The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In these first lectures, we shall bring together, from the field of knowledge of conditions which go to promote a healthy Agriculture, those which are necessary in order to enable us to reach certain practical conclusions which are to be realised in immediate application and which can only have significance when being so applied. To do so we have to enquire at the very outset how the products of Agriculture come into being and what is their connection with the Universe as a whole. Now a farm or agricultural estate comes to full expression as a ‘farm’ in the best sense of the word if it can be regarded as being a kind of separate individuality, a self-contained individuality. This is the condition to which every agricultural estate or farm should approach as near as possible, although it cannot be completely attained. In other words, everything that is needed to bring forth agricultural products should be supplied by the farm itself, which includes, of course, the necessary cattle and live-stock.

Anything brought in from outside, such as manure and the like, ought under ideal conditions of Agriculture, to be regarded rather as medicine for use in the case of sickness. A sound farm should be able to bring forth from itself everything that it needs. We shall see later why this is quite the natural thing. As long as we neglect the inner nature and essence of things and regard them only from their outer material aspect, so long will it be legitimate to ask: Does it really matter whether cow-manure is taken from the neighbouring farm or from one's own steading? Although it may be impossible to carry it out strictly it is important to hold before one the ideal of a self-contained farm. You will find some justification for this statement if you consider first the earth from which our farm arises and secondly the factors which work in upon the earth from the Universe. It is usual to speak of these factors in very abstract terms. People are aware, it is true, that the light and warmth of the sun, and all the meteorological phenomena connected with these, have a particular bearing upon the type of vegetation produced in a given area. But modern views can give no further details, nor throw any further light on the matter because they do not penetrate into the underlying facts. Let us therefore start from the standpoint which embraces the fact that the basis of all Agriculture is the soil of the earth.

This soil—I will indicate it schematically by this straight line (see Drawing No. 2) is generally looked upon as being something purely mineral into which at the best organic substance has entered either because humus has been formed or manure has been introduced. The idea that the soil not only contains added organic substance but also has itself a plant—like nature—and even contains an astral activity: such an idea has never been considered, still less conceded. And if we go a step further and consider how this inner life of the soil in the delicate balancing of its distribution is quite different in Summer from what it is in Winter, we come to subjects which are of enormous importance in practical life but to which no attention is paid to-day. If you start by considering the soil, then you must bear in mind the fact that it is a kind of organ within that organism which manifests itself wherever the growth of Nature appears. The earth surface is really an organ, an organ which, if you care to. you may compare with the human diaphragm. “We may put the matter broadly in this way (it is not quite exact but will give the right idea): Above the diaphragm there are in man certain organs, the head in particular, and the processes of breathing and circulation which work up into the head. Under the diaphragm are other organs. Now if we compare the earth surface with the human diaphragm we must say: The individuality represented by our farm, having the earth surface for its diaphragm has its head under the earth, while we and all the animals live in its belly. Above the surface of the earth, is really what may be regarded as the bowels of what I will now call the “agricultural-individuality.” On a farm, we are walking about inside the belly of the farm, and the plants grow upwards within this belly. Thus, we are dealing with an individuality which is standing on its head, and which is only rightly looked at if so understood, especially as regards its relation to Man. In relation to animals, the situation, as we shall see later on, is slightly different.

Now why do I say that the “agricultural-individuality” stands on its head?

I do so because the air, vapours and warmth, which are in the immediate neighbourhood of the soil and from which both man and the plants derive air, moisture and warmth—all this corresponds to the abdominal organs in the human body. On the other hand, everything that takes place within the earth, under the soil, affects the general growth of plants in the same way as our head affects our organism—especially in childhood, but also throughout the whole of our life. Thus, there is a constant and very living interplay of supra-terrestrial and sub-terrestrial activities.—The forces at work above the earth are immediately dependent upon what we will regard for the time being as localised on the planets. Moon, Mercury and Venus. These planets in strengthening and modifying the effects of the Sun exercise their influence on all that is above the earth surface, while the more distant planets lying outside the earth's path round the Sun strengthen and modify the effects of the solar influences which penetrate upwards through the earth. Thus, the growth of plants is affected by the distant heavens in so far as it takes place underground, and by the nearer heavens in so far as it takes place above ground; and the influences upon vegetable growth coming from the expanses of the Cosmos do not shine directly down upon the earth, but are first absorbed by the earth which then causes them to radiate upwards. What come from beneath as good or bad vegetable growth are really the cosmic influences which are reflected from below; whereas in the air and water above the earth the Cosmos exercises its power directly. The direct cosmic in-streaming is stored up beneath the earth's surface, and from there it works back. The inherent qualities of the soil affecting the growth of plants are dependent upon these stored up influences. (Later we shall consider the case of the animals). The soil still retains in it the effects of influences dependent upon the most remote parts of the Cosmos, which need to be considered in connection with the Earth. These effects are found in what we know generally as sand and rock; the substances which do not absorb water, which are ordinarily supposed to contain no nutritive elements whatsoever and which nevertheless play a very important part in the promotion of growth. These minerals are entirely dependent upon the activities of forces coming from the remotest parts of the Cosmos, and, improbable as it may appear, it is primarily through the medium of siliceous sand that it comes about that soil contains and radiates upwards what may be called its elements of life-ether and chemical activity (chemical ether). The inner life of the soil and the formation of its particular chemical properties depend entirely upon the constitution of its sandy parts, and what the plant roots experience within the soil is determined by the amount of Cosmic life and Cosmic Chemistry which the Earth has absorbed through the mediation of its stony substance (which of course, may lie at some depth below the earth surface). Anyone, therefore, who has to concern himself with the growth of plants should be quite clear as to the geological structure of the ground from which the plants are to grow, and further should bear in mind in all cases that those plants whose roots are for us of primary importance cannot do without silicon in the soil, even though thi3 may lie well below. We should be thankful that silicon makes up 47% to 48% of the Earth, either in the form of silicon (silicic acid) or in other' compounds. Such supplies as we need are therefore always present.

Now the effects which have been brought about in the root through silicon must be borne upwards through the plant. It must stream upwards and there must be a constant interaction between the cosmic forces that have entered into the plant through silicon and those that are active above—forgive me—m the “belly” and that supply the “head” below with what it requires. True the “head” must be provided for out of the Cosmos, but this process must interact with that which takes place above ground in the “belly.” The forces coming in from the Cosmos and being caught up underground must be able to flow upwards again, and the substance which brings this about is clay. Clay is the mediator through which the cosmic activity in the soil is enabled to work from below upwards. In actual practice this will give us the key to the handling of both clay soil and sandy soil according to the particular which we may wish to cultivate. But we must first know what is actually happening. How clay is to be described and how treated in order to make it fertile are important but secondary considerations. The first and foremost thing to know about clay is that it promotes the cosmic upward flow.

However, this cosmic upward flow is not enough by itself. There must also be present the opposite, which I would call the earthly or terrestrial element streaming downwards. All that undergoes a kind of external digestion in the “belly” (the processes above the surface throughout Summer and Winter are indeed a kind of digestion in relation in the growth of plants I) has to be drawn down into the earth. All forces produced by the action of water and air above the Earth and also the substances in delicate homeopathic distribution called from there are drawn down into the earth by lime presented in it in greater or smaller proportions. The lime content of the soil and the distribution of lime in homeopathic dilution above the surface—these are the factors which have the task of leading the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces down into the soil.

These things will take on a very different aspect in future when we shall have a real science concerning them, and not only the scientific guesswork of to-day: it will be possible then to give exact information. We shall then know that there is a great, an immense difference between the warmth that exists above the surface of the Earth and which stands within the sphere of the influence of the Sun, Venus. Mercury and Moon, and the. warmth which makes itself felt within the earth and which stands under the influence of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. These two kinds of warmth which we may call the “blossom and leaf warmth” and the “root-warmth” respectively, are completely different from one another—so much so, indeed, that we can describe the warmth above the Earth as a “dead” warmth, the warmth below the Earth's surface a “living” warmth. The warmth below the surface, especially during Winter, contains an inner vital principle. If we human beings had to experience in ourselves this living warmth which works within the soil, we should all become immensely stupid, because in order that we may be intelligent beings, dead warmth has to be supplied to our bodies. But at the moment when the limestone and other substances enable warmth to be drawn into the soil and to change from outer into inner warmth, it passes over into a condition of gentle aliveness. It is recognised to-day that there is a difference between the air which is above the Earth and that which is below the surface, but the difference between warmth above the Earth and that below the surface has been overlooked. It is generally known that the air under the Earth contains more carbonic acid, while that above the Earth contains more oxygen; but the reason for this is not known. It is that the air, as it is drawn into the earth, is penetrated by a gentle aliveness. This is true both of warmth and of air. They both receive a tiny spark of life as they pass into the earth. It is different in the case of water and of the solid earth element itself. Both of these have less life inside the Earth than they have when above its surface. They become “more dead,” they lose something of their life they had outside. But it is precisely this circumstance which exposes them to the influences of the most distant cosmic forces. The mineral substances have to free themselves from the forces which are working immediately above the surface of the Earth if they wish to be accessible to these far away cosmic forces. In our epoch, this emancipation from the processes in the immediate neighbourhood takes place in the period of the time between the 15th January and 15th February, i.e. in Winter. The time will come when these indications will be acknowledged as exact data. It is at this period of the Winter that within the Earth the formative forces of crystallisation reach their full development in the mineral substances. In these days of mid-winter, it is a peculiar feature of the interior or the Earth that it becomes less dependent upon its mineral masses and falls under the influence of the crystallising forces of the cosmic expanses.

Now consider what happens. Towards the end of January, the mineral substances of the Earth have a greater “longing” than at any other time to reach crystal purity in the economy of Nature; and the deeper one goes, the greater one finds this “longing” to be. The plants, absorbed in their own life in the Earth, are less open at this time than at any other to the influence of the mineral substances. But for a time before and for a time after this period, (but especially before when the minerals are preparing to perfect their crystal shape and purity) they are of utmost importance to the growth of plants. It is then that they throw out forces which are of extreme importance to plant growth. Thus, some time in November and December there .is a point of time when the mineral forces at work under the Earth are particularly propitious to the growth of plants. The question therefore arises: How can this best be utilised for the growth of plants? Someday it will become evident that by utilising this knowledge we are able to guide the growth of plants. I will say this now: That m the case of a soil which does not of itself promote the required upward movement of forces which ought to work upwards in the Winter period, it is well to add clay in a proper proportion. (I shall indicate this proportion later on). In this way, we enable the soil to carry those forces, upwards to make it effective in the realm of plant growth above the Earth; before the forces of the minerals have reached their maximum effects for themselves, which will not be until January or February period. (These forces show themselves outwardly—for those who can read their story—in snow crystals.) It may be noted that the power of these forces becomes stronger and stronger the deeper we go into the interior of the Earth.

In this way, what seems to most people recondite can give us insight of the greatest positive value and practical help, where we should otherwise be working at random. Indeed, we must realise clearly that the cultivated ground together with what lies under the surface of the Earth forms an individuality living also within the element of time, (i.e. living through the four seasons,) and that the life of the Earth still is particularly strong during Winter, whereas in Summer it undergoes a kind of death.

Now with regard to the cultivation of the soil there is a point of great importance which must be thoroughly understood. It is a point I have often dealt with among Anthroposophists. It is that we know the conditions under which the forces of the cosmic spaces can work upon the earthly realm. Let us begin with seed formation. The seed which gives rise to the embryo of the plant is generally regarded as a molecular structure of exceptional complexity, and science lays great stress upon this interpretation. The molecules, it is said, have a certain structure, in simple molecules it is simple, in complicated molecules it becomes more and more complex, until we come to the extreme complexity of the albuminous or protein molecule. People stand in wonder and astonishment at the enormous complexity of the structure supposed to exist in the seed.

They do so because they reason as follows. The albumen (or protein) molecule, they say, must be of enormous complexity, for the organism in succeeding plants arises from it. This organism is enormously complex, and since its structure was determined by the embryonic conditions of the seed, the latter's microscopic or ultra-microscopic content must also have a structure of enormous complexity. Well, it is complex indeed in the beginning. As the earthly albumen is formed, its molecular structure is driven to the utmost complexity; but this alone would never give rise to a new organism. For the organism arising from the seed does not proceed by a mere continuation in the offspring of what was present in the parent plant or animal. What happens is that when the embryonic structure has reached its highest stage of complexity in the earth domain it falls to pieces and becomes a “little chaos,” it breaks up and dissolves, one might say, into “world-dust.” And when this little chaos of world-dust is there, the whole surrounding Cosmos begins to work upon it. to stamp it with its own image and to build up in it a structure conditioned by the forces of the Universe working in upon it from every side (see Drawing No. 3). Thus, the seed becomes an image of the Cosmos. Every time this happens, and seed formation is carried through to the point or chaos, the new organism is^: built up from the seed-chaos by the activity of the cosmos. The parent organism has only the tendency to bring the seed into such cosmic position that through its affinity with this cosmic position the cosmic forces will act in the proper directions so that, e.g., a dandelion will give rise to another dandelion and not a berberis.

But the new thing that is built up is always the image of some cosmic constellation. It is built up out of the cosmos. And if in the Earth we would make effective the forces of the cosmos, we must drive the earthly elements into the state of greatest possible chaos. This has to be the case whenever we want the cosmos to act upon our Earth. In the case of plant-growth this is in a certain sense provided for by Nature herself. But just because every new organism is built up by the Cosmos it is necessary that the cosmic principles must be allowed freedom to work in the organisms until the seed-formation is completed.

If, for example, we plant the seed of a given plant in the earth, the seed contains the impress of the whole Cosmos from a particular cosmic direction, which means that it came under the influence of a particular constellation and received its particular form. At the moment when the seed is placed in the soil it is strongly worked upon by the terrestrial (“belly” Ed.) forces, and it is filled with the longing to deny the cosmic forces, in order that it may spread and grow in all directions. For the forces above the surface of the Earth do not want the plant to retain this cosmic form. The seed had to be driven to the point of chaos; but now that the plant is sprouting it is necessary to oppose the terrestrial to the cosmic forces which live as the form of the plant inside the seed. For the cosmic forces must be opposed and balanced, as it were, by the terrestrial forces. We must help the plant to become more akin to the Earth in its growth. This can only be done by introducing into the plant some form of living earthly matter which has not yet reached the state of chaos and seed formation, life which has been held up in a plant before the seeds have been formed. For this purpose, a rich humus formation comes to man's assistance m those districts that are fortunate enough to possess it. Man can hardly find any artificial substitute for the fertility given to the soil by Nature through humus. What causes the formation of humus? It arises from the absorption of remnants of living plants into the whole process of Nature. These remnants have not yet reached the state of chaos, and respect the cosmic forces, as it were. If humus is used for the growth of plants the terrestrial forces are held fast within them. The cosmic forces then work only in the upward stream that terminates in seed-formation. While the terrestrial forces work in the development of flowers, leaf and so on, the cosmos only radiates its influence into all this.

Let us suppose that we have before us a plant growing up out of its own root. At the top end of the stem comes the grain of seed, while the leaves and blossoms spread out sideways. Now, in the leaf and the blossom the terrestrial element is working in giving shape and filling it with matter; the reason why a leaf grows or a grain swells, and takes up the substance inside it is to “be found in the terrestrial forces which we lead to the plant and which have not yet reached the point of chaos. The seed, however, whose forces work upwards through the stem—vertically—not rotating around it (as in the formation of leaves Ed.) radiates the cosmic forces into leaves and blossoms. One can actually see this. We have only to look at the green leaves of a plant. In their shape, in the substances filling them and in their green colour, the leaves bear the terrestrial element. But they would not be green if they had not within them the cosmic force of the Sun. And now look at the coloured blossoms. In these the cosmic force of the Sun is not working alone but is supported by the distant planets, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. If we regard the growth and development of plants from this point of view, we shall see the redness of the rose as the force of Mars, the yellow of the sunflower- (so-called only because of its shape) as the force of Jupiter. It should be called the Jupiter flower, for it is the force of Jupiter that reinforces the solar force and brings forth the white and yellow colours in the flowers. The blue of the chickweed or chicory flower is the effect of Saturn reinforcing the effect of the Sun. Thus, we can see Mars in the red-coloured flower. Jupiter in the yellow, Saturn in the blue, while in the green colour of the leaf we see the Sun itself. But the same powers which appear as colour in the flower are also at work especially strongly in the root. Here once more the forces living in the distant planets are active within the soil. If we pull a plant out of the ground we may see that in the roots there is cosmic force, in the blossom mostly the terrestrial element. and only in the finest shading by the colour the cosmic element can be seen. The terrestrial forces on the other hand if living actively in the root cause the root to push out into form. For the form of the plant is determined by factors arising in the realm of earth. It is the terrestrial forces that causes the form to spread. When the root develops and divides, it is due to the terrestrial forces working downwards just as the cosmic forces (in the case of the colour) work upwards. Single roots are therefore cosmic roots, whereas forked roots are due to the terrestrial forces working down into the soil, just as in colour the cosmic forces work upwards into the flowers. And the cosmic force of the Sun stands between the two. The Sun force works principally in the green leaves, in the interaction between blossom and root, and in all that is between the two. Thus, the Sun element really belongs to what we have called the diaphragm provided by the surface of the earth: whereas the cosmic element belongs to the interior of the earth and works its way up into the upper part of the plant. The terrestrial element above the earth works downwards and is drawn into the plant with the help of the limestone. Plants which draw down the terrestrial element into their roots through the lime are those whose roots divide in all directions such as all herbs used for fodder, (but not turnips) and such as the sainfoin. Thus, it should be possible, looking at the form of a plant and the colour of the flowers, to tell how much cosmic forces and how much terrestrial forces are at work in it. Now let us assume that we find some means of holding back the cosmic forces within the plant. These forces will then be prevented from manifesting it by pushing up into flowers but will live out their life in the region of the stem of the plant. Now wherein do these cosmic forces reside in the plant? They reside in the silicon. Take the Equisetum. It has this very property of attracting silicon and permeating itself with it. It is 90% silicon. Thus, in this plant the cosmic element is present to a tremendous extent. It does not manifest itself in flowers, but in the growth of the lower part of the plant.

Now, let us take the opposite case. Let us suppose that we want to hold back these forces which work upwards from the root through the stem into the leaves and store them up in the region of the root. This possibility is no longer fully open to. us in the present epoch of our earth, since the genera and species of plants have been so firmly established. Formerly, in ancient epochs when men could easily transform one plant into another, this possibility had to come greatly into consideration. Today we consider it only from the point of view of finding out the condition favourable to a given plant. How can we then set about preventing these forces from pushing upwards into blossom and fruit? How can we in addition hold back the development of stem and leaf within the formation of the root? We must place such a plant on sandy soil. For silicon or flint holds back the cosmic forces and even gathers them. Now the potato plant is one in which the growth of leaf and stem is held back. The potato is a root-stock. The forces that form leaf and stem are held fast in the potato itself. The potato is not a root but a stem which has been held back. Potatoes must therefore be planted on sandy soil; this is the only way of holding back the cosmic forces in them.

The A B C of everything concerning the growth of the plant consists, therefore, m knowing what in any particular plant is of cosmic origin, and what is due to terrestrial forces. How can we make a soil more inclined to condense, as it were, the cosmic forces to retain them in root and leaf? How can we thin them out so that they can be sucked upwards into the blossoms and colour them and even into the fruit, and permeate them with a delicate taste? For the delicate taste in an apricot or plum is, like the colour of a flower, both being due to the cosmic forces which have worked their way upward through the plant. In the apple, you are literally eating Jupiter, in the plum you are eating Saturn. If modern man were faced with the necessity of producing the innumerable species and varieties of fruit-bearing plants from the much smaller number of original plants existing in primordial times, he would not get very far. And we may be thankful that the great majority of our existing fruit trees were brought into existence when mankind still possessed an ancient instinctive wisdom of how to produce new varieties out of the primitive species which then existed. Nowadays these things are done “by trial and error. People do not enter into the process with knowledge. And yet a rational method is the fundamental condition for any possible advance in Agriculture. What our friend Stegemann said in this connection was particularly apposite. He drew attention to the fact that agricultural products are deteriorating in quality. Now you may or may not agree with what I am going to say, but this deterioration is, I claim, connected as is the transformation of the human soul, with the declining of the Cosmic Kali-Yuga during the last few decades and the decades that are to come. For we are also in the presence of a complete inner transformation of Nature. All that we have inherited and been handed down in the way of natural talents, inherited knowledge, nature and of traditional medical remedies is beginning to lose its significance. We shall have to acquire new knowledge if we want to penetrate the natural connection of these things. Humanity has no other alternative before it today than either to learn again about the whole web of natural and cosmic connections, or to let both Nature and humanity degenerate and die out. As in the past, it is imperative that our knowledge should penetrate into the actual structure of Nature.

For example, man knows more or less what happens to air inside the Earth_? but he hardly knows anything of what happens to light inside the Earth. He does not know that silicon, the cosmic mineral» takes up light into the Earth and there makes it active, whereas humus, the substance closely allied to terrestrial life does not take up light and make it active in the earth but produces a lightless activity there. But these are things which will have to become understood and known.

Now, to go further: In any given region of the Earth there is not only a particular vegetation but also certain animals live there. For reasons which will appear later on, we need not consider human beings for the moment. It is one peculiar fact, and I should be glad to see this put to experimental test as I am quite sure that such a test would confirm it. This fact is that the right quantity of cows, horses and other live-stock on a farm will supply just the necessary amount of manure for the farm to restore to it what has been discharged into “chaos.” Moreover, the right proportion of horses, cows and pigs will yield the right proportions in the mixture of manures. This is because the animals eat the right proportion of the plant substances yielded by the soil, and because in the course of their organic processes they produce as much manure as is needed to be given back to the soil. And. though it cannot be strictly carried out. I would say that manure of any kind introduced from outside can only be regarded as a curative substance for a farm that has become diseased. A farm is only healthy if it can supply itself from the manure yielded by its own animals. This of course entails the development of a real knowledge of how many animals of a given sort are necessary for a given farm. But this will be found out as soon as some knowledge returns to us of the inner forces in Nature. To what I said about the “belly” being above the Earth and the “head” being under the Earth, belongs an understanding of the animal organism. For the animal organism is connected with the whole economy of Nature. With respect to form and colour structure and consistency of its substance it is under the influence of the planets. Working backwards from the snout the influences are as follows. Saturn, Jupiter and Mars affect the region extending from the snout to the heart, the heart is worked upon by the Sun, while the region extending from behind the heart to the tail comes under the influences of Venus, Mercury and Moon. (See Drawing No. 5).

Those who are interested in these things should try to examine the forms of animals from this point of view. For a development of knowledge along these lines would be of enormous importance. Go to a museum, for example, and examine the skeleton of any mammal. In doing so, bear in mind the principle that the structure and build of the head is primarily the result of the direct radiation of the Sun streaming into the mouth. Then you will 3ee that the structure of the head and of the adjoining parts depends upon the way in which the animal exposes itself to the Sun. A lion exposes itself quite differently from a horse: the reason for these differences will be examined later on. Thus, the front part of an animal and the structure of its head are directly connected with the Sun's radiation. Now the light of the Sun also reaches the Earth indirectly, by being reflected from the Moon. This too has to be taken into account. The sunlight that is reflected from the Moon is quite ineffectual when it falls on the head of an animal. (These things apply especially to embryonic life). The light* reflected from the Moon produces its greatest effect when falling upon the hind parts of the animal. Look at the formation of the skeleton of an animal's hind parts and the peculiar polarity in which it stands to the formation of the head. You should develop a feeling for this contrast in form between the animal's hind quarters and its head, and especially for the insertion of the hind limbs and the rear and the intestinal tract. This contrast between the front and the hindmost parts of the animal is the contrast between Sun and Moon. If you go further you will find that the influence of. the Sun stops just short of the heart; that Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are acting in the formation of the blood and the head;' and that, from the heart backwards the activity of the Moon is reinforced by that of Mercury and Venus. Thus, if we imagine ourselves to have picked up the animal, turned it round and set it upside down with its head in the earth we shall have the position invisibly taken by the “Agricultural-individuality.” The consideration of this formation of the animal enables us to see a relation between the manure produced by the animal and the needs of the earth in which the plants grow which serve as food for the animal. For you will remember that the cosmic forces which act in a plant are guided upwards through it from inside the earth. If, therefore, a plant is particularly rich in these cosmic forces, and an animal eats it, then the manure which this animal excretes will be particularly well-suited to the soil on which the plant grows. Thus, if we learn to grasp the forms of things we shall see in what sense an agricultural unit, or farm, is a “self-contained individuality” (or as we have called it an “agricultural-individuality”) only we have to include within it the necessary live-stock.

[ 1 ] The training of thoughts and feelings, pursued in the way described in the chapters on Preparation, Enlightenment, and Initiation, introduces into the soul and spirit the same organic symmetry with which nature has constructed the physical body. Before this development, soul and spirit are undifferentiated masses. The clairvoyant perceives them as interlacing, rotating, cloud-like spirals, dully glimmering in reddish, reddish-brown, or reddish-yellow tones. After this training they begin to assume a brilliant yellowish-green, or greenish-blue color, and show a regular structure. This inner regularity leading to higher knowledge, is attained when the student introduces into his thoughts and feelings the same orderly system with which nature has endowed his bodily organs that enable him to see, hear, digest, breath, speak. Gradually he learns to breath and see with this soul, to speak and hear with the spirit.

[ 2 ] In the following pages some practical aspects of the higher education of soul and spirit will be treated in greater detail. They are such that anyone can put them into practice regardless of other rules, and thereby be led some distance further into spiritual science.

[ 3 ] A particular effort must be made to cultivate the quality of patience. Every symptom of impatience produces a paralyzing, even a destructive effect on the higher faculties that slumber in us. We must not expect an immeasurable view into the higher worlds from one day to the next, for we should assuredly be disappointed. Contentment with the smallest fragment attained, repose and tranquility, must more and more take possession of the soul. It is quite understandable that the student should await results with impatience; but he will achieve nothing so long as he fails to master this impatience. Nor is it of any use to combat this impatience merely in the ordinary sense, for it will become only that much stronger. We over-look it in self-deception while it plants itself all the more firmly in the depths of the soul. It is only when we ever and again surrender ourselves to a certain definite thought, making it absolutely our own, that any results can be attained. This thought is as follows: I must certainly do everything I can for the training and development of my soul and spirit; but I shall wait patiently until higher powers shall have found me worthy of definite enlightenment. If this thought becomes so powerful in the student that it grows into an actual feature of his character, he is treading the right path. This feature soon sets its mark on his exterior. The gaze of his eye becomes steady, the movement of his body becomes sure, his decisions definite, and all that goes under the name of nervousness gradually disappears. Rules that appear trifling and insignificant must be taken into account. For example, supposing someone affronts us. Before our training we should have directed our resentment against the offender; a wave of anger would have surged up within us. In a similar case, however, the thought is immediately present in the mind of the student that such an affront makes no difference to his intrinsic worth. And he does whatever must be done to meet the affront with calm and composure, and not in a spirit of anger. Of course it is not a case of simply accepting every affront, but of acting with the same calm composure when dealing with an affront against our own person as we would if the affront were directed against another person, in whose favor we had the right to intervene. It must always be remembered that this training is not carried out in crude outward processes, but in subtle, silent alterations in the life of thought and feeling.

[ 4 ] Patience has the effect of attraction, impatience the effect of repulsion on the treasures of higher knowledge. In the higher regions of existence nothing can be attained by haste and unrest. Above all things, desire and craving must be silenced, for these are qualities of the soul before which all higher knowledge shyly withdraws. However precious this knowledge is accounted, the student must not crave it if he wishes to attain it. If he wishes to have it for his own sake, he will never attain it. This requires him to be honest with himself in his innermost soul. He must in no case be under any illusion concerning his own self. With a feeling of inner truth he must look his own faults, weaknesses, and unfitness full in the face. The moment he tries to excuse to himself any of his weaknesses, he has placed a stone in his way on the path which is to lead him upward. Such obstacles can only be removed by self-enlightenment. There is only one way to get rid of faults and failings, and that is by a clear recognition of them. Everything slumbers in the human soul and can be awakened. A person can even improve his intellect and reason, if he quietly and calmly makes it clear to himself why he is weak in this respect. Such self- knowledge is, of course, difficult, for the temptation to self-deception is immeasurably great. Anyone making a habit of being truthful with himself opens the portal leading to a deeper insight.

[ 5 ] All curiosity must fall away from the student. He must rid himself as much as possible of the habit of asking questions merely for the sake of gratifying a selfish thirst for knowledge. He must only ask when knowledge can serve to perfect his own being in the service of evolution. Nevertheless, his delight in knowledge and his devotion to it should in no way be hampered. He should listen devoutly to all that contributes to such an end, and should seek every opportunity for such devotional attention.

[ 6 ] Special attention must be paid in esoteric training to the education of the life of desires. This does not mean that we are to become free of desire, for if we are to attain something we must also desire it, and desire will always tend to fulfillment if backed by a particular force. This force is derived from a right knowledge. Do not desire at all until you know what is right in any one sphere. That is one of the golden rules for the student. The wise man first ascertains the laws of the world, and then his desires become powers which realize themselves. The following example brings this out clearly. There are certainly many people who would like to learn from their own observation something about their life before birth. Such a desire is altogether useless and leads to no result so long as the person in question has not acquired a knowledge of the laws that govern the nature of the eternal, a knowledge of these laws in their subtlest and most intimate character, through the study of spiritual science. But if, having really acquired this knowledge, he wishes to proceed further, his desire, now ennobled and purified, will enable him to do so.

[ 7 ] It is also no use saying: I particularly wish to examine my previous life, and shall study only for this purpose. We must rather be capable of abandoning this desire, of eliminating it altogether, and of studying, at first, with no such intention. We should cultivate a feeling of joy and devotion for what we learn, with no thought of the above end in view. We should learn to cherish and foster a particular desire in such a way that it brings with it its own fulfillment.

[ 8 ] If we become angered, vexed or annoyed, we erect a wall around ourselves in the soul-world, and the forces which are to develop the eyes of the soul cannot approach. For instance, if a person angers me he sends forth a psychic current into the soul-world. I cannot see this current as long as I am myself capable of anger. My own anger conceals it from me. We must not, however, suppose that when we are free from anger we shall immediately have a psychic (astral) vision. For this purpose an organ of vision must have been developed in the soul. The beginnings of such an organ are latent in every human being, but remain ineffective as long as he is capable of anger. Yet this organ is not immediately present the moment anger has been combated to a small extent. We must rather persevere in this combating of anger and proceed patiently on our way; then some day we shall find that this eye of the soul has become developed. Of course, anger is not the only failing to be combated for the attainment of this end. Many grow impatient or skeptical, because they have for years combated certain qualities, and yet clairvoyance has not ensued. In that case they have just trained some qualities and allowed others to run riot. The gift of clairvoyance only manifests itself when all those qualities which stunt the growth of the latent faculties are suppressed. Undoubtedly, the beginnings of such seeing and hearing may appear at an earlier period, but these are only young and tender shoots which are subjected to all possible error, and which, if not carefully tended and guarded, may quickly die.

[ 9 ] Other qualities which, like anger and vexation, have to be combated, are timidity, superstition, prejudice, vanity and ambition, curiosity, the mania for imparting information, and the making of distinctions in human beings according to the outward characteristics of rank, sex, race, and so forth. In our time it is difficult for people to understand how the combating of such qualities can have anything to do with the heightening of the faculty of cognition. But every spiritual scientist knows that much more depends upon such matters than upon the increase of intelligence and employment of artificial exercises. Especially can misunderstanding arise if we believe that we must become foolhardy in order to be fearless; that we must close our eyes to the differences between people, because we must combat the prejudices of rank, race, and so forth. Rather is it true that a correct estimate of all things is to be attained only when we are no longer entangled in prejudice. Even in the ordinary sense it is true that the fear of some phenomenon prevents us from estimating it rightly; that a racial prejudice prevents us from seeing into a man's soul. It is this ordinary sense that the student must develop in all its delicacy and subtlety.

[ 10 ] Every word spoken without having been thoroughly purged in thought is a stone thrown in the way of esoteric training. And here something must be considered which can only be explained by giving an example. If anything be said to which we must reply, we must be careful to consider the speaker's opinion, feeling, and even his prejudice, rather than what we ourselves have to say at the moment on the subject under discussion. In this example a refined quality of tact is indicated, to the cultivation of which the student must devote his care. He must learn to judge what importance it may have for the other person if he opposes the latter's opinion with his own. This does not mean that he must withhold his opinion. There can be no question of that. But he must listen to the speaker as carefully and as attentively as he possibly can and let his reply derive its form from what he has just heard. In such cases one particular thought recurs ever and again to the student, and he is treading the right path if this thought lives with him to the extent of becoming a trait of his character. This thought is as follows: The importance lies not in the difference of our opinions but in his discovering through his own effort what is right if I contribute something toward it. Thoughts of this and of a similar nature cause the character and the behavior of the student to be permeated with a quality of gentleness, which is one of the chief means used in all esoteric training. Harshness scares away the soul-pictures that should open the eye of the soul; gentleness clears the obstacles away and unseals the inner organs.

[ 11 ] Along with gentleness, another quality will presently be developed in the soul of the student: that of quietly paying attention to all the subtleties in the soul-life of his environment, while reducing to absolute silence any activity within his own soul. The soul-life of his environment will impress itself on him in such a way that his own soul will grow, and as it grows, become regular in its structure, as a plant expanding in the sunlight. Gentleness and patient reserve open the soul to the soul-world and the spirit to the spirit-world. Persevere in silent inner seclusion; close the senses to all that they brought you before your training; reduce to absolute immobility all the thoughts which, according to your previous habits, surged within you; become quite still and silent within, wait in patience, and then the higher worlds will begin to fashion and perfect the organs of sights and hearing in your soul and spirit. Do not expect immediately to see and hear in the world of soul and spirit, for all that you are doing does but contribute to the development of your higher senses, and you will only be able to hear with soul and spirit when you possess these higher senses. Having persevered for a time in silent inner seclusion, go about your customary daily affairs, imprinting deeply upon your mind this thought: “Some day, when I have grown sufficiently, I shall attain that which I am destined to attain,” and make no attempt to attract forcefully any of these higher powers to yourself. Every student receives these instructions at the outset. By observing them he perfects himself. If he neglects them, all his labor is in vain. But they are only difficult of achievement for the impatient and the unpersevering. No other obstacles exist save those which we ourselves place in our own path, and which can be avoided by all who really will. This point must be continually emphasized, because many people form an altogether wrong conception of the difficulties that beset the path to higher knowledge. It is easier, in a certain sense, to accomplish the first steps along this path than to get the better of the commonest every-day difficulties without this training. Apart from this, only such things are here imparted as are attended by no danger whatsoever to the health of soul and body. There are other ways which lead more quickly to the goal, but what is here explained has nothing to do with them, because they have certain effects which no experienced spiritual scientist considers desirable. Since fragmentary information concerning these ways is continually finding its way into publicity, express warning must be given against entering upon them. For reasons which only the initiated can understand, these ways can never be made public in their true form. The fragments appearing here and there can never lead to profitable results, but may easily undermine health, happiness, and peace of mind. It would be far better for people to avoid having anything to do with such things than to risk entrusting themselves to wholly dark forces, of whose nature and origin they can know nothing.

[ 12 ] Something may here be said concerning the environment in which this training should be undertaken, for this is not without some importance. And yet the case differs for almost every person. Anyone practicing in an environment filled only with self-seeking interests, as for example, the modern struggle for existence, must be conscious of the fact that these interests are not without their effect on the development of his spiritual organs. It is true that the inner laws of these organs are so powerful that this influence cannot be fatally injurious. Just as a lily can never grow into a thistle, however inappropriate its environment, so, too, the eye of the soul can never grow to anything but its destined shape even though it be subjected to the self-seeking interests of modern cities. But under all circumstances it is well if the student seeks, now and again, his environment in the restful peace, the inner dignity and sweetness of nature. Especially fortunate is the student who can carry out his esoteric training surrounded by the green world of plants, or among the sunny hills, where nature weaves her web of sweet simplicity. This environment develops the inner organs in a harmony which can never ensue in a modern city. More favorably situated than the townsman is the person who, during his childhood at least, had been able to breathe the fragrance of pines, to gaze on snowy peaks, and observe the silent activity of woodland creatures and insects. Yet no city-dweller should fail to give to the organs of his soul and spirit, as they develop, the nurture that comes from the inspired teachings of spiritual research. If our eyes cannot follow the woods in their mantel of green every spring, day by day, we should instead open our soul to the glorious teachings of the Bhagavad Gita, or of St. John's Gospel, or of St. Thomas à Kempis, and to the descriptions resulting from spiritual science. There are many ways to the summit of insight, but much depends on the right choice. The spiritually experienced could say much concerning these paths, much that might seem strange to the uninitiated. Someone, for instance, might be very far advanced on the path; he might be standing, so to speak, at the very entrance of sight and hearing with soul and spirit; he is then fortunate enough to make a journey over the calm or maybe tempestuous ocean, and a veil falls away from the eyes of his soul; suddenly he becomes a seer. Another is also so far advanced that this veil only needs to be loosened; this occurs through some stroke of destiny. On another this stroke might well have had the effect of paralyzing his powers and undermining his energy; for the esoteric student it becomes the occasion of his enlightenment. A third perseveres patiently for years without any marked result. Suddenly, while silently seated in his quiet chamber, spiritual light envelops him; the walls disappear, become transparent for his soul, and a new world expands before his eyes that have become seeing, or resounds in his ears that have become spiritually hearing.

What we are attempting here can be characterized in a few brief strokes as follows. We are creating a eurythmic art, and everything that is to be striven for and accomplished through this Goetheanum is rooted in the currents of Goethe's conception of the world and of art.

The aim is to develop in a particular field that which, in essence, was Goethe's view of art in all fields. This Goethean view of art, in turn, arose from Goethe's comprehensive view of nature. For Goethe, there was an intimate connection between everything that can be artistically represented and the higher truth of nature.

Therefore, one is repeatedly captivated by the impulse that permeates Goethe's entire world view, which is expressed, for example, in Goethe's words: “When nature begins to reveal its secret to someone, that person has an immediate need for its most worthy interpreter, art.” And this emerged from Goethe's powerful, great view of nature, which I would like to characterize here, of course, only with a few strokes.

If you read Goethe's wonderful essay on “The Metamorphosis of Plants”, you will be given Goethe's idea that metamorphosis prevails in all living things. Goethe sees in the colored petal only a transformation of the green leaf; and even in those organs - [for example] in the flower - that do not resemble the green leaf at all in their external form, he sees transformed leaves.

Of course, abstract natural science can confirm some of what Goethe said in 1790 about “The Metamorphosis of Plants” based on intuition, and disprove some of it. But for him, this arose from a different great idea: the rule of metamorphosis, of transformation, in all living things, right up to the human being. For Goethe, every single part of a living organ was somehow the whole organism, and in turn the whole organism was the effect of what essentially lived in the individual organ. Every leaf was a whole plant, is a whole plant for Goethe.

And today, when so many decades have passed since Goethe's time, we can develop this further, applying the Goethean worldview not only to the finished form but also to the activity of the organism. A partial activity of the organism represents what the whole organism basically does. And in turn, the whole organism is predisposed to be able to express that which is expressed in a partial activity, in the activity of a single organ. This can now be tried out on the human larynx, on the organ of speech and song, with the neighboring organs. We can recognize through intuition the mysterious movement patterns hidden in the human larynx by paying attention to what the larynx produces.

When we hear spoken language, we hear the connection between sounds, the musical aspect; we are not attentive to the mysterious movement patterns that the larynx carries out and which are then transferred into the movements of the air. But what a partial organ performs in terms of movement can really be extended by intuiting it, not by narrowing Goethe's view of nature in the abstract, not by developing it scientifically, but by feeling it artistically, what is predisposed in the larynx can be extended in such a way that it becomes movement of the whole human being. And that is what our eurythmy strives for: the whole human being should visibly express through his movements what is otherwise present in the larynx in the way of movement tendencies.

And with that, the basis seems to have been created for a movement art that can be felt and understood in the same way as what comes to light in sound and tone when speaking, when speaking in an artistically shaped way, in rhyme, in verse, when speaking in a musically shaped way, when singing.

But what a person speaks, what a poet works with, is imbued with human feeling, with the mood of the soul. In a certain way, the whole soul lives in it. What glows through as warmth of feeling, illuminates as mood of the soul what is spoken and sung, and we are now trying to express this in the mutual positions and movements of our groups, so that what is to be seen on stage is language that has become visible.

Of course, some may object to the idea of making language visible; but anyone who is able to truly comprehend the innermost essence of all natural and artistic activity has a sense that what has been developed in a certain area by nature itself can now be artistically utilized in all its aspects. And so in our eurythmy we try to create something that can be compared to the musical itself through inner conformity to law.

While neighboring arts try to express what lives subjectively in the human being through the momentary gesture, through the momentary pantomime, through facial expressions, there is nothing subjective or arbitrary in our eurythmy. We do not strive for what is currently living in the soul and needs to be expressed, but for the inner connection — as in the artful poetry of language itself, as in the musical melody and harmony — that is what we strive for. So that nothing depends on the subjectivity of what is to be presented, as when two different pianists present a Beethoven sonata in their interpretation.

Our eurythmy is an objective art; it is not a momentarily subjective creation, and thus frees itself completely from human arbitrariness. That is the essential thing. And if you should still perceive pantomime, facial expressions, gestures, that seemingly only express the soul symbolically, in some details today, then that is merely an imperfection. We have not yet achieved everything we want to achieve. The aim is an inner lawfulness that is independent of any human arbitrariness, as is the case in the musical work of art itself.

Nevertheless, everything should also be felt directly. Just as little as one needs to be a trained composer or to know musical theory in order to feel the music, one should also be able to feel in an elementary way what is expressed here in the harmonies and melodies of movement, without having first, I would say, the scholastic basis that the practitioner must know. But in this way – and I believe in the Goethean sense – a true art form is created. The whole person shows what inner possibilities of movement are present in him.

Now, Goethe is of the opinion that every artistic style is based on the foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things, insofar as it is allowed to us to present it in a tangible and visible way. And it is precisely when art elevates itself to the human being that Goethe sees the artistic perfection. He says that the human being is placed at the summit of nature and thus feels like a whole of nature, which in turn strives to bring forth a summit, in that the human being invokes choice, order, harmony and meaning within himself and thus elevates himself to the production of the work of art.

We do not, of course, believe that we can create some kind of total work of art, which would be a complete expression of what lies in the human being, with eurythmy. But we believe that we have made a start with something that can take its place alongside the other arts as a new art form.

And so I would ask you, esteemed attendees, to be mindful of the fact that we ourselves know exactly how imperfect and initial this is. But on the other hand, we are also convinced that the beginning is being made with something that is capable of further perfection. And we will be grateful if you turn your attention to this beginning. For a prologue, which can be found in Shakespeare's works, I would like to say, with a little reworking: If you turn your attention to this beginning, it will be a source of inspiration for those working in this art form to develop it further.

Because they are convinced that either we ourselves will be able to bring what is only imperfect today to a somewhat greater perfection, or others will further develop this art form. We are convinced that it contains fruitful seeds for development. And what still leaves something to be desired is, in our opinion, only due to the fact that we have only been able to create a beginning so far.

The collection of short stories by Franz Ferdinand Heitmüller, “Tampete” (Berlin S. Fischers Verlag 1899), published some time ago ¹ contains an artistic pearl. It is the novella “Tampete” that gave the volume its name. A mood poet of great narrative and characterization power has created this small work of art. “Tampete“, this Lower Saxony peasant dance, this German tarantella, lives on in this spirited style; the figures stand before us with deepened passion, like people who are not living out their own lives, but a demonic force that possesses them.”

In his recently published volume, Heitmüller has once again given us such a pearl: the novella “Als der Sommer kam”. This time, however, it is not as if a wild nature were speaking from the soul of a human being; this time it is a soul itself that is presented to us in its most intimate destiny, in lonely struggles: a soul that returns to itself from the alienation into which the world has brought it, that grows from smallness to greatness. Eugenie's child has grown up in the hands of strangers. But she herself must be seen as the virgin girl in her social environment. Only in this way can it be imagined that Arthur, her fiancé, who as a public prosecutor has “obligations to society”, will marry her. So Eugenie lives a life of pretense in the city, in the hope that one day she will be able to live a life of pretense at Arthur's side. Her child, however, whom she has hardly seen, lives far away from her, condemned to be disowned by its mother for the rest of its life. An illness of this child calls the mother to it. She hopes - a fatal illness, because with the child, what Arthur is repeatedly concerned about would be eliminated. A mother's soul, completely subjugated by the violence of social conditions, comes to her child, who is so foreign to her that she mistakes him for a stranger at first. And this mother's soul finds all the motherly love she needs at the sickbed, and with this love she finds herself, as a liberated, as an overcomer and victor. She describes this victory to the doctor of the country town, with whom she has become friends during the child's illness; she talks about how she has become free in the rural solitude, and how she now wants to carry this freedom into the city, where people can never understand such things, but where she wants to defy the lack of understanding. “The fact that I am here among people who are more or less indifferent to me and who are of no concern to me, that I am here, in a strange environment, so to speak, confessing my child, is not so bad after all. But there, in my usual sphere, which is no longer to be mine, it means something. Do you think I want to hide here and be secretive with my happiness? No, I want to proclaim it loudly, to shout it out so that everyone can hear it: look, this is me – the real me – and if they spit at me and I still remain in the calm equilibrium of proud love, then you see, only then do I have a right to myself and to the child whose mother I want to be. I want to be free of people and their rules, and that is why I have to go back to them.»

Heitmüller depicts the complete transformation of a human spirit. And he does so on fifty-two pages that are not too densely printed. But he does so with full inner truth. The poet has clearly encountered a problem that speaks to him in a rare way. He has mastered the entire psychology of this problem. And this psychology is worked out from a mood that is fully in harmony with it. Heitmüller knows how to stylishly interweave the girl's process of liberation with her life in nature. “She had rented a few rooms, far out in a somewhat dilapidated country house on the mountain. She had always seen it with its white-painted walls shining from afar. Like a hope. When she discovered a glass-covered veranda at the back of the house, which led to a spacious garden with old shady trees, she quickly came to an agreement with the owner. - And so they lived their quiet, regular lives... And very slowly, as the germs and budding buds stirred and stretched within her, dreamlike, unconscious, diverse, every day, every hour, ever stronger, swelling, a drunken confusion, until her white soul stood in a thousand glowing blossoms: - very slowly and hesitantly, the ground of the child's soul also began to green and to cover itself with the first shy colorful flowers. And on this soft ground her dreaming love wandered, pulling up the weeds everywhere or breaking a flower that had unfolded overnight, greedily inhaling its weak scent – shyly, trembling, dazed. Here and there she bent and cut back the overhanging branches, she drove away the shadow and let in the light, so that the other many buds that were peeping out everywhere from the light green lawn could also develop and unfold in full strength. And the light came from everywhere, for love has a hundred busy hands that never tire of bending aside leaf after leaf so that the sun can shine through...» This is how someone who has the finest sensitivity to the wonderful harmony that exists between the life of nature and the struggling human soul describes it. Who has a lively feeling for how deeply symbolically the human mind's desire for freedom is silently hinted at in the creations of the outside world, and how in the human heart the growth and blossoming, the germination and budding of nature is transformed into the language of the spirit.

I am less satisfied with the first novella in the book: “The Treasure in Heaven”. What Heitmüller achieved so perfectly in “When Summer Came” was to find the right style for his subject: in this novella, he has probably gone wrong. This farmer, who is so clumsily and comically deceived by Resi, the farmer's daughter, is a magnificent character, but he should be drawn with a sharp sense of humor, and we should not have the impression that the lines, which as caricatures we might well like, are being offered to us with complete seriousness. The poet does indeed make attempts at a humorous style throughout. However, it seems to me that the tone of humor does not really venture out. And so we have to accept that Resi deceives the Gaisdorffer farmer, that his deceased daughter writes him letters from heaven asking for loans, that the farmer believes this and really gives his money to help his daughter in heaven find her bridegroom. But Resi, the good girl, wants to use the money to buy herself a very earthly bridegroom, Wastl. The “pious girl” even manages to persuade the farmer that her and Wastl's little offspring is actually the Gaisdorffer farmer's grandchild. Crescence, the deceased daughter, who is still so in need of money in death, brought her the child. The farmer finally marries the “pious girl” with the child that fell from heaven. Wastl goes out into the big wide world, falls in love with someone else, and not without first spending the money that Resi has swindled from the farmer for heavenly purposes.

Heitmüller's skill at drawing simple, undifferentiated people, which we know from “Tampete”, is also evident here. None of these characters, except for the Gaisdorffer farmer himself, has suffered from the mistake of style.

I again place the last novella of the collection, “Abt David”, much higher. Here Heitmüller, the sympathetic poet of mood, lives out fully. Therefore, we are happy to overlook the fact that the idea of the story remains too pale, too abstract. David von Winkelsheim is a real abbot from the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. With a priestly attitude in which Catholic principles have become completely habitual, he combines a fine sense of art. He decorates his monastery with treasures of beauty, where praying and reading the mass are only done out of old tradition, but precisely and dutifully. With delicate sensitivity, the poet depicts how a general trend of the times is reflected in a small corner of the world. His abbot reflects the attitude of many Catholic priests of the time in which the novella is set. The worldly desires and passions that must be silenced in the soul of a priest take the form of artistic longing in David. And in a meaningful contrast to the abbot stands his brother, the man of the world of that time, who brings the adventurous Johanna, the artist in men's clothing, to him so that she can decorate the monastery with works of art. The abbot sees in Johanna only the artist, but the brother loves her as a woman. And when she finds death in the floods of the Rhine, the full contrast between the natures of the two brothers is revealed. Wolf von Winkelsheim – that is David's brother's name – describes this contrast: “At the time when she lost her father so suddenly in Florence, when she had to return home alone, she may well have had the adventurous idea. Dressed as a man, she could better protect herself from the dangers of the streets and the menfolk. But I know all about that, and the morning we broke in here, it was clear to me that there was a woman in those trousers. But I went along with the pious deception – of course! To finally get rid of my promise to give him the paintings. The brother got what he wanted too, he has his pictures, and his “Herr Johannes” lives on with him and can never die. But I have lost “Frau Johanna” - I paid too much for the pictures.” The poet brings this anecdote to life in such a way that he depicts it as it comes alive in him during a stay in the old monastery, which was secularized around 1529, while he rummages through the archives. In the drawing of the monastery and the nature in which it is set, we encounter Heitmüller's beautiful atmospheric painting again. Those with a sense for genuine poetic novella will follow Heitmüller's stories with heartfelt joy.

• 1. Franz Ferdinand Heitmüller: Der Schatz im Himmel. Novelle. Berlin S. Fischers Verlag, 1900.

As I said yesterday in the introductory lecture, the intention in this course is to give a picture, a kind of review of the theosophical world conception. It will be necessary to speak of a number of subjects with which many in the audience are already familiar. But only by learning of these truths from their very foundations will it be possible later on to consider higher regions.

Before beginning the actual theme, I want to speak of a matter of exceptional importance. Why is it that we must concern ourselves with theosophical ideas and theories before we can ourselves actually experience anything in the spiritual world? Many people will say, “The results of clairvoyant investigation are made known to us, but I myself cannot yet see into the spiritual world. Would it not be wiser if, instead of the results of investigation being communicated to us, I were told how I can myself develop clairvoyance? Each individual would then be able to undertake the further development himself.”

Those who are unacquainted with the principles of occult investigation may believe that it would be better if such facts had not previously been made known. But in the spiritual world there is a definite law, the significance of which we will make clear by an example. Suppose that in a certain year some properly trained clairvoyant had perceived this or that in the spiritual world. Now imagine that ten or twenty years later, another equally trained clairvoyant could see the same thing even if he had known nothing whatever about the result obtained by the first clairvoyant. If you were to believe that this could happen, you would be making a great mistake, for the truth is that a fact of the spiritual world that has once been discovered by a clairvoyant or by an occult school, cannot be investigated a second time if the would-be investigator has not first been informed that it has already been discovered. If, therefore, in the year 1900 a certain fact had been investigated and in the year 1950 another clairvoyant reaches the stage of being able to perceive the same thing, he can succeed only if he has realized that someone has already investigated and fathomed it. Therefore, already known facts in the spiritual world can be perceived only when their import has been consciously grasped as communications already made. This is the law that establishes for all epochs the foundation of universal brotherliness. It is impossible to penetrate into any domain of the spiritual world without a link having first been made with what has already been fathomed by the Elder Brothers of humanity. The spiritual world sees to it that nobody can become a law unto himself, saying, “I am not concerned with what is already there. I shall investigate only for myself.” None of the facts communicated in spiritual science today could be perceived by individuals, however highly developed and advanced, if they had not been previously known. Because a link must be there with what has already been discovered, the theosophical movement had also to be founded on this basis.

In a comparatively short time from now, many individuals will become clairvoyant, but they would be able to see only unreality, not truth, in the spiritual world if they had not heard of what had already been investigated. First one must have knowledge of these truths, such as is given by theosophy, or the science of the spirit, and only then can they be actually perceived. Even a clairvoyant must get to know what has already been discovered, and then, after conscientious training, he can perceive the facts himself. It may be said that the divine beings fertilize a faculty of seership only once in a human soul and if this single, virginal fertilization has been achieved, then other human beings must pay attention to what this first soul has discovered in order to have the right to see it themselves. This law lays the foundations of an inner, universal brotherliness, a true brotherhood of men. From epoch to epoch wisdom has passed through the occult schools and been faithfully harbored by the Masters, and we, too, must help to preserve this treasure and maintain brotherliness with those who have already achieved something if we wish to make our way into the higher regions of the spiritual world. What is striven for on the physical plane as moral law is natural law in the spiritual world.

Theosophy teaches us that everything physical or material is born out of the spiritual. But in our epoch it behooves us not to be satisfied with this bare realization of a spiritual world. That behind everything material, everything physical, there is the spiritual, is an essential, but abstract, consciousness of spirit. What is necessary is to develop definite concepts and ideas of how the spiritual becomes manifest in each domain. Today one can only guide some other individual by conscientiously ensuring that he takes all the steps leading from the external into the spiritual world.

The first kingdom to be observed among the physical kingdoms around us, is that of the minerals, the world of stones. The kingdom of the minerals is distinguished from the human kingdom, for example, by the fact that a man knows that if he has given someone else a hard blow, the latter feels pain. There is no outer evidence that a mineral feels pain from a blow. From this the conclusion is drawn that in man there is a soul that feels pleasure and suffering, but not in the mineral. We will not at the outset insist that the mineral also has a soul, because there we must already take note of the results of clairvoyant investigation. The stone as it lies before us has in it nothing of the nature of soul. But what is essential in a spiritual world conception is that observation shall be directed to the right place and not to a false one. Think of a tiny animal observing a human being but actually able to see only his fingernails. It would say that these fingernails are objects on their own, for the tiny animal cannot realize that the nails belong to and are part of an organism. When it is able to survey and see the whole, then its observation will be true. The same principle applies to the spiritual investigator and the mineral world. If you regard the stone as being something complete in itself, you are in the position of the tiny animal that takes the fingernails or the teeth to be the whole man, a complete being.

Think of the rocks on the earth. They can only be conceived as having grown out of the whole organism of the earth. But where is the being of which these rocks are parts, to which all these rocks belong? There are spiritual beings to whom the whole world of stones belongs. These beings feel happiness and pain, pleasure and suffering just as does the human soul, so that we can properly speak of a mineral soul. You must not, however, judge on the basis of mere analogies, because that might lead you to think that when a stone is smashed the mineral soul feels pain, but that is not the case. A man feels pain if one of his fingers is crushed, but in similar circumstances the mineral soul feels contentment and pleasure. The being belonging to the mineral experiences great happiness when stones are crushed, and pain when the fragments are put together again. Because in the external world, mineral fragments are constantly being separated off and put together again, pleasure and pain are continually being felt in the souls of the beings who belong to the mineral kingdom. Suppose we have salt here and a glass filled with warm water. What happens if we drop the salt into the water? To clairvoyant observation the grains of salt do not only dissolve in the water but feelings of well-being arise; actual pleasure becomes evident when the salt permeates the water in the glass. Then, when the water cools and a cube of salt crystallizes out, this causes suffering to the mineral soul. In mountain ranges where rocks have formed this is what has happened. When crystals form in the earth the process is accompanied by suffering and pain for the beings belonging basically to the mineral kingdom.

When a planet is born, collects into a coherent mass and condenses, this process causes pain and suffering to the spiritual beings involved in it. When a planet such as our earth comes into existence, the process is accompanied by pain and suffering. You may now ask me where then these beings are that the eye does not see, that feel pain and suffering, well-being and happiness, when, for example, stones are broken up by workmen in a quarry. Where are these beings? In a comparatively lofty spiritual world! The mineral substance seen by the eye is only a shadowy image of these beings. They live in a world we call the world of formlessness. Spiritual beings live in our whole mineral world-in the world of formlessness according to occult investigation. Why do we use this expression, “world of formlessness?” This will be understood at once when we turn to the world of plants.

The plant, too, is the expression of certain beings of soul. Here again we will study the results of spiritual investigation. This tells us that when, for example, in the autumn, the corn is mown and the scythe cuts through the stalks, no suffering is felt by the soul-beings whose bodies are the plants. No indeed! We must not think of suffering here because whole streams of joy and contentment weave over the area. Equally, when the animal is turned out to graze, it means happiness for the plant souls, not pain. It can be compared with the feeling experienced by a mammal when its offspring sucks its milk; this gives a feeling of bliss. What our planet furnishes on its surface in the way of nourishment for the beings inhabiting it, is, so to speak, milk for the beings that belong to the planet and have their habitation in the center of the earth. You may ask if all of them are able to find a place there. Certainly they are, because of the prevailing law of permeability. Their self-surrender, when a certain degree of maturity has been reached, means bliss for the plant soul. Pain is caused when plants are torn out of the soil. Now you. may say: Yes, but when mischievous boys and girls uselessly tear off flowers how can that possibly cause happiness to the plant soul? Would it not be much better to root out the plant altogether? How can that cause it pain? From the point of view that is valid for the physical world you are certainly right in saying this. But it must not be forgotten that these points of view are by no means always authoritative for the spiritual worlds. A person may look more handsome when he has torn out the first grey hairs that have appeared on his head but pain is caused nevertheless. It is all a matter of the point of view concerned and we cannot struggle against the occult world with moral considerations. Beings, souls—they also belong to the plants—beings and souls for which the plant world supplies the bodies. We will now try to form an idea of how happiness and suffering take their course in the plant world.

The plant world is a shadow of the spiritual world. Where, then, are the beings that belong to it? In the world of form. They are also known by different names. The spiritual beings belonging to the mineral kingdom inhabit a spiritual realm, the realm of formlessness; the spiritual beings belonging to the plants live in the realm of form.

Realm of Formlessness, Arupa or Upper Devachan.

Realm of Form, Rupa or Lower Devachan.

The souls of the minerals belong to a definite region of the spiritual world, indeed, to its upper region. This must not surprise you, for the higher the realm in which the souls live, the more thoroughly they conceal themselves. Why is the one realm called the realm of formlessness and the other the realm of form?

When a crystal is smashed it is its form alone that is destroyed. This can, however, be reconstructed somewhere else, independently of the form that was destroyed. When a salt crystal comes into existence in nature it need not necessarily do so out of another crystal. It can only arise from the substance of salt and disappear again as form. That is the characteristic of formless substance. In the case of the plant, the form cannot come into existence in the same way, out of substance, out of the formless. The plant—this is its essential characteristic—must develop out of a parental plant. The form must pass over from progenitor to offspring in the case of the souls of the beings in the realm of form; procreation takes place as the result of transmission of the form. The form alone, nothing else, is contained in the seed.

It is a superficial belief of science that there is no great difference between plant seed and animal egg. In the animal egg, form and life are transmitted from progenitor to off-spring: Life is transmitted. In the seed of the lily nothing except the form is preserved and it is transmitted to the new lily. What happens in the mineral is that the forces that, so to speak, implant the form arise in the higher realm of Devachan. In the case of the crystal, the formlessness shoots as it were into the form confronting the eye. We must, therefore, say that the whole planet upon which plant life unfolds is surrounded by collective life containing the impulse that enables the life of the plant to arise from it, and from the plant seed only the form. From the life of the old lily nothing passes over to the flower bed or flower pot in which the seed is lying. That the new lily is imbued with life is due to the fact that the seed has been received into the. universal life of our earth.

Here we come to the transition to the animal kingdom. The form alone is passed on through the seed; life arises because the seed is received into the universal life of our earth. The quality of soul in the animal is visually perceptible and it is therefore self-evident to speak of happiness and suffering, joy and pain in this case. If we are to be clear about what happiness and suffering mean in the plant kingdom, we must turn to the study of other beings because happiness and suffering are felt outside single plants; the whole organism of the earth feels them, just as when you cut a finger the pain is not in the finger itself but is led over to the whole organism. If you want to understand what pain is in the plant, you must turn to the earth as a whole in order to contact the soul of the plant there. The essential difference lies in the fact that if an animal is wounded, the pain is situated inside its skin, as is also the case with the animal nature of the human being. Here we are coming ever nearer to individualization; the higher the evolution of the kingdoms of nature ascends, the nearer we come to beings whose center is within themselves. We study the plant rightly only when we study it in connection with the earth as a whole. The animal has a soul and admittedly feels happiness and suffering within the limits of its skin. We do not actually see this soul because it is in the realm we call the astral world. The animals are creatures that have a center in themselves and their souls live in the astral realm. Thus there is a certain systematic order in our idea of the world. The mineral conceals its soul deeply, the plant less deeply and the animal less deeply still; the animal has its center in itself, in the realm that is invisible. We must look for the souls of the animals in a world other than the physical.

Thus we distinguish four kingdoms. Firstly, the realm of the visible forms of minerals, plants and animals, the physical world. Secondly, the realm where the invisible nature of the animal is to be found, the astral world. Thirdly, the realm of the plants, the souls of which are hidden in lower Devachan. Fourthly, the realm of beings whose souls are hidden in upper Devachan. The differentiation is obvious even from observation of the external world. We will now, however, turn to the results of clairvoyant investigation.

In the space occupied by the mineral as such, nothing of the nature of soul is present. This space is void of soul, black, but round about and outside it luminosity begins; further away this luminosity increases in strength. What is it? It is the etheric body of the mineral that originates in the cosmos, drawn from a part of the ether where no actual mineral exists. The cosmic soul forces of the mineral experience joy and sorrow in the space where the etheric body of the mineral is present. There suffering begins, or happiness, perhaps, anticipates the severance of stone from a quarry like a spiritual ray of light. The etheric body of the mineral encircles its physical body. It could be said that where the mineral exists as such, the etheric body has densified to such a degree that it has become physical. The difference between mineral and plant arises through the fact that the etheric body of the plant is within it, permeating every single part. The green pervading the plant is the substance described previously as being the etheric body of the mineral outside it.

But if all that could be said about the plant were that it is permeated by an etheric body, it would not blossom but only produce green leaves. When the plant begins to blossom, clairvoyant consciousness sees something spreading over and playing around it. This is the astral life, which brings about the crowning of the growth. The green plant grows and finally something new, the astral element, spreads over and plays around it but never penetrates into it.

The animal has spiritually within it what hovers around the plant. When what hovers around the plant is inside the skin, the being is an animal. What hovers above the plant, the astral element, surrounds the whole earth. It is the collective astrality of the earth that hovers like smoke above the plant when it is about to flower. Happiness and suffering are not seated within the plant itself but are felt by the earth. The animal itself experiences happiness and suffering; the astral body within the animal weaves and is astir in the whole astrality of our earth. The mineral kingdom is as though embedded in an etheric world and has its etheric body around it. The plant is permeated by an etheric body and because the plant world is embedded in an astral body that is part of the collective astrality of the earth, pain and happiness are experienced outside the plant itself. The being that is not only swathed by the astral element but can actually take it into itself, is the animal.

Thus we have now surveyed the three kingdoms of the world surrounding us and their connection with the higher worlds.

Man is a little world in himself, the product of all that surrounds him. What we have discovered today we will use tomorrow in order to comprehend the structure of the human being.

What holds good for people today as an almost undisputed authority is science; science in the sense in which it is pursued in the educational institutions of the country. We have often spoken of how far the validity of science can go, and it has also been pointed out that people today must free themselves from its authority. I want now to show how it has become a characteristic phenomenon—but only of the last three or four centuries—to regard medicine as one of these sciences which hold sway as authorities. Indeed, everything connected with medicine is just one science among others—a science the effects of which are intended to bring about the healing of the sick. Today it is hardly realised that this relation of medicine to the other sciences, and to the whole field of knowledge, has come about only during the last three or four centuries. For the further back we go in human evolution the more do we find how everything that could be cultivated by man in the way of science, of knowledge, was considered to be more or less of a medical nature—as having to do with healing. And when we look back to those olden times, particularly to the development then of occult science, we see that with the concept of this occult science, of this body of knowledge, there is always bound up the concept of healing. In any healing, spiritual science was always involved. Thus, at that time it could never have been said: Medicine is one science among many!—In those days when pure intellect was not thought to have any place in occult science it was said In all science, in all knowledge, we must search for what aims at healing the whole human being.—This thought arose in the soul when they spoke.

But now the question necessarily comes up: What was there in those days to be healed? In this age of materialism a man is said to be ill when anything abnormal is noticed in him, either outwardly in his physical functioning or in his behaviour towards the material world. This material concept of illness is indeed, strictly speaking, a product of man's recent evolution, a product of the post-Grecian age. For in the. Greece of that time, where men were more awake and more receptive towards the world than those who came later, there still persisted the concept of illness—and of the tendency to illness—which prevailed in all ages up to the last two or three centuries B.C. Such matters as these have to be somewhat emphasised in order to be understood and perceived in their real significance. In those olden days people were convinced that all human beings permanently carried within them the seeds of illness. That in reality everyone went about the world with the predisposition to illness, was the prevailing conception. All men needed help at least in warding off illness; they needed healing the whole time—such was the opinion. Perhaps those things can be better understood if this notion of them is compared with one we come across a good deal, particularly now in connection with our social affairs and social demands. Many people today consider themselves called upon to make a stir about what is necessary in social, or other matters, for the future betterment of mankind. What conditions would be were their ideas to be carried out, they picture as a paradise on earth indeed, the realisation of certain ideas is even said to mean the dawn of the millennium. Certainly this may be well meant, though it has its roots in poor understanding and still poorer intelligence. But it may have the effect of merely exciting people in the agitator's way. For what could have a more powerful effect of this kind, particularly in a materialistic age, than the promise of a paradise on earthy And if besides they are told it will happen before they die, it is highly probable they will support anyone making the promise. Compared with that, anything like the idea of the “Threefold Commonwealth” appears hard indeed, for it does not speak of a paradise on earth but of a social organism in keeping with life—an organism which can really live. Over against the conception which includes this possible paradise on earth, and is supposed capable of bringing men health by putting their ideals into effect merely through improving conditions on the physical plane—over against this way of thinking lies another.

This other way of thinking, which held good in ancient times and had a quite different shade of feeling, I was trying to describe when I said: All human beings, in so far as they live and work on the physical plane, are to a certain extent hampered by the pre-disposition to sickness, and need constant healing. This conception is founded on what might be expressed thus—that here in the physical world a man is able to deal with the organisations necessary on the physical plane—with his domestic affairs; his rights and so on. But when all this is carried out through his own power alone, when nothing plays a part which has not to do with external institutions, the physical organism of man becomes more and more unhealthy. Ordinary measures are then quite unable to promote a sound social organism but only one that becomes weaker and weaker. For this to be avoided it is necessary for spiritual life to run side-by-side with the measures taken for the physical world. Then this spiritual life has the effect of paralysing the germs of sickness always being produced in men. All knowledge was worthless for mankind—so it was thought which did not tend to counteract the poison constantly forming in the social organism. The process of cognition is a healing process. It was considered in those olden days that, were knowledge at fault in any particular epoch, the social organism would become sick. Hence, from the first, cognitional power was recognised as a healing force; only in the course of time did the doctor, the teacher, the priest become separate individuals, independent of a leader with knowledge of the Mysteries who was also responsible for the ordering of society as well as being doctor, teacher, priest and so on, All these faculties were originally combined in one man possessing the knowledge which, owing to its particular character, acted as a healing factor for mankind. Later only were they to be differentiated. At that period of human evolution, too, far less attention was paid to individual illness than is the case today. Certainly opinions were formed about individual cases, but they were not told to the patient for fear of hurting his feelings and horrifying him. On the other hand, the measures taken, drawn as far as possible out of the deep sources of knowledge, were considered a social cure.

Such a conception, it is true, could prevail in its fullness only at a time when a man's attitude to himself was quite different from what it is today. We have frequently spoken of how the intellectualism, that now takes such a prominent place in the acquiring of knowledge, is really, in its present form, only three or four hundred years old. This intellectualism, which sees its ideal in the natural laws perceived through abstract concepts, has little to do with the human personality, I have often described what effect this has. Picture anyone studying science today, any branch of science, in one of the usual centres of learning in the civilised world. The student site there listening to the lecturer only with his head, with his understanding, his intellect; and he watches experiments being made. In all this very little part is taken by his soul, his heart, his being as a whole. It was very different in the old Mysteries when there was no question of remaining aloof. All that worked on the head, on the intellect, at the same time affected the entire man, laying hold of his heart, soul and will, so that his whole being could participate. By thinking in the abstract, by the abstract investigation of nature, our very life has become abstract, so much so that today a man hardly possesses the organ capable of seeing rightly what once was bound up with the whole social life of mankind. We have often spoken hero about what in past ages of Judaism was called the “fearful, the inexpressible, name of God”, which eventually found utterance in the word “Jahve.” Why did the name inspire fear? It was because through the very power of the sound, the everyday mood of the one who uttered it, his everyday consciousness, was obliterated and another world arose before him. Because it necessitated the withdrawal of the ordinary consciousness, utterance of the word was dangerous. A man actually felt that when this name vibrated through him he was wafted to another world, where everything was different from the physical world,—This is a mood of soul of which people no longer have, nor can have, any notion. For today, a combination of sounds has no such shattering effect.

All this has to do with the constitution of man's soul and body from which in those times there was more to draw upon than there is now Today the organic plays the greater part—hunger, thirst, various emotions, desires, the promptings of heart and soul, sympathies and antipathies. All that arises in this way out of man's organisation is, strictly speaking, part of him as an individual—an individual human ego. In the case of the men of old, in addition to hunger, thirst, and the desires of ordinary life, revelations of the divine arose. They felt in what had to do in this way with their own bodily nature and with their own soul, the presence of God. Who worked in them as well as in nature. What arose in these men of olden times made them capable of seeing in surrounding nature not what we see today but the spiritual. Present-day man is not disposed to allow that the very faculty of perception in those earlier days was different from what it is in man today.

One can certainly understand this prejudice, this assumption that the world was always seen in the way we see it today. For those who want proof in such matters, however, even external facts show clearly that the Greeks themselves—so we need not go far back in man's evolution—saw surrounding nature differently from how we do. To spiritual science with its spiritual vision this is perfectly clear, but the knowledge, thus brought to the surface so vividly through spiritual vision, can be arrived at also through physical facts, if we look, for instance, in Greek literature and notice the use of the Greek word chloros. By this they meant green, but curiously enough they used the same word for golden honey and the golden leaves in autumn; it was also applied to the gold of resin. And the Greeks had a word to describe the darkness of hair, which they used as well when speaking of lapis lazuli, that blue stone. No-one can assume the Greeks had blue hair;. So there is ample proof of such things, from which it can be seen that, as a people, the Greeks were simply incapable of distinguishing yellow from green, and that they did not perceive blue as the colour we do but saw everything tinged with the vividness of red or gold. We find all this confirmed by a Roman writer who speaks of how the Greek painters only used four colours—black, white, red, yellow. Judging from our present theory of colour we must say: The Greeks were essentially blind to the colour blue; they did not see the blue in green but only the yellow. The surrounding world had, for them, a much more fiery aspect, for they saw it all with a reddish tinge. The metamorphoses of human evolution thus affect even the way in which a man sees, and as we have said this is capable of external proof. To spiritual vision it is perfectly clear that the whole colour-spectrum of the Greeks was on the red side—that they had little feeling for the blue and violet. For them the violet was much redder than we see it. Were we, according to our present visual conception, to paint the landscape as a Greek saw it, we should have to use quite different colours from those we ordinarily do. They had no knowledge of what we see as nature, and the nature they saw is an unknown world to us. The evolution of mankind progresses indeed by metamorphoses. The point is that the time when intellectualism arose and men became inclined to meditation—the Greeks had little inclination that way—they lived objectively in the world of nature—was the time when a feeling was acquired for the dark colours, the blue, the blue-violet. It was not only the inner nature of the soul that was changed, but also what passed over fror the soul into the senses.

You can therefore say that today, in this fifth postAtlantean period, we are indeed different men in our sense-faculties from the characteristic men of the fourth period, the Greco-Latin people. This is all connected with what has been said before. During the time when spiritual forces still arose from the emotions, from sympathies and antipathies, even from the body in its hunger, thirst, its satiation, these spiritual forces poured into the sense-organs. And these spiritual forces, streaming up from the lower bodily nature to pour themselves into the sense-organs, are those which play the chief part for the eyes in giving life to the various shades of yellow and red, enabling these colours to be perceived. The time has now come when the reverse is the most important task for mankind. The Greeks were still organised in such a way that their beautiful world-concep tion was mediated through their senses, into which flowed their organic life permeated by spirit. In the course of centuries this spirit-filled organic life has been suppressed by men. Out of our soul, out of our spirit, we must infuse it with fresh life; we must acquire the faculty for making our way into soul and spirit—as spiritual science enables us to do. But acquiring this faculty through spiritual science we shall take the opposite direction. In the case of the Greeks the streams came from the body to pour into the eye (see red in diagram I); the reverse must take place with us; we have so to develop soul and spirit that the streams (see blue in diagram I) from the soul and spirit reach the human organisation; and we must receive these streams in the other senses as well as in the eye. The way for mankind in future must be in the reverse direction to that of the middle of the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. Then the reflective man will once again become a knower of the spirit, but in another form, because of what comes to him from above. We have grown to be sensitive to the blue side of the spectrum.

If I wanted to make a diagram L should have to draw it in the following way: The Greek was susceptible to red, lived in red and was familiar with the red part of the spectrum (see left of diagram II). We, however, must grow more and more accustomed to this part (see right of diagram II). But by doing so, and in that we find blue and blue-violet increasingly attractive, our sense-organs have necessarily to undergo change,

The sense-organs must become quite different in their finer structure from how they were. What then gradually pours into the sense-organs in a natural way, develops through the eye, for example. Imagination; through the ear. Inspiration; through the sense of warmth, Intuition. Thus there must be developed:

through the eye: Imagination,
through the ear: Inspiration,
through the warmth-sense: Intuition.

In the course of human evolution the finer structure of manes organisation goes through a metamorphosis, becomes different.

People today must be awake to such things, for they are standing at a momentous cross-roads; it is indeed a time when it has to be decided whether they can take the way enabling them to receive impressions from above. Pure intellectualism does not suffice; we must permeate intellectualism with spirit and soul. Then what develops within us as spirit and soul will work into the human organisation. But what if we do not develop it? When any organ is destined for a purpose for which it is not used, it perishes—is killed. There you have in the human organism itself what a past age, out of the assumptions of the time, accepted for the evolution of mankind. Just consider your eyes—into those eyes must be poured what should stream from above as spiritual life into the people of the future. Should this not come about, the eyes are doomed to suffer. Through their very nature they must deteriorate; and it is the same in the case of the ears, the same with the sense of warmth, What kind of knowledge then must we look for? A knowledge that will heal our organism of its tendency to sickness. We have to find our way back to perceiving that all knowledge—in so far as it is connected with man should be of a healing nature. We must return to the concept that we have to seek knowledge for this healing virtue, that medicine is not just one science among others, but that in the process of human evolution all knowledge must be a healing factors. This is because human beings all the time need that what arises in them on the physical plane should be healed. The man who promises an earthly paradise is not speaking rightly; he alone tells the truth who makes it clear: When everything has been done to establish good earthly conditions, a man has still to seek his connection with the spiritual world. For even the best conditions on earth need perpetual healing—healing that penetrates right into the human organism, as this, too, is always prone to sickness. In so many words: There must be a spiritual life in men with power to form healing forces out of itself.

Among the many grounds, which, out of the anthroposophical world-conception, have contributed to giving life to the idea of the “threefold” are those you may gather from what I have been saying today. For this idea of the “threefold” is such that, look where you will in man's present evolution provided you can observe in the right way—the need for this membering into three is manifest to those who have a faculty for seeking the truth. Those with a little logic who, hearing about this “threefold” idea cannot immediately grasp it, or perhaps find it at variance with some other idea, should wait till they learn more about it. Then they will see that there is not just one proof nor one source alone for proving the necessity for the “threefold”, but that these are numberless. For wherever you look you find instances bearing independent witness to what I might describe as the present necessity for spreading this idea of the “threefold” in our social organism. And one of the most important spheres of all lies in the knowledge and understanding of the being of man himself. But where do we find science—so proud of its abstraction—turning its attention to the concrete?—The Greeks were still distinctly conscious that when they gave rein to their feelings the divine revealed itself to them. And we must acquire the faculty for bringing down spiritual forces of the soul from the spiritual heights; they must reveal nature to us, show us what nature is In other words we must grow to realise that we cannot learn to know nature by perceiving it outwardly, but only with sense-organs strengthened by what comes from above—with an eye made keen by Imagination, an ear sharpened through Inspiration, and a sense of warmth through Intuition—that is to say, through selfless experience of the things and processes surrounding us.

Out of the will to heal has science developed.
Into the will to heal must science return.

What we look upon as science today, showing such veneration for its authority, is only an intermediate state: which state, however, is leading in the social sphere to the most terrible conflict.

We shall continue on this theme tomorrow.

It has often been emphasized here on other occasions that what is called spiritual science or, in more recent times, theosophy, that these are by no means mere theories floating in worlds far away, that theosophy does not merely seek to satisfy curiosity about higher worlds. Theosophy should not be something far-removed from the world, something unworldly. If it wants to fulfill its task, its mission, it must draw the forces and the impulses for its work from the higher worlds, and its work towards its goal and its mission must take place under the authority of these forces. Only then can it help in the further development and salvation of humanity. It would be a rather idle knowledge of the higher worlds if one did not want to apply it in practice, to life. For no one can understand life who does not know the deeper forces on which it is based. These forces do not lie on the surface; they lie hidden in the depths. Just as iron, when first seen as a substance, does not reveal that it contains electricity, which only becomes apparent when it is rubbed, so too these forces must lie dormant in iron and must first be drawn out of it. If we wanted to work on the service of progress for humanity without knowing these hidden realities, then our work could only be superficial. Beneficial work is only possible if we explore the deeper forces and entities.

Of course, we must also recognize the goals of our work. What does man work for? For the future! But nothing lies in the lap of the future that is not already present in the present. Let us look at the plant. It does not yet bear flowers or fruit. It will only produce these in the future. But the forces for these flowers and fruits already lie dormant in the plant. It already contains in an invisible form what will happen in the future. And only because people usually remember how similar plants have borne blossoms and fruits can they say that this plant will bloom in this way and not in another way, and bear fruit in this way and not in another way. But if man could see into the interior of the plant, then he could see the forces at work in the plant that will produce those flowers and those fruits.

There is something that lies in the future and that we cannot know, whose development we cannot foresee, and that is the body of the human being. What will one day be in the physical world already rests today in humanity, just as the flower and fruit already rest in the plant. If we are not able to delve into what lies dormant in the womb of humanity today, we cannot become rulers over the forces that will unfold in the future. Those who want to work on the development of humanity are thereby working on something that has not yet existed, and those who want to grasp that must descend below the surface. The theosophical worldview must take on this task and carry it out in practice.

Nowhere is the eminently practical nature of the theosophical world view more evident than in the field of child education. In the child, we have before us, so to speak, the riddle that lies hidden in the future. And every day we have to solve this riddle anew. For the child of seven is not the same child as he was at six, and he is not the same as the child of fourteen or sixteen. Only when we are in harmony with the deep forces that work in secret, only then can we approach the numerous questions in the field of education that are so burning for humanity today. Real orientation in all these questions will only be possible when the theosophical view dominates people's minds.

Today we want to take a closer look at the mission that Theosophy has in modern culture in relation to educational issues. To do this, it is necessary that we know the whole structure of human nature. We know that, in the sense of spiritual science, man is a complex being. For those who look more deeply, the material body is only part of the human being. This physical body combines the same substances that are present in the natural world. In the human body, they are combined in a highly complex interaction. Science tells us: When we look at a machine, we see the effect of the materials of which it is composed; but when we look at a living being, we see not a mere structure of dead materials, but a body that is permeated by life, which regulates the physical forces and brings them to life.

This life was described by an earlier science as “life force”. But today's materialistic science claims that there is no “life force”, that substances develop life within themselves. In recent times, however, people have been moving away from this point of view. It is seen that one does not get very far with this theory, that one must indeed reckon with some kind of life-force to explain the living. But even in this sense of the newer natural sciences, the theosophical view does not speak when it speaks of the second link in the human being, the etheric or life body. It is not concerned with mere theorizing, it does not speculate, but its way is to develop the higher vision in man himself. Just as other beings are only present in the world for man if he has the organs to perceive these beings, just as he perceives light and color only if he has the eye for it, just as he perceives sounds only perceives sounds only if he possesses the ear for them, so for man the higher beings are only present if he has developed organs within himself to perceive them through the training that has often been mentioned here.

If there were a man who had no eyes but organs to perceive electricity, for example, if such a man could see the forces at work that ignite the light here in the room, that play back and forth outside in the telegraphic lines, how very different the world would appear to such a person! With each new sense, new worlds arise for man, and slumbering within him lie the senses that make the higher worlds perceptible to him. They can be developed. No one can justifiably assert that such worlds cannot exist. It would be the same if he were to say that there are no higher worlds because he cannot see them. It would be the same as if a blind man were to say about color that it does not exist because he cannot perceive it.

But if a person has developed through schooling, then the etheric body is an experience for him; he can then see it. In its size, it is almost the same as the physical body. One often imagines the etheric body as consisting of a finer substance, a kind of mist, but that does not correspond to reality. Rather, it consists of forces and currents of a spiritual nature that interact.

The third link, the astral body, differs from the etheric body in that, while in the latter the forces of growth, reproduction and so on are at work, it is the essence of the astral body to feel and to be conscious. The astral body is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of desires and passions.

Beyond these three members is what makes man the crown of earthly creation: the self-aware ego, the center of the human being, the innermost power in man. So when we have a fully developed human being before us, we have a structure of four members before us.

But you can only understand how to act as an educator if you understand this structure of the human being correctly, if you know that it does not play the same role in a newly born child as in a child of seven or fourteen years, if you know that the development of these links is different at each age level of the adolescent. Only when you know all this can you solve the puzzle that the child presents to us day after day. And we learn to understand all of this best when we start from the assumption that we see how the human being lives before birth.

Before the child is born, we have enclosed the child's physical body, enclosed in the mother's body. Nothing can reach the child without passing through the mother's body. No ray of light, no external influence reaches the child directly. It rests enclosed in another body; one physical body rests in another. Birth consists of the physical mother's shell being shed. But in this moment, from a spiritual point of view, not the whole human being is born, but only the physical body. The second birth takes place gradually, not in a single moment like the physical one. It essentially takes place when the child changes teeth. At this point, something similar happens in the spiritual realm to what happens in the physical birth.

Up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric shell, just as it was surrounded by a physical shell before the physical birth, the womb. And so one could say: up to the age of seven, the child is surrounded by an etheric mother. Just as one cannot get to the child before the physical birth other than through the mother's body, one can no more get to the child's actual etheric body before the age of seven. And just as one must care for the mother before the physical birth if one wants to care for the child, so too, in order to care for and develop the child's etheric body, one must, until the seventh year, keep away everything that could harm it and give it everything that can promote its development. In the seventh year, the etheric covering is pushed back, the etheric body of the human being is born, very similar to the physical birth of the physical body.

And later on there is a third birth, the birth of the astral body. When the human being has shed his etheric cover in the seventh year, he has not yet fully developed his astral body; to the spiritual seer's eye he is still surrounded by an outer astral cover. He is wrapped in this until he reaches sexual maturity; then it is also shed: the actual astral body of the human being is born.

The educator must know all this. He must know about the physical, etheric and astral birth of the human being, because the individual educational epochs are based on this. He must know that just as it would be nonsensical to want to reach the physical child in the mother's body, it is also nonsensical to want to reach something that concerns the etheric body through education up to the age of seven, or something that concerns the astral body until sexual maturity. The limbs of the human being are the carriers of very special soul forces. The physical body is the carrier of the physical sense organs; the etheric body is initially the carrier of the growth and reproduction forces. But that is not all, because all these different bodies are worked on from within by the human ego. This works from the inside. And so the bodies of the human being are particularly related to the soul forces. The ether body is the carrier of memory, of all lasting habits and inclinations, of temperament.

We find concepts of the intellect, images of external objects and so on in the astral body. But when the image is also a symbol, a parable, when it rises to artistic imagination, when it becomes productive in the soul, then the etheric body is the carrier. What we call judgment, criticism, intellectual activity depends on the astral body.

If we know all this, then we will be able to apply it in relation to the emergence of these limbs in the course of the child's development. If we know that the etheric body is enclosed until the seventh year, we also know that until then we must not act on what the properties of this etheric body are. Only when it is released by the second birth may we educate it. There is a saying that can spread light and should be the basic principle for the education of a child up to the age of seven. Aristotle expresses this saying when he says: 'Man is the imitator of animals'. Imitation is what characterizes the child up to the age of seven. The child must see what it is supposed to learn, it must see and hear it. There must be something in its environment that is intended to have an effect on the child. It should not be taught overnight, but rather it should be shown and exemplified what it is supposed to imitate.

Exemplarity and imitation are the two magic words for a child up to seven years of age. What kind of teachings you give them, what principles you have, is not important, only what you do in the presence of the child. That alone is important. The example is what is actually effective. What the child is to acquire must be introduced into the physical world. One should avoid, as far as possible, allowing something into the child that the child should not imitate. A thousand good teachings are of no use to a child of this age; the child should imitate what it experiences with its physical body in the physical world. A little story will show you how far this imitation can go. A child of five years, who had been well-educated until then, suddenly took money from his parents' cash box. They were extremely upset. The child stole and gave the money to another child. The parents could not understand how their child came to steal. The explanation is simple. The child saw how the parents took money from the cash box and simply imitated them.

We can see from this how far we must go to avoid anything we do not want our children to imitate when it is also allowed to adults. Anyone who observes a little sees that children copy writing – like signs, without understanding the meaning. The meaning of what is written can only be conveyed to the child when the etheric body is born; but it can imitate the writing before that. Learning to write should begin by having the child first copy the shapes of the letters. Later, one can then explain to him what he can already do.

Today, far too much emphasis is placed on the fact that meaning should be involved in everything that is taught to the child. But it is far more important to ensure that the child's entire environment is set up in such a way that the external forces surrounding the child have an awakening and life-promoting effect on its etheric body. — In doing so, we recall Goethe's words: The eye is formed by light for light. The animal that is forced to live in dark caves gradually loses its eyesight and becomes blind. Light has a creative and formative effect on the eye. The forces of nature create organs and develop them. A human being is not yet complete when he is born. Every ray of light continues to have a formative effect on the eye. And so everything in the child's environment can have the effect of awakening life or stunting it.

Here spiritual science shines through to the smallest details. For example, it is not unimportant whether the child's surroundings are red or blue. The same color is by no means suitable for a lively, perhaps even nervous, child as for one that is quiet or even apathetic. Blue is the right color for the latter, red for the former. Thus, even clothing can have a beneficial or debilitating effect on the child. In this way, it is influenced right down to the brain and heart, these instruments of the soul. It depends on the child's environment whether these organs dry up or mature into liveliness, whether they develop slowly and sluggishly or whether they are awakened to active life.

Education has to ensure that what is an indicator of inner prosperity is taken into account: pleasure and joy. These are not there for nothing; they should not be suppressed, especially not in childhood. They should not be suppressed, but ennobled. Thus, for example, the body's need for a particular kind of nourishment is indicated by the fact that one has a desire for it. In this way the body indicates that it needs it in order to thrive. Everything that gives pleasure, that arouses interest, has the effect of creating organs. The organs are brought to life by this, and regulated.

But if a child becomes bored, then you kill something, you have a weakening effect on your organs; and that is very bad. Because what has not been developed by the age of seven is lost forever. The whole direction, the growth tendency is indeed given by then. One might try – or rather, one had better not try – to test the truth of these assertions of spiritual science by, for instance, giving one child a lot of eggs to eat and another very few. The latter child will show remarkably healthy instincts for what his body needs as nourishment; the former, on the other hand, will not. This is because an excessive amount of egg white extinguishes healthy nourishment instincts.

So it is in the seventh year that the child's etheric body is born. The body that is the carrier of habits, temperament, memory, is freed. All these qualities must be cultivated in the period up to sexual maturity. This is the epoch in which one approaches the child with the subject matter of learning. For this time, not only what is present in the physical world applies. Imitation is the magic word up to the age of seven; there is now also a guiding principle for the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity: imitation and authority. Just as the child imitated before, so now, to use a saying of Goethe's, it must choose its hero and follow him on his path up to Mount Olympus. If you expound the most beautiful moral principles or pass harsh judgments in front of the child, you will find that such teachings are of no use to the child. However, if you place a personality in the child's environment as an authority, then it has an effect. Not moral principles, but embodied morality should be given to the child. The soul and conscience of the child are not developed by mere teaching, but by the child saying to itself when it sees such a personality: What he does is right. And it learns to look up with reverence to such a personality.

Nothing is more beneficial for later life than reverence cultivated in childhood, nothing more fruitful for the whole of life. When a child hears about someone who is a person to whom everyone looks up with reverence, and then sees this person for the first time and feels a shiver of awe run through his heart, too, then that is a wonderful basis for education. Respect and authority, these words must gain resonance if one wants to have a firm basis for education.

The child can only properly follow principles if it has previously seen them embodied in a person. Only then do the principles become second nature, or rather part of the etheric body. They remain in the memory. Anything missed during this time remains missed for life. To exercise the memory, the child must also absorb a great deal of material; he can then later permeate it with his own judgment; now he must first practice the memory. Later he must have material in order to be able to judge it. It is bad for the developing human being to be called upon to criticize too early. First it must get to know the world, must learn from great historical examples, must feel reverence. One must paint for the child in words and pictures what great personalities have achieved. The pictorial imagination must be cultivated in this period.

In this respect, the current materialistic way of thinking is in a sorry state. One must compare two things. Up to the age of seven, only the physical organs are developed, then the character and temperament; and we have seen how education can have the effect of awakening or stifling life. A child that is healthy in body and soul will always prefer a toy that it has created itself to a finished, beautiful and complicated thing. His rag doll, which has been given eyes, nose and mouth by ink blots, will be a dearer toy to him than the most beautiful doll bought. Why? Because when the child looks at his beloved rag doll, he has to do something, because he has to complement what he has in front of him through his imagination and power of imagination. The imagination must work, otherwise it withers away.

There is a great difference between letting a child develop by putting together artificial structures from individual parts and having something alive in front of you. There will come a time when people will no longer worship the construction kit. Truly, the occultist should not become sentimental, but here is a point where he is tempted to become so. He sees the materialistic way of thinking developing in the tender, childlike growing human being and knows that it comes from having put together dead individual things into a dead whole in the nursery. Just as the building blocks produce a lifeless thing, so the materialistic point of view achieves a lifeless world development. The materialist's brain has atrophied; it cannot be led to the living, cannot be pointed to it.

Therefore, give the child something alive, so that his brain may be awakened to life. Give him the simple toys of the country fair, where, for example, two figures set the blacksmith's hammer in motion, or a picture book in which figures pulled on strings can move. That is much better, that is alive. That is much more beneficial for the child than if he puts together dead things from dead things. There the child sees life, there it seeks the reason for the movement. This is how the child's soul develops. — All the pain in the world is deposited on the soul of the spiritual researcher when he has to see how the wrong things are brought into the child's environment. The spiritual researcher sees the forces in the organs of the developing human being wither and know: they are permanently withered.

In the period after the child's second dentition, what the etheric body is the carrier of begins to develop: a lasting stock of habits. If you want to cultivate calmness, security, simplicity and straightforwardness in the child, a personality with these character traits must walk before him as a living human being until the age of fourteen to sixteen. He must learn to develop these qualities by observing them in others. But the etheric body is also the carrier of all artistic powers. We must realize what should be given to the child artistically during this period. If the child's taste is spoiled during this time by bad pictures and so on, then it remains spoiled. From the age of seven, the child is also receptive to comparison. In this respect, there is the greatest lack of understanding in our time. For example, research is being done into the meaning of children's songs. Meaning should underlie everything. But children's songs, such as “Fly, little beetle, fly!... Your mother is in Pommerland” — that is, in Kinderland — they don't want to have any meaning at all; they are partly symbols, partly they should just give euphony.

The point is that from the age of seven, sound and color are transformed from the sensual into the meaningful. Our materialistic age is not exactly suited to this. It is not inclined to make itself understood allegorically. If, for example, you want to show the emergence of the butterfly from the chrysalis as a symbol for the emergence of the soul from the body, you yourself must also believe in such a parable as reality. Who really does that today? You may say to yourself half pityingly, the child with his still undeveloped mind cannot yet grasp what I mean, so I will make it clear to him in a symbolic way. But if you delve into the spirit of things, then such a parable is a profound mysterious process; then what the doll and the butterfly show us in a subordinate sphere is the same process that is repeated at a higher level when the soul emerges from the body.

If we realize this, if we feel it vividly, if we take this process not just as a comparison but as a pictorial expression of a higher truth, then the power of this idea flows into the child's soul. Everywhere, in everything, the educator should see a parable for the eternal and pour the power of this parable into the child's soul. Only then will he be able to work fruitfully. And this is not just the affair of some specially gifted or chosen person, but every educator can work in this way, every educator can impart these things from soul to soul and thus awaken productive life in the etheric body of the child.

With the time of sexual maturity, the last cover is then removed. Only now has the time come for the child to awaken to criticism and discernment, only now can abstract teachings be given, not before. And it is wrong to lead a person to their own judgment earlier than this. It is essential for the period between the ages of seven and fourteen that religious ideas also be brought to life. Religious education is just as essential for this period as the right physical environment was for the previous period. The child should not just hear about what is in the worlds beyond, but faith should be implanted in him as a matter of course.

But nothing is worse than calling a person to judgment before the astral body has awakened. First he should learn to worship, then to judge. First he should possess a great deal of memory knowledge before penetrating it with his mind. But to call him to judgment and confession before he can distinguish is the greatest corruption. First he should be imbued with a sense of authority, only then can one appeal to his judgment. It is not there before; it has not yet developed. It only develops in the years before and after sexual maturity. It is therefore grotesque when young people of eighteen appear and give their judgments, and even write thick books in which they want to overturn what has been created over thousands of years. In this respect, much will be able to change through spiritual science. Through right education, judgment can be formed and guided in the right way.

On the whole and in particular, it should be shown how one can become the right educator through a deeper knowledge of the development of the individual members of the human being. If someone says that one cannot know about this, then it must be answered: Just try educating people in this way, in the sense of these three births, and you will find the proofs of the theosophical truths in life and in practice. It is not a matter of formulating theories or principles, but of putting them into practice. The principles are good that prove beneficial in life, that, when applied in life, bear witness to their influence on culture in a beneficial way. What promotes culture, what awakens life, that is true. When the teachings that relate to the supernatural are applied, one will receive the proof of their truth. It will be recognized that Theosophy is something eminently practical, that it is not foreign and far removed from life, but that it is full of life and awakens life, that it gives strength and security to the human being. And what is more important than this in the education of a child? Education should bring down into the visible, into the sensory, what lies hidden in the supersensible. Therein lies the key to what happens in the childhood of the human being. The full significance of the question of education arises when we realize that every human being is a mystery that we as educators must solve by truly delving into their inner being.

Answer to question

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: The best way to counteract and eradicate this is to let the child achieve what it wants to achieve through this spirit of contradiction, so that the child experiences that what has been achieved is wrong and that it is harming itself by doing so. By forbidding, instructing and so on, little is achieved, and in most cases even more contradiction is provoked. The child learns best through its own experience.

Question: How can we explain the influence of colors on children?

Answer: Take the following example: If you look at a white surface with red squares on it, and then after a while look at an empty white surface, you will find that the squares that you previously saw as red now appear green to your eye on the empty white surface. The red that one was looking at has turned into green in the person. Green is now a soothing, calming color. Even the overly lively, nervous child, who has a lot of red in his environment, transforms this red into soothing, calming green.

Question: A spirit of contradiction in children?

Answer: It is so harmful to young people because it leads to impoverishment in later years. People then have no understanding for certain things. One can only judge about what one has experienced oneself. The power of judgment, summoned up too early, puts a stop to the whole broad reality of life. Life becomes impoverished; because only those who know can judge. Hence the rapidly impoverishing writers of our time.

Question: The sexual question: Should we educate children?

Answer: The question that is now so often asked in discussions about whether to explain sexual processes to children is often answered: I do not want to and must not tell the child any untruths. Well, one should not tell the child an untruth, one should tell him the whole truth, but a truth that lies in a completely different area than in the banal description of the physical processes of conception and birth. Our ancestors did not tell their children untruths when they said to them: “Your mother is in Pommerland, fly, little beetle, fly!” Pommerland is the land of children, the land of the soul's home. There is also a spiritual aspect to “flying”. People knew more than people today, they knew about the spiritual processes that take place at the physical birth of a child, they knew that these processes are more important, that birth is not just a physical act. And in this sense, we should also speak to children today when the question of the origin of man arises for them. We should tell them in the most beautiful poetic images about the soul that descends to give birth, we should fill their soul with images full of spiritual beauty and purity, holiness and reverence. We cannot reach high enough, we cannot be poetic enough when we place these images in their souls. And when the time comes when, with sexual maturity, the physical processes of conception and birth also become clear to them, these will appear to children only as what they are, as the inessential. Their soul, filled with high, sacred, awe-inspiring images and ideas, will regard the birth of the body as a more trivial matter.

Yesterday I tried to show you how a simple way can be found to envisage the human being's relationships to the cosmos in terms of body, soul, and spirit. Through the way in which I concluded yesterday's lecture by building up to certain imaginative pictures, I wanted to draw attention to certain things. I wanted to show how in such an imaginative picture as that of Christ as the Lamb of God, inspired Imaginations are truly and correctly expressed. I wanted to show that in the times when such pictures were formed, when indeed they were voiced with complete understanding and used for the life of the human soul, a real consciousness was present of how the human being works upward from his ordinary consciousness to conscious experiences in his soul, experiences that connect him to the spiritual world. I have drawn your attention to the fact that in the first four Christian centuries what we could call the Christian teaching still carried the impression that it was everywhere based on a real perception of the spiritual, that even the secrets of Christianity were presented as they could actually be seen by those who had developed their soul life to a vision of the spiritual. After the fourth century A.D., understanding of direct expressions of the spiritual faded away from ordinary consciousness more and more. And with contact between the Germanic peoples from the north and the Latin and Greek peoples of the south during those early days of growth for Western culture we see how these difficulties of understanding constantly increased. We must be fully aware that in the times immediately following the fourth century, people still looked with reverent devotion at those imaginations from earlier times in which Christian views were presented. Tradition was revered, and so too were the pictures that had come down to posterity through tradition. But the progressing human spirit continued to take on new forms. Therefore, the human being was led to say: Yes, tradition has handed down to us pictures such as the dove for the Holy Spirit and the Lamb of God for Christ himself. But how are we to understand them? How do we come to understand them? And out of this impossibility, or rather, out of the faith that was born with the conviction of the impossibility of the human spirit's ever achieving perception of the spiritual worlds through its own powers, there arose the Scholastic doctrine that the human spirit can achieve knowledge of the sense world by its own power, can also reach conclusions directly derived from concepts of the sense world, but that the human being must simply accept as uncomprehended revelation what can be revealed to him of the super-sensible world.

But this, I would like to say, twofold form of faith in the human soul life did not develop without difficulties. On the one hand there was knowledge limited to the earthly, while on the other hand there was knowledge of the super-sensible attainable only through faith or belief. Nevertheless, it was always felt, although more or less dimly, that the human being's relationship to super-sensible knowledge could not be the same as it was in olden times. Concerning this feeling, people said to themselves in the first period after the fourth century: In a certain sense the super-sensible world can still be reached by the human soul, but it is not given to all to develop their souls to such a height; most people have to be content with simply accepting many of the old revelations.

As I said, people revered these old revelations so much that they did not wish to measure them against a standard of human knowledge that no longer reached up to them. At least, people did not believe that human knowledge was capable of rising to the level of revelation. The strict Scholastic doctrine concerning the division of human knowledge was actually only accepted gradually; indeed it was not until the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries of the Middle Ages that this Scholastic tenet was fully admitted. Until that time there was still a certain wavering in peoples' minds: Could it be possible after all to raise this knowledge, which human beings could achieve at this late date, up to the level of what belongs to the super-sensible world?

The triumph of the Scholastic view meant that, in comparison with earlier times, a mighty revolution had taken place. You see, in earlier times, say, in the very first Christian centuries, if someone had struggled through to Christianity and then approached the mystery of divine providence, or the mystery of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, he would have said: This is difficult to understand, but there are people who can develop their souls so that they understand these things. He would have said: If I assume the omniscience of the Godhead, then this omniscient being must actually also know whether one human being is damned for all time or whether another will enter into blessedness. But this—such a person might have said—hardly seems to agree with the fact that people need not, inevitably, sin. And that if they sin they will then be damned; that if they do not sin they will not be damned; that no one will be damned if they do penance for a sin. One must say, therefore, that a person, through the way he or she conducts their life, can either make themselves into one of the damned through sin or into one of the blessed through sinlessness. But again, an omniscient God must already know whether an individual is destined for damnation or blessedness.

Such would have been the considerations of someone so confronted in the earliest Christian centuries. However, in these early Christian centuries that person would not have said: Therefore I must argue whether God foresees the damnation or the blessedness of a human being. He or she would rather have said: If I were initiated I would be able to understand that although an individual may or may not sin, God knows nevertheless who will be damned and who will be blessed. Thus would someone living in the first centuries of Christendom have spoken.

Similarly, if someone had told that person that through transubstantiation, through the celebration of the Eucharist, bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, he would have said: I don't understand that but if I were initiated I would. For in olden times a person would have thought: What can be observed in the sense world are mere appearances; it is not reality: the reality lies behind, in the spiritual world. As long as one stands in the sense world, in this world of illusions, it is a contradiction to say that someone can either sin or not sin and that the omniscient God nevertheless knows in advance whether an individual will be damned or blessed. But as soon as someone enters the spiritual world it is no longer a contradiction. There one experiences how it can be that God, nevertheless, sees ahead. In the same way, a person would have said: In the physical world of sense it is contradictory to say that bread and wine—which in outward appearance remain the same—become the body and blood of Christ after the transubstantiation. But when we are initiated we will understand this, because then, in our soul lives we are within the spiritual world. Thus would people have spoken in olden times.

And then came the struggles in human souls. On the one hand the souls of human beings found themselves more and more separated, torn away from the spiritual world. The whole trend of culture was to grant authority to reason alone, and reason, of course, did not reach into the spiritual world. And out of these struggles developed all kinds of uncertainties concerning the super-sensible worlds. If we study the symptoms of history we can find the points at which such uncertainties enter the world quite starkly. I have often spoken of the Scottish monk Scotus Eriugena, who lived in France at the court of Charles the Bald during the ninth century.¹⁹ At court he was regarded as a veritable miracle of wisdom. Charles the Bald, and all those who thought as he did, turned to Scotus Eriugena in all matters of religion and also of science whenever they wanted a verdict. Now the way in which Scotus Eriugena stood opposed to the other monks of his time shows how fiercely the battle was then raging between reason, which felt itself limited to the world of sense, along with a few conclusions derived from that world, and the traditions that had been handed down from the spiritual world in the form of dogmas. Thus in the ninth century we see two personalities confronting one another: Scotus Eriugena and the monk Gottschalk,²⁰ who uncompromisingly asserted the doctrine that God has perfect foreknowledge of an individual's future damnation or blessedness. This teaching was gradually embodied in the formula: God has destined one portion of humanity for blessedness and another for damnation. The doctrine was formulated as Augustine himself had formulated it. Following his teaching of predestination, one part of humanity is destined for blessedness, another part for damnation.²¹ And the monk Gottschalk taught that it is indeed so: God has destined one portion of the human race for blessedness and another for damnation, but no portion is predestined for sin. Thus, for external understanding, Gottschalk was teaching a contradiction.

In the ninth century the strife was extraordinarily fierce. At a synod in Mainz, for instance, Gottschalk's writing was declared heretical, and he was scourged because of this teaching. However, although Gottschalk had been scourged and imprisoned on account of this doctrine he was able to claim that he had no other desire than to reaffirm the teaching of Augustine in its genuine form. Many French bishops and monks, in particular, realized that Gottschalk was not teaching anything other than what Augustine had already taught. And so a monk such as Gottschalk stood before the people of his time teaching from the traditions of the old mystery knowledge. However, those who now wished to understand everything with the dawning intellect were simply unable to understand and therefore contested his teaching. But there were others who adhered more to reverence for the old and were decidedly on the side of a theologian like Gottschalk.

It is extremely difficult for people today to understand that things like this could be the subject of bitter strife. When such teachings did not please parties with authority their author was publicly scourged and imprisoned even though he might be, and in this case was, eventually vindicated. For it was precisely the orthodox believers who ranged themselves on the side of Gottschalk, and his teaching remained the orthodox Catholic doctrine. Charles the Bald, because of his relationship to Scotus Eriugena, naturally turned to him for a verdict. Scotus Eriugena did not decide for Gottschalk's teaching but as follows: The Godhead is to be found in the evolution of mankind; evil can actually only appear to have existence—otherwise evil, too, would have to be found in God. Since God can only be the Good, evil must be a nothing; but a nothing cannot be anything with which human beings can be united. So Scotus Eriugena spoke out against the teaching of Gottschalk.

But the teaching of Scotus Eriugena, which was more or less the same as that of pantheists today, was in turn condemned by the orthodox Church and his writings were only later rediscovered. Everything reminiscent of his teaching was burned and he came to be regarded as the real heretic. When he made known the views he had explained to Charles the Bald, the adherents of Gottschalk—who were now again respected—declared: Scotus Eriugena is actually only a babbler who adorns himself with every kind of ornament of external science and who actually knows nothing at all about the inner mysteries of the super-sensible.

Another theologian wrote about the body and blood of Christ in De Corpore et Sanguine Domini.²² In this writing he said something that, for the initiates of old, had been an understandable teaching: that in actual fact bread and wine can be changed into the real body and the real blood of Christ. This writing, too, was laid before Charles the Bald. Scotus Eriugena did not write an actual refutation but in his works we have many a hint of the decision he reached, namely, that this, the orthodox Catholic teaching of the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, must be modified because it is not understandable to the human mind. This was how Scotus Eriugena was able to express himself, even in his day.

In short, the conflict concerning the human soul's relationship to the super-sensible world raged fiercely in the ninth century, and it was exceedingly difficult for serious minds of that time to find their bearings. For Christian dogmas contained everywhere deposits, as it were, of ancient truths of initiation, but people were powerless to understand them. What had been uttered in external words was put to the test. These words could only have been intelligible to a soul that had developed itself up into the spiritual world. The external words were tested against that of which people at that time had become conscious as a result of the development of human reason. And the most intense battles ensued within the Christian life of Europe from the testing of that time.

And where were these inner experiences leading? They were tending in the direction of a duality entirely absent in former times. In earlier times the human being looked into the sense world and, as he looked, his faculties enabled him simultaneously to behold the spiritual pervading the phenomena of this sense world. He saw the spiritual along with the phenomena of the world of sense. The people of olden times certainly did not see bread and wine in the same way people in the ninth century A.D. saw them, that is, as being merely matter. In ancient times the material and spiritual were seen together. So, too, the people in olden times didn't have concepts and ideas as intellectual as those already possessed by people living in the ninth century. The thinness and abstraction of the concepts and ideas in the ninth century were not present earlier. What people experienced earlier as ideas and concepts was still such that concepts and ideas were like real objects with essential being. Concepts and ideas in olden times were not thin and abstract, but full of living reality, of objective being. I have told you how subjects such as grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astrology gradually became entirely abstract. In olden times the human being's relationship to these sciences was such that as he lived into them, he entered into a relationship with real, actual beings. But already by the ninth century, and still more in later times, these sciences of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, and so forth had become wholly thin and abstract without living content of being—almost, one might say, like mere pieces of clothing in comparison with what had formerly been present. And this process of abstraction continued. Abstraction increasingly became a quality of concepts and ideas while concrete reality increasingly became nothing more than the external sense world. These two streams, which we see in the ninth century, and which influenced men to fight such devastating soul battles—these two streams have persisted into modern times. In some instances we still experience their conflict sharply, in other instances the conflict receives less emphasis.

These tendencies in the evolution of humanity stand with a living clarity in the contrast between Goethe and Schiller.²³ Yesterday, I spoke about the fact that Goethe, having studied the botany of Linnaeus, was compelled to evolve really living concepts and pictures of the plants—concepts capable of change and metamorphosis, which, for this reason, came near to being Imaginations. But I also drew your attention to the fact that Goethe stumbled when his mind tried to rise from plant life to the animal world of sentient experience. He could reach Imagination but not Inspiration. He saw the external phenomena. With the minerals he had no cause to advance to Imagination; with plant life he did, but got no further because abstract concepts and ideas were not his strong point. Goethe did not philosophize in the manner customary in his day. Therefore, he was unable to express in abstract concepts what is found at a spiritual level higher than that of the plants.

But Schiller philosophized. He even learned how to philosophize from Kant, although the Kantian way ultimately became too confused for him and he left it.²⁴ Schiller philosophized without the degree of abstraction that prevents concepts from reaching actual being. And when we study Goethe and Schiller together this is precisely what we feel to be the fundamental opposition never really bridged between them, the opposition that was only smoothed over through the greatness of soul, the essential humanity that lived in both of them. However, this fundamental difference of approach showed itself in the last decade of the eighteenth century when Goethe and Schiller were both occupied with the question: How can the human being achieve an existence worthy of his dignity? Schiller set forth the question in his own way in the form of abstract thought, and he what he had to say about it appeared in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. He says there: The human being is, on the one hand, subject to the necessity implicit in logic and reason. He has no freedom when he follows the necessity of reason. His freedom goes under in the necessity of reason. But neither is he free when he surrenders himself wholly to the senses, to the necessity implicit in the senses; in this sphere, instincts and natural urges coerce him and again he is not free. In both directions, actually, toward the spirit and toward nature, the human being becomes a slave, unfree. Schiller concludes that the human being can only become free when he views nature as if it were a living being, as if nature had spirit and soul within it—in other words, if he raises nature to a higher level. But then he must also bring the necessity implicit in reason right down into nature. He must, as it were, regard nature as if it had reason; but then the rigidity of necessity and logic vanish from reason. When a human being expresses himself in pictures he is giving form, creating, instead of logically analyzing and synthesizing; and as he creates in this way he removes from nature the element of necessity caused by the mere senses. But this achievement of freedom, said Schiller, can only be expressed in artistic creation and aesthetic appreciation. One who simply confronts nature passively is under the sway of the necessity implicit in nature, of instincts, natural desires, and urges. If he sets his mind to work he must follow the necessity implicit in logic—if he does not wish to be untrue to the human. When we combine the two, nature and logic, then the necessity implicit in reason subsides, then reason yields something of its necessity to the sense world and the sense world of nature yields something of its instinctual compulsion. And the human being is represented in works of sculpture, for instance, as if spirit itself were already contained in the sensible world. We lead the spirit down into the sensuality of material nature while leading the sensuality of material nature up to the spirit, and the creation through images, the beautiful, arises. Only while creating or appreciating the beautiful does the human being live in freedom.

In writing these Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller strove with all the power of his soul to find out when it is possible for a human being to be free. And the only possibility of realizing human freedom he found in the life of beautiful appearances. We must flee crude reality if we desire to be free, that is to say, if we wish to achieve an existence worthy of a human being. This is what Schiller really meant, though he may not have stated it explicitly. Only in appearance, in semblance, can freedom really be attained.

Nietzsche, who was steeped in all these matters, nevertheless could not penetrate through to an actual perception of the spirit. In his first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music,²⁵ he wanted to show that the Greeks created art in order to have something through which, as free human beings in dignity, they might be able to rise above the reality presented by the external senses, the reality in which the human being can never achieve his true dignity. They raised themselves above the reality of things in order to achieve the possibility of freedom in appearances, in artistic appearances. Thus did Nietzsche interpret Greek culture. And here Nietzsche merely expressed, in a radical form, what was already contained in Schiller's letters on the aesthetic education of man. Therefore, we can say that Schiller lived in an abstract spirituality, but that at the same time there lived within him the impulse to grant the human being his true dignity. Just look at the sublimity, the greatness, of his letters on aesthetic education. They are worthy of the very highest admiration. In terms of poetic feeling, in terms of the power of soul, they are really greater than all his other works. When we think of the sum total of his achievements, these letters are the greatest of them all. But Schiller had to struggle with them from an abstract point of view, for he too had arrived at the intellectualism characterizing the spiritual life of the west. And from this standpoint he could not reach true reality. He could only reach the shining appearance of the beautiful.

When Goethe read Schiller's letters on the aesthetic education of man it was not easy for him to find his way around in them. Goethe was actually not very adept at following the processes of abstract reasoning. But he, too, was concerned with the problem of how man can achieve true dignity, how spiritual beings must work together in order to give the human being dignity so that awakened to the spiritual world, he can live into it.

Schiller could not emerge from the picture, or image, to the reality. What Schiller had said in his letters, Goethe also wanted to say, but in his own way. He did so in the pictures and imagery in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.²⁶ In all the figures in this fairy tale we are to see powers of the soul working together to impart to man his true dignity, in freedom. But Goethe was unable to find the way from what he had been able to express in Imaginations up to the truly spiritual. Hence, he got no further than the fairy tale, a picture, a kind of higher symbolism. It was, it is true, full of an extraordinary amount of life; still, it was only a kind of symbolism. Schiller formed abstract concepts, but remaining with appearance he could not get into reality. Goethe, trying to understand the human being in his freedom, created many pictures, vividly concrete pictures, but they could not get him into reality either. He remained stuck with mere descriptions of the world of sense. You see, his description of the sense images in the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. are wonderfully beautiful, yet it cannot be said that the final freeing of the crippled prince is intuitively obvious and real; it is only symbolically real. Neither of the two contrasting streams expressed in the personalities of Goethe and Schiller, could find a way into the real experience of the spiritual world. Both were striving from opposite sides to penetrate into the spiritual world, but could not get in.

What was really going on? What I am going to say may seem strange. Nevertheless, those who approach these matters without psychological bias will have to agree with the following.

Think of the two streams present in Scholasticism. For one, there is the knowledge from reason, creating its content out of the world of sense but not penetrating through to reality. This stream flows on through manifold forms, passing from one personality to another, also down to Schiller. Scholasticism held that one can only obtain ideas from the world of sense—and Schiller was drawn into this way of knowing. But Schiller was far too complete a human being to regard the sensuality of physical matter as compatible with true human dignity. Scholastic knowledge merely extracts ideas out of the world of sense. Schiller's solution was to let go of the world of sense so that only ideas remain. But with ideas alone he could not reach reality—he only reached beautiful appearances. He struggled with this problem: What should be done with this scholastic knowledge which man has produced out of himself, so that he can somehow be given his dignity? His answer was that one can no longer stay with reality, that one must take refuge in the beauty of appearances. Thus you see how the stream of scholastic knowledge from reason found its way to Schiller.

Goethe did not care much for this kind of knowledge. Actually he was much more excited by knowledge as revelation. You may find this strange; nevertheless, it is true. And even if he did not adhere to those Catholic dogmas, the necessity of which became clear to him as he was trying to complete Faust, and express them artistically, even if he did not adhere to the Catholic dogmas of his youth, still he held to things pertaining to the super-sensible world at the level he was able to reach. To speak to Goethe of a faith—this, in a way, made him furious. When, in Goethe's youth, Jacobi spoke to him about belief, about faith, he replied: I keep to vision, to seeing.²⁷ Goethe didn't want to hear anything about belief or faith. Those who claim him for any particular faith simply do not understand him at all. He was out to see, to behold. Furthermore, he was actually on the way from his Imaginations to Inspirations and Intuitions. In this way he could naturally never have become a theologian of the Middle Ages, but he could have become like an ancient seer of the divine, a seer of super-sensible worlds. He was certainly on the way, but was simply unable to ascend high enough. He only got far enough to see the super-sensible in the world of the plants. When he studied the plant world he was actually able to see the spiritual and the sensible next to one another as had the initiates in the ancient mysteries. But Goethe got no further than the plant world.

What, then, was the only thing he could do? He could only apply to the whole world of the super-sensible the pictorial method, the symbolism, the imaginative contemplation which he had learned to apply to the plants. And so, when he spoke of the soul life in his fairy tale he was only able to achieve an imaginative presentation of the world.

Whenever the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. mentions anything concerning plant life, anything that can be approached with Imaginations such as those developed by Goethe for the world of plants, then the writing is particularly beautiful. Just allow everything expressed in the style of Imaginations of the plant world in this fairy tale to work on you and you will feel a wonderful beauty. Actually, the rest of the fairy tale's contents also have a tendency to become plantlike. The central female figure, upon whom so much depends, he names Lily. Goethe does not manage to imbue her with real, potent life; he manages only to give her a kind of plant existence. And if you look at all the figures appearing in the fairy tale, actually they all lead a kind of plant existence. Where it becomes necessary to raise them to a higher level, they become mere symbols, and their existence is mere appearance at that level.

The kings that appear in the fairy tale aren't properly real either. They, too, only manage to achieve a plantlike existence; they only claim to have another kind of life as well. Something would have to be in-spired into the golden king, the silver king, and the bronze king before they could really live in the spiritual world.

Thus Goethe lived out a life of knowledge as revelation, as super-sensible knowledge, which he has only mastered up to a certain level. Schiller lived out the other kind of knowledge, knowledge as reason, which was developed by Scholasticism. But he could not bear this knowledge because he wanted to follow it into reality and it could only lead him as far as the reality of the beauty in appearances.

One can say that the inner truth of the two personalities made them so upright that neither one said more than he was truly able to say. Thus Goethe depicts the life of the soul as if it were a kind of vegetation, and Schiller portrays the free individual as if a free human being could only live aesthetically. An aesthetic society—that, as the social challenge, is what Schiller brings forward at the end of the letters on the aesthetic education of man. If the human being is to become free, says Schiller, let him so live that society manifests itself as beauty. In Goethe's relationship to Schiller we see how these streams live on. What they would have needed was the ascent from Imagination to Inspiration in Goethe, and the enlivening of abstract concepts with the imaginative world in Schiller. Only then could they have completely come together.

If you look into the souls of both of them you would have to say that both possessed qualities which could lead them into a world of spirit. Goethe struggled constantly with what he called “religious inclinations” or “piety.” Schiller, when asked, “To which of the existing religions do you confess?” said “To none.” And when he was asked why, he replied—“For religious reasons!”²⁸

As the super-sensible world flows into the human soul from knowledge that is actually experienced, we see how, especially for enlightened spirits, religion itself also flows into the soul. Thus religion will once again have to be attained—through the transformation of the merely intellectual knowledge of today into spiritual knowledge.

• 19. John Scotus Eriugena (c. 810–877), Neoplatonizing Celtic Christian philosopher. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, Occult History, Origins of Modern Science.
• 20. Gottschalk of Orbais, Benedictine monk, also at Fulda. Caused great controversy with teachings on the predestination of the elect. Condemned for heresy by the Synod of Mainz (848).
• 21. Cf. St. Augustine, City of God, Books XII, XIII.
• 22. Ratramnus of Corbie (d. 868+), Theologian and controversialist.
• 23. Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805), German poet, dramatist, historian, and philosopher. Schiller's friendship with Goethe is celebrated. Strongly influenced by Kant, his idealism and hatred of tyranny were a powerful influence in modern German literature. Wrote Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795).
• 24. Imanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher of the Enlightenment. Published Critique of Pure Reason (1781).
• 25. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher and poet. Professor of classical philology, Basel (1869–79). Known for denouncing religion, and for espousing the perfectibility of human beings through forcible self-assertion. Published The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (1872).
• 26. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, (Blauvelt, NY: Steinerbooks, 1979).
• 27. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), president of the Munich Academy. In opposition to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, he recognized only two types of people: Christian believers and those who trusted their reason. Reason, Jacobi taught, is not the way to arrive at ultimate truth.
• 28. Schiller, Votiftafeln: Mein Glaube.

Well, gentlemen, what have you decided?

Question: The various chemical substances have the property of giving certain colors to a flame, for example. On the other hand, many stars also have a color shimmer, like Mars. I would like to know more about this. For example, Mars has a reddish shimmer. Iron, when it oxidizes, rust, also has a reddish color. Are there any connections here?

Dr. Steiner: That is, of course, a very difficult question. First of all, we need to recall what we have already discussed about colours. We have already discussed various aspects of colours. You have to bear in mind that the colour of a body is connected with the whole way in which it is situated in the world. So let us imagine we have some kind of substance. This substance has a very specific colour. Now do you think that this color can possibly express itself quite differently when you bring this substance to the flame, so that you then get a certain coloration of the flame? You must realize that, when the flame arises by itself, the flame already has a certain color and that when we bring a substance into the flame, two colors interact: that of the substance and that of the flame. But there is something very peculiar about the way colors relate to each other in the world. I will tell you something about that now.

You know the usual rainbow. The rainbow has a red band, then it turns orange and yellow, then the band turns green, then blue, then the band turns a little darker blue, indigo blue and then the band turns violet. This is how we get a number of seven colors that the rainbow itself has (see drawing). Of course, people have always observed these seven colors and explained them in a variety of ways, because the seven colors that you get from a rainbow are actually the most beautiful colors that you can see in nature. And besides, you must know that these colors are as if they were floating freely. They arise, as you know, when it is raining somewhere when the sun is shining. Then the rainbow appears on the other side of the sky. So when you see a rainbow somewhere, you have to ask yourself: where is the weather? Yes, on the opposite side, away from the rain, the sun must be. That is how it should be. That is how the seven colors of the rainbow come about.

But these seven colors also occur in a different way. Imagine that we burn a metal-like body, heating it more and more, so that it becomes very hot. Then this metal-like body first, as you know, becomes red-hot, and finally white-hot, as they say. So imagine that we have created a kind of flame by what I might call actually a metal flame. But it is not an actual flame, it is a glowing metal, a metal that glows all over. If you now look at such a metal, which glows all over, through a so-called prism, you do not see a white-hot mass, but you see the same seven colors as in the rainbow.

I will now draw a schematic diagram (see page 72). Imagine that there is this glowing metal, and now I have a prism like this. You know what a prism is. It is drawn here from the side, as a triangular glass. There is my eye. Now I look through it. Now I don't see a white body, but I see the seven colors of the rainbow, the seven consecutive colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. So through the prism I see what is actually white, what is incandescent, in seven colors. From this you can see that what is incandescent can be seen shimmering in the colors of the rainbow.

Now, there is something else that can be done that is extremely interesting. You see, such a white-hot mass can only be produced when a metal, a solid body, is made to glow. But if I have a gas and burn the gas, then when I look through a prism, I don't get the seven colors, I don't get such a seven-color band, but something completely different.

You may ask how you can get a glowing gas. Yes, it is very easy to get a glowing gas. Imagine, for example, that I have ordinary table salt. There are two substances in ordinary table salt: first, a metal-like substance called sodium, and then there is chlorine. This is a gas that, when spread out somewhere, when it is somewhere, immediately hisses sharply into the nose. It is the same gas that is used, for example, to bleach laundry. The laundry items are bleached by letting chlorine brush over them.

So when you have sodium and chlorine together as one body, it is our common table salt, which we use to salt our food. If you take away the chlorine and put the sodium, which is then whitish, into a flame, the flame turns completely yellow. Why is that? Yes, gentlemen, that is because the sodium, when the flame is hot enough, turns into a gas, and then the sodium gas burns yellow, gives a yellow flame. So now we not only have a really glowing metal body, but we also have a gaseous flame. If I now look at this through my prism, it does not become seven-colored in the same way, but essentially remains yellow. Only on one side – and here you have to look very, very sharply – you see something bluish and something reddish. But on the whole you don't really notice that; you only see the yellow.

But that is not the interesting thing yet. The most interesting thing is this: if I set up the whole story here, enter the yellow flame here (see drawing on page 72) and now look through plate s my prism again, what will you say? You will say: when I look through Bee there, I see red, orange, yellow, green and so on. There is yellow there too, you will say. So when I look through it, the yellow will be particularly strong here, you will say, it will be an especially bright yellow, a very luminous yellow. Yes, you see, that is not the case. What is there is that no yellow appears at all, that the yellow is completely eliminated, erased, and there is a black spot. Just as there can be a yellow gas flame, there is also, for example, a blue one. You can also find substances, such as lithium, that have a red flame. Potassium and similar ones have a blue flame. If you now put a blue flame in here, for example, it is not the case that the blue appears stronger here, but again there is a black spot here. The strange thing is this: when you make something glowing, when something glows as a solid and is not gas, but glows, then you get this color band of seven colors. But if you only have a burning gas, then you get more or less a single color, and this single color then extinguishes that in the whole color band, which it itself has as a color.

What I am going to tell you now is something that people have only known for a relatively short time, having only been discovered in 1859. It was only in 1859 that it was discovered that in a seven-color band emanating from a glowing solid body, individual colors originating from glowing gases or burning gases extinguish the corresponding colors.

From this you can already see how extraordinarily complicated one color affects another. And this is why, when you look at the sun, it appears as if it were a white-hot body. It is right that way: if you look superficially through a prism, you also see these seven successive colors in the sun: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. But if you look more closely, then in the sun, in the solar disc, there are not these seven colors, but only approximations of the seven colors, and in between there are nothing but black lines, a whole lot of black lines. So if you look closely at the sun, you don't have a seven-color band, but you have the seven colors, but they are interrupted everywhere by nothing but black lines.

What do you have to say to yourself then? When you don't see the right, uninterrupted band of colors from the sun, but rather a band of colors interrupted by black lines, well, you have to say: Between us and the sun are nothing but burning gases that are always extinguishing the corresponding colors as they pass by. So when I look at the sun instead of at a glowing metal and see the black lines, I have to say to myself wherever I see the black lines: there, in other words always at the respective point, the yellow is being extinguished, for example here by sodium. When I look at the sun and see a black line in the yellow, I have to say: between me and the sun is sodium. And so I see black lines in the sunlight for all metals. So between me and the sun, all kinds of metals are spread out in space in gaseous form.

What can we conclude from this? Gentlemen, we can conclude that space, at least the area surrounding the Earth, is filled with nothing but not just glowing, but burning metals. When you consider that, then you have to realize that basically we cannot speak of the earth standing there and the glowing sun being up there, but what we see actually depends on what is between us and the sun, and the physicists would be very surprised if they could actually get into the sun, because it would not look as they assume it to be, but what one sees actually comes from what is between man and the sun. So you can see from this example how complicated the connection between substances and colors actually is.

So if you have a flame somewhere, and the flame, say a candle flame, has a certain coloration, you first have to ask: Well, what is inside the candle? In the flame, you have those substances in a gaseous state – they usually become gaseous due to the heat of the flame – that are inside the candle in a solid state. If we then look through a prism, as I have done here with the flame: a substance that is gaseous colors the entire flame. For example, the flame turns yellow due to the sodium. If you had a flame somewhere, for example in this room, and then looked at it through a prism, you would see the sodium blackness almost everywhere. You don't even need to add the sodium somehow. If the apparatus are arranged very precisely so that you can see correctly, you will find these black lines everywhere, which should actually be yellow and which basically come from the fact that there are tiny traces of sodium everywhere. There is hardly anything on earth that does not have small traces of sodium. But this proves that sodium is absolutely necessary in nature. Where it is not, we could not live. We also have to have a certain amount, a certain amount of sodium in us at all times, and we have to process the sodium. And it only betrays itself by the fact that it erases the yellow lines everywhere and makes them black.

Now, you have to remember what I told you before: what causes blue and violet colors? What causes red and yellow? - Well, I told you that blue appears in the vastness of space, because out there, where we see the firmament, there is nothing. It is the vast, black space of the universe. So we see the vast black space of the universe. But we do not see it just by looking out in front of us. Between us and this wide black space are the water vapors that are constantly rising. Even when the air is clear, water vapors are constantly in the air. If the Earth is here (he draws a picture), the water vapour is here and the black space is all around, then the sun shines through these vapours. If you were standing down there and looking up, you would not see black, but blue. Through the illuminated you now see the dark space in a blue colour. That means that when I see something dark or gloomy through something illuminated, I see it in blue.

The dawn and dusk are, as you know, yellowish or yellowish-reddish. When the Earth is here (it is drawn), since the vapors are all around and now the sun is coming up here, I see it illuminated. I see a bright spot here, but I see it first through the dark vapors. This makes it yellow for me. When I see a bright color through a dark color, it turns yellow. When I see a dark color through a bright color, it turns blue. Blue is the darkness seen through a bright color, yellow is the brightness seen through a dark color. That's understandable!

If I now have the yellow through the yellow sodium flame, then this yellow sodium flame means that the sodium is a substance that, when it evaporates, becomes bright but at the same time produces something dark around it. So the sodium actually burns like this: when the sodium burns here, the white light shoots up in the middle (diagram, left) and all around it, darkness shoots up, and that's why I see the whole thing yellow. So the sodium radiates light, but all around it, because it radiates light so strongly, it creates darkness.

You should not be surprised that the strongly luminous sodium produces darkness around itself, because if you are a fas t runner and run quite fast and someone else wants to keep up with you, he will just fall behind. That which splashes out is just a fast runner; it therefore appears luminous through the darkness, it appears yellow to me.

With an ordinary candle flame, the particles scatter in such a way that it becomes bright around the edges and dark in the middle. Therefore, if you have an ordinary candle flame, you see the dark through the light. Here the bright dots splash (see drawing, right). Here in the middle it remains dark and therefore appears blue. So if you have a yellow flame, as you do with sodium, it means that it splashes extremely strongly. If you have a blue flame, it means that it does not actually splash strongly, but rather splinters.

This is the fundamental difference between the effects of the substances in the world. Imagine I have a glass tube here; I melt both ends of it. Now, however, I also pump out the air so that I get a completely airless glass tube. Now I do the following: I introduce an electric current here, which ends there, and here [on the other side] too; this is a current that is then closed here. So now the two poles of electricity are facing each other. Between them is the vacuum. Now something very strange happens: on one side electricity is spurting out and on the other side, where it appears bluish, such waves are forming (see drawing on page 78), and these then merge.

There, so to speak, the light continuously splashes into the dark, the light electricity into the dark. So you have the two flames that I showed you separately. You have them on one pole of the electricity and that one on the other pole. What the sodium flame does is done here on one side, what the ordinary candle flame does is done on the other.

If you proceed in the right way, you get different types of rays here, including X-rays, which, as you know, can be used to see solid components, bones and so on, or foreign components that the body has within itself.

So the thing is that there are substances in the world that radiate. There are other substances that do not radiate, but, one can say, that glow and cover themselves on the surface with such waves. The substances that cover themselves on the surface with such waves are bluish; the substances that radiate are yellowish. If a dark body then comes before the yellowish, the yellowish becomes reddish. So if you make the yellowish darker again, it can become reddish.

So you see, gentlemen, we have bodies in the world that partly radiate and thus show the light colors that are on one side of the rainbow, and that on the other hand do not radiate, but send out such waves. This is how you get the bluish colors that are on the other side of the rainbow.

If you know this, then you will say to yourself: There are such stars as, for example, Mars, which radiates yellowish-reddish, or as, for example, Saturn, which radiates bluish. Now you can see from the nature of the star how it behaves. Mars is simply a star that radiates a lot, so it must appear yellowish-reddish. It is a star that radiates a lot. Saturn is a body that behaves more calmly and is covered with waves. You can almost see the waves around it. If you have Saturn, you can still see the waves around it as rings. It appears blue because it is surrounded by waves.

Now, what we observe on the earth's bodies shows us, if we observe them correctly and not indifferently, how the bodies are out in space. But we must be clear about the fact that all of space is filled, as I have told you, with all possible substances, which are always actually in a combustible state.

Now take a body, for example iron: it rusts. That is what you meant by your question, isn't it? Iron rusts, and that makes it redder than it otherwise is. So we have a body that is relatively dark, that rusts and that becomes reddish as a result. Now that we have studied colors, we will be able to provide information about what that actually means: iron becomes reddish when it rusts, that is, when it is constantly exposed to the air. Let's make it very clear to ourselves what that means. Of course I don't have all the colors here, but you can probably imagine what I mean. So let's assume we have the blue iron. Now it is exposed to the air. Now, because it is exposed to the air, it becomes reddish due to rusting.

Now you can tell yourself that the reddish color arises from the fact that you have a bright object that you see through darkness. So a bright object seen through darkness becomes reddish. When I look at the iron as it is in its normal state, it is dark at first, that is, it emits wavy lines. But when I expose the iron to the air for a long time, when the iron is in the air for a long time, then the air comes to the iron; and the iron gradually becomes so in the air that it begins to resist the air internally. It resists the air, begins to radiate. And that which radiates, like the sodium flame here, where there is darkness all around, turns yellowish or reddish. So you can say that the relationship between iron and air is such that the iron begins to tingle on the inside and radiates. The iron becomes tingly and radiates.

Now you know that iron is also present in the human body, and as a very important substance. Iron is contained in human blood, and iron is a very important component of blood. If we have too little iron in our blood, then we are people who cannot walk properly, who quickly become tired, who become weak. If we have too much iron in our blood, then we become agitated people and lash out at everything. So we have to have just the right amount of iron in our blood, otherwise we will feel bad. Now, gentlemen, nowadays people are less concerned with these things, but I have already drawn your attention to the fact that if you investigate how man is connected with the whole world, you find that blood in man is connected with the influence of Mars. Mars, which is moving, actually always stimulates the activity of blood in us. This is due to its affinity with iron. That is why ancient scholars who knew this attributed to Mars the same nature as iron. So in a sense, Mars can be seen as something similar to our iron. But at the same time, it shimmers reddish yellow, that is, it is constantly radiant in its interior. So in Mars we see a body that is constantly radiating within.

This whole thing can only be understood if, on the basis of these studies, we say to ourselves: Mars has an iron-like nature, is an iron-like substance; but it is constantly tingling, it constantly wants to become radiant. Just as iron wants to radiate through the influence of the air, so Mars wants to radiate constantly through the influence of its surroundings. So, in fact, it has a nature that constantly wants to tingle inside, that is, to come to life. Mars constantly wants to come to life. — This can be seen in its entire coloration and in the way it behaves. When dealing with Mars, one must know that it is a world body that actually constantly wants to come to life.

With Saturn it is different. Saturn has a bluish shimmer, that is, it does not radiate, but it surrounds itself with a wavy. It is just the opposite of Mars. Saturn wants to constantly pass into the dead, constantly becoming a corpse. You can see from Saturn that it surrounds itself, so to speak, with brightness, so that we then see its darkness through the brightness bluish.

Now I would like to draw your attention to something: You can have a very nice experience if you ever walk through a willow forest, or a forest with willows, on a not completely dark but very twilight night. Every now and then you might see something that makes you wonder: Gosh, what is glowing over there? What is it that glows like that? Then you go close and the glowing turns out to be rotting wood. So that which is rotting becomes luminous. If you then went very far away and looked at it and behind it, behind this glowing, you would have a dark area, then the glowing would no longer appear luminous to you, but blue. And so it is with Saturn. Saturn is actually constantly decaying. Saturn decays. That is why it has a light color all around, but it itself is dark, and that is why it appears blue, because we look at its own darkness, I might say, through its decay products, which it has around itself. With Mars, we see how it continually wants to live, with Saturn we see how it continually wants to die.

That is the interesting thing, that one can look at world bodies in such a way that one can say of them: the world bodies that appear to you in a bluish glow are perishing, and those that appear to you in a reddish, yellowish glow are only just emerging. And so it is in the world: in one place there is something that is emerging, in another place something that is passing away. Just as in one place on Earth there is a child and in another place an old man, so it is in the universe. Mars is still a young man and wants to live forever. Saturn is already an old man.

You see, the ancients studied that. We have to study it again. But we can only understand what the ancients meant if we find it again. That is why, as I said last time, it is so stupid when people say that anthroposophy only writes down what can be found in old writings. Because you can't understand what you find in old writings! You see, you only understand what is written in the old scriptures and comes from the right ancient wisdom when you have found it again. In the Middle Ages, before America was discovered, there was a saying that was very interesting; almost every single person said it. If you had lived at that time, you would have known the saying too. In the Middle Ages, all kinds of people said the saying, because you still learned the saying the way you learn something today, yes, I don't know, an agitprop slogan.

This slogan is:

Oh Sun, a king of this world!
Luna your gender receives.

Luna is the moon.

Mercury copulates you quickly.
Without Venus you would all be nothing,
The Marten chooses himself to the man.

So Mars.

So the saying implies: Venus, who is also a young figure, has chosen Marten as her husband, Mars. It is thus implied that Mars is a youth out there in the universe.

Without Jupiter's power, you lack everything.

So Jupiter is also hinted at, how he intervenes everywhere. And then it is said at last:

So that Saturn, old and decrepit,
appears in many colors.

Do you see how beautifully this medieval saying contrasts the youth of Mars with the age of Saturn?

Oh Sun, a king of this world!
Luna your lineage receives.
Mercury copulates you quickly.
Without Venus' favor, you all achieve nothing, The Marten to the man chosen.
Without Jupiter's might, you lack everything.
That Saturn, old and decrepit,
In many colors he appears.

So you see, it will not be understood, and that is what people show. Because if a modern scholar reads such a saying, he says: Well, that's a stupid superstition! He laughs at it. If you find what is true in such a saying, he says that it has been copied. So, no, it is impossible to imagine how foolish people actually are, because they cannot understand it. No modern scholar understands what lies in such a saying. But if you can do spiritual research, then you come across it again, only then do you understand it. One must first find these things again oneself, otherwise these old sayings, which are folk wisdom, really remain quite worthless. But it is also wonderful when one finds these things through spiritual research, and then one discovers this tremendous wisdom in simple folk sayings! This just testifies that the old folk sayings are taken from what was taught in ancient schools of wisdom. That is where these sayings come from. Today, people cannot go to their scholars in this way, because today's science does not produce sayings! There is not much that can be applied in life. But there was once a time when people knew such things as I have told you again today. They then wove them into such beautiful sayings. And then, of course, all kinds of things arose from it, sometimes misunderstandings too, of course. Now, this saying that I have just quoted to you about all the planets, yes, that has been forgotten, but other sayings have then been distorted.

Of course it is also significant when, let us say, the animals do this or that. They are connected with the universe. We can tell from the tree frog that something is going on with the weather when it climbs up. Isn't it true that the tree frog is used as a weather prophet when it climbs up or down its ladder? That is because everything that lives is in relationship with the whole universe. Only that was later distorted, and it is of course not completely unjustified when one also has such sayings, which one can make fun of when one listens to them, because stupidity has taken hold of them. For example, if someone says: 'If the cockerel crows on the dung heap, the weather will change or remain as it is' – well, that just shows that you shouldn't mix everything up and you shouldn't mix the stupid with the clever either.

The saying that I have quoted to you is, of course, one that points to secrets in the universe that are related to light and color. On the other hand, what people often say about what the cockerel does and the like can, of course, be ridiculed, as it is in the saying itself that I have quoted to you. But on the other hand, there is sometimes something extraordinarily profound and very wise in the sayings of the peasants, which are gradually being forgotten. And the farmer is not sad when it snows in March, because there are certain connections between the grain seed and the March snow.

In this way, we can see from such things how the whole world can be understood from what we observe on earth. It would be better to stick to what the tree frog can do, which is to climb up and down depending on the weather, than to stick to the marmot, which sleeps, and thus miss out on all the secrets of the universe.

I hope it has become clear to you what I developed in relation to your question. It is complicated, of course, and cannot be said in a few words. So I had to say all that, but you will be able to summarize it. It is quite interesting, isn't it, to see the context in this way.

Next Wednesday.

Notes from the lecture

Yesterday, two methods of initiation were mentioned: the mystical path and the path of ecstasy. However, both were appropriate for the state of development in ancient times. Today, the inner states in man are different and a new kind of initiation is necessary. The Rosicrucian initiation, rightly understood, is the one that fully corresponds to today's conditions. In order to get an approximately correct idea of what takes place in the human soul in this process, it is better to first become acquainted with the processes that are associated with the states of waking and sleeping, of life and death. We will therefore go into these states in more detail in our discussion today.

People usually do not understand the change between waking and sleeping deeply enough. It is such an everyday occurrence that it hardly deserves attention. As a result, the mystery that these processes hold is completely lost on them. When asked what happens to a person when they fall asleep, one would receive the answer: Consciousness extinguishes, the tired brain falls into a state of stupor and no longer absorbs sensory impressions from the outside world. This is correct insofar as it refers to what can be perceived with the physical eye. However, if we ask the clairvoyant what he perceives, he will tell us that something very significant is taking place. He sees how the inner, astral man rises out of the resting physical body and pours into the astral world body, the macrocosm. And in the morning, upon awakening, he sees how that which has flowed into the universe contracts again and is absorbed by the physical body, the microcosm. He beholds the changing life that man leads in the world at large and in the world of small things.

What, then, is the significance of sleep for man? What happens to him? Why does he leave his body? And how can the latter live without him? - The real, inner man, whose material expression and tool is the outer, physical body, notices when he falls asleep, how the whole outside world fades from his perception, how he gradually becomes insensitive to all the sense impressions he has received during the day, and how all mental sensations, joy and pain, completely fade. We must realize that the inner man, who perceives by means of the physical senses, is at the same time the bearer of pleasure and pain, of hate and love, and not the physical body. We might now object: If that is the case, how is it that this inner man, when leaving the body, does not retain the sensations of pain or joy in the astral world? The reason for this is that it must be in the physical body to perceive the facts of its inner life, which, like a mirror, reflects its emotions and brings them to consciousness. When the mirror is left, the image of the impressions fades and the person does not become aware of them again until he has retreated back into the body. There is thus a constant interaction between the inner and outer man.

It is interesting to compare what exact science has to say on this point; it is quite similar. When we fall asleep, we notice how the expenditure of energy during the day results in the fatigue of the whole organism, how the limbs gradually fail to move, how voice, smell, taste and sight cease, and finally hearing, the most spiritual of the senses. When we wake up, we feel that new strength and freshness has been given to all our limbs and senses. But whence come these forces that during the day reflect the inner man to the outer? We draw them at night from our spiritual home, the Macrocosm, and bring them in the morning into the physical world, in which we could not exist without this nightly immersion in the inner life of the world. Sleep is necessary because without it disturbances of the soul life would occur. It is sleep that gives us spiritual strength.

We have seen what we gain in the spiritual realm for the physical, and can now ask the second question: What do we bring over from the state of waking to that of sleeping in the evening? The answer to this is given to us by human life between birth and death. We see how it experiences an increase through the ever-growing sum of external experiences that have to be processed individually. Each of us assimilates individually. Take, for example, a historical event: each person judges it according to the maturity of his soul. Some remain uninfluenced and know no lessons to be learned from it, while another lets it fully affect him and becomes wise. In such a person, the experience has been transformed into spiritual forces.

This process can be illustrated even more clearly by the following example. Let us think of a child learning to write. How many unsuccessful attempts did he have to make before he managed to write his first characters, how much paper and how many pens did he have to use, how many punishments did he have to endure for blots and bad handwriting: and this for years until he was finally able to write well. Everything this child has gone through has, so to speak, been concentrated in him in the ability to write.

In this way, experiences are woven into soul forces, which we take with us into the astral world every evening. Sleep now adds something else and brings about the transformation of these forces. Most of us know from our own experience that a poem learned by heart emerges more firmly after sleep. This truth has almost become a common saying: Bisogna dormirci sopra. - From what has been said, it is clear that we transfer the experiences we have processed during the day into our spiritual home and from there, transformed into spiritual forces, we bring them back into the physical world in the morning. We now understand more clearly the purpose and necessity of the transition between the two planes of existence and the importance of sleep, without which life here would not be possible.

However, there is a limit to this transformation of forces, and every morning when we return to our physical body, we become more and more aware of it. It is the limit that our physical body sets to the abilities we have acquired. We can transform some things into the physical plane, but not everything. Take, for example, a person who has absorbed real knowledge of the external and hidden world for ten years. With what he has acquired externally and scientifically, he has only enriched his intellect and mind, but the secret experiences, the insights that have come to him from joy and suffering, are expressed in his physicality and have changed his physiognomy and gestures.

The following example explains the limit that the body sets to the assimilation of abilities: someone may have been born with an unmusical ear. - To be a performing musician, a fine structure of this organ is necessary, so fine that it escapes scientific observation. If such a person studies a lot in the field of music, what he absorbs during the day is transformed into spiritual musical power at night, but cannot be expressed when it enters the imperfect physical organ. This example shows one of the cases in which the inability to transform the physical organ poses an insurmountable barrier to the utilization of spiritual powers. In such cases man must resign himself and quietly suffer the disharmony between his body and the fettered powers. He who is able to look more deeply knows that everyone has many experiences that would completely transform him if he could incorporate them into the physical man. All these abilities that cannot manifest themselves, all this longing that rebounds from the inflexible body, now accumulates in the course of life and forms a whole that is clearly visible to the clairvoyant gaze.

The seer sees three things: the abilities that a person has brought with them at birth, then the new abilities that they have acquired and incorporated during their life, and finally the sum of those forces that have not been able to penetrate the physical body and are waiting to unfold. These latter forces form something like an opposition to the external physical body and act as a counterforce to it. This is the most important power, and it is not in harmony with our life in the physical body. It gradually dissolves it and causes the body to waste away. It seeks to cast it off like a cumbersome fetter; it seeks to discard it like an instrument that is no longer suitable for fulfilling the growing demands made upon it. It is the cause of our body withering like a flower that loses leaf after leaf and in which nothing remains alive but a new seed. In man, the clairvoyant sees something similar: it is as if, towards the second half of life, everything acquired in the human inner being contracts, unable to unfold, like a seed that holds a small germ for the next spring. Thus the clairvoyant sees a germinating seed in every dying person. In each of us, hidden deep within, the seed of a new life is forming.

With all the power of our feelings, we then have to grasp the meaning of death. With what other feelings will we then approach the deathbed of a loved one? This does not mean that we should suppress our grief at the separation, for the soul would wither away if it no longer felt pain. But we should look at life from the higher point of view that spiritual science presents to us and say to ourselves: Death appears sorrowful and cruel when viewed from below, from our earthly world, but it presents itself quite differently when viewed spiritually from above. In the long years of arduous earthly life, the soul has gained a wealth of abilities that it could not utilize if it had remained bound to the same body. Death makes it possible for it to ascend to a higher level. Just as man, in the short night's sleep, makes the spiritual gain of the day his own, so death enables him to develop and transform the entire gain of the life's work in the spiritual world. However, there is an enormous difference between sleep and death. During sleep, while the body is still alive, the normal person is unconscious because of the body's spell. In death, however, the person awakens because the body is freed from the spell.

In full consciousness, he reaps the fruits of his past life and works out on the spiritual plane what he could not utilize on the physical. And so he then lives into a new incarnation, for which he seeks a suitable body that will enable him to bring his acquired abilities to bear. For example: A person who has acquired musical knowledge will seek out a pair of parents who have a musically favorable ear structure. As a result, his life experiences in the new incarnation increase in a way that could not have taken place in the old body. And so the increase continues from embodiment to embodiment, depending on the extent of the newly acquired abilities, until complete spiritualization. Then the human being will no longer be bound to a physical shell and the chain of incarnations will have come to an end. If we have grasped what has been said in its full significance, we must conclude that, despite all its painfulness, death is a beneficent necessity and that the ego would have to wish for the creation of death if it did not exist. That there is nothing hostile to life in this view, no asceticism and no fear of life, is clearly evident from the fact that we strive to elevate this life and to ennoble and spiritualize both the outer and the inner man more and more. The question: How do we escape from life? - can only arise from an incomplete and false understanding of the doctrine of death and reincarnation. Everything here on the physical plane, and likewise after death on the spiritual plane, is only work and preparation for a new embodiment on earth. We thus see the same interrelations on a large scale as we could observe on a small scale in the life of day and night.

Yesterday two ways were indicated to reach the spiritual worlds: the mystical way and the way of ecstasy. It was emphasized that the old methods of initiation no longer fit into our time and that the present stage of development requires new means, which in the future will have to give way to still other means. From about the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the Rosicrucian method became necessary, and in the near future it will gain even more importance. He who lives in the spiritual life and follows its upward trend from incarnation to incarnation knows that today's spiritual science is adapted to our conditions, and that after thousands of years men will again look back on it as something outdated. One will reckon even more with fully conscious powers than in our days. Today's man, as we have seen, receives the powers during sleep, when he is in an unconscious state. Gradually, in the course of evolution, this process will increasingly enter his consciousness and come under his will.

The old forms of initiation required a descent into one's own inner being, which resulted in a strengthening of all egoistic forces and was a real temptation for the disciple. Everything that was still alive in him and all the instincts he had already overcome were brought up in the process. If, for example, we were to shut out all external impressions and withdraw into ourselves as soon as we woke up, our true inner self would not reveal itself to us at that moment. However, if we remained conscious, our sense of self would intensify into boundless egotism. During ecstasy, on the other hand, as we have seen, when the person consciously dissolves into the macrocosm, his ego becomes weaker and weaker and the disciple needs the help of a guru to prevent him from falling into complete powerlessness.

The Rose Cross initiation unites the two paths and gives the aspirant the right balance, which protects him from the above-mentioned dangers and at the same time gives him so much independence that he no longer needs the supervision of an initiator. It first leads him into the inner world, the access to which it opens for him through the outer world, which the disciple must observe faithfully in all its forms. Everywhere he must learn to discover the symbolic, until he realizes that the whole physical world is a parable. This is not to say that the botanist, the poet, or the painter see wrongly; they too see aright, but it is essential for the Rosicrucian disciple to fix his attention on the symbolism of form, since his purpose lies deeper than that of the other observers.

If he sees a rose, for example, he recognizes in it a symbol of life and says to himself: clear green sap rises in the stem, flowing from leaf to leaf, but at the top, in the flower crowning the plant, it transforms into the red juice of the rose. Then he turns his gaze from the flower to the human being and says to himself: “When I look at the plant next to the human being, it appears to me at first glance to be much lower than he is. It has neither movement nor feelings nor consciousness. Man, too, is permeated by the red nutrient juice, but he moves freely wherever he wants, he sees the outside world and feels its impressions as pleasure and pain and is aware of his existence. However, the plant has one advantage: it cannot err like man; chaste and pure, it does no harm to anyone and lives from one moment to the next. The red blood is the expression of higher spirituality and stands above the green sap of the plant, which is symbolically colored red in the flower. The rose is indeed a subordinate being, but it is like an ideal for man. One day he will become master of himself, and his ego will rise above the everyday ego. He will ennoble and purify himself, and his blood will become chaste and pure like the green sap of plants. And it is this purified blood of the spiritualized man that I see symbolized in the red rose-blood.

The lower nature in us must come under our control. We must master everything that opposes our ascent and transform it into pure forces. In the symbol of the Rose Cross, the dead black wood of the cross, on which the living roses bloom, we see ourselves. The dark wood is our lower nature, which is subject to death and must be overcome; the red roses are our higher nature, dedicated to life, which springs victoriously from the dying dishonesty.

The Rosicrucian should allow such symbols to have their full effect on him; he should seek them out everywhere in nature, imagine them and meditate on them. In this presentation, it is not so much the truth as the correctness, the symbolically correct, that is important. Particularly when meditating on the Rose Cross, the whole feeling, the whole heart's blood should be included; we should live and glow through before the image of the transformation of our nature. The disciple has the impression of increasing to such a strength and then repeating it constantly, so that it no longer fades from him and is taken over into the spiritual world by his astral body in the evening. The Rosicrucian disciple then feels how the unconsciousness into which he used to fall during sleep gradually disappears. It is as if a slow fire of the soul has been kindled within him. He carries it within him like a lamp that shines into the darkness of night and makes visible to him what was previously shrouded in darkness. He has become giving in the beyond. A light-giving, active eye has been opened in him, in contrast to the physical, passive eye, which has no source of light within itself, but only perceives with extraneous light.

The Rosicrucian, when he has trained himself in this way, sees external reality only where he can shape it into symbols that transform his inner abilities and the results of his meditation work into light.

In this way, the student's ego is protected from becoming hardened in selfishness, as well as from powerlessness, and he can enter the higher worlds without danger. He acquires the strength of mysticism in the right measure and uses it in ecstasy. With serious practice, he finally reaches the point of seeing the sun at midnight, as it was called in the old occult schools, that is, he sees behind the physical form and simultaneously sees the spirit.

In our brief discussion, this could only be briefly mentioned in principle. More details can be found in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.” This subject cannot be treated in more detail in public, because the majority do not yet have the ability to develop occultly. Also, little is publicly known about the old paths of initiation, and what little there is has not been personally experienced by those who have written about it. Every epoch has to show its corresponding changes, because the guides always had to incorporate something new into human life.

Tomorrow we will see what the work of one of their greatest, Gautama Buddha, was. He was a forerunner of the one for whom humanity has been prepared for thousands of years and from whom it was to receive the greatest impulse: Christ Jesus. We shall also see that only in our time has his mighty impulse begun to make itself felt, and that it will extend more and more to all mankind in the future. And there will be talk of a follower, the Maitreya Buddha, who will take up the Christ impulse in a new form.

Let us now survey what has been said and bear in mind that our life here is fertilized by the spirit in sleep and in death, and that all our striving, all the gain of our earthly existence would be in vain and unused if we always remained bound to this physical body. Only the transitional state of death makes it possible for us to reap the fruits of life and then return to this world richer, one step higher on the path to perfection. Let us allow spiritual science to enter into our lives and we will partake of the treasures of comfort, hope and strength that it contains.

What spiritual science brings to our attention today was already known to the greatest minds of the past. As a poet said:

How on the day you were given to the world
The sun stood to greet the planets,
You have flourished and flourished
According to the law by which you came into being.
You must be like this, you cannot escape yourself!
So said the Sibyls and the prophets,
And no time and no power dismembered
The form that was stamped, which develops itself alive!