The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In this last lecture, I shall try as far as possible to complete what I have already said, and to bring forward certain practical considerations. In the ensuing discussion, I shall make such additions as may prove necessary.

The practical hints I propose to deal with to-day are not such as can be embodied in general formulae, but need to be greatly modified according to the particular situation and the persons applying them. For this very reason, it is necessary that we should gain Spiritual-Scientific insight into this sphere, which will enable you intelligently to adapt to the individual case the various steps to be taken. I would ask you to consider how little insight there is into that most important matter, the feeding of our farm animals. Merely to indicate new methods of feeding is not sufficient.

How, then, ought our farm animals to be fed? In my opinion, improvement will certainly come if, in the teaching of agriculture, an insight is gained into the essential meaning of feeding as such. This is what I shall try to do today. Completely wrong ideas prevail as to what nutrition signifies both for man and beast. It is not merely the crude process of taking in foodstuffs and after certain changes, of storing these up in the organism, excreting what is not needed. This view carries with it the idea, for instance, that the animal should not be overfed, that its food should be as nourishing as possible and thus the bulk of it be utilised. And if we are of a materialistic turn of mind, we like to distinguish between actual food-stuffs and such substances as promote what is called combustion in the organism. We then build up all sorts of theories and put them into practice, finding, as always, that some work and some do not_? or that they only work for a time, having to be modified in one way or another.

What else indeed could we expect? We speak of processes of combustion in the organism. But no such thing takes place there. The combination of any substance whatever with oxygen in the organism means something quite different from a process of combustion. Combustion is a process which takes place in mineral, inanimate nature, and gust as a living organism is something different from a quartz crystal, so what is called “combustion” in a living organism is not the same as the “dead” process of burning, but something which is living and even sentient. The mere fact of using words in this way has directed our thoughts along certain channels and has done great mischief. To speak of “combustion” in the organism is to speak in a slipshod way. This does not matter if, by instinct or tradition, we still retain a right view of the facts. But if these slip-shod expressions are subjected to an attack of “psychopathia Professoralis,” then clever theories begin to be built upon them. If we depend upon these theories, what we do will be hopelessly wide of the mark, for such theories no longer cover the facts of the case. This is characteristic of our times. We are always doing something which does not fit in with what is going on in Nature. In this matter of nourishment, therefore, it is important to learn with what we are really dealing.

Let us recall what I said yesterday about the plant as having a physical and etheric body and being more or less surrounded from above by the astral element. The plant does not reach the astral element but is surrounded by it. If the plant enters into a special relation with the astral element, as in the case or the formation of edible fruits, a kind of food is produced which will strengthen the astral element in the animal and human organism. If one can look into this process, the very “habitus” of a plant and so on reveals whether or not it is capable of promoting some process in the animal organism. But we must also consider the opposite pole. Here something of great importance takes place. I have touched on this before, but now that the general principles of nutrition are being established, I must emphasise it still more definitely.

Since we are dealing with feeding, let us start from the animal. In the animal, the threefold organism is not so sharply defined as it is in man. The animal has a system of nerve and senses and a metabolic and limb system. These are clearly divided, the one from the other. But in many animals the limits of intermediate rhythmic system are indefinite; both nerves and senses system and metabolic system trespass upon the limits of the rhythmic system. We should therefore choose other terms when we speak of animals. In man one is quite right in speaking of a three-fold organism: but in the case of animals one ought to speak of the nerve and senses system as being localised primarily in the head, and of the metabolic and limb system as being in the hind quarters and limbs but at the same time diffused throughout the whole body. In the middle of the body the metabolism becomes more rhythmical as does also the nervous system, and there both flow into one another. The rhythmic system has a less independent existence in the animal. Rather the opposite poles become indistinct as they merge into one another. (Drawing 15.) We should therefore speak of the animal organism as being twofold, the extremes interpenetrating at the middle. In this way, the animal organization arises.

Mow all the substances contained in the head system—I am speaking of animals, but the same is true of man—are of earthly matter. Even in the embryo, earthly matter is led into the head system. The embryo must be so organised that its head receives its matter from the earth. In the head, therefore, we have earthly matter. But the substances which we bear in the metabolic and limb, organisation, those which permeate our intestines, our limbs, our muscles and bones, etc., these substances do not come from the earth, but from what has been absorbed from the air and warmth above the earth. It is cosmic substantiality. This is important. “When you see an animal's claw, you must not think of it as having been formed by the food which the animal has eaten and which has gone to the claw and been deposited there. This is not the case. It is cosmic matter taken up through the senses and the breathing. What the animal eats serves only to stimulate its powers of movement so that the cosmic matter can be driven into the metabolic and limb organisation, can be driven into the claw and similarly distributed, throughout the whole organism.

With forces (as opposed to substances) it is the other way around. Because the senses are centred in the head and take in impressions from the cosmos, the forces in the head are cosmic in nature. To understand what happens in the metabolic and limb organisation, you need only think of walking, which means that the limbs are permeated with earthly gravity: the forces are earthly ones. Thus, the limb system contains cosmic substances permeated by earthly forces.

It is extremely important that the cow or the ox, if used for working, should be fed so as to absorb the greatest possible amount of cosmic substance and that the rood which enters its stomach should produce the necessary strength to lead this cosmic substance into its limbs, muscles and “bones. It is equally important to realise that the (earthly) substances in the head have to be drawn from the food which has been worked upon in the stomach and is led into the head. In this sense, the head relies upon the stomach in a way in which the big toe does not, and we must realise quite clearly that the head can only work upon this nourishment which comes to it from the metabolism, if it can at the same time draw in sufficient cosmic forces. If, therefore, animals instead of being left in stuffy stables where no cosmic forces can reach them, are led into meadows and given every opportunity of entering into relation with their environment through the perceptions of their senses, then we may see results such as appear in the following examples.

Imagine an animal standing in a dark and stuffy stable before its manger, the contents of which have been measured out by human “wisdom”„ Unless its diet is varied, as it only can be out-of-doors, this animal will show a very great contrast to one which seeks out its food with its sense of smell, guided by this organ in its search for cosmic forces, seeking and finding its nourishment by itself and developing its whole activity in doing so. An animal that is red from a manger will not show immediately how devoid it is of cosmic forces, for it has inherited a certain amount of them. But it will breed descendants to whom these cosmic forces are no longer transmitted. Such an animal will become weak, beginning from the head, i.e. it will not be able to nourish its body because it cannot take in the necessary cosmic substances which should come in. This will show you that it is not enough simply to say: “This kind of fodder for one case, that for another.” Bather one must have a clear idea of the value for the animal's whole organisation that such and such methods of feeding have.

But we must go a step further. What is actually contained in the head? Earthly substance. If you take out the brain, the noblest part of an animal, you will have before you a piece of earthly substance. The human brain also contains earthly substance. But in both the forces are cosmic. What is the human brain for? It serves as a support for the ego. The animal, let it be remembered, has as yet no ego; its brain is only on the way to ego-formation. In man, it goes on and on to the complete forming of the ego. How then did the animal's brain come into existence? Let us look at the whole organic process. All that which eventually manifests in the brain as earthly matter has simply been “excreted,” (deposited), from tne organic process. Earthly matter has been excreted in order to serve as a base for the ego. Now the process of the working-up of the food in the digestive tract and metabolic and limb system produces a certain quantity of earthly matter which is able to enter into the head and to be finally deposited as earthly-matter in the brain. But a portion of the food stuff is eliminated in the intestine before it reaches the brain. This part cannot be further transformed and is deposited in the intestine for ultimate excretion.

We come here upon a parallel which will strike you as being very paradoxical but which must not be overlooked if we wish to understand the animal and human organisations. What is brain matter? It is simply the contents of the intestines brought to the last stage of completion. Incomplete (premature) brain-excretion passes out through the intestines. The contents of the intestines are in their processes closely akin to the contents of the brain. One could put it somewhat grotesquely by saying that that which spreads itself out in the brain is a highly-advanced dung-heap. And yet the statement is essentially correct. By a peculiar organic process, dung is transformed into the noble matter of the brain, there to become the foundation for the development of the ego. in man the greatest possible quantity of intestinal dung is transformed into cerebral excrement because man bears his ego on the earth. In animals, the quantity is less. Hence there remain more forces in the intestinal excrement of an animal which we can use for manuring. In animal manure, there is therefore more of the potential ego element, since the animal itself does not reach ego-hood. For this reason, animal dung and human dung are completely different. Animal dung still contains ego-potentiality. In manuring a plant, we bring this ego-potentiality into contact with the plant's root. Let us draw the plant in its entirety (Diagram 16). Down here you have the root? up there the unfolding leaves and blossoms. And just as above, in the leaves and blossoms, the astral element is acquired from contact with the air, so the ego-potentiality develops below in the root through contact with the manure.

The farm is truly an organism. The astral element is developed above, and the presence of orchard and forest assists in collecting it. If animals feed in the right way on the things that grow above the earth, then they will develop the right ego-potentiality in the manure they produce, and this ego-potentiality, working on the plant from the root, will cause it to grow upwards from the root in the right way according to the forces of gravity. It is a wonderful interplay, but in order to understand it one must proceed step by step.

From this you can see that a farm is a kind of individuality, and that both animals and plants should be retained within this mutual interplay. If, therefore, instead of using the manure supplied by the animals belonging to the farm, we sell off these animals and obtain manure from Chili, we are in a sense doing harm to Nature. In doing this we trespass the bounds of that which is a closed circuit, of that which should be self-sufficient. Of course, things must be ordered in such a way that the circuit really is self-contained. One need only have on the farm as many animals and of such kinds as will supply sufficient and appropriate manures. And one must also see to it that the animals have such plants to eat as they like and seek instinctively.

At this point experiments tend to become complicated because every case is different. But the main thing is to know the directions which the experiments should take. Practical rules will be found, but they should all proceed from the principle that a farm should be, as far as possible, self-contained. I say as far as possible because Spiritual Science takes a practical not a fanatical view of things. Under our present economic order this cannot be fully attained; but the ideal is one which we should make every effort to reach.

On this basis, then, we can find concrete instances of the relation between the organism formed by the livestock and the plant or “fodder organism.” Let us first consider this relation on broad general lines.

To begin with the root. The root generally develops in the soil and through the manure it becomes permeated with ego-potentiality which it absorbs. This absorption is determined and aided if the root can find in the right quantities salts in the soil around it. Let us assume that we are considering the nature of these roots merely from the point of view of the foregoing reflections. Then we shall suggest that roots are the food which, when it is absorbed into the human organism, will find its way most easily to the head by way of the digestive process. We shall therefore provide a diet of roots where we require to give the head material substances to enable the cosmic forces which work through the head to exercise their plastic activity. Mow imagine someone saying to himself: “I must give roots to this animal which requires earthly substance in its head in order to stimulate its sense-connections with its environment, i.e. with the cosmic environment.” Does not this immediately suggest the calf and the carrot? A calf eating carrots portrays this whole process. The moment something like this is put forward and you know how things really are and their true connections, you will know immediately what is to be done. It is simply a matter of realising how this mutual process arises.

But let us proceed to the next stage. Once the calf has eaten the carrot, once the substance really has been introduced into the head, the converse process must be able to begin, i.e. the head, on its part_? must begin to work with forces of volition, thus begetting within the organism forces which can be worked into it. It is not enough for the “carrot dung” to be deposited in the head; from what is deposited and in the course of disintegration, streams of force must come which will enter the rest of the organism. In short, there must be a second food substance which will enable one part of the body which has already been fed (in this case the head) to work in the right way on the rest of the organism.

Well, I have given the animal the carrot fodder. And now I want the animal's body to be permeated with the forces which are developed from the head. For this, as a second fodder, we need a plant with a spindly structure, the seed of which will have gathered into itself these “spindly” forces. We immediately think of flaxseed (linseed) or something similar. If you feed young cattle on carrots and linseed—or carrots and fresh hay (which is equally suitable)—this will bring into full operation the forces already latent in the animals. We should therefore try to give young cattle food which promotes, on the one hand, the forces of ego-potentiality, and, on the other, the complementary streams of astral force working from above downwards. For the latter purpose, those plants are especially suitable which have long, spindly stems and as such have been turned into hay. (Diagram 17.) Just as we have looked into this concrete case_? so we must approach Agriculture as a whole: of every single thing, we must know what happens to it when it passes either from the animal into the soil, or from the plant into the animal.

Let us pursue the subject yet further. Let us take the case of an animal' which should become particularly strong in the middle region (where the head or nervous organisation tends to develop in the direction of breathing and the metabolic organisation tends to have a rhythmic character). Which animals have to be strong in this particular region? They are the milch animals. The secretion of milk shows that the animal in question is strong in this region. The point to observe here is that the right co-operation should take place between the current going from the head backwards (mainly a streaming of forces) and the current going from the animal's hindquarters forward (mainly a streaming of substance). If these two currents co-operate and intermingle in the right way, the result will be an abundant supply of rich milk. For good milk contains substances prepared in the metabolic system and which, without having entered into the sexual system, have become akin to it. It.is a sexual process within the metabolic system. Milk is simply a sexual secretion on another level. It is a substance, which, on its way to becoming sexual secretion, is penetrated and transformed by the forces working from the head. The whole process can be seen quite clearly.

Now for processes which should arise in this way, we must choose a diet which will work less powerfully towards the head than do roots which contain ego-potentiality; neither may the diet, since it is to be connected with the sexual system, contain too much of the astral element, i.e. of that which goes towards the blossom and fruit of the plant. In short, if we wish to find a diet that will produce milk, we must choose the part of the plant which lies between blossom and root, i.e. the green and leafy part. (Diagram 18.) If we wish to bring about an increase in the milk supply of. an animal whose milk production we have reason to believe could be increased we shall certainly reach the desired end if we proceed as follows:

Suppose I have a cow and feed it with green fodder. I take plants in which the process of fruit-formation has been developed within the process of leaf-formation. Such, for example, are the pod-bearing or leguminous plants and especially the clovers. In clover, the would-be fruit develops as leaf and foliage. A cow that is fed in this way will perhaps not show much result of it; but when the cow comes to calve, the calf will grow into a cow that yields good milk. The effects of reformed foddering usually need a generation in which to show themselves.

There is however one point to be borne in mind. As we know, modern doctors go on using certain traditional remedies without knowing why they do so, except that the remedies have continued to prove effectual. The same thing happens in farming. People go on using traditional methods without knowing why they do so, and m addition to this they make experiments and tests, try to ascertain exactly the quantity of food that should be given for fattening cattle, milch cows, etc. But here again we have what always arises in haphazard experimenting. You know what happens when you have a sore throat and go and see your friends. They will all offer you some cure or other and in half-an-hour you will have collected a whole chemist's shop. If you were to take all these remedies, they would cancel each other out, and certainly ruin your stomach, and your sore throat would not be any better. Because of the circumstances, something which ought to be quite simple has been made extremely complicated. Something similar to this happens when one experiments with fodder for cattle. For it means, does it not, that one is using a food which suits the case 'in one particular but is ineffective in another direction. Then a second food is added to the first and finally one has a mixture of foods, each of which has a special significance for young cattle perhaps or for fattening stock. But the whole thing has become so complicated that one loses one's grasp of it all, because one loses sight of the interplay of forces involved. Or perhaps the different ingredients cancel each other in their effects. This is what often happens and especially with the modern college-trained student-farmer. Such a person looks things up in a book or tries to remember what he may have learned somewhere; “Young cattle must be fed in this way, and cattle for fattening in that.” But this does not help, because the fodder recommended by the book may well conflict with the fodder one i-s already giving.

The proper way to proceed is to start from the basis of thought which I have mentioned and which simplifies cattle-feeding so that it may be taken in at a glance. I really mean at a glance, as we saw in the case of the carrots and linseed. We can easily survey this. Think how one can then stand livingly in the midst of the farm, acting consciously and with deliberation. This knowledge leads not to a complication but to a simplification of methods of feeding. Much that has been discovered by experiment is right, but it is unsystematic and inexact. Or rather it has the sort of exactness which is really inexact because things are muddled up and cannot be seen through. Whereas what I have recommended is simple and its effects can be followed up into the animal organism.

Suppose now that we wish to consider the flowering and fruiting part of the plant. And we must go further, and observe what is fruit-like in the rest of the plant. This recalls a feature of plant-life that always delighted Goethe, namely the fact that the plant has throughout its whole body the tendency towards what is normally specialised at certain parts. With most plants, we take the seed which has formed from the blossom and place it in the earth in order to produce more plants. But we do not do this in the case of the potato. Here we use the eyes of the tubers. This is the fruiting part of the potato plant, but like many processes in Nature, it is not carried out to the end. We can, however, heighten its activity by a procedure which bears an external resemblance to combustion. For instance, if you “cossette” (chop up into thin straws) roots or tubers and dry the “cossettes” for fodder, the stuff will be enormously strengthened in its activity and brought a stage nearer to the fruit stage if you spread it out in the sun and allow it to steam a little.

Practices like this are based upon a deep and wonderful instinct. We can ask: how did men first come to cook their food? Men began to cook their food because they gradually discovered that what develops during fruit formation is mainly due to processes akin to cooking, viz. burning, warming, drying and evaporating. All these processes tend to make the fruit and seed and indirectly the other parts of the plant, especially the higher parts, more fitted to develop the forces that are necessary to the metabolic and limb system in the animal. Even uncooked the blossom and fruit of a plant work on the animal's metabolic and digestive system and primarily through the forces they develop, not through their substance«, For it is the forces of the earth which are needed by the metabolic and limb system, and in the measure in which it needs them, it must receive them. Take the case of the animals which pasture on steep mountain sides. Unlike those in the plains, they climb about under difficult conditions owing to the fact that the ground is not level. There is all the difference for those animals between level and slanting ground. They require food that will develop those forces in limb and muscle which are energised by the will. Otherwise they would not be good for either labour, milking or fattening. It is therefore important that they should eat plenty of those aromatic mountain plants in which blossom and fruit have undergone an additional treatment by the sun, resembling a process of natural cooking.

But similar results can be achieved and strength given to muscle and limb by artificial methods—roasting and boiling, etc. Flower and fruit are most suitable for this, especially of those plants which from the beginning develop towards fruiting and do not waste their time, as it were, in growing foliage. People should take careful note of these things, especially those who are on the dangerous slope that leads to laziness and inertia. An instance of this is the man who wants to be a mystic-. “But how,” he asks, “can I become a mystic if I am working with my hands all day? I ought to be completely at rest and not be constantly stirred to activity by something outside or inside me. If I no longer waste my forces by fussing about all day, I shall become a real mystic. I must therefore order my diet in such a way as to become a mystic.” And he goes in for a diet of raw food and ceases to cook for himself. But the matter is not so easy as all this. For a man of weak physical constitution who takes to a diet of raw food when he is already on the downward path that leads to mysticism, will naturally accelerate the process; he will become more and more “mystical”—that is more and more inert', (and what happens here to a man can be applied to the animal and can teach us how to stir it to greater) activity). But the opposite may also occur. We may have the case of a man of strong constitution who nevertheless has developed the queer idea of becoming a mystic. In this case his own inherent forces and those absorbed through the raw food will continue to develop and to work in him, and the diet may not do him much harm. And if, by this means, he stirs up the forces which generally remain below and produce gout and rheumatism if; he stirs these up, and transforms them, then his raw diet will make mm stronger. There are two sides to every question. No general rule can be laid down, but we must know how these principles work in individual cases. The advantage of vegetarianism is that it calls forth out of the organism forces which were lying fallow and which produce gout, rheumatism, diabetes, etc. where only vegetable food is taken, these forces serve to make it ripe for human assimilation* But where animal food is consumed, these same forces are deposited in the organism and remain unused, or rather they begin to work from out of, themselves, depositing the products of metabolism in various parts of the body, or, as in diabetes, they lay claim for their own use to substances which should remain spread out over all the organs. We only understand these matters when we look more deeply.

This brings us to the question of the fattening of animals. Here we must say we should regard the animal as a kind of sack to be filled as full as possible with cosmic substance. A fat pig is really a most heavenly animal'. Its fat body, apart from its system of nerves-and-senses, is made up entirely of cosmic, not of earthly substance. The pig needs the food which it enjoys so much in order to fill itself with cosmic substance, which it absorbs on all sides and then distributes throughout its body. It must take in this substance which has to be drawn from the cosmos, and distribute it. And the same is true of all fattened animals. lou will find that animals will fatten best on the part of the plant which tends towards fruit-formation, and has been heightened in its activity by cooking or steaming. Or, if you give them something which has in it an enhanced fruit-process, for instance turnip, which belongs to a species in which this process has been enhanced and which has become larger through long cultivation. In general, the best kind of food for fattening cattle is that which will at least help to distribute the cosmic substance, i.e. the part of the plant which tends to fruit-formation—and which has in addition received the proper treatment. These conditions are in the main fulfilled by certain kinds of oil cakes and the like. But we must also see to it that the animal's head is not entirely neglected and that in this fattening treatment a certain amount of earthly substance is introduced there. The fodder just mentioned needs to be complemented by something for the head, though a smaller quantity, as the head does not require so much. In fattening an animal, we should therefore add a small quantity of roots.

Now there is a substance which as substance has no particular function in the organism. In general, one can say that roots have a function in connection with the head, blossoms in connection with the metabolic and limb system, and leaf and stem in connection with the rhythmic system within the human organism. There is, now, a substance that can aid the whole animal organism, because it is related to all its members. This substance is salt. And as of all the ingredients in the food of both man and animals, salt is the least in quantity, we can see it is not how much we take which matters, but what we take. Even small quantities of substance will fulfil their purpose if they are of the right kind.

This brings us to a very important point and one on which I should like to see very accurate experiments made. These could be extended to the observation of human beings who use the article of food I am now going to deal with. As you know, the introduction of the tomato as a food is of comparatively recent date. It is very popular as a food and also extremely valuable as an object of study. One can learn a very great deal both from growing tomatoes and from eating them. Those who give the matter some thought—and there are some such nowadays—are of the opinion and rightly so, that the consumption of the tomato by man is of great significance. And it can well be extended to the animal; it would be quite possible to accustom animals to tomatoes. It is, in fact, of great significance for all that in the body which—while in the organism.—tends to fall out of the organism and to form an organisation of its own« We have the statement made by an American that in some circumstances the use of tomatoes can act as a dietetic means of correcting an unhealthy tendency of the liver. The liver is the most independent organ in the human organism, and diseases of the liver (and especially those of the animal liver) can in general be combated by a diet of tomatoes. Once again, we are gaining insight into the connection between plant and animal. Anyone suffering from cancer, I say this in parenthesis, i.e. from a disease which tends to make one organ in the body independent from the rest, ought at once to be forbidden tomatoes.

Why does the tomato have a special effect upon the parts of the organism which tend to be independent and specialised in their function? This is connected with the conditions which the tomato requires for its own growth. During its growth, the tomato feels happiest in the vicinity of manure which retains the form it had when it separated from the animal. Manure composed of a haphazard collection of all kinds of refuse, not worked upon in any way, will ensure the growing of very fine tomatoes. And if compost heaps could be made of tomato stalks and leaves i.e. of the tomato's own refuse, the result would be quite brilliant. The tomato does not wish to go beyond its own boundaries. It would rather remain within its own strong vitality, it is the most unsocial being in the plant kingdom. It does not wish to admit anything strange to its own nature and especially anything which has already been through the rotting process. And this is connected with the fact that this plant has a special effect on any independent organisation within the animal and human bodies.

In this respect, the tomato bears a certain resemblance to the potato, also a very independent plant in its effects—so much so indeed that after passing very easily through the digestive system, it penetrates into the brain and makes that organ independent even of the workings of the rest of the organs'. And among the factors which have led men and animals to become more materialistic in Europe, we must certainly reckon the excessive consumption of potatoes. The consumption of potatoes should serve only to stimulate the brain and head-system. But it should not go beyond this. These are the things that show in an objective way the intimate connection between agriculture and social life. It is infinitely important that agriculture should be so related to the social life.

I have only indicated these matters on general lines and, for some time to come, these should serve as the foundation for the most varied experiments, such as should lead to most striking results. From this you will be able to understand how the contents of these lectures should be treated. I am thoroughly in agreement with the decision which has been come to by the agriculturalists who have attended this course, namely, that what has been said at these lectures should for the present remain within this circle and be developed by actual experiment and research. This same circle should decide when in their opinion these experiments have been carried sufficiently far for the matter to be made public. A number of persons not directly connected with farming, but whose presence has been permitted through the organisers' tolerance because of their interest in the subject, nave also attended this course. They will, like the character in the well-known opera, be required to put a padlock on their mouths and not; fall into the common Anthroposophical mistake of spreading things as far and wide as possible. For what has so often done us harm is the talk of the individual, dictated not by a desire to convey real information but simply by a desire to repeat what has been heard. It makes all the difference whether these things are said by a farmer or by a layman. Suppose these things are repeated by laymen as an interesting new chapter of Anthroposophical teaching. What will happen? Exactly the same as has happened in the case of other Lecture Cycles. People on all sides, including farmers, will hear it ... But there are different ways of hearing. A farmer hearing these things from another farmer will think at first: “What a pity. The poor fellow has gone crazy.” He will say this the first and even the second time. But when finally a farmer sees something with his own eyes, then it is hardly wise for him to dismiss it as nonsense. But if he has only heard of a new method from people who are not professionally concerned with it but only interested in the subject, then naturally it all comes to nothing and the whole thing will lose its effect: it will be discredited from the start. Therefore, those friends who have been present and are not members of the Agricultural Circle must exercise restraint and not repeat what' they have heard wherever they go, as is so often done in Anthroposophy. This course has been decided on by the Agricultural Circle and the decision announced by our esteemed Count Keyserlingk, and I entirely agree with it.

And now that we have come to the end of this Course, I should like to express my pleasure at your having come to hear what was said, and at the prospect of your taking part in all the developments which will take place in the future. I think you will agree with me when I say that what we have been doing is useful work, and as such possesses a deep inner value.

There are, however, two things to which I would draw your attention. The first is the trouble that has been taken by Count and Countess Keyserlingk and all their household to make this course the success it has been.

This required energy, self-sacrifice, consciousness of the end in view, a sense of Anthroposophical values, a real identification with the cause of Anthroposophy. And this is why the work we have all been engaged upon, a work which will undoubtedly be of service to the whole of humanity, has seemed to take the form of a wonderful festival, for which we give our heartfelt thanks to Count and Countess Keyserlingk.

Discussion

QUESTION: Has liquid manure the same force of ego-organisation as dung?

ANSWER: Of course, liquid manure and dung should be used in union with each other and both should contribute to the same force of organisation of the soil. The connection with the Ego to which I referred holds good particularly for the dung, but does not hold good xn general for the liquid manure. For every Ego, even in the rudimentary form in which it appears in manure, must work in conjunction with some astral element, and the dung would have no astrality unless the liquid manure were there. The liquid is strong is astrality, the dung in ego-force. The manure may be regarded as “grey matter,” while the liquid is the cerebral fluid.

QUESTION: Could we be given the correct astronomical data for those preparations which must be burnt?

ANSWER: (by Dr. Vreede): The exact data cannot be supplied at present. There are calculations still required which cannot be made at the moment. In general, the period for burning the insects is from the beginning of February on into August. With regard to the destruction of field-mice, the period this year (1924)—it shifts from year to year—would be from the second half of November to the first half of December.

DR. STEINER: The principles laid down (in 1912) for the Anthroposophical Calendar ought to be worked out more precisely. Then one could go by it exactly.

QUESTION: In speaking of Full Moon and New Moon do you mean the one day on which the moon is full or new, or does it include the period shortly before and after it?

ANSWER: One reckons the new moon from the moment when the thin sickle (Diagram 22) of the old moon is still there and disappears. Full moon is reckoned from the moment when this other picture appears (again Diagram 22). Both phases cover from twelve to fourteen days.

ANSWER: We shall give the times for making the preparations, but the insects can be kept until then.

QUESTION: Has the burning of the weed seeds to take place in summer, or at any time?

ANSWER: Not too long after they have been gathered

QUESTION: How can this insect-pepper which has “been scattered over the soil' affect the living insects which never come into contact with the soil?

ANSWER: What matters here is not the physical contact but a certain quality coming from this homoeopathic dose. The insect has its own kind of sensitiveness, and it will flee from what has been scattered over the ground without having to come in contact with it. That the insect does not come into direct contact with the earth makes no difference at all.

QUESTION: What is the nature of the harm done by frost in agriculture and in the case of tomatoes in particular? In what sense is frost connected with cosmic forces?

. ANSWER: To have fine and large tomatoes you must keep them warm. They suffer from frost. With regard to frost in general, you must realise what it is t-hat is active in the effects of frost. Frost means that the cosmic influence which is active in the earth has been essentially strengthened. Now this cosmic influence has a normal mean between certain degrees of temperature. When the temperature is at a certain point, this cosmic influence is exactly what the plant requires. If, however, the frost is intense, lasts too long and strikes too deeply, the influence of the heavens upon the earth is too strong and the plant tends to become stalkified and thin throughout and in this attenuated state it falls an easy prey to the frost and is destroyed. Frost which is too intense is therefore extremely harmful to the growth of plants because it is a sign that too much of the heavens has entered into the earth.

QUESTION: Should the burnt remains of Horse-fly be used to treat the bodies of animals, or be scattered over the meadows and pastures?

ANSWER: Scatter it where the animals feed. It is to be regarded as additional to the manure.

QUESTION: What is the best way of combating couch-grass? Is it not very difficult to obtain the seeds?

ANSWER: This difficulty really solves itself. When it grows underground and rampant one can fight it. You need very little seed and you will be able to get this. Why, one can even find four-leaved clover!

QUESTION: Is it permissible to preserve bales of fodder by means of an electric current?

ANSWER: What would be your object in doing this? It is necessary at this point to consider the part played by electricity in Nature. Now it is comforting to note that in America, where people are more observant than they are over here, voices are heard to say that man cannot go on developing in the same way in an atmosphere which is continuously “being pierced “by electrical currents and waves; it has an influence on the whole development of man. Man's inner life will become different if these things are carried further and further. It makes a difference to a district whether it is provided with steam trains or electric trains. The action of steam is more conscious: the action of electricity is extremely unconscious, so that people simply do not know how certain things happen. .

No doubt there is a development going on which must be reckoned with because electricity is being used above the surface of the soil as radiant electricity (wireless) and also as conducted electricity (cables) for transmitting news as quickly as possible from one place to another. The result of this will be that men and women living in the field especially of the radiant electricity can no longer “take in” the news they obtain. The electric radiations used to ensure quick transmissions tend to blot out the capacity for understanding. This can already be observed. People have far more difficulty in taking in what comes to them than they had several decades ago. It is a comfort to find that a glimpse of the truth of this matter is beginning to dawn at least from America.

Whenever anything new appears, it is usually regarded at first as “a remedy.” Then the prophets come in and use the thing. It is strange how, when something new appears, clairvoyant perception is so often brought down to the human level. For instance, a man who had never before thought about it, begins to prophesy wildly regarding the healing power of electricity, and the idea is taken up not merely because electricity is there, but because it is in the fashion. Electricity in the form of radiations is no more a remedy than pricking with small thin needles can be a remedy. It is not the electricity which heals but the shock it produces.

It must not be forgotten, however, that, electricity has a particularly powerful effect upon the higher organisation in living beings, i.e. upon the head in men and animals and upon the root in plants. An animal that eats food that has been preserved through electrification will therefore gradually tend to grow sclerotic. The process will be slow and will not be noticed at first. All that will be noticed, is that in one way or another these animals die too soon. No one will attribute this to the electricity: all sorts of other reasons will be found. I cannot help it, but electricity is the last thing in the world which ought to be introduced into a living being to promote its life! It cannot promote life. Electricity is at one level lower than life, and the higher the level reached “by life, the more it tends to rid itself of electricity; and if you induce the living organism to take repulsive measures when there is nothing to be repelled, the organism becomes nervous and fidgety and gradually sclerotic.

QUESTION: What does Spiritual Science say on the subject of preserving food-stuffs by acidification in general?

ANSWER: If we use salt-like materials at all in this process it does not make much difference whether the salt is added at the moment of eating, or whether it is used in the preparation of the fodder. In the case of fodder that contains too little salt to carry the food stuffs to those parts of the organism where they should work, souring is the right procedure to adopt. Take the case of turnips. These, as we saw, are particularly fitted to work upon the head-organisation. They are, therefore, an excellent food for certain animals, especially for young cattle. If, however, it be noticed that the young animals shed their hair too soon and too much, their fodder should be salted because this means that the food is not being deposited in sufficient quantities in those parts of the organism where it is needed. Salt is tremendously effective in carrying food to the part of the organism where it is needed and will work.

QUESTION: What view does Spiritual Science take on the subject of souring of the leaves of sugar-beet and other green plants?

ANSWER: The great thing here is to find a certain optimum and not go beyond it by adding too much salt, because salt is the part of food which more than any other remains what it is once it is inside the organism. The organism in general, in the case of animals- and even more so of human beings, is so constructed as to submit everything it absorbs to the most varied changes. It is an error to think that the albumen which goes into our stomachs remains the same as it was before we ate it. It must first be changed into a completely lifeless substance and then changed back again by means of the etheric body into specifically human (or in the case of animals specifically animal) albumen.

Everything that enters into an organism must be changed. This applies even to warmth. Suppose that this (see Diagram 23, Part I) is a living organism and this the warmth in the environment. Now assume you have a piece of dead wood (Diagram 23, Part II) which, it is true, comes from a living organism but is already dead. It is likewise surrounded by warmth. Now when the warmth enters into the living organism, it does not simply go a little way in and remain what it is; the organism immediately transforms it into a warmth of its own, and it could not do otherwise. Whereas when the warmth penetrates into the dead wood it remains exactly the same kind of warmth as exists outside in the mineral earth. The moment warmth penetrates into us unchanged as it does into the piece of wood, we catch cold. Nothing that comes into the living organism from outside may remain what it is; it must immediately he changed into something else. This process takes place to the least extent m salt. No great harm, therefore, will he done by using salt for the preserving of food-stuffs so long as you do it carefully and do not put in too much. The mere sense of taste will reject it. If it is necessary for the preservation of food-stuffs this shows that up to a point it is the right process to adopt.

QUESTION: Do you recommend souring fodder without salt?

ANSWER: That is too advanced a process. It is a super-organic process (self-fermentation) and can in certain circumstances be extremely harmful.

QUESTION: Is Spanish Chalk, sometimes used to mitigate the effects of souring, bad for the animals?

ANSWER: Some animals cannot stand it at all; they become ill. Some can. I cannot say at the moment which are those that can stand it. On the whole, it does not do the animals much good and is apt to make them ill.

QUESTION: I suppose that the gastric juice will be dulled by the Spanish chalk?

ANSWER: Yes. The gastric juice becomes useless.

QUESTION: I would like to ask whether the inner attitude with which one sets to work is not of great importance in these matters? There is surely a great difference between sowing seed and scattering what is destined to work destruction. The attitude of mind must count. Does it not have an immensely greater karmic effect to work against insects in this way than to kill them in single instances by mechanical means?

ANSWER: The main thing about an inner attitude is whether it is a good or a bad attitude. What do you mean by “destruction?” Now consider how one must think about these things. In my lecture to-day I pointed out that we can know something and then actually see it before us. We can look at a linseed plant or a carrot and actually see (because we know) the course it takes and the process it undergoes when it enters the body of an animal. If we can really attain to this objective vision and make it a reality, then it is inconceivable

that we should not at the same time be penetrated by certain feelings of piety. And we shall gain the impulse to do this in the service of mankind, in the service of the Universe. The only way in which our state of mind could bring harm would be if we did our work from bad motives. I do not see, therefore, since these methods work on the whole for good, that they can in any way do harm. You seem to think that it would not be so bad just to run after the animal and kill it?

QUESTION: I wanted to know if there was a difference between the two ways of destruction—mechanical and cosmic?

ANSWER: This question raises very complicated issues which can only be understood if we have gained insight -into the wider connections that exist between things. Suppose you draw a fish out of the sea and kill it. Then you have killed something. You have carried out a process on a definite level. But suppose that for some reason or other you take a whole pail full of water containing quantities of fish-spawn, thus destroying a vast amount of life. This is something quite different from killing one fish. The process has been carried out on quite a different level. If something in Nature passes on towards a full-grown fish, it has travelled along a certain path. If you cut the fish off at this point, you cause a certain disorder in Nature. But it is quite a different matter to arrest a process which has not been completed or which has not ended in the blind alley of a fully-grown organism. Your question, therefore, boils down to this: What wrong am I doing in making this pepper? What I destroy with the pepper does not really come into consideration as it moves on another level of existence. All we need ask is: What must I have in order to make this pepper? And in most cases, it turns out that in making it I shall destroy far fewer animals than if I have to collect them in some other way and then kill them. I think that if you look at the question in a practical way and less from an abstract point of view you will find that it is not so very appalling.

QUESTION: Can human faeces be used for manuring, and how should they be treated before use?

ANSWER: They should be used as little as possible. For they achieve very little in the way of manuring and they can do more harm than any other kind of manure. If, however, you want to use them the normal amount that is to be had on a farm or estate will be amply sufficient. If one knows that a given number of human beings are working on an estate, then if the human manure be added to what already comes from the animals on the estate and from other sources, clearly this will make up the maximum that can he used without doing harm. It is the greatest mistake to use human manure in the neighbourhood of large towns, because the amount supplied by a large town would suffice for an estate of gigantic size. No one would have such a crazy notion as to use on a small piece of land the human manure supplied, say by the whole of Berlin. You need only try eating some of the plants that grow in the neighbourhood of big cities. Take asparagus or any other plant which still manages to grow fairly true to its nature and upright, and you will see what happens.

Again, if you use human manure for plants that are eaten by animals, you will have the most harmful results., For then much of what is eaten and goes through the animal's organism remains at the same stage as that at which the asparagus is arrested when it goes through the human organism. In this connection, it is the grossest ignorance which has caused the greatest mischief in this field.

QUESTION: Is there any remedy for red murrain (Erysipelas) in swine?

ANSWER: This is really a veterinary question. I have never gone into the matter, as I have never been asked for advice about it, but I rather think the best thing to do is to rub in a certain dose of antimony. This is a therapeutic question as it deals with a real disease.

QUESTION: Can one combat Wild Radish, which is a bastard species, with these peppers?

ANSWER: The peppers of which I have told you only affect the plants from which they were made. Plants which arise from symbiosis or the crossing of one plant with another cannot therefore be affected by pepper made from one of them.

QUESTION: What are your views on green manuring?

ANSWER: It has its uses, especially in connection with fruit-growing. One cannot generalise on such matters. It should be used if a powerful development of the leafy part of the plant is required. For such a purpose, it can well supplement other manures.

Today we want to occupy ourselves with occult symbols that a pupil gets to know during his development and through which the masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings give us wisdom that was brought over to us from Atlantean times.

After Atlantis sank, great initiates led two main streams of people from west to east, on through Africa, the other through Europe. Those who came to Asia through Africa produced the individuality that could take in the Christ light in the course of incarnations and developments. In the northern stream a strong, sturdy stock arose among initiates that not only knew how to defy outer enemies but was also a match for psychic, demonic influences. There were mystery centers in Europe, whose existence is reported in old sagas. For instance, the report of such an esoteric school is concealed behind the legend of King Arthur and his round table. King Arthur was a high initiate who proclaimed the mystery wisdom to his pupils.

Now, it's an occult law that some initiates withdraw to spiritual worlds when an especially high one unfolds his activity on the physical plane. Thus, while the Christ light shone in the Orient, another high initiate withdrew for whom north European people had been prepared as a later sphere of activity. He later incarnated to let the Christ event in its whole importance flow into mankind. We're told about this incarnation of the high initiate in the legend of the Holy Grail that angels carried from east to west and kept floating above the earth there. King Titurel was the guardian of the Grail and the reincarnation of the high initiate who was supposed to prepare things for a certain historical period. An old French legend, Floire et Blanchflor, was inspired by Titurel. Charlemagne was the reincarnation of a high, East Indian adept and an instrument of the spiritual individuality that's symbolized by the name Titurel. Floris and Blancheflur are called Charlemagne's spiritual parents. They inspired people who were connected with the mystery center.

Titurel attracted pupils who were all called Parzival. A Parzival had to free himself from all worldly influences that drag one down, through appropriate exercises He had to be a Cathar. When Parzival, who at this stage would call himself a “pious one” or purified one, stepped before his master Titurel, the latter let him use the forces that he'd developed through catharsis for an intensive concentration The earth and everything on it disappeared before his eyes and gradually changed into the image of a tree that grew and from which a wonderful lily sprouted And while Parzival was immersed in this perception he heard the voice of Blancheflur behind him—who, as it were, symbolized herself in the lily, saying “You are that.” The lily emitted a strong odor that Parzival found repulsive and he realized that this aroma symbolized all the things that he had set outside himself through catharsis, and that this still surrounded him like an atmosphere. Then the tree withered before him and it was replaced by a black cross with red roses sprouting out of it. He heard the voice of Floris—whose symbol was the red rose that's strengthened in itself—behind him: “You should become that.” Parzival was then led into mountain solitude by Titurel to meditate on the mighty pictures that had been conjured up before him. And on a secluded peak he directed his gaze to the endless heavens above him, lowered it to the endless depths beneath him, looked to the front and rear, right and left into endless distances, and an indescribable feeling of reverence and devotion for the Godhead that revealed itself to him in every thing overcame him. And he directed a prayer to it: “You great Enveloper, you whom I feel above and below and beside me, who is everywhere whether I look forward or backward—I would like to devote myself to you and merge with you.” At the same time he felt another divine power who did not overpower him as much, who seemed to lead him into himself and seemed to give him a center there. And he felt a third force like a messenger of the great Enveloper who seemed to lead him in a circle around his center. He felt that his left hand was grasped by a force that pressed like warmth through the arm, that announced itself through a feeling of cold. If we want to draw these forces then we must draw the first three (as at the bottom of the diagram below), and the two others that pressed through him like a feeling that gave him knowledge of his connection with all mankind, as wings.

Then the sky became dark for him and lost its outer light, and suddenly space lit up for him from within. He had the feeling as if his head opened up like a chalice to divine light and in this light he saw the messengers of the Panenveloper who came towards him from above, and through the radiant light that stood above him like a star and sent its shine deep into him he heard their voice that said to him: “This is the light of the Father, out of which you were born.”

And he realized that to become worthy of this birth he would have to transform the green lily tree into the dry wood of the cross in himself, just as the Christ had gone through death on the same, and that only thereby the hope could blossom in him to be resurrected in the Holy Spirit:

Notes from B-F: 1 is a force that projects into us, that also fills us when we concentrate on an object (white lily) 2 is another force that urges us to be ourself in initiative actions (rose cross). 3 is really a circle, a force that induces us to see life's joyful and sad experiences around us and not in us—with equanimity. It's the karmic law of necessity that turns in a circle. If we devote ourselves to these three, we then get 4/5 as supports, a warm wing of enthusiasm (love) and a cold one (shame and fear) that harmonizes this. Then in arrows 6/7 there are streams from the geniuses of light who bring us wisdom; thereby we feel as if we were growing two small wings in the larynx region. Then we hear the harmony of the spheres 8/9 from the geniuses of will that clarifies the goal of man and world evolution.

The whole picture is the tree of life or man in the form of a pentagram.

As always, we'll ask the Spirit of the Day for help in our work. (Saturday)

Great embracing Spirit,
You who filled endless space when none of my body's members existed yet;
You were.
I raise my soul to you.
I was in you.
I was part of your force.
You sent out your forces, and the first, original picture of my body's form was reflected in the earth's first beginnings.
I was in the forces that you sent out.
You were.
My archetype looked at you.
It looked at me, myself, I who was a part of you.
You were.

Great embracing Spirit
May my I raise itself from below upward,
May it get an inkling of you in the all-embracing.
May the spirit of my being be illumined
By the light of your messengers.
May the soul of my being be enkindled by the fire flames of your servants.
May the will of my I grasp
Your creatorword's force.
You are.
May your being permeate my will
That my I be grasped by an understanding of your light's shining,
Your life's love-warmth
And your being's creator words.
You are.

Yesterday we said that a pupil hears a spiritual sound from the east. But if a pupil would now want to say that he knew what the spiritual sounds like, that he had now heard his first spiritual sound, he would be making a big mistake. For this sound is, as it were, the last word out of the physical realm.

The spiritual world is for the time being completely colorless, lightless, soundless and so on. Any colors that we might see are nothing spiritual—they come from our own inner life, and, namely, they indicate qualities that we don't have but must acquire. For instance, if we see a red color it means that we don't have love in us, that we must develop it in ourselves. If we see violet, it's telling us that we must acquire devotional piety.

If we hear noises, it's nothing spiritual, but something that comes out of us. If someone becomes a vegetarian but his body still has a longing for meat, even if he's unaware of it, then this craving resounds in misleading sounds. All of these noises and sounds are only raven croaks.

If a figure from past ages appears to a pupil it's quite wrong for him to want to interpret it right away. He must be able to wait with his interpretation until later. If such an image appears before our soul, it dissipates as soon as we approach it with our thoughts. But if it's a genuine image, it'll rise before us later and remain there in its true form, and we'll know what it means. We must be able to wait and be silent. We should speak about such experiences much less than we think about them. We should look upon and treat our whole spiritual life as something sacred. We must tell ourselves that experiences of sounds, colors, etc. don't come from the spiritual realm but from our own ego that's surged through be a sea of passions an desires, just as Noah's ark had the sea surging around it. As we tell ourselves clearly and relentlessly that these experiences and phenomena are nothing spiritual, we must let our ego go and as it were, let it fly away, just as the dove was released from Noah's ark and didn't return.

A pupil then has another occult experience. After we've seen that the spiritual world is empty for us, we then see that these experiences are nevertheless important for us. Colors become warners and advisors. They tell us what we still have to acquire. We realize that sounds reflect our bodily cravings. And when the images that we've let work quietly tell us their significance, our soul becomes enriched by such experiences. That's like the dove that was released the second time and came back with an olive leaf, the emblem of peace.

But an esoteric's soul isn't left entirely to its own devices on this difficult path; there's things it can hang on to. The rose cross, for instance. We should let it work on us; we should realize that the wood's black is our corporeality that's hardened and withered, that we must let our lower ego that identifies itself with the body become just as dark and dead as the cross's wood. Then the higher, spiritual ego will work in us in the way that the black of the cross is changed into bright, radiant lines of light. Likewise, the red of the roses will change from the color of love working inwardly, to green, the color of life working outwardly.

When we experience symbols it's the ones that make us suffer that are genuine and from the spiritual world, and not the ones that give us joy. We must carry them around with us until we've grasped their meaning. The spiritual from them must be born in us while we suffer.

Another thing we must realize is that we can't be unegoistical. We are never ever unegoistical. And even if we imagine that we've done something that's entirely selfless, we're mistaken. We can't act selflessly. It's world karma that lets us act egoistically World karma is God.

And if we get to the point where we act in a good and noble way, then it's God in us who's good. As we get more selfless, we'll for instance, notice that we don't get scared or terrified anymore. If there's a sudden loud noise nearby, we won't jump as much as before. The God who lets us act in a good and noble way is our model. Our archetypal model made us into what we are now. And we must become a copy of our archetype again.

Once we've understood this rightly, we'll also understand the esoteric Rosicrucian saying: Ex Deo nascimur, in … morimur, Per spiritum Sanctum revivscimus.

An esoteric doesn't say what's left out here. When we begin to say this line our feeling must go to what's unutterable. And only when one's feeling comes back can one go on speaking. Anyone who experiences this inwardly with the right feeling will also rightly understand the other esoteric verse:

In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
The eyes of sense,
That through them I may see
The lights of bodies.
And the spirit has imprinted in my body
Reason and sensation
And feeling and will,
That through them I may perceive bodies
And act upon them.
In the spirit lay the germ of my body.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.
And I will incorporate into my spirit
The super-sensible eyes
That through them I may behold the light of spirits.
And I will imprint in my spirit
Wisdom and power and love,
So that through me the spirits may act
And I become a self-conscious organ
Of their deeds.
In my body lies the germ of the spirit.

I. Report in the “Mühlheimer Zeitung” of March 20, 1905

On Saturday evening, Dr. Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, spoke on 'Goethe's Faust in the Light of the Theosophical World View'. The speaker explained that Goethe cannot be grasped in the full depth of his life's work if Faust is seen only as the poetic expression of the outer life around us and of the soul life in its outer phenomena. Faust offers infinitely more; it aims to provide a picture of the development of man and his place in the world and the universe. Goethe had insight into the teachings of mysticism, which coincide with those of theosophy; in the sense of mysticism, he had given in his Faust a picture of the human being, his development and ascent. He had reproduced the ancient teachings as only a poet could reproduce them, namely in the representation of a poet, and in doing so, he had made use of mystical terminology. Goethe was familiar with the ancient division of the universe into a physical, a mental and a spiritual world, and it was clear to him that man is also composed of three parts: a physical, a mental and a spiritual one. He therefore understood the human being as a microcosm in which the image of the universe, the macrocosm, was reflected. The ancient wisdom teachings of the Indians, Egyptians, Persians and Greeks understood the development of the human being in the same way as Goethe. He paid homage to the view that the human soul was there from the very beginning, that it had developed through all the realms of nature and become the creator of these realms, that on this journey of development through the most diverse states, it had created man in his present form and was now striving to spiritualize him further. To make clear this view of the work of Goethe, the speaker pointed to the many expressions of mystical terminology scattered throughout Faust, such as the passage in the prologue in heaven, which cannot be understood in any other way than in a mystical sense:

The sun resounds according to ancient custom
In the song-contests of the spheres of the brothers,
And its ordained journey
It completes with a thunderclap.

These processes, which can only be perceived in the world of the spirit, where the ear of the spirit listens and the eye of the seer can no longer follow, not to mention the physical eye – they are referred to in mysticism as sounding or resounding. In the first act of the second part, Ariel calls the organ that is to be understood as the organ of perception in these worlds the “ear of the spirit”. Ariel speaks:

Hark! Hark! The hoar-hounds howl!
The new-born day is breaking
For the ears of spirits.
The gates of rocks are creaking and cracking;
The wheels of Phoebus are rolling and clattering;
What a tumult the light brings!
It trumpets, it trombone;
Eye blinks and ear astonishes,
Unheard of does not listen.

The first part of the tragedy, as Dr. Steiner explained, presents man to us in the struggle with the lower physical passions. In the second part, we are shown the development of his soul and his ascent into the purely spiritual. Mephisto is the principle of desire and longing until the soul incites to higher life. The realm of the mothers is understood to mean the spiritual realm, to which Faust descends to attain the spiritual archetypes of things (Helena as a symbol of beauty). In Homunculus, the soul's journey of development is shown through the realms of nature; in Euphorion, the moment of higher enlightenment, which comes to us in happy hours and suddenly disappears again, etc. The captivating explanations, of which we have only been able to reproduce a few here, were met with much applause.

II. Report in the “Kölnische Zeitung” of March 22, 1905

On Saturday evening in the Isabellensaal of the Gürzenich, Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Berlin gave a lecture on “Goethe's Faust, a Picture of His World View from a Theosophical Point of View”. The speaker often uses a mystically opaque mode of expression; in the course of his hour-long speech, he wove into his inwardly spiritualized presentation, which developed in broad strokes into a journey through Goethe's life's work, viewed from a theosophical perspective, reflections on the history and essence of Theosophy. Even though the Theosophical Society as such has existed only for 30 years, the spirit of the world view had already been active first in esoteric Buddhism and later in the most important minds of the Orient and the Occident at all times. From individual basic ideas of the theosophical doctrine, Redrier spread, as in earlier lectures, over the three worlds of theosophy, life, soul and spirit. Regarding the subject itself, he said that Goethe's poem of life could only be understood if one illuminated it with what the theosophical world view meant, which he had expressed in a special way in the secrets and fairy tales of the green snake and the beautiful lily. With advancing age, he had become more and more absorbed in this world and realized that when we know the world, we also know the fragmented details of our being; there is no end to knowledge, only degrees. That is why Goethe had to end Faust as a mystic, after saying in his youth, “A good man in his dark urges is well aware of the right path.” After the speaker had considered the prologue from the mystic's point of view, he described Faust in the first part as tired of the sensual world; all the sciences of the mind did not satisfy him, in his innermost being there was a yearning for a spiritual world in the sense of mysticism. That is why Goethe lets Faust reach the earth spirit in the flame and recognize at the end of the first part that true self-knowledge is knowledge of the world. In the second part, he lets Faust get to know the three worlds of the theosophist. The imperial court embodies the great sensual world – Mephisto, “the impulse of development,” repeatedly draws him back into it – the mothers are the soul principle that is fertilized so that the higher human being may be born in the human being. The mystic also said to the materialist: “In your nothingness, I hope to find the All.” The homunculus, which can also only be understood mystically, is the representative of mystical clairvoyance, the birth and downfall of Euphorion are the mystical moments of celebration that quickly fade away. Finally, it was explained how Faust becomes completely independent of the sensual world, how he goes blind, how darkness is around him, but there is bright light within him. The “Chorus mysticus” is a Goethean creed. The lecture was very well received and was followed by a stimulating discussion.

We have once more pointed out in these lectures that in the most recent cultural period of human evolution, the fifth post-Atlantean period, the main force governing human soul life is the force of the intellect, the force of ideas living in thoughts. To this we had to add the statement that the force of thoughts is actually the corpse of our life of spirit and soul as it was before birth. More and more strongly in recent times this force of thought has emancipated itself from the other forces of the human being, and this was clearly felt by those spirits who wanted to attain a full understanding of the Christian impulse.

Yesterday I endeavoured to describe this, using the example of Calderón's Cyprianus. That drama depicts, on the one hand, the struggles which arise out of the old ideas of a nature filled with soul and, on the other, the strong sense of helplessness encountered by the human being who distances himself from this old view and is forced to seek shelter in mere thoughts. We saw how Cyprianus had to seek the assistance of Satan in order to win Justina—whose significance I endeavoured to explain. But in consequence of the new soul principle, which is now dominant, all he could receive from Satan was a phantom of Justina.

All these things show forcefully how human beings, striving for the spirit, felt in this new age, how they felt the deadness of mere thought life and how, at the same time, they felt that it would be impossible to enter with these mere thoughts into the living realm of the Christ concept. I then went on yesterday to show that the phase depicted in Calderon's Cyprianus drama is followed by another, which we find in Goethe's Faust. Goethe is a personality who stands fully in the cultural life of the eighteenth century, which was actually far more international than were later times, and which also had a really strong feeling for the intellectual realm, the realm of thoughts. We can certainly say that in his young days Goethe explored all the different sciences much as did the Faust he depicts in his drama. For in what the intellectual realm had to offer, Goethe did not seek what most people habitually seek; he was searching for a genuine connection with the world to which the eternal nature of man belongs. We can certainly say that Goethe sought true knowledge. But he could not find it through the various sciences at his disposal. Perhaps Goethe approached the figure of Faust in an external way to start with. But because of his own special inclinations he sensed in this Faust figure the struggling human being about whom we spoke yesterday. And in a certain sense he identified with this struggling human being.

Goethe worked on Faust in three stages. The first stage leads us back to his early youth when he felt utterly dissatisfied with his university studies and longed to escape from it all and find a true union of soul with the whole of cultural life. Faust was depicted as the struggling human being, the human being striving to escape from mere intellect into a full comprehension of the cosmic origins of man. So this early figure of Faust takes his place beside the other characters simply as the striving human being. Then Goethe underwent those stages of his development during which he submerged himself in the art of the South which he saw as giving form on a higher plane to the essence of nature. He increasingly sought the spirit in nature, for he could not find it in the cultural life that at first presented itself to him. A deep longing led him to the art of the South, which he regarded as the last remnant of Greek art. There, in the way the secrets of nature were depicted artistically out of the Greek world view, he believed he would discover the spirituality of nature.

And then everything he had experienced in Italy underwent a transformation within his soul. We see this transformation given living expression in the intimate form of his fairy-tale¹ about the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, in which, out of certain traditional concepts of beauty, wisdom, virtue and strength, he created the temple with the four Kings.

Then, at the end of the eighteenth century, we see how, encouraged by Schiller, he returns to Faust, enriched with this world of ideas. This second stage of his work on Faust is marked particularly by the appearance of the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, that wonderful poem which begins with the words: ‘The sun makes music as of old, Amid the rival spheres of heaven.’² In the drama as Goethe now conceives it, Faust no longer stands there as a solitary figure concerned solely with himself. Now we have the cosmos with all the forces of the universe ascending and descending, and within this cosmos the human being whom the powers of good and evil do battle to possess. Faust takes his place within the cosmos as a whole. Goethe has expanded the material from a question of man alone to a question encompassing the whole of the universe.

The third stage begins in the twenties of the nineteenth century, when Goethe sets about completing the drama. Once again quite new thoughts live in his soul, very different from those with which he was concerned at the end of the eighteenth century when he composed the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, using ancient ideas about nature, ideas of the spirit in nature, in order to raise the question of Faust to the level of a question of the cosmos. In the twenties, working to bring the second part of the drama to a conclusion, Goethe has returned once more to the human soul out of which he now wants to draw everything, expanding the soul-being once more into a cosmic being.

Of course he has to make use of external representations, but we see how he depicts dramatically the inner journeyings of the soul. Consider the ‘Classical Walpurgis-Night’ or the reappearance of the Helena scene, which had been there earlier, though merely in the form of an episode. And consider how, in the great final tableau, he endeavours to bring to a concluding climax the soul's inner experience, which is at the same time a cosmic experience when it becomes spiritual. Finally the drama flows over into a Christian element. But, as I said yesterday, this Christian element is not developed out of Faust's experiences of soul but is merely tacked on to the end. Goethe made a study of the Catholic cultus and then tacked this Christianizing element on to the end of Faust. There is only an external connection between Faust's inner struggles and the way in which the drama finally leads into this Christian tableau of the universe. This is not intended to belittle the Faust drama. But it has to be said that Goethe, who wrestled in the deepest sense of the word to depict how the spiritual world should be found in earthly life, did not, in fact, succeed in discovering a way of depicting this finding of spirituality in earthly life. To do so, he would have had to come to a full comprehension of the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. He would have had to understand how the Christ-being came from the expanses of the cosmos and descended into the human being, Jesus of Nazareth, and how he united himself with the earth, so that ever since then, when seeking the spirit which ebbs and flows in the stormy deeds of man, one ought to find the Christ-impulse in earthly life.

Goethe was never able to make the link between the spirit of the earth, ebbing and flowing in stormy deeds, in the weaving of time, and the Christ-impulse. In a way this may be felt to be a tragedy. But it came about of necessity, because the period of human evolution in which Goethe stood did not yet provide the ground on which the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha could be comprehended. Indeed, this Mystery of Golgotha can only be fully comprehended if human beings learn to give new life to the dead thoughts which are a part of them in this fifth post-Atlantean period. Today there is a tremendous amount of prejudice, in thought, in feeling and in will, against the re-enlivening of the world of thought. But mankind must solve this problem. Mankind must learn to give new life to this world of thought which enters human nature at birth and conception as the corpse of spirit and soul; this corpse of thoughts and ideas must be made to live again. But this can only happen when thoughts are transformed—first into Imaginations, and then the Imaginations transformed into Inspirations and Intuitions. What is needed is a full understanding of the human being. Not until this becomes a reality, will what I told you yesterday be fully understood: That the world around us must come to be seen as a tremendous question to which the human being himself provides the answer. This is what was to have been given to mankind with the Mystery of Golgotha. It will not be understood until the human being is understood.

Let us look at a diagram of threefold man once more: the human being of the head or of the nerves and senses as discussed yesterday;

Earth

the human being of the rhythmic system or of the chest; and the human being of the metabolism and limbs.

Looking at the human being today, we accept him as the external form in which he appears to us. Someone dissecting a body on the dissecting table has no special feeling that the human head, for instance, is in any way very different from, say, a finger. A finger muscle is considered in the same way as is a muscle in the head. But it ought to be known that the head is, in the main, a metamorphosis of the system of limbs and metabolism from the preceding incarnation; in other words, the head occupies a place in evolution which is quite different from that of the system of limbs that goes with it.

Having at last struggled through to a view of the inner aspect of threefold man, we shall then be in a position to come to a view of what is linked from the cosmos with this threefold human being. As far as our external being is concerned, we are in fact only incarnated in the solid, earthly realm through our head organization. We should never be approachable as a creature of the solid earth if we did not possess our head organization, which is, however, an echo of the limb organization of our previous incarnation. The fact that we have solid parts also in our hands and feet is the result of what rays down from the head. But it is our head which makes us solid. Everything solid and earthly in us derives from our head, as far as the forces in it are concerned.

In our head the solid earth is in us. And whatever is solid anywhere else in our body rays down through us from our head. The origin of our solid bones lies in our head. But there is also in our head a transition to the watery element. All the solid parts of our brain are embedded in the cerebral fluid. In our head there is a constant inter-mingling vibration of the solid parts of our brain with the cerebral fluid which is linked to the rest of the body by way of the spinal fluid. So, looking at the human being of nerves and senses, we can say that here is the transition from the earthly element (blue) to the watery element. We can say that the human being of nerves and senses lives in the earthy-watery element. And in accordance with this, our brain consists of an intercorrespondence between the earthy and watery elements.

Now let us turn to the chest organism, the rhythmic organism. This rhythmic organism lives in the interrelationship between the watery and the airy element (yellow). In the lungs you can see the watery element making contact with the airy element. The rhythmic life is anintermingling of the watery with the airy element, of water with air. So I could say: The rhythmical human being lives in the watery-airy element.

And the human being of metabolism and limbs then lives in the transition from the airy element to the warmth element, in the fiery element (red, next diagram). It is a constant dissolving of the airy element in the warmth, the fiery element, which then seeps through the whole human being as his body heat. What happens in our metabolism and in our movements is a reorganization of the airy, gaseous element up into the warm, fiery element. As we move about, we constantly burn up those elements of the food we have eaten which have become airy. Even when we do not move about, the foods we eat are transformed airy elements which we constantly burn up in the warmth element. So the human being of limbs and metabolism lives in the airy-fiery element.

Human being of nerves and senses: earthy-watery element

Rhythmical human being: watery-airy element

Human being of limbs and metabolism: airy-fiery element

From here we go up even further into the etheric parts, into the light element, into the etheric body of the human being. When the organism of metabolism and limbs has transferred everything into warmth, it then goes up into the etheric body. Here the human being joins up with the etheric realm which fills the whole world; here he makes the link with the cosmos.

Ideas like this, which I have shown you only as diagrams, can be transformed into artistic and poetic form by someone who has an inner sense for sculpture and music. In a work of poetry such as the drama of Faust such things can certainly be expressed in artistic form, in the way certain cosmic secrets are expressed, for instance, in the seventh scene of my first Mystery Drama.³ This leads to the possibility of seeing the human being linked once more with the cosmos. But for this we cannot apply to the human being what our intellect teaches us about external nature. You must understand that if you study external nature, and then study your head in the same way as you would external nature, you are then studying something which simply does not belong to external nature as it now is, but something that comes from your former incarnation. You are studying something as though it had arisen at the present moment; but it is not something that has arisen out of the present moment, nor could it ever arise out of the present moment. For a human head could not possibly arise out of the forces of nature which exist. So the human head must not be studied in the same way as objects are studied with the intellect. It must be studied with the knowledge given by Imagination. The human head will not be understood until it is studied with the knowledge given by Imagination.

In the rhythmical human being everything comes into movement. Here we have to do with the watery and the airy elements. Everything

is in surging movement. The external, solid parts of our breast organization are only what our head sends down into this surging motion. To study the rhythmical human being we have to say that in this rhythmical surging the watery element and the airy element mingle together (see diagram, green, yellow). Into this, the head sends the possibility for the solid parts, such as those in the lungs, to be present (white). This surging, which is the real rhythmical human being, can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration. So the rhythmical human being can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration.

And the human being of limbs and metabolism—this is the continuous burning of the air in us. You stand within it, in your warmth you feel yourself to be a human being, but this is a very obscure idea. It can only be studied properly with the knowledge given by Intuition, in which the soul stands within the object. Only the knowledge given by Intuition can lead to the human being of metabolism and limbs.

The human being will remain forever unknown if he is not studied with the knowledge given by Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. He will forever remain the external shell which is all that is recognized today, both in general and in science. This situation must not be allowed to remain. The human being must come once more to be recognized for what he is. If you study only the solid parts of the human being, the parts which are shown in the illustrations in anatomy textbooks, then, right from the start, you are studying wrongly. Your study ought to be in the realm of Imagination, because all these illustrations of the solid parts of the human organism ought to be taken as images brought over from the previous incarnation. This is the first thing. Then come the even more delicate parts which live in the physical constituents. These can only be studied with the knowledge given by Inspiration. And the airy-watery element can only be studied with the knowledge given by Intuition. These things must be taken into European consciousness, indeed into the whole of modern civilization. If we fail to place them in the mainstream of culture, our civilization will only go downhill instead of upwards.

When you understand what Goethe intended with his Faust, you sense that he was endeavouring to pass through a certain gateway. Everywhere he is struggling with the question: What is it that we need to know about this human being? As a very young man he began to study the human form. Read his discourse on the intermaxillary bone and also what I wrote about it in my edition of his scientific writings.⁴ He is endeavouring so hard to come to an understanding of man. First he tried by way of anatomy and physiology. Then in the nineties he explored the aspect of moral ideas which we find in the fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. Then, in Faust, he wants to depict the human being as he stands in the world. He is trying to pass through a gateway in order to discover how the human being does, in fact, stand in the world. But he lacks the necessary prerequisites; he cannot do it.

When Calderón wrote his drama about Cyprianus, the struggle was still taking place at a previous level. We see how Justina tears herself free of Satan's clutches, how Cyprianus goes mad, how they find one another in death, and how their salvation comes as they meet their end on the scaffold. Above them the serpent appears—on it rides the demon who is forced to announce their salvation.

We see that at the time when Calderon was writing his Cyprianus drama the message to be clearly stated was: You cannot find the divine, spiritual realm here on earth. First you must die and go through the portal of death; then you will discover the divine spiritual world, that salvation which you can find through Christ. They were still far from understanding the Mystery of Golgotha through which Christ had descended to earth, where it now ought to be possible to find him. Calderon still has too many heathen and Jewish elements in his ideas for him to have a fully developed sense for Christianity.

After that, a good deal of time passed before Goethe started to work on his Faust. He sensed that it was necessary for Faust to find his salvation here on earth. The question he should therefore have asked was: How can Faust discover the truth of Paul's words: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’?⁵ Goethe should have let his Faust say not only, to ‘Stand on free soil among a people free’,⁶ but also: to ‘stand on free soil with Christ in one's soul leading the human being in earthly life to the spirit’. Goethe should have let Faust say something like this. But Goethe is honest; he does not say it because he has not yet fully understood it. But he is striving to understand it. He is striving for something which can only be achieved when it is possible to say: Learn to know man through Imagination, Inspiration, Intuition. That he is striving in this way gives us the feeling that there is much more in his struggle and in his endeavour than he ever managed to express or than has filtered through into today's culture. Perhaps he can only be fully recognized by doing what I did in my early writings when I endeavoured to express the ‘world view which lived almost unconsciously in him. However, on the whole, his search has met with little understanding amongst the people of today.

When I look at this whole situation in connection with modern civilization, I am constantly reminded of my old teacher and friend, Karl Julius Schröer.⁷ I think particularly of how, in the eighties of the last century, Schröer was working on Faust and on Goethe's other plays, writing commentaries, introductions and so on. He was not in the least concerned to speak about Goethe in clearly defined concepts but merely gave general indications. Yet he was at pains to make people understand that what lived most profoundly in Goethe must enter into mainstream modern culture. On the fiftieth anniversary of Goethe's death, in 1882, Schröer gave an address: ‘How the future will see Goethe’. He lived with the dream that the time had already come for a kind of resurrection of Goethe. Then we wrote a short essay in Die Neue Freie Presse which was reprinted in the booklet ‘Goethe and Love’. This and other of his writings have now been acquired by our publisher, Der Kommende Tag, so remaindered copies can be acquired there, and there will also be new editions eventually. This essay ‘Goethe after 50 Years’ is a brief extract from that lecture, at which I was present. It contains a good deal of what Schröer felt at that time regarding the need for Goethe to be assimilated into modern culture. And then in this booklet ‘Goethe and Love’ he endeavoured to show in the notes how Goethe could be made to come alive, for to bring Goethe to life is, in a sense, to bring the world of abstract thoughts to life. In the recent number of Das Goetheanum I referred to a beautiful passage about this in the booklet ‘Goethe and Love’. Schröer says: ‘Schiller recognized him. When an intuitive genius searches for the character of necessity in the empirical realm, he will always produce individuals even though these may have a generic aspect. With his intuitive method of seeing the eternal idea, the primeval type, in the mortal individual, Goethe is perhaps not as alone as one might assume.’

While Schröer was writing this booklet in 1882 I visited him a number of times. He was filled to the brim with an impression he had had. He had heard somewhere how Oppolzer, a physician in Vienna, used a rather vague intuitive faculty when making his diagnoses. Instead of examining the patient in the usual way, he allowed the type of the patient to make an impression on him, and from the type of the patient he deduced something of the type of the illness. This made a strong impression on Schröer, and he used this phenomenon to enlarge on what he was trying to explain: ‘In medicine we extol the ability of great diagnosticians to fathom the disease by intuitively discerning the individual patient's type, his habitude. They are not helped by chemical or anatomical knowledge but by an intuitive sense for the living creature as a whole being. They are creative spirits who see the sun because their eyeis sunlike. Others do not see the sun. What these diagnosticians are doing unconsciously is to follow the intuitive method which Goethe consciously applied as a means of scientific study. The results he achieved are no longer disputed, though the method is not yet generally recognized.’

Out of a conspectus which included Oppolzer's intuitive bedside method, Schröer even then was pointing out that the different sciences, for example, medicine, needed fructifying by a method which worked together with the spirit.

It is rather tragic to look back and see in Schröer one of the last of those who still sensed what was most profound in Goethe. At the beginning of the eighties of the last century Schroer believed that there would have to be a Goethe revival, but soon after that Goethe was truly nailed into his coffin and buried with sweeping finality. His grave, we could say, was in Central Europe, in the Goethe-Gesellschaft, whose English branch was called the Goethe Society. This is where the living Goethe was buried. But now it is necessary to bring this living element, which was in Goethe, back into our culture. Karl Julius Schroer's instinct was good. In his day he was unable to fulfil it because his contemporaries continued to worship the dead Goethe. ‘He who would study organic existence, first drives out the soul with rigid persistence.’⁸

This became the motto, and in some very wide circles this motto has intensified into a hatred against any talk of spiritual things—as you can see in the way Anthroposophy is received by many people.

Today's culture, which all of you have as your background, urgently needs this element of revival. It is quite extraordinary how much talk there is today of Goethe's Faust, which after all simply represents a new stage in the struggle for the spirit which we saw in Calderón's Cyprianus drama. So much is said about Faust, yet there is no understanding for the task of the present time, which is to bring fully to life what Goethe brought to life in his Faust, especially in the second part. Goethe brought it to life in a vague, intuitive sensing, though not with full spiritual insight. We ought to turn our full attention to this, for indeed it is not only a matter of a world view. It is a matter of our whole culture and civilization. There are many symptoms, if only we can see them in the right light.

Here is an essay by Ruedorffer⁹ entitled ‘The Three Crises’. Every page gives us a painful knock. The writer played important roles in the diplomatic and political life of Europe before the war and on into the war. Now, with his intimate knowledge of the highways and byways of European-life, and because he was able to observe things from vantage points not open to most, he is seeking an explanation of what is actually going on. I need only read you a few passages. He wants to be a realist, not an idealist. During the course of his diplomatic career he has developed a sober view of life. And despite the fact that he has written such things as the passages I am going to read to you he remains that much appreciated character, a bourgeois philistine.

He deals with three things in his essay. Firstly he says that the countries and nations of Europe no longer have any relationship with one another. Then he says that the governing circles, the leaders of the different nations, have no relationship with the population. And thirdly he says that those people in particular who want to work out and found a new age by radical means most certainly have no relationship with reality.

So a person who played his part in bringing about the situation that now exists writes: ‘This sickness of the state organism snatches leadership away from good sense and hands responsibility for decisions of state to all sorts of minor influences and secondary considerations. It inhibits freedom of movement, fragments the national will and usually also leads to a dangerous instability of governments. The period of unruly nationalism that preceded the war, the war itself, and the situation in Europe since the war, have made monstrous demands on the good sense of all the states, and on their peace and their freedom to manoevre. The loss of wealth brought about by necessary measures has completed the catastrophe. The crisis of the state and the crisis in world-wide organization have mutually exacerbated the situation, each magnifying the destructive effect of the other.’ These are not the words of an idealist, or of some artistic spirit who watched from the sidelines, but of someone who shared in creating the situation. He says, for instance: ‘If democracy is to endure, it must be honest and courageous enough to call a spade a spade, even if it means bearing witness against itself. Europe faces ruin.’

So it is not only pessimistic idealists who say that Europe is faced with ruin. The same is said especially by those who stood in the midst of practical life. One of these very people says:

‘Europe faces ruin. There is no time to waste by covering up mistakes for party political reasons, instead of setting about putting them to rights. It is for this reason alone, and not to set myself up as laudator temporis acti, that I have to stress that democracy must, and will, destroy itself if it cannot free the state from this snare of minor influences and secondary considerations. Pre-war Europe collapsed because all the countries of the continent—the monarchies as well as the democracies and, above all, autocratic Russia—succumbed to demagogy, partly voluntarily, partly unconsciously, partly with reluctance because their hand was forced. In the confusion of mind, for which they had only themselves to thank, they were incapable of recognizing good sense, and even if they had recognized it they would have been incapable of acting on it freely and decisively. The higher social strata of the old states of Europe—who, in the last century, were certainly the bearers of European culture and rich in personalities of statesmanlike quality and much world experience—would not have been so easily thrown from the saddle, rotten and expended, if they had grown with the problems and tasks of new times, if they had not lost their statesmanlike spirit, and if they had preserved any more worthwhile tradition than that of the most trivial diplomatic routine. If monarchs claim the ability to select statesmen more proficiently and expertly than governments, then they and their courts must be the centre and epitome of culture, insight and understanding. Long before the war this ceased to be the case. But indictment of the monarchs’ failures does not exonerate the democracies from recognizing the causes of their own inadequacies or from doing everything possible to eliminate them. Before Europe can recover, before any attempt can be made to replace its hopeless disorganization with a durable political structure, the individual countries will have to tidy up their internal affairs to an extent which will free their governments for long-term serious work. Otherwise, the best will in the world and the greatest capability will be paralysed, tied down by the web of the disaster which is the same wherever we look.’

I would not bother to read all this to you if it had been written by an idealist, instead of by someone who considers his feet to be firmly on the ground of reality because he played a part in bringing the current situation about.

‘The drama is deeply tragic. Every attempt at improvement, every word of change, becomes entangled in this web, throttled by a thousand threads, until it falls to the ground without effect. The citizens of Europe—thoughtlessly clutching the contemporary erroneous belief in the constant progress of mankind, or, with loud lamentations trotting along in the same old rut—fail to see, and do not want to see, that they are living off the stored-up labour of earlier years; they are barely capable of recognizing the present broken-down state of the world order, and are certainly incapable of bringing a new one to birth. On the other hand, the workers, treading a radical path in almost every country and convinced of the untenability of the present situation, believe themselves to be the bringers of salvation through a new order of things; but in reality this belief has made them into nothing more than an unconscious tool of destruction and decline, their own included. The new parasites of economic disorganization, the complaining rich of yester-year, the petit bourgeois descending to the level of the proletariat, the gullible worker believing himself to be the founder of a new world—all of them seem to be engulfed by the same disaster, all of them are blind men digging their own grave.’

Remember, this is not written by an idealist, but by one who shared in bringing about this situation!

‘But every political factor today—the recent peace treaties of the Entente, the Polish invasion of the Ukraine, the blindness or helplessness of the Entente with regard to developments in Germany and Austria—proves to the politician who depends on reality that although idealistic demands for a pan-European, constructive revision of the Paris peace treaties can be made, although the most urgent warnings can be shockingly justified, nevertheless, both demands and warnings can but die away unnoticed while everything rolls on unchanged towards the inevitable end—the abyss.’

The whole book is written in order to prove that Europe has come to the brink of the abyss and that we are currently employed in digging the grave of European civilization. But all this is only an introduction to what I now find it necessary to say to you. What I have to say is something different. Here we have a man who was himself an occupant of crucial seats of office, a man who realizes that Europe is on the brink of the abyss. And yet—as we can see in the whole of his book—all he has to say is: If all that happens is only a continuation of older impulses, then civilization will perish; it will definitely perish. Something new must come.

So now let me search for this new thing to which he wants to point. Yes, here it is, on page 67; here it is, in three lines: ‘Only a change of heart in the world, a change of will by the major powers, can lead to the creation of a supreme council of European good sense.’

Yes, this is the decision that faces these people. They point out that only if a change of heart comes about, if something entirely new is brought into being, can the situation be saved. This whole book is written to show that without this there can be no salvation. There is a good deal of truth in this. For, in truth, salvation for our collapsing civilization can only come from a spiritual life drawn from the real sources of the spirit. There is no other salvation. Without it, modern civilization, in so far as it is founded in Europe and reaches across to America, is drawing towards its close. Decay is the most important phenomenon of our time. There is no help in reaching compromises with decay. Help can only come from turning to something that can flourish above the grave, because it is more powerful than death. And that is spiritual life. But people like the writer of this book have only the most abstract notion of what this entails. They say an international change of heart must take place. If anything is said about a real, new blossoming of spiritual life, this is branded as ‘useless mysticism’. All people can say is: Look at them, bringing up all kinds of occult and mystical things; we must have nothing to do with them.

Those who are digging the grave of modern civilization most busily are those who actually have the insight to see that the digging is going on. But the only real way of taking up a stance with regard to these things is to look at them squarely, with great earnestness—to meditate earnestly on the fact that a new spiritual life is what is needed and that it is necessary to search for this spiritual life, so that at last a way may be found of finding Christ within earthly life, and of finding Him as He has become since the Mystery of Golgotha. For He descended in order to unite with the conditions of the earth.

The strongest battle against real Christian truth is being fought today by a certain kind of theology which raises its hands in horror at any mention of the cosmic Christ. It is necessary to be reminded again and again that even in the days when Schröer was pointing to Goethe as a source for a regeneration of civilization, a book appeared by a professor in Basel—a friend of Nietzsche—about modern Christian theology. Overbeck¹⁰ considered at that time that theology was the most un-Christian thing, and as a historian of theology he sought to prove this. So there was at that time in Basel a professor of theological history who set out to prove that theology is un-Christian!

Mankind has drifted inevitably towards catastrophe because it failed to hear the isolated calls, which did exist but which were, it must be said, still very unclear. Today there is no longer any time to lose.

Today mankind must know that descriptions such as that given by Ruedorffer are most definitely true and that it is most definitely necessary to realize how everything is collapsing because of the continuation of the old impulses. There is only one course to follow: We must turn towards what can grow out of the grave, out of the living spirit.

This is what must be pointed out ever and again, especially in connection with the things with which we are concerned.

• 1 . Floris Books, Edinburgh 1979. See, for instance, Rudolf Steiner, The Portal of Initiation & The Character of Goethe's Spirit as Shown in the Fairy Story (incl. a translation of the Fairy Story by Thomas Carlyle), Rudolf Steiner Press, New Jersey 1961.
• 2 . Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One, ‘Prologue in Heaven’. The English versions of the quotations from Faust are taken from the translation by Bayard Taylor, with the exception of these lines from the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, which are translated by Shelley. (Tr.)
• 3 . The Portal of Initiation. A Rosicrucian Mystery through Rudolf Steiner, transl. Ruth and Hans Pusch, Steiner Book Centre, Toronto, 1973.
• 4 . Rudolf Steiner Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, mit Einleitungen, Fussnoten und Erlauterungen im Text (Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings) in Kürschners Deutsche National-Litteratur. On the intermaxillary bone see Volume 1.
• 5 . Galatians 2, 20
• 6 . Part Two, Act 5, Great Outer Court of the Palace.
• 7. Karl Julius Schröer, 1825-1900. On his booklet Goethe und die Liebe (Goethe and Love) see Rudolf Steiner's collected essays 1921-1925 in Der Goetheanumgedanke inmitten der Kulturkrisis der Gegenwart, p.111. GA 36.
• 8 . Faust Part One. The Study.
• 9 . J.J. Ruedorffer, Die drei Krisen. Eine Untersuchung fiber den gegenwartigen politischen Weltzustand (The Three Crises. A consideration of the present state of world politics.) Stuttgart/Berlin 1920.
• 10. Franz Overbeck, 1837-1905.

I would like to discuss some more characteristic symbols and signs today, so that we can become clearer and clearer about the actual basic theme of our lectures, which should consist of showing how signs and symbols relate to the astral and spiritual worlds, also called the devachanic world.

We have seen that the symbols and pictures and the numerical and formal relationships really taken from the nature and essence of the higher worlds, when absorbed by the soul, evoke in it real soul forces in the form of perceptions, thoughts, ideas and feelings, which have a formative effect. Yes, we could even see that Noah's Ark was formative for the present physical body of man, and that the Temple of Solomon, when it works in its forms on the people of the present, will have a great significance for the shaping of man in the sixth race. From these statements you can already see that the path taken by the guides of humanity, who are constantly working on the course of human development, is actually similar to that taken by the individual in the elementary secret schools. There, too, we are dealing with a concentration of sensations, thoughts, images, and so on - many other things are added - that are effective and formative for the human being.

In many cases, the various occult currents of the present day are of the opinion that in our time there may be an ascent into the higher worlds by other means than through the application of imaginative and symbolic ideas. And for people of the present day, ascending into the astral world with the help of symbolic signs or other occult means of education is associated with a certain fear, even aversion. If you raise the question: Are such states of fear justified?, then you can say: Yes and no. In a certain respect they are justified; in another respect they are completely out of place, because no one can really go up into the higher worlds without passing through the astral world. It is a mistaken assumption if someone thinks that he can pass through the astral world blindfolded. You must realize, however, that the spiritual world as such has different regions. Man has descended from the spiritual world into the physical world, and he must ascend from the spiritual world back into the spiritual world. What must be avoided is that man, in his development, falls back into earlier states. Man must never fall back into earlier states. Every mediumistic state is a falling back into an earlier state, whereas true secret schooling is an ascent into higher states. Man must ascend through the astral world with full, bright day-consciousness in order to reach the higher regions of the spiritual world. Whatever longings, passions, instincts today's man carries within himself is anchored in the astral body, of which the astral body is the carrier. If a person wants to ascend to higher worlds, he must work with feelings and sensations; there is no other way. But the point is that he should never try to ascend to the higher worlds other than by fully maintaining the achievements of our physical world, that is, never with a damping of consciousness. When we look at mediums, we always find that they are thrown back into an earlier state of consciousness. Their bright day consciousness is dampened down, weakened, and an earlier state of consciousness, which the person has already overcome, is evoked. Anyone who wants to become a clairvoyant in the modern sense must retain their present bright day consciousness and take it with them. He can only do this by passing through the point of “sensuality-free thinking”, and nothing can ever happen when a person passes through sensuality-free thinking. Let us be quite clear about what this means.

Sensual thinking and imagining is anything that starts from the sensual perception of the objects around us. If you form your ideas in such a way that you first look at an object, perceive it, and then keep it in your memory, and your thoughts are such that you are stimulated by such ideas, then you have sensual thinking. This thinking fills by far the greatest part of the soul experiences of the present human being. And when a person examines himself to see how much remains to him when he throws out of his soul all ideas that are caused by sensory perception, then he will first become aware of what content is still there in the soul. When the ideas that were stimulated by external impressions have been removed, then he will grasp what the Greek philosopher Plato meant when he wrote over the entrance to his school, “No one unfamiliar with geometry shall enter.” This means that no one should enter who has not been able to rise to thinking free of sensuality. He did not demand ordinary geometry. Nor is it required today by those who want to ascend to higher worlds. Nor would it be necessary today for intrinsic, objective reasons. But from geometric representations one can form an idea of what thinking is that is free of sensuality. If you put three beans here, add three more beans, and another three beans, then you can learn from this sensual impression that 3 times 3 = 9. The child or primitive man learns it by the fingers. This is sensual thinking. When you no longer need the fingers or the beans, but when you learn the same thing through pure mental contemplation, then it is sensual-free thinking. The child starts learning from a bridge [beans or fingers] and only later rises to sensual-free thinking. If we draw a circle on the blackboard, it is not really a circle; what we draw there is a collection of little chalk mountains. You will not be able to grasp what a real circle is with sensory perception alone. Only the spiritually viewed, inwardly constructed circle is free of sensuality.

The best means for a larger circle of people to arrive at a thinking free of sensuality is today Theosophy, if Theosophy is understood in the sense that the human being learns to detach the images from sensuality. Particularly in those areas that go a little beyond the most elementary, man is led by theosophy to thinking that is free of sensuality. If, for example, you want to understand what the etheric body or the astral body is, you cannot see them externally. That is precisely what theosophy gives you: it describes things that you cannot see externally. Or when we describe the old moon in Theosophy, we create a picture of it, a very drastic one, in fact, in which we combine sensual and supersensible ideas, so that a materialistically minded person would say: He is painting something that is not possible. Yes, in Theosophy one must teach something that is almost impossible for today's conditions and describe the old moon in such a way that there were no such rocks, minerals and stones on it as there are on our earth today. The entire old moon consisted of a living substance that could be compared in density to a kind of spinach puree or cooked salad, a body halfway between minerals and plants, half plant, half mineral. We find something like a semi-vegetable life on the old moon. Minerals as they are today did not yet exist at that time. If you look at today's peat bogs, where there is also a kind of semi-vegetable substance, you would get an outwardly similar picture to the substance of the old moon. Instead of rocks and mountains, you would have found at most something on the old moon that is like the bark of our trees today. Now every naturalist will object that something like that could not exist as a planet. But it is precisely this that is needed, and it is a necessity in order to understand other epochs of development, for the human being to tear his thinking away from what today adheres to the conceptions of ordinary sensory thinking and feeling, and to arrive at a thinking that is free of the senses. Thinking that is free of the senses is not abstract thinking, but very, very real thinking. If we think of the old moon as a kind of large salad with its bark and so on included, then this is “sensual-supersensual” thinking, as Goethe says. By detaching color and form from sensuality and projecting them freely into space, you have gained imaginations through sensual-free thinking. Anyone who regards this as a firm foundation will never be able to stumble when ascending to higher worlds.

Let us make a schematic drawing for ourselves. Some things become unclear due to incorrect symbolic drawing. So, although it is sufficient for understanding certain relationships if the physical plane, the astral plane and the devachan plane are drawn on top of each other, it is more correct to imagine the physical world as a self-contained sphere, where the astral is all around, and the devachanic is around that again. Instead of drawing horizontal layers, it is good to draw it this way (see drawing), because this provides a way to distinguish two areas of the astral plane from each other. If we look into two very specific areas of the astral plane, which we indicate here with arrow 1, we see that in the astral world, what we call the male and the female here on earth are the two opposites of “form” and “life”. Form and life are opposites on the astral plane. Now, if we want to encounter form and life on the astral plane, we will only encounter them if we go in that direction (from the center upwards, see arrow 2). If we go in the other direction (center downwards, see arrow 3), we will by no means encounter the beneficial contrast of form and life, but rather the contrast of “decay” and “disease”. So if we start from the physical world, we encounter the opposite of form and life on the astral plane above; this corresponds to the opposite of decay and disease in the astral world below, i.e. going down below the physical plane. Whenever we go to one side, where we see beneficial properties for the physical world, these correspond on the other side to destructive, harmful influences for the physical world. We now have an opportunity to distinguish between the parts of the astral plane. There are actually two quite different areas of the astral plane that affect the human soul. If we want to form an idea of how these two very different areas affect the soul, we have to imagine that in a human being we have: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body; and depending on their development, which has been described many times: manas or spirit self, budhi or life spirit, and atma or spiritual man; and in between we have, filled by the I, the soul. So that we can distinguish in a certain respect: body - which actually includes the three bodies -, soul and spirit. Now the three lower members, astral body, ether body and physical body, are reflected in the soul. Insofar as the physical body, ether body and astral body are reflected in their original nature, they introduce lower, downward-pulling qualities into the human soul. But that which is higher is also reflected in man: manas, buddhi, atma, and thus we also have uplifting, purifying elements in the soul. In strict Christianity, people also knew about this twofold way of being reflected in the human soul. One saw that the higher human nature was reflected in the soul, or the lower nature was reflected in the soul. Many sensed this, even if they were not esotericists. That is why it was said: When a person dies, he perceives the reflection of the spiritual world as the collection of laws of Moses; and when the lower nature is reflected in the soul, the devil reads the record of sins to the soul in death.

This means that the soul is presented with all the qualities that adhere to it: That which is reflected from above is held up to it as the tablets of the law of Moses; and that which is reflected from below is described by saying: the devil reads the soul's record of sins to it. If the soul does not take the right path, it can indeed sink into its lower passions; that can happen. But this must not be presented to man as a deterrent.

All imagistic, pictorial representations educate the human being in order to gradually bring him to that point in the development of life where he learns to look more and more into the higher worlds. Pictorial representations, such as the image of the old moon, are a powerful educational tool in this direction. Through such images, the idea of development is introduced to the human being in the right esoteric way. If one only presents dry, abstract concepts to the human being, he remains on the physical plane with his thinking, because ordinary thinking as such never comes from the physical plane. It is indeed a reflection of the Devachan plan; but the thought that the human being entertains is something that belongs to the physical plan, it is only a shadow image of the higher processes. No matter how fine your conceptions may be regarding the process of development, how a being on the first step of existence differentiates itself, descends and envelops itself, these are all only conceptions that give you ideas of the physical plan, but do not help you in your development. Only concepts and ideas that are both sensual and supersensible can gradually help you to really advance one step. First, you have to transform the concepts into images, into imaginations, and then repeat this process over and over again.

If one were to express this process, which was taught, for example, in the Rosicrucian schools, in a dialogue between teacher and student, one could put it like this: - In reality, such a dialogue never took place in this way, but we can present it in this way to show what the student had to go through step by step in long, drawn-out experiences. The teacher said to the student: “Look at the plant and see how it directs its root into the earth, how it grows towards the sun with its stem and blossom, and how it develops its fruit organs. And now imagine the human being in contrast. The human being is poorly compared to the plant when one compares his head with the flower and his reproductive organs with the root of the plant. Even Darwin, the great naturalist, used this comparison correctly by comparing the head of the human being with the root of the plant, so that even for Darwin, the plant is the human being turned upside down. What the plant holds up chastely to the sunbeam, its reproductive organs, man directs to the center of the earth. Thus, in man we have to think of an inversion of the plant, in that he freely directs all the forces that in the plant are directed toward the center of the earth to the sun-filled cosmos, and shamefully directs those organs that the plant holds up chastely to the sunbeam toward the earth. The animal stands in the midst of it.

If we therefore want to draw the real directions of power that exist in the world, we can do so as follows: the true esoteric meaning of the sign of the cross is a sum of forces. One direction of force goes downwards: the plant being is directed by this force. In the human being, it is directed in the opposite direction. The animal has a horizontally aligned spine, and in it this force is manifested as orbiting the earth horizontally. The soul principle ascends from plant existence to animal existence to human existence. And Plato, who so often expressed things that originated in the mysteries, spoke the beautiful sentence: The world soul is crucified on the world body. That is, the world soul passes through the plant, animal and human; it is crucified in the forces of the three realms: plant, animal and human. And if we thus inscribe the cross into the three natural realms, then the cross becomes for us the sign of the direction of development.

Now the teacher said to the student: You have to imagine how the plant stretches its calyx towards the sunbeam, how the fruit organs reach maturity when the plant is kissed by the sunbeam. - The development into a human being happens through the fact that the pure, chaste plant substance is permeated by desires, instincts and passions. In this way man conquers his consciousness, in this way he becomes human by passing through his animal nature. By interweaving the lower nature of desire into the pure plant nature, man has ascended from the dull plant consciousness to the bright consciousness of day.

From this level of present-day man, the teacher pointed the student to a higher level. Just as man has developed from a state similar to that of a plant, so too will he purify his instincts and desires to a higher, chaste level. The teacher showed the student the structures in the physical body of man through which the higher levels of consciousness can be attained and human substance can in turn become a substance similar to that of plants. Every being must use a physical body if it wants to appear on earth. But the body of man will change more and more in the future. We distinguish between a descending and an ascending development with regard to the human organs. Some human organs are in a state of descending development; in the course of time, which admittedly counts in millennia, the human being will discard them. Other organs are in the process of becoming; in the future they will undergo an upward development, for example the human larynx; it is only at the beginning of its development. The human heart will undergo a further upward development, becoming a completely different organ in the future. While other organs have already passed their zenith, becoming detached from human nature and withering away, we have an organ in the heart that is only at the beginning of its development.

We can distinguish between striated and longitudinally striated muscles in the human body; these are voluntary and involuntary muscles. The voluntary muscles of the hand, for example, are striated. The muscles of the intestines, on the other hand, which involuntarily push food forward, are longitudinally striped. The heart is an exception here, and this is a crux for today's physiological and anatomical scientists. The heart belongs to the involuntary muscles, but it has striated musculature. Therefore, our anatomists cannot understand the heart either. They consider all organs to be the same. If we consider the organs spiritually, they may well consist chemically of the same components, but one may be in a descending development and the other in an ascending one. The heart is on the way to becoming a voluntary muscle in the future; its anatomical structure already bears the characteristic features for this. Today, however, it contributes to the effect of emotional experiences on the blood. You can see how, when you feel fear, the blood mass withdraws from the periphery of the body and moves inward, or how, when you feel shame, the blood is driven from the center of the body to the periphery. In the future, in addition to the transformation of the heart, there will also be a transformation of our larynx. Today, the larynx serves to translate my thoughts into words by making the air vibrate. You can pick up and hear my words with your ears; this is caused by the vibrations of the air. The present human larynx is capable of transforming into air vibrations what is going on in the soul. The human body of the future will transform its larynx into a fertilizing organ, and the word, which today only creates in the air, will in the future become creative in our environment. Reproduction will then take place through the larynx, which will create the race of the future.

Just as the teacher pointed out to the student the chaste chalice of the plant, and how he pointed out to the human being who, in descending, has permeated his plant substance with the lower nature of passions, desires and instincts, but But in exchange for this, has acquired his present clear day-consciousness, the teacher showed how the present human being will ascend to higher states of consciousness, and how the future human being will transform the substance, filled with desires, back into pure and chaste organs. The pupil's attention was drawn to the past, present and future. Just as the chalice of the plant extends chastely towards the sun and its fruit organs grow towards the sun, this will be there again on a higher level, where man will offer his larynx as a chalice to the spiritual sunbeam. This spiritual chalice, the transformed organ of speech, was called the Holy Grail. This is a real ideal. The beginning, middle and end of human development: here you see the idea of human development transformed into a picture.

Through the feelings that we develop from these pictures, the forces flow to us that truly open up the higher worlds for us. All this takes place without magic. The images stimulate the feelings that lead the human being into the higher worlds. Feelings and sensations lead the human being into the astral world, just as the will leads him into the devachanic or spiritual world. Thinking corresponds to the physical world, feeling to the astral world, and the purified will to the devachanic world.

If we look at the plant in its original chaste substance, we find green as the color in the life of the plant. The plant is permeated by chlorophyll, by what is called chlorophyll, in those parts where the etheric body is actively alive. The etheric body has a basic law, which is the law of repetition. If only the etheric body were active in the plant, then one and the same form would be repeated again and again; leaf by leaf it sets in. But when the astral body of the earth begins to affect the plant, it completes growth and sets in the flowering. The effect of the etheric body is revealed in the repetition. This principle also applies to human growth. The etheric body shows its influence in the formation of the spinal vertebrae, but this only goes as far as the arching of the cranial vault, where the astral body begins to take effect. We can therefore only influence the etheric body through the principle of repetition. When you think and comprehend, you only affect the astral body. But when you pray or meditate, for example, and repeat the same prayer or meditation every day, you have an effect that extends into the etheric body. The way it is in the cosmos is that the principle of repetition first manifests itself in the deeds of the etheric body, then the principle of closure through the astral body. Where the astral body withdraws, the principle of repetition naturally reappears. This is how your hair and nails grow, because the astral body has withdrawn there. It doesn't hurt when you cut your hair, because pain is an expression of the astral body.

We initially have the pure, chaste plant substance, where the plant, subject only to the law of the ether body, adds leaf after leaf. Now this pure, chaste plant substance is increasingly permeated by what is called kama in theosophy, the realm of instincts and feelings, the realm of desires, right up to the images. And now, in man, that which has developed in him since he had a plant nature is to be overcome again. As man developed, he took in the red blood. The red blood brings about in the human being that which makes him self-conscious. The chlorophyll of the plant, permeated by astral substance and the I, has been transformed into the red blood. If you could permeate the green plant substance with the I and the astral substance, you would get the red blood. Now think of the image of the cross. In the image of the cross you also have something that points to the future of man. Where does man's future lie? He is to regain his plant nature, but connected with the higher level of consciousness that today's man has already gained. The red roses of the Rose Cross signify what has been gained through blood, but also what he had as plant nature and is to have again. This is prefigured in the rose. It has a plant nature, and it also has the red color of blood. The etheric body is active in the green leaves, and the astral body is active in the red blossom, where the closure is; the rose blossom owes its red to the most intense effects of the astral body of the earth.

In the future, the human being's astral body will become free and consciously active from the outside, from outside the physical body, just as the earth's astral body now acts on the rose. Then what is now present as a plant rose at a lower level will appear at a higher level as the human rose. Thus, in the wreath of roses surrounding the black wood of the cross, we actually have a sign of the development of the human being. In the black wood we see what dies; it is an image of what will also die in man. And in the red rose we see what will continue to develop until it becomes that chalice which, like the chalice of a plant towards the sun, holds out towards the spiritual sun-rays. And the rose cross, where the red roses surround the black cross, presents this process to us in an image.

The important thing about the symbols is that we do not merely think them, but that we feel and sense them. For only when we feel that the red rose is saying: that is what you will become one day, that is what the goal of human development represents to us – and when our hearts open and our feelings become pure, then the forces within us are released that lead us up into a higher world. Thus these symbols are workers at our soul. They permeate and interweave our soul; they are the greatest and most effective educators of our human race.

Just as we place images and imaginations before our soul here, so in still higher spheres the inner forces of numbers are placed before man. Man must learn to feel the inner relationships of numbers like spiritual music. One can describe the relationships of the physical body, ether body, astral body and I to one another by attempting to provide images of the relationship between these four aspects of human nature. In doing so, one experiences a kind of imagination. Thus, one can describe the relationship between the physical body and the etheric body by saying: the physical body comes into being because all the forces and substances that are spread out in the mineral kingdom are connected by the etheric body; it would disintegrate if the etheric body did not permeate it; the etheric body is an inner fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. In this way we work our way up to an image of the etheric body.

And if we try to gain a pictorial representation of the astral body, we imagine how it moves out at night and works on the etheric and physical bodies from the outside, by removing the fatigue substances. Let us make this clear to ourselves pictorially. But there is an even higher way of imagining this relationship; here one has to imagine the inner value of certain numbers. You have to recognize that the ratio of 1:3 is something quite different than the ratio of 1:7. This is not irrelevant. With the ratio of 1:3, you have to imagine that the 3 is differentiated within itself, and you have to imagine the interrelations of the individual quantities to the others.

But what is important is the ratio of 1:3:7:12. If you understand the relationship between these numbers as a tone ratio, in that you imagine that a tone makes three vibrations in a certain time, another seven vibrations in the same time, and yet another twelve vibrations, then you have expressed in these numbers the ratio that indicates the ratio of the I, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body in spiritual music.

I = 1
astral body = 3
etheric body = 7
physical body = 12

There is good reason for this in the existence of the world. If we were to follow the development from the oldest Saturn existence to the present earthly existence, we would soon be able to find how this is rooted in the human existence. The Earth, in its first, in the Saturn embodiment, was surrounded by the twelve signs of the zodiac. They provided the first germinal formation of the physical body. Through the influence of the corresponding signs on the body, this relationship of the number twelve to the individual limbs of the physical body came into being. The seven planets influenced the etheric body. When the Earth was a sun, the other planets were around it, and so the number seven influenced the etheric body. When the Earth was in its lunar embodiment, it was first affected by the Sun. But then, as a result of the Sun and then the Moon separating from the Earth, three bodies emerged from one body, and so the number three was effective in the formation of the astral body. And when the I came down from the higher worlds, this was expressed in the number one. The ratio of 1:3 gives you the ratio of the I to the astral body, to 7 the ratio to the etheric body, and to 12 the ratio to the physical body.

1:3:7:12 thus denotes the ratio of the four elements of human nature, which you must feel inwardly. It is not easy to awaken the sensations that one has to imagine the physical body as the most perfect of the four parts, the etheric body as the less perfect, the astral body even less perfect, and the I as the “baby” among the four members of human nature. We must think of the physical body as being twelve times more perfect than the I, the etheric body as being seven times more perfect, and the astral body as being three times more perfect. These numbers indicate the degrees of perfection for the four aspects of human nature. These numbers are therefore profound symbols for the real conditions.

Occult schools provided instructions for gradually becoming familiar with the numerical values. For example, the significance of the number three was taught by saying: “Let us consider the development of a plant and pay attention to three things.” Let us start with the plant germ. You have an inconspicuous, small plant germ, from which the plant gradually develops. We can depict this in a drawing by letting the plant germ diverge in a radiating manner, up to the leaves, flowers and fruit. Now the germ has become a plant and then the plant germ has become a plant again. What has diverged in the plant to become leaves, flowers and fruit is all wrapped up together in the germ; it has, as it were, slipped into the germ. In a developed plant, everything is revealed in the senses. Then the senses enter into a completely different realm, into the germ. There we have in the germ the senses as small as possible and the spiritual as large as possible.

But a third thing also takes place. While the germ is forming out of the plant and the new plant is developing out of this germ, elemental forces from the environment are continually acting on the plant from the outside. The germ is there, which developed from the plant, and out of it the new plant develops again; but the third comes from the whole surrounding world; and it is this third that changes each plant again a little. The higher a being stands, the more the influence of the third changes it.

Let us now turn again to the human soul and consider how it lives between birth and death. There it spreads out what it has brought with it as the fruits of a previous embodiment. Just as external influences affect unconscious plant life, so man consciously experiences the most diverse influences from outside in the life between birth and death. And everything he experiences there was not yet present in the seed; it is something entirely new, an enrichment, the fruits of which the person takes with him into a later life, into a following incarnation. What was present in the old plant continues to work in the new plant; but in the development of the new plant something else appears that was not present in the old plant.

Thus, in all development, we have three aspects to consider: first, the unfolding from a, as it were, wrapped-up state; we call this development or evolution. Then, what lies in the germ must come into being through the reverse process, the wrapping or involution. These two processes alone, however, do not yet give progress. Only when a being is able to take in influences from outside and process them into inner experiences can something new and progressive come into the world. That is the third thing; it is called creation out of nothing. You are constantly developing what is predisposed in you from the past, constantly taking in something from your environment that you transform into experiences, and then you carry that into a new embodiment. In all life, the trinity of evolution, involution and creation out of nothing is at work. In the case of human beings, we have this creation out of nothing in the work of their consciousness. They experience the processes in their environment and process them into ideas, thoughts and concepts. Dispositions come from previous embodiments, but all progress in life is based on the production of new thoughts and new ideas. The circumstances of the environment are “consumed”, and the inner experiences lead to new thoughts and ideas. Therefore, three is the number of life, it is called the number of creation or of action.

On the other hand, another number is called the number of revelation. You can easily imagine which number is called the number of revelation. If you look at anything in the world, it must always reveal itself in a duality. As we cannot perceive light without darkness, so we always encounter an attenuated or opposite aspect of every real concept. Light and darkness, good and evil, and so on. Duality reigns in all that is revealed. Therefore, the number two is the number of revelation. Opposites are only united in the realm of the occult, which lies beneath the revealed. Therefore, the number one is the number of unity. Evolution and involution are not contradictions, because they would always unfold in the same way without the third - from germ to plant and from plant to germ. Only in connection with the third, creation out of nothing, does the new arise, which is expressed by the number three.

Thus, in the first three numbers you have important symbols of the spiritual world. It should be indicated to you by individual examples how that which is called symbols relates to the higher worlds, and how, for example, symbols such as the Holy Grail or the Rosicrucian in the picture express higher development.

Another beautiful symbol is the image of the mirror. We often call that which surrounds us a mirror of the spiritual, because in truth nothing external shows us anything other than the reflection of spiritual beings. You can observe this yourself in physical life. When you perceive a physical object, what does your eye see? Your eye would not see the object at all if the sun's rays did not fall on it and reflect off the object into your eye. In truth, your eye does not see ordinary objects, but the sunlight reflected from the objects, and that is how an object appears to you in a certain form. In truth, you do not see yourself when you look in the mirror either, because your spiritual part is outside of your physical being. What you see in the mirror is the reflection of the rays that fall on you from the spiritual world. What you see reflects the light of the spirit just as ordinary objects reflect sunlight. The outer body of man is actually the mirror in which his true being is reflected.

In the Atlantean period, man did not see objects outside at all. He knew that he was in a spiritual substance and therefore could see spiritually inwardly. Only in the last third of the Atlantean period did the spiritual light go out, and man only saw the reflected rays of the spiritual light. Imagine looking into a glass pane and being aware of your own spiritual qualities. Now someone applies a mirror substance to the back of the glass pane; as a result, you no longer see your own being in the glass pane, but only the image reflected by the mirror. Man now sees his image; and now the illusion arises for him that what he sees there is his ego. This illusion is wonderfully expressed in the Bible. Man lost Paradise when he became so absorbed in sensuality that he saw himself. Before that Adam and Eve had not “seen”; now “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked.” And because here an illusion actually occurred, legend attributes the fact of the externalization of objects to the Luciferic principle.

In Eastern Europe there is a folk tale that tells of a monk who wanted to test whether the biblical saying was based on truth: Those who seek will find, and to those who ask, it will be given. He wanted to test whether this was really true, so he prayed for what he wanted to beg for. He wanted nothing more nor less than the king's daughter herself. He proposed to the king's daughter. She told him that she would be his on one condition: he had to bring her an instrument in which she could see herself from top to bottom. This was at a time when there were no mirrors. So he went off searching, and met the devil, who told him the secret of the mirror principle. When he returned with this, he received the princess's hand in marriage; however, he later renounced her. So in order to obtain the mirror, he had to resort to the devil.

In the manifold signs and symbols that have come to us in these lectures, we have been able to see the real meaning of these images. Sensory perception is the content of the physical world. Images and imaginations are the expression of the astral world. Harmony of the spheres, sound of the spheres is the expression of the spiritual world. Those who ascend to this spiritual world perceive its inner spiritual sonority, it penetrates into them. Inspiration is the vital element of the spiritual world, just as imagination is the vital element of the astral world. A truly inspired world is created out of the spirit. IV

We have made a number of observations that have essentially been concerned with showing how a recovery of our social and other conditions of human coexistence can only be brought about by people being seized from within by different ways of thinking from those that have, so to speak, been developed over the course of the last three to four centuries. Among the influences that have been particularly effective in bringing forth such ways of thinking that must no longer dominate people, the scientific way of thinking was also particularly influential. It is difficult to speak quite impartially about this scientific way of thinking today, because there is no doubt that great, tremendous progress has been made for humanity through this scientific way of thinking. However, we must realize that the very advances of modern times that have been made in this area are those that have diminished the actual spiritual life of man. Little by little things have turned out in such a way that those parts of human knowledge have mainly undergone progress that could be utilized in external technology. And even the rest of cultural life has been influenced by this tendency to always orient human thinking, human imagination, towards how it can be used in external technology.

It would be quite wrong to think that this statement applies only to that which is dependent on the scientific way of thinking in modern intellectual life. That is not what is meant here; rather, it is meant that the whole thinking of modern humanity, insofar as old ideas, old elements in this thinking have not been inherited, is of the same nature as it has now come to expression in the extreme in scientific thinking and is expressed. It is not only those people who are directly influenced by science who think scientifically today. It is even true to say, somewhat paradoxically, that those people who are directly influenced by science are the ones who think least in the sense meant here. It is only that which is the general way of thinking of human beings that has found expression in a particularly characteristic form in natural science, so that, to a certain extent, natural science is the best way to see how this modern humanity thinks. Thus, we have repeatedly spoken of the influences of the way of thinking that has found its particular characteristic expression in natural science.

Now I would like to point out a particular idiosyncrasy that is inherent in our thinking, in our entire conceptualization, in fact in our entire modern soul life, due to the fact that so much of natural science impulses is present in this soul life. This idiosyncrasy consists in the fact that we, as modern human beings, have, in a sense, forgotten how to observe things impartially. People believe that they observe things impartially; but they do not. Even our school education today is such that it instills in people a great many preconceived ideas, which color our pure perception of things. We do not actually have a pure perception of things at present.

You can raise the question: Should not the particularly harmful aspect of this fact, that we do not have a pure view of things, be particularly evident in scientific research, in natural science? — One should believe that it is so. But if you look more closely, you notice something else. Science saves itself from the devastating and destructive nature of this inability to properly see relationships by directing more and more of its attention to the external sense world, to that which is given to the external senses. The outer senses do not conform to preconceived ideas, and so they constantly correct what comes from preconceived opinions and ideas, especially from preconceived views. In this way, observation constantly corrects what man carries within himself into his view of things. That is why we do not notice when scientific observations are made that all kinds of preconceived ideas are also brought into them. But they are still brought in. And if you then take what is produced scientifically in context, you will find that preconceived ideas are indeed brought into the entire scientific view.

But the particularly harmful aspect of this inability to see is especially evident when the present-day person is to reflect on social conditions. In this case, the facts do not at all correct the preconceived notions that people bring to these facts. And so, little by little, we have really come to the point where, with regard to the social facts of life, you can ultimately assert anything you want to assert. Today, in fact, you find all sorts of opinions represented. On the one hand, you find the opinion that true social reality consists only of economic processes, that all spiritual life is only a kind of superstructure, a kind of smoke that rises up or is erected over economic facts; that is one extreme. The other extreme is this: today, since we have no clear concept of the real spiritual powers that live in the world, we speak of the prevailing, abstract ideas, ideas of things and so on, and claim that these ideas shape – perhaps through people, but they do shape – what external economic and other facts are.

As you can see, there are two opposing opinions. Now it is a matter of proving one opinion and the other opinion. You can give quite correct arguments, incontestable arguments today for both the one and the other opinion, arguments that are equally good for the one and for the other opinion. If someone comes forward today and claims that all events are actually controlled by the spirit, by ideas, he can prove it. And someone else can come forward and say: What you are proving is pure fantasy; in reality, all ideas are only the mirror images, only the superstructure of what are economic facts. He can refute what the other says in the most beautiful way; he can prove his case and the other's. The arguments are in both cases equally good.

This is a phenomenon that is actually far too little appreciated in the intellectual life of our time. People today separate themselves into parties or groups and advocate some maxim or other, some program. They are convinced of this maxim, they are convinced of this program and can prove it. The others represent a completely different maxim, a completely different program; they can also prove it, and it cannot be said that one has worse or the other better reasons for his conviction. This is a phenomenon of public life that should really be noticed, because it is the most characteristic phenomenon of our time. This phenomenon ultimately leads to the most anti-social facts and attitudes. For if one is convinced of some maxim and one knows the good reasons for this maxim, then one considers the person who has a different conviction to be a fool or a scoundrel or some kind of dishonest person. And the other person, who may have the same good reasons, in turn considers the first person to be a fool or a scoundrel or a dishonest person. That this fact is not recognized as such is, in a sense, the tragedy of the present time. It is just that people today are so attuned that they believe that what is true for the human soul today has always been true. And as soon as anyone's attention is drawn to this phenomenon today, one can almost certainly expect that he will come and say: Yes, what you are explaining, that all opinions prove themselves side by side, that has always been the case in the development of mankind. If people would only take the slightest interest in educating themselves about the real development of humanity, they would not make such an assertion; for it was not always so in reality; the well-proven opinions and maxims and programs were not as openly juxtaposed as they are today. For today one can prove very well. Today, if one is as clever as certain socialists on the Left, one can prove Marxism quite clearly, and one can prove quite clearly, if one is willing to take just one other point of view, that Marxism is complete nonsense. Today one can prove very, very well; one should be quite clear about that.

This training, this ability to prove, is instilled in children today. But therein lies something extraordinarily sad for our present time, that one can prove everything so clearly and so strictly, and therefore can be so easily convinced of a thing. Because of all the ways of being convinced of a thing, the easiest, in today's sense, is to prove this thing. There is no easier way to acquire a conviction today than to prove it. It is precisely because of this ability to prove that people have completely lost a feeling, a real feeling, that convictions in life must be fought for and acquired, that overcoming is necessary if conviction is to take root in the soul.

Where does this fact come from, this fact that is so deeply ingrained in our entire lives, that we can prove so very easily? It comes from the fact that we are accustomed to thinking so superficially with our thoughts. People today think superficially about things, without making any effort to penetrate very deeply into them. And the more superficial one's thinking, the better one can prove. It is extremely important to realize this. The thinner the concepts are – and on the surface of things all concepts become thin and abstract – the better these concepts seem to provide evidence for what one wants to believe and accept from completely different sources, from very unconscious sources, from feelings, from directions of will and the like. Our entire party life should one day be studied and described from the point of view that has just been developed before you here.

What can be achieved least of all under the influence of this superficial approach is a real knowledge of the human being. That is why so many people today demand that we should at last deepen our conception in this respect, that man should penetrate to something of self-knowledge, that is, to knowledge of his essential nature. How many writings and lectures and instructions and political speeches there are today that already speak of this necessary knowledge of the human being! But first of all, the basis for such a possible knowledge of man must be established! It cannot be gained from any starting point. And what is necessary in order to get beyond the misery of proof is to learn to see impartially, to see things really simply as they are in the outer life. For a healthy perception and for a healthy view, it is especially necessary that we learn to see things as they are; for that is what we have most unlearned. We prove how things should be; but we do not look at them in reality, as they are, because looking is indeed more inconvenient than proving that things are so or so. One can only arrive at certain assertions, for example in the social sphere today, if one proves. But if one secures an unbiased view of reality, one cannot arrive at such assertions. So what matters most is a real looking at, a real seeing of things as they are.

If you read Goethe's scientific writings, as well as his writings on art, you will see how he tried to point out with all his might how to see with an unbiased eye even in his time. He saw how all the sciences work from concepts that have to be proven. He found this to be something that must be overcome above all else, and he wanted, above all, to achieve that people really get to know the phenomena, the appearances, the facts in their original meaning, to get to know them as they are. It has been of so little use that the ground on which Goethe particularly tried to let the facts speak, the ground of the theory of colors, is still today a ground on which Goethe's right to speak about the matter is completely disputed. But in particular, it is necessary for the knowledge of the human being to come to a real seeing of the facts of life, of subjective life. For example, people today talk a lot about what is external to the human being and what is internal. I believe that if you ask many people today: You see a red color, you hear a certain sound, you perceive this or that in the outside world - is that inside or outside? - that the person in question will tell you: What the senses perceive is the external! - Then he points to his inner being: that is in contrast to the external. Now ask the person if he is clear about what kind of contrast there is between the external and the internal. He will tell you with a fair degree of certainty: Yes, I am quite clear about that; I know exactly: what the senses perceive is the outside, and what is inside, what belongs to the person himself, that is the inside. But if you go further in your questioning and say to him: Look, you say about the outside: the grass is green, the sky is blue, the sun rises, and so on, you say what you observe and list it in detail, fine. But also describe to me in just as much detail what you have inside, what you call your inside! — Try to get any clear answer at all from most people today, an answer in which you are dealing with concrete facts by which a person describes his inner being to you. He is under the illusion that he knows this inner being quite well in contrast to the outer being; but if you penetrate a little into him and say: Describe your inner being to me as you describe your outer being! you will see that this knowledge of the inner self is not very profound. And when a person does manage to describe this inner self, it turns out to be nothing more than a reflection of the outer self, what has developed from the outer self, stored in the memory, at best, faded in the mind's eye. But what a person describes is not much different from the outer self. As a rule, he cannot tell you anything more about his inner life than that the grass is green and the sky is blue; at most he will tell you that he feels this way when he sees the blue sky, that he feels that way when he sees the green grass, and so on. But a real contrast and a relationship between the external and the internal will not be easily described to you by a modern person.

But this has a great consequence. The consequence is that people today do not even come to grasp the contrast between the external and the internal in relation to the human being in any correct way. For you see, natural science, from its present point of view, endeavors to examine the organs that are supposed to be the carriers of the inner processes. And if one regards from the present point of view what is proved there, but is by no means really seen, one will say: Well, the table is outside, inside is the soul life. And here one points to one's own inner life and thinks, for example in natural science, that the inside of the skull is the inside of the human being. One transfers the unclear images gained by seeing to the human body and says: “In there, somewhere behind the eye, is the inside.” If perhaps some people, when they want to grasp more precise concepts, begin to question the things that are given to them as concepts, unconsciously man still thinks: there, at the tip of my finger, that is outside, and in there, behind the eye, that is inside. But the fact that we say this, and in particular that we draw this conclusion for the bodily organs, arises only from an inaccurate seeing. Because in fact, everything that you are entitled to call your inner self is what you experience in the outside world, in the so-called outside world. You are constantly together with the outside world, and what you seemingly experience inwardly, you experience with the whole wide outside world.

In one of the 'Eight Meditations' — you can read about it there — I pointed out how, by observing the outside world, a person actually grows together with this outside world, and that it is quite unjustified to distinguish between the external and the internal with regard to what we experience in the outside world. That which is in our surroundings for our consciousness, we could only describe as our inner being if we really expressed what we see. But that is precisely our inner being. This is, however, an unpleasant thing for some mystics, because they attach great importance to deepening inwardly. But this inward deepening is usually nothing more than calling certain physical ideas of the outer world inward and even renaming them as divine inward and the like. These are favorite ideas that one borrows from the outer world. That which one can see without prejudice and which one usually describes as the exterior, that is what one should actually call the interior. In a sense, a person is inside his own face in his inner being. After all, we are really much more at home, let's say, in the moment when you are all sitting here in this hall than in your so-called inner being, especially if you call what is inside the skull behind the eye this inner being. Because however you may think about this inner life, except for the few concepts that you have absorbed from anatomy or physiology, which are really quite scanty, you know terribly little about what is behind your eye or your brain skull. And if you ask yourself: What is more inward to me, what is around me in this hall or what is behind my brain skull? you will say to yourself: What is in this hall around me is undoubtedly more inward to me than what is behind my brain skull. — In any case, at this moment your inner life is much more affected by what appears to be the outside world in this hall than by what is going on inside your brain skull. What goes on in your brain is very external to you, it is something that is not really within you at all. And if you describe objectively what you see, you must say: the external is actually the internal, and the internal is very much an external for the human consciousness.

Now you may say: these are concepts spun out of a spider's web. — First of all, it is not the case that they are concepts spun out of a spider's web, but rather they are concepts that stem from the observation of what is really perceived in contrast to what is theoretically proven, proved. It is what is really perceived, really seen. It is what is immediately present in consciousness and what one would regard as correct if one were to observe only what is really present in consciousness and if one did not construct the matter through preconceived notions. That is what needs to be said for the time being. But there is an important consequence to this. As long as you entertain the belief that what is out there is an external thing and what is in there is an internal thing, you cannot come to what I always call: understanding spiritual-scientific facts through common sense; because spiritual-scientific facts can only be understood if you take an unbiased look at them. But then one can see them, can see them long before one ascends in any way to clairvoyant views. But with the complicated concepts of today's everyday life, it is of course very difficult to see what the truth is.

The fact that we see the outside world - what we usually call the outside world - as we see it, and that it also contains our correctly seen and defined inside, comes from our senses and has to do with the way our senses are arranged. Through the senses we live in the immediate present. And we experience through our senses what is happening around us in the present. Our senses essentially make us co-experiencers of the present. But while we are absorbed in the outside world, our perceptions give rise to our ideas, which we then carry forward in our memory. We remember afterwards what we have experienced as co-experiencers of the present. We carry that with us. And these are essentially our concepts. People's concepts are mostly recollections of what they have taken from the so-called external world. But these ideas, these concepts and ideas are mediated, not created, but mediated, by what is otherwise called the inner self, what we have now got to know as the outer self. Through that – what you actually don't know – what lies behind your eye, through that, ideas and concepts are mediated. That is certainly the case. These ideas and concepts are conveyed through it. But what actually goes on in this human head?

If you observe what is actually going on in this human head, then you cannot say: insofar as man thinks, insofar as man imagines, he is just as much a witness to the events of the present as he is when he perceives with his senses. — That is not the case as a thinker, but rather, in our head, through our thinking, there is an effect of what we did as an activity before birth or before conception. That is to say, what goes on in there (see drawing), by imagining, is not an activity that you engage in by being a present human being, but you engage in this activity by the activity that you carried out in the supersensible world between death and new birth or conception continuing to resonate.

You are only a present-day human being because you perceive through your senses; by opening your senses to the external world, you perceive the present and live as a present-day human being with the external present. But the moment you begin to think, what plays into your brain is not what you are presently as a human being, but the echo of what you were in the spiritual world, in the supersensible world before birth or before conception. If you want to visualize it pictorially, you can imagine it quite well by thinking: I strike a note; this note continues to sound even after I have long since stopped striking it. Now imagine that you have some kind of activity in the spiritual world all the time between your last death and this birth, which I am describing schematically (see drawing, red). This activity has an after-effect; and this after-effect is the activity you perform when you think as a present human being. You are not performing an activity of the present human being by thinking now, but the activity that you performed in the supersensible world between your last death and your present birth still resonates.

You are only a present-day human being as a sensual human being. As a thinking human being, you carry out an activity that is the reverberation of what you did before your birth in the supersensible world. It is simply not true that, by thinking, we are “engaged in an activity that originates in the present.” If you examine the present scientifically, what is inside your brain, you will of course only find material things, because what works inside your brain outside of the material is something that came into being before birth and only resonates. The living proof for those who can see correctly is the fact that man not only comes out of the supersensible world, but that what he has practiced in the supersensible world still lives on in him while he lives here.

If you imagine that you have experienced a strong pain here in this physical world, which lingers in you, that is the echo of the pain that no longer causes itself in facts. So in the present your thinking is the echo, the reverberation of what you experienced in a much more intense way before you were conceived here for the sensual world.

Thus, only by perceiving with the senses are we men of the present. If we were only people of the present, we would never think, because we are not granted thinking by being born here into the physical world, but we are granted thinking by being able to resonate the activity that we exercised in the spiritual world before birth or conception, and by applying this activity to what is spreading around us sensually here.

One will never understand this fact if one starts from the ordinary concepts of 'exterior' and 'interior', and one will least of all understand the true facts, which express themselves in the human being, if one starts from that stupid mysticism that dominates so many minds today and that speaks: 'There is something to be sought within, something human and supersensible'. What should be sought is the prenatal: you should not point to your inner self by pointing beyond the outer sensory world, you should point to the time you lived through before your conception and before your birth; you should go out of this present human being into the pre-present human being, then you will enter into the real supersensible. That is what it is all about. Because one does not want to work one's way to this sound concept, one speaks in words that actually have no content, of all kinds of divine inner things or the like. The inner being that one seeks in the present human being should be sought in what was there before we were conceived for this life.

And if we act, when the will enters into our actions? Let us take the simplest action: we walk around the room; that is an action, isn't it? First we see ourselves walking around. There is no consciousness in man of how volition is connected with our walking, just as there is no consciousness in man in ordinary life of what he experiences in sleep. The human being does experience himself asleep. Outwardly, he sees as he sees the color blue or a tree or the stars, and also that which this individual of the flesh does, as he walks around. He observes himself. How he wills, he knows nothing about. He only knows that there goes one who is himself. And because he is compelled to think himself in the one who goes about, he says, “I go about.” But how this wanting hangs together with this going about – there can be no question of man's knowing anything about it in ordinary consciousness.

Now, this is again very closely related to what is usually called the “outward” and what is actually an “inner” process. When you walk around, i.e. move your legs, you see how you move your legs (see drawing on page 158). You see the guy walking around and you can see what he wants. You see this external process. But here you can actually see much more that it is actually a human inner process, because you put your will into this walking around, even if you cannot see how it is connected. This walking around is actually a part of him. You can see this more easily here than with the sense world, so that you can more easily call what is there an inner being than with the content of the sense world. With what goes from wanting to acting, you can more easily see that it is an inner being.

Of course, this does not suit the present-day mystics either, who explain external action as an external thing and say that one must penetrate to the divine human being within, who is the truly true human being and so on. But just as we have an inner side in sensory perception and an outer side in the so-called interior of the human head (see drawing above), so we have, in relation to this interior (drawing below), what the human being with limbs is.

And now we come to this strange idea, which of course does not agree with what can be proven today, but which, strangely enough, is correct if you look at it impartially. I do believe, however, that the present mood of human souls is such – excuse me, I must also mention these things – that many of the present philistine natures, and there are quite a few of them, believe that that region of the cosmos that spreads out below their diaphragm has a great deal to do with their inner selves. That is what people call something that has something to do with their inner selves. Now, in truth, this is the outermost part of the human being for human consciousness. We can say that if we call this (drawing above) an exterior, we can call that which lies below the diaphragm the outermost part of the human being (drawing below). What lies below the diaphragm, what is the human abdomen, is the very, very outermost part of the human being. Every tree, every stone that we see with our eyes is closer to us inwardly than what our abdomen is. That is the very outermost. Our true inner being is the sense perceptions, that which we perceive as our actions. The contents of the head are already external, and what lies below the human chest is the very outermost. That is the real observation of what can be seen. And it can be seen.

You see, that has a very specific meaning. Just think, since we have been practicing anthroposophy, we have always said: When a person is awake, his I and his astral body are in the physical and etheric bodies. That is correct. But when a person is asleep, from the moment he falls asleep until he wakes up, his I and his astral body are outside the physical and etheric bodies. But I have often pointed out what this exteriority mainly consists of. This exteriority consists in that what is otherwise of the I and of the astral body in the head, submerges into what is below the diaphragm. You can even, I might say, have empirical proof of this: You dream of the most beautiful snakes because you have just woken up from your stay in your own abdomen, where you perceived the intestines. You dream this memory of perceiving the intestines as the most beautiful snake dream. — So, when we speak of human conditions, the exterior and interior only really make sense when we know what is really exterior and interior in man.

But only if one can acquire such seen ideas, not those that can be “proven”, but such seen ideas, then one again gets the possibility to understand the spiritual-scientific achievements through common sense. Because what we want arises in a certain way from the most external.

Now think about what healthy ideas have to take the place of quite unhealthy ones. Man believes that when he wills something, it arises from his inner being. It arises from his very outermost part, it arises from that in which he is already completely out of touch during the day, and in which he is at most in touch with when he is asleep. When we want something, we are not at all within ourselves. We are in the cosmos. We are performing something that is a cosmic event, that is not at all merely our subjective event.

I have endeavored, I would say, throughout my entire literary life, to teach the present such concepts that are healthy concepts from this point of view. You can start with my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings,” in which I tried to replace the unhealthy concepts of the present with healthy ones from Goethe's worldview. In these writings, I have pointed out that one can only properly observe certain things that take place within a person if one does not say: That is going on in there, and the person does it - but if one regards this so-called human interior as the arena for human actions that are carried out in this arena from the cosmos, if one regards the so-called human interior as the arena for the cosmic. My entire development of epistemological concepts in my booklet “Truth and Science” ultimately fades away, on the last and penultimate page, into this: that man is a theater for what the cosmos actually does in him, and that he does it in connection with the cosmos, from the outside in, not from the inside out. The last two pages of my booklet 'Truth and Science' are the most important part. And because these two pages are the most important and significant, because they most intensively address what needs to change in the way we present the present, I was only able to design this booklet, which was also my doctoral dissertation at the time, after the doctoral dissertation was over. In the form in which it was submitted as a dissertation, these last two pages were missing; because one could not expect science to draw the conclusions from these things, which have a certain significance for the transformation of the entire world view. What was prepared epistemologically was relatively harmless in the dissertation; because that is an objective philosophical development. But what it amounted to could only be added in the later print. Only then, when one looks at things in such a way that one really practices this precise seeing, that one no longer succumbs to the illusions caused by preconceived notions, only then is one in a healthy way able to gain corresponding insights through the will. For what we see outside when the “guy” or the “gal” walks around, when we observe ourselves doing the simplest of actions, when we move our legs forward, that is only the inner side of our will. The outermost side, the one that has a meaning for the cosmos, is apparently hidden within us. But hidden in our outermost being is a spiritual element that underlies the inner being, which is not readily accessible to people. And what happens in there, the spiritual - of course not what happens physically, but what goes parallel to this physical as a spiritual - that is not a present moment. What is present is what you observe externally in the guy or gal. What is going on internally is something different, something that is only just beginning to happen in the germ, in the embryo. While you are walking around or performing some other action with your limbs, something is happening in your external being that only takes on real significance after your death. This is just as much a foreshadowing of the processes from death to the next birth as what is in your thinking is an echo of what you were in the spiritual world from your last death to this birth or conception. That which resonates in your outermost being, what people call your innermost being, is the embryo of the processes you will engage in between your next death and your next birth. Only he sees the human will that now, in turn, does not look at the present human being, but sees in what lives in the human being, seemingly in the human being, but in the uttermost part of the human being, the correlate, the belonging, to the action, and in the action sees the what emerges through the gate of death, becomes activity between death and a new birth and is formed in such a way that it can come in again and now continues to vibrate here in the external.

When one examines human volition and wants to seek mystically deep in the present human being the source of this volition, the divine source of this volition, then usually the word mystics find that they should not do that in the gut, because that is not noble enough for the word mystics; for them it is not about truth, but about special, unctuous phrases. But if one goes to the truth, then it is a matter of the fact that, with regard to the sensual-physical fact, now, let us say, the most unsavory thing is a correlate that goes through the gate of death into the later world; there we must seek the future man. And so we obtain the evidence from the thinking of prenatal man and from the volition of the man after death, as I have often stated here and as I have even mentioned in public lectures here and there. But these are truths that must be brought to our consciousness without fail today. It is imperative that we realize today that human thinking is something that cannot be produced at all by the human being who lives in the present with his flesh and blood and bones and nerves, but that it from prenatal life, and that the will is not something that can be brought forth by the present human being in his totality, but that the will has a side that remains beyond death. If we really get to know that which in the present human being cannot be brought forth by the bodily-carnal human being, then the eternal human being is present in the human being who stands before us. But these truths are not attained by speculating about the eternal, but by really being able to enter positively into what thinking on the one hand and willing on the other hand is. In this way one attains such knowledge.

It is really necessary: if one wants to pursue higher knowledge in the sense of today's spiritual science, then one must, above all, consider the word mysticism, which is practiced in many ways today, to be the most harmful.

That is why certain things that have to be written down today from the point of view of an honest spiritual science should be accepted. And they are indeed widely accepted. But when it comes to what it is actually about, to the intervention of the concrete facts of human life, then people no longer go along with it, because then they prefer to listen to the chatter of mystifying people who want to conjure up an inner world out of words. But the present is too serious in their lives to be able to indulge in such a pleasure. For most people, mysticism today is just a pleasure. What is to be done today is something that shapes the soul of the human being in such a way that he can really only grasp what lives in social life with these appropriated concepts. Is a person to arrive at social concepts if he cannot see, if he learns from the scientific way of thinking, to approach reality with nothing but prejudices and preconceptions? The pure observation of reality, as we need it today, can only be gained by freeing ourselves from the thicket of ideas to which we have surrendered through spiritual-scientific ideas, and which finds its ultimate, extreme consequence in some mystical aberrations of our time. The mystic aberrations of our time are not the sign of an initial improvement for the better; often they are the last sign of decline, the very utmost of mere empty words instead of real insights.

Real insights provide something like: Thinking is an echo of prenatal life; volition is a prelude to post-mortal life. These are concrete insights. When we speak of such concrete things, we speak quite differently from those who say: the eternal lives in the temporal man, the divine I lives there; when one experiences oneself in that, one has grasped the divine, that is the true I; the other is the untrue I, and so on. You can waste the whole day with playful terms. It can create a great sense of well-being internally, but you won't get any real insights with it.

My dear friends:

Let us, first of all, turn our thoughts to those who stand out there upon the battlefields, where historic events are being enacted, and who must be answerable with body, soul and spirit for these tremendous happenings of the present time.

Spirits ever watchful. Guardians of their souls,
May your vibrations waft,
to the Earth-men committed to your charge.
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who, in consequence of these events, have already passed through the gate of death:—

Spirits ever watchful. Guardians of their souls,
May your vibrations waft,
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge,
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And that Spirit whom we seek to know through our Spiritual Science, who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha for the salvation of the earth, for the progress and freedom of mankind—may He be with you and your difficult duties.

It is our striving to penetrate, knowingly and at the same time livingly, in so far as this is possible, into those worlds which are closed to the usual everyday knowledge, the usual intellectual knowledge—bound to the physical plane.

For, in the life in which man is enclosed in his physical body, he stands in a world, as we have become accustomed to think during the course of years, which is only a part, a small part, of the entire actual world. As we come together so seldom, it is not possible, at these meetings, to explain everything from its foundations. How well founded these things are, that must be spoken of at such meetings, which take place only at less frequent intervals, and by what means they are established—this we must assume to be known from other meetings and through our books. For particularly at such a gathering it may, indeed, be our desire to learn something more important and more essential about what has just been referred to, about the greater, real world, which embraces both the physical and the spiritual world.

Since we last gathered here, many things have taken place within the circle which nurtures our spiritual science. A larger number of our dear friends have passed through the portal of death. Also, since the beginning of this hard war time, friends have passed through the portal of death who had to take part directly in these great events. In other words, within our circle, we are ourselves touched by the great spiritual world, because souls who were among us have entered this spiritual world after laying aside their bodies. It lies within the attitude which results from our Spiritual Science that, for us, the souls who have left the physical plane, who are received by another world, remain united with us, as they were united with us while they still looked at us with physical eyes and could speak to us by means of the instrument of the physical body.

Precisely when we approach the world which has received into itself our dead, in this moment, as we draw nearer to the souls of the so-called dead, we learn to know all those shattering experiences which must heap themselves upon our soul where it seeks to look across the threshold which separates us from the spiritual world, when it seeks to enter the world which can only be seen in the disembodied state of the soul. And you will perhaps understand that many of the words spoken here to-day resound out of the many feelings which have passed through my own soul in the course of the year, since we last saw one another.

Particularly during the last year, I have often had to say to our friends, that the right confidence can be gained only gradually, by one who sees into the fundamental conditions of existence, when he knows that those who have passed through the portal of death and who were faithful fellow-workers here on earth, will remain so also after death; so that in our work we quite certainly do not lose those souls who have won an understanding of our work, because they were already united with us here before they passed through the portal of death. And just among such souls there are such faithful fellow-worker that we may say: Even if the enemies and the lack of understanding here on the physical plane are sometimes so strong in opposition to our work, and become ever stronger, as we can well see, yet we may still have faith that Spiritual Science will penetrate into the evolution of mankind, because we can win this faith through our connection with the disembodied souls who have reached an understanding of the whole significance of our work for the course of man's development.

Of course, just when the human being, by means of his opened soul, approaches the world in which the so-called dead are—we can speak in this way, although it is, of course, the entire spiritual world in which the dead are to be found—precisely then, when the human being is able to approach this world as a visitor, as one who accompanies the dead into the spiritual world, he learns to know again and again that which has also been emphasised here: that, in reality, the concepts, the percepts and ideas which we form concerning the world, since we form them as we do because we are in a physical body, must be changed, must be made pliant, flexible, so that they can also encompass the secrets of the spiritual world. The man of to-day is adapted very strongly to the purely material perception of his surroundings, and thus he also forms concepts according to a purely material perception. For this reason, it becomes especially difficult for him to penetrate into the spiritual world even by means of concepts. In fact, many people believe that it is not possible to attain to an understanding of the spiritual world, if we are not able to see into it. They believe this, however, only because their ideas have become stiff and dead, through the fact that they have too strongly accustomed themselves to think only about the physical world.

Now that I have made these introductory remarks, I should like to speak to you to-day particularly about certain things in connection with the life of the so-called dead.

We know that, if we wish to consider the life between death and a new birth, we must consider and notice carefully how the human being forms himself of four parts, which are well known to us: physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego.

If we consider, to begin with, the most outward fact regarding the dead a fact visible even from the physical plane, we find it to be the fact that man lays aside his physical body. We do not need to go into the different ways by which this physical body becomes united with the earth, be it by means of fire or decay—these differ, after all, only in regard to the time which they require.

But, even when we consider this fact, that the physical body falls away from the whole being of man in the moment of death and unites itself with the earth, as we say,—if we consider even this fact only with regard to its meaning for the physical plane, we shall have considered it, in reality, in a very inadequate way. And, in fact, it is often considered in a most inadequate way by persons of all manner of spiritual-scientific tendencies, who allow themselves still to be led astray by all sorts of moral conceptions, which do indeed penetrate into spiritual realms, to a certain extent, but are unfitted, in many respects, to understand in the right way the penetration of the spiritual into the physical world.

All physical events have also their spiritual significance. There is no physical event which has not, at the same time, a spiritual significance. In this case, then, the physical event is that our physical body falls away from us and is at the same time separated into its parts, into its molecules, into its atoms, and given over to the earth.

Now, it is a great prejudice of the modern materialistic world-conception, which has, however, held mankind more or less in its grip already for a long time, that the human body, as we carry it about from birth until death, or let us say from conception until death, that this human body simply falls into the smallest possible parts, into atoms, and that these atoms are then incorporated in the earth, or the sphere of the earth, and thereafter remain atoms, and then pass over as such into other beings.

Through the modern materialistic mode of investigation one comes very easily to such a preconception. But this mode of conception is, after all, nothing but nonsense, in view of spiritual science. It is nonsense. For, in reality, there are no such things as atoms, in the sense in which the chemists assume them. What the smallest parts of our bodies finally become, under all circumstances, regardless of the way in which we, as bodies, are united with the earth, is warmth. Our whole physical organism finally transforms itself, in reality, in one way or another, in a short or a long time, into warmth.

For this reason, we often speak, as you know, in spiritual science of warmth as a fourth physical state of aggregation, whereas physics does not acknowledge it as such, but only as a kind of characteristic. But it is this warmth which is, in reality, given to the earth; this is given over to the earth. Thus, from our physical body, we give to our earth—Warmth.

The warmth which is to be found in the earth, is, in reality, intimately connected with what human beings leave behind. Man does not transform himself into air, water, etc. These are only transitional stages through which he passes. Those parts of him which become air and water become at last warmth. Yes, even though it may be after a long time, even though the last remnants of matter may pass over into warmth only after hundreds of years, indeed, even though what belongs to the bone-system may pass over into warmth only after thousands of years, it is transformed finally into warmth.

If you go into Museums to-day, you will find skeletons of ancient men who lived upon earth in bygone ages, yet the time will indeed come when what is present there to-day as skeletons, will exist only as warmth within the body of the earth.

In any case, however, the way in which we are united with the earth, through warmth, is the materialistic way. The fact that even our physical body remains connected with the earth, has a great, an essential, importance for the one who has passed through the gate of death. He passes into the spiritual world. He leaves his body to the earth. This is an experience, an event, for the so-called dead. He has the experience:—“Your body passes away from you”. We must realise that this is an experience.

What is an experience? Well, you can form a conception of what it is, if you consider the experiences on the physical plane. It is an experience, if you have some new sensation, or feeling which you have never had before, and you learn to understand this. You have added something to your soul which you did not possess before a new concept, a new perception.

But now imagine such a small experience increased into a very great one. It is something mighty, something unfathomably mighty, that the human being experiences, which gives him the possibility between death and birth to see, to realise, to grasp the fact that he lays this physical body aside, that he gives over to the planet which he is leaving. It is a very great experience, an experience which naturally cannot be compared with any experience on earth—a mighty experience. The value of an experience lies in the fact that something remains in our soul as a result, as a consequence, of this experience. We may, therefore, ask the question:—What then remains as a result, as a consequence of this experience of the falling away of the physical body from the entirety of our being?

Indeed, if we were not able to have this experience when we pass through the gate of death, of knowingly participating in the falling away of our physical body, we should never be able to develop an Ego-consciousness after death. The Ego consciousness is aroused after death through this experience of the falling away of the physical body. For the dead it is of the greatest significance that he is able to say:—“I see my physical body slipping away from me and disappearing.” And, on the other hand:—“I see growing within me, out of this event, the feeling—I am an Ego.”

We may express this with the paradox words:—“If we were unable to experience our death from the other side, we would not have an Ego-consciousness after death.”

Just as the human soul entering existence through birth or, let us say, through conception—gradually becomes accustomed to the use of the physical apparatus and thereby acquires the Ego-consciousness within the body, so does the human being acquire the Ego consciousness after death, from the other side of existence, through the fact that he experiences the falling away of the physical body from the whole human being.

Consider now, for a moment, what this means. When we contemplate Death from the physical side of existence, we may say that it appears to us as the end of existence—as that which has beyond it, as far as the physical outlook is concerned, “Nothing”. Viewed from the other side, Death as such is a most wonderful thing, which can ever anew stand before man's soul. For it signifies that man can always have the feeling of the victory of spiritual life over physical life. And just as long as we can always have before us the conception of our birth here, in physical life—for no one can have the conceptual nature of his birth through physical means alone, indeed, no one knows anything about his birth through his own physical experience—just so surely do we always have before us, when we become fully conscious after death, a direct experience of the event of our death.

At the same time, this event of our death contains nothing which is in any way depressing; on the contrary, this death event, viewed from the other side, is the greatest, most wonderful and beautiful event which can appear before our soul. For it always places before us, in its entirety, the greatness of the idea that in the spiritual world, consciousness, self-consciousness is the result of death—that death stimulates this self-consciousness, in the spiritual world.

Secondly, we must observe the second member of our human existence, the etheric body. We find, with the help of the elementary presentations which we have all shared in, in the interval since we last met together, that this ether-body remains with us for a brief—a relatively brief—period after death, but after this, it is also laid aside. We know, too, that a certain importance must be attributed to the fact that our etheric body—the same one we possessed on earth—remains still united with us after death, for several days.

So long as we still carry this etheric body, after having laid aside our physical body, we can still think everything that we were able to think during our physical existence. We can, therefore, survey all the thoughts which we carry in us, as in a mighty picture. We see those thoughts which we experienced during life, in the life-picture which has often been described to you. Our whole life lies before us like a panorama, during the days in which we still carry our etheric body with us; and we have it before us simultaneously, i.e. we see it all at one glance. For, what we call memory, here, in the physical world, arises, to be sure, in the etheric body, but it is bound, nevertheless, to the physical body. This physical body we have laid aside. We see our thoughts. We do not draw them out of the depths that are connected with the physical body, but we see them; and we survey, as if in a panorama, the life which we have just passed through.

We then lay aside this etheric body. But this etheric body which we lay aside, remains visible for us, throughout our entire remaining life after death. It is outside, but it remains visible to us. It unites itself with the whole universe; nevertheless, whatever happens to it there, remains visible to us—we see it.

And this is one of the mysteries of death: that, so long as we carry our etheric body, we see in a panorama what we had in us in the form of thoughts while we were alive—we survey, as it were, what is outside us as being united with, woven into, the world; we see that, after death, it forms part of our surrounding world, not of our Ego. In this experience, it actually is as if that which weaved and lived in us as our etheric body, during life, were now entering the life of the etheric world outside.

Then comes the time, as you know, when we carry with us—of that which we carried here on the physical plane—only the Ego and the astral body, and when we, of course, look back. upon what we were. We then experience ourselves in an entirely different way from the way we did in the physical body—we experience ourselves with an enhanced consciousness, with a consciousness which death has founded in us.

We must never think, for instance, as the fanatics so easily do, that this life between death and a new birth is an unconscious experience for the soul. Connected with this life, is a stronger, more intensive consciousness, than is the consciousness belonging to the physical body—only that it has an entirely different form. And, of course, we can approach the way in which we should imagine the dead, only by taking all that Spiritual Science can give us, to help us to transform those conceptions which are suited to purely physical objects and events here on the physical plane.

Thus we now live, as we see, within our Ego and our astral body. We have cast off our etheric body. It is united with objective existence.

For one who is able to enter the spiritual world, it is a moving experience, indeed—and from this standpoint also, I may say—to visit and accompany the dead with whom one is able to find a contact; it is a moving experience to follow, not only the individual life of the dead between death and a new birth, but also, for instance, to follow what the dead beholds: that part of himself which is now contained, as his etheric body, in the woof of the world, which is now for him an exterior world, an objective world. It is deeply moving to observe what, the dead has just given over to the etheric world. Thus we may experience the dead in a twofold way, as it were. We can experience that part of him which he has passed on to the etheric world; and we can experience also that part which contains his consciousness after death.

I repeat, that this first contact with what the dead leave behind in the etheric world, is deeply moving. It would move us even if we were unable to come into contact with the Being itself, which continues to live between death and a new birth, and which carries both the consciousness and the self-consciousness of the deceased, but could come into contact only with what he had left behind. Even then this kind of experience would move our souls most deeply—it would have that moving quality peculiar to all contacts with the spiritual world.

And a part of what especially moves us is the actual, living experience that such spiritual substance as has here been indicated—indeed, that etheric spiritual thing which has been left behind by the dead—is, in reality, always round about us. Just so truly as we are living in the air which surrounds man everywhere, just so truly are we, at the same time, surrounded by what the dead have left behind them, as etheric spirituality. In this world, in which we stand, even with our physical bodies there is also that spiritual element which I have just mentioned. Just as we are surrounded by the air, so are we, in the same way, surrounded by what the dead leave behind. It is only states of consciousness that sever us from the spiritual world—we are not separated from them through spatial conditions, but only through conditions of consciousness.

Consider, for instance, the following fact:—Let us imagine a human being who is striving to carry out the following soul exercises. But I should like to emphasize that such soul-exercises must be carried out in perfect calmness of soul. If anyone becomes in any way excited through these exercises, he will damage himself. If soul-exercises are carried on in the way described here and in our literature, so that they are real soul-exercises, and our physical being does not take part in them, then they can never damage a human being in the very least—they cannot even damage his soul. Yet we should not on the other hand, be able to penetrate into spiritual knowledge, did we not call attention to such things, now and again.

Let us suppose that someone does the following exercise, and that he says to himself:—With my eyes I see red, blue, etc. And now he proceeds by experiencing something that is in a certain sense alive—when he sees red, blue green, etc.

Gradually, we begin to realise that, after all, we live in the physical world—especially our modern materialistic age—in a very coarse way—that we do not notice the finer experiences which come to us.

This finer element may be experienced if we take notice of the more purely soul-impression made upon us—let us say by colours—but also by other sense-impressions. Of course everybody knows, roughly speaking, that when he looks upon a blue surface, the impression it leaves will not be the same as that left by a red surface. A red surface—and I must emphasize this particularly—even when a person is not made nervous by looking at it, has something that attacks something which comes out of the surface, as it were, and thrusts itself at us. Whereas blue, for instance, awakens the opposite sensation—it remains quietly in its place; nothing comes toward us, out of the blue. On the contrary, we feel—if we are able to accompany colour-impressions with a fine feeling—that we can penetrate into this blue with our soul forces, that we can press through it.

Green is, as it were, in a rythmical state of balance. This is why it has so beneficent an effect upon us, as the plant's covering of the earth. Green works upon us in such a way that we are able, in part, to penetrate into it, while at the same time it comes back again toward us. When we look out upon the wide green field, we have this impression, that we enter into something; yet, at the same time, that it comes toward us. This is what constitutes the refreshing effect made upon us by a wide green field.

You will be able to convince yourselves of this fact: that human beings have noticed that it is possible to live with colour as it were, and if you read in Goethe's Theory of Colours—which, to be sure, is understood by very few persons of to-day—the chapter on the ethical effects of colours, you will find indicated the corresponding feeling to be experienced through each colour. Thus we find that we can experience colours ... we can also experience other sense-impressions; but, for the moment, we are speaking about colours, in order to have an example.

We can live with colours in such a way that blue, for example, calls to life in our souls a force that resembles the longing which goes forth from us and which is taken up kindly by blue.

In the case of red, something always arises which seems to come toward us and will not leave us alone—something that wishes to overpower us, as it were.

When we thus feel colours, we may have a soul-experience—a moral soul-experience, as it were. Of course, not every human being can carry on such experiences in any one incarnation; but I am describing them to you, in order that you may see how the different worlds are interrelated.

If, accordingly, a man were to carry on these exercises, he would live far more purely in the world of colours. And if he did them in connection with other sense-impressions, he would likewise live more purely in the other sense-impressions. In that case, however, something else would very soon have to arise—something different would take place.

Suppose that such a person were to experience the blue sky in this living way; he would in this case, not simply have the blue above him, (this is, moreover, a very subjective blue; for, in reality, there is no vault above us) but he would feel it above him as the inner surface of a beneficent, inner hemisphere, everywhere receiving his soul-life—a hemisphere, behind the apparent surface of which the soul's experience could penetrate.

It is because of this that human beings who experience the world in a deeper sense, speak as did Jacob Böhme, for instance, who did not say:—“When we see the blue vault of heaven ...”, but, rather:—“When we see the depths”. In these words, “When we see the depths”, we find contained the whole experience of “blue”.

But there is another parallel phenomenon which arises, if we so completely penetrate into the life of colour, that soul-experiences begin to light up when we see colours. There is then awakened in us the ability to make use of a very brief space of time, which we should otherwise not use at all.

When you face an exterior object in ordinary physical life, you see it—you see a certain colour. And, indeed, this is the starting-point of your impression. Then you are able to think about it. You can form a conceptual idea of the colour. But it is with the act of vision that you begin to live with the object. Yet, nevertheless, this is not the actual beginning of what takes place. Even the modern physiologist, working in the laboratories, knows that a certain time elapses between the effect upon our eye, and the arising of the idea connected with the colour blue. Thus, we see that, first of all, the blue colour works upon our eye. We do not immediately perceive it, but a certain time elapses, and only then do we become conscious of it.

You may read, even in ordinary books, how experiments connected with these things are carried on nowadays in the laboratories. Certain kinds of apparatus are constructed; and then the attempt is made to cause a certain impression—the student is the experimental rabbit. He must register, by means of another apparatus, when he receives the impression, so that one can establish the small fraction of time which elapses between the moment an impression strikes our sense-organs, and the moment we grow conscious of this. A certain space of time elapses. In this short interval, we do not as yet, for instance, experience the blue colour, (in the case of an impression of blue), but we do experience the moral effect of the colour. This works in us. Thus, the whole process of how the soul pours itself into the blue colour, how it is accepted with a kindly pleasure—all this lives in us already—the soul-element of the colour is active in us before anything else. Only, this activity remains unconscious; man does not perceive it. Man does not begin to develop his consciousness of the colour, until the colour arises. He does not notice what precedes the colour-sensation.

Now, let us think for a moment: when one is impelled to notice more particularly this moral impression of colours, this soul-experience of colours, then something special appears. We notice this when we should colour some sort of a surface—i.e. when we paint, or transmit colours in any way at all, which ought first to arise out of thoughts. In any real painting, the artist works out of the soul-impression of the colours. In this case, it is not as it is with the artist who simply uses a model—who simply imitates the model; but, rather the real artist knows that, because he has called forth a particular soul-impression, he must therefore use red; whereas, on some other surface, he uses blue, because he has called forth this or that soul-impression.

This is the way, you see, in which all of the painting has been worked out in our Dornach Building. The application of the colours has here arisen entirely out of the soul-element—which indeed must then shine through the colours. Yet, in order to achieve this, it was necessary, in the deepest sense of the word, first of all to have the Building in ourselves—as a Soul Being. The way in which the Building faces the world will be identical with the way in which it has grown out of “the Building”, as a Soul-Being.

People would perceive the thing out of which this Dornach Building has grown, were they able to make use of that short interval of time elapsing between the moment in which the Building strikes their sense-organs, and the moment in which the impression reaches their consciousness.

Any one, moreover, who has a share in the erection of the Building, must himself create all that is in it—its forms and colours—out of that short interval of time.

I have led you in a more scientific way, I might say, to something which may appear difficult to you. But we must also overcome difficulties such as these. Moreover, the possibility may arise, even in this modern Age, as if through an act of grace—and, in a certain sense, we are constantly being favoured by an act of grace, through the simple fact that we are in the world—for man to hold fast, in some way, to this moment. He will see something, and will at times be able to feel that something reciprocal has taken place between himself and the object which he sees outside—if he succeeds in bringing it to his consciousness. He will say to himself, when he sees something:—When I am looking at it, it seems almost as if I had already seen it before this moment.

Perhaps you have all become familiar with the experience of facing a being or an object, and then feeling, as it were, as if, after all, it is not there before you for the first time, when it makes an impression on your consciousness, but that it had already come nearer—indeed, it had come quite close. This creeping nearer—as one might call it—can indeed at times be observed. But, in ordinary life, what here takes place within this brief space of time, lies beyond our consciousness—beyond the threshold.

The moment we are able to bring into our consciousness what thus lies just beyond the threshold, we make an important spiritual discovery. I shall again bring it to your minds by citing a special case. Many of you have already heard about this. Perhaps I have also mentioned it here, in this place. Last year, a little boy died in close proximity to the Goetheanum Building; he was crushed by a furniture-van. The etheric body of this little boy is now united with the Dornach Building—forms the aura of the Dornach Building and lives in this aura. And when some artistic work must be carried out, in connection with this Building, forces come out of this etheric body, which then, of course, appears enlarged. We can feel these forces in us, in the same way that we feel the Building within our souls.

Why is this so? Because the world of which I have just spoken—that world which is always round about us, but which we do not perceive because it remains unnoticed until its impressions reach us—contains the etheric bodies of the dead, and the dead are looking on these bodies. What the dead see of our world—what the dead look upon—is contained in the etheric world which surrounds us. And we should always see it, if we could, so to speak, look into it before we look out into the physical world—if we were able to take even a little step across the threshold.

This does not, however, prevent the dead from being active in this world, through what they have left behind. We are surrounded by a world in which the etheric bodies of the dead are living. In some way or other, they are connected with that world. And only because what lives in the etheric must first come into contact with our physical body, and must set the physical apparatus into movement, do we fail to perceive this powerful weaving around us, of what the dead leave behind them, in etheric form, in our world. But we must acquire the feeling that it is our duty to enrich our world, in our conceptual ideas, by including in it, in the first place, what is contained in the whole etheric world, through the etheric bodies of the dead.

The dead themselves are not in this world—but only the etheric bodies which they have left behind. We cannot find the dead themselves in so easy a way—although even this “easy way” is difficult.

The dead, after they have laid aside their etheric bodies, continue to live in their astral bodies and their Egos. You can gauge to what extent we must transform our conceptions, if you bear in mind that everything pertaining to thought, is stripped off with our etheric bodies, which pass over into the exterior etheric world. After death, we do not keep the thoughts which we have collected here, in our physical body. All that pertains to thought becomes an exterior world. The one who has died, does not look upon his thoughts after death in the same way in which he looked upon thoughts which he formed during his life, and which he then remembered and drew up out of his sub-consciousness. After death he looks upon his thoughts as if they were an etheric painting; he sees his thoughts in the world outside. Thoughts are something exterior for one who has passed through the portal of death—they are outside. What reveals itself here through feeling and will, remains connected with our individuality. It continues to live in our astral body and in our Ego.

Our Ego lights up in self-consciousness through the contemplation of the moment of death. Our astral body is kindled because the thoughts contained in the picture before us, penetrate into the astral body. Thus we experience them in our astral body.

In the physical body, on the other hand, we experience thoughts by drawing them up from within us. After death, we experience thoughts by looking at them as we look at the stars, or as we look out at the world and the mountains, and they make an impression upon us; we take up this impression and experience it in our astral body and our Ego. Thus we see that just the opposite thing takes place: Whereas here on Earth we look upon thoughts as something within us, we must consider them as being something external, after death. Our life then dissolves in the world, flows out in the world.

It is important for us to bear this in mind and not to adopt the idea that the world after death is like a fine, thin repetition of the physical world here—an idea which is often accepted in spiritist circles. It is in fact something entirely different. And it is different, for the reason that our thoughts are Beings outside of us. Now, at the moment we begin to call up before our souls, conceptual ideas like these, we notice not only that we need a certain freedom from prejudice, as I might say, in order to accept Spiritual Science, but also that we must have a certain kind of ability to render our concepts more fluid, to transform our concepts—and that we cannot claim to be able to picture what is in the spiritual world with the same concepts and ideas which we have here, in the physical world.

Consequently, one who is in a position to visit—let us say—a so-called dead person, must first learn how to carry on this intercourse with the dead. Whereas, here, when we meet a person, we come into contact with his inner life through the fact that he expresses this inner life in words or gestures, we find instead, in the case of the dead, that if we wish to come into contact with him, he shows us what he wishes to tell us in the objective world. We see, as it were, in the form of imaginations, which he shows us, what it is that he experiences, and what he wishes to say to us. I might say that the dead person, when we ask him something, says to us: Look over there—it is there that you will find what I am now experiencing.

But all of this is a rapid process. The dead, accordingly, as you see from what I have said, have the capacity to see supersensibly the thoughts which we, here on earth, can experience only in an inward, invisible way. Only if we acquire the capacity to behold thoughts in union with him, are we able to share in his experience, for this reason, he has the special capacity, as a dead person—as a so-called dead person—to share with us the experience of our thoughts.

We are particularly struck by this in the case of a certain phenomenon which I should like to touch upon. When someone whom we have loved has departed from us, we continue, as we all know, to cherish our thoughts of him within our souls. We think about the experiences we have had in common, about the feelings we have shared with him, and so forth. The dead person, as I have said, beholds thoughts. He can also see our thoughts, and he can even distinguish very soon the thoughts which he himself has, in the form of impressions of the spiritual world—these are Imaginations of what is contained in the spiritual world, and thoughts living in the soul of a human being who is still dwelling in a physical body. He can distinguish these thoughts. His own inner experience enables him to make this distinction. For, you see, the difference is really very great. When a deceased person (and exactly the same thing applies to an initiate) has to experience a thought about something which exists only in the spiritual world, he must himself experience this thought, actively. He must himself first follow the thought—every position of it, as it were. It is difficult to make this process clear; but I might explain it as follows:—Suppose a painting were hanging before us, here. But supposing you were to see this painting only when you yourself had traced its lines and painted its colours—followed all the details. This is what the dead can do. He paints every thought he sees; he himself creates the thoughts anew, as it were, and experiences his own activity. A large portion of the life between death and a new birth consists in this—in a creative copying of what exists in the spiritual world as thought-formations. We must learn to create these anew, with the dead—then we know that these are forms of thought which pertain only to the spiritual world.

The experience is different when we look down from the spiritual world upon the thoughts living in the human beings who have been left behind in the physical world. In this case, it is not necessary to re-create them; but these thoughts actually come to meet us, so that the dead person can remain passive. Just as a flower does not need first to be drawn or painted by us, but immediately makes an impression upon us, so it is with the thoughts coming from those who are still alive. These thoughts actually arise in a way similar to the way in which impressions arise, here in the physical world.

And this is just what uplifts, gladdens and warms the dead, in the thoughts of the living whom they have loved. For it is a very special sphere of activity for the dead—this being able to look into the thoughts of those whom they have left behind and who loved them. This is a special world for them.

It would be possible—would it not—for us to experience the physical world, as if it contained only what arises in the mineral, animal and vegetable kingdom and in the kingdom of man. In this case, for example, the physical world would contain no Art. Art would have to be added to all this—it would have to be created in addition to what we actually need. Yet Art is the very element which, from a soul-aspect of human evolution, must not be absent in the world, in spite of the fact that Nature would be just as perfect as it is, even if there were no Art. Thus, the dead could go on living, if necessary—although it would be like the human being living in a barren, lifeless, naked world of Nature, a world devoid of Art—were the peculiar circumstance to arise that everyone who had died were to be immediately forgotten, after death, by those who had loved him. Whatever can be seen as thoughts, remaining in the souls of those who love the dead, is something which is, to be sure, an additional element, going beyond the immediate requirements of the world of the dead; yet, at the same time, it uplifts and beautifies the life of the dead. It cannot be compared with Art in the physical world—that is to say, it can be compared, but the comparison is a lame one—for it means for the dead, as I have said, an uplifting, a beautifying element, yet in a far higher sense than the beautifying influence of Art is for us, here, in the physical world.

Thus it is deeply significant for the whole existence of the world, if we unite our thoughts with the thoughts of the dead, and especially if we do this in the form which we have often spoken about, here. Above all, we should approach the dead with thoughts clothed in that language, in that language of concepts which is common both to the living and to the dead—in the language which we speak here, in Spiritual Science. For the dead understand what constitutes the contents of Spiritual Science, just as well as do the living. And, moreover, it never becomes alien to the dead.

It is precisely through the bringing together of conceptual ideas such as these, I believe, that we shall be able gradually to form a plastic picture of the spiritual world. We can thus find our way into what lies beyond the threshold—whence, in reality, there flows forth all that exists for us on this side of the threshold.

In the face of these phenomena, we must bear in mind that present-day humanity is shortsighted in its vision of the world—and this is justified, to be sure, because it forms part of the universal plan—at the same time, it really is more shortsighted than it needs to be. For, you see, when a materialistic person of the present day forms his ideas, his conceptions of the world, he thinks that these are the universally-accepted human ideas and conceptions. You know how difficult it is to convince a materialistically-minded person that there are also other ways of thinking than his own. The standpoint taken by the materialist causes him to say that anyone who does not think as he does is a fool. There is no greater inward intolerance than that of a materialist.

Hence, a materialistic person actually thinks, generally speaking:—“Oh, of course, in the past, men thought all manner of things as to the existence of the spiritual; they could hardly move a step, in their daily life, without suspecting the presence of spirits everywhere, or indeed without seeing them. But all this was sheer fancy—now, at last, we have progressed so far that we have discarded this childish play of the human race.”

And yet it would seem as if human beings ought to be able to see at each step how nonsensical such a conception really is.

I shall try to make this clear to you, by citing an example, which may appear to be far-fetched, and from an entirely different side than the one we have discussed to-day in essence.

Let us think, for a moment, about that picture, which we have often discussed from various aspects, relating to the first stage of human evolution on earth—of man's life in Paradise, as we find it described in the Bible. Let us think about this picture of Adam and Eve in Paradise, the first human beings—Eve biting into the apple and giving the apple to Adam. Let us think of the picture of the Serpent on the Tree, tempting Eve.

When the painter of our day paints this picture—and even to-day, the modern painters still occasionally do paint it—he paints it, to be sure, in such a way that the picture will show a woman as true to Nature as possible, and a still more naturalistic man, because this is modern ... Impressionism, Expressionism, and I do not know what else; in any case, a very naturalistic woman and a still more naturalistic man, then a naturalistic landscape, and a naturalistic serpent showing, of course, greedy naturalistic teeth, etc. This is actually the way it is painted.

Painters have not always painted in this way, however; for such a picture would not render the true facts, as we know them. We know that in the Serpent, we may recognize a symbol of the real Tempter, Lucifer. Moreover, Lucifer is a Being who, as we know, remained behind during the Moon Period, and who—in the way in which he appears during the Earth Period—may be symbolized by the Serpent. Nevertheless, the Serpent is not Lucifer, and this must somehow become evident, spiritually. In other words, this Lucifer must also be seen with the forces of the soul—he must be seen from within, through the effort of inner forces.

How is it possible to see him, my dear friends? Indeed, we bear within us all the impressions of Lucifer. We actually carry them about within us. Just as we carry about the impressions of Ahriman, so we carry these in us, also.

Now I shall explain to you as briefly as possible, without any proofs or detailed explanations—these you must find for yourselves, in our already existing literature on this subject—how it is possible to form a conception of Lucifer.

Man carries about within him the impulses of Lucifer. They live in him in such a way that they are centred in his head, and from there they permeate the astral body where the Luciferic principle has remained within him; that is to say they force their way into his head—whereas otherwise it is the Spirits of Form which have moulded his head—and they also force their way into what is formed by the astral force into the spinal cord.

Thus, if we were to draw the head of a man and prolongation, the spine, the result would be a Serpent, a serpent like form, with a human head. Of course, the whole thing should be imagined as an astral form—the head to some extent still resembling a human head, and the spinal cord appended to it and turning around like a serpent. Imagine this projected objectively—and you will have a serpent with a human head. That is, Lucifer viewed externally, in the form of an image, assumes the aspect of a serpent with a human head. Not a serpent with a serpent's head, for that would no longer be a Lucifer—that would be an earthly serpent, which has already, as an earthly creature, been subjected to the influence of the Spirits of Form.

Hence, if a painter wished to paint Lucifer on the Tree, he would have to imagine the Serpent coiled around the Tree with a human head looking out above. He would then be painting out of the knowledge gained through our Spiritual Science.

Thus, we should have to picture Adam and Eve by the side of the Tree, and—coiled into the Tree—the astral shape of the spinal cord, resembling, as I have said, a serpent body, together with the image of the human head. If the woman Eve, sees it first, it will, of course, take on the form of a woman's face.

If you go into the Museum here, and look at the painting of Master Bertram, you will see there, that in the Middle Ages this kind of serpent was still portrayed coiled on the Tree, as I have explained. It is most striking and sublime; for it proves to us that a painter living in the very heart of the Middle Ages could paint from out of the true and real concepts of the spiritual world. This is an undeniable proof for the fact that we need not go back so very many centuries; and there are many documents, still existing to-day, to show us that in those days people still knew something of what our present materialistic humanity has already forgotten.

Of course, in an exterior history of Art, this fact which I have just mentioned is never touched upon. Nevertheless, anyone—by adopting not only the modern materialistic attitude, but also the materialistic standpoint or conception—can convince himself that both the vision of the spiritual, and the disappearance of this vision, are events of only a few centuries ago. Anyone here in Hamburg can convince himself of this, by going to the Museum and looking at this Paradise-picture of Master Bertram, he will find, there, the irrefutable proof, furnished on the physical plane, that it was not at all so long ago that men were able, by means of atavistic clairvoyance—as we may call it—to look into the spiritual world, and to have knowledge of its mysteries in a way that was entirely different from the way of to-day.

We need only think how blindly people go through the world to-day; how, if they only wished to do so, they could convince themselves, even externally, on the physical plane that evolution takes place, in the human race.

The significant fact is that during the course of the last three to four centuries, the formerly extant, more atavistic and unconscious clairvoyance has been disappearing. For, naturally, Master Bertram would not have been able to develop Spiritual Science. He merely saw, still saw in the etheric world, what Lucifer was really like, and then painted him accordingly. It was an unconscious, instinctive clairvoyance.

In order that man should acquire the external form of vision, the old way of looking at the spiritual world had to disappear. But it must be acquired anew by man. And the time must gradually come, only of course, this must be in the sphere of consciousness—when what has been lost, must be striven after anew. For this reason, the way must be prepared by Spiritual Science. People can approach the spiritual world again only if they study Spiritual Science. But this Spiritual Science must really bring an insight into the spiritual world.

To-day it is possible to prove scientifically, as it were how far natural science can bring the world forward. When a scientifically-trained person to-day speaks about such matters, he really speaks about the soul-apparatus, about the bodily instrument of soul-life. Now, if you try to investigate in the descriptions available to-day—they are generally called psycho-physiology—even those written by the most significant modern scientists, you will find there, what they have to say about the soul-instrument. You will find that these people express themselves, everywhere, in a most peculiar way. They say, for instance:—Let us consider the life of impressions and reactions, and the life of conceptual ideas; to this life of impressions and conceptual ideas belongs, in every case, the soul-apparatus. And then they describe what happens in the brain and in the nervous system when a man has impressions or forms conceptions. The parallel bodily process can always be found. But when these scientists approach feeling and the will, they cannot find a parallel bodily process. They cannot find anything.

That a thing like this does not come to light, but remains unnoticed, is due only to the fact that natural science and its rear-guard—we cannot really say rear-guard, because a rearguard is useful, and the monistic rear-guard of natural science is entirely superfluous—because natural science and its rearguard, the Monists, simply crow about the fact that for every process of thought and sensation, a certain physical parallel process is to be found, and that thought and sensation are bound to the brain. But they do not speak of shades of feeling or will. At the most, they speak of shades of feeling—in other words, a certain nuance of conceptual thought. But they do not go as far as feeling and will.

And the honest scientists say:—Our science does not extend as far as feeling and will. You can read for yourselves what I have just said, in the natural-scientific literature. It is possible to corroborate it in all spheres of science. For instance, in the case of Dr. Th. Ziehen, the well known modern psychiatrist and psycho-physiologist—in his book, you can find most easily of all a confirmation of what I have just said. He points out the single processes which correspond to thought and to sensation. He goes as far as certain shades of feeling; but he does not reach to actual feeling and will. Thus he disavows feeling and will. They do not exist at all, he says.

Now could we really find any clearer scientific proof than this, for the fact that natural-scientific thought extends only over the sphere of the temporal—only over that which we lay aside with death; whereas, at the same time, there is something that extends beyond this, living, precisely, as I have indicated, in feeling and will, and yet so far removed from the body that the scientist simply does not find it, indeed he rejects it and disavows it!

This is, accordingly, the reason why the scientists boast that feeling and will do not exist: because they cannot be found by the ordinary science. Indeed, it is natural science itself, as we see, that proves to us today that feeling and will are not bound to the body as such, like thought and sensation.

This is connected with the fact that our thoughts separate themselves from us; after death they appear spread out, outside of us. Feeling and will remain ours. And out of feeling and will springs forth the power to create the thought-tableau. He who wishes to do so to-day, can show by means of what is strictly scientific, that feeling and will are not connected with what we call “Nature”, but that, on the contrary, they pass out after death, as astral body and Ego, and remain united with the human individuality—kindling themselves to a new consciousness, in the way that I have described, through the fact that what spreads itself out is all etheric, that is, mirrors itself first in the astral body and then in the Ego when the astral body has been laid aside.

This is all as it should be. Modern science does not refute Spiritual Science, but confirms it. It really does confirm it. If it were possible to arouse even a little understanding, it would be seen that, for a right understanding, it is precisely an honest natural science that points to a justification of Spiritual Science, even in all its separate details.

Spiritual Science is, as you see—in view of all that has been said—something which must in our day begin to enter into the development of humanity, which must begin to have a grip on humanity, because otherwise the human race will reach the point where it will understand only the temporal, and when it will know nothing of the eternal, which lives in us. The time will come, when people will first recognise this, and when they will also concern themselves more with the development of their feeling-life. For only through feeling and will do we unite ourselves with the world which is not devoid of thought.

The objection might be made:—Very well, then, you feel the spiritual world, but you do not will it. But no, it is precisely through feeling and will that we are united with the objective thought-world—with the thoughts that live, and which we do not merely think. And just as truly as in the past mankind possessed a power of seeing into the spiritual world, just so truly will it have to win this power again in the future. Man will be able to win it again, however, only if he determines first to enter a little way into the thought-world which is no longer recognised by our generation, as coming from the spiritual world.

In order to attain this, a very great deal of what is rumoured about to-day as concept and percept will have to be corrected. Indeed, it would be hard to believe how thoughtlessly, as a matter of fact, human beings of to-day—allow me to use a paradox—how thoughtlessly human beings think. This really would be hard to believe. They make definitions which they are unshakably convinced are right, and cannot be refuted in any way. It belongs to the task of the spiritual scientist, however, to test all the more carefully what it is that convinces people so unshakably—just because it appears to them to be entirely logical and thus they are convinced of it. What, for instance—they think—could be a better definition than this, when someone is asked, in this modern materialistic Age of ours “What is a true concept?”—that he answers by saying:—“It is a true concept, when I form an inner picture of an object which is actually present, outside in the world. This is then a true picture of an object which exists outside.” In other words, everyone, in our day, would give this definition: “Truth consists in the conformity of a picture which we form in thought, to something actually existing outside.” We can now very easily show, however, if we examine concepts, that true concept has nothing to do with what we usually call by this name—has nothing whatever to do with it, in so far as it is supposed to be a picture of something having actual existence. It can easily be shown that actual existence goes along quite another path than does the picture which we fancy to be concept. You see, if this were true: that a concept is only true when it conforms with something having actual existence, naturally, then, it would also be true only so long as that which has actual existence verifies it.

Thus a concept might be compared with a portrait which someone has made of a human being. The portrait is good, if it resembles the person in question. Yet it has nothing to do with his being. The fact that the picture corresponds to the person, does not lead to an inner truth in the picture. Imagine to yourself that you have painted the picture of some man who then dies, soon afterwards. At first, the picture corresponded to what was there, but afterwards to what no longer exists. There is no connection between actual existence or life, and the portrait; as far as life is concerned, it is an entirely indifferent matter whether the picture is a true one or not. Such a connection is quite imaginary, when we look at things really logically. The essential thing is to experience things inwardly. It is this inner experience which humanity must again acquire.

In order to acquire this, however—and it is just during these hard, sorrowful days that we can be brought to realise in a special measure how necessary this is—in order to acquire this, it is necessary above all that humanity should acquire again a feeling for Truth, for real Truth.

Materialism gradually estranges us completely from Truth. We have gone astray through materialism—and especially where the idea of Truth is concerned. Compare for yourselves, for instance, the journalistic descriptions of today—and how many people read nothing but the newspapers, nowadays—compare these with the real events, which you may happen to have seen yourself! When you read this again, in the newspapers, you will find that the reporter has written it up in the way that he believes will make an impression on his readers. All feeling that such descriptions should correspond to the Truth grows weaker and weaker. And so long as this feeling for Truth does not permeate humanity, the impulse that leads from the sense-world into the spiritual world cannot be awakened to activity in human souls. For, with this want of any concepts of Truth in our thoughts, our concepts become falsified. How often, for instance, do we come across the following case:

Someone writes about Spiritual Science—let us suppose about what I have published in connection with Spiritual Science. He writes about this, and he cannot help saying—owing to his materialistic mentality—that everything is invented, and that it is not permissible to invent such things. And then he continues by investigating the question of how it can be possible for a man to be so fantastic.

As a matter of fact, this article actually appeared not so very long ago. The writer tries to find out how it is possible that a man can be so fantastic! And then he relates where this man comes from—in this case, it was I—where he used to live (not his recent abode, but where the writer reports him to have lived) and how it is because of his peculiar race-mixture that he can invent such fantastic things. And then this reporter himself invents the most incredible things, impelled by his materialistic mentality. And here you have an example of what I mean: People simply take hold of lies, and allow truth to become inwardly distorted.

Of course, no direct proof can be supplied for this. Yet what could be more false than to accuse someone of inventing fantastic things, and then to invent the most incredibly fantastic things about him, oneself! If you will study our modern life carefully, you will find that there is a very widespread lack of any feeling of responsibility, which would see to it that everything one says should correspond to the Reality. Unless we possess this feeling for Truth most intensively, we cannot gain access to the spiritual world. Nor can we understand why we must believe to be true, what Spiritual Science brings down for us as Truth, from the spiritual world.

But our thinking is far too inadequate for a true contemplation of this sort—and we cling too much to our own personal interests, to be able to see how untruthfulness glitters in everything and how its fragments can be found in all the happenings of life.

A true feeling, a true conception of this is what should occupy our thoughts, and should constitute the first preparatory steps in Spiritual Science. Thoughts like these should be, I might say, a kind of conscious preparation for what Man's future really should be. For, the welfare of the human race can become a reality only if our souls become united again with the spirit. Spiritual Science is not something that we seek in the form of a new kind of sensation, but something whereof we know that it must arise, because humanity needs it. And we ought to feel indebted, as it were, to Spiritual Science, if we observe, in a clear and lucid way the course of human evolution.

How much richer we grow, through what Spiritual Science can give us, because the world widens out for us more and more, through the fact that spiritual reality is added to physical reality, in human evolution! Human beings have been more and more cut off, in this materialistic age, from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth. Spiritual Science must give back to them, again, that life which comprises the whole human being—including that part which remains when man no longer possesses a physical body. In this respect, the physical world has nothing to give us.

It can weigh heavily, very heavily, upon our souls—especially just at the present difficult time—to see a volume like the one by Ernst Haeckel, which has just appeared. He calls it “Thoughts of Eternity”. Now, Ernst Haeckel is one of the most distinguished men of our day. This book, “Thoughts of Eternity”, starts out with the present Great War. What is the chief content of this book? The chief content of this newest book by Haeckel, “Thoughts of Eternity”, is expressed in these words: What can this particular war teach us? Thousands and thousands of people die a death of external violence, without any necessity whatsoever. “Must we not see”—asks Haeckel—“in this very war, the proof for the fact that all thoughts on eternity and infinity are absurd? Does not this same war, which ruins men's lives through outer chance, such as a bullet, for example—does it not show us that there is nothing beyond ordinary physical life?”

Of course, there will be other people of our day, who will be led to a different kind of thinking about eternity, through these events—to quite the opposite kind of thoughts of eternity, to thoughts which, in any case, call up in us the feeling that those who pass through the portal of death in times such as these continue their tasks for humanity in other worlds, and that the very sacrifice which they make, partly constitutes, in their new life, the starting point for what they have to fulfil when they no longer carry a physical body.

It is possible to prove all sorts of things, through ordinary science: it is possible to prove, for instance, that ordinary science enables man to construct all sorts of excellent kinds of apparatus, which raise the standard of human life and advance human civilisation—in a peaceful sense. Yet this same science can also construct the most terrible things—for the destruction of human life. External science enables man to construct both good and destructive things, and to prove all sorts of facts.

In order really to penetrate into the world where the eternal lives, there is need for Spiritual Science. And this Spiritual Science—I have already spoken to you about this, at least to some of you—shows us, among other things, and makes it quite clear to us, that those who leave their physical body at an early age, before the ordinary span of life on the physical plane has elapsed, give over their etheric body to the etheric world, and continue to live as individualities. Then, the spirit and the sense of Spiritual Science show us that such an etheric body, which would still have been able to support a physical body for a long time, still contains vital forces, when it is handed over to the etheric world—forces which would have been able to keep the physical body alive for decades. It exists in the etheric world, as illustrated by the example I have already cited to you.

What a human being acquires, through his sacrificial death continues to live in his individuality. It continues to live in him, especially at a time like the present; and we are able to gain an insight into the significance of what is taking place only when we look at things with our spiritual eyes, through Spiritual Science. Then our attention will be drawn to the fact that the spiritual counterpart of what is now happening on European soil, as the spiritual correlation, the spiritual parallel process of the mighty and sorrowful events taking place on the physical plane, here in Europe—since all physical events are under the guidance of the spiritual world—must flow through physical events, into the future of human evolution.

But this will bear fruit only if human souls, living in physical bodies on the earth, acquire a consciousness of the fact that an active and helping influence is going out to them—from those forces which live in the spiritual world as the result of thousands and thousands of sacrificial deaths: and that they can submit themselves to this influence, in a sense, in order to be able to continue in the future their activity on this earth—united with the dead through that consciousness of the reality of a spiritual world, which can be acquired by the human soul.

This is what Spiritual Science must give to men—also in connection with these events now taking place. And human beings will then be able to render fruitful for the future, in the right way, the spiritual counterpart of this mightiest of all world-events, and they will be able also to think and to feel, in the right way.

From the courage of fighters,
from the blood of battles,
from the sorrow of those who are left behind,
from a nation's sacrifice,
will ripen spiritual fruit—
if, toward the spirit-kingdom,
souls will spirit-conscious turn.

Today we'll consider one of the greatest works in world literature, Dante's¹¹ Divine Comedy.¹² We have to understand that to gain even a little insight into this work we must go back to the 13th and 14th centuries. Goethe has Faust say:

The spirit of our times, as you will say,
is basically just the gentlemen's own mind
acting as mirror for the times.¹³

When someone wants to discuss a work written in earlier times he usually does so from his own point of view, finding in it the things that come from his own subjective feelings.

In the case of Dante's Divine Comedy we can see how hard it is to go back to the Middle Ages in one's mind. All kinds of interpretations are available, among them Cameri's translation into German.¹⁴ The introduction shows that Cameri was attempting something very difficult. He said the Divine Comedy was always spoiled for one because it was given theological interpretations. He himself had given it a purely human interpretation. Cameri was the ethic philosopher of Darwinism.¹⁵ Basing himself on Darwinism, he developed noble ethics which, however, were materialistic, with no awareness of spiritual powers in the world. The whole of his translation reflects a materialistic attitude. That is ‘the gentlemen's own mind acting as mirror for the times’.

But let us now really enter into the spirit of that past time. For once let us forget everything we have taken in from childhood and enter into those times. People both thought and felt very differently about things then. We have learned that the planets and the sun are one system and that this system is one of many. At school we learn that the sun is at the centre of this one system, with the planets orbiting around it. Abstract rational laws govern everything which is in orbit there, everything that lives and moves in the infinity of cosmic space around us. Anyone who thinks like that sees nothing but cosmic bodies orbiting in a vast empty space, cosmic bodies that have life forms on them.

The people who lived in Dante's time saw the world very differently. No one would then have thought of such abstract ideas. The earth was to them the centre of the whole world system. It was not only a solid planet, however, for within it were spirits that related to human beings. These were the powers that made man animal-like. They were at the centre of the earth. The different stages of ‘hell’, as it was called, were there. Dante described things that were wholly real to people in those days. He did not invent them. Anyone who thinks even for one moment that Dante believed it all to be mere superstition does not understand him. The idea people had at that time was that yonder, on the other side of the earth, the pull of gravity went in the opposite direction. In medieval times people thought of the forces that were in opposition to man, forces that removed him from everything there was by way of earthly gravity in mind and spirit. That was kama-loka, the purging fire.

Looking out from there into the starry heavens people had very different ideas then. The moon was not a mineral but the body of a spiritual entity and the abode of many spirits—a cosmic body. The spirits who lived there had gone through similar evolutional states as human beings, but had fallen deeper than man. Their vices were, however, of a more spiritual kind than the animal vices of humanity.

Mercury was also seen as a body encompassing a spirit. Just as we derive man from his innermost soul qualities, so did medieval people see the sun, the moon, mercury, venus, mars, jupiter and saturn as spiritual entities. People saw spirit everywhere then. The world was populated by spirits for them.

The Christ lived in the region of the fixed stars since he had left this world. Beyond the fixed stars was the empyrean, the tenth heaven, where the source of all being was. People thought the spirits which were not here on earth and in this body dwelt in some region or other beyond the earth. A warrior who had gone through death would have to be sought on Mars. Someone who had lived a contemplative life would be on Saturn. Those who had risen even higher had to be sought in the region of the fixed stars, where the Christ was after he died. Beyond this would be even higher spirits.

Dante wrote his Divine Comedy out of this way of thinking. Today people have simply no idea that people in his day still saw something of the spirit in everything material. For them, nothing was wholly physical and nothing purely spiritual. Interweaving matter and spirit was something entirely natural for them. If we enter into such a way of thinking we are alive to the feelings out of which the Divine Comedy was written. It is pointless to fight over whether Beatrice was just a symbol or Dante's lover. The two are not contradictory. Beatrice was a real person, and she also stood for all that is spirit. For someone not lead astray by learning she was the true personification of Theologia.

Let us consider the atmosphere in mind and spirit in which the work evolved. It gives sublime expression to 13th and 14th century strict Christian Catholicism, before the Church came to be divided. People like Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa,¹⁶ whose thinking was that of scholasticism. Dante was a student of scholasticism. He saw the world the way his teacher Thomas Aquinas did.¹⁷

What was the mission of Christianity? It was to create a new basic religious approach. Before that, a girdle of religious views spread around the whole world. Christianity brought a different basic approach to religion.

We have to go back a long way to enter into the basic tenor of Dante's work. About ten thousand years before the Christian era¹⁸ the vast continent known as Atlantis was gradually sinking. Theodor Arldt¹⁹ has given scientific proof of the existence of Atlantis in the journal Kosmos.²⁰ The Flood, as we call it, refers to that continent gradually becoming flooded. The ancestors of the people who now live in Europe and Asia lived on Atlantis. The mythologies of all these nations show profound similarities. German mythology speaks of Atlantis, calling it Niflheim, home of mists. A view of the world has come down through tradition that gives us the figure of Wotan, the ruler. Wotan is the same as Bodha or Buddha. And Veda and the Edda have the same linguistic origin, for example.

These views, which are, as it were, a sediment from the past, have something in common. Reincarnation was originally taken as a matter of course in all of them. Buddhism then spread among Mongol tribes, however, and not among Aryans. The Semitic element entered into the views of Aryan peoples, and reincarnation is unknown in this. The most sublime expression of this type of religion, which thinks in terms of one incarnation only, is Christianity. It is a characteristic feature of Christianity that it considers one incarnation only. This was not the case with esoteric Christian teachings, but the popular teaching did not include the idea of reincarnation. Ancient Judaism and Arabism knew nothing of reincarnation.

Knowing this, we have the basic tenor of Dante's magnificent work. It represents a vision beginning on Good Friday. That was the day to mark life's victory over death. People did not think of this in abstract terms. They would feel that the sun was given new powers of spring on Good Friday and at Easter. It rises, entering into the sign of the Ram or Lamb,²¹ letting the plant world come into active growth. The sun was considered to represent a particular spirit. People thought that the powers of spirit and soul related to the spirit of the sun body. And Good Friday night was felt to be the best time for the soul to enter the realm that lies beyond death.

Dante's work is a vision of the kind initiates know, something real in the world of the spirit. Dante was truly able to perceive the spiritual. He perceived the world of the spirit with spiritual senses. He gained his images as a strictly Catholic initiate. As he had his visions he brought into them the catholic world that had come alive in his organism, but he would see it in the spirit. People always see things of the spirit through the spectacles of personal experience. As the child's presence in the mother's womb relates to the physical level, so does one's presence in the world of the spirit relate to the things we know in the spirit here on earth. Our life on this earth is like a maternal womb in which we grow mature so that we may later arise in the spirit. The senses we have developed for things of the spirit depend on our life here on earth. Here we mature for the other world, preparing spiritual eyes and ears for the other world. Dante had thus developed his spiritual organs in the way made possible in a strictly Catholic world.

When we enter into the other form of existence we are able to perceive the things that are now inside us. They then become outwardly visible. We say that passions, instincts and drives are ours. When we have entered into the worlds of spirit, the contents of our soul organism become something that exists outside us, just like the objects we perceive around us in physical existence. The things that live in our souls become visible in symbolic form.

Dante wrote of three symbols representing three main qualities in his astral body, the body of drives or lower soul—a leopard, a lion, a she-wolf.²² His three main passions thus appeared to him in the form of three animals. This was no mere symbol, however. When man enters the astral level, his lower passions truly appear to him in the form of animals. The she-wolf represented one passion. This is the she-wolf who once suckled Romulus and Remus. It is the passion people adopted at the founding of the Roman nation, the passion which lives in everything connected with property—the desire to possess and on the other hand the right to have personal possessions. This passion was implanted in human beings at the time when the wolf suckled Romulus and Remus. Before this, humanity gained the power of courage, indicated by the lion, which can become lust for power. Even earlier came the increased cunning that developed from priestly rule—the leopard, the ability shown by Odysseus.²³ When Virgil²⁴ came to meet Dante he said: cannot make those animals go away, least of all the she-wolf? He said so because Dante had grown up in what remained of those old Roman passions in Italy. Virgil, who had given a picture of the initiation process in his Aeneid,²⁵ had to be Dante's guide. It was from the works of Virgil that people learned most about the other world in those days. They saw that world as having three levels—hell, purgatory and heaven.

There are only two consistent views of the world—that of Augustine²⁶ and that of reincarnation and karma. Augustine said: ‘Part of humanity on this earth is destined to be good and part to be evil’. According to the other view we develop through many incarnations. These are the only two possible views. Dante took Augustine's view, according to which human beings prepare here on earth for a destiny that will be eternal. Because of this, life on earth is immediately followed by hell, purgatory or heaven. The one life was all that counted. The person was all that was considered.

If we go beyond the person we are beyond birth and death. The principle that enters at birth and departs again at death goes beyond the personal. It is the individual. Anything the individual has done wrong must be compensated for in a next life. If we take away reincarnation and karma, everything has to be compensated in a single life. If one looks for retribution for everything concerning one person, a counter image of the personal is created and that is hell. Hell is nothing but being utterly caught up in the personal. The counter image of the personal in this world is hell in the other world. The personal must not be caught up in this world to such an extent that it beautifies existence. Christianity brought the view that everything depends on the one life between birth and death. The earth world had therefore to be made into a vale of sorrows, and people had to be told to let go of earthly things. Art on the other hand was a pagan element that made people be caught up in the personal aspect. The artists of old sought to make this earthly realm beautiful. Someone who sees only the personal element will say: ‘This personal aspect must do away with all that is beautiful. The earth must be made less beautiful, the person must be torn away from all that belongs to this world.’ It was therefore perfectly logical for Homer and all the poets of antiquity to appear to Dante in hell.²⁷

Dante gave a true picture of avaricious and prodigal people on the astral level.²⁸ There people see their own passions in mirror images. On the astral level an avaricious person will see what he has done with his avarice in the image of a prodigal. The prodigal will see his attributes in the counter image of an avaricious person.

In the city of Dis, Epicurus represents the approach to life that aims to expand and develop this world.²⁹ The city of Dis stands for physical reality. There people are in coffins. The materialists are living dead. They have been saying that man is but a corpse. As dead souls they now have to lie in coffins.

From hell Dante is taken into purgatory. Princes who neglected their soul's salvation over affairs of state also need to be purified in the fire.³⁰ The strictly Catholic view is that the personality must be developed. Princes who have not done so must therefore languish in the fire.

The next region between purgatory and heaven Dante enters is the Garden of Eden.³¹ Here we are introduced to the truly Christian view, which is that the origin of the Church rests in the realm of the spirit. Anyone wishing to understand the medieval view of the ideal Church must organize himself in a higher way so that he may see its original image in the other world.³² Dante used the views of the heavenly hierarchies held by Dionysius the Areopagite³³ for this. Dionysius wrote of a ranking order of angels, archangels, principalities, powers, virtues, dominations, thrones, cherubim, seraphim. The ranks in the temporal hierarchy of the Church were meant to reflect those heavenly hierarchies. Dante wrote of the hierarchies in symbolic form in the Garden of Eden.

Then Beatrice took on the role of guide.³⁴ We distinguish between a female element in the soul, which is inner soul nature, and a male element, which is the spiritual principle in the universe that impregnates the soul. The female soul draws us upwards. Medieval alchemists called the female aspect of the human being the ‘Lilium’.³⁵ This is also why Goethe spoke of the ‘beautiful Lily’ in his Tale.³⁶ In the Dantean way of thinking Beatrice represents the edifice of scholastic theology.

Spirits of the moon who had broken their spiritual vows were first of all brought before Beatrice.³⁷ They had broken their vow to serve only the spiritual and had fallen back into sensuality. In ancient Greek theosophy Mercury³⁸ was still the spirit who had a role to play when the ancient Atlanteans advanced to a concept of the I. The earliest Atlanteans were not yet conscious of the I. The personal comes under the sign of the god Mercury, Hermes. Man came to the personal level when he fell into I-nature, egotism. This also made us into people who want to have possessions and is the reason why Mercury was also the god of merchants.

On Jupiter Dante found the princes who exercised justice.³⁹ Something very important occurred on the sun.⁴⁰ Dante was shown the true nature of eternity on the sun; how to see the day known as the Day of Judgement. The Day of Judgement changes everything. Two people made their appearance—Thomas Aquinas and King Solomon. Thomas Aquinas represented life in terms of Christianity, of the New Testament, and King Solomon was the teacher of the Old Testament.

Christians saw the priesthood as a physical expression of what the Christ meant to them in spiritual development. After life on earth the Christ had gone away and was now triumphant in the fixed star heaven. Someone who has prepared his spiritual embryo here on earth so that he has spiritual vision is able to see the Christ in the fixed-star heaven. The disciple who had been most profoundly initiated, John, appeared as the teacher of this view.⁴¹ Only the Christ and Mary were able to take their bodies up into the fixed star heaven. A master also has his body fully in hand. Just as people are learning to master their passions with moral ideas in our present civilization, so does someone who has reached a higher level truly learn to control the physical body. Jesus and Mary had hallowed their physical body to such a degree that they were able to take it with them to the highest regions.

Then St Bernard⁴² became the guide for the higher regions where God is beheld and one enters wholly into the divine self. There Dante went beyond the teachings of the Church. He saw the three cycles, the threefold original essence of the world, father, son and spirit. They are called Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva in Indian religion. Here the trinitarian nature of the universe became apparent, with Dante rising to pure vision in the spirit, to contemplation.

In the end we are shown how we live, move and are in God but must not presume to understand God.⁴³ In the end, Dante only wrote of growing certainty in the human ability to recognize God. For him, this work was the drama of the world seen from the other side.

• 11. Dante Alighieri (1265–1321).
• 12. Rudolf Steiner was here considering the fundamental aspect of La Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy. He spoke of this in a very different style in the lecture given to the workers at the Goetheanum on 14 March 1923, published in GA 349, Vom Leben des Menschen und der Erde. Über das Wesen des Christentums (in process of publication). The influence of Brunetto Latini was discussed in a lecture given in Dornach on 30 Jan. 1915, published in GA 161, Wege der geistigen Erkenntnis und der Erneuerung künstlerischer Weltanschauung (not yet translated) and a number of lectures given in 1924, especially in Dornach on 10 Sept. 1924, published in translation as Karmic Relationships vol. 4 (in GA 238). 10 lectures, Dornach 5-23 Sept. 1924. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1957. For the translation of this lecture I have followed the terminology used in Dante Aleghieri, The Divine Comedy, text with translation by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth. Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1981. Translator.
• 13. Faust I, 577-578.
• 14. Cameri, B. Sechs Gesänge ausDantes Göttlicher Komödie, in German, with an introduction on Dante's use of alliteration. Vienna 1896.
• 15. Sir Bartholomaeus Cameri (1821–1909). See essay ‘Bartholomaeus Cameri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus’ (not translated) in GA 30, also in Steiner R. The Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Tr. F. C. A. Köllin. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 16. Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464). See Steiner R. Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Age (GA 7). Tr. K. E. Zimmer. Blauvelt: Steinerbooks 1980. Also Steiner R. The Origins of Natural Science (GA 326). Tr. M. St Goar, N. Macbeth. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1985.
• 17. Aquinas, Thomas (1225–1274). In his teachings high scholasticism reached its pinnacle. Rudolf Steiner spoke about him at Whitsun 1920 in Dornach (see The Redemption of Thinking. A study in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas (GA 74). Tr. A. P. Shepherd, M. R Nicoll. London: Hodder and Stoughton 1956.) Concerning his relationship to Aristotle, see lecture given in Munich on 20 March 1908 (in GA 108, not available in English).
• 18. The first German edition said ‘thirty thousand years’. It is doubtful, however, if the figure was written down correctly. See Steiner R. Occult History (GA 126) lecture of 31 Dec. 1910. Tr. D. S. Osmond, C. Davy. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1957.2nd edn Rudolf Steiner Press 1982.
• 19. Arldt, Theodor, b. 1878, palaeontologist and palaeogeographer.
• 20. Das Atlantisproblem. Kosmos 1905; 2: Nr. 10.
• 21. Dante's Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,38f The general view held at the time was that the sun was in the Ram when god made the heavenly bodies move in orbits. Thus be the day when Dante set out on his journey would have been the first day of spring. (Comment on 1,38 in W. v. Wartburg's German translation). The German translation has ‘panther’ instead of ‘leopard’ (translator).
• 22. In Roman mythology, the twin brothers Romulus and Remus, sons of Mars, who later founded Rome were suckled and reared by a wolf.
• 23. Odysseus or Ulysses, in Greek mythology king of Ithaca. Homer spoke of him in his Odyssey as being cunning and wise.
• 24. Divine Comedy, Inferno 1,94 f. Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70–19 BC). Roman poet highly esteemed in the Middle Ages.
• 25. Virgi's Aeneid, a great epic about the role ofRome in ancient history, speaks of the wanderings of Aeneas after the sack ofTroy before he finally settled in Italy.
• 26. Augustine (354–430), greatest of the Latin church fathers. He taught that because of Adam's fall into sin humanity was incapable of goodness (original sin), with individual people chosen for eternal salvation by an act of grace (predestination). See Steiner R. Christianity as Mystical Fact and The Mysteries of Antiquity (GA 8) chapter on Augustine and the Church. Tr. H. Collison, rev. C. Davy, A. Bittleston. Bristol: Rudolf Steiner Press 1992.
• 27. Divine Comedy, Inferno 4, 25 f
• 28. Inferno 7.
• 29. Inferno 10.
• 30. Purgatorio 7, 64 f.
• 31. Purgatorio 27, 124 f; 28 f.
• 32. Purgatorio 29 f.
• 33. Dionysius the Areopagite, member of the Areopagus, the highest judicial and legislative council in ancient Athens, converted to Christianity by Paul (Acts 17:34). The works published in his name in the 6th century were much venerated by scholastics and mystics and translated from Greek to Latin by Johannes Scotus Erigena in the 9th century. They include the treatises On Divine Names, On Mystical Theology, On the Heavenly and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies, and 10 epistles. See also Steiner R. The Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World (GA 110) lecture given in Düsseldorf on 12 April 1909. Tr. R. Querido. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1983.
• 34. Purgatorio 30.
• 35. Purgatorio 30, 21.
• 36. Goethe's Tale (of the green serpent and the beautiful Lily) first appeared in the literary magazine Horen in 1795, concluding the story ‘Conversations of German emigrants’. See Allen PM, Allen J deRis, The Time is at Hand! Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press 1995., and Steiner R. Goethe's Standard of the Soul. As illustrated in the Fairy Story of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily (GA 22). Tr. D. S. Osmond. London: Anthroposophical Publishing Co. 1925.
• 37. Paradiso 3.
• 38. Paradiso 5,91 - VII.
• 39. Paradiso 18, 70 f.
• 40. Paradiso 10-14.
• 41. Paradiso 26, 1-69; 31, 58 f
• 42. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). See Steiner R. A Sound Outlook for Today and a Genuine Hope for the Future. Lecture given in Berlin on 16 July 1918. Typescript translation C 50, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London: ‘Perhaps the most significant figure in the 12th century.’
• 43. Paradiso 33, 124 to the end.

There are some occult and spiritual-scientific truths I want to consider in connection with Richard Wagner's Parsifal.¹⁸⁵A strange, deep link exists between the phenomenon of the great artist Richard Wagner and the spiritual movement called Theosophy today. People are gradually beginning to realize that Richard Wagner and his works represent a great sum of occult power. But something else will also emerge in future, and that is that there is much more to the Richard Wagner phenomenon than he himself could possibly know. It is a mystery connected with many important figures, particularly artists, that a power lives in them of which they themselves have no knowledge.

If on the one hand we understand that there was much more to Richard Wagner than he himself was aware of, we must not forget, on the other hand, that he was not able to reach the ultimate level of wisdom, and that Richard Wagner's art therefore shows itself in quite a peculiar light to the occultist. When it comes to his works, one has to say to oneself that there is much more to them, something mysterious which lies behind it all.

It is indeed interesting to see the deeper currents in the background. Richard Strauss¹⁸⁶ said on one occasion that it was possible to see much more in Richard Wagner than people usually do. He put it more or less like this: ‘People who insist one should not look beyond Richard Wagner's work seem to me to be like people who also do not want to go beyond the flower they see. They will never know the secret of the flower. And is much the same with people who cannot think of anything further in the case of a great artist.’

Richard Wagner tackled subjects of tremendous significance. You keep finding names in his works that relate to very ancient sacred traditions. In Parsifal he achieved something that is closely bound up with the power that had such a strange influence in the last third of the 19th century.

To understand his figures and themes we must first cast an eye on profound secrets of human evolution, going back a few thousand years in history. All his life Richard Wagner made profound studies of human affairs and the secret of the human soul. In his youth he sought to explore the secret of reincarnation. The draft of a play he was working on in 1856 shows this. It was called The Victors.¹⁸⁷ Wagner stopped work on it later on, for he could not find a musical solution to the problem of the ‘victors’. A dramatic solution would have been perfectly possible. The story of the play was as follows. A young man in far distance India, Ananda by name, a Brahmin by caste, was loved by a girl called Prakriti who belonged to the lowest caste. Ananda became a pupil of the Buddha. He did not return Prakriti's love, which cast her into deep sorrow. Ananda withdrew from the world to dedicate himself to the religious life. A Brahman then told the girl why her fate was the way it was. In an earlier life she, a member of the Brahman caste, had rejected the love of this same young man, who was then of the lowest caste. Hearing this she, too, turned to the Buddha, and both of them were then pupils of the same teacher.

Wagner had intended to work on this theme in 1856. A year later the subject he had failed to deal with came to him in another way. He conceived the great idea of his Parsifal in 1857. It is a strange story of how the whole mystery of Parsifal came to Richard Wagner at one particular moment.¹⁸⁸ It was on Good Friday 1857 in the Wesendonk Villa on the Lake of Zurich. He saw nature outside growing, shooting and sprouting. And at that moment he understood the connection between nature coming to new life and Christ's death on the cross. That is the secret of the holy grail. From that moment, Richard Wagner lived with the idea of presenting the secret of the holy grail to the world in music.

To understand this unusual experience we must go back a few thousand years in history. Richard Wagner put down his beautiful thoughts on human evolution in writing under the title ‘Heroism and Christianity’.¹⁸⁹ Let us first of all consider the kind of teaching given in occult societies in the 16th or 17th century. There have been mystery centres at all times. The knowledge taught there was at the same time religion, a religion that was also wisdom. It is not possible to really understand the mysteries unless one understands that there is a world of the spirit.

The different realms of nature lie spread out around us—minerals, plants, animals and human beings. We consider the human realm to be the highest of the four. Just as there are realms around man that are lower than he is, so there are higher spirits above him, at many levels. The different levels of spirits that are above man have always been called ‘gods’. Wisdom was taught in the mystery centres in a way that made human beings able to commune with the gods at a conscious level. Such people would always and wherever mystery centres existed be called ‘initiates’. They were not merely given words of wisdom but experienced realities within those mysteries. Today's mystery centres are of a different kind than those of antiquity and medieval times.

An important mystery centre existed in a region of northern Spain at the time when the crusades began and a little before that. The mysteries of those times were called ‘late Gothic mysteries’. Their initiates were called Tempelisen or Tempeleisen or Knights of the Holy Grail. Lohengrin was one of them. The community of these Knights of the Grail was rather different from another knightly community. This had its seat in Britain, in Wales. All the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table have to do with this other initiate community.

In very early times, long before Christianity, a large population moved from west to east on this earth. This was a very long time ago. There was a time when Atlantis existed in a region that is now part of the Atlantic Ocean. Our far distant ancestors, the Atlanteans, lived there. The whole population of Europe and Asia, all the way to India, were descendants of the Atlanteans. Conditions of life on Atlantis were very different from those in which people lived later on. Atlanteans lived in a completely hierarchic system guided by such initiates. All government and rule came from the initiates in those times. One famous initiate school was in the north of present-day Russia. Its initiates were called trotts. Other schools were in western Europe, their initiates known as druids. All social institutions to control the masses of humanity came from these initiates.

Let us take a look at those very early schools. What kind of secret was taught in them? It is only the form of the teaching that changes with time. It is truly remarkable that the mystery which Richard Wagner experienced inwardly was taken to its highest development in those schools. It is the connection between nature coming alive in spring and the mystery of the cross.

The first thing pupils had to understand was that all power of bringing forth that lies outside the animal and human realms may also be seen in the plant world. In spring, the divine power of creation sprouts forth from Mother Earth. It had to be understood that there is a connection between the power that comes forth when the earth covers itself with a green carpet and the power of divine creation. The pupils would be told: ‘Out there you see a power in the flowers as they open that condenses in the seed. Countless seeds will come from the chalice of the flower, and put in the soil they will bring forth something new. One can now feel with the whole of one's being that the events that happen out there in nature are nothing else but the processes that also happen in the human and animal worlds, but in the plant this happens without desire and is wholly chaste.’

The infinite innocence and chastity slumbering in the flower chalices of plants had to live in the hearts of the pupils. They were then told: ‘The sunbeam opens the flowers. It brings forth the power from those flowers. Two things come together—the opening flower and the sunbeam. Other realms—the animal and human worlds—are between the plant world and the divine realm. All these realms are only the transition from the plant world to the divine realm. In the divine realm we see once again a realm of innocence and chastity, as in the plant world. In the animal and human worlds we see a realm of desire.’

And then the teachers would speak of the future: ‘The time will come when all lusts and desires shall vanish. Then the chalice will open from up above, just as the chalice of a flower opens, and it will look down on the human being. Just as the sunbeam enters into the plant, so will man's own purified power unite with this divine chalice.’

We can invert the flower chalice in our minds, letting it bend down from above, from heaven, and we can invert the sunbeam, so that it rises from the human being to the heavens. This inverted flower chalice was shown to be a reality in the mysteries and called the holy grail. The real chalice of a plant is the inverted holy grail. Everyone who gains occult knowledge comes to know that the sunbeam represents something known as the ‘magic wand’. The magic wand is a superstitious version of a symbol that represents a spiritual reality. In the mysteries this magic wand was known as the bloodstained lance. We are shown the origin of the grail on the one hand and of the blood-stained lance on the other, the original magic wand known to true occultists.

I am just touching on things of great profundity, significant truths that took place in that belt in northern and western Europe. Richard Wagner sensed a great deal of all this, as did his friend the Comte de Gobineau,¹⁹⁰ a deep thinker.

To say what lies at the base of the mysteries of which I have been speaking, it was knowledge of the fluid that streams in animal and human veins. Quite rightly, Goethe wrote ‘Blood is a sap of very special kind’ in his Faust.¹⁹¹ Many things are connected with the blood. We shall understand what blood signifies if we grasp and understand the tremendous revolution that has occurred in the mysteries. In earlier times, it was known among the European people that important things depend on the way people are related by blood. Because of this, progress and development was never left to chance in those times. All these things were arranged out of occult wisdom. It was known that if the development of small tribal communities was limited to that community, with no one coming in from outside, individuals born within that community would have special powers. The consequences of letting different kinds of blood come together were known in the mysteries. They also knew exactly which tribe was right for a particular area. They knew that common blood was the source of specific human powers.

When the ancient bonds of blood relationship were broken, something also happened in the mysteries. Purposes which before had been achieved by means of blood relationship were now replaced with two specific spiritual preparations in the great mysteries. The lesser mysteries had the outward symbols of these—bread and wine. The two preparations were substances which had an effect in the spirit that was similar to the physical effect of the blood in our veins. When the ancient clairvoyance had gone, these two preparations took its place. Having learned all of theosophical wisdom, initiates would then be given these symbols from the chalice of Ceridwen.¹⁹² The purified blood could then be given to human beings from the chalice opening up from above. This is the true mystery, which at the time remained with a very small body of people.

In other parts of Europe the mysteries fell into decline and were then made profane in a disgusting, repulsive manner. Their symbol of the offering was a dish in which a bleeding head was placed. It was thought that something might be aroused in a human being on seeing this head. It was black magic that was being performed, the opposite of the mystery of the holy grail.

It was known at that time that the element which streams upwards in the chalice of the flower also lived in the human blood. It had to become pure and chaste again, like the sap of a flower. In the degenerate mysteries this was given a crude, materialistic form. In the north, people needed the sublimated blood as a symbol, and in the Eleusinian Mysteries the wine of Dionysus and the bread of Demeter. The cup of the grail made into something abhorrent, with the bleeding head, may be found again in the story of Herodias and the head of John. She was laughing at the mystery made profane.

The true secret of the great mysteries went to the Tempeleisen in northern Spain, guardians of the Grail. King Arthur's knights were more concerned with worldly affairs, but it was possible to prepare the Tempeleisen to receive an even more sublime secret, the great secret of Golgotha, the mystery of world history.

Christianity had its origin in the most mixed of nations, the Galileans, who were wholly alien to and outside all blood community. The redeemer founded his kingdom entirely outside the old blood community, beyond all blood bonds. The sublimated blood, purified blood, sprouts from the sacrificial death, the purification process. The blood that gives rise to wishes and desires must flow, it has to be sacrificed, it must run.

The sacred vessel with the purified blood was taken to Spain, to the Tempeleisen on Montsalvatch. Titurel, the ancestor, received the grail; before, it had been longed for. Now the overcoming of the blood had happened. The purely physical nature of the blood had been overcome by the spirit.

You can only understand what happened on Golgotha if, unlike a materialist, you know blood to be composed not only of material elements. It is indeed highly remarkable that Richard Wagner was only able to find the sacred mood for his Parsifal because he knew that it was not only a matter of the Redeemer's death but of the blood which had been purified and was a little bit different from ordinary blood. He himself spoke of the connection between the Redeemer's blood and the whole of humanity: ‘Having seen that the blood of what is known as the “white race” had a special capacity for conscious suffering and pain, we must now recognize the saviour's blood as the essence of suffering consciously willed, divine compassion that flows for the whole human race as its source and origin.’¹⁹³

Richard Wagner also wrote: ‘The blood in the redeemer's veins must thus have flowed forth as the result of the utmost endeavour of the will, a divine sublimate of the human race itself to save that race which in its noblest parts was falling into decline.’

It was because the redeemer had come from the greatest mix of nations that his blood was the sublimate of all human blood, human blood in its purified form.

Richard Wagner approached the great original mystery in a way hardly anyone else had dared to do. It is the very vigour he brought to this that made him a great artist. He should not be taken for an ordinary musician but someone with profound insight who sought to recreate the deep secrets of the holy grail for modern humanity. Before Richard Wagner wrote his Parsifal, people in Germany knew little about the mysteries and the figures which Richard Wagner then presented.

The initiation into the mysteries was in three stages, through which the individual had to go. The first stage was known as ‘dumbness’, the second ‘doubt’, the third ‘godliness’. In the first stage the human being would be taken away from all prejudice in the world, and told of the power in his own soul, his own power of love, so that he might see the inner light shine out. The second stage was that of doubt. This state of doubting everything came at the second stage of initiation. At a higher level it was then elevated to become inner godliness. In this third stage the initiand was guided to be consciously with the gods.

Perceval—pass through the vale—that was the name given to such initiands in medieval times.¹⁹⁴ Parsifal had to learn all this from experience. Richard Wagner's strange genius made him feel this on that Good Friday in 1857, feel the thread that had to run through the whole of Parsifal's development.

The Tempeleisen represented the inner, the true Christianity as against the Christianity of the Churches. It is evident everywhere in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal that he wanted to show the spirit of that inner Christianity side by side with the Christianity of the Churches.

Remnants of the old profaned mysteries still existed in the Middle Ages. Everything that comes under this heading was epitomized in the name Klingsor. He was the black magician, in opposition to the white magic of the holy grail. Richard Wagner also showed him in opposition to the Tempeleisen.

Kundry is Herodias brought back to life. She symbolizes the power that brings forth nature, a power that can be both chaste and unchaste, but without direction. Chastity and lack of chastity have the same root, and it is a matter of ‘as the question, so the answer’. The productive power that shows itself in the flower chalice of the plant, going up through the other realms, is the same as in the Holy Grail. It merely has to go through purification in the purest, noblest form of Christianity, as we see it in Parsifal.

Kundry had to remain a black magician until Parsifal redeemed her. The whole confrontation between Parsifal and Kundry has the odour of the most profound wisdom. More than anyone else, Richard Wagner made it possible for people to take this in without knowing it. Richard Wagner was a missionary whose mission it was to give something full of significance to the world, without humanity being aware of this truth.

Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote his Parzifal as a plain and simple epic. That was sufficient in his day. People who had some degree of clairvoyance at that time understood Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the 19th century it was not possible to show the profound significance of the process in dramatic form. But there is a way of helping people's understanding without words, without concepts or ideas. This is through music. Wagner's music holds all the truths contained in Parsifal. The strange music written by Wagner would create quite specific vibrations in the ether bodies of those who listened to it. The ether body is connected with all the profound motions of the blood. Richard Wagner understood the secret of the purified blood. His melodies hold the vibrations that have to be in the human ether body when it becomes purified in the way that is necessary so that the secret of the grail may be received.

The strange way in which Richard Wagner was writing his books can only be understood if one goes into the realities that were behind Wagner. He knew very well that the human will receives a very special illumination from the spirit. He wrote that initially the will was a crude, instinctive element, but it gradually came to be refined. The intellect casts its light on the will and the human being becomes aware of pain and suffering, and this leads to purification. Referring to the ideas of his friend the Comte de Gobineau he wrote: "One cannot fail but realize the unity of the human race when reviewing its parts, and we are justified in saying that at its noblest it is the capacity of bearing pain and suffering in full awareness. In the light of this we ask where the outstanding nature of the white race lies, since we certainly must put it high above the others. With beautiful certainty, Gobineau perceives it to lie not in any exceptional development of its moral quality as such, but in a greater store of the fundamental characteristics from which those qualities arise. It would have to be sought in the fiercer yet also more delicate sensitivity of the will which reveals itself in a rich organization, in conjunction with the more astute intellect this requires; it will then be a matter of whether the intellect, under the impulses of a will that has great need, advances to clairvoyance, casting its own light back on to the will, and in this case subjugate it to become moral drive?

Richard Wagner was here speaking of the actual process in which the intellect casts its reflection on the will, and the human being become clairvoyant in the process.

Richard Wagner's work was to give religious depth to art and ultimately profound understanding of Christianity. He knew that Christianity was best presented through music. By rising to the inmost secrets of the world order we will on the one hand gain knowledge, but on the other also true godliness. There is a way of human development that teaches us the significance of this fact relating to Christianity.

• 185. See Rudolf Steiner's lectures given in Berlin on Richard Wagner and mysticism (in German, in GA 55) and on 22 and 19 March 1906 (in German, in GA 54).
• 186. Strauss, Richard (1864–1949). See Thomas, W. Richard Strauss und seine Zeitgenossen S. 46, 72, 75; München 1964.
• 187. Die Sieger. Entwurf, Zurich, Mai 1956, in Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen Band 11, Leipzig 1911. Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk from Paris in early August 1960: 'Only deep-thinking assumption of the transmigration of souls showed me the comforting point where everything finally comes together at one level of redemption, when the different lives lived, running separately but side by side in time have touched one another in understanding. According to the beautiful Buddhist belief the simple explanation of the absolute purity of Lohengrin is that he is a continuation of Parsifal who fought to gain his purity. In the same way Elsa would be at Lohengrin's level when reborn. The scheme for my Sieger has just presented itself to my mind as the final conclusion of Lohengrin. Here Savitri (Elsa) is wholly at Ananda's level. All the terrible tragedy of life would thus lie merely in the separateness of time and space. These, however, live only in our minds and have no reality beyond them. Someone with perfect clairvoyance would thus be able to explain even the greatest most tragic pain as mere error on the part of the individual. I believe this to be so. And in all truth it is wholly a matter of the pure and noble, which in itself is painless? Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk. Tagebuchblätter und Briefe 1853–1871. 36. Auflage S. 242. Berlin 1909.
• 188. ‘Lovely spring weather came; on Good Friday I woke up for the first time in this house to full sunshine. The small garden had grown green, the birds were singing, and I was finally able to sit on the parapet of the little house and enjoy the much longed-for quiet that held such promise. With my heart full of this, I suddenly said to myself that it was Good Friday and recalled the significance this reminder had held for me once before, in Wolfram's Parsifal. I had never taken the poem up again since that time in Marienbad when I developed the ideas for Meistersinger and Lohengrin. Now its ideal content came to me overwhelmingly, and with the Good Friday idea in mind I rapidly produced the outline for a whole dramatic piece, in three acts, and immediately made a few quick notes of it.' Wagner R. Mein Leben III. Band S. 133f Miünchen 1915.
• 189. Wagner R. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen in 10 Banden, hersg. W. Golther. 10. Bd S. 275ff: ‘Ausfiihrungen zu Religion und Kunsf, 2. 'Heldentum und Christentum’. Leipzig o. J.
• 190. Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de (1816–82), considered the 'intellectual father, of Nietzsche and the actual inventor of ‘super-man’ and ‘supermorality’. His Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, 4 vols, was published in 1853–55; translated in 1915 and published in English as The Inequality of Human Races.
• 191. Faust 1, verse 1740.
• 192. Ch. W. Heckethom wrote in Geheime Gesellschqften, Geheimbilnde und Geheimlehren S. 60 (Leipzig 1900): Druid culture encompassed all religious and philosophical study known in those lands at the time. The principal deities may be said to have been male and female, the great father and the great mother Hu and Ceridwen, in every respect the same as Osiris and Isis or Bacchus and Ceres, etc. See Rudolf Steiner's public lecture given in Berlin on 6 May 1909, ‘The European mysteries and their initiates’ (GA 57) (Anthroposophical Quarterly 1964: 9:1).
• 193. See ref. 189, 10. Bd S. 282.
• 194. Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170–1220) interpreted the name he gave to the hero of his epic poem V. 140.16 f. in this way.