The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This lecture-cycle deals with a subject which concerns Man very closely, namely, the exact nature and life of Man himself. Although so close to man, because it concerns himself; the subject is a difficult one to approach. For if we turn our attention to the challenge ”Know thyself!”, a challenge that has forced itself upon man through all the ages, as we may say, from mystic, occult heights, we see at once that a real, true self-knowledge is very hard of attainment. This applies not only to individual, personal self-knowledge, but above all to knowledge of the human being as such. Indeed it is precisely because man is so far from knowing his own being and has such a long way to go in order to know himself, that the subject we are about to discuss in the course of these few days will be in a certain respect something alien to us, something for which much preparation is necessary. Moreover it is not without reason that I myself have only reached the point where I can at last speak upon this theme as the result of mature reflection covering a long period of time. For it is a theme which cannot be approached with any prospect of arriving at a true and honest observation unless a certain attitude, often left out of account in ordinary scientific observation, be adopted. This attitude is one of reverence in the presence of the essential nature and Being of Man. It is, then, of vital importance that we maintain this attitude as a fundamental condition underlying the following reflections.

How can one truly maintain this reverence? In no other way, than by first disregarding what he appears to be in everyday life, whether it be oneself or another is of no consequence, and then by uplifting ourselves to the conception: Man, with all that he has evolved into, is not here for his own sake; he is here as revelation of the Divine Spirit, of the whole World. He is a revelation of the Godhead of the World! And, when a man speaks of aspiring after self-knowledge, of aspiring to become ever more and more perfect, in the spiritual-scientific sense which has just been indicated, this should not be due to the fact that he desires merely from curiosity, or from a mere craving or knowledge, to know what man is; but rather that he feels it to be his duty to fashion ever more and more perfectly this representation, this revelation, of the World Spirit through Man, so that he may find some meaning in the words, “to remain unknowing is to sin against Divine destiny!” For the World Spirit has implanted in us the power to have knowledge; and, when we do not will to acquire knowledge, we refuse what we really ought not to refuse, namely, to be a revelation of the World Spirit; and we represent more and more, not a revelation of the World Spirit, but a caricature, a distorted image of it. It is our duty to strive to become ever increasingly an image of the World Spirit. Only when we can give meaning to these words, “to become an image of the World Spirit”; only when it becomes significant for us in this sense to say, “We must learn to know, it is our duty to learn to know,” only then can we sense aright that feeling of reverence we have just demanded, in the presence of the Being of Man. And for one who wishes to reflect, in the occult sense, upon the life of man, upon the essential quality of man's being, this reverence before the nature of man is an absolute necessity, for the simple reason that it is the only thing capable of awakening our spiritual sight, our entire spiritual faculty for seeing and beholding the things of the spirit, of awakening those forces which permit us to penetrate into the spiritual foundation of man's nature. Anyone who, as seer and investigator of the Spirit, is unable to have the very highest degree of reverence in the presence of the nature of man, who cannot permeate himself to the very fibres of his soul with the feeling of reverence before man's nature, must remain with closed eyes (however open they may be for this or that spiritual secret of the world) to all that concerns what is really deepest in the Being of Man. There may be many clairvoyants who can behold this or that in the spiritual environment of our existence; yet, if this reverence is lacking, they lack also the capacity to see into the depths of man's nature, and they will not know how to say anything rightly with regard to what constitutes the Being of Man.

In the external sense the teaching about life is called physiology. This teaching should not here be regarded in the same way as in external science but as it presents itself to the spiritual eye; so that we may look beyond the forms of the outer man, beyond the form and functions of his physical organs into the spiritual, super-sensible foundation of the organs, of the life-forms and life processes. And since it is not our intention here to pursue this “occult physiology,” as it may be called, in any unreal way, it will be necessary in several cases to refer with entire candour to things which from the very beginning will sound rather improbable to anyone who is more or less uninitiated. At the same time, it may be stated that this cycle of lectures, even more than some others I have delivered, forms a whole, and that no single part of any one lecture, especially the earlier ones—for much that is to find expression in the course of this cycle will have to be affirmed without restraint—should be torn from its context and judged separately. On the contrary, only after having heard the concluding lectures will it be possible to form a judgment with regard to what really has been said. For this reason, therefore, it will be necessary to proceed in a somewhat different way, in this occult physiology, from that of external physiology. The foundations for our introductory statements will be confirmed by what meets us at the conclusion. We shall not be called upon to draw a straight line, as it were, from the beginning to the end; but we shall proceed in a circle so that we shall return again, at the end, to the point from which we started.

It is an examination, a study, of Man, that is to be presented here. At first he appears before our external senses in his outer form. We know, of course, that to what in the first place the layman with his purely external observation can know concerning man, there is to-day a very great deal which science has added through research. Therefore, when considering what we are able to know of the human being at the present time through external experience and observation, we must of necessity combine what the layman is in a position to observe in himself and others with what science has to say, including those branches of scientific observation which come to their results through methods and instruments worthy of our admiration.

If we bear in mind first, purely as regards external man, all that a layman may observe in him (or may perhaps have learned from some sort of popular description of the nature of man), then it will perhaps not seem incomprehensible if, from the very beginning, attention is called to the fact that even the outer shape of man, as it meets us in the outside world, really consists of a duality. And for anyone who wishes to penetrate into the depths of human nature, it is absolutely necessary that he becomes conscious of the fact, that even external man, as regards his form and stature, presents fundamentally a duality.

One part of man, which we can clearly distinguish, consists of everything that is to be found enclosed in organs affording the greatest protection against the outside world: that is, all that we may include within the region of the brain and the spinal cord. Everything belonging in this connection to the nature of man, to the brain and spinal cord, is firmly enclosed in a secure protective bony structure. Taking a side view, we observe that what belongs to these two systems may be illustrated in the following way. If a in this diagram represents all the super-imposed vertebrae along the whole length of the spinal cord, and b the cranium and the bones of the skull, then inside the canal which is formed by these super-imposed vertebrae, as well as by the bones of the skull, is enclosed everything belonging to the sphere of the brain and the spinal cord. One cannot observe the human being without becoming conscious of the fact that everything pertaining to this region forms a totality complete within itself; and that the rest of man (which we might group physiologically in the most varied ways, as the neck, the trunk, the limb-structure) keeps its connection with all that we reckon as brain and spinal cord by means of more or less thread-like or ribbon-shaped formations, pictorially speaking, which must first break through this protective sheath, in order that a connection may be brought about between the portion enclosed within this bony structure and the portion attached to it as exterior nature of man. Thus we may say that, even to a superficial observation, everything constituting man proves itself to be a duality, the one portion lying within the bony structure we have described, the firm and secure protective sheath, and the other portion without.

At this point we must cast a purely superficial glance at that which lies within this bony structure. Here again we can quite easily distinguish between the large mass embedded within the skull-bones in the form of a brain, and that other portion which is appended to it like a stalk or cord and which, while organically connected with the brain, extends in this thread-like outgrowth of the brain into the spinal canal. If we differentiate between these two structures we must at once call attention to something which external science does not need to consider, something of which occult science, however, since its task is to penetrate into the depths of the being of things, must indeed take note. We must call attention to the fact that everything which we consider as the basis of a study of man refers, in the first place, only to Man. For the moment we enter into the deeper fundaments of the separate organs, we become aware (and we shall see in the course of these lectures that this is true) that any one of these organs, through its deeper significance in the case of man, may have an entirely different task from that of the corresponding organ in the animal world. Or, to put it more exactly, anyone who looks upon such things with the help of ordinary external science will say: “What you have been telling us here may be just as truly affirmed with reference to the animals.” That which is said here, however, with reference to the essential nature of the organs in the case of the human being, cannot be said in the same way with regard to the animal. On the contrary the occult task is to consider the animal by itself, and to investigate whether that which we are in a position to state regarding man with reference to the spine and the brain, is valid also for animals. For the fact that the animals closely related to man also have a spine and a brain does not prove that these organs, in their deeper significance, have the same task in both man and animal; just as the fact that a man holds a knife in his hand does not indicate whether it is for the purpose of carving a piece of veal or in order to erase something. In both cases we have to do with a knife; and he who considers only the form of the knife, that is, the knife as knife, will believe that in both cases it amounts to the same thing. In both cases, he who stands on the basis of a science that is not occult will say that we have to do with a spinal cord and a brain; and he will believe, since the same organs are to be found in man and animal, that these organs must therefore have the same function. But this is not true. It is something that has become a habit of thought in external science, and has led to certain inaccuracies; and it can be corrected only if external science will accustom itself gradually to enter into what can be stated from out of the depths of super-sensible research regarding the different living beings.

Now, when we consider the spinal cord on the one hand, and the brain on the other, we can easily see that there is a certain element of truth in something already pointed out more than a hundred years ago by thoughtful students of nature. There is a certain rightness in the statement that when one observes the brain carefully it looks, so to speak, like a transformed spinal cord. This becomes all the more intelligible when we remember that Goethe, Oken, and other similarly reflective observers of nature, turned their attention primarily to the fact that the skull-bones bear certain resemblances of form to the vertebrae of the spine. Goethe, for example, was impressed very early in his reflections by the fact that when one imagines a single vertebra of the spinal column transformed, levelled and distended there may appear through such a reshaping of the vertebrae the bones of the head, the skull-bones; thus, if one should take a single vertebra and distend it on all sides so that it has elevations here and there, and at the same time is smooth and uniform in its expansions, the form of the skull might in this way be gradually derived from a single vertebra. Thus we may in a certain respect call the skull-bones reshaped vertebrae.

Now, just as we can look upon the skull-bones which enclose the brain as transformed vertebrae, as the transformation of such bones as enclose the spinal cord, so we may also think of the mass of the spinal cord distended in a different way, differentiated, more complex, till we obtain out of the spinal cord, so to speak, through this alteration, the brain. We might likewise, for instance, think how out of a plant, which at first has only green foliage, there grows forth the blossom. And so we might imagine that through the reshaping of a spinal cord, through its elevation to higher stages, the entire brain could be formed. (Later on, it will become clear how this matter is to be considered scientifically.) We may accordingly imagine our brain as a differentiated spinal cord.

Let us now look at both of these organs from this standpoint. Which of the two must we naturally look upon as the younger? Certainly not that one which shows the derived form, but rather the one which shows the original form. The spinal cord is at the first stage, it is younger; and the brain is at the second stage, it has gone through the stage of a spinal cord, is a transformed spinal cord, and is therefore to be considered as the older organ. In other words, if we fix our attention upon this new duality which meets us in man as brain and spinal cord, we may say that all the latent tendencies, all the forces, which lead to the building of a brain must be older forces in man; for they must first, at an earlier stage, have formed the tendency to a spinal cord, and must then have worked further toward the re-forming of this beginning of a spinal cord into a brain. A second start, as it were, must therefore have been made, in which our spinal cord did not progress far enough to reach the second stage but remained at the stage of the spinal cord. We have, accordingly, in this spine and nerve system (if we wish to express ourselves with pedantic exactness) a spine of the first order; and in our brain a spinal cord of the second order, a re-formed spinal cord which has become older—a spinal cord which once was there as such, but which has been transformed into a brain.

Thus we have, in the first place, shown with absolute accuracy just what we need to consider when we fix our attention objectively upon the organic mass enclosed; within this protective bony sheath. Here, however, something else must be taken into account, namely, something which really can confront us only in the field of occultism. A question may suggest itself, when for instance we speak as we have just been doing about the brain and the spinal cord, taking perhaps the following form: when such a re-formation as this takes place, from the plan of an organ at a first stage to the plan of an organ at a second stage, the evolutionary process may be progressive, or it may be retrogressive. That is, the process before us may either be one which leads to higher stages of perfection of the organ, or one which causes the organ to degenerate and gradually to die. We might say therefore, when we consider an organ like our spinal cord as it is to-day, that it seems to us to be at the present time a relatively young organ since it has not yet succeeded in becoming a brain. We may think about this spinal cord in two different ways. First, we may consider that it has in itself the forces through which it may also one day become a brain. In that case, it would be in a position to pass through a progressive evolution, and to become what our brain is to-day; or secondly, we may consider that it has not at all the latent tendency to attain to this second stage. In that case its evolution would be leading toward extinction; it would pass into decadence and be destined to suggest the first stage and not to arrive at the second. Now, if we reflect that the groundwork of our present brain is what was once the plan or beginning of a spinal cord, we see that that former spinal cord undoubtedly had in it the forces of a progressive evolution, since it actually did become a brain. If, on the other hand, we consider at this point our present spinal cord, the occult method of observation reveals that what to-day is our spinal cord has not within itself, as a matter of fact, the latent tendency to a forward-directed evolution, but is rather preparing to conclude its evolution at this present stage.

If I may express myself grotesquely, the human being is not called upon to believe that one day his spinal cord, which now has the form of a slender string, will be puffed out as the brain is puffed out. We shall see later what underlies the occult view, so as to enable us to say this. Yet, through this simple comparison of the form of this organ in man and in the lower animals, where it first appears, you will find an external intimation of what has just been stated. In the snake, for example, the spine adds on to itself a series of innumerable rings behind the head and is filled out with the spinal cord, and this spinal column extends both forward and backward indefinitely. In the case of man the spinal cord, as it extends downward from the point where it is joined to the brain, actually tends more and more to a conclusion, showing less and less clearly that formation which it exhibits in its upper portions. Thus, even through external observation, one may notice that what in the case of the snake continues its natural evolution rearward, is here hastening toward a conclusion, toward a sort of degeneration. This is a method of observation through external comparison, and we shall see how the occult view affects it.

To summarise, then, we may say that within the bony structure of the skull we have a spinal cord which through a progressive development has become a brain, and is now at a second stage of its evolution; and in our spinal cord we have, as it were, the attempt once again to form such a brain, an attempt, however, which is destined to fail and cannot reach its full growth into a real brain.

Let us now proceed from this reflection to that which can be known even from an external, layman's observation, to the functions of the brain and the spinal cord. It is more or less known to everyone that the instrument of the so-called higher soul-activities, is in a certain respect, in the brain, that these higher soul-activities are directed by the organs of the brain. Furthermore, it is recognised that the more unconscious soul-activities are directed from the spinal cord. I mean those soul-activities in which very little deliberation interposes itself between the reception of the external impression and the action which follows it. Consider for a moment how you jerk back your hand when it is stung. Not very much deliberation intervenes between the sting and the drawing back. Such soul-activities as these are in fact, and with a certain justification, even regarded by natural science in such a way as to attribute to them the spinal cord as their instrument.

We have other soul-activities in which a more mature reflection interposes itself between the external impression and that which finally leads to action. Take, for example, an artist who observes external nature, straining every sense and gathering countless impressions. A long time passes, during which he works over these impressions in an inner activity of soul. He then proceeds to establish after a long interval through outward action what has grown, in long-continued soul-activity, out of the external impressions. Here there intervenes, between the outer impression and that which the man produces as a result of the outer impression, a richer activity of soul. This is also true of the scientific investigator; and, indeed, of anyone who reflects about the things that he wishes to do, and does not rush wildly at every external impression, who does not as it were, in reflex action fly into a passion like a bull when he sees the colour red, but thinks about what he wishes to do. In every instance where reflection intervenes, we encounter the brain as an instrument of soul-activity.

If we go still deeper into this matter we may say to ourselves: True, but how then does this soul-activity of ours, in which we use the brain, manifest itself? We perceive, to begin with, that it is of two different kinds, one of which takes place in our ordinary waking day-consciousness. In this consciousness we accumulate, through the senses, external impressions; and these we work over by means of the brain in rational reflection. To express it in popular language—we shall have to go into this still more accurately—we must picture to ourselves that these outer impressions find their way inside us through the doors of the senses, and stimulate certain processes in the brain. If we should wish, purely in connection with the external organisation, to follow what there takes place, we should see that the brain is set into activity through the stream of external impressions flowing into it; and that what this stream becomes, as a result of reflection, that is the deeds, the actions, which we ascribe to the instrumentality of the spinal cord.

Then, there also mingles in human life as it is to-day, between the wide-awake life of day and the unconscious life of sleep, the picture-life of dreams. This dream-life is a remarkable intermingling of the wide-awake life of day, which lays full claim to the instrument of our brain, and the unconscious life of sleep. Merely in outline, in a way that the lay thinker may observe for himself, we will now say something about this life of dreams.

We see that the whole of the dream-life has a strange similarity, from one aspect, to that subordinate soul-activity which we associate with the spinal cord. For, when dream-pictures emerge in our soul they do not appear as representations resulting from reflection, but rather by reason of a certain necessity, as, for instance, a movement of the hand results when a fly settles on the eye. In this latter case an action takes place as an immediate, necessary movement of defense. In dream-life something different appears, yet likewise because of an immediate necessity. It is not an action which here appears but rather a picture upon the horizon of the soul. Yet, just as we have no deliberate influence upon the movement of the hand in the wide-awake life of day, but make this movement of necessity, even so do we have no influence over the way that dream-pictures shape themselves, as they come and go in the chaotic world of dreams. We might say, therefore, that if we look at a man during his wide-awake life of day, and see something of what goes on within him in the form of reflex movements of all sorts, when he does things without reflecting, in response to external impressions; if we observe the sum-total of gestures and physiognomic expressions which he accomplishes without reflection, we then have a sum of actions which through necessity become a part of this man as soul-actions. If we now consider a dreaming man we have a sum of pictures, in this case something possessing the character not of action but of pictures, which work into and act upon his being. We may say, therefore, that just as in the wakeful life of day those human actions are carried out which arise and take shape without reflection, so do the dream-conceptions, chaotically flowing together, come about within a world of pictures.

Now, if we look back again at our brain, and wished to consider it as being in a certain way the instrument also of the dream-consciousness, what should we have to do? We should have to suppose that there is in some way or other something inside the brain which behaves in a way similar to the spinal cord that guides the unconscious actions. Thus, we have, as it were, to look upon the brain as primarily the instrument of the wide-awake soul-life, during which we create our concepts through deliberation, and underlying it a mysterious spinal cord which does not express itself; however, as a complete spinal cord but remains compressed inside the brain, and does not attain to actions. Whereas our spinal cord does attain to actions, even though these are not brought about through deliberation; the brain in this case induces merely pictures. It stops midway, this mysterious thing which lies there like the groundwork of a brain. Might we not say, therefore, that the dream-world enables us in a most remarkable way to point, as in a mystery, to that spinal cord lying there at the basis of the brain?

If we consider the brain, in its present fully-developed state, as the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, its appearance for us is that which it has when removed from the cavity of the skull. Yet there must be something there, within, when the wakeful life of day is blotted out. And here occult observation shows us that there actually is, inside the brain, a mysterious spinal cord which calls forth dreams. If we should wish to make a drawing of it, we could represent it in such a way that, within the brain which is connected with the world of ideas of the life of day, we should have an ancient mysterious spinal cord, invisible to external perception, in some way or other secreted inside it. I shall first state quite hypothetically that this spinal cord becomes active when man sleeps and dreams, and is active at that time in a manner characteristic of a spinal cord, namely, that it calls forth its effects through necessity. But, because it is compressed within the brain, it does not lead to actions, but only to pictures and picture-actions; for in dreams we act, as we know, only in pictures. So that because of this peculiar, strange, chaotic life that we carry on in dreams, we should have to point to the fact that underlying the brain, which we quite properly consider to be the instrument of our wide-awake life of day, is a mysterious organ which perhaps represents an earlier form of the brain—which has evolved itself to its present state out of this earlier form—and that this mysterious organ is active to-day only when the new form is inactive. It then reveals what the brain once was. This ancient spinal cord conjures up what is possible, considering the way it is enclosed, and induces, not completed actions, but only pictures.

Thus the observation of life leads us, of itself, to separate the brain into two stages. The very fact that we dream indicates that the brain has passed through two stages and has evolved to the wide-awake life of day. When, however, this wakeful day-time life is stilled, the ancient organ again exerts itself in the life of dreams. Thus we have first made types out of what external observation of the world furnishes us, which shows us that even observation of the soul-life adds meaning to what a consideration of the outer form can give us, namely, that the wide-awake life of day is related to dream-life in the same way as the perfected brain at the second stage of its evolution is related to its groundwork, to the ancient spinal cord which is at the first stage of its evolution. In a remarkable way, which we shall justify in the following lectures, occult, clairvoyant vision can serve us as a basis for a comprehensive observation of human nature, as it expresses itself in those organs enclosed within the bony mass of the skull and vertebrae.

In this connection you already know, from spiritual-scientific observations, that man's visible body is only one part of the whole human being, and that in the moment the seer's eye is opened the physical body reveals itself as enclosed, embedded, in a super-sensible organism, in what, roughly speaking, is called the “human aura.” For the present this may be here affirmed as a fact, and later we shall return to it to see how far the statement is justified. This human aura, within which physical man is simply enclosed like a kernel, shows itself to the seer's eye as having different colours. At the same time, we must not imagine that we could ever make a picture of this aura, for the colours are in continual movement; and every picture of it, therefore, that we sketch with pigment can be only an approximate likeness, somewhat in the same way that it is impossible to portray lightning, since one would always end by painting it only as a stiff rod, a rigid image. Just as it is never possible to paint lightning, so is it even less possible to do this in the case of the aura, because of the added fact that the auric colours are in themselves extraordinary unstable and mobile. We cannot, therefore, express it otherwise than to say that at best we are representing it symbolically.

Now, these auric colours show themselves as differing very remarkably, depending upon the fundamental character of the whole human organism. And it is interesting to call attention to the auric picture which presents itself to the clairvoyant eye, if we imagine the cranium and the spine observed from the rear. There we find that the appearance of that portion of the aura belonging to this region is such that we can only describe the whole man as embedded in the aura. Although we must remember that the auric colours are in a state of movement within the aura, yet it is evident that one of the colours is especially distinct, namely around the lower parts of the spine. We may call this greenish. And again we may mention another distinct colour, which does not in any other part of the body appear so beautiful as here, around the region of the brain; and this in its ground-tone is a sort of lilac-blue. You can get the best conception of this lilac-blue if you imagine the colour of the peach-blossom; yet even this is only approximate. Between this lilac-blue of the upper portion of the brain, and the green of the lower parts of the spine, we have other colour nuances surrounding the human being which are hard to describe, since they do not often appear among the ordinary colours present in the surrounding world of the senses. Thus, for instance, adjoining the green is a colour which is neither green, blue, nor yellow, but a mixture of all three. In short, there appear to us, in this intermediate space, colours which actually do not exist in the physical world of sense. Even though it is difficult to describe what is here within the aura, one thing may nevertheless be stated positively: beginning above with the puffed-out spinal cord, we have lilac-blue colour and then, coming down to the end of the spine, we have a more distinctly greenish shade.

This I wish to state as a fact, along with what has been said to-day in connection with a purely external observation of the human form and of human conduct. Following this, we shall endeavour to observe also that other part of the human being which is attached to the portion we have discussed to-day, in the form of neck, trunk, limbs, etc., as constituting the second part of the human duality, to the end that we may then be able to proceed to a consideration of what is presented to us in the complete interaction of this human duality.

Anthroposophy, when properly understood, will guide us back more and more into that immediate life from which a materialistic way of thinking, quite paradoxically, estranges us.

We have said this frequently, here and at other places, at many different occasions, and always in order to characterize the mission of our anthroposophical movement. The above statement will make a strange impression on many of our contemporaries, for they are of the opinion that true life, or what they call life, is to be sought elsewhere than in what anthroposophy has to give; and they are also of the opinion that anthroposophy is least qualified to show them how to lead a practical everyday existence. Such is not the case. Anthroposophy will help us in all ways, great and small! Its teaching, when thoroughly assimilated, will enable those who are engaged in public or other matters to solve the problems of the day in the way in which they should be solved if mankind is to lead a complete life. The many disorders and unhealthy conditions of our age which are now being approached, from one standpoint or another, in a more or less amateurish manner, could, if our contemporaries were to permeate themselves with anthroposophical truths, be successfully handled. I just wanted to touch on this issue, it will not be the focus of our contemplation today.

Today it will be more the emotional aspect of anthroposophy with which I ask you to occupy your thoughts. It will be noticed how to a deeper, feeling permeated comprehension of life, a time like the present must seem to be abstruse, uninteresting, matter-of-fact and theoretical. When Christmas, Easter or Whitsuntide approaches, we can see how certain outward forms and external ceremonies are adhered to But there is very little left of what our forefathers felt to be alive in their very souls—that deep current of feeling penetrating into the soul which was peculiar to our forefathers with regard to the relationship of mankind to the whole cosmos and its divine foundations. This feeling was particularly alive at the time of such festivals. Then it was something tangible for the soul, for then it received impressions different from those gained during the rest of the year.

No true conception is formed today of that which filled the souls of our ancestors when the days grew shorter, the end of the year approached and the birthday of Christ Jesus was about to be celebrated; or when, at the festival of the resurrection of Christ Jesus, the snow was slowly melting, and what the earth had hidden appeared once more on the surface. It would seem indeed that our life were concrete. In reality the feelings of our contemporaries have become abstract, matter-of-fact and empty. People pass through the streets, and hardly feel more about Christmas than that it is a time for giving and receiving presents. Should they have any other feeling, there is little connection between it and that deep feeling which absorbed our forefathers at that time of the year. Mankind has lost its true relationship with life. To show how to regain this relationship is one aspect of the mission of anthroposophical spiritual science.

One who only grasps with his mind and understanding what is usually called the anthroposophical conception of the world has understood only the very least part of anthroposophy. It is only understood by him who realizes that the whole of man’s feelings and emotions must be altered when anthroposophy lives itself into the heart and soul. What was abstract for a certain time, and even forgotten in its significance—the true meaning of our festivals—will again penetrate into our souls when the intimate connection of the whole surrounding world with man is realized again, as it may be through a spiritual perception.

The deeper meaning of the Christmas festival has often engaged our attention at this time. Today, we shall look at it from another aspect. This can only be done if at first we make quite clear to ourselves what impression anthroposophical thoughts and ideas produce on our feelings, how they really have the power of making out of a human being something quite different from what he is at present, something through which he will again know what it is to have an immediate experience of the pulsation of the spiritual life of nature—actually to feel the warmth which passed through creation, animating every being. When a man looks today at the starry sky with the help of the abstruse science of astronomy, he sees it inhabited by abstruse material worlds. But these celestial bodies will again appear to him as the bodies of souls and spirits; space will once more appear to him permeated by spirit and soul. He will experience the whole cosmos as filled with warmth, and have the feeling that he has when reclining on the bosom of a friend; though of course experiencing the spirit of the cosmos is much more majestic and sublime.

We know that we have to seek in man alone such a soul as we are cognizant of in man—an individual soul, which, so to say, lives in a single body. The soul of the other creatures which surround us, we must seek in another way and in a different form. The animals which live in our midst also have souls, but we shall look in vain for them here on the physical plane. The animal-ego, which we name a “group ego”, is to be found on the astral plane; and a whole group of related animals, for example the lion-group, the tiger-group, the cat-group, all separate groups of related forms, have each of them a common soul, a common ego. The separation by space here on earth makes no difference; every lion belongs to the same lion-ego, whether one lion is here in a zoo, and another in Africa. The spiritual scientist can find the animal ego on the astral plane; and there these group-egos are individual personalities, just as your personality here on the physical plane is individual. As your ten fingers belong to your individual personality, so does every lion belong to the group-ego of the lions. If we could become acquainted with the individual group-egos on the astral plane, we would find that wisdom is their most conspicuous characteristic, although to us here on earth separate animals may not appear very wise. Nobody ought to judge the characteristics of the group-ego, of animal individuality on the astral plane, on the basis of the characteristics of the separate animals here on earth. Just as little as your ten fingers show the characteristics of an individual ego, just so little does the single animal show the characteristics of the group-ego.

These group-egos act very sagaciously, and are wiser than you imagine; for what you know here as the achievements of animals are brought about by these group-egos. They live in the atmosphere surrounding our earth, they are to be found round about us. If you follow the flight of birds as they migrate at the approach of autumn from the north-east to the south-west, and at the approach of spring return once more from the south-west to the north-east, you might ask yourself: who guides their flight so wisely? In your search for the individual directors and rulers you will come, as a student of spiritual science, to the group-egos of the different genera or species. The astral ego, which is just as much an ego on the astral plane as the human ego is here, lives in every animal community. The group souls or personalities or astral egos, who have their individual members here on the physical plane, are much wiser than the egos of mankind on the physical plane; everything which is so wisely organized in the animal-world is the manifested wisdom of the group-egos of animals. We walk differently through the world if we know that at every pace forward, we step through beings whose deeds we are able to see.

Now let us look at the plant kingdom: the egos of this plant world are to be found in a still higher world than the one in which the group-egos of the animals live. The egos of plants (there are actually very few of them) are to be found in the spirit-world or Devachan; each one of the plant-egos embraces many, very many, of the individual plants which are found here on earth in such great variety. If we should seek the place where these plant-egos are to be found in space, we would come to the center of the earth. All plant-egos are united at the center of the earth.

It would reflect a rather primitive mental life if, when considering the spirit of the egos, you were to ask: Is there room enough for all these different egos? In the spirit everything in-terpenetrates. He who does not understand this comes to the point of view expressed just now in a book which is particularly recommended to theosophists. This book certainly speaks of spiritual worlds, but speaks about them by using arguments such as: If in the course of a thousand years thirty billion people had lived whose souls are now in the atmospheric surroundings of the earth, then there would be such a great number of souls, that there would scarcely be room for them all in the earth’s periphery.—This book is well intentioned, but it is extremely trivial. (“Unknown Powers,” by C. Flammarion.)

We have to seek the plant-egos in the center of the earth, because the earth itself as a planet is a complete organism. In the same relation in which the hairs of your head art to your organism, so are the plants to the organism of our earth. These plants are not independent beings but are members of the earth organism.

Feelings of pleasure and pain in plants are the pleasure and pain of the earth’s organism; we need only recall what you were told a few weeks ago about pleasure and pain in the plant-kingdom. He who is able to observe these things knows that if you injure a plant in the part above the earth, the injury is not connected with a feeling of pain in our earth organism. On the contrary, it gives a pleasant feeling to the earth, in the same way in which the cow suckling her calf gets and bestows a pleasurable sensation. Thus the green of the plant which springs out of the earth, even though fixed, may be compared with the milk of the animal organism. And when in autumn the reaper cuts the grain with his scythe, it is more than an abstract occurrence to one who understands how to transform anthroposophical ideas into feelings of the soul. The reaping calls forth a breath of joy which goes over the whole field, and the mowing of the grass fills the field with pleasurable sensations.

Thus we learn to feel with the earth organism as we feel on the bosom of a friend. We feel pain with the earth when we understand that as soon as we tear out the plants by their roots, the earth feels pain. It ought not to be objected here that under certain conditions it might be better to transplant a whole plant with roots rather than to pick its blossoms. Such an objection is not relevant here. If a person begins to get grey hair, and in order to remain younger looking pulls out the first grey hairs, does the action hurt the less?

Thus we learn to feel with nature around us; more and more we learn to experience nature as permeated by soul and spirit. When we enter a quarry and watch the men breaking stones, this act remains with us as something concrete, not abstract, if we deepen our anthroposophical ideas on the subject into feelings of the soul. Then we do not only see the stones flying out of the rocks—not even if a rock were blasted would it seem abstract to us. On the contrary, we learn to feel what nature, permeated by soul and spirit, is feeling outside us. If we have a glass of water before us and throw into it some salt or a lump of sugar, and watch how the salt or sugar dissolves, this arouses the feeling that there is soul in it. If we would know what kind of a soul is contained therein we must not bring forward ordinary analogies. It would be very easy to believe that when the quarry-man breaks off the stone, his action causes nature to feel pain, but in reality the exact opposite is the case. What is called division into fragments in the mineral kingdom gives nature the greatest joy, an internal sensation of well-being. There is also an internal sensation of well-being when we dissolve a piece of sugar or salt in water. Feelings of pleasure flow through the water during the dissolving of the mineral bodies. It is different under different circumstances.

We can call to mind the primeval age on earth—that time when our earth was a fiery-fluid body with every mineral and metal dissolved in it. It was not possible for our earth to remain in such a state, it had to become the place on which we live, the solid body on which we can walk about. The metals and minerals had to solidify out of the liquid element; it was necessary for them to harden, to pull themselves together. Everything that was dissolved in the liquid element had to congeal and become crystallized. A similar process to what can be observed with salt dissolved in a glass of water: let the water evaporate and you will be able to see the salt crystals as firm particles. If you follow the feelings which are brought into action by such happenings you will see that pain can be felt even in the apparently dense mineral kingdom. Everything which appears to us as demolition and breaking into fragments gives a feeling of pleasure to the earth; whereas consolidation, compression, crystallization give a feeling of pain. The minerals and rocks of the planet on which we live have been formed under conditions of pain. And this has, more or less, been the case during the hardening of the earth’s crust.

If we look into the future development of our earth, we must imagine that what is firm and solid will become more and more flexible and liquid, until at last the earth changes into that which is called the “astral earth.” Thus the earth matter will have become rarer and rarer; so that we, in the first half of our earth’s evolution, must regard the elements of the mineral kingdom as that which, under the influence of pain and suffering, has formed the solid stage for our existence. Towards the end of the earth’s evolution there will be more peaceful feelings, the whole earth will be full of feelings of joy; it will change into a heavenly planet, which, in the cosmos, will be astral.

When the initiated talk about these things, deep mysteries lie hidden in their words. They express themselves in such a way that their words have several levels of meaning, because they contain so much. St. Paul, who was an initiate, spoke with words which always had several hidden meanings. The further we advance in the comprehension of the cosmos, of the spirit worlds, the better we shall understand these expressions of St. Paul and their hidden meaning. St. Paul knew that the earth suffered during the time it was becoming firm, and that it is longing for its release into a spiritual, heavenly state: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together, waiting for the adoption.” (Romans viii, 22) By these words the initiate Paul referred to the pain accompanying the formation of the hard minerals whereon we stand and move.

So long as we only consider Anthroposophy as a system of thought we do not understand it rightly. It is the characteristic mark of Anthroposophy, that ideas must change into feelings, and we become different beings when, at every step, we feel and are conscious of all that we see about us. Those who really understood the esoteric teaching of Christianity were also of this opinion. You can follow the Christian writers as far as the eighteenth century and discover many who had sympathy with all the pleasure and all the pain of living nature. In their writings they use words which are for mankind today but empty sounds, or at the most allegories or pictures, whereas to those who understand them they are truths: “You shall not alone think upon nature, but you shall perceive it and taste it and feel it!”

They meant that when the reaper cuts the grain, we should taste the feeling that passes over the field during this action.

When we see the man in the quarry breaking off the stone, we should enjoy with nature her sensation of well-being. When we notice a deposit of earth where a river flows into the sea, we should at the same time learn to feel the pain which accompanies the deposition of earth.

Thus we can begin to experience nature completely permeated by soul. Our souls will then gain the power of growing out of their confinement. Feeling streams into the world in which we live, and we become one with the whole of nature. When we become one with it, piece by piece, we will also feel the spirituality and soul-nature of the great yearly occurrences. In the spring, when the days gradually become longer and longer, and more light falls on the earth; when out of her womb the plants, whose seeds were in the earth, spring up, and when everything is once more clothed in green, then we feel that not only what we see—as the shimmering green- is coming forth, but we feel as well that something akin to soul activity is taking place.

When winter draws near, the days grow shorter, less light falls on our earth, the plants retire to their winter sleep, and the green changes, we too experience a similar feeling to that which we have at night when we fall asleep. On the other hand, the awakening of external nature in the spring draws from us its corresponding feeling, for these events are no allegory, but realities. We feel the changes in nature, and also the changes in the soul and spirit of nature. In the latter half of the summer we feel how everything seems to decline, how the soul of our earth approaches sleep.—Then in the evening, when we ourselves fee1 sleepy, we have a real example before us of the living process which we have often described. Gradually, the astral body with the ego withdraws from the physical and etheric body, frees itself, and floats as it were into its own, its very own original world. If a man could do today, in the present condition of the evolution of humanity, what he will be able to do in the future, a spiritual consciousness would light up when the astral body lifts itself out of the etheric and physical bodies; spiritual forces and a spirit world would surround the body; man would simply leave his physical body in order that he might enter into another form of existence. This, in fact, he does today too, but he knows nothing about it in his present stage of development.

The same thing also occurs to our earth. The astral body of our earth changes during the year. (The changes are not the same in the two opposite hemispheres, but this does not concern us today). The astral body of our earth is occupied with the external natural existence of our earth during the time in which plants and life generally spring up out of the earth. When plants grow, it is the astral body that looks after everything that grows and flourishes on the earth. In the autumn, when a kind of sleepiness comes over the earth, this astral body returns to its spiritual activity.

Those who are able to really feel this earth-process know that during the height of the sun—from spring right into autumn -in everything which grows and increases out of doors, they must see the outer revelation of the spirit of the earth. But when autumn approaches they are directly in contact with the liberated astral body of the earth; when the days are shortest, that is, when the outer physical life approaches nearest to sleep, then the spiritual life awakens. What is this “spiritual life” of the earth? Who is the “spirit of the earth?”

This “spirit of the earth” described Himself as such when He spoke these words: “He that eateth My bread, treadeth Me with feet”; and when He made reference to that which the earth brings forth as true nourishment for man and said, “This is My body!” and again when He was referring to that which flows as the sap of life and said, “This is My blood!” In these sayings He described the earth itself as His organism.

This was quite different in pre-Christian times—different from what it is in the Christian era at a definite moment of the earth’s evolution. During the short days when the sacred mysteries of the ancients were being observed, those who were initiated turned with their whole soul towards the sun; at midnight on the day which we know as Christmas Day, those about to be initiated into the sacred mysteries were advanced so far that they were able to see the sun at the midnight hour. They were then promoted to being clairvoyant. We today cannot see the sun at the midnight hour because it is then at the other side of the earth; but the physical earth presents no obstacle to the seer, he can see the sun. He sees it in its spiritual essence. When the seers saw the sun at the midnight hour in the holy mysteries they saw the sun’s sovereign ruler—the Christ. Those saw Him who were able to come into contact with Him, but at that time still in the sun.

The flowing of blood from His wounds on Golgotha was an event fraught with meaning for the whole of the earth’s evolution. Nobody understands that event who has not the power of understanding that Christianity is built upon a mystical fact. If someone with clairvoyant sight could have watched the development of the earth from a distant planet for some thousands of years, he would not only have seen the physical body, but the astral body of our earth as well. This astral body of the earth would have emanated definite lights, definite colors and definite forms during those thousands of years. In one moment this was changed.

Other forms appeared, other lights and colours shone forth -and this moment was when the blood flowed out of the wounds of our Saviour at Golgotha. This was not only a human, but a cosmic event. Through it the Christ-Ego, which up to this time could only be discovered in the sun, passed to the earth. It linked itself with the earth, and in the spirit of the earth we find the Christ-Ego, the sun ego. The initiate is henceforth able to see in Christ himself the sun-spirit which formerly, at the time of Christmas, was only to be seen at the midnight hour on the sun in the holy places of the ancients.

Christian consciousness, not only the consciousness of the ordinary Christian, but the consciousness of the Christian initiate, lies in the living feeling of union with the spirit of Christ. This takes place every year when the days are becoming shorter and the physical earth is beginning to fall asleep. It is then possible for us to come into direct connection with the spirit of the earth. Therefore, to place the birth of our Savior in the time of the shortest days and the longest nights was not the outcome of an arbitrary decision, but the result of initiation. Bound up with the shortening of the days and the lengthening of the nights, we see something infinitely spiritual, and we feel at the same time that in this event there is a living soul—the highest soul which we are able to feel in the earth’s evolution.

When the first Christians uttered the name of Christ, they did not express any doctrine or any particular mode of thought. It would have seemed quite impossible for them to call anyone a Christian who believed only the words which Christ Jesus spoke as a Christian teacher. It cannot be denied that these doctrines are also to be found in other religious beliefs, and no one wishes to regard them as something singular. Today, however, for the first time in history, par-ticularly in the educated classes, special stress is laid on the fact that the teaching of Christ Jesus is in harmony with other religious beliefs. It is quite true that it is difficult to find a single precept which had not already been taught before; but this has nothing to do with the matter. Not by doctrine alone is the Christian made one with Christ. He is not a Christian who believes in the doctrine, but he is a Christian who believes in the Christ-Spirit. In order to be a Christian we must have the feeling of union with Him, the feeling of union with the Christ who actually dwells on earth. Simply to avow the teaching of Christ is not preaching Christianity. To preach Christianity means to be able to see in Christ the Spirit Whom we have just characterized as the regent of the sun; Who in the moment when the blood flowed out of His wounds on Golgotha, transferred His work to the earth and through this act drew the earth into the work of the sun.

On this account those who were the first to preach Christianity laid very great stress on proclaiming the person of Christ Jesus, and very little stress on His words: “We have seen Him when He was with us on the holy mount.” They attached great value to the fact that He was there—that they saw Him. “We have placed our hands in His wounds.” They valued the fact that they had touched Him. What was felt at the time was that the whole of the future evolution of mankind on earth proceeds from this historical event. On this account the disciples said: “We value the fact that we were with Him on the holy mount; but we also think it a great thing that the words of the prophets have been fulfilled in Him—those words inspired by very truth and wisdom.” What the prophets foretold has been fulfilled. By “prophets” was then meant initiates, men who could predict the Christ, because they had seen Him at the midnight hour at Christmas time in the Holy Mysteries. The first disciples considered the event on Golgotha as a fulfillment of that which has always been known; and a rapid and total change took place in the feelings and thoughts of the initiated.

If we look into the time before the Christian era, and even let our thoughts wander further to a more remote time, we find that all love and affection is bound up with the tic of blood relationships. In the Jewish race, out of which Christ Himself issued, we see love only between those who are kinsfolk—we see that those love one another in whom the same blood flows; even earlier than this, love always rested on the natural foundation of a common blood-relationship. Spiritual love, which is independent of flesh and blood, was first introduced on earth by Christ. On this depends the fulfillment of the saying: “Who forsaketh not father and mother, brother and sister, wife and child, cannot be My disciple.” He who makes love conditional upon the natural foundation of blood-relationship, is not according to this sense a Christian. Spiritual love, which as a great fraternal bond will permeate all mankind, is the result of Christianity.

Christianity teaches mankind how to acquire the most perfect freedom and inner cohesiveness. The ‘Psalmist said, “I remember the days of old and ponder times long past”. To look back upon one’s first ancestors was a persistent experience of the olden times. The men of old could feel the blood of their ancestors flowing through their veins, and felt that their ego was connected with the ego of their ancestors. If it were desired to really feel this connection, even amongst the old Jewish people, it was customary to utter the name of Abraham; he who uttered this name felt that some of the blood which descended from Abraham flowed through his veins. When he wished to express his highest nature the Jew said: “I am one with Abraham!” After the death of his body, his soul returned into Abraham’s bosom—this has a deep, a very deep meaning. At that time man was not in possession of the self-dependence which first entered his consciousness through Christ Jesus. The conscious understanding of the “I am” was awakened by Christ Jesus. At that time they could not have felt the whole divinity of the inner divine being of man. They felt “I am,” but they connected it with their ancestors; they felt it in the common blood which flowed through their veins since the time of Abraham. Then Christ Jesus came and with Him the consciousness that there is something older and more independent in mankind. The “I am” is not only to be sought in what is common to a nation, but is something in the individual personality, which therefore must again seek love with its own personality, beyond itself. The ego which is today confined in you, cut off from everything outside itself, seeks spiritual love beyond itself.

This ego does not feel itself one with the father who was in Abraham, but with the spiritual Father of the world: “I and My Father are one!” A more profound saying than this—although this is the most impressive—because it appeals more to the understanding, is the one in which Christ made it clear to mankind that they are not expressing the utmost when they say, “I existed before in Abraham.” He points out that the “I am” is of older date, emanating from God Himself:

“Before Abraham was, I Am.” In this way does the saying appear in the original—which usually is so expressed that nobody quite understands what it means—“before Abraham was born, I am.” The “I am,” the innermost spiritual being, which everyone has within him, existed before Abraham.

One who understands this saying penetrates deeply into the essence of Christian intuition and life, and understands why Christ also refers to it in the words: “I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!” Therefore we also ought to feel the true hidden meaning of the expression in the Christmas hymn, which tells us every year anew at Christmas the original secret of the existence beyond time of the “I am.” The hymn is not sung as a reminder, “Today we remember that Christ was born”, rather we sing every time: “Christ is born in us today!” For this event is eternal, and that which once took place in Palestine can happen anew every Christmas night for those who have the power of transforming the teaching into feelings and experiences.

Anthroposophy will help mankind really to feel and understand again what is meant when we celebrate such a festival. Its mission is not to teach an abstract doctrine, an abstract theory, but to lead man back into fuller life—to make this life appear not as something abstract but as something which is filled with soul. We feel this soul when we go into the quarry and watch the stones being split off; when we see the migration of birds; when we see the scythe going through the grain; when the sun rises and sets. And the more profound the events we contemplate, the deeper do we feel their soul nature. At the great turning-points of the year we feel the most important soul events. What is most important for us is that we shall again learn to feel at those great turning-points of the year which are marked out in our festivals.

Thus our festivals will again become like a living breath permeating the soul of man; at the time of such festivals man will again become familiar with the whole weaving and working of the full soul and spirit nature. The anthroposophist must for the present act as a pioneer with regard to what these festivals may once more become when mankind understands their spirit anew—understands anew what is called “the festival spirit.” It will belong to those forces which will once more lead man out into the cosmos, when anthroposophists at such festivals feel and realize something of the feelings and sensations of nature, and remember at these important moments what Anthroposophy is able to restore to mankind through its teachings. Anthroposophy will then become a living factor in the soul, and will be genuine “life-wisdom”, vitaesophia. Anthroposophy can accomplish this best when the world-soul comes down amongst us, and is united with us in an especially intimate manner at the festival of the birth of Christ.

My dear friends,

A large number of anthroposophical friends have appeared at the Class today who have not been here before, so I am obliged to say a few introductory words about the School's arrangements. It is to be remembered in all earnestness that with the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum a new element has entered into the anthroposophical movement. Especially the members of our Free School for Spiritual Science must be aware of this new element. I have often indicated this, but I know that many anthroposophical friends are here for the first time who have never heard it, so I must emphasize it once again.

It is true that before the Christmas Conference it was always emphasized that the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society must be held strictly separate.

The anthroposophical movement represented the inflow of spiritual wisdom and life impulses into human civilization today which can and should be obtained for our present time directly from the spiritual world. This anthroposophical movement exists not because people like it to exist but because the spiritual powers which guide and lead the world and affect human history consider it right that spiritual light, which can come through anthroposophy, flow today into human civilization in the appropriate manner.

The Anthroposophical Society was founded in order to act as an administrative society for the body of anthroposophical wisdom and life. And it had to be continually emphasized that anthroposophy as such is beyond and above any societal organization and the Anthroposophical Society is the exoteric administrator.

That has changed since the Christmas Conference at the Goetheanum. Since the Christmas Conference the opposite is the case. And only because the opposite is the case was I able to declare myself willing, together with the Executive Committee (Vorstand) which was formed during the Christmas Conference and with whom the appropriate work to be done can be carried out, to take over the presidency of the Anthroposophical Society which was founded at Christmas. I can explain what this means in one sentence: Until then, anthroposophy was administered by the Anthroposophical Society; now whatever happens through the Anthroposophical Society must itself be anthroposophy. Since Christmas the Anthroposophical Society must occupy itself with anthroposophy. Every single act must have an esoteric character. The investment of the Vorstand was thus an esoteric measure, a measure which must be thought of as coming directly from the spiritual world. Only when our anthroposophical friends are conscious of this can the Anthroposophical Society thus founded thrive. So, the anthroposophical movement and the Anthroposophical Society have now become identical.

Thus, the Vorstand at Dornach is an initiative-Vorstand, as was emphasized during the Christmas Conference. Of course, there must be an administration. But that is not what it considers to be its principal task, but rather to make anthroposophy flow through the Anthroposophical Society and to do everything possible to achieve this objective.

The position of the Vorstand at Dornach within the Anthroposophical Society is therewith given. And it must be clear that from now on every relationship within the Anthroposophical Society will not be based on some bureaucratic measure or other, but it will be based on the strictly human. Therefore, at the Christmas Conference statutes that contain paragraphs which detail what members must believe or agree to were not presented; rather do the statutes describe what the Vorstand intends. And that is how the Anthroposophical Society is constituted. It is founded upon human relationships.

It is a minor thing, but I must emphasize it: every member is issued a membership card, which is signed by me, so that even if it's an abstract thing, the personal relationship is at least present. It has been suggested that I have a rubber stamp made with my signature. I'm not going to do that - despite it not being exactly comfortable to sign twelve thousand membership cards, little by little. But I will not have the stamp made, first of all because, although very abstract, a relationship is at least established to each and every member when, if only for minutes the eye rests on the name of the person who carries the membership card. Obviously, all the other relationships will be even more human, but by this means a concrete beginning is made within our society.

I must also stress that it must be clear to the members - I stress it because it has already been sinned against - that when the name “General Anthroposophical Society” is used, the agreement of the Vorstand at the Goetheanum is first obtained. In the same sense, when something comes from the Goetheanum and is then used as something esoteric, the use is based upon an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum. This means that nothing by way of formulations and teaching which appears in the name of the General Anthroposophical Society will be recognized by us here as valid unless an understanding with the Vorstand at the Goetheanum has taken place. In the future, no abstract relationship will be possible, only concrete ones. Anything said to come from the Goetheanum must really come from the Goetheanum. Therefore, the use of the title “General Anthroposophical Society” for lectures to be given somewhere or for the use of formulations and so forth which originate here and which an active member wishes to distribute, should write to the Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum, that is, to Mrs. Wegman, in order to obtain the Vorstand's agreement. It is important that in future the Vorstand at the Goetheanum be understood as the center of the anthroposophical movement.

Furthermore, the relation of this School to the Anthroposophical Society must be clearly understood by the membership. One who becomes a member of the Anthroposophical Society feels the inner heartfelt need to learn and live what circulates in the world as anthroposophical knowledge and living impulse. One assumes no responsibilities other than those which come to the heart and soul from anthroposophy itself. Once one has been a general member of the General Anthroposophical society for a certain time - presently the minimum is two years - he can apply for membership in the Free School for Spiritual Science.

In this Free School for Spiritual Science one assumes truly earnest responsibilities for the Society, for anthroposophy, that is, that as a member one wishes to be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world. That is necessary today. The leadership of the Free School for Spiritual Science cannot agree to work together with someone as a member under other conditions.

Do not say, my friends, that this is a limitation of freedom. Freedom demands that everyone involved be free. And just as one can be a member of the School and be free in this relationship, the leadership of the School must also be free to determine with whom it wishes to work and with whom not. Therefore, if the leadership for any reason is of the opinion that a member cannot be a true representative of anthroposophy to the world, it must be possible for the leadership of the School to either not approve that person's application or, in the case where he is already a member, to say that his membership must be revoked. This must be strictly observed in this future, so that in fact a free cooperation exists between the School's leadership and the members.

Step by step we will try to make arrangements so that those who cannot take part in the continuing work of the School in Dornach can partake in some manner. We can only take the fifth step after the fourth, not the seventh step after the first; we must take one step after the other and there has been much to do here since the Christmas Conference. But it will all be arranged to the extent possible. We will have a newsletter through which those who reside elsewhere can participate in the School's activities. We were able to make a beginning with a newsletter that Dr Wegman sent to the physicians who were thus able to participate in the work of the School. Things will develop as much as possible, and I ask that you be patient in this respect.

Something else to be mentioned is that the School must be understood not as having been established by a human impulse, but from the spiritual world. A decision made from the spiritual world has been obtained with the means which are possible. So that this School is to be understood as an institution of the spiritual world for the present time - as has been the case with the Mysteries in all times. Therefore, we may say today: This School must develop into a true Mystery School for our times. Thus, it will be the soul of the anthroposophical movement.

This makes clear how serious membership in this School should be understood to be. It is obvious that all the previous esoteric work achieved here will flow into the School's work. For this School is the esoteric foundation and source of all esoteric activity within the anthroposophical movement. Therefore, if anyone wishes to initiate any kind of esoteric work in the world without a connection to the Vorstand at the Goetheanum, they must either reach an understanding with the Vorstand or they cannot include things which originate in the Goetheanum in their teaching or impulse. Whoever wants to do esoteric work under conditions other than those just mentioned cannot be a member of this School. They must then do the esoteric work outside the confines of this School and unrecognized by it, but must clearly understand that it cannot include anything which originated in this School. Relations with the School must be clearly understood. So the members must understand that [the leadership of] the School must be able to consider that each member is a true representative of anthroposophy in the world, and that every member represents anthroposophy exoterically (sic) as a member of the School should.

Before I was President of the Anthroposophical Society an attempt was made to organize the Goetheanum in the way other universities are organized. But that doesn't work under certain circumstances. Here esoteric studies will take place which are not found in other universities. And there is no intention to compete with other universities in the world, but to begin with questions about any field of life posed by honestly seeking people, which cannot be answered outside the esoteric.

Therefore, in the future, especially for members of the School, nonsense which keeps being repeated must cease, because with the Christmas Conference something real has happened and for the Goetheanum to fulfill its mission all the members of the School must frankly and freely declare: I am a representative of the anthroposophy which comes given from the Goetheanum. Whoever will not do this, who thinks that one should be silent about anthroposophy, prepare people slowly, whoever wants to play politics and thinks that he can advance by denying us and then people will come to us - they generally don't - would be well advised to give up membership in the School right away. I can promise you that in the future membership in the School will be taken very seriously indeed. For those members of the School whose work is really about anthroposophy and not something else, this will be accepted readily and gladly. Those who continually claim that you can't confront people with anthroposophy immediately, that you must somehow talk them into it gradually, may choose to exercise their opinion outside the School.

These are the conditions which must be adhered to, and I had to mention them today because so many anthroposophical friends are present who had not yet participated in the School. And this is the reason why you have had to wait so long for the lesson to begin, and listen to this introduction. So, we can consider the lesson today to be a kind of preparation. I will hold a second lesson, date to be announced, in which no new friends may participate. So, I ask those who wish to attend in the future to have patience, because if every time a lesson is held here new people come, we would never get anywhere. Of course, one can still become a member, but only members who have attended today will be admitted to the next lesson. It will be a continuation of today's lesson.

I wish to begin today's lesson - without you taking notes, only listening at first - by speaking the mantric formula which points to what has resounded throughout the ages, first from the Mysteries, but previously for the Mysteries from the script written in the stars, in the whole cosmos, and which resounds in the human soul, in the human heart, as the great challenge to humanity to strive for a true knowledge of self. This challenge; “O man, know thyself!” rings forth from the whole cosmos.

We look up at the stars, which reveal an especially clear writing in the zodiac, which through their composition in certain forms reveal the grand cosmic script. For one who understands the script the cosmic words will sound forth: “O man, know thyself!”

When we look up at what the planets reveal by their movements, first the sun and moon, but also the planets which belong to the sun and moon, then just as the movements of the stars reveal the powerful, forceful cosmic word, so do these planetary movements reveal the heart and feeling content.

And through what we experience from the elements which surround us on the earth and in which we partake through our skin, through our senses, through everything in us, that enters into us and acts in our bodies - earth, water, fire, air - through them the will element pours into these words.

We can therefore let this cosmic word, which rings out to humanity, act on our souls through the mantric words:

O man, know thyself!
So resounds the cosmic-word.
You hear it strong in soul,
You feel it vast in spirit.

Who speaks so vastly cosmic?
Who speaks so deeply heartfelt?

Does it work through distant radiant space
Into your senses' sense of being?
Does it ring through waves of time
Into your life's evolving stream?

Is it you yourself who,
Feeling space, experiencing time

Create the Word, feeling foreign
In space's psychic vacancy,
Because you lose the force of thought
In time's destroying flow.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, there exists no knowledge which is not closely tied to the spiritual world. Everything we call knowledge which is neither investigated in the spiritual world nor imparted by those who are able to investigate in the spiritual world, is not real knowledge. We must be clear about the fact that when we look around in the world, in the kingdoms of nature, see the colors and the radiance manifested, see what lives above in the shining stars, in the warming sun, what springs up from the depths of the earth - it is all sublime, grand, beautiful, full of wisdom. And we would be very mistaken to ignore this beauty, sublimity, this wisdom. If one wishes to become an esotericist, if he strives for real knowledge, then he must have a sense for the world around him - an open, free sense. For during the time between birth and death, during his earthly existence, he is obliged to absorb his strength from the forces of the earth, and to return the results of his work to the forces of the earth.

But although it is true that man must really participate in all the colors on colors, sound on sound, warmth on warmth, star on star, cloud on cloud, creatures of the kingdoms of nature which surround him, it is also true that if when he looks out at all the grand, powerful, sublime, wise, beautiful things his senses convey, he still does not discover what he himself is. Rather is it just then, when he has a correct sense of the sublimity, beauty and grandeur of his surroundings in his life on earth, that he will realize: In this light-filled kingdom of earth the inmost source of my being is not present. It is elsewhere. Full recognition of this causes us to seek the state of consciousness which moves us on to what we call the threshold to the spiritual world. This threshold, which lies immediately before an abyss, we must approach and remember that in all that surrounds us in earthly existence the primal source of humanity is not found.

Then we must know: at this threshold stands a spiritual figure called the Guardian of the Threshold. This Guardian takes care - beneficially to man - that one does not cross the threshold unprepared, without having experienced deeply in the soul those feelings I have spoken about. But then, when he really is prepared with inner earnestness for spiritual knowledge - whether by means of clairvoyant consciousness or through healthy human understanding of what he has been told, for both ways are valid, only then is it possible for the Guardian of the Threshold to reach out with a helping hand and allow him to look over the abyss. There, beyond the threshold where the human being's inmost being originated, utter darkness lies at first.

My dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, we seek light in order to see in the light the origin of our own being. At first darkness reigns. This light which we seek must radiate out from the darkness. And it only radiates out from the darkness when we become aware of how the three fundamental impulses of our soul-life, thinking, feeling and willing, here is this earth-life are held together by our physical bodies. Thinking, feeling and willing are conjoined in physical existence.

If I schematically draw how they are conjoined, it looks like this. Feeling (green) extends into thinking (yellow); willing (red) extends into feeling. So, in earthly existence the Three are conjoined.

One must learn to feel that the Three separate from each other. And if more and more he uses the meditations suggested to him here by the School as the content of his soul life, he will note the following [drawing again]: thinking (yellow) is freed, detaching itself from feeling, feeling [green] is on its own as is willing [red]. For one learns to perceive without the physical body.

The physical body had held thinking, feeling and willing together, had pressed them into each other. [Around the first drawing an oval is drawn.] Here [in the second drawing on the right] the physical body is not present.

Through the meditations which he receives here at the School, one gradually comes to feel himself outside his body; and he comes to regard the world as self, and what self was, as world. We stand here on the earth in our earthly existence: we feel like human beings; we say, as we become inwardly aware: this is my heart, these are my lungs, this is my liver, this is my stomach. What we call our organs, what we call the physical human organization, we consider to be our own. And we point up: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, the clouds, that is a tree, a stream. We identify these things as being outside us. We are within our organs. We are outside of those things we indicated as: that is the sun, that is the moon, those are the stars, and so on.

When we have prepared our souls enough so that they can perceive without the body, that is, outside the body in the spiritual universe, then the reverse consciousness comes about. Now we speak of the sun as we speak of our heart here in earthly existence: that is my heart. We speak of the moon: that is the creator of my form. We speak of the clouds more of less as we speak on earth of our hair. We call our own organism what people on the earth see as components of the universe. And we point out: look there, a human heart, human lungs, a human liver - that is objective, that is world. Just as when we are in our physical bodies we look out from here to the sun and moon and to the world, when from the universe we look at the sun and the moon and clouds and rivers and mountains and they are within us. And when we look at man he is our outer world. The difficulty is only in the spatial relationships. And the difficulty will be overcome.

As soon as we leave our physical bodies with our thinking, we perceive this thinking as one with all that is manifested in the stars. Here on earth we call our brain our own, as the instrument of our thinking. But now we begin to feel the stars, especially the stars of the zodiac, as our brain when we are out in the universe and look down at man external to us.

And we perceive the circling planets as our own feeling. Our feeling follows then the course of the sun, of the moon, and of the other planets. Between what we experience as thinking in the fixed stars and feeling, is the sun in ourselves [the sun sign is inserted between the yellow and green of the second drawing]; and the moon lies between feeling and willing - which we also feel within us. [The moon sign is inserted between green and red.] And by simply meditating on this figure, it has the force to bring us closer and closer to spiritual vision. It must be realized that what I am saying here can really be experienced: leaving the physical body, expanding throughout the cosmos, feeling the elements of the cosmos - sun and moon, stars and so on - as one's own organs, observation of humanity as our exterior world.

What must be perfectly clear however, is that our thinking, our feeling and our willing which on earth is a unity held together by the physical body, now becomes threefold. And we learn to feel this threefold nature above all when we observe thinking.

Dear friends, dear sisters and brothers, this thinking which man uses on earth between birth and death is a corpse. It does not live. Whatever he may think with his brain about the beautiful, sublime, grand earth in his surroundings: these thoughts do not live. They lived in pre-earthly existence. They lived, these thoughts, when we had not yet descended to the physical world, but still lived above in the soul-spiritual world as soul-spiritual beings. There the thoughts which we have on earth were alive, but our physical body is the grave in which the moribund thought-world is buried when we descend to the earth. And here we carry the corpses of thought within us. And we think about our sense-perceptible surroundings on earth not with living thoughts but with the corpses of thought. But before we descended to this physical world a living thinking existed within us.

My dear friends, we only need to immerse ourselves in these truths again and again with inner strength and we come to the conscious conclusion that it really is so. One comes to know the human being in this way. One comes to know him and sees him so: This is the human head. [The outline of a head is sketched.] This human head is the bearer and support for earthly corpse-thinking. From it spring forth - but dead - the thoughts which spread over what is perceived by the eyes, by the ears, by the sense of warmth, by the other senses. We observe the thinking that corresponds to life on earth.

But gradually we learn to see through this thinking. Within the spiritual cell of the human head is the lingering sound of the true, living thinking in which we lived before descending to the physical world. When one looks at man, one sees at first his dead thinking [sketch: red part of the head]. But behind this dead thinking in the head's spiritual cell is the living thinking [yellow part of the head]. And this living thinking has brought with it the force necessary to form our brain. The brain is not thinking's creator, but the product of pre-earthly living thinking.

So when we look at the human being with the correct awareness, dead earthly thinking is manifested on the surface of the head; if we look within to the spiritual cell behind, we see the living thinking, which is like a will, such as the will we are otherwise aware of in the human motor system, which is really sleeping in us. For we don't know how thought descends to our muscles and so on - when it intends to will this or that. Then we observe what lives in us as will: we see it as thinking in the spiritual cell behind the sense oriented thinking. But then this will, which we become aware of as thinking, is creative for our thinking organ. For this thinking is no longer human thinking, it is cosmic thinking.

If we can understand the human being so that we look through the earthly thinking to the thinking which made the brain the basis for thinking on earth, then sensory thinking flows out into the cosmic void, and eternal thinking arises as will.

We become conscious of all this when we let the following mantric words act in us:

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

This imagination must gradually stand before you, my dear friends, this imagination of dead thinking directed toward the sensory world streaming out from the head. Behind it lurks - at first in darkness - the true thinking which glows through sensory thinking and which builds the brain as man descends from the spiritual to the physical world. It is, however, like will. And one sees then how from out of man the will arises [white lines from below to above], spreading in the head, to become cosmic thinking because what lives in the will as thinking is already cosmic thinking.

We should therefore try to better understand and bring closer the mantric thoughts which we can imbue in the soul in the following way:

[The first verse is written on the blackboard:]

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell

- that is, one must look behind thinking - [“behind” is underlined]

Willing arises from the body's depths;

- one must become strong in the soul to let normal sensory thinking flow away -

Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

These seven lines contain the secret of human thinking's connection to the universe.

We must not pretend to understand these things with the intellect, but must let them live in feeling as meditation. And these words have force. They are constructed harmoniously. “Thinking”, “willing”, “cosmic void”, “will” and “cosmic thought creating” [these words are underlined] are arranged here in inner organization of thoughts so they can work on the imaginative consciousness.

Just as we can look at the human head and it becomes a means for us to look into cosmic-thought-creating, we can also look at the human heart as the physical imaginative representative of the human soul. As thinking is the abstract representative of the human spirit, we can look upon the human heart as the representative of feeling. And we can look into feeling, as it applies to human earthly existence, but now no longer behind, but into it. [In the drawing a yellow oval.] For just as we perceive cosmic-thought-creating in the spiritual cell behind thinking, we can also perceive feeling, whose representative the heart is, streaming through something which from the cosmos goes in and out of man: we perceive cosmic life, cosmic life which becomes human soul-life.

As here [in the first verse] must be: “behind thinking's sensory light”, now it must be: “in feeling's” in the second mantra, which must be harmonically interwoven with the first.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

[This second strophe is written on the blackboard:]

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams

Feeling is only a wakeful dreaming. Feelings are not as conscious as thinking is. They are as conscious as the pictures in dreams. Thus, feeling is a waking dream. Therefore:

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life

Here [in the first verse] “willing” arises from the body's depths; whereas here “Life” streams in from cosmic distance.

streams in from cosmic distance;

[In the drawing 4 horizontal arrows are added.]

As here [in the first verse] thinking is to flow into the cosmic void through strength of soul, now we let the dreams of feeling gust away, but in their place, we perceive in the psychic weaving of feeling what streams in as cosmic life. When feelings' dreams completely dissolve in sleep, when individual human feeling stops, then cosmic life weaves into man.

Life streams in from cosmic distance

[Writing continues:]

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

Here [in the first verse] we need strength of soul; Here [in the second verse] we need complete tranquility, for the dreams of feeling dissolve in sleep, and the divine cosmic life streams into the human soul.

Let in sleep through the tranquil heart

[Writing continues, and the words “drift away”, “cosmic spirit life” and “Man's true force of being” are underlined.]

Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

In these seven lines the whole secret of human feeling is contained, if it can become independent when the unity [of thinking, feeling, willing] becomes threefold.

In this way we can also observe the human limbs, in which the will is revealed [Drawing: white arrow pointing downwards]; here we cannot say: “See behind”, “See into”. Here we must say “See above”, for thinking streams down to the will from the head, although man with normal consciousness cannot see it. But the thoughts stream from the head into the limbs in order for the will to be able to act in the limbs.

When we observe the will acting in the limbs, when we see in every arm movement, in every leg movement how the will streams in, then we also realize how in this will there is a secret thinking, a thinking which directly grasps earthly existence. Actually, it is our being in earlier earthly lives, which grasps earthly existence through the limbs in order that in grasping it we can live our present life on earth. Thinking descends into the limbs. When we see how thinking descends, we are seeing thinking in the will [drawing: red descending from the head through the arm].

Then, because we are seeing with the soul, we see how thinking lives in the arms, in the hands, in the legs, in the feet, in the toes, a process otherwise hidden from us, then we must see how this thinking is light. Thinking as light streams through arms and hands, through legs and toes. And the will, which otherwise is sleeping in the limbs, transforms itself and thinking appears as a magical being of will that transplants the human being from earlier lives - after becoming spirit - into the present-earth life:

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

It conjures, that is, it acts magically on the invisible thinking in the will of the limbs. He understands the human being who knows that the thought which is not seen in the will - because we are sleeping in the will - acts magically in the limbs as will. And only by seeing as magical the thoughts which pass through the arms and hands, through legs and toes is true magic understood.

[The third strophe is written on the blackboard with the words “thinking”, “transform” and “magical being of will” underlined.]

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as the magical essence of will.

Therein is contained the secret of human will, which creates magically from out of the universe into man.

Let us then, my dear friends, my dear sisters and brothers, consider this a foundation for building later on at a time to be announced, a foundation for again and again in meditation letting the mantric words flow through the soul.

See behind thinking's sensory light,
How in the darkening spirit-cell
Willing arises from the body's depths;
Let flow through your soul's force
Dead thinking into the cosmic void;
And the will, it arises
As cosmic-thought-creating.

See in feeling's psychic weaving
How in the twilight of dreams
Life streams in from cosmic distance;
Let in sleep through the tranquil heart
Human feelings drift away:
Cosmic spirit life becomes
Man's true force of being.

See over the will's work in the body,
How in sleeping fields of work
Thinking descends from the head's forces;
Let human will transform itself
Through the soul's vision of light;
And thinking, it appears
as magical being of will.

My dear friends,

Before we continue the observations of yesterday which we have nearly brought to a conclusion, let us carry out a few experiments to give support to what we are going to say. First we will make a cylinder of light by allowing a beam to pass through this opening, and into this cylinder we will bring a sphere which is so prepared that the light passes into it, but cannot pass through. What happens we will indicate by this thermometer (see drawing Fig. 1). You will note that this cylinder of energy, let us say, passing into the sphere reveals its effect by causing the mercury column to sink. Thus we are dealing with what we have formerly brought about by expansion. And indeed, in this case we have to assume also that heat passes into the sphere, causes an expansion and this expansion makes itself evident by a depression of the column of mercury. If we placed a prism in the path of the light we would get a spectrum. We do not form a spectrum in this experiment, but we catch the light—gather it up and obtain as a result of this gathering up of what is in the bundle of light, a very market expansion. You can see the definite depression of the mercury. Now we will place in the path of the energy cylinder, an alum solution, and see what happens under the influence of this solution. You will see after a while that the mercury will come to exactly the same level in the right and left hand tubes. This shows that originally heat passed through, but under the influence of the alum solution the heat is shut off, not more goes through. The apparatus then comes only under the influence of the heat generally present in the space around it and the mercury readjusts itself to equilibrium in the two tubes. The heat is stopped as soon as I put the alum solution in the path of the energy cylinder. That is to say, from this cylinder which yields for me both light and heat, I separate out the heat and permit the light to pass through. Let us keep this firmly in mind. Something still rays through. But we see that we can so treat the light-heat mercury that the light passes on and the heat is separated by means of the alum solution.

This is one thing we must keep in mind simply as a phenomenon. There is another phenomenon to be brought to our attention before we proceed with our considerations. When we study the nature of heat we can do so by warming a body at one particular spot. We then notice that the body gets warm not only at the spot where we are applying the heat, but that one portion shares its heat with the next portion, then this with the next, etc. and that finally the heat is spread over the entire body (Fig. 2). And this is not all.

If we simply bring another body in contact with the warm body, the second body will become warmer than it formerly was. In modern physics this is ordinarily stated by saying that heat is spread by conduction. We speak of the conduction of heat. The heat is conducted from one portion of a body to another portion, and it is also conducted from one body to another in contact with the first. A very superficial observation will show you that the conduction of heat varies with different materials. If you grasp a metallic rod in your fingers by one end and hold the other end in a flame, you will soon have to drop it, since the heat travels rapidly from one end of rod to the other. Metals, it is said, are good conductors of heat. On the other hand, if you hold a wooden stick in the flame in the same way, you will not have to drop it quickly on account of the conduction of heat. Wood is a poor conductor of heat. Thus we may speak of good and poor conductors of heat. Now this can be cleared up by another experiment. And this experiment we are unfortunately unable to make today. It has again been impossible to get ice in the form we need it. At a more favorable time the experiment can be made with a lens made of ice as we would make a lens of glass. Then from a source of heat, a flame, this ice lens can be used to concentrate the heat rays just as light rays can be concentrated (to use the ordinary terminology.) A thermometer can then be used to demonstrate the concentration by the ice lens of the heat passing through it. (See Fig. 4).

Now you can see from this experiment that it is a question here of something very different from conduction even though there is a transmission of the heat, otherwise the ice lens could not remain an ice lens. What we have to consider is that the heat spreads in two ways. In one form, the bodies through which it spreads are profoundly influenced, and in the other form it is a matter of indifference what stands in the path. In this latter case we are dealing with the propagation of the real being of heat, with the spreading of heat itself. If we wish to speak accurately we must ask what is spreading, then we apply heat and see a body getting warmer gradually piece by piece, we must ask the question: is it not perhaps a very confused statement of the matter when we say that the heat itself spreads from particle to particle through the body, since we are able to determine nothing about the process except the gradual heating of the body?

You see, I must emphasize to you that we have to make for ourselves very accurate ideas and concepts. Suppose, instead of simply perceiving the heat in the metal rod, you had a large rod, heated it here, and placed on it a row of urchins. As it became warm the urchins would cry out, the first one, then the second, then the third, etc. One after another they would cry out. But it would never occur to you to say that what you heard from the first urchin was conducted to the second, the third, the fourth, etc. When the physicist applies heat at one spot, however, and then perceives it further down the rod, he says: the heat is simply conducted. He is really observing how the body reacts, one part after another, to give him the sensation of warmth, just as the urchins give a yell when they experience the heat. You cannot, however, say that the yells are transmitted.

Now we will perform also an experiment to show how the different metals we have here in the form of rods behave in respect to what we call the conduction, and about which we are striving to get valid ideas. We have hot water in this vessel (Fig. 3). By placing the ends of the rods in the water, they are warmed. Now we will see how this experiment comes out. One rod after another will get warm, and we will have a kind of graduated scale before us. We will be able to see the gradual spreading of the effect of the heat in the different substances. (The rods consisted of copper, nickel, lead, tin, zinc, iron.) The iodide of mercury on the rods (used to indicate rise in temperature) becomes red in the following order: copper, nickel, zinc, tin, iron and lead. The lead is, therefore, among these metals, the poorest conductor of heat, as it is said.

This experiment is shown to you in order to help form the general view of the subject that I have so often spoken to you about. Gradually we will rise to an understanding of what the heat entity is in its reality.

Now, from our remarks of yesterday we have seen that when we turn our attention to he realm of corporeality, we can in a certain way, set limits to the realm of the solids by following what it is essentially that takes on form. We have the fluids as an intermediate stage and then we go over to the gaseous realm. In the gaseous we have a kind of intermediate state, exactly as we would expect, namely the heat condition. We have seen why we can place it as we do in the series. Then we come, as I have said, into an X region in which we have to assume materialization and dematerialization, pass then to a Y and a Z. This is all similar to the manner in which we find in the light spectrum the transition from green through blue to violet and then apparently on to infinity. Yesterday we convinced ourselves that we have to continue below the solid realm into a U region. Thus we think of the world of corporeality as arranged in an order analogous to the arrangement in the spectrum. This is exactly what we do when we pursue our thinking in contact with reality.

Now let us further extend the ideas of yesterday. In the case of the spectrum we conceive of what disappears at the violet end and at the red end in the straight line spectrum as bent into a circle. In exactly the same way we can, in this different realm of states of aggregation, imagine that the two ends of the series do not disappear into infinity. Instead, what apparently goes off into the indefinite on the one side and what goes off into indefiniteness on the other may be considered as bending back (Fig. 1) and then we have before us a circle, or at least a line whose two ends meet.

The question now arises, what is to be found at the point of juncture? When we observe the usual spectrum, we can in that case find something at this point. In Goethe's sense you know that the spectrum considered as a whole with all its colors included shows as its middle color on one side green, when we make a bright spectrum. On the other side peach blossom which is also a middle color when we make a dark spectrum. Thus we have green, blue, violet extending to peach blossom. By closing the circle we note that at the point where it closes, there is the peach blossom color.

If we then construct a similar circle in our thinking about the realm states of aggregation, what do we find at the point of juncture? This brings us to an enormously important consideration. What must we place in the spectrum of states of aggregation which will correspond to the peach blossom of the color spectrum? The idea that arises naturally from the facts here may perhaps be easier for you to grasp if I lead you to it as follows: What do we have in reality which disappears as it were in two opposite directions—just as in the color spectrum the tones shade off on the one side into the region beyond the violet and on the other side into the region beyond the red? Ask yourselves what it is. It is nothing more or less than the whole of nature. The whole of nature is included in it. For you cannot in the whole of nature find anything not included in the form categories we have mentioned. Nature disappears from us on the one hand when we go through corporeality into heat and beyond. She disappears from us on the other when we follow form through the solid realm into the sub-solid where we saw the polarization figures as the effect of form on form. The tourmaline crystals show us now a bright field, now a dark one. By the mutual effect of one form on another there appear alternately dark and light fields.

It is essential for us to determine what we should place here when we follow nature in one direction until we meet what streams from the other side. What stands there? Man as such stands there. The human being is inserted at that point. Man, taking up what comes from both sides is placed at that point. And how does he take up what comes from the two sides? (Fig. 2) He has form. He is also formed within. When we examine his form among other formed bodies we are obliged to give him this attribute. Thus, the forces that give from elsewhere are within man. And now we must ask ourselves, are these forces to be found in the sphere of consciousness? No, they are not in the human consciousness. Think of the matter a moment. You cannot get a real understanding of the human form from what you can see in either yourselves or other men. You cannot experience it immediately in consciousness. We have a corporeality, but this form is not given in our immediate consciousness. What do we have in our immediate consciousness in the place of form?

Now, my friends, that can be experienced only when one gradually and in an unbiased manner learns to observe the physical development of man. When the human being first enters physical existence, he must be related very plastically to his formative forces. That is, he must do a great deal of body building. The nearer we approach the condition of childhood, the greater the body building, and as we take on years there is a withdrawal of the body building forces. In proportion as the body building forces withdraw, conscious reasoning comes into play. The more the formative forces withdraw the more reasoning advances. We can create ideas in regard to form in proportion as we lose the ability to create form in ourselves. This considered in a matter of fact way, is simply an obvious truth. But now you see, we can say that we experience formative forces—forces that create form outside the body can be experienced. And how do we experience them? In this way, that they become ideas within us. Now we are at the point where we can bring the formative forces to the human being. These forces are not something that can be dreamed about. Answers to the questions that nature puts to us cannot be drawn from speculation or philosophizing, but must be got from reality. And in reality we see that the formative forces show themselves where, as it were, form dissolves into ideas, where it becomes ideas. In our ideas we experience what escapes us as a force while our bodies are building.

When we place human nature before us in thought, we can state the matter as follows: man experiences as ideas the forces welling up from below. What does he experience coming down from above? What comes into consciousness from the realms of gas and heat? Here again when you look at human nature in an unprejudiced way, you have to ask yourselves: how does the will relate itself to the phenomena of heat?

You need only consider the matter physiologically to see that we go through a certain interaction with the heat being of outer nature in order to function in our will nature. Indeed heat must appear if willing is to become a reality. We have to consider will related to heat. Just as the formative forces of outer objects are related to ideas, so we have to consider what is spread abroad as heat as related to that which we find active in our wills. Heat may be thus looked upon as will, or we may say that we experience the being of heat in our will.

How can we define form what it approaches us from within-out? We see it, in this form, in any given solid body. We know that if conditions are such that this form can be seized upon by our life processes, ideas will arise. These ideas are not within the outer object. It is somewhat as if I observed the spirit separated from the body in death. When I see form in outer nature, what brings about the form is not there in the object. It is in truth not there. Just as the spirit is not within the corpse but has been in it, so is that which determines form not within the object. If I therefore turn my eyes in an unprejudiced way towards outer nature I have to say: Something works in the process of form building in objects, but in the corpse this something “has been active,” while in the object its activity is becoming. We will see that what is there active lives in our ideas.

If I experience heat in nature, then I experience what works in a certain way as my will. In the thinking and willing man we have what meets us in outer nature as form and heat respectively.

But now there are all possible intermediate stages between will and thought. A mere intellectual self-examination will soon show you that you never think without exercising the will. Exercise of the will is difficult for modern man especially. The human being is more prone to will unconsciously the course of his thoughts, he does not like to send will impulses into the realm of thought.

Entirely will-free thought content is really never present just as will not oriented by thought is likewise not present. Thus when we speak of thought and will, of ideas and will, we are dealing with extreme conditions, with what from one side builds itself as thought and from the other side builds itself as will. We can therefore say that in experiencing will permeated by thinking and thinking permeated by will, we experience truly and essentially the outer forms of nature and the outer heat being of nature. There is only one possibility for us here and that is to seek in man for essential being of what meets us in outer nature.

And now pursue these thoughts further. When you follow further the condition of corporeality on the one hand you can say that you proceed along a line into the indeterminate. The opposite must be the case here. And how can we state this? How must it be within man? We must indeed, find again here what goes off into infinity. Instead of it going off into infinity, so that we can no longer follow it, we must picture to ourselves that it moves out of space. What wells up in man from the states of aggregation we must think of as going out of space. That is, the forces that are in heat must so manifest themselves in man that they move out of space. Likewise, the forces that produce form, pass out of space when they enter man.

In other words, in man we have a point where that which appears spatially in the outer world as form and heat, leaves space. Where the impossibility arises, that that which becomes non-spatial can still be held mathematically.

I think we can see here in a very enlightening way how an observation of nature in accordance with facts obliges us to leave space when we approach man, provided we properly place him in the being of nature. We have to go to infinity above and below (the scale of that states of aggregation.) When we enter the being of man, we leave the realm of space. We cannot find a symbol which expresses spatially how the facts of nature meet us in the being of man. Nature properly conceived, shows us that when we think of her in relation to man, we must leave her. Unless we do, when we consider the content of nature in relation to man, we simply do not come to the human being.

But what does this mean mathematically? Suppose you set down the lineal series among which you are following states of aggregation to infinity. The words one after another may be considered as positive. Then what works into the nature of man must be set down as negative. If you consider this series as positive, the effects in the human being have to be made negative. What is meant by positive and negative will be cleared up I think by a lecture to be given by one of our members during the next few days. We have to conceive, however, of what comes before our eyes plainly here in this way that the essential nature of heat, insofar as this belongs to the outer world, must be made negative when we follow it into the human being, and likewise the essentiality of form becomes negative when we follow it into man. Actually then, what lives in man as ideas is related to outside form as negative numbers are to positive numbers and vice versa. Let us say, as credits and debits. What are debits on the one hand are credits on the other and vice versa. What is form in the outside world lives in man in a negative sense. If we say “there in the outside world is some sort of a body of a material nature,” we have to add: “if I think about its form the matter must be negative, in a sense, in my thinking.” How is matter characterized by me as a human being? It is characterized by its pressure effects. If I go from the pressure manifestation of matter to my ideas about form, then the negative of pressure, or suction, must come into the picture. That is, we cannot conceive of man's ideas as material in their nature if we consider materiality as symbolized by pressure. We must think of them as the opposite. We must think of something active in man which is related to matter as the negative is to the positive. We must consider this as symbolized by suction if we think of matter as symbolized by pressure. If we go beyond matter we come to nothing, to empty space. But if we go further still, we come to less-than-nothing, to that which sucks up matter. We go from pressure to suction. Then we have that which manifests in us as thinking.

And when on the other hand you observe the effects of heat, again you go over to the negative when it manifests in us. It moves out of space. It is, if I may extend the picture, sucked up by us. In us it appears as negative. This is how it manifests. Debits remain debits, although they are credits elsewhere. Even though our making external heat negative when it works within us results in reducing it to nothing, that does not alter the matter. Let me ask you again to note: we are obliged by force of the facts to conceive of man not entirely as a material entity, but we must think of something in man which not only is not matter, but is so related to matter as suction is to pressure. Human nature properly conceived must be thought of as containing that which continually sucks up and destroys matter.

Modern physics, you see, has not developed at all this idea of negative matter, related to external matter as a suction is to a pressure. That is unfortunate for modern physics. What we must learn is that the instant we approach an effect manifest in man himself all our formulae must be given another character. Will phenomena have to be given negative values in contrast to heat phenomena; and thought phenomena have to be given negative values as contrasted to the forces concerned in giving form.

My dear friends,

At this point I would like to build a bridge, as it were, between the discussions in this course and the discussion in the previous course. We will study today the light spectrum, as it is called, and its relation to the heat and chemical effects that come to us with the light. The simplest way for us to bring before our minds what we are to deal with is first to make a spectrum and learn what we can from the behavior of its various components. We will, therefore, make a spectrum by throwing light through this opening—you can see it here. (The room was darkened and the spectrum shown.) It is to be seen on this screen. Now you can see that we have something hanging here in the red portion of the spectrum. Something is to be observed on this instrument hanging here. First we wish to show you especially how heat effects arise in the red portion of the spectrum. Something is to be observed on this instrument hanging here. These effects are to be observed by this expanding action of the energy cylinder on the air contained in the instrument, which expanding action in turn pushes the alcohol column down on this side and up on this one. This depression of the alcohol column shows us that there is a considerable heat effect in this part of the spectrum. It would be interesting also to show that when the spectrum is moved so as to bring the instrument into the blue-violet portion, the heat effect is not noticeable. It is essentially characteristic of the red portion. And now, having shown the occurrence of heat effects in the red portion of the spectrum by means of the alcohol column, let us show the chemical activity of the blue-violet end. We do this by allowing the blue portion to fall on a substance which you can see is brought into a state of phosphorescence. From the previous course you know that this is a form of chemical activity. Thus you see an essential difference between the portion of the spectrum that disappears on the unknown on this side and the portion that disappears on this other side; you see how the substance glows under the influence of the chemical rays, as they are called. Moreover, we can so arrange matters that the middle portion of the spectrum, the real light portion, is cut out. We cannot do this with absolute precision, but approximately we can make the middle portion dark by simply placing the path of the light a solution of iodine in carbon disulphate. This solution has the property of stopping the light. It is possible to demonstrate the chemical effect on one side and the heat effect on the other side of this dark band. Unfortunately we cannot carry out this experiment completely, but only mention it in passing. If I place an alum solution in the path of the light the heat effect disappears and you will see that the alcohol column is no longer displaced because the alum, or the solution of alum, to speak precisely, hinders its passage. Soon you will see the column equalize, now that we have placed alum in the path, because the heat is not present. We have here a cold spectrum.

Now let us place in the light path the solution of iodine in carbon disulphate, and the middle portion of the spectrum disappears. It is very interesting that a solution of esculin will cut out the chemical effect. Unfortunately we could not get this substance. In this case, the heat effect and the light remain, but the chemical effect ceases. With the carbon disulphide you see clearly the red portion—it would not be there if the experiment were an entire success—and the violet portion, but the middle portion is dark. We have succeeded partly in our attempt to eliminate the bright portion of the spectrum. By carrying out the experiment in a suitable way as certain experimenters have done (for instance, Dreher, 50 years ago) the two bright portions you see here can be done away with. Then the temperature effect may be demonstrated on the red side, and on the other side phosphorescence shows the presence of the chemically active rays. This has not yet been fully demonstrated and it is of very great importance. It shows us how that which we think of as active in the spectrum can be conceived in its general cosmic relations.

In the course that I gave here previously I showed how a powerful magnet works on the spectral relations. The force emanating from the magnet alters certain lines, changes the picture of the spectrum itself. It is only necessary for a person to extend the thought prompted by this in order to enter the physical processes in his thinking. You know from what we have already said that there is really a complete spectrum, a collection of all possible twelve colors; that we have a circular spectrum instead of the spectrum spread out in one dimension of space. We have (in the circular spectrum) here green, peach blossom here, here violet and here red with the other shades between. Twelve shades, clearly distinguishable from one another.

Now the fact is that under the conditions obtaining on the earth such a spectrum can only exist as a mental image. When we are dealing with this spectrum we can only do so by means of a mental picture. The spectrum we actually get is the well-known linear one extending as a straight line from red through the green to the blue and violet—thus we obtain a spectrum formed from the circular one, as I have often said, by making the circle larger and larger, so that the peach blossom disappears, violet shades off into infinity on one side and red shades off on the other, with green in the middle.

We may ask the question: how does this partial spectrum, this fragmentary color band arise from the complete series of color, the twelve color series which must be possible? Imagine to yourselves that you have the circular spectrum, and suppose forces to act on it to make the circle larger and larger and finally to break at this point (see drawing). Then, when it has opened, the action of these forces would make a straight line of the circle, a line extending apparently into infinity in each direction. (Fig. 1).

Now when we come upon this straight line spectrum here under our terrestrial conditions we feel obliged to ask the question: how can it arise? It can arise only in this way, that the seven known colors are separated out. They are, as it were, cut out of the complete spectrum by the forces that work into it. But we have already come upon these forces in the earth realm. We found them when we turned our attention to the forces of form. This too is a formative activity. The circular form is made over into the straight-line form. It is a form that we meet with here. And considering the fact that the structure of the spectrum is altered by magnetic forces, it becomes quite evident that forces making our spectrum possible are everywhere active. This being the case, we have to assume that our spectrum, which we consider a primary thing, has working within it certain forces. Not only must we consider light variation in our ordinary spectrum, but we have to think ofthis ordinary spectrum as including forces which render it necessary to represent the spectrum by a straight line. This idea we must link up with another, which comes to us when we go through the series, as we have frequently done before (Fig. 2), from solids, through fluids, to condensation and rarefaction, i.e. gases, to heat and then to that state we have called X, where we have materialization and dematerialization. Here we meet a higher stage of condensation and rarefaction, beyond the heat condition, just as condensation and rarefaction proper constitute a kind of fluidity of form.

When form itself becomes fluid, when we have a changing form in a gaseous body, that is a development from form as a definite thing. And what occurs here? A development of the condensation-rarefaction condition Keep this definitely in mind, that we enter a realm where we have a development of the condensation-rarefaction state.

What do we mean by a “development of rarefaction”? Well, matter itself informs us what happens to it when it becomes more and more rarefied. When I make matter more and more dense, it comes about that a light placed behind the matter does not shine through. When the matter becomes more and more rarefied, the light does pass through. When I rarefy enough, I finally come to a point where I obtain brightness as such. Therefore, what I bring into my understanding here in the material realm is empirically found to be the genesis of brightness or luminosity as a heightening of the condition of rarefaction; and darkening has to be thought of as a condensation, not yet intense enough to produce matter, but of such an intensity as to be just on the verge of becoming material.

Now you see how I place the realm of light above the heat realm and how the heat is related to the light in an entirely natural fashion. But when you recollect how a given realm always gives a sort of picture of the realm immediately above it, then you must look in the being of heat for something that foreshadows, as it were, the conditions of luminosity and darkening. Keep in mind that we do not always find only the upper condition in the lower, but also always the lower condition in the upper. When I have a solid, it foreshadows for me the fluid. What gives it solidity may extend over into the non-solid realm. I must make it clear to myself, if I wish to keep my concepts real, that there is a mutual interpenetration of actual qualities. For the realm of heat this principle takes on a certain form; namely this, that dematerialization works down into heat from above (see arrow). From the lower side, the tendency to materialization works up into the heat realm.

Thus you see that I draw near to the heat nature when I see in it a striving for dematerialization, on the one hand, and on the other a striving for materialization. (If I wish to grasp its nature I can do it only by conceiving a life, a living weaving, manifesting itself as a tendency to materialization penetrated by a tendency to dematerialization.) Note, now, what an essential distinction exists between this conception of heat based on reality and the nature of heat as outlined by the so-called mechanical theory of heat of Clausius. In the Clausius theory we have in a closed space atoms or molecules, little spheres moving in all directions, colliding with each other and with the walls of the vessel, carrying on an outer movement. (Fig. 3) And it is positively stated: heat consists in reality in this chaotic movement, in this chance collision of particles with each other and with the walls of the vessel. A great controversy arose as to whether the particles were elastic or non-elastic. This is of importance only as the phenomena can be better explained on the assumption of elasticity or on the assumption that the particles are hard, non-elastic bodies. This has given form to the conviction that heat is purely motion in space. Heat is motion. We must now say “heat is motion,” but in an entirely different sense. It is motion, but intensified motion. Wherever heat is manifest in space, there is a motion which creates the material state striving with a motion which destroys the material state. It is no wonder, my friends, that we need heat for an organism. We need heat in our organism simply to change continuously the spatially-extended into the spatially non-extended. When I simply walk through space, my will carries out a movement in space. When I think about it, something other than the spatial is present. What makes it possible for me as a human organism to be inserted into the form relationships of the earth? When I move over the earth, I change the entire terrestrial form. I change her form continually. What makes it possible that I am in relation to the other things of the earth, and that I can form ideas, outside of space, within myself as observer, of what is manifested in space? This is what makes it possible, my being exists in the heat medium and is thus continually enabled to transform material effects, spatial effects, into non-spatial ones that no longer partake of the space nature. In myself I experience in fact what heat really is, intensified motion. Motion that continually alternates between the sphere of pressure and the sphere of suction.

Assume that you have here (Fig. 4) the border between pressure and suction forces. The forces of pressure run their course in space, but the suction forces do not, as such, act in space—they operate outside of space. For my thoughts, resting on the forces of suction, are outside of space. Here on one side of this line (see figure) I have the non-spatial. And now when I conceive of that which takes place neither in the pressure nor in the suction realms, but on the border line between the two, then I am dealing with the things that take place in the realm of heat. I have a continually maintained equilibrium tendency between pressure effects of a material sort and suction effects of a spiritual sort. It is very significant that certain physicists have had these things right under their noses but refuse to consider them. Planck, the Berlin physicist, has made the following striking statement: if we wish to get a concept of what is called ether nowadays, the first requisite is to follow the only path open to us, in view of the knowledge of modern physics, and consider the ether non-material. This from the Berlin physicist, Planck. The ether, therefore, is not to be considered as a material substance. But now, what we are finding beyond the heat region, the realm wherein the effects of light take place, that we consider so little allied to the material that we are assuming the pressure effects—characteristic of matter—to be completely absent, and only suction effects active there. Stated otherwise, we may say: we leave the realm of ponderable matter and enter a realm which is naturally everywhere active, but which manifests itself in a manner diametrically opposite to the realm of the material. Its forces we must conceive of as suction forces while material things obviously manifest through pressure forces. Thus, indeed, we come to an immediate concept of the being of heat as intensified motion, as an alternation between pressure and suction effects, but in such a way that we do not have, on the one hand, suction spatially manifested and, on the other hand, pressure spatially manifested. Instead of this, we have to think of the being of heat as a region where we entirely leave the material world and with it three-dimensional space. If the physicist expresses by formulae certain processes, and he has in these formulae forces, in the case where these forces are given the negative sign—when pressure forces are made negative—they become suction forces. Attention must be paid to the fact that in such a case one leaves space entirely. This sort of consideration of such formulae leads us into the realm of heat and light. Heat is only half included, for in this realm we have both pressure and suction forces.

These facts, my dear friends, can be given, so to speak, only theoretically today in this presentation in an auditorium. It must not be forgotten that a large part of our technical achievement has arisen under the materialistic concepts of the second half of the 19^th century. It has not had such ideas as we are presenting and therefore such ideas cannot arise in it. If you think over the fruitfulness of the one-sided concepts for technology, you can picture to yourselves how many technical consequences might flow from adding to the modern technology, knowing only pressures—the possibility of also making fruitful these suction forces. (I mean not only spatially active suction which is a manifestation of pressure, but suction forces qualitatively opposite to pressure.)

Of course, much now incorporated in the body of knowledge known as physics will have to be discarded to make room for these ideas. For instance, the usual concepts of energy must be thrown out. This concept rests on the following very crude notions: when I have heat I can change it into work, as we saw from the up and down movement of the flask in the experiment resulting from the transformation of heat. But we saw at the same time that the heat was only partly changed and that a portion remained over of the total amount at hand. This was the principle that led Eduard von Hartmann to enunciate the second important law of the modern physics of heat—a perpetuum mobile of the second type is impossible.

Another physicist, Mach, well known in connection with modern developments in this field, has done quite fundamental thinking on the subject. He has thought along lines that show him to be a shrewd investigator, but one who can only bring his thinking into action in a purely materialistic way. Behind his concepts stands the materialistic point of view. He seeks cleverly to push forward the concepts and ideas available to him. His peculiarity is that when he comes to the limit of the usual physical concepts where doubts begin to arise, he writes the doubts down at once. This leads soon to a despairing condition, because he comes quickly to the limit where doubts appear, but his way of expressing the matter is extremely interesting. Consider how things stand when a man who has the whole of physics at his command is obliged to state his views as mach states them. He says (Ernst Mach, Die Prinzipien der Warme Lehre, p. 345): “There is no meaning in expressing as work a heat quantity which cannot be transformed into work.” (We have seen that there is such a residue.) “Thus it appears that the energy principle like other concepts of substance has validity for only a limited realm of facts. The existence of these limits is a matter about which we, by habit, gladly deceive ourselves.”

Consider a physicist who, upon thinking over the phenomena lying before him, is obliged to say the following: “Heat exists, in fact, that I cannot turn into work, but there is no meaning in simply thinking of this heat as potential energy, as work not visible. However, I can perhaps speak of the changing of heat into work within a certain region—beyond this it is not valid.” And in general it is said that every energy is transformable into another, but only by virtue of a certain habit of thinking about those limits about which we gladly deceive ourselves.

It is extremely interesting to pin physics down at the very point where doubts are expressed which must arise from a straightforward consideration of the facts.

Does this not clearly reveal the manner in which physics is overcome when physicists have been obliged to make such statements? For, fundamentally, this is nothing other than the following: one can no longer hold to the energy principle put forth as gospel by Helmoltz and his colleagues. There are realms in which this energy principle does hold.

Now let us consider the following: How can one make the attempt symbolically (for fundamentally it is symbolic when we try to set the outlines of something), how can we make the attempt to symbolize what occurs in the realm of heat? When you bring together all these ideas I have developed, and through which in a real sense I have tried to attain to the being of heat, then you can get a concept of this being in the following manner.

Picture this to yourselves (Fig. 5). Here is space (blue) filled with certain effects, pressure effects. Here is the non-spatial (red) filled with suction effects. Imagine that we have projected out into space what we considered as alternately spatial and non-spatial. The red portion must be thought of as non-spatial. Using this intermediate region as an image of what is alternately spatial and non-spatial, you have in it a region where something is appearing and disappearing. Think of something represented as extended and disappearing. As substance appears, there enters in something from the other side that annihilates it, and then we have a physical-spiritual vortex continually manifesting in such a manner that what is appearing as substance is annihilated by what appears at the same time as spirit. We have a continual sucking up of what is in space by the entity which is outside of space.

What I am outlining to you here, my dear friends, you must think of as similar to a vortex. But in this vortex you should see simply in extension that which is “intensive” in its nature. In this way we approach, I might say figuratively, the being of heat. We have yet to show how this being of heat works so as to bring about such phenomena as conduction, the lowering of the melting point of an alloy below the melting point of its constituents, and what it really means that we should have heat effects at one end of the spectrum and chemical effects at the other.

We must seek the deeds of heat as Goethe sought out the deeds of light. Then we must see how knowledge of the being of heat is related to the application of mathematics and how it affects the imponderable of physics. In other words, how are real formulae to be built, applicable to heat and optics.

Someone told the story of “Mary’s Child,” first for melancholic and then for sanguine children.

RUDOLF STEINER: I think in the future you will have to pay more attention to your articulation. The two versions, as you gave them, were too much alike. The difference must also lie in the articulation. If you bring out these details more emphatically you will not fail to impress the melancholic children. For the sanguines I would introduce more pauses into the story, especially at the beginning, so that the children are compelled to listen to you again each time their attention wanders. But now I would like to ask how you would apply these stories when you are actually teaching? Imagine yourselves standing in front of the class; what would you do? I would advise you to tell the story in the melancholic version and then have it retold by a sanguine child and vice versa.

A person comments: First, I think it would be advisable to seat the sanguine children directly in front of the teacher so they may be constantly within view, whereas melancholic children should be sitting where they like as much as possible.

RUDOLF STEINER: An excellent suggestion.

The individual who commented then related the story of “The Long-tailed Monkey,” first in a style for the sanguine and then for the melancholic children, adding the remark that melancholic children do not want to hear too many sad stories.

RUDOLF STEINER: You should also remember that, but the contrasting styles were good. Now I think we can go on to how we should make further use of these things later. I would not decide which child is to tell the story, but after a day or two I would say (in a lively way): “Now listen! You can choose for yourselves which part of the story you would like to retell. Then the next day or the day after that any child who wants to can come out and tell a portion of the story to the class.

Someone else told another story in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: You all have the feeling, don’t you, that something like this can be done in various ways. Now it is really very important, particularly for those who want to work as teachers, to get rid of the habit of unnecessary criticism. As a teacher you should develop a strong feeling for this; you should definitely be conscious that it is not a question of always trying to improve on what has already been done. A thing can be good in a variety of ways. And so I think it will be good to view what has been presented as something that can certainly be done as you have proposed.

But there is one thing I would like to add. In all three stories I think I noticed that the first rendering, both in style and purpose, was the better of the two. Which did you work out first in your mind, Miss A? Which did you feel you could do better? [It was determined that the version worked out first was for the melancholic temperament, and this was the better of the two]. I would now like to recommend that all three of you work out a version for the phlegmatic child. This version is very important from the perspective of style. But if possible please try to work this out tentatively today, then sleep on it and come to your final decision about the style tomorrow. It has been found by experience that when you have something like this to do, you can only discover its new form in a different spirit when, after the preparation, you allow it to pass through a period of sleep. On Monday bring us a version for the phlegmatics, but prepare it first and then later work out its final form. Having the Sunday in between will make this possible.

Someone showed a drawing, a design in blue and yellow for a melancholic child. Dr. Steiner drew the same design in green and red for a sanguine child.

RUDOLF STEINER: Now you can say to the children: This blue and yellow one can be seen best when it is getting dark; you take it into sleep with you, because that is the color with which you can appear before God. This one, the green and red one, can meet your eyes when you awake. You can gaze at it when you wake up in the morning and enjoy it for the rest of the day!

A drawing for a sanguine child was then displayed, red on a white ground. Dr. Steiner drew the same design for a melancholic child, long and thin on a black ground. Dr. Steiner called the impudent form sticking out a “little kicker.”¹

RUDOLF STEINER: In the design for the melancholics this little creature withdraws into the form. Here you see the contrast, a kind of contrast where you would primarily use the colors in order to work on one child or another, and you should certainly show the same thing twice. What would you say to the children?

I would ask them which one they liked best.

RUDOLF STEINER: You would then make your own discoveries! You would recognize the sanguine children from their joy in this contrast of colors. You should not miss the opportunity to use simple forms like these for the children.

Someone recommended forms pointed outward for the choleric:

to be changed to an enclosed form

or to be changed to:

For the phlegmatic he recommended the opposite way, to start from the circle and have figures drawn inside it or to break up a circle in some way:

RUDOLF STEINER: For the phlegmatic child I would add the following in this method. I should say:

“Look, here is a circle. You like that don’t you?

“But now I’ll draw something else for you:

“And if I simply take away the circle, then you have the form as it should be. You must get into the habit of not muddling things up together.”

By drawing things and rubbing them out again the phlegmatic child can be torn out of his phlegma. Now I will also ask you, Frau E., to work out the same design for other temperaments again, making use of the method of sleeping over what you have done.

A description of a gorilla was given in two versions.

RUDOLF STEINER: Of course nothing can be said against your inventing things without depending on any particular naturalists, although you may very well get suggestions from them. I would ask you, however, to awaken a closer contact with your students when you tell them a story of this kind. It would also be possible to use a long story and to make an impression with that. You must, however, not be absorbed in your own thoughts, but maintain closer contact with your students. If you are too absorbed in yourself you could easily lose contact with the children.

A horse was described for phlegmatic and choleric children.

RUDOLF STEINER: In giving descriptions of animals it is especially important that, in every detail, we should remain clear in our minds that a human being is really the whole animal kingdom. The animal kingdom in its entirety is humankind. You cannot, of course, present ideas of this kind to the children theoretically, and you certainly should not do so.

Let’s suppose, however, that someone has to work out in detail the subject Mr. L. introduced, and also distinguish between the phlegmatic and choleric groups. The phlegmatics are not as easily interested and they are not likely to remember much of what you tell them about an ordinary animal, such as a horse. They have seen horses often enough that they have very little interest in them.² But it is important to focus their attention, so I should say to the phlegmatic children, “Well now, what is the real difference between you and a horse? Let’s take some minor differences. You all have a foot like this, don’t you? Here are the toes, here is the heel and here is the instep.

“Now look at a horse’s foot. This is the hind foot of a horse. Where are the toes? Where is the heel? And where is the ankle? With you the knee is farther up. Where is the knee of a horse? Now look, here are the toes, the heel is right up there and the knee farther up still. It is very different. Just imagine how different a horse’s foot looks from yours.” You will now find that this will surprise the phlegmatic child into alertness, and what you have said will not be forgotten.

For the choleric children I would tell a story about how a child meets a horse out in the woods somewhere. The horse is running; and far behind, running after it, there is a man from whom it has bolted, and the child has to catch the horse by the bridle. If I know I have a choleric child before me I can try to show how the child should do this, how to get hold of the bridle. To get the child’s fantasy working to discover how the horse should be caught is a very good thing. Even a choleric child feels a little nervous about such a procedure, but you are meeting the need of the choleric temperament when you expect the child to do it. Such a child will become a little disconcerted and less arrogant. Something is expected of the child that can only be expected of a choleric child.

I would also like to say that, especially at first, you should make all such stories very short. So I will ask Mr. M. in this case to tell his story for sanguine and melancholic children, but let both stories be exceedingly short. Mr. L., you could do the same but choose particular incidents that will be remembered and serve to arouse the children’s eager interest.

We must realize that we should use the subject matter of our teaching primarily to capture the child’s powers of will, feeling, and thought; it is not so important to us that the children remember what they are told, but that they develop their soul faculties.

Someone spoke of how to consider the four temperaments in arithmetic, but explained that he had not really managed to work this out properly.

RUDOLF STEINER: I had foreseen that, because this problem is very difficult. You will have to sleep on it very thoroughly.

But please take the following as a fresh problem. Imagine to yourself a class in which there are children of eight and nine years old. In the teaching of the future it will, of course, be important that we develop as many social instincts as possible, that we educate the social will. Now imagine three children of whom one is a pronounced phlegmatic, another a pronounced choleric, and the third a pronounced melancholic. I will say nothing about their other qualities. Let’s suppose that in the third or fourth week after school had begun these children come to you and say, “None of the other children can stand me!” Immediately it would be obvious that these are the “Cinderellas” of the class, and all the other children are inclined to avoid them. By Monday I would like you to think over how the teacher can best try to remedy this evil. Please give your whole mind to thinking this through, and view it as a very important educational problem.

• 1. Kickerling = indicating a small football player.
• 2. This statement may not apply to the children of today, as it did in 1919.

Today I want to discuss some elementary aspects of the idea of multidimensional space [among other things, in connection with the] spirited Hinton.

You will recall how we arrived at the concept of multi-dimensional space, having considered the zeroth dimension [last time]. I would like to briefly repeat the ideas of how we can move from two- to three-dimensional space.

What do we mean by a symmetrical behavior? How do I align a red and a blue [flat figure, which are mirror images of each other]?

With two halves of a circle, I can do this relatively easily by sliding the red [half] circle into the blue one (Figure 10).

This is not so easy in the following [mirror]symmetrical figure (Figure 11). I cannot make the red and blue parts coincide [in the plane], no matter how I try to slide the red into the blue.

But there is a way [to achieve this anyway]: if you step out of the board, that is, out of the second dimension [and use the third dimension, in other words, if you] place the blue figure on the red one [by rotating it through the space around the mirror axis].

The same applies to a pair of gloves: I cannot match one with the other without stepping out of [three-dimensional] space. You have to go through the fourth dimension.

Last time I said that in order to develop an understanding of the fourth dimension, you have to make [the relationships in] space fluid, thereby creating conditions similar to those you have when moving from the second to the third dimension. In the last lesson, we created spatial structures out of paper strips that intertwined. Such interweaving causes certain complications. This is not a game, but such interweavings occur in nature all the time. Anyone who reflects on natural processes knows that such interweavings really do occur in nature. Material bodies move in such intertwined spatial structures. These movements are endowed with forces, so that the forces also intertwine. Take the movement of the earth around the sun and then the movement of the moon around the earth. The moon moves in an orbit that is itself wound around the earth's orbit around the sun. It thus describes a spiral around a circular line. Because of the movement of the sun, the moon describes another spiral around this. The result is very complicated lines of force that extend through the whole space.

The heavenly bodies behave in relation to each other like the intertwined strips of paper [by Simony, which we looked at last time]. We have to keep in mind that we are dealing with complicated spatial concepts that we can only understand if we do not let them become rigid. If we want to grasp space [in its essence], [we must first conceive it as rigid, but then] make it completely fluid again. [You have to go as far as zero]; the [living] point can be found in it.

Let us once again visualize the structure of the dimensions]. The point is zero-dimensional, the line is one-dimensional, the surface is two-dimensional and the body is three-dimensional. The cube has the three dimensions: height, width and depth. How do the spatial structures [of different dimensions] relate to each other? Imagine that you are a straight line, that you have only one dimension, that you can only move along a straight line. If such beings existed, what would their concept of space be like? Such beings would not perceive one-dimensionality in themselves, but would only be able to imagine points wherever they went. Because in a straight line, if we want to draw something in it, there are only points. A two-dimensional being would only encounter lines, so it would only perceive one-dimensional beings. [A three-dimensional being like] the cube would perceive two-dimensional beings, but could not perceive its [own] three dimensions.

Now, humans can perceive their three dimensions. If we reason correctly, we must say to ourselves: Just as a one-dimensional being can only perceive points, a two-dimensional being only straight lines, and a three-dimensional being only surfaces, so a being that perceives three dimensions must itself be a four-dimensional being. The fact that humans can define external beings in terms of three dimensions, can [deal with] spaces of three dimensions, means that they must be four-dimensional. And just as a cube can perceive only two dimensions and not its third, so it is clear that man cannot perceive the fourth dimension in which he lives. Thus we have shown [that man must be a four-dimensional being]. We swim in the sea [of the fourth dimension, like ice in water].

Let us return once more to the consideration of mirror images (Figure 11). This vertical line represents the cross-section of a mirror. The mirror reflects an image [of the figure on the left]. The process of reflection points beyond the two dimensions into the third dimension. [To understand the direct and continuous connection between the mirror image and the original, we have to add a third dimension to the two.

[Now let us consider the relationship between external space and internal representation.] The cube here apart from me [appears as] an idea in me (Figure 12). The idea [of the cube] is related to the cube like a' mirror image to the original. Our sensory apparatus [creates an imagined image of the cube. If you want to align this with the original cube, you have to go through the fourth dimension. Just as the third dimension has to be transitioned to (during the continuous execution of the two-dimensional) mirroring process, our sensory apparatus has to be four-dimensional if it is to be able to establish a [direct] connection [between the imagined image and the external object].

If you only imagined [two-dimensionally], you would [only] have a dream image in front of you, but you would have no idea that there is an object outside. Our imagination is a direct inversion of our ability to imagine [external objects by means of] four-dimensional space.

The human being in the astral state [during earlier stages of human evolution] was only a dreamer, he had only such ascending dream images.” He then passed from the astral realm to physical space. Thus we have mathematically defined the transition from the astral to the [physical-] material being. Before this transition occurred, the astral human being was a three-dimensional being and therefore could not extend his [two-dimensional] ideas to the objective [three-dimensional physical-material] world. But when he [himself] became physical-material, he still acquired the fourth dimension [and could therefore also experience three-dimensionally].

Due to the peculiar design of our sensory apparatus, we are able to align our perceptions with external objects. By relating our perceptions to external things, we pass through four-dimensional space, imposing the perception on the external object.

How would things appear if we could see from the other side, if we could enter into things and see them from there? To do that, we would have to pass through the fourth dimension.

The astral world itself is not a world of four dimensions. But the astral world together with its reflection in the physical world is four-dimensional. Anyone who is able to see the astral world and the physical world at the same time lives in four-dimensional space. The relationship of our physical world to the astral world is a four-dimensional one.

One must learn to understand the difference between a point and a sphere. In reality, this point would not be passive, but a point radiating light in all directions (Figure 13).

What would be the opposite of such a point? Just as there is an opposite to a line that goes from left to right, namely a line that goes from right to left, there is also an opposite to the point. We imagine an enormous sphere, in reality of infinite size, that radiates darkness from all sides, but now inwards (Figure 14). This sphere is the opposite of the point.

These are two real opposites: the point radiating light and infinite space, which is not a neutral dark entity, but one that floods space with darkness from all sides. [As a contrast, this results in] a source of darkness and a source of light. We know that a straight line that extends to infinity returns to the same point from the other side. Likewise, it is with a point that radiates light in all directions. This light comes back [from infinity] as its opposite, as darkness.

Now let us consider the opposite case. Take the point as the source of darkness. The opposite is a space that radiates light from all sides.

As was recently demonstrated [in the previous lecture], the point behaves in this way; it does not disappear [into infinity, it returns from the other side] (Figure 15).

[Similarly, when a point expands or radiates out, it does not lose itself in infinity; it returns from infinity as a sphere.] The sphere, the spherical, is the opposite of the point. Space lives in the point. The point is the opposite of space.

What is the opposite of a cube? Nothing other than the whole of infinite space, except for the piece that is cut out here [by the cube]. So we have to imagine the [total] cube as infinite space plus its opposite. We cannot do without polarities if we want to imagine the world as powerfully dynamic. [Only in this way] do we have things in their life.

If the occultist were to imagine the cube as red, the space around it would be green, because red is the complementary color of green. The occultist not only has simple ideas for himself, he has vivid ideas, not abstract, dead ideas. The occultist must enter into things from within himself. Our ideas are dead, while the things in the world are alive. We do not live with our abstract ideas in the things themselves. So we have to imagine the infinite space in the corresponding complementary color to the radiating star. By doing such exercises, you can train your thinking and gain confidence in how to imagine dimensions.

You know that the square is a two-dimensional spatial quantity. A square composed of four red- and blue-shaded sub-squares is a surface that radiates differently in different directions (Figure 16). The ability to radiate differently in different directions is a three-dimensional ability. So here we have the three dimensions of length, width and radiance.

What we did here with the surface, we also think of as being done for the cube. Just as the square above was made up of four sub-squares, we can imagine the cube as being made up of eight sub-cubes (Figure 17). This initially gives us the three dimensions of height, width and depth. Within each sub-cube, we can then distinguish a specific light-emitting capacity, which results in a further dimension in addition to height, width and depth: the radiation capacity.

You can imagine a square made up of four sub-squares, a cube made up of eight different sub-cubes. And now imagine a body that is not a cube, but has a fourth dimension. We have created the possibility of understanding this through radiative capacity. If each [of the eight partial cubes] has a different radiating power, then if I have only the one cube that radiates only in one direction, if I want to obtain the cube that radiates in all directions, I have to add another one on the left, doubling it with an opposite one, I have to put it together out of 16 cubes.

Next lesson we will have the opportunity to consider how we can think of a multidimensional space.

It is hardly possible this year, to give a Whitsuntide lecture in the true sense of the word. Let us consider the essential character of Whitsuntide as depicted in that document of Christianity, the New Testament. We shall find that the outstanding feature of that Whitsun Festival was the pouring forth of the Spirit upon certain men called the Apostles. As a result of this outpouring of the Spirit, (so we learn from the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles), men assembled together at that Whitsuntide, ten days after the so-called Ascension, all speaking the most varied languages, and understanding each one for himself the news proclaimed to him so thoroughly, that the language sounded quite familiar to him, although it is expressly stated that each man could only speak his mother tongue. Thus the pouring forth of the Spirit at Whitsuntide appears as the outpouring of the Spirit of Love, Concord and Harmony upon all those who, assembled together from every comer of the earth, all spoke different languages. Or perhaps in order to catch the exact purport of the Bible words it would be better to express it thus: The message of the Whitsuntide revelation was so in tune with the human heart that each man could understand it, although he knew no other language than his own.

But this year, in nearly every case, the exact opposite of this is taking place in the world around us at this Whitsuntide. If only an interpretation might be vouchsafed, that we might know the meaning of this Whitsun revelation! We only need to reflect, that the world nineteen centuries after this Whitsun revelation has understood this Whitsun revelation in such a way, that this present Whitsuntide sees thirty-four nations speaking different languages, at war with one another, and therefore, in a sense, in complete contradiction to the spirit of the Whitsuntide Feast. Perhaps this question of language shows, at least to a certain extent, how the spirit of understanding has passed away from mankind, how that first Whitsun revelation has not as yet spread over the whole earth in a sufficiently penetrating and convincing manner, how it has not yet seized upon the souls of men. Perhaps that is the reason why it is now necessary that that revelation should speak to the souls of men under a new form, should speak more clearly, more urgently than it has done as yet, so that for the future its true meaning may be understood aright.

So then this year in the light of our Whitsuntide considerations, let us take up a more universal standpoint, a point of view which from a certain side will bring us nearer to the new Whitsuntide revelation, by this I mean Spiritual Science. For we must regard what we have learnt during those lectures as a "Whitsuntide revelation to humanity; we must accept Spiritual Science as a Whitsuntide revelation.

Let us consider now what wo know of the Mystery of Golgotha and allow this knowledge to sink deeply into our souls. What is the essential part of the Mystery of Golgotha? It is this. That a Spiritual Being who, as we know, belonged to the cosmic spheres, descended and underwent earthly fate and earthly life in a physical human body; that the Christ Being lived for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. By that three years’ experience in tho body of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ Being has, since the Mystery of Golgotha, been united with what we call the Earth-Spirit, with what we term the Earth- Aura. Thus the whole of our earthly evolution is divided into two epochs of evolution. There was the period before the Mystery of Golgotha, during which the Christ Spirit could only be faintly perceived when man through initiation rose above the earthly sphere so that he no longer perceived what lies within the earthly sphere alone, but also that in which the Earth did not as yet participate, though predestined for a distant future. The other period is the time after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Since the Mystery of Golgotha we know that man with his spiritual nature does not need to leave the Earth, but that he can remain within the earthly sphere and participate within the earthly sphere in the Impulse of the Christ Being.

We must clear the ground a little here. It is true that through the ages up to our own time, a portion of humanity has always been aware that the Christ-Impulse had united itself to the Earth-existence. A great change has taken place in the universal human consciousness, especially of those people who have felt something of the Christ-Impulse. The soul was filled with the belief that Christ is with man and that the human soul can unite itself with Christ, that the human mind can participate during its Earth-existence with that which is impregnated with the living Christ-Impulse. But a comprehension of what the Christ-Impulse means in the universal Earth-existence in the evolution of humanity can only be brought home to the human soul by Spiritual Science. For this the knowledge is necessary of how this Christ-Impulse works in the human soul, so that two spiritual impulses may in a sense be made to balance one another.

This is represented by the group which will be placed at the east end of tho Goetheanum. There you will see the Representative of humanity, the Representative of man, in so far as he is capable of experiencing the profoundest, that which a man does experience when the Christ-Impulse is a living reality in his soul. The principal figure in the group at the east of the building may be called the Christ, yet it may also be called the Representative of the innermost soul of man in general. This Spirit, Who speaks through a human body, is seen in connection with two other spiritual Beings, Lucifer and Ahriman. In a standing position, the Representative of humanity expresses His connection with Lucifer and Ahriman. Everything about this figure must be characteristic. Above all, when this figure is erected later on, you will be able to notice that the gesture of the left hand which is raised, and the gesture of the right hand which is lowered, are very noteworthy. You will understand these gestures when you see that Lucifer is falling from the rocks above, towards the summit of which the Representative of humanity raises his left arm—Lucifer falls, because he has broken his wings.¹

Now it is easy to believe that his wings are broken by the force which flows from the arm of the Representative of man. It seems as though this force streamed out towards Lucifer and broke his wings. That, however, would be a false interpretation. And I hope we shall succeed in making such a false interpretation of the plastic representation impossible. For the point is, not that Lucifer’s wings are broken by something that streams forth from the Christ-permeated man, but that Lucifer experienced something within himself when he felt the presence of the Christ, which led to his breaking his wings. Because he cannot bear the Christ-Impulse, the Christ-strength, he breaks his own wings. This is an incident which has been caused not by a conflict between Christ and Lucifer, but it is an incident in the inner life of Lucifer himself, something which Lucifer himself must experience; and there must not be a moment’s doubt as to the fact that it would be impossible for Christ to feel either hatred or animosity against Lucifer—Christ is the Christ. He only fills the world-existence with equanimity, He joins battle with no might in the world; but when the might of Lucifer comes near His Presence, might must join battle with itself. Therefore, the raised left hand does not work aggressively, neither does the left side of the countenance with its strange expression, but it is a token that in the cosmic connections Christ has something to do with Lucifer. It has, however, nothing of the nature of a battle about it. The battle only originates in the soul of Lucifer himself, he breaks his own wings, they are not broken by Christ.

It is the same thing with Ahriman, who cowers in a hole in the rocks beneath the Christ-Man on the right, where the earth is driven upwards, where the material, is, as it were, driven into man, but cannot gain further strength and is crippled because the Christ-power is near.

Again, the Christ-strength which pulses and flows through the arm into the hand, betrays no hatred towards Ahriman, rather does Ahriman cripple himself and by means of what is passing, that which lies hidden in his soul—the gold in the veins of the earth—draws round him like chains so that he makes himself fetters of the earth-gold and forges them on to himself. He is not fettered by Christ; he forges fetters for himself, as soon as he experiences the nearness of Christ.

These are the original relations between the Beings, given in brief outline, and these must be realised before the Christ-Impulse can be truly comprehended by the human soul.

A very simple comparison will make the Christ-Impulse clear in an abstract way. Take a pendulum. The pendulum swings to one side and swings back again as far as it can of its own weight, and then again swings back towards the opposite side as far as it can, till it meets a point which we may designate as a balancing point. This point would be a dead point, a resting point, if the pendulum did not swing towards the opposite side. Life is a pendulum, because it swings backwards and forwards towards both sides and has a resting place in the middle.

It is thus that we must think of the earthly evolution since Golgotha. The pendulum swings out towards one side, the Luciferic side. Then again towards the other side—the Ahrimanic side. And the balancing point in the middle is Christ.

That the importance of this fact must be grasped, can be proved from a notable historical event. We all admire the picture painted by Michelangelo, called ‘The Last Judgment.’ You know it from reproductions of the original, which is preserved in the Sistine Chapel. In this picture we see the Christ, painted with consummate master-skill, Christ triumphant, judging men; sending some to hell to meet the wicked spirits,—others, the righteous, to heaven. If we study the face of this Christ, we see anger there—earthly anger—and if we have assimilated Spiritual Science, if we have really welded its contents with love into our own souls, we are forced to exclaim today—notwithstanding our admiration of the marvellous creation of Michelangelo—‘That is no Christ, for Christ does not judge men! They pass judgment upon themselves,—as in the case of Lucifer and Ahriman—they experience the results of their own deeds, not the result of any conflict carried on against them by Christ.’

In the days when Michelangelo created his Christ, the time had not arrived for the recognition of Christ in His full perfection. Men were still groping in the twilight, so to speak. They attributed to Christ qualities which we today know must be assigned to Lucifer or Ahriman. Thus, we today can understand why people have found something Luciferic or Ahrimanic in the Christ of Michelangelo. For Christ as there represented is not free from these attributes, whereas the true Christ is entirely without them.

At the stage of advancement in spiritual knowledge to which mankind had attained in those days, it was not possible to produce a picture of Christ which should portray a true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. For, in the time of Michelangelo, the relationship existing between the Christ and Lucifer and Ahriman was not yet made known. Let us pause here and let this fact sink into our minds. Let us try and realise its full significance.

How often in our meetings have I emphasised the point that it shews a false perception to turn to Lucifer and say ‘I must fly from him,’ or to turn to Ahriman and say ‘I must fly from him.’ This attitude only means making terms with weakness. It would be forbidding the pendulum to swing backwards and forwards, wishing it to remain at rest for ever. We cannot escape the cosmic forces—by which I mean Lucifer and Ahriman—but we can adjust our position with regard to them. This we shall only be able to do when we understand the Christ-Impulse aright, when we recognise in the Christ Being the guide who will adjust our position with regard to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers, which must some day be world-powers.

Now let us consider what it is that Lucifer brings into the life of man. Lucifer brings sensation, passion. and everything connected with the life of the feelings and of the heart. How dry, insipid and abstract life would be without the pulsation of keen sensation and intense feeling. Let us glance at the evolution of history. What a power passion, ‘noble passion,’ as it is often termed (and rightly so), has been in history. What influence feeling and sensation have had. Nevertheless, we cannot foster feeling or sensation without entering the sphere of Lucifer. Therefore, we must never enter this sphere without the guidance of the Christ-Impulse.

On the other hand we see how necessary it is, especially in these modern times, to understand more and more about the world, to cultivate science, to obtain the mastery over the external forces of nature and of all that exists within them. In these domains Ahriman is ruler. We should indeed remain stupid and dull if we could escape from the Ahrimanic element. There should be no question of avoiding the Ahrimanic element, but on the contrary, of entering the sphere over which Ahriman reigns, under the guidance of the Christ-Impulse. We must not endeavour slothfully to find the resting-place, but must strive to share in the living movement of the world’s pendulum; only we must be careful while moving with it that we take no step without the guidance of the Christ-Impulse. Knowledge of Christ is not possible until the relationship which exists between the Christ-Impulse and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces is clearly understood by the human soul. This revelation of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influence in the world is one of the tasks which the Spiritual Scientific movement must undertake, for it is aware that the Christ-Impulse is the foundation upon which it must take its stand. That is why you find nothing about the Ahrimanic and Luciferic elements in the non-Christian theosophical teaching; but they were bound to appear as soon as the Spiritual Scientific Movement began seriously and earnestly to reckon with the Christ-Impulse.

I think that it is, indeed, extraordinarily important for the human soul to feel that Spiritual Science has the task laid upon it of bringing something really new into the human consciousness; something so new that by means of it we are able to compare it with such a great human creation as that of the Christ in ‘The Last Judgment’ of Michelangelo. The knowledge which is coming to us from Spiritual Science must appear as the new Whitsuntide revelation, in the true sense of the words.

At Easter we saw how one of the greatest masters of modern times, Goethe, endeavoured to bring his Faust, the representative of humanity, into relationship with the Christ-Impulse. And we saw that Goethe in his youth was not able to do this; that only in his mature old age did he succeed. Thus, as we study the spiritual life through all its multifarious stages up to the present day, it appears to us as a struggle, an unceasing struggle. It really makes one extremely humble when one considers how the master minds of humanity have striven to gain some idea, some conception of the true significance of the Christ-Impulse. It is borne in upon us how very humble we should be in our human endeavour to obtain a knowledge of the Christ-Impulse.

As we have seen, Goethe made a great point of bringing the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements, which are always working around man, into contact with Faust, his representative of humanity. And we have also seen that Goethe confused the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements with one another in his figure of Mephistopheles, so that it is difficult to distinguish the one from the other therein. As we showed in the Easter Lectures, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are confused and intermingled with one another in Mephistopheles, because at that time true understanding was as yet impossible for Goethe. Goethe had, in fact, during the whole of his life, been aware of the struggle going on within him to arrive at some understanding of the relationship of man to Lucifer and Ahriman. When Schiller asked him, at the end of the eighteenth century, to continue his Faust, Goethe reconsidered what he had written in his youth from the standpoint of his maturity and pronounced this work which he had put together at different times to be a hybrid—half-animal, half-man—thus it was that Faust appeared to him. He called his Faust, ‘a barbaric composition,’ in order to indicate the difficulty in going on with it. Here we have Goethe’s opinion of his own work! Goethe, who must have certainly known, better than his critics, said the Faust was a hybrid—half an animal, half a man—a barbaric composition 1

What I endeavoured to convey to you at Easter, which might very easily have been misunderstood, only leads back to the opinion of Goethe himself about his own work. Nevertheless, many learned men consider Faust to be a finished work of art, one which cannot be surpassed. This was not Goethe’s own opinion, neither can we accept it. Although we recognise in Faust a work of the very highest order, we must not evade the truth that the drama of Faust fails in its fundamental conception owing to Goethe’s mistake in confusing the personalities of Lucifer and Ahriman and blending them together into his figure of Mephistopheles.

But in spite of all this confusion Goethe was dimly aware that both Lucifer and Ahriman must appear. Only he mixed the two together and called the result Mephistopheles. Thus, in some of the scenes in Faust, Lucifer appears as Lucifer, whilst in others he appears as Mephistopheles or Ahriman. But Goethe was quite clear about one thing, viz:—that there is something that takes place in man under the influence of both Lucifer and Ahriman, of both Lucifer and Mephistopheles.

Let us consider the end of the first part of Goethe’s Faust. How does it end? Faust has loaded his soul with the blackest guilt imaginable; he has the life of a fellow-being upon his conscience. He has betrayed a fellow-creature. Here is sin indeed against himself and against a fellow-being!... The first part of Faust ends with the words, ‘Hither to me,’ pronounced by Mephistopheles, while at the same time a voice, appearing to come from heaven, cries faintly ‘Henry! Henry 1’ This ending to the first part of Faust tells us where Faust has arrived. He has fallen into the power of Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles has secured him. About that there is no possible doubt.

And now we come to the second part of Faust. The second part opens with a pleasing scene. ‘Faust is discovered lying on flowery turf, weary, restless, seeking sleep.’ Spirits appear; and from their songs we gather that it is spring time. Nature is in her most beautiful mood, even as she is today. To understand this mood we only need to go out of doors at this time of year. Nature at Whitsuntide! The Whitsuntide atmosphere I This Whitsuntide atmosphere works its effect upon Faust. And after a while he rises and continues his life-journey.

A certain scholar has drawn a conclusion from this incident, for which there is certainly something to be said, although it is philistine and pedantic. The scholar puts it thus: ‘If you have a heavy load of guilt upon your soul, as was the case with Faust after his treatment of Gretchen, retire to a pleasant spot, lie down on the flowery turf, make some mountain excursions, and your soul vail then be healed and ready for fresh deeds.’ Speaking from the realistic, Ahrimanic point of view, there is certainly something to be said for this conclusion drawn by this scholar—Rieger—for, really, to all those who hold the purely materialistic view so popular at the present day, the second part of Faust must be unendurable after the first part in which Faust is depicted as having loaded his soul with such a terrible burden of sin. Unfortunately this, the greatest epic of humanity, is not taken literally enough, for Faust is the greatest epic of humanity in so far as it concerns the human personality. If it were only taken literally people would know that ‘Hither to me,’ is true... Mephistopheles has got hold of Faust. Because of this, Faust is lying on flowery turf, restless, seeking sleep. We must not imagine that Faust is freed from the powers of hell at the beginning of Part II. But Goethe strove after true spiritual knowledge. How very near Goethe was to spiritual knowledge we gather from a sentence in a letter written by him to his friend, the musician, Zelter. A most remarkable sentence! Goethe wrote, ‘Consider that with each breath that we draw, an etheric stream of life permeates our whole being, so that for very joy we can scarcely remember our sorrow.’

With each breath that we draw, an etheric stream of life does indeed permeate our inner being—that means nothing less than that Goethe knew all about man’s etheric body. But in his day he naturally only spoke about this to his own circle of friends.

First let us be quite clear as to Goethe’s position with regard to human nature in general. He studied this human nature and said: this human nature is capable of sin, for something exists within it which is subject to Mephistophelian influence, something appertaining to Mephistopheles. When Goethe studied the human beings who belonged to this sphere, he also became aware that something exists in human nature which can never fall under this influence, something which will be protected from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic influence. This it is with which the second part of Faust deals; this something in human nature, which can be protected from the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers. The man Faust, who was capable of sin, who had allowed himself to be led by Mephistopheles into the most trivial and commonplace pleasures of life, the man Faust who had betrayed Gretchen—had become a sinner. In our language we should say: this Faust would have to wait for the next reincarnation.

But there is a something in human nature which is a man’s higher self, and remains in communication with the spiritual powers of the world. The spiritual world-powers draw near to this eternal part in Faust. We must not think in a realistic way of Faust, as we see him at the beginning of Part II, simply as Faust become an older man. He really represents the higher self in Faust. His outward form is unchanged. But this outward form is now representative of that ‘something’ in Faust which could not fall into sin. This ‘something’ in Faust which could not fall into sin, now enters into relationship with the servants of the Earth-spirit.

From his youth upwards Goethe had been intensely anxious to be able to form some conception of human sin, of the evil in the world, and of what it is that floats over all, holding the balance against sin and evil. Thus Goethe, as he was to a certain extent forced to deliver up the one nature in Faust into the power of Mephistopheles (‘Hither to me’ ), ventured to turn to the other nature in Faust. We must be careful to make no mistake at this point. In the beginning of Part II the Faust who speaks is not the Faust whom wo met in Part I. It is another Faust, a second nature, who only outwardly bears the form of Faust, and who can participate in the spiritual which permeates our external world. Into that form, however, something must enter which has no immediate connection with the outward physical body of Faust, for the physical body retains, of course, so long as we remain in the same incarnation, all signs of the sins into which we have fallen. Perfect communion with the higher self can only be obtained by that within us which can make itself free of the physical body. Thus Faust has to undergo that transformation which we may term, ‘the transmutation of sin into higher knowledge.’ His sins he will have to carry with him into his next incarnation. In this earthly incarnation his guilt is the source of a higher knowledge which is opened to him, a more exact knowledge of life. Thus, the possibility of his higher self entering into connection with the spiritual forces which weave and interweave and permeate the world, opens out before Faust, notwithstanding that he bears on his soul a terrible load of guilt.

The higher self of Faust gets into communication with a spirit of the Earth-Aura. Goethe wished to convey at the same time, that the highest in man can never be seized by Mephistopheles (or, as we should say, by Lucifer-Ahriman). The highest is protected; it must be able to enter other spheres. Goethe meant it to be taken literally that this higher self in Faust could now communicate with the spiritual beings in the elemental world. We shall see to-morrow or the next day how this coincides with what I said in my Easter lectures. Now let us consider what relationship exists between these spiritual beings, which are under the leadership of the Air-spirit (for such is Ariel) and may thus be designated in general as Air-spirits—and the external events of nature. Let us see how they reveal themselves as a different order of spiritual beings from that of the self which in the super-earthly nature is not exposed to the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman.

‘When the spring-tide shower of blossom
Flutters down all men upon;
When on mortals from earth’s bosom
Smiles the fields’ green benison.’

Thus, when nature buds and blossoms in the Whitsuntide springtime, the elemental spirits come forth. Seen externally they are small; but as spirits they are great, for they are higher than that part of the human heart which may turn to the good or to the bad.

‘Elves great-souled though small of stature
Haste to help where help they can;
Good or evil be his nature...’

This is left for the next reincarnation, it does not concern the spirits.

‘Good or evil be his nature
Pity they the luckless man.’

They are only concerned with the higher self which is aloof from what takes place in karma or incarnation. But these spirits can only act in their own element, in which the being of man dwells only when his soul and spirit have left the external covering of the body. And now Goethe describes the duties of these elves in their spiritual greatness.

‘Ye round this head in airy wheel that hover,
In noble elfin-guise yourselves discover.
Soothe ye the bosom’s unrelenting strife,
Withdraw the bitter darts of self-upbraiding,
Purge ye his soul from horror of past life.’

This cannot happen to the Faust who is under the sway of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This purgation means, ‘Bring forth the higher self of Faust. Let it be there alone.’ And now it would seem as if Faust who is out of the body goes through something like an Initiation.

‘Four watches night hath’

From six o’clock in the evening till six o’clock in the morning the elves perform their task, bringing the soul, during the time between falling asleep and waiting. into communication with the spiritual forces which weave and interweave throughout the earthly existence.

‘Pause not—let each with kindly deeds be rife.’

each, that is, of the four watches which the soul experiences from the time of falling asleep till the time of awakening.

‘And first, lay ye his head on the cool pillow,
Bathe him in dew from Lethe’s waters drawn.
Soon will the cramp-racked limbs be lithe as willow
If new refreshed he sleep to meet the dawn.’

When he has accepted what the World-Spirit offers to him, when this spirit has penetrated to that part of Faust’s being where the higher self remains intact:

‘Fulfil the fairest elfin-rite
Give him again to the holy light.’

What occurs externally between his falling asleep and his awakening are real events, similar to an Initiation. And now we sec what takes place in the three periods: from six to nine; from nine to twelve; from twelve to three; from three to six. First we have the watch from six to nine o’clock.

‘When soft breezes swell, and vagrant
Haunt the green-embosomed lawn,
Twilight sheds its spices fragrant,
Sinks its mist like curtains drawn,
Breathes sweet peace, his heart composes
Like a child’s that rests from play,
On his eyes so weary, closes
Soft the portals of the day.’

The soul has gone. It is separated from the body. The second watch.

‘Now the Night more deeply darkles,
Linketh holy star to star.
Mighty torches, tiny sparkles
Glimmer near and gleam afar.
Glassed within the lake they glimmer
Gleam in Night’s unclouded round;
Throned aloft the Moon’s full shimmer
Seals the bliss of peace profound.’

Here we have a survey of the Harmony of the Spheres, the wisdom of the spheres, the great lights, the tiny sparks of light and the secrets of the Moon. All that we study in Spiritual Science about the secrets of the spheres is welded into the higher soul of Faust.

The third watch of sleep:

‘Now the hours are spent and over,
Weal and woe are swept away.
Dream of health! Thou wilt recover!
Trust the gleam of new-born day!
Vales grow green, and swell like pillows
Hill to shady rest to woo,
And in swaying silver billows
Waves the com the harvest to.’

This, as we have already said, is inwardly connected with the manifestations of Nature. Read my course of lectures on The Effect of Occult Development on the Bodies and Self of Man, given at the Hague, wherein it is shown that the human soul, when it rises out of the body, becomes one with the life and movement of outer existence. But this also points to the growth going on in the soul of Faust:

‘And in swaying silver billows
Waves the com [the soul of Faust] the harvest to.’

You will remember I have already told you that during sleep, man has the desire to return to the body.

Then comes the last watch of the night:
‘Wish on wish wouldst compass crowded,
Lift thine eyes to yon bright steep!’
The Sun can now be faintly perceived.
‘Only softly art thou shrouded
Cast away the shell of sleep!’

This is a very important line! A great poet does not make use of empty phraseology. What does ‘Cast away the shell of sleep’ mean? To the ordinary sleeper, sleep is not a shell; but it is a shell to those to whom the time between falling asleep and awakening is a time for the reception of the secrets of the universe.

‘Falter not! Thine heart embolden,
When the throng faint-hearted flees;
Nought is from the brave with-holden
Who is wise and swift to seize.’

And now the tremendous tumult which heralds the approach of the Sun reminds us of what Goethe wrote about this music of the Sun in the ‘Prologue in Heaven,’ in the first part of Faust.

‘The Sun with many a sister-sphere
Still sings the rival psalm of wonder,
And still his fore-ordained career
Accomplishes with sound of thunder.
The sight sustains the angels’ prime,
Though none may spell the mystic story:
Thy Works unspeakably sublime,
Live on, in all their primal glory.’

When the Sun rises and its light floods the physical plane, the soul, when it is out of the body, hears the approach of the Sun as the music of the spheres, as a special element in the music of the spheres. The spirits hear it, of course. Man cannot hear it, because he must hear through his physical ears. He is embodied in the physical plane and when the Sun reaches the physical plane the time has come for man to be awake. Then the spirits must retire. The words spoken by Ariel, the spirit of the air, to his servants, indicate the approach of the music of the spheres. The spirits can hear it. The man who is outside his body can hear it. Faust therefore hears this approach of the music of the spheres. After that he returns into his body. Then Ariel has to disappear. Ariel instructs his servants what they have to do: they have to disappear from the physical plane. For if the Sun, which they only know as the Sun of sound, were to strike them with his light, they would become deaf. The light would make them deaf, whereas they can hear the Sun of sound—in whoso tones, indeed, they live—without injury.

‘Hark! The Hours in storm are winging,
And, to spirit-ears loud-ringing,
Now the new-born day is springing;
Rocky portals clang asunder,
Phoebus’ wheels roll forth in thunder,
What a tumult brings the light!
Loud the trump of dawn hath sounded,
Eye is dazzled, ear astounded,
The Unheard no ear may smite.
Slip ye to your silent palace,
Deep within the flow’ret's chalice,
In the cliffs and 'neath the leaf!
If it reach you, ye are deaf!’

So the elves disappear. Faust returns to his body. But the guilty Faust has now become unconscious. He stands before us no longer. He has sunk down into the depths of Faust’s subconsciousness, where he will be preserved till the next incarnation. The Faust who had just passed through the experience of being in touch with the whole spiritual cosmos, must now make clear to himself the connection between his experience during the four watches of his sleep-life and his present perception of the world. He now lives in his body as the higher self.

Now, a man who, after sleeping all night without going through Faust’s experience, were to exclaim on awakening in the morning, ‘Thou Earth, through this night too hast stood unshaken!’ would be a fool; for no man expects the Earth to be anything else but ‘unshaken’ during the night. But if a man experiences what Faust experienced as his Initiation with the Earth-Spirits, then he has indeed experienced something which, as one can well believe, will have changed the whole earth for him. He will have become a new man. Or rather a new man will have been unveiled in him. ‘Oh I Earth! Thou wert unchanging throughout this night—in spite of what I have experienced’. To him the world appears quite new, because it is now revealed to a new man.

‘Life’s pulses newly quickened now awaken,
Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping;
Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken,
And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping.
Thou guides! me about with gladness, priming
My soul with stem resolve and strenuous keeping,
Onward to strive, to highest life still climbing.’

Now too, when the spirit has freed itself from that which must wait for the next incarnation!

‘Unfolded lies the world in twilight shimmer;
With thousand-throated song the woods are chiming;
The dales, wherethrough the mist-wreaths wind, lie dimmer,
Yet heavenly radiance plumbs the deeps unnumbered,
And bough and twig, new-quickened, bud and glimmer
Forth from the fragrant depths where sunk they slumbered;
Whilst hue on hue against the gloom still heightens,
Where bloom and blade with quivering pearls are cumbered
A very Paradise about me lightens !’

Here we have the man who I do not say has gone through Initiation, but in whom Initiation lives, and he has cause to see the world in a new light. He could not speak as he does if there were only left in him the man who was guilty and who during this incarnation must remain under this load of guilt.

‘Look up! The giant peaks that rise supernal
Herald the solemn hour; for them first brightens
The early radiance of the light eternal
Upon us valley-dwellers later showered. Now are the green-sunk Alpine meadows vernal
With radiance new, and new distinctness dowered,
And step-wise downward hath the splendour thriven.
He sallies forth [the sun, that is] and I mine overpowered
And aching eyes to turn away am driven.’

The higher self cannot now endure what the senses were able to endure. Faust cannot look at the Sun, for he has learnt so much that the Sun has now become something essentially different for him. Something connected with his earthly experiences now awakens within him.

‘Thus when a yearning hope, from fear and wonder
Up to the highest wish in trust hath striven,
The portals of fulfilment yawn asunder.’

What are these ‘portals of fulfilment?’ Those through which he passed during his recent sleep. But even the ordinary world seems to him now like a sea of flame, breaking forth from the eternal foundations:

‘Then burst from yonder depths where days ne’er dwindle
Excess of flame—we stand as smit with thunder.
The torch of life it was we sought to kindle,
A sea of fire, and what a fire! hath penned us.
Is't Love? Is't Hate?’

Love and hate we know already, but this experience is more than love or hate.

‘Is't Love? Is't Hate? That yonder glowing sparkle
In bliss and bale alternating tremendous
About us twines, till we the dazed beholders,
To veil our gaze in Earth’s fresh mantle wend us.’

He can no longer look at the Sun, he looks towards the waterfall which gives forth the colours of the rainbow and in which the Sun is reflected. He turns away from the Sun. He becomes a student of the world, as it appears to him like a reflection of the spiritual life. This world of which it is said, ‘All that is transient is but a parable.’

‘Nay then, the sun shall hide behind my shoulders.’

Before he had been looking towards it. He now turns to the waterfall.

‘The cataract that through the gorge does thunder
I’ll watch with growing rapture,’mid the boulders
From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder
In thousand, thousand streams, aloft that shower
Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under.
Yet blossoms from this storm a radiant flower;
The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,

for what is united in the Sun, is here divided into seven colours.

‘Now lost in air, now limned with clearest power,
Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.
Its rays an image of man’s efforts render;
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour!’

How greatly has Faust advanced during this night’s experience! He has advanced so far that he no longer wishes, like the Faust of Part I, to plunge into that life which flung him into sin and evil, but turns to its coloured reflection. This which appears to him as the ‘many-hued, reflected splendour’ is what we call Spiritual Science, and by means of it we shall wind gradually upward along the spiral way to reality.

The continuation of the Second Part is ‘Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour.’ It is folly to interpret this Second Part in a purely materialistic sense. We have here Faust whose higher self studies the many-hued reflections of life by means of the physical body, which he now bears with him on his journey through life, as something to be preserved in order that the higher self in him may be further developed; for that higher self alone can protect him from that which will reappear in a later incarnation.

Goethe found it very difficult to continue his Faust, after the words spoken by Mephistopheles toned forth, ‘Hither to me!’ But we see how Goethe strove to penetrate those mysteries which we today recognise as the Mysteries of Spiritual Science. We see how he approached them. And we can see in this Second Part of Faust, how, at first, Mephistopheles really has Faust in his toils, how Mephistopheles is behind all that happens at the Emperor’s Court, and how Faust, by the after-effects of Initiation working in him, gradually unloosens himself from the toils of Mephistopheles.

But there are other mysteries in this Second Part of Faust. Goethe himself said that he had introduced many secret things into the Second Part! These words of his have not been taken seriously enough. But we shall learn by degrees through Spiritual Science to take such words more seriously.

We must at least take one thing away with us from today’s lectures. Goethe endeavoured to advance beyond the First Part, to express in his Faust something of the atmosphere which is symbolically depicted there under the imagery of the Course of the Seasons.

As Whitsuntide approaches and the Spirits of the elemental world draw so near to man that it can be said of them:

‘When the Spring-tide shower of blossom
Flutters down all men upon;
When on mortals from earth’s bosom
Smiles the field’s green benison:
Elves great-souled, though small of stature,
Haste to help, where help they can.
Good or evil be his nature
Pity they the luckless man.’

That is the Whitsuntide atmosphere. The outpouring of the Spirit in the following lines, spoken by the choir, during the four watches of the sleep, from the time of falling asleep to the time of awakening.

Thus by means of Faust, we are able to demonstrate how urgent is the necessity for conveying to humanity the new Whitsuntide message which Spiritual Science has to deliver. This conception of Faust brings home to us vividly how complex are the threads which go to form the fundamental basis of human nature. In the depths of human nature something exists which is eternally opposed to the Ahrimanic and Luciferic world-powers and, in those depths, that something can be found by man, if he will place himself under the guidance of the Christ-Impulse.

Why do we speak of a ‘Threshold’? Why do we speak of a ‘Guardian of the Threshold’? Because actually, owing to the grace and wisdom of the guidance of the universe, all that works and wars and battles in our daily life was at first removed from the human soul. It is now, as it were, on the surface, beneath which elements are seething and warring and working. Even our daily experiences constitute a perpetual victory. But the victory has always to be won anew; and in the future it will only be won anew when man really knows that through which the good, wise direction of the universe has guided him; until now he has been unconscious of this. That something, which cannot be recognised in the ordinary life of the senses, but which can be experienced spiritually, must be found in the depths of the soul. It must be sought for in those depths of human consciousness where man’s essence is in touch with those world-forces which, in their spiritual greatness, transcend Good and Evil.

I have endeavoured to express this in a Whitsuntide apothegm which I have pieced together to show how man, in the secret recesses of his inmost being, possesses certain elementary powers, antagonistic to each other, and how that which exists in his consciousness is the victory over the warring elements in the depths of his soul-life.

The way in which these elements react in relation to the daily life of mankind I will speak of to-morrow or the following day. today I will close with this Whitsuntide apothegm which embodies that which is ever the vital principle of our Spiritual Science and which we have been considering today.

There, where knowledge gain'd by sense alone
Is no longer of avail,
Stands the Portal leading to life’s realities;
There do they become accessible to the soul.
The key whereby this door can be unlock'd
Is smelted by the soul that gains her strength in battle,
Battle waged in her own depths by cosmic Powers
Fighting against the powers of man,
If only that same soul herself can chase away the sleep
Which, at the very boundaries of the senses,
Enwraps the powers of knowledge in spiritual night.

• 1. Editorial Note. This group, designed and carved by Dr. Steiner, had not been placed in the Goetheanum when the fire broke out which destroyed the building.

Esoteric exercises are the technique of spiritual life. Maya = maha-a-ya = great-non-existence.

We've only become dwellers on earth through the influence of Lucifer and Ahriman; otherwise our egos would have remained in spiritual regions, and our bodies on the earth's surface would have been directed from those regions.

Even though Lucifer and Ahriman combat the direct working of the divine spirit, they're nevertheless wanted by the spirit, for it's only through such resistance that the ego becomes fully objective in the physical world. Without Ahriman we wouldn't see a plant's green as such, but only the spiritual being that's in the plant. A single plant is like a hair in the earth's body.

Our egoism only arises through Lucifer and Ahriman. It must live in us and come to full expression, for only in this way can all of life become fully developed physically. But we should be aware that every action of ours has a selfish coloration. Our sympathy drives us to help others, but we don't like to be sympathetic.

There's no point in the world space where there's no force.

Men's etheric brains vary more than leaves on a tree. The shining points in them are like a photo of the heavens that's full of stars.

The effect of atma, buddhi, and manas is elaborated in the human eye (as in the great seal on a one dollar bill, with buddhi on the left, manas on the right, and atma at the apex).

This symbol also works on us at night. There we should try to keep the chaotic impressions of the day as far away as possible.

We shouldn't chatter about theosophy while we're eating or at other everyday occasions. It should be a holy thing for us.

When today man speaks of the “word” he means, as a rule, only the weak human word, which, in the presence of the majesty of the universe is of little significance. But we know that the John Gospel begins with the deeply significant words: “In the Primal Beginning was the Word, the Logos. And the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.”

Anyone who meditates on this significant commencement of the John Gospel must ask himself: What is really indicated when the Word is placed at the very beginning of all things? What is really meant by this Logos, this Word? And how is this meaning connected with our puny human word, so insignificant in the presence of the majesty of the universe?

The name of John is connected with the city of Ephesus, and he who, equipped with Imaginative insight into world history confronts these significant words: “In the Primal Beginning was the Logos. And the Logos was with God. And the Logos was a god,” is continually referred back along an inner path to the ancient temple of Diana of Ephesus. To him who is initiated to a certain degree in the cosmic mysteries that which sounds forth as a riddle in the first verses of the John Gospel points to the Mysteries of the Temple of Artemis or Diana at Ephesus; so that it must seem to him, through enquiry of the Mysteries of Ephesus something could be obtained which would lead to the understanding of the beginning of the John Gospel.

Let us therefore today, equipped with what has been brought before our souls in the last two lectures, look for a while into the Mysteries of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Let us look back into a time six or seven centuries or even earlier before the Christian era, in order to see what was done in this sanctuary so sacred to the ancients. We find that the instruction given in the Mysteries at Ephesus centred in the first place in that which sounds forth in human speech. We learn what took place in those Ephesian Mysteries not from any historical presentation (for human barbarism has taken sufficient care for the destruction of historical records), but we learn it from the Akashic Record, that Chronicle of etheric thought accessible to spiritual cognition, in which the events of the world's history are inscribed.

In this Record there comes again and again to our perception the way in which the pupil was directed by the teacher to concentrate on human speech. Again and again the pupil was urged as follows: “Learn to feel in your own instrument of speech what really takes place in it when you speak.”

The processes which take place when a man speaks cannot be apprehended by coarse perceptions, for they are delicate and intimate. Let us consider first of all the external side of speech, for it was with this external side of speech that the instruction given in the Ephesian Mysteries began.

The attention of the pupil was first directed to the way in which the word sounds forth from the mouth. He was told over and over again: “Notice what you feel when the word sounds forth from the mouth.” The pupil had first to notice how, to a certain extent, something from the word ascends in order to take up into itself the thought of the head; and then, how something from the same word descends into man so that he might experience inwardly the content of feeling.

Again and again the pupil was directed to drive the greatest possible range of speaking through his throat, and at the same time to observe the surging up and sinking down, which is to be perceived in the word which presses forth from the throat. He had to make a positive and a negative assertion, “I am-I am not.” This he had to force through his throat in the most articulate way possible, and then observe how, in the words “I am” the feeling of that which rises is predominant while in the words “I am not” the feeling of that which descends prevails.

The pupil's attention was then directed even more closely to the intimate inner feeling and personal experiences of the word. He had to experience the following: From the word there mounts up towards the head something like heat, and this heat, this fire, catches hold of the thought. Downwards there flows something like a watery element, this pours downwards, as a glandular secretion pours forth within man. It was made clear to the pupil in the Mysteries of Ephesus that man makes use of the air in order to let the word sound forth. But in speaking, the air transforms itself into the next element, into fire, into heat, and draws down the thought from the heights of the head and envelopes it.

Again, because an alternating condition arises—this sending up of fire, and the sending down of that which is embodied in the word—the air, like a glandular secretion, trickles downwards as water, as a fluid element. By means of this latter process the word becomes inwardly perceptible, man can feel it inwardly. The word trickles downwards as a fluid element.

The pupil was then led into the actual mystery of speech; and this mystery is connected with the mystery of man. This mystery of man is today barricaded off from scientific men, for science places as the crowning point of all thought the most incredible caricature of a truth, namely, the so-called law of the conservation of energy and of matter. In man matter is being continually transformed. It does not remain. The air which is driven forth from the throat is transformed as it goes, alternately into the next higher element, into the element of heat or fire, and again into the element of water, Fire-Water-Fire-Water.

The pupil at Ephesus was made to notice that when he spoke, a series of waves poured forth from his mouth; fire-water-fire-water; but this is nothing more nor less than the striving of the word upwards towards thought, and the trickling downwards of the word towards feeling. Thus in man's speech thought and feeling weave, in that by this living wave-movement of speech the air is rarefied into fire on the one hand, and again it is condensed into water, and so on.

When in the Mysteries of Ephesus this great truth was brought before the soul of the pupil by means of his own speech it was intended that he should feel the following:

“Speak, oh Man! and thou revealest through thyself the evolution of the world.”

At Ephesus when the pupil went in at the door of the Mysteries he was always exhorted with these words:

“Speak, oh Man! and thou revealest through thyself the evolution of the world.”

When he went out again this statement was made to him in another form:

“The evolution of the world is revealed through thee, oh Man! when thou speakest.”

And the pupil gradually felt as if he, with his own body, were as a veil over the cosmic mysteries which sounded from his breast and lived in his speech, as if he with his own body were enclosing these mysteries of the cosmos.

This was brought before the pupil as preparation for the really deeper mystery, because through this preparation he was able to realize that the individual human being was inwardly connected with the mysteries of the cosmos. The saying “Know Thyself” gained a sacred significance because it was uttered not merely theoretically, but because it was inwardly, solemnly felt and experienced.

When the pupil had in this manner to a certain extent ennobled and elevated his own human nature, in that he felt it as a veil covering the mystery of the cosmos, he could be led still further into that which extends the cosmic mystery as it were over the expanses of the cosmos. Here let us recall what was said in the last lecture.

I have pictured to you a condition in the evolution of the earth in which the following occurred. We know that in the former condition of the earth there existed as an essential substance for the earth-evolution at that stage all that unpretentious chalk which we also have in the Jura mountains. In the chalk deposits, in the limestone rocks of the earth we have that which we wish now to consider. We must think of the earth surrounded by that which in the last lecture I called fluid albumen. We know that the cosmic forces worked into this fluid albumen in such a way that it coagulated into definite forms. And you have heard that while this condition of the earth existed there took place in a denser substance to an enhanced degree what we today have in the rising of the mist and the falling of the rain. The chalky element rises upwards, permeates that which had condensed in the fluid albumen, filling it with chalk so that it took on bony formations, and in this way the animals developed in the course of evolution on the earth. The animals were drawn down from the still albuminous atmosphere by that which lives spiritually in the element of chalk.

I also said that when man unites himself with the metals of the earth, then he feels everything which then happened as part of his own being; it is like a memory which rises within him. As regards this stage of evolution he does not feel himself as a tiny man enclosed in a skin; he feels himself as embracing the whole earth-planet. To express this in a somewhat grotesque way I should say: Man feels essentially his head as encompassing the whole earth-planet.

The processes which I pictured in the last lecture man feels as taking place within himself. But how does he feel this within him? All that I have pictured to you as the rising of the chalk, the union of this chalk with the coagulated albumen, again its descent and the drawing down with it the animals to the earth, is so experienced by man that he hears it. He experiences it inwardly. Only you must conceive of it as inner experience. He hears it. This creation which arises when the chalk fills out the coagulated albumen and makes it gristly and bony—that which is thus formed is something heard and felt as if through the ear. The mystery of the world is heard.

In actual fact man experiences in memory, through the memory produced by the metals, the past of the earth, as though one heard resounding what I have described and in this resounding there lives and weaves world-happenings.

What is it then that man hears? These world-happenings, in what form do they reveal themselves? They reveal themselves as the Word of the cosmos, as the Logos. The Logos sounds forth, the macrocosmic Word in this rising and falling of the chalk. And when man is able to hear this speech within him he perceives something else besides. The following becomes actually possible.

We stand before a human or an animal skeleton. That which the science of anatomy has to say about these forms is very superficial, it is really disgracefully superficial. What can we say when, with inner connection with its natural and spiritual being we look at a skeleton? We say: Do not merely look at it. It is shocking merely to look at the forms—the spinal column with its wonderfully moulded vertebrae piled one upon another, with the ribs proceeding from it which bend and curve in front and are so wonderfully articulated together; the way in which the vertebrae are changed into the bones of the skull, the articulation of which is still more difficult to perceive; how the bow-shaped ribs enclose the cavity of the chest; how ball-shaped joints are formed for the bones of the arm and the bones of the leg. Confronted with this mystery of the skeleton we cannot do otherwise than say something quite clearly defined.

We must say to ourselves: Do not merely look at all this but listen to it; listen how one bone changes into another. An actual speech is here.

If at this point I may make a personal observation it is this: Something very wonderful comes before us if, with a feeling for these things, we enter a natural history museum, for there we have a wonderful collection of musical instruments, forming a mighty orchestra, which resounds in a most wonderful symphony. I experienced this very strongly when I visited the museum at Trieste. There, owing to a quite special arrangement of the animal skeletons (which was done instinctively) the effect was that from one end of the animal the mysteries of the moon resounded, and from the other the mysteries of the Sun. The whole was as though permeated by resounding suns and planets. There one could feel the connection between this bony system of chalk composition, the skeleton, and that which once rang forth to man out of the weaving universe, when he himself was still one with this universe, when it rang forth as the mystery of the world, rang forth to man at the same time as his own mystery.

The creatures which then arose, first of all, the animal creatures, thereby revealed their essential being, for the Being of the animal-kingdom lived in the Logos, in the resounding cosmic mystery. It was not two separate things which one perceived. One did not perceive the animals, and then in some other way the Being of the animals; that which spoke was the arising and development of the animals themselves in their own Being.

The pupil of the Ephesian Mysteries could take into his heart and soul in the right way for that age what could then be made clear to him concerning the Primal Beginning, when the Word, the Logos was active as the very essence and being of all things. The pupil was able to receive this mystery because he had prepared for it by ennobling and elevating his human nature, in that he had been able to feel himself as a covering or veil of the tiny reflection of this cosmic mystery which lay in the sounding forth of his own speech.

Let us now endeavour to feel how this development of the earth passed over from one level as it were to another. Let us consider this. In the element of chalk we have something which at that time was still fluid; the chalk ascended as vapour and fell in drops again as rain. The chalk was of a fluid nature. As it ascended it transformed itself into air; when it descended it changed into solid substance. It is one stage lower than in the human picture, where we have air transforming to heat and water. In that primeval condition the element of water was active, i.e. the chalk, still fluid was rarefied to air and condensed to solid substance; as in our throats today the air rarefies to heat and condenses to water. That which lived in the world rose from water to air. In primeval times it lived in water, rarefied itself to air and condensed to solid substance.

Thereby it is possible for us human beings to comprehend this mystery of the world in miniature. When this mystery was the great and mighty maya of the world it was one stage lower. The earth condensed everything. The chalk became denser, etc. We human beings could not have admitted this densifying tendency into our own inner being, even if it had come to us in miniature. We could only admit it when it had risen a stage higher, from water to air, and therewith in its surging upwards into the element of heat or downwards into water, which is now the denser element.

Thus the great world, the macrocosmic Mystery became the microcosmic Mystery of human speech, and it is to this cosmic Mystery, the translation into maya, into the great world, that the beginning of the John Gospel points:

“In the Primal Beginning was the Logos; and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was a god.”

For this it was that still lived and was active in the tradition of Ephesus, also when the evangelist, the writer of the John Gospel could read in the Akashic Record about Ephesus that for which his heart thirsted, the right form in which to clothe what he wanted to say to humanity concerning the mystery of the beginning of the world. We can now go a step further.

We may recall what was said last time, that, preceding the chalk there was the silica, which now appears in quartz. In this silica the plant-forms appeared, those cloud-like formations becoming green and fading away. And if, as I said, a man at that time could have looked out into the expanses of the cosmos he would have seen the arising of the animal-creation and those primeval plants which became green and then passed away. All this was perceived by man as an inner experience. He perceived it as part of his own being. In addition to hearing that which sounded forth in the animal creation as something living within himself man could in a certain sense inwardly accompany what he heard sounding forth, just as in his own head, in the human breast and head he can ascend with words through the heat in order to grasp thought. He could thus accompany that which he heard resounding in the creation of the animals after what he had experienced in the arising of the plants.

This was the remarkable thing: man experienced the process of the development of the animals in the vapourising and descending chalk. And when he traced further that which was in the silica as the plant-beings becoming green and fading away, the cosmic Word became the cosmic Thought, and the plants living in the silicious element added the Thought to the resounding Word.

One took as it were a step upwards, and to the resounding Logos the cosmic Thought was added; just as today, in the sounding word in speech, in the waves of speech (fire-water-fire-water) thought is grasped in the fire.

If you were to study certain diseased conditions of the sense-organs of the head, or of the sense-organs in general you would be able to observe the curative effects of silicic acid. Silicic acid then appears to you among the secrets of the cosmos as the thought-element in the original primeval plant-creation, and I might even say that this is the sense-perception of the earth in regard to the structure of the cosmos. In a wonderful way there is actually expressed microcosmically in the man of today that which once was macrocosmic, that which was the arising and evolution, the working and weaving of the world.

Only think for a moment how man lived then, still one with the cosmos, in unity with the cosmos. Today when man thinks, he has to think in isolation with his head. Within are his thoughts and his words come forth. The universe is outside. Words can only indicate the universe. Thoughts can only reflect the universe. When man was still one with the macrocosm this was not the case, for he then experienced the universe as if in himself. The Word was at the same time his environment. Thought was that which permeated and streamed through his environment. Man heard, and the thing heard was World. Man looked up from what he heard, but he looked up from within himself. The Word was first of all sound. The Word was something which struggled, as it were, to be solved like a riddle; in the rising of the animal creation something was revealed which struggled for a solution. Like a question the animal-kingdom arose within the chalk. Man looked into the silicic acid, and the plant-creation answered with that which it had taken up as the sense nature of the earth, and solved the riddles which the animal creation presented. These beings themselves mutually answered each other's questions. One being, in this case the animal, puts a question: the other beings, in this case the plants, supply the answer. The whole world becomes speech.

And we may now say: this is the reality at the beginning of the John Gospel. We are referred back to the primal beginning of all that now exists. In this Primal beginning, in this Principle, was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was a god, For it was the creative Being in it all.

It is really the case that in that which was taught the Mystery-pupils at Ephesus concerning the primeval Word lies that which led to the opening sentences of the John Gospel. It is indeed very fitting for Anthroposophists to turn their attention today to these secrets which rest in the lap of time; for in a certain sense, in a very particular sense, that which stood here on the Dornach hill as the Goetheanum had become the centre of anthroposophical activity. The pain we feel today must continue to be pain, and will do so in everyone who was able to feel what the Goetheanum was intended to be. But to one who is striving upwards in his knowledge towards the spiritual all that takes place in the physical world must at the same time be for him an external manifestation, a picture of the spiritual which lies behind it. And if, on the one hand, we have to accept this pain, on the other hand, we as human beings striving after spiritual knowledge must be able to turn what has caused this pain into an opportunity for looking spiritually into a revelation which leads us into greater and greater depths. This Goetheanum was to have been a place in which one hoped to have spoken, and in which we have spoken again and again of those things which are connected with the opening words of the John Gospel:

“In the Primal Beginning was the Word—the Logos—and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word.”

Then the Goetheanum was destroyed by fire. This terrible picture of the burning Goetheanum arises before us. The pain may give birth to the summons to look ever more deeply into that which lives in the power of our thought, into this burning Goetheanum of New Year's Eve. That is an experience, painful though it is, which leads us into greater and greater depths. That which we wished to have founded in this Goetheanum, which with some things I have said is connected with the John Gospel, these already form an enclosure within these burning consuming flames. And it is an important impulse which we may grasp: Let these flames be for us the occasion to look through them to other flames, those flames which once long ago consumed the Temple of Ephesus. Let us look upon them as a summons to us to try and fathom that which stands at the beginning of the John Gospel. Urged by this painfully sacred impulse, let us look back from the John Gospel to the Temple of Ephesus—which once was also burned down—and then in the Goetheanum flames, which speak indeed so painfully we shall receive a monition from that which streams into the Akasha with the burning flames of the Ephesian Temple.

Even today, if we look back on that night of misfortune, to those fierce flames of the Goetheanum conflagration, do we not still find in them the molten metals of the musical instruments which speak a language so pure and holy? Do we not find in these molten metals those musical instruments which conjured into the flames those wonderful colours—variously speaking colours—colours closely connected with the metals? Through connection with the metals something arises like memory in the earth-substance. This memory we have of that which was consumed with the Temple at Ephesus. And just as these two conflagrations may be connected, so the longing to investigate the meaning of “In the Primal Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and a god was the Word” may be connected somewhat with the words which again and again were made clear to the pupil at Ephesus: “Study the mystery of man in the small word, in the micrologos; thereby thou shalt make thyself ripe to experience in thyself the mystery of the macrologos.”

Man is the microcosm as contrasted with the world which is the macrocosm, but he also bears within him the mysteries of the cosmos, and we can decipher the cosmic mystery contained in the first three verses of the John Gospel if we bear in mind in the right sense that into which, as into many other things also, the flames of the Goetheanum condensed, as if in written characters:

“Behold the Logos
In the burning fire
Seek the solution
In the house of Diana.”

The Akashic Record of the fire of last New Year's Eve speaks these words very clearly, together with many others; and they make on us the demand to establish in the microcosm the micrologos, so that man may gain the understanding of that out of which his whole being has been formed—the macrocosmos—through the macrologos.