The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] Let now fix our attention upon pure experience. In what does this consist when it comes into our consciousness, not elaborated by our thinking? It is merely juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of nothing but unrelated single entities. No one of the objects which there come and go has anything to do with any other. At this stage, the facts of which we become aware, and which mingle with our inner life, are absolutely without bearing one upon another.

[ 2 ] There the world is a multiplicity of things of uniform importance. No thing, no occurrence, can lay claim to any greater function in the fabric of the world than any other constituent in the realm of experience. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact possesses greater significance than another, we must not merely observe things but arrange them in thought-relationships. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which may not have the least significance in its organic functioning, possesses just as much value for our experience as the most important organ of the animal's body. That distinction between greater and lesser importance does not become apparent to us till we think back over the relationships of the individual constituents; that is, until we work over our experience.

[ 3 ] For our experience the snail, which belongs to a lower stage in organization, is of equal value with the most highly evolved animal. The distinctions between degrees of perfection in organization become evident to us only when we lay hold conceptually upon the multiplicity given to us in experience, and work it through. From this point of view, likewise, the culture of the Eskimo and that of the educated European are of equal value; Caesar's significance in the history of human evolution appears to mere experience no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe stands no higher than Gottsched so long as we are considering mere experiential actualities.

[ 4 ] At this stage of observation, the world appears to our minds as an absolutely flat surface. No part of this surface rises above any other; none reveals to our minds any distinction as compared with others. Only when the spark of thinking strikes this surface do there come to light elevations and depressions; one thing appears more or less lifted above the other, all takes on a certain sort of form, lines run out from one form to another; the whole becomes a self-sufficient harmony.

[ 5 ] The illustrations we have chosen seem to us to show with sufficient clearness what we mean in speaking of the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here considered as identical with the things of experience): what we mean by that knowledge which first comes into existence when we observe these objects in their interrelationship. These illustrations, we believe, insure us against the objection that the realm of our experience already reveals endless distinctions among its objects before thinking appears on the field: that a red surface, for instance, is different from a green surface even without any activity of thought. That is true. But any one who would bring this argument to bear against us has entirely misconstrued our assertion. This is just what we maintain: that what is presented to us by experience is an endless mass of single entities. These single entities must naturally be different one from another; otherwise they would not appear to us as an endless unrelated multiplicity. We do not refer to an indistinguishableness among the things perceived, but to the absolute want of meaning in the single facts of the senses for the totality of our image of reality. It is just because we recognize this endless qualitative difference that we are driven to the conclusion indicated.

[ 6 ] If we were met by a unity, well defined, composed of harmoniously ordered constituents, we could not speak of the lack of distinction in significance among the constituents in relation to one another.

[ 7 ] Whoever for such a reason considers the comparison we have used inapplicable must have failed to take hold of it at the real point of similarity. It would certainly be fallacious if we should compare the perceptual world, with its endlessly varied forms, to the uniform monotony of a surface. But our surface was not intended to resemble the manifold world of phenomena, but the unified total image that we have of this world so long as thinking has not come in contact with it. After the action of thought, each single entity in this total image appears, not as it was mediated by mere experience, but with the significance which it bears in relation to the whole of reality. At the same time, each appears with characteristics which were wholly wanting in its experiential form.

[ 8 ] According to our conviction, Johannes Volkelt has been remarkably successful in delineating within clear outlines that which we are justified in designating as pure experience. Five years ago [1881] this was strikingly described in his book Kants Erkenntnistheorie;⁵ and in his latest publication, Erfahrung und Denken,⁶ he has pursued the subject still further. He has done this, to be sure, in support of a point of view fundamentally different from ours and a purpose unlike that of the present book. But this need not hinder us from setting down here his remarkable characterization of pure experience. This description simply shows us the images which pass before our consciousness in a brief period in a manner utterly void of interrelationships. Volkelt says:⁷ “For example, my consciousness now has as its content the impression that I have worked diligently to-day; immediately thereto is linked the impression that I can with a clear conscience take a walk; again there suddenly appears the perceptual image of the door opening and the postman entering; the image of the postman soon appears with out-stretched hand, then with mouth opening, then doing the opposite; at the same time there blend with the perceptual content of the opening mouth all sorts of impressions of hearing—among others, that of rain beginning outside. The image of the postman vanishes from my consciousness and the impressions which now enter have as their content, one by one: grasping the scissors, opening the letters, a critical feeling at illegible writing, visual images of the most varied written symbols, and, united with these, manifold imaginative images and thoughts; scarcely is this series at an end when there reappears the impression of having worked diligently and—accompanied by depression—the consciousness of the continuing rain; then both of these vanish from my consciousness and there emerges an impression whose content is that a difficulty supposed to have been overcome in to-day's work has not been overcome; accompanying this there enter the impressions: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, the value of virtue, incomprehensibility, etc., and these unite with one another in the most varied and complicated ways—and so it continues.”

[ 9 ] Here is described for us, with regard to a certain limited space of time, what we really experience, that form of reality in which thinking has no participation.

[ 10 ] It need not be supposed that a different result would have been attained if, instead of this every-day experience, we had described what occurs in a piece of scientific research or in an unusual natural phenomenon. In these cases as in that, what passes before consciousness consists of unrelated images. Thinking for the first time institutes interrelationship.

[ 11 ] We must also attribute to the pamphlet of Dr. Richard Wahle, Gehirn und Bewusstsein⁸ (Vienna 1884), the service of having indicated in clear contours that which is given to us by experience void of any element of thought, only we must make the reservation that what Wahle describes as characteristics pertaining without restriction to the phenomena of the outer and the inner world holds good only for the first stage of our observation of the world, that stage which we have described. According to Wahle, we know only a juxtaposition in space and succession in time. There can be, according to him, no talk of a relationship between the things appearing beside one another or after one another. For example, there may be somewhere and somehow an inner relationship between the warm sunbeam and the warming of the stone, but we know nothing of a causal relationship; to us the only thing that is clear is that the second fact comes after the first. There may likewise be somewhere, in a world inaccessible to us, an inner relationship between our brain-mechanism and our mental activity; but we know only that the two are occurrences running in parallel lines; we are not at all justified, for example, in assuming a causal relationship between the two.

[ 12 ] Of course, when Wahle sets forth this assertion as the ultimate truth of science, we must oppose this extension of the assertion; but it is entirely correct as applied to the first form in which we become aware of reality.

[ 13 ] Not only are the things of the outer world and the processes of the inner void of interrelationship at this stage of our knowledge, but even our own personality is an isolated unit in comparison with the rest of the world. We perceive ourselves as one of the numberless percepts without relationship to the objects which surround us.

• 5. Johannes Volkelt: Immanuel Kants Erkenntnistheorie (Kant's Theory of Knowledge), Leipzig, 1879.
• 6. Johannes Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken. Kritische Grundlegung der Erkenntnistheorie (Experience and Thought), Hamburg and Leipzig, 1886.
• 7. Kants Erkenntnistheorie, p. 168 f.
• 8. Brain and Consciousness

[ 1 ] Let us now take a look at pure experience. What does it contain, as it sweeps across our consciousness, without our working upon it in thinking? It is mere juxtaposition in space and succession in time; an aggregate of utterly disconnected particulars. None of the objects that come and go there has anything to do with any other. At this stage, the facts that we perceive, that we experience inwardly, are of no consequence to each other.

[ 2 ] This world is a manifoldness of things of equal value. No thing or event can claim to play a greater role in the functioning of the world than any other part of the world of experience. If it is to become clear to us that this or that fact has greater significance than another one, we must then not merely observe the things, but must already bring them into thought-relationships. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which perhaps does not have the least importance for its organic functioning, is for experience of exactly the same value as the most essential organ of the animal's body. This greater or lesser importance will in fact become clear to us only when we begin to reflect upon the relationships of the individual parts of observation, that is, when we work upon experience.

[ 3 ] For experience, the snail, which stands at a low level of organization, is the equal of the most highly developed animal. The difference in the perfection of organization appears to us only when we grasp the given manifoldness conceptually and work it through. The culture of the Eskimo, in this respect, is also equal to that of the educated European; Caesar's significance for the historical development of humanity appears to mere experience as being no greater than that of one of his soldiers. In the history of literature, Goethe does not stand out above Gottsched, if it is a matter of merely experienceable factuality.

[ 4 ] At this level of contemplation, the world is a completely smooth surface for us with respect to thought. No part of this surface rises above another; none manifests any kind of conceptual difference from another. It is only when the spark of thought strikes into this surface that heights and depths appear, that one thing appears to stand out more or less than another, that everything takes form in a definite way, that threads weave from one configuration to another, that everything becomes a harmony complete within itself.

[ 5 ] We believe that these examples suffice to show what we mean by the greater or lesser significance of the objects of perception (here considered to be synonymous with the things of experience), and what we mean by that knowing activity which first arises when we contemplate these objects in their interconnection. At the same time, we believe that in this we are safe from the objection that our world of experience in fact shows endless differences in its objects even before thinking approaches it. After all, a red surface differs from a green one even if we do not exercise any thinking. This is correct. If someone wanted to refute us by this, however, he would have misunderstood our argument totally. This is precisely our argument, that an endless number of particulars is what experience offers us. These particulars must of course differ from one another; otherwise they would not in fact confront us as an endless, disconnected manifoldness. It is not at all a question of perceived things being undifferentiated, but rather of their complete unrelatedness, and of the absolute insignificance of the individual sense-perceptible facts for the totality of our picture of reality. It is precisely because we recognize this endless qualitative differentiation that we are driven to our conclusions.

[ 6 ] If we were confronted by a self-contained, harmoniously organized unity, we could not then say, in fact, that the individual parts of this unity are of no significance to one another.

[ 7 ] If, for this reason, someone does not find the comparison we used above to be apt, he has not grasped it at the actual point of comparison. It would be incorrect, of course, for us to want to compare the world of perception, in all its in finitely diverse configuration, to the uniform regularity of a plane. But our plane is definitely not meant to represent the diverse world of phenomena, but rather the homogeneous total picture we have of this world as long as thinking has not approached it. After the activation of our thinking, each particular of this total picture no longer appears in the way our senses alone communicate it, but al ready with the significance it has for the whole of reality. It appears then with characteristics totally lacking to it in the form of experience.

[ 8 ] In our estimation, Johannes Volkelt has succeeded admirably in sketching the clear outlines of what we are justified in calling pure experience. He already gave a fine characterization of it five years ago in his book on Kant's Epistemology, and has then carried the subject further in his most recent work, Experience and Thinking. Now he did this, to be sure, in support of a view that is utterly different from our own, and for an essentially different purpose than ours is at the moment. But this need not prevent us from introducing here his excellent characterization of pure experience. He presents us, simply, with the pictures which, in a limited period of time, pass before our consciousness in a completely unconnected way. Volkelt says: “Now, for example, my consciousness has as its content the mental picture of having worked hard today; immediately joining itself to this is the content of a mental picture of being able, with good conscience, to take a walk; but suddenly there appears the perceptual picture of the door opening and of the mailman entering; the mailman appears, now sticking out his hand, now opening his mouth, now doing the reverse; at the same time, there join in with this content of perception of the mouth opening, all kinds of auditory impressions, among which comes the impression that it is starting to rain outside. The mailman disappears from my consciousness, and the mental pictures that now arise have as their content the sequence: picking up scissors, opening the letter, criticism of illegible writing, visible images of the most diverse written figures, diverse imaginings and thoughts connected with them; scarcely is this sequence at an end than again there appears the mental picture of having worked hard and the perception, accompanied by ill humor, of the rain continuing; but both disappear from my consciousness, and there arises a mental picture with the content that a difficulty believed to have been resolved in the course of today's work was not resolved; entering at the same time are the mental pictures: freedom of will, empirical necessity, responsibility, value of virtue, absolute chance, incomprehensibility, etc.; these all join together with each other in the most varied and complicated way; and so it continues.”

[ 9 ] Here we have depicted, within a certain limited period of time, what we really experience, the form of reality in which thinking plays no part at all.

[ 10 ] Now one definitely should not believe that one would have arrived at a different result if, instead of this everyday experience, one had depicted, say, the experience we have of a scientific experiment or of a particular phenomenon of nature. Here, as there, it is individual unconnected pictures that pass before our consciousness. Thinking first establishes the connections.

[ 11 ] We must also recognize the service rendered by Dr. Richard Wahle's little book, Brain and Consciousness (Vienna, 1884), in showing us in clear contours what is actually given by experience divested of everything of a thought-nature, with only one reservation: that what Wahle presents as the characteristics applying absolutely to the phenomena of the outer and inner world actually applies only to the first stage of the world contemplation we have characterized. According to Wahle we know only a juxtaposition in space and a succession in time. For him there can be absolutely no question of a relationship between the things that exist in this juxtaposition and succession. For example, there may after all be an inner connection somewhere between the warm rays of the sun and the warming up of a stone; but we know nothing of any causal connection; all that becomes clear to us is that a second fact follows upon the first. There may also be somewhere, in a world unaccessible to us, an inner connection between our brain mechanism and our spiritual activity; we only know that both are events running their courses parallel to each other; we are absolutely not justified, for example, in assuming a causal connection between these two phenomena.

[ 12 ] Of course, when Wahle also presents this assertion as an ultimate truth of science, we must dispute this broader application; his assertion is completely valid, however, with respect to the first form in which we become aware of reality.

[ 13 ] It is not only the things of the outer world and the processes of the inner world that stand there, at this stage of our knowing, without interconnection; our own personality is also an isolated entity with respect to the rest of the world. We find ourselves as one of innumerable perceptions without connection to the objects that surround us.

The above heading was the title of a lecture given by Dr. Rudolf Steiner in Amsterdam on Thursday evening in the “Van het Nut” building.

The speaker, introduced to his audience as the General Secretary (Chairman) of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, began by describing the term “Theosophy”. Theosophy wants to be a movement to deepen our spiritual life. And it is fair to say that Theosophy in our time represents what we perceive as a great movement in the whole cultural world.

The speaker then points out the growing internationalism and the fact that more and more over the centuries the walls between people and people, between nations and nations, are continually falling away. In the material field, we see the banker, the industrialist, the merchant playing an important role here. But all of this as material phenomena are consequences of the existence of common ideas, the internationalization of ideas.

What we saw in earlier centuries (and even now) in the religious sphere, dividing one person from another and one people from another, is magnificently bridged by Theosophy. And this is only possible because the theosophical spiritual current extends to the deepest foundations of spiritual life.

It is not the theosophical attitude that says, “How is it possible that we have come so wonderfully far?” and looks back with a certain pity at the old “childlike belief.” We in Theosophy have completely turned away from the delusion that we can look down on what humanity has achieved in earlier times. In order to show the relationship between Goethe, the poet, and Hegel, the philosopher, and the theosophical view of life, the speaker wants to present the latter in a few basic lines:

A first principle is that this visible world is based on an invisible world; secondly, that man can get to know a supersensible world behind the sensual world. But the supersensible world cannot be reached by ordinary sensory perception. Theosophy is not concerned with magic, superstition or a regression into old fantasies. Those who perceive not only the facts of the material world, but also the spiritual causes of everything, become aware of a higher faculty within themselves.

Dr. Steiner then brings his favorite example of a person who was born blind and has been operated on. A world of perception opens up for him. An infinity of light and colors flows into his eye, which now sees, of which the person previously had no concept and could not form an idea.

As a citizen of the lower natural kingdoms through his lower nature, man, on the other hand, belongs through his higher nature to the realm of the higher worlds, from which his being is built. And so man stands with his inner being between two realms.

Now we see the life of the individual human being playing out externally between birth and death, and we see how he becomes richer and richer in experience through the perception of the external world. And we ask ourselves: What is it and where is it that the human being has taken in during all this time? What we have absorbed is transformed by death into a seed for a different development. The sum of our life experiences has been acquired by our soul, and at the moment of death the fruit of life emerges as a seed. In a new life, in a new embodiment, the seed unfolds. We can perceive this in the development of a person from the moment of birth.

What we perceive cannot be explained by this one life alone. Just as the plant germ leads us to an earlier plant, so this spiritual soul germ leads us to an earlier spiritual life. This is what is usually called 'reincarnation'.

Each life enriches the soul with the fruits of that life, and each life the person enters richer: everything we have within us we have acquired in previous lives. And we also know that the thoughts living in this world are the fruit of earlier human development. But we see that both the old fairy tales and myths and what we currently call our science are only forms of human development - and that we will later achieve other and higher forms of this development.

When we survey all this, we are able to build a bridge to the poet Goethe and to the philosopher Hegel. From the very beginning, we find a basis of theosophical feelings in the whole being of Goethe. The young Goethe tried to find his own divine spiritual nature through his spiritual experiences.

The seven-year-old boy cannot recognize the external religious forms of his time as his own; he builds himself an altar out of a lectern, and on it he lays stones and plants from his father's geological collection. Natural products that he perceives as expressions of divine life. And then he wants to light a sacrificial fire, and he lets the first rays of the rising sun fall through a burning glass, and he lets the sacrificial candle ignite on the altar he has built himself.

As an artist, too, he seeks - for example, on his Italian travels - nothing but the great life of the supersensible world. He even says that art is the most worthy interpreter of the spiritual world. One should also look at his letters to Winckelmann, in which he describes his view that everything that exists in nature in terms of order, harmony and measure is reflected in man, where it exults to the highest peak of perfection.

Schiller writes to Goethe:

"For a long time now, although from a considerable distance, I have been watching the course of your mind and have noted the path you have set out on with ever-renewed admiration. You seek what is necessary in nature, but you seek it by the most difficult route, which any weaker force would be well advised to avoid. You take all of nature together to get light on the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the explanation for the individual. From the simple organization, you ascend step by step to the more complicated, in order to finally build the most complicated of all, the human being, genetically from the materials of the entire natural structure. By recreating it in nature, as it were, you seek to penetrate its hidden technology. A great and truly heroic idea, which shows sufficiently how much your mind holds the rich totality of its ideas together in a beautiful unity."

From the very beginning, Goethe feels that he was born out of spiritual-cosmic nature.

That Goethe has recognized the spiritual in man is shown not only by a poem from the 1780s, “The Mysteries,” in which he speaks about the Rosicrucian symbol: the black cross with the red roses; he gives his creed even more beautifully in the “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” and in his Faust poem.

The speaker refers to Goethe's comment to Eckermann, in which he says that his Faust can be viewed from two perspectives: firstly, it is something for people in the theater, but then there is also something in it for the initiate who sees the spiritual life behind the sensual life of man. “He who does not have this, the dying and becoming, remains only a gloomy guest on this dark earth."

Then the speaker points out other things that are so well known to most people, but understood by so few, and certainly not by most commentators on Goethe: the prologue, in which Goethe speaks of the ‘harmony of the spheres’ and the heavenly choirs ; on the reappearance of the figure of Helen in the second part, Helen who had already died; and finally on the homunculus, by which he means nothing other than that which passes from person to person: the soul. It was only too happy to be embodied.

The speaker is briefer with regard to Hegel, namely because of the advanced time of the meeting. Hegel is a contemporary and in many respects the student of Goethe. He understood everything about Goethe, except for the theosophical basis. Hegel shows how far one can get who does not know the above-mentioned foundations of theosophy.

Take a glass of water: you can only draw water from it if it is in it. And man can only draw wisdom from a world that is itself built of wisdom. Hegel strove to prove this.

Hegel recognizes the world of ideas as a coherent spiritual world, independent of nature, and he calls this world pure logic. For Hegel, “logos” means the great original plan of the world, the sum of the ideas that underlie this world.

The speaker then points out the well-known systematic of Hegel and follows how he speaks of the three sides of the ideas: the idea in itself; the idea in nature, spread out in space and time, where it will become self-aware, descending into different forms, to the people and further; then the idea, returning to its own pure essence, having become self-aware.

But, says the speaker, Hegel carries within himself all the limitations of his time. We must not see the philosophical lines alone, not regard the world of ideas as something absolute. (The speaker seemed to mean: not as a concrete thing.

For Hegel, the scientific view of the world had become an absolute, and one always has the feeling that Hegel means that when man has grasped the world of ideas, humanity has come to its end.

Hegel knew nothing of the infinity of forms, whereby the world of ideas gradually becomes conscious in successive lives, and that man must learn the logos of feeling as well as the logos of idea in order to live and experience. A kind of materialism emerged from Hegel's philosophy. After speaking tirelessly and with great intellectual power for almost two hours, this extraordinary speaker concluded his lecture with the apt words of Goethe:

If the eye were not itself solar,
it could never behold the sun.
If the power of God were not in us,
how could we be enraptured by the Divine?]

Dear attendees!

Please allow me to say a few words by way of introduction to our eurythmy performance. This will seem all the more justified given that what is presented will not be something that is complete in itself, but rather an attempt, or perhaps I could say the mere intention of an attempt. For it is obvious that this particular form of movement art, which is to be presented in eurythmy, is confused with all kinds of neighboring arts, dance-like and similar arts. These neighboring arts have, as we well know, achieved great perfection in the present day. And if there were any belief that we wanted to compete with these neighboring arts, then this would be a false belief. It is not about something that is to compete in this way, but about a special form of movement art that is based on its own laws and that is intended to be a beginning, initially just a beginning of something that can perhaps be achieved in its direction.

It is based, like everything that is to be presented here at the Goetheanum, on the foundations of Goethe's world view. However, it is not the case that we only want to reproduce what is in the finished form of Goethe's world view, but rather that we want to keep alive, almost a century after Goethe's death, that has been given to the world through Goethe's world and art view, that we would like to develop that which has been initiated through Goethe for the development of humanity, in the sense of modern human conceptions.

Goethe's unique quality is that everything that has been incorporated into his art, his conception of art, is based on his comprehensive world view, which had nothing merely soberly theoretical about it – and therefore does not have the same sobering effect on artistic creation and perception as dry, sober rationalistic world views. It is from Goethe's great and powerful view of nature that his whole conception of art emerged. And you will allow me to try to hint at something that is particularly important to us in the development of the eurythmic arts, starting with a single detail.

I must refer to what is known as Goethe's theory of metamorphosis. This is a magnificent conception of the nature of all living things. More than one might think lies in Goethe's view that the colored petal of a flower is only a transformation of the green leaf of the plant, that even the stamens, the pistil of the plant, which are not at all similar in appearance to the leaves, are transformed petals. For Goethe, everything about a plant is a leaf, a transformed leaf.

And so, in turn, the whole plant is only a correspondingly differentiated, developed leaf for him. And each individual leaf is a whole plant for him, only more simply formed. This is Goethe's basic view of all living things. Every single part of a living being is, in a sense, a repetition of the whole living thing. And in turn, the whole living thing is only a more complicatedly developed organism of precisely that which is present in the individual main parts. And this is especially the case with humans. That which a person is as a whole is present in his individual, essential parts.

What Goethe had incorporated into his way of thinking for the design of living beings up to and including humans can now be applied not only to the design of the individual parts of a living being and of the whole living being, but also to activity. For example, it can be said that the activity performed by the human larynx and its neighboring organs is a microcosmic repetition of the potential movements that are inherent in the human being as a whole. In turn, everything that can be brought out of the whole human being in the way of movement and creative possibilities can be a reflection of what is revealed in the larynx when speaking or singing in the sequence of sounds, the sequence of tones, in the lawful connection of the tones and so on. We turn, by listening to singing, to speaking, to artfully shaped speech, our attention first to the sound and the sequence of sounds; but the intuitive recognition, that which looks at what is merely is predisposed to as possibilities of movement in the larynx, or that intuitive imagination can gain an insight into what passes over into the air vibrations, into the air rhythm, when a person sings or speaks artfully, can be expressed by the whole human being.

This is the basis of our art of movement, our eurythmy. To a certain extent, one can say that in eurythmy, as we understand it, the whole human being should act as a visible larynx, as if one were suddenly able to see what the air accomplishes in terms of inner mobility and movement when we hear a sound or a sequence of sounds.

In expressing his view of art with the beautiful words: “He to whom nature reveals her manifest secret feels the longing for her best interpreter, art,” Goethe pointed to a secret of artistic feeling in general. And with regard to the human being itself, our eurythmy seeks to transform what is naturally present in the human being into art. I am only describing the elementary foundations of our eurythmy to you, dear audience. What is brought out of the natural essence of man is not transformed into artistic creation according to abstract knowledge, but according to artistic feelings. It must, however, be judged directly in contemplation. All artistic feeling is based on this alone, that something deeper in the essence of things is taken in by the human being in direct contemplation and is pleasing. Recognizing this, Goethe once said, “Style, artistic style, is based on the foundations of knowledge, on the essence of things, insofar as it is allowed to us to present it in visible and tangible forms.

The style of our eurythmy is based on the essence of the human being, insofar as it is permitted to depict this essence in movement as visibly as the sounds audibly represent what lives in the human soul.

This is how our art of movement came about. However, since not only that which is inherent in the movements of the larynx lives in the sound, but since the sound and the sequence of sounds in singing and artistic speech is illuminated by soul feelings, warmed through by soul moods , and in the artistic shaping of speech in rhythms, rhymes, alliterations, assonance and so on, then this must also be expressed when creating a kind of visible speech. In this sense, the individual person who performs eurythmy presents, in front of the larynx as such, what the neighboring organs of the larynx are; what pervades the spoken or sung word in the soul will be presented through groups and group movements, the mutual relationship of the persons in groups, and so on.

The essential thing here is that everything that is expressed through eurythmy never expresses — as is the case with neighboring arts — a mere momentary alignment of the gesture, of the facial expression, with that which lives in the soul. Rather, our eurythmy is an inwardly lawful art, like the musical art itself, which lives in melody and harmony. Nothing in any gesture is arbitrary. Much more important than the individual gesture is the succession of gestures. It is truly a musical art that is visibly expressed in our eurythmy.

And one can also say: when two eurythmists present one and the same thing, it is to be presented in the same way. Subjective differences can only arise because the perceptions are so different, as, for example, two pianists present a Beethoven sonata differently according to their different perceptions. But the subjective differences and arbitrariness in the field of eurythmy cannot be greater than in this field.

Anything that is merely pantomime or mimic is strictly excluded, and if you see any of this in our performance, it is because we have not yet achieved the perfection we are striving for. But such perfection must unfold over time from this eurythmic art.

What I have just presented to you has been done by me in order to show how this eurythmic art has been derived from the nature of the human being itself, how the human being, in accordance with the potentialities of movement that are present in him, becomes a work of art in eurythmy. This, too, is in the spirit of Goethe, as he so beautifully expresses it in his book on Winckelmann: “Man, placed at the summit of nature, beholds nature as a whole and brings forth a summit, taking order, harmony and measure together, in order to finally rise to the production of the work of art.

In this way, we try on the one hand to bring the artistic aspect of language to the ear through the musically designed, and at the same time, to a certain extent, to allow the whole person as a larynx to express what can be revealed in the sound and the sequence of sounds, in the tone and the sequence of tones.

In this sense, I ask you to take our still weak attempt. We are not at all presumptuous to think that what we can offer is more than a beginning in the indicated direction. But we are also convinced that it is a beginning of a truly new art form, which, however, may only be able to be developed over a long period of time. We believe that it will be possible – either through ourselves or, if we are unable to do so, through others – to develop this art form into something that can stand alongside the other arts that humankind has produced. With this in mind, I ask you once again to take note of our modest attempt.

Munich, December 12, 1906 ¹

The four elementary natures that permeate the universe are called:

1. Gnomes, who live in the earth.
2. Undines, who embody themselves in water.
3. Sylphs, who we imagine living in the air, and
4. salamanders, which we have to imagine living in fire.

Instructional session, Basel, September 24, 1912

It goes without saying that if we have devoted ourselves to our occult development for a long time, in the sense that we have done our exercises and meditations in the right spirit, we must also reach the point where we are granted an insight into the spiritual world. This moment will come for every human being at some time or other if we allow everything we are presented with here as rituals and symbols to take effect on us with true earnestness and devotion in connection with our daily exercises. For some it will come sooner, for others later, but for every human being it will come at some point.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries, it was very difficult to enter the spiritual worlds. At that time, one could not go much further than to certain imaginations, which, although they gave a sense, a feeling for higher worlds of existence, did not convey direct revelations from the spiritual world. In our time, since the last third of the 19th century, it was even more difficult to make the leap that brings a person out of their physical body and into the spiritual world. But once they have managed to ascend, it is easier today than it was in the past to experience many things in the spiritual world.

In the course of the twentieth century, people will begin to develop their dormant organs, and through these they will first of all be revealed that which lies immediately above the physical-sensual world, that which is announced to us through nature. You will find yourself, for example, at the seaside or anywhere else near water; then you will look at the water and no longer describe it only externally as a composition of hydrogen and oxygen, but you will feel the nature of the water quite differently. You will recognize in it a huge number of elemental beings that permeate the water and are basically the water. For water is the arena, the soul element of these elemental beings. This is also where the word “element” comes from.

These elemental beings have their existence in water and they also perish in it, namely when another element, fire, enters. The heat causes a drying process and causes the water to rise in the form of fog or moisture or even clouds. During this process, the clairvoyant notices how the elemental beings are paralyzed, even killed, as it were. But when the water cools down again or the rising mist forms dense clouds again, from which lightning strikes and rain falls to the ground, he sees how these beings come to life again, and even arise anew. In the process of evaporation and dying that takes place when water is heated and vaporized, these elemental beings release seeds, as it were, that in turn sprout when the water cools and condenses. Countless numbers of elemental beings are born when rain pours down on the earth, and we can experience the beneficial influence of these newly emerging beings.

The beneficial and life-giving effect of water on the human organism has been well demonstrated by the healing arts in recent decades, but they have also had to learn that this power, when used in the wrong way or in excess, can cause harm. Where warm (hot) water is used, there is the need to numb or to nullify the effect of the elemental beings. When cold water is used, there is the need to feel the life-irritating power of all these emerging beings.

The clairvoyant will notice many other things. To him, the clouds that are there for the ordinary eye during a thunderstorm as black, ominous, compressed clouds, will appear as luminous, bright clouds. And when lightning strikes the rain cloud and the rain pours down, he sees it as light pouring down on the earth. This is what the ancients experienced when they drank the soma. They had a connection with the elemental world, and for them, with the rain, light came down on the earth.

The clairvoyant sees other elemental spirits, beings that are at yet another stage of development. These beings fill the air that we inhale with every breath and that we exhale (without being defined in chemical terms) as a dead thing when it is consumed by us. To the ordinary perception, the inhaled air is the living air and the exhaled air is the air of death or the killing air. Seen spiritually, however, the inhalation is the death of the elemental beings of the air, and with the exhalation they come to life again. Thus, these beings permeate our entire organism and have been working from the very beginning to build it.

Now let us consider the question of what particular role these elemental beings of water play in evolution, and what role those of the air element play. In long-gone evolutionary epochs, when the human being still had a very different composition of his higher limbs than he does now, these elemental beings also worked quite differently. At that time, man did not yet have what we call language. The speech organs are integrated into the respiratory organs, which enable us to speak. Man uses language to express his soul or just for conversation, but that is only the case in the materialistic age we are living in now. In the age that preceded our materialistic one, the speech organs were also organs of perception. Language arose from the fact that the water elementals, while penetrating the germinal organs (germinal formation) of the larynx, slowly and gradually transformed them into the speech organ as it is today.

The people of that time did not yet make themselves understood through words, as we now communicate with each other. Since they still had the old clairvoyance, they looked into the spiritual world, into the world of the elements. And they experienced the whirring elemental beings around them while pronouncing sounds like our vowels A, I, U, by letting sound from within them what they experienced in images. In this way they also expressed their feelings and emotions when, for example, what they saw inspired sympathy or antipathy in them. This was also the case when they pronounced the word Tao, which resonated throughout nature; then they knew of the Great Spirit, the cause of all being. This word, which was thus also a spiritual perception, has been lost since the respiratory and speech organs became more independent of each other than they were in the past.

[This postscript ends here. In another, the following is added:]

Not only in the lungs do we have a breathing process, but also in the eyes. Only that there is no air inhaled and exhaled, but warmth. When we see a red color, warmth is exhaled (red, orange, yellow). If a cold color such as blue, indigo, violet is perceived, then the eye inhales. That which underlies the eyes in the etheric, just as air underlies the physical lungs, is warmth, and this is inhaled and exhaled. Fundamentally, every sense organ is a respiratory organ.

Higher beings, those who stand directly above man, have neither eyes such as these nor speech such as man's. They direct warmth somewhere and a color lights up at that point. This is how they express their essence and how they communicate with each other. Anyone who has ever perceived colors in this vivid form feels pain when they see the solid colors that adhere to physical objects – just as the whole physical world initially pains them. The pain only stops when one learns to perceive colors morally. Then one perceives punishment for egoism in red and the reward for overcoming egoism in blue. Then the colors begin to speak a language that will also be the future language of people.

As humans approach the Jupiter existence, their speech will increasingly become a form of perception; then the organs of breathing and speech will no longer be as separate as they are today. Vision and the sensation of warmth will also merge. It was necessary for the development of the independent self that these processes were separate for a time. If this had not happened, then man would indeed always have perceived what was happening in his environment, but would not have come to self-awareness. In the future, one will begin to feel a connection between the spoken word and colors. One will feel green when talking about unimportant things; yellow will arise when speaking selfishly; red will be there when fighting egoism.²

This unification of the organs can basically only be achieved by understanding the mystery of Golgotha. Only that can enable us to feel the whole of nature morally. If you then look up at the clouds and see lightning shooting out of them, you will be able to see Christ in his etheric form. With the “clouds”, that is, with the elements, he comes in his spiritual form. This vision will one day occur to every human being, sooner or later. Only the Father knows the day and the hour, as the Gospel says.³

• 1. It is not known which symbols were used to express these.
• 2. In notes from a different hand, it says: The red color will be felt as the punishment for the evil that is to be overcome; the yellow indicates the selfishness of man, the blue the heavenly that we envision.
• 3. In the same notes from another hand, it says at the end: “Sacred service or esotericism gradually leads to vision. Only a few are called by grace, as elect, to see through the Christ; the others must develop to this through meditation and through sacred service. Only the Father knows the day and hour for each one, but it will come for everyone. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

[ 1 ] It was said by critics of this book immediately after its publication that it does not give a picture of Goethe's “world view” but only of his “view of nature.” I do not think that this judgment comes from a justified point of view, even though, looked at externally, the book deals almost exclusively with Goethe's ideas about nature. For I believe that in the course of what has been said I have shown that these ideas about nature rest upon a quite definite way of looking at the phenomena of the world. And in my opinion I have indicated in the book itself that taking a point of view toward the phenomena of nature such as Goethe had can lead to definite views about psychological, historical, and still wider phenomena of the world. What expresses itself in Goethe's view of nature about a particular area is, in fact, a world view, not a mere view of nature which a person could also have whose thoughts have no significance for a wider picture of the world. On the other hand, however, I believed I should not present anything in this book other than what can be said in direct connection with the realm which Goethe himself worked through out of the totality of his world view. To sketch the picture of the world which arises out of Goethe's literary works, out of his ideas on an history, etc. is of course altogether possible and certainly of the greatest possible interest. A person who is attentive to the stance of this book will not, however, seek in it any such world picture. Such a person will recognize that I set myself the task of resketching that pan of the Goethean world picture for which in his own writings there are statements which emerge in an unbroken sequence from each other. I have indeed also indicated in many places the points at which Goethe got stuck in this unbroken development of his world picture, but which,he did successfully achieve in certain realms of nature. Goethe's views about the world and life show themselves to the broadest extent. How these views emerge out of his own particular world view, however, is not observable in his works outside the area of natural phenomena in the same way that it is within this area. In these other areas what Goethe's soul had to manifest to the world becomes observable; in the area of his ideas about nature there becomes visible how the basic impulse of his spirit achieved, step by step, a world view up to a certain boundary. Precisely through the fact that one does not for once go further in sketching Goethe's thought-work than to present what developed within him as a conceptually cohesive part of a world view, light will be shed upon the particular coloration of what otherwise reveals itself in his life's work. Therefore I did not want to paint the picture of the world which speaks out of Goethe's life work as a whole but rather that part which comes to light with him in the form in which one brings a world view to expression in thought. Views which well up in a personality, however great that personality may be, are not yet parts of a world view picture which is cohesive in itself and which the personality himself conceives to be a coherent whole. But Goethe's nature ideas are just such a cohesive part of a world view picture. And, as illumination for natural phenomena, these ideas are not merely a view of nature but rather a part of a world view.

[ 2 ] The fact that I have also been reproached with respect to this book for changing my views after its publication does not surprise me since I am not unfamiliar with the presuppositions which move a person to make such judgments. I have expressed myself about this search for contradictions in my books in the preface to the first volume of my Riddles of Philosophy and in an article in the journal, Das Reich (“Spiritual Science as Anthroposophy and Contemporary Epistemology”). This kind of search is possible only for critics who completely fail to recognize how in fact my world view must proceed in order to grasp the different areas of life. I do not want to go into this question in a general way again here but rather will just briefly state a few things about this book on Goethe. I consider the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science which I have been presenting in my books for sixteen years to be a way of knowing the spiritual world content accessible to man; and a person who has enlivened within himself Goethe's ideas on nature as something right for him and, starting there, strives for experiences of knowledge about the spirit realm, must come to this way of knowing. I am of the view that this spiritual science presupposes a natural science which corresponds to the Goethean one. I not only mean by this that the spiritual science presented by me does not contradict this natural science. For I know how little it signifies for there to be only no logical contradiction between different assertions. In spite of this they could in reality be utterly incompatible. But rather I believe I have insight into the fact that Goethe's ideas about the realm of nature, if really experienced, must necessarily lead to the anthroposophical knowledge presented by me, if a person does something which Goethe did not yet do, which is to lead experiences in the realm of nature over into experiences in the realm of spirit. The nature of these latter experiences is described in my spiritual scientific works. This is the reason for also reprinting now, after the publication of my spiritual scientific books, the essential content of this present book, which I brought out for the first time in 1897, as my recapitulation of the Goethean world view. I consider all the thoughts presented in it to be still valid today, unchanged. I have only in individual places made changes which do not pertain to the configuration of thoughts but only to the style of individual expressions. And the fact that after twenty years one would want to make a few stylistic changes here and there in a book can, after all, seem comprehensible. Otherwise, what is different in the new edition from the previous one are only some expansions, not changes, of the content. I believe that a person who is seeking a natural scientific foundation for spiritual science can find it through Goethe's world view. Therefore it seems to me that a book about Goethe's world view can also be of significance for someone who wants to concern himself with anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. But the stance of my book is that it wants to consider Goethe's world view entirely for itself, without reference to actual spiritual science. (One will find in my book, Goethe's Faust and the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake, something of what there is to say about Goethe from the particularly spiritual scientific point of view.)

[ 3 ] Supplementary note: A critic of this book of mine on Goethe believed he had found a special trove of “contradictions,” when he placed what I say about Platonism in this book (in the first edition of 1897) beside a statement I made at almost exactly the same time in my introduction to volume four of Goethe's natural scientific writings (Kuerschner edition): “The philosophy of Plato is one of the most sublime edifices of thought that has ever sprung from the spirit of mankind. It is one of the saddest signs of our time that the Platonic way of looking at things is regarded in philosophy as the exact opposite of healthy reason.” It is indeed difficult for certain minds to grasp that each thing, when looked at from different sides, presents itself differently. It will be easy to see that my different statements about Platonism do not represent any real contradiction to anyone who does not get stuck at the mere sound of the words but who goes into the different relationships into which I had to bring Platonism, through its own being, at this or that time. It is on the one hand a sad sign when Platonism is regarded as going against healthy reason because only that is considered to be in accordance with reason which stays with mere sense perception as the sole reality. And it does go against a healthy view of idea and sense world to change Platonism in such a way that through it an unhealthy separation of idea and sense perception is brought about. Someone who cannot enter into this kind of thinking penetration of the phenomena of life remains, with what he grasps, always outside of reality. Someone—as Goethe expresses it—who plants a concept in the way in order to limit a rich life's content has no sense for the fact that life unfolds in relationships which work differently in different directions. It is more comfortable, to be sure, to set a schematic concept in the place of a view of the fullness of life; with such concepts one can indeed judge easily and schematically. But one lives, through such a process, in abstractions without being. Thus human concepts turn into abstractions, which one believes can be treated in the intellect in the same way that things treat each other. But these concepts are much more like pictures which one receives of a thing from different sides. The thing is one; the pictures are many. And it is not focusing on one picture that leads to a view of the thing but rather looking at several pictures together. Unfortunately I now had to see how strongly many critics are inclined to construct contradictions out of such a consideration of a phenomenon from different points of view, which strives to merge with reality. Because of this I felt moved, with respect to the passages on Platonism in this new edition, first of all to change the style of presentation and thus to make even more definite what seemed to me twenty years ago really to be clear enough in the context in which it stands; secondly, by directly placing the statement from my other book beside what is said in this book, to show how both statements stand in total harmony with each other. In doing so I have spared anyone who still has a taste for finding contradictions in such things the trouble of having to gather them from two books.

... Picture what the universe is, apart from the earth, if regarded by the Copernican world-conception alone: a set of calculations! It cannot be this for spiritual science, but must be something which is presented to spiritual knowledge. Why do we have a geology which believes that the earth has only developed through the purely mineral world? Because the Copernican world-conception had, as a matter of course, to produce the present-day materialistic geology. It has nothing in it that could show how the earth is to be thought of, from the cosmos, or from the spiritual, as a being with soul and spirit. A world thought of in Copernican terms could only be a dead earth! A living, ensouled, spiritually permeated earth has to be conceived from another cosmos—really from another cosmos—than that of the Copernican view. Naturally, each time only a few characteristics of the being of the earth can be given, as it appears when it is looked at from the universe.

Is that an entirely unreal conception; to picture the earth as seen from the universe? It is not unreal, but very real. It occurred once to Herman Grimm, but he immediately apologised, when he had written about it. In an essay written in 1858 he said that one could imagine—but he remarks at once ‘I do not want to put forward an article of faith, but a fantasy’—that the human soul, when it is freed from the body, could move freely in the cosmos about the earth, and would then in this free movement observe the earth. Then what happens on the earth would appear to man in quite a different light, thinks Herman Grimm. Man would get to know every event from another point of view. For example, he would look into human hearts ‘as into a glass bee-hive’. The thoughts arising in the human heart would appear as if out of a glass bee-hive! That is a beautiful picture. And then one could imagine: this human being, who has floated round the earth for a time, and observed it from outside, might come to incarnate again on earth. He would have father and mother, a native country and everything that there is on earth—and would then have to forget everything that he had seen from another point of view. And if he was a historian, for instance, in the present-day sense (Herman Grimm at this point writes in a subjective way!) he could not help forgetting the other—for with the other way of looking at things one cannot write history!

This is a conception which strongly approaches the reality. It is quite right that the human soul is as if floating around the earth, between death and a new birth, but—in a way conditioned by karmic connections, as I have often described—looks down at the earth. Then the soul has the definite feeling that the earth is an ensouled and spiritually permeated organism—and the prejudiced view ceases, that it is something without a soul, only something ‘geological’. And then the earth becomes something very much differentiated; it becomes, for observation between death and a new birth, differentiated in such a way that for instance the Orient appears otherwise than the American Occident. It is not possible to speak with the dead about the earth, as one speaks about it with geologists; for the dead do not understand geological conceptions. But they know: when from cosmic space the East, from Asia until far into Russia, is observed, then the earth appears as if wrapped in a bluish radiance—bluish, blue to violet; such is the earth seen from this side of cosmic space. If one comes to the Western hemisphere, if one looks at it where it is America—it appears more or less in burning red. You have there a polarity of the earth, seen from the cosmos. The Copernican world-conception can of course not of itself provide this—it is another way of seeing, from another point of view. For him who has this point of view it becomes comprehensible: this earth, this ensouled earth-organism shows itself outwardly otherwise in its eastern half, otherwise in its western; in the east it has its blue covering, in the west something like a glowing out of its interior, hence the reddish, burning glow. There you have one of the examples of how man can be guided between death and a new birth by what he then learns. He gets to know the configuration of the earth, the different appearance of the earth out into the cosmos, into the spiritual; he gets to know—it is on one side bluish-violet, on the other burning red. And according to his spiritual need, which he will develop out of his karma, this determines for him where he will next enter again into incarnation. Naturally one must picture these things as much more complicated than I have said now. But from such relationships man develops between death and new birth the forces which bring him to incarnate in a particular inherited child body.

What I have given are only two specific colours; apart from colours, there are other definite qualities, many others. For the present I will only mention: between East and West, in the middle, the earth is more greenish as seen from outside, in our regions for instance greenish. So that in fact a threefold membering is produced, which can lead to significant conclusions about the way in which the human being can use what he can observe between death and a new birth to guide him to come into incarnation in this or that region of the earth.

If this is taken into consideration, one will gradually acquire the conception that between the human beings incarnated here on the earth in the physical body and the human beings who are out of the body certain things play a part, which are generally not taken into account at all. When we go into a foreign country and want to understand the people, we must acquire their language. When we want to come to an understanding with the dead, we have also gradually to acquire the language of the dead. This is at the same time the language of spiritual science, for this language is spoken by all who are called alive and all who are called dead. It reaches from over there to here, and from here to over there. But it is specially important to acquire not just abstract conceptions, but such pictures of the universe. We acquire a picture of the earth when we imagine a sphere floating in cosmic space, gleaming on one side in shades of blue and violet, on the other side burning, sparkling red and yellow; and between a belt of green. Conceptions which have the character of pictures gradually carry us over into the spiritual world. That is what matters. It is necessary to put forward such picture-conceptions, if one is speaking in an earnest sense about the spiritual worlds; and it is necessary too that such conceptions are not regarded as if they were arbitrary inventions, but that something is made from them—on this one depends. Let us consider it once more: the eastern earth, gleaming in blue and violet—the western earth, sparkling reddish-yellow. But other differentiations come in. If the soul of one who has died contemplates certain points in our present age, then he perceives at the place that is designated here as Palestine, as Jerusalem, out of the bluish-violet something of a golden form, a golden crystal form, which comes to life. That is Jerusalem, seen from the spirit! That is what also plays a part in the Apocalypse (in so far as I speak of Imaginations) as ‘heavenly Jerusalem’. These are not things which are thought out. These are things which can be seen. Contemplated from the spirit, the Mystery of Golgotha was as it is in physical observation when the astronomer directs his telescope into cosmic space and then sees something that amazes him, for example the appearance of new stars. Spiritually, observed from the cosmos, the event of Golgotha was the appearance of a golden star in the blue earth-aura of the eastern half of the earth. Here you have the Imagination for what I described in conclusion the day before yesterday. It is really important that through such Imaginations conceptions of the universe are acquired, which enable the human soul to find its place in feeling within the spirit of this universe.

Try to think this with someone who has died: the crystal form of the heavenly Jerusalem, building up in golden radiance, amid the blue-violet earth-aura. This will bring you near. This is something which belongs to the Imaginations, into which the soul enters at death: ‘Ex Deo nascimur, in Christo morimur!’

There is a method of shutting oneself off from spiritual reality, and there is a method of approaching it. One can shut oneself off from spiritual reality by attempting to calculate reality. Mathematics is certainly spirit, indeed pure spirit; but employed upon physical reality it is the method for shutting oneself off from the spiritual. The more you calculate the more you shut yourself off from the spiritual. Kant once said: there is as much science in the world, as there is mathematics. But from the other point of view, which is equally justified, one could say: there is as much darkness in the world, as man has succeeded in calculating about the world. One approaches spiritual life the more one penetrates from external observation, and particularly from abstract conceptions, to picture conceptions. Copernicus brought men to calculate the universe; the opposite way of seeing things must bring men to form pictures of the universe again; to think of a universe, with which the human soul can identify itself—so that the earth appears as an organism, shining out into the cosmos: blue-violet, with the golden, shining heavenly Jerusalem on the one side, and on the other side sparkling reddish-yellow.

From what does the blue-violet on one side of the earth-aura originate? If you see this side of the earth-sphere, what is physical of the earth disappears, seen from the outside; rather, the light-aura becomes transparent, and the dark of the earth vanishes. The blue which shows brings this about. You can explain the phenomenon from Goethe’s Theory of Colour. But because the interior of the earth sparkles out from the western half—sparkles out in such a way that it is true, as I described the day before yesterday, that man is determined in America by the sub-earthly; because of this the interior of the earth shines and sparkles as a reddish-yellow glow, as a reddish-yellow shooting fire out into the universe. This is only intended as a sketch, in quite feeble outlines; but it is meant to show you that it is possible to speak today not only in general abstract ideas about the world in which we live between death and a new birth, but in very concrete conceptions. All this is capable of preparing our souls to reach a connection with the spiritual world, a connection with the higher Hierarchies, a connection with that world in which man lives between death and a new birth.

Dear attendees! The art of eurythmy is still in the early stages of development. One could even call it an experiment in intent. Therefore, it will be permitted to say a few words about the nature of the same before the presentation.

Everything that is being attempted and that will probably be perfected in the future with regard to this eurythmic art is based on Goethe's conception of the world and life. This Goethean view of the world and life is accompanied by a very special artistic attitude and a special concept of art. And it is precisely this that is so special about Goethe: he understood how to bridge the gap between artistic attitude, artistic power and general world view for his own perspective. In this way, it could also be attempted on the basis of Goetheanism, on which we stand with our entire anthroposophically oriented spiritual science; it could be attempted in a very special field – in the field of human movement art – to create something ourselves that will be an expression of Goethe's artistic attitude. Therefore, I ask you not to look at what we can offer today in this direction as if we wanted to compete with any of the arts and art forms that are in some sense related to our eurythmic art. We certainly do not want to do that. We know very well that the art of dance and similar arts, which one might confuse with ours, have now reached such a high level of perfection that we cannot compete at all. But we do not want to compete; rather, our aim is to introduce something fundamentally new into the general artistic development of humanity. And without becoming theoretical, I would like to explain very briefly how our attempt is connected with the greatness of Goethe's world view.

The truly significant, the great and decisive aspect of Goethe's world view has by no means been sufficiently appreciated. Goethe was able to orient his world of ideas, his world of cognitive sensation, in such a way that he could truly make the ascent from the science of the non-living – which basically still includes all of today's science – to a certain knowledge of the living. It only appears to be a theoretical matter when everything points to Goethe's great idea of the metamorphosis of organic beings and a single organic entity. In Goethe's sense, one need only imagine how a single plant comes into being as a living being, how it grows, perfects itself and reaches the summit of its becoming. For Goethe, every single plant leaf – whether a green plant leaf or a colored flower petal – is basically a whole plant, only more simply formed than the whole plant, and again the whole plant is for him only an intricate leaf.

This view, which is tremendously significant, applied to everything that is alive for Goethe. Every living being is formed in such a way that, as a whole, it is the more complicated formation of each of its individual parts; and each individual part, in turn, reveals – in a simpler form – the whole living being. This view can now be applied to the expressions and activities of a living being, and in particular of the highest living being known to man within his world: man himself.

And so, based on Goethe, we can also say: in what human language is, a single element of the entire human nature is also given. In what a person expresses through the larynx and its neighboring organs, speaking from the depths of his soul, something is given that is a single organ expression, a revelation of the human being. For those who are able to see what forces, possibilities for activity and movement are actually present in the human larynx when speaking, especially when speaking artistically, when speaking poetry as well as when singing, for those who can see this and are not limited to looking beyond what the larynx accomplishes in terms of movements, and merely listening to what is accomplished in terms of movements, it is possible for the person to transfer to the whole human being what otherwise only comes to expression in the individual organ - in the larynx and its neighborhood - in speaking.

It is possible to make the whole person a larynx, so that he moves in his limbs as, I would say, the larynx is predisposed to move when a person speaks or sings. One could also say: when one speaks, one is dealing with the wave motion of the air. Sounds are movements of the air. Of course, in everyday life we do not see these movements of the air. Those who look can therefore perceive the possibilities of movement that they can transfer to the whole human being, to his limbs. Then a visible language arises in which the arms and other limbs of the human being move in a lawful way. And through this visible language, the poetic-artistic aspect of language, the song-like aspect of music, is brought to revelation, and a completely new art form arises. This is to be our eurythmy.

What you see here is, in the first instance, nothing other than the human being's laryngeal movement transferred to the whole human being in an artistic way. What is now supposed to be art and must make a corresponding aesthetic impression when it is directly observed, if it is to have an artistic effect when observed directly, has of course arisen from the depths of human nature at its source. Thus one can say: what is simply there in man because he is a human organism should be brought forth from him.

There is nothing artificial in eurythmy. All gestures and pantomime are avoided. Just as in music it is not about expressing something through any old note, but about observing a lawfulness in the succession of notes, so here it is also not about the hand or something similar making any old movement, but about the human limbs making lawful eurythmic movements in succession. Thus everything arbitrary is avoided, and where something still occurs, you can regard it as a sign that something imperfect still exists there. If two people or two groups of people were to represent one and the same thing, they would only differ in the way they presented it, just as two different piano players will play a Beethoven sonata differently.

In eurythmy, everything is modeled on the movements of the larynx and its neighboring organs. But human speech is imbued with warmth of soul, with enthusiasm, with joy, with pain and suffering, with all kinds of inner crises. Everything that resonates through human language as an inner expression of the soul can be expressed by us in the relationships between the various forms, the groups, and through what a person can reveal through movements in space. In the same way, the inner mood of the soul, what penetrates from the depths of the soul to the surface, comes to expression. On the one hand, you will see what visible speech is.

We will let it be accompanied either by music, which is only the other, parallel expression of the same thing, or mainly by recitation, by poetry. In this context, I must note that, while the art of eurythmy is accompanied by poetry, it must be borne in mind that what is today the art of declamation, the art of recitation, is very much in decline. If one wants to accompany the art of eurythmy with poetry, one must go back to the old, good forms of recitation, the art of recitation. It is not a matter of expressing the ordinary narrative, the content of a poem through emphasis, but rather of expressing the actual artistic element through the recitation, apart from the purely narrative, from the content: the rhythm, the rhyme, the artistic vibrancy of a poem, everything that exists outside of the content, in other words - the poetic and musical.

There is little understanding of this today. But one need only remember that Goethe conducted his “Iphigenia” with a baton, and one need only keep in mind that Schiller, before he even brought the prose content of a poem to life in his writing, had a general melody in his soul, that is, he started from the general artistic idea. Today's emphasis on content when reciting is, so to speak, nonsense, it is decadent. It would not be possible to accompany eurythmy with this art of recitation, which only focuses on content. Therefore, we must return to what is little understood by our contemporaries as an art of recitation. But in this way we believe we can emphasize an element in the present that is as artistic as possible through this eurythmic art and thereby bring to life something of Goethe's artistic spirit. Goethe says so beautifully: “When nature begins to reveal her secret to someone, they feel an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter: art.” He sees in art a revelation of the secret laws of nature, which would not be revealed without art.

This is particularly evident when we see how man himself, in his movement, becomes the expression of a visible, living language. Goethe says elsewhere: Art consists in a kind of recognition, in that we grasp the essence of things in tangible and visible forms. And the highest of external nature, the human being, is revealed to us when we can visualize what is in his movements and present it to our eyes. Therefore, we feel Goethe's saying so much: “[In that man is placed at the summit of nature, he sees himself again as a whole nature, which in itself has to produce a summit again. To do so, he elevates himself by permeating himself with all perfection and virtue, invoking choice, order, harmony and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art [...].

We believe that through this eurythmic art, which is brought forth from the human being himself, at the same time something is visibly placed before the human eye like an artistic revelation of the mystery of the world, which is expressed in the highest sense in the human being. So far, however, only a beginning of all this exists. We know this very well and we are the harshest critics of the imperfections that still cling to our eurythmic artistic experiment. With this in mind, I ask you to also take in today's presentation. If it finds understanding among our contemporaries, then it will lead to it being further perfected. For however convinced we are that it is still in its infancy today, we are equally convinced that it has such principles within it that it can be brought to such perfection, either by ourselves or by others, that this eurythmic art, among other things, will be able to present itself as fully justified.

Translated by Gertrude Teutsch

The concepts concerning the super-sensible world and its relationship with the world of the senses have been discussed here in a long series of lectures. It is only natural that, again and again, the question should arise, “What is the origin of knowledge concerning the super-sensible world?” With this question or, in other words, with the question of the inner development of man, we wish to occupy ourselves today.

The phrase “inner development of man” here refers to the ascent of the human being to capacities which must be acquired if he wishes to make super-sensible insights his own. Now do not misunderstand the intent of this lecture. This lecture will by no means postulate rules or laws concerning general human morality, nor will it challenge the general religion of the age. I must stress this because when occultism is discussed the misunderstanding often arises that some sort of general demands or fundamental moral laws, valid without variation, are being established. This is not the case. This point requires particular clarification in our age of standardization, when differences between human beings are not at all acknowledged. Neither should today's lecture be mistaken for a lecture concerning the general fundamentals of the anthroposophic movement. Occultism is not the same as anthroposophy. The Anthroposophical Society is not alone in cultivating occultism, nor is this its only task. It could even be possible for a person to join the Anthroposophical Society and to avoid occultism altogether.

Among the inquiries which are pursued within the Anthroposophical Society, in addition to the field of general ethics, is also this field of occultism, which includes those laws of existence which are hidden from the usual sense observation in everyday human experience. By no means, however, are these laws unrelated to everyday experience. “Occult” means “hidden,” or “mysterious.” But it must be stressed over and over that occultism is a matter in which certain preconditions are truly necessary. Just as higher mathematics would be incomprehensible to the simple peasant who had never before encountered it, so is occultism incomprehensible to many people today. Occultism ceases to be “occult,” however, when one has mastered it. In this way, I have strictly defined the boundaries of today's lecture. Therefore, no one can object—this must be stressed in the light of the most manifold endeavors and of the experience of millennia—that the demands of occultism cannot be fulfilled, and that they contradict the general culture. No one is expected to fulfill these demands. But if someone requests that he be given convictions provided by occultism and yet refuses to occupy himself with it, he is like a schoolboy who wishes to create electricity in a glass rod, yet refuses to rub it. Without friction, it will not become charged. This is similar to the objection raised against the practice of occultism.

No one is exhorted to become an occultist; one must come to occultism of one's own volition. Whoever says that we do not need occultism will not need to occupy himself with it. At this time, occultism does not appeal to mankind in general. In fact, it is extremely difficult in the present culture to submit to those rules of conduct which will open the spiritual world.

Two prerequisites are totally lacking in our culture. One is isolation, what spiritual science calls “higher human solitude.” The other is overcoming the egotism which, though largely unconscious, has become a dominant characteristic of our time.

The absence of these two prerequisites renders the path of inner development simply unattainable. Isolation, or spiritual solitude, is very difficult to achieve because life conditions tend to distract and disperse, in brief to demand sense-involvement in the external. There has been no previous culture in which people have lived with such an involvement in the external. I beg you not to take what I am saying as criticism, but simply as an objective characterization.

Of course, he who speaks as I do knows that this situation cannot be different, and that it forms the basis for the greatest advantages and greatest achievements of our time. But this is the reason that our time is so devoid of super-sensible insight and that our culture is so devoid of super-sensible influence. In other cultures—and they do exist—the human being is in a position to cultivate the inner life more and to withdraw from the influences of external life. Such cultures offer a soil where inner life in the higher sense can thrive. In the Oriental culture there exists what is called Yoga. Those who live according to the rules of this teaching are called yogis. A yogi is one who strives for higher spiritual knowledge, but only after he has sought for himself a master of the super-sensible. No one is able to proceed without the guidance of a master, or guru. When the yogi has found such a guru, he must spend a considerable part of the day, regularly, not irregularly, living totally within his soul. All the forces that the yogi needs to develop are already within his soul. They exist there as truly as electricity exists in the glass rod before it is brought forth through friction. In order to call forth the forces of the soul, methods of spiritual science must be used which are the results of observations made over millennia. This is very difficult in our time, which demands a certain splintering of each individual struggling for existence. One cannot arrive at a total inward composure; one cannot even arrive at the concept of such composure. People are not sufficiently aware of the deep solitude the yogi must seek. One must repeat the same matter rhythmically with immense regularity, if only for a brief time each day, in total separation from all usual concerns. It is indispensable that all life usually surrounding the yogi cease to exist and that his senses become unreceptive to all impressions of the world around him. He must be able to make himself deaf and dumb to his surroundings during the time which he prescribes for himself. He must be able to concentrate to such a degree—and he must acquire practice in this concentration—that a cannon could be fired next to him without disturbing his attention to his inner life. He must also become free of all memory impressions, particularly those of everyday life.

Just think how exceedingly difficult it is to bring about these conditions in our culture, how even the concept of such isolation is lacking. This spiritual solitude must be reached in such a way that the harmony, the total equilibrium with the surrounding world, is never lost. But this harmony can be lost exceedingly easily during such deep immersion in one's inner life. Whoever goes more and more deeply inward must at the same time be able to establish harmony with the external world all the more clearly.

No hint of estrangement, of distancing from external practical life, may arise in him lest he stray from the right course. To a degree, then, it might be impossible to distinguish his higher life from insanity. It truly is a kind of insanity when the inner life loses its proper relationship to the outer. Just imagine, for example, that you were knowledgeable concerning our conditions on earth and that you had all the experience and wisdom which may be gathered here. You fall asleep in the evening, and in the morning you do not wake up on Earth but on Mars. The conditions on Mars are totally different from those on Earth; the knowledge that you have gathered on Earth is of no use to you whatsoever. There is no longer harmony between life within you and external life. You probably would find yourself in a Martian insane asylum within an hour. A similar situation might easily arise if the development of the internal life severs one's connection with the external world. One must take strict care that this does not happen. These are great difficulties in our culture.

Egotism in relation to inward soul properties is the first obstacle. Present humanity usually takes no account of this. This egotism is closely connected with the spiritual development of man. An important prerequisite for spiritual development is not to seek it out of egotism. Whoever is motivated by egotism cannot get very far. But egotism in our time reaches deep into the innermost soul. Again and again the objection is heard, “What use are all the teachings of occultism, if I cannot experience them myself?” Whoever starts from this presumption and cannot change has little chance of arriving at higher development. One aspect of higher development is a most intimate awareness of human community, so that it is immaterial whether it is I or someone else having the experience. Hence I must meet one who has a higher development than I with unlimited love and trust. First, I must acquire this consciousness, the consciousness of infinite trust toward my fellow man when he says that he has experienced one thing or the other. Such trust is a precondition for working together. Wherever occult capacities are strongly brought into play, there exists unlimited trust; there exists the awareness that a human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The first basis, therefore, is trust and faith, because we do not seek the higher self only in ourselves but also in our fellow men. Everyone living around one exists in undivided unity in the inner kernel of one's being.

On the basis of my lower self I am separated from other humans. But as far as my higher self is concerned—and that alone can ascend to the spiritual world—I am no longer separated from my fellow men; I am united with my fellow men; the one speaking to me out of higher truths is actually my own self. I must get away completely from the notion of difference between him and me. I must overcome totally the feeling that he has an advantage over me. Try to live your way into this feeling until it penetrates the most intimate fiber of your soul and causes every vestige of egotism to disappear. Do this so that the one further along the path than you truly stands before you like your own self; then you have attained one of the prerequisites for awakening higher spiritual life.

In situations where one receives guidance for the occult life, sometimes quite erroneously and confusedly, one may often hear that the higher self lives in the human being, that he need only allow his inner man to speak and the highest truth will thereby become manifest. Nothing is more correct and, at the same time, less productive than this assertion. Just try to let your inner self speak, and you will see that, as a rule, no matter how much you fancy that your higher self is making an appearance, it is the lower self that speaks. The higher self is not found within us for the time being. We must seek it outside of ourselves. We can learn a good deal from the person who is further along than we are, since there the higher self is visible. One's higher self can gain nothing from one's own egotistic “I.” There where he now stands who is further along than I am, there will I stand sometime in the future. I am truly constituted to carry within myself the seed for what he already is. But the paths to Olympus must first be illuminated before one can follow them.

A feeling which may seem unbelievable is the fundamental condition for all occult development. It is mentioned in the various religions, and every practical occultist with experience will confirm it. The Christian religion describes it with the well-known sentence, , which an occultist must understand completely, “Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” This sentence can be understood only by he who has learned to revere in the highest sense. Suppose that in your earliest youth you had heard about a venerable person, an individual of whom you held the highest opinion, and now you are offered the opportunity to meet this person. A sense of awe prevails in you when the moment approaches that you will see this person for the first time. There, standing at the gateway of this personality, you might feel hesitant to touch the door handle and open it. When you look up in this way to such a venerable personality, then you have begun to grasp the feeling that Christianity intends by the statement that one should become like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Whether or not the subject of this veneration is truly worthy of it is not really important. What matters is the capacity to look up to something with a veneration that comes from the innermost heart.

This feeling of veneration is the elevating force, raising us to higher spheres of super-sensible life. Everyone seeking the higher life must write into his soul with golden letters this law of the occult world. Development must start from this basic soul-mood; without this feeling, nothing can be achieved. Next, a person seeking inner development must understand clearly that he is doing something of immense importance to the human being. What he seeks is no more nor less than a new birth, and that needs to be taken in a literal sense. The higher soul of man is to be born. Just as man in his first birth was born out of the deep inner foundations of existence, and as he emerged into the light of the sun, so does he who seeks inner development step forth from the physical light of the sun into a higher spiritual light. Something is being born in him which rests as deeply in most human beings as the unborn child rests in the mother.

Without being aware of the full significance of this fact, one cannot understand what occult development means. The higher soul, resting deep within human nature and interwoven with it, is brought forth. As man stands before us in everyday life, his higher and lower natures are intermingled, and that is fortunate for everyday life. Many persons among us would exhibit evil, negative qualities except that there lives along with the lower nature a higher one which exerts a balancing influence. This intermingling can be compared with mixing a yellow with a blue liquid in a glass. The result is a green liquid in which blue and yellow can no longer be distinguished. So also is the lower nature in man mingled with the higher, and the two cannot be distinguished. Just as you might extract the blue liquid from the green by a chemical process, so that only the yellow remains and the unified green is separated into a complete duality, so the lower and higher natures separate in occult development. One draws the lower nature out of the body like a sword from the scabbard, which then remains alone. The lower nature comes forth appearing almost gruesome. When it was still mingled with the higher nature, nothing was noticeable. But once separated, all evil, negative properties come into view. People who previously appeared benevolent often become argumentative and jealous. This characteristic had existed earlier in the lower nature, but was guided by the higher. You can observe this in many who have been guided along an abnormal path. A person may readily become a liar when he is introduced into the spiritual world, because the capacity to distinguish between the true and the false is lost especially easily. Therefore, strictest training of the personal character is a necessary parallel to occult training. What history tells us about the saints and their temptations is not legend but literal truth.

He who wants to develop towards the higher world on any path is readily prone to such temptations unless he can subdue everything that meets him with a powerful strength of character and the highest morality. Not only do lust and passions grow—that is not even the case so much—but opportunities also increase. This seems miraculous. As through a miracle, the person ascending into the higher worlds finds previously hidden opportunities for evil lurking around him. In every aspect of life a demon lies in wait for him, ready to lead him astray. He now sees what he has not seen before. As through a spell, the division within his own being charms forth such opportunities from the hidden areas of life. Therefore, a very determined shaping of the character is an indispensable foundation for the so-called white magic, the school of occult development which leads man into the higher worlds in a good, true, and genuine way. Every practical occultist will tell you that no one should dare to step through the narrow portal, as the entrance to occult development is called, without practicing these properties again and again. They build the necessary foundation for occult life.

First man must develop the ability to distinguish in every situation throughout his life what is unimportant from what is important, that is, what is perishable from the imperishable. This requirement is easy to indicate but difficult to carry out. As Goethe says, it is easy, but what is easy is hard. Look, for instance, at a plant or an object. You will learn to understand that everything has an important and an unimportant side, and that man usually takes interest in the unimportant, in the relationship of the matter to himself, or in some other subordinate aspect. He who wishes to become an occultist must gradually develop the habit of seeing and seeking in each thing its essence. For instance, when he sees a clock he must have an interest in its laws. He must be able to take it apart into its smallest detail and to develop a feeling for the laws of the clock. A mineralogist will arrive at considerable knowledge about a quartz-crystal simply by looking at it. The occultist, however, must be able to take the stone in his hand and to feel in a living way something akin to the following monologue: “In a certain sense you, the crystal, are beneath humanity, but in a certain sense you are far above humanity. You are beneath humanity because you cannot make for yourself a picture of man by means of concepts, and because you do not feel. You cannot explain or think, you do not live, but you have an advantage over mankind. You are pure within yourself, have no desire, no wishes, no lust. Every human, every living being has wishes, desires, lusts. You do not have them. You are complete and without wishes, satisfied with what has come to you, an example for man, with which he will have to unite his other qualities.”

If the occultist can feel this in all its depth, then he has grasped what the stone can tell him. In this way man can draw out of everything something full of meaning. When this has become a habit for him, when he separates the important from the unimportant, he has acquired another feeling essential to the occultist. Then he must connect his own life with that which is important. In this people err particularly easily in our time. They believe that their place in life is not proper for them. How often people are inclined to say, “My lot has put me in the wrong place. I am,” let us say, “a postal clerk. If I were put in a different place, I could give people high ideas, great teaching,” and so on. The mistake which these people make is that they do not enter into the significant aspect of their occupation. If you see in me something of importance because I can talk to the people here, then you do not see the importance of your own life and work. If the mail-carriers did not carry the mail, the whole postal traffic would stop, and much work already achieved by others would be in vain.

Hence everyone in his place is of exceeding importance for the whole, and none is higher than the other. Christ has attempted to demonstrate this most beautifully in the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of John, with the words, “The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him.” These words were spoken after the Master had washed the feet of the Apostles. He wanted to say, “What would I be without my Apostles? They must be there so that I can be there in the world, and I must pay them tribute by lowering myself before them and washing their feet.” This is one of the most significant allusions to the feeling that the occultist must have for what is important. What is important in the inward sense must not be confused with the externally important. This must be strictly observed.

In addition, we must develop a series of qualities.¹ To begin with, we must become masters over our thoughts, and particularly our train of thought. This is called control of thoughts. Just think how thoughts whirl about in the soul of man, how they flit about like will-o'-the wisps. Here one impression arises, there another, and each one changes one's thoughts. It is not true that we govern our thoughts; rather our thoughts govern us totally. We must advance to the ability of steeping ourselves in one specific thought at a certain time of the day and not allow any other thought to enter and disturb our soul. In this way we ourselves hold the reins of thought life for a time.

The second quality is to find a similar relationship to our actions, that is, to exercise control over our actions. Here it is necessary to undertake actions, at least occasionally, which are not initiated by anything external. That which is initiated by our station in life, our profession, or our situation does not lead us more deeply into higher life. Higher life depends on personal matters, such as resolving to do something springing totally from one's own initiative even if it is an absolutely insignificant matter. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The third quality to be striven for is even-temperedness. People fluctuate back and forth between joy and sorrow. One moment they are beside themselves with joy, the next they are unbearably sad. Thus, people allow themselves to be rocked on the waves of life, on joy or sorrow. But they must reach equanimity and steadiness. Neither the greatest sorrow nor the greatest joy must unsettle their composure. They must become steadfast and even-tempered.

Fourth is the understanding for every being. Nothing expresses more beautifully what it means to understand every being than the legend which is handed down to us, not by the Gospel, but by a Persian story. Jesus was walking across a field with his disciples, and on the way they found a decaying dog. The animal looked horrible. Jesus stopped and cast an admiring look upon it, saying, “What beautiful teeth the animal has!” Jesus found within the ugly the one beautiful aspect. Strive at all times to approach what is wonderful in every object of outer reality, and you will see that everything contains an aspect that can be affirmed. Do as Christ did when he admired the beautiful teeth on the dead dog. This course will lead you to the great ability to tolerate, and to an understanding of every thing and of every being.

The fifth quality is complete openness towards everything new that meets us. Most people judge new things which meet them by the old which they already know. If anyone comes to tell them something new, they immediately respond with an opposing opinion. But we must not confront a new communication immediately with our own opinion. We must rather be on the alert for possibilities of learning something new. And learn we can, even from a small child. Even if one were the wisest person, one must be willing to hold back one's own judgment, and to listen to others. We must develop this ability to listen, for it will enable us to meet matters with the greatest possible openness. In occultism, this is called faith. It is the power not to weaken through opposition the impression made by the new.

The sixth quality is that which everyone receives once he has developed the first five. It is inner harmony. The person who has the other qualities also has inner harmony. In addition, it is necessary for a person seeking occult development to develop his feeling for freedom to the highest degree. That feeling for freedom enables him to seek within himself the center of his own being, to stand on his own two feet, so that he will not have to ask everyone what he should do and so that he can stand upright and act freely. This also is a quality which one needs to acquire.

If man has developed these qualities within himself, then he stands above all the dangers arising from the division within his nature. Then the properties of his lower nature can no longer affect him; he can no longer stray from the path. Therefore, these qualities must be formed with the greatest precision. Then comes the occult life, whose expression depends on a steady rhythm being carried into life.

The phrase “carrying rhythm into life” expresses the unfolding of this faculty. If you observe nature, you will find in it a certain rhythm. You will, of course, expect that the violet blooms every year at the same time in spring, that the crops in the field and the grapes on the vine will ripen at the same time each year. This rhythmical sequence of phenomena exists everywhere in nature. Everywhere there is rhythm, everywhere repetition in regular sequence. As you ascend from the plant to beings with higher development, you see the rhythmic sequence decreasing. Yet even in the higher stages of animal development one sees how all functions are ordered rhythmically. At a certain time of the year, animals acquire certain functions and capabilities. The higher a being evolves, the more life is given over into the hands of the being itself, and the more these rhythms cease. You must know that the human body is only one member of man's being. There is also the etheric body, then the astral body, and, finally, the higher members which form the basis for the others.

The physical body is highly subject to the same rhythm that governs outer nature. Just as plant and animal life, in its external form, takes its course rhythmically, so does the life of the physical body. The heart beats rhythmically, the lungs breathe rhythmically, and so forth. All this proceeds so rhythmically because it is set in order by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, particularly the astral body, have been, I would like to say, abandoned by these higher spiritual forces, and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity relating to wishes, desires, and passions is irregular, that it can in no way compare with the regularity ruling the physical body? He who learns to know the rhythm inherent in physical nature increasingly finds in it an example for spirituality. If you consider the heart, this wonderful organ with the regular beat and innate wisdom, and you compare it with the desires and passions of the astral body which unleash all sorts of actions against the heart, you will recognize how its regular course is influenced detrimentally by passion. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as those of the physical body.

I want to mention something here which will seem grotesque to most people. This is the matter of fasting. Awareness of the significance of fasting has been totally lost. Fasting is enormously significant, however, for creating rhythm in our astral body. What does it mean to fast? It means to restrain the desire to eat and to block the astral body in relation to this desire. He who fasts blocks the astral body and develops no desire to eat. This is like blocking a force in a machine. The astral body becomes inactive then, and the whole rhythm of the physical body with its innate wisdom works upward into the astral body to rhythmicize it. Like the imprint of a seal, the harmony of the physical body impresses itself upon the astral body. It would transfer much more permanently if the astral body were not continuously being made irregular by desires, passions, and wishes, including spiritual desires and wishes.

It is more necessary for the man of today to carry rhythm into all spheres of higher life than it was in earlier times. Just as rhythm is implanted in the physical body by God, so man must make his astral body rhythmical. Man must order his day for himself. He must arrange it for his astral body as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. In the morning, at a definite time, one must undertake one spiritual action; a different one must be undertaken at another time, again to be adhered to regularly, and yet another one in the evening. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable for the development of the higher life. This is one method for taking life in hand and for keeping it in hand. So set a time for yourself in the morning when you concentrate. You must adhere to this hour. You must establish a kind of calm so that the occult master in you may awaken. You must meditate about a great thought content that has nothing to do with the external world, and let this thought content come to life completely. A short time is enough, perhaps a quarter of an hour. Even five minutes are sufficient if more time is not available. But it is worthless to do these exercises irregularly. Do them regularly so that the activity of the astral body becomes as regular as a clock. Only then do they have value. The astral body will appear completely different if you do these exercises regularly. Sit down in the morning and do these exercises, and the forces I described will develop. But, as I said, it must be done regularly, for the astral body expects that the same process will take place at the same time each day, and it falls into disorder if this does not happen. At least the intent towards order must exist. If you rhythmicize your life in this manner, you will see success in not too long a time; that is, the spiritual life hidden from man for the time being will become manifest to a certain degree.

As a rule, human life alternates among four states. The first state is the perception of the external world. You look around with your senses and perceive the external world. The second is what we may call imagination or the life of mental images which is related to, or even part of, dream life. There man does not have his roots in his surroundings, but is separated from them. There he has no realities within himself, but at the most reminiscences. The third state is dreamless sleep, in which man has no consciousness of his ego at all. In the fourth state he lives in memory. This is different from perception. It is already something remote, spiritual. If man had no memory, he could uphold no spiritual development.

The inner life begins to develop by means of inner contemplation and meditation. Thus, the human being sooner or later perceives that he no longer dreams in a chaotic manner; he begins to dream in the most significant way, and remarkable things reveal themselves in his dreams, which he gradually begins to recognize as manifestations of spiritual beings. Naturally the trivial objection might easily be raised that this is nothing but a dream and therefore of no consequence. However, should someone discover the dirigible in his dream and then proceed to build it, the dream would simply have shown the truth. Thus an idea can be grasped in an other-than-usual manner. Its truthfulness must then be judged by the fact that it can be realized. We must become convinced of its inner truth from outside.

The next step in spiritual life is to comprehend truth by means of our own qualities and of guiding our dreams consciously. When we begin to guide our dreams in a regular manner, then we are at the stage where truth becomes transparent for us. The first stage is called “material cognition.” For this, the object must lie before us. The next stage is “imaginative cognition.” It is developed through meditation, that is through shaping life rhythmically. Achieving this is laborious. But once it is achieved, the time arrives when there is no longer a difference between perception in the usual life and perception in the super-sensible. When we are among the things of our usual life, that is, in the sense world, and we change our spiritual state, then we experience continuously the spiritual, the super-sensible world, but only if we have sufficiently trained ourselves. This happens as soon as we are able to be deaf and dumb to the sense world, to remember nothing of the everyday world, and still to retain a spiritual life within us. Then our dream-life begins to take on a conscious form. If we are able to pour some of this into our everyday life, then the next capacity arises, rendering the soul-qualities of the beings around us perceptible. Then we see not only the external aspect of things, but also the inner, hidden essential kernel of things, of plants, of animals, and of man. I know that most people will say that these are actually different things. True, these are always different things from those a person sees who does not have such senses. The third stage is that in which a consciousness, which is as a rule completely empty, begins to be enlivened by continuity of consciousness. The continuity appears on its own. The person is then no longer unconscious during sleep. During the time in which he used to sleep, he now experiences the spiritual world.

Of what does sleep usually consist? The physical body lies in bed, and the astral body lives in the super-sensible world. In this super-sensible world, you are taking a walk. As a rule, a person with the type of disposition which is typical today cannot withdraw very far from his body. If one applies the rules of spiritual science, organs can be developed in the astral body as it wanders during sleep—just as the physical body has organs—which allow one to become conscious during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes or ears, and the astral body walking at night is blind and deaf for the same reason, because it does not yet have eyes and ears. But these organs are developed through meditation which provides the means for training these organs. This meditation must then be guided in a regular way. It is being led so that the human body is the mother and the spirit of man is the father. The physical human body, as we see it before us, is a mystery in every one of its parts and, in fact, each member is related in a definite but mysterious way to a part of the astral body. These are matters which the occultist knows. For instance, the point in the physical body lying between the eyebrows belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. When the occultist indicates how one must direct thoughts, feelings, and sensations to this point between the eyebrows through connecting something formed in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body, the result will be a certain sensation in the astral body. But this must be practiced regularly, and one must know how to do it. Then the astral body begins to form its members. From a lump, it grows to be an organism in which organs are formed. I have described the astral sense organs in the periodical, Lucifer Gnosis. They are also called Lotus flowers. By means of special word sequences, these Lotus flowers are cultivated. Once this has occurred, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world he enters when passing through the portal of death, a final contradiction to Hamlet's “The undiscover'd country from whose bourn no traveler returns.”

So it is possible to go, or rather to slip, from the sense world into the super-sensible world and to live there as well as here. That does not mean life in never-never land, but life in a realm that clarifies and explains life in our realm. Just as the usual person who has not studied electricity would not understand all the wonderful workings in a factory powered by electricity, so the average person does not understand the occurrences in the spiritual world. The visitor at the factory will lack understanding as long as he remains ignorant of the laws of electricity. So also will man lack understanding in the realm of the spirit as long as he does not know the laws of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that is not dependent on the spiritual world at every moment. Everything surrounding us is the external expression of the spiritual world. There is no materiality. Everything material is condensed spirit. For the person looking into the spiritual world, the whole material, sense-perceptible world, the world in general, becomes spiritualized. As ice melts into water through the effect of the sun, so everything sense-perceptible melts into something spiritual within the soul which looks into the spiritual world. Thus, the fundament of the world gradually manifests before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

The life that man learns to know in this manner is actually the spiritual life he carries within himself all along. But he knows nothing of it because he does not know himself before developing organs for the higher world. Imagine possessing the characteristics you have at this time, yet being without sense-organs. You would know nothing of the world around you, would have no understanding of the physical body, and yet you would belong to the physical world. So the soul of man belongs to the spiritual world, but does not know it because it does not hear or see. Just as our body is drawn out of the forces and materials of the physical world, so is our soul drawn out of the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognize ourselves within ourselves, but only within our surroundings. As we cannot perceive a heart or a brain—even by means of X-ray—without seeing it in other people through our sense organs (it is only the eyes that can see the heart), so we truly cannot see or hear our own soul without perceiving it with spiritual organs in the surrounding world. You can recognize yourself only by means of your surroundings. In truth there exists no inner knowledge, no self-examination; there is only one knowledge, one revelation of the life around us through the organs of the physical as well as the spiritual. We are a part of the worlds around us, of the physical, the soul, and the spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical if we have physical organs, from the spiritual world and from all souls if we have spiritual and soul organs. There is no knowledge but knowledge of the world.

It is vain and empty idleness for man to “brood” within himself, believing that it is possible to progress simply by looking into himself. Man will find the God in himself if he awakens the divine organs within himself and finds his higher divine self in his surroundings, just as he finds his lower self solely by means of using his eyes and ears. We perceive ourselves clearly as physical beings by means of intercourse with the sense world, and we perceive ourselves clearly in relation to the spiritual world by developing spiritual senses. Development of the inner man means opening oneself to the divine life around us.

Now you will understand that it is essential that he who ascends to the higher world undergoes, to begin with, an immense strengthening of his character. Man can experience on his own the characteristics of the sense world because his senses are already opened. This is possible because a benevolent divine spirit, who has seen and heard in the physical world, stood by man in the most ancient times, before man could see and hear, and opened man's eyes and ears. It is from just such beings that man must learn at this time to see spiritually, from beings already able to do what he still has to learn. We must have a guru who can tell us how we should develop our organs, who will tell us what he has done in order to develop these organs. He who wishes to guide must have acquired one fundamental quality. This is unconditional truthfulness. This same quality is also a main requirement for the student. No one may train to become an occultist unless this fundamental quality of unconditional truthfulness has been previously cultivated.

When facing sense experience, one can test what is being said. When I tell you something about the spiritual world, however, you must have trust because you are not far enough to be able to confirm the information. He who wishes to be a guru must have become so truthful that it is impossible for him to take lightly such statements concerning the spiritual world or the spiritual life. The sense world corrects errors immediately by its own nature, but in the spiritual world we must have these guidelines within ourselves. We must be strictly trained, so that we are not forced to use the outer world for controls, but only our inner self. We are only able to gain this control by acquiring already in this world the strictest truthfulness. Therefore, when the Anthroposophical Society began to present some of the basic teachings of occultism to the world, it had to adopt the principle: there is no law higher than truth. Very few people understand this principle. Most are satisfied if they can say they have the conviction that something is true, and then if it is wrong, they will simply say that they were mistaken. The occultist cannot rely on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always be in consonance with the facts of the external world, and any experience that contradicts these facts must be seen as an error or a mistake. The question of who is at fault for the error ceases to be important to the occultist. He must be in absolute harmony with the facts in life. He must begin to feel responsible in the strictest sense for every one of his assertions. Thus he trains himself in the unconditional certainty that he must have for himself and for others if he wishes to be a spiritual guide.

So you see that I needed to indicate to you today a series of qualities and methods. We will have to speak about these again in order to add the higher concepts. It may seem to you that these things are too intimate to discuss with others, that each soul has to come to grips with them on its own terms, and that they are possibly unsuitable for reaching the great destination which should be reached, namely the entrance into the spiritual world. This entrance will definitely be achieved by those who tread the path I have characterized.

When? One of the most outstanding participants in the theosophical movement, Subba Row, who died some time ago, has spoken fittingly about this. Replying to the question of how long it would take, he said, “Seven years, perhaps also seven times seven years, perhaps even seven incarnations, perhaps only seven hours.” It all depends on what the human being brings with himself into life. We may meet a person who seems to be very stupid, but who has brought with himself a concealed higher life that needs only to be brought out. Most human beings these days are much further than it seems, and more people would know about this if the materialism of our conditions and of our time would not drive them back into the inner life of the soul. A large percentage of today's human beings was previously much further advanced. Whether that which is within them will come forth depends on many factors. But it is possible to give some help. Suppose you have before you a person who was highly developed in his earlier incarnation, but now has an undeveloped brain. An undeveloped brain may at times conceal great spiritual faculties. But if he can be taught the usual everyday abilities, it may happen that the inner spirituality also comes forth.

Another important factor is the environment in which a person lives. The human being is a mirror-image of his surroundings in a most significant way. Suppose that a person is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings that awaken and develop certain prejudices with such a strong effect that the higher talents cannot come forth. Unless such a person finds someone who can draw out these abilities, they will remain hidden.

I have been able to give only a few indications to you about this matter. After Christmas, however, we will speak again about further and deeper things. I especially wanted to awaken in you this one understanding, that the higher life is not schooled in a tumultuous way, but rather quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakens and enters into the higher life actually arrives like the thief in the night. The development towards the higher life leads man into a new world, and when he has entered this new world, then he sees the other side of existence, so to speak; then what has previously been hidden for him reveals itself. Maybe not everyone can do this; maybe only a few can do it, one might say to oneself. But that must not keep one from at least starting on the way that is open to everyone, namely to hear about the higher worlds. The human being is called to live in community, and he who secludes himself cannot arrive at a spiritual life. But it is a seclusion in a stronger sense if he says, “I do not believe this, this does not relate to me; this may be valid for the after-life.” For the occultist this has no validity. It is an important principle for the occultist to consider other human beings as true manifestations of his own higher self, because he knows then that he must find the others in himself. There is a delicate distinction between these two sentences: “To find the others in oneself,” and “To find oneself in the others.” In the higher sense it means, “This is you.” And in the highest sense it means to recognize oneself in the world and to understand that saying of the poet which I cited some weeks ago in a different connection: “One was successful. He lifted the veil of the goddess at Sais. But what did he see? Miracle of miracles! He saw himself.” To find oneself—not in egotistical inwardness, but selflessly in the world without—that is true recognition of the self.

• 1. For another description of these exercises, see Occult Science, an Outline (Anthroposophic Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1972) Chapter 5, p. 283.

In a series of talks, I have spoken of the ideas about the supersensible world and its connection with the sensuous world. It is only a matter of course that the question appears repeatedly, where from does the knowledge of the supersensible world come? Today we want to deal with this question, or with other words, with the question of the inner development of the human being.

Inner development of the human being is meant here in the sense that the human being advances to such abilities that he must acquire to himself if he wants to make that supersensible knowledge his own. Do not misunderstand the intention of this talk. This talk is remote from establishing rules or principles that have something to do with general human morality or with the demands, which belong to the general zeitgeist. I must note this expressly because over and over again in our time of equalisation where one does not accept any difference between human being and human being the misunderstanding appears, as if anybody who speaks of occultism establishes any general human demands, moral principles or the like which apply to everybody without distinction. This is not the case. This talk must not at all be confused with a talk on general principles of the theosophical movement. Occultism is unlike theosophy. The Theosophical Society has not only and indeed not exclusively the task to maintain occultism. It could be even possible that anybody who joins this Theosophical Society considers occultism as something completely unacceptable.

Among those matters that are maintained in the Theosophical Society to which also a general ethics belongs is also occultism, which encompasses the knowledge of those principles of our existence that escape from the usual sensory observation in the everyday human area of experience. However, by no means the principles are those, which have nothing to do with this everyday experience. “Occult” means: concealed, mysterious. However, I emphasise again and again that occultism is something that needs certain preconditions. As incomprehensible as higher mathematics is for the usual farmer who has never heard of it, it is occultism for many people of our time.

However, occultism stops being occult if one has taken possession of it. With it, I have strictly limited the field of this talk. Thus, nobody can object—and this must expressly be emphasised after the millenniums-old experiences and often performed experiments—that the demands which occultism puts up could not be fulfilled, they would contradict a general human culture. The fulfilment of it is required from nobody. If, however, anybody comes to me and wants to get the convictions which occultism conveys, but refuses to deal with occultism, he is in the very same situation as the schoolchild who wants to make a glass rod electric, but refuses to rub it. It will not become electric without friction. Somebody who behaves like that who has to make any objection to the methods of occultism.

Nobody is asked to become occultist; everybody must come voluntarily to occultism. Someone who objects that we do not need occultism does not need to deal with it.

Occultism does not appeal to the general humanity today. Moreover, in our present civilisation, it is exceptionally difficult to fulfil the demands of a life, which makes the supersensible world accessible.

Two preconditions are completely absent in our civilisation. The first demand is the isolation, that which esoteric science calls the higher human loneliness. The second one is the overcoming of an egoism that has risen high concerning the innermost soul qualities, in large part unaware to humanity.

The lack of these preconditions makes the developmental way of the inner life almost impossible today, because life is dispersed more and more, demands external sensuousness. In no other culture, the human beings lived in the exterior in this way as just in ours. Now I ask you again not to take anything that I say as criticism but only as a characteristic.

Of course, someone speaking that way as I do today knows exactly that this cannot be different, that just the great advantages and significant achievements of our time are based on these qualities. However, that is why our time is without any supersensible knowledge and without any influence of supersensible knowledge on our culture. In other cultures—and there are some—the human being is able to maintain his inner life more and to withdraw from the effects of the outer life. Then, within such cultures, that prospers which one calls inner life in the higher sense. In the Eastern cultures, there is something that one calls yoga and those who live according to the rules of yoga yogis. Therefore, a yogi is someone who aims at the higher spiritual science, but only, after he has looked for a master of the supersensible for himself. Nobody looks for yoga in another way than under the tutelage of a master, a guru. If he has found him, he must use a big part of the day regularly, not irregularly, to live completely in his soul. All forces that the yogi has to develop are already in his soul, they are there as certain as it is true that the electricity in the glass rod appears by friction. It is true that no one knows on his own how to cause these forces as also no one knows on his own that he can make the glass rod electric by friction.

One has to use the observations made in millenniums and the esoteric methods developed thereby to evoke the soul forces. This is very difficult in our time, which demands from every human being because of the struggle for existence that he splits himself. He does not come to the big inner contemplation, not even to a concept of contemplation, which one had in yoga. No consciousness is there of the deep loneliness which the yogi must search for. He has to repeat the same thing rhythmically, even if only for a short time, with tremendous regularity every day, with complete seclusion of anything that lives in him otherwise. It is necessary and essential that all life, which surrounds us, dies down before the yogi that his senses become unreceptive to any impression of the outside world. The yogi has to make himself blind and deaf to the environment for the time, which he dictates to himself. He must be so composed—and he has to acquire the practise in this contemplation—that one may shoot a gun beside him, and he is not disturbed directing his attention upon his inner life. In addition, he has to become free from any memory of the everyday life.

Consider now how exceptionally hard these preconditions are to be produced in our civilisation, how little one has an idea of such isolation, of such spiritual loneliness. You have to achieve all that on one condition, namely on that never to lose the harmony, the complete balance compared with the outside world in any way. This is exceptionally easy with such a deep sinking in your inside. What settles down deeper and deeper in your inside has to produce the harmony with the outside world even more distinctly at the same time. Nothing that is reminiscent of estrangement, of distance from the outer practical life is allowed to appear with you, otherwise you go astray, and otherwise, perhaps, you are not able to distinguish your higher life from insanity to a certain degree. It is really a kind of insanity if the inner life loses its relations to the outer one. Imagine once—to give you an example—you are clever concerning our earthly conditions; you have all experience and wisdom that can be collected on earth. You fall asleep in the evening, but you wake in the morning not on the earth, but on Mars. However, on Mars are conditions quite different from those on the earth. Any science, which you have collected on earth, benefits you by no means. There is no longer any harmony between your inner life and that, which takes action outside you. Hence, you would be probably put into a Mars lunatic asylum already after an hour because you cannot find the way in the new conditions. To such a road, anybody can be easily directed who loses the connection with the outside world developing his inner life. One strictly has to pay attention to it that this does not happen. All that causes big difficulties in our civilisation.

The other obstacle is a kind of egoism concerning inner soul qualities, an account of which the present humanity normally gives to itself. This is tightly connected with the spiritual development of the human being. For it belongs to the preconditions that one does not strive for it from egoism. Who strives for it from egoism cannot come far. However, our time is selfish until the inside of the human soul. You can hear repeatedly: on the other hand, how useful are these teachings to me which occultism propagates if I myself cannot experience them?

Who starts from this condition and also does not desist from it, can hardly get a really higher development, because the most intimate consciousness of human community belongs to the higher development, so that it is irrelevant whether I myself or another experience this or that. Hence, I must meet somebody whose development is higher than mine is with boundless love and full trust. First, I have to bring myself to this consciousness, to the consciousness of infinite trust towards my fellow man if he says I have experienced this and this. Such trust must be a condition of the community life, and wherever such occult abilities are used more extensively, there it is unlimited trust; there one has the consciousness that the human being is a personality in which a higher individuality lives. The basis is trust and confidence at first because we are searching not always only in ourselves for our higher selves, but also in our fellow men. Everybody who lives round us is according to his inner nature in undivided unity with us.

As long as it depends on my lower self, I am separated from other human beings. However, if it concerns my higher self—and only this can ascend to the supersensible world—, then I am no longer separated from the fellow men, I am a uniform being with my fellow men, then is that who speaks to me of the higher truth: I myself. I must drop this difference between him and me completely, I must overcome the feeling completely that he has something over me. Try to settle down in this feeling completely, so that it penetrates till the thinnest little fibres of the human soul and any egoism disappears, and the other who is farther than you stands like your own self before you, then you have understood one of the preconditions that are necessary to wake the higher spiritual life.

You can hear just where the instructions of the occult life are given—often very incorrectly and erroneously—: the higher self lives in the human being, he only needs to let his inside speak and the highest truth is revealed.—Nothing is more correct on the one hand and, on the other hand, more infertile than this assertion. If the human being tries once to let his inner human being speak, he will see that as a rule his lower self speaks, even if he imagines ever so much that his higher self appears. We do not find the higher self in ourselves at first. We have to look for it outside ourselves first. From anybody who is farther advanced we can learn a piece, because we keep it in sight as it were. We can never profit anything from our own selfish ego for our higher self. Where anybody is who has farther advanced than I have, there I am in the future. According to my disposition, I really bear the seed in myself of that which he is. However, first the ways to Mount Olympus must be illumined, so that I can pursue them.

A feeling is the basic condition of any esoteric development, you may believe it or not—every practical occultist who has experience confirms it to you—, a feeling which is mentioned in the different religions. The Christian religion calls it with the known sentence that one must understand as an occultist completely: “Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will never enter it” (Mark 10:15, Matthew 18:3). Only that understands the sentence who has learnt reverence in the highest sense of the word. Assume once that you would have heard of an adorable person in your earliest youth, a personality by which in you the highest idea has been woken in a direction, and the opportunity is offered to you to get to know this personality closer. A holy shyness of this personality lives in you during the day, which should bring you the moment where you see him in person for the first time. Standing before the door of this person, you can have the feeling to be afraid to touch the handle and to open the door. If you look to such an adorable personality this way, you have understood the feeling approximately which also Christianity means if it says that one should become like the little children to participate in the kingdom of God. It depends not so much on whether that to whom the feeling is directed deserves it in full measure, but it depends on the fact that we have the ability to look up reverentially at something from our inside. This is the important aspect of admiration that you yourselves are drawn up to that at whom you look up.

The feeling of admiration is the raising force, the magnetic force that pulls us up to the higher spheres of the supersensible life. This is the principle of the occult world that everybody who looks for higher life has to write into his soul as with golden letters. From this basic mood of the soul, the development has to begin. Without this feeling, one can generally attain nothing. Then that who looks for inner development must be clear in his mind that he does something tremendous concerning the human being. What he looks for is nothing more and nothing less than a new birth, namely in the proper sense. The higher soul of the human being should be born. As well as the human being was born with his first birth from deep inner reasons of existence as he came to the sunlight, somebody who looks for inner development steps out of the sunlight, out of that which he can experience in the sensory world, to a higher spiritual light. Something is born in him that rests in the usual human being, who represents the mother, as deeply as the child in the mother before it is born. Who is not aware of the far-reaching consequences of this fact does not know what is called occult or esoteric development. The higher soul that is deep in the whole human nature at first and is interwoven with it is got out. If the human being stands in the everyday life before us, his lower and higher natures are closely related, and this is a piece of luck in the everyday life.

Somebody, who lives among us, would perhaps bring evil, bad qualities to light if he followed his lower nature, but within him, mixed with the lower nature, the higher one lives which keeps it in check. You can compare this mixture with a mixture of a yellow liquid and a blue one in a glass, resulting in a green liquid in which we can no longer distinguish yellow and blue. The lower nature is mixed with the higher one in the human being that way and both are not to be distinguished. As you can extract the blue liquid from the green liquid by chemical means, so that only the yellow fluid remains, and the uniform green is separated into a duality, in blue and yellow, you separate the lower nature from the higher one by means of the esoteric development. You pull the lower nature out of the body like the sword from the scabbard, which remains alone then for itself. This lower nature comes out in such a way that it appears almost nightmarish.

When it was still mixed with the higher nature, nothing of it was to be noticed. Now, however, when it is separated, all evil, bad qualities come out. Human beings who had seemed benevolent before often become quarrelsome and envious. These qualities sat already in their lower nature, however, were controlled by the higher one. You can observe this with many people who are led on anomalous ways. The human being becomes a liar very easily when he enters the supersensible world. He easily loses the ability to distinguish true from wrong. It belongs inevitably to the esoteric training that the strictest training of the character is paralleled by it. What history tells of the saints as their temptations is not a legend but literal truth.

Someone who wants to develop in any way to the higher world is easily exposed to this temptation if he has not developed the strength of character and the highest morality in himself to be able to hold down everything that approaches him. Not only that desire and passions grow, this is not even so much the case, but—and this seems miraculous at first—also the opportunities increase. Like by a miracle, opportunities of the evil, which were concealed to him before, lie in wait of someone who ascends to the higher world. In every fact of life, a demon lies in wait for him which tries to lead him astray. What he has not seen once, he sees now. The splitting of his nature conjures up such opportunities as it were everywhere from the secret sites of life. Therefore, the so-called white magic—that school of esoteric development which leads the human being to the higher worlds in good, real and true way—demands a particular development of character as essential. Every practical esoteric says to you that nobody should dare to pass that narrow gate—one calls the entrance to the esoteric development that way—without practicing these qualities repeatedly. They are a necessary pre-school of the esoteric life.

The first ability that the human being must develop is to separate the unimportant from the significant, the transient from the imperishable on all his ways through life. One can demand this easily, but it is often difficult to carry it out. It is, as Goethe says, indeed, easy, however, the easy is difficult. Have a look, for example, at a plant or at a thing.

You learn to recognise that everything has an important and an unimportant side and the human being mostly is interested in the unimportant, in the relation of the thing to him or in a subordinated quality. Someone who wants to become an esoteric has to get into the habit of seeing and looking for a being in everything. Seeing a watch, for example, he has to be interested in its principles. He must be able to disassemble it in the minutest detail and develop a feeling of its principles. Suppose further that a mineralogist looks at a rock crystal. He gets already by an external view to a significant knowledge of the crystal. However, the esoteric must take a stone in hand and can vividly feel what is indicated in the following monologue: in certain respect, you are below humanity, but in certain respect, you outrank humanity by far. You are below humanity because you cannot conceive ideas of human beings because you do not feel. You cannot imagine, you cannot think and you do not live, but you have something over humanity, you are chaste in yourself, you do not have any wish and desire. Every human being, every living being has wishes, cravings, desires; you do not have them. You are perfect and contented with that which was bestowed on you, a model for the human being with which he has still to connect his other qualities.

If the esoteric can feel this rather deeply, he has grasped the significant that the stone can say to him. Thus, the human being can take something important from everything. If this has become a habit that he separates the significant from the unimportant, then he has appropriated another of the feelings, which the esoteric must have. Then he must connect his own life with the significant. The human beings are deceived in that in particular very easily in our time. The human beings believe very easily that the place on which they stand is not commensurate with them. How often are people inclined to say, my destiny has put me in a place in which I do not fit. I am, we say, for example, postal clerk. If I were put to another place, I could provide high ideas to the people; I could give great teachings and so on.

The mistake of these human beings is that they do not connect their lives with the significant of their occupations. If you see anything significant in me because I can talk to the people here, you do not see the significant in your own life and occupation. If the postmen did not carry away the letters, the whole exchange of letters would come to a standstill, a lot of work, which has already been performed by others, would be in vain.

Hence, everybody is of extraordinary importance for the whole on his post, and nobody is higher than the other is. Christ tried to indicate this the nicest in the downright marvellous way in the thirteenth chapter of the St. John's Gospel with the words: “a servant is not greater than his master, nor a messenger than the one who sent him” (13:16). These words were spoken, after the master had washed the disciples' feet. With it, he wanted to say, what would I be without my disciples? They must be there, so that I can be there in the world, and I have to pay tribute to them degrading myself before them and washing their feet.—This is one of the most significant hints to the feeling, which the esoteric must have towards the significant. One is not allowed to confuse the externally significant with the internally significant. One has to pay strict attention to that.

Then we must develop a number of qualities. First, we have to become masters of our thoughts, of the chains of our thoughts in particular. One calls that the control of thoughts. Consider once how in the human soul the thoughts are bustling about, how they are wandering around aimlessly: here appears an impression, there another, and every single one changes the thought. It is not true that we control the thoughts; rather the thoughts control us completely. However, we must advance so far that we are engrossed in a certain thought during a certain time of the day and say to ourselves, no other thought is allowed to enter my soul and to control me.—With it, we ourselves lead the reins of the thought life for some time.

The second quality is that we behave in a similar way to our actions, that is that we control our actions. It is necessary that we reach so far at least to commit such actions now and again to which we are caused by nothing that comes from outside. Nothing that is induced by our state, our occupation, and our position leads us deeper into the higher life. The higher life depends on such intimacies, for example that we make the decision to do something for the first time, something that arises from our very own initiative, and even if it is a quite unimportant fact. All other actions contribute nothing to the higher life.

The following, the third quality is endurance. The human beings alternate between joy and grief, once they are on top of the sky, then they are down in the dumps. Thus, the human beings drift on the waves of life, of joy and grief. However, they have to attain equanimity, calmness. The biggest grief, the biggest joys must not confuse them, they must stand firm, get endurance.

The fourth quality is the understanding of any being. What it means to understand any being is nowhere better expressed than in a legend about Christ Jesus, which has been preserved to us not in the Gospels, but in a Persian story. Jesus walked with his disciples overland, and they found a rotting dog on the way. The animal looked awkward. Jesus stopped and glanced admiring at it, saying, “However, what nice teeth has this animal.” Jesus spotted the beautiful of the awkward. Strive for approaching the marvellous everywhere in such a way, and then you see something in everything outdoors to which you can say yes. Make it like Christ who admired the beautiful teeth of the dead dog. This direction leads to great tolerance and to the understanding of anything and any being.

The fifth quality is the complete impartiality towards everything new that faces us. Most people judge something new according to something old that they know already. If anybody comes to say anything to you, you immediately answer: I am of another opinion about that.—However, we are not allowed to confront a communication, which we get with our opinion immediately, we must be on the lookout for something new that we can learn. We can still learn something from a little child. Even if one is the wisest human being, he must be inclined to restrain his judgment and to listen to others. We must develop this ability of listening to anybody, because it enables us to face the things with maximal impartiality. In esotericism, one calls this “confidence,” and this is the strength to maintain the impressions, which the new makes on us, by that which we hold against it.

The sixth quality is that which everybody receives by itself after he has developed the cited qualities. This is the inner harmony. The human being who has the other qualities has the inner harmony. Then it is also necessary that the human being who looks for the esoteric development has developed the feeling of freedom to the highest degree. This feeling of freedom which enables him to look for the centre of his being in himself and to stand firm on own feet so that he does not need to ask anybody what to do, but that he stands straight and acts freely. This is also something that one has to acquire.

If the human being has developed these qualities in himself, he is above any danger that could cause the splitting of his nature in him. Then the qualities of his lower nature can no longer work on him, and then he can no longer lose his way. Hence, these qualities must develop very exactly. The esoteric life comes then whose expression causes a certain rhythmisation of life. The term rhythmisation of life expresses the corresponding ability. If you look at nature, you find a certain rhythm in it. You will consider it as a matter of course that the violet blossoms annually at the same time in the spring that the grain on the field, the grapes on the grapevine become ripe at the same time. This rhythmical succession of the phenomena is found everywhere outside in nature. Everywhere is rhythm; everywhere is repetition in regular sequence. If you go up to the higher beings which, you see this rhythmical sequence more and more decreasing. You also see with the animal, still in a higher degree, all qualities rhythmically arranged. At certain time of the year, the animal gets particular functions and abilities. The higher the being is developed, the more life is given in own hands of the being, the more this rhythm ceases. You must know that the human body is only one of the members of his being. Then the etheric body comes, the astral body, and finally, the higher members, which form the basis of those.

The physical body is highly subject to the rhythm to which the entire external nature is subjected. As the plant life and animal life proceed in their external form rhythmically, the life of the physical body proceeds. The heart beats rhythmically, the lung breathes rhythmically and so on. Everything proceeds so rhythmically because it is ordered by higher powers, by the wisdom of the world, by that which the scriptures call the Holy Spirit. The higher bodies, and in particular the astral body, are left, I would like to say, by these higher spiritual powers in a certain way and have lost their rhythm. Can you deny that your activity is irregular concerning wishes, desires, and passions that it cannot be compared with the regularity that prevails in the physical body? Who learns the rhythm of the physical nature finds the model of spirituality in it. If you look at the heart, this marvellous organ with the regular beat and its implanted wisdom, and compare it to the desires and passions of the astral body that release all possible actions against the heart, then you recognise how disadvantageously the passion works on its regular way. However, the functions of the astral body must become as rhythmical as the performances of the physical body are.

I want to state something that will seem absurd to most people, namely concerning the fasting. We have completely lost the consciousness of the importance of fasting. However, from the point of view of the rhythmisation of our astral body, fasting is something exceptionally meaningful. What is fasting? It means to control the desire of eating and to eliminate the astral body concerning the desire of eating. He who fasts eliminates the astral body and has no appetite. This is in such a way, as if you switch off a force in a machine. Then the astral body sleeps, and the rhythms of the physical body and its implanted wisdom work on the astral body and make it rhythmic. As well as the seal is imprinted by a signet, the harmony of the physical body is imprinted in the astral body and it would be transmitted much more permanently if it were not always made irregular by the desires, passions and wishes, also by spiritual desires and wishes.

The modern human being needs more than in former times to bring in rhythm to his entire higher life. Just as God planted rhythm into the physical body, the human being must make his astral body rhythmic. The human being must dictate the course of the day to himself; arrange it for the astral body in such a way as the spirit of nature arranges it for the lower realms. Early in the morning, at a particular time, one must do a spiritual exercise, at another time, which must be again observed strictly, another exercise, in the evening another exercise again. These spiritual exercises must not be chosen arbitrarily, but must be suitable to the continuing development of the higher life. This is a kind to take charge of life and to control it. Determine an hour in the morning where you concentrate. You must observe this hour. There you have to produce a kind of calm, so that the great esoteric master can wake in you. There you have to meditate on big contents of thought, which have nothing to do with the outside world, and to liven these contents of thought up in you.

A short time is enough, maybe a quarter of an hour, even five minutes if one does not have more time. However, it is worthless and useless if one exercises irregularly. If one exercises regularly, so that the activity of the astral body becomes regular like a clock, then these exercises have value. The astral body gets another appearance if you exercise regularly. Sit down in the morning and exercise; the forces develop which I described to you. However, it must happen regularly because the astral body expects that the same is carried out with it at the same time, and it gets into a mess if it does not happen. One must have a mind to exercise regularly at least. If you make your life rhythmic in such a way, you perceive the results in not too long a time, namely the spiritual life, which is hidden to the human being at first, becomes apparent to some extent.

As a rule, the human life changes between four states. The first state is the perception of the outside world. You look with the senses and perceive the outside world. The second state is that which we can call imagination which is somewhat related to the dream life, even belongs to it. There the human being is rooted not in the surroundings, but is detached from them, there he has no realities before him, memories at the most. The third state is the dreamless sleep. There the human being has no consciousness of his ego, and the fourth state is that in which the human being lives in his memory. This is different from perception; this is something abstract, spiritual. Had the human being no memory, he could not get any spiritual development generally.

Inner life starts developing by means of tranquillity and meditation. The human being notices then eventually that he is no longer dreaming chaotically, but that he dreams in extremely significant way and that to him strange things manifest, which he recognises gradually as manifestations of spiritual truths. Of course, one can easily raise the trivial objection: all that is just dreamt, what does this concern to us?—However, if anybody invented the dirigible airship in his dreams and carried out it, this dream would just have revealed the truth. Thus, an idea can be grasped still in a way different from the usual, and then the truth of it must be found in the realisation. We have to be convinced of its inner truth from the outside.

The next stage of the spiritual life is that where we grasp truth using our own qualities and direct our dreams consciously. If we start directing the dreams regularly, we are on that level where truth becomes transparent to us. One calls the first stage the material knowledge where the object must be there. The other stage is the imaginative knowledge. One develops this by meditating, organising life rhythmically.

It is laborious to gain it. If it is obtained, the time also comes when there is no longer any difference between the perception in the usual life and the perception in the supersensible. If we live among the things of the everyday life, in the sensuous world, and change our spiritual state, we experience the spiritual supersensible world perpetually if we have exercised enough in this way. This is the case, as soon as we are able to become blind and deaf compared with the sensory world, to remember nothing of the everyday life and still to have a spiritual life in us. Then our dream life starts becoming conscious. If we are able to pour something of it in our everyday life, then also that quality appears which makes the spiritual qualities of the beings round us perceptible.

Then we do no longer see the outside of the things only, but then we also see the inside, the concealed essence of the things, the plants, the animals, and the human beings. I know that most people say: these are other things.—This is quite right; these are always things quite unlike those, which the human being sees, who do not have such senses. The third state is usually completely empty, but starts to be animated if the continuity of consciousness occurs. The continuity comes completely by itself, and then the human being does no longer sleep unconsciously. He experiences the supersensible world during the time when he sleeps otherwise.

What does sleep consist of, otherwise? The physical body lies in the bed and the astral body lives in the supersensible world. In this supersensible world, you are strolling. As a rule, the human being of the present disposition cannot go far away from his body. If anyone has now developed organs of the astral body, strolling during sleep, by the rules which spiritual science gives, he starts realising during sleep. The physical body would be blind and deaf if it had no eyes and ears, and the astral body that strolls at night is blind and deaf because it still has no eyes and ears. However, these develop by meditation; it is the means of forming its organs. This meditation must then be performed regularly. It is performed in such a way that the body of the human being is the mother and the spirit of the human being is the father. The body of the human being, as it stands physically before us, is in every member, which it shows to us, a mystery, namely in such a way that any member belongs in certain but concealed way to a part of the astral body. The esoteric knows these matters. He knows, for example, where to the point between the eyebrows belongs in the physical body. It belongs to a certain organ in the astral organism. While the spiritual scientist indicates how to direct your thoughts, feelings and sensations to the point between the eyebrows, you connect something that develops in the physical body with the corresponding part of the astral body and you get a certain sensation in your astral body.

However, it must happen regularly, and one must know how. Then the astral body starts being structured. It develops from a lump to the organism in which the organs form. I have described the astral senses in the magazine Lucifer-Gnosis. One also calls them lotus flowers. These lotus flowers develop using certain formulae. If they have developed, the human being is able to perceive the spiritual world. This is the same world, which he enters when he walks through the gate of death. The saying by Hamlet is then wrecked that from that unknown land no traveller has come back.

You can go or, better said, you can slip from the sensuous world into the supersensible world, and live here and there. This is no life in a cloud-cuckoo-land, but a life in that area which only makes the life in our area explicable and clear. As well as a usual human being who has not studied the principles of electricity goes into an electrically powered factory, sees the miraculous activities and does not understand them, he also does not understand the activities in the spiritual world.

The ignorance of the visitor of this factory exists as long as he does not know the principles of electricity. Thus, the human being is also ignorant in the fields of the spiritual, as long as he does not know the principles of the spiritual. There is nothing in our world that does not depend on the spiritual world wherever one goes. Everything that surrounds us here is an external expression of the spiritual world. There is no material. Every material is compressed spirit. To somebody who looks into the spiritual world, the whole material, sensuous world, the world generally spiritualises itself. As the ice melts before the sun to water, everything sensuous melts to something spiritual before the soul, which looks into the spiritual world. The primal ground of the world reveals itself bit by bit before the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear.

In reality, this life, which the human being gets to know in this way, is the spiritual life that the human being has already led inside perpetually about which he knows nothing because he does not know himself until he has developed the organs for the higher world. Imagine once that you would be a human being with the qualities, which you have now, however, you would have no senses. You would know nothing about the world round you, you would have no understanding of the physical body, and, nevertheless, you would belong to the physical world

Thus, the human soul belongs to the spiritual world, however, it does not know it because it does not hear and see. As our body is taken from the forces and materials of the physical world, our soul is taken from the forces and materials of the spiritual world. We do not recognise ourselves in ourselves, but only in our surroundings. As true as you cannot see the heart and brain, without perceiving them with your fellow men by your senses—even with the help of the X-rays your eyes can only see the heart—, it is true that you cannot see or hear your own soul, without recognising them by the spiritual senses in the environment. You can recognise yourselves only by your environment. There is no inside knowledge in reality, no introspection, there is only a knowledge, a revelation by organs of the physical as well as of the spiritual life around us. We belong to the worlds around us, to the physical, astral, and spiritual worlds. We learn from the physical world, if we have physical organs and from the spiritual world, from all souls if we have soul organs, spiritual organs. There is no other knowledge than world knowledge.

It is idle and empty tranquillity if the human being is brooding in himself and believes to be able to reach anything by mere introspection. The human being finds God in himself if he wakes the divine organs in himself and then finds his higher divine self in his environment, as he can only find his lower self in the surroundings using his eyes and ears. We understand ourselves as physical beings by the contact with the sensory world, and we understand ourselves in a spiritual respect while we develop spiritual senses in ourselves. Developing the inside means opening ourselves to the divine life in the outside world round us.

You understand now why it is necessary that someone who ascends to the higher world experiences an infinite consolidation of his character first. The human being can get to know by himself at first how the world is because his senses are already opened. For a benevolent divine spirit that had seen and heard in the physical world stood beside the human being aeons ago, before he could see and hear, and opened his eyes and ears. Just from such beings, the human being has to learn to see spiritually, from the beings, which are already able to what he has to learn. We must have a guru who says to us how to develop our organs who says to us what he did to develop the organs. Who wants to instruct has to acquire a basic quality: absolute veracity, and this is also a main demand, which must be made on the student. Nobody is allowed to be trained as an esoteric, unless he has acquired this basic quality of absolute veracity before.

Concerning the sensuous experiences, one can examine what is said. However, if I tell you anything of the spiritual world, you must have confidence because you are not yet so far that you can check it. Who wants to be a guru must have become so true that it is impossible for him to take such statements slightly with regard to the spiritual world and the spiritual life. The sensuous world immediately corrects the mistakes, which we do concerning this world, however, in the spiritual world, we must have that guideline in ourselves, we must be rigorously trained, so that we are not forced to control by the outside world, but have the control in ourselves. We can only acquire this control, while we appropriate the most rigorous veracity already here in the world. Therefore, the Theosophical Society also had to accept the principle: no law above truth, when it began revealing some elementary teachings of esotericism to the world.

A few understand this principle. Most people are content with it if they can say to themselves, I am aware that it is true, and if it is wrong, they say, I have erred. The esoteric is not allowed to insist on his subjective honesty. There he is on the wrong track. He must always comply with the facts in the outside world and he must regard an experience, which speaks against it as a mistake, as an error. The esoteric is no longer responsible or not. He must absolutely harmonise with the facts of life. He must start feeling responsible in the strictest sense of any statement, which he makes. Then one educates himself to the unconditional assurance that that must have for himself and others who wants to be a spiritual guide.

Thus, you see that I had to indicate—we have to speak about this subject once again to add the higher parts—a number of qualities and procedures. They seem to you too intimate to speak about them with others, every soul has to sort them for itself and they may seem to you inappropriate to attain the great aim, which should be attained, namely the entrance of the supersensible world. That will absolutely arrive at the entrance who walks on the way, which I have characterised.

When? About that, one of the most superior members of the theosophical movement, our long since deceased member Subba Rao (Tallapragada S. R., 1856-1890), appropriately expressed himself. He answered to the question, how long it lasts: seven years, maybe also seven times seven years, maybe also seven incarnations, maybe also only seven hours.—It completely depends on that which the person brings into life along with him. A person may face us, who is apparently quite silly who has brought a higher life along with him, which is concealed now and must only be got out. Today, most human beings are farther advanced in esoteric relation than it seems, and this would become known to many people if our material conditions and our material time did not strike back so much into the inner soul life. A big percentage of modern humanity advanced rather far in earlier times. It depends on different matters whether that which is in the human being comes out. However, one can give some help. Imagine that a human being faces me. In his former incarnation he was a far advanced individuality, however, he has an undeveloped brain now. An undeveloped brain may sometimes conceal great spiritual talents. However, if one teaches him the usual profane abilities, it is possible that also the inner spiritual ones come out. However, it does not depend only on this, but also on the surroundings in which the person lives.

In quite significant way, the human being is a reflection of his surroundings. Assume that a human being is a highly developed personality, but lives in surroundings, which only wake and form certain prejudices in him that work so vigorously that the higher disposition cannot come out. If such a human being does not find anybody who gets out it, then it just remains concealed in him.

I could only give you a few indications about that; however, we speak again about the other and deeper matters after Christmas. The one idea I wanted to wake is that the higher life develops not tumultuously but quite intimately, in the deepest soul, and that the great day when the soul awakes and enters the higher life really comes like the thief at night.

The development of the higher life leads the human being into a new world, and after he has entered this new world, he sees the other side of existence, so to speak, then that presents itself to him, which was hidden to him before. Everybody should say that to himself, perhaps, not everybody is able to do this, maybe only a few are able. However, this should not discourage him from entering that way which at least is open to everybody to hear something of the higher worlds. The human being is destined to live in community, and who separates himself cannot get to spiritual life. However, it is a seclusion in the higher sense if I say, I do not believe this, this is not related to me, this may have validity for the other life; this does not apply to the esoteric. The esoteric has the principle to regard the other human beings as a revelation of his own higher self because he knows then that he has to find the others in himself.

A subtle difference exists between both sentences “find the others in yourself” and “find yourself in the others.” That is in the higher sense: you are that. In the highest sense, it means, you recognise yourself in the world and understand the word of the poet, which I quoted some weeks ago in another connection: “Somebody was successful to lift the veil of the goddess of Sais.—But what did he see? He saw—miracle of miracles—his self!” You do not find true self-knowledge in your selfish inside but unselfishly in the world.