The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have tried to show how about the middle of last century a radical transformation took place in spiritual life, and how moreover the peculiar configuration of the nineteenth century thought and the spiritual life in general that underwent this transformation can be traced back to another crucial turning point in the west which we have to look for in the fourth century A.D.

Now it might at first sight appear as if we were trying to show too close a connection between two periods that are so very widely separated in point of time. But this very thought will serve to call attention to certain interconnections in the history of humanity. To-day we will begin where we left off yesterday, with the downfall of ancient culture and of the Roman empire. We drew attention to a distinguishing feature of that time. We placed before our souls two representative personalities; one of them was Augustine, who grew entirely out of the South-West; and we compared them with another personality, that of the Gothic translator of the Bible, Wulfila, and with the spiritual stream out of which Wulfila sprang.

We have to be quite clear that Augustine was altogether the child of the conditions which had developed in the south-western parts of the European-African civilization of the day. At that time men who sought a higher culture only found it through contact with the philosophy, literature, art and science which had for a long time been pursued in a certain upper level of society. We even have to think of Greek culture as the possession of an upper class which relegated its more menial work to slaves. And still less can we think of Roman culture without widespread slavery. The life of this culture depended upon its possessors being remote from the thought and feeling prevailing in the masses. But one must not think that there was therefore no spiritual life in the masses. There was an exceptionally strong spiritual life among them. This was of course derived more from the native stock left behind at an earlier stage of evolution than that of the upper class, but it was nevertheless a spiritual life. History knows very little about it, but it was very like what was carried into the southern parts of Europe by the barbarian tribes, forced to migrate by the forward pressure of the Asiatic hordes. We must try to form a concrete idea of it.

Take, for instance, the people who over-ran the Roman Empire—the Goths, the Vandals, the Lombards, the Herules. Before the migrations had begun, thus before the fourth century A.D. which is for us such an important turning-point, these men had spiritual life away in the East which culminated in a certain religious insight, in certain religious ideas, which pervaded everything; and the effects of these experiences influenced every aspect of daily life. Before the migrations began these people have had a long period of settled life. It was while they were thus settled that they first experienced the southern oriental peoples, from whom the Indian, Persian and succeeding cultures sprang, had experienced at a much earlier time; they experienced what we can call a religion which was closely connected with the blood relationships of the people. It is only through spiritual science that this can be observed, but it is also echoed in the sagas and myths I lived in these peoples. What they worshipped were the ancestors of certain families. But these ancestors first began to be worshiped long after they had passed away, and this worship was in no way based upon abstract ideas, but upon what was instinctively experienced as dreamlike clairvoyant ideas, if I can use the expression without causing misunderstanding. For there were certain ideas which arose in quite another way from the way our ideas of to-day are formed. When we have ideas nowadays our soul life comes into play more or less independently of our bodily constitution. We no longer feel the seething of the body. These people had a certain intensive inward sense that in what took place in their bodies all sorts of cosmic mysteries were active. For it is not only in the chemical retorts that cosmic processes work according to law, but in the human body also. And just as to-day, by means of the processes which take place in their retorts chemists seek with their abstract reason to understand the laws of the universe, so these men too tried through what they had experienced inwardly, through their own organism, whose inner processes they felt, to penetrate into the mysteries of the cosmos. It was entirely an inner experience that was still closely bound up with ideas arising in the body. And out of these ideas which were called forth by what we might describe as the inward seething of the organism, there developed the pictorial imaginations which these men connected with their ancestors. It was their ancestors whose voices they heard for centuries in these dream formations. Ancestors were the rulers of people living in quite small communities, in village tribal communities.

These tribes had still this kind of ancestor-worship, which had its life in dreamlike ideas, when they pressed forward from the east of Europe towards the west. And if we look back to the teachers and the priests of these peoples we find that they were advanced spirits whose foremost task was to interpret what the individual saw in his dream-pictures, albeit dream-pictures which he experienced in his awake consciousness. They were interpreters of what the individual experienced. And now the migrations began. During the period of the migrations it was their greatest spiritual consolation that they had this inner clairvoyant life which was interpreted by their priests. This spiritual life was reflected in sagas which have been handed down, notably in the Slav world, and in these sagas you will find confirmation of what I have just briefly outlined.

Now shortly after the end of the fourth century these tribes settled down again. Some of them were absorbed into the peoples who had already for a long time inhabited the southern peninsulas, that is to say they were absorbed into the lower classes of these peoples, for their upper classes had been swept away in the time of Augustine. The Goths were among the tribes absorbed in this way, but mainly those Goths who peopled the countries of middle and western Europe; those who settled in the northern regions of southern Europe maintained their own existence and acquired a permanent home there.

Thus we see that after the fourth century the possession of a fixed dwelling place becomes an essential characteristic of these peoples. And now the whole spiritual life begins to change. It is most remarkable what a radical change now takes place in the spiritual life of these people through their peculiar talent. They were gifted not only with special racial dispositions, but with a much greater freshness as a folk for experiencing spiritual reality in dreams; something which in the southern regions had long since been transformed into other forms of spiritual life.

But now they have become settled, and through their peculiar endowment a new kind of spiritual life developed in them. What in earlier times had expressed itself in ancestor-worship, had conjured before the soul the picture of the revered forefather, now attached itself to the place. Wherever there was some special grove, some mountain which contained let us say, special treasures of metal, wherever there was a place from which one could watch storms and so on, there, with a depth of feeling left to them from their old ancestor-imaginations and dreams, men felt something holy to be connected with the place. And the gods that used to be ancestral became gods of place.

Religious perceptions lost their time a character and took on a spatial character. Those who had been previously the interpreters of dreams, the interpreters of inner soul-experience, now became the guardians what one might call the signs c—the peculiar reflection of the sun in this or that waterfall or other feature of nature, the phenomena of the cloud-drifts in certain valleys and so on—these are now the objects of interpretation, something which then became transformed into the system of Runes cultivated in certain places, where twigs were plucked from trees and thrown down, and the signs read from the special forms into which the twigs fell. Religion underwent a metamorphosis into a religion of space. The entire spiritual life became attached to the place. Thus these tribes became more and more susceptible to the influence which the Roman Catholic Church, since it had become the state church in the fourth century, had been accustomed to exercise over the southern peoples, that is to say over the lower classes which had been left behind after the upper classes have been swept away.

And what was it that the church had done? In these southern regions the period of transition from the time conception to the spatial conception of the world was long since past, and something of extraordinary importance always happens in a period of transition from a time outlook to a spatial outlook, a certain living experience passes over into an experience through symbol and cult. This had already taken place for the lower classes of the people in the southern regions. So long as men continue to live in their time-conceptions, the priests, those who in the sense of ancient times we can call learned men, our interpreters of a corresponding life of the soul. They were engaged in explaining what man experience. They were able to do that because men lived in small village communities, and the interpreter, who was in fact the leader of the whole spiritual life, could address himself to the individual, or to a small group. When the transition takes place from the time-outlook to the space-outlook, then this living element is more or less suppressed. The priest can no longer refer to what the individual has experienced. He can no longer treat of what the individual tells them and explain to him what he has experienced. What is something living is thus transformed into something bound to a place. And thus ritual gradually arises, the pictorial expression of what in earlier times was a direct experience of the super-sensible world.

And at this point development begins again, so to say, from the other side. The human being now sees the symbol, he interprets the symbol. What the Roman Catholic Church built up as cult was built up with exact knowledge of this world-historic course of human evolution. The transition from the ancient celebration of the Last Supper into the sacrifice of the Mass arose, in that the living Last Supper became the symbolic rite. Into this sacrifice of the Mass, it is true, flowed primeval holy mystery usages which had been handed down in the lower classes of the people. These practices were now permeated with the new conceptions Christianity brought. They became, so to say, christianised. The lower classes of the Roman people provided good material for such a birth of ritual, which was now to reveal the super-sensible world in symbol.

And as the northern tribes had also made the transition to a spiritual life associated with place, this ritual could also be implanted among them, for they began to meet it with understanding. This is the bases of one of the streams which start in the fourth century A.D.

The other stream must be characterised differently. I have described how the ancient ancestor-worship lived on, rolling over from the east upon the declining Roman Empire. In the “Our Father” of Wulfila we see that in these nomadic peoples Christianity was absorbed into the ancestral cults and the cults connected with locality. And that constitutes the essence of Arian Christianity. The dogmatic conflict in the background is not so important. The important thing for this Arian Christianity, which traveled with the Goths and the other German tribes from the East towards the West by a path which did not lead through Rome, is that in it Christianity becomes steeped in a living spiritual life which has not yet reached the stage of ritual, that is closely related to the dream experience, to the clairvoyant experience, if you will not misunderstand the expression.

On the other hand the Christianity that Augustine experienced had passed through the culture of the upper classes of the southern peoples, and had to encounter all sorts of oriental cults and religious ideas, which flowed together in a great city of Rome. The heathen Augustine had grown up amidst these religious ideas and had turned from them towards Christianity in the way I have described. He stands within a spiritual stream which was experienced by the individual in quite a different way from the stream I have already mentioned. The latter arose out of the most elemental forces of the folk-soul life. What Augustine experienced was something which had risen into the upper class through many filtrations. And this was now taken over and preserved by the Roman Catholic clergy. Moreover its content is far less important for the progress of history than the whole configuration of soul that constituted first Greco-Roman culture and then, through the adoption of Christianity, the culture of the Catholic clergy. It is essential to see this culture as it was at that time and as it then lived on through the centuries. Our present-day educational system is something which remains over from the real culture of that time.

After one had mastered the first elements of knowledge, which we should to-day call primary education, one entered what was called the grammar class. In the grammar classes one was taught structure of speech; one learned how to use speech properly in accordance with the usages established by the poets and the writers. Then one assimilated all other knowledge that was not kept secret, for even at that time quite a lot of knowledge was kept secret by certain mystery schools. What was not kept secret was imparted through grammar, but through the medium of speech. And if anyone reached a higher stage of culture, as for example Augustine, then he passed on from the study of grammar to the study of rhetoric. There the object was to train the pupil above all in the appropriate use of symbol, how to form his sentences rightly, particularly how to lead his sentences to a certain climax. This was what the people who aspired to culture had to practice.

One must be able to sense what such a training develops in a human being. Through this purely grammatical and rhetorical kind of education he is brought into a certain connection with the surface of his nature, he is within what sounds through his mouth far more than is under the influence of thought. He pays much more attention to the structure of speech and to the connection of thought. And that was the primary characteristic of this ancient culture, that it was not concerned with the inner soul experience, but with structure, the form of speech, with the pleasure it gives. In short, the man became externalised by this culture. And in the fourth century, at that time Augustine was a student, as we should say to-day, we can see clearly this process of externalization, this living in the turn of words, in the form of expression. Grammar and rhetoric were the things that students had to learn. And there was good reason for this. For what we to-day call intelligent thought did not at that time exist. It is a mere superstition very commonly to be found in history to suppose that men have always thought in the way they think today. The entire thought of the Greek epoch right up to the fourth century A.D. was quite different. I have gone into this to a certain extent in my Riddles of Philosophy. Thought was not hatched out of inner soul activity, as is the case to-day, but thought came to the human being of itself like a dream. Particularly was this the case in the East, and the Oriental spiritual life which had animated Greece and still animated Rome was not won through thinking, it came, even when it was thought, as dream pictures come. And the oriental and south-european scholars only differed from those of the north in that the pictures that came to the northerners at first stimulated ideas of their ancestors, and later were associated with particular localities and became more or less ritualistic. The ideas that were formed in Asia, in southern Europe, already had the character of thought, but they were not thoughts won by inner soul activity, inner intelligence, they were inwardly revealed thoughts. One experienced what one called knowledge and elaborated for oneself only the word, the sentence, the discourse. There is no logical activity. Logic arose through Aristotle, when Greece was already decadent. And what lived in beauty of speech, in rhetoric, was essentially Roman culture, and became the culture of Catholic Christianity.

This habit of living not in oneself but in an external element expresses itself in the education that was given, and one can see how in this respect Augustine was a representative of his time. The correspondence between Jerome and Augustine is illuminating in this respect. It shows how differently these people conducted an argument in the fourth or beginning of the fifth century from the way we should do so to-day. When we discuss things to-day we have a feeling that we make use of a certain activity of thought. When these people discussed, one of them would have the feeling—“Well, I have formed my own view about a certain point, but perhaps my organism does not give me the right view. I will hear what the other man has to say; perhaps something else will emerge from his organism.” These men were within a much more real element of inner experience. This difference is seen also in Augustine's attitude in condemning heretics of various sorts. We see people deriving from the life of the common people, people like the priests of Donatism, like Pelagius and some others, specially coming to the fore. These people, although they believe themselves to be entirely Christian, stress the point that man's relation to justice, to sin, must come from the man himself. And thus we see a whole series of people one after the other who cannot believe that it has any sense to baptize children and thereby to bring about forgiveness of sins. We see objections made against the Christianity issuing from Rome, we see how Pelagianism wins adherents, and how Augustine, as a true representative of the Catholic element, attacks it. He rejected a conception of sin connected with human subjectivity. He rejects the view that a relation to the spiritual world or to Christ can come from an individual human impulse. Hence he works to bring about gradually the passing over of the Church into the external institution. The important question is not what is in the child, but what the Church as external ordnance bestows upon it. The point is not that baptism signifies something for the soul's experience, but that there exists an external ordnance of the Church which is fulfilled in baptism. The value of the human soul living in the body matters less than that the universal spirit that lives in the sacrament, so to say an astral sacrament, should be poured out over mankind. The individual plays no part, but the important thing is the web of abstract dogmas and ideas which is spread over humanity. To Augustine it seems particularly dangerous to believe that the human being should first be prepared to receive baptism, for it is not a question of what the human being inwardly wills, but it is a question of admitting into the Kingdom of God which has objective existence. And that is essentially the setting in which Athanasian Christianity lived, in contrast to the other background that originated in the north-east, in which a certain popular element lived. But the Church understood how to clothe the abstract element in the ritualistic form which again arose from below. It was this that made it possible for the Church to spread in this European element, from which the ancient culture had vanished. And above all it attains this expansion through the exclusion of the wide masses of the people from the essential substance of religious culture. It is a matter of tremendous significance that in the centuries which follow this substance is propagated in the Latin language.

And from the fourth century A.D. onward Christianity is propagated in the Latin tongue. It is as it were a stream flowing over the heads of men. That goes on right up to the fifteenth century. For what history usually relates is only the outer form of what went on in the souls of men. Christianity was kept secret by those who taught at right up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in a far deeper sense than the ancient Mysteries were kept secret. For only the outer ritual penetrated the masses. And what was transmitted, which at the same time laid claim to all science coming from the ancient culture and clothed it in the Latin tongue, this was the Church, something which hovered above the essential evolution of humanity.

And the centuries between the fourth and the fourteenth stand under the sign of these two parallel streams. The external history books, even the histories of the mind, only give the traditional description of what leaks out into greater publicity from the Latin ecclesiastical stream. Hence from present-day historical literature we get no idea of what took place among the wide masses of the people.

What took place among the masses was something like this. At first there were only village communities; in the colonization of the whole of middle, western and even of southern Europe the towns played a very small part. The most significant life developed in small village communities; such towns as did exist were really only large villages; in these large village communities there was the Catholic Church, way over the heads of men, but through the ritual working suggestively upon them; however, these men who only saw the symbolic rite, who participated in the cult, who watched something which they could not understand, did nevertheless develop a spiritual life of their own. The very rich spiritual life developed throughout Europe at that time, a spiritual life which stood first and foremost under the influence of human nature itself. It was something quite apart from their participation in the spread of Catholic doctrine. For to associate everything with the personality of Boniface, for instance, is to place things a false light. What went on in these village communities was an inner soul life through which echoed the omens of the divinity or spirituality associated with the place. Everywhere people saw intimations from one or other of these. They developed a magical life. Everywhere human beings had premonitions, and told their fellows about them. These premonitions expressed themselves in sagas, in mysterious hints as to what one or another had experienced spiritually in the course of his work.

But something very remarkable permeated this remains of an ancient prophetic and clairvoyant dream-life, which continued to flourish in the village communities whilst Catholic doctrine passed over their heads, and one can see that everywhere in Europe the organization of the human being was involved in this characteristic spiritual life. Something was at work which indicated a quite special disposition of soul in two respects. When people told of their weightiest premonitions, their most significant dreams (these were always associated with places), when they describe their half-waking, half-sleeping experiences, these dreams are always connected either with events, with questions which were asked them from out of the spiritual world, or with tasks which were imposed upon them, with matters in which their skill played a part. From the whole character of these stories, which were still to be found among the common people in the nineteenth century, one sees that when men began to ponder and to dream and to build up their legendary sagas in their mythologies, of the three members of the human being it was not so much the nerve-system—which is more connected with the outer world—but the rhythmic system which was active; and in that the rhythmic system was drawn forth out of the organism it showed itself in clairvoyant dreams which passed by word of mouth from one to another, and in this way the villagers shared with one another fear and joy, happiness and beauty. In all this there was always an element of delicate questioning which came from the spiritual world. People had to solve riddles half in dreams, had to carry out skillful actions, had to overcome something or other. It was always something of the riddle in this dream life.

That is the physiological basis of the widespread spiritual experience of these men who lived in village communities. Into this, of course, penetrated the deeds of Charlemagne of which history tells you; but those are only surface experiences, though they do of course enter deeply into individual destiny. They are not the main thing. The important thing is what takes place in the village communities, and there, side by side with the economic life, a spiritual life developed such as I have described. And this spiritual life goes on right into the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries. Of course, something of what has developed in the heads of men in the upper strata of society gradually trickles down into the lower strata, and the ghostly and magical character of the stories men recount gets charmingly mixed with the Christ and His deeds, and what comes from the human being himself is sometimes overlaid with what comes from the Bible or the Gospel. But then we see that it is primarily into social thinking that the Christian element is received. We see it in ‘Der Heliand’ and other poems which arose out of Christianity but always we see something spiritual brought to the people, who meet it with a spirituality of their own.

When we come to the tenth and eleventh centuries we see a change in the external life. Even earlier, but at this time more markedly so, we see life centering itself in the towns. That life of picture-like waking dreams which I have described to you is altogether bound up with the soil. As, therefore, in the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries the whole country became covered with larger towns, in these towns another kind of thinking began to develop. Men living in towns had a different kind of thought. They were cut off from the places in which their local cults had developed, their attention was more directed towards what was human.

But the human element which developed of the towns was still under the influence of this earlier state of mind, for some of the people who settled in the towns came from the villages and they with very special spiritual endowment made their own contribution. What they brought with them was an inner personal life which was an echo of what was experienced in the country, but which now manifested itself in a more abstract form. These men were cut off from nature, they no longer participated in the life of nature, and although they still have forms of thought derived from nature, they already began to develop the kind of thinking which was gradually directed towards intelligence. In the towns of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries there developed the first trace of that intelligence which we see arise in the fifteenth century among the leading European peoples. Because life in the towns was more abstract, the abstract ecclesiastical element, clothed in the Latin tongue, became mixed up with what sprang directly out of the people.

Thus we see how this Latin element developed in the towns in a more and more abstract form. Then we see the great outburst of people from below upwards in various countries. There is a great to-do when Dante, assisted by his teacher, makes his way up into the world of culture. But even that is only one instance of many similar outbursts which happened because of the peculiar manner in which the Latin culture came up against the popular element in the towns.

We must not forget that still other streams entered into what was taking place at that time. It is of course true that the main streams of spiritual life, which so to say carried the others, was the one that continued the spiritual tradition in which Augustine had lived; that controlled everything and finally not only gave the towns the bishops, who controlled the spiritual life, if somewhat abstractly and over the heads of the people, but also, little by little, because it took over everything from the constitution of the Roman empire, ended by giving the civil government also, and built up the alliance between Church and State which in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was very close. We see other events light up in this stream, we see crusades arise, which I need not describe to you, because I want to lay the greatest stress upon the things that external history places in a false light; and too little importance is attached to other currents that were present.

First of all there is the commercial traffic which had in fact always existed in Europe between the Danube basin and the East. There was constant trading in both directions particularly in the middle of the middle ages. In this way oriental ideas in an advanced stage of decadence were brought over into Europe. And someone who had probably never been in the east himself but had only traded with men from the east, brought to the householder not only spices, but spiritual life, a spiritual life tinged with Orientalism. This traffic went on throughout the whole of Europe. It had less influence on Latin culture, far more on the wide masses of people who understood no Latin. In the towns and in the surrounding villages there was a living intercourse with the east which was not merely a matter of listening to tales of adventure that which deeply influenced spiritual life. And if you want to understand figures such as Jacob Boehme, who came later, Paracelsus and many others, then you must bear in mind that they sprang from people who had developed without any understanding of the Latin culture which passed over their heads, but who were in a certain way steeped in Orientalism. All that developed as popular alchemy, astrology, fortune telling, had developed out of the union of what I described above as the inner experience of the riddle, told in waking dreams, with what came over from the east as decadent oriental life. Nor within the Latin culture have the will to think been able to make any headway. The logic of Aristotle had appeared, as it were, like a meteor. We see that even Augustine was little influenced by this logic. By the fourth century interest had been withdrawn from Greece, and later the Emperor Justinian had closed the School of Philosophy at Athens. This led to the condemnation for heresy of Origen, who had brought with him into Christianity much of oriental culture, of the earlier spiritual life. And the Greek philosophers were driven out. The teaching that they had from Aristotle was driven into Asia. The Greek philosophers founded centre in Asia, and carried on the Academy of Gondishapur, which had for its main objective the permeation of the old decadent oriental spiritual culture with Aristotelianism, its transformation into an entirely new form. It was the Academy of Gondishapur wherein a logical form of thought developed with giant strides, that saved Aristotelianism. Aristotelianism was not transmitted through Christianity, it came into Latin-ecclesiastical life by way of Africa, Spain and the west of Europe. And thus we see how Gondishapur, this philosophic form of Arabism, which does contain a living world-conception, although it is quite abstract, brings its influence to bear upon the current which we have already described as passing over the heads of men.

I have described to you both these streams, the one at work above, in the heads of men, the other in their hearts. They work together and it is very significant that the ancient culture was transmitted in a dying language. Of course there then flows into all this what came through the Renaissance. But I cannot describe everything to-day. I want to point out some of the main things which are of special interest to us. The two currents existed side-by-side right on into the fifteenth century.

Then something happened of extraordinary importance. The thought of antiquity, inspired thought which was half vision, became gradually clothed in abstract forms of speech, and became Christian philosophy, Christian spiritual life, the Scholastic philosophy, out of which the modern university system developed. In this grammatical-rhetorical atmosphere not thought, but the garment of thought, Romanism lived on. But in the popular stream thinking was born, evoked through subjective activity—for the first time in human evolution. Out of this ghostly-magical element of presentiment, mingled with Orientalism, which above all had its life in the interpretation of natural phenomena, active thinking was born. And this birth of thought out of the dreamlike mystical element took place somewhere about the fifteenth century. But up to that time the system of Roman law, clothed in Latin form, gathers strength side by side with the Roman priesthood. This current over the heads of men had been able to spread everywhere in a most systematic way first in the villages, then in the towns, and now in the new age which dawned in the fifteenth century it joined forces with that other current which now arose. In the towns people were proud of their individualism, of their freedom. One can see this in the portraits painted at that time. But the village communities were shut off from all this. Then the medieval princes rose to power. And those who outside in the villages gradually came to be in opposition to the towns, found in the princes their leaders. And it was from the country, from the villages that the impulse came which drew the towns into the wider administrative structure, into which then came Roman law. There arose the modern state, made up of the country parishes; thus the country conquered the towns again, and became itself permeated by what came out of the Latin element has Roman law. Thus the latter had now become so strong that what was stirring among the common people could find no further outlet; what in the times of unrest, as they were called, had expressed itself among the Russian peasants in the Hussite movement, in Wycliffism, in the Bohemian Brotherhood, such movements could no longer happen; the only thing that could find expression was what merged with the Roman-administrative element.

Thus we see that the folk-element which had won for itself the reality of thought, which held its own in opposition to the Roman-Latin element, remained to begin with a faint glow under the surface. There is a cleavage in the spiritual life. Out of the Latin element develops Nominalism, for which universal concepts are merely names. Just as this was an inevitable development from grammar and rhetoric, so, where there still remained a spark of the folk-element, as was the case with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, there developed Realism, which experienced thought and expression of something real. But at first Nominalism had the victory. All that happened in the historical evolution of humanity is in a sense necessary, and we see that the abstract element becomes all the stronger because it is carried by the dead Latin language right up to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and is then fructified by thought, has to reckon with the birth of thought, but clothes thought in abstractions. And the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries are primarily under the influence of thought born from out of the ancient Gothic Germanic way of life, clothed however in Roman formulae, in grammatical, rhetorical formulae. But now that they have been fructified by thought, these formulae can be called logical formulae. That now becomes inward human thinking. Now one could think thoughts, but the thoughts had no content. All the old world-conceptions contained, together with the inward experience, at the same time cosmic mysteries. So that thought still had content right up to the fourth century A.D. Then came the time which as it were bore the future in its womb, the time in which rhetoric, grammar and dialectic developed further and further in a dead language. Then that was fructified by the force of thought which came from below, and men acquired mastery over that, but in itself it had no content. There was a dim perception of Realism but a belief in Nominalism, and with the aid of Nominalism next came the conquest of nature.

Thought as inner soul life brought no content with it. This content had to be sought from without. Thus we see how from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century the conquest of natural law was the achievement of a thinking that was empty of all content, but was born as a capacity out of all that Europe had brought forth as her own. In the middle of the nineteenth century men began to be aware “With your thought you are conquering natural law, you are conquering the external world, but thought itself is making no progress.” And men gradually got into the way of eliminating from their thought everything that did not come from outside. They found their life in religious faith which was supposed to have nothing to do with scientific knowledge, because their thinking has become void of content and had to fill itself only with external facts and natural entities. The content of faith was to be protected because it had to do with the super-sensible. But because this empty thinking had no content, it could apply itself to the sense-perceptible. But this faith in which man lived could only fill itself with old traditions, with the content of the oriental culture of the past, which still lived on.

It was the same with art. If one looks back to earlier times, one finds art closely associated with religion, and religious ideas find their expression in works of art. One sees how their ideas about the Gods find expression in the Greek dramatists or the Greek sculptors. Art is something within the whole structure of the spiritual life. But by the time of the Renaissance Art begins to be taken more externally. Indeed in the nineteenth century we see more and more how men are happy to be offered a pure phantasy in art, something which they need not accept as a reality, something which has nothing to do with reality. And such men as Goethe are like modern hermits. Goethe says “He to whom nature begins to unveil her open secrets feels an irresistible longing for her worthiest interpreter, art.” Art, says Goethe, is a revelation of nature's secret laws, laws which would never be revealed without her. And it is worthy of note that Goethe has a way of turning to the past, different from that of other men,—he speaks therein for a content, in the age of empty intellect, filled only with the impression of the external world of the senses. He yearns toward Greece. And when in Rome he finds still something of what Greek art has fashioned out of the depths of its philosophy, he writes “That is necessity, that is God.” Art unveiled for him the spirituality of the world which he was trying to experience. But more and more men have a obscure ill-defined feeling “This thinking of ours is all right for the external world, but it is not suited to attain to an inner spiritual content.” And thus we see the second half of the nineteenth century run its course. As I remarked yesterday, the winds of the first half of the nineteenth century, such as Hegel, Saint-Simon or even Spencer, still believed that they could reach a philosophy, even a social philosophy, out of their inner soul experiences. In the second half of the nineteenth century men thought that no longer.

But something of what had given birth to thought out of the unconscious was still at work. Why was it that in the portentous dreams of village populations over the whole of Europe right up to the twelfth century there was always something of this riddle-solving element, this cleverness which expresses itself in all sorts of cunning? It was because thought, reflection, the work of thinking, was born. The foundation of thought was laid. And now we see how in the second half of the nineteenth century there is utter despair. Everywhere we find statements as to the boundaries of knowledge. And with the same rigidity and dogmatism with which once the scholastics had said that reason could not rise to the super-sensible, du Bois-Reymond, for example, said that scientific investigation could not penetrate to the consciousness of matter. I mean that previously the barrier had been set up in relation to this super-sensible; now it referred to what was supposed to hide behind the senses. But in all manner of other spheres we see the same phenomena emerge.

Ranke the historian of the second half of the nineteenth century is very typical in this respect. According to him history has to investigate the external events, even of the time in which Christianity begins to spread; one has to pay attention to what is taking place in the world around one politically and socially and culturally. What however has taken place through Christ in the course of human evolution—that Ranke assigns to the original world (Urwelt), not in the temporal sense, but to the world behind what can be investigated. We have seen that the scientist du Bois-Reymond says ‘ignorabimus’ as regards matter and consciousness. Natural Science can go pretty far; but what is there where matter lurks, what is there where consciousness arises, there du Bois-Reymond formulates his seven universal riddles; they are he pronounces his ‘ignorabimus!’ And Leopold von Ranke, the historian who works in the same spirit says “Upon all the wealth of existing documents historical investigations can pour its light; but behind what is at work as external historical fact there are events which seem to be primeval.” Everything which thus lies at the base of history he calls the ‘Urwelt’, just as does du Bois-Reymond the world lying beyond the limits of natural science. Within that sphere lie the Christian mysteries, the religious mysteries of all peoples. There the historian says ‘ignorabimus’. ‘Ignorabimus’ alike from scientist and historian; that is the mood of the entire spiritual life of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Wherever you meet the spiritual life, in Wagnerian music, in the cult of Nietzsche, everywhere this mood is to be found. The former is driven to take refuge in certain musical dreams, the latter suffers through what is taking place in the world of ‘ignorabimus’. Agnosticism becomes fashionable, becomes politics, shapes the state. And anyone who wishes to do anything positive but relies not on any kind of gnosticism, but upon agnosticism. The strategy of Marxism builds upon what lies in the instincts, not upon something which it wants to bring forth of super-earthly nature. We see how everywhere spirituality is driven back, how agnosticism becomes the formative reality. It is thus that we have to understand modern spiritual life. We shall only understand it aright if we follow its origin from the fourth century A.D., if we know that in it Nominalism is living, the purely legalistic and logical; and thought has been born in the way I have described. This thought, however, is still only so far born as to be able to make use of formalism, of empty thinking. It slumbers in the depths of civilised humanity. It must be brought out into the open.

We learn how really to study history, if we illuminate with the light of spiritual investigation what has hovered over us since the fourth century. Then we can know what is above. And certainly thought has become fruitful and natural science because it has been fructified by thought born out of human nature in the way I have described. But now in the time of poverty, in the time of need, mankind needs to remember that thought which to begin with could only fructify formalism—empty thought that receives knowledge of nature from outside—has exhausted itself in natural scientific agnosticism, must strengthened itself, must become ripe for vision, must raise itself into the super-sensible world. This thought is there, it has already played a part in natural scientific knowledge, but its essential force still lies deep beneath the consciousness of human evolution. That we must recognize as a historical fact, then we shall develop trust in the inner force of spirituality, then we shall establish a spiritual science, not out of vague mysticism, but out of clarity of thought. And the thoughts of such a spiritual science will pass over into action, they will be able to work into the human social and other institutions. We are constantly saying that history should be our teacher. It cannot be our teacher by putting before us what is past and over, but by making it capable of discovering the new in the depths of existence. What goes forth from this place goes forth in search of such a new vision. And it can find its justification not only in the inculcation of spiritual scientific method, but also by a right treatment of history.

I have often emphasised here that the theosophical movement cannot disabuse us of the immediate reality, of the duties and tasks that the day imposes on us in this time. Now it must become apparent whether this theosophical movement finds the right words if it concerns to give us an understanding of the great spiritual heroes who are, in the end, the creators of our culture and education. During these days, everybody who counts himself among the German education directs his thoughts upon one of our greatest spiritual heroes, on our Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805).

Hundred years separate us from his earthly decease. The last big celebration of Schiller, which was committed not only within Germany, but also in England, in America, in Austria, in Russia, was in 1859, on his hundredth birthday. It was interlinked with jamborees, with devoted words to the highest idealism of Schiller. These were words that were spoken over whole regions of the earth. There will be again jamborees which are celebrated during these days to honour of our great spiritual hero. However, as intimate and sincere and honest as the sounds were, which were spoken in those days in 1859, so intimate and devoted and completely spoken from the heart the words will not be that are spoken about Schiller today. Education and the national view about Schiller has substantially changed during the last fifty years. In the first half of the 19th century, Schiller's great ideals, the great portrayals of his dramas settled down, slowly and gradually It was an echo of that which Schiller himself had planted, an echo of that which he had sunk in the hearts and souls which flowed in enthusiastic words from the lips of the best of the German nation in those days. The most excellent men of this time have exerted their best to say what they had to say. There the brothers Ernst and Georg Curtius, the aesthete Vischer, the linguist Jacob Grimm, Karl Gutzkow and many others united. They joined in the big choir of Schiller celebrations and everywhere it sounded in such a way, as if one heard anything from Schiller himself, anything of that which Schiller himself had planted.

We have to acknowledge to ourselves that this changed in the last decades. The immediate interest in Schiller has decreased because Schiller's great ideals do no longer speak so familiarly and intimately to our contemporaries. Hence, it may be a substitute that we bear in mind clearly and vividly what Schiller can still be for our present and future. It behoves the theosophist above all to take the big theosophical basic questions up and to ask himself whether Schiller has to do anything with these theosophical basic questions. I hope that the course of this evening shows that it is not pure invention if we bring together Schiller and the theosophical movement, if we theosophists feel called in certain way to care for the remembrance of Schiller.

What is our basic question, what do we long for, what do we want to investigate and fathom? It is the big question to find the way to that which surrounds us as sense-perceptible objects and to that which is beyond the sensuous, as the spiritual, the super-sensible that lives in us and above us. This was also an early question which moved our Schiller. I cannot get involved in details. But I would like to show one thing, nevertheless, that Schiller's life and work was penetrated by this basic question: how is the physical with the psycho-spiritual, the super-sensible connected? Schiller wanted to solve this problem from the beginning of his life up to the heights of his work, even through his whole work, which is the artistic and philosophical expression of this question. At that time, he wrote a treatise after he had completed his study of medicine. This treatise, a kind of thesis, which he wrote with the departure from the Karlsschule (elite military academy) addresses the question: which is the interrelation between the sensuous nature of the human being and his spiritual nature?

Schiller treats in this work emphatically and nicely how the spirit is connected with the physical nature of the human being. Our time has already outdistanced what Schiller answers to this question; but that does not matter with such a great genius like Schiller. It matters how he engrossed his mind and how he put up with such things. Schiller understood this in such a way that there no conflict may be permitted between the sensuous and the spiritual. Thus he tried to subtly show how the spirit, how the soul of the human being works on the physical, that the physical is only an expression of the spirit living in the human beings.

Any gesture, any form and any verbal utterance is an expression of it. He investigates at first how the soul enjoys life in the body; then he investigates how the physical condition works on the mind. Briefly, the harmony between body and soul is the sense of this treatise. The end of the treatise is brilliant. There Schiller speaks of death in such a way, as if this is no completion of life, but only an event like other events of life. Death is no completion. He says already there: life causes death once; but life is not finished with it; the soul goes, after it has experienced the event of death, into other spheres to look at life from the other side. However, has the human being already sucked out all experience from life really at this moment? Schiller thinks that it might very well be possible that the life of the soul within the body appears as if we read in a book which we peruse, put aside and take in hand again after some time to understand it better. Then we put it aside again, after some time we take it in hand et etcetera to understand it better and better. He says to us with it: the soul lives not only once in the body, but like the human being takes a book in hand again and again, the soul returns repeatedly to a body to make new experiences in this world. It is the great idea of reincarnation, which Lessing had touched shortly before in his Education of the Human Race like in his literary will, and which Schiller also expresses now where he writes about the interrelation of the sensuous nature with the spiritual nature of the human being. At the very beginning, Schiller starts considering life from the highest point of view.

Schiller's first dramas have an intense effect on somebody who has a feeling heart for what is great in them. If we ask ourselves why Schiller's great thoughts flow into our hearts, then we get the answer that Schiller touches matters in his dramas which belong to the highest of humanity. The human being does not always need to understand and realise in the abstract what takes place in the poet's soul if he lonely forms the figures of imagination. But what lives there in the breast of the poet when he forms his figures, which move there on the stage, we see this already as young people in the theatre, or if we read the dramas. There flows in us what lives in the poet's soul. What lived in Schiller's soul at that time when he out-poured his young soul in his Robbers, in Fiesco, in Intrigue and Love. We must take him from the spiritual currents of the 18th century if we want to completely understand him.

Two spiritual currents existed which influenced the spiritual horizon of Europe at that time. A term of the French materialism calls one current. If we want to understand it, we have to see deeper into the development of the nations. What seethed in Schiller's soul has taken its origin in the striving and thinking of centuries. Approximately around the turn of the 15-th to the 16-th century the time begins when the human beings looked up at the stars in a new way. Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, they are those who bring up a new age, an age in which one looks at the world differently than before. Something new crept into the human souls relying on the external senses.

Who wants to compare the difference of the old world view of the12th, 13th centuries with that which arose around the turn of the 16th century with Copernicus and later with Kepler must compare what plays in Dante's Divine Comedy with the world view of the 17th, 18th centuries. One may argue against the medieval world view as much as one likes. It can no longer be ours. But it had what the 18th century did no longer have: it arranged the world as a big harmony, and the human being was arranged in this divine world order as its centre, he himself belonged to this big harmony. All things were the outflow of the divine, of the creativity which was revered in faith, in particular that of Christianity. The superior was an object of faith. It had to hold and bear. And this had an effect down to the plants and minerals. The whole world was enclosed in a big harmony, and the human being felt existing in this harmony. He felt that he can be released growing together and being interwoven with this divine harmony. He rested in that which he felt as the world permeated by God, and he felt contented.

This changed and had to change in the time when the new world view got entrance in the minds when the world was permeated with the modern spirit of research. There one had gained an overview about the material. By means of philosophical and physiological research one had received an insight into the sensory world. One could not harmonise what one thought of the sensuous world with faith this way. Other concepts and other views took place. However, the human beings could not harmonise their new achievements with that which they thought and felt about the spirit.

One could not harmonise it with that which one had to believe about the sources of life according to the ancient traditions. Thus something came up in the French Revolution that one can express with the sentence:”the human being is a machine.” One had understood the substances, but one had lost the connection with the spirit. One felt the spiritual in oneself. However, one did not feel how the world is connected with it; one did no longer have this. The materialists created a new world view in which actually nothing but substances existed. Goethe was repelled by such views like Holbach's Systeme de la nature, he found it empty and dull. But this world view of Holbach (1723–1789) was got out of the scientific view. It mirrors the external truth. How should the human being face up to it now who has lost the spirit? He has lost the connection, he has lost the harmony which the medieval human being felt, the harmony between the soul and the material. Thus the best spirits of that time had to strive to find the connection again or were forced to choose between the spiritual and the sensuous.

This was, as we have seen, Schiller's basic question in his youth, this interrelation between ideal and reality, nature and spirit. But the trend had torn up a deep abyss between the spiritual and the sensuous, it pressed like a nightmare on his soul. How can one reconcile ideal and reality, nature and spirit? This was the question.

This abyss had been still torn open by another trend, which issued from Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Rousseau had rejected the culture modern at that time up to a certain degree. He had found that the human being alienated himself by this culture, that he has torn out himself from nature. He had alienated himself from nature not only by the world view; he also could no longer find the connection with the spring of life. Therefore, he had to long for the return to nature, and thus Rousseau establishes the principle that basically the culture diverts the human beings from the true harmonies of life, that it is a product of decline.

At that time, the question of the spiritual, of the ideal had faced up the greatest of the contemporaries in new form: why should it not be there if they looked at life? In the time in which one felt the ideal of life so much, one had to feel the conflict twice if one looked at the real life as it had developed, and then at that which there was in the human society. Schiller's teens were in this time. All that towered up; and Schiller had to feel that as disharmony. His youth dramas originated from this mood. Back to the ideal! Which is the right social existence which is decreed to us in a divine world order? These are the feelings which lived in Schiller's youth, which he expressed then in his dramas, in the Robbers, in particular, however, also in the court dramas; we feel them if we take in the great drama Don Carlos. We have seen how the young doctor Schiller put the basic question of the interrelation between the sensuous and the spirit, and that he put it as a poet before his contemporaries.

After the hard trials which he was exposed to on account of his youth dramas he was invited by the father of the freedom poet Körner (Christian Gottfried K., 1756–1831) who did everything to support the cultural life. Körner's fine philosophical education brought Schiller to philosophy, and now the question arose philosophically before Schiller's mind anew: how can the interrelation of the sensuous with the spirit be found again? What was spoken in those days in Dresden between Schiller and Körner (1785–1787) and which great ideas were exchanged is reflected in Schiller's philosophical letters. Indeed, these may be somewhat immature compared with Schiller's later works. What is immature, however, for Schiller, is still very ripe for many other people and is important for us because it can show us how Schiller has struggled up to the highest heights of thinking and imagination.

These philosophical letters, The Theosophy of Julius, represent the correspondence between Julius and Raphael; Schiller as Julius, Körner as Raphael. The world of the 18-th century faces us there. Nice sentences are in this philosophy, sentences like those which Paracelsus expressed as his world view. In the sense of Paracelsus that of the whole outside world is shown to us which the divine creativity accomplished in the most different realms of nature: minerals, plants, animals with capacities of the most varied kind are spread out over nature. The human being is like a big summary, like a world like an encyclopaedia repeats everything once again in itself that is otherwise scattered. A microcosm, a little world in a macrocosm, a big world! Like hieroglyphics, Schiller says, is that which is contained in the different realms of nature. The human being stands there as the summit of the whole nature, so that he combines in himself and expresses on a higher level what is poured out in the whole nature. Paracelsus expressed the same thought largely and nicely: all beings of nature are like the letters of a word, and, if we read them, nature represents her being, a word results which presents itself in the human being. Schiller expresses this lively and emotionally in his philosophical letters. It is so lively to him that the hieroglyphics speak vividly for themselves in nature. I see, Schiller says, the chrysalises outside in nature which change to the butterflies. The chrysalis does not perish, it shows a metamorphosis; this is a guarantee to me that also the human soul changes in similar way. Thus the butterfly is a guarantee of human immortality to me.

In the most marvellous way the thoughts of the mind associate themselves in nature with the thought which Schiller studies as that which lives in the human soul. Then he struggles up to the view that the force of love lives not only in the human being, but finds expression in certain stages all over the world, in the mineral, in the plant, in the animal, and in the human being. Love expresses itself in the forces of nature and most purely in the human being. Schiller phrases that in a way which reminds of the great mystics of the Middle Ages. He calls what he pronounced that way the Theosophy of Julius. At it he developed up to his later approaches to life. His whole lifestyle, his whole striving is nothing else than a big self-education, and in this sense Schiller is a practical theosophist. Theosophy is basically nothing else than self-education of the soul, perpetual work on the soul and its further development to the higher levels of existence. The theosophist is convinced that he can behold higher and higher things the higher he develops. Who accustoms himself only to sensuality can see the sensuous only; who is trained for the psycho-spiritual sees soul and spirit around himself. We have to become spirit and divine first, then we can recognise something divine. The Pythagoreans already said this in their secret schools that way, and Goethe also said it in accordance with an old mystic:

Unless the eyes were like the sun,
How could we see the light?
Unless God's own force lived in us,
How could delight us the divine?

But we must develop the forces and capacities which are in us. Thus Schiller tries to educate himself throughout his whole life.

A new stage of his self-development is his aesthetic letters, About the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters. They are a jewel in our German cultural life. Only somebody can feel what mysteriously pours out between and from the words also from Schiller's later dramas who knows these aesthetic letters; they are like a heart- balm. Who has concerned himself a little with the lofty spiritual, educational ideal, which lives in his aesthetic letters, has to say: we have to call these aesthetic letters a book for the people. Only when in our schools not only Plato, not only Cicero, but Schiller's aesthetic letters are equally studied by the young people, one will recognise that something distinct and ingenious lives in them. What lives in the aesthetic letters becomes productive first if the teachers of our secondary schools are permeated with this spiritual life, if they let pour in something of that which Schiller wanted to bring up giving us this marvellous work. In the modern philosophical works you do not find any reference to these aesthetic letters. However, they are more significant than a lot that has been performed by the pundits of philosophy, because they appeal to the core of the human being and want to raise this core a stage higher.

Again, it is the big question which faces Schiller in the beginning of the nineties of the 18th century. He puts the question now in such a way: the human being is subjected, on one side, to the sensuous hardships, the sensuous desires and passions. He is subjected to their necessities, he follows them, he is a slave of the impulses, desires and passions. The logical necessity stands on the other side: you have to think in a certain way. The moral necessity stands on the other side, too: you must submit to certain duties. The intellectual education is logically necessary. The moral necessity demands something else that exceeds the modern view. Logic gives us no freedom, we must submit to it; also the duty gives us no freedom, we must submit to it. The human being is put between logical necessity and the needs of nature. If he follows the one or the other, he is not free, a slave. But he should become free.

The question of freedom faces Schiller's soul, as deeply as it was never possibly put and treated in the whole German cultural life. Kant had also brought up this question shortly before. Schiller has never been a Kantian, at least he overcame Kantianism soon. During the wording of these letters he was no longer on Kant's point of view. Kant speaks of the duty so that the duty becomes a moral imperative. “Duty, you lofty and great name. You have nothing popular or mellifluous in yourself but you request submission, … you establish a law... in front of it all propensities fall silent if they counteract secretly against it...” Kant demands submission to the categorical imperative. However, Schiller renounced this Kantian view of duty. He says: “with pleasure I serve the friends, however, I do it, unfortunately, with propensity” and not with that which kills propensity which even kills love. Kant demands that we act from duty, from the categorical imperative.

Schiller wants harmony between both, a harmony between propensity and passion on the one hand and duty and logic on the other side. He finds it at first in the view of beauty. The working of beauty becomes a big universal music and he expressed this: ”Only through beauty's morning gate you enter the land of knowing.” If we have a piece of art, the spiritual shines through it. The piece of art does not appear to us as an iron necessity, but as a semblance that expresses the ideal, the spiritual to us. Spirit and sensuality are balanced in beauty. As to Schiller, spirit and sensuality must also be balanced in the human being. Where the human being is between these two conditions, where he depends neither on the natural necessity nor on the logic one, but where he lives in the condition which Schiller calls the aesthetic one, passion is overcome.

He got down the spirit to himself, he purified sensuality with beauty; and thus the human being has the impulse and the desire to do voluntarily what the categorical imperative has demanded. Then morality is something in the human being that has become flesh and blood in him, so that the impulses and desires themselves show the spiritual. Spirit and sensuality have penetrated the aesthetic human being that way, spirit and sensuality have interpenetrated in the human being because he likes what he has to do. What slumbers in the human being has to be awakened. This is Schiller's ideal. Also concerning the society, the human beings are forced by the natural needs or by the rational state to live together according to external laws. The aesthetic society is in between where love accomplishes what every human being longs for and what is imposed on him by his innermost propensity. In the aesthetic society, the human beings freely co-operate, there they do not need the external laws. They themselves are the expression of the laws according to which the human beings have to live together. Schiller describes this society where the human beings live together in love and in mutual propensity and do voluntarily what they should and have to do.

I could only outline the thoughts of Schiller's aesthetic letters in a few words. But they have an effect only if they are not read and studied, but if they accompany the human being like a meditation book through the whole life, so that he wants to become as Schiller wanted to become. At that time, the time had not yet come. It has come today where one can notice the large extent of a society which founds the interrelation of human beings on love as its first principle. At that time, Schiller tried to penetrate such a knowledge and such a living together. Schiller wanted to educate the human beings with his art at least, so that they become ripe once because his time was not ripe to create the free human beings in a free society. It is sad how little just these most intimate thoughts and feelings of Schiller have found entrance in the educational life which would have to be filled completely with them, which should be a summary of them.

In my talks on Schiller, which I have held in the “Free College,” I have explained how we have to understand Schiller concerning the present. I tried there to show the thoughts in coherent and comprehensive way. You can read up there in detail what I can only indicate today. In any Schiller's biography you can find basically only little of these intimacies of Schiller. But once a pedagogue, a sensitive, dear pedagogue concerned himself with the content of Schiller's aesthetic letters in nice letters. Deinhardt (Heinrich D., 1805-1867) was his name. I do not believe that you can still buy the book. All teachers, in particular of our secondary schools, had to purchase it. However, I believe, it was pulped. The man, who wrote it, could hardly achieve a poor tutor's place. He had the mishap to pick up a leg fracture; the consulted doctors said that the leg fracture could be cured, however, the man were too badly nourished. Thus he died as a result of this accident.

After Schiller had advanced to this point of his life that way, something very important occurred to him: an event took place that intervened deeply in his life and also in the life of our whole nation. It is an event which is very important generally for the whole modern spiritual life. This is the friendship between Schiller and Goethe. It was founded peculiarly. It was at a meeting of the “Society of Naturalists” in Jena. Schiller and Goethe visited a talk of a significant scientist, Batsch (Johann Karl B., 1761-1802, botanist). It happened that both went together out of the hall. Schiller said to Goethe: this is such a fragmented way to look at the natural beings; the spirit that lives in the whole nature is absent everywhere. Thus Schiller put his basic question again to Goethe. Goethe answered: there may probably be another way to look at nature.

Goethe had also pointed in his Faust to that where he says that somebody who searches in such a way expels the spirit, then he has the parts in his hands “however, unfortunately, the spirit band is absent.” Goethe had seen something in all plants that he calls the archetypal plant (Urpflanze), in the animals what he calls the archetypal animal. He saw what we call the etheric body and he drew this etheric body with a few characteristic lines before Schiller. He realised that something really living expresses itself in every plant. Schiller argued: “yes, however, this is no experience, this is an idea!” Goethe responded: “this can be very dear to me that I have ideas without knowing it, and even see them with my eyes.” Goethe was clear in his mind that it was nothing else than the being of the plant itself.

Schiller had now the task to attain the great and comprehensive view of Goethe. It is a fine letter, which I have mentioned already once; it contains the deepest psychology which generally exists and with which Schiller makes friends with Goethe. “For a long time and with always renewed admiration I have already observed the course of your mind although from considerable distance and the way, which you have marked for yourself. You search for the necessary of nature, but you search for it in the most difficult way, for any weaker strength will probably take good care not do that. You summarise the whole nature to get light about the single; you try to explain the individual in all its appearances. From the simple organisation you ascend step by step to the more intricate one to build, finally, the most intricate one of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the whole nature. Because you recreate him in nature as it were, you try to penetrate his concealed techniques. A great and really heroic idea which shows well enough how much your mind holds together the whole wealth of its ideas in an admirable unity. You can never have hoped that your life will suffice to such a goal, but even to take such a way is more worth than to finish any other and you have chosen like Achilles in the Iliad between Phthia and immortality.

If you had been born as a Greek, or just as an Italian, and a choice nature and an idealising art had surrounded you already from the cradle, your way would be endlessly shortened, would maybe rendered quite superfluous. Then already in the first observation of the things you would have comprehended the form of the necessary, and with your first experiences the great style would have developed in you. Now, because you are born as a German, because your Greek mind was thrown into this northern creation, no other choice remained to you to become either a northern artist, or to give your imagination what reality refused to it to substitute with the help of mental capacity and to bear a Greece as it were from within on a rational way.” This is something that continued having an effect on Schiller as we will see immediately.

Schiller now returns again to poetry. What had a lasting effect faces us in his dramas. Greatly and comprehensively life faces us in Wallenstein. You do not need to believe that you find the thoughts which I develop now, if you read Schiller's dramas. But deeply inside they lie in his dramas, as well as the blood in our veins pulsates, without us seeing this blood in the veins. They pulsate in Schiller's dramas as blood of life. Something impersonal is mixed in the personal. Schiller said to himself: there must be something more comprehensive that goes beyond birth and death. He tried to understand which role the great transpersonal destiny plays in the personal. We have often mentioned this principle as the karma principle. In Wallenstein he describes the big destiny which crushes or raises the human being. Wallenstein tries to fathom it in the stars. Then, however, he realises again that he is drawn by the threads of destiny, that in our own breasts the stars of our destinies are shining. Schiller tries to poetically master the personal, the sensuous nature in connection with the divine in Wallenstein. It would be inartistic if we wanted to enjoy the drama with these thoughts. But the big impulse flows unconsciously into us which originates from this connection. We are raised and carried to that which pulsates through this drama. In each of the next dramas, Schiller tries to reach a higher level to educate himself and to raise the others with him.

In The Maid of Orleans transpersonal forces play a role in the personal. In The Bride of Messina he tries to embody something similar going back to the old Greek drama. He attempts to bring in a choir and a lyrical element there. Not in the usual colloquial language, but in sublime language he wanted to show destinies, which rise above the only personal. Why Schiller tied in with the Greek drama? We must visualise the origin of the Greek drama itself. If we look back to the Greek drama behind Sophocles and Aeschylus, we come to the Greek mystery drama, to the original drama whose later development stages are those of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. In his book The Birth of the Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1872) Nietzsche (1844–1900) tries to explore the origin of the drama. In the Homeric time, something was annually brought forward to the Greeks in great dramatic paintings that was at the same time religion, art and science truth, devoutness and beauty. What did this original drama thereby become? This original drama was not a drama which shows human destinies. It should show the godhead himself as the representative of humanity Dionysus. The god, who has descended from higher spheres, who embodies himself in the material substances, who ascends through the realms of nature to the human being to celebrate his redemption and resurrection in the human being. This path of the divine in the world was shaped most beautifully in the descent, in the resurrection and the ascension of the divine.

This original drama took place in manifold figures before the eyes of the Greek spectators. The Greek saw what he wanted to know about the world, what he should know as truth about the world, the triumph of the spiritual over the natural. Science was to him what was shown in these dramas, and it was shown to him in such a way that this presentation was associated with devoutness and could be a model of the human lifestyle. Art, religion and wisdom was that which happened before the spectators. The single actors spoke not in usual language, but in sublime language about the descent, the suffering and overcoming, about the resurrection and ascension of the spiritual. The choir reflected what happened there. It rendered what took place as a divine drama in the simple music of the past. From this homogeneous spring flows out what we know as art, as science, which became physical, and as religion, which emerged from these mysteries. Thus we look back at something that links art with truth and religious devoutness.

The great re-thinker of the Greek original drama, the French author Edouard Schuré (1841–1929), attempted in our time to rebuild this drama. You can read up this really ingenious rebuilding in The Holy Drama of Eleusis (Le drame sacré d'Eleusis). Engrossing his mind in this drama he got to the idea that it is a task of our time to renew the theatre of the soul and the self. In The Children of Lucifer (Les Enfants de Lucifer) he tries to create a modern work that connects self-observation and beauty, dramatic strength and truth content with each other. If you want to know anything about the drama of the future, you can get an idea of it in these pictures of The Children of Lucifer. The whole Wagner circle strives for nothing else than to show something transpersonal in the dramas. In Richard Wagner's dramas, we have the course from the personal to the transpersonal, to the mythical. Hence, Nietzsche also found the way to Wagner when he sought the birth of the tragedy in the original drama. Schiller had already tried in his Bride of Messina what the 19th century aimed at. In this drama, the spiritual is represented in sublime language, and the choir echoes the divine actions before us. He says in his exceptionally witty preface of the writing About the Use of the Choir in the Tragedy from which depths he wanted to bear a Greece in those days. This writing is again a pearl of German literature and aesthetics.

Schiller attempted the same that the 19th century wanted to enter the land of knowing through beauty's morning gate and to be a missionary of truth. With the drama Demetrius which he could not finish because death tore him away, with this drama he tried to understand the problems of the human self, with a clearness and so greatly and intensely that none of those who tried it could finish Demetrius because the great wealth of Schiller's ideas is not to be found with them.

How deeply he understands the self that lives in the human being! Demetrius thinks of himself because of certain signs that he is the real Russian successor to the throne. He does everything to attain what is due to him. At the moment when he is near to arrive at his goal everything collapses that had filled his self. He has now to be what he has made of himself merely by the strength of his inside. This self which was given to him does no longer exist; a self which should be his own action should arise. Demetrius should act out of it. The problem of the human personality is grasped grandiloquently like by no other dramatist of the world. Schiller had such a great thing in mind when death tore him away. In this drama, something lies that with those who could not put it in clear words will now find more response. What was built in the human hearts and in the depths of human souls gushed out again in 1859.

1859 caused a change in the whole modern education. Four works appeared by chance round this time. They influenced the basic attitude of our education. One of them is Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life that brought a materialistic movement with it. The second work was also typical, in particular concerning Schiller if we remember his words which he called out to the astronomers: “do not chat to me so much about nebulas and suns! Is nature only great, because she gives you something to count? Admittedly, your object is the loftiest in space; but, friends, the elated does not live in space.” But it became possible to understand just this elated in space by a work about the spectral analysis which Kirchhoff (Robert K., 1824–1887, physicist) and Bunsen (Robert Wilhelm B., 1811–1899, physicist) published. The third work was again in a certain opposition to Schiller. Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887) wrote in idealistic spirit: The Preliminaries of Aesthetics (1876). An aesthetics should be created “from below.” Schiller had started it stupendously “from above.” Fechner took the simple sensation as his starting point. The fourth work carried materialism into the social life. What Schiller wanted to found as society was moved under the point of view of the crassest materialism in the work by Karl Marx (1818–1883) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All that crept in. These are things which were far from the immediate-intimate which Schiller poured in the hearts, honestly and sincerely. And now those who are exposed to the modern literature can no longer look at Schiller in such an idealistic way. Recently, in the last decade of the 19-th century, a man wrote a biography on Schiller who had grown together thoroughly with the aesthetic culture. The first word in it was: “I hated Schiller in my youth!” And only by his scholarly activity he was able to acknowledge Schiller's greatness.

Who can listen only a little to what floods in our time sees that there a certain internal coercion prevails. Time has changed. Nevertheless, perhaps some great, enthusiastic words and some nice festivity will be also connected with Schiller. But somebody who has a good ear will not hear anything that still moved through the minds and souls before half a century when we revered Schiller. We must understand it; we do not reproach those who have no connection with Schiller today. But with the immense dimension of Schiller's oeuvre we have to concede to us: he has to become a component of our cultural education again. The immediate present has to follow Schiller again. Why should a society striving for spiritual deepening like the Theosophical Society not take Schiller up? He is still the first pre-school of self-education if we want to reach the heights of spirit. We get to knowledge differently, if we experience him. We come to the spiritual, if we experience his Aesthetic Letters. We understand the Theosophical Society as an association of human beings, without taking into consideration nation, gender, origin and the like, as an association merely on the basis of pure human love.

In the course of his life, Schiller strove for the heights of spiritual being, and his dramas are basically nothing else than what wants to penetrate artistically into the highest fields of this spiritual being. What he sought was nothing else than to develop something everlasting and imperishable in the human soul. If we remember Goethe quite briefly again: with the word “entelechy“ he termed what lives in the soul as the imperishable what the human being develops in himself, acquires experiencing reality, and what he sends up as his eternal. Schiller calls this the forming figure. As to Schiller, this is the everlasting that lives in the soul that the soul develops constantly in itself, increases in itself and leads to the imperishable realms.

It is a victory which the figure gains over the transient corporeality in which the figure only acts. Schiller calls it the everlasting in the soul-life, and we are allowed, like Goethe, after Schiller had deceased, to stamp the words: “he was ours.” If we understand Schiller with living mind, we are allowed to imbue ourselves with that which lived in him with which he lives in the other world, which took up his best friendly and affectionately. We are also allowed as theosophists to celebrate that mysterious connection with him which we can celebrate as a Schiller festival. As well as the mystic unites with the spiritual of the world the human being unites with the great spiritual heroes of humanity. Everybody who strives for a spiritual world view should celebrate such a festival, a “unio mystica,” for himself, still beside the big Schiller jamborees. Nothing should be argued against these big festivals. However, only somebody who celebrates this intimate festival in his heart connecting him with Schiller intimately finds Schiller's work. Aspiring to spirit we find the way best if we make it like Schiller who educated himself all his life. He expressed it, and it sounds like a motto of the theosophical world view:

Only the body belongs to those powers
Which braid the dark fate;
But freely from any force of time,
As playmate of blessed beings,
Strolls above in the light's acres,
Divinely among gods the figure.

[ 1 ] During our last meeting here some time ago we spoke of the deeper currents of Christianity with particular reference to the Gospel of St. John and of the great images and ideas accessible to man when he reflects deeply upon this unique text. More than once it has been emphasized that the very depths of Christianity are illuminated by that Gospel and some of those who have heard lecture-courses on the same subject might feel inclined to ask: If the viewpoint reached through studying the Gospel of St. John may truly be called the most profound, can it be widened or enriched in any way by study of the other three Gospels of St. Luke, St. Matthew and St. Mark? Again, those who tend to be mentally lazy might ask: If the deepest depths of Christianity are to be found in the Gospel of St. John, is it still necessary to study Christianity as presented in the other Gospels, especially in the apparently less profound Gospel of St. Luke?

[ 2 ] Anyone who might put this question believing such an attitude to be worthy of consideration would be labouring under a complete misapprehension. The scope of Christianity itself is infinite and light can be shed upon it from the most diverse standpoints. Furthermore, as the present course of lectures will show, although the Gospel of St. John is a document of untold profundity, there are facts which can be learnt from the Gospel of St. Luke and not from that of St. John. The ideas which in the lectures on the Gospel of St. John we came to recognize as among the most profound in Christianity, do not by any means comprise all its depths. It is possible to penetrate these depths from another starting-point altogether, basing our studies on the Gospel of St. Luke viewed in the light of Anthroposophy.

[ 3 ] Let us once again recall facts in support of the statement that there is something to be gained from the Gospel of St. Luke even if the depths of the Gospel of St. John have been exhaustively studied. A fact revealed to the student of Anthroposophy by every line of the Gospel of St. John is that records such as the Gospels were composed by individuals who, as initiates and clairvoyants, possessed deeper insight than other men into the nature of existence. In everyday parlance the terms ‘initiate’ and ‘clairvoyant’ may be synonymous. But if our studies of Anthroposophy are to lead us into the deeper strata of spiritual life, we must distinguish between one who is an ‘initiate’ and one who is a ‘clairvoyant’, for they represent two distinct categories of human beings who have found their way into the spheres of super-sensible existence. There is a difference between an initiate and a clairvoyant, although an initiate may at the same time be a clairvoyant, and a clairvoyant an initiate of a certain grade. To distinguish with exactitude between these two categories of human beings you must recall the facts described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment, remembering that strictly speaking there are three stages on the path leading beyond ordinary perception of the world.

[ 4 ] The first kind of knowledge accessible to man can be described by saying: he beholds the world through his senses and assimilates what he perceives by means of his intellect and the other faculties of his soul. Beyond this, there are three further stages of knowledge, of cognition: the first is the stage of Imagination, Imaginative Cognition, the second is the stage of Inspiration, and the third is the stage of Intuition—but the term ‘Intuition’ must be understood in its true sense.

[ 5 ] The faculty of Imaginative Cognition is possessed by one before whose eye of spirit all that lies behind the world of the senses is unfolded in mighty, cosmic pictures—but these pictures do not in the least resemble anything we call by this name in everyday life. Apart from the difference that the pictures revealed by Imaginative Cognition are independent of the laws of three-dimensional space, other characteristics make it impossible for them to be compared with anything in the world of the senses.

[ 6 ] An idea of the world of Imagination may be gained in the following way. Suppose someone were able to extract from a plant in front of him everything perceptible to the sense of sight as ‘colour’, so that this hovered freely in the air. If he were to do nothing more than draw out the colour from the plant, a lifeless colour-form would hover before him. But to the clairvoyant such a colour-form is anything but a lifeless picture, for when he extracts the colour from the objects, then, through the preparation he has undergone and the exercises he has practised, this colour-picture begins to be animated by spirit just as in the physical world it was filled by the living substance of the plant. He then has before him, not a lifeless colour-form but freely moving coloured light, glistening, sparkling, full of inner life; each colour is the expression of the particular nature of a spiritual being imperceptible in the world of the physical senses. That is to say, the colour in the physical plant becomes for the clairvoyant the expression of spiritual beings. [ 7 ] Now imagine a world filled with such colour-forms, reflected in manifold ways and in perpetual metamorphosis; your vision must not be confined to the colours, as it might be when confronting a painting of glimmering colour-reflections, but you must imagine it all as the expression of beings of soul-and-spirit, so that you can say to yourselves: ‘When a green colour-picture flashes up it expresses to me the fact that an intellectual being is behind it; or when a reddish colour-picture flashes up it is to me the expression of a being with a fiery, violent nature.’ Now imagine this whole sea of interweaving colours I might equally well say a sea of interplaying sensations of tone, taste, or smell, for all these are the expressions of beings of soul-and-spirit behind them—and you have what is called the ‘Imaginative’ world, the world of Imagination. It is nothing to which the word ‘imagination’ (fancy) in its ordinary sense could be applied; it is a real world, requiring a mode of comprehension different from that derived from the senses.

[ 8 ] Within this world of Imagination you encounter everything that is behind the sense-world and is imperceptible to the physical senses—for instance, the etheric and astral bodies. A man whose knowledge of the world is derived from this clairvoyant, Imaginative perception, becomes acquainted with the outward aspect of higher beings, just as you become acquainted with the outward, physical aspect of a man in the physical world who, let us say, passes in front of you in the street. You know more about him when there is an opportunity of talking with him. His words then give you an impression differing from the one he makes upon you when you look at him in the street. In the case of many a man whom you pass by (to mention this one example only) you cannot observe whether his soul is moved by inner joy or grief, sorrow or delight. But you can discover this if you converse with him. In the one case his outward aspect is conveyed to you through everything you can perceive without his assistance; in the other case he expresses his very self to you. The same applies to the beings of the super-sensible world. [ 9 ] A clairvoyant who comes to recognize these beings through Imaginative Cognition knows only their outward aspect. But he hears them give expression to their very selves when he rises from Imaginative Knowledge to Knowledge through Inspiration. He then has actual intercourse with these beings. They communicate to him from their inmost selves what and who they are. Inspiration is therefore a higher stage of knowledge than Imagination, and more is learnt about the beings of the world of soul-and-spirit at the stage of Inspiration than can be learnt through Imagination.

[ 10 ] A still higher stage of knowledge is that of Intuition—but the word must be taken in its spiritual-scientific sense, not in that of day-to-day parlance, when anything that occurs to one, however hazy and nebulous, may be called ‘intuition’. In our sense, Intuition is a form of knowledge thanks to which we not only listen spiritually to what the beings communicate to us, but we become one with the very beings themselves. This is a very lofty stage of spiritual knowledge for it requires, at the outset, that there shall be in the human being that quality of universal love which causes him to make no distinction between himself and the other beings in his spiritual environment, but to pour forth his very self into the environment; thus he no longer remains outside but lives within the beings with whom he has spiritual communion. Because this can take place only in a spiritual world, the expression ‘Intuition’, i.e. ‘to dwell in the God’ is entirely appropriate. Thus there are three stages of knowledge of the super-sensible worlds: Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition.

[ 11 ] It is possible, of course, to attain all these three stages of super-sensible knowledge, but it may also be that in some one incarnation the stage of Imagination only is reached. Then the spheres of the spiritual world attainable through Inspiration and Intuition remain hidden from the clairvoyant concerned. In our present age it is not usual for a person to be led to the higher stages of spiritual experience before having passed through the stage of Imagination; it is hardly possible for anyone to omit the stage of Imagination and be led at once to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. But what would not be appropriate to-day, could happen and actually did happen in certain other periods of the evolution of man.

[ 12 ] There were times when Imagination on the one hand and Inspiration and Intuition on the other were apportioned to different individuals. In certain Mystery-centres there were men whose eyes of spirit were open in such a way that they were clairvoyant in the sphere of Imagination and that world of symbolical pictures was accessible to them. Because with this grade of clairvoyance, such men said: ‘For this incarnation I renounce the attainment of the higher stages of Inspiration and Intuition’, they made themselves capable of seeing clearly and with exactitude in the world of Imagination. They underwent much training in order to develop vision of that world. [ 13 ] But one thing was essential for them. Anyone who wants to confine his vision to the world of Imagination and gives up any attempt to advance to Inspiration and Intuition, lives in a world of uncertainty. This world of flowing Imaginations is, so to say, boundless, and if left to its own resources the soul floats hither and thither without being really aware of its direction or goal. In those times, therefore, and among peoples where certain human beings renounced the higher stages of knowledge, it was necessary for those whose clairvoyance had reached the stage of Imagination to attach themselves with utter devotion to leaders whose capacities of spiritual perception were open to Inspiration and Intuition. For Inspiration and Intuition alone can give such certainty in regard to the spiritual world that a man knows with full assurance: Thither leads the path—towards a definite goal! Without Inspiration it is not possible to say: There is the path; I must follow it in order to reach a goal! Whoever, therefore, cannot say this must entrust himself to the wise guidance of someone who says it to him. Hence in so many quarters it is constantly emphasized, and rightly so, that whoever rises, to begin with, to the stage of Imagination, must attach himself inwardly to a Guru—a leader who gives both direction and aim to his experiences. [ 14 ] It was also advisable in certain epochs—but this is no longer the case to-day—to allow other individuals to omit the stage of Imagination and to lead them at once to Inspiration or, if possible, to Intuition. Such men renounced the possibility of perceiving the Imaginative pictures of the spiritual world around them; they lent themselves only to such impressions from the spiritual world as issue from the inner life of the beings there. They listened with their ears of spirit to the utterances of the beings of the spiritual world. Suppose there is a screen between you and another man whom you do not see but only hear him speaking behind the screen. It is certainly possible to renounce pictorial vision of the spiritual world in order to be led more quickly to the stage of hearing the utterances of the spiritual beings. No matter whether a person sees the pictures of the world of Imagination or not—if he is able to apprehend with spiritual ears what the beings in the spiritual world communicate regarding themselves, we say of him that he is endowed with the power to hear the ‘inner word’—in contrast to the outer word used in the physical world between man and man.

We can thus conceive that there are people who, without beholding the world of Imaginations, are endowed with the power to apprehend the inner word and can hear and communicate the utterances of spiritual beings. [ 15 ] There were periods in the evolution of humanity when, within the Mysteries, these two forms of super-sensible cognition worked in co-operation. Each individual who had renounced the faculty of perception possessed by another, could develop greater clarity and definition in his own faculty and at certain periods this resulted in a truly wonderful co-operation within the Mysteries. There were clairvoyants who had specially trained themselves to see the world of Imaginative pictures, and there were others who, having passed over the world of Imagination, had trained themselves to receive the inner word into their souls through Inspiration. And so the one could communicate to the other the experiences made possible by his particular training. This was possible in times when some degree of confidence reigned between one man and another; to-day it is out of the question, simply because of the character of our age. Nowadays one man has not such strong belief in another that he would listen to his descriptions of the pictures of the world of Imagination and then, honestly believing those descriptions to be accurate, supplement them with what he himself knows through Inspiration. Nowadays, everyone wants to see it all himself—and that is natural in our age. Very few people would be satisfied with a one-sided development of Imagination such as was taken for granted in certain epochs. In our present time, therefore, it is necessary for a man to be led through the three stages of higher knowledge without omitting any one of them.

[ 16 ] At each stage of super-sensible knowledge we encounter the great mysteries connected with the Christ Event, about which all three forms of cognition—Imaginative, Inspirational, Intuitive—have infinitely much to say.

[ 17 ] If with this in mind we turn our attention to the four Gospels, we may say that the Gospel of St. John is written from the vantage-point of one who in the fullest sense was an Initiate, cognisant at the stage of Intuition of the mysteries of the super-sensible world, and who therefore describes the Christ Event as revealed by the vision of Intuition. But if close attention is paid to the distinctive characteristics of St. John's Gospel it will have to be admitted that the features standing out most clearly are presented from the standpoint of Inspiration and Intuition, while everything originating from the pictures of Imagination is shadowy and lacks definition. Thus if we disregard what was still revealed to him through Imagination, we may call the writer of St. John's Gospel the messenger of everything relating to the Christ Event that is vouchsafed to one endowed with the power of apprehending the inner word at the stage of Intuition. Hence he describes the mysteries of Christ's Kingdom as receiving their character through the inner Word, or Logos. Knowledge through Inspiration and Intuition is the source of the Gospel of St. John.

[ 18 ] It is different in the case of the other three Gospels, and not one of their writers expressed his message as clearly as did the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke. [ 19 ] In a short but remarkable preface it is said, in effect, that many others had previously attempted to collect and set forth the stories in circulation concerning the events in Palestine; but that for the sake of accuracy and order the writer of this Gospel is now undertaking to present the things which ... and now come significant words ... could be understood by those who from the beginning were ‘eye-witnesses and servants (ministers) of the Word’—that is the usual rendering. The aim of the writer of this Gospel is therefore to communicate what eye-witnesses—it would be better to say ‘seers’ (Selbstseher)—and servants of the Word had to say. In the sense of St. Luke's Gospel, ‘seers’ are men who through Imaginative Cognition can penetrate into the world of pictures and there behold the Christ Event; people specially trained to perceive these Imaginations are seers with accurate and clear vision at the same time as being ‘servants of the Word’—a significant phrase—and the writer of St. Luke's Gospel uses their communications as a foundation. He does not say ‘possessors’ of the Word, because such persons would have reached the stage of Inspiration in the fullest sense; he says ‘servants’ of the Word—people who could count less upon Inspirations than upon Imaginations in their own knowledge but for whom communications from the world of Inspiration were nevertheless available. The results of Inspirational Cognition were communicated to them and they could proclaim what their inspired teachers had made known to them. They were ‘servants’, not ‘possessors’ of the Word.

[ 20 ] Thus the Gospel of St. Luke is founded upon the communications of seers, themselves knowers of the world of Imagination; they are those who, having learnt to express their visions of that world through means made possible by their inspired teachers, had themselves become ‘servants of the Word’.

[ 21 ] Here again is an example of the exactitude of the Gospel records and of the need to understand the words in the strictly literal sense. In texts based upon spiritual knowledge, everything is exact to a degree often undreamed of by modern man.

[ 22 ] But we must now again remember—as always when such matters are considered from the anthroposophical standpoint—that, for spiritual science, the Gospels themselves are not original sources of knowledge in the actual sense. One who stands strictly on the ground of spiritual science will not necessarily take a statement to be the truth simply because it stands in the Gospels. The spiritual scientist does not draw his knowledge from written documents but from the yields of spiritual investigation. Communications made by beings of the spiritual world to the initiate and the clairvoyant in the present age—these are the sources of knowledge for spiritual science. And in a certain respect these sources are the same in our age as in the times just described to you. Hence in our age too, those who have insight into the world of Imagination may be called clairvoyants, but only those who can rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition can be called ‘Initiates’. In our present age the expressions ‘clairvoyant’ and ‘initiate’ are not necessarily synonymous.

[ 23 ] The content of the Gospel of St. John could be based only upon knowledge possessed by an Initiate capable of rising to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. The contents of the other three Gospels could be based upon the communications of persons endowed with Imaginative clairvoyance but not yet able themselves to rise to the stages of Inspiration and Intuition. If therefore we adhere strictly to this distinction, St. John's Gospel is based upon Initiation, and the other three, especially that of St. Luke—according to what the writer himself says—upon Clairvoyance. Because this is the case, and because everything that is revealed to the vision of a highly trained clairvoyant is introduced, this Gospel gives us well-defined pictures of what is contained in the Gospel of St. John in faint impressions only. In order to make the difference even more obvious, let me say the following.

[ 24 ] Although it would hardly ever be the case to-day, let us suppose a man were initiated in such a way that the worlds of Inspiration and of Intuition were open to him but that he was not clairvoyant in the world of Imagination. Suppose such a man met another, perhaps not initiated but to whom the whole world of Imaginations was open. This man would be able to communicate a great deal to the first who might possibly only be able to explain it through Inspiration but could not himself see it, having no faculty of clairvoyance. There are many to-day who are clairvoyant without being initiates; the reverse is hardly ever the case. Nevertheless it might conceivably happen that someone who had been initiated, could not, although possessing the gift of clairvoyance, for some reason or other perceive the Imaginations in a particular instance. A clairvoyant would then be able to tell such a man a great deal as yet unknown to him.

[ 25 ] It must be strongly emphasized that Anthroposophy relies upon no other source than that of the Initiates, and that the texts of the Gospels are not the actual sources of its knowledge. The fount of anthroposophical knowledge is investigated to-day independently of any historical records. But then we turn to the records and compare the findings of spiritual-scientific research with them. What Anthroposophy can at all times discover about the Christ Event without the help of any documentary record is found again in the Gospel of St. John, presented in a most sublime way. Hence its supreme value, for it shows us that at the time when it was composed a man was living who wrote as one initiated into the spiritual world can write to-day. The same voice, as it were, that can be heard to-day, sounds across to us from the depths of the centuries.

[ 26 ] The same can be said of the other Gospels, including that of St. Luke. It is not the pictures delineated by the writer of the Gospel of St. Luke that are for us the source of knowledge of the higher worlds; the source for us lies in the results of ascent into the super-sensible world. When we speak of the Christ Event, a source for us is also that great tableau of pictures and Imaginations appearing when we direct our gaze to the beginning of our era. We compare what thus reveals itself with the pictures and Imaginations described in the Gospel of St. Luke; and this course of lectures will show how the Imaginative pictures accessible to man to-day compare with the descriptions given in that Gospel.

[ 27 ] The truth is that there is only one source for spiritual investigation when directed to the events of the past. This source does not lie in external records; no stones dug out of the earth, no documents preserved in archives, no treatises written by historians either with or without insight—none of these things is the source of spiritual science. What we are able to read in the imperishable Akashic Chronicle—that is the source of spiritual science. The possibility exists of knowing what has happened in the past without reference to external records. [ 28 ] Modern man has thus two ways of acquiring information about the past. He can take the documents and the historical records when he wants to learn something about outer events, or the religious scripts when he wants to learn something about the conditions of spiritual life. Or else he can ask: What have those men to say before whose spiritual vision lies that imperishable Chronicle known as the ‘Akashic Chronicle’—that mighty tableau in which there is registered whatever has at any time come to pass in the evolution of the world, of the earth and of humanity?

[ 29 ] Whoever raises his consciousness into the spiritual world learns gradually to read this chronicle. It is no ordinary script. Think of the course of events, just as they happened, presented to your spiritual vision; think, let us say, of the Emperor Augustus and all his deeds standing before you in a cloud-like picture. The picture stands there before the spiritual-scientific investigator and he can at any time evoke the experience anew. He requires no external evidence. He need only direct his gaze to a definite point in cosmic or human happenings and the events will present themselves to him in a spiritual picture. In this way the spiritual gaze can survey the ages of the past, and what is there perceived is recorded as the findings of spiritual investigation.

[ 30 ] What happened at the beginning of our era can be perceived by spiritual vision and compared, for example, with what is related in the Gospel of St. Luke. Then the spiritual investigator recognizes that at that time too there were seers able to behold the past; and moreover the accounts they give of happenings in their own times can be compared with what is revealed to-day by spiritual investigation of the Akashic Chronicle.

[ 31 ] Again and again it must be realized that we do not have recourse to outer records but to the actual findings of spiritual investigation and that we then try to rediscover these results in the outer records. The value of the records themselves is thereby enhanced and we can come to a decision about the truth of their contents on the strength of our own investigations. They lie before us as, even more faithful expression of the truth because we ourselves are able to recognize the truth. But a statement such as this must not be made without at the same time affirming that this ‘reading in the Akashic Chronicle’ is by no means as easy as observation of events in the physical world! With the help of an example I should like to give you an idea of certain difficulties that may arise.

[ 32 ] We know from elementary Anthroposophy that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. The moment we are no longer observing man on the physical plane but rise into the spiritual world, the difficulties begin. When we have a human being physically before us, we see a unity formed by physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. Whoever observes a human being during waking life has all this before him as unity, but if it is necessary for some reason to rise into the higher worlds in order to observe a human being, the difficulties at once begin. Suppose, for example, we wish to observe a human being in his totality while he is asleep during the night, and rise into the world of Imagination in order, let us say, to perceive his astral body—which is now outside the physical body. The human being is now divided into two. [ 33 ] What I am describing will seldom occur in this particular form, for observation of the human being is comparatively easy, but it will help to convey an idea of the difficulties in question.

Suppose someone goes into a room where a number of people are asleep. He sees their physical bodies lying there and, if he is clairvoyant, their etheric bodies too; at a higher stage of clairvoyance he sees their astral bodies. But in the astral world everything interpenetrates—including, of course, the astral bodies of human beings. Although it would not often happen to a trained clairvoyant, when looking at a number of sleeping people he might mistake which astral body belonged to some particular physical body below. As I said, it is an unlikely occurrence because this is one of the first stages of actual vision and because anyone who attains it is well trained in how to distinguish in such a case. But the difficulties become very considerable when spiritual beings—not human beings—are observed in the spiritual world. As a matter of fact the difficulties are already great if a human being is to be observed, not as he is at present, but in his totality, as he passes through incarnations. [ 34 ] Thus if you observe a human being now living and ask yourself: Where was his Ego in his previous incarnation? you have to go through the Devachanic world to reach his former incarnation. You must be able to establish which Ego has always belonged to the preceding incarnations of the person in question. You must hold together, in an intricate way, the continuous Ego and the various stages down on the Earth. Mistakes are very possible here and error can very easily occur when looking for an Ego in its earlier bodies. In the higher worlds, therefore, it is not easy to maintain the connection between everything belonging to a human personality and his former incarnations as inscribed in the Akashic Chronicle.

[ 35 ] Suppose someone has before him a man—let us call him John Smith—and as a clairvoyant or initiate he asks: ‘Who were the physical ancestors of this man?’—Let us assume that all external records have been lost and there is only the Akashic Chronicle upon which to rely. It would be a matter of having to discover from the Akashic Chronicle the physical ancestors of the man—the father, mother, grandfather, and so on, in order to see how the physical body evolved in the line of physical descent. But then there might be the further question: ‘What were the earlier incarnations of this man?’ To answer that question an entirely different path must be taken than when looking for the physical ancestors. It may be necessary to go back through long, long ages in order to arrive at the previous incarnations of the Ego.

Already you have two streams: the physical body as it stands before you is not a completely new creation, for it springs from the ancestors in the line of physical heredity; nor is the Ego a completely new creation, for it is linked with its previous incarnations. [ 36 ] The same holds good for the intermediate members, the etheric and astral bodies. Most of you know that the etheric body is not a completely new creation but that it too may have taken a path leading through the most diverse forms. The etheric body of Zarathustra reappeared in Moses. It was the same etheric body. If we were to seek out the physical ancestors of Moses this would give us one line; if we were to seek out the ancestors of the etheric body of Moses we should get another, quite different line; here we should come to the etheric body of Zarathustra and to other etheric bodies. [ 37 ] Just as we have to trace quite different lines for the physical body and the etheric body, the same applies to the astral body. Each separate member of the human being might lead to very diverse streams. Thus the etheric body may be the etheric re-embodiment of an etheric body that belonged to a different individuality altogether—not by any means the same in which the Ego was formerly incarnated. And the same can be said of the astral body.

[ 38 ] When we rise into the higher worlds in order to investigate the several members of a human being, the individual streams all take different directions, and in following them we come to very intricate processes in the spiritual world. Whoever wishes to understand a human being from the vantage-point of spiritual investigation, must describe him not merely as a descendant of his ancestors, not merely as having derived his etheric body or his astral body from this or that being, but he must describe the paths taken by all these four members until they unite in the present individual. This cannot be done all at once. For instance, we may trace the path followed by the etheric body and reach important conclusions. Someone else may trace the path of the astral body. The one may lay more stress on the etheric body, the other on the astral body, and frame his descriptions accordingly. To those who do not notice everything said about an individual by men who are clairvoyant, it will make no difference whether one says this and another that; it will seem to them that the same entity is being described. In their eyes the one who describes the physical personality only and the other who describes the etheric body are both speaking of the same being—John Smith.

[ 39 ] All this can give you an idea of the complexity of circumstances and conditions encountered when it is a question of describing the nature of any phenomenon in the world—whether a human or any other being—from the standpoint of clairvoyant research or Initiation-knowledge. I was obliged to say the foregoing because it will help you to understand that only the most extensive investigation in the Akashic Chronicle can present any being in full clarity to the eyes of spirit.

[ 40 ] The Being who stands before us as the Gospel of St. John describes Him—no matter whether we speak of Him as Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism by John or as Christ after the Baptism—that Being stands before us with an Ego, an astral body, an etheric body and physical body. To give a full description according to the Akashic Chronicle of the Being who was Christ Jesus, we must trace the paths traversed by the four members of His nature in the course of the evolution of humanity. Only then can we rightly understand Him. It is here a question of grasping the meaning of the information regarding the Christ Event given by modern spiritual-scientific investigation, for light must be shed on apparent contradictions in the four Gospels.

[ 41 ] I have often pointed out why purely materialistic research cannot recognize the supreme value and profundity of the Gospel of St. John: it is because those who carry out this research cannot understand that a higher Initiate sees differently, more deeply, than the others. Those who have doubts about the Gospel of St. John attempt to establish a kind of conformity between the three synoptic Gospels. But conformity will be difficult to establish and sustain if it is based only upon the external, material happenings. What will be of particular importance in tomorrow's lecture, namely the life of Jesus of Nazareth before the Baptism by John, is described by two Evangelists, by the writers of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and external, materialistic observation will find differences there that are in no way less than those which must be assumed to exist between the Gospel of St. John and the other three Gospels.

Let us take the facts: The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew relates how the birth of the Creator of Christianity was announced beforehand, how the birth took place, how Magi, having seen the ‘star’, came from the East, being led by the star to the place where the Redeemer was born; he describes how Herod's attention was aroused and how, in order to escape the massacre of the babes in Bethlehem, the parents of the Redeemer fled with the child to Egypt; when Herod was dead it was made known to Joseph, the father of Jesus, that they might return, but for fear of Herod's successor they went to Nazareth instead of returning to Bethlehem.

To-day I will leave aside the Baptist's proclamation, but I want to draw attention to the fact that if we compare the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew we find the annunciation of Jesus of Nazareth described quite differently; the one Gospel relates that it was made to Mary, the other that it was made to Joseph. From the Gospel of St. Luke we learn that the parents of Jesus of Nazareth lived at that place and went to Bethlehem on the occasion of the enrolling. While they were there, Jesus was born. Then came the circumcision, after eight days—nothing is said about a flight into Egypt—and a short time afterwards the child was presented in the temple; the customary offering having been made, the parents returned with the child to Nazareth. A remarkable incident is then described—how on the occasion of a visit with his parents to Jerusalem the twelve-year-old Jesus remained behind in the temple, how his parents sought and found him there among those who expounded the scriptures, how among the learned doctors of the Law he gave evidence of profound knowledge of the scriptures. Then it is related how the parents took the child home with them again, how he grew up ... and we hear nothing particular about him from that time until the Baptism by John.

[ 42 ] Here we have two accounts of Jesus of Nazareth before the Christ descended into him. Whoever wishes to reconcile the accounts must consider how, according to the ordinary materialistic view, he can reconcile the story in the Gospel of St. Matthew that directly after the birth of Jesus his parents, Joseph and Mary, fled with the child into Egypt and subsequently returned, with the other story of the presentation in the temple narrated by St. Luke.

[ 43 ] In these lectures we shall find that what seems a complete contradiction to the ordinary mind will be revealed as truth in the light of spiritual investigation. Both accounts are true!—although presented as accounts of events in the physical world they are in apparent contradiction. Precisely the three synoptic Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke ought to compel people to adopt a spiritual conception of events in the history of humanity. For it is surely obvious that nothing is attained by ignoring apparent contradictions in such records or by speaking of ‘fiction’ when realities prove too great an obstacle.

[ 44 ] We shall have opportunity here to speak of things of which there was no occasion to speak in detail when we were studying the Gospel of St. John namely, the events that took place before the Baptism by John and the descent of the Christ into the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. Many riddles of vital significance concerning the essence of Christianity will find their solution when—as the outcome of research into the Akashic Chronicle—we hear of the being and nature of Jesus of Nazareth before the Christ took possession of his three bodies.

[ 45 ] Tomorrow we shall begin by considering the nature and the life of Jesus of Nazareth as revealed in the Akashic Chronicle, and then ask ourselves: How does the knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth compare with what is described in the Gospel of St. Luke as imparted by those who at that time were ‘seers’ or ‘servants’ of the Word, of the Logos?

THE STUDY of Spiritual Science should always go hand in hand with practical experience of how the mind works. It is impossible to get entirely clear about many things that we discussed in the last lecture unless one tries to get a kind of living grasp of what thinking involves in terms of actualities. For why is it that among the very persons whose profession it is to think about such questions, confusion reigns, for example, as to the relation between the general concept of the “triangle-in-general” and specific concepts of individual triangles? How is it that people puzzle for centuries over questions such as that of the hundred possible and the hundred real thalers cited by Kant? Why is it that people fail to pursue the very simple reflections that are necessary to see that there cannot really be any such thing as a “pragmatic” account of history, according to which the course of events always follows directly from preceding events? Why do people not reflect in such a way that they would be repelled by this impossible mode of regarding the history of man, so widely current nowadays? What is the cause of all these things?

The reason is that far too little trouble is taken over learning to handle with precision the activities of thinking, even by people whose business this should be. Nowadays everyone wants to feel that he has a perfect claim to say: “Think? Well, one can obviously do that.” So they begin to think. Thus we have various conceptions of the world; there have been many philosophers—a great many. We find that one philosopher is after this and another is after that, and that many fairly clever people have drawn attention to many things. If someone comes upon contradictions in these findings, he does not ponder over them, but he is quite pleased with himself, fancying that now he can “think” indeed. He can think again what those other fellows have thought out, and feels quite sure that he will find the right answer himself. For no one nowadays must make any concession to authority! That would deny the dignity of human nature! Everyone must think for himself. That is the prevailing notion in the realm of thought.

I do not know if people have reflected that this is not their attitude in other realms of life. No one feels committed to belief in authority or to a craving for authority when he has his coat made at the tailor's or his shoes at the shoemaker's. He does not say: “It would be beneath the dignity of man to let one's things be made by persons who are known to be thoroughly acquainted with their business.” He may perhaps even allow that it is necessary to learn these skills. But in practical life, with regard to thinking, it is not agreed that one must get one's conceptions of the world from quarters where thinking and much else has been learnt. Only rarely would this be conceded to-day.

This is one tendency that dominates our life in the widest circles, and is the immediate reason why human thinking is not a very widespread product nowadays. I believe this can be quite easily grasped. For let us suppose that one day everybody were to say: “What!—learn to make boots? For a long time that has been unworthy of man; we can all make boots.” I don't know if only good boots would come from it. At all events, with regard to the coining of correct thoughts in their conception of the world, it is from this sort of reasoning that men mostly take their start at the present day. This is what gives its deeper meaning to my remark of yesterday—that although thought is something a man is completely within, so that he can contemplate it in its inner being, actual thinking is not as common as one might suppose. Besides this, there is to-day a quite special pretension which could gradually go so far as to throw a veil over all clear thinking. We must pay attention to this also; at least we must glance at it.

Let us suppose the following. There was once in Görlitz a shoemaker named Jacob Boehme. He had learnt his craft well—how soles are cut, how the shoe is formed over the last, and how the nails are driven into the soles and leather. He knew all this down to the ground. Now supposing that this shoemaker, by name Jacob Boehme, had gone around and said: “I will now see how the world is constructed. I will suppose that there is a great last at the foundation of the world. Over this last the world-leather was once stretched; then the world-nails were added, and by means of them the world-sole was fastened to the world-upper. Then boot-blacking was brought into play, and the whole world-shoe was polished. In this way I can quite clearly explain to myself how in the morning it is bright, for then the shoe-polish of the world is shining, but in the evening it is soiled with all sorts of things; it shines no longer. Hence I imagine that every night someone has the duty of repolishing the world-boot. And thus arises the difference between day and night.” Let us suppose that Jacob Boehme had said this.

Yes, you laugh, for of course Jacob Boehme did not say this; but still he made good shoes for the people of Görlitz, and for that he employed his knowledge of shoe-making. But he also developed his grand thoughts, through which he wanted to build up a conception of the world; and for that he resorted to something else. He said to himself: My shoe-making is not enough for that; I dare not apply to the structure of the world the thoughts I put into making shoes. And in due course he arrived at his sublime thoughts about the world. Thus there was no such Jacob Boehme as the hypothetical figure I first sketched, but there was another one who knew how to set about things. But the hypothetical “Jacob Boehmes”, like the one you laughed over—they exist everywhere to-day.

For example, we find among them physicists and chemists who have learnt the laws governing the combination and separation of substances; there are zoologists who have learnt how one examines and describes animals; there are doctors who have learnt how to treat the physical human body, and what they themselves call the soul. What do they all do? They say: When a person wants to work out for himself a conception of the world, then he takes the laws that are learnt in chemistry, in physics, or in physiology—no others are admissible—and out of these he builds a conception of the world for himself. These people proceed exactly as the hypothetical shoemaker would have done if he had constructed the world-boot, only they do not notice that their world-conceptions come into existence by the very same method that produced the hypothetical world-boot. It does certainly seem rather grotesque if one imagines that the difference between day and night comes about through the soiling of shoe-leather and the repolishing of it in the night. But in terms of true logic it is in principle just the same if an attempt is made to build a world out of the laws of chemistry, physics, biology and physiology. Exactly the same principle! It is an immense presumption on the part of the physicist, the chemist, the physiologist, or the biologist, who do not wish to be anything else than physicist, chemist, physiologist, biologist, and yet want to have an opinion about the whole world. The point is that one should go to the root of things and not shirk the task of illuminating anything that is not so clear by tracing it back to its true place in the scheme of things. If you look at all this with method and logic, you will not need to be astonished that so many present-day conceptions of the world yield nothing but the “world-boot”. And this is something that can point us to the study of Spiritual Science and to the pursuit of practical trains of thought; something that can urge us to examine the question of how we must think in order to see where shortcomings exist in the world.

There is something else I should like to mention in order to show where lies the root of countless misunderstandings with regard to the ideas people have about the world. When one concerns oneself with world-conceptions, does one not have over and over again the experience that someone thinks this and someone else that; one man upholds a certain view with many good reasons (one can find good reasons for everything), while another has equally good reasons for his view; the first man contradicts his opponent with just as good reasons as those with which the opponent contradicts him. Sects arise in the world not, in the first place, because one person or another is convinced about the right path by what is taught here or there. Only look at the paths which the disciples of great men have had to follow in order to come to this or that great man, and then you will see that herein lies something important for us with regard to karma. But if we examine the outlooks that exist in the world to-day, we must say that whether someone is a follower of Bergson, or of Haeckel, or of this or that (karma, as I have already said, does not recognise the current world-conception) depends on other things than on deep conviction. There is contention on all sides!

Yesterday I said that once there were Nominalists, persons who maintained that general concepts had no reality, but were merely names. These Nominalists had opponents who were called Realists (the word had a different meaning then). The Realists maintained that general concepts are not mere words, but refer to quite definite realities. In the Middle Ages the question of Realism versus Nominalism was always a burning one, especially for theology, a sphere of thought with which present-day thinkers trouble themselves very little. For in the time when the question of Nominalism versus Realism arose (from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries) there was something that belonged to the most important confessions of faith, the question about the three “Divine Persons”—Father, Son and Holy Ghost—who form One Divine Being, but are still Three real Persons. The Nominalists maintained that these three Divine Persons existed only individually, the “Father” for Himself, the “Son” for Himself, and the “Holy Ghost” for Himself; and if one spoke of a “Collective God” Who comprised these Three, that was only a name for the Three. Thus Nominalism did away with the unity of the Trinity. In opposition to the Realists, the Nominalists not only explained away the unity, but even regarded it as heretical to declare, as the Realists did, that the Three Persons formed not merely an imaginary unity, but an actual one.

Thus Nominalism and Realism were opposites. And anyone who goes deeply into the literature of Realism and Nominalism during these centuries gets a deep insight into what human acumen can produce. For the most ingenious grounds were brought forward for Nominalism, just as much as for Realism. In those days it was more difficult to be reckoned as a thinker because there was no printing press, and it was not an easy thing to take part in such controversies as that between Nominalism and Realism. Anyone who ventured into this field had to be better prepared, according to the ideas of those times, than is required of people who engage in controversies nowadays. An immense amount of penetration was necessary in order to plead the cause of Realism, and it was equally so with Nominalism. How does this come about? It is grievous that things are so, and if one reflects more deeply on it, one is led to say: What use is it that you are so clever? You can be clever and plead the cause of Nominalism, and you can be just as clever and contradict Nominalism. One can get quite confused about the whole question of intelligence! It is distressing even to listen to what such characterisations are supposed to mean.

Now, as a contrast to what we have been saying, we will bring forward something that is perhaps not nearly so discerning as much that has been advanced with regard to Nominalism or to Realism, but it has perhaps one merit—it goes straight to the point and indicates the direction in which one needs to think.

Let us imagine the way in which one forms general concepts; the way in which one synthesizes a mass of details. We can do this in two ways: first as a man does in the course of his life through the world. He sees numerous examples of a certain kind of animal: they are silky or woolly, are of various colours, have whiskers, at certain times they go through movements that recall human “washing”, they eat mice, etc. One can call such creatures “cats”. Then one has formed a general concept. All these creatures have something to do with what we call “cats”. But now let us suppose that someone has had a long life, in the course of which he has encountered many cat-owners, men and women, and he has noticed that a great many of these people call their pets “Pussy”. Hence he classes all these creatures under the name of “Pussy”. Hence we now have the general concept “Cats” and the general concept “Pussy”, and a large number of individual creatures belonging in both cases to the general concept. And yet no one will maintain that the general concept “Pussy” has the same significance as the general concept “Cats”. Here the real difference comes out. In forming the general concept “Pussy” which is only a summary of names that must rank as individual names, we have taken the line, and rightly so, of Nominalism; and in forming the general concept “Cats” we have taken the line of Realism, and rightly so. In one case Nominalism is correct; in the other. Realism. Both are right. One must only apply these methods within their proper limits. And when both are right, it is not surprising that good reasons for both can be adduced. In taking the name “Pussy”, I have employed a somewhat grotesque example. But I can show you a much more significant example and I will do so at once.

Within the scope of our objective experience there is a whole realm where Nominalism—the idea that the collective term is only a name—is fully justified. We have “one”, “two”, “three”, “four”, “five”, and so on, but it is impossible to find in the expression “number” anything that has a real existence. “Number” has no existence. “One”, “two”, “three”, “five”, “six”,—they exist. But what I said in the last lecture, that in order to find the general concept one must let that which corresponds to it pass over into movement—this cannot be done with the concept “Number”. One “one” does not pass over into “two”. It must always be taken as “one”. Not even in thought can we pass over into two, or from two into three. Only the individual numbers exist, not “number” in general. As applied to the nature of numbers, Nominalism is entirely correct; but when we come to the single animal in relation to its genus, Realism is entirely correct. For it is impossible for a deer to exist, and another deer, and yet another, without there being the genus “deer”. The figure “two” can exist for itself, “one”, “seven”, etc., can exist for themselves. But in so far as anything real appears in number, the number is a quality, and the concept “number” has no specific existence. External things are related to general concepts in two different ways: Nominalism is appropriate in one case, and Realism in the other.

On these lines, if we simply give our thoughts the right direction, we begin to understand why there are so many disputes about conceptions of the world. People generally are not inclined, when they have grasped one standpoint, to grasp another as well. When in some realm of thought somebody has got hold of the idea “general concepts have no existence”, he proceeds to extend to it the whole make-up of the world. This sentence, “general concepts have no existence” is not false, for when applied to the particular realm which the person in question has considered, it is correct. It is only the universalising of it that is wrong. Thus it is essential, if one wants to form a correct idea of what thinking is, to understand clearly that the truth of a thought in the realm to which it belongs is no evidence for its general validity. Someone can offer me a perfectly correct proof of this or that and yet it will not hold good in a sphere to which it does not belong. Anyone, therefore, who intends to occupy himself seriously with the paths that lead to a conception of the world must recognise that the first essential is to avoid one-sidedness. That is what I specially want to bring out to-day. Now let us take a general look at some matters which will be explained in detail later on.

There are people so constituted that it is not possible for them to find the way to the Sprit, and to give them any proof of the Spirit will always be hard. They stick to something they know about, in accordance with their nature. Let us say they stick at something that makes the crudest kind of impression on them—Materialism. We need not regard as foolish the arguments they advance as a defence or proof of Materialism, for an immense amount of ingenious writing has been devoted to the subject, and it holds good in the first place for material life, for the material world and its laws.

Again, there are people who, owing to a certain inwardness, are naturally predisposed to see in all that is material only the revelation of the spiritual. Naturally, they know as well as the materialists do that, externally, the material world exists; but matter, they say, is only the revelation, the manifestation, of the underlying spiritual. Such persons may take no particular interest in the material world and its laws. As all their ideas of the spiritual come to them through their own inner activity, they may go through the world with the consciousness that the true, the lofty, in which one ought to interest oneself—all genuine reality—is found only in the Spirit; that matter is only illusion, only external phantasmagoria. This would be an extreme standpoint, but it can occur, and can lead to a complete denial of material life. We should have to say of such persons that they certainly do recognize what is most real, the Spirit, but they are one-sided; they deny the significance of the material world and its laws. Much acute thinking can be enlisted in support of the conception of the universe held by these persons. Let us call their conception of the universe: Spiritism. Can we say that the Spiritists are right? As regards the Spirit, their contentions could bring to light some exceptionally correct ideas, but concerning matter and its laws they might reveal very little of any significance. Can one say the Materialists are correct in what they maintain? Yes, concerning matter and its laws they may be able to discover some exceptionally useful and valuable facts; but in speaking of the Spirit they may utter nothing but foolishness. Hence we must say that both parties are correct in their respective spheres.

There can also be persons who say: “Yes, but as to whether in truth the world contains only matter, or only spirit, I have no special knowledge; the powers of human cognition cannot cope with that. One thing is clear—there is a world spread out around us. Whether it is based upon what chemists and physicists, if they are materialists, call atoms, I know not. But I recognize the external world; that is something I see and can think about. I have no particular reason for supposing that it is or is not spiritual at root. I restrict myself to what I see around me.” From the explanations already given we can call such Realists, and their concept of the universe: Realism. Just as one can enlist endless ingenuity on behalf of Materialism or of Spiritism, and just as one can be clever about Spiritism and yet say the most foolish things on material matters, and vice versa, so one can advance the most ingenious reasons for Realism, which differs from both Spiritism and Materialism in the way I have just described.

Again, there may be other persons who speak as follows. Around us are matter and the world of material phenomena. But this world of material phenomena is in itself devoid of meaning. It has no real meaning unless there is within it a progressive tendency; unless from this external world something can emerge towards which the human soul can direct itself, independently of the world. According to this outlook, there must be a realm of ideas and ideals within the world-process. Such people are not Realists, although they pay external life its due; their view is that life has meaning only if ideas work through it and give it purpose. It was under the influence of such a mood as this that Fichte once said: Our world is the sensualised material of our duty. [Note 2] The adherents of such a world-outlook as this, which takes everything as a vehicle for the ideas that permeate the world-process, may be called Idealists and their outlook: Idealism. Beautiful and grand and glorious things have been brought forward on behalf of this Idealism. And in this realm that I have just described—where the point is to show that the world would be purposeless and meaningless if ideas were only human inventions and were not rooted in the world-process—in this realm Idealism is fully justified. But by means of it one cannot, for example, explain external reality. Hence one can distinguish this Idealism from other world-outlooks:

We now have side by side four justifiable world-outlooks, each with significance for its particular domain. Between Materialism and Idealism there is a certain transition. The crudest kind of materialism—one can observe it specially well in our day, although it is already on the wane—will consist in this, that people carry to an extreme the saying of Kant—Kant did not do this himself!—that in the individual sciences there is only so much real science as there is mathematics. This means that from being a materialist one can become a ready-reckoner of the universe, taking nothing as valid except a world composed of material atoms. They collide and gyrate, and then one calculates how they inter-gyrate. By this means one obtains very fine results, which show that this way of looking at things is fully justified. Thus you can get the vibration-rates for blue, red, etc.; you take the whole world as a kind of mechanical apparatus, and can reckon it up accurately. But one can become rather confused in this field. One can say to oneself: “Yes, but however complicated the machine may be, one can never get out of it anything like the perception of blue, red, etc. Thus if the brain is only a complicated machine, it can never give rise to what we know as soul-experiences.” But then one can say, as du Bois-Reymond once said: If we want to explain the world in strictly mathematical terms, we shall not be able to explain the simplest perception, but if we go outside a mathematical explanation, we shall be unscientific. The most uncompromising materialist would say, “No, I do not even calculate, for that would presuppose a superstition—it would imply that I assume that things are ordered by measure and number.” And anyone who raises himself above this crude materialism will become a mathematical thinker, and will recognize as valid only whatever can be treated mathematically. From this results a conception of the universe that really admits nothing beyond mathematical formulae. This may be called Mathematism.

Someone, however, might think this over, and after becoming a Mathematist he might say to himself: “It cannot be a superstition that the colour blue has so and so many vibrations. The world is ordered mathematically. If mathematical ideas are found to be real in the world, why should not other ideas have equal reality?” Such a person accepts this—that ideas are active in the world. But he grants validity only to those ideas that he discovers outside himself—not to any ideas that he might grasp from his inner self by some sort of intuition or inspiration, but only to those he reads from external things that are real to the senses. Such a person becomes a Rationalist, and his outlook on the world is that of Rationalism. If, in addition to the ideas that are found in this way, someone grants validity also to those gained from the moral and the intellectual realms, then he is already an Idealist. Thus a path leads from crude Materialism, by way of Mathematism and Rationalism, to Idealism.

But now Idealism can be enhanced. In our age there are some men who are trying to do this. They find ideas at work in the world, and this implies that there must also be in the world some sort of beings in whom the ideas can live. Ideas cannot live just as they are in any external object, nor can they hang as it were in the air. In the nineteenth century the belief existed that ideas rule history. But this was a confusion, for ideas as such have no power to work. Hence one cannot speak of ideas in history. Anyone who understands that ideas, if they are there are all, are bound up with some being capable of having ideas, will no longer be a mere Idealist; he will move on to the supposition that ideas are connected with beings. He becomes a Psychist and his world-outlook is that Psychism. The Psychist, who in his turn can uphold his outlook with an immense amount of ingenuity, reaches it only through a kind of one-sidedness, of which he can eventually become aware.

Here I must add that there are adherents of all the world-outlooks above the horizontal stroke; for the most part they are stubborn fold who, owing to some fundamental element in themselves, take this or that world-outlook and abide by it, going no further. All the beliefs listed below the line have adherents who are more easily accessible to the knowledge that individual world-outlooks each have one special standpoint only, and they more easily reach the point where they pass from one world-outlook to another.

When someone is a Psychist, and able as a thinking person to contemplate the world clearly, then he comes to the point of saying to himself that he must presuppose something actively psychic in the outside world. But directly he not only thinks, but feels sympathy for what is active and willing in man, then he says to himself: “It is not enough that there are beings who have ideas; these beings must also be active, they must be able also to do things.” But this is inconceivable unless these beings are individual beings. That is, a person of this type rises from accepting the ensoulment of the world to accepting the Spirit or the Spirits of the world. He is not yet clear whether he should accept one or a number of Spirits, but he advances from Psychism to Pneumatism to a doctrine of the Spirit.

If he has become in truth a Pneumatist, then he may well grasp what I have said in this lecture about number—that with regard to figures it is somewhat doubtful to speak of a “unity”. Then he comes to the point of saying to himself: It must therefore be a confusion to talk of one undivided Spirit, of one undivided Pneuma. And he gradually becomes able to form for himself an idea of the Spirits of the different Hierarchies. Then he becomes in the true sense a Spiritist, so that on this side there is a direct transition from Pneumatism to Spiritism.

These world-outlooks are all justified in their own field. For there are fields where Psychism acts illuminatingly, and others where Pneumatism does the same. Certainly, anyone who wishes to deliberate about an explanation of the universe as thoroughly as we have tried to do must come to Spiritism, to the acceptance of the Spirits of the Hierarchies. For to stop short at Pneumatism would in this case mean the following. If we are Spiritists, then it may happen that people will say to us: “Why so many spirits? Why bring numbers into it? Let there be One Undivided Spirit!” Anyone who goes more deeply into the matter knows that this objection is like saying: “You tell me there are two hundred midges over there. I don't see two hundred; I see only a single swarm.” Exactly so would an adherent of Pneumatism stand with regard to a Spiritist. The Spiritist sees the universe filled with the Spirits of the Hierarchies; the Pneumatist sees only the one “swarm”—only the Universal Spirit. But that comes from an inexact view.

Now there is still another possibility: someone may not take the path we have tried to follow to the activities of the spiritual Hierarchies, but may still come to an acceptance of certain spiritual beings. The celebrated German philosopher, Leibnitz, was a man of this kind. Leibnitz had got beyond the prejudice that anything merely material can exist in the world. He found the actual, he sought the actual. (I have treated this more precisely in my book, Riddles of Philosophy.) His view was that a being—as, for example, the human soul—can build up existence in itself. But he formed no further ideas on the subject. He only said to himself that there is such a being that can build up existence in itself, and force concepts outwards from within itself. For Leibnitz, this being is a “Monad”. And he said to himself: “There must be many Monads, and Monads of the most varied capabilities. If I had here a bell, there would be many monads in it—as in a swarm of midges—but they would be monads that had never come even so far as to have sleep-consciousness, monads that are almost unconscious, but which nevertheless develop the dimmest of concepts within themselves. There are monads that dream; there are monads that develop waking ideas within themselves; in short, there are monads of the most varied grades.”

A person with this outlook does not come so far as to picture to himself the individual spiritual beings in concrete terms, as the Spiritist does, but he reflects in the world upon the spiritual element in the world, allowing it to remain indefinite. He calls it “Monad”—that is, he conceives of it only as though one were to say: “Yes, there is spirit in the world and there are spirits, but I describe them only by saying, ‘They are entities having varying powers of perception.’ I pick out from them an abstract characteristic. So I form for myself this one-sided world-outlook, on behalf of which as much as can be said has been said by the highly intelligent Leibnitz. In this way I develop Monadism.” Monadism is an abstract Spiritism.

But there can be persons who do not rise to the level of the Monads; they cannot concede that existence is made up of being with the most varied conceptual powers, but at the same time they are not content to allow reality only to external phenomena; they hold that “forces” are dominant everywhere. If, for example, a stone falls to the ground, they say, “That is gravitation!” When a magnet attracts bits of iron, they say: “That is magnetic force!” They are not content with saying simply, “There is the magnet,” but they say, “The magnet presupposes that supersensibly, invisibly, a magnetic force is present, extending in all directions.” A world-outlook of this kind—which looks everywhere for forces behind phenomena—can be called Dynamism.

Then one may say: “No, to believe in ‘forces’ is superstition”—an example of this is Fritz Mauthner's Critique of Language, where you find a detailed argument to this effect. It amounts to taking your stand on the reality of the things around us. Thus by the path of Spiritism we come through Monadism and Dynamism to Realism again.

But now one can do something else still. One can say: “Certainly I believe in the world that is spread out around me, but I do not maintain any right to claim that this world is the real one. I can say of it only that it ‘appears’ to me. I have no right to say more about it.” There you have again a difference. One can say of the world that is spread out around us. “This is the real world,” but one can also say, “I am clear that there is a world which appears to me; I cannot speak of anything more. I am not saying that this world of colours and sounds, which arises only because certain processes in my eyes present themselves to me as colours, while processes in my ears present themselves to me as sounds—I am not saying that this world is the true world. It is a world of phenomena.” This is the outlook called Phenomenalism.

We can go further, and can say: “The world of phenomena we certainly have around us, but all that we believe we have in these phenomena is what we have ourselves added to them, what we have thought into them. Our own sense-impressions are all we can rightly accept. Anyone who says this—mark it well!—is not an adherent of Phenomenalism. He peels off from the phenomena everything which he thinks comes only from the understanding and the reason, and he allows validity only to sense-impressions, regarding them as some kind of message from reality.” This outlook may be called Sensationalism.

A critic of this outlook can then say: “You may reflect as much as you like on what the senses tell us and bring forward ever so ingenious reasons for your view—and ingenious reasons can be given—I take my stand on the point that nothing real exists except that which manifests itself through sense-impressions; this I accept as something material.”

This is rather like an atomist saying: “I hold that only atoms exist, and that however small they are, they have the attributes which we recognize in the physical world”—anyone who says this is a materialist. Thus, by another path, we arrive back at Materialism.

All these conceptions of the world that I have described and written down for you really exist, and they can be maintained. And it is possible to bring forward the most ingenious reasons for each of them; it is possible to adopt any one of them and with ingenious reasons to refute the others. In between these conceptions of the world one can think out yet others, but they differ only in degree from the leading types I have described, and can be traced back to them. If one wishes to learn about the web and woof of the world, then one must know that the way to it is through these twelve points of entry. There is not merely one conception of the world that can be defended, or justified, but there are twelve. And one must admit that just as many good reasons can be adduced for each and all of them as for any particular one. The world cannot be rightly considered from the one-sided standpoint of one single conception, one single mode of thought; the world discloses itself only to someone who knows that one must look at it from all sides. Just as the sun—if we go by the Copernican conception of the universe—passes through the signs of the Zodiac in order to illuminate the earth from twelve different points, so we must not adopt one standpoint, the standpoint of Idealism, or Sensationalism, or Phenomenalism, or any other conception of the world with a name of this kind; we must be in a position to go all round the world and accustom ourselves to the twelve different standpoints from which it can be contemplated. In terms of thought, all twelve standpoints are fully justifiable. For a thinker who can penetrate into the nature of thought, there is not one single conception of the world, but twelve that can be equally justified—so far justified as to permit of equally good reasons being thought out for each of them. There are twelve such justified conceptions of the world.

Tomorrow we will start from the points of view we have gained in this way, so that from the consideration of man in terms of thought we may rise to a consideration of the cosmic.

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

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And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

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Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

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I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.¹

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 1. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

If we look back over the evolution of mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha, we get the impression that Christianity, the Christ Impulse, has only been able to live on within the European and American civilisations in the face of definite obstacles and in association with other streams of spiritual life. And a study of the growth and gradual development of Christianity reveals many remarkable facts.

To-day I want to describe in broad outlines the growth and development of Christianity in connection with what ought to live within the Anthroposophical Society: and not only ought to, but can live, because those persons who feel an honest and sincere urge towards Anthroposophy, have this urge from the very depths of their being.

If we take the facts of repeated earthly lives in all seriousness, we shall say: This inner urge to get away from the conceptions and habits of thought of those among whom life, education and social relationships have placed us, this urge that we feel to enter a stream of thought which really makes claims upon our life of soul, must have its origin in karma, in the karma coming from earlier lives on earth.

Now if we study the question of karma in connection with those personalities who find themselves together in the Anthroposophical Movement, it transpires that, without exception, before their present earthly life they have had one other important incarnation since the Mystery of Golgotha. They were already on earth once since the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and are now there for the second time since that Event.

And then the great question arises: How has the previous earthly life, with respect to the Mystery of Golgotha, worked upon these personalities who now, out of their karma, feel the urge to enter the Anthroposophical Movement?

Even from exoteric study we find that men standing as firmly within the stream of Christianity itself as St. Augustine, have said: “Christianity did not begin with Christ; there were Christians before Christ, only they were not so called.” This is what St. Augustine says.

Those who penetrate more deeply into the spiritual mysteries of human evolution and can study these spiritual mysteries with Initiation Science, will strongly confirm such a view as is expressed by St. Augustine, for it is a fact. But it becomes necessary, then, to know in what form that which through the Mystery of Golgotha became the historical Christ Impulse upon the earth, existed in earlier times.

To-day I can speak of this earlier form of Christianity by starting from impressions which came in a place not far distant from Torquay (where our Summer Course has been held), in Tintagel, whence proceeded the spiritual stream connected with King Arthur. It was possible to receive the impressions which can still come to-day at the spot where King Arthur's castle with its Round Table stood—impressions which come above all from the magnificent natural surroundings of this castle.

At this place where nothing but ruins remain of the old citadel of King Arthur, where we look back as if in memory across the centuries that have elapsed since the Arthur stream went out from thence, we realise how stone after stone has so crumbled away that there is hardly anything to be recognised of the old castles which once were inhabited by King Arthur and those around him. But when with the eye of spirit we look out from the place where the castle once stood, over the sea with its iridescent colours and breaking waves, the impression we get is that we are able at this place to penetrate deeply into the elemental secrets of nature and of the cosmos.

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And if we look back with occult sight, if we can visualise the point of time which lies a few thousand years ago, when the Arthur stream had its beginning, then we see that those who lived on Arthur's Mount had, as is the case with all such occult centres, chosen this spot because the impulses necessary for the tasks they had set themselves, for their mission in the world, needed the play of those forces which nature there displayed before them.

I cannot say whether it is always so, but when I saw the view there was a most wonderful play of waves surging and rippling up from the depths—in itself one of the most beautiful sights in all nature. These waves hurl themselves against the walls of rock and as they fall back again in seething foam the elementary spirits are able to rise up from below and come to living expression. From above, the sunlight is reflected in manifold forms in the waves of the air. This interplay of elemental nature from above and from below reveals the full power of the Sun and displays it in such a way that man is able to receive it into his being. Those who can imbibe what is given by this interplay of the beings born of the light above and the beings born in the depths below, receive the power of the Sun, the impulse of the Sun. It is a moment in which man can unfold what I will call “piety”—piety in the pagan sense. Christian piety is not the same as pagan piety which means inner surrender to the gods of nature working and weaving everywhere in the play of nature.

Those who lived around King Arthur absorbed this play of weaving, working nature into their very being. And most significant of all was what they were able to receive in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha.

I want to tell you to-day about the character of this spiritual life that was connected with such centres as that of King Arthur's Round Table. And I must begin by speaking of something that is known to you all.

When a human being dies, he leaves his physical body and still has his etheric body around him for a few days. After these few days have elapsed he lays aside his etheric body and lives on then in his astral body and Ego. What happens thus to the man who has passed through the gate of death, appears to the eye of vision as if the etheric being were dissolving. After death the etheric human being expands and expands, his actual form becoming more and more indefinite as he weaves himself into the cosmos.

A remarkable phenomenon, and the exact opposite of this other, occurred in the world-historic sense when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. What was it that happened then? Up to that time Christ had been a Sun Being, had belonged to the Sun. Before the Mystery of Golgotha had come to pass, the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table stood on these rocks, gazed at the play between the Sun-born spirits and the Earth-born spirits, and felt that the forces living in this play of nature-spirits poured into their hearts and above all through their etheric bodies. Therewith they received into themselves the Christ Impulse which was then streaming away from the Sun and was living in everything that is brought into being by the Sun-forces.

And so, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Knights of King Arthur received into themselves the Sun-Spirit, that is to say, the Christ as He was in pre-Christian times. And they sent their messengers out into all Europe to subdue the wild savagery of the astral bodies of the peoples of Europe, to purify and to civilise, for such was their mission. We see such men as these Knights of King Arthur's Round Table starting from this point in the West of England to bear to the peoples of Europe as they were at that time, what they had received from the Sun, purifying the astral forces of the then barbarous European population—barbarous at all events in Central and Northern Europe.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. What happened in Asia? Over yonder in Asia, the sublime Sun Being, Who was later known as the Christ, left the Sun. This betokened a kind of death for the Christ Being. He went forth from the Sun as we human beings go forth from the earth when we die. And as a man who dies leaves his physical body behind on the earth and his etheric body which is laid aside after three days is visible to the seer, so Christ left behind Him in the Sun that which in my book Theosophy is called “Spirit-Man,” the seventh member of the human being.

Christ died to the Sun. He died cosmically, from the Sun to the earth. He came down to the earth. From the moment of Golgotha onwards His Life-Spirit was to be seen around the earth. We ourselves leave behind at death the Life-Ether, the etheric body, the life-body. After this cosmic Death, Christ left His Spirit-Man on the Sun, and around the earth, His Life-Spirit. So that after the Mystery of Golgotha the earth was swathed as it were by the Life-Spirit of the Christ.

Now the connections between places are not the same in the spiritual life as they are in physical life. The Life-Spirit of the Christ was perceived in the Irish Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Hibernia; and above all by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table. So, up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ Impulse belonging to the Sun actually went out from this place where the impulses were received from the Sun. Afterwards the power of the Knights diminished but they lived at the time within this Life-Spirit which encircled the earth and in which there was this constant interplay of light and air, of the Spirits in the Elements from above and from below.

Try to picture to yourselves the cliff with King Arthur's castle upon it and from above the Sun-forces playing down in the light and air, and pouring upwards from below the elementary beings of the earth. There is a living interplay between Sun and earth.

In the centuries which followed the Mystery of Golgotha this all took place within the Life-Spirit of the Christ. So that in the play of nature between sea and rock, air and light, there was revealed, as it were in spiritual light, the Event of Golgotha.

Understand me rightly, my dear friends. If in the first five centuries of our era men looked out over the sea, and had been prepared by the exercises practised by the twelve who were around King Arthur and who were concerned above all with the Mysteries of the Zodiac, if they looked out over the sea they could see not merely the play of nature but they could begin to read a meaning in it just as one reads a book instead of merely staring at it. And as they looked and saw, here a gleam of light, there a curling wave, here the sun mirrored on a rocky cliff, there the sea dashing against the rocks, it all became a flowing, weaving picture—a truth whose meaning could be deciphered. And when they deciphered it they knew of the spiritual Fact of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Mystery of Golgotha was revealed to them because the picture was all irradiated by the Life-Spirit of Christ presented to them by nature.

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Yonder in Asia the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place and its impulse had penetrated deeply into the hearts and souls of men. We need only think of those who became the first Christians to realise what a change had come about in their souls. While all this of which I have been telling you was happening in the West, the Christ Himself, the Christ Who had come down to earth leaving His Spirit-Man on the Sun and His Life-Spirit in the atmosphere around the earth, bringing down His Ego and His Spirit-Self to the earth—the Christ was moving from East to West in the hearts of men, through Greece, Northern Africa, Italy, Spain, across Europe. The Christ worked here in the hearts of men, while over in the West He was working through nature.

And so on the one hand we have the story of the Mystery of Golgotha, legible in the Book of Nature for those who were able to read it, working from West to East. It represented, as it were, the science of the higher graduates of King Arthur's Round Table. And on the other hand we have a stream flowing from East to West, not in wind and wave, in air and water, not over hills or in the rays of the Sun, but flowing through the blood, laying hold of the hearts of men on its course from Palestine through Greece into Italy and Spain.

The one stream flows through nature; the other through the blood and the hearts of men. These two streams flow to meet one another. The pagan stream is still working, even to-day. It bears the pre-Christian Christ, the Christ Who was proclaimed as a Sun Being by those who were Knights of the Round Table, but also by many others before the Mystery of Golgotha actually took place. The pre-Christian Christ was carried through the world by this stream even in the age of the Mystery of Golgotha. And a great deal of this wisdom was carried forth into the world by the stream known as that of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It is possible, even to-day, to discover these things. There is a pagan Christianity, a Christianity that is not directly bound up with the actual historical Event of Golgotha.

And coming upwards to meet this stream there is the form of Christianity that is connected directly with the Mystery of Golgotha, flowing through the blood, through the hearts and souls of men. Two streams come to meet one another—the pre-Christian Christ stream, etherealised as it were, and the Christian Christ stream. The one is known, subsequently, as the Arthur stream; the other as the Grail stream. Later on they came together; they came together in Europe, above all in the spiritual world.

How can we describe this movement? The Christ Who descended through the Mystery of Golgotha drew into the hearts of men. In the hearts of men He passed from East to West, from Palestine, through Greece, across Italy and Spain. The Christianity of the Grail spread through the blood and the hearts of men. The Christ took His way from East to West.

And to meet Him from the West there came the spiritual etheric Image of the Christ—the Image evoked by the Mystery of Golgotha, but still picturing the Christ of the Sun Mysteries.

Behind the scenes of world-history, sublime and wonderful events were taking place. From the West came pagan Christianity, the Arthur-Christianity, also under other names and in another form. From the East came the Christ in the hearts of men. And then the meeting takes place—the meeting between the Christ Who had Himself come down to earth and His Own Image which is brought to Him from West to East. This meeting took place in the year 869 A.D. Up to that year we have two streams, clearly distinct from one another. The one stream, more in the North, passed across Central Europe and bore the Christ as a Sun Hero, whether the name were Baldur or some other. And under the banner of Christ, the Sun Hero, the Knights of Arthur spread their culture abroad.

The other stream, rooted inwardly in the hearts of men, which later on became the Grail stream, is to be perceived more in the South, coming from the East. It bears the real Christ, Christ Himself. The other stream brings to meet it from the West a cosmic Image of the Christ. This meeting of Christ with Himself, of Christ the Brother of Humanity with Christ the Sun Hero Who is there only as it were in an Image—this meeting of Christ with His own Image took place in the 9th century.

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I have given you here, my dear friends, an idea of the inner happenings during the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, when, as I have already said, the souls were living who are now again upon earth, and who have carried with them from their previous earthly lives the urge to come in sincerity into the Anthroposophical Movement.²

When we consider this significant Arthur stream from West to East, it appears to us as the stream which brings the Impulse of the Sun into earthly civilisation. In this Arthur stream is working and weaving the Michael stream as we may call it in Christian terminology, the stream in the spiritual life of humanity in which we have been living since the end of the seventies of last century. The Ruling Power, known by the name of Gabriel, who had held sway for three or four centuries in European civilisation, was succeeded at the end of the seventies of last century by Michael. And the Rulership of Michael will last for three to four centuries, weaving and working in the spiritual life of mankind. And so we have good cause at the present time to speak of the Michael streams, for we ourselves are living once again in an Age of Michael.

We find one of these Michael streams if we look back to the period immediately preceding that of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the Arthur Impulse going out from the West, from England, an Impulse which was kindled originally by the Hibernian Mysteries. And we find a still more ancient form of this Michael stream if we look back to what happened centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, when, taking its start from Northern Greece, in Macedonia, the international, cosmopolitan stream connected with the name of Alexander the Great arose under the influence of the conception of the world that is known as the Aristotelian. What was achieved through Aristotle and Alexander in that pre-Christian age took place under the Rulership of Michael, just as now once again we are living under his Rulership. The Michael Impulse was there in the spiritual life at the time of Alexander the Great, just as it is there now, in our own time. Whenever a Michael Impulse is at work in humanity upon the earth it is always a time when that which has been founded in a centre of spiritual culture spreads abroad among many peoples of the earth and is carried into many regions, wherever it is possible to carry it.

This came to pass in pre-Christian times through the campaigns of Alexander. The achievements of Greek culture were spread among men wherever this became possible. If one had asked Alexander and Aristotle: Whence comes your impulse to spread abroad the spiritual culture of your age?—they would have spoken, though under a different name, of that same Being, Michael, who works from the Sun as the Servant of Christ. For among the Archangels who in turn rule over civilisation, Michael belongs to the Sun. Michael was Ruler in the time of Alexander and is Ruler again in our own time. The next Ruling Archangel was Oriphiel, who belongs to Saturn. His successor, the Archangel Anael, belongs to Venus. While Zachariel, the Archangel who ruled civilisation in the 4th and 5th centuries, belongs to the sphere of Jupiter. Then came Raphael, from the Mercury sphere, at the time when a form of thought connected with medicine and healing lived in the background of European civilisation. After Raphael came Samael, whose Rulership extended a little beyond the 12th century. And then came the Age of Gabriel. Samael belongs to Mars, Gabriel to the Moon. And Gabriel was once again succeeded by Michael, who belongs to the Sun sphere, in the seventies of the 19th century. Thus in rhythmic succession these seven Beings of the Hierarchy of the Archangels rule over the spiritual life of the earth.

And so as we look back—when was the last Rulership of Michael? It was in the Alexander period. It prevailed during that period when Greek civilisation was carried across to Asia and Africa, and finally concentrated in the great and influential city of Alexandria with its mighty heroes of the spiritual life.

It is a strange vista that presents itself to occult sight. In the age which lies a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha, we see, going Eastwards from Macedonia—that is to say, once more from West to East but this time farther to the East—we see the same stream which proceeds from the English and Irish souls in the West and which also flows from West to East. During the Alexander period, Michael was the Ruling Archangel on the earth. During the Arthur period, when Michael was working from the Sun, the influences I have described were sent down from the Sun. But what happened later on, after the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place? What happened to the kind of thought that had been carried by Alexander the Great over to Asia?

At the time when Charlemagne, in his own way, was establishing a certain form of Christian culture in Europe, Haroun al Raschid was living over yonder in Asia Minor. All the oriental wisdom and spirituality to be found at that time in architecture, in art, in science, in religion, in literature, in poetry—it was all gathered at the Court of Haroun al Raschid. And at his side there was a Counsellor, a man who was not initiated in all these arts and sciences at that time, but who had been an Initiate in earlier times, in a former life. Around these two men, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor, we find that all the wisdom which had been carried by Alexander into Asia, all the teachings which had been drawn from the old nature-wisdom and were imparted by Aristotle to those he was able to instruct—all this was changed. Alexandrianism and Aristotelianism were permeated and impregnated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid with Arabism, with Mohammedanism.

And then, all the learning thus permeated with Arabism was carried over into the stream of Christianity by way of Greece, but especially by way of Northern Africa, Italy and Spain. It was carried over, inculcated as it were into the world of Christendom.

But before this, Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor had passed through the gate of death, and from that life which leads from death to a new birth they looked down on what was taking place on earth in the expeditions of the Mohammedan Moors to Spain. From the spiritual world they watched the form of culture which they themselves had promoted and which had been spread by their successors. Haroun al Raschid concentrated his attention from the spiritual world more on the regions of Greece, Italy and Spain; his Counsellor more on the stream going out from the East across the regions to the North of the Black Sea, through Russia and into Central Europe.

And now the question arises: What was the destiny of Alexander and Aristotle themselves? They were deeply bound up with the Rulership of Michael but they were not incarnated on the earth at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

We must try to get a clear conception of the two contrasting pictures. On the earth are those who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ comes down through the Mystery of Golgotha, becomes Man, and from then on lives in the earth-sphere. And what is happening on the Sun? On the Sun there are the souls who at that time belonged to Michael, who were living in his sphere. These souls witnessed, from the Sun, the departure of Christ from the Sun and His descent to earth. On the earth there were those who witnessed His arrival. That is the difference. The experience of those who were on earth during the Michael Rulership at the time of Alexander, was that they saw as it were the other direction of the Christ Event, namely, the departure of the Christ from the Sun. They live on—I will not now mention unimportant incarnations—and they experience, in the spiritual world, that significant point of time in the 9th century, about the year 869, when there took place the meeting of the Christ with His own Image, with His own Life-Spirit brought over from pagan, pre-Christian Christianity.

Another meeting also took place in the spiritual world, a meeting of the individualities living in Alexander the Great and in Aristotle with the individualities who had lived in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The wisdom from Asia, in a Mohammedanised form, living in Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor after their death, came into contact, in the spiritual world, with Alexander and Aristotle. On the one side Aristotelianism and Alexandrianism, but impregnated with Mohammedanism, and on the other, the real Aristotle and the real Alexander—not a weakened form of their teachings. Alexander and Aristotle had witnessed the Mystery of Golgotha from the Sun.

Then a great spiritual exchange, a great heavenly Council, if one may call it so, took place in the spiritual world between Mohammedanised Aristotelianism and Christianised Aristotelianism which had, however, been imbued in the spiritual world with the Christian Impulse.

In the spiritual world which borders on our physical earth—it was here that Alexander and Aristotle met with Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor and consulted together as to the further progress of Christianity in Europe, with an eye to what should come at the end of the 19th century and in the 20th century, when Michael would again have the Rulership on earth. This all took place in the light raying from that other event, namely, the meeting of Christ with His own Image. That heavenly Council was permeated by the influence of this meeting. And the lines, the threads of the spiritual life of humanity were projected with great intensity in the spiritual world which borders on the physical earth.

Below, on the earth itself, the Church Fathers gathered together in Constantinople at the Eighth Ecumenical Council, where they formulated the dogma that man does not consist of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul, the soul possessing certain spiritual attributes. Trichotomy—the definition of man as body, soul and Spirit—was done away with and anyone who persisted in believing it was declared to be a heretic. The Christian Fathers in Europe never spoke of body, soul and Spirit, but only of body and soul.

The decisive event which took place in the year 869 in the super-sensible worlds as I have described it, cast its shadows down into the earthly world. The Dark Age, the Kali Yuga, received a special impetus, while what I have just described was taking place above, in the spiritual world.

Such was the real course of events. In the physical world the Council of Constantinople which eliminated the Spirit, and in the world immediately bordering on the physical, a heavenly Council such as I have described—coinciding with the meeting of Christ Himself with His own Image.

But it was known that it was a question of waiting until the new Michael Age had dawned on earth. There were, none the less, always a few Teachers who knew, even though in a somewhat decadent way, something of what takes place behind the veils of existence. There were always Teachers who knew how to present, if not always in very apt pictures, the spiritual content of the world, who could speak of what was happening in the spiritual world that is so near to the earth. And here and there these Teachers found ears willing to listen to them. Their listeners were men who learned something of true Christianity by catching here and there fragmentary words as to what would come in the 20th century after the Michael Rulership had begun once again.

In you yourselves, my dear friends, are the souls who were in incarnation at that time and listened to those who spoke of the coming Age of Michael and whose speech was influenced by impulses coming down from the heavenly Council of which I have told you.

From these experiences of a previous life in the early Christian centuries—not precisely the 9th century but before and after, chiefly before—arose the subconscious urge, when the Michael Rulership should be there once more, from the end of the 19th century onwards, to look for centres where the spiritual life is again cultivated under the influence of Michael. This impulse was rooted in the souls of those who had once heard of the teachings, who knew something of the mysteries of which we have spoken to-day.

And so the karmic urge lives in souls to find their way to that form of Christianity which was to be spread by Anthroposophy under the influence of Michael at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. What these souls had experienced in earlier times expresses itself in this incarnation in the fact that certain of them find their way to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Knowledge resulting from a converging of old pre-Christian, cosmic Christianity with inward Christian doctrines, teachings which were connected with the spiritual workings of nature and yet also with the Mystery of Golgotha, continued to be taught on earth at the time when those souls who now in this later incarnation feel themselves drawn to Anthroposophy had passed through the gates of death and were living in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some of them indeed came down to incarnation on the earth. The ancient teachings, with their cosmic view of Christianity, lived on, propagating traditions of the Mysteries of antiquity. This knowledge lived on in Schools in Europe like that of Chartres in the 12th century, with its great Teachers—Bernardus Sylvestris, Alanus ab Insulis and others. And the teachings lived and worked too in the great teacher of Dante, Brunetto Latini, of whom I spoke to you in the last lecture. In this way we see how there is a continuation of the knowledge in which there was still connection between cosmic Christianity and the purely human, earthly Christianity which more and more gained the supremacy on earth.

The Council held in Constantinople was an earthly, shadow-image of something that took place in the spiritual world. A constant connection was maintained between what was proceeding in the physical world and in the immediately adjacent spiritual world. And because of this, the most illustrious Teachers of Chartres felt themselves inspired by the true Alexander and the true Aristotle, although in a still stronger way by Plato and by the Platonic and Neo-Platonic thought which prevailed in the mysticism of the Middle Ages.

Something of great significance now took place. Those who had grouped themselves around Michael, and who had for the most part been incarnated at the time of Alexander, were now living in the spiritual world. Looking down from thence they saw how Christianity was evolving under the Teachers of Chartres. But they waited until these Teachers—who were the last who taught of Christianity in its cosmic aspect—they waited until these Teachers of Chartres had come up into the spiritual world. And at a certain point of time, at the end of the 12th and beginning of the 13th centuries, there gathered together in the spiritual sphere bordering on cur earth, the more definitely Platonic Teachers of Chartres and those who had in some way taken part in the heavenly Council in the year 869. There took place—if I may use trivial words of earth to describe such a sublime event—a kind of conference between the Teachers of Chartres who had just ascended into the spiritual world and were now to continue their existence there, and those who were on the point of descending to earth, among them the individualities of Alexander and Aristotle, who immediately afterwards incarnated in the Dominican Order. And then, in a body of teaching that is so misunderstood to-day but the deep significance of which ought to be realised, in Scholasticism, preparation was made for all that was to come later on in the next Age of Michael.

And now, in order that they might enter right into the heart of Christianity, the souls who belonged to the sphere of Michael, who had lived in the old Alexander time, who had not lived on earth during the first Christian centuries, or at least only in unimportant incarnations—these souls now came into incarnation in order to imbibe Christianity in the Dominican or other Orders, but mainly in the Dominican Order. Again they passed through the gate of death and continued their existence in the spiritual world.

In the 15th century and lasting on into the 16th—and it must be remembered that time-relationships are quite different in the spiritual world—there took place in the super-sensible world the great process of instruction instituted by Michael himself for those who belonged to him. A great super-sensible School was founded, a School in which Michael himself was the Teacher and in which those souls took part who had been inspired by the impulses of the Alexander Age and had later steeped themselves in Christianity in the manner described. All the discarnate souls who belonged to Michael took part in this great School in the super-sensible world during the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. All the Beings of the Hierarchy of Angels, Archangels and Archai who belonged to the Michael stream, as well as many elementary beings, also took part in it.

In this super-sensible School, a wonderful review was given of the wisdom of the ancient Mysteries. Detailed knowledge in regard to the ancient Mysteries was imparted to the souls partaking in this School. They looked back to the Sun Mysteries, to the Mysteries of the other planets. But a vista of the future was given too, a vista of what should begin at the end of the 19th century in the new Age of Michael. All this passed through these souls who now, in the present Michael Age, feel drawn to the Anthroposophical Movement.

Meanwhile, on earth, the last bout of the struggle was taking place. Haroun al Raschid had incarnated again as Lord Bacon of Verulam and in this new incarnation had set the impulse of materialism on foot. The universality in the teachings of Bacon, but also his materialism, came from his incarnation as Haroun al Raschid. Bacon was the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid. The Counsellor, who had taken the other path, incarnated in the same epoch, as Amos Comenius.

And so while Christianity illumined by Aristotelian and Alexandrian thought was going through its most important phase of development in the super-sensible worlds during the 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th centuries—during this very same period we find materialism being established on earth in the minds of men, established in science by Bacon, the reincarnated Haroun al Raschid, and in the realm of education by Amos Comenius, the reincarnated Counsellor of Haroun al Raschid. The two souls worked together.

When Amos Comenius and Bacon had once again passed through the gate of death, a remarkable thing came to pass in the spiritual world. After Bacon had passed through the gate of death, it happened that because of the particular mode of thinking he had adopted in his incarnation as Bacon, a whole world of “idols,” demonic idols, went forth from his etheric body, and spread themselves out in the spiritual world which was peopled by those who were the pupils of Michael.

As I have shown in my first Mystery Play, things that happen on earth work powerfully into the spiritual world. Bacon's mode of thinking on the earth worked so shatteringly into the spiritual world that it was flooded by a whole host of “idols.”

And the materialistic form of educational science inaugurated by Amos Comenius provided the sphere, the cosmic atmosphere, as it were, for the idols of Bacon. Bacon provided the idols; and just as we human beings have around us the mineral and plant kingdoms, so these idols of Bacon were surrounded by other kingdoms which were necessary to their existence. And these were provided by what Amos Comenius had instituted on earth.

The individualities who had once lived on the earth as Alexander and Aristotle set themselves to fight these demonic idols. And the conflict continued until the time when the French Revolution broke out on the earth.

The idols, the demonic idols which it had not been possible to overcome, which had as it were escaped from the fight, descended to earth and became the inspiring forces of the materialism of the 19th century with its many consequences. These forces are the inspirers of the materialism of the 19th century.

The souls who had remained behind, who with the assistance of the individualities of Aristotle and Alexander had profited by the teaching of Michael, came back to earth, bearing the impulses I have described, towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. And many of these souls can be recognised in those who come to the Anthroposophical Movement. Such is the karma of those who come to the Movement with inner sincerity.

It is a shattering experience to hear of what is happening immediately behind the events in the outer world at the present time. But it is something which, under the impulse of the Christmas Foundation at the Goetheanum must be implanted in the hearts and souls of those who call themselves Anthroposophists. It must live in their hearts and souls, and it will give them the strength to work on, for those who are Anthroposophists to-day in the true sense will feel a strong urge to come down again to the earth very soon. And with a faculty of prophecy connected with the Michael Impulse, it can be foreseen that many anthroposophical souls will come again to the earth at the end of the 20th century in order to bring to full realisation the Anthroposophical Movement which must now be established on a firm and sure foundation.

Every Anthroposophist should be moved by this knowledge: “I have in me the impulse of Anthroposophy. I recognise it as the Michael Impulse. I wait and am strengthened in my waiting by true activity in Anthroposophy at the present time in order that after the short interval allotted in the 20th century to anthroposophical souls between death and a new birth, I may come again at the end of the century to promote the Movement with much more spiritual power. I am preparing for the new Age leading from the 20th into the 21st century” ... It is thus that a true Anthroposophist speaks. Many forces of destruction are at work upon the earth! All culture, all civilised life must fall into decadence if the spirituality of the Michael Impulse does not so lay hold of men that they are capable of bringing upliftment to the civilisation that is hurrying downhill.

If there are to be found truly anthroposophical souls, willing to bring this spirituality into earthly life, then there will be a movement leading upwards. If such souls are not found, decadence will continue to spread. The great War, with all its attendant evils, will be merely the beginning of still worse evils.

Human beings to-day are facing a great crisis. Either they must see civilisation going down into the abyss, or they must raise it by spirituality and promote it in the sense of the Michael Impulse.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to say to you on this occasion and my desire is that it shall work on and bear fruit in your souls. For as I have often said at the conclusion of a happy and satisfying visit, when we have worked together for a time, we know, as Anthroposophists, that it is our karma to have been able to do so. We know too that we still remain united, even when divided in physical space. We shall remain united in the signs that can reveal themselves to the eyes of spirit and to the ears of soul if what I have said in these lectures has been received in full earnestness and has been understood.

• 2. See: Karmic Relationships, Vol. III.

My dear brothers and sisters! Since the Christmas Conference an esoteric impulse goes through the entire Anthroposophical Society, and those members of the Anthroposophical Society who have recently taken part in the general members' lectures will have noticed just how this esoteric impulse flows through all that is worked on within the Anthroposophical Movement and through all that is still to be worked on.

This was a necessity, a necessity which above all has been given out of the spiritual world, from which certainly flow the revelations which should live in the Anthroposophical Movement. It was a necessity which arose out of the spiritual world.

With this, however, an imperative emerged, in particular out of the spiritual world, out of which the revelations flow which should live in the Anthroposophical movement. This emerged out of the spiritual world. This imperative was fashioned as a specific kernel for Anthroposophical esoteric life, to make a kernel for true esoteric living. Thereby the imperative was given in a certain measure to build a bridge over to the spiritual world itself.

The spiritual world in a certain sense revealed itself in having to fashion such a school. For an esoteric school cannot be made out of human caprice, or what people might call human idealism. Rather this Esoteric School must be the body of something flowing out of spiritual life itself, so that in all that happens in such a school, it presents itself as the external expression what happens from an activity specifically in the supersensible, in the spiritual world itself. In this fashion this esoteric school could not have been made without having surveyed the will, which frequently has been brought forth in members' lectures, the will which since the last third of the nineteenth century has actually been guiding human spiritual affairs, the Will of Michael.

This Michael Will is one of those forces which in the course of time has intervened out of the spiritual world in sequence ever and again in the cycles of human destiny. When we look back in time at evolution, we find that this same Michael Will, which we can also call the Michael Regency, was active in the spiritual affairs of humanity, in the great questions of civilization, before the Mystery of Golgotha during the time of Alexander. Then what had been brought forth in Greece through the Mysteries, both the underworld Chthonic and the celestial Mysteries, that this was to be carried abroad into Asia, carried abroad into Africa. Whenever and wherever the Will of Michael has dominion, a cosmopolitan spirit is always present. The differentiations among people on earth are overcome in an era of Michael.

After this deeply significant activity, linked with the spreading of Aristotelianism and of Alexandrianism, which was an activity of Michael, after this followed other activities linked with Oriphiel.¹ After the Oriphiel-linked activity came the Anael activity, the Zachariel activity, then the significant Raphael activity, then the Samael activity, then the Gabriel activity, which extended into the nineteenth century. Since the late seventies of the nineteenth century, we stand once again under the sign of Michael's regency. It is beginning, but the Michael-Impulses must flow in, and can certainly become clear to you, my brothers and sisters, through the general members' lectures, Michael-Impulses must flow in a conscious way into all genuine, rightfully constituted esoteric work.

And through all that is connected with the impulse of the Christmas Conference, through all that has been brought forth, is the possibility of this being the kernel of the Anthroposophical Movement’s forming an esoteric school to be seen as the esoteric school inspired and guided by Michael himself. Thereby it rightfully stands its ground in our time as a spiritual institution. And a person must feel, a person who would rightfully become a member of this school, that this must become a part of one’s life in deepest sincerity. And a person who would rightfully become a member of this school must feel not merely belonging to an earthly community, but also to a supersensible community, whose leader and guide is Michael himself. As a consequence, what is communicated here should not be taken as my word, but rather in so far as it is the content of the lesson it should be taken as that which Michael has to make known esoterically in this age to those who feel themselves belonging to him. Therefore, what these lessons contain will be the Michael communication for our era.

And thereby, since it is that, the Anthroposophical Movement will contain its specific spiritual vigor. To this end it is necessary that what may be called membership in this school will be acquired with utmost sincerity. It is still necessary, my dear brothers and sisters, fundamentally and deeply necessary, that in an ever more earnest way, it is necessary to point to the holy sincerity with which the school must be taken up.

Here within this school, it must be said once again, and ever and again, that in Anthroposophical circles much too little seriousness prevails for what actually flows through the Anthroposophical Movement, and, at least among the esoteric members of this esoteric school, a kernel of humanity will be drawn forth, which will gradually rise to the necessary earnest sincerity. Therefore, it is necessary that the leadership of this school really reserves to itself the responsibility to recognize only those as rightful, worthy members of the school who, in every detail of their lives, would be worthy representatives of Anthroposophical endeavors, and the decision as to whether or not that is the case must rest with the leadership of the school.

Do not see this, my dear brothers and sisters, as a limitation of freedom. The leadership of the school must have freedom and be free to recognize who belongs to this school and who does not, just as much as each of you will freely choose whether or not to belong to this school. But it must throughout be an idealistic spiritual freely-borne pact, so to speak, that will be made between the members of the school and the leadership. In no other way could the esoteric development be considered healthy, and especially in no other way worthy of the actuality of this esoteric school standing under the immediate impact of the potency of Michael himself.

The leadership of the school must, in the strictest sense of the word, manage what has just been said. That it does so may become evident to you, my dear friends, through what has taken place since the relatively brief existence of the school, that eighteen to twenty expulsions have occurred, because the earnest serious quality which is essential to the school was not adhered to.

Conscientious care of the mantric maxims, so that they do not fall into unauthorized hands, is the first obligation, but also to actually be a worthy representative of Anthroposophical affairs.

I need only mention a few facts in order to indicate how little, in actuality, the Anthroposophical Movement is grasped fully in earnest, how little earnestness penetrates the Anthroposophical Movement. I have mentioned this to some of you individually. It has happened that members of the school have reserved their seats here with the blue certificates which give them the right to be present in the school. It has happened in the Anthroposophical Society that whole piles of News Sheets, intended only for members, have been found in the tram running from Dornach to Basel. I could enlarge this list in the greatest variety of ways. Again and again, it happens that the most dumbfounding incidents occur as a result of the lack of seriousness. Even things which are taken seriously in everyday life, as soon as the same things practiced seriously in ordinary life are practiced within the Anthroposophical Movement, they are not taken seriously.

These are all matters which must be taken into account in relation to the firm structure which this school must have. Therefore, these things must be said, for if one fails to pay attention to these matters, one cannot worthily receive the revelations from the spiritual world which are given here in this school. At the close of each lesson attention is expressly drawn to the fact that the individuality of Michael himself is present while the revelations of the school are being given, and this is confirmed through the Sign and Seal of Michael.

All these things must live in the hearts of the members. Dignity, profound dignity, must prevail in everything, even to what connects one’s thoughts to the school. For in all of this there can live only what today an esoteric streaming through the world should carry. And all this is included in the responsibilities each individual has.

The mantric maxims written here on the board can only be possessed, in the strictest sense of the word, by those who have the right to participate in the school. If a member of the school is prevented on some occasion from taking part in the lessons in which mantric verses are given, another member who has received these verses in the school can communicate the verses. In every single case, however, for every single person to whom the verses are to be given, permission must be requested either from Frau Dr. Wegman or from myself. When permission has been given for one person it then remains in effect. But for every other person permission must again be requested from Frau Dr. Wegman or from me. This is not an administrative regulation, it is something which is demanded, in the strictest sense, by the rules of occult life. For it must be understood that every act of the school must remain connected with the school's leadership, and this begins with the fact that one requests permission if something is to occur which belongs to the sphere of responsibility of the school. Not the one who is to receive the mantras should request permission, but the one who transmits them, according to the procedures which I have just described. If someone writes down anything during the lesson, other than the mantric verses, something which has been said, that person is obligated to keep it only eight days and then to burn it.

All these things are not arbitrary regulations, but are connected with the occult fact that esoteric matters are only effective when they are encompassed by a certain attitude of heart and mind, which those who are recognized as responsible members of the school have. The mantras lose their effectiveness when they come into unauthorized hands. This rule is so firmly inscribed into the world's order that the following incident once occurred and a whole series of mantras became ineffective, which had been current within the Anthroposophical Movement.

It was possible for me to give to a number of people some mantric verses. I gave the mantras also to a certain person. This person had a friend who was clairvoyant to a certain degree. It then came about, as both friends were sleeping in the same room, that the clairvoyant friend, during the time that the other was merely repeating the mantra in his mind, the clairvoyant read it mentally and then misused it by giving it to others as coming from him. One first had to investigate the incident, which then brought to light why the mantras in question became ineffective for all those who possessed them.

You may not, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, take these matters lightly, because the rules of esoteric life are strict, and no one who has committed such a mistake should excuse himself with the thought that he couldn't help himself. If someone lets a mantra pass through his head in thought, and someone else observes this clairvoyantly, the one who thinks the mantra certainly cannot do anything about this. But the events occur, nevertheless, according to an iron law of necessity.

I mention this incident in order that you may see how little arbitrariness is involved in these matters, and to show how in these matters there is contained what is read directly from the spiritual world, what corresponds with the habits and customs of the spiritual world. Nothing is arbitrary in what takes its course in a rightfully constituted esoteric school. And there should ray out from the esoteric school into the rest of the Anthroposophical Movement that earnest quality about which we have spoken. Only then will this school be for the Anthroposophical Movement what it should be. But it will be necessary to be honest with oneself, and acknowledge that one acts sometimes out of personal motives, and if so, one should not dress the matter up as if it were inspired by devotion to the Anthroposophical Movement. Naturally, I certainly don't intend to say that nothing should occur out of personal motives, for it is a matter of course that people today must be personal. But then it is necessary that in what is personal the truth must be acknowledged. For instance, if someone travels here to Dornach for personal pleasure, he or she should therefore admit this and not make out otherwise. There's nothing wrong with traveling to Dornach for personal pleasure! Indeed, it is, by the way, very good when one comes here. But one should admit the personal pleasure and not dress it up as pure devotion to spiritual life.

I mention this, but I might equally well have chosen a different example, which might be closer to reality, for it is, in fact, true that when most of our friends travel to Dornach, the readiness to sacrifice, the spirit of sacrifice, is indeed involved, and that in this particular example, the traveling to Dornach, in at least some degree, untruthfulness played a role. But I chose this example precisely because of the fact that it hits home least and is thus less hurtful. If I had chosen other examples, the basic quite calm mood of soul, a truly serene mood in the hearts and souls of all those who are sitting here, would have been less likely to rise to the occasion.

After this introduction I would like to start with the verse which is both the beginning and the end of what comes before you here as the declaration of Michael, which contains what is spoken to all human beings who have an unencumbered sense for it, by all things and beings in the world, if one listens to what is said with the soul. For everything that lives in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, that sparkles down from the stars, that works into our soul from the realm of the hierarchies, from all that crawls on the earth worm-like, that moves living upon the earth, out of all that speaks in rock and spring, in forest and field and mountains and thunder and clouds and lightning, out of all this spoke to the open-minded human being in the past, speaks to him in the present, will speak in all futures:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

The last lesson concluded, my dear brothers and sisters, following the final admonitions that the Guardian of the Threshold imparts before crossing the yawning abyss of being, with the Guardian of the Threshold having spoken weighty, human-heart-moving words:

Enter
The door is opened
You will become
A true human being

Weighty, portentous, significant experiences have entered our hearts, through all that the Guardian of the Threshold has spoken at Michael's behest. All that he has spoken was spoken in order to prepare us for the demeanor which we must have, when after the door is opened, we cross over the yawning abyss of existence, where one does not go by walking with earthly feet, where one only goes by flying with the soul, when the soul out of a spiritual attitude, out of spiritual love, out of spiritual feeling grows wings.

So now, my dear brothers and sisters, will be described what the human being experiences when he stands beyond the yawning abyss of existence. The Guardian of the Threshold instructs, “Turn around and look back! Until now you have looked toward what appeared to you a black, night-bedecked darkness, concerning which you had to surmise that it will become bright and will illumine the source of your own self. I allowed it, on the occasion of the last admonitions, so says the Guardian of the Threshold, I allowed it to grow brighter, at first very gently. First you feel light dawning around you. But turn around, look back!”

As one who has crossed the yawning abyss of being now turns around and looks back, he beholds his person of earth, what he is during physical incarnation, over there in that part of existence which he has left, that now lies yonder in the province of the earth. He beholds his own person of earth over there. He has entered and embodies himself with his spirit-soul being in spirit existence. The earthly sheath, the earthly formation, now stands over yonder. It stands yonder in that region in which we were at first with our entire human being, where we have seen all that crawls below and flies above, where we have seen the sparkling stars, the warm sun, where we have seen what lives in wind and weather, and where we have stood, knowing that in all of this, despite all that is so majestic that rays out and gives light in the sun, despite all its beauty and greatness, there in the field of sense-existence, where we have stood and said to ourselves that our own human being's essence is not within it, that you must seek beyond the yawning abyss of existence, in what from the other, from the sense-bound side appears to you as black, night-bedecked darkness.

The Guardian of the Threshold has shown us in the three beasts what we actually are. Now there is described how, within the darkness which is growing bright, which is beginning to lighten up, we should begin by looking back on what we are as human beings in the sense-world, together with what was formerly our only world in sense-bound earth existence.

Now the Guardian of the Threshold points in a very definite way to the one who stands over there as the earth-person, who is ourself, in earth existence, that being to whom we must return again and again, into whom we must penetrate over and over again when we step forth from the spiritual world and enter into the duties of our work on earth, when we return to earth existence. For we may not become dreamers and light-headed enthusiasts. We must return, in every respect, to earthly life and obligations. For this reason, the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to look on the person who stands over yonder, who we ourselves are, in such a way that he makes us attentive, at first, to who and what this person is. [An outline of the human form was drawn on the blackboard.] The human being is aware that he perceives the outer world through the senses [the eye is drawn] which are localized, primarily, in the head and that he perceives his thinking through the activity of his head.

But the Guardian of the Threshold now remarks, “Look inside this head.” It is as if you look into a dark cell, for you do not see the light which is working within it. But the truth is that what you carried within you as thinking over there in the sense world is the mere appearance of reality, is mere picture-images, not much more than mirror-pictures.

The Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us to be very conscious of this fact, but also to be conscious of the fact that what lives in earthly thinking only as appearance, as we learned in earlier lessons, is the corpse of living thinking, in which we lived in the spiritual-soul world before we descended into this earth-existence. In that existence thinking was alive. Now, thinking rests as dead thinking, as the semblance of thinking, in the coffin of our body. All thinking which we make use of in the sense world is dead thinking. It was alive before we descended to earth.

What did this thinking make? It first made all that, which within the top of the body, within the head, within this dark cell, so it shows itself for sensory appearance, all that is light-making being.² The brain, which sits there inside as the supporting pillar of thinking, has been made out of living thinking. [The interior of the head, yellow, was drawn on the blackboard.] And living thinking it is that first makes the supporting pillar for our semblance of thinking on earth.

Look at the convolutions of the brain, look at all you bear within you in the dark cell of the head, which makes earthly thinking possible for you, my brothers and sisters. Look behind that thinking, which is only appearance in the cabinet of the head, and you will then discover how into what here above is felt as thinking [drawing, red arrows] there streams the force of willing, there pours up into thinking the force of willing, so that each thought is irradiated by will. It can be felt how the will flows into thinking.

We look back thus from beyond the threshold and see how that other human being, who we ourselves are, has streaming out of the body into the head the willing’s undulations, willing at work, and eventually, if we follow it back in time, traveling as far as our former incarnations on earth, at work over here from past worlds into the present incarnation are thought-undulations which build our head, finally passing over into the appearance of thinking here in this incarnation.

Therefore, we should be stout and strong,³ the Guardian of the Threshold says to us, and imagine the dead thinking thrown out into world-nothingness, for it is mere appearance. And the willing which arises there we should regard as that which from former earth-incarnations crosses over to dwell and move and work and make⁴ us finally into a thinker. There, within [see drawing, yellow] are the formative world-thoughts.⁵ These formative world-thoughts first take effect, that we can have intrinsically human thoughts.

Therefore, the first word of the Guardian of the Threshold after he has allowed us to cross the threshold, after he has informed us that the door is opened, that we can become a true human being, therefore the first word which he there speaks is:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

The first words that we hear over there, as we look back upon the form, the gestalt which we ourselves are, which stands here before our soul's gaze, which we direct back from over there: [The heading and the first verse with the underlined words were written on the blackboard.]

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Then the Guardian of the Threshold adds to this, and one must exert oneself in order to hear it. Just imagine yourself looking back at what you yourself are, who stands over yonder, then turn again and look into the darkness and try with all possible inner imaginative force of memory, as when you retain an after-image, a physical after-image held in your eye, try with maximum force to sketch there something like a kind of gray outline form of what you have seen over yonder, but avoid making a sketch of anything else other than a gray outline. [Drawing continued.]

There then appears, if one succeeds in seeing this gray outline-figure, there

appears behind this gray outline the image of the moon [the sickle moon is drawn, yellow] with the gray silhouette in front of it.

If one is now able to maintain inner quiet, one sees in the distance the moon. The gray silhouette becomes something that is both over there and at the same time arises within one. If we practice in this way, again and again, we feel approaching the spirit-form of the head, which one has yonder, not the physical form, but the spirit-form of the head, which we have over there, then will the person feel coming toward him what karma brings him from former incarnations on earth [yellow arrow to the right of the sickle moon].

Therefore, in meditating, you should meditate on the image I have drawn here in gold, the sickle moon with this arrow. Let the mantra run, let it play out, then bring up the image as a reminder for what can gradually lead one to become familiar with what emerges in force from prior lives on earth.

As a second step the Guardian of the Threshold instructs with a more forceful gesture, pointing to what lives as feeling in the person over there, who we ourselves are, and he admonishes us to correctly see this feeling as a dream dawning. And in the act, we will see feeling, which in spite of this person over there is made much more real than is thinking, for thinking is appearance, yet feeling is half real. However, we see the feeling of the day-person unfolding in dream pictures that are louder, purer, and we learn to know through the observation, that feeling as seen from the spirit, and in the spirit, is dreaming.

But what kind of dreaming is feeling? In this feeling the person dreams not alone the individual person, but therein dreams the whole surrounding world-consciousness.⁶ Our thinking is ours alone, therefore it is also only appearance. Our feeling is something in which the world to some extent lives. World-consciousness is within it.

Now we must look to acquiring the greatest possible restfulness of heart, which the Guardian admonishes us to do. If we acquire the greatest possible restfulness of heart, so that we can extinguish what moves and lives as feeling in dream pictures, just as dreaming is extinguished in deep sleep, then we come upon the truth of feeling and can see personal feeling interwoven with world living that is present in spirit around us. And then the true spirit-person appears to us, which lives and moves in the body, initially in its half-existence. Emerging from the sleeping feeling appears to us the person. We feel ourselves over there on the other side of the Threshold in this way, on the other side of the yawning abyss of existence in our essence as a human being, since feeling has fallen asleep and world-creative might has appeared around us, might that lives in feeling. Therefore, the Guardian admonishes us:

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

[The second stanza was written on the board and compared with the first.]

Look into

Here [in the first verse] it was behind, here it is into [into was underlined]. Every word is significant in mantric verses.

feeling’s wafting of soul,

Here it is thinking, here feeling, here sensory-light, here wafting of soul. Wafting is much more real than light’s appearance.

[In the second verse feeling's was underlined but not wafting of soul.]

How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;

Here it says Willing ascends from bodily depths, and here Living streams from world afar.

[In the second verse Living was underlined.]

Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;

It progresses. Here [in the first verse] there is let flow through the strength of your soul. Here [in the second verse] one must let human feeling waft away. [waft away was underlined.]

And world living shall come alive

There [in the first verse] it was willing, which is still within the person. Here

As human-being's-power.

The progression is in contrast to world-thought-creating. [In the second verse human being's power was underlined.]

The Guardian of the Threshold instructs us to look back once again on the form, the gestalt that stands over there, the one we ourselves are in earth existence, and once again we should take up the gray image, but now take it up in such a way that we retain it, after having turned away from ourselves, and in our soul-life we turn it in a circle, so that it persists as we turn it. We shall find that when we rotate the image in this way in a circle, the sun appears, in its appearance behind the silhouette turning in the circle. [drawing, red]. In this experience we become aware how in the moment we are drawn out of spiritual worlds into physical earth consciousness, our etheric body has drawn itself together out of the world ether. Therefore, just as the previous picture belongs to the first verse [The drawing of the gray silhouette and the first verse were numbered 1.], we should add this picture to the second verse [The red drawing of the rotating image and the second verse were numbered 2.].

Then the Guardian of the Threshold directs us to our willing, that acts in our limbs. He sternly makes us aware that everything connected with the will is sleeping in us when we are awake. For just as the thought works downward, as I explained last time and therefore may say today, just as the thought warms downward into the limb’s movement, just so willing emerges, which becomes clear in spiritual discernment, in spiritual observation. This is hidden from ordinary consciousness just as life is hidden in sleep. Now we are to look, and from the start, to behold willing within our limbs sunk in deep sleep. There willing sleeps. The limbs sleep. This we should have as a firm thought in mind. For then, when we have this, we are able to realize how thinking, that is the origin of willing in earthly man, sinks down into the limbs. Then it becomes light in the human being. Willing becomes bright. It wakes up. When we first see it in its sleeping condition, we find that it awakens when thinking sinks downward and light streams upward from below, light which is indeed none other than the forces of gravity. Feel in your legs, feel in your arms the force of gravity when you just let everything hang down. That is what streams upward, what unites itself with the downward streaming thinking. We see human willing transforming itself into its reality and thinking appearing as what, in a mysterious, magical way ignites the will in man. This is, in actuality, the magical activity, the magical effect of thinking, which the will carries out. There is magic. This we now realize. The Guardian of the Threshold says:

Look over willing's bodily-working

in the surrounding aura

How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

[This third verse, with certain words underlined, was now written on the board.]

Look over willing's bodily-working
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

To that, imagine the Guardian of the Threshold again beckoning us to look down at what is over there, who we ourselves are, to retain an image, but this time not to turn round but rather to allow this image to sink into the earth beneath the form that stands there. We look over there. There stands over there, who we ourselves are. We form the image for ourselves and form within us the powerful force to look downward, as though a lake were there and we would see this image by looking down and under, so that we see it now as if within the earth, but not as a reflected image, but as an upright picture.

We imagine the earth, [The arc was drawn.] with the third verse. [This drawing and the third verse were numbered 3.] We imagine the earth, how its gravity-forces ascend, how the gravity-forces shine into the limbs, feet, and arms [arrows]. In what we perceive later we have a foreshadowing of how the gods work together with human beings between death and a new birth, in order to fulfill karma.

It is this about which the Guardian of the Threshold admonishes us, when he speaks to us for the first time after we have crossed the yawning abyss of existence:

Look behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkened spirit-cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul,
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Always, the circle closes. Again, we look back upon the point from which we set out, hearing out of all beings and all processes of the world:

O Man, know yourself!
So sounds the word of worlds
You hear it soul-forcefully,
You feel it spirit-powerfully.

Who speaks so world-mightily?
Who speaks so heart-inwardly?

Does it work streaming through space
Into your sense’s self-experiencing?
Does it sound weaving through time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Are you the one, who yourself
In sensing space, in experiencing time
Creates the word, feeling yourself
Estranged in space’s soul-emptiness,
As you lose the power of thinking
In time’s destroying stream?

With his communication, Michael is present in this rightly constituted school. His presence is confirmed by his sign, which should have dominion over all that will be given in this school [The Michael sign was drawn on the blackboard.], and it is confirmed through his seal which he has impressed upon the esoteric striving of the Rosicrucian School, which lives symbolically in the threefold maxim Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus. And as Michael impresses his seal, the first sentence is spoken in this gesture [The lower seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], the second sentence in this gesture [The middle seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.], and the third sentence in this gesture [The upper seal gesture was drawn on the blackboard.].

The first gesture signifies [Beside the lower seal gesture was written:]

I honor the Father.

It lives silently while we speak the Ex Deo Nascimur. The second gesture signifies [Beside the middle seal gesture was written:]

I love the Son

It lives silently while we speak the In Christo Morimur. The third gesture signifies [beside the upper seal gesture was written:]

I unite with the Spirit

It lives silently in the sign, that there is Michael's Seal, as we speak the Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

And so is confirmed today’s Michael proclamation substance through the Sign and Seal of Michael. [The Michael sign was made and with the three seal gestures was spoken:] Ex Deo Nascimur, In Christo Morimur, Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus.

I have to announce that the course for theologians will take place tomorrow at 10:45. The speech formation and dramatic course at 12 o'clock. In the afternoon at 5 there will be a eurythmy presentation, and at 8 o'clock in the evening, or, if the eurythmy finishes late, at 8:15 or 8:30, the members' lecture.

The Guardian is heard in the gradually brightening darkness:

Look behind thinking's sensory light
How in the darkened spirit cell
Willing ascends from bodily depths;
Through the strength of your soul
Let dead thinking flow into worldly void;
And willing, it shall arise
As world-thought-creating.

Look into feeling's wafting of soul
How in the diminishment of dreams
Living streams from world afar;
Through calm of heart in sleep
Let human feeling waft away;
And world living shall come alive
As human-being's-power.

Look over willing's bodily working,
How into sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from forces of head;
Through soul-viewing brought to light
Let human willing be transformed;
And thinking, it shall appear
As willing’s-magical-essence.

Ex Deo Nascimur
In Christo Morimur
Per Spiritum Sanctum Reviviscimus
I honor the Father
I love the Son
I unite with the Spirit

• 1. In a notebook of Rudolf Steiner, dated August 18, 1924, under morning lecture, Torquay, appears an entry about the different epochs: 1979–1510 Gabriel (Moon), 1510–1190 Samael (Mars), 1190–850 Raphael (Mercury), 850–500 Zachariel (Jupiter), 500–150 Anael (Venus), 150–200 Oriphiel (Saturn).
• 2. lichtschaffendes Wesen
• 3. stark
• 4. herüberwellt und webt und wirkt und macht
• 5. schaffenden Weltgedanken
• 6. Weltendasein

The phase of evolution beginning in our own time has a very special character. The same may, of course, be said of each epoch but in every case it is a matter of defining the particular characteristics. The present phase of evolution may be characterized in a general way by saying that all the experiences confronting humankind in the physical world during the earth's further existence will represent a decline, a retrogression. The time when human progress was made possible through the constant refinement of the physical forces is already over. In the future, too, humankind will progress, but only through spiritual development, through development on a higher level than that of the processes of the physical plane. People who rely entirely on the processes of the physical plane will find in them no source of satisfaction. An indication given in spiritual science a long time ago, in the lecture course on the Apocalypse,¹ namely that we are heading for the “War of All against All,” must from now onward be grasped in all its significance and gravity; its implications must not remain in the realm of theory but also come to expression in the actions, the whole behavior of human beings.

The fact that—to use a colloquialism—people in the future are not going to get much fun out of developments on the physical plane will bring home to them that further evolution must proceed from spiritual forces.

This can be understood only by surveying a lengthy period of evolution and applying what is discovered to experiences that will become more and more general in the future. The trend of forces that will manifest in the well-nigh rhythmical onset of war and destruction—processes of which the present catastrophe is but the beginning—will become only too evident. It is childish to believe that anything connected with this war can bring about a permanent era of peace for humanity on the physical plane. That will not be so. What must come about on the earth is spiritual development. Its direction and purport will be clear to us if, after surveying a comparatively lengthy epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, we bear in mind something of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and then try to envisage the impulse of that event working in the future evolution of humankind.

We have studied the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view and will do so again today by characterizing, very briefly, the civilization which preceded it—let us say as far back as the third millennium B.C.—and then continued for a time as pagan culture in the period of Christian development itself. Within this pagan culture, the utterly different Hebraic-Jewish culture took root, having Christianity as its offspring.

The nature of pagan culture can best be understood if we realize that it was the outcome of knowledge, vision and action born of forces much wider in range than those belonging to present earthly existence. It was actually through Hebraic culture that the moral element was first inculcated into humanity. In paganism the moral element did not occupy a place separate and apart; this pagan culture was such that people felt themselves members of the whole cosmos.

This is something we must particularly bear in mind. Human beings living on earth within the old pagan world felt themselves membered into the whole cosmos. They felt how the forces at work in the movements of the stars extend into their own action, or, better said, into the forces taking effect in their actions. What later passed for astrology, and does so still, is but a reflection—and a very misleading one at that—of the ancient wisdom gleaned from contemplation of the stars in their courses and then used as the basis for precepts governing human action.

These ancient civilizations can be understood only if light is thrown by spiritual science upon human evolution in its outer aspect some four or five thousand years before Christ.

We are apt to speak in rather a matter-of-fact way of the second or the first post-Atlantean epochs, but we err if we picture human existence on the earth in the fifth, sixth, or seventh millennia B.C. as having been similar to our present existence. It is quite correct that people living on the earth in those ancient times had a kind of instinctive soul life, in a certain respect more akin to the soul life of animals than to that of present-day human beings. But it is a very one-sided conception of human life to say that in those ancient times people were more like animals. In tenor of soul, the human being then moving about the earth was, it is true, more like the animal; but those human-animal bodies were used by beings of soul and spirit who felt themselves members of the super-sensible worlds, above all of the cosmic worlds. And provided we go back far enough, say to the fifth pre-Christian millennium, it may be said that people made use of animal bodies as instruments rather than feeling themselves within those bodies. To characterize these people accurately, one would have to say that when they were awake, they moved about with an instinctive life of soul like that of animals, but into this instinctive life of soul there shone something like dreams from their sleeping state, waking dreams. And in these waking dreams they perceived how they had descended, to use animal bodies merely as instruments. This inner, fundamental tenor of the human soul then came to expression as a religious rite, in the Mithras cult with its main symbol of the God Mithras riding on a bull, above him the starry heavens to which he belongs, and below him the earth to which the bull belongs. This symbol was not, strictly speaking, a symbol to these people of old; it was a vision of reality. People's whole tenor of soul made them say to themselves: When I am outside my body at night I belong to the forces of the cosmos, of the starry heavens; when I wake in the morning I make use of animal instincts in an animal body.

Then human evolution passed, figuratively speaking, into a period of twilight. A certain dimness, a certain lethargy, spread over the life of humanity; the cosmic dreams receded and instinct gained the upper hand.

The attitude of soul formerly prevailing in human beings was preserved through the Mysteries, mainly through the Asiatic Mysteries. But in the fourth millennium B.C. and until the beginning of the third, humanity in general—when uninfluenced by the Mystery wisdom—lived an existence pervaded by a more or less dim, twilight consciousness. In Asia and the then-known world, it may be said that during the fourth and at the beginning of the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, people's life of soul was dim and instinctive. But the Mysteries were there, into which, through the powerful rites and ceremonies, the spiritual worlds were able to penetrate. And it was from these centers that human beings received illumination.

At the beginning of the third millennium a momentous event took place. The root cause of this dim, more instinctive life may be characterized by saying that as beings of spirit and soul, people were still unable at that time to make use of the human organs of intellect. These organs were already within them, they had taken shape in their physical constitution, but the being of spirit and soul could not make use of them. Thus human beings could not acquire knowledge through their own thinking, through their own powers of intellectual discernment. They were dependent upon what was imparted to them from the Mysteries. And then, about the beginning of the third millennium, a momentous event took place in the east of Asia.

A child of a distinguished Asiatic family of the time was allowed to grow up in the precincts of the Mystery ceremonies. Circumstances were such that this child was actually permitted to take part in the ceremonies, undoubtedly because the priests conducting the rites in the Mysteries felt it as an inspiration that such a child must be allowed to participate. And when the being incarnate in that child had reached the age of about forty—approximately that age—something very remarkable came to light. It became evident—and there is no doubt at all that the priests of the Mysteries had foreseen the event prophetically—it became evident that this man who had been allowed to grow up in the precincts of one of the Mystery centers in East Asia, began suddenly, at the age of about forty, to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation, and only through revelation. He was as it were the first to make use of the organs of human intellect, but still in association with the Mysteries.

Translating into terms of our present language how the priests of the Mysteries spoke of this matter, we must say: In this man, Lucifer himself was incarnated—no more and no less than that! It is a significant, momentous fact that in the third millennium before Christ an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh actually took place in the east of Asia. And from this incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh—for this being became a teacher—there went forth what is described as the pre-Christian, pagan culture which still survived in the gnosis of the earliest Christian centuries.

It would be wrong to pass derogatory judgment on this Lucifer culture. For all the beauty produced by Greek civilization, even the insight that is still alive in ancient Greek philosophy and in the tragedies of Aeschylus would have been impossible without this Lucifer incarnation.

The influence of the Lucifer incarnation was still powerful in the south of Europe, in the north of Africa, and in Asia Minor during the first centuries of Christendom. And when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, it was essentially the luciferic wisdom through which it could be understood. The gnosis, which set about the task of grasping the import of the Mystery of Golgotha, was impregnated through and through with luciferic wisdom. It must therefore be emphasized, firstly, that at the beginning of the third millennium B.C. there was a Chinese incarnation of Lucifer; at the beginning of our own era the incarnation of Christ took place. And to begin with, the significance of the incarnation of Christ was grasped because the power of the old Lucifer incarnation still survived. This power did not actually fade from the human faculty of comprehension until the fourth century A.D.; and even then, it had its aftermath, its ramifications.

To these two incarnations, the Lucifer incarnation in ancient times and the incarnation of the Christ which gives the earth its meaning, a third incarnation will be added in a future not so very far distant. And the events of the present time are already moving in such a way as to prepare for it.

Of the incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we must say: through Lucifer, human beings have acquired the faculty of using the organs of their intellect, of their power of intellectual discernment. It was Lucifer himself, in a human body, who was the first to grasp through the power of intellect what formerly could be imparted to humanity only through revelation, namely, the content of the Mysteries.

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none-too-distant future is an actual incarnation of Ahriman.

As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behooves humankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness. It is of the very greatest importance that people should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event. The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognized only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries. People were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the event of Golgotha really signified. But they must live on toward the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life. And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life—which cannot be averted in any way or by any means—the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate will become possible and inevitable.

From the spiritual world this Ahrimanic power is preparing for incarnation on the earth, endeavoring in every conceivable way to make such preparation that the incarnation of Ahriman in human form may be able to mislead and corrupt humankind on earth to the uttermost. A task of humankind during the next phase of civilization will be to live toward the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself humanity will become aware of what can, or shall we say, can not be achieved by physical life alone. But people must go forward with full consciousness toward this incarnation of Ahriman and become more and more alert in every domain, in order to recognize with greater and greater clarity those trends in life which are leading toward this Ahrimanic incarnation. People must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognize and learn to control the currents leading toward the incarnation of Ahriman. It must be realized that Ahriman will live among people on the earth, but that in confronting him people will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him. This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onward, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman for the purpose of leaving humankind as deeply unconscious as possible of his coming; then, one day, he will be able to appear on earth and overwhelm people tempting and luring them to repudiate earth evolution, thus preventing it from reaching its goal. To understand the whole process of which I have been speaking, it is essential to recognize the character of certain currents and influences—spiritual or the reverse.

Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus? Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays. The old religious impulses mean nothing to them. But neither will they bring themselves to give a thought to what can stream into our civilization as new spiritual life. They resist it, reject it, regard it as folly, as something inconvenient; they will not allow themselves to have anything to do with it. But, you see, human beings as we live on earth are veritably a unity. Our spiritual nature cannot be separated from our physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if human beings do not receive the spiritual through their faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth—only people are not willing to receive it.

But even if they do not accept the spiritual, it is there! And what becomes of it? Paradoxical as it may seem—for much that is true seems paradoxical to the modern mind—in those people who refuse the spiritual and like eating and drinking best of all things in life, the spiritual streams, unconsciously to them, into the processes of eating and digestion. This is the secret of that march into materialism which began about the year 1840, or rather was then in active preparation. Those who do not receive the spiritual through their souls receive it today nonetheless: in eating and drinking they eat and drink the spirit. They are “eaters” of the soul and spirit. And in this way the spirit that is streaming into earth evolution passes over into the luciferic element, is conveyed to Lucifer. Thereby the luciferic power, which can then be of help to the ahrimanic power for its later incarnation, is constantly strengthened. This must come to the knowledge of those who admit the fact that in the future people will either receive spiritual knowledge consciously or consume the spirit unconsciously, thereby delivering it into the hands of the luciferic powers.

This stream of spirit-and-soul-consumption is particularly encouraged by Ahriman because in this way he can lull humankind into greater and greater drowsiness, so that then, through his incarnation, he will be able to come among people and fall upon them unawares because they do not confront him consciously.

But Ahriman can also make direct preparation for his incarnation, and he does so. Certainly, people of our day also have a spiritual life, but it is purely intellectual, unconnected with the spiritual world. This purely intellectual life is becoming more and more widespread; at first it took effect mainly in the sciences, but now it is leading to mischiefs of every kind in social life as well. What is the essential character of this intellectual life?

This intellectual life has very little to do with the true interests of human beings! I ask you: how many teachers do you not see today, passing in and out of higher and lower educational institutions without bringing any inner enthusiasm to their science but pursuing it merely as a means of livelihood? In such cases the interest of the soul is not directly linked with the actual pursuit. The same thing happens even at school. Think how much is learned at the various stages of life without any real enthusiasm or interest, how external the intellectual life is becoming for many people who devote themselves to it! And how many there are today who are forced to produce a mass of intellectual material which is then preserved in libraries and, as spiritual life, is not truly alive!

Everything that is developing as intellectual life without being suffused by warmth of soul, without being quickened by enthusiasm, directly furthers the incarnation of Ahriman in a way that is after his own heart. It lulls people to sleep in the way I have described, so that its results are advantageous to Ahriman.

There are numerous other currents in the spiritual or unspiritual life which Ahriman can turn to his advantage. You have lately heard—and you are still hearing it—that national states, national empires must be founded. A great deal is said about “freedom of the individual peoples.” But the time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind. [Quote 1] If an appeal is made today to national, racial, and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among humankind will be intensified. And it is this disharmony among humankind which the ahrimanic power can put to special use. Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form—this is the material from which Ahriman will build just what he needs.

But there are other things as well. Everywhere today we see parties being formed for one object or another. People nowadays have no discernment, nor do they desire to have it where party opinions and party programs are concerned. With intellectual ingenuity, proof can be furnished in support of the most radically opposing theories. Very clever arguments can be used to prove the soundness of Leninism—but the same applies to directly contrary principles and also to what lies between the two extremes. An excellent case can be made out for every party program: but the one who establishes the validity of the opposite program is equally right. The intellectualism prevailing among people today is not capable of demonstrating the inner potentialities and values of anything. It can furnish proofs; but what is intellectually proved should not be regarded as of real value or efficacy in life. People oppose one another in parties because the soundness of every party opinion—at any rate the main party opinions—can be proved with equal justification. Our intellect remains at the surface layer of understanding and does not penetrate to the deeper layer where the truth actually lies. This, too, must be fundamentally and thoroughly understood.

People today prefer to let their intellect remain on the surface and not to penetrate with deeper forces to those levels where the essential nature of things is disclosed. It is only necessary to look around a little, for even where it takes its most external form, life often reveals the pitfalls of current predilections. People love numbers and figures in science, but they also love figures in the social sphere as well. Social science consists almost entirely of statistics. And from statistics, that is to say from figures, the weightiest conclusions are reached. Well, with figures too, anything can be proved and anything believed; for figures are not a means whereby the essential reality of things can be proved—they are simply a means of deception! Whenever one fails to look beyond figures to the qualitative, they can be utterly deceptive.

The following is an obvious example. There is, or at least there used to be, a great deal of argument about the nationality of the Macedonians. In the political life of the Balkan peninsula, much depended upon the statistics compiled there. The figures are of just as much value as those contained in other statistics. Whether statistics are compiled of wheat and rye production, or of the numbers of Greek, Serbian, or Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia—in regard to what can be proved by these means it is all the same. From the figures quoted for the Greeks, for the Bulgarians, for the Serbians, very plausible conclusions can be drawn. But one can also have an eye for the qualitative element, and then one often finds it recorded that the father was Greek, one son was Bulgarian, another was Serbian. What is at the back of it you can puzzle out for yourselves! These statistics are taken as authoritative, whereas in this case they were compiled solely in support of party aims. It stands to reason that if the father is really a Greek, the two sons are also Greeks. But the procedure adopted there is just an example of many other things that are done with figures. Ahriman can achieve a great deal through figures and numbers used in this way as evidence of proof.

A further means of which Ahriman can avail himself is again one that will seem paradoxical. As you know, we have been concerned in our movement to study the Gospels in the light of spiritual science. But these deeper interpretations of the Gospels, which are becoming more and more necessary in our time, are rejected on all sides, just as spiritual science as a whole is rejected.

The people who often profess humility in these matters—and they are insistent about it—are actually the most arrogant of all. More and more generally it is being said that people should steep themselves in the very simplicity of the Gospels and not attempt to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by entering into the complexities of spiritual science. Those who feign unpretentiousness in their study of the Gospels are the most arrogant of all, for they despise the honest search for knowledge demanded in spiritual science. So arrogant are they that they believe the highest revelations of the spiritual world can be garnered without effort, simply by browsing on the simplicity of the Gospels. What claims to be “humble” or “simple” today is often supreme arrogance. In sects, in religious confessions—it is there that the most arrogant people are to be found:

It must be remembered that the Gospels came into existence at a time when the luciferic wisdom still survived. In the first centuries of Christendom, people's understanding of the Gospels was quite different from what it came to be in later times. Today, people who cannot deepen their minds through spiritual science merely pretend to understand the Gospels. In reality they have no idea even of the original meaning of the words; for the translations that have been made into the different languages are not faithful reproductions of the Gospels; often they are scarcely even reminiscent of the original meaning of the words in which the Gospels were composed.

Real understanding of the intervention of the Christ being in earthly evolution is possible today only through spiritual science. Those who want to study, or actually do study the Gospels “without pretension”—as the saying goes—cannot come to any inner realization of the Christ being as he truly is, but only to an illusory picture, or, at very most, a vision or hallucination of the Christ being. No real connection with the Christ impulse can be achieved today merely through reading the Gospels—but only a hallucinatory picture of the Christ. Hence the prevalence of the theological view that the Christ was not present in the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was simply an historical figure like Socrates or Plato or others, although possibly more exalted. The “simple man of Nazareth” is an ideal even to the theologians. And very few of them indeed can make anything of an event like Paul's vision at the gate of Damascus, because without the deepened knowledge yielded by spiritual science the Gospels can give rise only to a hallucination of the Christ, not to vision of the real Christ. And so Paul's vision at Damascus is also regarded as a hallucination.

Deeper understanding of the Gospels in the light of spiritual science is essential today, for the apathy that takes hold of people who are content to live merely within the arms of the denominations will be used to the utmost by Ahriman in order to achieve his goal—which is that his incarnation shall catch people unawares. And those who believe they are being most truly Christian by rejecting any development of the conception of the Christ mystery, are, in their arrogance, the ones who do most to promote Ahriman's aims. The denominations and sects are positively spheres of encouragement, breeding-grounds for Ahriman. It is futile to gloss these things over with illusions. Just as the materialistic attitude, rejecting the spiritual altogether and contending that the human being is a product of what people eat and drink, furthers Ahriman's aims, so are these aims furthered by the stubborn rejection of everything spiritual and adherence to the literal, “simple” conception of the Gospels.

You see, a barrier which prevents the single Gospels from unduly circumscribing the human mind has been erected through the fact that the event of Golgotha is described in the Gospels from four—seemingly contradictory—sides. Only a little reflection will show that this is a protection from too literal a conception. In sects, however, where one Gospel only is taken as the basis of the teaching—and such sects are quite numerous—pitfalls, stupefaction, and hallucination are generated. In their day, the Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the luciferic gnosis; but if no attempt is made to develop understanding of their content, the aims of Ahriman are furthered, not the progress of humankind. In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put. The best can be the worst if wrongly used. Sublime though they are, the Gospels can also have the opposite effect if people are too lazy to search for a deeper understanding based on spiritual science.

Hence there is a great deal in the spiritual and unspiritual currents of the present time of which people should be acutely aware, and determine their attitude of soul accordingly. Upon the ability and willingness to penetrate to the roots of such matters will depend the effect which the incarnation of Ahriman can have upon human beings, whether this incarnation will lead them to prevent the earth from reaching its goal, or bring home to them the very limited significance of intellectual, unspiritual life. If people rightly take in hand the currents leading toward Ahriman, then simply through his incarnation in earthly life they will recognize the ahrimanic influence on the one side, and on the other its polar opposite—the luciferic influence. And then the very contrast between the ahrimanic and the luciferic will enable them to perceive the third reality. Human beings must consciously wrestle through to an understanding of this trinity of the Christian impulse, the ahrimanic and the luciferic influences; for without this consciousness they will not be able to go forward into the future with the prospect of achieving the goal of earth existence.

Spiritual science must be taken in deep earnestness, for only so can it be rightly understood. It is not the outcome of any sectarian whim but something that has proceeded from the fundamental needs of human evolution. Those who recognize these needs cannot choose between whether they will or will not endeavor to foster spiritual science. On the contrary they will say to themselves: The whole physical and spiritual life of human beings must be illumined and pervaded by the conceptions of spiritual science!

Just as once in the East there was a Lucifer incarnation, and then, at the midpoint, as it were, of world evolution, the incarnation of Christ, so in the West there will be an incarnation of Ahriman.

This ahrimanic incarnation cannot be averted; it is inevitable, for humanity must confront Ahriman face to face. He will be the individuality by whom it will be made clear what indescribable cleverness can be developed if they call to their help all that earthly forces can do to enhance cleverness and ingenuity. In the catastrophes that will befall humanity in the near future, people will become extremely inventive; many things discovered in the forces and substances of the universe will be used to provide human nourishment. But these very discoveries will at the same time make it apparent that matter is connected with the organs of intellect, not with the organs of the spirit but of the intellect. People will learn what to eat and drink in order to become really clever. Eating and drinking cannot make them spiritual, but clever and astute, yes. Humanity has no knowledge of these things as yet; but not only will they be striven for, they will be the inevitable outcome of catastrophes looming in the near future. And certain secret societies—where preparations are already in train—will apply these things in such a way that the necessary conditions can be established for an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth. This incarnation cannot be averted, for people must realize during the time of the earth's existence just how much can proceed from purely material processes! We must learn to bring under our control those spiritual or unspiritual currents which are leading to Ahriman.

Once it is realized that conflicting party programs can be proved equally correct, our attitude of soul will be that we do not set out to prove things, but rather to experience them. For to experience a thing is a very different matter from attempting to prove it intellectually.

Equally we shall be convinced that deeper and deeper penetration of the Gospels is necessary through spiritual science. The literal, word-for-word acceptance of the Gospels that is still so prevalent today promotes ahrimanic culture. Even on external grounds it is obvious that a strictly literal acceptance of the Gospels is unjustified. For as you know, what is good and right for one time is not right for every other time. What is right for one epoch becomes luciferic or ahrimanic when practiced in a later one. The mere reading of the Gospel texts has had its day. What is essential now is to acquire a spiritual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in the light of the truths enshrined in the Gospels. Many people, of course, find these things disquieting; but those whose interest is attracted by anthroposophy must learn to realize that the levels of culture, gradually piling one above the other, have created chaos, and that light must penetrate again into this chaos.

It is interesting nowadays to listen to someone whose views have become very extreme, or to read about some burning question of the day, and then to listen to sermons on the same subject given by a priest of some denomination who is still steeped in the form of thought current in bygone times. There you face two worlds which you cannot possibly confuse unless you avoid all attempts to get at the root of these things. Listen to a modern socialist speaking about social questions and then, immediately afterward, to a Catholic preacher speaking about the same questions. It is very interesting to find two levels of culture existing side by side but using the words in an entirely different sense. The same word has quite a different meaning in each case.

These things should be seen in the light that will dawn if they are taken in the earnest spirit we have been trying to convey. People belonging to definite religions do also come, in the end, to long in their way for spiritual deepening. It is by no means without significance that a man as eminently spiritual as Cardinal Newman, ardent Catholic though he was, should say at his investiture in Rome that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation.

In effect, what Cardinal Newman said was that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation! But he had not the courage to take a new spiritual revelation seriously. And so it is with many others. You can read countless treatises today about what is needed in social life. Another book has recently appeared: Socialism, by Robert Wilbrandt, the son of the poet. In it the social question is discussed on the foundation of accurate and detailed knowledge. And finally it is stated that without the spirit nothing is achieved, that the very course of events shows that the spirit is necessary. Yes, but what does such a man really achieve? He gets as far as to utter the word “spirit,” to pronounce the abstract word “spirit;” but he refuses to accept, indeed he rejects, anything that endeavors to make the spirit really take effect.

For that, it is essential above all to realize that wallowing in abstractions, however loud the cry for the spirit, is not yet spiritual, not yet spirit! Vague, abstract chattering about the spirit must never be confused with the active search for the content of the spiritual world pursued in anthroposophical science.

Nowadays there is much talk about the spirit. But you who accept spiritual science should not be deluded by such chattering; you should perceive the difference between it and the descriptions of the spiritual world attempted in anthroposophy, where the spiritual world is described as objectively as the physical world. You should probe into these differences, reminding yourselves repeatedly that abstract talk of the spirit is a deviation from sincere striving for the spirit and that by their very talk, people are actually removing themselves from the spirit. Purely intellectual allusion to the spirit leads nowhere. What, then, is “intelligence?” What is the content of our human intelligence? I can best explain this in the following way. Imagine—and this will be better understood by the many ladies present!—imagine yourself standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The picture presented to you by the mirror is you, but it has no reality at all. It is nothing but a reflection. All the intelligence within your soul, all the intellectual content, is only a mirror image; it has no reality. And just as your reflected image is called into existence through the mirror, so what mirrors itself as intelligence is called into existence through the physical apparatus of your body, through the brain. You are intelligent only because your body is there. And as little as you can touch yourself by stretching your hand toward your reflected image, as little can you lay hold of the spirit if you turn only to the intellectual—for the spirit is not there! What is grasped through the intellect, ingenious as it may be, never contains the spirit itself, but only a picture of the spirit. You cannot truly experience the spirit if you get no further than mere intelligence. The reason why intelligence is so seductive is that it yields a picture, a reflected picture of the spirit—but not the spirit itself. It seems unnecessary to go to the inconvenience of penetrating to the spirit, because it is there—or so, at least, one imagines. In reality it is only a reflected picture—but for all that, it is not difficult to talk about the spirit.

To distinguish the mere picture from the reality—that is the task of the tenor of soul which does not merely theorize about spiritual science but has actual perception of the spirit.

That is what I wanted to say to you today in order to intensify the earnestness which should pervade our whole attitude to the spiritual life as conceived by anthroposophy. For the evolution of humanity in the future will depend upon how truly this attitude is adopted by people of the present day. If what I have characterized in this lecture continues to be offered the reception that is still offered to it today by the vast majority of people on the earth, then Ahriman will be an evil guest when he comes. But if people are able to rouse themselves to take into their consciousness what we have been studying, if they are able so to guide it that humanity can freely confront the ahrimanic influence, then, when Ahriman appears, human beings will acquire, precisely through him, the power to realize that although the earth must enter inevitably into its decline, humankind is lifted above earthly existence through this very fact. When human beings have reached a certain age in physical life, the body begins to decline, but if they are sensible they make no complaint, knowing that together with the soul they are approaching a life that does not run parallel with this physical decline. There lives in humankind something that is not bound up with the already prevailing decline of the physical earth but becomes more and more spiritual just because of this physical decline.

Let us learn to say frankly: Yes, the earth is in its decline, and human life, too, with respect to its physical manifestation; but just because it is so, let us muster the strength to draw into our civilization that element which, springing from humankind itself, will live on while the earth is in decline, as the immortal fruit of earth evolution.

• 1. Twelve lectures given at Nürnberg, 1908.

The phase of evolution beginning in our own time has a very special character. The same may, of course, be said of each epoch but in every case it is a matter of defining the particular characteristics. The present phase of evolution may be characterised in a general way by saying that all the experiences confronting mankind in the physical world during the earth's further existence will represent a decline, a retrogression. The time when human progress was made possible through the constant refinement of the physical forces, is already over. In the future, too, mankind will progress, but only through spiritual development, through development on a higher level than that of the processes of the physical plane. Men who rely entirely on the processes of the physical plane will find in them no source of satisfaction. An indication given in spiritual science a long time ago, in the Lecture-Course on the Apocalypse,¹ namely that we are heading for the “War of All against All”, must from now onwards be grasped in all its significance and gravity; its implications must not remain in the realm of theory but also come to expression in the actions, the whole behaviour of men.

The fact that—to use a colloquialism—people in the future are not going to get much fun out of developments on the physical plane, will bring home to them that further evolution must proceed from spiritual forces.

This can be understood only by surveying a lengthy period of evolution and applying what is discovered to experiences that will become more and more general in the future. The trend of forces that will manifest in the well nigh rhythmical onset of war and destruction—processes of which the present catastrophe is but the beginning—will become only too evident. It is childish to believe that anything connected with this war can bring about a permanent era of peace for humanity on the physical plane. That will not be so. What must come about on the earth is spiritual development. Its direction and purport will be clear to us if, after surveying a comparatively lengthy epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha, we bear in mind something of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and then try to envisage the impulse of that Event working in the future evolution of mankind.

We have studied the Mystery of Golgotha from many different points of view and will do so again to-day by characterising, very briefly, the civilisation which preceded it—let us say as far back as the third millennium B.C.—and then continued for a time as Pagan culture in the period of Christian development itself.

Within this Pagan culture, the utterly different Hebraic-Jewish culture took root, having Christianity as its offspring.

The nature of Pagan culture can best be understood if we realise that it was the outcome of knowledge, vision and action born of forces much wider in range than those belonging to present earthly existence. It was actually through Hebraic culture that the moral element was first inculcated into humanity. In Paganism the moral element did not occupy a place separate and apart; this Pagan culture was such that man felt himself a member of the whole cosmos.

This is something we must particularly bear in mind.—The human being living on earth within the old Pagan world felt himself membered into the whole cosmos. He felt how the forces at work in the movements of the stars extend into his own actions, or, better said, into the forces taking effect in his actions. What later passed for astrology, and does so still, is but a reflection—and a very misleading one at that—of the ancient wisdom gleaned from contemplation of the stars in their courses and then used as the basis for precepts governing human action.

These ancient civilisations can be understood only if light is thrown by spiritual science upon human evolution in its outer aspect some four or five thousand years before Christ.

We are apt to speak in rather a matter-of-fact way of the second or the first Post-Atlantean epochs, but we err if we picture man's existence on the earth in the fifth, sixth or seventh millennia B.C. as having been similar to our present existence. It is quite correct that men living on the earth in those ancient times had a kind of instinctive soul-life, in a certain respect more akin to the soul-life of animals than to that of present-day man. But it is a very one-sided conception of human life to say that in those ancient times men were more like animals. In tenor of soul, the human being then moving about the earth was, it is true, more like the animal; but those human-animal bodies were used by beings of soul-and-spirit who felt themselves members of the super-sensible worlds, above all of the cosmic worlds. And provided we go back far enough, say to the fifth pre-Christian millennium, it may be said that men made use of animal bodies as instruments rather than feeling themselves within those bodies. To characterise these men accurately, one would have to say that when they were awake, they moved about with an instinctive life of soul like that of animals, but into this instinctive life of soul there shone something like dreams from their sleeping state, waking dreams. And in these waking dreams they perceived how they had descended, to use animal bodies merely as instruments. This inner, fundamental tenor of the human soul then came to expression as a religious rite, in the Mithras cult with its main symbol of the God Mithras riding on a bull, above him the starry heavens to which he belongs, and below him the earth to which the bull belongs. This symbol was not, strictly speaking, a symbol to these men of old; it was a vision of reality. Man's whole tenor of soul made him say to himself: When I am outside my body at night I belong to the forces of the cosmos, of the starry heavens; when I wake in the morning, I make use of animal instincts in an animal body.

Then human evolution passed, figuratively speaking, into a period of twilight. A certain dimness, a certain lethargy, spread over the life of humanity; the cosmic dreams receded and instinct gained the upper hand.

The attitude of soul formerly prevailing in men was preserved through the Mysteries, mainly through the Asiatic Mysteries. But in the fourth millennium B.C. and until the beginning of the third, humanity in general—when uninfluenced by the Mystery wisdom—lived an existence pervaded by a more or less dim, twilight consciousness. In Asia and the then known world, it may be said that during the fourth and at the beginning of the third millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, man's life of soul was dim and instinctive. But the Mysteries were there, into which, through the powerful rites and ceremonies, the spiritual worlds were able to penetrate. And it was from these centres that men received illumination.

At the beginning of the third millennium a momentous event took place.—The root-cause of this dim, more instinctive life may be characterised by saying that as a being of spirit-and-soul, man was still unable at that time to make use of the human organs of intellect. These organs were already within him, they had taken shape in his physical constitution, but the being of spirit-and-soul could not make use of them. Thus men could not acquire knowledge through their own thinking, through their own powers of intellectual discernment. They were dependent upon what was imparted to them from the Mysteries. And then, about the beginning of the third millennium, a momentous event took place in the east of Asia.

A child of a distinguished Asiatic family of the time was allowed to grow up in the precincts of the Mystery-ceremonies. Circumstances were such that this child was actually permitted to take part in the ceremonies, undoubtedly because the priests conducting the rites in the Mysteries felt it as an inspiration that such a child must be allowed to participate. And when the being incarnate in that child had reached the age of about 40—approximately that age—something very remarkable came to light. It became evident and there is no doubt at all that the priests of the Mysteries had foreseen the event prophetically—it became evident that this man who had been allowed to grow up in the precincts of one of the Mystery-centres in East Asia, began suddenly, at the age of about 4o, to grasp through the faculty of human intellect itself what had formerly come into the Mysteries through revelation, and only through revelation. He was as it were the first to make use of the organs of human intellect, but still in association with the Mysteries.

Translating into terms of our present language how the priests of the Mysteries spoke of this matter, we must say: In this man, Lucifer himself was incarnated—no more and no less than that!—It is a significant, momentous fact that in the third millennium before Christ an incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh actually took place in the east of Asia. And from this incarnation of Lucifer in the flesh—for this Being became a Teacher—there went forth what is described as the pre-Christian, Pagan culture which still survived in the Gnosis of the earliest Christian centuries.

It would be wrong to pass derogatory judgment on this Lucifer-culture. For all the beauty produced by Greek civilisation, even the insight that is still alive in ancient Greek philosophy and in the tragedies of Aeschylus would have been impossible without this Lucifer-incarnation.

The influence of the Lucifer-incarnation was still powerful in the south of Europe, in the north of Africa and in Asia Minor during the first centuries of Christendom. And when the Mystery of Golgotha had taken place on earth, it was essentially the Luciferic wisdom through which it could be understood. The Gnosis, which set about the task of grasping the import of the Mystery of Golgotha, was impregnated through and through with Luciferic wisdom. It must therefore be emphasised, firstly, that at the beginning of the third Millennium B.C. there was a Chinese incarnation of Lucifer; at the beginning of our own era the incarnation of Christ took place. And to begin with, the significance of the incarnation of Christ was grasped because the power of the old Lucifer-incarnation still survived. This power did not actually fade from man's faculty of comprehension until the fourth century A.D.; and even then, it had its aftermath, its ramifications.

To these two incarnations, the Lucifer-incarnation in ancient times and the incarnation of the Christ which gives the earth its meaning, a third incarnation will be added in a future not so very far distant. And the events of the present time are already moving in such a way as to prepare for it.

Of the incarnation of Lucifer at the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we must say: through Lucifer, man has acquired the faculty of using the organs of his intellect, of his power of intellectual discernment. It was Lucifer himself, in a human body, who was the first to grasp through the power of intellect, what formerly could be imparted to man only through revelation, namely, the content of the Mysteries.

What is now in preparation and will quite definitely come to pass on earth in a none too distant future, is an actual incarnation of Ahriman.

As you know, since the middle of the fifteenth century we have been living in an era in which it behoves mankind to come more and more into possession of the full power of consciousness. It is of the very greatest importance that men should approach the coming incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness of this event. The incarnation of Lucifer could be recognised only by the prophetic insight of the priests of the Mysteries. Men were also very unconscious of what the incarnation of Christ and the Event of Golgotha really signified. But they must live on towards the incarnation of Ahriman with full consciousness amid the shattering events which will occur on the physical plane. Amid the perpetual stresses of war and other tribulations of the immediate future, the human mind will become very inventive in the domain of physical life. And through this very growth of inventiveness in physical life—which cannot be averted in any way or by any means—the bodily existence of a human individuality in whom Ahriman can incarnate, will become possible and inevitable.

From the spiritual world this Ahrimanic power is preparing for incarnation on the earth, is endeavouring in every conceivable way to make such preparation that the incarnation of Ahriman in human form may be able to mislead and corrupt mankind on earth to the uttermost. A task of mankind during the next phase of civilisation will be to live towards the incarnation of Ahriman with such alert consciousness that this incarnation can actually serve to promote a higher, spiritual development, inasmuch as through Ahriman himself man will become aware of what can, or shall we say, can not be achieved by physical life alone. But men must go forward with full consciousness towards this incarnation of Ahriman and become more and more alert in every domain, in order to recognise with greater and greater clarity those trends in life which are leading towards this Ahrimanic incarnation. Men must learn from spiritual science to find the key to life and so be able to recognise and learn to control the currents leading towards the incarnation of Ahriman. It must be realised that Ahriman will live among men on the earth, but that in confronting him men will themselves determine what they may learn from him, what they may receive from him. This, however, they will not be able to do unless, from now onwards, they take control of certain spiritual and also unspiritual currents which otherwise are used by Ahriman for the purpose of leaving mankind as deeply unconscious as possible of his coming; then, one day, he will be able to appear on earth and overwhelm men, tempting and luring them to repudiate earth-evolution, thus preventing it from reaching its goal. To understand the whole process of which I have been speaking, it is essential to recognise the character of certain currents and influences—spiritual or the reverse.

Do you not see the continually growing number of people at the present time who do not want any science of the spirit, any knowledge of the spiritual? Do you not see how numerous are the people to whom the old forces of religion no longer give any inner stimulus?—Whether they go to church or not is a matter of complete indifference to large numbers of human beings nowadays. The old religious impulses mean nothing to them. But neither will they bring themselves to give a thought to what can stream into our civilisation as new spiritual life. They resist it, reject it, regard it as folly, as something inconvenient; they will not allow themselves to have anything to do with it. But, you see, man as he lives on earth is veritably a unity. His spiritual nature cannot be separated from his physical nature; both work together as a unity between birth and death. And even if man does not receive the spiritual through his faculties of soul, the spiritual takes effect, nevertheless. Since the last third of the nineteenth century the spiritual has been streaming around us; it is streaming into earthly evolution. The spiritual is there in very truth—only men are not willing to receive it.

But even if they do not accept the spiritual, it is there! And what becomes of it? Paradoxical as it may seem—for much that is true seems paradoxical to the modern mind—in those people who refuse the spiritual and like eating and drinking best of all things in life, the spiritual streams, unconsciously to them, into the processes of eating and digestion. This is the secret of that march into materialism which began about the year 184o, or rather was then in active preparation. Those who do not receive the spiritual through their souls, receive it to-day none the less: in eating and drinking they eat and drink the spirit. They are “eaters” of the soul-and-spirit. And in this way the spirit that is streaming into earth-evolution passes over into the Luciferic element, is conveyed to Lucifer. Thereby the Luciferic power which can then be of help to the Ahrimanic power for its later incarnation, is constantly strengthened. This must come to the knowledge of those who admit the fact that in the future men will either receive spiritual knowledge consciously or consume the spirit unconsciously, thereby delivering it into the hands of the Luciferic powers.

This stream of spirit-and-soul-consumption is particularly encouraged by Ahriman because in this way he can lull mankind into greater and greater drowsiness, so that then, through his incarnation, he will be able to come among men and fall upon them unawares because they do not confront him consciously.

But Ahriman can also make direct preparation for his incarnation, and he does so. Certainly, men of our day also have a spiritual life, but it is purely intellectual, unconnected with the spiritual world. This purely intellectual life is becoming more and more widespread; at first it took effect mainly in the sciences, but now it is leading to mischiefs of every kind in social life as well. What is the essential character of this intellectual life?

This intellectual life has very little to do with the true interests of men! I ask you: how many teachers do you not see to-day, passing in and out of higher and lower educational institutions without bringing any inner enthusiasm to their science but pursuing it merely as a means of livelihood—In such cases the interest of the soul is not directly linked with the actual pursuit. The same thing happens even at school. Think how much is learnt at the various stages of life without any real enthusiasm or interest, how external the intellectual life is becoming for many people who devote themselves to it! And how many there are to-day who are forced to produce a mass of intellectual material which is then preserved in libraries and, as spiritual life, is not truly alive!

Everything that is developing as intellectual life without being suffused by warmth of soul, without being quickened by enthusiasm, directly furthers the incarnation of Ahriman in a way that is after his own heart. It lulls men to sleep in the way I have described, so that its results are advantageous to Ahriman.

There are numerous other currents in the spiritual or unspiritual life which Ahriman can turn to his advantage. You have lately heard—and you are still hearing it—that national states, national empires must be founded. A great deal is said about “freedom of the individual peoples”. But the time for founding empires based on relationships of blood and race is past and over in the evolution of mankind. If an appeal is made to-day to national, racial and similar relationships, to relationships arising out of the intellect and not out of the spirit, then disharmony among mankind will be intensified. And it is this disharmony among mankind which the Ahrimanic power can put to special use. Chauvinism, perverted patriotism in every form—this is the material from which Ahriman will build just what he needs.

But there are other things as well. Everywhere to-day we see parties being formed for one object or another. People nowadays have no discernment, nor do they desire to have it where party opinions and party programmes are concerned. With intellectual ingenuity, proof can be furnished in support of the most radically opposing theories. Very clever arguments can be used to prove the soundness of Leninism—but the same applies to directly contrary principles and also to what lies between the two extremes. An excellent case can be made out for every party programme: but the one who establishes the validity of the opposite programme is equally right. The intellectualism prevailing among men to-day is not capable of demonstrating the inner potentialities and values of anything. It can furnish proofs; but what is intellectually proved should not be regarded as of real value or efficacy in life. Men oppose one another in parties because the soundness of every party opinion—at any rate the main party opinions—can be proved with equal justification. Our intellect remains at the surface-layer of understanding and does not penetrate to the deeper layer where the truth actually lies. This, too, must be fundamentally and thoroughly understood.

People to-day prefer to let their intellect remain on the surface and not to penetrate with deeper forces to those levels where the essential nature of things is disclosed. It is only necessary to look around a little, for even where it takes its most external form, life often reveals the pitfalls of current predilections. People love numbers and figures in science, but they also love figures in the social sphere as well. Social science consists almost entirely of statistics. And from statistics, that is to say from figures, the weightiest conclusions are reached. Well, with figures too, anything can be proved and anything believed; for figures are not a means whereby the essential reality of things can be proved—they are simply a means of deception! Whenever one fails to look beyond figures to the qualitative, they can be utterly deceptive.

The following is an obvious example.—There is, or at least there used to be, a great deal of argument about the nationality of the Macedonians. In the political life of the Balkan peninsula, much depended upon the statistics compiled there. The figures are of just as much value as those contained in other statistics. Whether statistics are compiled of wheat and rye production, or of the numbers of Greek, Serbian or Bulgarian nationals in Macedonia—in regard to what can be proved by these means it is all the same. From the figures quoted for the Greeks, for the Bulgarians, for the Serbians, very plausible conclusions can be drawn. But one can also have an eye for the qualitative element, and then one often finds it recorded that the father was Greek, one son was Bulgarian, another was Serbian.—What is at the back of it you can puzzle out for yourselves!—These statistics are taken as authoritative, whereas in this case they were compiled solely in support of party aims. It stands to reason that if the father is really a Greek, the two sons are also Greeks. But the procedure adopted there is just an example of many other things that are done with figures. Ahriman can achieve a great deal through figures and numbers used in this way as evidence of proof.

A further means of which Ahriman can avail himself is again one that will seem paradoxical. As you know, we have been concerned in our movement to study the Gospels in the light of spiritual science. But these deeper interpretations of the Gospels which are becoming more and more necessary in our time, are rejected on all sides, just as spiritual science as a whole is rejected.

The people who often profess humility in these matters—and they are insistent about it—are actually the most arrogant of all. More and more generally it is being said that people should steep themselves in the very simplicity of the Gospels and not attempt to understand the Mystery of Golgotha by entering into the complexities of spiritual science. Those who feign unpretentiousness in their study of the Gospels are the most arrogant of all, for they despise the honest search for knowledge demanded in spiritual science. So arrogant are they that they believe the highest revelations of the spiritual world can be garnered without effort, simply by browsing on the simplicity of the Gospels. What claims to be “humble” or “simple” to-day is often supreme arrogance. In sects, in religious confessions—it is there that the most arrogant of men are to be found.

It must be remembered that the Gospels came into existence at a time when the Luciferic wisdom still survived. In the first centuries of Christendom, men's understanding of the Gospels was quite different from what it came to be in later times. To-day, people who cannot deepen their minds through spiritual science merely pretend to understand the Gospels. In reality they have no idea even of the original meaning of the words; for the translations that have been made into the different languages are not faithful reproductions of the Gospels; often they are scarcely even reminiscent of the original meaning of the words in which the Gospels were composed.

Real understanding of the intervention of the Christ Being in earthly evolution is possible to-day only through spiritual science. Those who want to study, or actually do study the Gospels “without pretention”—as the saying goes—cannot come to any inner realisation of the Christ Being as He truly is, but only to an illusory picture, or, at very most, a vision or hallucination of the Christ Being. No real connection with the Christ Impulse can be achieved to-day merely through reading the Gospels—but only an hallucinatory picture of the Christ. Hence the prevalence of the theological view that the Christ was not present in the man Jesus of Nazareth, who was simply an historical figure like Socrates or Plato or others, although possibly more exalted. The “simple man of Nazareth” is an ideal even to the theologians. And very few of them indeed can make anything of an event like Paul's vision at the gate of Damascus, because without the deepened knowledge yielded by spiritual science the Gospels can give rise only to an hallucination of the Christ, not to vision of the Real Christ. And so Paul's vision at Damascus is also regarded as an hallucination.

Deeper understanding of the Gospels in the light of spiritual science is essential to-day, for the apathy that takes hold of people who are content to live merely within the arms of the denominations will be used to the utmost by Ahriman in order to achieve his goal—which is that his incarnation shall catch men unawares. And those who believe they are being most truly Christian by rejecting any development of the conception of the Christ Mystery, are, in their arrogance, the ones who do most to promote Ahriman's aims. The denominations and sects are positively spheres of encouragement, breeding-grounds for Ahriman. It is futile to gloss these things over with illusions. Just as the materialistic attitude, rejecting the spiritual altogether and contending that man is a product of what he eats and drinks, furthers Ahriman's aims, so are these aims furthered by the stubborn rejection of everything spiritual and adherence to the literal, “simple” conception of the Gospels.

You see, a barrier which prevents the single Gospels from unduly circumscribing the human mind, has been erected through the fact that the Event of Golgotha is described in the Gospels from four—seemingly contradictory—sides. Only a little reflection will show that this is a protection from too literal a conception. In sects, however, where one Gospel only is taken as the basis of the teaching—and such sects are quite numerous—pitfalls, stupefaction and hallucination are generated. In their day, the Gospels were given as a necessary counterweight to the Luciferic Gnosis; but if no attempt is made to develop understanding of their content, the aims of Ahriman are furthered, not the progress of mankind. In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put. The best can be the worst if wrongly used. Sublime though they are, the Gospels can also have the opposite effect if men are too lazy to search for a deeper understanding based on spiritual science.

Hence there is a great deal in the spiritual and unspiritual currents of the present time of which men should be acutely aware, and determine their attitude of soul accordingly. Upon the ability and willingness to penetrate to the roots of such matters will depend the effect which the incarnation of Ahriman can have upon men, whether this incarnation will lead them to prevent the earth from reaching its goal, or bring home to them the very limited significance of intellectual, unspiritual life. If men rightly take in hand the currents leading towards Ahriman, then simply through his incarnation in earthly life they will recognise the Ahrimanic influence on the one side, and on the other its polar opposite—the Luciferic influence. And then the very contrast between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic will enable them to perceive the third reality. Men must consciously wrestle through to an understanding of this trinity of the Christian impulse, the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic influences; for without this consciousness they will not be able to go forward into the future with the prospect of achieving the goal of earth-existence.

Spiritual science must be taken in deep earnestness, for only so can it be rightly understood. It is not the outcome of any sectarian whim but something that has proceeded from the fundamental needs of human evolution. Those who recognise these needs cannot choose between whether they will or will not endeavour to foster spiritual science. On the contrary they will say to themselves: The whole physical and spiritual life of men must be illumined and pervaded by the conceptions of spiritual science!

Just as once in the East there was a Lucifer-incarnation, and then, at the mid-point, as it were, of world-evolution, the incarnation of Christ, so in the West there will be an incarnation of Ahriman.

This Ahrimanic incarnation cannot be averted; it is inevitable, for men must confront Ahriman face to face. He will be the individuality by whom it will be made clear to men what indescribable cleverness can be developed if they call to their help all that earthly forces can do to enhance cleverness and ingenuity. In the catastrophes that will befall humanity in the near future, men will become extremely inventive; many things discovered in the forces and substances of the universe will be used to provide nourishment for man. But these very discoveries will at the same time make it apparent that matter is connected with the organs of intellect, not with the organs of the spirit but of the intellect. People will learn what to eat and drink in order to become really clever. Eating and drinking cannot make them spiritual, but clever and astute, yes. Men have no knowledge of these things as yet; but not only will they be striven for, they will be the inevitable outcome of catastrophes looming in the near future. And certain secret societies—where preparations are already in train—will apply these things in such a way that the necessary conditions can be established for an actual incarnation of Ahriman on the earth. This incarnation cannot be averted, for men must realise during the time of the earth's existence just how much can proceed from purely material processes! He must learn to bring under his control those spiritual or unspiritual currents which are leading to Ahriman.

Once it is realised that conflicting party programmes can be proved equally correct, our attitude of soul will be that we do not set out to prove things, but rather to experience them. For to experience a thing is a very different matter from attempting to prove it intellectually.

Equally we shall be convinced that deeper and deeper penetration of the Gospels is necessary through spiritual science. The literal, word-for-word acceptance of the Gospels that is still so prevalent to-day, promotes Ahrimanic culture. Even on external grounds it is obvious that a strictly literal acceptance of the Gospels is unjustified. For as you know, what is good and right for one time is not right for every other time. What is right for one epoch becomes Luciferic or Ahrimanic when practised in a later one. The mere reading of the Gospel texts has had its day. What is essential now is to acquire a spiritual understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha in the light of the truths enshrined in the Gospels. Many people, of course, find these things disquieting; but those whose interest is attracted by Anthroposophy must learn to realise that the levels of culture, gradually piling one above the other, have created chaos, and that light must penetrate again into this chaos.

It is interesting nowadays to listen to someone whose views have become very extreme, or to read about some burning question of the day, and then to listen to sermons on the same subject given by a priest of some denomination who is still steeped in the form of thought current in bye gone times. There you face two worlds which you cannot possibly confuse unless you avoid all attempts to get at the root of these things. Listen to a modern socialist speaking about social questions and then, immediately afterwards, to a Catholic preacher speaking about the same questions. It is very interesting to find two levels of culture existing side by side but using the words in an entirely different sense. The same word has quite a different meaning in each case.

These things should be seen in the light that will dawn if they are taken in the earnest spirit we have been trying to convey. People belonging to definite religions do also come, in the end, to long in their own way for spiritual deepening. It is by no means without significance that a man as eminently spiritual as Cardinal Newman, ardent Catholic though he was, should say at his investiture as Cardinal in Rome that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation.

In effect, what Cardinal Newman said was that he could see no salvation for Christianity other than a new revelation! But he had not the courage to take a new spiritual revelation seriously. And so it is with many others. You can read countless treatises to-day about what is needed in social life.—Another book has recently appeared: Socialism, by Robert Wilbrandt, the son of the poet. In it the social question is discussed on the foundation of accurate and detailed knowledge. And finally it is stated that without the spirit nothing is achieved? That the very course of events shows that the spirit is necessary. Yes, but what does such a man really achieve? He gets as far as to utter the word “spirit”, to pronounce the abstract word “spirit”; but he refuses to accept, indeed he rejects, anything that endeavours to make the spirit really take effect.

For that it is essential above all to realise that wallowing in abstractions, however loud the cry for the spirit, is not yet spiritual, not yet spirit! Vague, abstract chattering about the spirit must never be confused with the active search for the content of the spiritual world pursued in anthroposophical science.

Nowadays there is much talk about the spirit. But you who accept spiritual science should not be deluded by such chattering; you should perceive the difference between it and the descriptions of the spiritual world attempted in Anthroposophy, where the spiritual world is described as objectively as the physical world. You should probe into these differences, reminding yourselves repeatedly that abstract talk of the spirit is a deviation from sincere striving for the spirit and that, by their very talk, people are actually removing themselves from the spirit. Purely intellectual allusion to the spirit leads nowhere.—What, then, is “intelligence”? What is the content of our human intelligence? I can best explain this in the following way.—Imagine—and this will be better understood by the many ladies present!—imagine yourself standing in front of a mirror and looking into it. The picture presented to you by the mirror is you, but it has no reality at all. It is nothing but a reflection. All the intelligence within your soul, all the intellectual content, is only a mirror-image; it has no reality. And just as your reflected image is called into existence through the mirror, so what mirrors itself as intelligence is called into existence through the physical apparatus of your body, through the brain. Man is intelligent only because his body is there. And as little as you can touch yourself by stretching your hand towards your reflected image, as little can you lay hold of the spirit if you turn only to the intellectual—for the spirit is not there! What is grasped through the intellect, ingenious as it may be, never contains the spirit itself, but only a picture of the spirit. You cannot truly experience the spirit if you get no further than mere intelligence. The reason why intelligence is so seductive is that it yields a picture, a reflected picture of the spirit—but not the spirit itself. It seems unnecessary to go to the inconvenience of penetrating to the spirit, because it is there—or so, at least, one imagines. In reality it is only a reflected picture—but for all that, it is not difficult to talk about the spirit.

To distinguish the mere picture from the reality—that is the task of the tenor of soul which does not merely theorise about spiritual science but has actual perception of the spirit.

That is what I wanted to say to you to-day in order to intensify the earnestness which should pervade our whole attitude to the spiritual life as conceived by Anthroposophy. For the evolution of humanity in the future will depend upon how truly this attitude is adopted by men of the present day. If what I have characterised in this lecture continues to be offered the reception that is still offered to it to-day by the vast majority of people on the earth, then Ahriman will be an evil guest when he comes. But if men are able to rouse themselves to take into their consciousness what we have been studying, if they are able so to guide it that humanity can freely confront the Ahrimanic influence, then, when Ahriman appears, men will acquire, precisely through him, the power to realise that although the earth must enter inevitably into its decline, mankind is lifted above earthly existence through this very fact. When a man has reached a certain age in physical life, his body begins to decline, but if he is sensible he makes no complaint, knowing that together with his soul he is approaching a life that does not run parallel with this physical decline. There lives in mankind something that is not bound up with the already prevailing decline of the physical earth but becomes more and more spiritual just because of this physical decline.

Let us learn to say frankly: Yes, the earth is in its decline, and human life, too, in respect of its physical manifestation; but just because it is so, let us muster the strength to draw into our civilisation that element which, springing from mankind itself, will live on while the earth is in decline, as the immortal fruit of earth-evolution.

• 1. Twelve lectures given at Nuremberg, 1908.

It was my task yesterday to show how the special configuration of such mythologies as the Osiris Myth, the Greek mythology—and in a certain sense even the Old Testament teachings to which we will return presently—is connected with changes in the stages of human consciousness. We know of the development of consciousness in mankind, we know that we have to look back to earlier times of man's evolution in which there existed an old clairvoyance, a perceptibility of super-earthly things. It is well to look back at such things for this retrospection gives us orientation. Mankind is again to achieve vision directed to the super-sensible; it is to be achieved on the path of Spiritual Science, through spiritual scientific thinking. The realization of what each one can do, no matter where he stands in the world, can be helped by the will to orientate oneself for what is to come by considering what has been.

In a certain sense things take place in later times in connection with events of earlier times. We look back from our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, in the development of which we are standing, to the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, the Greco-Latin, and to the Third, the Egyptian; we come then already to the time in which it was natural for men to express in certain mythical pictures and imaginations what they thought and felt about cosmic mysteries. In another connection we have already stated that we in our Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch have to recapitulate in a sort of inverted way what had happened in the Third, the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, so that it emerges again differently. The booklet ‘The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Mankind’, also refers, as you know, to this subject.

Now we saw yesterday that in the time of the Greco-Latin evolution, in the time that begins with the 7th or 8th century before our era, there was a kind of looking back of mankind, and this looking back to other states of consciousness in fact expressed in imaginative myths facts about the ruling spiritual beings, as we described yesterday. Men in the Fourth Epoch knew: when we look around us we see only the physical, on the other we can reflect. You know, moreover, if you have followed attentively what is said in my book The Riddles of Philosophy, that in Grecian times, and even much later, people saw Ideas—as it were—as Goethe still did, and that they could really say: we see them. Entirely abstract thinking has only come about in modern times. But at that time there was indeed a seeing of ideas, a seeing of spiritual realities, a living in spiritual realities.

In the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch this was no longer so in the full sense, but the people remembered that it had been so earlier. They said—and in fact this represented the truth:—there are, however, Beings in existence, who are not human beings, who live in super-sensible worlds and have still preserved life in the imaginative consciousness. The Greeks saw such Beings in the individuals of the Zeus-circle.

The Egyptians again said to themselves: that age in which men still lived directly with Imaginations was the age when Osiris wandered upon Earth. They meant of course not one Osiris, but it was believed that there had been a time in which men on earth lived in Imaginations. And this type of human soul which was able to live in Imaginations was described by saying: Osiris lived upon earth. Lost and slain had been this life-in-Imaginations. Osiris has been killed by his brother Typhon—that is, by that force of the human soul, which to be sure is still directed to the super-sensible, but will no longer evolve the Imaginative faculties. The ancient clairvoyance exists no more. The forces active in the old clairvoyance are now amidst the dead. Hence Osiris is the Judge of the dead; the human being meets him when he has passed through the portal of death. The figures of Osiris and Isis were brought into connection with the Death-Mystery by those people who set the Osiris myth into the centre of their thought. Moreover, in the details through which the Osiris myth has been elaborated there actually lies all that I have been stating. The point of time has also been specified in which according to the legend, Osiris was killed by Typhon.

And just as we could point to a quite definite heavenly constellation, which the Magi of the East knew as the constellation in which the new cosmic age was to approach (we have pointed out in the Christmas lectures that by a certain constellation of the ‘Virgin’ the Magi of the East knew that they were to bring their offerings to the new World-Saviour) so too have those whose thoughts centred on the Osiris myth looked back to quite definite star-constellations. They have said: Osiris was slain. They meant to say: the old life in the Imaginations vanished when the setting sun in autumn stood in seventeen degrees of Scorpio and in the opposite point of the heavens the full moon rose in Taurus or in the Pleiades. This constellation of the full moon rising in Taurus at a definite point of the year in connection with the Scorpio position of the Sun, this moment of evolution has been given by the followers of Osiris as that in which Osiris has vanished from the earth, that is, in which he was no longer there. These things naturally come about in such a way as to leave legacies behind. There have always been people, stragglers even up to recent centuries with Imaginative clairvoyance, but the point is to show when Imaginative clairvoyance disappeared from earth as a normal faculty of the human soul. And men were aware that in the ages when Imaginative clairvoyance prevailed on earth conditions were quite different from what they were later. And this too was plainly indicated in the Osiris-Isis myth. But it is just this that is so very little understood by those who explain the myth of Isis and Osiris.

It is related, as you know, that when Isis discovered that her spouse, Osiris, had been slain, she departed on a search for the dead body. She found it at last in Byblos in Phoenicia and brought the corpse of Osiris from Phoenicia back to Egypt. A deep wisdom is expressed in such a myth, a wisdom of humanity's physiology. What sort of conditions were there then during the Osiris-time? During the Osiris-time there was not yet such a script as the later script. What prevailed in Egypt during the age of Osiris was a picture-writing and this was considered sacred. And how actually was the picture-script brought about? It was brought about inasmuch as the most important signs were taken, not from animal or earthly forms, but from the star-constellations, in fact from what clairvoyance saw in the star-constellations. If I were to make a comparison from something lately in our minds, I might say: You have heard in the ‘Dream of Olaf &Åsteson’ how he experiences the spirit-snake, the spirit-dog and the spirit-bull; he describes what he feels about them. Imagine to yourselves such pictures, but in a far more perfect form, as signs—such signs then are images of Imaginations. Such signs as the signs of the earliest writing were held to be holy. In such signs was cosmic wisdom contained for ancient times, this cosmic wisdom which in fact was at the same time a heavenly wisdom, inasmuch as men read the cosmic mysteries in the star-script, as the dead alone are able to do now. The gift of possessing a writing which is really a reproduction of Imaginations only belonged to humanity at a certain period of time, and then vanished. And the ancients knew: this imaginative way of writing existed in the age of Osiris. Together with the dying away of the old life of the world in Imaginations, the ancient picture-script disappeared and there arose that which has become the abstract script. This no longer expresses mysteries, but gradually, since it has become abstract, only serves to express the sense world—namely, the ordinary letter-script. Just as Osiris was looked on in those ancient times as the hero, as the divine hero of the Imaginative script, so is Typhon, his brother but his opponent, the hero of the abstract script of letter, developed from it.

This is also indicated profoundly in the Osiris-Isis myth. Over to Phoenicia must Isis go to find the corpse; that means to find the picture-script transformed into the letter-script—to find the corpse of Osiris. The letter-script was ‘found’, invented, as we say, in Phoenicia. From Phoenicia back to Egypt the abstract-script has come, whereas the Egyptians in their old mysteries in the Osiris-time had a picture-writing reflecting Imaginations. Thus the transition from the old concrete conception in the Imaginative-script to the newer concept in the abstract script has also found expression in the Osiris-Isis myth.

All these things lie in the course of mankind's evolution. We are there looking back to an older experience in Imaginations. Real physiological wisdom is, in fact, expressed in the myths. Thinking gradually passed over to abstractions—not immediately to the quite empty abstractions of today but to the somewhat fuller abstractions of about the 6th and 5th-centuries B.C.—in the work of Thales, with whom one generally begins the history of philosophy. (You can read of it in my The Riddles of Philosophy.)

But you can see from this that humanity has to look back to earlier evolutionary periods with quite different conditions of soul. Certain Brotherhoods of modern times know, to be sure, about these entirely different conditions, but they hold that such things should still be kept under lock and key. That is not right for the present day, but it is a little dangerous to talk of these things beyond a certain degree. Up to a certain degree, however, it is not only a case of should, these things must be spoken of today, because the knowledge of ancient conditions of human consciousness helps to give orientation for what is to develop as the new. If we have knowledge of what once existed, that can help us to further the necessary new conditions of evolution, although of an entirely different kind.

Now today you find in boys who develop to the age of puberty a change of voice. It is as we know, the expression in the boys of an organic process, which occurs differently in the female sex, and which apparently makes greater inroads into the human being in the case of the female, since the process reaches more directly into the physical. But that is not true. The influence on boys is just as strong, though it lies in a different sphere, so to say, and though externally it only comes to expression physically in the change of voice.

This reaching maturity by the human being is today—in fact since the times when Osiris was dead for the outer world—almost a physical process. It was not merely a physical process in the ages when Osiris lived, no, it was a soul process. The boy of fourteen or fifteen years—as you know we have already spoken of other experiences at the time of puberty—experienced not only that his voice changed, but that what today only enters, presses into, the region of the voice, extending from the sexual essences of the organism, in those ancient times pressed also into the thoughts, the conceptual world of the young boy. We must deal with such things truthfully; the voice apparatus is simply pervaded with the sexual essences of the organism. Today the voice breaks; in those days the thoughts ‘broke’ too, since it was still the ancient Imaginative time. In those times the young boy before the age of puberty had certain Imaginations; it was a living process and all knew that the child up to nine or ten years of age had Imaginations—Imaginations of spiritual events in the atmosphere. (Today there are still slight remains of this in almost every child of tender age, it is only that people pay no attention to it, or talk the children out of it as being foolish nonsense.) In the air spiritual events are taking place around us all the time. The air is not only what physical science describes, but spiritual events are taking place. These spiritual events, essentially events of the etheric world, were perceived by children in full Imaginations up to the time of puberty. And when puberty entered—not only for the voice, but the life of concepts—the human being felt something in him (it was in fact that which shot up out of the forces which are usually called in physiology the sex forces), felt something in him of which he said: what I saw as a child through the Imaginations in the atmosphere, now comes to life in me again, it is perception, it lives in me. That took place. The man was aware that he had taken something into himself out of the atmosphere. Formerly he had seen it outside; now he felt it within him.

For woman too, in those ancient times, there had been, before puberty, a perception in Imaginations of what was outside in the atmosphere. But after puberty that which in the case of boys merely emerged in the feeling of an alteration in their mental life, in the case of the woman was like an ascent of still more inward Imaginations: it was the human image that the woman perceived within her again and again in Imagination. And then she said to herself: what I now perceive Imaginatively, is the same as I experienced in childhood before puberty, out in cosmic space, as Imaginative pictures. Both sexes, only in different ways, experienced the fact that they actually knew in the soul: in me something is born which cosmic space has fructified in me.

There you have a still more concrete form of the Osiris-Isis-myth: it is universal wisdom in so far as it is won from the atmosphere, but it is in organic connection with man, the deeper layers of the human spirit. You can get an idea of it if you seek it in the following way. You see, men think nowadays in an abstract way, inasmuch as they desire to know through the head what the world contains of laws and so on. In these old times men were clear that in this way, merely through head knowledge, one cannot know, but one knows through the whole human being. One knows what goes on outside in space, goes on etherically, by having perceived it formerly as it were, outside, and then after puberty pictured or felt it inwardly. How do you perceive then today, with the abstract perception that you have? You discover something which you see with the senses; then you think it over afterwards. That happens in rapid succession. With those mysteries, through which man in ancient times penetrated into the laws of the atmosphere present in Imaginations, it was a different matter. As child, up to puberty, he perceived, he only perceived; afterwards he worked this over inwardly. One might say it is only a perceptive process and a thinking process spread out in time; whereas today it is placed at man's own discretion to observe abstractly and to reflect, conceive abstractly. Over the whole life was spread what we now crowd together in a few moments as regards the outer physical world, perceive, conceive. That was something which in his relation to the world man thought of as spread out over the whole of human life between birth and death. To the age of puberty he perceived certain things, afterwards he reflected upon them. Such an age was once in existence.

But now think. People said to themselves: ‘this perceiving and reflecting, this is connected in a certain way with the day, with the rising and setting sun. With the rising sun, one wakes, gets up, begins to perceive and to think; with the setting sun this ceases, since one lies down to sleep.’ Thus people connected perceiving and thinking with the day; and what was spread out over the whole life between birth and death they brought into connection with more widely extended cosmic events in the heavens. Just as it depends on the sun, on the ordinary rising and setting of the sun, that I can perceive and think, so does it depend on greater, more extended star constellations which appear after centuries, after millennia, what man develops in perceiving and thinking of the kind that I have described. And as in those old times people connected the ordinary perception and thinking with the day, with sunrise and sunset—indeed as people do today though they don't think so and even believe they go by the clock—so they connected matters concerning more comprehensive cosmic mysteries with the other star-constellations, with the other events in the heavens.

You see, a deep logic, a deep wisdom lies in these things. With superficialities one cannot get at the facts. But something else too is bound up with it. These ancient peoples—and we could speak of others besides the Egyptians and the Greeks—these ancient peoples knew that the more inward-lying forces of human nature are connected with what come to expression in celestial happenings, in star-constellations. That decadence of man which is expressed in the modern attitude to the sex problem, and that greatest decadence which is expressed in the most modern attitude to sexual problems, of this nothing was yet known to those ancient peoples of the ages of which one must speak when one deals with these things. For them it was something very different when they had the feeling: it is the sexual essences which are suffused into the human being when the voice breaks and therewith the thoughts break too—or when the other appears of which I have spoken. That the divine was then pouring itself forth in man—that was the conviction of the ancients. Hence what is only viewed in a pernicious sense today is found in all old religious rites: the sex-symbols, the so-called sex-symbols, point thus to this connection—we can call it the connection between the atmosphere with its air-events and the human processes of knowledge which take place during the whole human life between birth and death.

‘Through my eye, through my ear’—so said these people—‘I am connected with what is brought by the day. Through the deeper, more inwardly lying forces, I am connected with something quite different, with the secrets of the air, which, however, are only perceived in Imaginative experience.’ And this Imaginative experience in its concrete form I have described for you with reference to these early times.

The Old Testament conception in these matters was different inasmuch as it put doctrine in the place of actual experience. The Egyptian of the Osiris-age, especially of the earlier Osiris-age, said as follows: ‘The true human being only enters me with puberty, for I then take in what formerly I saw in Imaginations. The air transmits to me the true man.’ In the doctrine of the Old Testament this was transformed into the conception: The Elohim or Jahve have breathed into man the living breath (Odem), the air. There the essence was lifted out of the direct living experience and became doctrine, theory. This was necessary, for only so could mankind be led—and that is the meaning of the Old Testament—be led from that living in union with the outer world, which still had an inner connection between the microcosm, man, and the macrocosm, the world, to their further evolution (of which I will speak later). As this connection gradually vanished, it was necessary to fall back on just such a doctrine as that of the Old Testament.

But now there came the time of the death of Osiris—and therewith the time too in which, while one thing became finer, the other thing, as it were, became coarser. How is that to be understood? Well, you can imagine it thus: When we go back into the old Osiris-time, then the human being saw or felt before puberty the Light-Imaginations within the outer air (see sketch)—if I speak for the one sex—

Thus he saw in his environment the Light-Imaginations in the air up to the time of puberty. Afterwards he had the feeling that they had entered into him, and the changes occurred of which we have spoken. For the child the air was everywhere filled with Light phenomena; for the grown man, the matured man, the air was certainly still there, but he knew that as child he had seen something else in it. He knew that the air was at the same time the bearer, the mother, of light. He knew that it was not true that when he looked out into the air there was nothing in it but what was shown physically. Beings live in it which are to be perceived in Imagination.

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These Beings were for the Greeks the Being of the Zeus-circle. Thus man knew that there were Beings in the air. But all this—the fact that human states of consciousness became changed—all this is connected with the fact that even objective things became different in the finer substantiality. Naturally, for the modern clever man it is an outrage if one says such things. I know it is an outrage, but nevertheless it is true: the air has become different. Naturally it has not changed in a way that can be tested by chemical reagents; nevertheless the air has become different. The air has lost the strength to express the Light-Imaginations; the air has—one could say—become coarser. It has actually become different on earth since that ancient time. The air has become coarser. But not only the air, but man himself has become coarser. That which formerly lived spiritually in the essences which permeated the larynx and the rest of the organism, that has also grown coarser. So that in fact if one speaks today of the sexual-essences one speaks of what is different from what one would speak of in ancient times. Everyone in older times knew: ‘The perception of the day is connected with my personality; the other, which I experience from the atmosphere, experience with my whole life, that, however, is connected with mankind as such, that goes beyond the individual man.’ Hence they also sought to fathom the social mysteries under which men live together, through the link which bound them with the macrocosm, they sought for social wisdom through the star-wisdom. But what lived in man as social wisdom bound him in fact to the celestial. This came to expression in the most everyday concepts. A human pair before the death of Osiris would never have felt anything else than that they had received a child from heaven. That was a living consciousness and corresponded also with truth. And this living consciousness could develop because man knew that he received out of the air-filled space what he himself experienced.

Of all this the coarse dregs, so to say, have been left. As in the air the coarse sediment has remained behind of that power of the air that revealed itself to man in Imaginations in earlier ages, so in man himself are the coarse dregs left behind. This had to come about since otherwise men could not have attained freedom and a full consciousness of the ego. But it is the dregs that have remained. In this way, however, all that the ancients meant by the divine, which as you can now readily realize, they connected in a roundabout way with the sexual essences, all this has been coarsened, not only in idea but also in reality. But it is there nevertheless; naturally not only in the one way, but in the other way too. The reproduction of mankind was in those olden times thought to be in direct connection with the micro-macrocosmic bond of mankind, as you have seen, but the whole social life of man on earth was in fact also thought to be in connection with this micro-macrocosmic bond. Numa Pompilus went to the Nymph Egeria to receive information from her as to how he should arrange social conditions in the Roman Kingdom. This, however, means nothing else than that he had let the star wisdom be imparted to him, had let the star-wisdom tell him how social conditions should be organized.

That which men reproduce on earth, and which is connected with successive generations, was to be placed in the service of what the stars have to say. As the individual man directed his life with his ordinary perceiving and thinking, according to the rising and setting of the sun, so the interconnections of mankind which later became ‘States’, were to be placed under the star-constellations as expressions of cosmic relationships.

In our language—and languages often contain memories of old conditions—we still have a remembrance of this connection in the fact that the relation of male and female is described by the word ‘Geschlecht’ (sex) and also the successive generations as ‘Geschlechter’ (races). It is one and the same word: the ‘Geschlecht’—the family, interconnected, blood relations—and then the relation of man and woman. And so is it too in other languages, and it all points to how man sought to find a recognizable connection with the macrocosm for what lay in his nature, in the deeper strata of his being.

These things have become coarsened in the direction we have discussed. Among other things that have remained behind is the attachment in longing and feeling to nationality, the clinging to the national, the chauvinistic impulse for the national; that is the lingering relic of what in older times could be thought of in quite different connections. But only when one looks into such things does one know the truth contained in them. What is expressed by the nationalistic longing? When man develops to excess this national feeling, this sentiment for the nation, what is living in it? Exactly the same as lives in the sexual, in the sexual in one way, in national sentiment in another. It is the sexual human being that lives his life through these two different poles. To be Chauvinistic, is, nothing else really than developing a sort of group-sexuality. One could say that where the sexual essences, in what they have left behind, grip men more, there is present more national Chauvinism; for it is the very force living in reproduction that comes to manifestation too in national sentiment. Hence the battle-cry of the so-called ‘Freedom of the Peoples or of the Nations’ is really only to be understood in its more intimate connections if one said—in a most respectable sense of course—‘The Call for the Re-establishment of the National in the Light of the Sex-Problem’. It is necessary to realize as one of the secrets of the time-impulse, the fact that the sexual problem is proclaimed in quite a special form over the earth today, without people having any idea of how out of their subconsciousness the sexual clothes itself in the words: ‘Freedom of the Peoples.’ And far more than men imagine are sexual impulses present in the catastrophic events of today, far more than men imagine! For the impulses to what is happening today lie, in fact, very, very deep.

Such truths must no longer in our present age be kept under lock and key. Certain Brotherhoods have been able to keep them under lock and key, because in the strictest sense of the word they have excluded women. Although joint work with women can nevertheless lead to all sorts of bad things, as has indeed constantly been shown today, yet the time has come in which right views, general views, on these matters must be spread among humanity. Ideas are nevertheless spread abroad which are impure, foolish, empty, inasmuch as from certain directions, without knowledge of the more intimate connections, all sorts of things are treated today as sexual problems. But you see how what here is pure, genuine, honourable truth comes in contact, on the one hand, with what can be the most impure, lowest way of thinking, as is shown from time to time in the outgrowths of Psycho-Analysis or similar things. You will always find, however, that what on the one hand, rightly understood, is profound truth, needs hardly to be altered at all in words, but only to be permeated with a low-minded type of thought, and it is simply a pernicious, stupid, objectionable conception.

A former age could speak of ‘nations’, when one pictured ‘Nations’ in such a way that one nation had its guardian spirit in Orion, another in another star, and one knew that one's life was ruled from the star-constellations. One then appealed, as it were, to the ordering in the heavens. Today where there is no longer such ordering in the heavens, there is the appeal to the merely national, the Chauvinistic appeal to the merely national, that is to say, an asserting of an impulse, psycho-sexual in the most pronounced sense, a backward luciferic impulse.

If one would see clearly and plainly what is today, one must not shrink from the actual underlying truth. But one can also see from such things why people are so afraid of the truth. Just imagine if, in the outcry on the freedom of nations and so forth that is raised today, people were to hear ‘that comes from sexual impulses!’ One should just imagine that! One should picture for once the crowing cock ... I don't mean any special one, not simply Clemenceau ... one should picture all the declaimers on this theme ... and imagine that they had to realize that what they crow is after all the mating-voice of the cock, however finely it is decked out in national garments.

These are things which mankind must learn to know today, and which they do not want to hear, for, as you know, of things that are black it is asserted that they are white, and of those that are white, that they are black. The point is, that that ancient time of which I have spoken has come now to the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch in which abstraction has gradually developed. There where the boundary lies between the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean epochs (you can read about this in my book The Riddles of Philosophy), there men strove with all their might over the intellectual value—so to say—of the abstract. Read afterwards in my The Riddles of Philosophy where I speak of the nominalism and realism of the Middle Ages. Abstraction had grown to such a pitch that they asked themselves: When I form a concept, has that any significance for the things outside, or is it only a name in my head? Today people no longer reflect on such things. Of what interest is it to people to know that men have tormented themselves in the Middle Ages, when the abstractive power of thought was felt, what role the so-called universals, the general ideas, play in the world! That one wrestled and strove about what role abstractions play! Nowadays one thinks no more about it; one has already become used to abstractions; one does not strive to get beyond the abstract impulse but, on the contrary, to get thoroughly within it. The conflict over ‘universals’—this ultimately came to the point where it was said: ‘Universals, General Ideas, are at first as certain Ideas in God: those are Universals ante rem; then the Ideas are in the objects: Universals in re; and then the Ideas are in our mind, our soul: post rem—Universals post rem.’ That was an expedient, in order to take up a stand on the question: is a man connected with reality when he thinks, when he only thinks ideas? They still felt something of how in ancient times men had been connected with reality. When they reached maturity they thought over, as it were, what as a child they had formerly perceived; they knew therefore that only then had the true human being entered in. One had to struggle desperately over the Universals, as to whether, when one thinks, there is still something of reality left in one's thought or whether it is entirely divorced from reality and has nothing to do with it. Since that time people have grown accustomed to take the universals, the abstractions, as abstractions, and are more or less completely cut off from reality in their consciousness.

Such a process is taking place continually on a small scale. Think for a moment: words which are the representatives of concepts, are originally in direct connection with what is seen. For instance, a small group of fighting men has one man at the head, they have this one man before them, they call him the foremost, the first, Fürst (Eng: Chief, Prince). There one has it linked directly with what is beheld, later it was set free, it became a word which denoted something without any sort of connection with a direct perception. Just think to how many words this applies! And the next step is that then certain words become privileged, that speech becomes monopolized, becomes the property of the State. Even in language certain things are developing in this direction, are they not? ... Take the simple case that someone has learnt a great deal, has become wise—let us say, without meaning anything foolish by it—he is a learned man. In a certain naive way one would then say: he is a ‘Doctor’. Here we have a connection with fact if we call someone ‘doctor’ who is seen to be learned. For it still has a certain significance when there is documentary evidence held by a Corporation which gives this recognition. But it loses the significance when it is monopolized ... Yet mankind is enthusiastic about such monopolizing nowadays. All possible words are to be monopolized. A man is not supposed merely through his gifts to be an ‘engineer’, but this must also become a recognized title from heaven knows where. And increasingly things are to be loosed from their connections. There you can see the abstraction-process on a small scale, but it is accomplished wholesale with infinite significance. A family has a father. What is the connection between the pater, who is the father of the family and the Pater, who is a priest? This tearing loose of what is contained in the word—I wanted to bring it forward as illustrating the abstraction-process taking place in humanity.

And in the case of ideas it is much more mischievous than in language; people often make use of concepts without having the least idea of their connection with what is perceived. Sometimes people then search for the real observation, become comic, frightfully comic in this search! Only remember how there is a whole literature today about the cross-sign, which is really a universal sign, spread over the world. Most amusing is all the learnedness applied to it! This sign

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is traced back to this

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That was supposed to have been the cross of former times.

Sometimes they then trace that back by saying: only the parts have been left, the swastika and so on. Yes, it is frightfully

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clever what has been written about it, quite immensely clever, the way ‘cleverness’ has been applied to such things. I do not wish at all to go in for detailed criticism. But to know what is true, cleverness is not enough. One ought, of course, to know that the cross-sign means nothing else than that the human being takes his stand, stretches out his arms and then he is the cross. From above downwards goes a stream of existence that binds man with the macrocosm, and through the outstretched hands too. And the Cross is the sign for Man.

And when you find distinguishing marks of the Assyrian kings or of the Egyptian kings, medallions, for instance, then they are medallions with the cross-sign.

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And two other signs (the cross on the medallion is one sign that ancient kings had) were, for instance, these.

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The star in the sign is generally made in such a way that one does not immediately recognize the pentagram in it—or is it even a hexagram;—however, that is not the point.

Specially clever people have said: that is the Sun, that is the Cross, that is the moon, that is the star. But the deeper meaning lies precisely in the fact that it is man, the microcosm, who is compounded of sun and moon. You see from this ordinary cross-sign, how the concept has been separated from the real object. The direct perception is this, the sign is this: man in the form of a cross. People today know so little of how to connect the object with the sign, that, as I have said, an immensely clever literature exists which seeks to find out how this sign is connected with what it wants to express. And so one could write quite clever articles over the most everyday words without discovering how these things, these words, were connected with the realities.

Humanity had to go through the period of abstractions. We know that today we are no longer in the sign of Aries, in which the Sun stood at the beginning of Spring when the transition took place from the old Imaginative time, of which echoes still lingered, to the age of abstractions. We have entered the age of Pisces. A special characteristic of this age is that man receives the force for abstract ideas out of the macrocosm. Man receives this force today from the macrocosm. But in the meantime man does not know how he is to unite the abstract ideas again with reality. They must be united again with reality.

I said at the beginning of the lecture that in this fifth Post-Atlantean epoch there must be a kind of recapitulation of the time in the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch when one looked back to the ancient Osiris-age, when Imaginations were in existence. The reverse, as it were, must take place: man must find the way back again to the Imaginations. One could say in another form: Osiris must become alive again, we must find ways and means to bring Osiris to life. I have spoken very concretely in these studies by saying that we must find forms of experience which are common to the dead and the living. Since Osiris was slain he has been with the dead; he will remain with the dead, but he will have to come again among the living, when there are concerns which are common to the dead and the living for the social life of men.

This brings us to the fact that people must understand something which it is above all necessary for our time to understand: how will Osiris be revivified? How can Osiris come to new life? How does man approach again life and experience in the Imaginative consciousness?

We will speak of this tomorrow—how he is to rise again, and how the resurrection is to be brought about. Tomorrow's considerations shall have then, as their subject, the Imaginative consciousness.