The Rudolf Steiner Archive

On the essence of practice
Transcription for Prof. Dr. Hans Wohlbold, Munich, from 1917.

The essence of practice lies in the appropriation of the imaginative activity that can elevate spiritual reality to knowledge. The essential thing is that this imaginative activity is experienced independently of the physical organization. It is a matter of experience to know: now I notice how I am able to think, etc., without the usual conditions of the imagination being tied to the physical body. This point in time occurs in the course of practice. In particular, I advise:

1.) In the evening, a backward imagining of the day's experiences. This is a first step with an imagining that does not bind itself to the usual pursuit of imagining. The imagining becomes freer.

2.) To concentrate in complete calm on a short train of thought. This should be completely manageable, so that one does not mix in unconscious or subconscious reminiscences of images, etc., but really remains in a mental activity with complete awareness. Then one lets the thought-content fall away in consciousness and tries to retain the energy, to remain consciously for a short time without thought-content. In this way one brings the ability to perceive to that calm energy which is necessary to grasp the spiritual, which otherwise, as it were, falls through the meshes of ordinary thinking and thus does not come to consciousness.

I advise doing exercises 1 and 2 in the evening.

In the morning it is good to do a kind of thought-concentration similar to the second one. Pictorial imagination can play a role here, as I have discussed in principle with the rose-cross exercise in the second part of “Occult Science”. In order to gain the necessary calmness of thought concentration, it is good to do the six exercises (as auxiliary exercises) described in the second part of my “Secret Science”.

The purpose of practicing lies partly in the application of stronger soul activity in contrast to the ordinary. Just as in the physical world, at critical points, the quantitative naturally changes into the qualitative, so the increase of the ordinary capacity for knowledge becomes that which can have the spiritual world as its object.

Exercises for Adolf Arenson
given in Stuttgart at the beginning of April 1904
Manuscript archive number 5299, 5300, 5301.

I. Every day, review the experiences of the personality during the day. You consider the most important experiences you had during the day and the way you behaved within them. All this is done with the aim of learning from life. How can I do a better job of something I did today? Such questions are asked. This does not make you dull to pleasure and pain. On the contrary. You become more sensitive. But you don't get stuck worrying and regretting what you've done; you turn it into a resolution to do better in the future. You become your own architect. Just as an architect does not stand and regretfully lament over a house he has built, that it is not better, but rather evaluates the experiences he has with the less good one for a next possible construction, so man does the same with himself. Our personality is lost in regret and worry; through learning it rises. Regret and worry are of no use; we should spend the time we waste on them on our upward development. The whole process should not take more than three to four minutes. You then fall asleep with a manas that has received the strength to develop upwards within itself. If you can add an important resolution for life or even a good thought for fellow human beings, it is particularly good. This gradually transforms you, because you have given the manas, which is free of all personal barriers during sleep, a worthy content that promotes development.

II. In the morning as the first mental work of the day:

a) Elevation to one's own higher self through complete surrender to the formula:

I am the living urge in my covers.
My higher self is pure like the purest crystal.

b) Concentrated devotion to a high thought. The meditation of Bhagavad-Gita, chap. III, Karma Yoga, is best. From the third verse onwards:

3. As I have already told you...

Always just one verse. You stay with one verse for two weeks. After two weeks, you choose the next one and so on. In this meditation, as well as in the previous elevation to the higher self, the field of vision of consciousness must be completely pure. Every other thought must be kept away completely. If one should arise, it must be banished with all one's strength.

c) Devotional mood toward that which is most sacred to one. (The Creative All, God, etc., according to the personality, according to what one has learned to honor and name as the highest.)

For the morning meditation, 8-10 minutes.

Patience and perseverance, absolute earnestness are absolutely necessary. One must get into the mood in which the spirit perceives this meditation as a need as natural as the body's physical needs. And then one waits to be given. It will be given to everyone in due time.

It can be started now on April 16 (not earlier), then again on May 16.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3105/06

Morning meditation - 5 minutes

1. Brighter than the sun
purer than snow
finer than ether
is the Self
the spirit in my heart
That Self is me

2. 5 minutes

Inhalation: seek the way - 1 time (deep, calm)

Breathing retention: Search for the path in contemplation – 3 times.

Exhalation (not in spurts): Search for the path by boldly stepping out of yourself – 2 times.

(3 times)

because:

14 days: Before the eye sees
14 days: Before the ear
14 days: Before
14 days: Before them

3. Devotional surrender to one's own divine ideal. 5 minutes

Ending:
1st month: Self-confidence
2nd month: self-control
3rd month: presence of mind
4th month: energy

In the evening

Review of the day: If there was an experience:
Have I learned enough from it?
If there was an action:
Can't I do it better?
Without regret. Only with the intention of learning from life.
From back to front. From evening to morning.

Without alcohol.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3107

In the morning

I.) Brighter than the sun
purer than the snows
more subtle than the ethers
is the Self
its spirit in my heart
this Self am I
I am this Self.

Full waking consciousness.

II.) Think of the left hand and the heart and at the same time imagine:

Seek the way

Now you stop at the heart and think:

Seek the way of inner contemplation.

Now think of the right hand and fold it over the left, imagining:

Seek the way by boldly stepping out of yourself.

III.) Devotional surrender to that which one regards as a divine ideal.

In the evening

Review of the day.
Without regret.
From evening to morning. Backwards.
You can fall asleep doing this!!

Exercises from a Notebook: Archive number 105, 1906

February 16.

1.) Radiant ---

2.) Inhalation, exhalation, holding the breath.

I am, which is poured through the whole body.

This three times in succession, whereby actually the “I am” should accompany
the whole process.

Inhalation, exhalation, retention of breath
It - whereby it is actually “I” - It is
This again three times

Inhalation, retention of breath, exhalation The inner being

3.) The currents within the body.

Then, after the meditation, a sinking into and letting oneself be affected by the following figures:

What does it mean to disappear into oneself and to arise again from one's disappearance?

How does a point become a circle, and how does a circle become a point?

What is inner, what is outer; what is upper, what is lower; what is matter, what is spirit; what is physical matter, what is ether?

What is astral?

How do the spirits of the sensation affect the wearer of the substance?

Imagine that the lines are clasps made of whalebone, which are in the above position; but in every moment they resist this length through their strength.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3187/88

In the evening

First look back over the life of the day, presenting individual episodes of this life in pictures. Going back from the evening to the morning. This need only take 5-7 minutes. Then, with the feeling, “From the spiritual world my self flows to me,” concentrate on the center of the eyebrows and direct the words to this point:

“I am.

Then, with the feeling, ‘The spiritual world lives soulfully in the silent word,’ concentrate on the larynx and direct the words to this point:

”It thinks”.

Then, with the feeling: “The spiritual world creates its knowledge,” concentrate on the heart, arms and hands and direct the words into this area:

“It feels.”

Then with the feeling: “In me the spiritual world creates its self-awareness,” concentrate on the aura, which is thought of as egg-shaped and surrounding the body; at the same time, direct the words into this area:

"It wills.

The meditation should last 10-15 minutes.

In the morning

The meditation of the Rose Cross, as described in “Occult Science”.

In addition, the 6 subsidiary exercises.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 6860-62 with note:
End of August [1906] Stuttgart.

Immerse yourself completely in the idea of

an impersonal higher self

It is not important that you visualize something prescribed by someone, but that you try to form the best idea of the “higher self” that you can, based on your level of development.

Now treat this idea as if you were placing it in the place inside the head where the pineal gland (Z) is located. Transfer your consciousness there for a while and fill it completely with the above idea of an “impersonal higher self”. So for a while you imagine that your own being is in Z, compressed, and that you are the above idea. Banish everything else from your consciousness.

Once you have done this for a while, slowly guide the above idea from Z in a line to the beginning of the spinal cord, approximately where the brain passes into the spinal cord. Then you continue it from there approximately down the area of the spinal cord to a point called K (kundalini). After imagining that you have imbued the above idea with kundalini power (spiritual) fire, you slowly guide it back up along the spinal cord to a point inside the head: approximately at the point (B) of the small brain (back of the head). Now you imagine (impersonal higher self) from this point in two lines to the two eyes and let it flow out through them, as it were, into infinite space. Then you draw it back in through the eyes and guide it to point B. Do this again by leading the image from B to the two ears, letting it flow through them into infinite space and then back

to B through the ears. Once you have imagined that you have led the “impersonal higher self” through space twice and filled it with its content, then lead the thus enriched idea again from B through the spinal cord to K, imbue it there in the imagination with the spiritual fire and now lead it very slowly (so slowly that the time during which one ascends from K to the point at the throat at laryngeal level takes about 20 minutes) to the throat (at laryngeal level). There one now thinks intensely:

I am not you.

I, the concept of the higher self according to all the paths it takes in the above sense.

You, the ordinary self that one does not identify with at this moment.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3192

Christian Gnostic Meditation

I. Early in the morning, immediately after awakening, when no other impressions have yet passed through the soul, one seeks to free the consciousness completely from all memories of everyday life, one seeks to distract one's attention from all external perceptions. Then, when one has attained this inner silence, one lets live alone in the soul:

The first five verses of the Gospel of John. II. Then, for the first fortnight, one should try to recall one's whole past life in order to get to know oneself completely. After the first fortnight, one should read the whole Gospel of John, so that one lives in one chapter every day for seven days.

So in the first 7 days: 1st chapter from sentence 6 to the end
So in the second 7 days: 2nd chapter
etc.

When you have reached the 13th chapter, you try to experience

foot washing to experience the feeling of how every higher being owes its existence to the lower ones, and must therefore humbly bow down to them.

Flagellation the feeling that one can stand upright facing the scourging of life, i.e. facing all suffering and pain.

Crowning with thorns: the feeling that you have to stand tall, even in the face of all scorn and mockery.

Crucifixion: the feeling that your own body is something alien that you carry and to which you are tied from the outside.

Mystical death: You experience the curtain that still covers the spiritual world, but then also how it tears and you look into the spiritual world.

You learn to see the causes of evil and the evil ones: descending into hell.

Entombment: You feel at one with all beings on earth, with the earth itself. You are immersed in it.

Resurrection: This can only be experienced because the words of ordinary language are insufficient to describe it.

III. Then one calls the figure of Christ Jesus to mind and delves into the following image:

I, in Your Spirit.

In the evening: review of the entire day.

I and III are the same every day; only II changes every 7 days, as described.

After completing cycle II, you start again from the beginning and so on forever. After a long time, you may experience the inner and outer symptoms mentioned in the description of Christian development.

Outwardly one feels as if one's feet are surrounded by water.

Outwardly one feels a burning sensation etc. over the whole skin.

Outwardly one feels pain in the head.

Outwardly the wounds redden during meditation.

Internally, one experiences the vision as if one were personally performing the washing of the feet.

Internally, one sees oneself being scourged.

Internally, one sees oneself wearing the crown of thorns.

Inwardly you see yourself crucified.

Exercise with the Rose Cross Visualization.
Handwritten manuscript archive number 3229

Evening:

1.) Retrospective. Pictorial. Retrospective.

2.) Search You, my soul, to plunge into yourself, sensing you;
At the bottom of you lies your spirit;
In your spirit the spirit of the world is at work.
I am in all this
thinking feeling
living.

(Peace of mind)

In the morning:

In you, you world letter
I see
The sevenfold workings of the spirit
In seven rose stars
The dark paths of life
In the black wood of the cross
I am in all this.

(Peace of mind)

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3236/37/38

In the morning:

Concentrate on a line that goes through the body, so

The line does not go through the spinal cord, but a little in front of it through the body.

Then meditate on the following words:

Warming light penetrates into me from above
The gravity of the earth spreads warming light within me
and shapes me,

Then, for a longer period of time, hold the idea

I am

Then do not imagine anything, but wait in empty consciousness for what comes.

In the evening: try to concentrate on your own physical sensations in the following stages:

I am my head
I am my neck
I am my arms
I am my chest wrapping
I am my heart
I am the blood that circulates in me
I am my lungs

Then, concentrate on the breath in the following way:

Concentrate on inhalation and perceive the inhaled air as J

Concentrate on the inhaled air filling the body and perceive it as A

Focus on the exhalation and feel the air leaving the body as O

Do this for seven consecutive breathing cycles;

then focus contemplatively on the inside of the head (point a)

Feel as if the sound J A O were resounding there; hold this sound for one to two minutes, then imagine nothing but wait in empty consciousness for what comes. Neck: luminous stream along the spine A

Luminous stream from the center of the eyebrows to the neck: J

Luminous stream along the spine: A

Light flow inside from the spine back to the center of the eyebrows: O

(seven times every 2 minutes (14 minutes)

J A O penetrates into me through me out of me

J A O creates forces in me through me out of me as often as

J A O lives, webend in me through me out of me, possible.

Mood:

J A O as the name of Christ
This is connected with the secret of
how Christ works in man.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 5273

1.) Evening: 4-5 minute review of the day's life (in reverse chronological order).

2.) Evening: The following meditation for 4-5 minutes:

I feel myself in the space of light (thereby imagining the light-filled world around me)

Light weaves my etheric body (imagining my own body consisting of light)

I feel myself in the world of colors (imagining a sea of colors in which you yourself are)

The world of colors of the mind gives me the soul (imagining your own soul).

In light and color, My Self thinks, feels and wills.

3.) In the morning: Imagine a black cross with seven shining stars.

Meditate on this:

4-5 minutes:

My Self
Thinks, feels and wills
Through light and color 4-5 minutes
I rest quietly
In my higher self
My I In
Christ.

In addition, the six exercises: concentration of thought, etc., as they appear in Occult Science.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3233

I. Day: Evening, 10 minutes:

Summarize a realization in a short sentence.

Transformation into a mathematical or physical symbol.

Breaths:

Inhalation: Consuming the symbol for several minutes through the head.

Holding the breath: Storing the symbol.

Exhalation: Imagine letting the symbol out along with the air you breathe out, without the symbol.

Morning: 15 minutes:

Repeat the same exercise.

Remain with an even inner soul, without external impressions and without memories of life on the physical plane.

Day 2:

Evening:

Summarize a realization into one sentence.

Transform it into a plant symbol.

Breaths:

Inhale: Consume the symbol through the heart.

Holding the breath: Holding the symbol

Exhaling: Imagining that you are holding the symbol within you and letting out air without a symbol.

Morning:

Repeat the exercise and remain as on the first day.

III. Day:

Evening:

Summarize a realization in a short sentence.

Transform it into a symbol from the animal kingdom.

Breaths:

Inhale the symbol through the larynx.

Hold your breath: Hold the symbol.

Exhalation: Imagine that [the] symbol remains inside and empty breath goes out.

Morning: Repeat as on other 'days.

No alcohol. No lentils, beans, peas.

Handwritten Exercise: archive number 5269

Evening:

1.) Retrospective review of the events of the day in reverse chronological order. 4-5 minutes.

2.) First, concentrate on the visualization: I think things and facts.

Hold this visualization for about a minute, excluding other thoughts.

Then concentrate on the visualization:

My thinking flows in time.

Hold this image again for a minute.

After this preparation, concentrate on the following in succession (3-4 minutes):

I follow the flowing thought
I will recognize my will in my thinking
I will find my I in my thinking will
I will live as I in my thinking will
I await the solution of the I from the I.

Then a calm inner frame of mind.

In the morning: visualization of a blue circular area with a red surrounding.

Then transform it into a red circle with a blue surrounding. Transform back into the previous state.

Do this 7 times in a row.

Observe inwardly how, as a result, thinking gradually becomes mobile, free within itself and ultimately elevated to a body-free state.

With the soul thus prepared, concentrate on some simple object and observe how this inner activity is now different from what it would be without this preparation.

The whole thing takes 4-5 minutes.

Do the six exercises as in the second part of “Occult Science”.

The time indications are, of course, based on how you feel.

Handwritten Exercise: Archive number 3230.

In the morning:

I recognize the thought-image
of a being
in my head;
I think the feeling-rhythm
invigorating my being
in my heart;
I feel the willpower strengthening my limbs in my entire body.

At noon:

Let the power of the right eye flow into my left arm and the power of my left arm into my right leg.

Let the power
of the left eye flow
into my right arm
and the power of my right arm
into my left leg.

Before falling asleep:

I will
leave my body
My feelings follow me
My will enters the spiritual realm
power permeates him
He seizes all limbs when awakening

Supplement

End of an exercise with no beginning. Archive number 1704.

Now, with all your strength, as far as your memory reaches, go through your own life in concrete terms and feel responsible for descending into this incarnation; say to yourself that every part of one's destiny has been earned by myself – then realize the distance that exists between the life in such an incarnation, burdened with unbalanced karma, and the life of the purified person – with a completely balanced life account (karma).

Looking up to the idea of a purified Master.

That is what I shall become, that is what I want to become.

Notes on “Light on the Path”. From a notebook from 1906. Archive number 105. It is not known what the individual dates refer to.

II/1 (meditation of 1/11) is about the following:

When the higher self has taken complete possession of the person, when the personality shell has fallen away, then the whole choir of higher spirits can speak through him, just as the sensual world speaks through him before – in order to prepare for this moment, one must develop within oneself the attitude that renounces defending one's own, separate self. One ceases to be a warrior; one becomes an instrument of the Warrior.

The saying does not refer to the higher fact itself, but gives the instruction for developing the attitude through which the higher fact is attained.

On the meditation of 12/1.

Instead of “king”, it should be “kings”, because [one] is dealing with whole hosts of higher spirits; however, one can only speak of one fighter because at this level of being, the many resonate in complete harmony so that their expression appears as one.

From the meditation of 13/1.

Nothing – at least nothing essential – is left behind, but is redeemed in the course of time, i.e. absorbed into the higher. The higher (good) itself absorbs evil in the course of time and transforms it into good through its own power.

First of all, we are dealing with the divine spirit. It could not develop up to certain levels if it did not repel evil from itself and thus first reached a certain height without this evil.

264-17

With the evil in him, he could not have reached a height; but now at this height he is able to retrieve the evil and take it with him on his further journey.

The saint redeems the criminal. God redeems Satan.

Regarding 16.1

Wherever intuitive knowledge is mentioned here, it should be read as 'imaginative' knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is developed through [the] second sentence: unlearning sensitivity.

1. Sensory knowledge: everyday knowledge.

2. imaginative knowledge: spiritual seeing (pictures)

3. intuitive knowledge: spiritual hearing (the inner word).

4. knowledge of God - complete oneness with the absolute.

The realization regarding [name] is quite correct, and the more you attain in this direction, the faster you progress. However, we must give each such thought the right spiritual weight by acting as if we could do everything despite the opposite assumption:

1. I am clear in my feelings that [the person concerned]'s fate is the right one.

2. I am clear in my will that I should nevertheless act as if I could extend [the person concerned'] life into the immeasurable.

Feelings and will must always go in opposite directions. Otherwise, the realization is not spiritual, but abstract.

Except during meditation: reflection.

During meditation: live with the contemplative thought.

Regarding January 19:

When considering such ideas, it is always important to keep the counter-thought in mind: Inner peace should never be bought by turning away from the outside world, but always only after harmonizing with the outside world. This is just the same as with two other pole thoughts, for example; the esotericist never thinks or speaks one or the other without at least subtly striking the corresponding opposite pole in the background. Say, for instance,

God is in me

, then I should at least think subtly:

I am in God

, and thereby the one-sided thought-form is always paralyzed by the corresponding other, as for instance the physical body is paralyzed by the etheric body.

264-18

The forces (r ) act within the body and would immediately dissolve it if the pole forces did not hold it together from the outside. Dynamically, the etheric body is the positive pole and the physical body is the negative pole.

20.

Excessive emphasis on the inner self can easily lead to rigidity in the ahamkara. One can rise very high and still remain in it. That is why all esotericism has an important sentence:

Everything contributes to your immortality,

what is not done for this immortality

is done.

For example: if I devote myself to a teaching, I do raise myself, but not completely. If I build this teaching into a Gothic cathedral or into the soul of another person, or even just into my dealings with people, then what I have planted outside myself becomes part of my eternal body.

164-19

The building plan as such

The master builder dies.

The effects of the cathedral become the building blocks of the eternal soul of the master builder. This is also the basis of the sentence:

Pray and work.

Contemplating the absolute, the relative has lost all power over you. Polarity thought:

You cannot recognize an absolute without shining the light of the absolute into the relative.

A criminal is only recognized in his relativity if one is clear about how the divinity in the criminal reveals itself.

Such a dream can be a very good pointer: Tired swallow - Looking into development (symbolized by the swallow emerging from the reptile) is initially tiring and allows the wings to unfold less than independent progress in dullness. Seen more deeply, however, the former leads safely to the goal. It is precisely the deepest wisdom that appears worthless to people who live only in the moment. Such thoughts play around you and sometimes break through in dreams.

The dream of the 24th is significant. All such dreams are symbols of higher truths. The first part: floating in the vegetable corresponds approximately to the image of man in the 5th round. (There is no longer any mineral present). All visions that have a basis are prophetic to a certain extent, for no highly developed human being can see anything that will not later become part of the experience of all human beings.

Consciousness will only achieve continuity when experiences are present not only in dreams but also in dreamless sleep.

Dream experiences are images analogous to the seen image. Dreamless sleep experiences are always hearing experiences and, if they are to be of any value, articulated hearing experiences, e.g. words.

Sometimes you don't even need to understand the words. Because they can appear in the reminiscence as in a language that is not understood by us.

ad. 25.

All forms are at the same time expressions of the eternal. If we seek the eternal in form, we find it; if we seek it by fleeing from form, we separate ourselves even further.

264-20

ad. 26.

The subtlety of vibrations causes a heightened sensitivity to the outside world. A drunkard is immune to the vibrations of another drunkard. Therefore, at first the drinker becomes unpleasant to the non-drinker. It is the same with everything. Through the subtlety of vibrations, evolution precisely unlocks all impurity, baseness, etc. of the surrounding world, and in this way only an intensification of crucifixion in the material world can be achieved. The capacity for suffering in the world around increases with evolution. Only when one has overcome oneself, i.e., has stepped beyond the subtlety of the vibrations, then comes peace. But then one has not finer, but on the contrary simpler vibrations in oneself. Not refinement, but simplification of the vibrations is what matters.

I. Two undeveloped people.

264-21

The vibrations correspond to each other, and consequently they coincide; one does not perceive the other.

264-22

II. An undeveloped and a developed person.

264-23

Each individual rhombus of the second one perceives those of the first one, but cannot paralyze them.

III. An undeveloped and a more highly developed human being.

264-24

The simple vibrations of the second one do notice the deviations in the first one, but they are strong enough to paralyze them.

ad. 27.

This in particular should be considered in the light of the previous law of simplification. Man becomes greater when he becomes simpler.

ad. 29.

It is important to understand that sensitivity is not the same as sensitivity. It therefore means:

Before the ear is able to hear, it must replace sensitivity with a simplified perception. In sensitivity, the person reacts to the external world. In the perception, the eternal that is absorbed into the person permeates the external world with the simple rhythms of infinity.

ad. 30. All in the sense of I II III.

ad. 3/2.

The masters are not a bulwark against evil, but the guides to the absorption of evil. We should not exclude evil, but absorb it and use it in the sphere of good. The lion's rage is only evil as long as it is used selfishly by the lion; if a ruler could appropriate the lion's rage and use it to build welfare institutions, it would be good. Therefore, evil is to be recognized as non-real. There is no evil. Evil is only a displaced good. Only with this realization is spiritual alchemy possible.

ad. 6.

That is precisely the progress made by Christianity, that the personality is taken along into eternity.

Therefore the Christian principle is correct: You will rise with your transfigured body, i.e. through Christian thinking the personality becomes eternal.

Pentagram and hexagram exercise

as a supplement to the letter to Wilhelm Hübbe-Schleiden dated November 15, 1908

Memorandum of the esoteric lessons in Berlin, November 29, 1907 and January 7, 1908

Berlin, November 29, 1907. Memory notes by Günther Wagner.

A current flows through the etheric body in the form of a pentagram: from the point of the I in the forehead to the two feet, from there to the antipolaric hands and from one hand to the other through the heart. When the body and limbs are bent, the currents also bend. The various planets are connected with the various parts of the currents as indicated. The planets are to be understood more as principles that actually always work on all globes, only on the individual in an outstanding way.

The principle of Saturn is the physical basis
of the sun: eternal growth, eternal progress
of the moon: holding back, retarding, solidification
of Mars: courage to introduce the aggressive into the life of the senses, the red blood
of Mercury: leading out of the life of the senses
of Jupiter: liberation of the ego
of Venus: rising in love.

The colors correspond to these planets and the principles:

Saturn - Green
Sun - Orange
Moon - Violet
Mars - Red
Mercury - Yellow
Jupiter - Blue
Venus - Indigo ¹

The hexagram corresponds to currents in the astral body, but this is not to be understood as a line figure; the double triangle is only an average. (While the currents in the etheric body form the lines of a pentagram, the hexagram represents the currents in the astral body.

Pentagram and Hexagram Exercise

264-25

On the Pentagram and Hexagram Exercise of the Esoteric Hour, Berlin, November 29, 1907.

264-26

the astral body in a completely different way, not linearly, but two-dimensionally physically.) If the figure is turned on its vertical axis, the real figure emerges, although the horizontal cross-section does not quite correspond to a circle (oval). The horizontal lines thus actually form a surface; the upper one at arm level, the other at knee level.

The downward-pointing triangle has to do with the bodies: the astral body (Moon), etheric body (Sun), physical body (Saturn principle). The other triangle with the higher parts: sentient soul (Mars), intellectual soul (Mercury) and consciousness soul, which is only at the beginning of its development (Jupiter). Accordingly, the colors.

One should meditate on these figures and the meaning of their details in order to become aware of one's own inner life and its relationship to the cosmos. One will then awaken strange feelings within oneself.

Memo notes from the same session by Camilla Wandrey

The principle of Saturn (Oriphiel. Green. Lead): the physical basis, but spiritual.

The principle of the Sun (Michael. Orange. Gold): eternal growth, eternal progress. Individual life.

The principle of the moon (Gabriel. Violet. Silver): Holding. Retarding. Freezing. Appearance in Maya.

The principle of Mars (Samael. Mars. Red. Iron): Courage. The aggressive. Introduction to the sensual life through the red blood. Consciousness.

The principle of Mercury (Raphael. Yellow. Mercury): leading out of the life of the senses. Divine intelligence. Holy Spirit.

The principle of Jupiter (Zachariel. Blue. Tin): Liberation of the ego. Power. Father. The principle of Venus (Anael. Indigo. Copper): The rising in pure love. Love. Son. Transition from God to man. Mediator.

The pentagram

The hexagram

The hexagram corresponds to currents in the astral body. But it is only an average. If the figure were rotated around its vertical axis, the real figure would emerge, the horizontal average of which corresponds approximately to a circle. The upper surface can be experienced at arm level, the lower at knee level.

The downward-pointing triangle is connected to the physical body, Saturn. Moon: astral body. Sun: etheric body. The upward-pointing triangle with the higher parts: Mars (the soul of feeling). Mercury (the soul of mind). Jupiter (the soul of consciousness).

Through intense meditation on these figures, man gains knowledge of himself and his connection with the macrocosm. The pentagram represents the currents of the etheric body and their connection with the planets.

The physical body is connected with all the forces in the universe. It is the center of the irradiation of all the forces of the zodiac.

The etheric body is initially connected to the center of the earth.

The astral body is connected to the center of the moon.

The I is not only a point that has gradually united through the growth of the forehead and the retraction of the etheric body at the upper root of the nose, but there is a second point in front of it. The connecting line to this point changes, the direction of this line points to the center of the sun. The more a person develops, the closer the two points come together. The developing human being must place himself in this second point, that is, outward, and he must learn to look at his body as at anything physical besides him (Tat tvam asi [= That art Thou! Famous formula of the Veda]); this frees the human being from egoism. A vivid reliving of the mystery of Golgotha and the fact that the superfluous, egoistic blood of humanity has flowed there is a help in this.

Meditation should be like sacrificial smoke rising to the gods.

Berlin, January 7, 1908 (continued from November 29, 1907) Memory notes by unknown hand

If we want to profitably observe such an occult figure (the hexagram) as in the previous lesson, it is not enough to stare at it constantly. Rather, we must picture it over and over again in our minds in quiet hours and meditate on the meaning of the individual colors. Only in this way will we gain the advantage and benefit that such occult signs can have when viewed in the right way. For the whole wisdom of the world is given to us in a few such occult figures. And by delving into them, the spiritual connections of the higher worlds will gradually become clear to us.

Let us take two colors from the hexagram that are opposite each other: red and green. These two colors are deliberately placed opposite each other. What might the red color mean, what the green? We find the green color in the plant world outside, covering the earth with its blanket. And what is the relationship between man and plants? We know that man on Saturn led an existence that in some respects corresponds to our present-day minerals. Not that man was ever a mineral! Our present-day mineral kingdom is in fact the youngest of the natural kingdoms. We also know that man on the Sun led a plant-like existence. Today a greenish sap flows in plants. A similar sap flowed through the human being of that time. If, by some magic, astral components were to be pressed into the plant today, it would turn red! The fact that man on the moon acquired the astral body turned the inner sap red – the red blood came from it.

Consider that the plant is chaste, it has no desires, passions: anger, fear, dread. By becoming in some respects worse than the plant, man received something that elevated him above the plant: the waking day consciousness. The plant world of today is asleep. A plant is the reverse of a human being. A plant's roots point towards the center of the earth, where its I is located. The same force that works downwards in the plant works upwards in the human being. The fact that the human being received blood expresses the reception of the I. The expression of the I is the red blood.

If you look at the inner surface of a green leaf with spiritual eyes, it will appear red to you. This red power is, so to speak, spiritual. If you see a red surface against a white background, look at it sharply and then look at the white surface, a green spot will appear. And the same is true the other way round. These colors are called complementary colors. Thus, the inner spiritual connection is also expressed in such a physical phenomenon.

Or let us take two other colors: blue and orange, which are opposite each other. You should know that orange has two aspects: orange and gold.

Where do we find the color blue in nature? When we look up into the boundless distance of the vaulted sky! And where do we find the color gold? In the paintings of the old masters, we see golden backgrounds. These old masters still painted according to a tradition that possessed some knowledge of the phenomena and beings of higher worlds. When we look out into the celestial space with spiritual eyes, it appears in golden depths. That is why we see angelic heads on a golden background in the old paintings, because when you look out (mentally) into the celestial space, it appears to you in golden colors.

Thus we must search for and gather together what is scattered throughout the cosmos, for the building of our soul. Just think how all the foodstuffs needed for the building of our body are scattered over the earth. Imagine that vividly! It is exactly the same in the spiritual realm. From the chaos the soul must also gather together what is suitable for its building up.

When a soul begins to meditate in this way, an organ in the physical body begins to develop: the mucous gland. In the normal average person, the mucous gland is an organ, hardly the size of a cherry stone, located behind the pineal gland. But it contains disproportionately great powers. It regulates the correct build-up of the body in relation to its size. The so-called giants who are shown around have a disease of the mucous gland. In some way, the forces set in motion by them must be allowed to run their course. When the Meditand begins to work on himself, forces are awakened in the mucous gland. From the mucous gland, the organic structure from the chaos of sensations to the astral body takes place. When the mucous gland flows around the pineal gland with golden threads, then the time has come when the transformation of the astral body into the spirit self, into manas, has progressed so far that the etheric body can now be transformed into the buddhi.

Those who meditate on such occult signs in this way will work purposefully on building up their higher bodies. Sometimes, in the briefest of moments, the soul can grow tremendously. One could say that it is not time that is needed for development, but rather profound inner calm.

From the same hour, memory notes by Günther Wagner:

Meditating on the hexagram. Pointed end up red, pointed end down green. Contrasts: complementary colors. Green is the color of plants. Red is the color of human blood.

Human beings have only been able to achieve progress by also accepting desires and passions. That part of the earth's astral body that belongs to the plant world is red. Thus, physically green, spiritually red: the plant. In plants, the red astral forces point downwards towards the center of the earth, while in humans, the same forces have reversed and point upwards.

Green and red: opposites. Likewise blue and orange, or rather in one of the two aspects: golden [addition in a different hand: violet and golden]. These too are complementary colors. In the physical world the sky is blue, in the devachan world it is golden, as can still be seen in old, early medieval paintings. Such are the other opposites.

By contemplating such symbols given to us by the masters, we transform and shape our astral body, especially the aura, around (to the manas). All sorts of scattered outer experiences may point out to us these color relations, and so our spiritual body is formed, shaped, and developed by the assimilation of all sorts of scattered experiences, as our physical body is by the assimilation of all sorts of physical food gathered from the face of the whole earth.

And as our astral body thus orders and organizes itself, it acts specifically on the mucous gland or pituitary body (hypophysis), a small organ, hardly the size of a cherry stone, which is initially involved in the growth of the body. Through such an organization of the astral body, the mucous gland begins to become more and more luminous; it emits rays and gradually envelops the pineal gland lying before it, stimulating it; as a result, the effects on the astral body expand and begin to impress and reorganize it.

• 1. In other contexts, different correspondences are sometimes given, e.g. for eurythmy or on the color sketch “Man in Connection with the Planets”. This should not be understood as a contradiction, but as an expression of different aspects. See, for example, the lecture in Vienna, June 1, 1918.

When you consider what has been said here during the past two days you will see that what belongs to the essence of imperialism is that in an imperialistic community something that was felt to be part of a mission—not necessarily justified, but understandable—later continued on as an automatism, so to speak. In the history of human development things are retained—simply due to indolence—which were once justified or explicable, but no longer are.

If a community is obliged to defend itself for a period of time, then it is surely justified to create certain professions for that purpose: police and military professions. But when the danger against which defense was necessary no longer exists, the professions continue to exist. The people involved must remain. They want to continue to exercise their professions and therefore we have something which is no longer justified by the circumstances. Something develops which, although perhaps originating due to the necessity for defense, takes on an aggressive character. It is so with all empires, except the original imperialism of the first human societies, of which I spoke yesterday, in which the people's mentality considered the ruler to be a god and thus justified in expanding his domain as far as possible. This justification was no longer there in all the subsequent empires. Let us now consider once again from definite viewpoints what is apparent in the historical evolution of mankind. We find that in the oldest times the will of the individual who was seen as divine was the indisputable power factor. In public life there was in reality nothing to discuss in such empires; but this impossibility of discussion was grounded in the fact that a god in human form walked the earth as the ruler. That was, if I may say so, a secure foundation for public affairs.

Gradually all that which was based on divine will and was thus secure passed over to the second stage. In that stage the things which can be observed in physical life, be they persons, be they the persons' insignias, be they the deeds of the governing or ruling persons, it was all symbols, signs. Whereas during the first phase of imperialism here in the physical world the spirit was considered directly present, during the second stage everything physical was thought of as a reflection, as an image, as a symbol for what is not actually present in the physical world, but only illustrated by the persons and deeds in the physical world.

Such times, when the second stage appeared, was when it first occurred to people that a possibility for discussion of public affairs was possible. What we today call rights can hardly be considered as existing during the first stage. And the only political institution worth mentioning was the phenomenon of divine power exercised by physical people. In social affairs the only thing that mattered was the concrete will of a physical person. To try to judge whether this will was justified or not makes no sense. It was just there. It had to be obeyed. To discuss whether the god in human form should or should not do this or that made no sense. In fact it was not done during those times when the conditions I have described really existed. But if one only saw an image of the spiritual world in physical institutions, if one spoke of what Saint Augustine called the “City of God”—that is, the state which exists here on earth, but which is really an image of heavenly facts and personalities, then one can hold the opinion that what the person does who is a divine image is right, is a true image: someone else could object and say that it is not a true image. That's when the possibility of discussion originated. The person of today, because he is accustomed to criticize everything, to discuss everything, thinks that to criticize and discuss was always present in human history. That is not true. Discussing and criticizing are attributes of the second stage, which I have described for you. Thus began the possibility to judge on one's own, that is, to add a predicate to a subject. In the oldest forms of human expression this personal judging was not at all present in respect to public affairs. During the second stage what we call today parliament for example was in preparation; for a parliament only makes sense when it is possible to discuss public affairs. Therefore, even the most primitive form of public discourse was a characteristic of the second stage. Today we live in the third stage, insofar as the characteristic form of the western countries more or less spreads over the world. This is the stage of platitudes. This stage of platitudes, as I characterized it to you yesterday, is the one in which the inner substance has also disappeared from discussion and therefore everyone can be right, or at least think that they are right, when it can't be proved that they are wrong, because basically within the world of platitudes everything can be affirmed. Nevertheless, previous stages are always retained within the next stages. Therefore the inner impulse to imperialism exists. People observe things very superficially. When the previous German Kaiser wrote in a book that was opened out to write in: “The king's will is sublime law”—what did it mean? It meant that he expressed himself in the age of platitudes in a manner that only had meaning for the first stage. In the first stage it was really the case that the ruler's will was highest law. The concept of rights, which includes the right of free speech, and involves lawyers and courts, is essentially a characteristic of the second stage, and can only be grasped in its reality from the viewpoint of the second stage. Whoever has followed how much discussion has taken place about the origin and character of rights will have noticed that there is something shimmering in the rights concept as such, because it is applicable to the symbolic stage, where the spiritual shimmers through the material, shines, so that when only the external signs, the legal aspects and words appear, one can argue and discuss what are rights and the legal system in public discourse.

In the age of the platitudes, however, understanding of what is necessary for rights in society is completely lost: that the spiritual kingdom shines through into the physical kingdom. And then one arrives at such definitions as I described yesterday using the example of Woodrow Wilson. I will now read to you a definition of the law that Woodrow Wilson gave so you can see how this definition consists of nothing but platitudes. He said: “The law is the will of the state in respect to those citizens who are bound by it.” So the state unfolds a will! One can well imagine that someone who is embedded so strongly in abstract idealism, not to mention materialism—for they are practically the same—can claim that the state is supposed to have a will. He would have to have lost all sense of reality to even conceive of such a thing let alone write it down. But it is in the book I spoke to you about yesterday—the codex of platitudes: The State, Elements of Historical and Practical Politics.

There are other interesting things in it. Only in parenthesis I would like to draw your attention to what Wilson says in this book about the German Empire after he describes how the efforts to found it were finally successful in 1870/71. He describes this with the following sentences: “The final incentive for achievement of complete national unity was brought about by the German-French war of 1870/71. Prussia's brilliant success in this struggle, fought in the interest of German patriotism against French impertinence, caused the cool restraint of the central states towards their powerful neighbor in the northern end; they united with the rest of Germany and the German Empire was founded in the royal palace at Versailles on January 18, 1871.” The same man wrote that who a short time later in Versailles united with those whose impertinence had once been the motivation for the founding of the German Empire. Much of present day public opinion derives from the fact that people are so terribly superficial and pay no attention to the facts. If you decide to decide according to objective information, then things look quite different from what is propounded in public and accepted by thousands upon thousands of people. It wouldn't have hurt one bit if when Woodrow Wilson arrived in Paris in glory, praised from all sides, these remarks had been held up to him. That is what must be striven for, to take the facts into account, which means also the truth.

So the second stage is when discussion arises, which is what makes the civil rights concept possible. The third stage is when economic life is the essential reality. And yesterday we showed how this [present] age of platitudes is absolutely necessary in the course of historical evolution in order that the platitude, which is empty, can open people's eyes to the fact that the only reality is economic life and how it is therefore so necessary to propagate spirituality, the new spirituality in the world.

People have quite a skimpy idea about this new spiritual life. And it is therefore understandable that it is burdened with the most ridiculous misunderstandings. For this new spirituality must penetrate into the depths of human life. And although those secret societies, about which I spoke yesterday, only traditionally preserve the old forms, the slogan “brothers,” meaning not to let social class or an individual's religion play a part in the lodges, in a certain sense does prepare for it in the right way.

We say today—I beg you to pay special attention to this, let's take something quite banal, quite common: “The tree is green.” This is a manner of speaking which is common to the second stage of human development. Perhaps you will understand me better if you imagine that we try to paint this opinion—that “the tree is green.” You cannot paint it! There will be some white surface and green will be added, but nothing about the tree has been painted. And when something of the tree is painted which isn't green all you do is disturb the effect even more. If you try to paint “The tree is green,” you are painting something dead. The way we combine subject and predicate in our speech is only useful for our view of the dead, of the non-living in the world. As we still have no idea of how everything in the world is alive, and how to express ourselves about what is alive, we form such judgments as “The tree is green,” which presupposes that a relationship exists between something and the color green, whereas the color green is itself the creative element, the force which acts and lives. The transformation of human thinking and feeling will have to take place within the innermost life of the soul. This will take a long time to accomplish, but when it does it will affect social conditions and how people relate to each other.

Today we are only at the beginning of all this. But it is necessary to know which paths lead to the light. I have said that it is meaningful when people get together and each one's subjective beliefs play no role. And consider it from this viewpoint—really think about it—the way in which anthroposophy is described. It is not described through definitions or ordinary judgments. We try to create images, to present things from the most varied sides, and it is senseless to try and nail down something meant in a spiritual-scientific sense with a mere yes or no opinion. People today always want to do that, but it isn't possible. It happens ever more frequently—because we are growing out of the second stage and into the third—that someone asks: What is good for me in order to counter this or that difficulty in life? Advice is given. Aha! The person concerned says, so in this or that situation in life one must do this or that. They generalize. But it has only a limited meaning, for judgments given from the spiritual world always have only an individual meaning, are only applicable to one case. This way of generalizing, which we have become accustomed to in the second stage, must not continue into the third stage. People today are very much inclined to carry things over from the past into the future. One can become disinclined towards the things which are pernicious for the soul by seeing clearly what is happening.

Yesterday I indicated to you that in many respects the Catholic Church harks back to the first stage. It contains something like a sham or a shadow of the first stage of human evolution, which sometimes solidifies into a kind of spiritual imperialism, as for example in the 11th century when the Monks of Cluny really ruled over Europe more than is thought. From their ranks the powerful, imperialistic Pope Gregory VII emerged. Therefore Roman Catholic dogma enables the priest to feel greater than Christ, because he can force him to be present at the altar. This clearly shows that the institution of the Catholic Church is a relic, a shadow-image of what existed in the very first imperialism.

You know that a great enmity existed between the Catholic Church and the secret societies which used Freemasonry in the west—a certain form of Freemasonry at least—as their instrument. It would go too far in this lecture to describe in detail how this enmity has gradually increased over time. But one thing can be said, how in these secret societies the opinion is very strong that the Catholic Church is a relic of the first stage of imperialism. The Holy Roman Empire used this framework to have Charlemagne and the Otto's crowned by the pope, thereby using the imperialism of the soul as the means of mundane anointment. They took what still remained from older times and poured it into the new. Thus the imperialism of the second stage was poured into the framework of the first imperialism.

Now we have arrived at the third stage, which shows itself to be economic imperialism, especially in the west. This economic imperialism is connected to a background culture of secret societies, which are sated with empty symbols. But while it has become clear that the social constitution of the Church is a shadow-image of what once existed and no longer has meaning, it is still not understood that in the second stage the statesmen of the west still suffer under a great illusion. Woodrow Wilson would no longer speak of the will of the Church, but he speaks of the will of the State as being self-evident. But the state only had the importance attributed to it during the second stage of human development. Whereas during the oldest, the first stage the Church was all-powerful, in the second stage the state contains everything that was attributed to the Church in the first stage. Thus the economic imperialism of Great Britain and even a certain idea of freedom has been poured into the state. And those who were educated in Great Britain see in the state something that can well have a will of its own.

But we must perceive that this concept of the state must take the same road the concept of the Church has traveled. It must be realized: If we retain this concept of the state for the entire social organism, a mere rights institution, and force everything else into this rights institution, we are propagating a shadow just as the Church has propagated a shadow—recognized as such by the secret societies. There is little awareness of this though. Think of all the public affairs that people are enthusiastic about which are pressed into the concept of the political state. There are nationalists, chauvinists and so forth; everything we call nation, national , chauvinism, it's all incorporated into the framework of the state. Nationalism is added and the concept of the “nation-state” is construed. Or we may have a certain opinion about, say socialism, even radical socialism: the framework of the state is used. Instead of nationalism, socialism is incorporated. But then we have no concept; it can only be a shadow-image, as the constitution of the Church has become. In some Protestant circles the idea has arisen that the Church is only the visible institution, that the essence of religion must take root in people's hearts. But this degree of human development has not yet arrived in respect to the political state, otherwise we wouldn't be trying to squeeze all kinds of nationalisms into the political boundaries which exist as the result of the war [First World War—trans.] All this neglects to take one thing into consideration—the fact that what occurs in the historical development of humanity is life and not mechanism. And a characteristic of life is that it comes and goes. The imperialistic approach is different however. According to this approach one does not think about the future. This is part of the present-day approach to public affairs, that people have no living thoughts, only dead ones. They think: Today we instituted something, it is good, therefore it must remain forever. The feminist movement thinks like this, as do the socialists and the nationalists. We have founded something, it begins with us, everything waited for us until we became clever enough. And now we have discovered the cleverest that exists and it will continue to exist forever. It's as though I have brought up a child until he is eighteen years old and I say: I have brought him up correctly, and he will stay as he is. But he will get older, and he will also die, as does everything in the course of human evolution. Now I come to what I mention before about what must accompany the principle of indifference to one's religious beliefs and fraternity. What must accompany them is the awareness that life on earth includes death and that we are aware that the institutions we create must of necessity also cease to exist, because the death principle already resides in them and they therefore have no wish to exist forever, do not consider being permanent. Of course under the influence of the thinking characteristic of the second stage this is not possible . But if the feeling of shame of which I spoke yesterday arises, when we realize that we are living in the kingdom of platitudes under which only economic imperialism glimmers—then will we call for the spirit, invisible but real. We will call for a knowledge of the spirit, one which speaks of an invisible kingdom, a kingdom which is not of this world in which the Christ-impulse can actually gain a foothold.

This can only happen when the social order is tripartite, threefold: The economy is auto- administered, the political state is no longer the absolute, all-inclusive entity, but is exclusively concerned with rights alone, and spiritual/cultural life is truly free, meaning that here in reality a free spiritual sector can be organized. The spiritual life of humanity can only be free if it is dependent only upon itself and when all the institutions responsible for cultivating the spirit, that is, cultural life, are dependent only upon themselves.

What do we have then, when we have this tripartite organism, this social organism? We have an economy in which the living physical earth is predominant. In this sector the economic forces of the economy itself are active. I doubt anyone will think that if the economy is organized as described in my book Towards Social Renewal—Basic Issues of the Social Question some kind of super-sensible forces will be present. When we eat, when we prepare our food, when we make our clothing, it is all reality. Esthetics may be symbolically present, but the actual clothing is the reality.

When we look at the second sector of the future social organism [the rights sector], we don't have a symbolism like the second stage, where the political state constituted the totality, but we have what is valid for one person being equally valid for the other. And the third sector will be neither symbol nor platitude, but a spiritual/cultural reality. The spirit will possess the possibility of really living within humanity. The inner social order can only be built through a transition to inner truthfulness. In the age of platitudes this will be especially difficult though. For during the age of platitudes people acquire a certain ingenious cleverness, which is, however, nothing more than a play on words of the old concepts. Just consider for a moment a characteristic example. Suddenly from the imperialism of platitudes comes the idea that it would be good if the queen of England also has the title “Empress of India.” One can invent the most beautiful reasons for this, but if it didn't happen, nothing would have changed. The Emperor of Austria, who now belongs to the deposed royalty, before he was chased out carried around along with his other titles a most unusual one: Franz Joseph I, Emperor of Austria, Apostolic King of Hungary, King of Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galizia, Lodomeria, Illyia and so on. Among all these titles was also “King of Jerusalem!” The Austrian Emperor also carried, until he was no longer emperor, the title “King of Jerusalem.” It came from the crusades. It would be impossible to give a better example of meaninglessness than this. And such meaninglessness plays a much greater role than you imagine. It is a question of whether we can arise to a recognition of the present-day platitudes. It is made difficult because those who live in platitudes are the verbal representatives of the old concepts that stagger around in their brains imitating thoughts. But one can only achieve real thinking again when the inner soul-life is filled with substance and that can only come from knowledge of the spiritual world, of spiritual life. Only by being relieved by the spirit can one become a complete person, after having been constipated with platitudes. What I described yesterday as a feeling of shame will result in the call for the spirit. And the propagation of the spirit will only be possible if the spiritual/cultural sector is allowed to develop independently. Otherwise we will always have to take advantage of loopholes, as was the case with the Waldorf School because the Württemberg Province education law had such a loophole which made it possible to establish a Waldorf school only according to spiritual laws, according to spiritual principles, something which in practically no other place on earth would be possible. But one can only organize the things concerning the spiritual life from the spirit itself if the other two sectors do not interfere, if everything is taken directly from the spiritual sector itself.

At present the tendency is the reverse. But this tendency does not reckon with the fact that with every new generation a new spiritual/cultural life appears on earth. It's immaterial whether a dictatorship or a republic is established, if it is not understood that everything which appears is subject to life and must be continuously transformed, must pass through death and be formed anew, pass through metamorphoses, then all that will be accomplished is that every new generation will be revolutionary. Because only what is considered good for the present will be established. A fundamental concept for the western areas which are so mired in platitudes must be to see the social organism as something living. And one sees it as living only when it is considered in its threefold nature. It is just those whose favorable economic position allows them to spread an [economic] imperialism over practically the whole world who have the terrible responsibility of recognizing that the cultivation of a true spiritual life must be poured into this imperialism. It is ironic that an economic empire which spread over the whole world was founded on the British Isles and then when they were seeking mystical spirituality turned to those whom they had economically conquered and exploited. [India—Tr.] The obligation exists to allow one's own spiritual substance to flow into the social organism. That is the awareness which our British friends should take with them, that now, in this worldwide important historic moment, in all the world's economic institutions where English is spoken, the responsibility exists to introduce true spirituality into the exterior economic empire. It's an either/or situation: Either efforts remain exclusively oriented towards the economy—in which case the fall of earthly civilization is the inevitable result—or spirit will be poured into this economic empire, in which case what was intended for earthly evolution will be achieved. I would like to say: Every morning we should bear this in mind very seriously and all activities should be organized according to this impulse. The bell tolls with extreme urgency at present—with terrible urgency. In a certain sense we have reached the climax of platitudes. In an age when all content has been squeezed out of platitudes, content which came to humanity previously but which no longer has any meaning, we must absorb real substantial content into our psychological and social life. We must be clear about the fact that this either/or must be decided by each individual for him or her self and that each must participate in this decision with his most inner force of soul. Otherwise he does not participate in the affairs of humanity.

But the attraction for illusion is especially strong in the age of platitudes. We wish so to sweep away the seriousness of life. We avoid looking at the truth inherent in our evolution. How could people let themselves be deceived by Wilsonian ideas if they really had the intense desire for truthful clarity? It must come. The desire for truth must grow in humanity. Above all, the desire for the liberation of spiritual/cultural life must grow along with the knowledge that nobody has the right to call himself a Christian who has not grasped the saying: “My kingdom is not of this world.”

This means that the kingdom of Christ must become an invisible kingdom, a truly invisible empire, an empire of which one speaks as of invisible things. Only when spiritual science gains in importance will people speak of this empire. Not some church, not some state, not some economic empire can create this empire. Only the will of the individual who lives in a liberated spiritual/cultural life can create this empire.

It is difficult to believe that in the lands in which people are downtrodden much can be done to free spiritual life. Therefore it must be done in those lands where the people are not downtrodden politically, economically and, obviously, not spiritually downtrodden. Above all it must be realized that we have not arrived at the day when we say: Until now things have gone downhill, they will go uphill again! No, if people do not act for this objective out of the spirit, things will not go uphill again, but will continue downhill. Humanity does not live today from what it has produced—for to produce again a spiritual impulse is necessary—humanity lives today from reserves, from old reserves, and they are being used up. And it is childish and naïve to think that a low point is reached some day and things will get better then, even with our hands in our laps. That's not how it is. And I would like to see that the words spoken here kindle a fire in the hearts of those who belong to the anthroposophical movement. I would hope that the specter which perhaps haunts those who find their way to this anthroposophical movement be overcome by the spirit meant here. It is certainly true that someone who finds his way to such a movement often seeks something for himself, for his soul. Of course he can have that, but only in order to stand with his soul in the service of the whole. He should advance, certainly, for himself, but only so mankind can advance through him. I cannot say that often enough. It should be added to those things I said should be thought about every morning. If we had really taken the inner impulse of this movement seriously, we would have been much farther along. But perhaps what is done in our circles does not help advance towards the future, but is often a hindrance. We should ask ourselves why this is so. It is very important. And above all we should not think that the sharpest powers of opposition are not active from all sides against what strives for the well-being of humanity. I have already indicated to you what is being done in the world in opposition to our movement, what hostility is activated against us. I feel myself obliged to make these things known to you, so that you should never say to yourself: We have already refuted this or that. We have refuted nothing, because these opponents are not interested in the truth. They prefer to ignore as much as possible the facts and simply aim slanderous accusations from all corners.

I would like to read part of a letter to you which arrived recently from Oslo. “One of our anthroposophical friends works in a so-called people's college in Oslo together with a certain Schirmer. This Mr. Schirmer is in a certain sense quite a proficient teacher, but is also a fanatical racist and a sworn anti-Semite. At a people's meeting where three of us gave lectures about the Threefold Society, he talked against us, or rather against Dr. Steiner's Towards Social Renewal, although without much success. The guy has a certain influence in teachers' circles and he works in his own way in the sense of the social triformation in the school insofar as he is for freedom, but on the other hand he works against the social triformation and Dr. Steiner for the simple reason that he suspects that Dr. Steiner is a Jew. That is perhaps not so bad. We must expect and overcome more serious opposition. But now he has received confirmation of his suspicion. He turned to an ‘authority,’ namely the editor of the political anthropological monthly, Berlin-Steglitz. This purely anti-Semitic magazine wrote to him that Dr. Steiner is a Jew through and through. He is associated with the Zionists. And the editor added that they, the anti-Semites, have had their eye on you [Dr Steiner] for a long time. Mr. Schirmer also says that a persecution of the Jews is beginning now in Germany, and that all the Jews on the anti-Semites' blacklist should be simply shot down or, as they say, rendered harmless.” and so on.

You see, this has nothing to do with anti-Semitism as such, that's only on the face of it. They choose slogans in these situations, with which they try to accomplish as much as possible with people who listen to slogans. But such things clearly indicate what most people don't want to see, what they want to ignore more and more. It is today much more serious that you think, and we should not ignore the seriousness of the times, but should realize that we are only at the beginning of these things which are opposed to everything that is intended to advance human progress. And that we should never, without neglecting our responsibilities, divert our attention from what is a radical evil within humanity, what manifests as a radical evil within humanity. The worst that can happen today is paying attention to mere slogans and platitudes, and believing that outdated concepts somehow have roots in human reality today—if we do not initiate a new reality from the sources of the spirit itself.

That, my dear friends, was what I wanted to tell you today, first of all to all of you, but especially to those whose visit has pleased us greatly—especially to our English friends, so that when they return to their own country, where it will be so important, they will have something on which to base their activities. You will have seen that I have not spoken in favor or against anyone, nor have I flattered anyone. I only speak here in order to say the truth. I have known theosophists who when they speak to members of a foreign nation begin to talk about what an honor it is to be able to spread the teachings about the spiritual life in a nation which has accumulated so much glory. Such things cannot be said to you here. But I believe that you have come here to hear the truth and I think that I have best served you by really trying to tell the unvarnished truth. You will have learned during your trip that telling the truth nowadays is not a comfortable thing, for the truth calls forth opposition now more than ever. Do not be afraid of opposition, for they are one and the same: to have enemies and to tell the truth. And we will understand each other best when our mutual understanding is based on the desire to hear the unvarnished truth. Before I leave for Germany, this is what I wanted to say to you today, and especially to our English friends.

Today I should like to start by giving a kind of sketch of the human soul, as this human soul stands in relation to the world and to itself. I should like to give this sketch in such a way that it can be said: we are looking at the profile of man as a soul being. So that we understand ourselves just as if we were to look at the physical man—not the soul-being (see Head in diagram 1)—not perhaps seeing him full-face but, let us say, from the right in profile. Let us observe him thus. If we try to sketch in outline anything like this we must naturally always keep in mind that we have to do with imaginative knowledge, that the reality behind the matter therefore is being given in picture form. The picture refers to the matter and is given, too, in such a way that it correctly indicates the matter. Naturally, however, we may not have the same idea of a drawing, a sketch, meant to represent something of a soul and spirit nature as we do of anything that in a naturalistic way is copied from an external perceptible reality. One must be conscious all the time of what I am now saying. I shall therefore omit all that concerns the physical and lower etheric organism of man and try to sketch only what is soul—soul-and-spirit (see diagram 2). As you know from the various descriptions that have been given, the soul-and-spirit stands in a more direct connection with the world of soul-and-spirit than physical man stands in connection with his physical environment. Towards his physical perceptible environment physical man is rather an isolated being; one might even say that physical man of the senses is really shut up within his actual skin.

It is not so where what can be called the men of soul-and-spirit is concerned. There we have to think of a continual crossing of the currents pulsating in the inner depths of man's soul-and-spirit—of all the movements and currents existing in the general, universal world of soul-and-spirit.

If I want first of all to describe from the one side the kind of relation the human soul-and-spirit has to what is of soul-and-spirit in the cosmic environment, I should have perhaps to do it in this way. I should, first of all, have to paint what enters in a soul-spiritual way from the universal, from the infinity of space, like this. Naturally I should have to paint the whole space in a way... but that is not really necessary. I shall only paint man's immediate environment. Thus it is now what we may understand as the surrounding world. (see blue in diagram 2).

Now imagine in this picture form of the soul-spiritual that into which man is placed. Man indeed is not yet there, but indicated in this blue is only the edge of the environment. Imagine this like a surging blue sea filling space. (When I say ‘blue’ sea this must naturally be taken as I have often described it in books available to you, namely, colours are to be grasped in the description of the aura, of the soul-spiritual.) Borne like a wave, swimming, I might say, or hovering, so nothing else is borne up which is of soul-and-spirit. This is what I should now have to represent perhaps in the following way.

Thus, if we pass from the cosmic environment to man, we may be able to think of ourselves and what belongs to the human spirit-and-soul as perhaps hovering in this red.

There we should have first of all part of the soul-spiritual; and if we would make the sketch in accordance with reality it is only the upper part we should have to give in a kind of violet, in lilac graduating into red. This could only be given correctly by toning down the red into violet.

Thus, you see, with this I have given you first what might be called the one pole of man's spirit-and-soul nature. We get the other pole when we can perhaps incorporate in the following way what, adjoining the universal soul-spiritual here, is swimming and hovering towards the human physical face: yellow, green, orange; green running into the blue.

Here you get from the right side what I might call the side view of the normal aura of man. I say expressly a normal aura seen from the right side. What is presented to the view in this figure shows how man is placed into his environment of soul-and-spirit. But t also describes where man, the soul-and-spirit in man, stands in relation to itself. When everything represented by this figure is studied, it can clearly be seen how man is a being bounded an two sides. These two sides where man has his limits are always observed in life; but they are not indicated correctly nor considered in the right way—at least they are not understood. You know how in external science it is said that when man observes the world, when with his science he wishes to gain knowledge of the world, he comes to definite limits. We have often spoken of these limits, of the famous ignorabimus (“we shall never know”) which holds good with scientists and many philosophers. It is said that man comes indeed to certain limits in his cognition, in his conception, of the external world. I have certainly already quoted to you du Bois-Reymond's famous statement that in his seventieth year he made to the Scientific Congress in Leipzig; Human cognition will never penetrate into the regions haunted by matter—this is roughly what he said at the time. Perhaps the more correct way of speaking about the limits to human knowledge would be the following. In observing the world it is necessary for man to hold fast certain concepts which he penetrates neither with his scientific cognition nor with his ordinary philosophical cognition, we need only consider such concepts as that of the atom. The atom, however naturally has meaning only when we cannot actually speak of it, when we cannot say what it is. For the moment we were to begin describing the atom, it would no—longer be an atom. It is simply something unapproachable. And it is thus already matter, actual substance. Certain concepts have to be maintained that can never be approached. It is the same with knowledge of the external world; inaccessible concepts like matter, force and so on, must be maintained. That they should have to be maintained, depends here simply upon the inner light of man's soul-and-spirit stretching out into the darkness. What is stated to be the limit of knowledge can, I might say, actually be seen clearly in the aura.

Here lies a boundary in front of man. His being, what he himself is, is here represented in the aura by what I nave made run from bright green into blue violet (see diagram 2). But by passing over into blue-violet it leaves off being man and becomes the encircling cosmos. There with his being, which is the inner force of his world outlook, man comes to a boundary; there in a sense he reaches nothingness and he has to hold fast to concepts having no content—concepts such as matter, atom, substance, force. This lies in the human organization, it lies in man's connection with the whole cosmos. Man's connection with the whole cosmos actually stands out in front of him. If we describe this boundary in accordance with the ideas of spiritual science, we can do so by saying (diagram 3): this boundary allows man with his soul to come into contact with the universe. If we indicate the direction of the universe in one loop of a lemniscate we can with the other loop show what belongs to man, only what proceeds from man goes out into the universe, into the infinite.

Therefore we must make the line of the loop, the lemniscate, open on one side, closed on the other, and draw it like this—here the line of the loop is closed and here it goes out into infinity. It is the same line that I drew there, only here the arm goes out at this end into infinity (see diagram 4 of lemniscate open to the outside). What I have here drawn as an open lemniscate, as an open loop, is not just something thought out, but something you can actually look upon as flashing in and out of a gentle, very slow movement as the expression of man's relation to the universe. The currents of the universe continually approach man; he draws them towards him, they become intermingled in his vicinity and proceed outward again. Thus this kind of thing streams towards man, interweaves and then goes out again; man is permeated by these currents belonging to the universe, which stop short in front of him.

As you may imagine, through this man is surrounded by a kind of wave-like aura; these currents enter from the universe, form a whirlpool here, and by making this whirlpool in front of him, as it were, salute man. So that here he is surrounded by a kind of auric stream.

This is essentially an expression of man's relation to the cosmos, to the surrounding world of soul-and-spirit. You can, however, find all that you actually experience as lying in your consciousness represented here as a mixture of blue, green and yellow running into orange towards the inside. But that pushes up against here; within the soul part of man this yellow-orange collides with what waves on the blue sea as the soul-and-spirit of the lower man, of the man below. What I have shown here in red passing into orange, belongs to the subconscious part of man, and corresponds to those processes in the physical that take place principally in the activity of the digestion and so forth, where consciousness plays no part. What is connected with the consciousness would be described, where the aura is concerned, in the bright parts that I have applied here. (see diagram 2)

Just as here the soul-spiritual of man meets the soul-spiritual of the surrounding world, so what is within man as his soul and spirit meets his subconscious—that actually also belongs to the universe. I shall have to draw this meeting of the currents so that one of the streams goes out into the infinite; within man I must draw this meeting differently. Here I must also draw a loop line but this must be done so that it runs towards the inside. Now please notice that I am keeping entirely to a looped line but I take the under loop and turn it around so that it goes thus (diagram 6).

Thus, I turn the lower loop around. In contrast to the above diagram 5, where I have made one loop run out to infinity, widen out into the infinite, I now turn back the lower loop; with this I have shown diagrammatically the obstacles, dams, that arise where the spirit and soul here in the inside enter the subconscious spirit-and-soul and therefore also that of the cosmos.

I must therefore describe these obstacles if I draw them as corresponding to what arises in man, in the following way; seven lemniscates with turned back loops—those are the obstacles that correspond to an inner wave in man (diagram 7). If you wish actually to follow up this inner wave, its main direction—but only its main direction—would perhaps take the course of running along beside the junction of man's wrongly named but so-called sensory and motor nerves. This is only said by the way for today I am going to describe the matter chiefly in its soul-spiritual aspect.

By this you can see the strong contrast existing in man's relation to the spirit and soul environment and to himself, namely, to that bit he takes in out of the spirit-soul environment as his subconscious, and what I have had to sketch as the red wave swimming on the universal blue sea of the spirit-soul universe.

We said that this wave here (see right of diagram 2) corresponds to the barrier against which man pushes if he wishes to know about the external world. But there is a limit here too (see left of diagram 2); within men himself there is a barrier. Did this limit, this barrier, not exist you would always be looking down into what is within you, my dear friends. Everyone would look within himself. In the same way that man would look into the external world were the barrier (on the right) not there, if the boundary on the left were not present he would look into himself. If man looked into himself in this present cycle of evolution this would indeed give him little joy, because what he would see there would be a most imperfect, chaotic seething upheaval in man's inner nature—something that certainly could not arouse joy in him. It is, however, that into which imaginative mystics believe they are able to link when they speak of the mysticism that is full of fantasy. All that the mystics of fantasy very largely look upon as a goal worthy of their striving, what, particularly in the case of many such mystics who really believe that in looking within themselves they are able to learn about the universe, what figures with them as mysticism—all that is concealed, entirely concealed, from men by just this dam.¹

Man cannot look into himself. what is formed inside this region (left) is dammed up and reflected, it can t be reflected back into itself; and the expression of this, reflection is memory—remembrance. Every time a thought or an impression that you have received comes back in memory it does so because this damming process begins to work. If you had not this stemming wave, every impression received from outside, every thought you grasp and which permeates you, would be unable to remain with you and would go out into the rest of the soul-spiritual universe. It is only because you have this obstructing wave that you can preserve the impressions you receive.

Through certain processes still to be described you are in a position to call back your impressions. And this is expressed in the functioning of recollection, of memory. You can therefore picture to yourself that you have in you something that here in this diagram is drawn in profile (for so it is drawn; there is in you just such a flat surface); There we find thrown back what should not penetrate. When you are awake you remain united with the external world, otherwise in the waking condition everything would go through you. You would actually know nothing of impressions; you would nave impressions but be unable to keep them.

This is what memory signifies. And the surface of this dam that brings about our memory conceals what the imaginative mystic would like to look at, within himself. One could say of what is underneath that for those who really know these things, the saying holds good that man should never be curious to see what the beneficent Godhead has covered with night and obscurity, but the mystics are fantastic and wish to look down into it. All the same, they cannot do so, however, for they would so bore into and destroy the normal consciousness that the waves of memory would not be thrown back. All that produces our memory, all that is so necessary for external life, conceals from us what the fantastic mystic would like to see but men should not look upon. Beneath recollection, beneath what causes recollection, beneath the surface of recollection, lies an essential part of man. Just like the back of a mirror, the mercury being a mirror, what is in front, what is thus in your consciousness works; it does not go inside but is thrown back and is therefore able to continue there as memory. In this way our whole life is reflected as a memory. And what we call the life of our ego is essentially reflection in memory.

Thus you see that we actually live our conscious life between this wave (right of Diagram 2) and this other wave (left). We should be mere funnels, therefore, letting everything flow through us; had we not this dam as the basis of memory, and we should see into the secrets beyond our boundary of knowledge were we not obliged to place ourselves outside the sphere of perceptible concepts for which we have no content. We should be funnels were we not so organised that we could not produce this dam, organised so that we should not be obliged to set up before us concepts as it were without a content, obscure concepts, we should become loveless beings, empty of love, with dry, stony natures. Nothing, in the world would please us and we should be so many Mephistopheles. Because we are organised so that we are unable to approach what is of soul-and-spirit in our environment with our abstract concepts, with our intellectual powers—to this we owe our capacity to love. For we are not meant to approach what we should love by analysing it in the ordinary sense of the term, nor by tearing it to pieces and treating it as chemicals are treated by the chemist in a laboratory. We do not love when we analyse like a chemist or synthesise chemically. The power of memory, the capacity to love—these are two capacities that correspond at the same time to two boundaries of human nature. The boundary towards within, corresponds to the power of memory; what lies beyond the memory zone is the subconscious within man. The other zone corresponds to the power of love, and whet lies beyond this zone corresponds to what is of the nature of soul-and-spirit in the universe. The unconscious part of man's nature lies beyond this zone as far as what is within man reaches; the soul-spiritual of the universe goes out boundlessly from the other zone into the wide space.

We can therefore speak of the zone of love and the zone of memory and can include man's soul-and-spirit in these zones. We must however seek beyond the one zone above (see right of diagram 2) whet is unconscious, and because it remains unconscious is on that account very closely connected with the bodily nature of man, with his bodily organisation. Naturally things are not in reality so simple as they must be in any representation, because everything is interwoven. What is red here (diagram 2) runs into things and is changed; again, what is green and blue is also changed. Actually, things all intermix with one another: in spite of this, however, the sketch is correct in the main and corresponds with the facts.

But from this we see that for physical life here on earth the spiritual is both strong and conscious. Here (left) the spiritual that actually merges into the universe is unconscious. These two parts of man are very clearly differentiated. The spiritual here (in the middle) is for this reason above all for earthly life a very finely woven spiritual element. Everything here (yellow) is what might be called finely woven light. Were I obliged to show where this finely woven light is in man, I should have to go to what I have been so minutely describing—the human head.

What I have thus described, what I have sketched in yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange, on the other side, is what I might cell the finely woven spirit light. This has no very strong connection with earthly matter; it has as little connection with earthly matter as is possible. And because it has so little connection it cannot well unite with matter, and thus, for the greater part, remains unconnected with it; to this part matter is given that actually always comes from time to time from man's previous incarnation, and there is but a loose connection between this finely woven soul-spiritual element and what belongs to the body, what has actually been held together out of the foregoing incarnation. Your physiognomy, in its arrangement and characteristics, you carry over, my dear friends, from your previous incarnation. And those who are thoroughly able to explain man actually look through the physiognomy of the head; not through what has its origin in the luciferic within men, but more through the manner in which he adapts himself to the universe.

The physiognomy must be looked upon as though it were stamped into man, not to the extent of being the product of this stamping, but rather one has to see in it the negative of the soul; it is this that is seen in the negative of the face. If you were to make an impression of any face you would actually see there the physiognomy that relentlessly betrays what has been made of the last incarnation. On the other hand, all that I have sketched down there as being only connected with the surging sea of the world of soul and spirit, all that is to be understood as corresponding to man's subconscious or unconscious, is closely related to the bodily nature; it permeates the bodily nature. The bodily nature is united with the spiritual in such a way that the spiritual is wholly incapable of appearing as such.

For this reason were we to look down we should see this seething and merging of the spiritual and the bodily behind the threshold of memory. It is this that pares the head of the next incarnation and seeks to transform what will take definite material form only in the future and will not become head until the next incarnation. For man's head is something that outstrips his stage of development. The head in its development therefore—as you may remember from lectures previously held here—has actually come to an end by man's twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth year. (See NSL 122-123 Historical Necessity and Free Will and R-LII Ancient Myths and Their Meaning). In the form of the head there is already our development of man.

But, strange as it may seem, the rest of man is also a head only it is not so far advanced as the other head. If you picture to yourself a decapitated man, what remains is another head but at a more primitive stage. When further developed it become head, whereas what you have as the human head is the rest of the organism of a previous incarnation. If you picture what in your present organism is discarnated, free of the body, if you think away the head of your present organism, the organism that will become head in the next incarnation (and this organism is but an image, everything physical being an image of something spiritual), if you imagine the spiritual element of what in its external form has not yet appeared in man, then you see this in the Group in our luciferic figure—there you have it!

Now imagine compressed into the human head all the soul-spiritual that is merged into man, and held back in you from the head, all that forms a barrier, that is to say, which man cannot penetrate (see right in diagram 2); then man will not have the old dignified head that he ordinarily has; he will have a bony head, and will be altogether bony, like the figure of Ahriman in our Group. (see Der Baugedanke des Goetheanum.)

What I have here been explaining to you has not only great significance for understanding man, but also great significance for understanding what is going on spiritually in mankind's evolution. If we have not a fundamental comprehension of these things we shall never understand how Christianity and the Christ-impulse have entered human evolution. Neither shall we understand what part is played by the Catholic Church, what part is played by the Jesuits and similar currents, what functions belong to the East, what to the West, if all this cannot be considered in connection with these things.

I shall take upon myself to tell you something of these currents tomorrow, currents such as those of East and West, Jesuitism, and the tendency to put everything into terms of mathematics, which really can only be rightly understood if we take into consideration what lies at the basis of soul-spiritual man.

• 1. Mysterien Wahrheiten und Weihnachtsimpulse. 6 Lectures 24-31, December 1917. (Mystery Truths and the Christmas Impulse), 4 lectures in Magazine, 24-29)

A journey through the most recent German poetry

I shall very briefly draw attention once more to what I presented to you here yesterday, because today I shall have further things to add that relate to the human being. What I had to say to you yesterday was as follows: We first turned our attention to the three faculties of the human soul that are more devoted to knowledge. We pointed out that there are essentially three cognitive faculties in the human soul: first, what is the faculty of memory, then what is intelligence, and finally what is sensory activity. Now I drew your attention to the fact that these three soul faculties can only be understood by looking at their development. In order to understand memory, which is relatively one of the more recent abilities of the human being, we must turn our gaze back to times when the Earth was not yet what it is today, when the Earth was undergoing its development as the Moon, which preceded the Earth. So that the first rudiments of what has now become our faculty of memory are to be sought in the ancient lunar period and there appeared, not as memory, but as the dream-like imagination that pervades the human being, which I have often described in other contexts. What was dream-like imagination in the ancient moon period in the beings from which man developed has become the faculty of memory in the earth period. This memory, as I have already mentioned, is more closely interwoven with the physical body than are the other cognitive faculties of the soul. Intelligence is less closely interwoven with the physical body. It is more detached from it, as I described yesterday. But to discover its first rudiments, one must go further back than the old moon time; one must go back to the old sun time and then find the first rudiment of what is present in us today as intelligence in dormant inspiration. As for that which is most divorced from our physical nature, as I explained yesterday, one must go back furthest, although one is least inclined to believe this from the materialistic point of view of our time: for sensory activity, one must go back to the old Saturn time. And one finds as the first origin of this sensory activity, both beings, from which man was later formed, a dull intuition.

Furthermore, we have seen that by carrying these three soul abilities within us, we are at the same time the hosts for beings of higher hierarchies in the organization that underlies these soul abilities. So that through the organization of our sensory activity, we are the hosts of the archai, the spirits of time. They live in our humanity. Through that which we have in us as intelligence, insofar as this intelligence is bound to the mirroring apparatus in us, which reflects back to us our concepts, our ideas, but which come from the spiritual world, and thus brings them to our consciousness, we are the hosts of the archangeloi. And through that which works in our organization and mediates our memory, we are the hosts of the angeloi. Thus we are related to the past through our cognitive abilities, and we are related to the beings of higher hierarchies through our cognitive abilities.

According to an old custom, these three abilities of man are called the upper abilities. And if I am to sketch the human being schematically for you, if I am to present the image of the human being to you as in a diagram, then I would have to draw the following as this diagram of the human being. I would have to start by drawing the faculty of sensory activity. I will try to do it like this, by making a white background (see drawing, hatched in white). I would first have to draw the sensory activity schematically in the human organization, and to get the right proportions, I would have to draw it like this (blue). The main sensory activity is, of course, developed in the head. Although the whole person is imbued with sensory activity, I would first like to draw the main sensory organization here (blue).

If I wanted to draw in the intelligence, I would have to draw it in the following way to make it visible: sensory activity more outward (blue); the intelligence (green) has its mirroring apparatus more in the brain. Deeper down, what underlies memory is already very much connected to the physical organization. In reality, memory (red) is connected to the lowest nervous organisms and to the rest of the organism. I could then create transitions between sensory activity and intelligence by drawing this (indigo) here as a transition. You know that we also have concepts and ideas that are, so to speak, of a descriptive nature. While I have to draw the sensory activity as such in blue, I would have to draw an indigo here as a transition. For the more abstract concepts I would have to draw green, and for that which is in us as memory-based concepts, I would have to draw yellow as a transition from green to red through orange. In this way, I would have to draw the human being in its organization in relation to the ability to perceive, going from the outside in. In the succession of these colors, if you imagine the organization of eyes and ears with blue nuances and that the activity of the senses passes over into the intelligence, the indigo towards the green, lightening through the yellow to the red towards the memory, you get a kind of scheme that, however, very strongly reflects the reality of what the human soul's cognitive abilities or cognitive abilities are.

Now, in human nature, everything plays together in a mess. That is what makes it so difficult for the materialistically thinking person, that in human nature everything plays together in a mess. You can't neatly separate one thing from another in space. In human nature, too, it is not so clearly defined, but if one wants to draw schematically, one can still get a relatively clear picture of all sorts of things. Thus, one can indeed see that the ability to remember is related to the ability to think through their inner properties in the same way that the color red relates to the color green; and just as green relates to blue, so does intelligence relate to the activity of the senses. Now, however, we have other abilities in the human soul, abilities that are more or less bound to physical corporeality in the strictest sense in us as earth people. Feeling belongs to these first. While memory, intelligence and sensory activity are bound to the awakening consciousness in stages, feeling is already something very 'dreamlike' in the human being. I have often explained this. While memory is something that developed in the distant past on the old moon, intelligence on the sun, sensory activity on Saturn, feeling, as we have it today, belongs to the human being on earth. It is essentially something that is bound to the human earthly organization. What we as terrestrial human beings received as an organization actually made us sentient beings in the first place. But just as memory is something that has gone beyond its first disposition and has come to a higher level of development on Earth, and if one has enough of a supersensible vision to recognize that memory is, so to speak, an old human ability, one recognizes that feeling is only present in its disposition. If we look at what the human being calls feeling today with the necessary understanding, we can see that in the future it will develop into something quite, quite different. Just as if, as an observer during the old moon time, we had looked at dreaming imagination and said to ourselves: This will later become the memory of man. In the same way, when we look at feeling today, we must say, understandingly: When the earth will no longer be, but something else will have come out of it, when the earth will have become the future Jupiter, then feeling will have become what it can become. Today, feeling in man is still only embryonic, something that exists as a germ. What it can become will only arise out of feeling. Thus, in feeling, we carry within us something that relates to what it becomes on Jupiter, just as a child in the womb relates to the human being born into the world. Our feeling is embryonic, and it will only later, during the Jupiter period, become that which will flourish as a complete, fully conscious imagination.

Another soul faculty that is tied to our organization is desire. This desire is still much more embryonic than feeling. Everything in our world of desire will only become what it is now germinating towards during the future Venusian age. Today our desires are very closely bound up with our physical organization. They will become detached. Just as our intelligence was bound during the old sun time to the physical organization of the sun, as I have described it in my “Occult Science in Outline”, so is the world of desires of man today bound to the physical organization. It will appear detached from the physical organization during the future Venus period, and it will then appear as fully conscious inspiration.

Among our soul abilities, the will is most embryonic. In the future, the will is called upon to become something very powerful, something cosmic, through which the human being will belong to the whole cosmos in the future, will be an individual being and yet will live out his individual impulses as a fact of the world. But this will only be during the volcanic age, when the will will be fully conscious intuition.

Upper abilities

Lower abilities: Social World

Thus, through our feelings, desires and will, we once again belong to the future. These abilities lie within us in that they prepare the human being for his future being. But here too we stand in a relationship with the world in which these abilities of the human being have their relationships to the environment. Just as, in relation to the spiritual environment, memory, intelligence and sensory activity are related to the angels, archangels and archai, so feeling, desire and will are related to the physical environment, but in such a way that our feeling is related to the world that surrounds us that during our time on earth it gradually consumes the mineral world. All that is the mineral world around us will disappear at the end of the earth's time, and the forces that will consume the mineral world from the human being are the forces of feeling. So we must assume a special relationship between feeling and the mineral kingdom (see diagram). We must assume a special relationship between desire and the plant kingdom. Just as there will be no mineral kingdom on Jupiter, which, as the future planet, will be the next embodiment of our Earth, because during its time on Earth feeling will have consumed the mineral kingdom, so during the Venus period there will no longer be a plant kingdom because human desire during the Jupiter period will have consumed this plant kingdom, and human will during the Venus period will have consumed the animal kingdom. And when the time of Vulcan comes, the future incarnation of Vulcan on our Earth will no longer contain the three kingdoms, but only that part of the present kingdoms that will have become of the human kingdom.

In response to what I have just told you, people may come from the present and say: I am not very interested in what I once was with my memory, with my intelligence and with my sense of being on the good old Saturn and the Sun and the Moon; I am pleased with my existence as an earth dweller, what do I care about what the things that I no longer know anything about went through on earlier planetary embodiments of our Earth? I am not interested in that! And I am certainly not interested in what will become of my feelings, which interest me very much now, on Jupiter or even on distant Venus, what will become of my desires there. These desires drive me now, but I am not yet interested in Lady Venus, because she is not present, and I am only interested in present ladies. And so, right, only with the will in such a distant, distant future!

Certainly, many people in the present feel this way, and culture is very, very much in favor of oversleeping everything that wants to assert this knowledge from the present, that they would not want to wake up to these insights. But human development will not be guided into the future without having such insights. For it is profoundly true that in the human organism, in the physical, in the soul, in the spiritual organism, everything works in confusion; but one must also be able to distinguish the things. Just as the higher abilities could be schematically recorded, from sensory activity to memory, so I can now draw in the lower abilities that are specifically formed on earth (see drawing on page 213). I must then do this in the following way: a somewhat deeper red (unfortunately I do not have the differences here) would correspond to our feeling. But this feeling extends into the intelligence, into the sensory activities everywhere, and also through the memory. I would then have to draw an actual red-violet when I draw the activity of desire. And if I wanted to draw the will as it is today, I would have to draw a blue-green. So that man is a dual being, an upper man (circle at the top), who is essentially a knower, and a lower man (circle at the bottom), who is essentially a desirer, feeling and willing regarded as the two poles of desire.

Now, in the earthly human being, what is the lower human being actually works its way into the upper human being, both the wanting and the desiring and the feeling work into the upper human being (arrow pointing up T). In other words, our sensory activity is such that we have in it everything that has gradually emerged from the dull intuition of ancient Saturn. But if we were to carry within us, through our eyes and ears, only that which comes from the dull intuition of ancient Saturn, we would be very dry beings. We would perceive the outer world as if through senses that worked automatically. We would think soberly and dryly about this outer world, and we would remember what we have experienced without warmth. That we experience what we have experienced as our own affair, that we do not merely look into our experiences with indifference and remember them, looking at our personal life like the individual stones of a kaleidoscope, is what makes our remembered thoughts, our intelligent being, our sensory perceptions, our feelings, desires and wills arise. When we look at things externally, we like them. We like them through our desire, through our feeling or through our will. When we think, we do not just think soberly and dryly, but we bring a certain enthusiasm into our ideas. We would not bring this into it if we only had what the sun has given us as intellectual power; we have this in our thinking because the earth has endowed us with will, desire and feeling, even if these are now embryonic. The same applies to the ability to remember. Those abilities that are called the lower abilities, because they are more closely connected with the body, always play a part in our higher soul abilities. Let us hold on to that for the time being. The lower soul faculties of will, desire and feeling shine through and glow in our higher soul faculties, which would place us in the world like dried-out intestines if they were only what they have become through Saturn, Sun and Moon, and we become warm, feeling human beings, even when we think. There are, however, a great many people today who strive for objectivity by throwing feeling and desire out of their intelligence; but this is either merely an illusion, if people believe that they can throw out the lower soul faculties from the activity of the senses, the intelligence and memory, or if they really throw them out – to a certain extent one can only do that – but then one becomes one's own lower self! It is only possible to a certain extent to expel the lower soul faculties from the higher ones. One can expel them, for example, by stepping onto the lectern and expounding to the foxes and other, later students all kinds of sciences. One can expel the lower, actually earthly soul faculties from the intellect. But one cannot expel them completely. If, after spending the day in philosophy, you do not enjoy your midday meal, then your intelligence is permeated by real desires and feelings, and you grumble about what your housewife has prepared, and in particular, your sense activity of taste, smell and so on. Thus, sometimes, the dry philistine exists in man, who has thrown out the lower soul faculties from his upper soul faculties, and the person who is quite capable of enthusiasm when something is over-peppered or over-salted or even burnt or otherwise not properly cooked in some way!

Our lower soul abilities must interact with our higher soul abilities. But there is actually a wave of development in humanity, precisely since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period, since the middle of the 15th century, to make the activity of the senses, the intelligence, purer and ever purer, and later this will also come in relation to memory. This has not yet been affected. The aim is to liberate these faculties, indeed, the aim is that not only the characteristics I have just mentioned in the dry philistine - which only arises because this dry philistine is in fact more affected by what human nature in general does after all. But the physical part of the human being will dry up altogether, as I have already explained in an earlier observation, and will be less and less able to warm and illuminate the higher soul faculties. They will then actually become that dried-up part if they are not filled by what can come from spiritual revelation.

Indeed, we have to fertilize sensory activity, intelligence and memory in the following stages of the earth's development with what is revealed from the spiritual world, because the actual earthly gift that comes for these higher abilities as volition, desire and feeling gradually dries up. We do not merely want to disparage the stuffy philistine, as we have just done, but at the same time we want to admit that he is a pioneer of the drying up of our higher soul abilities in the future, that he already feels in his body what will affect all of humanity; only today he still rarely feels the necessity that this must be replaced by spiritual revelation. It must be replaced by spiritual revelation. Man, accustomed as he has been to experiencing the upward streaming (arrow up) of volition, desire and feeling in memory, intelligence and sense activity, must experience the revelations of the spiritual world through spiritual knowledge ( down arrow, top right), so that his sensory activity, his intelligence, his memory can be filled with that with which they are no longer filled, as our physical body withers more and more in the decadence of the earth.

Let us first of all realize that we are heading for a time when everything that man perceives through sense experience, through intelligence, through memory, must receive spiritual revelation within him so that human culture can progress. Let us now turn to the lower human faculties, which today are only present in embryonic form. These lower human faculties are those that primarily bring us into relationship with our environment. Even inwardly, they are related to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms that make up our environment. By feeling, we feel about the things in our environment; by desiring, we desire the things in our environment; by willing, we directly intervene in the active nature of our environment. We are completely immersed in our environment. And what, we ask, comes of what becomes of the feelings, desires and will of the people who live together on earth?

If you take a spiritual look at everything that is called the social world, you will see that it is entirely the result of the will, desires and feelings of the people living together. And what we experience as human beings through our feelings, what people desire from each other and from nature, and what is done out of will, that is actually the outer world. By desiring, we belong to the social order much more than we realize. We are made into desiring beings by our position in the social world, and our will intervenes everywhere in the social world in such a way that what happens in the social world happens through our will. Therefore, in what we call the social order of life, what people feel, desire and will lives an independent life. Today's Social Democratic Party says: what lives outside is the result of an economy, of economic forces, and how they develop. No, what lives outside is the objectification of the feelings, desires and will of people living together in society. That which first arises in man as feeling creates conditions that then determine the social life of man; likewise desire and even more so will. But everything in human nature is connected. The colors are drawn down there, which correspond to feeling, desire and will. The intelligent properties, the sensory activity, the actual intelligence, the memory work downwards and work out into the social world through our will (arrow down, going to the right).

If, in fact, man increasingly dries up with regard to his physical organization in the direction of the future, then little would be able to flow from the bodily organization into the social order, and sensory experience, intelligence and the individual human memory thoughts would flow into the social world without first passing through feeling, desire and will. In other words: If it were to develop in accordance with the mere organization of the earth, so that our bodily organization dries up and only sensory activity, intelligence, memory remain for us, and these are not fertilized by the spirit either, then a dry intelligence, a merely external sensory perception and merely selfish memories of the individual human beings would want to dominate social life. This would give rise, in ever further development, to what is now beginning in Russia. In Russia, a social order is now beginning to take shape in Leninism and Trotskyism that stems solely from sensory experience, intelligence and the few memories of an egotistical nature of the individual human beings. One does not yet realize that this order in Eastern Europe strives to be a purely rationalistic order, an order that is to be formed only from the cognitive abilities of man on earth, as he has emerged from the Saturn, Sun and Moon man, that everything that can be taken from the spiritual world is to be consciously excluded.

The feeling that teaches one to what degree of rigidity human civilization is coming, so that man will only be a walking machine, that feeling that teaches one what would become of the world if dictators like Lenin and Trotsky were left to take care of it, that feeling must come from such an understanding of the nature of human nature as we have presented to our souls during these two days. From such a realization one sees that it is simply a necessity of human nature that the upper faculties of the soul should be enlightened and warmed by spiritual revelation, lest what intelligence and sense activity and memory would become if they did not fertilize themselves with the spiritual world should flow out into social life. Man must learn to feel what holds him together with all earthly existence, and he must learn to feel, out of spiritual knowledge, what is preparing in the East and what threatens to consume all of Asia in an ever faster and faster development. Man must learn to feel this as the great and terrible disease of present-day civilization, which must be cured. And it can only be cured if it can be diagnosed in the right way.

Practising spiritual science today means seeking out the healing process of the diseased civilization. This should be felt by a sufficiently large number of people, and it should be felt very deeply and thoroughly. Without spiritual science one will not feel this. And now all the leading events are taking place without any sense of what one is actually doing. The Versailles Treaty was nothing other than the instilling of a poison of civilization, a toxic substance that must make humanity even sicker than it was before. For everything that is created without knowledge of the future conditions of life on earth is a disease-causing substance for developing humanity.

We are accustomed to accepting such things as true, spoken from the heart, from the intuitive sense. Here they are not said from such a source. Here they are derived from the knowledge of the nature of human nature. And here it can be shown that the spiritual life of human beings, of which memory, intelligence and sensory activity are the bearers, cannot continue to exist without being fertilized from the spiritual world. This is not admitted today. But why is it not admitted? It is not admitted for a historical reason. Since the middle of the 15th century, more and more of those entities have emerged that are today perceived as the actual bearers of civilization, the modern states. But these modern states can only be in the future that which - I have explained this in another context here - relates to the life of the human being between birth and death. They must not interfere in anything that relates to the spiritual world between people. In the future, people must be able to let the spiritual world into their memory, their intelligence and their sensory activity as individuals. They can only do this as individuals, only as individuals. In the future, individuals must become mediators between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and physical worlds. And people today rightly feel this, although they have almost the wrong feelings in the way they feel it, but they still feel it as something improper when currents that should only flow into individual human beings flow into so-called public state affairs. When the Russian Czar and the Russian Czarina availed themselves of the inner experiences of a Rasputin for their governmental acts, people were right to fear it, because revelations from the spiritual world may only play into the spiritual life, they may not play into the life of the state. Only that which has become our healthy reason through spiritual revelations may play a part in it. Now, Rasputin did not go as far as healthy reason, even if he did go as far as revelation.

On the other hand, in social life outside of it, only that which is connected with the lower abilities of human beings, with the abilities that develop on earth, with desires, feelings, and will, can find expression. These develop in dealings from person to person; and they develop in dealings not with abstract humanity as a whole, but only with circles that are connected by interests, by their particularly constituted desires, by their particularly constituted feelings or by the will that they must develop.

This, however, justifies the necessity for a threefold structure of public affairs. In the future, the state, which must not allow direct spiritual life to enter into its affairs at all, will not be allowed to extend to spiritual life. Spiritual life will have to have its own independent administration because it cannot progress if it does not receive spiritual revelations. A healthy State must renounce spiritual revelations. If it interferes in spiritual matters, it is only to make things as difficult as possible. The spiritual life must be separated and made independent. But the economic life cannot be connected with the life of the state either, because this economic life must be closely rooted in the communities of interests of the individual people bound together in circles of interest, in the feeling, desire and will as it develops in the associations, in the narrower communities.

In short, just as the physicist understands the complex phenomena of physical nature from the simple experiences he makes, so today one must understand from human nature with its higher abilities: memory, intelligence and sensory perceptions, its lower abilities: will, desire and feeling - that which has to happen in the development of humanity. And anyone who today, with social willpower drawn from a strong but empty self-confidence and with the tone that is called the chest tone of conviction in many people today, presents himself and develops social ideas is like someone who stands in front of a telegraph installation, has no idea about electricity and magnetism, these simple facts, and now, out of his lack of knowledge, explains a telegraph installation. The people who talk about sociology today usually talk from a spirit like that — no matter how learned it may sound to many people — like someone who has never heard of the nature of electricity and looks at a Morse code system in a telegraph station and says: “There are just tiny little riders in there, you can't see them, they ride to the other station, you just can't see any of that.” And he explains it all very neatly. This is how Marxism explains social facts, this is how our university sociologists explain social facts. Reality only emerges when one recognizes human nature. But human nature can only be recognized from within the whole cosmic order. Because memory is connected with the extraterrestrial, intelligence is connected with the extraterrestrial, sensory activity is connected with the extraterrestrial. Feeling is something that will only become what it is supposed to be after the earth no longer exists; desire and will in an even more distant future. Just as one must know the simple fact of the thermodynamics of the organism in order to be a physicist, the simple fact of acoustics, so too, in order to have a say today, and as many people as possible must have a say with regard to social facts, one must delve into the simple, elementary connections between the human being and the world, because that which is socially grounded is carried by the human being into the social order. But here, in his own being, man brings in the whole universe. That is why it is also bad for those chatterboxes who, from all sorts of old traditions, talk about man being a microcosm, a small world compared to the macrocosm, and who stick to these abstractions. Only he who knows that there were once ancestors of man as moon people who had fantastic imaginations has a real right to speak of macrocosm and microcosm. The moon has passed away, the earth has come into being. Human memory has arisen out of that which is no longer there, but which once was there. This has no earthly origin. Only the human ego and its expression, the present physical human body with its form, have an earthly origin. One must grasp this in concrete terms, otherwise one has no right to call it anything but a microcosm.

My dear friends, the decadent civilization can only be saved if it is finally realized that man must be spoken of as a cosmic being from the institutions in which philosophy is taught today as a mere sum of expressed abstractions. What has become of humanity through abstraction, through mere abstraction, appears only in symptoms in such philosophies as those of the American William James, the Englishman Spencer, the Frenchman Bergson or the German, Königsberg Kant. These abstractions conceal from humanity what it is. But the living knowledge of the spiritual, which is to be striven for through spiritual science, can bring man to self-knowledge.

More on this tomorrow.

Recently, many members of the Anthroposophical Society, especially those with a scientific background, have come to believe that a discussion should take place between what is given in Anthroposophy as world knowledge and what is given today as scientific world knowledge based on the assumptions of the second half of the 19th century. Yes, it is believed that if one, as it were, accommodates science in a certain way, responds to it as much as possible, this could result in something extraordinarily favorable for anthroposophy.

It is precisely because scientific activity has entered the Anthroposophical Society, which in other respects is to be welcomed as an extremely gratifying fact, that an extraordinary number of errors have arisen with regard to the point mentioned.

We must not forget that in the course of the 19th century, under the influence of what was gradually called and is still called science, general human knowledge has taken on a character in relation to which anthroposophical knowledge of the world is quite different. One must assume that anyone who has grown into present-day scientific life with their habitual way of thinking will find it impossible to switch to the anthroposophical view without further ado. Therefore, one must be aware that no kind of approval of the anthroposophical view of the world can come from this side in the near future.

Those people who either have not grown into today's scientific work with their habitual way of thinking or who, as young people, grow into it and then out of it again, will be the ones who will mainly recognize the validity of anthroposophical world knowledge.

To bring a little life into what I have just said, I would like to speak today about an initial perspective on the path of Anthroposophy through the world. I would like to structure these three lectures somewhat aphoristically so that friends who have come from far away can take as much with them as possible. I would like to tie in with all kinds of phenomena in the life of civilization today, but in the main I would like to seek the content for these lectures in purely anthroposophical discussions.

We know what the facts are that a person experiences when they pass through the gate of death. Today, in order to present the physical perspective of anthroposophy to our souls, so to speak, we will first consider only the very first period of life after passing through the gate of death. It has often been mentioned how, throughout their entire life on earth, human beings have such a close connection between their physical body and their etheric body or formative forces that this connection is maintained throughout their entire life on earth.

When a person interrupts the ordinary state of consciousness during their life on earth through the state of sleep and dreams, they carry the astral body and the ego out of the physical and formative forces. These, in turn, are so closely connected that they do not separate. Thus, in the course of a normal twenty-four-hour day, the separation that occurs in the course of a normal day is such that the physical body and the etheric or formative body on the one hand and the ego and the astral body on the other hand separate, while each side forms a closely knit whole.

When a person now passes through the gate of death, it is different. Then it happens that the physical body is discarded first and that for a very short time a connection is established between the I, the astral body and the etheric body, which was not present during life on earth. This connection gives the first experiences that a person goes through after death, which only last for days. What are these experiences?

They consist of the person, as if melting away from himself, seeing everything that he has taken in through his senses and also through the mind, which combines the perceptions of the senses, during his life on earth.

During our life on earth, we become accustomed to seeing colored things and processes that shine in colors in our view when we look out into the world. But we also retain the impressions of colors in our memory, albeit in a weakened form. We carry them with us through our memory. It is the same with the impressions of the other senses. And if we are honest in self-observation, then we say to ourselves: Actually, when we sit in the quiet chamber and let our memories, that is, our inner selves, play, what we experience from our inner selves is composed of the shadowy images of external impressions. In our ordinary consciousness, we live either in the immediate, vivid impressions of the external world or in the shadowy memories of it. We will talk tomorrow about what we have beyond that. Today we only want to call to mind very strongly that during our whole life on earth this consciousness is filled with colors and color processes that spread over things, with sounds, with sensations of warmth and cold, in short, with the impressions that we receive through the senses, and with their shadowy afterimages in the inner life of the soul, as one might also say, in memory. Let us consider this as a kind of starting point.

Everything we experience melts away when we pass through the portal of death. Within a few days, so to speak, everything that fills our soul from birth to death has dissolved into the greater cosmos. This can be called: The etheric body or formative forces of the human being separate from the I and the astral body, after first entering into a connection with them that did not previously exist in earthly life.

Now let us imagine more precisely what this experience is like. I will make a schematic drawing for this purpose. Let us assume that the physical body of the human being is characterized by this schematic drawing; the etheric or formative body is characterized by this schematic drawing (shaded in yellow). We only experience what I have characterized as this, this interrelated structure of physical and etheric bodies, when we are stuck inside after waking up. So we actually always experience it from the inside. And to help us recall this as accurately as possible, I would like to design the drawing in the following way. I will indicate green for the part of the etheric body that seems inward. The physical body is discarded at death anyway, so we need not consider it at this point. And I will indicate what is directed outwards from the etheric body with this red line.

I just said that we only experience this structure of the etheric body from the inside after waking up; so, in a sense, we only experience what shines inward in the green. We do not experience what shines outward in the red.

When we have passed through the gate of death and enter into a certain connection with the etheric body with our ego and our astral body, this connection happens in the following way. You must now imagine that the whole etheric body turns like a glove when you turn all the finger linings inside out, as you would normally do with the skin, turning the inside out. So that I now have to draw what is colored red on the outside in the earthly state as the inner part, and what is colored green on the inside, I have to draw green on the outside. The entire etheric body turns in on itself. But this turning around is connected with an immeasurably rapid enlargement of the etheric body. It grows, it becomes gigantic, it expands immeasurably far into the universe, so that I would now have to make the drawing something like this (large green board 8 circles).

And whereas we used to be in there with our ego and our astral body, we are now (red circle) facing the etheric body that expands into the cosmic, but we look at it from its other side. That which we previously carried with us without meaning, the red on the outside, is now turned inwards. What was previously turned inwards and what alone has meaning for us during our life on earth is now turned outwards, no longer of any concern to us, and disperses into the universe. But in this green – of course presented schematically – is contained everything that we have had within us during our life on earth as a colored, sounding, and so on world.

As green, so to speak, goes through the etheric body turning to the other side, we lose it completely and we get a very different world as an impression. We must not imagine that we can still have the same world that we had during our life on earth after death. This world goes away. To imagine, for example, that after death we could experience, for my sake, in a different edition, the content of earthly life, that is quite wrong, that does not correspond to the facts. What we experience through the turning of the etheric or formative body is indeed of a gigantic size compared to the content of earthly life, but it is something quite different. We experience the whole of our earthly education through the fact that the outside is now turned inwards, in powerful impressions that are different from the sensory impressions. We do not experience the blush of the rose, but we experience how we have formed the blush of the rose within us as an idea. That is where it begins to be not as calm as it is in physical life. There, in earthly life, the roses are so beautifully arranged in a rose garden, and each one gives peace, and one feels suspended in the peace. Now the rose garden becomes something completely different, now the rose garden becomes an event in time. And as we gradually let our gaze wander from one rose to the next, as we formed the image of the first rose, the second, the third rose and so on within us, this, as in a living becoming, in a lightning-fast rippling and weaving, one rose after the other arises, but not as roses, but as images that unfold, this now emerges as our inner life as if in a sea of events. And so we are confronted with something we have not seen during our life on earth: the becoming of this earthly life, the gradual development of this earthly life. We know how our soul has become from childhood on. That which we have left completely unnoticed during our earthly life is now playing out in us. It is as if we had stepped out of ourselves, had become a second person and were watching how we gradually formed the simple ideas of childhood, the more complicated ones of later years, and so on. We see the emergence of all this earthly life from its inner side. We see how this earthly life, this earthly existence, is formed from hour to hour. Yes, we gain the impression that this whole earthly life is actually formed from the cosmos. For everything we perceive grows into the immeasurable, into the cosmic, and by growing into it, we become clear about the fact that what has been formed in us in earthly life is also formed from the cosmos.

And now we are gradually getting a valid idea of what it is like to live this human life on earth. Let us take as our starting point what is more or less believed today with regard to this life on earth. Man eats, and in doing so he takes the substances that are outside into his own organism. This is an undeniable fact. He also changes these substances. He changes them in his mouth, and then all the more so in the rest of his organism. What is absorbed goes into the whole organism, really goes into the whole organism. Science will still come and say: But we are also constantly losing substances to the outside. We need only think of how you cut your nails and your hair if you are not yet bald. You can see from the dandruff and so on how the human being loses matter, loses substance. And it is common knowledge today that in this way, by constantly losing matter, the human being completely rebuilds itself over the course of about seven years.

So that, if I want to put it drastically, everything sitting here on the chairs, in terms of the material, was scattered all over the world eight or nine years ago. Let me put it this way: what is sitting here on these chairs could only have gathered over the last seven to eight years. If what was in all of you more than seven or eight years ago were still sitting here in muscle tissue and so on – you are already older, so you will have regenerated several times – you would not all be sitting here.

So, of what you carried as your muscle meat, blood and other things at home or elsewhere seven or eight years ago, nothing is sitting there; you have gradually cut it off, shed it and so on.

But if science is now materialistically oriented, then how does it answer? It says something like this: During these last seven years we have all been eating. That which we have eaten now is here, and that which we ate earlier is no longer here. For example, each of you sitting here has a heart, doesn't he? Now, the physical matter of this heart, so science tells you, has renewed itself in the last seven to eight years. So you definitely have a new heart compared to your condition nine years ago, let's say. Yes, you could say something like that, if you think in terms of the present.

But it is not so. This idea exists only because people do not know what I have just explained to you, do not include it at all in the realm of their scientific observation and thinking. They know nothing of that reversal of the ether or formative forces of the body, of what shows us, after we have passed through the gate of death, how the whole being has actually come into being bit by bit. Because if one knows this, then one is also able to look into the human organism quite differently. And only then does one learn to recognize the truth.

One can believe that the cabbage, potatoes, other vegetables, cherries, plums and so on that one has enjoyed over the past few years have gradually accumulated this heart matter. But it has not. Essentially – listen to me when I say this – the heart you carry within you has not much to do with the material you have taken in over the last seven to eight years. Rather, the heart you carry within you today has essentially arisen in a very mysterious way out of the ether of the cosmos, which you have drawn together into the density of the heart over the last seven to eight years. So it is not that your heart has been renewed out of physical matter of the last seven to eight years, but it has been renewed out of the cosmos. You have renewed your heart and your other organs out of the ether. You have actually made yourself into a new person over the past few years, not from the earth, but from the cosmos. This can be seen from the effects of the etheric body after death, how it has worked during the whole of life on earth, that we have always regenerated ourselves from the cosmos.

Now your materialistic conscience – after all, everyone has to have one of those – will say: But we did eat. We did absorb external matter, and internal processes took place as a result.

Yes, but these internal processes have less to do with your actual, deeper nature than you might think.

Now we can even state a fact that may seem somewhat grotesque to today's thinking: You are all sitting there now; what you have renewed in yourselves over the past seven to eight years did not live in the cabbage and on the potato fields, but lived out in the universe in the sun, moon and stars, coming down from there, and you formed yourselves anew out of the universe. In doing so, we have pointed out an error that simply has to arise from today's thinking. They seek only the relationships of human regeneration to physical earth matter, but not to ether. And the consequence of this is that once one has become accustomed to the ideas presented in current physiology, one cannot help but regard everything that is given from the anthroposophical point of view as a kind of fantasy. Therefore, we must be clear about how fruitless discussions are today, how only by mastering both fields, contemporary science and anthroposophy, can we shed light on them from both sides, but how we must not give ourselves over to the hope – because if we give ourselves over to this hope, it is actually to the detriment of anthroposophy! - that those who are accustomed to materialistic ideas can be drawn over to it so easily by a discussion. One must have very clear and precise ideas about this. Then one will realize that, first of all, the whole way in which one appropriates anthroposophy must be appropriated by people before they can even enter into this anthroposophical way of looking at and knowing things.

I said that essentially we actually regenerate our new human being from the cosmos. We do not find the substances in the cosmos that we then find in the heart, of course not, because there they are so thin that they cannot be detected by physical means on earth. There they are ethereal. But what appears as dense heart matter at a certain age has only just condensed from the cosmic ether. So what is there today was all still out in the heavens, in the stars, nine or ten years ago, and what has remained, what has pushed its way in from the matter that should actually have formed out of the ether, that is what causes illness. When we carry physical matter that is too old within us, then that is one cause of illness. And deep insights into the nature of disease are gained when one knows how matter, instead of being expelled, persists; for all matter that is taken up as physical earth matter is actually doomed to be expelled again. If it persists in the organism, then it becomes the cause of disease.

You can also see from this how this really real knowledge, which we can only gain by having an insight into what occurs in us as first experiences shortly after we have completely discarded the physical body, plays a practical role. So after death, everything that we have had in the way of sense impressions and the mind's processing of sense impressions melts away from us. We look at the world quite differently. Minerals, plants, and animals, as we previously looked at them, are not there at all. How people become, that is there.

We have passed through the gateway of death. We have thereby resigned from the scene of the earth. We have stepped onto the scene of the cosmos: Another world surrounds us. It is as if we had stepped out of a small chamber of earthly existence into the majestically vast chamber of the cosmos, and we feel spread out over the cosmos, would truly not fit into the small earthly chamber. So we have entered the scene of the cosmos. And on this scene of the cosmos we must now remain until we descend again to our earthly existence, only that we now enter into contact with completely new worlds, with worlds whose essence belongs to the higher hierarchies.

This consideration, which one gains so directly in connection with man, must, however, be extended to the whole of nature. And I would like to characterize to you what has to happen there in the following way.

Let us assume, for example, that we have gone back a very long time in evolution, in the evolution of the earth. We would encounter very different living creatures and very different events on earth. You know that there have been periods of time when giant animals of a lower kind lived that no longer exist today. The entire species has died out and is no longer present. The paleontologist and geologist search for individual remains in the formations of the earth. Let us assume that I would draw schematically this very old development, where, for example, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, these strange beasts, would have lived here on earth. Yes, these creatures were not formed out of physical earthly matter, they were formed out of the cosmos, out of ether. And when the time approached when these creatures gradually died out, the entire etheric matter remained, if I may put it that way. (See drawing: yellow.) Now there were no more creatures. But all the etheric matter from which these creatures had formed remained behind, just as our etheric body remains behind. And this etheric matter was the cause that in later times, after this etheric formation had passed through the cosmos, other beings formed in earthly existence. Of these, in turn, the etheric remained behind. From these, other entities formed. And finally, the world of animals emerged as it exists today.

So if you have three consecutive periods here, first period, second period, third period, you have, let's say, consecutive animal forms. But for the following one to always arise from the previous one, a passage through the cosmos with the help of the ether is necessary, just as a passage through the cosmos between two earth lives is necessary for man. And if we finally have entities here (see drawing: red), then that can in turn pass into the ether, and there, formed out of the ether in a certain period, the human being can appear. But the influence has always happened in a roundabout way through the cosmos.

Now comes the purely materialistic observer. He sees all this, and now he believes that one thing has arisen out of the other. Certainly, on earth it also follows; but an etheric activity, a cosmic activity lies in between.

In the 19th century, it became common practice to look only at what follows on the earth, but not at what cosmic activity is beyond the earthly. Therefore, the consideration remained: ultimately man, before that simpler forms, still simpler forms and so on. This is what we can obtain as the development of organisms through natural science, which does not involve the etheric. This natural science could obtain nothing other than what it did obtain. If one admits its presuppositions, that one should not get involved in the ethereal, one poses the question in such a way that one should only consider that which belongs to earthly existence; yes, then there is no other choice than to present the physical evolutionary current. Darwinists have done this, Haeckel has done this, and to demand more as earth science or even to want to polemicize against what has come about as earth science is nonsense. Because only when one adds the knowledge of the ethereal world can that arise which belongs to it. So you see, there is no point in direct polemic; but if someone wants to remain on the ground of natural science, he can. And to the other, who speaks of some other principles of formation in what is on earth, he can always say: Yes, that has no significance at all. That is not there, he will say, when he has become accustomed to the merely earthly way of looking at things.

If one wants to speak differently, then one must first acquire knowledge of the ethereal world. So for a valid, reasonable polemic against today's science, the only thing left to do is to say: In your field, o naturalist, you are quite right, nothing else can come of it, we do not deny that, we fully admit that. But if you want to talk to us about what we mean, well, then you must first familiarize yourself with the elementary processes in the cosmic ether, then we can talk to each other. Otherwise you are not grounded in reality if you do not start from these things.

You see, a member sitting here has written a little book on botany from a spiritual scientific point of view. A very disparaging review of it appeared recently in a local paper. Well, what can one say about that! I said: Imagine you were the botanist who wrote this review, you had never heard of anthroposophy and this second edition of your little book came to your notice. It is only natural that you would write just like him! The fact that you do not do so, but on the contrary have written the little book yourself, is the very reason why you have taken up anthroposophy in the first place. You only have to put yourself in the other person's shoes for once, and then you can write all these opposing things yourself. But you see, if you want a person who has once put himself in one direction with all his habits of thought to be different, if you want him to be an anthroposophist, it seems to me almost like someone who has had a blonde daughter suddenly wants a black one. It doesn't work like that. What man has become through today's science is not something that can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. You have to think realistically.

The period that followed the mid-19th century gave the whole state of mind a very specific character. I will give you an example of this from a completely different angle.

You know that there is something today called analytical psychology, psychoanalysis. I have often said here that psychoanalysis produces some beautiful things; but, first of all, it arises from an incomplete, amateurish knowledge of human physiology, so it is amateurishness. Then it arises from an amateurish knowledge of the human soul, of human psychology. That is also amateurism. And because one usually follows the other, the things multiply, and psychoanalysis is actually amateurism squared. - If you multiply d by d, you get d?. But it does have an effect, even if only in an amateurish way, if it is pursued further. And one can also understand that this thing could gradually emerge from inadequate physiology and psychology. But it does rub off on people's minds, this way of thinking does rub off!

Today we have an enormous literature about it. You could fill a large library with psychoanalytic literature. People argue terribly in it, so that if you go into the polemics, it is sometimes quite interesting. Well, this psychoanalysis has also been mentioned here from time to time. One can really fill a library with what has been written about it. But if so much is written in this field, then there must be a lot of study in it, at least on the surface. This colors the state of mind of people.

Now there is something very peculiar. You see, in 1841, there was already a psychoanalytic literature in Central Europe. But it consisted of only fourteen lines. They read: “In our modern overcrowded consciousness, we throw many things around that we cannot develop because we lack the time. They remain in us in the form of tasks that we could work on. They are, to quote Tieck, unborn souls that, yearning for existence, hover in the background of our own soul as if in a limbo."

You see, in these fourteen lines - if you make the lines longer, there is even less - the principle of the whole of psychoanalysis is contained. At that time, it was called “unborn souls” that live in the background of the soul in a limbo, struggling for existence. Now it is called “hidden provinces in the depths of the soul,” “soul provinces,” and so on. In those days, however, it was considered such an insignificant thing that it was noted in a few lines. Today our civilization has come to write entire libraries about it. But everything essential, everything fundamental, is contained in those fourteen lines. But in those days, when it was all contained in just fourteen lines, the libraries were filled with different books than they are filled with today, and people who wanted to learn took in different material.

If today, as a young student, you somehow study psychology and are supposed to write a dissertation, you can't avoid psychoanalysis. You have to study it. Yes, it rubs off on the soul. In 1841, the essential was expressed in these fourteen lines. It was not considered something so important that could have such a tremendous significance for human thought. And so it has been with many things.

It means something tremendous, whether we look at any field of facts or whether we do not look. In those days, in 1841, people slept through psychoanalysis. This thought, which I read to you in the fourteen lines, only emerged in a single person, in Karl Rosenkranz. He dreamt about it once. Dreams pass quickly and do not have much influence on life. But people filled their waking hours with other things. Today, on the other hand, much is missed because one has to be awake for psychoanalysis and similar things.

This matter really needs to be looked at carefully, then it will be possible to say where to start in order to bring anthroposophy to bear in the world. In any case, polemics are not the answer. Polemics are almost like someone lying in a room and snoring terribly, and cannot be woken up at all, and someone else is watching, and now the person watching is trying hard to make the snorer, who is sleeping through everything, understand

what the other is saying. He cannot understand him. Nor is it possible for two fields of spiritual life to communicate with each other if each sleeps for the other's field and only watches for his own.

Now there will still be many who sleep for anthroposophy. They will not wake up so quickly for anthroposophy. But one would like the anthroposophists to wake up for the others, so that they know why anthroposophy is the all-embracing one, not only out of their blind faith but out of a real insight into the quality of the other and also encompasses what the others consider to be the only one, and how anthroposophy broadens the horizon because it goes beyond those areas that the others consider to be merely within a narrow horizon.

In this way I have presented one of the perspectives, the perspective that arises when we ask about the details of what surrounds us as the earth world and what melts away after death. It is the physical perspective. In order to be understood, it leads us into that which is immediately adjacent to it, into the etheric.

Later, we will look at the soul perspective, how the human being awakens to the soul perspective, and then conclude with a consideration of the spiritual perspective of anthroposophy. These will be the three perspectives of anthroposophy.

Question: Has liquid manure the same Ego-organising force as manure itself?

Answer: The essential point is to have the manure and the liquid manure properly combined. Use them in such a way that they work together, each contributing to the organising forces of the soil. The connection with the Ego applies in the fullest sense to the manure, though this does not hold good, generally speaking, for the liquid manure. Every Ego—even the potentiality of an Ego, as it is in the manure—must work in some kind of connection with an astral factor. The manure would have no astrality if “manure juice” did not accompany it. Thus liquid manure helps—it has the stronger astral force, the dung itself the stronger Ego-force. The dung is like the brain; the liquid manure is like the brain-secretion—the astral force, the fluid portion of the brain, i.e. the cerebral fluid.

Question: Might we have the indications as to the proper constellations?

Answer (by Dr. Vreede): The exact indications cannot be given now. The necessary calculations cannot be done in a moment. Broadly speaking, the period from the beginning of February until August will hold good for the insect preparations. For field-mice, the periods will vary from year to year. For this year (1924) the time from the second half of November to the first half of December would be right.

Dr. Steiner: The principles of an anthroposophical calendar, such as was planned at the time, should be carried out more fully. Then you could follow such a calendar precisely.

Question: Speaking of full Moon and new Moon, do you mean the actual day of the full or new Moon, or do you include the time shortly before and after?

Answer: You call it new Moon from the moment when this picture appears, approximately speaking (Diagram 22). This picture is there; then it vanishes. And you reckon it full Moon from the time when the following picture occurs. New Moon, therefore, from the time when the Moon appears as a quite narrow crescent, and then disappears. Twelve to fourteen days in each case.

Question: Can insects, unobtainable at the season of the given constellation, be kept until the proper time arrives?

Answer: We shall give more exact indications of the time when the preparations should be made. The several forms of insects can no doubt be kept.

Question: Must the weed-seeds be burnt in summer, or can it be done at any time?

Answer: Not too long after collecting the seed.

Question: What of the sprinkling of insect-pepper taken from insects that have never come into actual contact with the earth?

Answer: Sprinkle it on the earth just the same. For the insect, the process does not depend on physical contact, but on the quality communicated by these homoeopathic doses. The insect has quite another kind of sensitiveness; it flees from what ensues when the preparation is sprinkled in the earth. That the insect does not come into direct contact with the earth makes no difference at all.

Question: What of the harmfulness of frost in farming, especially for the tomato? In what cosmic relationship is frost to be understood?

Answer: If the tomato is to grow nice and big, it must be kept warm; it suffers greatly from frost.

As to frost in general, you must realise what it is that comes to expression in the effects of frost. These effects always represent a great enhancement of the cosmic influences at work in the earth. This cosmic influence has its normal mean when certain degrees of temperature are prevalent; then it is just as the plant requires it. If, on occasion, we get frost of long duration or too intense and deeply penetrating, the influence of the heavens on the earth is too strong, and the plants will tend to ramify in various directions, to form thread-like growths, to spread out thinly. And the resulting growths, being thin, will under certain conditions naturally be received by the prevailing frost, and destroyed. Frost, therefore, when it goes too far, is undoubtedly harmful to plant-growth, simply because too much of the heavens comes into the soil of the earth.

Question: Should one treat the bodies of animals with the burnt relics of horse-flies and the like, or should these relics be scattered over the meadows and pastures?

Answer: Wherever the animal feeds. Sprinkle the relics over the fields; they are all to be thought of as additions to the manure.

Question: What is the best way of combating couch-grass? It is very difficult, is it not, to get the seeds?

Answer: The mode of propagation of the couch-grass you have in mind—where it never goes so far as to form seed—will in the end eliminate itself. If you get no seed, you have not really got the weed. If, on the other hand, it establishes itself so strongly that it plants itself and continues to grow rampantly, you then have the means to combat it, for you will soon find as much seed as you require, because, in fact, you need so very little. After all, you can also find four-leaved clover.

Question: Is it permissible to conserve masses of fodder with the electric current?

Answer: What would you attain by so doing? You must consider the whole part played by electricity in Nature. It is at least comforting that voices are now being heard in America—where, on the whole, a better gift of observation is appearing than in Europe—voices, I mean, to the effect that human beings cannot go on developing in the same way in an atmosphere permeated on all sides by electric currents and radiations. It has an influence on the whole development of man.

This is quite true; man's inner life will become different if these things are carried as far as is now intended. It makes a difference whether you simply supply a certain district with steam-engines or electrify the railway lines. Steam works more consciously, whereas electricity has an appallingly unconscious influence; people simply do not know where certain things are coming from. Without a doubt, there is a trend of evolution in the following direction. Consider how electricity is now being used above the earth as radiant and as conducted electricity, to carry the news as quickly as possible from one place to another. This life of men in the midst of electricity, notably radiant electricity, will presently affect them in such a way that they will no longer be able to understand the news which they receive so rapidly. The effect is to damp down their intelligence. Such effects are already to be seen to-day. Even to-day you can notice how people understand the things that come to them with far greater difficulty than they did a few decades ago. It is comforting that from America, at least, a certain perception of these facts is at last beginning to arise.

It is a remarkable fact that whenever something new appears, as a rule in the early stages it is heralded as a remedy—a means of healing. Then the prophets get hold of it. It is strange, where a new thing appears, clairvoyant perception is often reduced to a very human level! Here is a man who makes all sorts of prophecies about the healing powers of electricity, where no such thing would previously have occurred to him. Things become fashionable! No one was able to imagine healing people by electricity so long as electricity was not there. Now—not because it is there, but because it has become the fashion—now it is suddenly proclaimed as a means of healing. Electricity—applied as radiant electricity—is often no more a means of healing than it would be to take tiny little needles and prick the patient all over with them. It is not the electricity—it is the shock that has the healing effect.

Now you must not forget that electricity always works on the higher organisation, the head-organisation both of man and animal; and correspondingly, on the root-organisation in the plant. It works very strongly there. If, therefore, you use electricity in this way—if you pour electricity through the foodstuffs—you create foodstuffs which will gradually cause the animal that feeds on them to grow sclerotic. It is a slow process; it will not be observed at once. The first thing will be, that in one way or another the animals will die sooner than they should. Electricity will not at first be recognised as the cause; it will be ascribed to all manner of other things.

Electricity, once for all, is not intended to work into the realm of the living—it is not meant to help living things especially; it cannot do so. You must know that electricity is at a lower level than that of living things. Whatever is alive—the higher it is, the more it will tend to ward off electricity. It is a definite repulsion. If now you train a living thing to use its means of defence where there is nothing for it to ward off, the living creature will thereby become nervous or fidgety, and eventually sclerotic.

Question: What does Spiritual Science say to the preservation of foodstuffs by acidification, as in the Silage-process?

Answer: If you are using salt-like materials at all in the process—taken in the wider Sense—it makes comparatively little difference whether you add the salt at the moment of consumption or add it to the fodder. If you have fodder with insufficient salt-content to drive the foodstuffs to the parts of the organism where they should be working, the souring of such fodder will certainly be beneficial.

For instance, suppose you have turnips, swedes, etc., in a certain district. We have seen that they are especially fitted to influence the head-organisation. They are excellent fodder for certain animals—young cattle, for example. If, on the other hand, in some district you notice that as a result of such fodder the animal tends to lose hair too early or too much, then you will salt the fodder. For you will know that it is not being sufficiently deposited at those parts of the organism which it should reach; it is not getting far enough. Salt, as a rule, has an exceedingly strong influence in this direction, causing a foodstuff to reach the place in the organism where it ought to work.

Question: What is the attitude of Spiritual Science to the ensiling of the leaves of sugar-beet, etc., and other green plants?

Answer: You should See that you get the optimum effect; you must not go beyond the optimum in the method used. Generally speaking, the souring will not have a harmful effect unless carried to excess by the addition of excessive quantities of admixtures. For the salt-like constituents are precisely those that tend most strongly to remain as they are in the living organism.

Usually the organism (the animal organism also, and the human to a still greater extent) is so constituted that it changes whatever it absorbs in the most manifold ways. It is mere prejudice to think, for example, that any part of the protein you introduce through the stomach is still available after this point in the same form in which you introduce it. The protein must be completely transformed into dead substance, and must then be changed back again by the etheric body of man himself (or of the animal) into a protein which is then specifically human or animal protein.

Thus, everything that penetrates into the organism must undergo a complete change. What I am saying applies even to the ordinary warmth. I will draw it diagrammatically (Diagram 23). Assume that you have here a living organism; here you have warmth in its environment. Suppose on the other hand that you here have a piece of wood, which, though it comes from a living organism, is already dead, and you have warmth in its environment. Into the living organism the warmth cannot simply penetrate; it does not merely penetrate it. The moment the warmth begins to come inside, it is already worked upon by the living organism; it changes into warmth that has been assimilated and transmuted by the living organism itself. Indeed, it cannot rightly be otherwise. Into the dead wood, on the other hand, the warmth will simply penetrate; the warmth inside is the Same as in the surrounding mineral kingdom of the earth.

Not so with living bodies. The moment any warmth begins to penetrate unchanged into our organism, for example—as it would penetrate into a piece of wood—that moment, we catch cold. Whatever enters from outside into the living organism must not remain as it is; it must at once be changed. This process takes place least of all in salt. Hence, with the salts, used in the way you indicate for ensiling the foodstuffs—provided you are just a little sensible and do not give too much (for then in any case the animal would reject the food because of its taste)—you will do no great harm. If it is necessary for preservation, that in itself is a sign that the process is right.

Question: Is it advisable to ensile the fodder without salt?

Answer: That is a process much too far advanced. It is, I would say, a super-organic process. When it has gone too far, it can under certain circumstances be extremely harmful.

Question: Is the Spanish whiting (sometimes used to mitigate the souring effects) harmful to animals?

Answer: Certain animals cannot stand it at all; they become ill at once. Some animals can stand it; I cannot say which at the moment. Generally speaking, it will not do the animals much good; they will tend to become ill.

Question: I imagine the gastric juice will be dulled by using it?

Answer: Yes, it will be made ineffective.

Question: I should like to ask if it is not of great importance in what frame of mind one approaches these matters? It makes a great difference whether you are sowing corn or scattering a preparation for destructive ends. Surely the attitude of mind must come into question. If you work against the insects by such means as are here indicated, will it not have a greater karmic effect than if in single instances you get rid of the animals by some mechanical means?

Answer: As to the attitude of mind—surely the chief point is whether it be good or bad! What do you mean by the “destruction”? You need but consider the whole way in which you have to think about these things in any case. Take to-day's lecture, for instance, and the way it has been held; when, for example, I pointed out how one must know about the things of Nature: how one must see from the outer appearance, say, of the linseed or the carrot, what kind of process it will undergo inside the animal.

You will go through such an objective education if this knowledge becomes a reality in you at all, that it is surely quite unthinkable without your being permeated with a certain piety and reverence. Then you will also have the impulse to do these things in the service of mankind and of the Universe.

If harm were to result from the spirit in which you do them, it could only be a question of your bringing in deliberately evil intentions. Yes—you would have to have downright bad intentions. If, therefore, common morality is at the same time fostered, I cannot imagine how it should have bad effects in any way. Do you conceive that to run after an animal and kill it would be less bad?

Question: I was referring to the manner of destruction—whether it be by mechanical means, or by these cosmic workings—whether that makes a difference.

Answer: This question raises very complicated issues, the understanding of which depends upon your seeing them in large connections. Let us assume, for instance, that you draw a fish out of the sea and kill it. Then you have killed a living thing. You have carried out a process which takes place upon a certain level. Now let us assume that for some purpose you scoop up a vessel of sea-water in which much fish-spawn is contained. You will thus be destroying a whole host of life. Thereby you will have done something very different than in destroying the single fish. You will have carried out a process on an entirely different level.

When such an entity in Nature passes on into the finished fish, it has followed a certain path. If you reverse this path, you are bringing something into disorder. But if I hold up, at an earlier stage, a process which is not yet completed (or which has not yet come to an end in the blind-alley of the finished organism), then I have not by any means done the same thing as when I kill the finished organism.

I must therefore reduce your question to this: What is the wrong I do when I make the pepper? What I destroy by the pepper scarcely comes into question. The only thing that could come into question would be the creatures I need to make the pepper. And to do this, I shall obviously in most cases destroy far fewer animals than if I had to catch them all with much trouble, and kill them. I fancy, if you think it over in a practical way and not so abstractly, it will no longer seem to you so monstrous.

Question: Can human faeces be used, and to what treatment must it be submitted before use?

Answer: Human faeces should be used as little as possible. It has very little effect as manure, and it is far more harmful than any kind of manure could possibly be. If you will use human faeces, so much as will find its way into the manure of its own accord on a normal farm is quite sufficient. Take that as your maximum measure of what is not yet harmful. You know there are so and so many people on a normal farm, and if with all the manure you get from the animals and in other ways there is also mixed what comes from the human beings—that is the maximum amount which may be used.

It is the greatest abuse when human manure is used in the neighbourhood of Large cities; for in large cities there is enough for an agricultural district of immense proportions. Surely you cannot fall a prey to the demented idea of using up the human dung on a Small territory in the neighbourhood of a large city—say, Berlin. You need only eat the plants that grow there; they will soon show you what it means. If you do it with asparagus, or anything that remains more or less sincere and upright, you will soon see what happens.

Moreover, you must bear in mind that if you eat this kind of dung for growing plants which animals will eat, the eventual result is even more harmful, for in the animals much of it will remain at this level. In passing through the organism, many things remain at the level which the asparagus preserves when it goes through the human body. In this respect crass ignorance is responsible for the most awful abuses.

Question: How can red murrain (Erysipelas) in swine be combated?

Answer: That is a veterinary question. I have not considered it, because no one has yet asked my advice about it. But I think you will be able to treat it by external applications of grey antimony ore in the proper doses. It is a veterinary, a medical question, for this is a specific disease.

Question: Can the Wild Radish,¹ which is a bastard, also be combated with these peppers?

Answer: The powders of which I have spoken are specifically effective only for the plants from which they are derived. Thus, if a plant is really the outcome of crossing with other species, one would expect it to be immune. Symbioses will not be affected.

Question: What about green manuring?

Answer: It also has its good side, especially if you use it for fruit-culture, in orchardry. Such questions cannot be answered in an absolutely general way. For certain things, green manuring is useful. You must apply it to those plants where you wish to induce a strong effect on the growth of the green leaves. If this is your intention, you may well supplement other manures with a little green manuring.

• 1. Raphanus raphinastnrm

RUDOLF STEINER: In the speech exercises that we will take now, the principal purpose is to make the speech organs more flexible.

Curtsey Betsy jets cleric
lastly light sceptic

One should acquire the habit of letting the tongue say it on its own, so to speak.

Tu-whit twinkle ‘twas
twice twigged tweaker
to twenty twangy twirlings
the zinnia crisper
zither zooming shambles
this smartened smacking
smuggler sneezing
snoring snatching.

Both these exercises are really perfect only when they are said from memory.

From “We Found a Path” (by Christian Morgenstern):

Those who don’t know the goal
can’t find the way,
they will trot the same circle
all their lives long,
and return in the end
whence they began,
their piece of mind
more disturbed than before.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now we will proceed to the task that we have been gnawing at for so long.

Someone presented a list of the human soul moods and the soul moods of plants that could be said to correspond to them.

RUDOLF STEINER: All these things that have been presented are reminiscent of when phrenology was in vogue, when people classified human soul qualities according to their fantasies, and then searched the head for all kinds of bumps that were then associated with these qualities. But things are not like that, although the human head can certainly be said to express human soul nature. It is true that if a person has a very prominent forehead, it may indicate a philosopher. If a person has a very receding forehead and is at the same time talented, such a person may become an artist. You cannot say that the artist is located in a particular part of the head, but through your feelings you can differentiate between one or another form. You should consider the soul in this way. The more intellectual element drives into the forehead, and the more artistic element allows the forehead to recede. The same thing is also true in the study of plants. I mean your research should not be so external, but rather you should enter more deeply into the inner nature of plants and describe conditions as they actually are.

Some remarks were added.

RUDOLF STEINER: When you confine yourself too much to the senses, your viewpoint will not be quite correct. The senses come into consideration insofar as each sense contributes to the inner life of human beings, whatever can be perceived by a particular sense. For example, we owe several soul experiences to the sense of sight. We owe different soul experiences to other senses. Thus we can retrace our soul experiences to these various senses. In this way the senses are associated with our soul nature. But we should not assert unconditionally that plants express the senses of the Earth, because that is not true.

Someone cited samples from the writings of Emil Schlegel, a homeopathic doctor from Tübingen.

RUDOLF STEINER: Schlegel’s comparisons are also too external. He returns to what can be found in the mystics—Jacob Boehme and others—to the so-called “signatures.” Mystics in the Middle Ages were aware of certain relationships to the soul world that led them into deeper aspects of medicine. You find, for example, that a definite group of plants is associated with a quality of soul; mushrooms and fungi are associated with the quality that enables a person to reflect, to ponder something, the kind of inner life that lies so deeply in the soul that it does not demand much of the outer world for its experience, but “pumps,” as it were, everything out of itself. You will also find that this soul quality, most characteristic of mushrooms, is very intimately associated with illnesses of a headache nature; in this way you discover the connection between mushrooms and illnesses that cause headaches. Please note that you cannot make such comparisons when teaching about animals.

There are, as yet, no proper classifications of plants, but by means of these relationships between human soul qualities and groups of plants you must try to bring some kind of classification into the life of plants. We will now attempt to classify the plant kingdom.

You must first distinguish what are properly seen as the different parts of the plant—that is, root, stem (which may develop into a trunk), leaves, blossoms, and fruits. All the plants in the world can be divided into groups or families. In one family the root is more developed; the rest of the plant is stunted. In another the leaves are more developed, and in others the blossoms; indeed, these last are almost entirely blossom. Such things must be considered in relation to each other. Thus we can classify plants by seeing which system of organs predominates, root, trunk, leaves, and so on, since this is one way that plants vary. Now, when you recognize that everything with the nature of a blossom belongs to a certain soul quality, you must also assign other organic parts of the plant to other soul qualities. Thus, whether you associate single parts of the plant with qualities of soul or think of the whole plant kingdom together in this sense, it is the same thing. The whole plant kingdom is really a single plant.

Now what are the actual facts about the sleeping and waking of the Earth? At the present time [September] the Earth is asleep for us, but it is awake on the opposite side of the Earth. The Earth carries sleep from one side to the other. The plant world, of course, takes part in this change, and in this way you get another classification according to the spatial distribution of sleeping and waking on the earth—that is, according to summer and winter. Our vegetation is not the same as that on the opposite side of the Earth.

For plant life, everything is related with the leaves, for every part of a plant is a transformed leaf.

Someone compared groups of plants with temperaments.

RUDOLF STEINER: No, you are on the wrong track when you relate the plant world directly to the temperaments.

We might say to the children, “Look children, you were not always as big as you are now.¹ You have learned to do a great many things that you couldn’t do before. When your life began you were small and awkward, and you couldn’t take care of yourselves. When you were very small you couldn’t even talk. You could not walk either. There were many things you could not do that you can do now. Let’s all think back and remember the qualities you had when you were very young children. Can you remember what you were like then and what kinds of things you did? Can you remember this?” Continue to ask until they all see what you mean and say “No.” “So none of you know anything about what you did when you were toddlers?

“Yes, dear children, and isn’t there something else that happens in your lives that you can’t remember, and things that you do that you can’t remember afterward?” The children think it over. Perhaps someone among them will find the answer, otherwise you must help them with it. One of them might answer, “While I was asleep.” “Yes, the very same thing happens when you are very young that happens when you go to bed and sleep. You are ‘asleep’ when you are a tiny baby, and you are asleep when you are in bed.

“Now we will go out into nature and look for something there that is asleep just like you were when you were very young. Naturally you could not think of this yourselves, but there are those who know, and they can tell you that all the fungi and mushrooms that you find in the woods are fast asleep, just as you were when you were babies. Fungi and mushrooms are the sleeping souls of childhood.

“Then came the time when you learned to walk and to speak. You know from watching your little brothers and sisters that little children first have to learn to speak and walk, or you can say walk and then speak. That was something new for you, and you could not do that when you began your life; you learned something fresh, and you could do many more things after you learned to walk and speak.

“Now we will go out into nature again and search for something that can do more than mushrooms and fungi. These are the algae,” and I now show the children some examples of algae, “and the mosses,” and I show them some mosses. “There is something in algae and mosses that can do much more than what is in the fungi.”

Then I show the children a fern and say, “Look, the fern can do even more than the mosses. The fern can do so much that you have to say it looks as if it already had leaves. There is something of the nature of a leaf.

“Now you do not remember what you did when you learned to speak and walk. You were still half asleep then. But if you watch your brothers and sisters or other little children you know that, when they grow a little older, they do not sleep as long as when they were first born. Then came the time when your mind woke up, and you can return to that time as your earliest memory. Just think! That time in your mind compares with the ferns. But ever since then you can remember more and more of what happened in your mind. Now let’s get a clear picture of how you came to say ‘I.’ That was about the time to which your memory is able to return. But the I came gradually. At first you always said ‘Jack wants.. .’ when you meant yourself.”

Now have a child speak about a memory from childhood. Then you say to the child, “You see, when you were little it was really as though everything in your mind was asleep; it was really night then, but now your mind is awake. It is much more awake now, otherwise you would be no wiser than you used to be. But you are still partly asleep; not everything in you is awake yet; much is still sleeping. Only a part of you has awakened. What went on in your mind when you were four or five years old was something like the plants I am going to show you now.”

We should now show the children some plants from the family of the gymnospernms—that is, conifers, which are more perfectly formed than the ferns—and then you will say to the children, “A little later in your life, when you were six or seven years old, you were able to go to school, and all the joys that school brought blossomed in your heart.” When you show a plant from the family of the ferns, the gymnosperms, you go on to explain, “You see there are still no flowers. That was how your mind was before you came to school.

“Then, when you came to school, something entered your mind that could be compared to a flowering plant. But you had only learned a little when you were eight or nine years old. Now you are very smart; you are already eleven years old and have learned a great many things.

“Now look; here is a plant that has leaves with simple parallel veins

and here is another with more complicated leaves with a network of veins. When you look at the blossoms that belong to the simple leaves, they are not the same as those on the plants with the other kind of leaf, where the blossoms and everything else are more complicated than in those with the simpler leaves.”

Now you show the children, for example, an autumn crocus, a monocotyledon; in these plants everything is simple, and you can compare them to children between seven and nine. Then you can continue by showing the children plants with simple blossoms, ones that do not yet have real petals. You can then say, “You have plants here in which the green sepals and the colored petals are indistinguishable, in which the little leaves under the blossom cannot be distinguished from those above. This is you! This is what you are like now.

“But soon you will be even older, and when you are twelve, thirteen, or fourteen you will be able to compare yourselves with plants that have calyx and corolla; your mind will grow so much that you’ll be able to distinguish between the green leaves we call the calyx and the colored leaves called petals. But first you must reach that stage!” And so you can divide the plants into those with a simple perianth—compared to the elevenyear- old children—and plants with a double perianth—those of thirteen to fourteen years.² “So children, this is another stage you have to reach.”

Now you can show the children two or three examples of mosses, ferns, gymnosperms, monocotyledons, and dicotyledons, and it would be a fine thing at this point to awaken their memory of earlier years. Have one of them speak of something remembered about little four-year-old Billy, and then show your ferns; have another child recall a memory of seven-year-old Fred, and then show the corresponding plant for that age; and yet another one could tell a story about eleven-year-old Ernie, and here you must show the other kind of plant. You must awaken the faculty of recalling the various qualities of a growing child and then carry over to the plant world these thoughts about the whole development of the growing soul. Make use of what I said yesterday about a tree, and in this way you will get a parallel between soul qualities and the corresponding plants.

There is an underlying principle here. You will not find parallels accidentally according to whatever plants you happen to pick. There is principle and form in this method, which is necessary. You can cover the whole plant kingdom in this way, with the exception of what happens in the plant when the blossom produces fruit. You point out to the child that the higher plants produce fruits from their blossoms. “This, dear children, can only be compared to what happens in your own soul life after you leave school.” Everything in the growth of the plant, up to the blossom, can be compared only with what happens in the child until puberty. The process of fertilization must be omitted for children. You cannot include it.

Then I continue, “You see, dear children, when you were very small you really only had something like a sleeping soul within you.” In some way remind the children, “Now try to remember, what was your main pleasure when you were a little child? You have forgotten now because, in a way, you were really asleep at that time, but you can see it in little Anne or Mary, in your little baby sister. What is her greatest joy? Certainly her milk bottle! A tiny child’s greatest joy is the milk bottle. And then came the time when your brothers and sisters were a little older, and the bottle was no longer their only joy, but instead they loved to be allowed to play. Now remember, first I showed you fungi, algae, mosses; almost everything they have, they get from the soil. We must go into the woods if we want to get to know them. They grow where it is damp and shady, they do not venture out into the sunlight. That’s what you were like before you ‘ventured out’ to play; you were content with sucking milk from a bottle. In the rest of the plant world you find leaves and flowers that develop when the plants no longer have only what they get from the soil and from the shady woods, but instead come out into the sun, to the air and light. These are the qualities of soul that thrive in light and air.” In this way you show the child the difference between what lives under the Earth’s surface on the one hand (as mushrooms and roots do, which need the watery element, soil, and shade), and on the other hand, what needs air and light (as blossoms and leaves do). “That is why plants that bear flowers and leaves (because they love air and light) are the so-called higher plants, just as you, when you are five or six years old, have reached a higher stage than when you were a baby.”

By directing the children’s thoughts more and more—at one time toward qualities of mind and soul that develop in childhood, and then toward the plants—you will be able to classify them all, based on this comparison. You can put it this way:

Pleasures of infancy (babies): Mushrooms and Fungi
Pleasures of early childhood (the awakening life of feeling, both sorrows and joys): Algae, Mosses
Experiences at the awakening of consciousness of self: Ferns
Experiences of fifth and sixth year, up to school age: Gymnosperms, Conifers
First school experiences, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh year: Parallel-veined plants, Monocotyledons; Plants with simple perianth
Experiences of the eleven-year-old: Simple dicotyledons
School experiences from twelfth to fifteenth year: Net-veined plants, Dicotyledons; Plants with green calyx and colored petals

“You are not smart enough yet for these last experiences (the plants with a green calyx and colored blossoms), and you won’t know anything about them until you are thirteen or fourteen years old.

“Just think; how lovely! One day you will have such rich thoughts and feelings, you will be like the rose with colored petals and green sepals. This will all come later, and you can look forward to it with great pleasure. It is lovely to be able to rejoice over what is coming in the future.” The important thing is that you arouse within children’s hearts a joyful anticipation of what the future will bring them.

Thus, all the successive soul qualities before puberty can be compared with the plant kingdom. After that the comparison goes no further because at this point the children develop the astral body, which plants do not possess. But when the plant forces itself into fertilization beyond its nature, it can be compared with soul qualities of the sixteenth to seventeenth year. There is no need to call attention to the process of fertilization, but you should speak of the process of growth, because that agrees with reality. The children would not understand the process of fertilization, but they would understand the process of growth, because it can be compared with the process of growth in the mind and soul. Just as a child’s soul is different at various ages, so also the plants are different because they progress from the mushroom to the buttercup, which is usually included among the most highly developed plants, the Ranunculuses. It is indeed true that, when the golden buttercups appear during spring in lush meadows, we are reminded of the soul life and soul mood of fourteen-and fifteen-year-old boys and girls.

If at some time a botanist should go to work along these lines in a thoroughly systematic way, a plant system would be found that corresponds to fact, but you can actually show the children the whole external plant world as a picture of a developing child’s soul. Much can be done in this way. You should not differentiate in the individualized way practised by the old phrenologists, but you should have one clear viewpoint that can be carried right through your teaching. Then you will find that it is not quite correct to merely take everything with a root nature and relate it to thought. Spirit in the head is still asleep in a child. Thus, thinking in general should not be related to what has root nature, but a child’s way of thinking, which is still asleep. In the mushroom, therefore, as well as in the child, you get a picture of childlike thinking, still asleep, that points us toward the root element in plants.

Rudolf Steiner then gave the following assignments:

1. To comprehensively work out the natural history of plants as discussed up to this point;

2. The geographical treatment of the region of the lower Rhine, from the Lahn onward, “in the way I showed you today when speaking of lessons in geography”: mountains, rivers, towns, civilization, and economics.³

3. Do the same for the basin of the Mississippi.

4. What is the best way to teach the measurement of areas and perimeters?

• 1. According to the Waldorf curriculum, the children are around eleven years old when they are taught about the plant kingdom.
• 2. The perianth is the envelope of a flower, particularly one in which the calyx and corolla are combined so that they are indistinguishable from one another; these include such flowers as tulips, orchids, and so on. The perianth is single when it has one verticil, and double when it has both calyx and corolla.
• 3. See Practical Advice to Teachers, lecture 11.

Morning:
Imagine you're out in cosmic space surrounded by light, and that a voice from the four compass points (only one voice from four different directions) says to you:

Be a strong I.
Give thy heart to the Spirit of the World.
(Then soul quiet.)

Evening:
Retrospect. Imagine you're out in cosmic space surrounded by darkness, and you tell the eastern full moon:

I will be a strong I.
I will give my heart to the Spirit of the World.
(Then soul-quiet.)

__________

Morning,
3–4 minutes: Think of a star that's over your head:

By the lighting
Of the star
Over my head
I will hold
The power
In my heart
To helping the powers in my soul.

Evening,
4–5 minutes: Imagine that the Christ comes to you from the sun and says to your heart:

I give you
My graceful word
And my loving power
And you will
Make progress
In your soul
And in your I.

__________

Morning:
Imagine a that alternates between blue and red:

I will
Send my thoughts
To thee
Messenger of Gods
And be
In thy being
For time and eternity.
(Then soul-rest)

Evening:
Retrospect. Imagine that the sun says:

In harmonies
With the Planet Sphere
Tell I
As representer of Christ
To thine heart
“The God Word
Streams in My Light.”

Then 5 min. quiet meditation.

__________

Evening,
3–4 minutes: I go into the spiritual world. Then 10 minutes: Imagine a charcoaled cross with 7 pink violet roses.

So as out of the black cross
The red roses,
So out of the darkness of the world
The clearness of Christ's life.

Morning,
15 minutes: Retrospect of the preceding day. Then imagine a white, gleaming sunlight-cross with 7 green roses.

So as the green life
In the white sunlight,
So Christ's life
In the course of man's evolution.

Then the 6 exercises.

Rudolf Steiner: Good morning, gentlemen! You will have realized from all we've said that our earth in its present form is only the last remains of what was once essentially different. If we want to compare its earlier condition with anything, we can only compare it really—as you have seen—with what one has in an egg cell. Our earth today has a solid kernel of all sorts of minerals and metals. And we have the air around us, and in the air two substances which especially affect us-we could not live without them: oxygen and nitrogen. We can say therefore that in the earth we have a hard kernel of all kinds of substances, seventy to eighty of them, and around us the air-envelope containing mainly nitrogen and oxygen.

Nitrogen and oxygen, however, are only the main constituents. The air always contains other substances, though in very small quantities, such as carbon, hydrogen, sulphur, among others. But these are also the substances contained in the white of an egg, in the white of a hen's egg. Oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon and sulphur! The difference is merely that in the egg white the sulphur, hydrogen and carbon are closely combined with the oxygen and nitrogen, while in the outer air they are present in a much looser way. So the same substances are in the air that are in the hen's egg. The same substances are present in a much smaller amount in the yolk, and we can therefore say that when it hardens, densifies, it becomes what the earth is. One must observe such things if one wants to know what the earth once looked like.

Today, however, things are done in quite a different way, and in order that your judgment of what I am telling you here may not be confused by what is commonly accepted, I would like to give you a small view of this general knowledge. It agrees perfectly with what I say if only one considers it in the right way.

People today do not think about things as we have done here in the last two lectures. They say: Here is the earth; it is made of mineral substance. This mineral earth is convenient to investigate, so let us examine first what lies on top, what we walk on. Then if we make quarries, if we make railway cuttings and open up the ground, we find there are certain layers or strata of earth. The uppermost layer is the one on which we walk. If we go somewhere or other into the depths, we find deeper-lying strata. But these strata are not always lying so nicely above one another that we can say: the one is always above the other.

When you really examine the earth, here you have one stratum [See drawing-red], it is curved over, not level; another stratum below is also curved [green]. And above them comes the stratum on which we walk [white]. Now, as long as we remain on foot on this side of a hill we find an upper layer that could become good arable land if we would use the right manuring methods and so on. But if we are building a railway we may have to remove certain strata and by making these cuttings we come into the depths of the earth. That has led to the discovery that strata are superimposed on one another, not level, but they have been jumbled up in all sorts of ways.

But these strata are sometimes very remarkable. People have asked how one can determine the age of the strata—which layer is older. Of course the most obvious answer is this: When the strata lie above one another, then the lowest is the oldest, the next above, younger, and the one at the very top the youngest of all. But, you see, that is not always the case. In some places it is so, but not everywhere. And one can show in the following way why it is not the case everywhere.

We are accustomed, as you know, in our civilized lands to bury our domestic animals when they die, so that they may not be injurious to people. But if the human race were not so far evolved, what would happen with the animals then? Wherever the animal died, there it would lie. Now at first it remains on the surface. But, as you know, when it rains the soil gets washed up and after a time part of the decaying creature is mingled with the soil thrown up by the rain. There it will remain, and after some time the whole animal is penetrated with earth by the rain or by water that flows down over a slope and then the rest of the earth goes over the animal. Now someone can come along and say: Heavens! The earth looks so uneven there, I must dig and have a look! He need not dig very far, just a little, and then he finds what is left of the skeleton, let us say, of a wild horse. Then he says: Well, now I'm walking on a stratum that only appeared later, the one below was formed when there were wild horses like that. And one can know that that is the next stratum, that the age in which this man lives was preceded by an age in which these horses lived.

You see, what that man does is what the geologists have been doing with all the strata of the earth, ever since the time when they could be reached by quarries, railway cuttings, excavations, and so on. One learns in geology to investigate quarries everywhere, with a hammer or some other instrument, in order to record what is exposed in the mountains through landslides or something similar. One goes hammering everywhere, makes various statements and then one finds in some stratum the so-called fossils. Then one can say: There are strata beneath the ground that contain animals quite different from those of today. Then one discovers in excavating the earth's strata what the animals were like that existed in other ages.

This is nothing so very special, for people often underestimate the time it takes for something like this to happen. People find today in southern regions churches or other buildings just standing there. The people come along, do some digging for some reason or other, and Heavens! there's something under this church that is hard; that's not earth. They dig down and find a pagan temple underneath! What had happened? A relatively short time ago this surface layer on which the church or building stands was not there at all. It was pushed up by man, perhaps with the help of nature-forces, and underneath there is the pagan temple. What was once above, is now below. Layer upon layer has in fact been piled up in the earth. And one must find out, not from the way the strata lie, but from the nature of the fossils, how these animals and the various plants have come into the strata.

Then, however, the following comes about: You find one layer of the earth [See drawing below, yellow], you find another [green]; you are able for some reason or other to excavate [arrow], and if you look merely at the stratification, then it seems as if what I have marked green were the lower layer and what I have marked yellow were the upper layer. You cannot get in here at all, you cannot excavate, there is no railway, no tunnel nor anything else by which one can get in. You make a note that the yellow is the upper stratum, the green the lower. But you must not decide immediately, you must first look for fossils.

Now one very frequently finds fossils in the upper stratum which are earlier, of fish, for example, strange fish-skeletons which are earlier. And perhaps below, one finds interesting mammal skeletons which are more recent. Now the fossils contradict the strata, up above appear the older, the earlier; below, the more recent, the younger. One must realize how that has happened. You see, it is because some sort of earthquake, some inner movement has flung what was below up above the top layer. It is the same as if I were to lay a chair on the table and the original position would be: here the chair-back and here the table-top, and then through an earthquake the table would be turned over the chair.

One can perceive in the most varied instances that there has been an inversion, a turning upside down. And one can come to the following conclusions as to when the inversion took place: It must have happened later than when all the animals were alive, it must have happened after the fossils were formed, otherwise they would lie differently.

One comes in this way not to judge the strata simply as they lie one above the other, but one must be able to see how they have changed their positions. The Alps, this mighty chain of mountains stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the region of the Danube, this main mountain range in Switzerland, is not to be understood at all unless one can go into such things. For all the strata that were built up in the Alps have later been thoroughly jumbled up. There what was lowest often lies at the top, and what was at the top is lowest of all. One must first find out how all these shifts have taken place.

It is only when all this is taken into account that one can tell which are the oldest strata and which are the newest. Modern natural science, only going by the externals of research, then naturally says: Those strata are the oldest in which the remains of the very simplest animals and plants are found. Later on, animals and plants grew more complicated, and so we find the most complicated remains in the latest strata. In the oldest strata one finds fossils because the calcium or quartz structure of the animal has been preserved, while everything else has been dissolved. When one comes to the later strata the skeleton has been preserved.

Now there is another remarkable way in which fossils are formed. Sometimes this is very interesting. Picture that there once existed some simple type of ancient creature; it had a body, perhaps with tentacles in front. I am drawing it rather large; in the strata known to geology it will as a rule be smaller. Now this creature perishes lying on this piece of ground, and this particular soil does not penetrate and permeate the creature; it avoids, so to say, the acids in the body. Then something very remarkable occurs: the earth in which the animal lies approaches it from all sides and envelops it, and a hollow space is made in the shape of the animal. That has happened very frequently; such hollow spaces are formed, earth is shaped around the animal. But there is nothing inside; the soil has not been absorbed by the body, but round about, because the animal was scaly, a hollow space is formed. Later, the scales are dissolved and still later a brook winds through.

This then fills the hollow space with stony gravel, [green] and there within, a cast of the animal is finely modeled, by a quite different material. Such casts are particularly interesting, for there we don't have the animals themselves, but their casts.

However, you must not imagine that things are always so easy. Of present man, for instance, with his organism of soft substance, there is extraordinarily little left—nor of the higher animals. There are animals of which only the casts of their teeth have remained. One finds casts of the teeth of a kind of primeval shark which were formed in this way. One comes to realize that every animal has its own form of teeth and man has a different form. The dental formation is always in keeping with the whole structure of the creature. One must have the talent to imagine the appearance of the whole animal from the form of its teeth. So things are by no means simple.

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But as one studies these strata one finds out how things really developed. And then it simply becomes clear that there was a time when such animals as we have now did not exist, when there were much, much simpler creatures, somewhat like our snails, mussels, and so on. But one has to know how much has remained of them. Let us imagine that the following could happen. Just suppose that a small boy who did not like to eat crab sneaked a crab from his parents' dinner-table and played with it. He is not caught and buries it in the garden. Now there is earth over it and the whole business is forgotten. Later the garden belongs to new owners; they dig about and in one place they see some funny little things looking like lime-shells. (You know about the so-called crab's eyes which are not eyes, but little lime-shells in the body of the crab.) Those are the only traces left.

Now one cannot say that those are fossils of some kind of animal; they are fossils of only part of the creature. Similarly in older strata, especially in the Alps, one finds some sort of fossil having that shell-like appearance. That is how they look; they no longer exist today but are found in the earlier strata. One must not suppose, however, that this had been the whole creature. One must assume that there was something around it that dissolved, and only a small piece of the animal is left.

Modern science goes into this very little. Why? Well, it simply says that in this mighty Alpine mass the layers have been mixed with one another, the lowest flung to the top, the uppermost to the lowest—that the strata show it. But can you imagine, gentlemen, that with the present earth-forces such massive mountains could be flung up in that way? The little that happens now on earth is by comparison a dancing through, one fleck lightly tossed on another—today that is all, a sort of dancing through!

If a man lived 720 years instead of seventy-two, he would experience in his old age that he was walking on ground a little higher than before. But we live too short a life. Just think if a fly that only lives from morning till evening were to relate what it experiences! Since it lives only in the summer, it would tell us of nothing but flowers, that there were always flowers. It would have no idea of what goes on in the winter; it would believe that each summer joined on to the one before. We human beings are certainly a little longer-lived than a one-day fly, but still we have a little of the fly nature with our seventy to seventy-two years! We see indeed little of what goes on. Even with the scanty forces prevailing today, there is no doubt that more happens than man usually sees. Yet, comparatively speaking, all that happens is that rivers flow along to the sea and leave alluvial soil behind. So a little soil is deposited, and this then reaches beyond the shores and the fields get a new stratum. That is comparatively little. When one considers how something like this great mountain mass of the Alps has been jolted and shaken through and through, it is obvious that the forces which are active today were active in quite a different way in earlier times.

But now we must try to picture how such a thing can happen. Take, for instance, an egg cell from some mammal. It looks at first quite simple, a nucleus in the center with an albuminous mass all around. Now suppose that the egg is fructified. When it is fructified, the nucleus changes into all sorts of little forms; it develops very strangely into a number of spirals that go up like tails. And then the moment these little coils arise, star-formed structures develop out of the mass. The whole mass comes into formation because there is life in it. What goes on there is very different from what goes on in our earth today. The upheavals and over-turnings that are taking place in the egg cell are the same as what once took place in the massive Alps!

What then is more natural than to say: Well, then the earth must once have been alive, or these convulsions of inverting and overthrusting could not possibly have occurred! The present form of the earth does in fact show us that in past ages when neither man nor higher animal existed, the earth itself was alive. This obliges us to say that the present dead earth has come forth from a living earth. Yet animals can only live on this present dead earth! Just think if the oxygen and nitrogen in the air had not separated off and had not condemned hydrogen, carbon and sulphur to an almost complete passivity: we would then have to breathe in something like egg white—for that was what surrounded the earth.

Now we could imagine—for anything can happen in this world!—that instead of our lungs, we had developed organs able to draw in an albuminous atmosphere like that. Today, of course, we can take it in as food through the mouth. Why could not a sort of lung-organ have evolved, up nearer to the mouth? Anything can originate in this world; any possible thing might come about—even though we would never guess at such changes from observing man's present body. But think, gentlemen—we look today into lifeless air. It has died. Formerly the albumen was living. The air has died because the sulphur, hydrogen and carbon have gone and the nitrogen and oxygen have therefore also perished. We gaze into light-filled air that has died, but this has allowed our eyes to be physical, as they are indeed physical. If everything in our surroundings were living, then our eyes would have to be living too. But if they were living, we would be unable to see with them, and we would always be in a state of unconsciousness: just as a person becomes unconscious when there begins to be too much life in his head, when instead of the regularly developed organs he has all sorts of growths. He is then unconscious intermittently, and later it becomes so severe that he lies there as if he were dead. Likewise in our original condition on the earth, as it was then, we could not have lived consciously. The human being could only awake to consciousness as the earth gradually died. And so mankind evolves on an earth that is dead.

So it is, gentlemen! And this is true not only of nature but also of civilization. If you think back to what I said just now—that below the earth there could be pagan temples and above Christian churches—you will see that the Christian churches are related to the pagan temples just as the upper strata to the lower, only that in one case we have to do with nature, in the other with culture. But one will not understand how the Christian element evolved if one does not observe that it evolved out of paganism as its foundation. In culture too we have to consider these strata.

Now I have said that the human being has actually been there all the time, but as a spiritual being, not a physical being. And that again leads us to look for the real reason why man did not evolve as a physical being earlier. We have said that in the air today there are nitrogen and oxygen, with carbon, hydrogen and sulphur to a lesser degree. In our breathing we ourselves unite the carbon that is in us with the oxygen we inhale and exhale the two together as carbon dioxide. In our human existence we breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide; our life consists of that. We would long, long ago have filled the earth and the air of the earth with carbon dioxide had there not been something else on the earth: the plants. They have the same hunger for carbon that we have for oxygen. They take up the carbon dioxide eagerly, hold on to the carbon and give out the oxygen again.

You see, gentlemen, how wonderfully these things complement each other! We human beings need the oxygen out of the air, we inhale it, unite it with the carbon we have within us and exhale carbon and oxygen together as carbon dioxide. The plants breathe this in and breathe the oxygen out again, and so there is always oxygen in the air.

Well, this is true today but in human evolution on the earth it was not always like that. When we find the fossilized creatures that lived long ago, we realize that they could not have been like our modern animals and plants, particularly not like our present plants. All the primeval plants must have been much more like our sponges, mushrooms, algae. There is a difference between our mushrooms and our other present plants. The latter take in the carbon and form their body from it. When they sink into the ground, their body remains as coal. The coal we mine today is the remains of plants.

All the research we are able to pursue into the kinds of plants that originally existed tells us the following: Our present plants, including the plants which are now providing us with coal, are built up from carbon. But much earlier plants were formed not from carbon but from nitrogen. That was possible because just as carbon dioxide is exhaled today by animal and man, in ancient times a combination of carbon and nitrogen was exhaled. That is prussic acid, the terribly poisonous hydrocyanic acid fatal to all life today. This poisonous prussic acid was once exhaled, and nothing that exists today could then have arisen. The early mushroom-like plants took in the nitrogen and formed their body from it. The creatures about which I spoke last time, the bird-like beings and the heavy, coarse animal-beings, breathed out this poisonous acid, and the plants around them took the nitrogen to form their plant-body. Here, too, we can see that substances still existing today were used in quite a different way in ancient times.

I spoke of this once before to those of you who have been here for some time. I related how in 1906 I had to give some lectures in Paris⁴ on the evolution of the earth, the origin of man, and so forth. The subject led me to say: Can anything in this world show that carbon and oxygen have not always had the role they play today, that nitrogen once had that role, and that once the atmosphere consisted of prussic acid, of hydrocyanic acid?

Now you know that there are old people and young children. Well, if a man of seventy stands here and a child of two next to him, they are both human beings; they stand beside each other, and the one who is now seventy was like the two-year-old sixty-eight years ago. Things of different ages stand side by side. And it is the same in the universe; there, too, the older and the younger are side by side. Our earth, from what I have just now described and what you can still see today, our earth is a greybeard, an ancient fellow, almost dead already-if one does not count the life newly sprung up, one can call it almost dead. But at its side in the universe there are again younger forms which will only later become what our present life is. For instance, we must regard the comets as one of these. We can know, therefore, that since the comets are younger, they must still have conditions that belong to a younger age. The comets are to the earth what the child is to the old man. And if the earth once had prussic acid, the comets must now have it, they must have hydrocyanic acid! If with today's body one were to touch a comet, one would instantly die. It is diluted prussic acid that is in them.

I said in Paris in 1906 that this follows from the premises of spiritual science. Those who acknowledge spiritual science accepted my statement even though it astonished them. Then later, a fairly long time afterward, a comet made its appearance. By that time people had got the necessary instruments and it was then found by ordinary scientific methods that comets do have cyanide, prussic acid, as I had said in Paris in 1906. So it was confirmed.

Naturally, when people hear of this, they call it a coincidence: Oh sure, Steiner made that statement in Paris, and then there was the discovery—just a coincidence. They say this because they know nothing else. But I have now told you why one must take it for granted that there is prussic acid in the comets. It was no accident, it was genuine science by which one first reached this knowledge. Physical research only confirmed it later. People realize now that this is true for all that anthroposophy sets forth; for everything is confirmed later. Quite a number of things will be discovered today outside the Anthroposophical Movement that were already given out many years ago by anthroposophy in a rather different way.

Yes, there are many other things that could be carefully investigated today by science. I am always saying that if people could really travel to a star, they would be amazed to find it different from the modern ideas about it determined by their life on earth. They imagine that it contains a glowing gas. But that is not at all what is found out there. Actually, where the star is, there is empty space, empty space that would immediately suck one up. Suction forces are there. They would suck you up instantly, split you to pieces. If people would work with the same consistent research and the same unprejudiced thinking as we do here, they would also come to see with intricate spectroscopes that there are not gases out there, but negative suctional space.

Some time ago I gave certain individuals the task of investigating the sun and stars with the spectroscope, simply in order to prove by external methods that the stars are hollow spaces, not glowing gases. That can be proved. The persons to whom I gave this task were tremendously enthusiastic when they started: “Oh! then we shall get somewhere!” But sometimes enthusiasm fades away; they delayed too long. And then a year-and-a-half ago news came from America that people were starting to investigate the stars and were gradually finding out that they were not glowing gases but hollowed-out space! It is no disaster, of course, for such a thing to happen. But naturally, it would have been more useful to us – externally—if we had done it. But it doesn't matter, as long as truth comes to light.

On the other hand, however, it can be seen through just such things that anthroposophy really wants to work in collaboration with ordinary science. So it would also like to work with ordinary science on the strata of the earth. One thoroughly accepts what science has to say about the upheavals and overturnings in the Alps. But one cannot go along with the scientists when they assume that these upheavals were caused by forces that are still existing today. The fact is that there were life-forces there then; only life-forces could have flung and tossed these strata of living substance through one another. Anthroposophy already incorporates ordinary science and extends far beyond it, but science always wants to stop whenever it is too lazy to approach things more closely.

So—we will continue on Wednesday at nine o'clock.

• 4. Paris, May 25-June 16, 1906: L'Esotérisme chrétien / Esquisse d'une cosmogonie psychologique, Paris 1957.