowledge really amount? It amounts to what we have acquired from experience—that and nothing more, to begin with. A man who aspires to Self-Knowledge without realising that his soul is only a mirror in which the outer world is reflected, may persuade himself that by penetrating within his own being he can find the higher Self; certainly he will find something, but it is only what has come into him from outside. Along this cheap, easygoing path no headway can be made. Rather we must ask about those other worlds where in truth the higher Self abides and the only available teachings here are those contained in Theosophy, for example, concerning the different incarnations of the Earth and the like. Just as we inquire about the environment of a child, about what is around the child, we must ask the same questions concerning the higher Self. Theosophy teaches us of the worlds to which the higher Self belongs, through telling us of Saturn and its secrets, of the Moon, of the evolution of the Earth, of Reincarnation and Karma, of Devachan, Kamaloca and so forth. By such teachings alone we can learn about the higher Self, about the Self which transcends the physical plane. And anyone who refuses to study these secrets is merely pandering to his own ease. For such a soul is always whispering: “Look within yourself—there you will find the Divine Man.” And what does such a man find? In reality nothing but experiences which have been gleaned from the outer world and then deposited within him! We find the Divine Man only when we seek for what is mirrored into this earthly world from realms outside and beyond it. Things which may sometimes be difficult and uncomfortable—they are true Self-Knowledge, true Theosophy! From Theosophy we receive illumination concerning the Self—our own higher Self. For where, in reality, is the Self? Is the Self within our skin? No, the Self is out-poured over the world; everything that is and has been in the world is part and parcel of the Self. We learn to know the Self only when we learn to know the world.

These apparent theories are, in truth, the ways to Self-Knowledge! A man who thinks he can find the Self by delving into his inner life and anchoring there, whispers to himself: “You must be a good and righteous man, you must be selfless!” ...Well and good, but it is often very obvious that such a man is becoming more and more egotistical. On the other hand, a man who wrestles with the great secrets of existence, who tears himself away from the wheedlings of the personal self and rises to what abides and can be found in the higher worlds—such a man is led to the true Self-Knowledge. When we think deeply about Saturn, Sun, Moon, we lose ourselves in cosmic Thought.—“Cosmic thoughts are living in thy thinking”—so says a soul who thinks in the sense of Theosophy; and he adds: “Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts.” The soul in whom Theosophy has become creative power, says: “In thy feeling, cosmic powers are weaving”—adding: “Experience thyself through cosmic powers.” ... not through powers which wheedle and cajole. This experience will not come to a man who closes his eyes, saying: “I want to be good and righteous.” It will come only to the man who opens his eyes of Spirit and sees the Powers of yonder worlds mightily at work, realising that he is embedded in these cosmic Powers. And the soul who gathers strength from Theosophy says: “In thy willing, cosmic Beings work,” adding: “Create thyself anew from powers of will!” In a man who has this conception of Self-Knowledge, transformation is wrought—through the might of cosmic realities.

Dry and abstract as this may seem, in truth it is no theory but something that thrives and grows like a seed of corn sown in the Earth. Forces shoot out in every direction and become plant or tree. So indeed it is. The feelings that come to us in Spiritual Science give us the power to create ourselves anew. “Create thyself anew from power of will!” Thus does Theosophy become the elixir of life and our gaze extends over the worlds of Spirit; forces pour into us from these worlds; we receive their forces and know ourselves, then, in all the depths of our being. Not until we bear World-Knowledge within us can we pass, step by step, away from the being of lesser wisdom within us, the being who is separated from the Guardian of the Threshold, to the “wiser being.” We penetrate through all that is concealed from one who does not yet desire the real strength but to which he can be led through Theosophy.

I had good reason to emphasise at the end of each of the two public lectures⁵³ that Anthroposophy must not be regarded merely as a theory or a science, nor only as knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is rather something that can be transformed in the soul into actual life, into an elixir of life. What really matters is that we shall not only acquire knowledge through Anthroposophy, but that forces shall flow into us from Anthroposophy which help us not only in ordinary physical existence but through the whole compass of life, which includes physical existence and the discarnate condition between death and a new birth. The more we feel that Anthroposophy bestows upon us forces whereby life itself is strengthened and enriched, the more truly do we understand it. When such a statement is made, people may ask: If Anthroposophy is to be a power that strengthens and infuses vigour into life, why is it necessary to absorb all this apparently theoretical knowledge? Why do we have to bother in our group meetings with all sorts of details about the preceding planetary embodiments of the earth? Why is it necessary to learn about things that happened in the remote past? Why are we also expected to familiarise ourselves with the more intimate, intangible laws of reincarnation, karma and so forth? Many people might think that Anthroposophy is just another kind of science, on a par with the many sciences existing in outer, physical life.

Now with regard to this question, which has been mentioned here because it is very likely to be asked, all considerations of convenience in life must be put aside; there must be scrupulous self-examination to find whether or not such questions are tainted by that habitual slackness in life which we know only too well; that man is fundamentally unwilling to learn, unwilling to take hold of the spiritual because this is inconvenient for him. We must ask ourselves: Does not something of this fear of inconvenience and discomfort creep into such questions? Let us admit that we really do begin by thinking that there is an easier path to Anthroposophy than all that is presented, for example, in our literature. It is often said lightheartedly that, after all, a man need only know himself, need only try to be a good and righteous human being, and then he is a sufficiently good Anthroposophist. Yes, my dear friends, but precisely this gives us the deeper knowledge that there is nothing more difficult than to be a good man in the real sense and that nothing needs so much preparation as the attainment of this ideal.

As to the question concerning self-knowledge, that can certainly not be answered in a moment, as so many people would like to think. Today, therefore, we will consider certain questions which are often expressed in the way indicated above. We will think of how Anthroposophy comes to us, seemingly, as a body of teaching, a science, although in essence it brings self-knowledge and the aspiration to become good and righteous human beings. And to this end it is important to study from different points of view how Anthroposophy can flow into life.

Let us consider one of life's vital questions. I am not referring to anything in the domain of science but to a question arising in everyday existence, namely, that of consolation for suffering, for lack of satisfaction in life.

How, for example, can Anthroposophy bring consolation to people in distress when they need it? Every individual must of course apply what can be said about such matters to his own particular case. In addressing a number of people one can only speak in a general sense.

Why do we need consolation in life? Because something may distress us, because we have to suffer and undergo painful experiences. Now it is natural for a man to feel that something in him rebels against this suffering. And he asks: ‘Why have I to bear it, why has it fallen to my lot? Could not my life have been without pain, could it not have brought me contentment?’ A man who puts the question in this way can only find an answer when he understands the nature of human karma, of human destiny. Why do we suffer? And I am referring not only to outer suffering but also to inner suffering due to a sense of failure to do ourselves justice or, find our proper hearings in life. That is what I mean by inner suffering. Why does life bring so much that leaves us unsatisfied?

Study of the laws of karma will make it clear to us that something underlies our sufferings, something that can be elucidated by an example drawn from ordinary life between birth and death. I have given this example more than once. Suppose a young man has lived up to the age of eighteen or so entirely on his father; his life has been happy and carefree; he has had everything he wanted. Then the father loses his fortune, becomes bankrupt, and the youth is obliged to set about learning something, to exert himself. Life brings him many sufferings and deprivations. It is readily understandable that the sufferings are not at all to his liking. But now think of him at the age of fifty. Because circumstances obliged him to learn something in his youth he has turned into a decent, self-respecting human being. He has found his feet in life and can say to himself: ‘My attitude to the sufferings and deprivations was natural at the time; but now I think quite differently about them; I realise now that the sufferings would not have come to me if in those days I had possessed all the virtues—even the very limited virtues of a boy of eighteen. If no suffering had come my way I should have remained a good-for-nothing. It was the sufferings that changed the imperfections into something more perfect. It is due to the suffering that I am not the same human being I was forty years ago. What was it, then, that joined forces in me at that time? My own imperfections and my suffering joined forces. And my imperfections sought out the suffering so that they might be removed and transformed into perfections.’

This attitude can even arise from quite an ordinary view of life between birth and death. And if we think deeply about life as a whole, facing our karma in the way indicated in the lecture yesterday, we shall finally be convinced that the sufferings along our path are sought out by our imperfections. The vast majority of sufferings are, indeed, sought out by the imperfections we have brought with us from earlier incarnations. And because of these imperfections a wiser being within us seeks for the path leading to the sufferings. For it is a golden rule in life that as human beings we have perpetually within us a being who is much wiser, much cleverer than we ourselves. The ‘I’ of ordinary life has far less wisdom, and if faced with the alternative of seeking either pain or happiness would certainly choose the path to happiness. The wiser being operates in depths of the subconscious life to which ordinary consciousness does not extend. This wiser being diverts our gaze from the path to superficial happiness and kindles within us a magic power which, without our conscious knowledge, leads us towards the suffering. But what does this mean: without our conscious knowledge? It means that the wiser being is prevailing over the less wise one, and this wiser being invariably acts within us so that it guides our imperfections to our sufferings, allowing us to suffer because every outer and inner suffering removes some imperfection and leads to greater perfection.

We may be willing to accept such principles in theory, but that is not of much account. A great deal is achieved, however, if in certain solemn and dedicated moments of life we try strenuously to make such principles the very lifeblood of the soul. In the hurry and bustle, the work and the duties of ordinary life, this is not always possible; under these circumstances we cannot always oust the being of lesser wisdom—who is, after all, part of us. But in certain deliberately chosen moments, however short they may be, we shall be able to say to ourselves: I will turn away from the hubbub of outer life and view my sufferings in such a way that I realise how the wiser being within me has been drawn to them by a magic power, how I imposed upon myself certain pain without which I should not have overcome this or that imperfection. A feeling of the peace inherent in wisdom will then arise, bringing the realisation that even when the world seems full of suffering, there too it is full of wisdom! In this way, life is enriched through Anthroposophy. We may forget it again in the affairs of external life, but if we do not forget it altogether and repeat the exercise steadfastly, we shall find that a kind of seed has been laid in the soul and that many a feeling of sadness and depression changes into a more positive attitude, into strength and energy. And then out of such quiet moments in life we will acquire more harmonious souls and become stronger individuals.

Then we may pass on to something else ... but the Anthroposophist should make it a rule to devote himself to these other thoughts only when the attitude towards suffering has become alive within him. We may turn, then, to think about the happiness and joys of life. A man who adopts towards his destiny the attitude that he himself has willed his sufferings will have a strange experience when he comes to think about his joy and happiness. It is not as easy for him here as it is in the case of his sufferings. It is easy, after all, to find a consolation for suffering, and anyone who feels doubtful has only to persevere; but it will be difficult to find the right attitude to happiness and joy. However strongly a man may bring himself to feel that he has willed his suffering—when he applies this mood of soul to his happiness and joy he will not be able to avoid a sense of shame; he will feel thoroughly ashamed. And he can only rid himself of this feeling of shame by saying to himself: ‘No, I have certainly not earned my joy and happiness through my own karma!’ This alone will put matters right, for otherwise the shame may be so intense that it almost destroys him in his soul. The only salvation is not to attribute our joys to the wiser being within us. This thought will convince us that we are on the right road, because the feeling of shame passes away. It is really so: happiness and joy in life are bestowed by the wise guidance of worlds, without our assistance, as something we must receive as grace, always recognising that the purpose is to give us our place in the totality of existence. Joy and happiness should so work upon us in the secluded moments of life that we feel them as grace, grace bestowed by the supreme powers of the world who want to receive us into themselves.

While our pain and suffering bring us to ourselves, make us more fully ourselves, through joy and happiness—provided we consider them as grace—we develop the feeling of peaceful security in the arms of the divine powers of the world, and the only worthy attitude is one of thankfulness. Nobody who in quiet hours of self-contemplation ascribes happiness and joy to his own karma, will unfold the right attitude to such experiences. If he ascribes joy and happiness to his karma he is succumbing to a fallacy whereby the spiritual within him is weakened and paralysed; the slightest thought that happiness or delight have been deserved weakens and cripples us inwardly. These words may seem harsh, for many a man, when he attributes suffering to his own will and individuality, would like to be master of himself, too, in the experiences of happiness and joy. But even a cursory glance at life will indicate that by their very nature joy and happiness tend to obliterate something in us. This weakening effect of delights and joys in life is graphically described in Faust by the words: ‘And so from longing to delight I reel; and even in delight I pine for longing.’⁵⁴ And anybody who gives any thought to the influence of joy, taken in the personal sense, will realise that there is something in joy that makes us stagger and blots out our true being.

This is not meant to be a sermon against joy or a suggestion that it would be good to torture ourselves with red-hot pincers or the like. Certainly not. To recognise something for what it really is does not mean that we must flee from it. It is not a question of running away from joy but of receiving it calmly whenever it comes to us; we must learn to feel it as grace, and the more we do so the better it will be, for we shall enter more deeply into the divine. These words are said, therefore, not in order to preach asceticism but to awaken the right mood towards happiness and joy.

If anyone were to say: joy and happiness have a weakening, deadening effect, therefore I will flee from them (which is the attitude of false asceticism and a form of self-torture)—such a man would be fleeing from the grace bestowed upon him by the gods. And in truth the self-torture practised by the ascetics, monks and nuns in olden days was a form of resistance against the gods. We must learn to regard suffering as something brought by our karma, and to feel happiness as grace that the divine can send down to us. Joy and happiness should be to us the sign of how closely the gods have drawn us to themselves; suffering and pain should be the sign of how remote we are from the goal before us as intelligent human beings. Such is the true attitude to karma, and without it we shall make no real progress in life. Whenever the world bestows upon us the good and the beautiful, we must feel that behind this world stand those powers of whom the Bible says: ‘And they looked at the world and they saw that it was good.’ But inasmuch as we experience pain and suffering, we must recognise what, in the course of incarnations, man has made of the world which in the beginning was good, and what he must contribute towards its betterment by educating himself to bear pain with purpose and energy.

What has been described are two ways of accepting our karma. In a certain respect our karma consists of suffering and joys; and we relate ourselves to our karma with the right attitude when we can consider it as something we really wanted, and when we can confront our sufferings and joys with the proper understanding. But a review of karma can be extended further, which we shall do today and tomorrow.

Karma does not reveal itself only in the form of experiences of suffering or joy. As our life runs its course we encounter in a way that can only be regarded as karmic—many human beings with whom, for example, we make a fleeting acquaintance, others who as relatives or close friends are connected with us for a considerable period of our life. We meet human beings who in our dealings with them bring sufferings and hindrances along our path; or again we meet others whom we can help and who can help us. The relationships are manifold. We must regard these circumstances too as having been brought about by the will of the wiser being within us—the will, for example, to meet a human being who seems to run across our path accidentally and with whom we have something to adjust or settle in life. What is it that makes the wiser being in us wish to meet this particular person? The only intelligent line of thought is that we want to come across him because we have done so before in an earlier life and our relationship had already begun then. Nor need the beginning have been in the immediately preceding life it may have been very much earlier. Because in a past life we have had dealings of some kind with this person, because we may have been in some way indebted to him, we are led to him again by the wiser being within us, as if by magic.

Here, of course, we enter a very diverse and extremely complicated domain, of which it is only possible to speak in general terms. But all the indications given here are the actual results of clairvoyant investigation. The indications will be useful to every individual because he will be able to particularise and apply what is said to his own life.

A remarkable fact comes to light. About the middle of life the ascending curve passes over into the descending curve. This is the time when the forces of youth are spent and we pass over a certain zenith to the descending curve. This point of time—which occurs in the thirties—cannot be laid down with absolute finality, but the principle holds good for everyone. It is the period of life when we live most intensely on the physical plane. In this connection we may easily be deluded. It will be clear that life before this point of time has been a process of bringing out what we have brought with us into the present incarnation. This process has been going on since childhood, although it is less marked as the years go by. We have chiseled out our life, have been nourished as it were by the forces brought from the spiritual world. These forces, however, are spent by the point of time indicated above. Observation of the descending line of life reveals that we now proceed to harvest and work over what has been learnt in the school of life, in order to carry it with us into the next incarnation. This is something we take into the spiritual world; in the earlier period we were taking something from the spiritual world. It is in the middle period that we are most deeply involved in the physical world, most engrossed in the affairs of outer life. We have passed through our apprenticeship as it were and are in direct contact with the world. We have our life in our own hands. At this period we are taken up with ourselves, concerned more closely than at any other time with our own external affairs and with our relation to the outer world. But this relation with the world is created by the intellect and the impulses of will which derive from the intellect—in other words, those elements of our being which are most alien to the spiritual worlds, to which the spiritual worlds remain closed. In the middle of life we are, as it were, farthest away from the spiritual.

A certain striking fact presents itself to occult research. Investigation of the kind of encounters and acquaintanceships with other human beings that arise in the middle of life shows, curiously, that these are the people that a man was together with at the beginning of his life, in his very earliest childhood in the previous incarnation or in a still earlier one. The fact has emerged that in the middle of life as a rule it is so, but not always—a man encounters, through circumstances of external karma, those people who in an earlier life were his parents; it is very rarely indeed that we are brought together in earliest childhood with those who were previously our parents; we meet them in the middle of life. This certainly seems strange, but it is the case, and a very great deal is gained for life if we will only try to put such a general rule to the test and adjust our thoughts accordingly. When a human being—let us say at about the age of thirty—enters into some relationship with another ... perhaps he falls in love, makes great friends, quarrels, or has some different kind of contact, a great deal will become comprehensible if, quite tentatively to begin with, he thinks about the possibility of the relationship to this person having once been that of child and parent. Conversely, this very remarkable fact comes to light. Those human beings with whom we were together in earliest childhood—parents, brothers and sisters, playmates or others around us during early childhood—they, as a rule, are people with whom we formed some kind of acquaintanceship when we were about thirty or so in a previous incarnation; in very many cases it is found that these people are our parents or brothers and sisters in the present incarnation. Curious as this may seem, just let us try to see how the principle squares with our own life, and we shall discover how much more understandable many things become. Even if the facts are otherwise, an experimental mistake will not amount to anything very serious. But if, in solitary hours, we look at life so that it is filled with meaning, we can gain a great deal. Obviously we must not try to arrange life to our liking; we must not choose the people we like and assume that they may have been our parents. Prejudices must not falsify the real facts. You will see the danger we are exposed to and the many misconceptions that may creep in. We ought to educate ourselves to remain open-minded and unbiased.

You may now ask what there is to be said about the descending curve of life. The striking fact has emerged that at the beginning of life we meet those human beings with whom we were connected in the middle period of life in a previous incarnation; further, that in the middle of the present life, we revive acquaintanceships which existed at the beginning of a preceding life. And now, what of the descending curve of life? During that period we are led to people who may also, possibly, have had something to do with us in an earlier incarnation. They may, in that earlier incarnation, have played a part in happenings of the kind that so frequently occur at a decisive point in life—let us say, trials and sufferings caused by bitter disillusionments. In the second half of life we may again be brought into contact with people who in some way or other were already connected with us; this meeting brings about a shifting of circumstances, and a lot that was set in motion in the earlier life is cleared up and settled.

These things are diverse and complex and indicate that we should not adhere rigidly to any hard and fast pattern. This much, however, may be said: the nature of the karma that has been woven with those who come across our path especially in the second half of life is such that it cannot be absolved in one life. Suppose, for example, we have caused suffering to a human being in one life; we could easily imagine that in a subsequent life we shall be led to this person by the wiser being within us, so that we may make amends for what we have done to him. The circumstances of life, however, may not enable compensation to be made for everything, but often only for a part of it. This necessitates the operation of complicated factors which enable such surviving remnants of karma to be adjusted and settled during the second half of life. This conception of karma can shed light upon our dealings and companionship with other human beings.

But there is still something else in the course of our karma to consider, something that in the two public lectures was referred to as the process of growing maturity, the acquisition of a real knowledge of life. (If the phrase does not promote arrogance it may be used.) Let us consider how we grow wiser. We can learn from our mistakes, and it is the best thing for us when this happens, because we do not often have the opportunity of applying the wisdom thus gained in one and the same life; therefore what we have learnt from the mistakes remains with us as strength for a later life. But the wisdom, the real knowledge of life that we can acquire, what is it really?

I said yesterday that we cannot carry our thoughts and ideas with us directly from one life to the other; I said that even Plato could not take his ideas straight with him into his next incarnation. What we carry over with us takes the form of will, of feeling, and in reality our thought and ideas, just like our mother tongue, comes as something new in each life. For most of the thoughts and ideas live in the mother tongue whence we acquire them. This life between birth and death supplies us with thoughts and ideas which always come from this particular earth existence. But if this is so, we shall have to say to ourselves that it depends upon our karma. However many incarnations we go through, the ideas that arise in us are always dependent upon one incarnation as distinct from the others. Whatever wisdom may be living in your thoughts and ideas have been absorbed from outside, it is dependent upon the way karma has placed you with regard to language, nationality and family. In the last resort all our thoughts and ideas about the world are dependent on our karma. Very much lies in these words, for they indicate that whatever we may know in life, whatever knowledge we may amass, is something entirely personal, and that we can never transcend the personal by means of what we acquire for ourselves in life. In ordinary life we never reach the level of the wiser being but always remain at that of the less wise. Anyone who flatters himself that he can learn more about his higher self from what he acquires in the world, is harbouring an illusion for the sake of convenience. This actually means that we can gain no knowledge of our higher self from what we acquire in life.

Very well, then, how are we to attain any knowledge of the higher self? We must ask ourselves quite frankly: What do we really know? First of all, we know what we have learnt from experience. This is all we know, and nothing else! A man who aspires to self-knowledge without realising that his soul is only a mirror in which the outer world is reflected, may persuade himself that by penetrating into his own being he can find the higher self; certainly he will find something, but it is only what has come into him from outside. Laziness of thinking has no place in this quest. We must ask ourselves what happens in those other worlds in which our higher self also lives, and this is none other than what we are told about the different incarnations of the earth, and everything else that Spiritual Science tells us. Just as we try to understand a child's soul by examining the child's surroundings, so must we ask what the environment of the higher self is. But Spiritual Science does tell us about these worlds where our higher self is, in its account of Saturn and its secrets, of the Moon and Earth evolution, of reincarnation and karma, of Devachan and Kamaloca and so on. This is the only way we can learn about our higher self, about the self which transcends the physical plane. And anyone who refuses to accept these secrets is merely pandering to his own ease. For it is a delusion to imagine you can discover the divine man in yourself. Only what is experienced in the outer world is stored inside, but the divine man in us can only be found when we search in our soul for the mirrored world beyond the physical. So that those things which can sometimes prove difficult and uncomfortable to learn are nothing else but self-knowledge. And true Anthroposophy is in reality true self-knowledge! From Spiritual Science we receive enlightenment about our own self. For where in reality is the self? Is the self within our skin? No, the self is outpoured over the world; everything that is and has been in the world is part and parcel of the self. We learn to know the self only when we learn to know the world.

These apparent theories are, in truth, the ways to self-knowledge. A man who thinks he can find the self by staring into his inner being, says to himself: You must be good, you must be unselfish! All well and good. But you will soon notice that he is getting more and more self-centred. On the other hand, struggling with the great secrets of existence, extricating oneself from the flattering self, accepting the reality of the higher worlds and the knowledge that can be obtained from them, all leads to true self-knowledge. When we think deeply about Saturn, Sun and Moon, we lose ourselves in cosmic thought. ‘In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living,’⁵⁵ says a soul who thinks Anthroposophical thoughts; he adds, however, ‘Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts!’ The soul creating out of Anthroposophy says: ‘In thy feeling cosmic powers are weaving,’ but he adds: ‘Experience thyself through cosmic powers!’ not through powers which flatter. This experience will not come to a man who closes his eyes, saying: ‘I want to be a good human being.’ It will only come to the man who opens his eyes and his spiritual eyes also, and sees the powers of yonder world mightily at work, realising that he is embedded in these cosmic powers. And the soul that draws strength from Anthroposophy says: ‘In thy willing cosmic beings are working,’ adding: ‘Create thyself anew from Beings of Will!’ And this will really happen if we grasp self-knowledge in this way. Then we shall really succeed in creating ourselves anew out of world being.

Dry and abstract as this may seem, in reality it is no mere theory but something that thrives and grows like a seed sown in the earth. Forces shoot out in every direction and become plant or tree. So it is indeed. The feelings that come to us through Spiritual Science give us the power to create ourselves anew. ‘Create thyself anew from Beings of Will!’ Thus does Anthroposophy become the elixir of life and our view of spirit worlds opens up. We shall draw strength from these worlds, and when we have drawn these forces into our being, then we shall know ourselves in all our depths. Only when we imbue ourselves with world knowledge can we take control of ourselves and advance step by step away from the less-wise being within us, who is cut off by the Guardian of the Threshold, to the wiser being, penetrating through all that is hidden from those who do not as yet have the will to be strong. For this is just what can be gained by means of Anthroposophy.

• 53. public lectures: Vienna 6th and 7th February 1912, on Death and Immortality in the Light of Spiritual Science, and The Essence of Eternity and the Nature of the Human Soul in the Light of Spiritual Science. These lectures were not printed. See the corresponding lectures given in Berlin, 26th October 1911 and 21st March 1912, in ‘Menschengeschichte im Lichte der Geistesforschung’ (Human History in the Light of Spiritual Research) GA 61 Dornach, 1962.
• 54. ‘And so from longing to delight I reel ... ’: Goethe ‘Faust’, Part 1, Woodland and Cave.
• 55. ‘In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living’: Benedictus' words in Rudolf Steiner's second mystery play ‘The Soul's Probation’, Scene 1.

At the end of the two public lectures I have given in this city, I emphasized that anthroposophy should not be considered a theory or mere science, nor as knowledge in the ordinary sense. It is rather something that grows in our souls from mere knowledge and theory into immediate life, into an elixir of life. In this way, anthroposophy not only provides us with knowledge, but we receive forces that help us in our ordinary lives during physical existence as well as in the total life that we spend during physical existence and the non-physical existence between death and a new birth. The more we experience anthroposophy as bringing to us strength, support and life renewing energies, the more do we understand it.

Upon hearing this, some may ask, “If anthroposophy is to bring us a strengthening of life, why do we have to acquire so much of what appears to be theoretical knowledge? Why are we virtually pestered at our branch meetings with descriptions about the preceding planetary evolutions of our earth? Why do we have to learn about things that took place long ago? Why do we have to acquaint ourselves with the intimate and subtle laws of reincarnation, karma and so on?”

Some people may believe that they are being offered just another science. This problem, which forces itself upon us, demands that we eliminate all easy and simplistic approaches toward answering it. We must carefully ask ourselves whether, in raising this question, we are not introducing into it some of the easy-going ways of life that become manifest when we are reluctant to learn and to acquire something in a spiritual way. This is an uncomfortable experience for us and we are forced to wonder whether something of this attitude of discomfort does not find expression in the question that is being asked. As it is, we are led to believe that the highest goal that anthroposophy may offer us can be attained on easier roads than on that taken by us through our own literature.

It is often said, almost nonchalantly, that man has only to know himself, that all he has to do in order to be an anthroposophist is to be good. Yes, it is profound wisdom to know that to be a good person is one of the most difficult tasks, and that nothing in life demands more in the way of preparation than the realization of this ideal to be good. The problem of self-knowledge, however, cannot be solved with a quick answer, as many are inclined to believe. Therefore, today, we will shed light on some of these questions that have been raised. We then will come to see how anthroposophy meets us, even if only by appearance, as a teaching or as a science, but that it also offers in an eminent sense a path toward self- knowledge and what may be called the pilgrimage toward becoming a good person. To accomplish this we must consider from different points of view how anthroposophy can be fruitful in life.

Let us take a specific question that does not concern scientific research, but everyday life—a question known to all of us. How can we find comfort in life when we have to suffer in one way or another, when we fail to find satisfaction in life? In other words, let us ask ourselves how anthroposophy can offer comfort and consolation when it is really needed. Obviously, what can be said here only in general terms must always be applied to one's own individual case. If one lectures to many people, one can only speak in generalities.

Why do we need comfort, consolation in life? Because we may be sad about a number of events, or because we suffer as a result of pains that afflict us. It is natural that, at first, man reacts to pain as though he is rebelling inwardly against it. He wonders why he has to stand pain. “Why am I afflicted by this pain? Why is life not arranged for me in such a way that I don't suffer pain, that I am content?” These questions can only be answered satisfactorily on the basis of true knowledge concerning the nature of human karma, of human destiny. Why do we suffer in the world? We refer here to outer as well as to inner sufferings that arise in our psychic organization and leave us unfulfilled. Why are we met by such experiences that leave us unsatisfied?

In pursuing the laws of karma, we shall discover that the underlying reasons for suffering are similar to what can be described by the following example relating to the ordinary life between birth and death. Let us assume that a youngster has lived until his eighteenth year at the expense of his father. Then the father loses all his wealth and goes into bankruptcy. The young man must now learn something worthwhile and make an effort to support himself. As a result, life hits him with pain and privation. It is quite understandable that he does not react sympathetically to the pain that he has to go through.

Let us now turn to the period when he has reached the age of fifty. Since, by the necessity of events, he had to educate himself at an early age, he has become a decent person. He has found a real foothold in life. He realizes why he reacted negatively to pain and suffering when it first hit him, but now he must think differently about it. He must say to himself that the suffering would not have come to him if he had already acquired a sense of maturity—at least, to the limited degree than an eighteen year old can attain one. If he had not been afflicted by pain, he would have remained a good-for-nothing. It was the pain that transformed his shortcomings into positive abilities. He must owe it to the pain that he has become a different man in the course of forty years. What was really brought together at that time? His shortcomings and his pain were brought together. His shortcomings actually sought pain in order that his immaturity might be removed by being transformed into maturity.

Even a simple consideration of life between birth and death can lead to this view. If we look at the totality of life, however, and if we face our karma as it has been explained in the lecture two days ago, we will come to the conclusion that all pain that hits us, that all suffering that comes our way, are of such a nature that they are being sought by our shortcomings. By far the greater part of our pain and suffering is sought by imperfections that we have brought over from previous incarnations. Since we have these imperfections within ourselves, there is a wiser man in us than we ourselves are who chooses the road to pain and suffering. It is, indeed, one of the golden rules of life that we all carry in us a wiser man than we ourselves are, a much wiser man. The one to whom we say, “I,” in ordinary life is less wise. If it was left to this less wise person in us to make a choice between pain and joy, he would undoubtedly choose the road toward joy. But the wiser man is the one who reigns in the depth of our unconscious and who remains inaccessible to ordinary consciousness. He directs our gaze away from easy enjoyment and kindles in us a magic power that seeks the road of pain without our really knowing it. But what is meant by the words: Without really knowing it? They mean that the wiser man in us prevails over the less wise one. He always acts in such a way that our shortcomings are guided to our pains and he makes us suffer because with every inner and outer suffering we eliminate one of our faults and become transformed into something better.

Little is accomplished if one tries to understand these words theoretically. Much more can be gained when one creates sacred moments in life during which one is willing to use all one's energy in an effort to fill one's soul with the living content of such words. Ordinary life, with all its work, pressure, commotion and duties provides little chance to do so. In this setting, it is not always possible to silence the less wise man in us. But when we create a sacred moment in life, short as it may be, then we can say, “I will put aside the transitory effects of life; I will view my sufferings in such a way that I feel how the wise man in me has been attracted by them with a magic power. I realize that I have imposed upon myself certain experiences of pain without which I would not have overcome some of my shortcomings.” A feeling of blissful wisdom will overcome us that makes us feel that even if the world appears to be filled with suffering, it is, nevertheless, radiating pure wisdom. Such an attitude is one of the fruits of anthroposophy for the benefit of life. What has been said may, of course, be forgotten, but if we do not forget it, but practice such thoughts regularly, we will become aware of the fact that we have planted a seed in our soul. What we used to experience as feelings of sadness and attitudes of depression will be transformed into positive attitudes toward life, into strength and energy. Out of these sacred moments in life will be born more harmonious souls and stronger personalities.

We may now move on to another step in our experience. The anthroposophist should be determined to take this other step only after he has comforted himself many times with regard to his sufferings in the way just described. The experience that may now be added consists of looking at one's joys and at everything that has occurred in life in the way of happiness. He who can face destiny without bias and as though he had himself wanted his sufferings, will find himself confronted by a strange reaction when he looks at his joy and happiness. He cannot face them in the same way that he faced his sufferings. It is easy to see how one can find comfort in suffering. He who does not believe this only has to expose himself to the experience.

It is difficult, however, to come to terms with joy and happiness. Much as we may accept the attitude that we have wanted our suffering, when we apply the same attitude to joy and happiness, we cannot but feel ashamed of ourselves. A deep feeling of shame will be experienced. The only way to overcome this feeling is to realize that we were not the ones who gave ourselves our joys and happiness through the law of karma. This is the only cure as, otherwise, the feeling of shame can become so intense that it virtually destroys us in our souls. Relief can only be found by not making the wiser man in us responsible for having driven us toward our joys. With this thought, one will feel that one hits the truth, because the feeling of shame will disappear. It is a fact that our joy and happiness come to us in life as something that is bestowed upon us, without our participation, by a wise divine guidance, as something we must accept as grace, as something that is to unite us with the universe. Happiness and joy shall have such an effect upon us in the sacred moments in our lives and in our intimate hours of introspection that we shall experience them as grace, as grace from the divine powers of the world who want to receive us and who, as it were, embed us in their being.

While our pain and suffering lead us to ourselves and make us more genuinely ourselves, we develop through joy and happiness, provided that we consider them as grace, a feeling that one can only describe as being blissfully embedded in the divine forces and powers of the world. Here the only justified attitude toward happiness and joy is one of gratitude. Nobody will understand joy and happiness in the intimate hours of self-knowledge when he ascribes them to his karma. If he involves karma, he commits an error that is liable to weaken and paralyze the spiritual in him. Every thought to the effect that joy and happiness are deserved actually weakens and paralyzes us. This may be a hard fact to understand because everyone who admits that his pain is inflicted upon himself by his own individuality would obviously expect to be his own master also with regard to joy and happiness. But a simple look at life can teach us that joy and happiness have an extinguishing power. Nowhere is this extinguishing effect of joy and happiness better described than in Goethe's Faust in the words, “And thus I stagger from desire to pleasure. And in pleasure I am parched with desire.” Simple reflection upon the influence of personal enjoyment shows that inherent in it is something that makes us stagger and blots out our true being.

No sermon is here being delivered against enjoyment, nor is an invitation extended to practice self-torture, or to pinch ourselves with red hot pliers, or the like. If one recognizes a situation in the right way, it does not mean that one should escape from it. No escape, therefore, is suggested, but a silent acceptance of joy and happiness whenever they appear. We must develop the inner attitude that we experience them as grace, and the more the better. Thus do we immerse ourselves the more in the divine. Therefore, these words are said not in order to preach asceticism, but in order to awaken the right mood toward joy and happiness.

If it is thought that joy and happiness have a paralyzing and extinguishing effect, and that therefore man should flee from them, then one would promote the ideal of false asceticism and self-torture. In this event, man, in reality, would be escaping from the grace that is given to him by the gods. Self-torture practiced by ascetics, monks and nuns is nothing but a continuous rebellion against the gods. It behooves us to feel pain as something that comes to us through our karma. In joy and happiness, we can feel that the divine is descending to us.

May joy and happiness be for us a sign as to how close the gods have attracted us, and may our pain and suffering be a sign as to how far removed we are from what we are to become as good human beings. This is the fundamental attitude toward karma without which we cannot really move ahead in life. In what the world bestows upon us as goodness and beauty, we must conceive the world powers of which it is said in the Bible, “And he looked at the world and he saw that it was good.” But inasmuch as we experience pain and suffering, we must recognize what man has made of the world during its evolution, which originally was a good world, and what he must contribute toward its betterment by educating himself to bear pain with purpose and energy.

What has now been described are two ways to confront karma. To a certain extent, our karma consists of suffering and joys. We relate ourselves to our karma with the right attitude when we can consider it as something we really wanted and when we can confront our sufferings and joys with the proper understanding. But a review of karma can be extended further, which we shall do today and tomorrow.

Karma not only shows us what is related to our lives in a joyful and painful manner. But as the result of the working of karma, we meet many people during the course of our lives with whom we only become slightly acquainted, and people with whom we are connected in various ways during long periods of our lives as relatives and friends. We meet people who either cause us pain directly, or as a result of some joint undertaking that runs into obstructions. We meet people who are helpful, or to whom we can be helpful. In short, many relationships are possible. If the effects of karma, as described.the day before yesterday, are to become fruitful, then we must accept the fact that the wiser man in us wants certain experiences. He seeks a person who seems accidentally to cross our paths. He is the one who leads us to other people with whom we get engaged in this or that way. What is really guiding this wiser man in us when he wants to meet this or that person? What is he basing himself on? In answer, we have to say to ourselves that we want to meet him because we have met him previously. It may not have happened in the last life; it could have happened much earlier. The wiser man in us leads us to this person because we had dealings with him in a previous life, or because we may have incurred a debt in one way or another. We are led to this person as though by magic.

We are now reaching a manifold and intricate realm that can be covered only by generalities. The indications here stem from clairvoyant investigation. They can be useful to anybody since they can be applied to many special situations.

A strange observation can be made. We all have experienced or observed how, toward the middle of our lives, the ascending growth-line gradually tilts over to become a descending line, and our youthful energies begin to decline. We move past a climax and from there on we move downward. This point of change is somewhere in our thirties. It is also the time in our lives when we are living most intensively on the physical plane. In this connection, we can fall prey to a delusion. The events that from childhood precede this climax were brought with us into this incarnation. They were, so to speak, drawn out of a previous existence. The forces that we have brought along with us from the spiritual world are now placed outside ourselves and used to fashion our lives. These forces are used up when we reach this middle point.

In considering the descending curve of our lives, we perceive the lessons that we have learned in the school of life, that we have accumulated and have worked over. They will be taken along into the next incarnation. This is something we carry into the spiritual world; previously, we took something out of it. This is the time when we are fully engaged on the physical plane. We are thoroughly enmeshed with everything that comes to us from the outside world. We have passed our training period; we are fully committed to life and we have to come to terms with it. We are involved with ourselves, but we are primarily occupied with arranging our environments for ourselves, and in finding a proper relationship to the world in which we live. The human capacities that are seeking a relationship to the world are our power of reasoning and that part of our volitional life that is controlled by reason. What is thus active in us is alien to the spiritual world, which withdraws from us and closes up. It is true that in the middle of our lives we are the farthest removed from the reality of the spirit.

Here occult investigation reveals a significant fact. The people with whom we meet, and the acquaintances we make in the middle period of our lives are curiously enough the very people with whom we were engaged during the period of early childhood in one of our previous incarnations. It is an established fact that, as a general rule, although not always, we meet in the middle period of our lives, as a result of karmic guidance, the very people who were once our parents. It is unlikely that we meet in early childhood the persons who were once our parents. This happens during the middle of life. This may appear as a strange fact, but this is the way it is. When we attempt to apply such rules to the experience of life, and when we direct our thoughts accordingly, then we can learn a great deal. When a person at about the age of thirty establishes a relationship to another, either through the bonds of love or of friendship, or when they get involved in conflict, or in any other experience, we will understand a great deal more about these relationships if we consider hypothetically that the person may have once been related to the other as a child is to his parents.

In reversing this relationship, we discover another remarkable fact. The very people with whom we have been associated in our early childhood, such as parents, sisters and brothers, playmates and other companions, as a rule are the very people whom we have met in the previous or one of our previous incarnations around our thirtieth year. These people frequently appear as our parents, sisters or brothers in the present incarnation.

Curious as this may appear to us at first, let us try to apply it to life. The experience of life becomes enlightened if we look at it in this way. We may, of course, err in our speculation. But if, in solitary hours, we look at life so that it is filled with meaning, we can gain a great deal. Obviously, we must not arrange karma to our liking; we must not choose the people we like and assume that they may have been our parents. Prejudices must not falsify the real facts. You realize the danger that we are exposed to and the many misconceptions that may creep in. We must educate ourselves to remain open-minded and unbiased.

You may now ask what the relation is to the people we meet during the declining curve of our lives. We have discovered that at the beginning of our lives, we meet people with whom we were acquainted during the middle period of a previous life, while now during the middle of our lives, we recognize those with whom we were involved at the beginning of previous existences. But how about the period of our descending life? The answer is that we may be led to people with whom we were involved in a previous life, or we may not yet have been involved with them. They will have been connected with us in a previous life if we are meeting under special circumstances that occur at decisive junctures of a life span, when, for example, a bitter disappointment confronts us with a serious probation. In such a situation, it is likely that we are meeting during the second period of our lives people with whom we were previously connected. Thereby conditions are dislodged and experiences that were caused in the past can be resolved.

Karma works in many ways and one cannot force it into definite patterns. But as a general rule, it can be stated that during the second half of our lives we encounter people with whom the karmic connections that are beginning to be woven cannot be resolved in one life. Let us assume that we have caused suffering to someone in a previous life. It is easy to assume that the wiser man in us will lead us back to this person in a subsequent life in order that we may equalize the harm that we have done. But life conditions cannot always permit that we can equalize everything, but perhaps only a part of it. Thereby matters are complicated, and it becomes possible that such a remainder of karma may be corrected in the second half of life. Looking at it this way, we are placing our connections and communications with other people in the light of this karma.

But there is something else that we can consider in the course of karma. This is what I have called in my two recent public lectures the process of maturing and the acquisition of life experiences. These terms may be used with utter modesty. We may take into account the process by which we become wiser. Our errors may render us wiser and it is really best for us when this happens because during one lifetime we do not often have the opportunity to practice wisdom. For this reason, we retain the lessons that we have learned from our errors as strength for a future life. But what really is this wisdom and the life experience that we can acquire?

Yesterday I referred to the fact that our ideas cannot be taken immediately from one life to another. I pointed to the fact that even a genius like Plato could not carry the ideas of his mind into a new incarnation. We carry with us our volitional and soul powers, but our ideas are given us anew in every life, just as is the faculty of speech. The greater part of our ideas live in speech. Most of our ideas are derived from our faculty to express ourselves in a language. The ideas we conceive during the time between birth and death are always related to this particular earthly existence. This being so, it is true that our ideas will always depend on the where and how of our incarnations, no matter how many we have to live through. Our wealth of ideas is always derived from the outer world, and depends on the way karma has placed us into race, family and speech relationships.

In our ideas and concepts we really know nothing of the world except what is dependent on karma. A great deal is said with this statement. This means that everything we can know in life and acquire in the form of knowledge is something quite personal. We never can transcend the personal level with regard to everything we may acquire in life. We never come quite as far as the wiser man in us, but we always remain with the less wise man. If someone believes that he can, by himself, know more about his higher self from observations in the outer world, he is being led by his laziness into an unreal world. Thereby we are saying nothing less than that we know nothing of our higher self as a result of what we acquire in life.

How can we gain an understanding of our higher self; how do we come to such knowledge? To find an answer, we must ask ourselves the simple question, “What do we really know?” First of all, we know what we have learned from experience. We know this and nothing else. Anyone who wants to know himself and does not realize that he carries in his soul nothing but a mirror of the outer world may delude himself into believing that he can find his higher self by introspection. What he finds within, however, is nothing else than what has come in from outside. Laziness of thinking has no place in this quest. So we must inquire about the other worlds into which our higher self is embedded, and thereby we learn about the various incarnations of the earth and the world picture described by spiritual science.

Just as we try to understand a child's soul with regard to its outer life conditions by examining the child's surroundings, so must we ask what the environment of the higher self is. Spiritual science gives us insight into the worlds in which our higher self lives by its accounts of the evolution of Saturn and all its secrets, of the Moon and Earth evolution, of reincarnation and karma, of devachan and kamaloka, and so on. This is the only way we can learn about our higher self, about that self that extends beyond the physical plane. He who refuses to accept these secrets is as playful as a little kitten in regard to himself. It is not by petting and caressing oneself that one can discover the divine man in oneself. Only what is experienced in the outer world is stored inside, but the divine man in us can only be found when we search in our soul for the mirrored world beyond the physical.

The very things that are uncomfortable to learn make up knowledge of self. In reality, true anthroposophy is true knowledge of self. Properly received, the science of the spirit enlightens us about our own self. Where is this self? Is it within our skin? No, it is poured into the entire world, and what is in the world is linked to the self; also, what once was in the world is connected with this self. Only if we get to know the world can we also get to know the self.

Anthroposophical knowledge, although it may appear first as mere theory, points to nothing less than a path to self-knowledge. He who wants to find himself by staring into his inner being may be motivated by the noble desire to be good and unselfish. But in reality, he becomes more and more selfish. In contrast to this, the struggle with the great secrets of existence, the attempt to emancipate oneself from the complacent personal self, the acceptance of the reality of the higher worlds and the knowledge that can be obtained from them, all lead to true self-knowledge.

While contemplating Saturn, Sun and Moon, we lose ourselves in cosmic thoughts. Thus, a soul thinking in anthroposophy exclaims, “In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living.” He then adds to these words, “Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts.”

A soul creating out of anthroposophy says, “In thy feeling cosmic forces are weaving,” and adds in the same breath, “Feel thyself through cosmic forces.” These universal powers will not reveal themselves when we expect them to be flattering or when we close our eyes and pledge to be a good human being. Only when we open our spiritual eye and perceive how “cosmic forces” work and create, and when we realize that we are embedded in these forces, will we have an experience of our own self.

Thus, a soul that draws strength from anthroposophy will say, “In thy willing cosmic beings are working,” and he will quickly add, “Create thyself through beings of will.”

The meaning of these words can be realized if self-knowledge is practiced in the right way. If this is done, one recreates oneself out of the cosmic forces.

These thoughts may appear to be dry and abstract, but they are not mere theory. They have the inherent power of a seed planted in the earth. It sprouts and grows; life shoots in all directions and the plant becomes a tree. Thus it is with the experiences we receive through the science of the spirit that we become capable of transforming ourselves. “Create thyself through beings of will.” Thus, anthroposophy becomes an elixir of life. Our view of spirit worlds opens up, we draw strength from these worlds and once we can fully absorb them, they will help us to know ourselves in all our depth. Only when we imbue ourselves with world knowledge can we take hold of ourselves and gradually move from the less wise man in us, who is split off by the guardian of the threshold, to the wise man in us. This, which remains hidden to the weak, can be gained by the strong through anthroposophy.

In thy thinking cosmic thoughts are living;
Lose thyself in cosmic thoughts.
In thy feeling cosmic forces are weaving;
Feel thyself through cosmic forces.
In thy willing cosmic beings are working;
Create thyself through beings of will.