The Rudolf Steiner Archive

All the knowledge that is brought to people in theosophical literature naturally comes from one source. To the question “How do you get it?”, the answer must be: Yoga is the path to higher knowledge, and to participation in the higher worlds in general. “Yoga” means union with the divine source of existence, with the spiritual sources of the world. The one who practises yoga is called a yogi, that is a person who seeks to develop within himself the abilities and powers to penetrate into the spiritual worlds.

There is a great difference between the man who has grasped the idea of Yoga and he who seeks to acquire knowledge today. The latter seeks to bring as much of the outer world as possible into his own mind. The yogi, on the other hand, seeks out all the sources of knowledge that come from spiritual life itself. He starts from the fact that there is development, that man's development, as it is now, is a stage, and that there are forces and abilities slumbering within him that still have to come out, and that if we bring them out, we can truly enter into higher worlds. If you want to become a yogi, you must acquire an unconditional belief in the upward development of the human being, not a blind faith, but the active belief that you can move upwards, that you can develop forces that have not yet been expressed. But this cannot happen overnight. Yoga is a path that consists in many ways of renunciation, and it must be sought with patience and perseverance. It is very difficult for people in today's cultural life to achieve yoga. That is why the theosophical movement was necessary. When Subba Rao was asked how long it takes to achieve initiation, he said: “It can take seventy incarnations, sometimes only seven, for some it takes seventy years, for some seven years, and there may be people who achieve it in seven days, and some even in seven hours.

Of course, it depends on the level of maturity of a person. A person may be further along than he or she realizes. Internally, a person can already be empowered to exercise his or her will and mind in the spiritual world. It may be that someone in a previous incarnation was much further along than he has come today. Perhaps in this incarnation, due to the conditions of the physical body, what was already within him could not come out; now the previously attained powers must be brought out through the powers of the present life. For example, someone might have been a wise priest with magical abilities. This would now have to be brought out in the later incarnation through the powers of that incarnation. Perhaps the brain development in the later incarnation is not so far advanced as to make this possible. It could also be that other forces are missing, perhaps love and kindness; then the earlier forces cannot be brought out again. That is why it takes less time for one person and more time for another to reach initiation. It is a matter of exploring what is already within us by creating the most intimate inner life possible.

The concept of yoga must be removed more and more from everything external and tumultuous, and it must be realized that yoga will happen in the seclusion of the innermost life. Above all, it should be kept in mind that higher spiritual qualities should never be developed without strengthening the character at the same time. Imagine a yellow and a blue liquid mixed together, then a green liquid would result. Just as the yellow and blue liquids, when mixed, produce a green one, so the spiritual and physical powers of man are united. When the spiritual nature is extracted, the physical nature remains behind, so to speak, as a sediment. Much depends on the two natures being mixed [correctly]. It is because the higher nature is connected with the lower nature that man is a particular man. In yoga training, the higher nature is drawn out, and all those qualities that are bad in man come to the fore if absolute character development does not go hand in hand with it. If you aspire to yoga, you have to be prepared for the strangest things to happen in your life. These are the temptations of Saint Anthony. If you seriously begin with yoga exercises, then you have to be prepared for all sorts of things to come out of the lower nature. Some people who were truthful before start lying, cheating, becoming unreliable in character. This happens when the strictest sense of yoga training is not required of students to constantly strengthen their character. Opportunities for wrongdoing then arise as if by magic. That is why all genuine yoga schools first look at the development of morality. Annie Besant repeatedly says to Westerners: spiritual training without moral elevation of character can only lead to wrong paths.

Yoga consists of raising certain things that a person otherwise does unconsciously into consciousness. A person usually performs the breathing process unconsciously; the yogi raises it from the subconscious into consciousness. The yoga training that places the greatest emphasis on the breathing process from the outset, the Hatha Yoga training, only leads to a certain point of development; then it breaks off. It does not go further than the realization of the astral. From the very beginning, one should not follow the Hatha Yoga path, but the Raja Yoga path. This path regards a process such as the breathing process as part of a larger whole. It also involves bringing the things that we previously performed unconsciously into consciousness. We pay no attention to a large part of our thought processes. We have to learn to follow our inner thought process with attention. We can do this by bringing about complete calm within us in relation to the outside world. Then we have to bring thoughts into this calm ourselves and focus our attention on a particular

thought. It is best to devote ourselves to thoughts that contain a force. This conscious immersion in a thought is called meditation. What matters is to live intimately with a thought. You can meditate with a specific valuable thought content. You have to rest completely on it in all silence. You could also do it with an everyday thought, for example with the thought “table” and realize what that is. Most people do not realize what a table is, namely that a weight mass is distributed over several legs. You can search to understand the concept of the table in a contemplative way.

Look at certain pictures by great painters [...]. With some, you feel satisfied when you see floating figures, but with others you feel no satisfaction at all. With some pictures, you feel that the painter literally lived within the figures, while with others you feel that he only saw the figures from the outside.

A European man of culture will find it very difficult to immerse himself in such a concept for a long time. But the real yogi must immerse himself more and more in the concept. As we live inwards, forces develop in our soul that were not there before. When we rest in a concept with the soul, then these forces come out. You have to have the reins in your hand and look at your soul life in such a way that you always have the reins in your hand. A good preparation for this is this quiet resting in thought. The thoughts of life call the inner soul to the most diverse affects. You have to learn not to be led by the soul forces, but to lead them. You have to learn to strengthen your inner self more and more so that you can hold back an outburst of anger, so that you can hold back hatred. We have to get all our affects and passions under control so that nothing gets out of hand with us. We have to achieve complete mastery and restraint of our inner self. This is achieved through quiet devotion to the thought.

To meditate, it is necessary: first, to fix a thought in itself; second, to identify with the thought; third, to remain within it for a while. You have to enter into a thought, for example, the concept of the table, and identify the will with it. Then Samadhi occurs, which is immersion in the object.

The regulation of the breathing process is connected with such training of thought. If this alone is tackled from the beginning, it is Hatha Yoga. If it forms part of the other training, it is Raja Yoga. The yogi must observe certain times for breathing, and then he enters into a rhythmic life. The seven degrees of the Persian initiation are based on this: Ravens, Occult, Strugglers, Lions, Persians, Sun-runners, Fathers. Those who had come so far as to make their lives completely rhythmic were called Sun-runners. In this way, the human being integrates himself into the whole rhythm of nature. The sun returns to the same point every year. Everything happens rhythmically with it. Everything in life is based on rhythms. If a person wants to achieve something, he must bring rhythm into his life. The plants and animals are connected to the seasons in a very specific way. In the human being, everything is initially subject to the arbitrariness of the astral body, and this makes his life unrhythmic. This brings disorder into his life. He must now make it rhythmic again.

If I meditate every day at a certain hour, for example at seven o'clock in the morning, I bring rhythm into my life. But if I meditate at ten o'clock or at some other time instead of at seven o'clock, then the rhythm is disturbed. Even if a person decides to say a prayer every day at seven o'clock in the morning, again at noon and before going to bed, then these are three fixed points that bring rhythm into our lives. Part of the rhythmization of life is also the rhythmization of the breathing process. This is connected with very deep things that exist between man and the universe. Plants and humans belong together in a certain way. The human being inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide; the plant does it the other way around. Throughout evolution, there is a connection between the nature of plants and that of human beings. The plant grows rhythmically according to natural laws. It is still completely chaste because it does not yet have the astral life within it. On the one hand, it is higher than the human being, but on the other hand, it is lower. As an ideal, it stands before man. Man must become similar to it by rhythmizing the breathing process. When one inhales and holds the breath longer, one develops carbonic acid in oneself, and thus approaches the nature of plants.

When the yogi gradually begins to consciously live in what he had previously done unconsciously, then new worlds open up around him. He then experiences new worlds. If we were asleep, we would not hear the most glorious music. So, at first, man is a sleeper in relation to the spiritual worlds. And just as waking up is like waking up to melodies, there is a waking up in the spiritual world through the breathing process. When you consciously enter into the breathing process, imaginative knowledge begins. Ordinary seeing is material knowledge. Imaginative knowledge consists in our ability to evoke images that are not mere visions, but that are grounded in the very basis of existence. Even when you look at the ordinary world, you basically only have images. Everything in the external world is an image. The images of the external world correspond to material knowledge. The images that arise through the yoga process are stimulated internally, stimulated in the right way.

What matters in this whole world, which then arises in us, is that it is inwardly true. That is the difficulty in the yoga training. As long as a person has personal desires, he cannot easily distinguish truth from untruth in this world. Hence the need to become selfless. In the Pythagorean schools, people were made to understand: You can only learn about life after death when you are completely indifferent to whether you live after death or not. All personal aspiration is eliminated in relation to this one question. When personal desire is eliminated, where imagination is needed, then truth is expressed in imagination.

The third stage is the stage of rational will. Here you also learn how the truth is made, the will by which something is willed. The fourth stage is the stage of intuition. The yoga training is about reining in everything that is in us: desire, urge, craving and passion. As long as we do not control this, truth makes us illusory. Above all, absolute inner calm, patience, endurance and steadfastness are required in the practice of yoga.

Certain character traits are essential. We must never lose our harmony with our surroundings, otherwise our progress will be at an end. If the smartest person fell asleep and then woke up on Mars, he would be unable to use his abilities on Mars. He would be considered insane there. All madness is a lack of harmony with the environment; then you can't get ahead if that happens. Not a drunken person should you become, as Plato says, but a sober person, and in no way neglect your everyday duties. This is absolutely necessary for the practice of yoga.

Then it is important to develop humility. Only under the influence of the highest humility can one speak correctly of the experiences in the higher worlds. A very high degree of humility must go hand in hand with the yoga training. The oriental disciple can easily gain a sense of respect and appreciation for the teacher. In this case, it is very important. The deepest trust in the teacher is necessary for the yoga training because one must have a fixed point. In a sense, the yoga student leaves the whole rest of the world. His relationship to the world changes. All things then take on a new meaning.

He becomes alien to his surroundings. He must transform all things. A certain spiritual alchemy takes place with him. He must now do everything out of an inner sense of duty. He treats everything from a new point of view. The way he relates to things changes completely. In a sense, the person becomes estranged from his surroundings. If he does not develop full strength of character, he can easily lose touch with his environment.

The fixed point for the yoga student was always the teacher, who was a point of reference for him, whom he calls his guru, whom he regards as the embodiment of the deity in man. In reality, divine beings do exist in higher human natures. It seems obvious to the Oriental that a higher being lives in the guru. This is not the case in the West. If someone seeks a yoga training in the West, then he will also find the opportunity to reach his goal in the West.

The greatest evil in yoga training would be impatience. But you overcome that when you recognize reincarnation and karma as realities. We must live with the feeling that we actually see this present life between birth and death as one among many.

In a transcript by Anna Rebmann, the following table is attached:

Notes from the lecture

People who live in abstract concepts and have no particular inclination to engage with spiritual life in its reality very often talk about there being a transitional period here or there when discussing the process of human development. The spiritual researcher cannot be so generous with the words “we live in a transitional period”. Those who really observe spiritual life must know that such times of transition come, and those where the course of development proceeds more evenly. In this sense, we can indeed say that we live in a spiritual transition period. Some of what takes place in it will be the subject of our consideration today.

Every development, whether it be the evolution of the individual between birth and death or the evolution of the planets, always has currents within it; it does not proceed in a straight line. Even in the life of the individual we must distinguish between two currents. In the education of the child you can already find one of these currents. This is described in the booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science' and also in the second part of 'Occult Science, an Outline of the Principles of the Science of the Spirit', which has just been published. Actually, the human being experiences several births. First, the physical birth. Only what we call the physical body is born. Until then, it was enveloped in the physical mother's body. This first state lasts until the age of seven. Until then, he is surrounded by the etheric sheath. Now, until about sexual maturity, the human being also frees himself from this sheath, and then the astral body is born. At the age of twenty-one, the I is born.

If we observe this development, we can say that it takes place in every human being according to certain laws. Certain rules can be followed, which are given in that little book, “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, and it is beneficial if they are followed. But now we come to what is individual for each person: this is an inner current that runs parallel to the first current. The second current proceeds within the first. This second current includes everything from previous lives, from one's own experiences. The difference between the outer and inner currents of development can be recognized in every person, especially in people with significant character traits.

Petöfi is a Hungarian poet. His fellow countrymen saw something very special in him. His Hungarian identity is expressed in his lyrical poems. You get to know Magyar will, feeling and thinking from them. If you look into this in more detail, you learn that his name was not Petöfi at all, but that his father was Serbian and his mother Croatian. There was nothing Magyar in him. What was not Hungarian built up in him: that was the external development. Then there is the inner development, which reflects what is there from previous lives: Hungarian in essence.

Another example is the German painter Asmus Carstens. He had an overwhelming urge to paint. If you have the opportunity to see the things he created, you will say: These are the things of someone who can't paint at all. But his individuality is in his pictures. He wanted to learn painting from a famous painter, but when the painter went out, he was supposed to operate the coach box. He didn't want that and left. He then went to a wine merchant to learn his trade and had to wash barrels. He then came to Copenhagen. There he was not accepted at the academy because he was too old. He never learned how to paint, had no sense of color, but what he did create has become something significant in art. This is an example of such cases, where there is such a special urge from previous lives, but the outer development is not favorable for it.

We must apply such results of spiritual research in life if we want to approach life correctly, otherwise life could prove that we would have missed something. For example: some individuality enters life. It is predestined to accomplish something. But we fail to educate their bodies properly. In the seventeenth or eighteenth year, when crises occur, it becomes apparent that the coverings are not properly formed: the astral body is not formed with the instincts and desires; the etheric body is not formed with the corresponding skills and habits. Then the outer and inner development do not coincide. In milder cases, people lose their inner balance; but a complete disruption of the soul life can also occur. If something like this happens in the crisis years, it is due to nothing more than the non-harmonization of the various currents.

We must supply the human ego with concepts and understanding for life: habits for the etheric body, concepts for the astral body. What comes over from the previous life must develop freely.

In the great evolution of humanity, we can see how the two currents of development merge. The souls that are now embodied here were previously embodied in the other epochs: in the Greco-Latin, Egyptian, Persian, Indian. The world was different when your souls looked up at the venerable pyramids. If the earth were always the same, then the incarnations would serve no purpose. They make sense because something different occurs each time.

Now it could be that one or two or three lives would not have been properly utilized, for example in the Egyptian-Babylonian period. Then something would have been missed that could never be recovered. Inner development runs like a thread through the outer life, through what we can learn from the outer life. Thus a disharmony can also occur between the outer and inner currents of development. Now one could say: What you are telling us is somewhat distressing; it could be that we have neglected something that we can never make up for. First spiritual science brings us enlightenment, and now we can no longer make up for it. But it is not like that. Until now, people were not at all able to choose and neglect freely and independently. Only now does the time begin when souls can miss something. That is why spiritual science is only coming now, so that people can hear what they can miss, to see how people burden themselves with guilt when they miss something. That is why spiritual science is being proclaimed now, because humanity needs it now.

The human soul with its abilities was not always as it is today. In the past, people had an old, dim clairvoyance. The waking states were not as developed in ancient times as they are today. Objects were surrounded by an ether aura. Between waking and sleeping, people lived in the spiritual worlds and were there among spiritual-divine beings. In those days, people knew that spiritual worlds existed not only from hearsay but from experience. The further back we go, the more we see man in this spiritual world. The gates of this spiritual world then gradually closed on him. One can indicate such points in time quite accurately. A saying goes that nature does not make leaps. This saying is very inaccurate and inappropriate. Where a green leaf becomes a flower, there is a leap, and so it is.

Just as we can indicate the exact point of transition from green leaf to flower, so we can indicate the time when clairvoyance ceased. Of course it happened gradually, but on average it stopped at a certain time. This point in time can be indicated as 3101 BC. At that time people discarded their old clairvoyance. Before that time there was still a dim clairvoyance present, like a memory of an even older clairvoyance. In that early age people really saw clearly into the spiritual world. And there was an even earlier time when people regarded the physical as something highly insignificant. That was the golden age. This was followed by the silver age, in which people also saw into the spiritual worlds. Then came the iron age, in which people had a memory of the old clairvoyance, and then - starting in 3101 - the next age, our age, in which the gates of the spiritual world closed.

Krita Yuga is the first, the golden age; the second, 'Treta Yuga, the silver; the third, Dvapara Yuga, the bronze; the fourth, Kali Yuga, also called the dark age, beginning in the year 3101 BC. Within the dark age, we must find that which could not be anywhere else: 3000 years after the beginning of this age, we find the event of Golgotha.

Humanity could no longer ascend to the gods. Therefore, a god had to descend. This is what happened with the Christ event. The human ego could only live out itself in the Kali Yuga. Therefore, the event of Golgotha had to take place here. The destinies that can be told with earthly words were those of Christ Jesus. When initiates ascended to the spiritual world in the past, it had to be expressed in spiritual words. That is why it is not understood today. Because this God led an earthly life, it was possible to speak of Him in earthly words. That was also a time of transition. This cannot be expressed more clearly than in the words: Change your soul's disposition, for the Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near to you. The understanding, the connection with the Kingdom of Heaven, can only be found within oneself. You can no longer find it beyond your earthly self, but heaven has come right up to your self. “Blessed are they who are poor in spirit” also points to this. In the past, the spirit was given to them. Now people have become poor. They can now only find the spirit in their own self.

It is a childish notion to say that Christ or John the Baptist proclaimed a kingdom that was to return after a thousand years. It should only be hinted that we should enter the kingdom through our own self. Such a special time is here again today. It could be that this time would be slept through.

The Latin historian Tacitus does not speak of the Christians as of something significant, but rather as of a new sect. It was said in Rome that in a remote street there was a new sect whose leader was a certain Jesus. How important an aspect can be overlooked! Just as the time of the former transition was important, we are now in a transition period that may not be quite as important, but it is still important. Humanity is acquiring new abilities. These abilities must be applied to increasingly identify the Christ.

In 1899, the Kali Yuga had expired. New powers are developing in people, but not only those that can be gained in occult training, as it is written in “Occult Science”. In the coming decades, some people will say that they see people quite differently. Science will no longer be enough for them. People will gradually see the etheric body. Some people will foresee and predict this and that, connections and so on. This will gradually emerge.

Two things can now happen. Let us assume that anthroposophy had never existed, never said that it could explain something like this. Then people would say: those who see something like this are insane — and would put them in insane asylums. Or anthroposophy is lucky and finds its way into people's hearts. So we have two developmental currents again: These abilities, just described, develop in the outer human current; but our individuality must grow into these abilities. The human ego must learn to understand what it actually is that is developing.

It is not at all necessary that what is now being proclaimed by anthroposophy as prophecy should also be believed and heeded. And if it does not come to what was prophesied, then people would say: You see, it was just a fantasy. — 'But, only those people do not understand it, the development went as it should not have gone. Humanity would wither and freeze.

The Christ has only once lived in a physical body. When people in the pre-Christian era were able to see into the spiritual worlds, they were told: There is something else, a spiritual, that is not yet visible today, but a time will come when this will be seen, and then a time will come when this great spirit will live in the physical body. A person who knew about this lived in Palestine, but he did not recognize the Christ. Yet when he clairvoyantly recognized the Christ in the etheric body, he recognized that what he had known was to come had been fulfilled. Then he knew that the Christ had lived. That was the event of Damascus.

In his etheric body, the Christ can always be found by the clairvoyant consciousness. When this further development of humanity occurs, people will experience the event of Damascus. The abilities occur with the expiration of the Kali Yuga. And the ability to experience the event of Damascus occurs in the years 1930 to 1940. And if one does not go past this point in time blindly, then one will be able to speak of a coming to Christ. That is what is called in the occult schools: the return of Christ. Then an age will come that will last 2500 years. More and more people will live their way up to the Christ through the anthroposophical view. In the first half of the 20th century, the return of Christ will be able to occur. Deepened and further developed, Christianity will become that.

We may say today what was said then: Change your soul's disposition so that you may find the Kingdom of Heaven, which is drawing near! Care must be taken that this time does not pass unrecognized.

It will also work through Christ for those who pass through physical death between now and then. Those who die around 1920 will be able to understand in devachan what is happening here at that time, but only if they have acquired an understanding of it in their earthly life and have prepared themselves for it.

What has now been said will be said even more often in the next ten years, so that time will not pass unused. It must also be heard by those who are so steeped in materialism that they can only think that Christ can only reappear in a physical body. False messiahs will arise around the middle of the twentieth century who will tell people that they are Christ. And true anthroposophy will know that they are not, that only materialistic ideas are at play. So it is important for anthroposophists to know that spiritual life must be there.

We live in an important transitional epoch, we can say. Times are running fast. The Kali Yuga lasted 5000 years. The next epoch will last 2500 years.

The coming together with the Christ is what is now imminent. The Christ will not descend to humanity, but humanity will ascend to the Christ.

In our recent studies I have shown how the human being can find a relationship to the world, a relationship that he is seeking to the spiritual, the soul, and the bodily. I have also shown you that if we seriously wish to bring the spiritual nature of the human being into our consciousness, we can only apply our gaze to the spiritual worlds. For, in fact, playing into our human spirit are the deeds and reciprocal relationships of those hierarchies that we group together as the hierarchies of the angeloi, archangeloi, archai, and so on. By bringing the deeds and relationships of these beings to consciousness, the human being at the same time brings his own spirituality to consciousness.

In relation to the soul element, I was able to describe to you how thinking occurs between man's etheric body and physical body, how feeling occurs between man's etheric body and his astral body, and how willing occurs between the astral body and the I. Then I showed you how what man today can call his bodies must now be understood—if one wishes to bring them in their true form into consciousness—as the seed for future worlds. In fact, what will be formed in the world's future existence has its seed in the human bodies that we bear with us in life: in our physical body, which we lay aside here on the earth, but which, in being dissolved in the earthly realm, becomes seed for what the earth becomes after it has disappeared as earth; we learn to know our etheric body—for a short time, after we have passed through the portal of death, it apparently dissolves itself in the wide universe, but it becomes the seed for what the earth is to become in the future. This is also the case with our astral body and with that which is the sheath of our I. This I-sheath, however, as we have it here on earth as human beings, we received into our being only during this earthly existence.

We live today, which means that we have already been living for a long time in the intellectual age. The human being understands what surrounds him in the world in the same way as things generally are understood today, by means of the intellect, by means of intellectual knowing. Everything that the human being encounters today as culture, as civilization, is adjusted to this outer knowledge. Even when we feel, then, the feeling remains dull and dreamlike. What becomes clear to the human being in feeling is just what the world today presents from its authoritative science as an outer knowledge. Thus the human being, from the time he enters school, receives as inner soul life within our ordinary civilization only an intellectual mastery of the environment. How far, however, will this kind of intellectual mastery of the environment take us? I could also put the question this way: how deeply does this intellectual mastery of the environment penetrate into our soul life?

Let us consider a person who today enters school at six years of age, enters the kind of school in which he is brought into a relationship to the outer world only by outer methods. Let us assume that this person goes right through our higher education. He then is able to learn even more, is able to pass through the higher stages of culture and absorb all this into himself, by which means one becomes a leader of humanity in some realm today, in a spiritual respect. What does such a person, who has formed his soul life in accordance with the culture of our modern time, actually receive in his soul? He receives only what goes as far as his I. He receives no more than what goes as far as his I. He receives it, then, rayed back by those members of his human nature in which the I is certainly immersed but that are not called to do actual self-conscious activity. He receives as reflections his thoughts, his memory pictures, his feelings, and what he knows about his will impulses. Everything else he experiences is weakened, paralyzed. His soul life runs its course merely in the I, and everything that is communicated to him is communicated only to the extent that it enters his I.

What happens, then, if what we call anthroposophical spiritual science approaches a person? If this happens he should actually learn to feel something that can be expressed in the following way: he should feel a recognition of “... the I as a structure that strives to attain, with a power against which the force of gravity is like the breath of a snowflake, a state of being in which nothing that modern culture designates as talent plays a role. ...”⁹ A person, in approaching anthroposophical spiritual science, really should arrive at the point of being able to say: a very special demand is made on you with this anthroposophical spiritual science. You are able to understand things that you receive as ideas in your soul, which other people, who live only in today's culture, claim to be fantasies or deranged visions; you receive, therefore, what those who live in today's culture do not approach with their I-culture. They do not approach this with their I-culture. The earthly I cannot comprehend the concepts which, following one another, proceed from anthroposophy: what is related about the ancient Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions or about the spiritual, soul, and bodily nature of the human being. It can only be assumed that if one had a competent modern philosopher, one who has not become deranged or “clever” to the extent that he “takes Darwin for a midwife and the ape for an artist,”¹⁰ if one takes such a competent modern philosopher he should understand that the spirit of the human being, about which he says so much—though the philosopher of today speaks only with words—can be comprehended only in connection with the higher hierarchies, that the soul of the human being can be comprehended according to thinking, feeling, and willing only if one looks between man's members, the physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I. Could you expect that such a philosopher would see in the bodily sheathes of the human beings, which he considered as fantasy, seeds for future worlds? One cannot arrive at such a view, of course, with what the modern I encompasses. If one is nevertheless able to link something from the soul life with this unusual idea—and to do this it is not necessary to be a clairvoyant oneself, but only to the research of the clairvoyant as ideas—this is done not in the I but in the astral body. The thought shadows, which one receives today in the I as a reflection of the astral body, do not strain the astral body. One can have these with the I-culture. If the astral body is here (see next drawing, red) and the I here (green), then all that modern man experiences is here in the I, and his thoughts are nothing but what the astral body casts into the I as shadow images (yellow). It is not necessary to strain oneself by these. One allows the I to prevail, which has been received through the earthly organization. A person constructs a microscope, places a slide under it, followed by another slide and another, peers at them, and compares the thought shadows, making some mathematical calculations that proceed just as they are given, as shadow processes. It is thus possible to relate to the world, in relation to one's inner experience, completely passively. This passivity is then developed further by shifting this way of viewing to one's inner work, though not now in the Goethean sense. Such a person no longer likes to attend lecture courses in which he must participate actively with his thinking; he prefers lecture courses in which lots of experiments are done and, between the experiments, in the unpleasant babble by which the experiments are explained, he falls asleep. Or he even goes to the movies. There one need not be active at all.

This is truly the I-culture. It is prevailing more and more. Anthroposophical spiritual science comes along, however, and with that one cannot work in this way. A modern theologian said that he would not read the Akashic Chronicle even if it were bestowed on him in a special illustrated edition;¹¹ but he need not have feared that he would receive the Akashic Chronicle in a special illustrated edition, for it must be acquired in such a way that one participates in an inwardly forming way. Even if once one were really to fix in a symbolic, artistic way what is found in the Akashic Chronicle, this theologian still could not do anything with it because he primarily values the illustrations.

With anthroposophical spiritual science, one must participate inwardly, for otherwise one naturally hears only the words, which can be regarded arbitrarily as fantasy. This inner participation, however, one must learn to love. One must resolve to do this. It is uncomfortable, but it becomes noticeable, if one resolves to do it, that this activity refreshes, that it makes the human being fresher in soul and body. I know that many people raise objections concerning this becoming refreshed, but they would very much like to attain through merely passive thinking what should be attained through an active participation of the astral body in a difficult wrestling for comprehension, just as that theologian would have been most content to have the entire Outline of Occult Science played out for him in a movie. This is just how he uses his concepts in the essay where he speaks of a “special illustrated edition of the Akashic Chronicle.”

Briefly, by means of anthroposophical spiritual science something comes into activity that is no longer merely the I but that includes the astral body. There are certainly those people who sense this when they read an anthroposophical book. As they read it they sense something; something stirs in them. Before things were disposed to move inwardly only passively, as thought shadows. Now something like an active intellect begins to stir in them. Something emerges from them as if inwardly they had lice, and then they become so nervous about this inner stirring that they say: this is unhealthy. Then they complain about the difficult things with which people in anthroposophical spiritual science are challenged. Especially those who then observe people who are noticeably affected inwardly in this way—their brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles—complain that anthroposophy is something that makes people nervous.

What happens, however, if we now ask, what is the relationship between the I-culture, which man received first during earthly existence, and the culture that can be acquired through anthroposophical spiritual science? A simple sketch can make this clearer. Let us assume that the earth is here (see drawing below, red). It would have been preceded by ancient Moon, Sun, and Saturn. Here we would have the next planet, Jupiter (green), which will be transformed from the earth after the earth has passed through its decline. On Jupiter, then, there participate intensively those members of the human being that exist now, as seed: the physical body, etheric body, and astral body; the I, however, takes part only under a certain condition. If the I takes up only what can be taken up through earthly culture, this I-consciousness ceases along with the earth; then the human being becomes an earthly I, and, as an earthly I, he ceases to exist along with the earth. He must evolve himself further in other forms.

If the human being has developed himself right into his astral body, however, if he has brought his astral body into activity, then this activity radiates back to his I. The being of man then consists of an I and astral body that are inwardly active. He does not feel—as I described it previously—as though he had lice inside but rather as if inwardly he were permeated by strong, healthy life forces, by life forces that now link him with what already proceeds from his bodily sheaths, as seed, into future metamorphoses of the earth, in order to develop himself further in these future earthly metamorphoses.

Anthroposophical spiritual science absolutely must be studied as something living. Then it gives the human being not merely a theory or a theoretical world view, but it gives the human being the life force that can guide him beyond mere earthly existence.

Especially if we take completely seriously a knowledge such as we have unfolded before our souls in the last three lectures—if we place the human being from the point of view of spirit, soul, and body within the entire evolution of the world and feel something as a result in the inner human content by which we become richer—then we incorporate into this human being something that carries him beyond earthly existence. For it could be—although this will not be the case, one hopes—that the human being, because he has become tired in the way characterized before, rejects anthroposophical spiritual science. Then the human sheath would continue to develop further, but it would be taken hold of by other beings than by the human beings entitled to it, and the human beings would sink into a lower existence than the one intended.

This is ultimately what it is that makes a few people in the present fearful about the cosmic future of the human being, that makes a few people sense that man, due to his trespasses, could be lost in the universe. Therefore still others must come whose insight extends beyond the assumption that “Darwin is a midwife and the ape a work of art,” who do not merely believe that one ultimately speaks “under the guidance of standard medicine,” about “weak nerves, fatigue, psychological weaknesses,”¹² and so, who do not merely come to the point of saying to themselves, “I won't write any more, for one would have to write with pinworms. I won't read anymore. Who is there to read? The ancient, honest Titans wrapped in sandwich paper?”¹³

Now, despite the infernal laughter which is welling up on every side, one must still say that those who have no faith anymore in the “Titans with Icarus wings wrapped in sandwich paper,” those who see that everything that still has a germinal quality in our declining culture actually can only be “written about with pinworms,” then ask themselves, what should one read, what should one concern oneself with? They should be given anthroposophical literature, despite the infernal laughter coming today from all sides, and they should receive, if at all possible, a soul remedy so that they can be relieved of the inhibitions that prevent them from receiving what the soul undoubtedly needs today.

Many people go around in the world who do not know what to do with themselves, people whose body becomes too heavy, inwardly crippled. They often must be shown in full seriousness the strengthening, health-giving impulses that lie in a real self-achievement of the thoughts, the ideas of anthroposophical spiritual science.

These things—I must say this again and again—have to be taken up with the greatest seriousness. It is necessary to have a little insight into the consequences actually imminent in our time from the direction upon which materialistic culture has entered.

May it also be felt how very necessary it is for the renewal of our culture to take place today from primal sources! Tomorrow we shall continue.

• 9 . Quotation from Epilog, by the German poet Gottfried Benn, 1886–1956.
• 10. Ibid.
• 11. Christoph Schrempf, theologian, 1860–1944.
• 12. Quotation from Epilog, by Gottfried Benn.
• 13. Ibid.

Speech Exercises:

Children chiding
Chaffinch chirping
Choking chimneys
Cheerfully chattering

Children chiding and fetching
Chaffinch chirping switching
Choking chimneys hitching
Cheerfully chattering twitching

Beach children chiding and fetching
Reach chaffinch chirping switching
Birches choking chimneys hitching
Perches cheerfully chattering twitching

RUDOLF STEINER: The “ch” should be sounded in a thoroughly active way, like a gymnastic exercise.¹

The following is a piece in which you have to pay attention both to the form and the content.

From “Galgenlieder” by Christian Morgenstern:

The Does’ Prayer

The does, as the hour grows late,
Med-it-ate;
Med-it-nine;
Med-i-ten;
Med-eleven;
Med-twelve;
Mednight!
The does, as the hour grows late,
Meditate,
They fold their little toesies,
the doesies.²

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will continue our talk about the plant world.

Various contributions were offered by those present.

RUDOLF STEINER: Later there will be students in the school who will study the plant kingdom on a more scientific basis, in which case they would learn to distinguish mosses, lichens, algae, monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and so on. All children, who in their youth learn to know plants according to scientific principles, should first learn about them as we have described—that is, by comparing them with soul qualities. Later they can study the plant system more scientifically. It makes a difference whether we try first to describe the plants and then later study them scientifically, or vice versa. You can do much harm by teaching scientific botany first, instead of first presenting ideas that relate to the feeling life, as I have tried to show you. In the latter case the children can tackle the study of scientific botanical systems with a truly human understanding.

The plant realm is the soul world of the Earth made visible. The carnation is a flirt. The sunflower an old peasant. The sunflower’s shining face is like a jolly old country rustic. Plants with very big leaves would express, in terms of soul life, lack of success in a job, taking a long time with everything, clumsiness, and especially an inability to finish anything; we think that someone has finished, but the person is still at it. Look for the soul element in the plant forms!

When summer approaches, or even earlier, sleep spreads over the Earth; this sleep becomes heavier and heavier, but it only spreads out spatially, and in autumn passes away again. The plants are no longer there, and sleep no longer spreads over the Earth. The feelings, passions, and emotions of people pass with them into sleep, but once they are there, those feelings have the appearance of plants. What we have invisible within the soul, our hidden qualities—flirtatiousness, for example—become visible in plants. We don’t see this in a person who is awake, but it can be observed clairvoyantly in people who are sleeping. Flirtation, for example, looks like a carnation. A flirt continually produces carnations from the nose! A tedious, boring person produces gigantic leaves from the whole body, if you could see them.

When we express the thought that the Earth sleeps, we must go further: the plant world grows in the summer. Earth sleeps in the summer and is awake during winter. The plant world is the Earth’s soul. Human soul life ceases during sleep, but when the Earth goes to sleep its soul life actually begins. But the human soul does not express itself in a sleeping person. How are we going to get over this difficulty with children?

One of the teachers suggested that plants could be considered the Earth’s dreams.

RUDOLF STEINER: But plants during high summer are not the Earth’s dreams, because the Earth is in a deep sleep in the summer. It is only how the plant world appears during spring and autumn that you can call dreams. Only when the flowers are first beginning to sprout—when the March violet, for example, is still green, before flowers appear, and again when leaves are falling—that the plant world can be compared to dreams. With this in mind, try to make the transition to a real understanding of the plant.

For example, you can begin by saying, “Look at this buttercup,” or any plant we can dig out of the soil, showing the root below, the stalk, leaves, blossoms, and then the stamens and pistil, from which the fruit will develop. Let the child look at a plant like this. Then show a tree and say, “Imagine this tree next to the plant. What can you tell me about the tree? Yes, it also has roots below of course; but instead of a stalk, it has a trunk. Then it spreads its branches, and it’s as if the real plants grew on these branches, because many leaves and flowers can be found there; it’s as if little plants were growing on the branches above. So, we could actually look at a meadow this way: We see yellow buttercups growing all over the meadow; it is covered with individual plants with their roots in the Earth, and they cover the whole meadow. But when we look at the tree, it’s as if someone had taken the meadow, lifted it up, and rounded it into an arch; only then do we find many flowers growing very high all over it. The trunk is a bit of the Earth itself. So we may say that the tree is the same as the meadow where the flowers grow.

“Now we go from the tree to the dandelion or daisy. Here there is a root-like form in the soil, and from it grows something like a stalk and leaves, but at the top there is a little basket of flowers, tiny little blossoms close together. It’s as though the dandelion made a little basket up there with nothing in it but little flowers, perfect flowers that can be found in the dandelion-head. So we have the tree, the little ‘basket-bloomers,’ and the ordinary plant, a plant with a stalk. In the tree it’s as though the plants were only high up on the branches; in the compound flowers the blossom is at the top of the plant, except that these are not petals, but countless fully-developed flowers.

“Now imagine that the plant kept everything down in the Earth; suppose it wanted to develop roots, but that it was unsuccessful—or perhaps leaves, but could not do this either; imagine that the only thing to unfold above ground were what one usually finds in the blossom; you would then have a mushroom. At least, if the roots down below fail and only leaves come up, you would then have ferns. So you find all kinds of different forms, but they are all plants.”

Show the children the buttercup, how it spreads its little roots, how it has its five yellow-fringed petals, then show them the tree, where the “plant” only grows on it, then the composite flowers, the mushroom, and the fern; do not do this in a very scientific way, but so that the children get to know the form in general.

Then you can say, “Why do you think the mushroom remained a mushroom, and why did the tree become a tree? Let’s compare the mushroom with the tree. What is the difference between them? Take the tree. Isn’t it as though the Earth had pushed itself out with all its might—as though the inner being of the tree had forced its way up into the outside world in order to develop its blossoms and fruits away from the Earth? But in the mushroom the Earth has kept within itself what usually grows up out of it, and only the uppermost parts of the plant appear in the form of mushrooms. In the mushroom the ‘tree’ is below the soil and only exists as forces. In the mushroom itself we find something similar to the tree’s outermost part. When lots and lots of mushrooms are spread over the Earth, it is as though you had a tree growing down below them, inside the Earth. And when we look at a tree it is as though the Earth had forced itself up, turning itself inside out, as it were, bringing its inner self into the outer world.”

Now you are coming nearer to the reality: “When you see mushrooms growing you know that the Earth is holding something within itself that, in the case of a growing tree, it pushes up outside itself. So in producing mushrooms the Earth keeps the force of the growing tree within itself. But when the Earth lets the trees grow it turns the growing-force of the tree outward.” Now here you have something not found within the Earth during summer, because it rises out of the Earth then and when winter comes it goes down into the Earth again. “During summer the Earth, through the force of the tree, sends its own force up into the blossoms, causing them to unfold, and in winter it draws this force back again into itself. Now let us think of this force, which during the summer circles up in the trees—a force so small and delicate in the violet but so powerful in the tree. Where can it be found in winter? It is under the surface of the Earth. What happens during the depth of winter to all these plants—the trees, the composite flowers, and all the others? They unfold right under the Earth’s surface; they are there within the Earth and develop the Earth’s soul life. This was known to the people of ancient times, and that was why they placed Christmas—the time when we look for soul life—not in the summer, but during winter.

“Just as a person’s soul life passes out of the body when falling asleep, and again turns inward when a person wakens, so it is also for the Earth. During summer while asleep it sends its sap-bearing force out, and during winter takes it back again when it awakens—that is, it gathers all its various forces into itself. Just think, children, our Earth feels and experiences everything that happens within it; what you see all the summer long in flowers and leaves, the abundance of growth and blossom, in the daisies, the roses, or the carnations—this all dwells under the Earth during winter, and there it has feelings like you have, and can be angry or happy like you.”

In this way you gradually form a view of life lived under the Earth during winter. That is the truth. And it is good to tell the children these things. This is something that even materialists could not argue with or consider an extravagant flight of fancy. But now you can continue from this and consider the whole plant. The children are led away from a subjective attitude toward plants, and they are shown what drives the sap over the Earth during summer heat and draws it back again into itself in winter; they come to see the ebb and flow in plant life. In this way you find the Earth’s real soul life mirrored in plants. Beneath the Earth ferns, mosses, and fungi unfold all that they fail to develop as growing plants, but this all remains etheric substance and does not become physical. When this etheric plant appears above the Earth’s surface, the external forces work on it and transform it into the rudiments of leaves we find in fungi, mosses, and ferns. But under a patch of moss or mushrooms there is something like a gigantic tree, and if the Earth cannot absorb it, cannot keep it within itself, then it pushes up into the outer world.

The tree is a little piece of the Earth itself. But what remains underground in mushrooms and ferns is now raised out of the Earth, so that if the tree were slowly pushed down into the Earth everything would be different, and if it were to be thus submerged then ferns, mosses, and mushrooms would appear; for the tree it would be a kind of winter. But the tree withdraws from this experience of winter. It is the nature of a tree to avoid the experience of winter to some extent, but if I could take hold of a fern or a mushroom by the head and draw it further and further out of the Earth so that the etheric element in it reached the air, then I would draw out a whole tree, and what would otherwise become a mushroom would now turn into a tree. Annual plants are midway between these two. A composite flower is merely another form of what happens in a tree. If I could press a composite flower down into the Earth it would bear only single blossoms. A composite flower could almost be called a tree that has shot up too quickly.

And so we can also find a wish, a desire, living in the Earth. The Earth feels compelled to let this wish sink into sleep. The Earth puts it to sleep in summer, and then the wish rises as a plant. It is not visible above the Earth until it appears as a water-lily. Down below it lives as a wish in the Earth, and then up above it becomes a plant.

The plant world is the Earth’s soul world made visible, and this is why we can compare it with human beings. But you should not merely make comparisons; you must also teach the children about the actual forms of the plants. Starting with a general comparison you can then lead to the single plant species.

Light sleep can be compared with ordinary plants, a kind of waking during sleep with mushrooms (where there are very many mushrooms, the Earth is awake during the summer), and you can compare really sound deep sleep with the trees.

From this you see that the Earth does not sleep as people do, but in one part it is more asleep and in another more awake; here more asleep, there more awake. People, in their eyes and other sense organs, also have sleeping, waking, and, dreaming side by side, all at the same time.

Now here is your task for tomorrow. Please make out a table; on the left place a list of the human soul characteristics, from thoughts down through all the emotions of the soul—feelings of pleasure and displeasure, actively violent emotions, anger, grief, and so on, right down to the will; certain specific plant forms can be compared with the human soul realm. On the right you can then fill in the corresponding plant species, so that in the table you have the thought plants above, the will plants below, and all the others in between.

Rudolf Steiner then gave a graphic explanation of the Pythagorean theorem and referred to an article by Dr. Ernst Müller in Ostwald’s magazine for natural philosophy, Annalen der Naturphilosophie, entitled “Some Observations on a Theory of Knowledge underlying the Pythagorean theorem.”

In the drawing, the red parts of the two smaller squares already lie within the square on the hypotenuse. By moving the blue and the green triangles in the direction of the arrows, the remaining parts of the two smaller squares will cover those parts of the square on the hypotenuse still uncovered.

You should cut out the whole thing in cardboard and then you can see it clearly.³

• 1. The original German exercise (which appears in the appendix) uses the “pf ” sound; the “ch” sound has been substituted in the English version.
• 2. Max Knight, trans., University of California Press, Berkeley, 1964.
• 3. The Pythagorean theorem states that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. For another brief discussion of the Pythagorean theorem in teaching see Rudolf Steiner, The Kingdom of Childhood: Introductory Talks on Waldorf Education, Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1995, pp. 85–90.

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

When you read or hear about those cultural endeavors that connect with or join our building, this Goetheanum, then you can actually always assume in this case that the opposite of what is said in the world is being striven for here. In fact, the aim here is to strive for that which is fundamentally the longing, the unconscious, instinctive longing of many people, in the most diverse branches of contemporary civilization and culture.

What we are able to present to you today is only a small, narrowly defined part of the whole of our cultural and spiritual endeavors of our time. Eurythmic art should not be seen as a dance art alongside other things that look similar to what is done here, but our eurythmic art should be something completely independent. It is, like all our striving, actually based on what I would call Goetheanism, Goethe's artistic attitude, Goethe's world view. Only we are not dealing with the Goethe who died in 1832. We leave it to those who want to deal with it more in a scholarly way. We are dealing, I would say, with the genius of Goethe, how he lives on and how he also lives in the early 20th century.

And what is to be presented here in our eurythmic art - albeit only in its beginnings, in first attempts - is the realization of Goethe's artistic view in a very specific field, in an artistic field that makes use of the human being's own movement potential as its means of art. An art of movement of the human organism in space is what underlies this. And if I am to express what the sources of this particular art form are, I will speak at first in seemingly theoretical terms, but only seemingly so.

Everything artistic should be immediately comprehensible to the aesthetic sense. All theorizing has no justification in the face of art. In direct observation, the beauty of some art must reveal itself. But what Goethe said, based on his artistic and ideological convictions, is true, deeply true: when nature begins to reveal its secrets to someone, they feel the deepest yearning for its most worthy interpreter, art.

And what is to be presented here directly through the human organism itself can best be explained by reminding you of the comprehensive idea of Goethe's metamorphosis. This idea of Goethe's metamorphosis is something that has not yet been sufficiently appreciated by our school of thought, by our intellectual life. This Goethean idea of metamorphosis will enable us to move from the science of the dead, in which we now find ourselves, to a real science of the living.

What can be called the Goethean idea of metamorphosis still appears simple today. The whole plant with all its complications, with all its complicated structures, whether it is a tree or a green foliage plant: for Goethe, everything that is a plant is a transformed leaf; whether it is a colored petal or a green leaf, for Goethe it is a whole plant. As I said, it still sounds very abstract and primitive today; but there is an enormous amount in this view that the organism in its complexity is a transformation of a single link in the organism, an enormous amount of future world view is in this.

Now, Goethe initially applied this only to the forms of the organism. We want to apply it to the artistic thought and the spiritualized one by applying it to human movement; and we assume that what the human larynx and its neighboring organs do when we listen to a person speaking, especially an artistically speaking person, that these are actually invisible movement patterns.

The one who is able to see such things, who is able to look at what does not reveal itself externally, but only to a spiritual faculty of perception, knows that there are movement patterns in the human larynx and its neighboring organs. We do not see them in ordinary life – we listen as these movement patterns produce the words and word combinations, the sounds and sound combinations. But it is possible to really see the movement systems of the larynx. You just need to remember the physical fact that when I speak here, the air is set in motion.

Imagine this movement being grasped and looked at, and you have a visible language. We try to reveal this visible language through our eurythmy by making the whole human being the larynx, that is, by moving the limbs in space as the limbs of the larynx want to move. And when we speak in the spoken language, it goes into the audible.

We want to place the person on the stage so that they move their arms and hands in the same way that the larynx is designed to move, or how the air is moved when we speak. That is to say, we try to make the whole person move in such a way that the larynx is transformed, just as Goethe looks at the whole plant as a transformed leaf. That is the source of our eurythmic art. So that everything you will see here in the movements of the individual person is the same movements that remain invisible only when one speaks. But other movements still come into consideration.

That which lies in human language is ensouled: joy and suffering, delight and pain, sorrow and enthusiasm, warmth of soul, and everything else that the soul contains, resonates through and vibrates our language. Rhythm and meter, artistic form – that is what the poet immerses language in. Just as language is artistically shaped in song, just as the human capacity for suffering is artistically shaped in song, so the poet artistically shapes language in a different way. Everything that runs through our speech as pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, warmth and enthusiasm, everything that vibrates through our speech from the soul, everything that sounds through our speech artistically, is expressed in the movements that the human being now makes in space, either alone or in relation to each other, when groups perform dance-like movements here on stage. What the human being does in relation to these movements of people in groups or alone is the basic principle.

I am only saying this to give you an indication of the source from which this eurythmic art draws. For everything that is performed in movement should have an immediate aesthetic effect. And this only comes about when we truly reveal the inner workings of nature in this way, when we seek it out, and then, by revealing the formative regularity of the world, the artistic and beautiful is truly expressed.

All arbitrariness is avoided in this eurythmic art. While you otherwise see all kinds of similar arts today, which connect a momentary gesture with some kind of soul movement or the like, there is no question of such pantomime or mime or such momentary gestures here, but everything is inwardly lawful as in the metamorphosis idea itself. Just as in music it is the moving tone and in language the moving sound, so here it is the moving of the human soul itself, that human soul that constantly wants to move in this way, only becomes still when it hears the tone of music, the tonal shaping, or when it hears the artistically shaped language.

So that one can say: There is so little that is arbitrary here that when two people or two groups of people in different places perform one and the same piece of poetry or one and the same piece of music in eurythmy, there is no more individual difference than when two pianists play one and the same Beethoven sonata in two different places, because the arbitrariness here is only individually limited. But there is an inner lawfulness in this visible language, which is eurythmy, just as in music, even in melody and harmony, there is an inner lawfulness that wants to be shaped, that wants to be grasped, that cannot be shaped arbitrarily in the moment.

If you therefore see something pantomime-like or mimetic in our performances today, it is only for the reason that today it may still be present - we are our own strictest critics - because our eurythmic art is only just beginning. Once it is fully developed, all that is arbitrary and mimic will be out, just as everything that is musically picturesque, all tone painting and the like, must and will be out as something dilettantish.

Now you will see, on the one hand, my dear audience, what is presented in the visible language of eurythmy, which you will simultaneously hear as pieces of music or also simultaneously hear as the recited poem. But it must also be considered that the art of recitation itself, which is supposed to accompany our eurythmic performances, that this art of recitation and declamation must go back to earlier good forms of recitation and declamation. It can be said, even if many people do not like it: the actual art of recitation is in decline today. The person reciting today actually only tries to bring out the prose element in many ways. He tries to express what lies in the content of the words through emphasis or warmth or the like.

One need only recall the better days of the art of poetry to feel that recitation must nevertheless take a different path, that today, to a certain extent, it has gone astray. I would like to remind you that Schiller, in most of his poetry, especially in those that speak most warmly to our souls, did not initially have the meaning of the words in his soul; the meaning of the words was not there at all at first. He had something melodious, something musical, and only to the music that lived in his soul did he find the meaning of the words to go with it. And then I would like to mention something else: when Goethe rehearsed his “Iphigenia” - even a dramatic poem - with his actors in Weimar, he rehearsed it with a baton like a conductor, just as one rehearses a piece of music.

So it was important to these true artists to seek the poetic, the recitative, not in the content, but in the form, in the rhythm, in the beat. This must also be the basis of recitation. Anyone who knows how the art of recitation was in primitive ages and still is among primitive people, at least quite recently, knows how justified this is. In such primitive ages, when this or that was recited in a simple way before villagers, one would like to say that , in a primitive eurhythmy, with a primitive movement of his entire human organism, the reciter walked up and down and expressed what lies in the form of language, on the one hand through the sound itself, on the other hand through the movement with which he accompanied it.

We shall only return to such things when we take a deeper look at the actual essence of culture, of intellectual culture and its connection to material culture. How many people today still know that in more primitive times, work was accompanied by rhythm; everything that was done, the work, was accompanied by rhythm. Everything that was done was accompanied by rhythm. In the culture of the past, work and rhythm belonged together.

We will try to do this first by bringing the present into relation with consciousness, by presenting poetry and recitation to accompany eurythmy, because we cannot do it any other way. We could not present our visible language of eurythmy and have it accompanied by poetry and recitation if we did not shape it in such a way that we do not arrive at the literal literal content of the prose, which is mostly popular today in the art of recitation, which has gone astray, but which is only the starting point for the actual artistic element. Instead, the main emphasis is on meter, rhythm, that is, on the truly artistic, on that which the poet lends to his language as a melodious element. The content is only the opportunity to express this actual artistic element.

So you will see – as I said, on the one hand, but central to our presentation – the art of eurythmic movement on the one hand accompanied by music, on the other hand the accompanying recitation and declamation. All three should only be the expression of one and the same. For this very reason, it is hoped that a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk can be achieved with this eurythmic art, because the human being is a kind of extract, a kind of essence of the whole universe in its conformity to law.

If we do not look at the laws of the world with our minds, but look at them with our capacity for contemplation, then we grasp the world artistically. But the human being is a real microcosm, a small world in itself. That which lives in him as a basis for movement, that which metamorphoses into art, must also have a truly artistic effect in the highest sense on any unbiased person. Therefore one can say: this eurythmy fulfills Goethe's artistic spirit. Goethe once put it so beautifully when he said: “For man, having been placed at the summit of nature, sees himself again as a whole nature, which in turn has to produce a summit within itself. To do this, he rises by permeating himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, harmony, order and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.”

And when man not only proceeds to produce another work of art, but elevates himself and makes himself a work of art, then the deepest secrets of the world must come to revelation in direct contemplation. And that must, in a sense, summarize what the most diverse arts in their various fields seek.

However, what we are able to offer you will have to be judged with leniency, my dear attendees, for we are only at the beginning of everything I have outlined here; perhaps it is only the attempt at a beginning. We are our own harshest critics and we know that what we have already developed must be taken further and further. But if our contemporaries have an understanding for new phenomena – but for real, not merely apparent new phenomena – if our contemporaries have an understanding for new phenomena, as this eurythmy is supposed to be, then we hope that – perhaps no longer through ourselves, but through others who will take our place – this eurythmic art will be developed to ever greater and greater perfection.

Much as we realize that today we can only give what we actually want to give inadequately, by leaning on Goethe's artistic attitude, which does not separate cognition and artistic perception completely, but sees something of real cognition in the artistic - the apprehension of things in visible and tangible forms - as we know that we can only give something very elementary in comparison to this progress today, but we do believe – and it is our deepest conviction – that something will develop from what has been started in our time with this eurythmic art, which will be able to stand alongside other fully justified arts as a fully justified newer art. In this sense, I ask you today to accept this attempt at a eurythmic presentation of something that is to be developed more and more fully.

Report in the “Allgemeine Zeitung München” of May 3, 1904

Goethe as a theosophist. On April 22, the well-known Goethe scholar and philosophical writer Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin, formerly an official at the Goethe-Schiller Archive in Weimar, gave a long lecture in the large hall of the Wittelsbacher Garden on the subject of “Goethe as a theosophist,” which writer Ludwig Deinhard introduced with a short speech. The latter referred, among other things, to the earlier works of Dr. Rafael v. Köber and Prof. Seiling on Goethe's position on the question of immortality and on occultism. Dr. Rud. Steiner first stated that in his lecture he would like to limit himself solely to Goethe's relationship to Theosophy, without pursuing his position on occultism. He then discussed the basic idea of Theosophy, “the divine striving of man to develop”, which can be recognized as the core essence of the various religions and has found expression in Goethe's works as well as in the writings of other leading figures in world history. Goethe, in his spiritual depth a mystery to his contemporaries, knew much, very much indeed, to say about the divine, mystical, ideal human being in the depths of the human essence. He had sought and seen the divine in nature, in the beauty of art, in the laws of the macrocosm and the microcosm, in man. To illuminate Goethe's theosophical ideas, the speaker referred in particular to the lesser-known enigmatic fairy tale 'The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily'. The speaker sought to interpret this 'secret revelation' of the poet in a meaningful way. The will-o'-the-wisp, the souls trapped in the world of the senses, can only return to the land of the spirit by sacrificing the snake, the symbol of the higher self sacrificing itself for others. Only through sacrifice can the bridge to the land of the spirit, of higher knowledge, be built. In this realm, the youth, representing the human race, receives the lily, the symbol (taken from the alchemists) of a “higher spiritual development”. Furthermore, the speaker sought to trace Goethe's theosophical views in the second part of Faust as well. He discussed, among other things, the meaning of the ideas of the gradually revealing soul being, the homunculus, the descent to the mothers, the idea of karma in the life and work of Faust and his final ascent to mystical life after he goes blind to the sense world. In conclusion, the speaker offered a meaningful explanation of the “Chorus mysticus”. After the lecture, a number of those present, who had given the speaker's interesting explanations a lively applause, gathered for a discussion. Through “Karma” it was determined that the listeners had to bear saddening proof of the “inadequacy of our earthly Sansara” in their efforts to obtain their wardrobe. In the “terrible narrowness” of the queue in front of the entrance to the hall, they were able to practice “sacrificing their lower selves”. Unfortunately, several Theosophists, who were perhaps still too absorbed in Faust's “Descent to the Mothers”, were tripped up by a weighing machine in front of the cloakroom, which will hopefully be eliminated in the course of the 20th century.

IN THE PRELUDE AND INTERLUDE:

Sophia.
Estella.
Two Children.

IN THE MYSTERY:

Johannes Thomasius.
Maria.
Benedictus.

Theodosius, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Spirit of Love.

Romanus, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Spirit of Action.

Germanus, whose prototype,, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of the Earth-brain.

Helena, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as that of Lucifer.

Retardus, active only as a Spirit-influence.

Philia, Astrid, & Luna, Friends of Maria, whose prototypes, as the Mystery proceeds, reveal themselves as spirits of Maria's soul-powers.

Professor Capesius.
Doctor Strader.

Felix Balde, who reveals himself as representative of the Spirit of Nature.

Felicia Balde, his wife.

The Other Maria, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as the Soul of Love.

Theodora, a Seeress.

Ahriman and Lucifer, conceived as Soul-influences only.

The Spirit of the Elements, conceived as a Spirit-influence.

A Child, whose prototype, as the Mystery proceeds, reveals itself as a young soul.

As is usual in English stage directions, right means right of the stage, and not right of the audience as in the original German. So too the left is left of the stage.

The music at the representation of each play was by Mr. Adolf Arenson.

NOTES ON THE COSTUMES WORN: The costumes worn are those of every day, except that the female characters, over their dress, wear bright broad stoles of a colour to suit their character.

Benedictus is is usually in a black riding suit, top boots, and a black mantle.

Lucifer has golden hair, wears crimson robes, and stands upon the right of Johannes. Lucifer appears as female.

Ahriman, the conventional Satan, wears yellow robes and stands upon the left of Johannes.

In the fifth and eleventh scenes and when in spirit form or acting as hierophant, Benedictus wears a long white robe over which is a broad golden stole with mystic emblems in red. He also wears a golden mitre and carries a golden crosier.

On such occasions Theodosius is similarly robed except that the stole, mitre, and crosier are silver and the emblems blue. Similarly the stole, mitre, and crosier of Romanus are bronze and the emblems green. Retardus' costume is a mixture of the above three.

Germanus wears long brownish robes and is made to appear like a giant with heavy clogs, as if tied to earth. Scene 6.

Philia, Astrid, and Luna in the seventh and eleventh scenes and in the other plays have conventional angel-forms; Astrid is always in the centre of this group; Luna is on her right; Philia on her left.

Theodora wears white and has angel's wings in the seventh and eleventh scenes.

The Other Maria is dressed like a spirit (except in Scene 1) but one associated with rocks and precious stones.

We know three worlds: the physical, the astral and the devachanic. The physical one is known to all people: the world we perceive with the five senses. - Not so the astral, it is the world of all drives, desires, passions and so on. Man must receive guidance in order to know his way around it. If a person gets a glimpse of the astral completely unprepared, he will not find his way around in it. The best comparison is the seal impression: What is sublime in the physical, that forms the recess in the astral and vice versa, what is recess here, is sublime there. Everything is a reflection of reality. The numbers are seen in reverse: 364 here is 463 there. It is much more complicated with the space formations: One sees a sphere as if one had the eye in the center of the sphere. All colors are seen in their opposite, what is red here is green there, yellow here becomes indigo there, black becomes white. The opposite color is always the one whose covering creates white.

Time actually runs backwards. One does not live towards the future, but towards the past. The peoples have expressed in the myths this astral way of looking at things. The myths of Chronos devouring his children can be understood only by those who have astral vision: The children in turn return to the womb of that from which they emerged. Uranos means the mental world, Chronos the astral, and Zeus the physical world. The myths originate from the initiates, who went out from the pre- and postexistence. They form the spirit through legends and fairy tales. What man cannot grasp in one life, he will grasp in the next. Also moral and spiritual conditions appear in the mirror image. What man feels belongs to the astral. And when he observes his own urges, they also appear to him in the mirror image. When a desire moves outward, it appears [there] as when it approached [one]. Like an animal that wants to snatch a thing from him when he takes it away. Thus he sees a whole animal world rushing at him: it is all the desires, cravings, and passions that man exudes.

The dream is a kind of memory of astral experiences; dreams are often nothing but mirror images of one's passions. Curiosity, for example, is always a certain current in the astral. The legend of the midday woman who visits the workers in the field and always quizzes them. Human curiosity expresses itself especially in the fact that man wants to know something about his past and future. The reflection of inquisitiveness is magnificently expressed in [the riddle of] the Cadmean Sphinx. The whole earth development of man lies in the answer: Man walks on four legs, on two legs, on three legs. Man walked on fours as a single-sex being in the Lemurian time. On two he goes in the present, on three he will go in the future. Both feet and the right side with the arm will disappear; instead there will be a highly developed left arm.

Evolution proceeds in such a way that certain beings evolve upward and have side shoots that come in decadence. In those who lag behind, the astral body is stronger; in those who advance, the mental body.

The reflection of development is retardation: regression. From the [retarding] forces of the astral, development is arrested. Thus, on the astral one must translate everything into its mirror image. This could not be understood in the beginning of the theosophical movement. The Master tried to make it clear to Sinnett, through the plant, which is surrounded by a mass, into which the plant pushes off.

If one wishes to characterize higher worlds, one must use words which are of little use, since these are intended for the sensuous world. But there are certain common qualities in all worlds: Colors, sounds, certain forces. We want to speak first about certain colors; these are known to us in the physical world only in spatial things. Even there, where they are present without objects, they become noticeable only through the objects. Only in the borderline cases of the physical life one can see colors without object, for example the rainbow. The colors in the astral world are not bound to a fixed, spatial limit. They are still psychic, are the expression of the being at which they are. A sensual passion expresses itself differently than a highly striving thought. Here is immediate harmony. The color floats freely, but it is connected with what it expresses. It is not exterior color, but interior color. The bell, for example, does not care whether it is yellow or green, it does not affect its tone.

When one gets beyond the astral world, there are also colors, but they are not only inner colors, but they are creative, bring themselves forth; they are radiant colors. Now, when man rises into the mental space, he first loses the ability to perceive the mental colors in the same way. That is why one speaks of the sounding world. On the other hand, the ability to perceive sound occurs. Only when one again gets even higher, one perceives the radiant colors. When the human being has again made his way to the color, he is in the Arupa.

If we could take color from a physical object and carry it with us like a thin layer and bring it to Devachan, the color would shine there. That is why Devachan is also called the 'world of radiant colors'. If you want to communicate something to a fellow human being here, you tell him through sound. In Devachan it would shine in the corresponding color. Such a world, where all beings live in radiant colors, is called the 'first elementary realm'. When the matter of these beings becomes a little denser, descends into the Rupic, they begin to make themselves felt through sounds. This is the 'second elemental realm'. The beings that live in it are very mobile. In the 'third elemental realm', form is added to the rest. The inner color is shaped; passion shows itself in lightning form, lofty thoughts in plant form. In higher realms, they are sparks and glimmers; here they are forms of monochrome and sounding worlds.

All our beings have passed through three elemental realms. Gold, copper and so on have now passed into the mineral kingdom. Gold did not look the same in the lunar round as it does now: a star shining on different sides, through which one could reach. By a similar process, water, when it freezes into snow, becomes a small crystal. The metals are the condensed forms of the third elementary kingdom. Therefore metal is not internally uniform, but internally shaped - Chladnian sound figures. According to lines and figures the whole mineral kingdom is animated, and in the third elementary kingdom it was colored. By the fact that the forms solidify, surface becomes, and now the colors arise on the surface.

So we have:

1st elemental realm - realm of radiant colors
2nd Second elemental realm - realm of free tones
3rd elemental kingdom - kingdom of colored forms
4th mineral kingdom - kingdom of colored bodies

The physical world contains all three elemental kingdoms as coagulated within itself. Sound is much more related to the interior of a being than color. The latter is more surface. The radiating colors are still more inwardly connected. [The self radiating of the first elementary kingdom.]