The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Certain questions will increasingly obtrude themselves upon those who really think, even though in these times of overwhelming materialism these thinkers would prefer to keep them more or leas at a distance. There are many such questions, and today I should like, out of all of them, to pick a few that arise from man, in spite of resisting it, becoming aware of the spiritual world. To such questions belong those, for instance, raised in the course of everyday life; certain men die young, others in old age, others again in middle life. Concerning the fact that on the one hand young children die and on the other hand people grow to old age and then die—concerning this fact questions arise in man to which by the means today called scientific the answer can never be found. Everyone has to own this after inner reflection. Yet in human life these are burning questions; and surely anyone can feel that infinitely much in life must receive enlightenment when we can really get down to these questions: why do some human beings die early, some as children, some as adolescents, some in the middle of the normal period of life? Why do other die old? What significance has this in the whole cosmos?

Men still had ideas, concepts, with which to answer these questions up to that point of time described in these lectures, the time at the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, up to approximately the middle of the eighth pre-Christian century. Men had concepts that came down out of ancient wisdom. In those olden times before the eighth pre-Christian century, ideas were in fact circulating everywhere in the cultural life of the earth giving men, in conformity with the mind of those times, the solution to such questions as are here mentioned. What today we call science cannot connect the right meaning with these questions and has no idea that there is something in them for which men should be seeking a possible answer. All this arises because since the point of time indicated, all conceptions related to spiritual and therefore to immortal man have actually been lost. Only these conceptions remain that are connected with man's transitory nature, man between his birth and his death. I have drawn attention to how in all the old world-conceptions they spoke of the Sun as being threefold; the same sun that is perceived out there by the physical senses as a shining sphere in cosmic space. But behind this sun the wise men of old saw the soul-sun, according to the Greeks Helios, and behind this soul-Sun again, the spiritual-Sun, still identified by Plato, for example, with the Good. Modern men do not see any real sense in speaking of Helios, the soul-Sun, or for that matter of the spiritual-Sun, the Good. But as the physical sun shines upon us here between birth and death, there shines into our ego, if I may say so, during the time we pass between death and a new birth, the spiritual sun identified by Plato with the Good. And during this time between death and a new birth, to speak of a shining sphere in the way it is spoken of in our modern materialistic world-conception has no meaning. Between death and a new birth there is only meaning when we speak of the spiritual-Sun Plato still referred to as the Good. A concept of this kind is just what should show us something. It should lead us to reflect how the matter really stands with regard to the physical representation we form of the world. It is not taken seriously in its full sense, at any rate not so seriously that our outlook on life is actually permeated by it, that in all our physical representations of the world, in what is spread out perceptibly before us, we have to see a kind of illusion, Maya.

It is indeed fundamentally this kind of representation of the Sun that anyone accepts when taking as his authority modern physics, astrophysics, whatever you like to call it. If he were able to travel to the place where the physicist places the sun, on approaching it he would—now let us turn from the conditions of human life and assume that absolute conditions of life could prevail—he would become aware of overpowering heat, this is how he would picture it. And when he had arrived inside the space that the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist actually pictures—a ball of glowing gas or something like it. But it is not so, my dear friends, that is definitely maya, complete illusion. This representation cannot hold water in face of true physical perception that is possible, let alone what can actually be perceived spiritually. Were it possible to get near the sun, to reach where the sun is, we should find yes, indeed, an getting near, we should find something that would have the same effect as going through floods of light. But when we came right inside, where the physicist supposes the sun to be, we should find first what we could only call empty space. Where the physical sun is supposed to be there is nothing at all, absolutely nothing. I will draw it diagrammatically (blue centre in yellow circle, diagram not available) but in reality nothing is there; there is nothing, there is empty space. But it is a strange kind of empty space: When I say there is nothing there I am not speaking quite accurately—there is less than nothing there. It is not only empty space for there is less than nothing there. And that is something that is an extraordinarily difficult idea for the modern western man to picture. Even today men of the east take this as a matter of course; for them there is absolutely nothing strange or difficult to understand when they are told that less than nothing is there. The man of the west thinks to himself—especially when he is a hard and fast follower of Kant, and there are far more followers of Kant today than those who are consciously so—he thinks to himself that if there is nothing in space then it is just empty space! However this is not the case, there can also be exhausted space. And if indeed you were to look right through this corona of the sun, you would feel the empty space into which you would then enter most uncomfortable—that is to say it would tear you asunder. By that it would show its nature, that it is more—or it is less, however we can best express it, than empty space. You need only seek the help of the simplest mathematical concept and when I say empty space is less than just emptiness you will no longer find my meaning so puzzling. Now let us assume you possess some kind of property. It can also happen that you have given away what you possess and have nothing. But we can have less than nothing, we can have debts. Then we do actually have less than nothing. If we pass from fullness of space to its ever diminishing fullness, we can come to empty space; and we can still go an beyond mere emptiness just as we can go beyond having nothing to having debts. It is a great weakness of the modern world outlook that it does not know this particular kind of—if I may so express it—negative materiality, that it only knows emptiness or fullness and not what is less than emptiness. For because knowledge today, the world outlook today is ignorant of what is less than emptiness, this world outlook is more or less held in the bonds of materialism, strictly confined by materialism—I should like to say, under the ban of materialism. For in man also there is a place that is emptier than empty, not in the whole of him but where there are layers of what is emptier than empty. As a whole, man, physical man, is a being who materially fills a certain space; but there is a certain member of man's nature, of the three I have referred to, that actually has something in it like the sun, emptier than empty. That is—yet, my dear friends, you'll have to put up with it—it is the head. And it is just because man is so organised that his head can become empty and in certain parts more than empty, that this head has the power to make room for the spiritual. Now just picture the matter as it actually is.

Naturally we have to picture things diagrammatically, but use your imagination and picture that everything materially filling your head I am going to draw in the following way. This is the diagram of your head (see red in diagram 5). but now, if I want to draw it properly, I shall have to leave empty places in this head, these naturally are not very big; but there inside are empty places. And into these empty places can enter what I have recently been calling the young spirit. In these spaces the young spirit with its rays, as it were, is drawn (see yellow in diagram 5).

Now, my dear friends, the materialists say that the brain is the instrument of the soul-life, of the thinking. The reverse is the truth. The holes in the brain, what indeed is more than holes, or one could just say as well less than holes, what therefore is emptier than empty, that is the instrument of the soul-life. And here where the soul-life is not, into which the soul-life is continually pushing, where the space in our skull is filled with brain substance here nothing is thought, here is no soul-experience.

We do not need our physical brain for our life of soul; we need it only to lay hold of our soul-life, physically to lay hold of it. And if the soul-life were not actually alive in the holes of the brain, pushing up everywhere, it would vanish, it would never reach our consciousness. But it lives in the holes of our brain that are emptier than empty.

Thus we have gradually to correct our concepts. When we stand in front of a mirror we do not perceive ourselves but only our reflected image. We could forget ourselves ... We see ourselves in the mirror. In the same way man does not experience himself by putting together with his brain what is lying in the holes in that brain. He experiences the way in which his soul-life is everywhere reflected by pushing up against the brain substance. It is reflected everywhere, and man experiences it; what he experiences is actually its reflected image. All that has slipped into the holes, however, because it is then permeated by consciousness in the contrary sense is what makes man conscious when without the resistance of the brain he goes through the gate of death. Now I should like to draw another diagram. Take the following: forgive me if I am rather drastic in portraying the brain and how the holes are left (blue in diagram 6). Here is the brain substance and here the brain leaves its holes and into these holes goes the life of the soul. (yellow)

This soul-life, however, continues, just outside the holes. There come to what naturally is only seen near man but projects indefinitely—man's aura. Now let us think away the brain and imagine we are looking at the soul-life of an ordinary man between birth and death. We should then have to say that seen in this way the condition of the real man between birth and death is such that actually his face is turned to his body thus (see lilac). It is true I shall have to draw this diagram differently. He turns his soul-life to the corporeal. And when we look at the brain the soul-life stretches out like a feeler that creeps into the holes of the brain. What there I made yellow here I make lilac, because that is more appropriate for the view into the living man. Thus, that would be what runs into the brain of the living man.

If after this I want to draw, let us say, physical man, I could best indicate that by perhaps here drawing in for you the boundary set to the faculty of memory. You would go outside there and there you would have the outer boundary, the boundary of cognition, of which I have also spoken to you. For that you will just have to remember diagram 5 and diagram 3 drawn yesterday).

But now this is the reality—when man is looked at spiritually from without, his soul-life stretches into him thus... so I will draw the single elongation only where the brain is concerned (diagram 7). But this soul-life in itself is also differentiated. So to follow up this soul-life further I should have to draw... another region here (red under the lilac), here another region blue); thus all this would belong to what constitutes man's aura. Then another region (green). You see how this part I am now drawing lies beyond the boundary of man's cognition. Then the region (yellow)—in reality all this belongs to man—and this region (orange.)

When man is asleep this moves more or less out of the body, as it was drawn yesterday (diagram 2), but when man is awake it is more or lass within the body. So that actually, perceived with the soul, the aura is in the immediate vicinity of the body. And if the physical man is described this is done by saying that this physical man consists of lungs, heart, liver, gall and so on; This is done in physical anatomy, this is done in physiology. But you can do the same when describing the man of soul and spirit who in this way actually stretches out into the holes in man, in what is more than empty in man. You can describe this in the same way—only then you must mention of what this soul-and spirit man consists. just as in physical man the organs are differentiated, here the different currents must be separated. It can be said: in here where it is red, physical man would stand thus in profile, the face turned in this direction, for example, the eyes here (diagram 7), and here would be the region of burning desire (red). That would be part of the man of soul-and-spirit who has taken his substance from the region known in my book Theosophy as the region of burning desire. Thus something taken from burning desire and introduced into man gives this part of him.

If I am describing this in detail what I have here colored lilac I should have to call soul-life. As you know, a certain part of the soul-sphere, of the soul-land, has been given the name soul-life. This substance of it would have this violet color,this lilac, and forms in man a part of his soul-spiritual being.

And if we continue in this way the orange here would have to be called active soul-force. So that you have to remember that your soul-life is what during your life between birth and death enters you with most intensity by way of your senses. And behind, checking itself, not so well able to enter, held up by the soul-life, there is the active soul-force.

Still further behind there is what is called soul-light (yellow in diagram 8). To a certain extent attached to this soul-light, pressing itself through, there would be what is taken from the region of liking and disliking which I should have to give to the green area. Wishes, we should ascribe to the sphere of what is approximately blue. And now pushing up here, the real blue, that is approaching blue red, this would be the region of mobile susceptibility. These are auric currents that I here call burning desire, mobile susceptibility, and wishes. As you know, these auric currents, these auric streams, constitute the world of soul, they also constitute the man of soul and spirit who may be said to be built out
of the ingredients of this soul world.

Then when death comes the physical body falls away, and man withdraws what has projected into the holes in the body. He takes it away and by so doing (we can now think away physical man) he comes into a certain relation with the soul-world and then with the spirit-land as you will find it described in Theosophy. He has this relationship by having in him its ingredients, but during physical life these are bound up with the physical body and then they become free. Becoming free, however, as a whole it is gradually changed. During physical life—if I leave out the differentiations and draw the soul-life thus—the feelers (lilac in diagram 8) reach out into our holes; after death these feelers are drawn back. By their being drawn back, however, the soul-life itself becomes hollowed out and the life of the spirit coming from the other side rises into the life of soul (yellow).

In the same degree as man ceases to dive into the physical, the soul-spiritual lights up and, from the other side, penetrates his aura with light. And just as man is able to acquires a consciousness through the reflection caused by the continual pushing of the soul-spiritual against the physical body, he now acquires a consciousness by drawing himself back against the light. This light is that of the Sun, the original light that is the Good. Thus, whereas during his physical life as man of soul and spirit he pushes against what is related to the Sun, namely, against the more than empty holes in the brain, after death when he withdraws himself he pushes against the other Sun, the Good-Sun, the original sun.

You see, my dear friends, how the possibility of receiving concepts of life between death and a new birth is bound up with the basic ideas of primeval mysteries. For we are placed into this whole cosmic life in true way I have been picturing during these last few days. It is true, however, that we have to go more deeply into the framework of actual human evolution throughout earthly time to come to correct concepts of these matters. I think you will agree it might be possible that someone through a special stroke of luck—if one might so call it—were able to see clairvoyantly, the whole of what I have been describing. This stroke of luck, however, could only bring him to the point of seeing ever changing images. It is something like this—a man through some kind of miracle—but nowadays it would not happen through a miracle—or let us say through clairvoyant vision, super-sensible vision, a man might see something of the nature of what I have been trying to picture, namely man's life of soul and spirit. You will find it obvious that this should look rather different from what a short time ago I was describing as the normal aura, if you understand what I was describing only a few days ago as the aura revealed when the whole man is seen, that is, physical man with his encircling aura. But now I have taken out the man of soul und spirit, so that this man of soul and spirit has been abstracted from the physical man.

From this you recognise that in one case the colors have to be arranged in one way, in another case in another way; you recognise also that for super-sensible consciousness things look very different. Try simply to see man's aura—as it is while man is in the physical body—then look at this aura. Turn your attention that is, from the man of soul and spirit, and try to see the man why stretches out his organs into physical man. But when you see the man during the time between death and a new birth, then you also see how the whole changes. Above all, the region that is red here (Diagram 7) goes away, goes here, and the yellow goes below, the whole gradually gets into disorder. These things can be perceived but the percept has something confusing about it. Therefore it will not be easily possible for modern man to bring meaning and significance into this confusion if he does not turn to other expedients.

Now we have shown that man's head points to the past whereas the extremities man points to the future. This is entirely a polaric contrast, both the head and the extremities of man (remember what was said yesterday) are actually one and the same, only the head is a very old formation, it is overformed. That is why it has the holes; so far the extremities man has not these holes; on the surface he is still full of matter. To have these holes is a sign of over development. Development in a backward sense can be seen in the head and much hangs on that. Much depends too on man being able to understand that extremities man is a recent metamorphosis—the head an old metamorphosis. And because extremities man is a recent metamorphosis he has not so far developed the capacity to think in physical life but his consciousness remains unconscious; he does not open up to the man of soul and spirit such holes as are in the brain.

You see it is infinitely important for spiritual culture, and will in future become more and more so, for us to perceive that these two things that outwardly, physically, are as totally different from one another as the head man and extremities man, are according to soul and spirit, one and the same, and only differ because they are at different stages of development in time. Many mysteries lie in this particular fact that two equal physical things at different stages of their development in time, can be really one and the same that, though outwardly physically different, this is only due to the conditions of their change, of their metamorphosis.

Goethe with his theory of metamorphosis began in an elementary way to form concepts by which all this can be understood. Whereas otherwise since ancient times there has been a deadlock in the formation of concepts, with Goethe the faculty of forming concepts once more arose. And these concepts are those of living metamorphoses. Goethe, it is true, always began with the most simple. He said: when we look at a plant we have its green leaf; but the green leaf changes into the flower petal, into the colorsome petal of the flower. Both are the same, only one is the metamorphosis of the other. And as the green leaf of the plant and the red petal of the rose are different metamorphoses, the same thing at a different stage, man's head and his extremities organism too are simply metamorphoses of one another. When we take Goethe's thought on the metamorphosis of the plant we have something primitive, simple; but this thought can blossom into something of the greatest and can serve to describe man's passing from one incarnation to the next. We see the plant with its green leaf and its blossom, and say: this blossom, this red blossom of the rose is the metamorphosis of the green leaf of the plant. We see a man standing before us and say: that head you are carrying is the metamorphosis of arms, hands, legs, feet of your previous incarnation, and what you now have as arms, hands, legs and feet will be changed into your head of the next incarnation.

Now, however, will come an objection that evidently sits heavily on your souls. You will say: good gracious but I leave my legs and feet behind, my arms and hands too; I do not take them into my next incarnation ... how then should my head be made out of them? It is true, this objection can be made. But once again you are coming here up against Maya. It is not true that you actually leave behind your legs, feet, hands, arms. It is indeed untrue. You say that because you still cling to Maya, the great illusion.

What indeed with the ordinary consciousness you refer to as your arms, hands, legs and feet, are not your arms, hands, legs and feet at all, but what as blood and other juices fills out the real arms, hands, feet and legs. This again is a difficult idea but it is true. Suppose that here you have arms, hands, feet and legs, but that what is here is spiritual, spiritual forces. Now please to think that your arms, hands, legs and feet are forces—super-sensible forces. Had you these alone you would not see them with your eyes; they are filled out, these forces, with juices, with the blood, and you see what as mineral substance, fluid or partly solid—the smallest part solid—fills out what is invisible (hatching in diagram 9). What you leave in the grave or what is burnt is only what might be called the mineral enclosure. Your arms and hands, legs and feet are not visible, they are forces and you take them with you, you take the forms with you. You say: I have hands and feet. Anyone who sees into the spiritual world does not say: I have hands and feet, he says; there are spirits of form, Elohim, they think cosmic thoughts, and their thoughts are my arms and hands, my legs and feet; and their thoughts are filled out with blood and other fluids. But neither are blood and the other fluids what they appear physically; these again are the ideas of spirits of wisdom, and what the physicist calls matter is only outer semblance. The physicist ought to say when he comes to matter: here I come to the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom, the Kyriotetes. And where you see arms, hands, feet, legs, you cannot touch them but should say: here the spirits of form are building into these shapes their cosmic thoughts.

In short, my dear friends, strange as it sounds, there are no such things as your bodies, but where your body is in space there intermingled with one another live the cosmic thoughts of the higher hierarchies. And were you able to see correctly and not in accordance with Maya, you would say: into here there project the cosmic thoughts of the Exusiai, the spirits of form, the Elohim. These cosmic thoughts make themselves visible to me by being filled out with the cosmic thoughts of the spirits of wisdom. That gives us arms and hands, legs and feet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as it appears in Maya is there before the spiritual vision, out there stand the cosmic thoughts. And these cosmic thoughts crowd together, are condensed, pushed into one another; for this reason they appear to us as these shadow figures of ours that go around, which we believe to have reality. Thus, as far as the physical man is concerned, he does not exist at all.

With certain justification we can say that in the hour of death the spirits of form separate their cosmic thoughts from those of the spirits of wisdom. The spirits of form take their thoughts up into the air, the spirits of wisdom sink their material thoughts into the earth. This brings it about that in the corpse an aftershadow of the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom still exists when the spirits of form have taken back their thoughts into the air. That is physical death—that is its reality.

In short, when we begin to think about the reality we come to the dissolution of what is commonly called the physical world. For this physical world derives its existence from the spirits of the higher hierarchies pushing in their intermingled thoughts, and I beg you to imagine that finely distributed quantities of water are introduced in some way which form a thick mist. That is why your body appears as a kind of shadow-form, because the thoughts of the spirits of form penetrate those of the spirits of wisdom, the formative thoughts enter the thoughts of substance. In face of this conception the whole world dissolve into the spiritual. We must, however, have the possibility of imagining the world to be really spiritual, of knowing that it is only apparent that my arms and hands, my feet and legs are given over to the earth. That is what it seems; in reality the metamorphosis of my arms and legs, hands and feet begins there and comes to completion in the life between death and a new birth, when my arms and legs, hands and feet become the head of my next incarnation.

I have been here telling you many things that perhaps at least in their form may have struck you as something strange. But what is all this ultimately of which we have been speaking but an ascending from man as he appears, to man as he really is, ascending from what lives externally in Maya to the successive ranks of the hierarchies.

It is only when we do this, my dear friends, that we are able to speak in a form that is ripe today of how man is permitted to know a so-called higher self. When we simply rant about a higher self, when we simply say: I feel a higher self within me . . . then this higher self is a mere empty abstraction with no content; for the ordinary self is in the hands of Maya, is itself Maya. The higher self has only one meaning when we speak of it in connection with the world of the higher hierarchies. To talk of the higher self without paying heed to the world that consists of the spirits of form and the angels, archangels and so on, to speak of the higher self without reference to this world, means that we are speaking of empty abstractions, and at the same time signifies that we are not talking of what lives in man between death and a new birth. For as here we live with animals, plants and minerals, between death and a new birth we live with the kingdoms of the higher hierarchies of whom we have so often spoken. Only when we gradually come nearer to these ideas and concepts (in a week, perhaps, we shall be speaking of them) shall we approach what can answer the question: why do many human beings die as mere children, many in old age, others in middle age?

Now, my dear friends, what I have just given you in outline are concrete concepts of what is real in the world. Truly they are not abstract concepts I have been describing, they are concrete concepts of world reality. These concrete concepts were given, for a more atavistic perception, it is true, in the ancient mysteries. Since the eighth pre-Christian century they have been lost to human perception, but through a deepening of our comprehension of the Christ-Being they must be found again. And this can only be realised on the path of spiritual science.

Let us make ourselves from a certain point of view another kind of picture of human evolution. We will here keep before us exceedingly important concepts. Now it can be said that when we go back in the evolution of man we discover—and I have often described this—that in ancient days men had more of the group-soul, and that the individual souls were membered into what was group-soul. You can read about this in various cycles:¹ we can then diagrammatically represent human evolution and say: in olden days there were group-souls and each of these split up (it would appear thus to soul perception but different for the perception of the spirit). But each of these souls clothed itself with a body that here in this figure I indicate with red strokes. (Diagram 10).

Up to the time of the Pythagorean school this drawing, or something like it, was always made and it was said: look at your body, so far as that is concerned men are separated, each having his own body (that is why the red strokes are isolated). Where the souls are concerned however, mankind is a unity, since we go back—it is true a long way back—to the group-soul. There we have a unity. If you think away the red, the while will form a unified figure (see diagram.)

There is sense in speaking of this figure only if we have first spoken of the spiritual as has been done here today; for then we know everything that is working together in these souls, how the higher hierarchies are working together on these souls. There is no sense in speaking of this figure if our gaze is not fixed on the hierarchies. It was thus that they spoke up to the time of the Pythagorean School; and it was from the Pythagorean School that Apollonius learned what I spoke about yesterday and about which I shall be talking further in these next weeks. But then after the eighth pre-Christian century, when the Pythagorean Schools were in their decadence, the possibility of thus speaking was lost. And gradually the concepts that are concrete, that have reality by being related to the higher hierarchies—these concepts have become confused and hazy to people. Thus there has come to them in the place of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Wisdom, Thrones, instead of all this concrete weaving of the spirit, they arrived at a concept that now played a certain part in the perception of the Greeks—the concept of the pneuma. Everything became hazily confused: Pneuma, universal spirit, this indistinct concept still so loved today by the Pantheists ... spirit, spirit, spirit ... I have often spoken of how the Pantheists place spirit everywhere; that goes back to Greek life. Again this figure is portrayed ... but you can now see how what was once concrete, the fullness of the Godhead, now became an abstract concept—Pneuma. The white is Pneuma, the red physical matter (see diagram 10) if we are considering the evolution of man. The Greeks, however, at least still preserved some perception of this Pneuma, for they always saw something of the aura. Thus, for them, what you can picture in these white branches was always of an auric nature, something really perceptible. There is the great significance of the transition from that constituted Greece to all that was Roman—that the Greeks still in their perception experienced Pneuma as something actual and spiritual, but that the Romans did so no longer. Everything now becomes quite abstract with the Romans, completely abstract; concepts and nothing more. The Romans are the people of abstract concepts.

My dear friends, in our days you find in science the same diagram! You can come upon it today in materialistic books on science. You will find the same diagram, exactly the same, as you would have found in the old Mysteries, in the Pythagorean Schools, where everything was still related to the hierarchies. You have it with the Greeks where everything is related to the Pneuma; again today you find it drawn, and we shall see what it has now become. Today the scientist says as he makes this same drawing on the blackboard for his students: in the propagation of the human race the substance of the parents' germ cells passes over to the children; but part of this substance remains so that it can again pass over to the children and and again there remains some of this to pass over anew to the children. And another part of the germ cell substance develops so that it can form the cells of the physical body. You have exactly the same diagram, only the modern scientist sees in the white (see diagram) the continuity of the substance of the germ cell. He says; if we go back to our old human ancestors and take this germ cell substance of both male and female, and then go to present day man and take his, it is still the same stream, the substance is continuous. There always remains in this germ substance something eternal—so the scientist imagines—and only half of the germ plasma goes over into the new body. The scientist has still the same figure but no longer has the pneuma; the white is now for him the material germ substance—nothing is left of soul and spirit, it is just material substance. You can read this today in scientific books, and it is taken as a great and significant discovery. That is the materialising of a higher spiritual perception that has passed through the process of abstraction; in the midst stands the abstract concept. And it is really amusing that a modern scientist has written a book (for those whose thinking is sound, it is amusing) in which he says right out: what the Greeks still represented as Pneuma is today the continuity of the germ substance. Yes, it is foolish, but today it counts for great wisdom.

From this you can, however, see one thing, it is not the drawing that does it! And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch. However, my dear friends, these drawings are not important. What matters is that we should really be able to have living conceptions; for the same drawing can represent the soul-spiritual in the flowing of hierarchies, the purely material in the continuous germ-plasm. These things are seen very hazily by modern man. Therefore it is so important to be clear that the Greeks still knew something of the real self in man, of the real spiritual and that it was the Romans who made the transition to the abstract concept. You can see all this in what is external. When the Greek talked about his Gods, he did so in a way that made it quite evident that he was still picturing concrete figures behind these Gods. For the Romans the Gods, in reality, ware only names, only expressions, abstractions and they became abstractions more and more. For Greek a certain idea was ever present that in the man before him the hierarchies were living, that in each man the hierarchies were living a different life. Thus the hierarchies were living differently in every man. The Greek knew the reality of man, and when he said, that is Alcibiades, that is Socrates, or that is Plato, he still had the concept that there in Alcibiades, Socrates or Plato ware rising up, within each in a different way, the cosmic thoughts of the hierarchies. And because the cosmic thoughts arose differently these figures appeared different.

All this was entirely lacking in the Roman. For this reason he formed for himself a system of concepts that reached its climax when from the time of Augustus on and actually from an earlier date, the Roman Caesar was held to be God. The Godhead gradually became an abstraction and the Roman Caesar was himself a God because the concept of God had become completely abstract. This applies to the rest of their concepts; and it was particularly the case with the concepts that lived deeply in the Roman nature as concepts of rights, moral concepts. Thus, in place of all that in olden days was a living reality, there arose a number of abstractions. And all these abstractions lasted on as a heritage throughout the middle ages and descended to modern times, remaining as heritage down to the nineteenth century—abstract concepts carried into every sphere.

In the nineteenth century there came something startling. Man himself was entirely lost sight of among all these abstract concepts! The Greeks still had a presentiment of the real man who descends here after being formed and fashioned out of the cosmos; in the time of the Roman empire all knowledge of him was lost. The nineteenth century was needed to rediscover him through all the connections I have been showing you and will go on showing you even more exactly. The discovery of man took place now from the opposite pole. Greece wanted to see man as descending from the hierarchies, divine man; in place of this the Romans set up a series of abstract concepts; the nineteenth century—the eighteenth century too but particularly the nineteenth—was needed to rediscover man from the other side, from his animal side. And he could not be grasped with abstract concepts; this was the great shock. This was the great shock and the deep cleft that arose; what is this actually that stands there on two legs and fidgets with its hands, and eats and drinks all manner of things; what is it? The Greeks still knew, then a change took place when concepts became abstract. Now it comes as something startling to men of the nineteenth century; it stands there and there are no concepts with which to grasp it. It is taken for simply a higher form of animal. On the one hand, in science it produces Darwinism, on the other hand, in the spiritual it brings about socialism which would place man into society as a mere animal. Here is man standing transfixed before himself—what is this thing? And he is powerless to answer the question.

That is the situation today; that is the situation that will produce not only concepts that are right or wrong according as men will them, but is called upon to create facts either catastrophic or beneficial. And the situation is—the shock men have when seeing themselves. We must find the elements once more for te understanding of spiritual man. These elements will not be found unless we turn to the theory of metamorphosis. There lies the essential point. Goethe's concepts of metamorphosis are alone able to grasp the ever changing phenomena which offer themselves to the perception of the reality.

Now one might say that spiritual evolution has always moved in this direction. Even at the time when the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the seventeenth century was being published in so wonderful a way—other writings too—the endeavour was already there to provide for the arising of a social structure for man compatible with his true nature. (In Das Reich I have referred to this in a series of articles concerning The Chemical Wedding). In this way the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz by the so-called Valentin Andreae arose. On the other hand, however, there also arose the book he called Reformation des Ganzer Menschengeschlectes (Reformation of the whole Human Race), where he gives a great political survey of how social conditions ought to be. Then, it was the thirty years war that swept the thing away! Today, there is the possibility that the ordering of the world either sweep things away once more ... or carry them right into human evolution. With this we are touching an the great fundamental questions of the day, with which men should be occupying themselves instead of with all the secondary matters that engross them. If only men concerned themselves about basic questions they would find means and ways of bringing fruitful concepts into modern reality—then we could get away from abstract concepts.

It is not very easy to distinguish reality from illusion. For that, we must have the will to go right into life with all seriousness and all good will, and not be bound down by programmes and prejudices. I could tell many tales about this but now I will refer to one fact only. In the beginning of the nineties of the last century a number of people foregathered in various towns of Europe and brought about something of an American nature, namely, the Movement for Ethical Culture. At that time it was the intellectuals who were connected with founding these societies for Ethical Culture. These people produced very beautiful things, and if today you read the articles written at that time by the promoters of Societies for Ethical Culture ... if you have a taste for butter, you will probably even today be enchanted by all the beautiful, wonderfully beautiful ideals, in which these people indulged. And indeed it was no pleasant task to go against this reveling in butter: However, I wrote an article at the time in one of the first numbers of Die Zunkunft (The Future), against all this oiliness in “ethical culture,” and denounced it in awful words. Naturally it was a shameful deed—how should it not have been when these people had set out to make the whole world ethical, moral—how should it not have been disgraceful to turn upon anything so good: At that time I was living in Weimar but on paying a visit to Berlin I had a conversation with Herman Grimm who said:

“What is the matter with ‘ethical culture'? Go and see the people themselves. You will find that here in Berlin those who hold meetings about ethics are really thoroughly nice kind people—one could not have any objection to them. They can even be congenial and very pleasant.” This was not to be denied and at the moment Herman Grimm had just as much right on his side as I had. Outwardly and momentarily, one of us was as right as the other, one could be proved right just as well as the other. And I am not for maintaining that from the point of view of pure logic my grounds for opposing these ethical philosophers were any more sound than those brought forward by them—I wouldn't be sure. But, my dear friends, from all this highfalutin idealism the present catastrophe has arisen! And only those people were right, and have been justified by events, who said at the time; with all your talking and luxuriating in buttery ideals, by means of which you would bring universal peace and universal morals to man, you have produced nothing but what I then called social carcinoma that had to end in this catastrophic present. Time has shown who was working with concrete concepts, who with merely those that are abstract. When they are simply abstract in character, there is no distinguishing who is right and who is wrong. The only thing that decides is whether a concept finds its right setting in the course of actual events. A professor teaching science in a university can naturally prove everything he says to be right in a most beautiful and logical way. And all this goes into the holes in the head (and this today I naturally may be allowed to say with the very best intention). But you see it is not a question of bringing forward apparently good logical grounds; for when these thoughts sink into a head such as Lenin's they become Bolshevism. What matters is what a thought is in reality, not what can be thought about it or felt about it in an abstract way, but what force goes to the forming of it in its reality. And if we test the world-conception that is chiefly talked of today—for the others, specified yesterday, were more in picture form—when one brings socialism to the test, it is not a question today of sitting oneself down to cram (as we say for ‘study') Karl Marx, or Lassalle, or Bernstein, to study their books, to study these authors. No! It is a question of having a feeling, a living experience for what will become of human progress if a number of men—the sort of men who stand at a machine—have these thoughts. That is what matters, and not to have thoughts about the social structure in the near future that are learnt in the customary course of modern diplomatic schooling, Now is the time when it is important to weigh thoughts so as to be able to answer the question: what are the times wanting for the coming decades? Today the time has already come when it is not allowed to sit in comfort in the various magisterial seats and to go on cherishing what is old. The time has come when men must bear the shock of seeing themselves, and when the thought must rise up in those responsible anywhere for anything: How is this question to be solved out of the spiritual life?

• 1. For example: Universe, Earth and Man, and Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.

My dear friends,

You will perhaps have noticed that in our considerations here, we are striving for a certain particular goal. We are trying to place together a series of phenomena taken from the realm of heat in such a manner that the real nature of warmth may be obvious to us from these phenomena. We have become acquainted in a general way with certain relations that meet us from within the realm of heat, and we have in particular observed the relation of this realm of the expansionability of bodies. We have followed this with an attempt to picture to ourselves mentally the nature of form in solid bodies, fluids and gaseous bodies. I have also spoken of the relation of heat to the changes produced in bodies in going from the solid to the fluid and from the fluid to the gaseous or vaporous condition. Now I wish to bring before you certain relations which come up when we have to do with gases or vapors. We already know that these are so connected with heat that by means of this we bring about the gaseous condition, and again, by appropriate change of temperature that we can obtain a liquid from a gas. Now you know that when we have a solid body, we cannot by any means interpenetrate this solid with another. The observation of such simple elementary relations is of enormous importance if we really wish to force our way through to the nature of heat. The experiment I will carry out here will show that water vapor produced here in this vessel passes through into this second vessel. And now having filled the second vessel with water vapor, we will produce in the first vessel another vapor whose formation you can follow by reason of the fact that it is colored. (The experiment was carried out.) You see that in spite of our having filled the vessel with water vapor, the other vapor goes into the space filled with the water vapor. That is, a gas does not prevent another gas from penetrating the space it occupies. We may make this clear to ourselves by saying that gaseous or vaporous bodies may to a certain extent interpenetrate each other.

I will now show you another phenomenon which will illustrate one more relation of heat to certain facts. We have here in the left hand tube, air which is in equilibrium with the outer air with which we are always surrounded. I must remind you that this outer air surrounding us is always under a certain pressure, the usual atmospheric pressure, and it exerts this pressure on us. Thus, we can say that air inside the left hand tube is under the same pressure as the outer air itself, which fact is shown by the similar level of mercury in the right and left hand tubes. You can see that on both right and left hand sides the mercury column is at the same height, and that since here on the right the tube is open to the atmosphere the air in the closed tube is at atmospheric pressure. We will now alter the conditions by bringing pressure on the air in the left hand tube, (\(2\) × \(p\)). By doing this we have added to the usual atmospheric pressure, the pressure due to the higher mercury column. That is, we have simply added the weight of the mercury from here to here. (Fig. 1b from \(a\) to \(b\)). By thus increasing the pressure exerted on this air by the pressure corresponding to the weight of the mercury column, the volume of the air in the left hand tube is, as you can see, made smaller. We can therefore say when we increase the pressure on the gas its volume decreases. We must extend this and consider it a general phenomenon that the space occupied by a gas and the pressure exerted on it have an inverse ratio to each other. The greater the pressure the smaller the volume, and the greater the volume the smaller must be the pressure acting on the gas. We can express this in the form of an equation where the volume \(V_1\) divided by the volume \(V_2\) equals the pressure \(P_2\) divided by the pressure \(P_1\).

From which it follows:

This expresses a relatively general law (we have to say relative and will see why later.) This may be stated as follows: volume and pressure of gases are so related that the volume-pressure product is a constant at constant temperature. As we have said, such phenomena as these must be placed side by side if we are to approach the nature of heat. And now, since our considerations are to be thought of as a basis for pedagogy we must consider the matter from two aspects. On the one hand, we must build up a knowledge of the method of thinking of modern physics and on the other, we must become acquainted with what must happen if we are to throw aside certain obstacles that modern physics places in the path to a real understanding of the nature of heat.

Please picture vividly to ourselves that when we consider the nature of heat we are necessarily dealing at the same time with volume increases, that is with changes in space and with alterations of pressure. In other words, mechanical facts meet us in our consideration of heat. I have to speak repeatedly in detail of these things although it is not customary to do this. Space changes, pressure changes. Mechanical facts meet us.

Now for physics, these facts that meet us when we consider heat are purely and simply mechanical facts. These mechanical occurrences are, as it were, the milieu in which heat is observed. The being of heat is left, so to speak, in the realm of the unknown and attention is focused on the mechanical phenomena which play themselves out under its influence. Since the perception of heat is alleged to be purely a subjective thing, the expansion of mercury, say, accompanying change of heat condition and of sensation of heat, is considered as something belonging in the realm of the mechanical. The dependence of gas pressure, for instance, on the temperature, which we will consider further, is thought of as essentially mechanical and the being of heat is left out of consideration. We saw yesterday that there is a good reason for this. For we saw that when we attempt to calculate heat, difficulties arise in the usual calculations and that we cannot, for example, handle the third power of the temperature in the same way as the third power of an ordinary quantity in space. And since modern physics has not appreciated the importance of the higher powers of the temperature, it has simply stricken them out of the expansion formulae I mentioned to you in former lectures.

Now you need only consider the following. You need consider only that in the sphere of outer nature heat always appears in external mechanical phenomena, primarily in space phenomena. Space phenomena are there to begin with and in them the heat appears. This it is, my dear friends, that constrains us to think of heat as we do of lines in space and that leads us to proceed from the first power of extension in space to the second power of the extension.

When we observe the first power of the extension, the line, and we wish to go over to the second power, we have to go out of the line. That is, we must add a second dimension to the first. The standard of measurement of the second power has to be thought of as entirely different from that of the first power. We have to proceed in an entirely similar fashion when we consider a temperature condition. The first power is, so to speak, present in the expansion. Change of temperature and expansion are so related that they may be expressed by rectilinear coordination (Fig. 2). I am obliged, when I wish to make the graph representing change in expansion with change in temperature, to add the axis of abscissae to the axis of ordinates. But this makes it necessary to consider what is appearing as temperature not as a first power but as a second power, and the second power as a third. When we deal with the third power of the temperature, we can no longer stay in our ordinary space. A simple consideration, dealing it is true with rather subtle distinctions, will show you that in dealing with the heat manifesting itself as the third power, we cannot limit ourselves to the three directions of space. It will show you how, the moment we deal with the third power, we are obliged, so far as heat effects are concerned, to go out of space.

In order to explain the phenomena, modern physics sets itself the problem of doing so and remaining within the three dimensional space.

You see, here we have an important point where physical science has to cross a kind of Rubicon to a higher view of the world. And one is obliged to emphasize the fact that since so little attempt is made to attain clarity at this point, a corresponding lack enters into the comprehensive world view.

Imagine to yourselves that physicists would so present these matters to their students as to show that one must leave ordinary space in which mechanical phenomena play when heat phenomena are to be observed. In such a case, these teachers of physics would call forth in their students, who are intelligent people since they find themselves able to study the subject, the idea that a person cannot really know it without leaving the three dimensional space. Then it would be much easier to place a higher world-view before people. For people in general, even if they were not students of physics, would say, “We cannot form a judgment on the matter, but those who have studied know that the human being must rise through the physics of space to other relations than the purely spatial relations.” Therefore so much depends on our getting into this science such ideas as those put forth in our considerations here. Then what is investigated would have an effect on a spiritually founded world view among people in general quite different from what it has now. The physicist announces that he explains all phenomena by means of purely mechanical facts. This causes people to say, “Well, there are only mechanical facts in space. Life must be a mechanical thing, soul phenomena must be mechanical and spiritual things must be mechanical.” “Exact sciences” will not admit the possibility of a spiritual foundation for the world. And “exact science” works as an especially powerful authority because they are not familiar with it. What people know, they pass their own judgment on and do not permit it to exercise such an authority. What they do not know they accept on authority. If more were done to popularize the so-called “rigidly exact science,” the authority of some of those who sit entrenched in possession of this exact science would practically disappear.

During the course of the 19th century there was added to the facts that we have already observed, another one of which I have spoken briefly. This is that mechanical phenomena not only appear in connection with the phenomena of heat, but that heat can be transformed into mechanical phenomena. This process you see in the ordinary steam locomotive where heat is applied and forward motion results. Also mechanical processes, friction and the like, can be transformed back again into heat since the mechanical processes, as it is said, bring about the appearance of heat. Thus mechanical processes and heat processes may be mutually transformed into each other.

We will sketch the matter today in a preliminary fashion and go into the details pertaining to this realm in subsequent lectures.

Further, it has been found that not only heat but electrical and chemical processes may be changed into mechanical processes And from this has been developed what has been called during the 19th century the “mechanical theory of heat.”

This mechanical theory of heat has as its principal postulate that heat and mechanical effects are mutually convertible one into the other. Now suppose we consider this idea somewhat closely. I am unable to avoid for you the consideration of these elementary things of the realm of physics. If we pass by the elementary things in our basic consideration, we will have to give up attaining any clarity in this realm of heat. We must therefore ask the questions: what does it really mean then when I say: Heat as it is applied in the steam engine shows itself as motion, as mechanical work? What does it mean when I draw from this idea: through heat, mechanical work is produced in the external world? Let us distinguish clearly between what we can establish as fact and the ideas which we add to these facts. We can establish the fact that a process subsequently is revealed as mechanical work, or shows itself as a mechanical process. Then the conclusion is drawn that the heat process, the heat as such, has been changed into a mechanical thing, into work.

Well now, my dear friends, if I come into this room and find the temperature such that I am comfortable, I may think to myself, perhaps unconsciously without saying it in words: In this room it is comfortable. I sit down at the desk and write something. Then following the same course of reasoning as has given rise to the mechanical theory of heat, I would say: I came into the room, the heat condition worked on me and what I wrote down is a consequence of this heat condition. Speaking in a certain sense I might say that if I had found the place cold like a cellar, I would have hurried out and would not have done this work of writing. If now I add to the above the conclusion that the heat conducted to me has been changed into the work I did, then obviously something has been left out of my thinking. I have left out all that which can only take place through myself. If I am to comprehend the whole reality I must insert into my judgment of it this which I have left out. The question now arises: When the corresponding conclusion is drawn in the realm of heat, by assuming that the motion of the locomotive is simply the transformed heat from the boiler, have I not fallen into the error noted above? That is, have I not committed the same fallacy as when I speak of a transformation of heat into an effect which can only take place because I myself am part of the picture? It may appear to be trivial to direct attention to such a thing as this, but it is just these trivialities that have been completely forgotten in the entire mechanical theory of heat. What is more, enormously important things depend on this. Two things are bound together here. First, when we pass over from the mechanical realm into the realm where heat is active we really have to leave three dimensional space, and then we have to consider that when external nature is observed, we simply do not have that which is interpolated in the case, where heat is changed over into my writing. When heat is changed into my writing, I can note from observation of my external bodily nature that something has been interpolated in the process. Suppose however, that I simply consider the fact that I must leave three dimensional space in order to relate the transformation of heat into mechanical effects. Then I can say, perhaps the most important factor involved in this change plays its part outside of three dimensional space. In the example that concerned myself which I gave you, the manner in which I entered into the process took place outside of three dimensions. And when I speak of simple transformation of heat into work I am guilty of the same superficiality as when I consider transformation of heat into a piece of written work and leave myself out.

This, however, leads to a very weighty consequence. For it requires me to consider in external nature even lifeless inorganic nature, a being not manifested in three dimensional space. This being, as it were, rules behind the three dimensions. Now this is very fundamental in relation to our studies of heat itself.

Since we have outlined the fundamentals of our conception of the realm of heat, we may look back again on something we have already indicated, namely on man's own relation to heat. We may compare the perception of heat to perception in other realms. I have already called attention to the fact that, for instance, when we perceive light, we note this perception of light to be bound up with a special organ. This organ is simply inserted into our body and we cannot, therefore, speak of being related to color and light with our whole organism, but our relation to it concerns a part of us only. Likewise with acoustical or sound phenomena, we are related to them with a portion of our organism, namely the organ of hearing. To the being of heat we are related through our entire organism. This fact, however, conditions our relation to the being of heat. We are related to it with our entire organism. And when we look more closely, when we try, as it were, to express these facts in terms of human consciousness, we are obliged to say, “We are really ourselves this heat being. In so far as we are men moving around in space, we are ourselves this heat being.” Imagine the temperature were to be raised a couple of hundred degrees; at that moment we could no longer be identical with it, and the same thing applies if you imagine it lowered several hundred degrees. Thus the heat condition belongs to that in which we continually live, but do not take up into our consciousness. We experience it as independent beings, but we do not experience it consciously. Only when some variation from the normal condition occurs, does it take conscious form.

Now with this fact a more inclusive one may be connected. It is this. You may say to yourselves when you contact a warm object and perceive the heat condition by means of your organism, that you can do it with the tip of your tongue, with the tip of your finger, you can do it with other parts of your organism: with the lobes of your ears, let us say. In fact, you can perceive the heat condition with your entire organism. But there is something else you can perceive with your entire organism. You can perceive anything exerting pressure. And here again, you are not limited strictly as you are in the case of the eye and color perception to a certain member of your entire organism. If would be very convenient if our heads, at least, were an exception to this rule of pressure perception; we would not then be made so uncomfortable from a rap on the head.

We can say there is an inner kinship between the nature of our relationship to the outer world perceived as heat and perceived as pressure. We have today spoken of pressure volume relations. We come back now to our own organism and find an inner kinship between our relation to heat and to pressure. Such a fact must be considered as a groundwork for what will follow.

But there is something else that must be taken into account as a preliminary to further observations. You know that in the most popular text books of physiology, a good deal of emphasis is laid on the fact that we have certain organs within our bodies by means of which we perceive the usual sense qualities. We have the eye for color, the ear for sound, the organ of taste for certain chemical processes, etc. We have spread over our entire organism, as it were, the undifferentiated heat organ, and the undifferentiated pressure organ.

Now, usually, attention is drawn to the fact that there are certain other things of which we are aware but for which we have no organs. Magnetism and electricity are known to us only through their effects and stand, as it were, outside of us, not immediately perceived. It is said sometimes that if we imagine our eyes were electrically sensitive instead of light sensitive, then when we turned them towards a telegraph wire we would perceive the streaming electricity in it. Electricity would be known not merely by its effects, but like light and color, would be immediately perceived. We cannot do this. We must therefore say: electricity is an example of something for whose immediate perception we have no organ. There are aspects of nature, thus, for which we have organs and aspects of nature for which we do not have organs. So it is said.

The question is whether perhaps a more unbiased observer would not come to a different conclusion from those whose view is expressed above. You all know, my dear friends, that what we call our ordinary passive concepts through which we apprehend the world, are closely bound up with the impressions received through the eye, the ear and somewhat less so with taste and smell impressions. If you will simply consider language, you may draw from it the summation of your conceptual life, and you will become aware that the words themselves used to represent our ideas are residues of our sense impressions. Even when we speak the very abstract word Sein (being), the derivation is from Ich habe gesehen, (I have seen.) What I have seen I can speak of as possessing “being.” In “being” there is included “what has been seen.” Now without becoming completely materialistic (and we will see later why it is not necessary to become so), it may be said that our conceptual world is really a kind of residue of seeing and hearing and to a lesser extent of smelling and tasting. (Those last two enter less into our higher sense impressions.) Through the intimate connection between our consciousness and our sense impressions, this consciousness is enabled to take up the passive concept world.

But within the soul nature, from another side, comes the will, and you remember how I have often told you in these anthroposophical lectures that man is really asleep so far as his will is concerned. He is, properly considered, awake only in the passive conceptual realm. What you will, you apprehend, only through these ideas or concepts. You have the idea. I will raise this glass. Now, in so far as your mental act contains ideas, it is a residue of sense impressions. You place before yourself in thought something which belongs entirely in the realm of the seen, and when you think of it, you have an image of something seen. Such an immediately derived image you cannot create from a will process proper, from what happens when you stretch out your arm and actually grasp the glass with your hand and raise it. That act is entirely outside of your consciousness. You are not aware of what happens between your consciousness and the delicate processes in your arm. Our unconsciousness of it is as complete as our unconsciousness between falling asleep and waking up. But something really is there and takes place, and can its existence be denied simply because it does not enter our consciousness? Those processes must be intimately bound up with us as human beings, because after all, it is we who raise the glass. Thus we are led in considering our human nature from that which is immediately alive in consciousness to will processes taking place, as it were, outside of consciousness. (Fig. 3) Imagine to yourselves that everything above this line is in the realm of consciousness. What is underneath is in the realm of will and is outside of consciousness. Starting from this point we proceed to the outer phenomena of nature and find our eye intimately connected with color phenomena, something which we can consciously apprehend; we find our ear intimately connected with sound, as something we can consciously apprehend. Tasting and smelling are, however, apprehended in a more dreamlike way. We have here something which is in the realm of consciousness and yet is intimately bound up with the outer world.

If now, we go to magnetic and electrical phenomena, the entity which is active in these is withdrawn from us in contrast with those phenomena of nature which have immediate connection with us through certain organs. This entity escapes us. Therefore, say the physicists and physiologists: we have no organ for it; it is cut off from us. It lies outside us. (Fig. 3 above) We have realms that we approach when we draw near the outer world—the realms of light and heat. How do electrical phenomena escape us? We can trace no connection between them and any of our organs. Within us we have the results of our working over of light and sound phenomena as residues in the form of ideas. When, however, we plunge down (Fig. 3 below), our own being disappears from us into will.

I will now tell you something a bit paradoxical, but think it over until tomorrow. Imagine we were not living men, but living rainbows, and that our consciousness dwelt in the green portion of the spectrum. On the one side we would trail off into unconsciousness in the yellow and red and this would escape us inwardly like our will. If we were rainbows, we would not perceive green, because that we are in our beings, we do not perceive immediately; we live it. We would touch the border of the real inner when we tried, as it were, to pass from the green to the yellow. We would say: I, as a rainbow, approach my red portion, but cannot take it up as a real inner experience; I approach my blue-violet, but it escapes me. If we were thinking rainbows, we would thus live in the green and have on the one side a blue-violet pole and on the other side a yellow-red pole. Similarly, we now as men are placed with our consciousness between what escapes us as external natural phenomena in the form of electricity and as inner phenomena in the form of will.

It will be our task to-day to describe to a certain extent the human being during his sojourn in Devachan between death and new birth. In this connection we must first of all form an idea of that which man gains through the fact that during his passage through the spiritual world he is, to begin with, active for his own sake. We can picture this more easily if we bear in mind the relationship of two things: of that which we experience, and of that which our experience becomes during the time between birth and death.

Consider, for instance, everything which you experience when you learn to write. You would find it difficult, to remember all the things which you had to take in at that time in order to learn the or writing. Think of all admonishments of your teacher. Perhaps even of his anger! All this passed through your soul, and what has remained? The capacity to write. Everything else has become blurred and the art of writing has remained.

This is the course of things in life generally—not only during the life between birth and death, but in the whole life of the universe, both in the physical and in the super-sensible world.

It is possible to form a conception of how the things explained above are active in the super-sensible world. Let us, for example, take Mozart. When he was quite a young boy he heard a long piece of music at St. peters in Rome; according to an old tradition it was not allowed to write down this music, but Mozart wrote it down afterwards, from memory. What memories you must have had! And he could do this as a young boy! How do materialists explained this? They would protest energetically if they were asked to believe that an ox grows out of a piece of earth, that in animals such as the ox arises in a way which does not correspond to Nature. They say: Miracles do not exist ... and they are perfectly right in this. But in the face of spiritual things they become tremendously superstitious and believed in miracles at which point materialists simply accept back such as the one just now described from Mozart's life, and without further ado they place it to the account of heredity. Yet at Mozart's case, an explanation not arising out of a spiritual science describes just as great a miracle as that of an ox growing out of a piece of earth. For it is possible for a human being gradually to acquire an excellent memory if he turns his spirit again and again towards the same object. Memory develops in exactly the same way in which something perfect develops out of something imperfect, and it would be a miracle if Mozart's memory had grown out of nothing!

The answer of spiritual science to such a problem is that even in such a case upgrade developed gradually and naturally. If a materialists seeks an explanation for it, he cannot extricate himself otherwise that by admitting that he must either believe in miracles or that capacity is which does manifest themselves prove that they already existed in a former life and that they followed an entirely natural course of development.

Reincarnation is consequently the logical deduction of such a train of thought. And those who explain, through a materialistic way of looking at things, that such a perfect memory as that of the young boy Mozart can arise out of nothing, should follow their belief to a logical conclusion and admit, for instance, that frogs develop without further ado from mud—A fact which was accepted by a natural scientists before the time of Francesco Redi. Consequently, those who wish to be logical in spiritual science state: Even as an oak-tree grows out of the acorn and develops gradually, so our soul-capacities develop little by little, and when a human being enters life with capacities so highly developed as those of Mozart, this undeniably proves that the human being gained these capacities during former lives on earth. This gives us a clue to the comprehension of man's destiny in the spiritual world.

The essential point is therefore that the experiences of one life transform themselves into capacities for the succeeding life. All the dispositions of character which we bring with us in this life are the fruit of experiences gained during earlier lives on earth. For this reason it is necessary to study man's passage through Devachan in order to understand fully how the experiences of one life become capacities in the next life.

When we pass through our life on earth, we daily experience many things, and all these experiences appear in the panorama-picture already described to you, which rises up before the soul's eye immediately after death. But the capacities which we have gained through all these experiences remain as an essence, and we take along with us into the spiritual world this essence,which endures for all times to come.

When the human being enters Devachan, he perceives the regions described to you yesterday; the continental region, consisting of the archetypes of all earthly forms; the oceanic region, consisting of everything which is life; the air-region, consisting of everything pertaining to the soul, pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, etc. In the continental region the human being first perceives the archetype of his own physical body, and in the air-region he of course perceives, to begin with, also that which took place within his own soul during his past life on earth in the form of joy, suffering, pleasure, pain and passions. In other words, he once more perceives all the experiences of his past life, but in an entirely different way than during his passage through the Kamaloka period, which I have already described to you. In Kamaloka he lived through them once more in order to lose the habit of being dependent on them. In the watery region of Devachan man experiences all the peculiarities of his bodily life, and in the air-region of the celestial world he passes through all his psychic experiences.

It is important and of great interest to realise that everything which we have experienced in the course of one life—our feelings concerning the world, pleasure, pain, etc.—that in the spiritual world all this surrounds us as an external world. We need not feel sad that there our sufferings lie spread out before us. This is not sad at all, for there, all our sufferings exist in the same way in which storms exist in the physical world and in the spiritual world all our joyful experiences appear to us like wonderful cloud-phenomena. In Devachan our own inner experiences do not exist within us, as here on earth, but they live in our environment in an external form, in the same way in which a picture of Nature lies spread out before us. Our inner experiences live round about us, as if they were images, sounds or atmospheric phenomena; they have become objectified, as heavenly forms.

I have told you that it is not sad if our sufferings come raying towards us; just as little sad as lightning or thunder in physical life. Those who perceive these connections know what they owe to their sufferings in particular. Just those who have passed through pain and suffering will always say that they gratefully accept joy and pleasure, but that they would never wish to do without suffering and pain. We owe all Our wisdom to our suffering and pain during past lives on earth. A man whose physiognomy bears upon it the mark of wisdom in this life, owes this to the fact that in former lives he experienced the world's connection as suffering.

I have already explained to you that everything which we have experienced during our earthly-life lies spread out before us in pictures, etc, , when we enter Devachan. What does this signify? It will be easier to understand this if we realise what influence the environment exercises upon us. You all know Goethe's words: “The eye has been formed through the light and for the light.” What does this mean? The eye must exist in order to perceive the light. If we did not possess our eyesight the world would be dark and gloomy. But what is the origin of the human eye? It has been formed by the light itself, and similarly the eye would degenerate if there were no light. It has, for instance, been possible to observe this fact directly, in the case of animals who immigrated into the caves of Kentucky.

Light is the origin of the power of sight. Once upon a time man was not endowed with sight, because he still lived under quite different conditions; in earlier times of the earth's development the sun was not visible to an external sensory eye. Let us remember in this connection what the legends relate in regard to “Niflheim”.

The:more man lived exposed to the sun, the further the eye developed by the light of the sun. All the other sense organs developed in the same way: sound formed the ear, heat the sense of heat. We would have no sense of touch if there were no hard objects. The external world moulds and forms our body.

This is most important in practical life; in fact, theosophy is always meant to be applied to practical life. It is also most important in education, for only an educator who can look deeply into man's nature educate in the right way.

The physical body develops until the child changes its teeth, the etheric body develops up to the 14th/15th year, and the astral body up to the 21st year. We must know all this if education is to be approached practically and not fantastically. Since the disposition of the physical body is what we must bear in mind up to the seventh year, physical impressions, that is to say, everything which the child perceives through his sense organs, must be considered deeply and thoroughly. Sins of omission in education in connection with the form and disposition of the physical organs in the child's body, are a loss for the whole of life.

An insight into this last sentence gives medicine in particular many guiding lines for a right treatment of illnesses, among others, for instance, rickets, How is it that rickets arise just in this period of life? Just because; the child is moulding its body, and that is why these symptoms manifest themselves in the form (deformed bones, bad teeth, wrong form of the skull, etc.) But for this very reason the child is still able, until dentition, to correct the wrong forms and lead them back to a normal condition. We can see that even the most crooked legs grow straight again if the child receives the right treatment, and that perfectly sound second teeth can develop even if the milk-teeth were quite defective, whereas crooked legs which were not healed up to the seventh year remain crooked for the whole of life.

Up to the seventh year the brain is also engaged in the work of moulding its plastic forms, and the fine developments and forms of the brain's shape which could not be moulded up to that time are lost forever. Since the physical brain is the instrument through which the spirit manifests itself, it is of tremendous importance that this instrument should be moulded as finely as possible, that is to say, that it should be prepared during, the first seven years of life. For even the greatest individuality can do nothing with a defective brain, just as the greatest pianist cannot play well on a piano which is out of tune. Spiritual science, can give most important guidance to pedagogy, as well as to medicine, particularly in regard to the development of the brain.

In modern medicine one comes across a complete misunderstanding of facts particularly in this field. Rickets manifest themselves in a deformation of the bones, but very frequently they also appear in the shape of a defective glandular system and diseased mucous membranes; that is to say, children affected with rickets frequently have symptoms of swollen glands, adenoid growths, etc. A third pathological symptom in such children is that at school they frequently remain behind spiritually and that they become apathetic, indeed even slightly idiotic. In reality this is based on the defective development of the physical brain, particularly of its so-called corticose substance, which must above all be developed in its finest structure during these years. And in the same way the other symptoms are based on defective development.

Through the modern natural-scientific training and attitude, modern medicine is in such cases more than inclined to follow the example of modern natural science, namely to look upon the external symptoms as cause and effect, linking them up together like pearls on a chain and completely ignoring the deeper spiritual causes. What is the result? The facts are: rickety bones, adenoid growths, diminished attention and comprehension on the child's part. The conclusion to which modern doctors arrive is: Children with adenoid growths become mentally defective Owing to those growths; consequently it is necessary to remove them. The growths are consequently removed by operation. If this conclusion were right, every child who underwent such a treatment would respond to it by the disappearance of the impediments in the brain. But what is observed after such a treatment in the great majority of cases? The operation results in a sham success of brief duration, for the growths appear again after a very short time. But if the illness is to be attacked at its root—and this is quite possible, only now this would lead us too far away from our subject—the deformed bones, the swollen mucous membranes and glands disappear, as well as the impediments in the working of the brain.

After this digression, let us new return to our subject. The external world thus calls into being and moulds the right physical forms. Up to the seventh year, the child is in reality nothing but sense-organ. Everything which it takes in with its senses is elaborated ; above all, what it sees and hears in its immediate environment. Until dentition, the child is therefore an imitative being, and,this goes as far as its physical organisation. This is quite natural. Through its sense-organs, the child takes in its whole environment. And it is always practicing how to use it to limbs. It watches how its father or mother, etc. do this or that thing, and it simply imitates them. This goes as far as the movements of hands and legs. If the father or the mother are, for instance, fidgety people, then the child will also become fidgety in countless cases; if the mother is calm, then the child will of course, also become calm. We must try to produce the right counter-condition by placing the child in a right environment.

It is absolutely necessary to stimulate the child's fantasy, besides giving it sensory impressions, if it is to receive the influences needed for the development of the physical brain. It is consequently necessary to give a small child toys which are as simple as possible. A natural child will again and again turned to the “old doll”, made of a rag, no matter how beautiful the “new doll” which it receives. Only the spoiled children of our age are brought up on “beautiful”dolls. What is the reason for this? The child must exert its fantasy in order to transform the red-doll in its fancy into something resembling human shape, and this is a sound activity for the brain. Even as the arm grow stronger through gymnastic exercises, so the brain develops through this exercise.

Also the colours in, the child's surroundings are important. They exercise quite a different influence upon a small child than upon an adult. Many people think that green has a calming effect upon children. But this is quite wrong. A fidgety child should be surrounded with red and a calm child with green or blue-green. The effect of red upon the child is as follows: If you look upon a bright red and then turn your gaze away quickly to a piece of white paper you will see its complementary colour, which is green. ... By this I mean to, illustrate the tendency which the eye has to produce the opposite colour. The child also attempts to do this; inwardly he seeks to unfold the activity which calls forth the counter-colour. This is an example showing how the environment can influence a child.

In a similar way the child is influenced by everything which surrounds it, in addition to many, many things which I shall explain later, in another connection. All this contributes to a very great extent to the development of the child's physical body, from its birth to dentition; to the development of the etheric body, from the seventh to the fourteenth year; or to the development of the astral body, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, etc. Indeed, during the whole life the surrounding world exercises its influence upon the human being. The proverb, “Tell me with whom you go, and I will tell you who you are”, is based on this insight, for “with whom you go” means “what takes place in my environment”. This environment therefore has a strong influence upon us. This applies particularly to the time when the astral body develops, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and it is an almost daily experience that a young person can easily be astrally corrupted by his environment during these years.

It is exactly the same in Devachan, as here in physical life. Even as here on earth the human being is constantly exposed to the influences of the atmosphere, so he is also exposed to them in Devachan—and there the atmosphere consists of all psychic life, our own and that of our fellow men. All this soul life continually influences the, human being, and gifts and talents develop through the fact that they attract the psychically kindred astral forces from the environment, allowing them to exercise their influence. Mozart was born with such a great musical memory because in a former life he had gathered experiences having this goal in view, and then allowed these experiences to exercise their influence for a long time, during his life in Devachan. Through our environment in Devachan we pass through an enhanced development of our innermost being—indirectly, through all our experiences during our preceding life on earth.

All our capacities are therefore the fruit of former lives, and in Devachan they have been further developed. This is the bliss-giving feeling in Devachan. In Devachan we hatch out what we are able to do in our present life, And in accordance with this is the feeling which we have during the whole intermediary time of our Devachan existence: This feeling, connected with everything productive, is bliss.

Here on earth we often feel pain, but in Devachan even pain is bliss, for there we realise, that we acquire wisdom through pain. Even a materialistic scientist has discovered this fact his book “Mimic of Thought” he writes: “Every wise countenance reveals the expression of crystallised suffering”. From the pains of his preceding life the human being in fact produces through his experiences in Devachan talents and wisdom for his next life on Earth. And the feeling of producing this is one of untold bliss.

You may see a pale reflection of this here on earth in a hatching hen. If you transfer this to the spiritual plane and enhance it immensely you obtain the feeling of incessant infinite bliss between the time of Kamaloka and a new birth,—for then the human being works out all his dispositions and capacities for the next life. Everything there becomes a source of blissful life.

We have therefore seen that one source of bliss in Devachan is all the ties formed here on earth are formed once more in Devachan, indeed we experience the spiritual part of those relationships in an immensely enhanced form. The other source of bliss is the productive, creative activity for our next life, as described above.

If the spiritual investigator now turns his gaze upon this activity of man in Devachan he perceives that this productive work has a meaning not only for the individual human being and for his future organisation, but that the human being must contribute and cooperate in a significant way in the progress of the whole evolution of the earth. It is an error to think that in Devachan we are only concerned with our own affairs. How must we work, as blissful spirits in the realm of spirits?

The activity of the dead is a cooperation in the development of our earth . . . We might easily ask: Why are we always born again, after having passed through the experiences of one earthly life? Is not reincarnation useless?

But this is not the case. It is never useless for a man to be born again. The single lives on earth are so far apart , that we always learn something new and pass through new experiences. Centuries elapse between two incarnations, and when we return, the earth has completely changed. Let us suppose that we lived on earth in the second century after Christ. What aspect did the earth present at that time? Even the descriptions of this region, of the Elbe and the Weser etc. of a much later period would be quite different from present descriptions, for here, in Nassau-Hessen, there were still virgin forests.

When the human being is born again, he experiences something quite different from his former life. During our various lives on earth we participate in the development of the earth itself, through the very fact that we incarnate again and again. In addition there is the change brought about by every civilisation. Think of what a Roman boy was able to do! Of the great difference in the education of a boy of the present time! As we have seen, all these experiences are immensely important. It therefore has a deep significance that the human being must always come back again.

Let us now ask: Who changes the face of the earth? The dead themselves, who live in the spirit-realm, do this, through the power which they there acquire, enabling them to work upon this transformation of the earth. Even as human beings are here active externally upon the earth, so the dead are active upon the spiritual prototype of the physical earth. It is they who send their forces into this physical earth, cooperating in its transformation. Of course, there are leaders in this work and higher beings who take over the guidance. In this spiritual realm—which is in our very midst—the dead work upon the transformation of the countenance of the earth.

Why am I in this very place to-day? Why have I been born here? Because I myself have, so to speak, prepared my bed in the very place where I was born. The forces which have a transforming influence both upon the oceans and, upon the surface of the earth, are the forces of our dead. We know that the Atlantic Ocean of to-day was once upon a time a wide expanse of land; this transformation too has been brought about by our dead, and these forces are quite natural and in no way miraculous.

An insight into such things proves with absolute logic the importance and necessity of this work in the spirit realm. If we only know how to interpret the phenomena in the right way, we may even describe this work. Here on earth we breathe the air; we could not live without air. It is similar with the dead, except that there the light plays the same part which the air plays here on earth. The initiate perceives the dead in the midst of light, which is spread out everywhere. A clairvoyant seer, for instance, sees the plants surrounded by the spirits of the dead and these spirits of the dead make the plant grow through the light and change the plant. In the spiritual world we shall all soar above the earth and work upon the plants.

If we thus contemplate the world in connection with the spiritual beings, it becomes larger and more significant to us.

In conclusion, let me mention a few things which can help us to understand certain fine details in our civilisation.

At times, the seer finds that his own observations are confirmed by phenomena in the history of ancient peoples, which before were enigmas to him. It is, for instance, a well known fact that at first primitive nations possess a kind of clairvoyance enabling them to see things of which we have no idea. These primitive races often saw in the shadow, for example, something which is connected with the soul. The clairvoyant now returns to this through his own observations. For if you look in to the shadow which you yourself throw, you first learn to perceive your own spiritual emanations. If we retain the physical light, we perceive the spiritual in the shadow-space. This knowledge has been preserved in occult science, and many who had no inkling of this truth have used it, for example, Chamisso in his “Peter Schlemihl”. This is a man who lost his shadow and is very unhappy over this. But it is a spiritual fact that the soul is visible in the shadow, and the man without a shadow is therefore a man without a soul.

There are hundreds of examples of this kind. We really learn to know the world fully if we learn to know its spiritual foundations. Spiritual science therefore is not for brooding people, but for those who wish to be active in practical life. We do not wish to withdraw from the visible world, but rather to understand it better.

The higher facts are related to the visible world as magnetism is related to iron. We learn to know iron fully if we also learn to know magnetism. A few examples will show us that especially that which we learn to know in the spiritual world bears fruit in practical life.

It can be seen from what has been said about evolution and involution that it is possible to ask with every phenomenon: What has evolved? [What is in involution?]

Looking at the physical Earth we will find different states of aggregation—solid, fluid, gaseous and ether-like. Physical substances are only perceptible to human [senses] from the outside; they also have an inner aspect, and this is in involution. The outer one, which is evolved, is perceptible to the senses.

Taking fire, air and water, we can say that they are representative of the three levels of which we have spoken:

fire - level of existence air - level of life water - level of conscious awareness.

The way we put it is to say that water is in some way related to conscious awareness, since for the physical human being the astral is the principle in which he becomes aware of himself in sentience.

When we go to the Earth, we have reached the level of existence; when he [the human being] becomes earthly, he gains self-awareness. These four states of aggregation thus represent four states in the human being: existence, life, conscious awareness and then again existence.

Let us go back to the state in which the human being was the way which has been described so often: like jellyfish or gel, not yet having reached the stage then of using air as such in himself. He was a water human being. It is evident that the organ used to take in air would have served no purpose then. It did not [exist], in fact and [hence also] not the creatures of the air, the birds. We were in the process of preparing for the lung human being and the creatures which arose in consequence.

The human being was preparing to take in air, which could only be done by ... him preparing an outer form for himself in which the formless principle concerned would be able to live. The lung is nothing but the evolution of the principle which is in involution in the air. The lung is thus the evolution of life [air].

Let us remember: The human being evolved from a lungless animal to one with lungs, he created form for himself, and life was able to enter into the form. The concomitant was the bird world. The gel-like human being grew solid, taking chaotic matter, dust-like at the time, into himself, and parallel to this assimilation of matter went that of air. Two things happened: assimilation of earthly dust and absorption of the principle of life with the air. He became living from within, in the soul.

We must also note the following. The bird world is something which remains as an eternal symbol of the living human soul. Hence the phoenix forever rising from the ashes in renewal and perishing in the flames.

A process such as the creation of a form through a principle must be seen as something typical.

Earlier, the air as such was the outer vestment of the life principle contained in it, and now the lung [which] is the outer vestment for the life principle contained in the human being.

The relationship between macrocosmic life and air is like the relationship between microcosmic human life and lung.

Once again the Bible can be taken literally: putting together earth dust and the living human being.

If we consider the whole of evolution, every mineral state of life is preceded by three earlier states, and there are three to follow. Let us ask ourselves, what is the relationship between these seven states? In the middle one we have a particular relationship between existence, life and conscious awareness. It is more or less in balance. If we think of them being evenly distributed, we get the middle planet, balance:

existence of body \(a\), life or soul \(b\), spirit or conscious mind \(c\). The planet is in its middle state:

Other relationships are possible (\(=\) equal, \(>\) predominant):

No others are possible.

When existence is grossly preponderant over the other states, so that life and conscious awareness are seed-like, we have the arupa state. If we let life be such that it contains existence, we have form, rupa. If conscious awareness preponderates ... [gap], we have the astral. When they are equal [we have] the physical.

In the arupa state we have existence in evolution, life and conscious awareness in involution. Rupa state: existence and life evolved, conscious awareness in involution. Astral state: all three evolved, but existence and life greater than conscious awareness. In the physical, approximate equality of proportions.

We have now tried to approach these things from different points of view, keeping our concepts fluid as we attach them to these things.

An important occult maxim is to see any form of understanding merely as a vestment for the essential nature. This must live in us. We must all the time make garments and vestments of the nature of the thing in us, but be aware that the nature of the thing is not in those vestments and garments. The moment we have found a form that expresses the inner nature of the thing we have made the esoteric exoteric. The esoteric can thus never be told in any but an exoteric form.

Create forms of understanding all the time, but also always overcome the forms of understanding you have created for yourself. First it is you, secondly are the forms of understanding you have created, thirdly it is you again, having made those forms your own and overcome them. This means that you are existence first, then life in the forms you have created, and thirdly conscious awareness in the life forms which you have assimilated. Or: you are you and need to evolve in your forms, so that you may then let the evolved forms go through involution in you.

Human understanding is thus also existence, life and conscious awareness.

It is impossible to see the all and everything of a truth in a dogma or teaching; the dogma is only the second element. We need to overcome it; then we have seen the truth of things for ourselves. Hence the important maxim:

Human beings have to be dogmatic in order to perceive the truth, but they must never consider the dogma to be the truth. And this gives us the life of someone seeking the truth; he can recast the dogma in the fire of concept.

Occultists therefore work with dogma in the freest possible way.

This insight, this stroke in the world of concept and then again counter stroke, is called ‘dialectics’, whilst holding fast to concepts is called ‘logic’. Dialectics is therefore the life of logic, and someone who understands the spirit of dialectics will transform dead, rigid concepts into living ones when he comes to the higher regions of perceptive insight, that is, he will assign them to particular persons. He will transform logic into dialogue. Thus Plato made logic into dialectics, transforming it into dialogue.

Goethe's green serpent⁹³

God - wisdom
Light - form in which wisdom comes into its own

What is more glorious than light? Dialogue!

Conclusion of Rudolf Steiner’s Eleven European Mystics, Angelus Silesius:⁹⁴

My friend, it is good so. In case you want to read more Go and be yourself the script, yourself the essence.

• 93. Refers to Goethe’s Tale of the Green Snake and the Fair Lily. See Rudolf Steiner’s Goethe’s Standard of the Soul GA 22, tr. D. S. Osmond, London: Anthr. Publ. Co. 1925.
• 94. Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modem Age GA 7, tr. K. E. Zimmer, Blauvelt: Steinerbooks 1980.

Dear children, dear teachers, and dear parents who are here today! Each year when Easter comes, it is a very special festival for the school, a special festival for children to experience and a special festival for all of human existence. This festival is anticipated in the beautiful language that nature now begins to speak to us.

Of course nature is always beautiful, and anyone who is sensitive to it can find beauty in it even in winter, when the snow makes its way up the mountains and covers the ground and the trees in a way that is almost sad. It is beautiful then, too, but it is cold outside, and that makes our souls cold and reminds us of how often life chills our hearts and souls.

But then in spring, as Easter approaches, the seeds sprout and the flowers spring up out of the ground. The March violets are a greeting from the sunlight and the world-spirit itself. And the green reminds us of our hopes in life, of what we wish to have from life. The color of hope, of wishing, and of joy in life is there in the green.

Turning from nature to our school of life, because we must say that a school of life is what the Waldorf School intends to be—and now I am speaking to you, dear children—the fact that life is now beginning to unfold outside makes Easter a festival that has a great effect on the school, on the children and on the teachers and on the parents, who are the most important thing standing behind the school’s children and faculty. At Easter-time, the new children enter our school.

This is when the teachers see the life task they face in educating these new children. This is when a wonderful soul-relationship has to come about between the teachers and the parents who are entrusting their children to them. At Easter-time, for a number of children and teachers, something begins that will continue for years as these teachers grow close to these children whom they love so dearly.

But at the same time, there is something different associated with Easter. It is also the time for graduation from school, as is now the case with us for many of the eighth graders and all of the twelfth graders. This is the time when their teachers are heavy-hearted, because they have grown close to these children in soul and in spirit. It is also the time when we can see the heavy hearts of the children who must now leave this school, which was a preparatory school for life, a school where everything possible was meant to be done to show the hopeful side of life. They must now leave this bright, beautiful summertime of their lives and go out into an existence that is often raw and hard, where there is so much pain and so many joys to experience. Life has a lot to give us—joy and sadness and problems—and we must cope with it. And when the festival of Easter is approaching, as it is now, when we turn our gaze to the coming of Easter, we are reminded of how this festival is a very incisive one in the hearts and minds of students and teachers.

In welcoming their new students, teachers look toward everything that is to come. They feel their tasks as teachers especially strongly now, as they turn to the parents of these children and realize that these men and women are showing their confidence in them by bringing them their nearest and dearest. This is something meaningful that should enter the teachers’ hearts and be very deeply felt. The children come in, joyfully looking forward to what they will be graced with through their teachers love and through everything that human beings have brought forth.

Then we must also be aware of the departures, for one or the other student will have to leave this school. That is when we get the other feeling, a feeling of mixed wistfulness and sorrow in many respects. Especially for teachers, this engenders a very wistful sorrow in their hearts and minds, because they must now send the children they have grown to love out into life. These children must now seek for themselves what they and their teachers had sought together in school. But to this is added the satisfaction of being able to say as a teacher, “If you have succeeded, then they will take with them the strengths that you wanted to give them.” This thought is what makes graduation beautiful for the teachers and makes their Easter a happy one.

It is one of the nicest things about being a teacher to hear from the children when they have been out there in life for a while, sometimes years later, and to find out what has become of them—how they have found their place in life, what good fortune they have experienced, how they learned to bear sorrow. When these messages from the students make their way back into the school when the students are practically grown up, perhaps, and are firmly rooted in life, these are experiences that really give the teachers strength and reanimate them, even if they have been teaching for a long time.

If we make ourselves aware of everything that is working into the school at Easter-time, we get a feeling—and this is a feeling that you too should get, dear boys and girls—for what this time in school signifies in a whole human life between birth and death. It is a real summertime, life’s sun time, and Easter in particular, as it is now starting to happen in nature, reminds us of it.

Then the teachers realize how happy they are to have the confidence of people like the parents who entrust their children to them. Because of all the effort they have made, the teachers are then really able to experience this: For years and years the parents have entrusted what is dearest to them to us in full confidence, and the school is fortunate in having been able to not only uphold this confidence but also to justify it, so that the parents can see their children leaving school, full of hope on entering life, with the same satisfaction that they had in trustingly sending them off to school for the first time.

All this is present in our hearts and souls at this time of year. I merely wanted to say a few words to impress it on the hearts and souls of the students and teachers.

All this will come about if something that must be present becomes a general practice among the students, namely love and devotion toward the faculty and devotion toward what you are learning through this school. If the right love prevails in the Waldorf School among parents, teachers, and students, then in what love can do when people are to be led through life by all that is beautiful and grand, this life will be able to prevail and to give people the forces they need.

This is why I have always asked you if you have succeeded in learning to really love your teachers. If you can learn to love them even more, it will be possible for everything to well up out of this love as if from a spring of fresh water. Then you will learn everything, and the Easter season will give you all it can. I would like to ask you, “Do you love your teachers?” [They all shout, “Yes!”] That is nice of you. Now, in this love that has developed between you, look at the ones who are now leaving school and resolve to follow them through life with your loving glances, and a wonderful relationship of love and friendship will be able to develop. And then the Waldorf School will be like a sun, able to ray out beautifully into life.

The Ancient Egyptian Doctrine of Evolution. The Cosmic View of the Organs and their Coarsening in Modern Times.

At various points in this cycle of lectures we have tried to present the facts of post-Atlantean evolution, and we have indicated that in our time there is a kind of repetition or resurrection of the experiences that mankind went through during the Egypto-Chaldean culture. It has been stated that the Indian period will repeat itself in the seventh period, the Persian in the sixth, the Egyptian in our time, and that the fourth, the Greco-Latin, stands by itself, so to say. Now, connecting the Egyptian time and our own, we shall try to indicate how a certain recrudescence of outer and inner experiences is to be seen when we bring our time into connection with the Egyptian.

We have seen that in the spiritual worlds there exist mysterious forces, to which there correspond certain other forces in the physical world which effectuate the appearance of these repetitions. Thus do these resurrections of outer and inner experiences originate. In the middle between these stands the Greco-Latin period, during which the Christ appeared upon the earth and the Mystery of Golgotha took place. It was also pointed out that not only the external evolutionary relationships on the physical plane had changed, but that also the relationships in the spiritual world had become different. I have described how the soul was in the Egyptian time, when it looked upon the gigantic pyramids, how different it was when it reincarnated in the Greco-Latin period, and how different it is in our time. We have seen that not only does this occur, but that also for the period between death and a new birth, in kamaloka and Devachan, there takes place a sort of progress or transformation, so that the soul does not experience the same thing when it enters into kamaloka or Devachan from an Egyptian, a Greek, or a modern body. Externally the world of the physical plane alters, but progress also occurs in the spiritual world so that the soul always experiences something different there.

It is primarily from the standpoint of this “beyond” that today we shall consider the mighty event of the Christ's appearance on our earth. We shall approach in a much deeper way the question, What significance has the advent of the Christ on our earth? What significance has the Christ's appearance for the dead souls, for the life on the other side, the spiritual side, of existence? For this purpose we must explore many different things that affected souls in the Egyptian period both within and beyond the physical plane.

From our studies of the earlier great epochs of earth evolution we can derive that the Egypto-Chaldean period furnishes a mirroring in knowledge and experience of what happened in the Lemurian time, of what happened on the earth during and after the departure of the moon. What men experienced then, they experienced again as a memory in what the Egyptian initiates gave them. The Egyptian initiate himself experienced during his initiation events that man otherwise experiences only when he passes through the portal of death. To be sure, the Egyptian initiate experienced this in a different way than does the ordinary person who dies. He experienced it differently and in a much fuller way. It will be well for us now, as a basis for these considerations, to describe the essence of Egyptian initiation in a few words. This initiation is essentially different from that of the time after Christ, for through his advent initiation was fundamentally altered.

We have seen that men had to descend further and further into the material world, gaining increasing interest in the physical world. In the same proportion, however, the experience in the spiritual world between death and a new birth became more pale and shadowy. The livelier man's consciousness became in the physical world, the more he enjoyed being there, the, more he discovered the laws of the physical plane, the dimmer his consciousness in the spiritual world became. The consciousness in the spiritual world reached its low point in the Greco-Latin time. But even before man had fully descended into these depths of matter, it had become impossible for him, within the physical body, to experience completely what one must experience if, during the period between birth and death, one seeks to gain insight into the spiritual world.

The initiation event may be briefly described, and it is the same for initiations before and after Christ, although the conclusion is different. Initiation is nothing other than man's gaining the capacity of developing organs of vision in his higher bodies. Today man sees darkness when it is night; he is in the dark. This is because man has no organs of perception in his astral body. As the eyes and ears have formed themselves into physical organs of perception, so super-sensible organs must be developed out of the higher members and assimilated into them. This occurs through certain exercises of concentration and meditation being given to the pupil. These exercises are performed after the pupil has first surveyed the knowledge of the spiritual worlds that can be given by the initiates. It has always been the case that the pupils had to learn what we today would call elementary theosophy. Much more strongly than today it was required that the pupils become acquainted with the truth in a regular progression. When there was enough theoretical preparation, and when the pupils were sufficiently mature, the exercises were given to them. These exercises have a definite purpose.

When in his daily life man lets the impressions of the senses work upon him, these impressions bring certain fruits for the ordinary life on the physical plane. These impressions pass over into the astral body, which in turn transmits them to the ego. But these impressions are such that man cannot hold them fast when, with his astral body and ego, he slips out of his physical and etheric bodies during the night. What man receives in this way from the physical plane does not penetrate into him so strongly that he can retain it as a permanent impression. But when a person performs the exercises of meditation and concentration, these are so adjusted, in accordance with thousands of years of experience, that the astral body no longer loses the impressions, but retains them when it slips out of the physical body in the night. Through the exercises the astral body receives plastic impressions, which shape and member it as the physical organs have been membered. Thus the astral body is worked on for certain periods through these exercises. Thereby the super-sensible organs of vision are imprinted on the astral body. It would be a long time, however, before man could use his organs of vision if they were imprinted only into his astral body. Something further must take place so that the astral body, when it returns into the etheric body, may stamp upon that body, like the impression of a seal, what has taken shape within itself. Only when what has taken shape in the astral body imprints itself upon the etheric body, only then does the illumination take place that makes it possible for the person to see the spiritual world as he sees the physical world today.

Here we can begin to grasp what kind of an impulse we have received through the appearance of Christ on earth. In the old initiations the astral body had the strength to work upon the etheric body only when the etheric body had been lifted out of the physical body. This was because at that time the etheric body, had it remained connected with the physical body, would have exerted so much resistance that it could not have received the imprint of what the astral body had formed within itself. In the ancient initiations, therefore, for a period of three and a half days, the candidate was put into a deathlike condition in which the physical body was deserted by the etheric body while this latter, freed from the physical, united itself with the astral body. The astral then stamped into the etheric all that had been built into the astral through the exercises. When the Hierophant again awakened the candidate, the latter was illuminated. He knew what took place in the spiritual world, for he had made a remarkable journey during the three and a half days. He had been led through the fields of the spiritual world. He had seen what went on there, and he knew from direct experience what another person could learn only through revelation. A person thus initiated could, out of his own experiences, give knowledge of the beings who were in the spiritual world, beyond the physical plane.

When man had not yet descended so far into the physical plane, he could learn what was experienced in the spiritual world. There the candidate became acquainted with the true form of Osiris, Isis, and Horus. The initiate saw the contents of the myths during this journey into the spiritual world. He could then transmit this to other persons when he had dressed it as myth or saga. He saw all this; he saw in what a special way the Osiris influences had shaped themselves when the moon had withdrawn from the earth; he saw how Horus issued from Isis and Osiris; he saw the four human types, the bull, the lion, the eagle, and the true man. He also saw what happened to man between death and a new birth. The Sphinx appeared to him as a real form; he experienced it. He could say, “Oh, I have seen the Sphinx, man as he was when he still had an animal-like form, and his etheric body—similar to the human—only projected out of this animal-like form!” The Sphinx was a real experience for the initiate. He even heard the question of the Sphinx with its enigmatic content. He saw how the human body prepared itself out of the animality, at a time when the head was only an etheric form, the ether-head of the Sphinx. This was truth for the initiate, as were also the older forms of the gods, who had, so to speak, taken a different course of evolution.

It has recently been said that certain beings pursued a different path in evolution. The individuality of Wotan, for example, takes such a different course. Up to a certain stage it travels together with man, but then it does not descend so deeply. Man descends further into matter and only later will he again join these beings, who are completing their evolution in the earth-time. We have seen that a time came when Wotan no longer walked on our earth. Such beings, however, were not like Osiris and Isis. These latter were beings who had branched off still earlier, who completed their evolution on a higher level in full invisibility. These forms went through their special experiences.

Let us look back into the Lemurian period. At that time the etheric was not yet manlike in its form. In his etheric body man was still similar to the animals, and the gods who descended then had to accommodate themselves to the same animal forms in which man lived on the earth. If a being wishes to enter into a certain plane, it must fulfill the conditions of that plane. This is also the case here. The divine beings who were connected with the earth during the departure of the sun and moon, who were on the earth, had to take on a form that was possible at that time, an animal-like form. And since the Egyptian religious views present in a certain way a recapitulation of the Lemurian time, the Egyptian initiate looked upon the gods, Osiris and Isis for example, as having animal-like forms. He still saw the higher gods with animal heads. Therefore from an occult view it was quite correct when such forms were represented with the head of a hawk or a ram in accordance with what the initiates knew. The gods were portrayed in the forms they had when they walked the earth. The outer images could only resemble what the initiate saw, but they were faithfully reproduced. The various divine beings changed a good deal. The forms in Lemuria were different from those in Atlantis. In those times beings went through much more rapid changes than they do now. In addition, these forms were still filled with spirit. When one looks back on them one sees them in their three bodies, but illuminated and rayed through by the astral and etheric light. This was accurately portrayed in the pictures. Modern men may laugh over the forms that were represented, but they do not know how realistic they were.¹

There was one being who performed special services in that period of human evolution when, through the cosmic-tellurian powers, the combining intellect was being organized in man. At that time the physical brain was prepared in such a way that man was able to develop intelligence later. This capacity was implanted in man and reckoned as one of the deeds of the god Manu. What was worked into man as intelligence was connected with this. If today we examine a person in whom a well-formed ability for judging and combining is present, if we examine him clairvoyantly, we find a strong expression and reflection of this fact in a green glittering and shining of the astral body, of the astral aura. The capacity for combining shows itself in green colors in the aura, especially in those who have keen mathematical understanding. The ancient Egyptian initiates saw the god who implanted the faculty of intelligence in men, and in portraying him they painted him green² because they saw the green shimmering of his luminous astral and etheric form. Today this is still the color that glitters in the aura when the person's intelligence is stirred. Much time could be devoted to these connections if people really wanted to study this wonderful realism of the forms of the Egyptian gods. These representations of the divine forms, through the fact that they were so realistic and not at all arbitrary, had magical power; and one who could see more deeply would perceive that many mysteries were present in the coloring of these ancient forms. Here one can, see deep into the workings of human evolution.

We have seen how what the initiates saw was retained in the Sphinx. Of course, this was not retained in a photographic way, yet it was realistic. But the forms were always changing. The form of the Sphinx gives an image of how man once looked. His present form has been shaped by man himself. We know that through evolution on the earth various animal forms have been split off. What is an animal form? It is a form that has remained static, while man proceeded further in evolution. In these forms we see arrested stages of evolution, to the extent that these forms have become physical. In the spiritual something else has taken place. What man is spiritually has nothing to do with his physical forebears. Only the physical is connected with that. Man does not descend from the animals; the animal forms have remained unchanged. In man, however, the shape has been transformed to a certain level. The animals are previous physical human forms fallen into decadence. The situation is different in another realm of evolution. Not only have the physical forms of the animals remained unchanged, but also the rudiments of the etheric and astral forms as well. Just as the lion, at the time when it split off, looked quite different than now, so certain soul-spiritual forms degenerate in the course of time when they remain at a particular stage. It is a law of the spiritual world that anything that stands still on the same level of spirit or soul becomes more and more decadent.

If, for example, the Sphinx stands still, it degenerates and receives a form that is like a caricature of what it originally was. The Sphinx has been preserved in this way on the astral plane up to our own time. To those who, as initiates or in some other lawful manner, penetrate into the higher worlds, these decadent forms have little interest, being only decayed vagabonds in the spiritual world. But when, in exceptional cases, persons equipped with inferior clairvoyant gifts are led into the astral world, such decadent forms approach them. The true Sphinx approached Oedipus, but it has not died even yet. Up to today it has not died; it only approaches man in another form. When persons who have remained standing at a certain stage of evolution, among the peasants perhaps, rest in the fields at midday in the hot glow of the summer sun, and fall asleep, they may have what could be called a latent sun-stroke. Through such an impact on the physical body, the astral and etheric are loosened from a part of the physical. Then such persons are translated to the astral plane and they see this last decadent offspring of the Sphinx. This apparition is called by different names. In certain regions it is called the midday woman. Many people in the country will recount that they have met the midday woman. She appears in many regions under many different names. She is a descendent of the ancient Sphinx, and as the ancient Sphinx put questions to the men who experienced her, so this midday woman also asks questions. You may hear it told how the midday woman asks endless questions of the men whom she meets. This torment by questions is a relic of the old Sphinx. The midday woman has grown out of the ancient Sphinx. This indicates how evolution proceeds beyond the physical world, how whole tribes of spiritual beings decline until at last they are mere shadows of what they were originally. Here we see another characteristic of the way in which things are connected in evolution. We have mentioned this so it may be seen how manifold evolution is.

Now, to understand everything correctly, we must give some thought to the fact that in the course of time man has organized the fourth member, the ego, into what he brought with him at the beginning of earth evolution as his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. I have shown how this ego permeates the astral body, claims it for itself so that it dominates it as higher spiritual beings formerly dominated it. It is a deed of the higher beings that this ego was implanted in the astral body. If evolution had proceeded further in accordance with the views of certain higher beings, it would have been a different evolution from what has actually taken place. However, certain beings remained unchanged. They had not become capable of collaborating in implanting the ego in the astral body.

When man appeared on the earth he consisted of the physical, etheric, and astral bodies, all of which he shaped further. Now he was endowed with egohood by certain sublime beings who had their dwellings mainly on the sun and moon. These beings collaborated, so to speak, on the ego. But there were certain other beings who, during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, had not raised themselves so far that they could take part in this organizing of the ego. They could do only what they had learned on the moon. They had to limit themselves to working on the astral body, hence there was implanted in man's astral body something that did not belong to his noblest qualities, did not come from the higher sublime beings but from the retarded intruders who had remained behind. Had these beings done this on the moon, it would have been something lofty. But through the fact that they did this on earth as stragglers, they worked into the astral body something that placed it lower than it would have been otherwise. It became endowed with instincts and passions, and with egoism. We must heed this fact that man was influenced from two sides, that he received impacts in his astral body through which the latter became debased.

Such a thing does not influence the astral body alone. Man is so constituted that the astral body transmits such an influence to the etheric body, and this again to the physical body. The astral body is active in all parts, hence these spirits work on the etheric and physical through the astral body. Had these spiritual beings not been able to exercise such an influence, something would not have appeared in man at that time. This is an enhanced selfhood in man, an increased ego-feeling. What this caused in the etheric body was all that appeared as darkening of judgment, as the possibility of error. All that the astral body accomplished in the physical body is the basis of what appeared as illness. That is the spiritual cause of illnesses in man; among animals, becoming ill is something different. We see how illness has been transplanted into man; illness is connected with the causes we have indicated here. And since the physical and etheric bodies are connected with the facts of heredity, so the principle of illness proceeds through the hereditary line. Let us again emphasize, however, that we must distinguish between inner illnesses and external injuries. If a man is run over, that is something entirely different. Also, certain internal illnesses can be connected with external causes; for example, if one eats something that upsets the stomach, that is something external.

Before the above-mentioned beings gained influence over man in the course of evolution, he was so organized that he reacted far more powerfully than today toward evil pressing upon him from without. But in proportion to the influence that they gained over him, he lost the instincts he had possessed for what was not right. Formerly, man's whole organization was such that he had fine instincts as to what was not right for him. Substances that are taken into the stomach today and there cause illness were then rejected simply through instinct. Gazing backward in time we come to periods when man stood in a delicate relationship to the forces of his environment, reacting sensitively to the forces in his surroundings. In this respect man grew ever less sure, less capable of rejecting what was not serviceable to him.

This is connected with something else. As man grew more inward, something occurred in the world outside; what we know as the three other kingdoms of nature arose. The three kingdoms around us arose gradually. At first, only man was present. Then the animal kingdom was added; then the plant kingdom, and finally the mineral kingdom. If we were to look back on the primeval earth when the sun was still united with it, we would find a human being in and out of whom all the substances of the physical world moved. Man still lived in the womb of the gods: everything still agreed with him, so to say. Then he had to leave behind what was precipitated as the animal kingdom. Had he carried this with him, he would not have been able to develop further. He had to expel the animal kingdom, and later the plant kingdom. What exists outside in the animals and plants is nothing other than temperaments, passions, certain traits of men that they had to expel. And when man formed his bones he expelled the mineral world. After a certain length of time, man could look upon his environment and say, “Formerly I could endure you; formerly you went in and out of me as air now does. When I still lived in the water-earth I could endure you; I digested you. Now you are outside, and I can no longer endure you, no longer digest you.” As man became enclosed in his skin, as he became a self-contained separate being, he saw, in the same proportion, these kingdoms around him.

If these beings had not worked on man, something else would not have happened. As long as man is healthy, he will stand in a normal relationship to the outer world. When he has disturbed forces within him, these must be driven back by the powers that man has. If his powers are too weak for this, if he cannot provide the normal resistance, then something must be infused into him from outside. Something must be implanted into him to furnish the resistance that he still had at the time the forces from outside breathed in and out of him. It may be necessary, when a person is ill, that the forces of a metal, for example, should be injected into him. It is because man was in connection with metals earlier, in connection with plant juices and similar things, that we are justified in applying them as medicaments.

When the Egyptian initiates could look back over the whole course of world evolution, they knew precisely how the individual organs of the human body corresponded with the substances of the external world. They knew which plants and which metals had to be administered to the patient. A great treasure of occult wisdom in the domain of medicine will be raised to light one day, wisdom that mankind formerly possessed. Not only are many things bungled in medicine today, but often special healing powers are ascribed to this or that in a one-sided way. The true occultist will never be one-sided. How often must we reject efforts that would make a compromise with the science of the spirit! The latter cannot support a one-sided method: on the contrary, it seeks to establish diversified research. It is one-sided to say, “Away with all poisons!” People who say this do not know the true healing forces. Naturally many stupid things are done today, for the professionals in most cases cannot grasp all the relationships, and a certain tyranny in medical science excludes what can proceed from occultism. If there were no campaigns against the oldest methods of medicine, against the injection of metals, there could be a reform. With modern experimentation nothing is discovered that can hold its own against the traditional remedies, which only a lay ignorance can oppose as strongly as is often done. The ancient Egyptian initiates excelled in these secrets. They had an insight into the real relationships of evolution, and if today certain physicians speak in a condescending way of Egyptian medicine, you can soon tell from their tone that they know nothing about it. Here we touch upon something in the Egyptian initiation that should be known.

It was such things as these that went over into the folk-consciousness. Now we must reflect that the same souls that are in our bodies today were also incarnated in that ancient time. Let us remember that these souls saw all the images that the initiates made of what they knew through vision in the spiritual world. We know that what a soul takes into itself from incarnation to incarnation, ever and again bears fruits in one or another way. Even though man cannot remember it, it is still true that what lives in the soul today lives in it because it was deposited there earlier. The soul is formed both within and beyond the physical life. When it was between birth and death, when it was between death and a new birth, Egyptian ideas were influential and modern ideas have proceeded from these. Today certain definite ideas are developing out of the Egyptian ideas. What is called Darwinism today did not arise because of external reasons. We are the same souls who, in Egypt, received the pictures of the animal forms of man's forebears. The old views have awakened again, but man has descended more deeply into the material world. He remembers that it was said to him, “Our ancestors were animal forms.” But he does not remember that these forms were gods. This is the psychological basis for the emergence of Darwinism. The figures of the gods appear in materialistic form. Thus there is an intimate spiritual connection between the old and the new, between the third and the fifth cultural periods.

Now it is not the whole destiny of our time that man should see in material form what previously he saw in the spiritual. That would have been our fate had not the Christ-impulse entered into human evolution in the meantime. This was not significant only for life on the physical plane. Today we shall see what significance the events of Palestine had for the other side of life, where the souls of the Egyptians sojourned after death. Here on the physical plane occurred the things we have already discussed. But the three years of Christ's activity, like the event of Golgotha and the baptism in Jordan, were of significance equally to the souls incarnated on earth and to those who were in the condition between death and a new birth.

Let us recall the fact that the external physical expression for the ego is the blood. What works physically in the forces of the blood is the physical expression of the ego. In the course of evolution too strong a measure of egoism made its appearance, which means that the egohood impressed the blood too powerfully. This “surplus” of egoism had to be expelled again if spirituality was to be restored to mankind. On Golgotha the impulse was given for this expulsion of egoism. In the same moment when the Redeemer's blood flowed on Golgotha, still other events were taking place in the spiritual world. The Redeemer's blood flowed out in the material world, while the superfluity of egoism passed over into the spiritual world. The superfluous egoism had to vanish from the world, and the impulse for this was given on Golgotha. In place of egoism, universal human love entered into mankind.

But what was this event of Golgotha? What was this event of a three-and-a-half-day death on the physical plane? It was the enactment on the physical plane of what also had been experienced in spiritual development by one who was initiated. He was dead for three and a half days. One who had gone through this symbolical death could say to mankind, “There is a conquering of death. There is something eternal in the world.” Death was conquered by the initiates, and they felt themselves to be victors over death. The event of Golgotha signifies that what had often taken place in the mysteries of ancient times became, for once, an historical event: the conquering of death through the spirit. This was taken out into the world on the physical plane. If we let this work upon our souls, we sense what happened with the Mystery of Golgotha as something new, but also as an image of the ancient initiation. We feel this unique event entering into the world historically.

What was the consequence of this? What could the initiate do? Out of his own experiences he could say to his fellow men, “I know there is a spiritual world, that man can live in the spiritual world. I have lived in it for three and a half days and bring you tidings thence. I bring you the gifts of the spiritual world.” These gifts were useful and healing to mankind.

On the other hand, one who had lived as an initiate in the physical world could bring nothing similar to the dead. To the dead he could only say, “All that happens on the physical plane is so ordered that man ought to be redeemed.” Thus it was when, in the spiritual world, the ancient initiates held converse with the dead, to whom they could give only the teaching that “Life is suffering; only redemption will bring healing.” Thus did Buddha still teach. Thus did the initiate teach both the living and the dead. But through the event of Golgotha death was conquered in the physical world, and this signified something for those who had died and were in the spiritual world. Those who take up Christ in their innermost parts illuminate again their shadowy life in Devachan. The more man experiences here of the Christ, the brighter it becomes over there in the spiritual world. After the blood had flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer—this is something that belongs to the mysteries of Christianity—the Christ-spirit descended to the dead. This is one of the deepest mysteries of mankind. Christ descended to the dead and said to them, “Over there something has happened, of which it cannot be said that what happens there is not so important as what happens here. What man brings with him into the spiritual realm as a consequence of this event is a gift that can be brought out of the physical world into the spiritual world.” These are the tidings that Christ brought to the dead in the three and a half days. He descended to the dead in order to redeem them.

In the ancient initiation one could say that the fruits of the spiritual were reaped in the physical. Now an event occurred in the physical world that produced its fruits and did its work in the spiritual world. One can say that it was not in vain that man completed his descent to the physical plane. He completed it so that here in the physical world fruits could be produced for the spiritual world.

That these fruits could be produced came to pass through Christ, who was present among the living and among the dead, who gave an impulse so intense and so powerful that it shook the whole world.

• 1. Fantastic speculation on the reason why the Egyptians worshipped animal-headed gods began in classical times. See Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris, Sec. 72.
• 2. For pictures of the Green Osiris, see the frontispieces in both volumes of Budge, Osiris and the Egyptian Resurrection, and in Volumes II, X, and XII of Maspero and Rappaport, History of Egypt (London, Grolier, 1901). See also text in Budge, Vol. II, p.355.

Some time ago, we spoke here, at least in some allusions, of what is called occult reading and occult hearing, and today and tomorrow I will take up these considerations of those discussions about occult reading and occult hearing, because then I will be able to develop some important ideas about our structure in connection with them.

If we look at the outer scientific consideration, insofar as it concerns the life of the soul, today, we find many difficulties in this outer scientific consideration, as soon as we want to come to a reasonably satisfactory overview of the relevant concepts. Among the many difficulties, the one that arises when we consider the outer science of human memory is truly no small one.

Now I would have to cite a lot here if I wanted to talk about this or that that external psychology or the doctrine of the soul has to say about human memory. But it would not get us very far if I wanted to explain all of that. I just want to draw your attention to the difficulty for this external science when it comes to understanding memory and its peculiarities.

Human memory presents itself to us in such a way that we can recall to our consciousness at a later time perceptions, concepts, and ideas that we have absorbed at some time in the past. So there is the psychological fact that, for example, we have some kind of perception or experience today, and that after some time, without being confronted with the same fact that caused the perception or experience, we can vividly recall the idea of the fact, of the experience, from within.

This seems to indicate that the human soul stores everything it takes in from the outside. For example, when we meet someone, we get an impression of them. We transform this impression into a mental image and then store this mental image in our subconscious; when we need it, we retrieve it.

Wouldn't it then be the case that our soul, insofar as it develops the power of our memory, would be, let's say, a box in which all ideas and experiences can be placed and stored, and from which they can be taken out when needed to be brought up into consciousness. So all kinds of experiences would be stored down there in this soul cabinet, and they could be retrieved from there.

When you read books about memory today, you get the impression that the authors often believe that the soul is a kind of storage cabinet for all kinds of experiences. Now imagine walking around with your soul and carrying a cabinet for all your impressions and experiences with you in this soul. It must be freely admitted that there is a difficulty here. Various scientific concepts have been used to try to bridge this difficulty, but nothing particularly satisfactory has emerged from them. This difficulty will only be overcome when we acquire a deeper insight into the structure of the human being in the physical body, in the etheric body, in the astral body and in the I. For this etheric body of man must indeed be studied if one is to gain a real knowledge of the nature of human memory, and the astral body must be studied no less for this purpose.

Let us assume that we can at least form some kind of idea, comparatively speaking, of what this astral body of man actually is. In the waking hours of everyday life, the human being does not experience himself in his astral body, any more than he experiences himself in his ether body. The human being experiences himself in his I from waking up to falling asleep, and all experiences are I-experiences. In the astral body, the human being does not experience himself. This astral body is, as I have emphasized on other occasions, fundamentally infinitely wiser than the I-human being. It can do much more than the I-human being can do. This astral body can actually read what I have indicated to you as occult writing. The astral body can read this occult writing; it can really read it.

Among many other ideas through which one can evoke an understanding of the astral body, one can also have the idea that it is a reader of occult writing. And the etheric body, on the other hand, is, among many other qualities it has, something like a writing tablet in which the occult writing is continually being inscribed through the processes of the world.

While we live - and we always live, whether we are awake or asleep, between birth and death, and from death to a new birth - processes and events are constantly taking place in the universe, in the cosmos. There is essence in the cosmos. All this is imprinted and written into the etheric body. The etheric body of the human being is indeed a true reflection of the entire cosmos. There is nothing in the cosmos that is not impressively imprinted in the etheric body of the human being and, if one wants to use the expression, imaginatively mirrored. And the human astral body is constantly reading what the world inscribes into the etheric body. This takes place in the subconscious, so that the human astral body reads what the world inscribes into the etheric body.

But now, when we ourselves, in our conscious, waking day-life, encounter an event or even an object that makes an impression on us, we form a mental image of this object. When we form this mental image of the object, the astral body is the first to be involved. It is in a state of vehement movement while we form a mental image of an object or form the mental image of the impression of an external event. What we form as an idea, what we experience as soul, is also written into the etheric body of the human being and remains there. Just as the world with its events continually inscribes itself into our etheric body, we also inscribe into our etheric body what we ourselves experience as soul. It remains there inscribed. When we remember something, a complicated process actually takes place. Our astral body reads what has been written into our etheric body, and the result of this reading is the emergence of an image that we call a memory.

Now, in this way, memory would be traced back to a kind of reading of our astral body in the etheric body. And indeed, as soon as we know this, we will no longer arrive at the naive idea that the soul is a kind of storage cabinet for what we have experienced, but we will see: there are in fact few habits - I say explicitly habits, we will understand the word even better tomorrow - into which the astral body repeatedly places itself when it has experienced something, and which it then impresses into the etheric body. Just as our writing has few letters, so our astral body has few, very few habits. And just as we communicate the whole infinite abundance of what human beings have to say to each other about themselves and the world through various groupings of our few letters in writing, so what memory retains is formed from a few habits through their combinations.

If we know that it is a matter of reading, then we will no longer believe that every single experience has to be written down. Instead, a few habits of the astral body are combined and then fixed in the etheric body. Just as we can fix a new word with the old letters when we hear it, so we can fix each new experience in the etheric body with a few habits of the astral body. This is because both our etheric body and, in particular, our astral body are connected to the entire cosmos. We must not take what an older wisdom teaching has emphasized from the cosmos as something that was emphasized by chance, but rather it has a deep meaning and importance.

If we take the twelve constellations of the entire zodiac, we can say that our astral body is indeed in living connection with these twelve constellations. These twelve constellations really do mean twelve certain habits for our astral body, twelve certain ways of moving. And then our astral body is also connected with the seven planets, as we have often discussed. These in turn determine certain habits in him. Through these habits – I say expressly 'habits' – which are ignited in our astral body by the planets of our solar system, something similar arises in the astral body to the vowels; and through the habits that are stimulated in it by the influence of the zodiac, something similar arises to the consonants.

What I mean to say is this: Let us assume that at some moment in our lives – and such moments are always present because we are always in contact with the world – our astral body is in contact with the forces that stream out of the constellation of Aries. Because our astral body is in connection or under the particular influence of that which radiates out of the constellation of Aries, the possibility develops in this astral body to close itself in its particular form, to give itself a boundary; while if the astral body is more under the influence of Libra, a movement develops in it that allows it to be more open to the rest of the world.

Thus a definite tendency of motion develops under the influence of each constellation. Under the influence of this or that constellation, the astral body particularly stretches its upper part upwards, and under the influence of one of the other constellations, it particularly stretches its lower part. Twelve such special movements correspond to twelve such habits, and in turn seven special habits under the influence of the planets. These are more inner movements under the influence of the planets, whereby the inner parts move or bring themselves into a relationship with each other. Thus, our astral body has, in fact, 12 + 7 = 19 habits, implanted by the cosmos.

Just as we can write anything with our characters, with the signs for the vowels and consonants by combining them, if we want to express what we bring to light with our wisdom, so our astral body forms everything it has to form through the combinations of these nineteen habits. When a person comes up to us with a face that looks at us in a certain way, good or evil, our astral body makes certain movements that are combined from these nineteen habits. This is then written into the etheric body, and at a later time the astral body can read what is written into the etheric body. And that is what memory is based on! As soon as you go beyond what the senses and the mind bound to the senses reveal, you immediately come to the relationship of the human being to the cosmos. The physical body only conceals this relationship of the human being to the cosmos.

We therefore have a continuous inner reading, and if we could go back, also historically, to the origin of writing, we would find that in fact in the oldest pictographic writings, man is imitated in this inner reading of man. It is not the case that writing came about by chance, but the original consonant signs were imitations of the signs of the zodiac and the original vowel signs were imitations of the planetary images. The outer reading was nothing more than a reproduction in the outer world of what man had as an inner reading.

This is connected with the attitude that people in ancient times had towards the art of writing. It was considered to be something tremendously sacred because it was taken from cosmic secrets. And it is still known from Egyptian culture that the copyists, if they made mistakes, exposed themselves to the most severe punishments, even the death penalty, depending on the magnitude of the mistake they made, under the strict laws there, if the mistake was big enough. It was considered something infinitely high and sacred to write down what man could know of the sacred secrets, because one still had a sense of the context of these characters and all the sacred secrets of human nature and their connection with the divine.

That is the important thing, as we gradually absorb spiritual science within us, to regain the sense of the sacredness of the hidden pages of human nature. This sense is much more important than the mere theoretical absorption of spiritual-scientific things. But it is also connected with the fact that at the moment when, in the course of the development of humanity, one had to give up all connection with the sacred of Scripture, one also felt that, basically, I would say, something creepy was taking place in the history of humanity. Take a book from a library from the early Middle Ages and try to imagine how such a book came into being, how a monk, I would say, spent years, even decades, writing this book, how he spent a long, long time painting a single letter. Then one knew that writing was considered something sacred. One knew that through writing one was connected to the good gods, and in a sense what one entrusted to writing was a carrying out into the outer world of what comes from the good gods.

But you know, it is a sign of evolution that everything that comes from the good gods can be distorted in the world by Ahriman or Lucifer. The moment when the very ordinary art of printing was created, which then developed into that from which man mainly draws his wisdom today, by bending his head over the paper on which there are horrible signs, which are only the ape-like old characters that reveal to him what people thought or did not think about the world and its secrets, the art of writing was shifted. As a result, the written word has indeed entered a new stage, the stage where it has lost all nimbus of the sacred, where the Ahrimanic stage of written communication has begun, so to speak. And so, just as the ancient characters are the externalization of hidden secrets, albeit in a reproduction, in symbolism, just as these characters are the externalization of hidden secrets into the outer world, and just as these secrets correspond to the nature of the entities of the spiritual world that progress in the good sense. What we have today, especially in the form of printed matter – but in a broader sense it also applies to handwriting – is of a distinctly Ahrimanic character. And the people sensed this when they attributed the art of printing to the 'black forces', calling it a 'black art', and even attributing its invention to the devil.

There is a deeper connection when one associates the invention of the art of printing with Faust, just as Goethe associates the art of printing with what Faust goes through in a certain phase of his life. The Ahrimanic epoch of the art of communication has arrived with the invention of printing. We know, of course, that we must rightly unlearn to make a sign of the cross before all things that are called Ahrimanic. But we also know that we must call things by their right name and understand them. We, as spiritual scientists, must not be among those who say: the art of printing is Ahrimanic, so we must therefore eradicate it. We will not do that, it would never occur to us, because we understand that the Ahrimanic is also necessary in world evolution, that it also belongs to world progress. But we must also see things as they are. We must not reinterpret things in order to make it easier for ourselves, to allow ourselves to live in the world without Lucifer and Ahriman. It is more pleasant not to know that Ahriman stares at us from almost every book we read today. But it is necessary for those who see the world in its true light to endure this state and not to reinterpret it into something else. To understand the world is the task of those who feel more and more drawn to spiritual science.

In our time, we see an external natural science that would like to reduce everything to a kind of mechanical movement of the smallest mass particles. I have often spoken about this world view that external natural science is creating of our world. We are told: Oh, colors - red, yellow, green, violet, blue - are nothing but vibrations in reality! Color is only something that the eye causes. From so and so much vibration of the ether, red arises, from so and so much vibration yellow, from so and so much blue, from so and so much vibration violet. - And one would like to say that the modern world observer has the tendency to erase from the world picture that which he perceives with his senses in the world and to replace it with a material vortex.

One of the last great minds to have rebelled against this, which can be called a whirling dance of material particles, especially in the field of the theory of colors, is Goethe. And because the modern world has increasingly embraced this materialistic view, this obliteration of the manifold world around us, it has not been able to understand what Goethe actually wanted to say in his theory of colors.

Spiritual science will restore some order here, and Goethe's theory of colors will be appreciated to the extent that spiritual science permeates people. For Goethe, it undoubtedly seemed like a kind of madness - I say “madness”, but given his particular expressions, he might also have said “great madness” - to think that the colors flooding the world are nothing more than what the eye evokes from a vortex of vibrations, from a vibrating cosmos.

This vibrating cosmos – I have often referred to it as a fantasy of modern science – was simply not present for Goethe; for him, it was one of Mephistopheles's temptations. With his alert senses, Goethe was truly devoted to the full range of colors and the flood of colors in the world, and he lived in the flood of colors. It would have seemed to him the most desolate gray theory if he had had to replace this flooding sea of colors with the horrible vibrations of modern physics.

Why was that? Because Goethe - one may say the word in the deepest sense - had a universally developed, healthy human nature and through this healthy human nature always strove to place himself in the right relationship to the world. Such a healthy nature - I will now say something seemingly very trivial, but it is not trivial, rather it contains a significant wisdom - such a nature as Goethe's also sleeps healthily. Yes, a trivial truth! But for the spiritual researcher, healthy sleep actually means a great deal. During sleep, the human being is outside of his physical and etheric body, present in his I and his astral body. There he is truly immersed in the experiences that bring his astral body into connection with the entire starry cosmos, for example. Everything that can be influenced by the zodiacal constellations and the planets lights up in the astral body. Just as the human being lives with the external world in a state of wakefulness, so the human being lives with the world of the stars in a state of sleep. But you all know that: the human being does not know very much about this life with the world of the stars, and that is important to understand why the human being does not know much about this coexistence with the world of the stars. Why is that?

You don't overlook a landscape when it is covered with fog. The fog moves across the landscape and the parts of the landscape, the rivers, mountains, plains and so on, do not appear to us when they are interspersed with fog. In the same way, when a person sleeps, they are permeated by a fog, a mental fog. What is this mental fog? It is a fog of desires, consists of desires, and these desires are formed by the longing for the physical body. When the person is out of the physical body and etheric bodies, that is, in the time from falling asleep to waking up, he continually has the desire for the physical body; he wants to return to his physical body. He is taken out of the physical body by the forces of the cosmos, and only when these forces release him does he slip back into the physical body when he wakes up. There his desire for the physical body is satisfied again.

In a person like Goethe, healthy sleep is present because the desire for the physical body is less than in some other people, and therefore the influences from the cosmos are greater than in other people during sleep. You can easily imagine a person like Goethe being more receptive to the influences of the cosmos during sleep, and that is his healthy sleep. The desire for the physical body is there, but healthier than in other people. And why is it healthier? It is healthier precisely because Goethe is so healthily devoted to the impressions of the outside world while awake, because, for example, he did not allow himself to substitute something theoretical, such as vibrations, for colors, but because he observed colors themselves in their reality, in their full-bodied reality. There is a difference between a person like Goethe, who, although full of wisdom, walks through nature and sees green as green, violet as violet, and the relationship of green to violet or to yellow and so on, and thus sees the content directly as color, or whether a dry theorist walks through the field and does not see the colors, but speculates about what kind of a trillion or a million vibrations correspond to green or red or yellow.

Why does he then go through the world as such a dry theorist? Because he is not devoted to the world of colors, but because he is too strongly devoted to his physical body, even if it is initially his physical brain. All gray theory arises from being too devoted to the physical body during the waking hours. We would not have any materialistic theories today if people had not been so strongly devoted to the physical body. The more a person selflessly devotes himself to the things of the world during waking life, the more he has the opportunity to be devoted to the influences of the extraterrestrial cosmos during sleep, and then to bring back the healthy after-effects of these impressions into daily life. Then he will not, like the dried-up physicist described above, see swirling atomic vortices behind the flowing colors, but spirit, elementary spirituality, real spiritual activity.

Thus, to know that behind the impressions of the senses is the living spiritual world is an after-effect of healthy sleep. For when one cannot, during the waking hours, selflessly surrender to what is flowing outside in the world, but instead forms horrible theories about it, which are actually phantasms, then when one falls asleep one has a stronger overpowering urge for the physical body and not only darkens one's consciousness towards the impressions during sleep, but also lessens, besides one's consciousness, the intensity and strength of these impressions themselves. This is connected with the fact that, in fact, the more spiritual science is taken to life the human soul life, the more precisely such wisdom as Goethean physics will take hold of people again, compared to the dull theories that are now wreaking havoc in external science.

The assimilation of spiritual science in humanity is connected with many things. It will truly mean a tremendous change when the general consciousness is once imbued with the truth: at night, you as a human being are in the extra-terrestrial universe in a spiritual way and in the daytime you immerse yourself in your physical and etheric bodies. There is much that we will learn to feel and sense together with this knowledge.

For example, let us now turn to something more spiritual. We will have to learn that what we call life with the folk spirit, with the folk soul, to which we count ourselves in the narrower sense, is present when we enter the physical and etheric bodies of the human being. Thus, we are in contact with the national soul from the moment we awaken until we fall asleep, for that which the national soul is, the forces and activities it develops, are poured into the physical body and the etheric body: into the physical body more the racial aspect, into the etheric body more the national aspect. It is poured into the veils we enter when we awaken. In this way we are actually continually exchanging forces with our own folk soul. The science that is universally human, that has nothing to do with the configurations and differentiations that are poured into people through the folk souls, this science must indeed be won by that part of human nature that can free itself, can become independent of the physical, just as a person is independent of it when asleep. This science is necessarily general and human because it is gained through those members of human nature that are independent of the physical body and the etheric body.

If one were to assume that someone who can truly see into the spiritual world and gain knowledge of it could be bound by popular prejudices, then one would simply not take the secrets of initiation into due consideration. Just as life in sleep is quite different from waking life in the cases mentioned above, but the two are related, so it is also with regard to the relationship between the human being and the nature of the folk soul. From the moment a person falls asleep until they wake up, they are not together with the forces that come directly from the folk soul, for these can only be sent into the physical and etheric bodies alone. Thus, anyone who has attained conscious inner experience of their ego and their astral body is, while experiencing this, experiencing what they then have to form into spiritual science, yes, outside of the physical and etheric body; they experience outside of the physical and etheric body. But one is nevertheless not outside the world. While one is with one's folk spirit as soon as one slips into one's physical body and thus also into one's etheric body, one is outside one's own folk soul when one slips out of the physical and etheric bodies, as it is when sleeping or in initiation, which works into the physical and etheric bodies. One is outside, but one is not outside the realm of folk souls in general, because they are spiritual beings. And when one is outside one's physical and etheric body in the spiritual world, one is actually only outside of one folk soul that has a particular significance for one at the present time, namely, one's own folk soul, the one that is active in the physical and etheric bodies. By being in community with it or coming into community with it during waking hours, interest in it is lost during sleep and during initiation. The peculiar fact emerges that during sleep and during initiation one is essentially with all other folk souls, only not with one's own.

So if you imagine the round dance of contemporary folk souls, then as a human being, when you are in your physical body and perceive it while you are awake, you are together with your own folk soul; but when you are asleep or in a state of initiation, you are together with all the other folk souls, except your own. That is an objective truth.

Now you can see how nonsensical it would be for someone who can consciously be with other folk souls to fail to recognize the other folk souls, or to treat them with sympathy or antipathy. It is as if one did not want to recognize the folk souls. Only for the one who has not progressed to initiation does it make sense to feel sympathy or antipathy for this or that folk soul, because he does not know that he is really together with the other folk souls for the sleeping half of his life. But there is a difference now. While in waking life one is connected, so to speak, with one national soul, with one's own, in sleeping life one is connected with the other national souls, thus not with the effects that emanate from one, but with the interaction of the others, so to speak with what the other national souls perform as a round dance in harmony.

So you can easily imagine life with one folk soul and life with the other folk souls. The former is life when awake, the latter is life when asleep. During sleep or during initiation, you are with the interaction of the other folk souls. A person cannot be alone with their own folk soul unless they are constantly awake. It is quite impossible for him to do so, because he would have to be constantly awake. The difference is that when we are awake, we exchange forces with our own folk soul; when we are asleep, we do not exchange forces with our own, but with the totality, with the roundelay of the other folk souls.

But there is a way to be with a particular folk soul even in sleep, to be more influenced by the forces emanating from one folk soul rather than from the totality of folk souls. Then, in sleep, one is, as it were, spellbound by this one folk soul. The remedy for this is to particularly hate this folk soul when awake. A folk soul that one particularly hates while awake is torn out of the dance of the other folk souls and it captivates and fetters one to its particular characteristics. If I may express myself in a trivial way, my dear friends, it must be said - you will not hold it against me in this case: to really hate a national soul in the waking state is to condemn oneself to having to sleep with that national soul! This is truly an occult truth, albeit a distressing one, a truth about which there is really nothing to laugh. This must be faced if one also wants to gain an understanding from a certain point of view of how spiritual science must influence by spreading itself throughout the world, the attitudes of people, how it must permeate all feeling and sensing.

I have deliberately formulated what I have to say about the relationship between the human being and the folk soul in a way that makes you laugh. I had to do that because very often, as an occultist, one has the tendency to help people through what is most harrowing, most tragic, not by saying it in all its tragic gravity, since that would crush people, but by saying it in such a way that it helps people to be able to absorb it like any other scientific idea.

However, it should not be forgotten that spiritual science shows us in a very thorough way to what extent we want to accept the world as Maja. Because as soon as we penetrate into spiritual science with the deepest seriousness, it becomes serious, I would say, it becomes really deeply serious with it and with all that it should be for man. It may be said that most people today still have something against spiritual science because they cannot understand with their intellect what spiritual science is actually supposed to make of man. People today do not understand the basic nerve of spiritual science. But it is not only that they cannot understand it with their intellect, there is something much deeper. When we penetrate deeper into the wisdom of spiritual science, we find that it also makes demands on our minds and wills. It shows us the human being in a light that we usually do not want to have ourselves. Not only does our mind prefer to turn to Maja than to reality, but so does our will.

If I may speak in a trivial way again, I can say: it is extremely uncomfortable to live with the deeper wisdom of spiritual science, because life must take on a different face under the influence of spiritual science. In the moment when one knows what it means when Capesius and Strader stand opposite each other in their spiritual forms and exchange words, but in truth these words cause tumult and turmoil in the most elementary forces of the world, in that moment, when one knows what is is going on in the world, in the whole cosmos, when a person experiences this or that in his soul, then the full seriousness of spiritual science becomes apparent, and only then do we realize how people not only want to live in maya with their minds, but also with their wills. We need only develop this or that sympathy or this or that antipathy, and what we do there then becomes the cause of being driven as a sleeping or dead human being into the realm of this or that being of the cosmos and effecting this or that there. For through our being with this or that being of the cosmos, cosmic events happen again.

With such words, one would like to evoke a feeling of how spiritual science really wants to speak not only to people's minds, but to grasp the whole person, the whole soul, because people's lives today are at a stage from which the signs of the times clearly show us how this life must be grasped if it is to continue, by that wave which encompasses the spiritual secrets and does not merely leave man in Maya, but leads him into true reality. These are the things we must consider if we want to come to a deeper understanding of our spiritual scientific will. And tomorrow we will continue to speak of such things and will probably end up with something that is connected with a fundamental idea of our structure.

Dear children!¹ Last time I was able to be here, I told you how glad I am when our dear friend Herr Molt comes to pick me up in Dornach, where the school for big people, for grown-ups, is being built.² Then I can be with you again for a little while and see what you are doing.

And why am I so glad when Herr Molt comes to bring me here? Because it makes me think, “Now I am going to the school that was founded for our dear children”—that is, for you who are here because you long to become capable people who are ready for life.

Because I have only been here for a short time, I have not been able to see much yet—just the tiny little folks in the first grade, and the eighth grade—but what I did see gave me great pleasure. I saw how patiently and lovingly the first grade teacher had helped the children make some progress, and I was privileged to spend a very nice lesson with the eighth grade students. They were hearing about what human history tells us of how human beings on earth are involved in an evolution, an ongoing progress, that is driven by the spirit: Something that lives in human history gives us the desire to work on into the future. The spirit in which this was being conveyed to the souls of our dear young friends in the eighth grade was very beautiful. I am looking forward to seeing all the other classes, too. I am always pleased when I see how what our friend Herr Molt planted here is beginning to develop.

You entered this school when the fall was approaching. At that time we tried to think about what we would experience here and what we wanted to foster—love for each other, love for our teachers, love for God, who speaks to us from everything. And now, while you have been enjoying what your teachers presented to you each morning, you have also been experiencing what comes up out of the earth, what the spring draws out of it. You have seen the trees growing green. And now we remember what we hear when we go out into the woods. We hear the songbirds, and we are glad.

But today we have also heard something else, something for which I am especially thankful. We have heard you, under the direction of your teachers, express something that comes from inside of you. We can hear the birds singing out in the woods, and we can also hear what you have expressed to us, but there is a difference between them.

We are glad when we hear the little birds singing. But we know that something else is present when we hear what you perform for us. This is something that we call the human soul. It is your human souls that speak to us and sing to us. This is what human beings make out of what speaks to them out there in nature. In the woods, we hear the birds, but when you sing many other things that are heard come toward us out from the human soul.

But there are also other things out there in nature. You see how the plants grow and the trees turn green. All of this is called forth by the light. Light floods the entire universe. Light and warmth are what call everything up out of the earth, all those things that delight your eyes and hearts. What sounds in your ears, brought to you through the patience and persistence of your teachers, what travels through the world as light and then enters your eyes—we hear all of this resounding from you, not only when you sing and dance, but also when you tell what you have learned to calculate and what you have learned about everything that is human. In your souls, this turns to light. And just think what the plants would be without the sun. They would not be able to come out of the ground. They would always remain roots that would not be able to develop flowers, and it would be dark. This is what it would be like for you if you went through the world without ever finding a school where you could learn something. You would be like a plant that never finds the sun. The soul finds its sun in people from whom it can learn something.

This is why we are so glad that a school like this has been founded as a result of Herr Molt’s insight, and why you are so glad to be able to be in a school that you love. Seek the light of the soul, just as the plants seek the light and warmth of the sun!

I do not want to always say the same things to you, because I also do not want to always hear the same things when I come, but there is one thing that I want to hear from you again and again. You must answer me; this is what I am most curious about. And so I ask you, children, do you still love your teachers? [“Yes!” shout the children.] That is what I want to hear from the majority of you. That is what you are meant to take up into your souls. Love for your teachers will support you as you go out into life. Again and again, each time I come here, I would like to experience that you have made progress in learning, but I would also like you to show me that you have continued to love your teachers. You can be sure that in the great building that is being built for grown-ups in Dornach, where big people are meant to learn something, we all think about the Waldorf School here, and we think of it with love and joy. There are a lot of people who are thinking of the Waldorf School with love today, and they are thinking, “How good and capable these people will grow up to be, since as children they were filled with love for their teachers.”

Oh, there is something I must tell you—Frau Steiner sends her greetings, since she cannot be here today.

There is a spirit that is always meant to prevail here, a spirit that your teachers bring to this place. From the spirit of the cosmos, they learn to bring this spirit here to you; they take in what St. Paul said with all of their souls. The spirit of Christ prevails throughout our school; whether we are doing arithmetic, reading, writing, or whatever we do, we do it with the attitude that the Christ awakened in us:

“I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”³

This is the spirit that is meant to prevail here, and it will do so through what your teachers bring to you with love, patience and endurance. May it also prevail through what lives in your souls!

Be with this spirit when you are in your class, and think of it when you leave. Be glad in your souls that you are coming back to the Waldorf School where the sun is lit for you, the sun that people need for life.

If there is someone among you who does not pay attention, there should be one of you who can go to that person and lovingly say, “Hey, hard work and paying attention get us up the mountain of life. Upward, friend! You should always be going up the mountain of life.”⁴ This is how each of you should help the friend who falters a little—all of you for each one, all for one, one for all, lovingly. Love needs to be present among you, for each other and for your teachers. This is something we want to cultivate as part of the good spirit of the Waldorf School.

• 1. Rudolf Steiner had suggested that the students gather at the school for a brief celebration instead of the monthly day off from school that was the custom in Baden-Württemberg. The mood of the course of the year was to form the background for this event and the classes were to show each other what they had been working on in recitation, drama, music, and eurythmy, or in foreign languages, gymnastics, and so on. Rudolf Steiner also gave a talk at these assemblies whenever he could be in Stuttgart.
• 2. The wooden building of the Goetheanum, the Free School of Spiritual Science, was under construction from 1913-1921.
• 3. Matthew 28:20.
• 4. In the original German, this is a reference to a song sung by the students at the beginning of the assembly.

Dear children!

Last time I was able to be here, I told you how gladI am when our dear friend Herr Molt comes to pick me up in Dornach, where the school for big people, for grown-ups, is being built.¹ Then I can be with you again for a little while and see what you are doing.

And why am I so glad when Herr Molt comes to bring me here? Because it makes me think, “Now I am going to the school that was founded for our dear children”—that is, for you who are here because you long to become capable people who are ready for life.

Because I have only been here for a short time, I have not been able to see much yet—just the tiny little folks in the first grade, and the eighth grade—but what I did see gave me great pleasure. I saw how patiently and lovingly the first grade teacher had helped the children make some progress, and I was privileged to spend a very nice lesson with the eighth grade students. They were hearing about what human history tells us of how human beings on earth are involved in an evolution, an ongoing progress, that is driven by the spirit: Something that lives in human history gives us the desire to work on into the future, the spirit in which this was being conveyed to the souls of our dear young friends in the eighth grade was very beautiful. I am looking forward to seeing all the other classes, too. I am always pleased when I see how what our friend Herr Molt planted here is beginning to develop.

You entered this school when the fall was approaching. At that time we tried to think about what we would experience here and what we wanted to foster—love for each other, love for our teachers, love for God, who speaks to us from everything. And now, while you have been enjoying what your teachers presented to you each morning, you have also been experiencing what comes up out of the earth, what the spring draws out of it. You have seen the trees growing green. And now we remember what we hear when we go out into the woods. We hear the songbirds, and we are glad.

But today we have also heard something else, something for which I am especially thankful. We have heard you, under the direction of your teachers, express something that comes from inside of you. We can hear the birds singing out in the woods, and we can also hear what you have expressed to us, but there is a difference between them.

We are glad when we hear the little birds singing. But we know that something else is present when we hear what you perform for us. This is something that we call the human soul. It is your human souls that speak to us and sing to us. This is what human beings make out of what speaks to them out there in nature. In the woods, we hear the birds, but when you sing many other things that are heard come toward us out from the human soul.

But there are also other things out there in nature. You see how the plants grow and the trees turn green. All of this is called forth by the light. Light floods the entire universe. Light and warmth are what call everything up out of the earth, all those things that delight your eyes and hearts. What sounds in your ears, brought to you through the patience and persistence of your teachers, what travels through the world as light and then enters your eyes—we hear all of this resounding from you, not only when you sing and dance, but also when you tell what you have learned to calculate and what you have learned about everything that is human. In your souls, this turns to light. And just think what the plants would be without the sun. They would not be able to come out of the ground. They would always remain roots that would not be able to develop flowers, and it would be dark. This is what it would be like for you if you went through the world without ever finding a school where you could learn something. You would be like a plant that never finds the sun. The soul finds its sun in people from whom it can learn something.

This is why we are so glad that a school like this has been founded as a result of Herr Molt's insight, and why you are so glad to be able to be in a school that you love. Seek the light of the soul, just as the plants seek the light and warmth of the sun!

I do not want to always say the same things to you, because I also do not want to always hear the same things when I come, but there is one thing that I want to hear from you again and again. You must answer me; this is what I am most curious about. And so I ask you, children, do you still love your teachers? [“Yes!” shout the children.] That is what I want to hear from the majority of you. This is what you are meant to take up into your souls. Love for your teachers will support you as you go out into life. Again and again, each time I come here, I would like to experience that you have made progress in learning, but I would also like you to show me that you have continued to love your teachers. You can be sure that in the great building that is being built for grown-ups in Dornach, where big people are meant to learn something, we all think about the Waldorf School here, and we think of it with love and joy. There are a lot of people who are thinking of the Waldorf School with love today, and they are thinking, “How good and capable these people will grow up to be, since as children they were filled with love for their teachers.”

Oh, there is something I must tell you—Frau Steiner sends her greetings, since she cannot be here today.

There is a spirit that is always meant to prevail here, a spirit that your teachers bring to this place. From the spirit of the cosmos, they learn to bring this spirit here to you; they take in what St. Paul said with all of their souls. The spirit of Christ prevails throughout our school; whether we are doing arithmetic, reading, writing, or whatever we do, we do it with the attitude that the Christ awakened in us:

“I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”

Matthew 28:20.

This is the spirit that is meant to prevail here, and it will do so through what your teachers bring to you with love, patience and endurance. May it prevail through what lives in your souls!

Be with this spirit when you are in your class, and think of it when you leave. Be glad in your souls that you are coming back to the Waldorf School where the sun is lit for you, the sun that people need for life.

If there is someone among you who does not pay attention, there should be one of you who can go to that person and lovingly say, “Hey, hard work and paying attention get us up the mountain of life. Upward, friend! You should always be going up the mountain of life.”² This is how each of you should help the friend who falters a little—all of you for each one, all for one, one for all, lovingly. Love needs to be present among you, for each other and for your teachers. This is something we want to cultivate as part of the good spirit of the Waldorf School.

• 1. The wooden building of the Goetheanum, the Free School of Spiritual Science, was under construction from 1913–1921.
• 2. In the original German, this is a reference to a song sung by the students at the beginning of the assembly.

We have been occupied in showing how those spiritual forces that we call the luciferic and ahrimanic powers play their part in the historical growth of mankind. We have seen how what is to be carried over from one age into another in the course of world evolution is carried over through such powers, and we have been at pains to show how in the desires, instincts and strivings for knowledge, in the impulses, too, of man's social life, something is present that can only be grasped concretely when one recognizes those super-sensible forces that underlie world historical evolution. We have seen how what must come to expression in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch has been in preparation since the fifteenth century. We have seen what new faculties of mankind have evolved in the whole European cultural life since that time.

If we wish to find a spirit who has brought to expression in the most concentrated and clearest manner what the impulses of our time ought to be, then we can look to Goethe. We have already observed that equally in his conception of nature and in his imaginative world, Goethe has expressed something that can form the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I must remind you today how I have often pointed out that Goethe has expressed in intimate fashion in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily what he regarded as the right impulses of culture, knowledge, feeling and will; that is, what he was obliged to look upon as necessary for the activity of man in the future. He has concealed in his fairy tale what he knew of the spiritually hidden active forces at work in mankind since the fifteenth century, and that will be at work for about two thousand years more. You know, too, how in our Mystery Dramas we have sought to bring to life in all possible detail what Goethe saw when he composed this Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. The intention was to bring to expression, in the way in which it can again be brought to expression today, a hundred years later, what inspired Goethe and is to inspire the entire fifth post-Atlantean culture as the highest spiritual treasure. Such depths of soul underlying so great and powerful a work as the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, in spite of its being symbolic, and such great impulses underlying Goethe's Faust as a poem of mankind, point again and again to forces lying deep below the surface of consciousness. All this worked in such a soul out of the depths of old cultural impulses. Today I should like to speak a little about such cultural impulses in connection with yesterday's lecture, and of how they went through a kind of spiritualizing process in Goethe.

We must go back to that age in which the impulses for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch were first laid down in germ, back before the fifteenth century because things that are to develop spiritually must be prepared long beforehand. One can only recognize how in the European life of soul, as well as in the European social life, in the striving toward the True, the Beautiful and the Good, the normally progressive divine-spiritual forces intermingle in our age with luciferic-ahrimanic powers when one goes back into the time when the earliest impulses were given. We learned about these first impulses of earlier ages yesterday. Today, we will learn about a similar impetus from the middle of medieval times, and come to know how certain spiritual tendencies were born out of human evolution. In doing so, we will no more than indicate the historical background since nowadays one can read about it in any encyclopedia.

In order to describe the configuration of the cultural impulses that underwent a certain spiritualization in Goethe, I must refer to the age in which the impulse of the Crusades arose out of the European will: in fact, out of the Christian impulses of the European will. At the time when the will to visit the Holy Places originated in the civilized inhabitants of Europe there were bitter conflicts in the life there between what are called the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. That is to say, into the progressive, good, truly Christian impulses those other powers worked in, as it were, from the direction that was described yesterday. They worked in the way in which they are permitted by the wise guidance of the world. Thus, what happens in the wise guidance of the world may be duly influenced by other impulses working from the past and interpenetrating the impulses of the present in the way we have described.

When we consider it, among much that brings rejoicing to the soul, among much that originated soon after the Crusaders won their first successes, we see the founding of the Order of the Knights Templar in the year 1119 A.D. Five French knights united under the leadership of Hugo de Payens and, at the holy place where the Mystery of Golgotha occurred, they founded an order dedicated entirely to the Mystery of Golgotha. Its first important home was close to the place where Solomon's Temple once stood, so that the holy wisdom from most ancient times and the wisdom of Solomon could work together for Christianity in this spot with all the feelings and sentiments that have arisen from entire and holy devotion toward the Mystery of Golgotha and its Bearer. In addition to the religious vows of duty to their spiritual superiors usual at that time, the first Knights Templar pledged themselves to work together in the most intensive manner to bring under European control the place where the events of the Mystery of Golgotha had occurred.

The Written and unwritten rules of the Order were such that the Knights were to think of nothing except how they could completely fill themselves in heart and soul with the sacred Mystery of Golgotha, and how with every drop of their blood they could help bring the holy places within the sphere of influence of European authority. In each moment of their lives they were to think and feel dedicated with all their strength to this task alone, shunning nothing in order to realize it. Their blood was no longer to be their own but was to be devoted solely to the task we have indicated. Were they to meet a power three times as great as themselves, it was commanded that they were not to flee but were to stand firm. In each moment of their lives they were to think that the blood coursing in their veins did not belong to them but to their great spiritual mission. Whatever wealth they might acquire belonged to no one individual but to the Order alone. Should a member of the Order be killed, no booty should be available to the enemy except the hempen cord girding his loins. This cord was the sign of their work, which was freely undertaken for what was then regarded as the healing of the European spirit. A great and mighty task was set, less to thought than to deep feeling, which aimed at strengthening the soul life as individual and personal with the intention that it might be entirely absorbed in the progressive stream of Christian evolution.

This was the star, as it were, that was to shine before the Knights Templar in all that they thought, felt and understood. With this an impulse was given, which in its broader activity—on the wider extension of the Templar Order from Jerusalem over the countries of Europe—should have led to a certain penetration of European life by a Christian spirit. With respect to the immeasurable zeal that existed in the souls of these Knights, the powers who have to hold evolution back, leading the souls to become estranged from the earth and to led away from it to a special planet, leaving the earth uninhabited, those powers who desired this, set to work quite especially on souls who felt and thought as did the Knights Templar. They desired to devote themselves entirely to the spirit and could easily be attacked by those forces that wished to carry away the spiritual from the earth. These forces do not want the spiritual to be spread over the earth to permeate earth existence. Indeed, the danger is always at hand that souls may become estranged from the earth, become earth weary, and that earthly humanity may become mechanized.

There we have a powerfully aspiring spiritual life that we can assume will easily be approached by the luciferic temptation; a foothold is here given it. Then we also have, however, at the same time as the spread of the Templar Order over the various countries of Europe, the possibility of a sharp intrusion of ahrimanic powers in Western Europe. At the close of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Templar Order—not the individual Knights but the Order—had attained great prestige and wealth through its activity and had spread over Western Europe, we have a human personality ruling the West who can actually be said to have experienced in his soul a kind of inspiration through the moral, or the immoral, power of gold. He was a man who could definitely use for his inspiration the wisdom materialized from gold. Recollect the Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily in which the Golden King became the representative of wisdom. Since spiritual forces also exist in the various substances, which are always only maya with spiritual forces standing behind that [which] the materialist cannot perceive, it is absolutely possible for gold to become an inspirer.

A highly gifted personality, Philip the Fair, who was equipped with and extraordinary degree of cunning and the most evil ahrimanic wisdom, had access to this inspiration through gold. Philip IV, who reigned in France from 1285 to 1314, can really be said to have had a genius for avarice. He felt the instinctive urge to recognize nothing else in the world but what can be paid for with gold, and he was willing to concede power over gold to none but himself. He wished to bring forcibly under his control all the power that can be exercised through gold. This grew in him to be the immense passion that has become famous in history. When Pope Boniface forbade the French clergy to pay taxes to the State, this fact, in itself not very important, led Philip to make a law forbidding anyone to take gold and silver out of France. All of it was to remain there, such was his will, and only he was to have control of it. One might say that this was his idiosyncrasy. He sought to keep gold and silver for himself and gave a debased currency to his subjects and others. Uproar and resentment among the people could not prevent him from carrying out this policy, so that, when he made a last attempt to mix as little gold and silver as possible in the coinage, he had to flee, on the occasion of a popular riot, to the Temple of the Knights Templar. Driven to do so by his own severe regulations, he had had his treasures deposited for safety with them. He was astounded to see how quickly the Knights calmed the popular uprising. At the same time, he was filled with fear because he had seen how great was the moral power of the knights over the people, and how little he, who was only inspired by gold, availed against them. The Knights, too, had by this time acquired rich treasure and were immensely wealthy, but according to their rules, they were obliged to place all the riches of the Order in the service of spiritual activity and creative work.

When a passion is so strong as avarice was in Philip the Fair, it presses out strong forces from the soul that have a great influence on the unfolding of the will toward other men. To the nation, Philip counted for little, but he meant much to those who were his vassals, and these constituted a great host. He also understood how to use his power. As Pope Boniface had once opposed his will to make the clergy in France pay as much as possible, Philip hatched a plot against him. Boniface was freed by his followers but he died of grief soon after. This was at the time when Philip undertook to bring the entire Church completely under his control, thereby making Church officials mere bondsmen of the kingly power in which gold ruled. He thereupon caused the removal of the Pope to Avignon, which marked the beginning of what is often known in history as the “Babylonian Captivity” of the papacy. This lasted from the year 1309 to 1377.

Pope Clement V, former Bishop of Bordeaux, resided in Avignon and was a tool completely in the hands of Philip. Gradually, under the working of Philip's powerful will, he had reached the point of having no longer a will of his own, but used his ecclesiastical power only to serve Philip, carrying out all he desired. Philip was filled with a passionate desire to make himself master of all the then available wealth. After he had seen what a different significance gold could have in other hands, it was no wonder that he wished above all things to exterminate those other hands, the Knights Templar, so that he might confiscate their gold and posses their treasure himself. Now, I said that such a passion, aroused in such a materialistic way and working so intensely, creates powerful forces in the soul. At the same time, it creates knowledge, although of an ahrimanic order. So it was possible for a certain second-hand sort of knowledge to arise in the soul of Philip, of those methods that we have seen flame up in the harshest, most horrible way in the Mexican mysteries. The knowledge arose in Philip of what can be brought about by taking life in the correct way, although in a different, more indirect way from that of the Mexican initiates. As if out of deep subconscious impulses, he found the means of incorporating such impulses into humanity's evolution by putting men to death. For this, he needed victims. In a quite remarkable way this devilish instinct of Philip's harmonized with what developed of necessity in the bosom of the Knights, resulting from the dedication of their lives to the things I have indicated.

Naturally, where something great and noble arises, as it did among the Knights Templar, much that does not belong—perhaps even immorality—becomes attached to that greatness and nobleness. There were, of course, Knights who could be reproached for all sorts of things; that shall not be denied. But there was nothing of this kind in the spirit of the foundation of the Order, for what the knights had accomplished for Jerusalem stood first, and then what could be accomplished for the Christianizing of the whole of European culture. Gradually the Knights spread out in highly influential societies over England, France, Spain, part of Italy and Central Europe. They spread everywhere. In each single Knight was developed to the highest degree this complete penetration of the soul with the feeling and experience of the Mystery of Golgotha and of all that is connected with the Christian impulse. The force of this union with the Christ was strong and intensive. He was a true Knight Templar who no longer knew anything of himself, but when he felt, he let the Christ feel in him; when he thought, he let the Christ think in him; when he was filled with enthusiasm, he let the Christ in him be enthusiastic. They were perhaps few in whom this ideal had worked a complete transformation, a metamorphosis of the soul life, and who had really often brought the soul out of the body and enabled it to live in the spiritual world, but in respect of the entire Order they were, for all that, a considerable number. Something quite remarkable and powerful had thus entered into the circle of the Templar Order without their having known the rules of the Christian initiation other than through sacrificial service. At first in the Crusades, then in the spiritual work in Europe, their souls were so inspired by intense devotion to the Christian impulse and the Mystery of Golgotha that consequently many Knights experienced a Christian initiation. We have before us the following world historical event: on the world historical basis of the experience of a number of men, the Christian initiation, which is to say the perception of those spiritual worlds that are accessible to men through Christian initiation, arises from the fundamental depths of human development.

Such events always call forth opposing forces, which, indeed, in those times were abundantly at hand. What thus enters the world is not only loved; it is also excessively hated. In Philip, however, there was less hatred than the desire to rid the world of such a Society and to filch from it the treasure that had flowed abundantly to it and that was used only in the service of the spirit.

Now in such an initiation as was experienced by a number of the Knights, there is always the possibility of perceiving not only the beneficent, the divine, but also the luciferic and ahrimanic forces. All that draws men down into the ahrimanic world and up into the luciferic, appears, to him who goes through such an initiation, side by side with the insight into the normal worlds. The one thus initiated is confronted with all the sufferings, temptations and trials that come upon man through the powers hostile to good. He has moments in which the good spiritual world disappears before his spiritual gaze, the gaze of his soul, and he sees himself as though imprisoned by what tries to gain power over him. He sees himself in the hands of the ahrimanic-luciferic forces that wish to seize him to gain control of his willing, feeling, thinking and sense perception. These, indeed, are spiritual trials that are well-known from the descriptions of those who have seen into the spiritual world.

There were many in the circle of the Knights Templar who could gain a deep insight into the Mystery of Golgotha and its meaning and into Christian symbolism as it had taken shape through the development of the Last Supper. They beheld as well the deep background of this symbolism. Many a one who in consequence of his Christian initiation could look into the Christian impulses passing through the historical evolution of the European peoples, also saw something else; he experienced it in his own soul, as it were, since it always again came over him as a temptation. Recognizing the unconscious capabilities of the human soul, he repeatedly overcame the temptation that showed itself to him. The initiate thus became conscious of it and sought to overcome what otherwise remained in the subconscious. Many Knights learned to know the devilish urge that takes possession of the will and feeling to debase the Mystery of Golgotha. In the dream pictures by which many such initiates were haunted, appeared in vision the reverse, as it were, of the veneration of the symbol of the crucifix. This was possible owing to the way in which the initiation had come about, and particularly because the luciferic forces had stood close by with their temptation. He saw in vision how the human soul could become capable of dishonoring the symbol of the Cross and the holy ritual of the Consecration of the Host. He saw those human forces that urge men to return to ancient paganism, to worship what the pagans worshipped and to scorn the advance to Christianity. These men knew how the human soul could succumb to such temptation since they had to overcome it consciously.

You are looking here into a life of soul of which outer history relates but little. Philip the Fair, through his ahrimanic gold initiation, had also a correct knowledge of these facts of soul life, even if only instinctively. He knew enough of it, however, to be able to communicate it to his vassals. Now, after a cruel judicial process had been contrived involving all manner of investigation, a course of action, decided upon beforehand, was begun. Plots were made, instigated by Philip together with his vassals who had been summoned to make investigations against the Knights. Although they were innocent, they were accused of every imaginable vice. One day in France they were suddenly attacked and thrown into prison. During their confinement their treasures were seized.

Trials were now arranged in which, entirely under the influence of Philip, torture was extensively employed. Every Knight to be found was subjected to the severest torture. Here, therefore, torture was also used to take life, the significance of which you have already learned to know. The intention of Philip was to put to the rack as many persons as possible, and the torture was applied in the most cruel way so that many of the harassed Knights lost consciousness. Philip knew that the pictures of the temptations emerged when, in terrible agony on the rack, their consciousness became clouded. He knew: the images of temptation come out! Under his instigation a catechism of leading questions was so arranged that the answers were always suggested in the way the questions were put. The Knights' answers were, of course, given out of a consciousness dulled by the torture. They were asked, “Have you denied the Host and refrained from speaking the words of Consecration?” In their clouded consciousness the Knights acknowledged these things. The powers opposing the good spoke out of their vision and, whereas in their conscious life they brought the deepest reverence to the symbol of the Cross and the Crucifix, they now accused themselves of spitting upon it; they accused themselves of the most dreadful crimes, which normally lived in their subconscious as temptations. So from the admissions made by the tortured Knights, the story was fabricated that they had worshipped an idol instead of Christ, an idol of a human head with luminous eyes; that on their admittance to the Order they were subjected to repulsive sexual procedures of the vilest nature; that they did not conduct the Transubstantiation in the right way; that they committed the worst sexual offences; that even on their admittance to the Order they forswore the Mystery of Golgotha. The catechizing had been so well organized that even the Grand Master of the order had been tortured into making these subconscious avowals.

It is one of the saddest chapters of human history, but one that can only be understood if one sees clearly that behind the veil of what is related by history stand active forces, and that human life is truly a battlefield. Because of lack of time, I will omit all that might be said further on this subject, but it would be easy to show how there is every ostensible reason for condemning the Knights Templar. Many stood by their avowals, many fled; the majority were condemned and, as stated, even the Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was forced under torture to speak in the way described. Thus it came about that Philip the Fair, Philip IV of France was able to succeed in convincing his vassal, Pope Clement V—it was not difficult—that the Knights had committed the most shameful crimes, that they were the most unchristian heretics. All this the Pope sanctioned with his benediction, and the Order of the Templar was dissolved. Fifty-four Knights, including Jacques de Molay, were burned at the stake. Shortly afterward in other European countries—in England, Spain, then right into Central Europe and Italy—action was also taken against them.

Thus we see how the interpretation of the Mystery of Golgotha and its influence penetrated into the midst of European evolution through the Order of the Templar. In a deeper sense, however, these things must be looked upon as determined by a certain necessity. Humanity was not yet ripe to receive the impulse of wisdom, beauty and strength in the way the Knights desired. Besides, it was determined on grounds we have yet to learn, grounds that lie in the whole spiritual development of Europe, that the spiritual world was not to be attained in the way in which the Templars entered it. It would have been gained too quickly, which is the luciferic way. We actually behold here a most important twofold attack of the forces of Lucifer and Ahriman: Lucifer urging the Knights on, driving them into their misfortune, and Ahriman working actively through the inspiration of Philip the Fair. We see here a significant twofold attack effected in world history.

But what lived and worked in the Knights Templar could not be eradicated. Spiritual life cannot be rooted out; it lives and works on further. With the Knights, notably with the fifty-four who had been burned at the stake through the agency of Philip, many a soul was certainly drawn up into the spiritual world who would still have done much work on the earth in the spirit of the Templar Order, and who would also have attracted pupils to work in the same spirit. But it had to turn out differently. In the spiritual world these souls lived through those experiences they had undergone in the most terrible agonies that were brought about under the influence of the visionary avowals extorted through torture. Their impulses, which now, between their death and their next birth, go out to souls who have since descended, and also to souls who are still above awaiting incarnation, must be metamorphosed from the character of the activity of the physical earthly world into spiritual activity. What now came from the souls of the Knights, who had been murdered in this pitiful way and who before their death by burning had to undergo the most frightful experience a man can suffer, was to become for many others a principle of inspiration. Powerful impulses were to flow down into humanity. We can prove this in the case of many human souls.

Today, however, we will keep more to the sphere of knowledge and intellect as we have done also in the other examples given in recent days. Inspiration from the cosmic knowledge of the Knights Templar—this was always given. The fact that ultimately people came to look on the Templars as heretics after they had been burned to death is not to be wondered at; nor is it to be wondered at that people also believed they had committed all sorts of infamous crimes. Had someone been pleased to condemn as specially heretical the Devil's act, which has just been presented here,¹ in which Mephistopheles, the Lemures and the thick and thin Devils appear, perhaps—I do not know—countless persons in the nation would also look on that as something heretical. The methods of Philip the Fair are, however, no longer employed in the present rather more lamentable times. The cosmic wisdom that these Knights possessed has entered many souls. One could cite many examples of how the inspiration of the Knights Templar had been drawn into souls. I will read you a passage from the poem “Ahasver” by Julius Mosen, which appeared in 1838. As you can read in the lecture cycles, I have often referred to Julius Mosen, the author of the profound poem “Ritter Wahn” (Knight Chimera). In the very first canto of the third section of “Ahasver”, Mosen leads his hero to those parts of the earth where, in Ceylon and the neighboring islands, the region is to be sought that we describe in the cosmology of our spiritual science as the approximate locale of Lemurian evolution. This region of the earth is distinguished in a special way. You know that the magnetic north pole is located at a different point from that of the geographic north pole. Magnetic needles everywhere point toward the magnetic north pole and one can draw magnetic meridians that meet at this point. Up in North America where the magnetic north pole lies, these magnetic meridians go round the earth in straight lines. Remarkably, however, in the Lemurian region the magnetic meridians become sinuous serpentine lines. The magnetic forces are twisted into a serpentine form in this region. People notice these things far too little today. One who sees the living earth, however, knows that magnetism is like a force vivifying the earth;

in the north it goes straight, and in the region of old Lemuria it goes in a tortuous winding line. Just think how profoundly Julius Mosen speaks as he sends his Ahasver toward this region in the first canto of the third epoch—it is divided in epochs—of the poem:

In line direct and straight from Southern Pole
Takes the Magnetic Line its chosen course,
When suddenly it twines in serpent-curve

There before India and its neighbor isles
Before the dungeon where in deepest woe
Sits the Eternal Mother ever bound.

In circle form the Line drew back its length,
And twining swift and secret on itself
With a single plunge in swirling vortex fell.

There the Great Spirit in a first embrace
Held the poor spouse, and from their ardent fire
Sprang the Earth-demons instantly to life.

When thus the first creation came to naught,
The Great, the Nameless Spirit in his wrath
Stamped down the bridal couch beneath the sea.

So it goes on. We see inspiration emerge with wonderfully intuitive knowledge. The wisdom lives on that could only enter the world amid sufferings, tortures, persecutions and the most frightful offences. Nevertheless, it lives on in spiritualized form.

When we seek the most beautiful spiritualizations of this wisdom that has entered the development of Europe, as we have described, then we find one precisely in all that would work and live in the powerful imaginations of Goethe. Goethe knew the secret of the Templars. Not without purpose has he used gold as he has done in his Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, in which he made the snake consume the gold and then sacrifice itself. By this deed the gold is wrested from the powers with which Goethe truly knew it must not be allowed to remain. Gold—naturally everything is also meant here of which gold is a real symbol. Read once more Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily and try to feel how Goethe knew the secret of gold, how, through the way in which he lets gold flow through the fairy tale, he is looking back into earlier times. May I perhaps add here the personal confession that when for the first time in the eighties of the last century, I faced the question of the gold in Goethe's fairy tale, the meaning of the story emerged for me through the development of the gold in it.

Through the way in which Goethe lets gold flow through this fairy tale, he shows how he looks back into the time in which wisdom—for which gold also stands, hence, “The Golden King of Wisdom”—was exposed to such persecutions as those described. Now, he sought to show past, present and future. Goethe saw instinctively into the future of eastern European civilization. He could see how unjustifiable is the way in which the problem of sin and death worked there. If we wished to designate, not quite inappropriately perhaps, the nationality of the man who is then led to the Temple and the Beautiful Lily, who appears at first as without vigor as if crippled, then, from what we have had to say recently about the culture of the East and of Russia, you will not consider it unreasonable to deem this man to be a Russian. In so doing, you will almost certainly follow the line of Goethe's instinct. The secret of European evolution in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch lies concealed within this fairy tale, just as truly as Goethe was able to conceal it in his Faust, especially in the second part, as we know from his own statement. It is clearly to be seen in Goethe—we have already shown it in various respects; later it can be shown in others—that he begins to regard the world and to feel himself in it, in accord with the fundamental demand of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

In Goethe we have a true continuation of the life of the Knights Templar but, as I have said, in a spiritualized way. This Goetheanism, however, will only be able to enter slowly and gradually into human understanding. I have already shown in certain respects how the impulse for everything of a spiritually scientific nature lies in Goetheanism. All of spiritual science can be developed from Goethe. I have shown in a public lecture (Berlin, April 15, 1916) that I gave a short time ago how the first elementary scientific foundation for the doctrine of reincarnation, of repeated earth lives, lies in Goethe's doctrine of metamorphosis. He begins the teaching of metamorphosis by showing how the leaf changes into the blossom, how an organ appears in different forms. When one follows this through with penetration, there lies implicit in it what I have often explained here; that is, the head of man is the transformed body, and the rest of the body is a human head still to be transformed. Here is metamorphosis in the ultimate degree, which for science will develop into a direct knowledge of reincarnation, of repeated earthly lives. But Goethe is still but little understood; he must first become familiar in the cultural life of humanity. Not only centuries but millenniums will be needed in order to unravel what lies in Goethe. As a matter of fact, even today there is not a foundation for a study of Goethe such as a monograph or biography could provide that would be produced really in his very style.

Let us see what has been done in particular instances in modern culture toward the understanding of Goethe's personality. We can, of course, only cite single examples. Herman Grimm has, however, rightly said, “A certain Mr. Lewes has written a book, which was for some time the most famous book on Goethe; one can even say the best. It is a book treating of a personality who was supposed to have been born in Frankfurt-am-Main in 1749, and to have had a Frankfurt councilor for a father. He then developed and grew up in such a way that Goethe's youth was ascribed to him, along with all sorts of other things taken from Goethe. Goethe's works were attributed to him; he also traveled to Italy in the same year as Goethe, and died the same year Goethe died. This person, however, is not Goethe but a fantasy of Mr. Lewes's”.

Then we also have a relatively good book in which Goethe's life and creative work is described with immense industry and better than many other works on Goethe. It is filled, however, from the first to the last page with hatred and aversion. This book is by the Jesuit, Baumgartner. It is an excellent but, in fact, a Jesuitical, book; but antagonistic to Goethe. At least, it is better written than the countless others on Goethe that have appeared throughout the nineteenth century and now on into the twentieth. A great number of these works are unpalatable. One continually sneezes because the dust of the library and professor gets into one's nose. They have been written by pedants who call it Goethe. Often they have been written with pedantic pride, but they are also fusty with library dust or the air one must breathe when one guesses how often the man who is writing about Faust, for example, has opened Grimm's or some other glossary in order to decipher a word or passage—and so on. One could say: Oh horrible, most horrible, what has been written in this field!

One book, however, stands out in a quite unusual way. These are Herman Grimm's lectures on Goethe given in the seventies at Berlin University. Grimm was, as we can see, a spirit who had the best will and the most wonderful traditions to aid him in familiarizing himself with Goethe. His book is an intelligent and excellent one that has developed right out of the Goethean atmosphere. Grimm grew up in the age when there were still Goethean traditions, but this book shows something quite remarkable. In fact, in a certain respect it is not at all a book that has developed from Goethean traditions; it is both Goethean and un-Goethean. For Herman Grimm does not write in a Goethean style but, strangely enough, in a style that leads one to say that the book was written by an American, a German American! One can call Grimm's lectures a book written by an American but in German. In style it is American—a style in which Grimm has educated himself. As one of the most enthusiastic followers of Emerson, he has studied him, read, digested, translated him, has quite familiarized himself with him. Now, Grimm finds his way into this American-Emerson style so that he is complete master of it; at the same time he grows enthusiastic about it. One can see at once on reading his novel, Invincible Powers, how he is able to let everything American live on in him. Enthusiasm for what is American and at the same time a wonderful feeling of internationalism is poured out in Herman Grimm's Goethe lectures.

In spite of all this, much, very much in the spiritual life of man must come about before Goethe and similar spirits will be understood! If sometimes they are rightly understood, it must be in quite another way from that of Herman Grimm. Once, in a conversation with him, I wished to make just a few references to the path by which one could gradually enter the spiritual world. The movement of his right arm will always remain unforgettable—a gesture of warding off; he wanted to push that aside. He created a Goethe who is simply delightful to see from outside, but one does not see into his heart. This Goethe of Grimm's, as he makes his way through historical development, as he stands there, as he moves about and comes into relation with people, as human relations flow into his works, as the contemporary world conception flows into his works—this Goethe goes past our mind's eye as a ghost who flits through the world unseen by the living. Goethe will only be understood when one has deepened Goetheanism to become spiritual science. Then, much will emerge from Goethe that he could not express himself. Goethe, truly understood, leads, in fact, to spiritual science, which is really developed Goetheanism.

From the beginning Goethe also understood that Christianity is a living thing. How he longed for a possible expression for the Christianizing of the modern world conception. It did not lie in his time to find it, but in the new age spiritual science is already working to attain it. Let us take his poem, “The Mysteries” (Die Geheimnisse), in which Brother Mark is guided to the Temple where the Rose Cross is on the door, and let us look at the whole picture. We shall see that the Christian mood is in this fragment, “The Mysteries,” the mood born of the feeling that the symbol of the Cross becomes a picture of life through the living roses entwining it! Then, too Goethe lets his Faust end with a Christian conception; he spoke of it to Eckermann in his old age. A time will come when in a much more active, intense sense, one will connect with Christianity the thoughts that ring through the conclusion of Faust, although Goethe, who was inwardly modest in such things, was far from doing so himself. He was, in reality, on the way that he made his Brother Mark take—to the Cross encircled with roses. In this lies ultimately all that is to flow from such wisdom as was striven for by the Knights Templar. (Their striving was too rapid and unsuitable to physical evolution.)

A longing for the full Christianizing of the treasures of wisdom concerning the cosmos and earthly evolution gradually broke through—a longing for the full Christianizing of earthly life so that suffering, pain and grief appear as the earth's Cross, which then finds its comfort, its elevation, its salvation in the Rose symbol of the Crucifix. Repeatedly in men thus inspired, in whom lived on what was thought to have been destroyed with the burning of the Templars—in these inspired men lived ever again the ideal that in the place of what brings strife and quarrels something must appear that can bring good to earth, and this good may be pictured in the symbol of the Cross in conjunction with the roses.

The book, Ruins (Shutt), by Anastasius Grün has been given to me today by one of our members. I have here again the same verses that I read to you some time ago to confirm the fact that this mystery, which this poem also expresses, is not merely something put forward by us, but that it comes to life again and again. Anastasius Grün, the Austrian poet, composed these poems; the eighth edition appeared in 1847. In his own manner he wrote of the progress of mankind, and I will read again today the passage I read years ago as proof of the role played by the image of the Rose Cross in evolving humanity; that is, among those who are incarnated in the new age. Anastasius Grün turns his gaze toward Palestine and other regions after having described how much confused fighting and quarreling has been spread over the earth. After he has seen and described much that causes fighting and strife he, who is a great seer in a certain way, turns to a region of the earth that he describes thus. I cannot read all of it as it would take too long, but one's eye is first turned to a part of the earth where the ploughshare is used.

As children once were digging in a meadow
They brought a shapeless thing of iron to light,
It seemed too straight, too heavy for a sickle,
For plough it was too slender and too slight.

With toil they dragged it home as new found treasure;
The elders see it, yet they know it not;
They call the neighbors round within the circle,
The neighbors see it, yet they know it not.

There is an ancient greybeard, wan and sallow,
Whose lifetime lingers on like tale forgot
Into the present world of busy dealing,
They show it to him, but he knows is not.

Well for them all, that they have never known it,
Else must they weep, and still must be deplored
The folly of their fathers, long since buried,
For what was known by no one was a sword!

Henceforth it shall but cleave the earth as ploughshare;
Shall point the seed-corn's path into the ground,
The sword's new hero-deeds are peaned
When sun-filled airs with song of lark resound.

Once more it came to pass, that in his ploughing
The farmer struck what seemed a piece of stone.
And as his spade unloosed the earthy covers,
A structure of a wondrous shape was shown.

He calls the neighbors round within the circle;
They look at it but still they know it not.
Thou wise and aged one, thou'lt surely tell us?
The greybeard looks at it, yet knows it not.

Thus, in ploughing, something was dug up and even the aged man does not recognize it.

Though known to none, yet with its ancient blessing
Eternal in their breast it stands upright,
Scatters its seed around in every roadway;
A Cross it was, this stranger to their sight!

They saw the fight not, and its bloodstained symbol,
They see alone the victory and the crown,
They saw the storm not, and the lashing tempest
They only see the rainbow's glistening shine.

The Cross will always be known, even in a region where it was already buried and drawn out of the earth as a cross of stone, where civilization has so withdrawn that an un-Christian culture has developed. There, Anastasius Grün wishes to say, a cross is found and men know it in their inmost breasts, even though the oldest among them fails to recognize it through tradition.

Though known to one, yet with its ancient blessing
Eternal in their breast it stands upright,
Scatters its seed around on every roadway,
A Cross it was, this stranger to their sight.

They saw the fight not and its bloodstained symbol,
They see alone the victory and the crown,
They saw the storm not and the lashing tempest
They only see the rainbow's glistening shine.

The Cross of stone they set up in the garden;
A venerable relic strange and old,
Flowers of all species lift their growth above it,
While roses climbing high the Cross enfold.

So stands the Cross weighty with solemn meaning
On Golgotha, amidst resplendent sheen;
Long since 'tis hidden by its wealth of roses;
No more, for roses, can the Cross be seen.

But it is there! There is the Cross! There are the roses! One only learns the meaning of history when one turns one's gaze to what lives in the spiritual and pervades human evolution, when, too, one will turn one's attention to what shows us under what auspices, under what insignia things enter world history. I think that one can feel the deeper connection between what we have characterized for later times and what has been characterized in the ideal of the Knights Templar and their fate in the world at the beginning of the fourteenth century.

• 1. A presentation of Faust had presumably just taken place.