The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you once more. And to see the fine progress our building has made during the time we could not meet is a pleasure no less great. In the name of our striving to serve the needs of our time, a hearty thanks is truly due to all our friends who have been devoting themselves to the necessary tasks of this building. Some of these things take months to accomplish, so allow me to say, by way of a greeting, that every step our work progresses has great significance for our spiritual movement. In these difficult times, when the fate of spiritual movements can be said to depend upon an uncertain future, we need above all to maintain a lively awareness of the eternal significance of precisely the kind of work that takes place here. It is important that such work has actually been taken up, that some human hearts and souls have actually been touched by the spiritual implications of the work, and that some human eyes have actually beheld it. For this creates a womb that will always be able to carry the future, and what we are doing thus enters into the developing stream of human aspiration. We may hope that what our dear friends accomplish here in their souls will also be able to bear the most manifold fruits out there in the world. And these fruits will most certainly be beautiful for, from its inception, this work has been done in the spirit of progress and with a desire to build the future—a desire to lead our times forward.

It gave me deep joy, for example, when I walked past the house that has been newly erected in the vicinity of the west portal¹ for the first time. It is significant that this house also stands within our precincts. For it is significant that it has been possible to build such a house. It stands there as a living protest against all merely traditional style in building and against an architecture that no longer has anything to contribute to our path of development. So this little house stands there as a preliminary announcement of something new. And the fact that in our circles the need to build something new was understood, is much more significant than one might at first think. For this house to stand here is of very great significance! Whatever objections may still be raised against this style of building and this kind of architecture, it is nevertheless the style and the architecture of the future. And if one tries to acquaint oneself with the artistic longings of the present, one finds everywhere the same: there is an obscure striving, but none of those who strive know where they want to go. By and by it will be seen that those who strive in darkness are striving for the goals that already are being sought here. It will be seen that one needs to become acquainted with these forms that are born out of the womb of spiritual science. However shocking some aspects of our buildings may now seem, it will not be long before they cease to be shocking and appear as the obvious result of the experience and the feelings of the present and of the immediate future. And at present, when there is so much to cause us sorrow, we have this to raise our spirits: that we are permitted, in the midst of these times of uncertain destiny, to establish what mankind needs for its future.

And now, today and tomorrow I would like to talk to you about some things that are evidence of what is rooted in the depths of the human soul, rooted in such a way that a person finds much of it incomprehensible when it emerges from the depths. Moreover, it makes self-knowledge difficult, for it is rooted in the soul in such a way that the inner destiny of a person is connected with what thus emerges from the depths of the soul. The nearer one comes to self-knowledge, the more these life-obscuring clouds arise. It is about human nature, therefore, that we want to speak—about some indefinite and often indefinable aspects of human nature.

I will begin with an example; our times provide us with many examples like it. You are aware that for a long time people have called our times ‘the age of decadence’, and have even been pleased to feel themselves to be true children of such times. One felt something about our times that made it proper and even stylish to be a ‘decadent’. Many adhered to a kind of gospel which proclaimed: In order not to be a philistine you must have a certain degree of nervousness. Anyone who was not nervous was a thick-headed philistine—or was some other kind of person who was bound to fail to achieve the heights of his age. More than a few people really did feel like this during the last few decades. To be distinguished one had to be, at the very least, nervous. Only as a decadent could one really belong to the new spiritual nobility.

Today we will first consider one type of decadent as an example. Later he will provide us with a basis for some more general conclusions about certain world-views. So, as I said, he will only be an example of one type and should only be viewed as such. There are numerous contemporary examples which we could equally well consider.

Today I want to discuss a relatively young man who developed along these lines. He wrote two books that attracted much attention. The first was called Sex and Character (Geschlecht und Charakter). The second book was only published by friends after his death. It bore the title, Concerning the Last Things (über die letzten Dinge).³ I am speaking about Otto Weininger,² a man whom many saw as a true genius of his time. When he wrote the fat book, Sex and Character, it attracted a great deal of attention, and the various judgments passed on the book differed greatly. There were people who viewed it as a kind of gospel proclaimed by the archetypal spirit of the times. They claimed that this book, Sex and Character, touched—if somewhat one-sidedly and perhaps not entirely explicitly—on the deepest truths of the contemporary era. There were also others—those, for example, who by profession were doctors to the insane—who maintained that the only serious libraries in which the two books, Sex and Character and Concerning the Last Things, belonged were the libraries of asylums for the insane. They did not mean in the patients' library, either, but rather in the doctors' library—so that the doctors could study the two books as typical examples of contemporary lunacy.

As you see, a greater divergence of opinion could not be imagined. On the one hand there was an almost prayerful reverence for a great work of genius; on the other, this work was viewed as a product of lunacy. And some of what is to be found in the book, Sex and Character, is indeed curious. But it could only have surprised those who had not concerned themselves intensively with certain thoughts that had been coming to the surface during the last few decades.

To begin with, Weininger said (not in precisely these words, for with so fat a book it is necessary to abbreviate): Up to now the views of mankind have been the views of philistines and pedants. The philistines and pedants have always believed that there are two kinds of human being in the world-men and women. But only a true philistine could believe that there are just men and women in the world. To really understand the world, one must rise above the philistine view that there are just men and women in the world, for Weininger believes it is not true that there are only the two sexual identities, masculine and feminine. With great correctness and diplomacy he calls the masculine and feminine characters respectively M and W. But, according to Weininger, there is no one in the world who is exclusively M or W. And it would be unfortunate if there were someone who would have to be designated as entirely M or entirely W. For, asks Weininger, what is a proper woman? A proper woman is not even a something, but is the negation of a something—is nothingness. Now there are some individuals walking about who are not properly here in this world. They are only here as a kind of maya. But those we designate as W would not be here at all—not if they are exclusively W. The truth of the matter is that every human individual consists of M + W. Every human being has both masculine and feminine characteristics. If there is a preponderance of M, the person gives the impression of being a man; if there is a preponderance of W, the impression of being a woman. And because a woman does not have so very much M in her, she is both a Something and a Nothing. The fundamental character of a person depends on how much M they possess and how much W, and on the way these are combined.

This is how Weininger observes humanity. He says that everything depends on our giving up the old prejudice that there are men and women. He believes that very much indeed depends on our finally seeing that every human individual is a Something in so far as there are M characteristics present in him, and a Nothing in so far as there are W characteristics, feminine characteristics, present. Thus every human being fundamentally consists of a combination of the Something and the Nothing.

Now, this is the point of view on which the whole fat book is based. Everything from the life of the individual to the course of history is observed, with mathematical rigour, from this point of view. Naturally, Weininger finds, for example, that the basic character of an individual depends very heavily on the quantity, the quantum, of W, contained in that individual—on how much of the Nothing they contain. A different type of person arises depending on whether more or less W is mixed into their character.

You must excuse me for confronting you with some of Weininger's train of thought. You might be of the opinion that it is not quite proper to talk openly about such things. But if we want to know what is going on, we cannot stick our heads in the sand like ostriches. So I am simply describing this one type of person. At present there are actually many people who think like this, only many of them do not know it. Therefore you must excuse me, for I am not expressing my own judgements; they are Weininger's.

Let us assume that much W were mixed into the character of a particular individual, a maximum quantity, so that the person appeared to us in the maya form of a woman. If less were mixed in, then the person would be of a different type and would only have the outward appearance of being exclusively feminine. If there is much W in the mixture, we have the type of the mother; if less, then we have the type of the hetaera. Thus, two basic types of individual have been distinguished: the mother and the courtesan. The mother is the most retrograde type of human being. She floats on the lowest plane of human existence and can only be a friend of men who are philistines, for, possessing the highest degree of W, she comes closest to the Nothing and has nothing to contribute to cultural progress. If there is less W mixed in, we have the type of woman who can be the friend of a genial man: the type of woman, whom Weininger calls the hetaera, who can participate in the cultural progress of humanity and who lives on a higher plane of being.

The other kind of human being is also divided into two kinds—those who have much M and those who have less M. These are the men, although we can only call them men if we lapse into the old, traditional way of speaking. Those who have much M have the great honour of being able to burden themselves with much guilt and are capable of doing great evil. Those with less M tend to exist on a lesser plane of existence and are less capable of doing evil and creating guilt in the world. And what is the greatest guilt that those with much M in their nature can load upon themselves? What, indeed, is the greatest possible guilt there is within the limits of our physical, historical existence? Now, you must remember what I have told you—that according to Weininger's theory, W is really the Nothing. But how can this Nothing exist in the world? Why is the Nothing in the world at all? What is this Nothing when one examines it more closely? It is nothing but the guilt of the men. Thus W has no existence at all in its own right. It exists only through the guilt of M. If men had not laden themselves with guilt by creating woman out of their longing, woman would not even exist. That is the Fall Of Man.

Yes, according to Weininger's theory, those of you who have the outer appearance of women are to believe that fundamentally, in some unknown, occult way, you have been summoned into existence by the guilt of men! And one must concede that there is genius in the way the book's argument is presented—precisely the kind of genius that has been used frequently in recent decades. In viewing Weininger's literary accomplishments one critic even said that the presence of such spirits as Weininger proves that one still can take sonic joy in present-day life, in spite of all its philistinism and pedantry!

The book is not intended frivolously, nor is it merely an item of belles-lettres. The man who wrote it received his doctorate from a university for the first part of it—not the whole book, but the first two or three sections of it. Thus, the first part of it was accepted by a university as a doctoral dissertation. Later he changed it somewhat. If one wants to write a doctoral dissertation, naturally one has to translate what has been written in a genial vein into something a little more pedantic. He was able to do this, of course. And so the book was received in all seriousness and it furnished a basis for subsequent theories. The book caused a great sensation and, not only that, it has had great influence.

Let us look a little more closely at this man. From the very beginning, Weininger was the kind of child one calls ‘gifted’. Even in his early years he was full of the kind of clever ideas which make so many parents happy. He was a serious child who was interested in intellectual matters. Once he had entered school, it is impossible to discover one instance in which his teachers made a mistake—which is as is to be expected, is it not? But for him, the teachers could not do things satisfactorily. Weininger was always wanting to do something different from what his teachers expected of him, especially once he had entered grammar school. While the teachers were talking about things that bored him, he read all kinds of things for himself. Of course others do that, too: one ignores the teacher who is going on about things that are, in any case, in the books, and can be read up at home in less time-meanwhile, under the desk ...!

When he had compositions to write, the teachers who corrected them were sometimes astonished, sometimes repelled, by what they read. Nor did he care to please the schoolmasters. When he entered university he showed himself to be a gifted person, with many ideas about what was presented to him there. He came under the most diverse literary influences. The various cultural streams of the end of the nineties of the last century had a marked influence on him. And the society around him naturally had a great influence on him, too. He lived in the Vienna of the end of the nineteenth century, a member of circles of which it was said—correctly—that there were many geniuses among them, but decadent geniuses. At the turn of the last century Weininger was a member of circles whose most gifted members were said to have dismissed Raphael as an idiot by the time they were twenty. Of course, at the age of twenty it is to be assumed that one is a genius. One reforms the whole world daily. This applies to Weininger, too, but as a genial, gifted man with ideas. For, to draw what I have been telling you to a conclusion, he does have ideas. However mistaken one may hold them to be, they are ideas. Moreover, they are new ideas.

Weininger was influenced by certain racial theories that are deeply rooted in our times. He was Jewish, and early on he acquainted himself with the development of humanity and with how it moves towards the Mystery of Golgotha. He was much concerned with the Christ. And he constructed a very unique theory for himself. On the one hand, he saw Christ as a Jew. But, precisely because Christ was a Jew, it was possible for him to overcome Judaism in the most thoroughgoing way. Weininger believed that the result was a total reversal in the development of mankind, and this observation made a deep impression on him. Whereas previously he had raised a kind of pessimistic defence of his Judaism, he now took heart in the thought of converting, of imitating Christ, by changing and becoming a Christian. At this stage there entered into his thinking the idea of a kind of modern Christ, but a Christ who had freed humanity from evil and from original sin. What Weininger does not say at this point, although one sees that it is the idea that rules his soul, is that the feminine is the thing from which Christ, out of his deeper knowledge, is to free modern humanity. Our redemption lies in being totally freed from W. Only then can mankind develop further. Not only must we be redeemed from sin, we must also be redeemed from W. Then W will no longer exist and the sin of man will also cease to exist, because the sin of man is what W is. Weininger saw this as the fulfilment of Christianity which he, as a Jew, could introduce: the redemption from F. He saw this as his mission.

Such were the thoughts that occupied him at the age of twenty or twenty-one. In a relatively short time he was able to write this gigantic book, a book in which a very great deal of contemporary learning and science is dealt with, and which is saturated with the kind of ideas I have been sketching for you. Then came a period when he was preoccupied with thoughts about how his kind of genius could not be understood in the present day. He believed that it was a foregone conclusion that he would not be understood by any people in whom the F plays a significant role—those with the outer appearance of women and others who possess a large amount of W, even though they do not outwardly appear to be women. All of these people he must do without. That, of course, is far, far more than the half of humanity. ‘Women will never understand me’, Weininger told his father. So they must all be put to one side.

Then, when his book appeared, he developed a kind of wanderlust. He wanted to travel, so he took a journey to Italy. At this point in his life, extraordinary things begin to emerge. On a journey to Sicily he wrote down the ideas which then were published in the book, Concerning the Last Things, which was published posthumously by his friend Rappaport.

This second book contains extraordinary ideas, ideas much more radical than those to be found in Sex and Character. But there is something curious about these ideas: they are reminiscent of what we call imaginative knowledge. There are ideas, aphoristically expressed, covering just about the whole range of human life. Mind you, what is said there about illness alone would be enough to convince any doctor that Weininger was completely insane. Yet all the ideas collected in Concerning the Last Things actually contain imaginative knowledge. They are paradoxically expressed, but they contain imaginative knowledge. They are constructed in the manner of imaginative knowledge. Consider one of them: Weininger points out that both evil and neurasthenia are present in mankind. He believes, furthermore, that if we observe neurasthenia, we will discover it growing everywhere in the external world, for the whole world of the plants is an embodiment of neurasthenia! It is comparable to neurasthenia. If that which rightly lives in the plant world gains the upper hand in a person, that person becomes neurasthenic; for a human being is also in a certain sense a plant, and he is neurasthenic to the extent that his plant nature gains the upper hand. Paradoxical! But by no means a mad idea—just one that has been paradoxically expressed! Or one could say, rather, that something that must be kept within the limits of imaginative knowledge has been dragged into the sphere of intellectual knowledge and has thereby been turned into a caricature.

He says similar things about the way evil lives in man. Just look about you, he says. Evil is to be found living wherever there are dogs. The dog is the symbol of evil. Just as a person is neurasthenic in so far as he resembles a plant, he becomes evil in so far as he resembles a dog. All the rest of nature, you see, is condensed in the human being.

Everything that is spread out before us in nature is contained in man—it can all be found in man. In this fashion, deeply felt aperys emerge from Weininger's soul. For example, he is standing on a mountain. It is spewing forth fire. What he compares that to I will not even mention. But then he sees the setting sun and says, more or less, ‘At this place and on this soil, such a setting sun is only endurable if the crater is at one's feet; otherwise it would be disturbing.’

So you see in what an extraordinary fashion this soul experiences the world: another soul would experience the beauty and grandeur, of a sunset, but a sunset is only endurable to him if there is something with which to contrast it. And there is much in which this soul differs from the souls of other men. It is interesting how he describes what happens when one meets a person and looks them in the eyes—how one being gazes out of one eye, another being out of the other. He observes the thing exactly. He possesses imaginative vision, but presents it in a confused manner.

Then he returns home, having recently felt much distress at the world's lack of understanding and asking himself how long it will be before the world will be able to understand the kind of things he writes. Weininger's father is still thoroughly convinced that his son is just a genial young man, even though he has had to move house because he cannot live with his family. Although he naturally does not agree with all his son's ideas, he does not notice anything abnormal about him. After all, what state would we be in if all the parents in the world thought that their children were insane just because they disagreed with their ideas!

Then Weininger took a room in the house in which Beethoven died. After living there for some days, he shot himself, exactly in accordance with a programme he had formulated. Beforehand, he had announced to a company of his younger friends that he was going to shoot himself because this corresponded so well to his personality. He was twenty-three years old. He shot himself in the house in which Beethoven died.

So you see that we are dealing with an extraordinary individual. And yet his personality is typical. This is an especially pronounced example, with certain ideas developed in a unique way, but there are many people about who possess similar natures. Contemporary humanity includes many individuals with natures similar to Weininger's. It is quite understandable that a doctor who treats the insane should see nothing but crazy nonsense in either Sex and Character or in Concerning the Last Things. A psychiatrist would compare Weininger's biography with the ideas he developed and would find numerous, obvious symptoms of abnormality. But some such signs are to be found in almost anyone. It more or less depends on the subjective viewpoint, but the psychiatrist does not know this. As I said, however, it is easy to point to a pre-existing abnormality in someone who set himself against his teachers as Weininger did and who read books under the desk while his teacher lectured about something entirely different. And it is a dubious trait to see oneself as a prophet, and dubious to rent a room in the house in which Beethoven died in order to shoot oneself there! Weininger exhibited many such traits, and one must acknowledge that it is quite appropriate to make him the subject of psychiatric studies, even though one could write in this same vein about many people. Nevertheless, it would be appropriate. But what most stands out as genuinely serious and significant in the distorted and caricature-like ideas of Sex and Character and Concerning the Last Things is the particular direction and fundamental character they express. One can concede that the whole of it is crazy nonsense, and yet it is interesting because of the manner in which the ideas are shaped.

If one were to express his fundamental insights in terms of a more strict, spiritualised, healthy science, one would have to put it thus: We can see how everything that fills the external world, the macrocosm, corresponds to something in the human being, the microcosm, for man carries within himself everything that is out there. Thus I am saying that Weininger is following the pattern of imaginative knowledge when he produces the idea, albeit in a distorted, caricature-like form, that the plant is the embodiment of neurasthenia, and that the dog is the embodiment of evil. It is as though someone had twisted genuine imaginative knowledge into a caricature, but it nevertheless follows the pattern of imaginative knowledge. And yet this man Weininger is wholly unsuited for life; he is a man who can be totally ignored as far as life goes! For, fundamentally speaking, no one can learn anything from these two books. It is characteristic of the literati of our time that they are much more interested in such tests of endurance than in confronting imaginative knowledge which has been expressed as it should be expressed. That holds no interest for them. It becomes interesting, however, when it comes expressed in insane ideas.

We are really talking about imaginative knowledge, therefore, but in a distorted form. What, then, is actually going on here? One needs to get to the bottom of things to understand why an individual of Weininger's calibre should still be unfit for life. Why did Weininger develop into such an extraordinary person? Now, suppose that one could have observed Weininger at times when he was sleeping normally. (Although I am convinced that what I am about to say must have been so, it is hypothetical, for I did not personally observe Weininger's case.) If he had been observed when he was sleeping a healthy sleep—something that must have been a rare occurrence—one would have seen that truly grandiose intuitions and imaginations of the spiritual world were present in his ego and his astral body. So, if we could have observed his ego and astral body when they were separated from his physical and etheric bodies, we would have perceived a grandiose, genial soul, a soul filled with wonderful intuitions and inspirations that were absolutely accurate. This soul, rightly understood, would actually have become one of the great teachers of our times. But it was only permitted to work as a teacher while separated from the sleeping physical and etheric bodies. Only in the state of sleep were the students permitted to behold what the I and the astral body of their teacher had to say to them. But Weininger himself was not far enough advanced to be aware of this. He was not awake enough to perceive it; he had not undergone what in these days would be called initiation. In other words, he himself was not aware of what happened in his I and astral body while he was separated from his physical and etheric bodies. In our times, what would Weininger have had to become in order for him to have been able to work for the spiritual benefit of his fellow men? Through initiation he would have had to acquire the ability to behold the great gifts he possessed while outside his own physical and etheric bodies, for these can only manifest themselves outside the physical and etheric bodies. Then he would have been able to submerge again in his physical and etheric bodies in order to use the spiritual faculties and powers they contain for looking at the things he had experienced while outside his physical and etheric bodies. Then he would not have believed that he needed to present these truths by deriving them from the physical body, in the way one would demonstrate a mathematical truth.

But instead of this, something else happened. What happened instead is the following. Imagine that this is Weininger's physical body, and that these are his etheric and astral bodies. (They were drawn on the blackboard.) If one were to observe this astral body and its I, one would see the most beautiful and significant things ... But now this astral body and I submerge in the physical body and are inside it.

Instead of the person being able to separate himself from the astral in order to behold the astral realm, this astrality is pressed into the physical body. There it acquires the vitality which otherwise would only be possessed by the astrality of a normal man. That is to say, the giant imaginations which are contained in the astral body, and which should remain there, are pressed into the physical body. The brain does not function in the way it has been formed to function, the way appropriate to our present cycle of development. What should simply remain in the astral body as imaginations is pressed into the brain as though it were a lump of soft wax. Think of the brain as being like butter, or wax. A properly formed human brain allows the astral body to submerge in it like in air, filling it but leaving it unaltered. But this brain has not retained the form proper to a human brain; instead, things that should remain in the astral body have been pressed into it. This now expresses itself in the brain, leading that to come to expression in the physical man which would receive its rightful expression only in the spiritual man.

Why does this happen? What leads the astral body to thrust itself into the physical body in a manner for which it is not intended? What enables this to happen?

Well, my dear friends, there is a good reason why this happened, for those intuitions and imaginations that were being expressed, in our day, through Weininger, are ideas that really belong to the future? Please do not let what I am saying upset you; do not think that all the ideas about masculinity and femininity that we have been following are really ideas of the future. Those are not ideas of the future, but the caricature-like results of ideas that already have been pressed into the brain. But there is more to them than just this business about M + W. If they are separated-out and observed from within, they become something grandiose, something that people of today cannot yet understand. In the future something will be poured out over humanity; people will no longer be so aware of one another in terms of gender, but will meet more as human beings. Once one isolates this idea and clarifies it as regards the way it has been pressed into the physical body, it really does contain something of the future. All ideas, however, must be said to contain something of the future, for although the ideas you develop as you live in the twentieth century belong to the twentieth century, the ideas you need for your next incarnation are already there beneath the surface. They are there in your astral body and I, and you will need to take them with you as fruits of this incarnation. Everyone already carries a little bit of the future, but normally it does not come to expression in this life. The ideas for the next incarnation are already there, at work in the brain, just as the seed is within the plant. What happened to Weininger, however, should not happen. The independent astral body and I should not have influenced his physical and etheric bodies as they did. That is something that should only have occurred during the time between death and a new birth, when the body for his next incarnation was being formed. Then it would have been right for the ideas to press into the body—the body that was to come.

So you can see what is involved: the present and the subsequent incarnation are out of tune with one another. They are creating disturbances in one another instead of remaining properly distinct. The future incarnation is erupting into the present incarnation. What would be significant and right for the next incarnation is forcing its way into the body of the present incarnation, where it causes disturbances and where it appears in caricature.

I have often told you that we live in a time of transition, and that there will come a time when the people living today will again incarnate. When that time comes, these people will have a different relation to their previous incarnations. Unlike today, when everyone is aware only of his present incarnation, they will have to look back to their previous incarnation. This change is being prepared, and sometimes aberrations occur. Aberrations of this process can be observed in precisely such individuals as Weininger. The aberrations can be followed all the way to their ultimate consequences. Why, then, do we die? In order to be able to live the next incarnation! Of the many things that make death magnificent—and I am speaking now about a life that has run its full course—one is the way in which we are able to carry the fruits of this incarnation with us through the gates of death and then use them to shape the next incarnation. Death is as much a part of life as birth and growth. A plant is killed by the seed it carries within itself; the seed is what leads it to wilt. First the leaves come, then the flower and fruit, then it wilts—and this is more or less how we are killed by our next incarnation. If our next incarnation is somehow off its tracks or turned around, then some of the things it needs to accomplish can happen in a distorted fashion instead of happening in the way they should. The next incarnation is the rightful bringer of death in the present incarnation. If the next incarnation erupts into the life of this incarnation, as Weininger's did, it brings a caricature of death, suicide. The next incarnation should rest, quietly embedded in this one. But if it is not attuned to it, the next incarnation can erupt into the present one, bringing about the caricature of death, suicide. So you can follow the results of a dissonance between this individuality's physical and etheric bodies on the one hand, his astral body and I on the other, all the way to these consequences.

I would like to point out how this particular example illustrates what is living in many people of today. The important thing is to notice it when it occurs in the present, and to understand it. The literati, who do not understand him, see Weininger as the genius of the age; the psychiatrists see him as insane. But for those who want to respond to events with a loving understanding, he is an example of the transitional nature of our times, an interesting example. It is important to take hold of life by way of such interesting examples. This is how spiritual science becomes practical, for we live in times in which life will become more and more difficult, in which men will become more and more involved with themselves, times when self-knowledge is becoming more and more difficult. The upward thrust of what is living and stirring within us will grow and will make us seem to be afflicted with confusion and depression. The knowledge of spiritual science must help us win through to an understanding of mankind.

Tomorrow we will speak further about this and begin the approach to a greater theme.

• 1. The house near the west portal is ‘Haus Duldeck’, the house of Dr Grosheintz.
• 3. Otto Weininger: über die letzte Dinge, Vienna and Leipzig, 1904.
• 2. Otto Weininger, (1880 – 1903): Geschlecht und Charakter, 17th edition, Vienna and Leipzig, 1918.

In this Lecture, Rudolf Steiner reminds us to look beyond immediately sense-perceptible definitions of man and woman to the levels of polarity which are at work within these outer “garments,” to look behind our male and female physical bodies for the interacting of masculine and feminine elements within the whole human being.

Lecture 11 of 15 from the lecture series: Perception of the Soul and of the Spirit. Published in German as: Die Erkenntnis der Seele und des Geistes. Published in The Anthroposophical Review, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1980). GA# 56.

Anthroposophical science does not exist in order that human beings be estranged from life through some kind of mysticism. It should in no way divert people from their tasks in daily life or the present. On the contrary, spiritual science should bring strength, energy and open mindedness to humanity so that people can meet what daily life and our times demand. Hence it follows that spiritual science must not concern itself solely with the great riddles of existence, of the nature of human existence and the meaning of the world, but must also seek to cast light on those questions which confront us directly. Therefore in these lectures we shall deal throughout with what are commonly called questions of our time.

But whoever would speak out of spiritual science on such contemporary issues finds himself in a special position, for he raises the expectation that he will directly enter these current debates. And this expectation arises very easily with the questions of man and woman, or man, woman and child. Yet precisely because the spiritual researcher must consider these questions from a higher vantage point, his observations seem to lead away from the outlook and opinions arising in conventional discussions. Although spiritual science must indeed look at these questions from a higher perspective, it is precisely spiritual science which is able to work most practically on these issues. For while it is of the nature of spiritual scientific observation that such questions are raised into their eternal context, at the same time such observation makes visible practical solutions to concrete problems (unlike party programmes, slogans and the like which prove to be unworkable in practice). This must always be remembered when considering the relationship of man and woman from a higher vantage point. Many of the things to be said will sound quite strange. But if you penetrate deeper into them you will discover that spiritual science can offer a far more thorough answer to questions of practical life than can be found in other quarters.

Spiritual science takes its start from the knowledge that behind all that is sense perceptible stands a soul-spiritual nature. Only when we turn our gaze towards the spiritual lying behind the sense world, will the questions with which we wish to concern ourselves appear in their right light. And so we must ask ourselves: What is the spiritual nature of the two sexes? We shall then see that the truths revealed by spiritual science are already sensed by many today, even by those of a materialistic world outlook. But as these inklings are only based on a materialistic conception they often appear as illusory.

What then does materialism have to say about the nature of the sexes? We may best orientate ourselves towards this question by considering that women have for some time sought to approach the time in human evolution when both sexes shall attain full equality. In so far as women have stepped into the struggle for their rights, it is important for us to learn what materialism has to say about female nature. Then we will find a point of reference on how the modern world thinks about this question. One could quote the most varying ideas on female nature such as they appear in the book A Survey of the Woman Problem (Zur Kritik der Weiblichkeit) by Rosa Mayreder. It is indeed very good to seek the opinions of leading personalities of the day on issues of this kind.

A very noteworthy scientist of the nineteenth century described the basic quality of woman to be humility. Another whose comment is equally valid declared it to be an angry disposition. Another scientist who sparked off much controversy came to the conclusion that female nature is basically submissive, while yet another felt it consisted of the desire to dominate. One described women as conservative, still another felt women to be the true revolutionary element in the world. And yet another said that the ability to analyse was well developed in women, as opposed to others who believed that women lack this quality entirely and have only developed the capacity for synthesis.

This quaint collection could be extended indefinitely, though in the end one would only learn that through looking at things on a purely external level, intelligent people are led to opposite conclusions. Those who wish to enter into the thing more deeply must ask whether perhaps these observers are starting from false premises. One cannot merely look at externalities, rather one must consider the whole being of the human being. An inkling of the truth dawned in many researchers through the facts themselves. However this was submerged by materialistic thought. For example a young man, Otto Weininger, wrote a book entitled Sex and Character. Otto Weininger was a man with great potential which, however, he was unable to develop because the full weight of materialism rested heavily on his soul. He was of the opinion that the individual human being can be seen neither as entirely masculine nor feminine but rather that the masculine is mixed together with the feminine and vice versa. This embryo of an idea dawned in the soul of Weininger but was stultified by the prevailing materialism. Thus Weininger imagined there to be a mixing and material interaction of the masculine and feminine principles such that in every man a hidden woman and in every woman a hidden man is to be found. But out of this, some strange conclusions came to him. Weininger said for example that the woman possesses no ego, individuality, character, or personality, no freedom and so on. As his theory was concerned only with a purely material, quantitative mixing of male and female properties, it followed that the man possesses all of these things. These, however came to nothing in him because of his other male qualities. Thus if we enter into this logically we soon discover a theory which destroys itself. Yet as we shall see, there is some truth in it.

I have emphasised again and again that it is not as easy to understand the human being out of spiritual science as it is out of a materialistically orientated science. For that which we perceive as the sense-perceptible human being, is for spiritual science only one member of the whole being, namely the physical body. Beyond that, however, spiritual science distinguishes the etheric body which the human has in common with animals and plants. As a third member of the human being it characterises the astral or soul body as that which lives in our feelings and sensations and is the bearer of our joys and sorrows. This member we have in common with the animal world. And as the fourth member spiritual science recognises that which makes human beings human and conscious of themselves—the ego. Spiritual science thus describes the human being as possessing four members.

At present we will concern ourselves with the physical and etheric bodies. For herein lies the solution to the riddle of the sexes. The etheric body is only to a certain extent a picture of the physical body. In regard to the sexes things are different. In the man the etheric body is female and in the woman it is male. However strange it may seem, a deeper observation will disclose the following: Something of the opposite sex lies hidden in each person. It is no good however to look for all kinds of abnormal phenomena, rather one needs to pay attention to normal experiences. By confronting this fact, it is no longer possible in the strict sense to speak of man and woman, but rather of masculine and feminine qualities. Certain qualities in the woman work more outwardly while others are more inward. The woman has masculine qualities within herself and the man feminine qualities. For example a man becomes a warrior through the outer courage of his bodily nature, a woman possesses an inner courage, the courage of sacrifice and devotion. The man brings his creative activity to bear on external life. The woman works with devoted receptivity into the world. Countless phenomena of life will become clear to us if we think of human nature as the working together of two polar opposites. In the man the masculine pole works outwards and the feminine lives more inwardly, while in the woman the opposite holds true.

Spiritual science however also shows us a deeper reason why a masculine quality is to be found in the woman and a feminine in the man. Spiritual science speaks of how human beings strive after ever greater perfection, through many lives. Our present life is always the result of a previous one. Thus as we proceed through many lives, we experience both male and female incarnations. What arises in this way may be expressed as the effect of those experiences gathered on both sides in earthly life.

Whoever is able in this way to look more deeply into the male and female natures knows that the more intimate experiences of the two sexes are very different, and must be very different. Our entire earth existence is a collection of the most varied experiences. However, these experiences can only become comprehensive through their being acquired from the viewpoint of both sexes. Hence we can see that even if we only consider the human being with regard to the two lower members, we see in reality a being with two sides. So long as one merely looks at the physical body little can be understood. The spiritual lying behind must also be recognised. Through his masculine nature the inner femininity of the man appears, and through the woman's feminine nature her inner masculinity appears. Now one can grasp why it is that so many misjudgments have been made about this question; it depends on whether one looks at the inner, or the outer aspects. In considering only one side of the human being, one is subjected entirely to chance. If, for example, one researcher finds that the main quality of the woman is humility and another that it is an angry disposition, it simply means that both have observed only one side of the same being. Error must occur with this kind of approach. In order to recognise the full truth we must look at the whole human being.

Something else must also be taken into account in order to gain knowledge of the whole truth. We must observe the human being in alternating sleeping and waking states. During sleep the astral body and the ego are raised out of the physical-etheric organism of the human being. On falling asleep one loses one's day consciousness; one enters into a different state of consciousness—a sleep consciousness. The perceptions and experiences which are made by the ego and astral body during sleep in the spiritual world remain hidden to our usual consciousness. In the present evolutionary state the human being is organised in such a way that the ego and astral bodies must make use of the physical sense organs in order to become aware of the physical world. That we see, hear, taste, and so on with our physical organs of sense is an idea widely held today. A thinker like Fichte however, would say: The ear does not hear—I hear. The ego, the human being's true inner being, is therefore the starting point for all our sense perceptions. And each morning when we awaken, the ego and astral body experience new knowledge of the physical world through the sense organs. It is different during sleep, for the ego and astral body spend their time in the spiritual world. The human being has sense organs in the astral body which enable perception in the astral world, but these have normally not been developed. Those who are unable to accept this as a possibility must be more consequent and say that in reality human beings die every evening. But human beings do find themselves in the spiritual world at night.

Further than this, the spiritual and physical worlds have a unique relationship to one another, for everything physical is only a very dense form of the spiritual. In the same way as ice is densified water, so are the physical and etheric bodies a densification of the astral body. Present day materialism will find it very hard to admit that the spirit creates everything material. It is, however, the tragedy of materialism that it understands the nature of matter least of all. One arrives at some very strange conclusions if one denies that matter is a condensed form of the spiritual. Naturally if one stays with popular concepts, most people will not immediately recognise anything less than pure reason in such a sentence as the following: The body is the foundation for our true soul nature; all so called spiritual things can be guided through that which is bodily. It becomes much clearer, however, if one takes it to its logical conclusion, as is done for instance in that pragmatism which comes from America. One single sentence will easily show how this theory speaks pure nonsense to the human mind. Thus it declares that man does not cry because he is sad, but rather is sad because he cries. That a soul mood might have an effect on the physical is not deemed possible, instead one believes that some outside event causes the tears to run which then makes the person sad. This is the consequence of materialism carried to its logical absurdity.

Spiritual science knows that the two higher members of the human being, the ego and the astral body leave during the night while the physical and etheric bodies remain behind. Thus it follows that during sleep the human being leaves behind male and female aspects and lives as a sexually undifferentiated being in the spiritual world. Everyone's life is thus divided between a sexual and an asexual experience.

Do the sexes then have no meaning in the spiritual world? Does the polarity of physical and etheric body which makes the two sexes manifest here on earth, find no echo in the higher worlds? Certainly we do not take our sexual nature with us into higher worlds; however, the origin of the two sexes is to be found in the astral sphere. In the same way as ice is formed from water, that which meets us in the physical world as masculine and feminine is formed out of the polarity of higher principles. We can approach this best if we consider it as the polarity of life and form. This polarity is also expressed in nature. We can see budding life in the tree and at the same time that which builds up hard forms, slows down growth and transforms it into the solid trunk. Life and form must work together in everything that lives. And if we look at the nature of the sexes from this standpoint we can say: That which corresponds to the life principle is the masculine, while that which brings life into a certain form expresses itself in the feminine. That which an artist creates in the way of form in marble, for example, is not to be found in outer nature. Only the artist's inner being, which is rooted in the spiritual world and finds its nourishment there, can be artistically creative. Indeed the reality is that the forces and beings of the spiritual world are continually streaming into the astral body and ego of the human being. And that which the artist creates as an imprint on matter is a memory of something with which he has been stimulated in the spiritual world. Were the human being unable to return to a spiritual homeland during sleep, it would not be possible to carry into physical existence the seeds needed to initiate great and noble deeds. Therefore nothing could be worse for the human being than prolonged loss of sleep.

That which the artist has drawn from the spiritual world and has built unconsciously into his work then appears as life and form. One might ask why it is that the “Juno Ludovisi” appears so wonderful to us. There is the large face, the wide forehead, the unusual nose. If we try and feel our way into this picture we would come to experience how impossible it is to think away the spiritual; soul and spirit are to be found in the very form of this face. This form could stay like this forever. The inner life has become entirely form, is fixed in form; soul and spirit have become form. But then we look up at the head of Zeus. Soul and spirit are present in this rather narrow forehead too, but one has the feeling that this form could change at any moment. Out of a deep inspiration the artist has been able to hold on to life and form in all reality.

But just as the artist is able to mould life and form into his great works, so is our whole being in reality life and form. This in itself shows that human nature is of spiritual origin and is created out of life, out of the continuous process of life and that which gives it permanence. The human being experiences life and death as the expression of this higher polarity of existence. It is in this sense that Goethe could say: “Death is the means by which nature can create more life.” Thus life finds a form not for one-sided life, nor one-sided death, but for a higher harmonious whole which can be created through life and death together. On this basis spiritual and physical can work together through the medium of masculine and feminine; the eternally developing life in the masculine, and life held in form in the feminine principle.

When investigating the nature of the sexes we have not begun with a one-sided observation of physical existence but rather have sought an answer on the spiritual level of existence. The harmony above the sexes can only be found in so far as the two sexes raise themselves to that level. If, therefore, by making use of the knowledge to be gained from spiritual science we could enable the reality beyond the sexes to take effect in practical life, the problem of the sexes would be solved. This does not lead away from life however. For that which meets us in the two phenomena of human nature can best be clarified by consciously striving for this higher harmony. In this way the question of the sexes will be deepened and the polarities will be harmonised. Everything in the nature of the sexes attains a very different form and meaning. We cannot solve this question through dogma, rather we must seek a common ground, and find perceptions and feelings which lead beyond the sexes.

These observations have shown, as is found again and again, that we must distinguish between the reality of the senses and the nature of being itself. If we want to solve the riddles of life, we must observe the whole human being from the world of the senses and from the world of the spirit. It can be seen that beyond the sense-perceptible polarity, man and woman are only garments, sheaths which hide the true nature of the human being. We must search behind the garments, for there is the spirit. We must not merely consider the outer side of the spirit, we must enter into the spirit itself.

We could also express it in this way: Love saturated with wisdom or wisdom penetrated with love is the highest goal. “The eternal feminine draws us forward.”¹ The feminine is that element in the world which strives outward in order to be fructified by the eternal elements of life.

• 1. The closing lines of Goethe's Faust.

Today I would like to begin by considering a simple fact of which everyone is aware. If we cast an understanding and observant eye over the variety of natural occurrences, we will notice that they seem to fall into two very different and distinct realms: one realm which manifests the greatest kind of regularity and order, and another realm of extensive disorder, irregularity and virtually impenetrable interconnections. This, at any rate, is how we experience them. Even though there is a sharp dividing-line between these two realms, our normal natural sciences do not distinguish clearly between them. On the one hand we have all the things that happen with the regularity with which the sun rises and sets each morning and evening, and with which the stars rise and set, and with which all the other things associated with the rising and setting of the sun occur—such as the plants, which regularly send forth their growing shoots in the spring, develop through the summer, then fade away and disappear in autumn. And the realm of nature presents us with many other things in which we can see a similarly great degree of regularity and order.

But there is another realm of nature, one which cannot be experienced in the same way. One cannot anticipate storms in the way one can anticipate the sunrise and sunset each morning and evening, for storms do not occur with that kind of regularity. We can say that the sun will occupy a certain position in the heavens at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, but we cannot say that we will see a certain cloud formation in a certain position, let alone say anything about how the clouds will look. Nor can we predict, in the way we can predict the quarters of the moon, that, here in our building in Dornach, we are going to be surprised by a storm or shower at some particular time. It is possible to calculate eclipses of the sun and moon that will happen centuries hence quite accurately, but the occurrence of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions cannot be predicted with the same degree of certainty.

You see here two distinct realms of nature, one that manifests regularities our reason can grasp, and the other whose manifestations are irregular and cannot be experienced in the same way. Great regularity and extreme unpredictability are intertwined in what we call nature as a whole. I would like to describe the overall impression that nature makes on us at a given instant as a mixture of the orderly procession of regular events with those other events, the ones that can take us by surprise, even though they come again and again with at least a certain degree of consistency.

Now, there is a profound truth that we have considered from many points of view in the course of our studies here, the truth that man is a microcosm—that man mirrors the macrocosm and that everything that is to be found at large in the macrocosm can be rediscovered in some form in mankind. So we would expect to find these two spheres of nature expressed in some human form, one which exhibits great order, the other which exhibits a pronounced lack of order. Naturally, in a human life these would be expressed very differently from the way they are expressed out there in nature. Nevertheless, that twofold division of nature into order and irregularity should remind us of something in man. Now, consider the typical example I tried to present to you yesterday.

That typical individuality was well able to think logically. When it was a matter of logical thinking, he could reckon, pass judgements and regulate his life with a degree of order, overseeing it and planning and acting accordingly. In other words, he had access to everything that regularity can contribute to the functioning of our understanding, our reason, our capacity for experience and our will-impulses. But, alongside these, this person also lived another life, a life that was expressed in those two works I described to you. From the little I have told you about the content of these books you can well imagine how stormy a life this was, how erratic when compared with what human reason has to offer. There were storms in the depths of that soul, profound storms, and these storms were lived out in the way we described yesterday. Such things truly do happen in the way thunderstorms and outbursts of wind and weather play into the regular procession of sun and moon, into the orderly succession of sprouting, fading away and dying in the plant world. Into all that develops out of the human head and the regular course of the human heart come the storms we experience as waking dreams or as lightning flashes of genius. These flash through the soul and discharge themselves like storms. But be in no doubt about it, every human soul has the tendency to experience the very same things that Otto Weininger experienced in such an extreme, radically paradoxical fashion. They are there in the depths of every human soul. Ordinary people who are not so disposed, as Weininger was, to experience their own genius, express it through their dreams—but always as dreams. Everyone dreams and, in the final analysis, dreams are things that bubble up out of the depths of the astral realm. They make their appearance at times when the astral body is being reflected in the etheric body. Every human being possesses a day-to-day awareness that a man like Weininger dismisses as the pedantic consciousness of a philistine, and every human being possess that other consciousness, the one that bubbles up in dreams.

One should not say, you see, that these dreams and this world of dreams are only present at night when one knows one is dreaming or has been dreaming. For a human being is constantly dreaming. Real dreams, or what one calls real dreams, are only the results of a temporary view of the continuous stream of dreams. Actually, however, one is continuously dreaming. All of you seated here are dreaming. Alongside the thoughts expressed in this lecture which, I trust, are living in you, you are all dreaming. In the depths of your souls you are all dreaming. And the only thing that distinguishes the dreams you have now from the ones you have at night is that at the moment there are other thoughts that are more conscious and stronger, and which I would think outweigh the dreams in most cases. But when waking consciousness has been suppressed and, simultaneously, sleep is interrupted, then what is now being dreamed unconsciously can emerge for a while. That is when a conscious dream appears. The life of dreams, however, proceeds without any interruption.

The contrast in human nature between the regularity of normal thinking and the lack of it in dreams is really of this nature. A person is spiritually ill if he does not have access to the regularity of normal thinking, to the kind of regularity which governs the appearance of the sun at its appointed time. A person must be able to apply the canons of reason and distinguish one event from another. But alongside his healthy waking consciousness a person also has, living in the depths of his soul, this other realm that I have described as stormy and irregular.

The forces upon which waking consciousness is based really do mirror the astronomical pathway of the stars across the heavens. If the pathway of the stars were not a part of us, we would have no waking consciousness. But, as you can see from remarks I made in the lecture cycle, The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Humanity, the very same external forces that can be observed at play in wind and weather, in storm and earthquake, are also at work in the depths of the human soul and they are reflected in the unconscious and half-conscious aspects of human life. In this respect, a human being is truly a microcosm in which the macrocosm is repeated.

These days, there is a restricted awareness of such things, for we live in an age when humanity has been called upon to restrict itself more and more to the physical plane—to become materialistic. The cultivation of an understanding and a rationality divorced of spirituality is simply a symptom of this. But, as we have often explained here, humanity will also proceed beyond this age. And the spiritual-scientific movement should be preparing the manifestations of the spirit for the time to come.

Men are little aware that the spiritual world is connected with what they pursue here, with the events and facts of earthly existence. But mankind has not always lived in the spirit-less style of today. Human institutions have not always taken so little account of the influences of the spiritual world on the physical world. Think of Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome. I once described to you how he wanted to set about establishing institutions here on the physical plane. The story is symbolic, but a significant fact lies behind the symbolism. In order to find out how the eras of history would unfold, he consulted the nymph, Egeria, whose knowledge was derived from the spiritual world. Thereafter, he designated the era of Romulus as the first, his own as the second, and five others that would follow his, making a series of seven. There is something remarkable in this story about a king of Rome: the sevenfold order he constructs is the same as the order on which the seven members of our organism are based. In earlier times there was a tendency for physical life to be arranged so that its institutions reflected the demands of the spiritual world—so that they in some way reflected what happened in the spiritual worlds. Today, men take no account of this.

I have often mentioned how people have lost their sense of piety as regards establishing the time of the Easter festival, the festival of the Easter season. Today there are even some who want to set a fixed day for Easter Sunday, rather than following the present custom of determining the festival in accordance with the course of the stars. For it would simplify our account books if Easter were always to be, say, the first Sunday in April. Then one would no longer have to set up the books for a different Easter each year and it would be easier to close the accounts for the year. This is simply one crass example from among the countless examples that could be mentioned. It shows how little sense the men of today have for arranging their earthly institutions so that they will reflect what is happening in the spiritual worlds and in the stars. But it was not always so. There have been times when there was a profound awareness that a man's own life and the life he shares with other men should be an earthly reflection of what is happening in the spiritual worlds and is expressed in the stars. These were earlier ages, when atavistic clairvoyance was still present.

Let us look at an example from the ancient Hebrews. Their religious year, and thus the year that really mattered, was a moon year of 354 3/8 days. Now that is somewhat shorter than a sun year. So if one reckons in moon years, some days will be lost because the moon year does not entirely fill out a sun year. After a certain time, more and more days will have been left out. Then a balance would need to be established again. But the ancient Hebrews had a very special way of creating a balance between sun years and moon years. I will only go into this method briefly, since what we need today is to let the whole sense and spirit of the matter pass before our souls, not the particular details. Ancient Hebrew tradition recognised a so-called ‘Jubilee Year’. This was a year of universal conciliation and reconciliation. It was celebrated after 49 sun years, which add up to slightly more than 50 moon years. In such a year of reconciliation, people forgave one another for various things for which they held each other to be to blame: those who were debtors could be, or should be, released from their debts, property should be returned to those who had lost it, and such like. It was a year for balancing things out, for reconciling the 7 x 7 sun years with fifty moon years-actually 50 1/2 moon years, but one can call it 50 because this year lasted for a while and it furnished the starting point for one's reckoning. Thus, a Jubilee Period lasted 50 x 354 3/8 days; during this period one accumulated all the various things that would need balancing out.-If one takes into consideration that this Jubilee Year was a time for reconciling 49 (which equals 7 x 7) sun years with 50 moon years, one can say that it is ordered in accordance with the number 7. Therefore the institution of the Jubilee Year was based on a certain awareness of the significance of seven-foldness.

Today we want to make the spirit of the thing present for our souls, so we should give special heed to the following. We want to see what it would have been like to live in the ancient Hebrew times when one said: we experience the course of the days, one following after the other. After 354 days, a new year begins. And after experiencing 49 or 50, respectively,—years in a row, then begins a special festive year for humanity. And now just imagine how it would have been if, accompanying everything that people lived through, there was the awareness that it is 7, 8, or 9, years since the Jubilee Year, and that one would have to wait a certain number of years for the next Jubilee Year. Nor is this set up arbitrarily; it is established on the basis of an occult division according to certain numbers.

You need have no doubts that those who were living 24 years after a Jubilee Year would be reckoning back 24 years to the last Jubilee Year and 26 years forward to the next one. That gives you some degree of access to those times. In other words, the human souls here on earth were occupied with something that involved them in a particular numerical relationship, and this numerical order affected the way they felt things-this numerical order flowed through their souls in an uninterrupted stream. In the course of thousands of years, human souls became accustomed to living with what I have just characterised. And as you know, experiences that are repeated again and again are imprinted on life. They become part of the life that shapes the soul and gives it its configuration. Thus, investigating the ancient Hebrews, one discovers an awareness for a particular temporal order living in their souls, a particular temporal configuration which expressed itself in their awareness of the passage from one Jubilee Year to the next Jubilee Year. This gave every single day a special relationship to the passage of time. The soul had become accustomed to an order that was based, on the one hand, on 354, and on the other hand, on 49 (7 x 7)—or, respectively, 50. And this accompanied the soul wherever it went.

This is comparable to the way it is necessary to learn in one's youth the calculations that one will need to use later in life; once learned, they become a possession. A certain configuration has been established in the soul. We want to take note of that as we now move on to another consideration.

According to the calculations of today's astronomy, Mercury circles the Sun much more rapidly than the Earth does, so that if we refer to the revolutions of Mercury, we obtain a picture of the Earth slowly moving about the Sun while Mercury moves quickly. Now keep the orbit of Mercury in mind. We want to take 354 of these—in fact, we can take 354 3/8 of them; and then we want to multiply yet again by 49 or, respectively, by 50. Simply picture these numbers. If you think of one orbit of Mercury as a kind of celestial day, then 354 of these Mercury orbits would be a kind of Moon year on the planet Mercury. Then take 49 or 50 of these: that would be one celestial Jubilee Year. Naturally, one celestial Jubilee Year is much longer than an earthly Jubilee Year, but of course it is calculated with reference to Mercury.

Thus we are calculating a Jubilee Year that is based on Mercury, just as the ancient Hebrews calculated a Jubilee Year based on Moon and, respectively, on Earth. For 354 3/8 times they experienced one Earth day after the other. One year had passed. That, multiplied by 7 x 7 (49 or 50), made up one of the ancient Hebrews' Jubilee Years. Corresponding to this would be 354 3/8 Mercury orbits multiplied by 50 (or 49). Naturally, that is an entirely different expanse of time, an entirely different expanse of time from an Earth year, although it is based on the same numbers.

Now let see how yet another number is determined. Now we take Jupiter. Jupiter is much slower, it moves much more slowly. It takes twelve years to go around the Sun once. Mercury moves much more quickly than the Earth, Jupiter much more slowly. Now we will take Jupiter and consider one of these years for Jupiter. Actually, it would be a Jupiter year, but because Jupiter is in the heavens where we can think on a very large scale, we look upon that as one Jupiter day. We will let one of the periods in which Jupiter circles the Sun correspond to one of our Earth days. Then 354 3/8 of these days would add up to a large Jupiter year of the kind based on the Moon: one large Jupiter year. We will not multiply it by 7 x 7, but only once, because it lasts so long. Using the same method, then, we have calculated one Jubilee Year for Mercury, and one for Jupiter—just a single, great year.

Then we consider yet another planet, one not known to the ancient Hebrews. They were, however, aware of its sphere, which they thought of as being beyond the planets; they thought of it as the crystal sphere that formed the vault of the heavens. Much later it was discovered that one could speak of Uranus as being there. But we can consider Uranus, even though it was discovered much later. The only difference is that the ancient Hebrews thought of a sphere in the place where Uranus was later located. We will take 49 (or 50) orbits of Uranus, which moves very slowly.—And now we will compare all of this with Earth years.

Each of these would correspond to a definite number of Earth years, would it not? Thus, 354 3/8 x 50 revolutions of Mercury around the Sun would correspond to a certain period of Earth years. One great Jupiter year, consisting of 354 3/8 orbits, would correspond to another period of Earth years. And 49 (50) orbits of Uranus would give us yet another period of Earth years.

The extraordinary thing is that each of these yields the same number of Earth years. One obtains a given number of Earth years if one takes 50 (49) orbits of Uranus. One obtains the same number if one takes 354 3/8 orbits of Jupiter, or 50 x 354 3/8 of the orbits of Mercury: each yields that particular span of Earth years. In the case of Uranus, you multiply by 50, with Jupiter, you multiply by 354 3/8, and with Mercury, by 50 x 354 3/8—in each case you obtain the period I have already called a celestial Jubilee⁴ Year based on Mercury. All three planets give us the same number.

And how did the ancient Hebrews experience this number? The number is 4182. (Naturally, there are certain irregularities which play into this and which we are ignoring today.) In each of the three cases the number comes out at 4182. One has to say that this is approximate, but you can investigate it exactly, for the irregularities are balanced-out by compensating movements: it comes to 4182 Earth years! And what would an ancient Hebrew have had to say about this? He could say, ‘Here on Earth your soul experiences 354 3/8 x 50 days in each Jubilee Year, and that is one great year of reconciliation. But something is also happening out there where cosmic thoughts are formed. Out there live beings for whom one revolution of Mercury is equivalent to one of your Earth days. These beings also experience the macrocosm in other ways, for example, in a way that corresponds to your experience of a Jubilee Year. And such a being would tell you that one orbit of Mercury is equivalent to one day and that 354 3/8 x 49 (or 50) of these days is equivalent to one Jubilee Year reckoned on the basis of Mercury. The being would also tell you that this same number is identical to one Jupiter year and is also identical to 50 revolutions of the celestial sphere.’

The ancient Hebrews had reasons for calculating time from the beginning of the Earth in the following way—we also place an event at the beginning of our reckoning of Earth time, although it is a different event. According to their reckoning, 4182 years after the beginning of the Earth would be the time of a great, cosmic year of reconciliation, the year in which the Christ would appear in the flesh. In other words, the ancient Hebraic culture lived in a time-span that extended from the beginning of the Earth to the appearance of Christ in the flesh. This span was that of a single Jubilee Year of Mercury, one great Jupiter year, or 50 revolutions of the outermost, celestial sphere, which we now know as the orbit of Uranus.

In this wonderful example you see how the human soul was being prepared for the great, cosmic Jubilee Year. It was prepared by social institutions that based the temporal reckoning on 354 3/8 and 7 x 7, or 50. Thereby the soul was enabled to experience the ordering of the cosmos, which means that cosmic forms were inscribed in the soul. This is a tremendous thing. The connections are immensely profound.

And if you follow the thoughts of those who have emerged from Judaism, you will see that these souls bore thoughts of a cosmos inhabited by infinitely lofty beings. And they assumed that the laws governing the movements of the stars would announce to their interpreters the time of the Christ's descent from the sphere of the Sun to the Earth. The events out yonder were thought of in terms of 354 3/8 and 7 x 7. Out yonder, things were ordered so that someone who followed the clock of Mercury, counting one orbit of Mercury as one day, could determine the span of one Jubilee Year from the beginning of the Earth to the Mystery of Golgotha. Just as man thinks of the beginnings of earthly existence, so also do the cosmic beings think of that moment which, for the ancient Hebrews marked the beginning of the Earth—but cosmic beings think on a cosmic scale. Meanwhile, here on Earth a human institution was preparing human souls for thinking the great thought that is spread out before them in the heavens; it was shaping their souls so they would be able to apply the thought to their own passage through time. Those who lived in the time of Christ's coming and who could understand the place of the Mystery of Golgotha in the course of time were men who had gone through this preparation and whose souls had been shaped by it. Thereby they knew: The Mystery of Golgotha is approaching. They were thereby enabled to write the Gospels, for they could understand what lay behind the descent of the cosmic Sun Spirit to Earth. Such an understanding presupposes that the soul has been prepared.

Here you have a wonderful example of how social institutions that have been spiritually ordered by initiates can prepare the human soul for understanding an event—or for comprehending it at all. What does this show us? It deepens our understanding of why we should use our waking consciousness to shape our human social life so that it is related to the world of the stars. The Mystery of Golgotha cannot be understood—one cannot bring it within the scope of reason—until one has understood the connection of reason itself to the course of the stars. This is expressed in numerical relationships. Thus, everything that is connected with our waking consciousness is connected—consciously or unconsciously—with the orderly procession of the stars. In this case it was consciously determined by initiates. And so, emerging from the depths of our souls, these things begin to make their appearance in the forms I have described to you, in dreams or in the lightning flashes of genius of a man like Weininger. As I explained yesterday, these things do not belong to the present course of the stars and will only be developed in later incarnations.

What, then, are these things connected with? All the things that are consciously or unconsciously thought by our heads and felt by our hearts,—in short, everything connected with our waking consciousness—corresponds to the movement of the stars. What, then, corresponds to the things that go on in our more dreamlike or fantasy-filled states of consciousness and often fill our more inspired moods? These latter correspond more to the elemental world of natural events, the world on which such things as thunder and storms and hail and earthquakes depend. And in this fashion we can look deeply into nature. It begins to appear to us as it has appeared to men who are to some degree initiated and who have always asked, ‘What, then, is this part of nature that is not regulated by the regular course of the sun and moon and their like—this part of nature that does not proceed regularly or in accordance with rules? What is this nature of rain, of hail, of storms, of thunder, of earthquake, of volcanic eruption?’ And these initiates have always answered, ‘Here nature appears as a somnambulist!’

And now let us look up at the procession of the stars. In its regular, numerical relationships, as in its occult connections, it presents us with the macrocosmic representation of our waking consciousness. Then let us contemplate our dream consciousness and everything that is to a greater or lesser degree expressed there. There we find mirrored all the irregular happenings of the external world. Looking up to the heavens, we behold the external, macrocosmic representation of our waking consciousness. Looking down towards the Earth and its manifestations, we find nature as a somnambulist, a somnambulistic dreamer, who is the mirror and the outer picture of what goes on in the depths of our souls. Our waking spirit thinks in accordance with astronomy. Our dreaming, fantasy-filled, often somnambulistic soul lives and weaves in harmony with the great, somnambulistic consciousness of earthly nature. That is a profound truth.

Between now and tomorrow, reflect on the extent to which astronomy is governing your waking consciousness, and the extent to which meteorology rules in your unconscious. Yesterday, Otto Weininger provided us with an example of a man in whom astronomy came to expression only to be obscured by meteorological clouds. We will speak further about this tomorrow.

• 4. For the sake of clarity, the exact astronomical calculations for the three cases discussed are shown here (one Sun-year / 365.26 days):
  
  Cosmic Jubilee Year:
  Mercury-orbit, 87.97 days x 354 3/8 x 49 = 4,182 years
  
  Jupiter Year:
  Jupiter-orbit, (11.86 years = 4,332.59 days)
  4,332.59 days x 354 3/8 = 4,203 years
  
  Uranus:
  Uranus-orbit, (84.01 years = 30,688.39 days)
  30,688.39 days x 49 = 4,117 years
  x 50 = 4,201 years

Yesterday I was at pains to give you a picture of man as a being of soul. Vast in connection with this picture of man as soul we want particularly to deal with today is to be the two boundary zones we learned about yesterday. The one boundary zone is seen in how man is obliged to come to a halt when he tries to look through the external world as it appears to him perceptibly. Scientists, philosophers, then speak of boundaries to knowledge. We know that these boundaries to knowledge do not in truth exist, but that in actual fact they are present for man's physical sense-perception.

The other boundary is the result of everything found in our consciousness, or entering into consciousness, being mirrored back, reflected back, on to an inner zone and, by this reflection, being enabled to become memory. What we have in consciousness does not go right into the depths of the region that lies in man's subconsciousness. We will draw these two boundaries the boundary of memory (left) and what we might at once refer to as the boundary of the capacity for love (right) which is at the same time the of our knowledge of nature.

We have indicated this in the lemniscates we drew which are open to the outside (see diagram 8) and we had here to draw lemniscates with the loop turned crack towards the inside.

This is the external region therefore into which man can no longer look with his ordinary powers of sense-perception—this, it is imperceptible. And there underneath is the inwardly directed boundary of conscious life, into which man cannot descend with his consciousness. He remains with his consciousness above this limit. Should he dive down with his conscious conceptions he would have no memory.

Now in connection with these two boundaries there is something quite definite to be said about this very life of the man of soul. If we go back in human evolution, go back perhaps farther than the eighth pre-Christian century (you remember that the year 747 begins the fourth post-Atlantean epoch), if we go back beyond this point of time into the earlier post-Atlantean epochs, then whet lies beyond this boundary was to a certain degree accessible to the human consciousness into which it worked. The atavistic clairvoyance still existing at that time rested indeed upon this. Certain impulses from the cosmos came through in those days and made themselves felt as atavistic powers of vision. We could therefore say that what is here outside us first became increasingly impenetrable—I mean intellectually impenetrable—after the eighth century before Christ. We are living now in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and it is still impenetrable. And people are knocking at the boundary today, quite extraordinarily while continuing to maintain that no one is able to penetrate to the thing—call it how you will—lying beyond this boundary.

It may be said on the other hand that another tendency makes itself increasingly felt, and will make itself still more felt as the sixth post-Atlantean epoch approaches—the zone here(left) will become penetrable. The time will come when out of the depths of human nature whet I described to you yesterday as something seething, into which man should not look (above all should not look in the sense of what the imaginative, the fantastic, mystic wants), out of this sphere from the sixth post-Atlantean epoch onwards all manner of things will seep through.

This time indeed will begin before the end of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—our epoch; all kinds of things will want to leak through. This will show itself above all in far more people than we think today understanding from purely inner experience that there are repeated lives on earth, and things of that kind. One may say that already today these things are breaking through, though not very often. I have frequently mentioned the name here of a remarkable man of the present day—Otto Weininger (Das Rätsel des Mensch {The Riddle of Man} - Lecture 1, not translated)—who is particularly well known by reason of his book Geschlecht und Charakter [Race and Character].

But still more interesting is his book published after his death by his friend Rappaport, in which all kinds of most interesting things appear. These are mostly aphorisms, and the whole bears the title Über die letzten Dinge (About ultimate questions), the greater part of it being aphorisms. One of these aphorisms is approximately to this effect—Weininger maintains that the human soul during life before birth might have developed a certain dread of itself and because of this have longed to forget this life and bury itself in oblivion—which means incarnating. Thus Weininger expressly talks of pre-earthly life and of incarnating, only he speaks in a gloomy, pessimistic way of how the soul seeks to bemuse itself about its life before birth, and seeks this oblivion through incarnation in a physical human body. Many such direct impressions are received by present-day can concerning the path of the soul and they will become ever more numerous.

One can already see in such a man as Weininger how today the ego is lying hold of man inwardly in what I may call a more solid and compact way; one can already see very clearly in Weininger's case how this boundary is becoming as it were penetrable, and all manner of things are pressing through. What he has written down about his death, for instance, is interesting. In his early years, when only twenty-three, he committed suicide. He made a whole series of notes which are extraordinarily interesting because they exactly represent Imaginations seen in the astral. All this is in accordance with a certain trend of character that led him to take Beethoven's room in Vienna one day and then the next day to kill himself—at the age of twenty-three. And it was all noted now he would be driven to suicide because otherwise he might become haunted by the fear of a vague impulse urging him on to murder and he would have to kill someone else.

It can be seen how most terrible things are here making their presence felt in the soul of an extraordinarily gifted man who cannot act in accordance with the dictates of his consciousness because so much rises up from his subconscious. You will understand that one is in certain way justified in showing how the ordinary cleverness that man is now able to develop does not extend to knowledge of what arises from the unexplored depths. For it should not arise: it should remain, nevertheless it will arise. Just as, up to the year 747, something came in from outside, henceforward something will rise up from within.

What man attains through his ordinary normal cleverness will not be able—will in fact be far from able—to overcome this. For what is here is the understanding of the wor1d acquired through Spiritual Science. It is possible for harmony, inner firmness and inner dignity, to permeate man's life of soul only when there is the desire to order and harmonise this life of soul through what can be acquired by working for knowledge of the spirit. In his development man is striving towards a condition where more will spring up out of his innermost depths than is the normal case today.

The things of which I am speaking now were actually quite well known in the various centres of Initiation. The whole of eastern spiritual life, the whole life of the spirit in Asia, is still redolent of that ancient knowledge which was accessible to man up to the eighth century before Christ. Indeed it is not only the spiritual life in Asia that tells of it. Fundamentally it is Asiatic culture as a whole. This it is that makes it so difficult for a European to understand what is said by an oriental about the civilisation of the East. If we would understand these people it is necessary indeed for us to have different conceptions and to form our thoughts differently. For example, it must be very interesting for many people today to consider anything so characteristic as the address about the spirit of Japan given by the Indian, Rabindranath Tagore. (Tagore as you know is the Indian author who has been awarded the Nobel prize for literature). He gave a lecture about the spirit of Japan.

What he said about the spirit of Japan is of less moment than the spirit out of which he spoke, the spirit of the oriental today, which can be understood only when we know how in the oriental something still remains of that rising-up and that coming-in—no longer perceptible to the external world. When speaking to most Europeans in the spirit of the spirit of their civilisation men of the East are really almost unintelligible. Usually there is no understanding whatever for what they are saying.

And we also have this other phenomenon—that what actually should only arise in the future can be experienced in a way in advance. I might compare this with children who as children have the characteristics of old age; they assume these characteristics when quite young. Irregularity enters evolution when something is thrust into it that should only come later. Whereas in oriental thinking, in oriental conceptions, even in the most outstanding spirits there rules, as I have shown, what is left over from a previous age, there is dominant in the spirits who think in accordance especially with what is American, something that is to enter later, something is introduced which belongs to a later time.

If one can go deeply into such matters it is clearly distinguishable that the most outstanding minds receive a great deal that seeps through here (left). You get an idea of what thus seeps through if you read, for example, the address given by Woodrow Wilson concerning the evolution of the American people, in particular the North American people. One cannot imagine anything more to the point nor more apt than this lecture of Woodrow Wilson's about the evolution of the American people! Every word of it gives the feeling that the whole matter is characterised and dealt with in the most shrewd manner. And this is particularly surprising since in this case, Wilson emphasises how a great number even of Americans hold the view that is justified only if one considers the American people as still being a dependency of the English—which is certainly not Wilson's opinion. Woodrow Wilson is most definitely in opposition to those who look upon the Americans as originating in—being a branch of—the English in Europe, and consider that they do not at all understand the actual evolution of the American people during the nineteenth century. And Wilson speaks right out of the spirit of America, most pregnantly and to the point, when he says that Americans first begin to oe Americans at the moment when they sever the links binding their souls to what proceeds from England, and start blazing their trail from East to West, from the eastern coast of America to its western coast.

In this trekking through the primeval forest, in the work with pickaxe and spade, in the labour with horse and plough, in overcoming all obstacles on the road from east to west, there developed what he calls the western man. And in a way that is direct and convincing Wilson sees in this manner of conquering the ground, the actual nerve of American evolution. In all this one has the definite feeling—the "how" must be understood here, not merely the "what"—the feeling that in all this something greater is speaking than Wilson. For when Wilson himself speaks—well, what is said is not very clever; it sounds much more as though the man were speaking out of whet lived within him as a kind of possession; demonic natures speak, giving out indeed grandiose secrets of the future, secrets that would have to be penetrated by man for himto understand evolution.

Today a real distinction has to be made between the understanding of the world that is scientific and in accordance with time—an understanding that is easy and universally popular—and the true understanding of the world. This true understanding of the world must be able to recognise such contrasting things as I have here been discussing, namely, the entering in of something from the peoples of the east that lies there outside (see right of diagram 8) and the arising of something from the American people that lies here (left). And what arises here is not necessarily something to be looked down upon, in a certain sense it can be a majestic ahrimanic, manifestation. For it is essentially an ahrimanic manifestation which is given in this excellent utterance of Woodrow Wilson's upon the evolution of the American people.

The initiates of the East and the initiates of the American people know what it is necessary to make of these things. There is the will absolutely to guide the evolution of mankind from both directions into a certain course. The eastern peoples, that is to say their initiates, have quite definite views for the future evolution of mankind. These people see what is right for evolution and, as far as it lies in man's power, seek to influence this right evolution. They try to give it a definite direction, a definite impulse. And the impulse that the initiates of the East wish to give to evolution rests essentially upon man no longer reclining on human generation after the first half of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch.

After this time it will be sought to renounce the earthly human race. The desire will be to bring human evolution to the point when man no longer returns to a physical body, when souls are so spiritualised that they do not descend to earth any more in bodily form. From the middle of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch man will already be seeking to found for himself the Kingdom of the spirit. This would be possible only were certain ingredients of culture rejected. It is not only the initiates of the East who feel a decided aversion to certain European characteristics but every cultured oriental instinctively feels it also—he feels an aversion for just those characteristics on which the European particularly prides himself. For example, he has no use for the purely technical, material culture which has arisen both in Europe and in its off-shoot America. Those who study man's evolution, particularly in the nineteenth century and on into the twentieth, find they have to admit that technics has carried things very far, that technics has deprived man of his power for work.

When it is said today that the earth has so and so many hundred millions of inhabitants, this is not, actually entirely correct, for it can also be reckoned how many inhabitants the earth has according to how much work is done. Now we are perfectly justified in saying that since the last third of the eighteenth century man's power of labour has been fixed by the machines that have been increasingly produced. It can be reckoned, and reckoned pretty exactly, how many millions more men would have to be apportioned to the earth if all the work produced by machines were to be produced by men. The earth would have to have 500,000,000 more men. It can indeed be said that the earth today has not so many men if they are to be counted according to their two legs and their head, but according to labour power the earth has 500,000,000 more men; machines do duty as labour-power.

But, my dear friends, there is nothing material that has not behind it what is spiritual. These 500,000,000 human forces are the opportunity for the same number of ahrimanic demons to take up their abode in human culture! These ahrimanic demons are certainly there. And the man of the East instinctively turns right away from these ahrimanic demons, and will have nothing to do with them. You see this in every manifestation of a highly culture oriental; he turns from this ahrimanic demonology. For this ahrimanic demonology weighs men down, weighs them down and deprives them of the possibility to bring about the aim of oriental initiation, namely, the end of the human race on earth from the middle of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. This will be held back by what is developed in this demoniacal ahrimanic way.

American initiates are striving towards another goal; they strive towards the opposite goal. They endeavour to form a more inner bond than is normal in the course of man's evolution between the human soul and that bodily nature that is to be found upon earth, the dense, coarse corporeality which from the sixth post-Atlantean epoch on, will be found on earth. The culture of the soul will be deepened, what is of a bodily nature will coarsen. A more inward connection with this bodily nature then is normal is, however, striven for in the least, in America, a more intensive descent into the body. Man will go towards what seeps through, will approach it by an intensive penetration into what is of the body. Whereas the Orientals wish to found a culture that takes no account of the human body, in the future earthly evolution, in the American culture of the West there will be an endeavor to chain the soul to the future evolution of the earth. There is a desire so to form the body that when souls have passed through the gate of death, they will be able to return as quickly as possible into a body and spend as short a time as possible from sojourning in the spiritual world and there will be the desire to return to earth as soon as possible, to be as closely united as possible with earthly life.

These are tendencies that must be recognised, my dear friends. Strange as it may seem to man today when one speaks of such tendencies, it will all the same be harmful to him should they happen. For it is necessary for man to take his stand consciously where he himself is concerned, in what is sought after, and in connection with which he is, unfortunately, often placed in a position to justify the remark that he lets just anything happen to him.

This western ideal, however, to give man over to demonology, will be possible only should the American tendency, this soul and spirit tendency in America, receive the support of another stream of world-outlook far more closely connected with that of America then is recognised. The most striking feature of the American tendency, as you have seen, is essentially its leaning towards an ahrimanic culture. But this American characteristic would be increased were it supported by another world conception, and the relation between the two is closer than is supposed. I refer to Jesuitism.

The outlook of the Jesuits and that of the Americans are very closely related. For at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic epoch it was a question of an impulse having been found in which man was placed in a position to be lead as far as possible from the understanding of Christ. And the endeavor in cultural development that took on the task of obliterating the understanding of Christ, of completely eradicating all understanding of Christ, this is Jesuitism. Jesuitism strives gradually to root out every possibility of understanding the Christ. For what lies at the bottom of this is indeed closely connected with a deep mystery.

Now, with man's ability always to receive within him what came from without, was connected as I have told you, his old atavistic clairvoyance, possessed by him before the seventh, eighth century of the Christian era; moreover with this atavistic clairvoyance men perceived Christ in the cosmos. The Christ was something that could be seen with ancient clairvoyance. I have often pointed this out. I have pointed it out in Occult Science, and the whole meaning of my book Christianity as Mystical Fact ultimately centres in this. Christ was seen in the cosmos; Christ was seen in the universe. But think now from the seventh, eighth pre-Christian century we men have been losing the possibility of seeing into the universe. What then would men have lost had nothing else arrived but this possibility of knowing anything about a Christ spirit at all had not the Christ come to them through the Mystery of Golgotha, had not Christ descended to earth.

In the historic moment of time when man was no longer able to see Christ in the cosmos, Christ came down to earth and united Himself with Jesus. From then it has been man's task to apprehend the Christ within man. We have to save the possibility of recognising the Christ by what seeps through here (see right of diagram 8). For Christ descended to mankind; Jesus is a man in whom lived the Christ. Real knowledge of the human self must bear the seed of Jesus—through which man will be able to move on into the future. There is deep meaning when we speak of a Christ-Jesus. For the Christ corresponds with what is cosmic; but what is thus cosmic has come down to earth and has dwelt in the Jesus. And Jesus corresponds with what is of the earth, with the whole of the future of the earth. (see From Jesus to Christ)

If there is a desire for man to be cut off from the spiritual he will also be severed from the Christ. And then the possibility arises to make use of the Jesus in such a way that the earthly aspect of the earth alone remains. You will therefore find in the Christology of the Jesuits a continual fight, a strong emphasis on there being a host, an army to fight for Jesus. Yes, indeed it is natural that Spiritual Science should be the means for making these things known, and for removing the scales from men's eyes! For this reason some who wish to remain unknown become increasingly angry about the aims of Spiritual Science; one sees this growing anger—the July number of the Jesuits publication Voices of the Times contains not only one article against me but two at the same time. And those who can put this in connection with what is now developing elsewhere among the Jesuits will be able to see something deeper in all this.

Today, however, one speaks of these things unfortunately to men who are asleep. Where the most important things are concerned men like to sleep through them and to close their ears to what is now actually determining the future. As I said the day before yesterday, everything will come upon men as a surprise. They will have it thus. When at the earliest possible moment one speaks of the things lying in the womb of time, men look upon it as something upsetting. For they are worthy members of the bourgeoisie who would like, as long as they can, to sit comfortably in their easy chairs, even if they have responsibilities as leaders of their fellow men. Those, however, who are interested in Spiritual Science should have it engraved on their souls that everything will be done to make Spiritual Science ineffective. Above all, it is not good when we within our circle are too fast asleep where what is going on in the world is concerned.

Sometimes it is hard to see all that is particularly important and essential at the present time, namely, watching the way in which the great affairs of mankind are gradually developing. You see, my dear friends, what starts great impulses of will really comes from various sources which are to be taken seriously. Such an impulse as the one I have referred to, for example, is indeed to be taken in a certain more serious sense. We must be able to give it its right value. Naturally in this connection we need not take those nice little attacks seriously that are constantly rising up from what is sub-earthly in our Society, attacks that look rather bad simply because there is so frequently a noticeable tendency for people to sympathise greatly with those who seek maliciously to slander what is striven for earnestly in our midst. When the harm is actually done gradually people decide to open their eyes; up to now several people have been made much of who afterwards caused harm.

I am not saying this because I think this or that ought to be different, but because I really feel it my duty to draw attention, my dear friends, to the necessity for men to wake up, and above all of the necessity for joining those who are striving for the truth.

In certain spheres today we can do everything within out power. But what I refer to as man's sleep which can be overcome only by his penetrating into the spiritual world, this sleep of man is extraordinarily difficult to surmount. And in connection with spreading the knowledge of Spiritual Science this sleep can be as great an obstacle as an opponent. I will not dwell on any particular instance of this, but in all our culture at present there is something of a sleepy nature about the very impulses everywhere sprouting above men's heads. Two things are necessary, my dear friends, two things that like golden rules must be engraved upon our souls.

Never was there more necessity than in our fifth post-Atlantean epoch for men to exert themselves more and more to attain what is of particular value, namely, the understanding of what is known as Spiritual Science. For there is no doubt that there are men able to do this. It is certainly a necessity for the knowledge of Spiritual Science to be sought by seeing into the spiritual world clairvoyantly. It goes without saying that there must be clairvoyants to penetrate into the spiritual world, that there must be those who strive after supersensible knowledge. This is, first, something obvious and, secondly, something that is not so important as for people to find the intellectual power to understand the matter, where the knowledge of Spiritual Science, is concerned. Today it is particularly necessary to have a reasoning, intellectual grasp of Spiritual Science, for it is this by which the opposing cultural powers can be overcome. Man's intellect today is so great that if the desire is only there the whole of Spiritual Science can be understood. And to strive for just this understanding is not an egoistic cultural interest but one that is universal and human. For this understanding can be our goal when those intellectual forces applied today in scientific spheres on all kinds of pedantry, when those intellectual forces applied so fruitlessly in the modern economic sphere and, finally, those forces used in soul-destroying technics—when all these forces will be suitably applied and men are no longer misguided from their earliest childhood. Then will be seen how easily spiritual gifts of the spirit can be brought to the understanding of the human being! This is one side.

The other golden rule is this—that we men today need some tiling more in our culture for the gifts of the spirit to become fruitful. The first is something that must be wrested from Ahriman. Men today are very clever, Ahriman sees to it that men should be clever—oh, men are clever! But they apply their cleverness only to what is of material interest. Men are not merely clever, they are more than clever. We shall speak more of this in our next lectures for you to recognise what an enormous influence this ahrimanic element has at the present time upon human super-cleverness, but there is something else necessary. There is much still to be wrested from another spirit. We do not need only cleverness with which to permeate our gifts of the spirit, but above all we need most urgently—how shall I express it?—we need in the human soul receiving these gifts of the spirit, feeling, enthusiasm, fire, warmth. We have need of men who approach what they receive from the spirit with their whole undivided soul. In the spiritual sphere this is just what must be wrested from the luciferic forces which are so active in the world in other ways!

There is a lovely vista, my dear friends, it is a picture of someone who quietly, clearly accepting knowledge of the spirit can produce within himself, because it is a necessity for him, a glow of inner fire and enthusiasm. There is another picture—this is one of seeking to receive spiritual knowledge as if it were a lullaby to make us dreamy, to let warmth pour into us, to enable us to go out into universal forces and unite ourselves with the divine all. These are contrasting pictures which present-day man may do well to contemplate, which it is necessary for him to contemplate. For it will not be easy for us to incorporate into human culture what we receive from the spirit. And it must be incorporated, for man has need of it.

Man will not only have to learn to think very differently, he will also have to learn to feel and experience in quite another way!

I might, it is true, add a great deal more to what I have just been saying, but perhaps it will better to stop now, to give you the chance for reflection. There is much that can be reflected upon in what has been suggested by certain malicious incidents I have intentionally introduced into the truths that have just been spoken.

Today I should like to look back, drawing together and amplifying what has been said here in the past. In this way I want to lay a foundation for: carrying certain essential themes to a conclusion in the present lectures.

In spiritual-scientific inquiries we encounter besides the two forms of consciousness known to everybody—dreaming and ordinary day-time life from waking to sleeping—a third form, best described perhaps as “higher perceptive consciousness”. Dream-consciousness we reckon in ordinary life as merely a sort of interruption of ordinary consciousness, but that is because we recall only a small part of our dreams. We are really dreaming all the time from falling asleep to waking, and what we commonly describe as the content of our dream-consciousness is merely such fragments of dreaming experience as we are able to remember when we are awake. From the standpoint of Spiritual Science, therefore we must say: We know three stages or kinds of consciousness; that of dreams, that of waking life, and the consciousness in which the spiritual world is open to higher perception.

You will have no difficulty in recognising that each type of consciousness has a certain quality in common with the one next above it in rank. For instance, dream-consciousness gives us pictures—we know that our dream-experiences are pictures. When you recall them you are unable to fit then into the sequence of Cause and Effect in daily life. To try to do that would mean confusing dream life and day-life, and you would become visionaries. Dream-experiences consist of pictures in contrast to realities, by which we mean the events experienced in waking life.

If we now compare our ordinary waking-experiences with those of the higher perceptive consciousness, we find an exactly similar relationship. Here, compared with what is experienced by this higher consciousness as spiritual, super-sensible reality, the experiences of the day-time from waking to falling asleep, are pictures. Therefore, to the degree in which the awakened, higher perceptive consciousness is experienced, it is possible to say (this must be done with prudence): “I experience in this consciousness a genuine reality, compared with which ordinary so-called reality is only a set of pictures”.

Put in this abstract way, the statement has little value. Of course, many people are quite content with these abstract phrases, believing that thereby the riddles of the world can be solved. This is not so. Such a statement has value only when it is applied directly to the actual practice of life. Hence it has to be made relevant to certain definite realms of experience.

There is a realm to which I have already drawn attention from time to time, one which we needs must contemplate if we would make progress in Spiritual Science. It lies nearest to us, yet it is often quite beyond our ken—the realm of man himself. The common opinion is that though we are ignorant of the super-sensible man, we do know the physical man, but this is true only up to a certain point. Anatomy and physiology, as usually understood, are woven out of countless illusions. To-day let us start, if only apparently, from the outer form of man as a physical being and proceed on the lines of the threefold division of his organism to which I have often referred.

If he is viewed in relation to the super-sensible world, and thus as a picture—not as the reality which ordinary anatomy and physiology take him to be—he falls into three markedly different divisions, even as regards his outer physical form: the man of head, chiefly concentrated there; the breast-man; and the man of the extremities or limbs. It must be understood however, that this third man does not consist only of arms and legs, but that these limbs have terminations within the body, as contrasted with the outside, and that all these together make up the whole third man. These three divisions must be kept in mind.

Without sinning against the reality of the super-sensible world, we cannot actually speak of three “men”: for, as regards the super-sensible being of man, a fundamental distinction exists between these three parts. The different forces, or streams of force, which went to build into the structure of these different bodily parts, come from widely different sources. If the human form is examined with super-sensible faculties, the structure of the head is seen to be derived from forces operative before birth or conception. One must go back to the spiritual world, not to the stream of physical heredity. In the formation of the head one can trace—admittedly in its finer details—a share of what belongs, in the spiritual world, to the forces of the human soul before it unites itself with the physical stream of heredity through birth or conception. The chief shore in the formation of the head, belongs not so much to the outer configuration of what a man lived through in his previous earth-life, but to his behaviour, the character of his actions, and to some extent his feelings. When super-sensible perception has so far advanced as to awaken a sense for this kind of form, it is possible to see, through the formation of the head, into what we call the preceding incarnation. Here we touch an extremely significant mystery of human development. More than is usually supposed by initiates of a lower grade, the form of the head is linked with a man's karma—with his karma as it comes over from the previous into the present incarnation.

Leaving aside the breast-man, let us focus our attention on the limb-man (or “man-of-extremities”), with the inner terminations I have mentioned. Here we find by no means so decided, so individual a form as in the head. Each person has his own individual form of head, pointing back to an earlier earth-life. The limb-system, with which the sex- organisation is essentially connected, points forward to future earth-lives. Everything there is still undifferentiated and what corresponds in the soul to this organisation points forward towards lives still to come.

To consider the breast man attentively is specially important. This part of his organism is the combined work of the forces which play their part in man's spiritual life before conception and after death between death and the next birth. What has been the soul's environment between the last death and this conception or birth, acts together with what will surround it between the next death and birth, (or conception). The two interweave. This interweaving of the two sets of forces works itself out in man's breast-organisation, and is principally noticeable in its most conspicuous activity, the process of breathing. Out-breathing gives a picture—here again we must use this word—of what took place in the soul between the last death and this birth; while in-breathing gives a picture of what will operate in and around the soul between death and the next conception or birth.

Here is a concrete fact. The procedure of ordinary anatomy and physiology is to put things down in a row:—head, breast, limbs, and in the same way a collection of nerves and blood vessels. Supersensible perception discriminates between them, realising the essential differences of these members of the human form. Ordinary anatomy and physiology see merely the immediate realities. Spiritual Science sees in the shape of the head a picture of the deeds and feelings of the last incarnation: in the out-breathing, with its distinct individual form in each person (differing in each one according to the particular formation of his head) a picture of the forces surrounding the soul between the last death and rebirth; in the in-breathing, the forces to be met with by the soul between the present death and the next birth. The life of the limbs presents a picture of the next earth-life. Thus the vast panorama of super-sensible life which lies open to spiritual consciousness is interwoven with pictures, even as daytime-life is in dreams. But these pictures represent the reality of our daily life. We arrive at the conclusion that each successive world of phenomena, viewed from the point of view of spiritual consciousness, presents the next to us in pictures. Our prosaic reality is a picture of super-sensible reality, and in dreams we have in picture-form the ordinary realities grasped in everyday life.

Spiritual consciousness is needed to make all this clear, simply because the contemplation of the outer form alone is not sufficient for the purpose. Suppose there were a person possessing a low degree of clairvoyance, of the kind in which there is more “sensing” than full perception—that might lead him, through the head, breast and limbs, to a dim idea of what has just been said, and this would not be at all difficult even to a quite low grade of clairvoyance. But there would be no certainty about it. Conviction of its accuracy could hardly be possible without the searching proof acquired through clairvoyance endowed with the states of consciousness connected with those three members of the human organism. For the head not only shows by its outer form that it points back to a former life; it is clearly marked out by its own soul-qualities, as well as by its inner construction, from the other parts of nan's being. Ordinary consciousness is blind to this fact. For either it dreams, or is occupied with daily realities and fails to notice something which “underlies”, so to speak, the activity of the head. By this I mean the following.—We go through our daily experiences in waking consciousness, we fill our minds, through the medium of the head, with outer perceptions, with the pictures brought to us by the senses, and the mental conceptions we form about the sense-pictures. For the ordinary consciousness, all this is so vivid, so intensely real, that a subtle undercurrent of finer consciousness, a low-toned background as it were, is overlooked.

The truth is that the head is dreaming all the time we are awake. This is the remarkable fact, that behind our waking: consciousness the head has a continual flow of dreams. This we can easily discover for ourselves; no very extensive training is needed, only an endeavour to attain the stage in which consciousness is “empty”—awake, but devoid of perceptions, even of thoughts. In ordinary life we are in some way or other busy with the world of outer perceptions, with memories of them, or with thoughts arising from them. Oftener than we think we are given up to a pure waking consciousness, unknowingly. It is dim. When we endeavour to attain to the soul-state which can be described as “nothing but waking”—outer perceptions, memories, and thoughts all banished, so that we are trying solely to be awake—perceptions will at once arise which are not to be clothed in ordinary ideas. They have, as they emerge, something of the nature of dim feeling—picture-like, yet lacking; the substantial character of pictures. One frequently meets people who are familiar with this state. They speak of it, perhaps, as a state of soul in which they perceive something that defies description; they perceive it, but it is not like a perception of the outer world. It is not unusual to find people speaking in this way, and there are many more than we suppose who, if we get, to know them well, will tell us about such things.

The source of these perceptions is the weaving of the “underlying” consciousness which I have mentioned, and this is itself a kind of dream. But what is the dream about? It is actually about the former incarnation, the last earth-life. The interpretation is the difficulty. Latent in the consciousness of the head lies this dream of a former life on earth. In this subjective fashion it is possible to arrive at such a dream, although it may be hard to interpret. We shall return to this question.

Hence you will see that what I have described as the human head is, in terms of soul-life, somewhat complex, inasmuch as two forms of consciousness belong to it, closely interwoven: the ordinary waking day-consciousness and the underlying dream-consciousness, which is a kind of reflection of the former incarnation. Another interesting characteristic of the life of soul concerns the other pole in man, the man of limbs, or extremities. This limb-man, too, is extremely complicated psychically—that is, in terms of the corresponding part of the soul. I have often pointed out that we are “asleep” as regards this limb-man, although “awake” as regards the head; and our will really acts as though asleep. All that we are able to bring into clear consciousness is what the will accomplishes. Nobody carrying out the idea, “I move my hand”, perceives how all the bodily apparatus comes into it. This goes on as unconsciously as do the bodily processes during sleep. Sleep continually pervades the daytime consciousness of this man of limbs, inasmuch as the will of man is sunk in sleep.

The curious thing is that this “third man” wakes in a sense at night, when, during sleep, man is outside the physical and etheric bodies, and neither consciousness nor self-consciousness function, or only very dimly. Man at his present stage cannot penetrate behind the scenes with his ordinary consciousness, because this sleep-dimness prevents him from following up the activity of the limb-man in the night, when self-consciousness is detached from the physical body. This activity is also a sort of dream. The limb-man actually “dreams” in the night. So, as the head dreams by day, below the clear day-consciousness, so the limb-man dreams in the night, below the dim sleep-consciousness—parallel with it. What does he dream? He dreams of the next earth-incarnation. In truth, we not only bear the past and future in our outer physical form, but we have within us, as soul-life, in the form of usually unrecognised dreams, an ever-present, underlying consciousness of our past and future earth-lives.

Then, as to the breast-man. Although the processes of out-breathing and in-breathing are not followed with any , distinctness by the ordinary consciousness, our organic functions are closely bound to them. In the East, the processes of out-breathing and in-breathing are so attentively followed as to be lifted into consciousness. This procedure is no longer suitable for us; we must attain spiritual consciousness in a different way. The Eastern seeker tries to dim or suppress the head-consciousness, and to stimulate, to clarify the breast-consciousness. He really tries to perform the breathing processes so as to arouse a distinctive type of breath-consciousness. Tracing the inhaled air, as it pervades his organism, and the exhaled air as it leaves the body, and streams out, he raises to consciousness what would otherwise remain unconscious. In this way he attains to a state in which he has a distinct consciousness of the reality pictured in the breathing-process—that is, of the life in the spiritual world between death and birth. This clear knowledge, of which the West has no conception at all, still Persists in the East to a much greater extent than is supposed, and is one reason why understanding between East and West is so difficult. In the East it is no theory that a life of spirit and soul lies before birth and after death, but as clear a certainty as that the road extends before and behind a traveler on the physical plane. Just as it is an obvious fact that the road in front and the road behind possess such and such features, so, for the Oriental, what lies before birth or conception and after death is not a theory, not a result of forming ideas about it; but something perceptible to him through the breathing process raised to consciousness. This breast-part of man never ceases dreaming. It does not entirely wake with our waking, or sleep with our sleeping; but there is a difference between these two states. The breast-man's dream-consciousness by day is dimmer than in the sleeping-state, when it is rather clearer; the difference is not so very great, but there is a slight variation.

This all shows us that we have not only a threefold man in our outer form, but complicated states of consciousness within us. They compose our soul-life, as they interweave and reflect each other. Through the waking-day consciousness of the head, what we know as the life of perception and thought is made possible; through the unbroken dream-consciousness of the breast-man, what we call the life of feeling; and through the limb-man's consciousness—asleep by day, but awake at night—what we call our will.

One thing more. When we consider merely the outer aspect of man, we have to do with more than a visible physical organism, for we bear a fine etheric, super-sensible organism in us—to which in the later issues of the magazine “Das Reich”, I have applied, to avoid misunderstanding, the term “body of formative forces”. It is less differentiated, compared with the physical organism; approaching nearer to a unity: only crude observation will ascribe unity to man's outer form. Man's proper unity lies in his etheric body, which can be divided into parts like the physical body, but not into limbs side by side. The parts of the etheric body call rather for the approach that we have used in speaking of states of consciousness. The etheric body also is in a constantly varying state of consciousness—a different state between waking and falling asleep from that which prevails between falling asleep and waking. Here again, with this super-sensible body, we carry something very significant in ourselves. Some theosophical theorists may think they have accomplished something important in dividing man's being into physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., but they delude themselves. That is reducing it to a kind of system, and systematising is never any good.

The only way to gain insight is to examine what is happening in the etheric body. If anyone merely says, “We have an etheric body,” that is no more than a phrase, calling up a picture of the thinnest kind of mist, and to take this for the real thing is self-deception. The point is that in the etheric body we have something very real and substantial, though it is not perceptible in ordinary life. Living and weaving in the etheric body, ceaselessly from waking to falling asleep, is the karma of earlier earth-lives. In truth, the etheric body weaves in our subconscious, and through its weaving brings to view our karma from previous incarnations. The clairvoyant knows something of karma because he can make use of his etheric body as he does at other tires of his physical body. Anyone who has learnt to do this cannot help seeing that karma is a reality. The etheric body as concrete reality means this—from waking to falling asleep, it has the vision of karma from earlier earth-lives, and during sleep, of karma in the making. I am again describing it from a clairvoyant's point of view.

The dreams of the breast-man accordingly, are not only about experiences between the last death and birth; we look also at what the past has laid upon our shoulders as karma—at what is spread out below our normal consciousness by the functioning of the lower body, and viewed by the etheric body, although by a spiritual eye, as the karma of the past. Neither do we perceive through the consciousness of our extremities, as we breathe in, only what is bound up with the incarnation to come; for the etheric body becomes the eye of the spirit, giving us, in a fashion unknown to ordinary life, a vision of karma in the making. It is not easy for present-day man to bring the training of his soul to such a point, although it is necessary for everybody to envisage truly all that I have described. (There are certain difficulties, discussed in the book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment.”) It was far easier in bygone ages. Even in historical times life has undergone more changes than we think, and one momentous point in human history (described in “Occult Science” and other writings of mine) is the transition from the third to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, the inception of the Graeco-Latin age. It was at this point that it became so intensely difficult for civilised humanity to penetrate into the worlds I have just described. Before this, it had been comparatively easy, and Orientals still retain something of this facility. The Western man doss not possess it; therefore he cannot do the same exercises, but must resort to those described in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds.” The period which began about 700 to 600 B.C. marks a deeper descent of man into the physical world. Another period will dawn, approximately at the beginning of the third millennium after the Mystery of Golgotha, and preparation must be made for it. Something indefinable will arise in every soul—inexplicable save through occult science. It is not merely a subjective ideal or tendency which Spiritual Science has to prepare and establish in readiness for the next millennium; it answers to a need in mankind's development. The middle of the third millennium will be a critical moment in the development of civilisation, for then a point will be reached when human nature will have progressed so far that it will be thrown back into decay unless it has acquired the vision of repeated earth-lives and karma, lost since the seventh or eighth century before Christ. In earlier times, human nature had a healthy power of response; knowledge came naturally to it. In future it will become diseased unless it takes this teaching into itself. We understand our age only if we keep in mind that it lies between two poles. One pole lies far back, beyond the seventh or eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. Those were the times when knowledge of the soul's super-sensible experience was given by human nature itself. The other pole will be in the third millennium, when (as described in “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”) man must acquire super-sensible knowledge in spiritual ways, so that health, and not sickness, may stream into the body. Our age can be understood in both its inner and its outer aspects only if we keep this in mind. Naturally the change will be slow and gradual. But anyone who does not want to dream through the most important things of our age in a dull, sleepy way, but wishes to live in conscious wakefulness—it behooves him to mark what is seeking entry into human life. It will not enter completely until the middle of the third millennium; but little by little it will make its presence felt, and humanity must now consciously be alive to and prepare for its inevitable advent. Learn to study life, and even outer phenomena—especially those of human life—will yield a superficial perception of this truth. With a brain of the coarse development normal for most people to-day, it is certainly not easy to acquire what has to be taken intelligently into the mind, as Spiritual Science depicts it. But I would like to add this: it is tragic to see what unknown powers (I shall speak of them in the next lecture) are trying to make of mankind. At the present day there are certain sick natures—that is why I use the word ‘tragic’—which are abnormal for their time; yet they receive intimations of much that men will encounter normally in the future. I have often mentioned a very well-known contemporary whose life ran its course in alternating health and sickness: Otto Weininger, who wrote the remarkable book, “Sex and Character”. Weininger was altogether an extraordinary man. Picture someone who in his very early twenties presented the first chapter of his book as a University thesis—this book which has roused as much enthusiasm in some quarters as fury in others—both ill-founded. But something else might well have been noted. For he came to live more and more into the problems raised in his book. He travelled in Italy, jotted down his experiences, seeing very different things from other travellers in that country. I find much that is remarkable in Weiniger's Italian diary. As you know, I describe much that can be described only in Imaginations: concerning the Atlantean and Lemurian periods, and the appearance of things in times which to-day can no longer be followed with ordinary consciousness or by historical research. Certain concepts and ideas are necessary in order to present such descriptions to human consciousness. When I read Weininger's notes, something in then strikes me as a fine, artistic caricature of the truth. His life is certainly remarkable. He was only 23 when a thought struck him which puzzled him terribly: that he would have to commit suicide lest he should kill somebody else; he thought that a murderer, a criminal, was latent in his soul—a symptom easily to be explained by occultism. Equally mingled in his life were greatness, punctiliousness and affectation. He left his parents' house, took a room in Beethoven's house in Vienna, stayed there one night—and in the morning shot himself.

The characteristic of this soul was that its union with the body was never quite complete. For external psychology, Weininger was merely a case of hysteria; but for anyone who appreciates the facts it was obvious that an irregular union between his spiritual -psychic and his physical-bodily principles must have existed. With normal present-day people, the former principles leave the latter at the moment of falling asleep, rejoining it on awaking; but with Weininger it was different. I could show you passages from which it is evident that at times his spiritual-psychic part was just a little outside his physical-bodily part and then suddenly dived down into it: as this occurred, a thought flashed through him, which he wrote down often in quite a dry fashion: but of course in diving down he acted imaginatively—and very strangely. To anybody who understands the matter it is clear that an irregular union of these principles brings in a remarkable and peculiar way a knowledge which humanity will have in the future. Think—in a man labeled “hysterical” by a clumsy psychology, there arises a knowledge which all humanity must possess in times to come—only it is caricatured. From what I have said you can quite understand that through such abnormalities something like pioneers of the future appear amongst us, (just as there are “stragglers” from the past): a future in which humanity will inevitably know about recurrent earth-lives, about karma and the dreams of karma. And because such people appear as the pioneers of the future, the knowledge makes them ill. So, by means of an unhealthy organism, there comes out in caricature what is some day to be the wisdom of humanity. Look for instance at a paragraph in Weininger's “Last Things”, (printed by his friend Rappaport): “Perhaps no memory is possible of the state before birth, because we have sunk so deeply through birth itself; we have lost the consciousness and chosen to be born through impulse alone, without rational decision or knowledge, and that is why we know nothing of such a past.”

One thing is clear—although the knowledge shining forth in this utterance is a caricature, yet someone writes as though absolutely convinced: “Through my birth I passed from a state, a spiritual life, in which I previously lived.” If that had been written ten or twelve centuries before the birth of Christ, or at the time of Origen, it would not have been surprising, but here in our time is a man who has set such a thing down in a fashion of his own, full of passionate feeling, as a direct illumination of consciousness, not as a theory.

I could adduce many such instances. What do they mean? They are presages of the super-sensible knowledge which is coming to mankind, and because it is not sought on the path of anthroposophical spiritual science, it comes convulsively, shattering human nature, making it sick, as in the case of Weininger. I say “sick”, not in the common sense of the word, but surely the outer facts show that there is something really abnormal when a man of twenty-three shoots himself because he finds a hidden murderer concealed within him, and saves himself from becoming a murderer by committing suicide.

A hundred,—nay, a thousand,—examples could be given; this knowledge must inevitably come; and it be well if as many souls as possible could be awakened to the fact. In the subconscious of mankind the longing for such knowledge is extraordinarily widespread. External powers, which I have often described, hold it back. We must very carefully keep in mind what is implied in the close of my article on Christian Rosenkreutz, in “Das Reich.” We must remember that what became evident in the seventeenth century had been noticeable since the fifteenth, Growing steadily stronger. In speaking of it now to people of our own time, the customary scientific formulae must be used. I described in the last number of “Das Reich” how it was manifested in the writing of the “Chemical Marriage” of Christian Rosenkreuz by Johann Valentin Andreae. Philologists have racked their brains about this: Johann Valentin Andreae wrote down the “Chemical Marriage”, in which really deep occult knowledge was hidden, but behaved afterwards in a very remarkable fashion, Not only was he unable to explain certain words he had spoken in connection with writings which he had produced at the same time as the “Chemical Marriage”, but in spite of having transcribed this great work, he appeared to be entirely without understanding of it. This bigoted Pastor, who afterwards wrote all kinds of other things, does not understand anything of the “Chemical Marriage”, nor of the other works composed by him at the same period. He was only seventeen when he wrote it. He never altered; he remained just the same person; but a totally different power had spoken through him. Philologists cudgelled their brains, and corresponded about it. His hand wrote it; his body was present, assisting; but through his human equipment a spiritual power, not then in earthly incarnation, wished to make it known to mankind, in the style of those days.

Then came the Thirty Years War, the tomb of much which should then have come to mankind. What should have been then understood, was not understood, was even consigned to oblivion. The “Chemical Marriage” was written down about 1603, ostensibly by one who signed himself Johann Valentin Andreae; little notice was taken of it because in 1613 the Thirty Years War began. Such things often happen before a war. Then one can truly read in the signs of the times: “What is now planted as a seed, must one day bear flowers and fruit”.

This is all part of what I am now pointing out—what is to be read in the signs of the times, in our own catastrophic century.