The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Translated by Steiner Online Library

My dear Theosophical friends! The Theosophical movement does not want to create a sect, it does not want to be a sectarian movement, it does not want to found any new religious system, nor does it want to oblige anyone to follow certain dogmas or doctrines, nor does it even want to cause anyone to believe in such doctrines. All the teachings that we spread and represent are only a means to deepen life itself.

Many misconceptions about the theosophical movement have been spread. It is believed that Theosophy is a doctrine, a system of dogmas, a philosophy, a religion, and on the basis of such views, some believe that they will be alienated from their worldview if they devote themselves to Theosophy. This is not the case, and it is not in the plan of those who brought the theosophical movement into being. On the contrary, the theosophical movement is supposed to be one that makes it possible to fully understand what in life is called science or religion, depending on the circumstances into which one is born and which one recognizes as one's own. Just as we survey the phenomena of nature and learn to understand them only by delving more deeply into them, so we also learn about the phenomena of human life only by delving more deeply into them. The various religious systems, the various scientific systems and also the various philosophical worldviews are phenomena of human spiritual life. They show man their exterior. The theosophical movement wants to lead people deeper into the essence of the actual spiritual phenomena. Therefore, no one should believe that they will be estranged from their religious beliefs or scientific convictions if they become Theosophists. Our Theosophical Society is also active in India, and the Indian Brahmins have found that the old depth of their own ancient wisdom has been restored to them through the theosophical movement. At the Congress of Religions in Chicago, the Indian Brahmin Chakravarti emphasized that his people, like other peoples, had fallen into materialism, had strayed from the high spiritual world view that came from the ancient rishis, and that the theosophical movement, by delving into this ancient wisdom, has taught the Indian people again the infinite depth that is revealed when the Hindu or Buddhist religious system is understood in its true essence and not merely on the surface.

Likewise, we can penetrate deeper and deeper into that mighty world view system that we know as the ancient Hebrew system, as that of the ancient Jews. I would like to say that this wisdom is written down in the Old Testament only in broken rays. But the Old Testament nevertheless reveals itself to those who delve into it with a theosophical understanding as a wisdom of extraordinary depth.

Above all, I would like to emphasize that Christianity, the Christian worldview itself, can be fully understood and explored through the theosophical method, through the theosophical life. This Christianity, which for centuries has been the one that has shown countless people the way to their highest goal, this Christianity, which today is still for countless people what they seek in life, what comforts them in death, we certainly understand this Christianity too, when we get to know it as it is presented to us through the various means of the different churches. But, my dear Theosophical friends, Christianity is something that one can delve into and delve into more and more, and each degree of delving always brings us teachings of infinite depth from within Christianity itself. There is no degree of delving that does not bring us ever new things from the depths from which the greatest Christian wisdom springs.

Above all, no one needs to become estranged from his Christianity by becoming a theosophist. Today, for those who might be led astray from Christianity by modern science – by the scientific endeavors of the present and also by the criticism that theological science itself has practiced on this Christianity – today the way to understand Christian truths again is solely and exclusively the theosophical one.

If we look back to the Middle Ages – no one can conjure up the Middle Ages again – but if we look at it psychologically, but not externally like today's psychology, then we will see what passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand what kind of spirituality passed through the souls of people back then, then we understand we realize that they did not have Christian dogmas, but that they more or less sensed what had been expressed by the Christian mystics – they sensed something of the glimmering of the Christ-being, as expressed in the saying of Angelus Silesius: “And if Christ were born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you would be lost forever.” — It is the same with Meister Eckhart when he demands that man should have experienced the nature of Christ within himself, because only then can he understand what the event in Palestine really means.

For centuries, people have had their emotional and spiritual guidance for experiencing the Christian essence in the Gospel of John, in the Gospel that we call the fourth, in the Gospel that which adheres – seemingly rigidly from today's point of view – to the fundamental Christian truth that the great teacher who once walked in Palestine – Christ Jesus – was the true God-man, that in him the divine principle of our universe became flesh. Today, the saying at the beginning of the Gospel of John is criticized above all from the point of view of so-called man. The enlightened person can hardly connect any meaning with the opening words of the Gospel of John. He does not know what it is supposed to mean: the word - the word that is God at the same time.

Go where the leaders of humanity were, and you will find that the pinnacle of effectiveness was spent understanding, grasping what it means: the Christ has come into the world. That was the yearning of the researchers, to understand what lies in these words. Then, in the times when it was taken for granted that a Christ had lived, that a Christ had been working through the centuries, medieval theology also believed in it, and the theologians did not even remotely think of doubting the true nature of the real Jesus. They all endeavored to build extensive scientific systems that contained the revealed truths, which were simply accepted as they were and as they were prescribed by the church; they were content with interpreting them.

We have the so-called period of scholasticism and, in a slightly different form, mysticism. We have the time when it was established that a Christian can only be a Christian by feeling connected, feeling a living connection with Christ Jesus. Those who sought to reach the summit of the spirit strove to awaken the Christ within themselves, the life and the essence. They lived the profound saying of Goethe, understood in that time:

If the eye were not sunlike,
The sun could never behold it.
If the God-owning power did not lie in us,
How could we delight in the divine?

The spiritual eye must first be made capable of finding God in the outer world. At that time no one would have felt entitled to make statements about the historical Christ Jesus without first having understood the nature of the Christ, without having studied Christology. Just as today no one feels called upon to judge about lightning and thunder without having studied physics, so at that time no one felt called upon to judge about Christology without having studied it.

Something else came up that ties in with the name of the Rosicrucians. This movement is similar to Theosophy. It strove to understand the various religions, but especially Christianity, in their depths. These Rosicrucians differ from us in that we appear openly before the people and communicate to them what we have learned ourselves, while the Rosicrucians worked in secret. But what they wanted to achieve was to make people understand what Christology is. They were inwardly convinced and knew that one can comprehend the phenomena only when one has experienced within oneself the nature of Christ Jesus.

I would like to emphasize one fact of the Rosicrucian movement. Every Rosicrucian had those who wished to become disciples practise one thing above all others. He demanded of the external disciple, who had yet to enter the sanctuary and who only wanted to approach the teachings within the Rosicrucian sanctuary, that he inwardly absorb the Gospel of John, chapter 13. This was the basic principle of this occult training. And anyone who had emerged from the Rosicrucian movement and tried to grasp everything that was there would experience something that not everyone can experience when they delve into the Gospel of John in the sense of what we call “meditation”. They experience a multitude of occult powers, so that the one who places himself under the influence of these sentences undergoes a metamorphosis. He experiences within himself a repetition of the mystery that Jesus exemplified for us. You can relive the life of Jesus point by point, from the washing of the feet to the crucifixion and resurrection, on the basis of the Gospel of John - not through the concepts that are there, but through the occult forces hidden in the concepts.

Just as something cannot be made clear by mere theory, so the Rosicrucians could not merely expound it to anyone. They allowed their disciples to experience it. And there were not a few such disciples in the nineteenth century who experienced real wounds on themselves.

Then there came a time when they knew that these things were more than abstract symbols, that they were to be taken literally. Before one has realized this, one does not know what this gospel is about, one does not know what is hidden in it. So those who wanted to lead their students to Christianity through the occult tried to do so through the Gospel of John. But at the same time they were convinced that the one who is gifted – that is, the one who has developed the corresponding power – is able to release forces in his community when he speaks, even if the community is unaware of it. Public preaching was based on this. In the churches of the Middle Ages, there was still some understanding of this occult side. But even in more recent times, there was still a magical, occult power in the Gospel of John. It was not for nothing that Luther made the Gospel of John his favorite gospel. He knew what it meant, even if he and his friends were not all occultists. But every person experienced a purification that led him to an understanding when he lived with a chapter, so that he sought to live through sentence after sentence, that he did not dwell on a verse for days but for weeks and months, began to love it, began to live with it, so that it filled his whole being without him having to neglect the duties of his outer life.

In the course of modern development, this has changed. Without saying anything against the modern heads of the church, it must be emphasized that the relationship of the religious person to the religious leader has become essentially different in modern times. Look at the figures [of religious leaders] in the Middle Ages up to our century: they were filled with true faith and with sacred secrets and views; they taught through inner experiences. The people who listened to them knew that someone was speaking who spoke from deep knowledge. They were not people who believed in authority. They sensed that something was alive within the religious leader, which flowed through his words, but which cannot be expressed in an abstract and intellectual way. It was more in the words of community life.

This changed in more recent times. The whole way of looking at the world became different. People no longer understood anything like what I said about the Gospel of John today; they no longer knew that there were hidden sides to the gospel. More and more, the Gospels were taken as a scientific object, as a pure object of methodical, historical research. And so, over time, we see a theology emerging that offers a truly tragic history with its research into the Gospels.

Now let me give a brief overview of what today's theology knows about the value and truth of the Gospels. What is taught at the university today wants to be a science like any other. It is no longer the case, as it was even a hundred years ago, when a Schleiermacher still spoke to the educated with the full power of the orator. Today, the word of the gospel is often used for money, but the actual leaders have subjected the gospel to a theology, to a science, which has become tragically peculiar to the gospel.

The first thing to be dropped is precisely this Gospel of John. You all know that a Christian learns about the founder of his religion, about the one from whom the teaching originated, about the Christ himself, through the Gospels. A Christian lets the Gospels work on him. In the Gospels, he is told about the teachings of Christ Jesus, about the teachings and deeds. Through the centuries, what has been told has been accepted because one was convinced of the actual fact that Jesus lived. No value was placed on whether or not they [the Gospels] contradict each other in detail; one sought to deepen one through the other. Whatever they may have done in different ways, the focus was still on the only figure of this God-man. And the Gospels were suitable for leading to this. The wording of the Gospels was not important. It was only in the nineteenth century that the Gospel was examined under the microscope, as is the case with every other work of man. The first question the learned theologians asked themselves was: To what extent can the Gospels be records of the Jesus who lived in Palestine? Are they records that prove the accuracy of the teachings? The objective reality of Jesus of Nazareth was the basis for the research of the nineteenth century. Now the question arose: Can the Gospels be historical records like other historical records? More and more it has been shown that the Gospels were written when Christianity had already begun. No scholar today would take the position that they were written in the first century of our era. It has been found that they were written only later.

The question that interests us most is this: if you compare the gospels and see that the individual evangelists directly contradict each other in their statements, how can we understand these statements as a record of Jesus? What can we do with it when Mark speaks differently than John and Matthew, differently than Mark and Luke? As it became more and more apparent that the gospels contradict each other, it became important to examine whether other testimonies, testimonies and reports from historians, could be found. The result was – as is well known – that no such documents exist. Neither the information Josephus gives us nor that which Tacitus gives us confirms anything about a Jesus of Nazareth.

Protestant theology places little value on Christian tradition. But it is there. And Irenaeus emphasizes that he had known apostles who had known the Lord. But these are traditions that cannot be considered historical. In short, all we have to shape a biography of Jesus are the Gospels. So one had to ask oneself: “What do the Gospels testify to?” Because everything else was found to be worthless.

The next realization was that the Gospel of John reports something quite different in many ways than the other three Gospels. They know that they are called “after” Matthew, “after” Mark, “after” Luke and “after” John. Above all, more and more emphasis was placed on the fact that the image of Jesus of Nazareth, as it emerges from the Gospel of John, is different from that of the other evangelists. Here are some basic features: the Jesus of John's Gospel is understood as God made man. He is the one who does things that can only flow from divine power itself. These are miracles of omnipotence. This gives a different picture than the other evangelists. It gives the picture that he portrayed Jesus as the one who feels within himself that he is God, that he is the God who came into the world to hold people fast to this belief in God.

The gospel of John also differs from the other gospels in its external appearance. We are never told that the mother of Jesus and the disciples were standing at the cross. There are many other points in which it radically differs from the others. That is why it was decided to exclude the gospel of John when it came to the biography of Jesus. The gospel of John is considered to be a confessional writing that cannot claim to be anything other than a hymn-like song. For modern theology, the gospel of John is not considered a historical document. Matthew, Mark and Luke show more agreement among themselves than these three gospels show with the gospel of John. These three gospels are called the synoptic gospels and their authors the synoptics. What is in Mark is to a high degree in all three synoptic gospels. Matthew is therefore the one that could be deleted, and you would find everything in Mark and Luke again. There is nothing in Mark that is not also in Matthew and Luke. Therefore, the gospel of Mark is considered the original. It is also written in very old Greek. Therefore, the researchers pointed out that the Gospel of Mark should be regarded as the first. So the Gospel of Mark was accepted as the first, and the others accordingly took from what Mark said. In Matthew and Luke, there are elements that are not in Mark, so-called “words of the Lord, core sayings, because they come from Christ Jesus. They agree in Matthew and Luke. Since they agree, one can only assume that they come from the same source. These words of the Lord are said to be based on a Greek source, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which they were inserted into what they copied from Mark. The agreement between Matthew and Luke is great, but the layout is quite different. So they could not have copied from each other, but they could have had a common collection of sayings as a basis.

So what do we have? First, the Gospel of Mark, which mainly tells of the deeds of Jesus, starting with the baptism. Second, the Gospel of Matthew and third, the Gospel of Luke. The corresponding words of the Lord were always added to the deeds. But then there is something special about each of the two, Matthew and Luke, that is not found in any of the others. Matthew has insertions that have a distinctly Jewish character. It is this that Matthew has for himself, so that it is to be regarded as a gospel that was intended for the Jewish community. Luke wrote more for others, namely for the poor and the oppressed. Therefore, the entire Gospel of Luke, as far as the words of the Lord and the material of Mark are not considered, gives the impression that it was written for the poor and from a heart full of mercy.

Theology has therefore created strange images. First, that the Gospel of John is out of the question altogether; then, that Matthew and Luke each have something special, and that each can be decisive to a certain extent for the true facts of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. But where do the words of the Lord come from? There must have been a Greek collection of sayings that were added to the Gospels. Historical research cannot determine the question of where they come from. It is impossible for it to say where this collection of sayings comes from. So we are led back to Mark again. So you have the Gospel of Mark and then the collection of sayings. As for what Matthew and Luke have to say, it could be said that it goes back to Jesus and is a retelling of his deeds, but we cannot prove it. It may be based on true facts, but that is not necessarily the case. Similarly, what is referred to as the words of the Lord may go back to Jesus, but we do not know. And so we are led back to the Gospel of Mark. It recounts deeds, but they are of a peculiar kind. What does modern theology say about this? It says: Let us examine the facts. We find that Mark narrates in a way that someone would have narrated if they had heard it themselves or been an eyewitness. Mark speaks of a work. But then he strings the things together in such a way that this stringing together of the individual facts is an artistic composition. That he has strung the facts together in the way he could best put them together, much like a poet puts the details together to form a whole work. The story itself is the composition of Mark – the facts could be tradition. But they are told in such a way that they have a very general character. – Mark is telling facts that have a general character. We see, then, that the composition is the work of Mark. But the facts are such that he says, for example, “Christ did this or that,” but in such a way that only three or four disciples see it and are not allowed to share it. It is difficult to get the Jews to believe in Jesus. Therefore, Mark seeks to frame the work in such a way that it became understandable to Christians why the Jews found it so difficult to believe in Jesus.

We find two things – so the modern theologian says: firstly, that Jesus is not understood. And this is explained by the fact that Mark makes it difficult for the Jews to understand Jesus. When Jesus performs miracles, he forbids those who have seen it to tell it. The modern theologian is baffled by this. The modern theologian only admits: There must have been some secret tradition here, but it only existed between Jesus and his chosen ones. The modern theologian cannot do anything with this.

We have a tradition that Mark the Evangelist was a disciple of Peter, who recorded what Peter said. There is no doubt that Peter did not write, but that he generally taught Jesus' doctrine and particularly emphasized soaring above earthly facts, so that the copyists were unable to describe anything local. This leads us to a later time when the gospel of Mark was written. A long span of time separates us from the oldest gospel, from the real Jesus. We do not know what we can deduce from the original gospel about the Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot construct a biography of Jesus' life from it.

The only thing that theology believes is to gain a clue to an oldest piece of the Gospel of Mark. This is a passage contained in the 13th chapter:

But when they lead you and deliver you up, do not worry about what you are to say, or how you are to defend yourselves. But whatever is given you at the time, that speak. For it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.

And brother shall deliver up brother to death, and the father child; and children shall rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death.

And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.

But when you see the abomination of desolation, spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing where it should not (let the reader understand), then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains. And let him that is in the house not come down into the street, neither enter into his house, to take any thing out of his house. And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. [Mk 13,11-16]

From this point, modern theology believes that it could have been written immediately under the impression of the impending destruction of Jerusalem. There must be something here that is old, so old that we could place it in the time before the destruction of Jerusalem. It is said to have been a pamphlet, a flyer, to warn people and tell them how to behave when this event occurred. Mark may have used this flyer and incorporated it into his gospel.

Yet another passage is of particular importance to the modern theologian. This is a passage in Luke, chapter 11, verse 48:

Thus ye bear witness and consent to the deeds of your fathers: for they killed them, and ye build their tombs.

If you read this passage in Matthew, chapter 10, verse 15, the comparison is very interesting:

Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that city.

In Matthew it is a saying of Jesus, in Luke it is a quotation. Therefore, the wisdom of God is speaking. The latter must therefore come from a source that is called the “wisdom of God.” Theology assumes that it was a collection of sayings, a collection of wisdom proverbs from which the theologian quoted and taught by saying, “Thus speaks the wisdom of God.” Matthew does things differently. The so-called words of the Lord are traced back to the collection of sayings by modern theologians.

Take a rough overview of the sketchiness that is necessary and compare it with what remains of scholarly gospel research. – Nothing remains. The Gospel of John is eliminated, Matthew and Luke are traced back to the collection of sayings. The collection of sayings can be traced back to Greek sources and cannot be followed further; we lose the thread. Mark can only have been written long after Jesus. Therefore, the modern theologian says: We cannot gain anything from the gospel. We cannot gain a biography of Jesus, we cannot gain what Jesus taught, we cannot gain what he taught about the intermediate court and the kingdom of God. Modern people say that the gospels tell us nothing about any of this. And what they tell us cannot be decisive in the sense of materialistic science.

I call this research into the Gospels a tragic story. You see, you have measured the Gospel by the standards of external science, and now the whole truth - as a result of research - is not there.

This indicates a very different point of view today between the believer and the theologian than was previously the case. In the past, the believer looked up to the theologian, who only proclaimed the truth of the Gospels. He was the authority. Even Harnack's book, which caused such a stir, is based on this modern theology. Today, believers face the theologian who does not know what is in the words of the Gospels, but can only say: I am unable to say scientifically what the founder of Christianity taught, whether he lived at all, and so on. - Science has produced a completely negative result in this direction. From this you can see that it is quite difficult for those who rely on Christianity [of the theologians] to build on it. If you believe the theologians whose science says that, you may begin to waver.

So it must be considered a new source of wisdom, hypothetically, when the theosophical movement now again delves into the Gospel of John and tries to bring the Gospel of John back to true understanding. The theosophical movement does not depend on riding Buddhist dogmas forever. They are only means, dogma is only a means. Today a movement is being born out of the bosom of the Theosophical Society that will bring a true understanding of Christianity, of the gospel hidden in the gospels, which is not understood in the ordinary sense.

Those who have experience may speak about it. I myself can hint at it with a few words, by saying that I have titled my new book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. I have not written this book from historical sources, I have deliberately written it without any historical source. I have left the historical sources alone and relied only on the occult sources. This book is written from the Akasha Chronicle, one might say. If you look at things from the point of view that Annie Besant has adopted in the book 'Esoteric Christianity' and that I have adopted in the book 'Christianity as Mystical Fact', then things take on a completely different effect. Next time I will show you what a completely different picture we get. This science will lead us from a different point of view to the greatest possible depth, to the revival of Christian truth. A parallel current is striving for this revival, and it is first of all the revival of the Gospel of John that is at stake. These great words, with which I would like to conclude today – in a translation that is reasonably accurate – will be understood again next time, when I will start from them again.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

He was in the beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

In this was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.

He came for a witness, to bear witness about

the Light, that through him all might believe.

He was not the Light, but a witness of the Light.

The true Light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

It was in the world, and the world was made through it, yet the world did not recognize it.

It came to the individual people [up to the I-people], but the individual people [I-people] did not accept it. But those who accepted him [it] could reveal themselves as children of God through him.

Those who trusted in his name were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of human will, but of God.

And we have heard his teaching; the teaching of the only son of the Father, full of devotion and truth.

Those who understand these words correctly will see that research can only find the right word from this understanding. One should not find fault with the word. And we want to understand this word again, the greatest word:

And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.

If you think back to the entrance of the Blessed Boys in the final scene of Goethe's Faust, you will recall the verse:

Boys, brought forth in midnights haunted,
Half-unsealed the sense and brain,
For the parents lost when granted,
For the angels sweetest gain!

I've already called your attention to many a profundity in this final scene of Faust, but it contains a great deal more than I was able to point out on that occasion, more indeed than could possibly be brought to light in a limited period of time.

The four lines just quoted are equally fitted to be the leitmotif of the deeper spiritual-scientific expositions with which we will be concerning ourselves today, tomorrow, and next Monday.

I want to point out today by way of introduction that it is possible to delve more deeply, in a truly spiritual-scientific approach, into the statement made here recently when I characterized sleeping and waking and related matters. I spoke of how the whole nature of spiritual science was such as to require finding the correct approach to the facts we encounter in the world. And I showed that this approach is to be found only when we seek it as was done in our study of the alternating states of sleeping and waking. We tried to understand how differently consciousness functions in the waking and the sleeping states. But much else can be learned here by studying the way consciousness works according to whether it is that of human beings or of other beings. The four lines quoted from Faust refer to a human state of consciousness, possessed by the souls of the “boys brought forth in midnights” and “for the parents lost when granted,” in other words, by souls claimed by death immediately after birth. But the verse states expressly that these souls are “for the angels sweetest gain.”

We'll see that the saying that souls of this kind are “gain for the angels” is comprehensible only if we look into the state of consciousness of beings belonging to the hierarchy of angels. But let us first acquire some preliminary concepts of these matters and so prepare ourselves for the deeper understanding of the spiritual world into which they are to lead us.

I'll start from the fact, familiar to us from various spiritual-scientific studies, of how remote from reality the learning, the truth, and our concepts of things in ordinary life all are. People are even glad not to have these add anything to reality as they see it, for in their view the reliability of knowledge and “the unvarnished truth” depend on the fact that our cognitive processes and our soul experiences add nothing to things. Just consider what a point science makes of restricting itself to merely reflecting what goes on in the world and not allowing the soul the least influence on its pronunciamentos. Let us recall what trouble is taken by those who dream up a world view on the basis of all sorts of illusions to show that their fabrications are dictated by some reality or other outside themselves rather than originate within them. This is true all the way up to what is claimed to be valuable “occult knowledge” such as we hear some people touting. Those who desire to have occult insight here on the physical plane are basically concerned with not adding anything to the conceptions they develop. How proud people of this type are when they can report that such and such beings appeared to them, this or that was “dictated” to them, or something else was mysteriously communicated to their spiritual ears! This satisfies them, for then they can have the feeling that the conceptions they have created are reflections of reality, not something they produced. We might say that in their concern for attaining the reliable knowledge they are seeking, they actually make a fifth wheel on the wagon out of it. Knowledge should not add anything to what already exists, for only then do they regard it as something particularly reliable, particularly right.

We can arrive at a true and reliable concept of the relationship of knowledge to reality only if we gradually ascend from ordinary knowledge about physical matters to higher types of insight. We are familiar with the fact that the next level of knowledge is that called imagination. But if imagination is to have any relationship to reality it cannot be attained by living in the physical body; we must make ourselves capable of overcoming all dependence on the physical body to attain genuine imaginative knowledge. We must have progressed beyond using the physical body as our instrument. But we do still use the etheric body when we seek imaginations; we have to make use of our etheric bodies to obtain really objective imaginative experience, exactly as we make use of our physical bodies for perceiving objects in the physical realm.

Now we find that when a person on the path of clairvoyant knowledge has progressed to the point where he has loosened his soul from his physical body and is using his etheric body as his cognitive tool, what is called knowledge in the physical world, the kind of knowledge sought without a wish to add anything to the findings, remains behind on the physical plane. For example, everything that a modern scientist is interested in finding out is left behind on the physical plane by those who leave it to ascend into the imaginative world. Nothing remains of what scientists and natural philosophers think of as a world of whirling atoms, a world, as I have often explained, that is dreamed up and totally lacking in reality; nothing remains but pictures of this world. In other words, on leaving the physical plane we become aware that the conceptions of a world of whirling atoms left behind there were just dreamed up. In the imaginative world into which we have ascended no direct use can be made of any knowledge acquired on the physical plane. Please note the word direct here. We will see the subtleties of what is involved as we progress.

Now in earlier lectures I've already shown that the spiritual energy underlying thinking changes when a clairvoyant seeker frees himself from the instrumentality of his physical body. I've said that it is as though all our thinking comes alive. Instead of living in the passive world of thinking experienced on the physical plane, it is as though all our thinking comes alive and starts to tingle as we enter the imaginative world. Once, in Munich, I used a drastic comparison. I said that upon entering that world the thoughts we were previously accustomed to sending hither and thither and otherwise dispatching them as perfectly passive entities become transformed as though we had stuck our heads into a wasps' nest and our thoughts swirled and whirled about, every thought possessing a life of its own. We have to endure it in the sense that we don't feel unfree as a result of being wrested, as it were, out of ourselves by this independent life of our thoughts.

We gradually make the discovery that the insights, the conceptions we obtain on the physical plane as mere images of external reality fall away from us like a rain that rains back down upon the physical world and doesn't enter the imaginative world; they fall away and stay behind in the physical realm. All that is left of them is a memory. So we can look back on everything we have attained by exerting thinking, but that is now left behind on the physical plane as something we have finished with and no longer have any influence on.

This is a diagram of how it actually is. This would represent the physical body out of which the individual ascends. Then he immediately perceives his knowledge about physical facts falling like raindrops into the physical world. Knowledge of physical things is then outside him.

This is an extremely interesting and extraordinary process. As we ascend into the first spiritual world, the imaginative world, we see our thoughts dropping away from us. And then we see that these thought-forms become beings, and they make a strange impression on us if we really see them. We have the impression as we look at them that they are something wrested from us, something with significance for the physical world only.

Now it is extraordinarily difficult to get a more exact conception of what is dropping away from us there. It is scarcely possible, on ascending into higher worlds, to acquire correct insights by any other means than the most painstaking comparisons. First of all, it is necessary to discover what these thoughts of the physical plane, which have dropped away, can be compared to. These thoughts become very lively indeed. And the curious thing is that these thoughts we see back there on the physical plane are engaging in all sorts of dances similar to eurythmy. It is almost impossible to find these thoughts keeping really still.

I spoke of their dancing resembling eurythmy—not the eurythmy that is being nurtured here, but regular movements of a sort. These thoughts have an extremely peculiar aspect: they are inwardly alive when they have left us. And this fact makes them valuable in this first stage of true clairvoyance.

When a person says something colossally stupid here in physical existence, he certainly doesn't hold on to it for very long, once he has realized the situation. Most people like to skip lightly over their stupidities, once they've recognized them. A really stupid thought laughs when it gets out! It laughs in proportion to its stupidity. And other thoughts can be seen behaving in a similar manner. They manifest an inner life, these thoughts, a very lively play of expression. They convince us that no stupidity we perpetrate escapes being eternalized.

The only way we can get at the facts about these strange thought-forms which put in such a lively appearance is through a comparison. We will find one only if we are in a position to see our thoughts in the way just described. Then we are also in a position to experience what I am going to describe. We need for purposes of comparison the whole wide world of gnomes, the fairy folk that rules all of external earthly nature. These gnomes, who belong to the external inorganic realm in the way other elemental beings belong to plants, water, air, and fire, and so on, this whole world of gnomes has the same character, the same inner nature as the thought-forms described. I could also say that gnomes belong to the same class as our thought- forms, referring however to those thought-forms based on mental images derived from the physical plane alone.

Now as you see, we have a comparison. And that is why there is an inner relationship of sorts between the gnome world and our thoughts about things on the physical plane. As I've mentioned, people make an effort to be faithful to the facts in their knowledge and perceptions, making these into a fifth wheel on the wagon.

The gnomes have a similar relationship to their realm. Speaking euphemistically of course, but in a way corresponding to the facts, when a person talks with a gnome, he finds the gnome regarding the world to which he belongs with tremendous wistfulness, because he is so extremely uninvolved with it. He has as little influence over it as human beings have over the physical world around them with their knowledge. It is a matter of considerable indifference to the physical world surrounding us how we think about it with thoughts derived from the physical plane. A tree grows neither more nor less slowly because of thoughts derived from the physical plane that we may have about it, or because we go past it without giving it any thought at all. As I mentioned recently, we are the only ones to gain by this; our thoughts about the tree have not the least effect upon it.

The gnomes too have a similar external relationship to the world to which they belong externally. I might say that their world belongs to what we call the terrestrial world, the solid element. But we can just as easily disregard the world of the gnomes when we study the solid element as we can disregard watchmakers in a study of the laws involved in watch-making.

It is extremely important to develop a right understanding of a comparison of this kind, one that I have often resorted to, the comparison of the structure of the universe with the mechanism of a watch. If you want to understand a watch, you must study the laws governing its mechanism, and it would be ridiculous to say, Ah ha! The hands of a watch keep moving; there must be tiny demons pushing them. No such demons are involved. But if someone who understands watches as a result of studying them were to say that a watch has nothing to do with the watchmaker who put it together, he would also be talking nonsense. The fact that the world can be understood from its own make-up and that it is possible for scientists to discover natural laws can just as little be taken as proof of the nonexistence of a spiritual basis for the universe. The laws that govern the functioning of a watch are equally discoverable in the watch itself. So when it is stated that the laws that govern nature are to be found within the natural world and it is therefore unnecessary to look for anything divine in the universe, this reflects the same lack of thought as saying of watches that no watchmaker is needed because they are explainable on the basis of their own construction.

In the world surrounding us that is so entirely explainable on the basis of the laws that govern it, gnomes have a function. They too are somewhat comparable to the fifth wheel on a wagon: they accompany the world to which they belong, but without having any effect upon it. I ask you to consider the inner relationship of the world of gnomes to our physical thought world, for then you will realize that we have to make a start at understanding such a thing as the gnome world by taking a state of consciousness into consideration. Then we will ask ourselves how it is that we come to know about the physical world. We do so by forming the reflections I've been discussing. Just as reflections have no real connection with what they reflect, physical knowledge has nothing to do with what it knows about; it doesn't make anything happen in the physical realm. If we come to see physical knowledge as a matter of a state of consciousness and sense in full awareness how unessential, how superfluous, mirrors are to the objects mirrored, we will understand the soul-mood that envelops the world of gnomes. That is their soul-mood. Gnomes are therefore unable to grasp how there can be anything but an ineffectual relationship with this world.

If a clairvoyant person were to feel pain and sorrow, as they can indeed be felt on many occasions in human life, and were then to perceive gnomes, as clairvoyants do, he would find that they cannot comprehend his pain. They are aware that people can feel a general sadness and depression, but they cannot understand how anyone can be attached to physical existence; they laugh at such feelings. Indeed, we might say that our sense of the value of things on the physical plane is lost in encounters with the world of gnomes, because they heap such ridicule upon us for the value we attach to much that exists on the physical plane.

We understand the mental state of gnomes, then, if we become cognizant of the state of consciousness involved in the relationship of physical knowledge to the world reflected in it.

The beings to whom the name undines has been given and who are inwardly related not to the earthly but to the watery element and to everything liquidly rippling and flowing must be pictured somewhat differently. We cannot form a proper concept of plants just by looking at them and making a one-time image of them analogous to a papier-mâché reproduction. To be aware of nothing more than such a one-time impression is to lack any true conception of a plant, and the same holds true in the case of undines. We picture a plant rightly only if we know it in its various states: first in its root development, then growing a stem, then putting forth leaves, then blossoming, the blossoms wilting, fruits appearing, and so on. Goethe tells us in his beautiful Metamorphosis of Plants that we must study a plant's growth process.¹ And there live in the plant, in addition to what it is in and of itself, mobile elemental beings inwardly related to the shaping, rippling, mobile element of water.

And now we have to realize that the imaginative world into whose life we make our way on evolving beyond the physical plane is an inwardly mobile realm resembling the cloud-world in its metamorphoses, resembling the rippling, flowing element. The imaginative world is itself in flowing motion. And just as we encounter the realm of our own physical thoughts when we first enter the spiritual world, under favorable conditions encountering the elemental world of the gnomes, so do we live in the realm of higher elemental beings as waves live in water; we belong to and are part of its encompassing whole; we live in it.

It is of course difficult to give an impression of such matters, but here too we must picture the state of consciousness involved. It helps us to understand to say that all our thinking begins to come alive, that we are swept up by thoughts that become alive as though the thoughts we produce, thoughts endowed with imagination, were to take on a life of their own. Purely physical thoughts such as we had before are left behind, an abandoned realm. Then we can say that the gnomes live in the world we have abandoned. But now we are living in the realm of the undines, and both for them and for us it is a world of movement.

Let us picture this very exactly. We separate from our physical bodies and become strangers to them. We begin to carry on a life of inner mobility, of continuously changing, rippling motion. Everything takes on inner life as we experience ourselves in our etheric bodies. This is the experience we have also immediately upon dying, except that the tempo is slower.

This experiencing of the imaginative world is what we experienced on the moon, except that it is at a higher level now; there, it was a dream-world of imagination, a realm of pictures. On Jupiter we will experience it in full consciousness. We lift ourselves into it upon leaving our physical bodies behind as described. Try to picture it really vividly. The world of the senses is obliterated; what we saw with our eyes and heard with our ears is no longer perceptible. We cease to feel as well. Thoughts related to the outer world are laid aside in a way that could be described as follows: O gnomes, we give you our physical thoughts to keep you company; occupy yourselves with them for awhile.

Now an inner living and weaving sets in, a sharing in everything on earth that is inwardly alive and streams and ripples in the way the earth's fluid element carries on its rhythmic life. It is a sharing with the earth reminiscent too of the ancient moon period. A strange process starts: In addition to being aware of living in a realm of elemental beings belonging to the plant kingdom and to flowing liquids, we realize something else of a very special nature, something quite strange, namely, that we are becoming part of a rhythm that is involved both in the inner rhythm of the earth and in our breathing rhythm. We acquire the idea that the rhythm of our breathing is inwardly related to the rhythm of the earth. In short, we begin to be aware that we are part of the whole earth-organism. We really begin to sense our belonging to it. The earth-organism claims us.

This can be compared to what Goethe described to Eckermann on April 11, 1827, when he said, “I picture the earth with its vapor mantle as a huge living organism involved in an unceasing in- and out-breathing.”² We feel ourselves involved in this. We share in this unique way in the life of the earth.

I'd like to point out something here that demonstrates again how fruitfully spiritual science illuminates the findings of natural science made by some characteristic scientific figures, and how well they go together. So I remind you of the famous exclamation of the Greek philosopher Archimedes, who as he sat in his bath shouted, “Eureka! I've found it!”³ And what had he found out? He lifted his feet out of the bath water and then put them back in again, finding that they were lighter in the water than outside it. So he discovered the important principle that any body suspended in water loses as much weight as the water it displaces weighs. Balloons rise according to the same principle, losing as much weight as the air they displace. In the case of water, a heavy object lying on the bottom does not lose weight, but it does so when it is suspended in the water. This principle obtains throughout nature, and it is an important one, for it is related to something of the greatest importance in human beings.

You will have heard that the human brain weighs on the average 1350 grams. It is therefore quite heavy, almost 1 1/2 kilos. Very fragile organs occupy the space beneath it, organs that would be crushed by laying anything weighing a single kilo on top of them. Yet it is a fact that we all have a brain heavy enough to crush the organs that lie at its base. But the pressure exerted on them actually amounts at most to 20 grams, rather than to a kilo. How is this accounted for? It is due to the fact that the brain is suspended in a fluid; it loses all but 20 grams of its weight because it is floating in the brain fluid. We are speaking here not of what it actually weighs, but of its 20-gram pressure on the organs at its base. We picture it correctly when we conceive the brain floating in the brain fluid and this fluid extending downward into the spinal column.

Now picture this brain fluid rhythmically rising and falling. This fluid with the brain floating in it is involved in rhythmical movement as the diaphragm contracts and expands with the in- and out-movement of the breath, and it is thus involved in the breathing process. Insofar as the brain is its instrument, the whole thought process thus is connected with the breathing process. The brain is thus an extraordinarily sensitive sense organ for the forces continually playing in the earthly realm. Goethe, in his deep insight into matters of this kind, refused, for example, to accept what the crude meteorological science of his time had to say about the rise and fall of barometric pressure being due to atmospheric lightness or heaviness. He spent an endless amount of time registering barometric readings in various localities. And he tried to determine how regular this rise and fall was over the earth as a whole and showed how it could be compared to an inner terrestrial force, an in- and out-breathing on the part of the earth, which is of course closely related to meteorological regularity and irregularity. We need not be surprised at the barometer's changeableness despite the regularity of the earth's in- and out-breathing; human beings too are prone, despite the regularity of their breathing, to contract colds and other conditions that act like barometers showing that something is amiss.

We perceive this wonderful lawfulness in the earth's gravity, this inner life of the terrestrial, even though we are not conscious of it in physical life. We perceive the mysterious inner processes of the “earth-creature” taking place in the continuous rising and falling of the brain fluid in exactly the same way we gaze out into the world and listen to it. Goethe said of it, “I picture the earth with its vapor mantle as a huge living organism involved in an unceasing in- and out-breathing.” We feel that we share in it, though on an unconscious level. But the moment we use our etheric bodies as perceptive organs we begin to perceive it consciously and to participate in it; we become part of this huge earth-creature.

Our age is really the first to confront such matters entirely without understanding. Kepler, whom even those currently eager to wipe out all spiritual insight regard as a great mind, still spoke of our earth as having a periodic respiratory process which he likened to that of whales, a going-to-sleep and reawakening, dependent upon the sun-rhythm and accompanied by a fulling and ebbing of the ocean.⁴ We have an experience of these processes on an unconscious level, and it finds expression in a physical process of which we are not consciously aware.

It will not surprise you, then, that clairvoyant perception reports that what has now withdrawn into the inner organism, the strange relationship between the external atmosphere and our thought process through the blood and the rising and falling of the brain fluid was once an external element on the ancient moon, where dreamlike clairvoyance prevailed. The circulating air was outside. The human being himself was as yet only a vortex in the moon substance, for there was as yet no earthly matter; the moon was still in a fluid state or, at its most material, a thickened fluid. And in this whirling and perceiving the whirling lived moon human beings, floating as condensations in the fluid element.

What we were as moon humanity remains within us. And if we study the brain in the brain fluid and study the nature of the various functions related to the breathing process, we see that it is indeed true that we have inherited the legacy of the ancient moon, but now withdrawn into our interior make-up. We are still there, as brains floating in fluid, in rhythmically alternating motion.

We see here a reflection of the old moon rhythm that constituted human physical nature on the moon. And our whole physical make-up, which we perceive with our nerves and external senses, has spread out over that nature as an outer covering. Hidden beneath it is what remains as a moon legacy.

There are always and everywhere these interrelationships, marvelously wrought. But we have no inner perception of them as long as our eyes and ears are directed only toward the external. The moment we surrender the use of our senses and leave our thoughts behind as described, however, we feel our unity with the life of the earth. And we know ourselves inwardly to be one with the earthly gravity of our etheric life, that life into which we enter upon leaving our physical bodies in the transformed condition known as death.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet and thinker. Published Metamorphosis of Plants in 1790; in this book he shows the leaf as the primeval organ of the plant out of which all other plant organs evolved.
• 2. Johannes Peter Eckermann, 1792–1854. Published Conversations with Goethe, 1823-1832 in 1836.
• 3. Archimedes, 285–212 B.C., Greek physicist and mathematician.
• 4. Johannes Kepler, 1571–1630, German astronomer. Calculated orbits of the planets and discovered the laws of the movement of the planets.

Often I have indicated how spiritual science wants to position itself in the spiritual life of the present. I have also often spoken about what it can be for the human beings and what it can bring to them, and I will do this in detail in the last talk. I have also pointed in the course of these winter talks repeatedly to the fact that one can understand that on one side numerous human beings of the present, maybe more than they already know it, strive instinctively for this spiritual science out of the unconscious soul forces. On the other side, one can understand that from the general attitude of our time opposition arises against spiritual science. The spiritual researcher also understands the objections, although they are based on prejudice. However, the whole attitude of our civilisation to a possible spiritual science depends to no small measure on the fact that one does not want to realise how spiritual science can basically understand all other worldviews and can completely acknowledge the reasons which are brought forward by this or that side against it. I have drawn your attention to the fact that spiritual science wants to be the large circle which extends the human knowledge of all fields of life, and that all other worldviews are small circles within this large circle, which, of course believe to be right from their viewpoints. Spiritual science can mostly affirm the positive aspects of these worldviews. However, one cannot say this of the other worldviews that one asserts today, in the same sense. Since just on the following point of view one will not position oneself: this or that—may it be put forward for materialism, spiritualism or realism—is to be regarded as one-sided in a certain respect, and only by overcoming this one-sidedness one can attain knowledge satisfying the human being. In its fields, that worldview which must appear as one-sided is often fully entitled, so that it can produce truth at its place. Spiritual science cannot stop there recognising these truths as something all-embracing, but it has to go over to putting them at their right place. That is why we deal in particular in spiritual-scientific fields with the opposition of that worldview which believes to stand firmly on the ground of modern science, and which must—I say expressly “must” -- regard spiritual science from its point of view as fantasy and daydreaming.

I choose a form of worldview that believes to stand strictly on the firm ground of scientific methodology. I want to characterise this worldview somewhat radically. It says that one has to consider the physical, chemical and mineral forces and substances of the human being if one wants to understand the human being and gets clear about the fact that, as any other being is composed according to the principles of nature, also the human being, as the crown of creation, is composed.

This worldview thinks, if it has succeeded once in getting to know all natural principles and substances that work in the human nervous system up to the subtlest processes of the brain, then it recognises, as far as it is scientifically possible, how the human thinking, feeling, and willing arise from the physical laws. It is an entitled ideal of this worldview to understand the human being wholly scientifically.

I know that I must cause, indeed, contradiction from some researchers taking action a little more seriously who already say today that one has left that more materialistic worldview which believes there that the human being is understood completely if he is understood completely according to the outer physical processes. However, it does not depend on that that one admits there or there already that one has not understood the human being if one knows the wholly natural processes that go forward in his nervous system up to the brain. However, that is the point that in spite of this consciousness even in the scientific methods also of the philosophically thinking contemporaries nothing else exists than the view, which positions itself on these natural processes. Since most people who believe to be based on science reject a view as it is meant here as spiritual science.

The view of spiritual science has to admit on basis of its research results that with any thinking, with any research which can survey the processes of the sensory world and can pursue them up to the processes in the nervous system one can find nothing else than the wholly natural human being. However, this wholly natural human being is only the cover of that which we got to know as going over from one life on earth to another which experiences an existence in a purely spiritual world between death and new birth after every life on earth. I tried to show this in the last talk. Spiritual science must realise that this everlasting must remain concealed in the human nature to any philosophy that wants to turn only to the forces accessible to this view of nature. One can investigate this everlasting in the human nature only with forces that one attains with an inner development, as I have described it more exactly in my Occult Science. An Outline and in the bookHow Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?. However, even the philosophers who stress the necessity of spiritual life, yes, even the philosopher who has become famous in such weird way, Rudolf Eucken (1846-1926, Nobel Prize for Literature in 1908) who speaks in his essayistic philosophy of the “spirit” repeatedly, restricts himself to this natural human being. He nowhere betrays that he has a sensation of the fact that spirit and spiritual world can be investigated only with the mental forces that certain spiritual-scientific methods bring out of the soul.

Spiritual science is not the adversary of such scientific views, also not of such philosophical worldviews, but it has to show their limits, has to show what they are capable of and what they can show. Concerning this standpoint of spiritual science to the other worldviews, I have also emphasised here repeatedly that it feels in harmony with those spirits of the human development who indeed did not yet have spiritual science. Nevertheless, because they had a thorough inkling of truth from their deepest feeling, they spoke in a clear, understandable way where they expressed this inkling.

This applies to two personalities of the nineteenth century, to Goethe and to the less known Robert Hamerling (1830-1889, Austrian poet)) about whom I would like to speak today. Both poets have dealt with a problem like from a deep spiritual-scientific feeling, but poetically, while I want to stress the spiritual-scientific colouring of this problem.

I would like to ask: could not the thought even arise in a head: what originates really if one invents the human being as a being in such a way that one does not count on the everlasting forces slumbering in the human soul? Which picture of the human being originates if one only uses the natural forces and substances and the physical principles?

The spiritual scientist can assess such a picture only from his point of view. If you develop the forces slumbering in your soul to spiritual beholding, you experience yourself in the soul so that you experience and recognise that these abilities are not bound to the senses and not to the forces of the brain. You experience this way that you are really with your soul beyond your senses, beyond the brain, beyond the body, yes, you face everything that is bound to the body as an outer object. Now you face what you consider, otherwise, as belonging to your ego, your body, as you face the table. You face your destiny too, as far as it takes place in the outer world. You have become a new human being to whom that what you were before has become objective and outside you.

If you consider the human being in such a way, you attain the possibility to assess how much is valid what one can think up as a picture of the human being with only natural substances, natural laws and abilities. One realises that this picture is something very real; but for the human being it is not real in the sensory world, but it is a part of the human being, it penetrates and invigorates the human being.

Those listeners who remember the ambitious attempt eight days ago have heard that the human soul, after it has gone through the purely spiritual life between death and a new birth, enters a new earth-life with forces developed in this life, that it is attracted by a parental couple and that it adapts itself to the inherited forces of father and mother. However, the spiritual researcher realises that the human soul descends to a new embodiment on earth, must wrap itself during the penetration into the physical embodiment in forces that are as it were an essence of the whole physical nature. Before the everlasting human being hurries to his embodiment, he has to attract as it were forces and substances from the spiritual substance by which he hardens the picture that he has developed purely spiritually like a prototype for the next embodiment and wants then to embody himself physically within the line of inheritance. We can say that with the human embodiment an intermediate link puts itself between the completely spiritual which prevails between death and a new birth, and that what stands then in the physical world as a human being before us. In this physical human, we just have what has come from father and mother, and that what comes from the former embodiments, the spiritual-mental. However, in between is, one would like to say, a purely etheric human being, a still spiritual human being that is invisible, supersensible, that contains, however, the forces in himself which are like an essence of the whole physical world process. It is strange: if the human being believes to be on the firm ground of natural sciences and develops a corresponding picture of the human being, he gets to a picture that is not real in this physical human being who contains the everlasting soul. It is a mere abstraction that works, however, in this physical human being, it is that in which the human being wraps himself up before he descends to the physical embodiment.

It is a real being what the human being snatches from the everlasting spiritual life and forces into the life between birth and death what prevails in us between birth and death, what is spiritual, but what lifts us from the physical and what hands over us to the spirit. However, it is not physically visible but to a higher beholding.

Hence, the strange fact emerges that those are not completely wrong who believe to think materialistically correctly, while they form a fantastic picture of the human being completely according to the principles of nature. This picture has meaning for the human being between birth and death, and causes during the life on earth that the soul forgets its spiritual life as it were. However, it does not exist as a thing of nature with mere physical substances and principles, but it penetrates the human nature only. This link between the outer and the everlasting human being walks through the physical world.

Goethe considered this thing as something “supersensible-sensory,” one would like to say, and he characterised it as Homunculus in the second part of his Faust. The materialistic worldview develops fantastically that what Goethe meant with his Homunculus as the picture of the human being. However, this picture of the human being does not exist in truth. It impregnates the human being; it divests him of his everlasting meaning between birth and death and works in the physical-sensory nature.

This latter is the third that comes to the other two. While the materialistic thinker believes to put the most real before us with his picture of the human being; he puts an abstraction, he puts something supersensible. This ideal of modern monism, this Homunculus, that what the modern monism would like to describe as a “human being,” Goethe used it in the second part of his Faust for a particular mission.—I can indicate these things only briefly not to drag the talk out too much.

Faust has experienced what is known from the first part of the drama under the guidance—or by the seduction—of Mephistopheles. He has gone through all phases and tortures of the desire of knowledge, has experienced serious human guilt, and now in the second part Goethe shows how Faust is snatched away from the usual imagination. Faust shall not get the possibility to penetrate farther into the world, so that he works up his way with the usual consciousness again from everything that his soul has experienced. A night is presented to us, it means, Faust's consciousness is removed at the beginning of the second part. From the spiritual worlds, forces are put in his sleeping consciousness in which he does not immediately become aware of that; however, they become effective, as Goethe suggests, in Faust's soul where the everlasting forces prevail, so that he can advance. Hence, spirits speak in his sleep, like Ariel, and others. Therefore, he feels “life's pulses beating with fresh vitality” (verse 4679); he is given back to life and can begin the struggle for existence anew.

I want to refrain from all other things and state only that one demands from him to conjure up the pictures of Paris and Helen. Faust himself gets the desire to behold Helen; and one understands it after Goethe's portrayal that he himself gets this desire.

What a figure is Mephistopheles? He places himself beside Faust as the spiritual being that wants to keep the human being in the outer-sensory world, in the natural existence. Mephistopheles is absolutely a spiritual being, but a being that denies the spiritual world towards the human being. Faust has to demand from Mephistopheles that he enables him to penetrate into those fields of existence where the everlasting-mental of Helen exists. Mephistopheles can give him only the key of this world; since it is the world of the mothers, the everlasting forces of spiritual existence. Now a conversation develops in the second part of Faust where the spiritual-scientific attitude of Faust and the refusal of this attitude by Mephistopheles face each other. Mephistopheles regards that world as nothing into which Faust wants to penetrate. However, Faust replies to him: “in your Nothingness I hope to find my All” (verse 6256). As to Mephistopheles the world into which Faust wants to penetrate, is nothing.—Faust meets the primal figure, the everlasting of Helen in the realm of the mothers. He brings up it. He is immature to face it. I do not want to mention everything that still happens, but only this one: Faust is not so purified as in such striving someone who wants to face the spiritual really has to purify the forces. He approaches Helen as if she is a sensory appearance and the result is that Helen paralyzes him. His consciousness is snatched away from him because of his violent passions. In paralysis, his dream emerges which leads him into the realm where Helen has lived.

Now the big question originated for Goethe: how can one continue the life of Faust poetically? Goethe was no symbolic poet; he was a realistic poet, even if spiritually more realistic. The question originated in him: Faust must be able to face Helen as a human being, as she lived as a human being. She has to descend to the realm of the human beings, she has to embody herself, and Faust must be able to face Helen as a human being: how can one do this in the spiritual-realistic sense?

When Goethe wrote this scene in the twenties of the nineteenth century, he remembered former studies. What he had studied in his youth as spiritual science, affected him more and more. Hence, the second part of this drama is riper all the more what caused, however, that some people regarded this second part as a miserable product of the old Goethe because they had no use for it. Goethe asked, how can I use my spiritual-scientific studies to bring Faust where one has to search the spiritual of Helen? There he remembered what he had read in the book De generatione rerum naturalium by Paracelsus (1493-1541), he remembered the “Homunculus.” Paracelsus declares in this book how a picture of a completely natural human being can be produced, so that one can see him really.—It would lead too far to go into that what Paracelsus shows, simply because his explanations are not at all satisfactory for us today. I want to go into the matter more in the style of modern spiritual science, and not into that what Paracelsus showed.

Paracelsus talks of the fact that one can mix different substances and treat them according to the methods of his time. If one goes into it how the human beings thought in this respect at his time, it mattered not so much how the substances were mixed how they decomposed and combined, but it mattered that the human being stood before the chemical processes and let them work on his soul. The effect of these processes caused a clairvoyance to be produced by other means today. Then one beheld that figure which Paracelsus describes which is really a paradigm of the human being, a little human being, but only radiant, without body, not embodied. These are the essentials in the sense of modern spiritual science that those processes produced that condition of consciousness while the Homunculus became visible.

So Goethe said to himself tying on Paracelsus: this Homunculus is a being which stands between the supersensible and the sensory, namely in such a way that it can bring the human beings down from the everlasting into the physical-sensory world which works in the human being as a force but is not embodied. Goethe moulded the Homunculus into a poetic figure. For he presents a spirit of such kind at first about which one can say in the sense of Faust, such spirits look greedily for treasures and are happy if they find earthworms. Goethe presents such a spirit in Wagner, a figure that is really an ideal of people with modern worldview who look for treasures and are happy if they find the laws of the earthworms.

  To two sides the picture of Wagner arose to Goethe. Since there is beside aFaust book also a Wagner book first; and then there a strange man lived at Goethe's time: His name was Johann Jacob Wagner (1775-1845, philosopher). This man stated that one gets a little human being really, if one mixes substances and so on in the retort according to certain methods. From these two Wagner figures, Goethe melted down a figure, the Wagner of the poem. Thus, the figure of that Wagner originated who stands before his retort and mixes substances and waits until the “well-behaved little human being,” the Homunculus, originates. He would not originate without further ado. Neither in the retort of Johann Jacob Wagner nor in that of the Goethean Wagner a human being would originate, or what some modern scientists imagine as the human being, unless Mephistopheles slipped in the processes, unless the spiritual power of Mephistopheles worked in the background. A purely spiritual being originates in Wagner's retort that way, it is radiant, it wishes, however, to be embodied and it does not lack mental faculties, but it lacks efficiency—a being that the materialistic worldview considers as the human being:

He's well supplied with mental faculties,

but sorely lacks substantial attribute.

So far he weighs no more than does his vial

but hopes that he may soon obtain a body. (Verses 8249-8-9-8252)

Homunculus wants to embody himself, but he is a being only living in the spiritual. Since those present a bad abstraction who search the “real.” However, Wagner can only believe that he has caused the super-creation in reality. He stands before the retort and believes:

It works! the moving mass grows clearer,

the super-creation (conviction) the more certain; (Verses 6855-6-5-6856)

This passage is so little understood in the Faust literature even today that people believe that it concerns a “conviction” (German: Überzeugung). However, Goethe means it in the sense of Nietzsche's “superman” (Über-mensch) as super-creation (Über-zeugung).

Homunculus turns out to be a being that belongs to the spiritual world. Since he attacks Faust immediately in a weird way. Faust lives in dreams of ancient Greece. Homunculus is clairvoyant; he beholds everything that Faust is dreaming. Why? Because Goethe imagines him in the spiritual world, not emerging from the physical world. The human being has it as forces in himself. There Homunculus loses his abstraction. One will even concede to the monists that this abstraction would be clairvoyant if they beheld it in the spiritual world where it is real. Since Homunculus, the human being, as Ludwig Büchner (1824-1899, philosopher) and others invented him exists as a spiritual being and is a clairvoyant being in the spiritual world. However, a person like Büchner would not suppose this. Hence, Homunculus can really become the leader in the regions where Helen shall reincarnate where she shall appear and face Faust. However, Homunculus must appropriate the forces for that only which are in the physical nature apart from everything else.

Homunculus as a clairvoyant being becomes the leader of Faust in the Classical Walpurgis night. There he gets advice from the ancient philosophers, from Thales and Anaxagoras, from Proteus also, how he could get to a natural existence. He who wants so much to be embodied, who “is well supplied with mental faculties,” but even more, “he sorely lacks substantial attribute.” Nevertheless, if once the materialists realise how that what we imagine fantastically could get to natural existence?! Proteus advises to develop through all realms of nature. Goethe's tip to that is great where it concerns the passage through the plant realm, Homunculus says there:

I like the way the air smells fresh and green!

(German: Es grunelt so, und mir behagt der Duft!) (Verse 8266)

The verb “gruneln” is derived from “becoming green” to show the effective fresh life of the plant realm. However, one thing is said to Homunculus: that he can get on this way only to the time when the human being comes into being. He is the mediator between the bodily and the everlasting. When it concerns the birth he must submerge head first into the natural forces, must be taken up in the merely cosmic elements. Hence, one says to Homunculus, experience all that, and that he has “lots of time before you must be human” (verse 8326). Then one tells him:

just don't aspire to the higher places,

for once you have become a human being

you've reached the end of everything. (Verses 8330-8332)

How wonderfully is that in harmony with the mission of Homunculus with the process of human incarnation; since if he has become a human being, he completely goes into the human nature. Hence, one says to him, stay here, do not aspire to higher places (German: Orten and notOrden = medals (or classes) as in most editions). - Here, one must say “places.” For the copyist made a mistake there. This part of theFaust exists only as a duplicate, and because Goethe spoke with Frankfurt accent, the writer understood Orden (“medals”) instead of Orten (“places”). The modern commentators have believed that already the old Proteus spoke of “medals,” one of the unhappiest ideas that slipped in the Faust literature.

Goethe portrays the merging of Homunculus into the elements splendidly where Helen should originate where she should face Faust, so that her everlasting unites with the forces that come from the elements, so that she can enter the earthly existence. The sirens say:

What miraculous fire transfigures our waves,

that break on each other and shatter and sparkle?

Lights wave and hover, the brightness comes nearer,

what moves in the darkness is pure incandescence,

and all is enveloped in eddies of fire.

Let Eros now rule, the creator of all! (Verses 8473-8479)

That is: if the human being enters the physical existence from the eternally spiritual by love, Eros, then one can clairvoyantly behold this merging in waves. “Waves” are meant spiritually. Hence, one says:

Hail to Ocean and the waves

now embraced by sacred fire!

Hail to Water! Hail to Fire!

Hail this strange and rare event!

Hail to Air and its soft breezes!

Hail to Earth's mysterious depths!

To you four, o Elements,

Here we offer solemn praise!(Verses 8480-8487)

That is: Homunculus is now taken up in the elements, and Helen appears in the third act. The reincarnated Helen appears who does not smash Faust.

Thus, Goethe knew how to use the figure of Homunculus poetically. Thus, Homunculus is also in Goethe's eyes that in the human being that leads a completely mechanical existence in which purely mechanical forces prevail. However, the human being is the highest member of creation because these forces dissolve when they enter into him. However, what the human being is not in reality he can be it in his imagination. Out of human freedom, he can get an idea of his ideal and that he can deny his everlasting spiritual which he does not want to take into consideration, and that he can imagine: I am only a being that consists of completely natural substances and forces. Then he can also live in a corresponding manner.

In a time which produces materialism in theory which thinks in theory in the described way, it is not harmless that it has something in its whole attitude that denies the everlasting spiritual and makes just that the natural human being what we have got to know as Homunculus. A certain desire must be there to develop the Homunculus forces particularly; then one has taste to a worldview that regards this Homunculus as the human being.

In the sixties of the nineteenth century, a weird catchword circulated in psychology. One has always believed of psychology that the human beings would not go so far into Homunculism in relation to the soul that they wanted to know nothing about the soul and accept the purely bodily only. However, there the catchword “psychology without soul” emerged (by Friedrich Albert Lange in hisHistory of Materialismup to Wundt (Wilhelm W., 1832-1920, psychologist). That is: one wants to study the mere phenomena of the soul life to the details. These are just “events,” one says; but one does not turn to the soul itself.-

Of course, it is in the nature of this Homunculism to deny the soul; since one must deny the soul if one considers Homunculus as the true human being, because Homunculism cannot be reconciled with the soul. A time in which the catchword “psychology without soul” could originate must show Homunculism as a hidden desire of human life. A time, which believes that the human being is only that what one can recognise with the usual forces engaged in the nervous system, shows homunculoid characteristics in the majority of its human beings.

There the thought may arise in a poet: how would it be if I hold up a mirror to the time and show: you imagine what would result from you if you believed to originate only from purely physical forces and principles. He is a poet who takes the catchword “psychology without soul” seriously and says to himself, the human beings have not only said this, but they also lived it. I want to put a human being who is invented exactly after the picture as they imagine him. They do not know only that he is in such a way as he works. However, I want to invent strictly what would originate from the picture of the modern materialist.

Such thoughts worked in Robert Hamerling (1830-1889, Austrian poet), and he carried out these thoughts on his sickbed and sent out the picture of theHomunculus in the world. One knows this poem little today, although 5,000 copies were sold during the first five months after its publication. However, this is also something that is in the sense of Homunculism, of our time.—Hamerling created his Homunculusas I try to show him in few words. I can show him in such a way. As I got around to regarding that as correct what I say about Goethe after a more than 30-years study, I can do it concerning Hamerling too. Since shortly after Homunculusby Hamerling had appeared, I wrote a treatise about it, and Hamerling still wrote to me that I had understood his idea completely.

Robert Hamerling had taken the idea to put once before the modern human being what is contained in the views if one imagines the human being consisting of wholly physical forces and substances according to natural laws only. Hence, he let the modern professor be serious to create a human being according to the physical forces and principles. Indeed, the scientist who believes to construct a worldview based on physical laws says that one is not yet able to create a human being that way today. However, the poet can say, let us assume that this time has already arrived that that could be performed what was theory once. Thus, we see the academic monist standing before the retort, we see him treating the substances accordingly—and the little human being, Homunculus, appearing:

“Bravo, little doctor!” he shouted

Still a second time, while he

Slipped shivering in a little jerkin,

Which was ready for him;

With gracious look he knocks

On the shoulder of the producer.

“So on the whole and from the pure

Chemical-physiological point of view

Considered, is that, my dear,

What you created, a respectable,

Praiseworthy piece of work.

In detail, one could say

Many a thing about it.”

Homunculus continued

And gave some learnt,

Estimable hints.

He spoke much about albumin,

About fibrin, about globulin, too,

Keratin, mucin, and other things,

And about their correct mixture,

And taught his creator

And producer thoroughly how he

Could have made it better.(Literal translation)

Thus he is there in reality—that is in the reality of the poet, as he is invented in the heads of many materialistically minded people. From this materialistic attitude that is given to the “well-behaved little human being” that originates also which this little human being shows as his first tendency. If one looks at the world for the tendencies of the “youngest” people, one already understands how Homunculus can come to such like that:

Gradually he started quibbling

And grumbling in the book,

Which he had in his hands,

The Homunculus. This was interesting

To the doctor, and he wrote

The remark in his notebook:

The first literary emotion

Of a little human being—Review

However, it will not go at all. Since Homunculus grows out of the thoughts of his creator, we say, of his super-creator, and brings many things with him that lived in his thoughts because of the whole condition of our time. He is nervous; he brings nervousness with him. Nevertheless, there his learnt producer cannot do anything with him. That is why he casts him back into the retort, makes him the human embryo again. Homunculus is correctly conceived and born now by a mother, so that we have a not entirely right Homunculus, but one who is only without a natural father.

Then he goes through his apprenticeship. He also becomes a poet, of course. He experiences what many poets experienced in our time: he looks for publishers. He develops a pleasant relation not only to his publisher, but also to his daughter who is promised to him, if his poems find the necessary distribution. Of course, one has “connections”in the era of Homunculism. One praises the book very much; how can Homunculus assume it different! But behold: when the year was over, the publisher had sold thirteen copies only. He takes away the daughter from him, and Homunculus must search his further journey through life.—He chooses all possible ways. He comes to a spa resort, and there he gets to know the customs and traditions of Homunculism, I would like to say, the customs and traditions of modern spa life. Then he grasped the plan to found a newspaper,News for Everything and for All People.

Councillors, councils of state and other councils or also the leaders of powerful, financially strong parties, the leaders of big bank companies and trading companies urge to it and write their editorials and reports.—I beg you to consider—because Homunculus was published in 1888—that with it no satire was intended about something that appeared much later.—However, Homunculus is not content with it; he still aims at something higher. He sells his newspaper to a corporation—this is no satire—and he devotes himself to his other enterprises. Then he becomes a millionaire and lives in a very strange way. I would like to stress that he settles very well in the time of Homunculism. What Non-Homunculism attains by lifeless forces if, for example, anything is supported by columns still belongs to the past times. The big tamed snakes in his garden pavilion hold its cupola. One had trained squirrels once and had imprisoned them in cages. Homunculus does not do this; he lets them work as machines. This is the right Homunculism. Such a thing would already come out if some thoughts existing already today were developed further.

However, even if he is a millionaire he does not arrive at a satisfying life. He did not know a “soul life” because he had no soul. Thus, his existence dissatisfies him extremely, and, therefore, he plunges into the Rhine River. There a being saves him that also has no soul, the mermaid Lurley. Now Homunculus and Lurley become a couple. Because all old worlds are not enough for them, they immigrateto a quite new region.—One would still have to describe the interesting Literary Walpurgis night that is celebrated at the wedding feast of this couple. Some things of it apply to our time, too.

One would have to carry back one's mind only to Hamerling's time, but one would also have to say the same here that it should be no satire of modern conditions:

The host of water poets was

Completely addicted

To harsh world-weariness,

To bitter weariness of life,

To dark melancholy,

And to Prometheic

Liverish pessimism.

The beer and wine poets

Felt much more comfortable in their skin.

To these the world was just

Right, and they suffered only

From one evil: hydrophobia.

The absinthe poets, in the end,

With the wine and beer poets

Shared hydrophobia,

And with the host of water poets

The vulture bite of the dark,

Melancholy-weary,

Liverish pessimism.

Therefore, they were twice miserable.

“Art and literature” are studied rather interesting.

They immigrate into a region not yet sicklied by the faith in the soul. The soulless man and the soulless mermaid emigrate into an Eldorado. This is an Eldorado of some party systems; and something that prevails in a party system today is portrayed brilliantly. I only want to suggest that Homunculus also does not manage here with the establishment of his model state, the Eldorado, even his Lurley is taken away from him by a party man who walks around with the slogan: “nobody shall outvote us!” However, Lurley says, he is a character, and Homunculus has to move on. Nevertheless, he is an inventive head and wants to think the things to their ultimate consequences. He says to himself, you can bring about nothing with the human beings if you want to put Homunculism into reality; nevertheless, they are not able to do this. However, why should I not take the ultimate consequences? Could I not develop the monkeys to human beings? Modern science already teaches that the human beings have developed from the monkeys. I gather the best of them and transform them into human beings rather fast.—He founds an enterprise in which he wants to transform the monkeys into human beings, a quite new realm. Now one tells us about the monkey school:

The teachers of the monkey school

Only complained about restlessness,

Since it was hard to tear

These noble offsprings

From certain habits

Of their race

From climbing up, for example,

Everywhere.

They forgot themselves now and again

So far, in long lessons

To delouse each other,

Attacked the teacher

In wild hordes to delouse his head.-

When the monkeys were now educated,

They competed the human beings

In any field. They were

Very competent at fine arts

Because of their innate imitation talent.

They were unequalled—of course—

As stage artists,

And undertook tours

With brilliant success.

Farce, comedy, operetta,

Parody—all that was their field.

If they made faces, these were:

Showpieces and masterpieces

Of drastic and finest comic,

As one had never seen before.

They had world-famous recitals -

Howling monkeys were the soloists,

Now and then they beat

Human choirs at prize singing.

Baboons, grinning like fauns,

Developed to fops,

To elegant strollers,

Were also at balls smart

Dancers, and the gallant style,

Which they showed perkily

With the women, was partly

Very much after the taste of the latter.

Concerning the monkey women,

They equalled the human women

And soon before also

In the skill of flirting.

Who would understand better

To dress up always fashionably

Than a monkey? They understood

To festoon themselves with jewellery

With tassels, ribbons, and bows...

And so on. Nevertheless, Hamerling thinks that one cannot transform an educated monkey to a human being. Indeed, the monkeys referred to many a “monkey ancestor,” but they only became similar to the humans with one “virtue,” that of conviction. They soon declared that it is actually inferior to be a human being; because these have not even become “monkeys.” This led to the fact that the elected monkey rector, the monkey “Doctor Krallfratz” replaced Homunculus. Thus, Doctor Krallfratz replaced him. Nevertheless, the monkeys had less luck with it. Indeed, the human beings did not cope with the monkeys that had become human beings; but in wild regions the human beings living still there in the primordial state coped with them, they simply killed the monkeys.

Now a chapter comes which one held against Hamerling very much.—Hamerling did not want to go among the anti-Semites; he strictly protested against it where he made Homunculus the leader of the Jews immigrating to Palestine in the eighth song. They do no longer stand it here under the today's conditions.

One should assume that this is something noticeable in a time that knows the attempts of Zionism. However, it is important what arises now for Homunculus from it, the Jews crucify him because they do not endure being together with him. When he is attached to the cross, only Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, visits him. He frees him from his bonds, and they both have to walk on together.

Indeed, Homunculus has thought up to the ultimate consequence what he believes to have gained from modern science. However—and this should appear with people who deal with ideological questions—he has not really dealt, actually, with science. He begins now to deal with scientific problems. Indeed, there he manages to win a big part of humanity for an idea which appeared first with the philosopher of the unconscious out of pessimism which is also a kind of Homunculism in certain sense: from Eduard von Hartmann's pessimistic philosophy. Not many people still know today what pessimism has to announce to the human beings: oh, the world is bad, as bad as possible, and it would be the best of all to escape this bad world. It is necessary that one realises that the world originated from the will, and if all human beings grasped the volition to finish their existence, world and life would be finished by the united volition of all. Eduard von Hartmann (1842-1906, Philosophy of the Unconscious, 1869) describes in detail that it were possible to eliminate humanity from the world by a common volition.

Homunculus founds a society not only of human beings but also of animals under this viewpoint. One holds congresses and speeches, and so on. In the end, a time is determined at which all human beings should decide simultaneously: now we want to exist no longer. Besides, even the earth should perish. All agree; the day, the hour approaches, but it stops the sun only. What had happened? Homunculus and Lurley had wished a child; however, they could not get it in Eldorado. Hence, they accepted two children of the prehistoric humans living there; they called them Eldo and Dora. However, both could not cope with Homunculism. When all human beings gather to carry out their decision, Eldo and Dora meet again after long separation, they fall in love, and therefore they come too late. They were absent when the whole humanity gathered at the agreed time, and all efforts were pointless. Homunculus himself has built up those who ruin his decision. Oh, Homunculism will create the “Eldo” and “Dora” in manifold way from itself who come too late if Homunculism wants to take the ultimate consequences. Then the sun of spiritual life, of spiritual science rises!

Nevertheless, in the end Homunculus must reach something from his science. He builds, after he has investigated all forces of nature, a huge telescope with which he can see into the most distant regions of the universe, all that is increased hugely with which the modern worldview has grown up. Except this huge telescope, he constructs a huge stethoscope and a gigantic smelling pipe; and, one can say, he still builds everything that one can obtain from the mechanical forces! From these mechanical forces in the most modern style, he builds a gigantic airship. I note once again: in 1887, Robert Hamerling in his Homunculus writes the history of the dirigible airship! With this dirigible airship, Homunculus leaves the earth sphere. He can race along with his airship faster than the light does. But he is not content with that what he is able to do: he can travel around with his airship in the cosmic space, can look out with his huge telescope into the world of the stars, he can listen to the earth with his huge stethoscope, and he speaks with a gigantic megaphone down to the human beings. There he comes into a thundercloud, lightning strikes his airship, it cannot destroy the rudder, the engine, but it destroys its controllability! Thus, Homunculus is handed over with his airship to the elementary forces. He can still take one thing along: when he approaches the earth once again, he discovers the corpse of Lurley and carries it with him on his dirigible gigantic airship.—Hamerling closes his epic with the words:

Whom the holy nature,

The mysterious mother,

Gave life by love,

Gave life in love.

She also refuses death to him,

The happiest death, above all, is

Dying down in love.

The vast universe has for him

No grave of blissful rest,

No place of everlasting peace.

Who can say where

And how long with Homunculus

And the mermaid that joins him

The ruling fate does chase

The charred gigantic airship

In the whirl of iron laws,

Of substances and forces

On roads without barriers?

Sometimes in starry nights

Sunday's children still see

That wreck as a dark planet

High above in immeasurable distance,

And shuddering they suspect

The fate of the forever restless.

Hamerling showed in his way that that what Homunculism invents cannot belong to the world in which the human soul lives but only to the completely mechanical forces. Mechanical forces of nature tear him away. Indeed, the poet could have this idea that the modern human being who develops his completely natural human ideal looks, actually, only at that in himself what is abstraction, what is something unreal and belongs to the completely natural elements. Hamerling means that what also Goethe said where his Homunculus disintegrates in the elements:

Hail to Air and its soft breezes!

Hail to Earth's mysterious depths!

To you four, o Elements,

Here we offer solemn praise!(Verses 8484-8487)

Whereas Goethe's Homunculus contributes his forces to the incarnation of Helen, the Homunculus of Hamerling as soulless being, as the representative of that human ideal that denies the soul has to be taken up in the elements of the universe.

One can say, Hamerling had the intention—I leave it to others to assess whether he was successful or not—to hold up a mirror to that modern attitude which wants to know nothing of the spirit and conjures up a human ideal divested of spirit before itself. It is another question whether the reflection is also recognised. However, it is something that is not real in the physical nature that rightly those can deny who just put up it. Strange disaster! Goethe solves the riddle somewhat. He reminds of the other word:

Simple folk never sense the devil's presence

not even when his hands are on their throats. (Verses 2181-2182)

Wagner who produces Homunculus in his retort also does not notice that the devil is that who produces him, actually. Since Mephistopheles brings in the spiritual forces. It is an inspiration of the “father of all obstacles” of that what is a product of modern science what materialism wants to put as the modern human being.

I read about Homunculus a third time. I say it somewhat bashfully; however, I do not want to shrink back from a remark that forced on me already once. I read a book of the learnt economist Werner Sombart (1863-1941) who describes the modern economic human being. Read the final chapter about the bourgeois; it is written very interesting; and at last, the modern economic human being appears whom the forces seize like with tentacles that prevail in the modern economic life and who is driven from enterprise to enterprise. As the last, he has also lost religion, Sombart says. “Religion has become business.” The modern human being is in Sombart's humanity. Someone who knows something of it has to say, does he not exist; do not the economists describe him?

It arises from everything that one has to overcome Homunculism by the living understanding of the spiritual life. As Homunculism cannot see many things, it also does not see to what its own forces lead him. The poets tried to show it, and spiritual science completely feels in harmony with such poets who felt out of their inkling what spiritual science has to found anew. What spiritual science can be as a treasure for life to the human being that it can grasp his soul that it is the only true overcomer of any Homunculism; I show this in the next talk. Today I just wanted to bring into view how spirits who looked with open eyes and sense recognised that what prevails in the conditions of the presence as Homunculism.

I believe that one understands Hamerling on the ground of spiritual science; one understands just the last words:

Who can say where

And how long with Homunculus

And the mermaid that joins him

The ruling fate does chase

The charred gigantic airship

In the whirl of iron laws,

Of substances and forces

On roads without barriers?

Sometimes in starry nights

Sunday's children still see

That wreck as a dark planet

High above in immeasurable distance,

And shuddering they suspect

The fate of the forever restless.

Nevertheless, you permit that I use a well-known and somewhat changed proverb compared with this quotation: why should we look with the eyes of the Sunday's child at the wreck in the vast universe? Homunculus is so close that even Sombart can describe him! Homunculus is very close to the modern human being, and one can only hope that many anticipating and sighted souls become Sunday's children in this respect by spiritual science that recognise the very close Homunculism, the wreck of a worldview. More and more of such Sunday's children will be there. And what also—let me use this expression—Homunculism is able to argue against spiritual science, spiritual science will give humanity what it cannot lack, what it craves for and what it must hope for: the soul, and with the soul the spiritual life. Hence, one has not to be worried about the future of spiritual science.

This will be the topic of the last of these winter talks.

What we have said so far about the Gospel of St. John has taken us deeply into the essence of Christianity, and has shown us what profound mystical power lies hidden within this Christian document. We have seen that it should not be read like a report of outer events, or an historical account, but a script engraved by life, so that every sentence re-lived, transforms something in us.

We have followed the seven stages of spiritual ascent in the life of St. John. Today we will add something which goes even deeper. A few examples will show that I have not forced an arbitrary meaning on the gospel, but that by means of occult teaching we are able to understand many things that otherwise would remain dark and unintelligible. First I will remind you of the seven stages of initiation which existed at the time of the birth of Christianity.

In the last lecture we came to know the Christian initiation, but it was not Christianity that first made initiation possible. At all times, ever since there were men as we know them on earth, it was possible to become an initiate—to ascend to higher stages of human existence. Through Christianity all these things became more inward. Since Christianity has provided us with such documents as the John Gospel—which only needs to be allowed to work and live in us—one can achieve much, and rise to spiritual heights. There were no such documents in pre-Christian times available. One had to be introduced into hidden mystery temples, or centres, and according to the various peoples, the lower stages of initiation differed. In the higher stages national peculiarities were of no account, and they were the same for all peoples even in much older times.

I would like to describe the seven stages of initiation as they were practised in the Persian Mithras cult. It was a form of initiation that was cultivated in the whole of Asia Minor, in Greece and Rome, and even as far as the Danube basin it was practised far into the Christian era. For a long time it was possible to go through these stages even in the hidden cultic centres and temples in Egypt which were often built into the solid rock. They were only accessible to those who came to know them as morally advanced pupils and initiates after strict tests. The first grade was the “Raven”. As a raven the neophyte carried the knowledge acquired in the outer sense world into spiritual life. The idea of the raven has lingered in myths and sagas. There are the Ravens of Wotan, the ravens of Elijah, and in the German Barbarossa saga ravens are the intermediaries between the emperor under a spell in the mountain and the outer world. In the Mithraic mysteries “Raven” signified a grade of initiation.

The second grade was that of the “Occult One”. This was the name for someone who had already received some important occult secrets.

The third grade was that of the “Fighter”. These were initiates who felt their higher self to the extent that they understood sayings such as one finds in the second part of “Light on the Path”.¹ Only an initiate of the third grade can understand such sayings. This does not mean that the ordinary person cannot reach a certain comprehension. Everyone has a higher self, and if one is able to abnegate one's lower self and make it a servant of the higher self then one can say in a certain sense: “Though thou fightest thou art not the fighter”. But it is not until one has reached a particular stage of initiation that one really knows what this sentence signifies. What one formerly considered as higher interests become mere subsidiary interests, mere servants of the fighter.

The fourth grade was achieved when complete inner harmony and calm, equilibrium and strength are gained. This grade was called that of the “Lion”. Such an initiate had so developed the occult life in himself that he could represent the occult not only with words but with deeds.

Meanwhile the consciousness of a person who has passed through these four stages of initiation extended further and further. He identified himself with ever larger groupings of people. All these names have a hidden meaning. For instance, the expression, “The Occult One”. What is a human being as we see him in front of us? He is what is in him. As a Raven an initiate of the first grade—he tries to overcome what is only in him. Then his interests become wider. What people around him are, what they feel and what they will, becomes his own feeling and his own will. The terms were coined in times when there were still communities which were kindred enlarged families. How did one regard such a family? One said they were members of a soul-family tracing right back to a common ancestral pair—members of a hidden ego.

An initiate of the second grade, an “Occult One”, had so ennobled his ego that it became the ego of his community; he made their interests his own. The occult entity of a human community was able to live in him. When the ego of such a human community became the ego of an individual initiate then this community became his dwelling place. The “Fighter” fought for the larger community. In ancient Palestine one designated as a “Lion”, he who had raised himself up to encompass the consciousness, the ego, of a whole tribe. The “lion” of the tribe of Judah is the term applied to someone who had reached such a stage of initiation that he bore within himself the ego of the whole tribe.

The initiate of the fifth grade had so overcome his personality that he could take up the folk-soul. The folk-spirit lived in him. In Persia such an initiate was called a “Persian”. In Greece one would have called him a “Grecian”, if it had been the custom. What does this grade signify? For him everything individual has vanished and his consciousness has become one with the whole. This constitutes a higher state of consciousness.

Today it is different. Because of the splitting up of all communal groups we meet with quite different stages of initiation. But at the time of the birth of Christianity it still had a meaning when one spoke of souls initiated to the fifth grade. You can verify this in the John Gospel. Take the first chapter, verse 45:

“Philip findeth Nathanael and saith unto him: We have found him of whom Moses in the law and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth the son of Joseph. And Nathanael said unto him: Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him: Come and see. Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him and saith of him: Behold an Israelite indeed in whom is no guile!”

Nathanael is here acknowledged as an initiate of the fifth grade. This means that he had learned to know what for us men is the essence of life, the Tree of Life. Earlier in life one tastes of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. One partakes of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge the moment one is able to say “I” to oneself. When the higher, the spiritual, in man awakens it can happen that God has to protect man. Jehovah was concerned lest man, after having eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, should also eat of the Tree of Life before he was ready for it. The initiate of the fifth grade learns what relieves this concern and what raises one beyond all death and all that is transitory. This is the spiritual element.

How can the spiritual element become established in man? For someone who has penetrated more deeply into Theosophy it is something which flows through the whole world. For him whose vision is able to penetrate into higher worlds, all that is, to begin with, a stage of inner development even on higher planes, is expressed at first on the astral plane as a picture. When a person has reached the fifth grade of initiation he always sees a picture on the astral plane, which formerly he had not seen—the picture of a tree, a finely branched, white tree. This picture on the astral plane, which is to be taken as a symbol of the fifth grade of initiation, is called the Tree of Life. He who had reached this point is said to have sat under the Tree of Life. Thus Buddha sat under the Bodhi Tree and Nathanael under the Fig Tree. These are terms for the picture on the astral plane. What is seen are reflections of inner—even bodily inner things. The Bodhi Tree is but the astral mirror image of the human nervous system. He who through initiation is able to direct his gaze inward, sees his inner life, even his bodily inner life, projected, reflected into the outer astral world. So you see what is intended in this chapter of the John Gospel.

Nathanael is addressed as one who knows. It is implied: We understand each other. “Jesus said unto him, ‘Before that, Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee.’” This means, we are brothers of the fifth grade of initiation. It is a recognition between initiates. “Nathanael answered and saith unto him, ‘Rabbi, thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel.’” You see the recognition is complete. Jesus answered him, and said that it will become apparent that he is more than an initiate of the fifth grade. He said, “Because I said unto thee I saw thee under the fig tree, thou believest; thou shalt see greater things than these.”

I would also like to draw your attention to the conversation with Nicodemus, which you will find in the third chapter. There we have the significant words, “Verily, verily I say unto thee, except a man be born of water and of the spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.” What does it mean to be born anew and to see the Kingdom of God? It means to have awakened the higher self, to be born so that the eternal core of one's being is awakened. What does it mean to enter the kingdom of heaven? It means to see not only the reflection of Devachan here on earth as we see it through our physical eyes, but to see this realm directly itself. He alone can do this who has not only been born for this physical world, but is born a second time.

Take what I have used as a comparison, but one which is more than a comparison. Take it literally. To be born means to proceed from an embryo to a stage at which one perceives the outer world with the senses. If one does not pass through an embryonic stage one can never be ready to be born. Those who know this stage also know that ordinary life is an embryonic stage for the higher life. This leads us deep into the meaning of ordinary life. It could be quite easy for someone who directs his gaze towards the spiritual world to become convinced that there is such a world and that man is a citizen of it. He could then proceed to disregard the physical world and to believe that one cannot depart from it quickly enough, and that one should mortify the flesh, the sooner to reach the spiritual world. This shows ignorance. It is as senseless as if one would not allow the human embryo to mature but would bring it into the world at two months, and expect it to live there. Likewise for the higher world, one has to develop to become mature. Such is he who has developed his higher self. The physical world is the school. He who has developed his ego here is ready to enter the kingdom of heaven, which means to be born again. Man has to go through birth and death ever and again, until he has gained his full maturity in order to enter the spiritual world itself, so that he no longer needs physical organs. Thus we have to realise that everything we do by means of our eyes, ears and other senses is work done for the higher life.

Certainly, we have, frequently said that man must develop higher senses, that he must develop the chakrams or holy wheels, which enable him to enter the spiritual world and see it. But how does he come to obtain these holy wheels? Through his work on the physical plane. Here is the place of preparation. Our work here prepares the organs for a higher world. As the human being is prepared in the mother's body, so in the body of the great world mother—where we are while leading our physical life—is prepared what is necessary to make it possible for us to see and act in higher worlds. One is perfectly justified to speak of a higher world and to value it higher than our lower world, but we should only use these terms in a technical sense. All worlds are, basically, equally valid expressions of the highest principle, in different forms. We should not despise any world. In this way we learn to relate ourselves rightly towards both the lower and the higher worlds. This is the requirement for entering into the third chapter of the John Gospel.

It must be understood that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus of a genuine rebirth, and that, above all, he wishes to remind him that looked at in this way, the ordinary, everyday life must be reborn as a higher life and recognised as such. He who reads this chapter really carefully will see that this is what is meant.

Many circles lay it against Theosophy that it teaches reincarnation—the gradual maturing of humanity through rebirth and repeated earth lives. It is said that Christianity knows nothing of this teaching of reincarnation. But actually in the John Gospel there is a clear indication that when he spoke intimately with his disciples, Jesus taught reincarnation. For instance, one can only make sense of the ninth chapter (the healing on the Sabbath of the man born blind) if one bases it on the idea of reincarnation. One must remember that he spoke in the language current at that time. In Greece it was then usual to speak of the power that permeates man's innermost being and leads it forward. For the Greeks and all other peoples of that time, the power that made man into man and caused him to develop was God. An outer God, a God in the next world, was unknown in those days. Therefore one called what lived in man, the God in man. Thus if one spoke of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, it was the higher self that was meant. One can only understand the Old Testament if one appreciates this conception of God. Jesus too speaks of the God living in man when talking intimately to his disciples: “His disciples asked him, saying, ‘Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’”

These three sentences speak clearly enough. Neither had he sinned in his physical body, nor had his parents; therefore the Jewish law that God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children unto so and so many generations does not hold good. But the works of God in man shall be made manifest, i.e. the self in man that passes through all his incarnations. These words which Jesus spoke to his disciples could not be clearer. You know the orthodox explanation. Think, if someone meant what is supposed to be said here: The glory of God should be made manifest in a blind person. This presumes that it was arranged that someone should be blind so that Jesus could heal him and the glory of God be made manifest. Can this be reconciled with true Christianity? No. Christianity would be morally degraded. Interpreted theosophically, this image carries a truly beautiful and noble meaning.

It was always so when Jesus spoke intimately with his disciples. That it was so, is especially revealed in the scene known as the transfiguration. It is, however, not in the John Gospel. We find it in the seventeenth chapter of St. Matthew and in the ninth chapter of St. Mark. In St. John it is not to be found. The only reference that could have any relation to it is the passage in the twelfth chapter, verse 28: “‘Father glorify thy name.’ Then came there a voice from heaven saying, ‘I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.’” And further in verse 31: “‘Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth will draw all men unto me.’ Thus he said, signifying what death he should die. The people answered him, ‘We have heard out of the law that Christ abideth for ever, and how sayest thou: the Son of Man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of Man?’ Then Jesus said unto them, ‘Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.’”

We find the transfiguration scene in all the evangelists except St. John. This is significant. Let us clarify the meaning of this scene. What takes place? Jesus goes with three disciples Peter, James and John—up a mountain: this means into the inner sanctuary where one is initiated into higher worlds and where one also speaks in occult language. Then it is said: the master took his disciples up into a mountain—it means that he went to that place where he expounded the parable to them. The disciples were carried up into a higher state of consciousness. They saw then that which is not transitory but eternal. Moses and Elias appear and Jesus himself with them. What does this mean? In occult science the word Elias means the same as El—the goal, the way. Moses is the spiritual scientific word for truth. By the fact that Elias, Moses and Jesus appear you have the fundamental Christian truth: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. Jesus himself says—this is a fundamental Christian mystical truth—“I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” (John, ch. 14, v. 6)

The important thing is that here the eternal is shown as against the temporal, and the disciples see into a world which lies beyond this world. Afterwards they said to the master, “All this should only have come to pass once Elias has come again.” Thus they spoke to him as though reincarnation was taken as a matter of course, as also in many other passages in the gospels. John asked, “Art thou Elias come again?” Then answered the master, “Elias is indeed come again—John the Baptist is Elias. But the people did not recognise him. Say it unto no man until I come again.” Here we have the general, religious, profound truth of reincarnation uttered in the intimate conversation between the master and his disciples. At the same time it is set down as a testament: “Say it unto no man until I come again.” This coming again refers to a much later time, the time when all men will recognise Christ through their higher comprehension. When this comes about then will He reappear to them.

Thus time is being prepared through the theosophical world conception. Christ will reappear in the world. The doctrine of reincarnation and karma as a generally accepted idea was to be laid aside until this time. At that time people should know nothing of reincarnation and karma, so that they were obliged to take the life between birth and death as something of particular value and importance. Humanity had to pass through all stages of life experience. Up to the time of Christ, reincarnation was generally accepted. Life between birth and death was only a passing episode. But then man had to learn to take life on earth as something important. An extreme form of this teaching was the dogma of eternal punishment and eternal reward. This is an extreme form. What mattered was that each human individuality, each “God-man”, should pass through one incarnation in which he knew nothing of reincarnation and karma and in which he appreciated the vital importance of life between birth and death.

If you read theosophical books you will find that the time between the two incarnations is fifteen to eighteen hundred years. This is about the same length of time as between the birth of Christ, and the present day. Those living then, appear again today. Because of this they are able again to accept the new teaching. Therefore, the theosophical outlook was really prepared on Mount Tabor by Christ Jesus. If we look at world history in broad lines, we should not think that we are dealing either with truth or with error which we can censure. It is not a question of absolute truth or error, but of what is right for man at any given time. If I sat here with a group of boys no more than ten years old, and set about teaching them higher mathematics, I would be teaching them truth and yet it would be folly. I must give a person what he needs, at any given stage of his development. It is not right for us today to say in retrospect, that the Christian teaching contained errors. No. In order to master the physical plane, one had to take this one life seriously. Certainly, the priestly sages of Chaldea taught great spiritual truths. They brought down a vast knowledge of the spiritual world, but they used the most primitive tools, and did not know how to use the forces of nature in everyday life. The physical plane had first to be mastered. To do this, man's whole life of feeling must be directed towards it. Christianity had to prepare mankind to master the physical world. This was decreed, it is the testament from Mount Tabor. What lies behind this declaration is something wonderful.

If one penetrates deeper, one will find more and more. If we want to understand religious documents which came down to us from times which had true knowledge of spiritual life and not a materialistic way of thinking, we must realise that the mode of thought was so different, that if one spoke of man, one spoke in a completely different way.

Now I must tell you something which though easy to understand intellectually, is difficult for the man of today to grasp with his whole soul. The time when the gospels were written was the dawn of Christianity. One used names then in a way which I will now explain. One did not look to the outer physical man, but one saw something higher, the spiritual, shining through it. A name was not used as it is today, it had a significance. Suppose someone was called James (Jacobus). James really means water. Water is the spiritual scientific term for the soul element. If I call somebody James, I say that his soul shines through his body. With this, I signify that he belongs to the watery element. If I give the name James to an initiate, he is to me the symbol for water (Hebrew—Jam). James is nothing but the technical name for an initiate who especially governs the force of water in its occult sense.

Thus were the three disciples who were taken up to Mount Tabor called by their initiate names: James means water, Peter stands for earth, or rock (Hebrew—Jabascha), John signifies air (Ruach). Thus, John means he who has attained the higher self. This leads us deep into the secret doctrines. Transport yourself back into the time when man only possessed the lower principles—the third Root Race, the Lemurian epoch. Mankind did not then breath air, he breathed through gills. Lungs and breathing through lungs developed later. This process coincided with the impregnation by the higher self. Air is, according to the hermetic principle, the lower which represents the higher—the higher self. If I call somebody John (Johannes), then he is one who has awakened his higher self, who governs the occult forces of air. Jesus is the one who governs the occult forces of fire (Nur). Thus you have in these four names, the representatives of earth, water, air and fire. They are the names of the four who ascended Mount Tabor.

Think of these four together on the Mount of Transfiguration. There you have at the same time, the initiates who govern the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. What happened? It was made manifest spiritually that through the appearance of Jesus, the whole power of the elements was renewed in such a way that the life pulsing through the elements passed through a new, important phase of its development. This is the transfiguration seen occultly. If somebody goes through the transfiguration in this manner, if he has within himself the stages of water, earth and air, and even rises to the forces of fire, then he is a reawakened one, someone who has gone through the crucifixion. Thus, in the case of the other evangelists, this scene is but a preparation for the deeper initiation scene of the crucifixion itself. In the John Gospel, everything is already prepared. The preparatory scene does not appear, only the death on the Mount of Golgotha. Jam, Nur, Ruach, Jabascha—INRI—this is the meaning of the words on the cross.

One can go deeper and deeper into the religious texts and never finish learning. Sometimes when one hears an explanation like this it sounds forced. But every step that leads you deeper will furnish evidence that it is not forced. Superficial explanations seek to avoid the “depths” purposely. But there are depths in these writings. Those who know something can always say to themselves: probably there is much more in it, I have still much to learn. This is the attitude of reverence that we can bring to religious texts.

This reverence is of the utmost importance, for it will become strength in us drawn from the depths. There is one important sentence that I can only touch on. In chapter 19, verse 33,we find: “But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already they brake not his legs ... ” and in verse 36, “For these things were done, that the scripture should be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.” You know that this reminds one of a passage in one of the books of Moses (Exodus 12:46). Rightly understood, it has a deep meaning. It is deeply symbolical, but I can only touch on it.

If you look around the world you will have to admit that man as he is now incarnated in the flesh has no power over life, nor over what stands, above life. He is only master of the lifeless inorganic forces. Man cannot oblige a plant to grow, or to grow faster. He would have to acquire occult power, to do so. Far less is he able to master what is higher than life forces. What he is able to control is the lifeless outer world. There, he exerts his mastery in everyday work over the materials with which nature provides him. He creates works of art, pictures of the Almighty, but he cannot breathe life into them. He can only copy life. He cannot awaken an intimation of life in the lifeless, even in the most sublime Christian works of art. This is so because man has enfolded his astral and etheric forces in the solid, dense physical body. Thus he came to have this relation to the outer world—to be master only of the lifeless. The higher forces which are not tied to the physical must be awakened, and then man will again be able to master life. As it is, he can only control physical forces, and not life itself.

This is connected with the fact that the human body which was once soft and pliable has now become more and more solid. If you go back in evolution you will see that man has changed very much. In Lemurian times he had no skeleton. This was formed later. The bones were the last things to appear in the human organism. He will have them until he has spiritualised himself again, until he has awakened again his inner forces and learned the lesson which he can only learn in this dense body with its hard skeleton. Christ Jesus is that spirit whose cosmic mission it was to be incarnated in just such a body in order to show man the way out of this world into a higher world. He is the leader and guide into the higher world. That which has to find its way into the higher world is symbolised by the solid human skeleton. As long as man had not reached the stage of having a hard skeleton, he did not need a Messiah. But for this present epoch he needs the Messiah, the Redeemer.

Thus it is evident that the forces in Jesus which are connected with the higher world do not concern present day humanity. We can express it by calling the skeleton the exterior; water, the etheric body; blood, the astral body; and then the spirit. *[First Epistle of John, ch. 5, v. 8, (literally) “And there are three that bear witness: the spirit and the water and the blood.”] Therefore blood and water can flow from the body of Christ. These are of no import for the present cycle of human development. On the other hand, that which supports the whole, which leads man upwards to the throne of the Eternal, what he needs in order to learn the lesson, that must be kept uninjured. This is the skeleton, the symbol for the lifeless in nature. Through this skeleton, Christ is connected with the present cycle of man's development. This is what must be kept intact until such time as man shall have reached higher stages. We can follow this back to the corresponding passages in the Books of Moses. But this can be done some other time.

Today I wanted to add something which will have shown you that the John Gospel is inexhaustible, and how full it is of strength and life. As we take it in and absorb it, it gives us strength and life. This is why this gospel is the leading scripture for those who wish to penetrate deeper and deeper into theosophical Christianity. If theosophy is to work for Christianity it is from this, above all, that it must start. But clearly, if I were to explain the John Gospel in its entirety to you, I should have to take the whole winter. I should have to take it sentence by sentence and then you would see how deep are the words ascribed to John, i.e. to him whose very name indicates that he is a herald of the higher self. He is the representative of air, and master of the higher forces, who, from the perception of the higher self, wrote his Gospel according to St. John.

It would be futile and in vain, to attempt to fathom, or criticise this gospel with the powers of the ordinary intellect. In our time the intellect has achieved great things, but the John Gospel is not written for the intellect. Only he who has overcome the intellect and is able to lead it to the heights of spirit power as John did, can understand his gospel. Theosophy would be quite wrong to undertake an intellectual critique of this John Gospel. Instead, it should immerse itself in it, in order to understand it. Then we should see that a new spirit of Christianity—not only the spirit of the past, but a future Christianity, can proceed from the John Gospel. We will become aware of the deep truth of one of the most beautiful and profound sayings of Christ. Out of his mouth we are told that Christianity is not something that has merely lived in the past, but that the same power still lives today. True it is what Christ said: I am with you always, even unto the end of time.

• 1. “Stand aside in the coming battle, and though thou fightest, be not thou the warrior.” Light on the Path, Mabel Collins, Theosophical University Press. Pasadena, California, 1971.

Today's talk is connected with the broader theme we have talked about here so often recently. As we have seen, we need to look at the activities, thinking, and beliefs of our times that resist and oppose spiritual science as we understand it. We believe this spiritual science must become a necessary part of human cultural development in the present and the near future. Thus, what I have presented here is connected to the outlook of spiritual science as well as to the whole impulse or force on which our movement is based. And in this context I want to add a few remarks today.

Again and again we have to caution people against letting certain ideas and concepts that are meaningful in our spiritual science become merely empty words. We have to warn particularly against approaching the ideas of spiritual science—in many respects a new acquisition of humanity—with old ways of thinking and old habits of soul. For instance, we must not approach such conceptions as “ahrimanic” and “luciferic” with all the usual feelings and ideas these words evoke. We need only picture how the name Lucifer in southern regions brings up the concept of demons prevailing there. However, when we arrive at the spiritual scientific view of Lucifer, we should not have the same negative ideas and feelings connected with the old idea of demons. Nor should the ideas that arose in human souls when the medieval views of the devil were alive be applied unhesitatingly to our concept of the ahrimanic.

We must be aware that the world as it presents itself to us is in a state of equilibrium or balance. The beam of a scale does not come to rest in a straight horizontal position just because it is a beam, but only because equal weights hang down from it on both sides and balance each other out. It is the same with everything in our world. The world exists neither because of a state of rest nor because of nothingness, but because of the balance created by the possibility of deviating radically from what is right and good either toward Lucifer or toward Ahriman.

Anyone who says that we simply have to guard against everything ahrimanic and luciferic is in the same position as people who say they want a scale, but don't want to put weights on either side. For instance, we know there would be no art if the luciferic element did not play a role in the world. On the other hand, we also know there would be no observation and understanding of nature if the ahrimanic element did not play a part, too. It is only a matter of establishing a balance in the human heart and soul. And that is why we can fall prey to the ahrimanic and luciferic elements just when we think we are rejecting everything ahrimanic and luciferic. We can sin against reality, but we cannot suppress it!

Thus, those who want to avoid everything ahrimanic will easily fall prey to the luciferic, and those who are trying to avoid the luciferic will be easy prey for Ahriman. The point is to find the balance, to fear neither the one nor the other, and to have enough courage to face both ahrimanic fear as well as luciferic hope or desire. But our culture does not like this; on the contrary, our contemporary culture, unknowingly and without wanting to, loves the ahrimanic and the luciferic. Believing it is avoiding them, it becomes all the more completely their prey.

Talking in general terms and abstractions usually leads absolutely nowhere. We can only get somewhere if we approach these important problems in life in a concrete way. That is why I chose so many specific examples that show how one can find a balance in life, the balance between rest and movement, between unity and diversity.

Now there are philosophers, or people dealing with world views, who say they are striving for unity. That sounds very fine but is purely luciferic. Others are striving for diversity and don't want to have anything to do with unity. Though this can be fruitful today, it is ahrimanic. Only those really strive for balance who seek unity in diversity and look for diversity in such a way that it reveals unity. It is simply a matter of finding a way to really do this. I can only mention a few sins against this balance.

In our times, one such sin is perpetrated primarily in the way people view history. How do they view history? They study how events follow each other and how they are connected in time through the law of cause and effect—at least that's what people think. What happens immediately after one event is taken as its consequence, and people try to explain the latter on the basis of what preceded it. However, as a rule people's memory these days is very short, as we can see from the fact that for nearly two years now people have been talking about historical events, the events leading to this terribly tragic war, as if the world had only begun in July of 1914! They forget so easily what happened before that. From our reading we know people have forgotten what happened prior to that date. But aside from that, when people look at history at all, they link events to the ones that preceded them, and those in turn they connect with other preceding events. Thus, the individual events are strung up like beads on a necklace, and the result is then called history.

This way we will never find the truth, at least not the kind of historical truth that will help us in life. Although events do indeed follow upon one another, one of them may be far more important than another. Sometimes a particular event taking place at a particular time may mean much more for the understanding of what follows than other events happening at the same time. The point is to find the right events, the right facts. I have often called this way of looking at history a symptomatic view of history, in contrast to the merely pragmatic view so popular nowadays. The symptomatic approach to history tries to understand our inner, spiritual evolution on the basis of symptoms, and it finds at certain times particular events that are of far greater significance than other, concurrent happenings.

This approach to history is basically a Goethean one. Goethe made it part of his whole outlook not to see events simply lined up side by side. Instead, he saw events as significant for the course of human history depending on whether the spiritual revealed itself in them to a greater or lesser extent. Someday people will write the history of the current tragic conflicts by describing certain specific events of recent decades, and from these they will understand why the current situation has come about. Today is not the time to explain these facts; they would only be misunderstood. But in the future historians will report events that people now ignore when they read about them. However, if I may say so, truth shines forth from these events.

Over the last few years I have told you about all kinds of facts with the intention to speak about the true spiritual course of events by means of them. Now, I have spoken more abstractly about the issue of history because if I had discussed certain facts in more detail—which would have clarified contemporary events—I would have had to talk about things that people don't want to hear about nowadays.

Those who do not look at history in this symptomatic way do not find the balance between the ahrimanic and the luciferic and fall prey to an ahrimanic view of history. The modern view of history is largely ahrimanic. Facts are not weighed properly. People believe they are evaluating facts and events but are not really doing it. Generally, they do not even know what the most important facts are because those are just the ones they consider the least important. But the opposite also happens, and we can talk about that in more detail. The opposite happens when people don't take facts into account at all, but develop general truths out of their hearts and souls; they carry these with them throughout life, trying to apply them everywhere. No matter how different the situations they may be in, they always try to apply the same tmth. That is really a kind of luciferic exaggeration, but it is what people prefer these days. They want to have a kind of essence of tmth that will never change and will carry them through each and every situation—that is what they would like. But that won't do at all. We have to find the balance.

Now I would like to explain what I mean. You see, people may go through the world, they may stand on a mountain and take in the wide expanses of nature. Well, they look at everything but don't connect it with the spiritual. Or people may go into homes where misery reigns; they look at everything, are touched by it, and feel sympathy. But what they think about the deepest mysteries of human existence is always the same; they carry the same thoughts into every situation. In the old folk wisdom, which is now on the decline, we can find a clear striving for balance in the soul. Thus it could happen that someone walked through a village at the time when there were still sundials—of course, nowadays sundials could not very easily be used for they cannot be set an hour back or ahead; that is impossible! But in the days when sundials were still of importance, someone might have passed through a village, seen a sundial, and found words written under it that were quite impressive. For example, people could find the following words under a sundial:

I am a shadow.
So too art thou!
I reckon with time;
And thou?

Just think, such profound words under a sundial, “I am a shadow. So too art thou!” A shadow cast by the sun. “I reckon with time. And thou?” Here, out of direct perception of a concrete reality, speaks the profound truth that human life is but a shadow of what works and weaves in the spiritual world. How vividly this comes to meet the weary wanderer, imprinting itself in his heart, when he steps before the sundial and sees the shadow! The sundial then points out to him: “A shadow so too art thou! I reckon with time. And thou?” Just imagine, these are profound and powerful questions for us, for our conscience: “Do you reckon with time? Are you finding your place in your time?” That is what I mean by saying balance must be sought.

It is important that people stop letting facts work side by side, each as important as the others and instead realize that there are important facts that can speak to us of great and eternal truths. Then what lives in the human soul and what is spread out in the universe can unite. We find ourselves truly united with the truth of the world only if we continuously come upon the truth in our interaction with the world, only if we don't insist on carrying a priori truths in us and don't walk by a sundial as we would by a plow or something like that. Instead, in looking at things, we must be instructed about the most noble and greatest striving that can light up in human souls.

This living together with outer reality, with all that is spread out throughout the universe, this feeling oneself at the right moment face to face with the eternal, is something quite different from learning out of books that this or that is an everlasting truth. No matter how often we abstractly impress upon ourselves that human life is a shadow of what happens to us in eternity, no matter how many beautiful ethical truths about the use of time we impress upon our memory, none of them will ever reach as deep as the finding of a right relationship between ourselves and outer reality. Then we will see a significance in the individual concrete fact, and only then will we find the balance in life we can never find by losing ourselves in the external world or by merely immersing ourselves deeply into our inner being. Mysticism is one-sided and luciferic; natural science is onesided and ahrimanic. But mysticism developed through observation of external nature or observation of nature deepened to mysticism, that is balance!

Let us take another example. Suppose someone were hiking one morning in a beautiful area in the Alps, noticing the song of the birds, the beauty of the woods, perhaps even the marvelous virginal purity of the water as it babbles its way downhill in brooks, and so on. Imagine the hiker wandered for an hour, maybe, or an hour and a half, and then came upon a simple wooden crucifix. The hiker may be inwardly glad, having all the forces of gladness in his soul shaken awake because he or she has seen beautiful, great, noble, and sublime views. But the hiker is also weary and approaches this place where a simple wooden crucifix stands in the midst of beautiful and wonderfully sublime nature. On the crucifix there are the following words:

Stay your steps, wanderer,
Look on my wounds.
Wounds abide,
Hours glide.
Take heed, and guard thy way,
Beware what on the judgment day
O'er thee as verdict I shall say.

The experience we can have on reading these words can be greater and can touch our hearts more profoundly than what we may experience on seeing the figure of Christ in Michelangelo's famous painting in the Sistine Chapel. The author of the words I have just spoken is unknown. Yet, all those who understand anything about poetry know that the person who wrote the words: “Wounds abide, hours glide,” is one of the greatest poets of all time. But first one has to have a feeling for this and know that true poetry is the poetry that pours out of the human soul in the right place. Not all words that rhyme, not all that passes for poetry is true poetry. But it is true poetry when out of Christianity's eternal truths there pours forth:

Stay your steps, wanderer,
Look on my wounds.
Wounds abide,
Hours glide.
Take heed, and guard thy way,
Beware what in the judgment day
O'er thee as verdict I shall say.

These are simple words, sublime words—grandest poetry! To be made aware of the greatest event in the evolution of the earth while surrounded by sublime nature and its graceful beauty means to experience with the soul the reality in the universe. This is only an example and a more profoundly touching one than the previous one of the sundial. The important thing is to develop in life so that when we meet with such things, we do not pass by reality but experience the human soul growing together with reality and maintain the balance even in our relation to what was not made by human beings, but was given by the eternal powers. We can perceive the spiritual world only when our striving is neither only one-sided mysticism, nor only one-sided observation of nature, but instead is directed toward the union of both.

I have to say this because it is part of what present-day humanity has the least real feeling for and what it can least experience. That is why spiritual science is so difficult for people to understand nowadays. What it offers is obliterated as much by a one-sided search for an all-purpose insight as by accepting the external world pretty much without seeking the symptomatic traits and the revelation of the spiritual in various events. That is what our contemporaries have the least understanding for. If they had it, there would be much less versifying and, if I may say so, much less defining. For definitions only lead people to overestimate words, and versifying leads them to misuse words. A poem such as the one under the simple crucifix—well, nobody knows who wrote it—surely originated in a time when a profound poetical sensibility lived in the hearts and souls of the people and true balance reigned in their souls.

Alas, people in our age have become inured to true poetry because there is much too much verse around, and poetry begets more poetry just as unhealthy living produces cancer. Encouraging everybody to write poems based on what already exists in poetry is the same on the cultural and spiritual level as stimulating the life process to produce cancerous growth. In this respect we have seen the most precious fruits of the art of versifying at the end of the nineteenth century. As you may know, one of the most biting critics in Berlin had to call himself Alfred Kerr, because his real name was Kempner, a name that could not be used at the end of the nineteenth century since it brought to mind Friederike Kempner.¹ Yes, she, too, was a poet. We need only remember one of her pretty poems—I won't recite many such verses, but just this one:

America, thou land of dreams,
Thou world of wonder, broad and long!
Thy trees of coconut how fair,
Thy busy solitude how strong!

This is a very striking example, but many contemporary poems, though less striking are just like this one, and many concepts formed are just like Friederike Kempner's “busy solitude.” For people nowadays often have no feeling for how strongly the adjective contradicts the noun when they speak or write. These things simply must be realized,- there is no other way. After all, quite a few people nowadays speak as though they did not take language to be just gesture, which is all words really are. I have pointed out to you how clumsy a theory like Fritz Mauthner's is.² He wants to reduce all philosophy and all world views to mere semantics and wrote three hefty volumes as well as a whole dictionary in two volumes, which lists alphabetically all philosophical terms but not a single philosophical concept.³ He completely disregards the fact that a word relates to its concept like a gesture. People always forget this in their world view. In everyday reality it cannot be forgotten; there we cannot easily confuse a table with the word “Table,” and we won't expect to learn about tables from the word “table.” But in philosophy and in matters of world view that is what happens all the time.

Well, Fritz Mauthner should just meet what we call in Austria a “Bohemian Privy Counselor” (“böhmischer Hofrat”). He would enter “Bohemian” in his dictionary and explain all sorts of things and then do the same with “Privy Counselor.” However, a “Bohemian Privy Counselor” is neither a Bohemian nor a Privy Counselor, in fact, he can be a Styrian office messenger. In Austria, we call all people “Bohemian Privy Counselor” who advance in their careers on shoes that make no more noise than slippers and who push aside their rivals without the latter noticing anything. In other words, they don't have to be Bohemians or Privy Counselors. Clearly, the meaning of this expression cannot be gotten from the words alone; they are merely a gesture.

That is what we have to realize: words are gestures. The larynx makes gestures, which become audible by means of the air, just as our hands or arms make gestures, which we cannot hear only because they are too slow. The larynx makes its gestures so quickly they become audible. The only difference lies in the quickness of the larynx. And just as it is wrong to describe somebody's gesture pointing to the table rather than describing the table, so it is wrong, in the cultural and spiritual realm, to use words to get to any truths about their concepts or the things they name.

Errors of this kind occur very frequently these days. People rely completely on words. When I was a young man—well, actually not yet a young man; I was only a boy and went to school in Wiener-Neustadt in lower Austria—I learned a little verse that has kept me from setting great store by definitions and explanations of words in general. This little verse was written on a building as the motto of the house, so to speak; it reads as follows:

I, Hans Carouser,
Prefer wine to water.
If I preferred water to wine,
Carouser would be no name of mine!

That is roughly what the modern definitions of words are often like. That is, one first makes up a definition and then formulates the explanation so that it fits, for if it didn't fit, then things would not be as they are. If you remember this little verse, you will be shielded from so much that emerges these days and is clearly visible in our so-called cultural life. Much, very much appears in our age. All these things are likely to divert our attention more and more from looking at the spiritual, from realizing that spirit reigns and weaves in what is real, in everything around us.

To an ever greater extent, we, and indeed the world, are losing all connection with the spiritual. For just talking about the spiritual does not bring it to us. A gesture pointing to a reality does not have the same meaning in regard to the reality concerned as the imitation of that gesture by another person in another room does. But what will become of our world if it loses all contact with the spiritual, if it casts off all that is spiritual? It is strange that people hardly seem to notice that they are losing the connection to the spiritual world. Humanity needs world views; people do not want to live without a world view. Yet, our modern time is largely without spirituality, without faith, or even an inclination to spirituality. However, not all those who are not inclined to spirituality can make do without a world view. And then strange justifications for a world view appear!

For example, in these last few weeks, I have been thinking about a man I spent much time with around the turn of the century, between 1898 and 1901 or so. Back then he was striving for a world view but unable to construct one. He was searching for it in Haeckelism, but apparently did not find that satisfactory. Then I completely lost touch with him. Now I see that this same man, thoroughly educated in the natural sciences, is indeed still striving for a world view, but he has the most peculiar ideas about the reasons why people arrive at world views. And incidentally, he also includes religion under the category “world view.” Someone who lives totally in the merely external, material understanding of facts, in the ahrimanic reality, cannot really feel justified integrating these facts into a world view. Now if he is nevertheless looking for a world view, how is he supposed to justify this search? We can see especially from this example how misguided people can be these days. Still, they are all honestly striving people.

Now this man I mentioned admits that on the basis of what the conventional sciences give us, on the basis of what is simply “the truth,” one cannot build a world view. How then do we arrive at a world view? We do not get it through our senses; our intellect, which is necessarily bound to the senses, also does not lead us to a world view—so what is left?

Well, this man hit upon the idea to look for the source of a world view in a place typical for our times, namely in psycho-sexuality! How do people build their world views? Through the fact that they are sexual beings! If we were not sexual beings, we would not integrate events and facts into a world view but would merely perceive them. I would like to read you a passage typical of this man's thinking:

If we follow Schopenhauer's thoughts to their logical conclusion, we can say that in psycho-sexuality there are supra-individual tendencies and strivings that ultimately have to be seen in connection with the metaphysical needs of human beings. These are expressed in the creation of religious feelings and ideas as well as in the formation and elaboration of integrated world views. At the same time, we find in psycho-sexuality an opposite pole, namely, a force that pulls human beings down into the depths of their darker side. Criminal instincts also spring from psycho-sexuality.

In other words, there are two poles in human nature, and both originate in psycho-sexuality. The one pole is religious feeling and thinking about a world view, the other, criminal instincts. Isn't it—I do not say sad, I say tragic—isn't it tragic to see where our time is heading?

These ideas are not to be taken lightly. Those who observe matters closely can see with what enormous speed these ideas are spreading. In my youth psychoanalysis, the Freudian theory, did not yet exist, and back then anyone who would have wanted to found it would have been considered a lunatic. Nowadays we have not only the Freudian theory, with its publications and with its representatives in all countries, but also psychoanalytical institutions all over the world where this psychoanalysis nonsense is practiced. These days, the most important and, as you have seen, even the most sacred experiences of the human soul are traced back to psycho-sexuality.

Humanity has indeed strayed very far from the paths it used to travel and to which spiritual science must lead it again. For what we are dealing with here cannot be refuted easily, because what is at stake when we speak about these things is the overall tendency of the soul, the whole form and understanding of the soul. When a pamphlet on psychosexuality appeared in our own Society—and a very superficially and badly written one at that—we had a big fight on our hands, which is not yet over. People could not understand why we thought such a booklet unsuitable. I told the author that the occultist is cautious in these matters because here only a very fine line, a thin spiderweb, so to speak, separates misunderstanding from the truth, and what is important is the whole attitude of the soul, and it is dangerous to speak of these things.

We will have to speak about these things for they are investigated by external science, where they will come to play a certain role. But first we must return to the direction the soul has to take so humanity can find its way to the spiritual.

In connection with the grotesque idea to look for the source of world views in psycho-sexuality, let me tell you about another fact, one sacred to all of us. I mean the fact that in the section on Paradise in the Bible, the Hebrew has been translated appropriately into our language, and we read: “And Adam knew his wife.” There you have knowledge, the concept of knowledge brought into connection with sexuality. But how? It is done exactly in the opposite way! This conceals a deep mystery. Only when people will come to things that are true on this opposite path, only then will light be shed upon these things. These truths must be looked at from the point of view of the spiritual if they are not to lead us astray. In the present age we must guard against the lack of respect for spiritual research, a lack that definitely exists. In the truest sense of the word, there is a general disrespect for the spiritual world. People believe that based on their experience of what is immediately in front of them, or on yesterday's experiences, they can intervene in the course of the world to reform and improve it.

A pathetic example of this has recently caught my attention. A man allowed himself to be so affected by the present tragic events of this terrible war that he concluded it would be a disaster if peace were ever to return to the world. He concluded that the war must continue because warfare is the natural condition of humanity. He wrote:

War is not leamt in a day. It is really fortunate that the threats of our enemies are speeding up the process of adaptation, above all this last threat of the complete destruction of our export trade. [You see, this must have been published very recently for it takes into account the Economic Conference in Paris.] Now nobody can evade the logical conclusion that peace would be a catastrophe, that war remains the only possibility. Up to now, war has been a reaction against provocation and a means to an end; from now on it will become an end in itself. From now on all those unredeemed German souls, and possibly even the most stalwart pacifists, will realize the error of their ways and see that their ideals are not relics but fossils. The whole nation as one man will demand eternal war ...

Educate people to hate, to revere hatred, to love hatred, to organize hatred! Away with immature timidity, away with a false sense of shame in the face of brutality and fanaticism! Even in terms of politics Marinelli's words hold good: “More slapping, less kissing.” We must not hesitate to announce blasphemously: “Ours are faith, hope, and hatred.” But hatred is the greatest of these.

Yes, my dear friends, such things exist. It can never be a matter of sticking one's head in the sand like an ostrich, but only of knowing where materialism leads, especially in its latest phase, when it is denied even by its adherents. In fact, things were better in the nineteenth century, in the days of Büchner, David Friedrich Strauss, and chubby Voit, the one who analyzed the metabolism, and all the others who at least declared themselves materialists.⁴ Nowadays materialism wears a hypocritical air, and people say it has long since been overcome. However, what they have put in its place, hypocritically denying it is materialism, is nothing else but materialism, an increasingly fierce materialism.

What we need, my dear friends, is Goetheanism; we need a world view that allows the soul to grow together with reality in its particular, characteristic phenomena. This Goetheanism is nothing else but the renewal of the true Christian life of feeling and experience.

Why do Orientals not understand the Mystery of Golgotha? They do not understand it because they cannot understand that one event is more significant than another. We understand the Mystery of Golgotha only when we know the difference between events, for only then can we realize that one event can give the earth its meaning. Only when we can see differences between events can we see one event as more important than another. In the Orient, we find at most a continual play of cycles, where everything is said to repeat itself. That the earth is based entirely on the fact that we have a time of preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha followed by the Mystery of Golgotha itself as the zenith of earth evolution, and then the living into it, this truth is what humanity will gradually have to understand, based on the symptomatic view of history, of course.

Everything spiritual science can give us will ultimately culminate in the Christian view of the world, which will prevail. As I have often said, spiritual science does not want to be a new kind of religion. Rather it wants to provide the tools for humanity, which would otherwise completely fall prey to materialism, to fully understand again the spiritual that is contained in Christianity. It is absolutely necessary to look with open eyes at our age, and that is much more important than any sentimental looking into it.

• 1. Alfred Kerr, real name Kempner, 1867–1948, German theater critic He was a relative of Friederike Kempner (1836–1904), a poet notorious for the unintended humor of her poems.
• 2. Fritz Mauthner, 1849–1923, German writer and theater critic. Exponent of philosophical Skepticism.
• 3. Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einei Kritik der Sprache (“Contributions to a Critique of Language”), 3 vols., 1901–2; Wörterbuch der Philosophie (“Dictionary of Philosophy”), 2 vols., 1910–11.
• 4. Friedrich Karl Christian Ludwig Buchner, 1824–1899, German physician and philosopher. Evolved philosophy of consistent, determinist materialism; roused controversy with view of mind and consciousness as epiphenoma of physical brain.
  
  David Friedrich Strauss, 1808–1874, German theologian and philosopher.
  
  Carl von Voit, 1831–1908, German physiologist. Conducted pioneering research on animal and human metabolism.

Today's deliberations will take as their starting point something that was already partially hinted at when I last had the opportunity to address you from this position. Today, we must once again consider the question that arises as a kind of conundrum of the times, but which is at the same time a profound riddle of humanity: How are the phenomena of nature, to which we are subject as physical subject to as physical beings, and the phenomena of the moral, ethical, and spiritual world, to which we must in some way profess to belong, because otherwise we cannot recognize our own human dignity? No matter how materialistic someone's outlook on knowledge may be, if he has even a rudimentary sense of human dignity, he will accept the difference between good and evil, between moral and immoral. And he will look up to the moral world, perhaps , if he is a materialist, reluctantly, but still in some way at least questioning, at least doubting, to the spiritual world, a spiritual world order that permeates the natural world to which we belong through our physical-sensual body. But if we consider what can emerge from the formation of our time to enlighten us about the nature of the world, we see that today human thinking, feeling and impulse are in profound conflict. This conflict cannot be resolved overnight, and it is not easy for modern man to find his way out of it. On the one hand, there is what science reports to him, which today has such tremendous success, that science, which rises from the contemplation of the external sensual world to justified or unjustified hypothetical views even about the beginning and end of the world, and on the other hand, there is the demand of the moral world. But how can the conflict between the two be resolved when, from the perspective of natural science, we learn that once upon a time there was a kind of cosmic fog; out of this cosmic fog the cosmos formed, our earth formed, initially in such a way that it was only a kind of mineral surge. Then gradually the plant and animal world emerged. Finally, man appeared. And if we then extend the same way of thinking, the same kind of lawfulness that we have envisaged, further to the becoming of the earth, we come to the conclusion that this earth will one day return to a kind of mineral surge, that the scene will no longer be able to support living beings, how, in other words, this scene will be a large cemetery that holds everything buried that was once alive, that was once ensouled and spiritualized. So there we are, between the mineralized world and yet again the mineralized world in the middle of it, having emerged from this mineralized world with all our organs, which actually represent only structures in which the substances that constitute the external world are interwoven more intricately than they are in the external world.

From what has emerged as a human being within this scientifically hypothetical world, the demand now arises to be moral, to be good, ideas and ideals arise in man, and the question must arise: What will become of the demands of the moral world, what will become of ideals, of ideas, when one day everything we understand scientifically, including man, will have fallen to the great final cemetery?

Of course, one can say that this is the extension of the scientific way of thinking to the hypothetical, and one does not actually need to go that far. But then one would have to at least raise the question: So where should one turn? Where can one gain any insight into the place of man in the universe, insofar as he is a moral being, a being who carries ideas and ideals within himself? This question would have to be raised if one did not admit to science the right to form hypotheses about the end of the earth and the beginning of the earth. But from all that is currently presented to man by recognized human science, which, after all, has been formed entirely out of natural science, no information can be given about man's place in the universe. I would like to explain what is emerging as a conflict in all human feeling in the present day and which is fundamentally intimately connected with all the forces of decline that are making themselves so terribly felt in our time by placing a man of the present day who has absorbed everything that is accepted as enlightenment, education and scientific knowledge in our time, in other words, a man who feels very clever in the present day. I will place him on one side and on the other side I will place a person from the Greek cultural community, a person who lived in the pre-Socratic period, still in the time from which so little has survived, such as individual sayings of the great philosophers Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and so on. I would like to place such an educated Greek next to the very clever people of the present. And not just a Greek in his present reincarnation, because if he were in a human body, he would probably also be a very clever person of the present, but I want to place him here as he was as a Greek. So in his embodiment as a Greek, I want to confront him with a very clever person of the present.

A person from that time would say: Yes, you modern people, you know nothing about humanity, because you also know nothing real about the world.

– “Why?” the clever person of the present would ask.

He would say: We have come to know a number of seventy elements, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur and so on. We are, however, now at the point where it seems that all these elements can be traced back to one; but we are not yet at the point where we can trace them back to one. We recognize these seventy-two elements, which mix and unmix, combine and separate, and which actually make up everything that happens in the physical-sensual world. Everything you see is based on the connection and disconnection of these elements.

The ancient Greeks would say: It's all very well having seventy-something elements, but you certainly won't get to know the human being with all these elements. There can be no question of that, because the beginning of knowledge of man - the ancient Greek would say - must be made by not speaking of seventy-two or seventy-six elements, of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and so on, but the beginning of knowledge of man must be made by saying: Everything that surrounds us externally, sensually, consists of earth, water, air and fire.

Now the clever person of the present day would say: Yes, that was once, that was in childhood, when one did not yet know as much as we do today. Then one said: earth, water, air and fire, but we have outgrown these childish things. Then four elements were assumed; now we know that there are seventy-six elements. That was a very childish way of looking at things. We know that water is not an element. We know that air should not be spoken of as an element either. We know that heat, fire, is not a material at all. We are tremendously clever. You were just at a childish stage of world view.

Now perhaps the Greek might reply: I have already studied your seventy elements, and the way you look at them – and it is the way of looking at them that matters – is that, in our conceptualized world, these seventy elements belong to the earth, not to water, not to air, not to fire, but to the earth. It is nice of you that you can differentiate and specify this earth and also think of it in great variety, split into seventy-two or seventy-six elements, that is all nice; we were not yet ready to get to know these interesting details, but we have summarized all this under the expression “earth.” But what we understand by water, air and fire, you understand nothing about, and because you understand nothing about it, you cannot have any knowledge of human nature. For you see — as the Greek of this time would say — there are two kinds of people: firstly, the human being who walks around between birth and death, first as a child and then as an adult, and then the human being who lies there as a corpse for a few days and then is in the grave. We are only talking about the physical human being – the Greeks would say – and there is this twofold form: the human being who walks from birth to death, and then the human being whom one sees for a few days as a corpse and who then lies in the grave. And what you learn from your seventy-two or seventy-six elements that combine and release, that only refers to the human being who lies in the grave, to the human corpse. You can recognize with your chemistry and physics how things are in the human being as a human corpse, but you cannot recognize anything at all about the human being who walks around alive between birth and death. You have a science that only refers to the observation of a person after he has died. You understand nothing about the living human being. You have happily reduced your science to a science of the dead human being, not at all of the living human being. For if you want to have a science of the living human being, then you must first observe the comprehensive, universal weaving and living of that which we call “water”. We do not call the coarse liquid element that runs in the brook water, but we call water everything where cold and moisture interact in the world; we call that water — as the Greeks would say. And in that we want to form a living image of what is intermingled there of moisture and cold in all forms, then we are first of all led to imagine not with mere concepts, with mere ideas, with mere abstractions, but in images. And the Greek will now say: If you can perceive moisture with some sensation of cold, when that passes into other moist things, shaped by the moist element or revealing itself in another sensation of cold, then you get living, weaving images in moisture and cold. And one ascends to the comprehension of the plant world and begins to understand the interweaving of the watery and cold element in such a way that, now not in the gross material water, but in this weaving of cold and watery, the plant world arises in spring in images, how it tears itself from the ground, how it tears itself through the watery in itself from the cold, because the earth is dry and cold. And in the formation of the plant world through spring, summer and autumn, we see another weaving of the watery element, and we grow in the mighty imagination of this outer weaving and life of the watery element. But the whole plant world with its formations is in it.

And so the Greek says: It is not a sensual thing that matters to us, but what one has as a super-sensual thing; weaving cold and damp, that is what matters to us. And we perceive the weaving and life of the plant world in this liquid, watery element within it. If we get to know this, not through abstract concepts, but through these images, which themselves inspire us to be inwardly active, then we need only look back into ourselves and we perceive in what we can observe outside in spring, summer, autumn and winter, in the emerging plant world, in the overcoming of the cold by warmth, in all that takes place towards autumn and again towards winter, in all this we perceive something that we can then imagine as a miniature image. When a person falls asleep, something happens in him that is very similar to spring, and as he continues to sleep, something similar happens in him that is like the sprouting, sprouting summer life. And when the person wakes up again, it is like winter life. You see a miniature image of the outer life, insofar as this outer life produces the vegetative, in what the human etheric body is. The Greeks would have said: In your seventy-two or seventy-six elements you only get to know the human corpse. But this human corpse is permeated by something that can only be known in pictures, but in such pictures, which arise when one thinks of the vegetative, one thus interprets the watery element. There you learn to recognize what, from birth to death, as the etheric body, makes active what you learn through your quite a few seventy elements to be the element of death. And by not rising to the watery element, you also never get to know the human being as a living being.

But now something else begins. That is just earth, which represents the dead in man. The moment a person dies, his body is taken over by the earth, by the many seventy elements; the lawfulness of the earth, the lawfulness of the earth element, extends over him. Where is the lawfulness of the element that is the watery? This lawfulness is not on earth, this lawfulness is out there in the cosmos. And if you want to look for — as the Greek would say — who brings forth this surging of the cold and damp through spring, summer, autumn and winter, you have to look up into the cosmic element, first to the planets, then to the fixed stars, look up into the vastness of the cosmos. Your earthly element is only valid in relation to the human being when he lies in the grave; the human being who walks around here on earth is, in every single moment, insofar as he carries his etheric body within him, subject to the laws of the cosmos. These are the laws that come into effect from the weaving of the planets or from the forces of the fixed stars. And so essential for the Greeks in the time I have indicated was the watery element that they would have said: In what the watery element is that surrounds the earth, clouds it, or discharges itself in thunderstorms, insofar as this watery element is effective, the cosmos is effective in the earth with its forces. What takes place in the watery element has nothing to do with the earthly element or with earthly things in general. It is to be sought in the cosmos, and there man rises into the cosmic element, simply because he has within him an active etheric body, which the elements snatch from the fate, let us say, of chemistry, between birth and death.

But with that, one has actually not yet grasped the human being in truth. One has only grasped what permeates him as life forces, what makes him grow, what causes him to be able to digest, what accompanies him as life forces between birth and death. But a third one – and the ancient Greek philosophers I mentioned would also have pointed this out – asserts itself in the human being, which is certainly active the whole time between birth and death, but actually asserts itself in a very special, unique way, not like the usual life forces. These are the forces that lie in our rhythmic system, in our respiratory system, in our blood circulation system and so on, everything that is rhythm, rhythmic activity in us.

You will be able to sense a certain connection between your not merely physical life, but your being as a soul, and breathing, if you bring to mind the following, which every human being knows. You will have woken up at times with a particular fear. You emerge with the awareness of a sense of anxiety and you notice: there is something wrong with your breathing. Certainly, the connection between breathing and the life of the soul is a mysterious one; but it can at least be perceived when a person wakes up with nightmares and when he notices the irregularity of his breathing. There is a connection between the life of the soul, between all the surging feelings and emotions within us, the feelings of fear and anxiety, the feelings of joy and pleasure, and the rhythm of breathing and the rhythm of circulation. This rhythmic system is something other than the mere system of life. This rhythmic system has to do with our being as soul; it has a great deal to do with our life of soul and our soul nature. It is, after all, the air that we breathe that actually stimulates the entire rhythmic system, and in ancient times people still spoke of the element of air and its relationship to human beings, for example in the time when the mystery schools studied the rhythms that regulate human inner activity, but from which at the same time the meter of Homer, the hexameter, was derived. If you take the average normal breathing and circulation rhythm, you have the following: you take about eighteen breaths and four times as many heartbeats in one minute. The ratio of blood rhythm to breathing rhythm is four to one. Take the hexameter: long, short, short – long, short, short – long, short, short: three feet and the caesura is the fourth. The four beats that fall on the half of the breath; after the caesura: dactyl, dactyl, dactyl, again the caesura. The inner structure of the Homeric verse and, in general, the inner structure of the old verses is taken from the human rhythmic system. In the peculiar structure of the Homeric verse, we find the expression of the relationship between blood circulation and respiratory rhythm. By taking seriously the element of air that unites with man and then separates from man, one felt that one absorbs something into oneself that has to do with the regular experiences of the human soul. And by speaking of the air element, the Greek began to speak of the most beautiful and also the most ordinary aspects of the human soul, and he remembered that a human being takes 25,920 breaths in the course of a twenty-four-hour day, and that the sun goes around the entire vault of heaven once every 25,920 years with its vernal point. And he harmonized the rhythm of the world with the daily rhythm of the human being. He pointed out the connection between the soul of the world and the soul of man, and he said: With the life that flows between birth and death, which in its twenty-four-hour course presents us with a miniature picture of spring, summer, autumn and winter, of this aqueous lawfulness that spreads out for the cold and damp in space, and moisture in the universe, which is governed by the cosmic, in this relationship between the human etheric and the cosmic, which expresses itself in the seasons, which is expressed in the change of weather, which is regulated by the movements of the planets, in this relationship we have what expresses itself in the human etheric body. When we come to the rhythmic system, we have to turn to the air element. We have to turn to what, in ancient times, when it was better understood, gave rise to the formation of that soul element that came to light in verse construction, because people sensed the connection between the human soul and the soul of the world. One still comes into the spatial when one observes life. One must indeed ascend into the cosmic-spatial. But one comes out of space and perceives what is sent into it from time as rhythm into space, when we turn to the rhythmic system.

You see, in the rhythmic element, which is the air element, the Greeks still perceived something of what they said: the human soul is rooted in the world soul, and it is the world soul itself that lives in its rhythm and sends the miniature images of its rhythm into human life. Outside, the world soul causes the spring equinox to advance a little each year; in 25,920 years it moves around the entire solar orbit, and in 25,920 breaths a day, a person has a miniature image in his or her rhythm of an immensely long world rhythm. In twenty-four hours, the human being presents a rhythm within himself that is a reflection of a cosmic year lasting 25,920 years. Thus, the human being is rooted in the soul of the world, in that he is within the soul of the world with his soul, lives within it.

If we then ascend to the element of fire, we have not only the soul, but also the spiritual that permeates us with the ego; we also have that which finds its physical expression in the element of blood. Just as we perceive the relationship of the human soul to the soul of the world through the element of air, so we perceive the relationship of the human spirit, of the human ego, to the spirit of the world through the element of warmth or fire. In earlier times, man was led up into spiritual regions by hearing about those elements that today's quite clever man thinks have arisen from a childish way of thinking. On the contrary, we must find our way back to this way of thinking; only we must reach it fully consciously, not instinctively, as it was in those days. But if we first penetrate into the watery element, we experience the world itself as a great living thing, because we are immediately led into the cosmos with its sources of life. We experience the world as a living thing. When we enter the rhythmic element, we experience the world as ensouled, and when we then enter the element of warmth, we experience the world as spiritualized.

But you cannot get to know the watery element through our abstract concepts, through all the concepts that you can get today if you go through elementary school, through secondary school, through high school, through universities; with all these concepts, you do not gain anything with which you could grasp the watery element. This must be grasped with imagination; it reveals itself only in images. Then, in a certain respect, the ordinary abstract way of thinking must be transformed into a concrete way of thinking, into an artistic conception of the world. The modern philosopher will immediately object: it is impossible to grasp the world in pictures; it is impossible to grasp the world artistically. I am constructing a theory of knowledge; the laws of nature must be encompassed by logic. It must be possible to express everything one wants to understand about the world in abstract concepts and abstract laws. People can demand this and they can base such epistemologies, but when nature creates artistically, it cannot be captured by such epistemologies; then it must be grasped in images. We cannot dictate to nature how she should be understood; instead, we must listen to how she wants to be understood. And it can only be grasped in its watery element of the plant world through imagination, and it can only be grasped in its rhythmic life, out into the rhythms of the world, through inspiration, through the pursuit of rhythmic life, through living into the life of breathing.

If you have nightmares, then you are oppressed by the rhythm of the world, which comes over you so vehemently that you cannot bear it. But if, after going through certain exercises, you can now crawl into this air element yourself, can move with the rhythm yourself, then you enter into the world of inspiration, then you are outside your body, just as the air itself, which moves in, is outside your body. Then you move with the air into and out of the body. Then you move on to the concept of what man truly is, not what lies in the grave after his death and what today's science can grasp.

But at the same time, one must rise from abstract concepts, from mere logical images to imaginations, to inspirations and then to intuitions. Today, however, abstract life is being taken very far. It is spirited. One can think up the following so beautifully. I may have mentioned it here before, but it is important to point out such things again and again.

You travel past two places at a decent speed. A cannon is fired at one place, and a cannon is fired at a slightly later point in time at another place that you pass later. Then you hear the cannonade from the place where the shot is fired later, of course only after you have heard the bang from the first place. Now you can easily imagine the following: If you move faster and faster, you will finally move at the speed of sound. If you move as fast as sound travels, then when you pass the second location, you will be able to perceive the two bangs at the same time. And if you move even faster than sound, you will perceive the later bang first and the earlier one later, because you will have outrun it by moving faster than sound.

There is a lot of speculation like this today. You think to yourself: How do I hear two cannons being fired if I move faster than the sound? I fly away from the sound; then, right, I must also hear the one fired later earlier than the one fired earlier and which I have run away from! You see, you have the possibility of forming something quite logical, but it is not realistic. Because if you were to move as fast as sound, you would be sound yourself and you would make a sound yourself, you would merge into sound, you would merge with sound. It is impossible for someone who thinks realistically to engage in such speculations. But such speculations are being made today. They are called Einstein's theories. Einstein goes to America; the newspapers spread the word that he has had enormous success, but that he said in London that not a single person in America understood him. So then he had his success with all those who did not understand him. Perhaps. But in London it was a great folly to present these abstractions, which of course originated in a very abstract mind, as the greatest and most significant world event, and even the old Lord Haldane felt obliged to emphasize what actually happened there. Basically, nothing more has happened than that a human being has taken abstraction, the spirit of unreality, the study of concepts and ideas, to the extreme, concepts and ideas that are completely alien to reality and have even less in itself than the power of the kind of logic that relates to the dead man in the grave; because with Einstein's concepts, you can no longer even grasp the corpse, but only an extract of the corpse. But basically there is no corrective at all against what is spreading among humanity today. This corrective is only present in anthroposophical spiritual science, which in turn seeks to find the way to concepts that are in line with reality. And these concepts that are in line with reality lead us out into the worlds, for example, which still appear spatial as cosmic worlds. Here we have the world before us as one great living organism, more or less as Goethe spoke of this world in the powerful intuition of the prose hymn 'Nature'. But then, ascending from this world, we come to the soul of the world, to the rhythm of the world, to that which was once called the harmony of the spheres. One comes to the world rhythms when one cultivates it, when one transforms it into imaginations, into rhythms. This is where one has what I tried to present in my 'Occult Science in Outline', where the world rhythm is presented and from the world rhythm the formation of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth time and the future Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan time. These things are the elaboration of world events from the world rhythm. But just look at the way these successive, unfolding world rhythms are spoken of! First, the human being belongs to these world rhythms. The human being does not arise out of some sort of swirling, out of a mineral or animal swirling, but the human being arises out of the spiritualized world as a whole, and as far as we find world, we also find the human being. But you find something else as well: when you approach the world where rhythms are mentioned, you cannot help but speak of divine spiritual beings when you speak of this world. Do you think it makes sense to speak of the world, as described in a modern physics or chemistry book, in terms of Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai? Of course it would be very out of place if one were to speak first of the special compounds of carbon, of the etheric compounds of carbon in chemistry, of alcohol and so on! If one were to list all these formulas with their carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and so on and then say: this is of angels, this is of archangels - that is of course not possible. But if one ascends to the region where one is compelled to allow the evolution of the earth to emerge from the evolution of Saturn, the sun and the moon, if one beholds this fabric that lives in the world, in the rhythms of the world, that plays into the human soul through the inner human rhythm, which one can follow into the verse, if one can at the same time point out how the verse is constructed in relation to the blood rhythm and the breathing rhythm; if one can ascend to these regions, where one describes Saturn, Sun, Moon and so on, then one is compelled to speak of beings of the spiritual hierarchies. One enters into a world in which real spiritual entities are, not merely into a world in which that hazy pantheism is to live, to which even today some who do not want to be materialists aspire and say: The world is spiritualized.

Well, the world is permeated by spirit, a spiritual element is spreading everywhere – it is roughly the same as when someone says: a lion; you claim that it has a larynx, with which it roars, and a gullet and trachea and lungs and stomach – that is not my concern, I will not talk about it, it is just completely “lionized”. — It is something like saying that someone is completely permeated, the philosophical posturing of the pantheists, who think that the nebulous spiritual is spread everywhere.

But if you really want to talk about the spiritual, you have to talk about individual spiritual beings. Then you have to know how, as soon as you ascend from the water element to the air element, you encounter the spiritual beings that are described in the hierarchies. As soon as one enters the element of fire, one comes to the highest hierarchy: thrones, cherubs, seraphs, and only then to the actual spiritual formation of the world, in which, however, the human being can no longer distinguish individual entities. But before one enters into what superficial pantheists might call the nebulous All-One, one passes through the world in which the individual concrete spiritual entities live. And in these concrete spiritual beings, one now recognizes what also lives in the nature that surrounds us. Because one comes to the fundamentals of the nature that surrounds us. Man cannot be in the nature that surrounds us and that we observe with our chemistry and physics. Man can only be in a nature in which there is also the watery, the airy, and the fiery element.

As soon as we enter the airy element, we have the beings that we describe as angels, archangels and so on. Here we enter into the concrete spiritual world being. We also enter a world that we can grasp both morally and physically. We just don't see it because today we cloud our view of the fact that real morality also emanates from the same world from which, for example, real meter emanates. The world in which the seventy-six elements are found is not, of course, the origin of morality; nor does it contain that which animates the human being. But the moment we enter the rhythmic element, we also enter the world of morality. And the task for the modern human being is to recognize the moral world as real again, to recognize that the same material or substance from which his astral body is formed is contained in moral ideas. The same substance from which our ego is formed is contained in religious ideas and in the religious idea.

We must again find the bridge between the observation of nature and the observation of the spiritual world, but not just the generally hazy spiritual world, but the spiritual world from which our moral intuitions come. I already wanted to point out this interplay between the world of perceptions and the world of intuitions in my Philosophy of Freedom, 1893. I wanted to show how the concrete moral intuitions are taken from a world that lies beyond the world of perceptions and are inserted into the world.

That, after all, is the great task of the present time: not to stop at the world that is actually applicable to man only when he is in the grave, but to ascend to the world that shows us man when he experiences the soul in the rhythm of the physical. But it is precisely in the rhythm of the physical that one learns to understand rhythm in its essence. Thus one learns to understand the cosmic rhythm, and one cannot understand the cosmic rhythm without understanding the sources, the origins of the moral world. Only then can such an understanding come to say: Yes, I have a natural science at present that can be applied to the human being as a corpse. — Of course, it must then come from the corpse of the world, taken from that in the world that perishes. It must relate to that part of the earth that will one day become the corpse of the earth. But in what we grasp in the rhythmic, what we pour out, for example, in verse, in pictures, in the spiritual in general, so that it comes to life as it lives in the rhythms, and what we intuitively grasp in our moral ideals, we create something that outlasts earthly death, just as the individual human soul outlasts human death. The earth will perish according to the laws of nature that we recognize today; according to these laws the earth will perish. And according to the laws that we recognize by approaching the spiritual world, and according to the laws that we recognize when we have moral intuitions, when we have truly religious intuitions, according to these laws the soul is formed, the human souls are formed, which will leave the earth when it decays into death and go to new future existences.

And so it is that today we have an officially recognized science: it teaches that which is dead, it teaches that after which the earth will one day perish in the great cosmic grave. And we need a spiritual science that seriously endeavors to fulfill the words of Christ Jesus: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” We need a spiritual science that seeks the real, the true content of these words of Christ, because these words are about rhythm, about morality, about the divine, about that which passes over to new levels of existence when the earth and the cosmos fall apart and become a corpse. And we must be aware that we must escape from a science that only speaks of death, and move on to a science that rises to the living and through the living to the soul and spirit.

Until the year 333, roughly until the first half of the fourth century A.D., there was actually still a mystery science; in fact, it was only in the sixth century that the last Greek sages were completely expelled. But what did this mystery science actually want? This mystery science wanted to help people overcome the great danger of physical life. And in those days it was still relatively easy to help people overcome the great danger of physical life because they still had something of a unifying power, of group souls. This group soul nature was still very strong until the 4th century AD. Only since the migration of peoples began and the group soul nature was broken by the special element that emanated from the Germanic peoples, has the situation changed. But these mysteries have only attracted individuals whom they have regarded as particularly select, and developed them in the mysteries to a particular spiritual level of education. But in so doing, they did not only do something for these individual initiates and initiates, but because group spirit prevailed, everything was done at the same time for the rest of the environment in which the teacher or otherwise initiate worked. Particularly when we go back to the older Egyptian times, there were a few initiates, but they were at the same time the intellectual leaders in all fields, the leaders of the entire Egyptian people, and because there was group soulfulness, their strength was transferred to the other people who were not initiated. So in those days one had only to initiate individuals.

What was actually intended by this initiation? It was intended that people should be made aware of the danger of becoming mortal in their souls. In Egypt, people had a different concept of immortality than they do today. Today, we actually think of immortality as something that is granted to us in any case, that we cannot lose. In the Samothracean mysteries, for example, it was taught: There are four Kabirs; three of them always kill the fourth. But actually, it was meant that man has a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. The physical body is subject to death, and becomes a physical corpse. The etheric body is scattered in the cosmic, and the astral body also dissolves in a certain way, as I have described in my book Theosophy. If the I does not save its self-awareness by participating in the spiritual, then the three also kill the I and drag it down into mortality. In the mysteries, people sought to save human immortality. They did not imagine that they could acquire immortality through prayers; they did not imagine that they could only relate passively to immortality and the like, but they imagined that those who were initiated, through the special transformation of their soul, through their awakening, through the awakening of their ego, got over the danger of not grasping themselves in spirit and thereby having to go the way of their mortal body. And because individual initiates had this power to still be able to think beyond the mortal body, they were also able to communicate it to other people because there was a group soul spirit. Today there is no more group soul. Since the first third of the 15th century, this has been more and more prepared; today we are called upon to develop freedom as individual human beings. Today we are basically at the point where we face the opposite danger.

While people until the 4th century AD were faced with the danger of not being able to grasp themselves in the spiritual element, so to speak, so that they had to be awakened in this spiritual element, today, due to the special development of their physical body, due to the special development of matter, people are actually really thinkers, and they live terribly much in thoughts. Those people who believe that they live in reality are actually living more than ever in thoughts. Today people are terribly abstract, and they immediately fall for everything that is abstract because they have an inner affinity to the abstract. But these abstractions, these thoughts that are concocted, are not only wrongly interpreted when it is said that they depend on the brain; they really do depend on the brain, because the brain imitates the processes that take place in the spiritual world in a person before birth or before conception. The brain imitates what my soul did before it descended. Now, because this thinking, which is developed with particular perfection today, is mere brain thinking, materialism is right. It must be emphasized again and again: with regard to today's prevailing thinking, materialism is right, because it is a mere imitation of true, living thinking. And so man must come to grasp freedom in thinking and thereby save himself. That is, he must come not only to let his brain think but to take hold of his thinking in such a way that he becomes aware: he is a free being. That is why I placed great emphasis on pure thinking, on free thinking, which at the same time grasps itself as will, so that one thinks but actually wills, so that the volition and the thinking are a substantial grasping itself in pure freedom, as I presented it in my Philosophy of Freedom. It should show people: You are only free when you grasp that which is in you, your immortal self, through which you can save yourself, through which you can save yourself beyond the death of the four Kabirs.

However, one enters a ground that, I would like to say, consists of thin ice, which the modern man does not like to enter because he would prefer that some external worldly powers immortality guaranteed to him in some way, that he would not have to do anything to awaken in himself that which might otherwise fall asleep, that which might otherwise go through death by the human body going through death. And in modern humanity, as thinking becomes more and more similar to the physical processes of the brain, modern humanity is indeed not only facing the danger of no longer understanding anything about immortality, but modern humanity is facing the danger of losing immortality. That is the greatest ideal of Ahriman, to destroy the human being in his individuality, to no longer allow him to be individual, but to take the powers that he has, the power of thought, and to incorporate them into the earthly powers, so that once the earth becomes one great corpse, this corpse will be permeated by all the powers that man, through his logic, incorporates into the earth. So that there would be a great earth spider in which the seventy elements would live, completely pulverized, but interwoven like huge, tangled spiders, human thinking, according to the pattern of mere abstract thinking. That is the ideal that Ahriman would like to achieve: to destroy the individualities of man, to transform the earth from the power of human thought into a web of gigantic thought-spiders, but real spiders. That is the Ahrimanic goal, and it must be avoided by man now truly grasping the spiritual language: “Not I, but the Christ in me”, by the true I becoming alive in him, the immortal I that can understand the words: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away”. That wisdom cannot perish which is reality and which encompasses that reality by which, when the earth is a corpse, the whole being of man is propagated into a new existence. The New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse is meant to speak of such existence. But these things must be understood again. The greatest obstacle to such understanding is, of course, all the Einsteinerei and the like, all that which today, as the great, terrible addiction to abstraction, goes through the world, which is quite suitable for further developing the forces of decline; while for the benefit of humanity it can only be to make use of the forces of the rising, the real powers of body and soul and spirit. That is what I wanted to speak to you about today.

The Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Sensations in Rudolf Steiner's Work

Hella Wiesberger

At the first general assembly of the German Section in October 1903, Rudolf Steiner outlined his future teaching program as “occult historical research”, part of which was the teaching of the great spiritual leaders of humanity. For, according to the aspects of the great trinity of body, soul and spirit, occult historical research will show how the physical existence of humanity is determined by the great cosmic forces of nature; what role the personal element plays in history; how the universal spirit of the universe intervenes in human destinies by pouring its life into the higher self of a great human leader and thereby communicating it to all humanity:

"For this is the way this higher life takes: it flows into the higher selves of the leading spirits, and they share it with their brothers. From embodiment to embodiment, people's higher selves develop and learn more and more to make their own selves missionaries of the divine plan of the world. Through occult historical research, one will recognize how a human leader develops to the point where he can take on a divine mission. One will realize how Buddha, Zarathustra, and Christ came to their missions.“ ¹

At the next General Assembly in October 1904, the topic was taken up again by the leaders of humanity, who repeatedly pointed out that in order to understand it, a distinction had to be made between masters of the past, the present and the future.

The masters of the past, the present and the future

After such references in the lectures of October 7 and 24, 1904, this fact was presented in detail on October 28, 1904, on the grounds that although it was already known to most people, it was necessary to keep repeating that

"In the course of our fifth root race, that is, in the time from the sinking of the Atlantean race until the next root race, a highly important step will be taken in the evolution of humanity, in that, namely, out of humanity itself, the leaders of humanity, the Manus, will arise.

All the great leaders, the Manus, who have helped humanity during the earlier root races and given it great impulses, have not completed their development purely on earth, but partly on other celestial bodies, and have thus already brought with them from other worlds what they had to give to humanity in the way of great impulses for this earth. The Manus of the Lemurian and Atlantean races, as well as the Stamm-Manu of our fifth root race, are superhuman individualities who have undergone their great schooling on other planets in order to become the leaders of humanity.

In contrast, during our fifth root race, highly developed individuals are emerging within our own humanity who, from the sixth root race onwards, will be able to become the leaders of humanity. In particular, the main leader of the sixth root race will be a human being like us, only one of the most advanced - indeed, the most advanced of all human beings. He will be an entity that began its development at the time when, in the middle of the Lemurian race, human incarnation began at all. This entity will have always been a human being among humans, only able to progress faster, and will have gone through all stages of human development. This will be the basic character of the Manu of the sixth root race. Such entities must pass through the most varied initiations, must have been initiated repeatedly.

Therefore, the fifth root race has always had initiated people since its inception, people who were initiated in that direction, so to speak, that they could go their own voluntary way. This was not the case during the entire Lemurian period and also during the entire Atlantean period. Those who helped humanity, who governed and directed it, who were statesmen and leaders of great religious communities, were under the influence of higher beings. During the Lemurian and Atlantean races, they were directly dependent on those higher beings who had undergone their development on other planets. It was only in the fifth root race that humanity was released. There we have initiates who, although they are connected with the higher entities, are not given such far-reaching advice that they are fully developed, but the initiates of the fifth root race are given more and more freedom in the details. In general, directives are given, not only to the initiates, but also to those who are inspired by them. They are given impulses, but in such a way that it is their own spirituality from which they have to carry out the things.” (Berlin, October 28, 1904)

A few months after this account, it is emphasized once again that in the fifth root race - the post-Atlantean period - the human leaders and masters are to emerge from the human race itself:

"Now, one who has passed through all phases of humanity more quickly becomes a master and rises to become a leader of humanity.” (Berlin, May 5, 1905)

Such people will then be the “true” masters of wisdom and of the harmony of feelings (Düsseldorf, March 7, 1907). The direction in which this development must be striven for can be seen from the following statement:

"Our task today is to grasp the occult in the Manas, in the purest element of thought. To grasp the spiritual in this finest distillate of the brain is the real mission of our time. To make this thought so powerful that it has something of occult power is the task set for us, in order to be able to fulfill our place in the future.” (Düsseldorf, March 7, 1907)

The same is expressed in the answer to the question once asked as to where the initiates of humanity actually are when a work like his is at stake:

“Now it is a matter of the higher truths being grasped by human thinking. If you were to meet these initiates today, you might not find in them what you are seeking. Their task lay more in earlier incarnations. Now human thinking must be spiritualized.”

²

From the twelve-, seven- and fourfold activity of the masters

Up until the separation of the first esoteric working group from the E.S.T. in 1907, Rudolf Steiner named four masters who are particularly associated with the Theosophical movement: the two masters of the East, Kuthumi and Morya, and the two masters of the West, Christian Rosenkreutz and Master Jesus. After the separation, he only spoke of the two masters of the West.

If we try to answer the question of why only four or two masters were named, while according to other statements there are twelve who form the great white lodge (Cologne, December 3, 1905), and it is also stated that there have never been more than seven initiates at the same time (Berlin, October 10, 1905), it becomes clear that that the numbers 12, 7, 4 are based on certain laws. First of all, there is a certain ratio of 12 to 7, which is found in notes from a private session with Marie von Sivers (Berlin, July 3, 1904) as follows:

"If we imagine the evolution of a planetary system, we must consider the following. Evolution takes place in such a way that two always alternate for each being: evolution and involution. Now we must imagine the seven evolving and involutionizing each other.

On the next planet, each of the rulers has to go up one level. 8 is the evolved 7. As they develop further, they develop into the others. When they arrive at 7, they cannot go any further. If 7 became 8, the process would already have happened; it is nothing but a repetition of the first, 7 on a different level. As we move up, we see that the leaders themselves change. We get 12 regents and a 13th, superfluous one. This 13th brings the whole planet into a state as it was in the beginning, only into a higher one.

We have to conclude with 12. So that in each constitution of a planetary chain we have not seven but twelve exalted leading spirits. Of these, only the first has the eighth not in action, and so on. (Our concepts belong to the rupically mental world; these entities lie beyond our concepts, so that it is not a matter of a coming forth, but of relationships - timeless). ³

These beings have been recognized as the 12 regents in the symbols, for example of the zodiac, through which the sun passes. Corresponding to the stages of the macrocosm is also the increase in consciousness of microcosmic development. Thus the number 12 has always been decisive and there have been 12 leading spirits everywhere: 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles, 12 knights of the Grail.

Thus, both macrocosmically and microcosmically, 12 is the sacred number that underlies everything. 7 are in action, 5 have other tasks. For the physical planet, only 7 are considered, therefore only 7 of the 12 principles of man are taught.

⁴

This description, as well as the answer to the question of May 29, 1915 (p. 201), that of the twelve leading spirits, only seven are considered for the physical plan, explains why the Theosophical Society spoke of seven masters: the Masters Kuthumi, Morya, Jesus, Christian Rosenkreutz (also known as the Count of Saint-Germain after his incarnation in the 18th century), Hilarion, Serapis and the so-called Venetian Master. These seven were understood to be the seven emanations of the Logos, and each Master was ascribed a particular mode of working according to his ray. For example, it was said of Christian Rosenkreutz that he worked through ceremonial magic as a representative of the seventh ray. Rudolf Steiner apparently rejected this, because in the lecture Berlin, June 20, 1912, there is a remark that the individuality of Christian Rosenkreutz, whom “we recognize as the leader of the occult movement into the future,” is also much misunderstood by occultists and that he will certainly never develop his authority in the world through an “outer cultus.”

However, Rudolf Steiner also spoke of a sevenfold activity of the masters, as can be seen from the account given in Berlin, July 3, 1904, and the answer to a question given on May 29, 1915. When asked about this sevenfold structure from a different quarter, he is reported as having replied: “Two work in the east, two in the west, two in the center, but one goes through”.⁵ The expression “in the center” does not refer to Central Europe, but to the Mediterranean region as the center of the world; from a global perspective, Central Europe belongs to the western world, which is why Rudolf Steiner always spoke of the two masters of the West as the ones who are decisive for Central Europe.

If we now look at the various details about the incarnations of the masters, these could appear contradictory at first glance, when on the one hand it is said that they have already been taken from the world as highly developed individuals, and on the other hand there is talk of specific incarnations, of certain masters with a special mission, even to the extent that their physical body is preserved so that death does not occur at all (see page 205). This apparent contradiction, however, only points to the manifold and complicated way in which the masters work, as well as to the degrees of mastery, as they have often been presented, for example, by Rudolf Steiner at the Boddhisattva-Buddha levels.⁶ The following two statements, for example, point to the as-well-as in the question of incarnation or non-incarnation:

“As a rule, the masters are not exactly historical personalities; they sometimes incarnate in historical personalities when it is necessary; but it is a sacrifice to a certain extent. The degree of their consciousness is no longer compatible with working for themselves. And working for themselves is already maintaining the mere name.” (Berlin, December 23, 1904)

"When the present-day leaders of humanity go about in the world in their human guise, they are not recognized in the outer exoteric world. And if we speak of the Masters of the Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings on the basis of spiritual science, then people would often be amazed at the simple, unpretentious humanity with which these Masters of the Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feelings come to all countries. They are present on the physical plane. But they do not give the most important teachings on the physical plane, but... on the spiritual plane. And anyone who wants to hear them and receive teachings from them must not only have access to them as to their physical, carnal body, but as to their spiritual form.

The latter statement in particular also indicates that it is advisable to exercise caution when judging and thinking further about Rudolf Steiner's statements about the incarnations of the masters, especially when the information has been handed down only inadequately and not truly authentically. This is because the masters do not work only in physical incarnation, but also through incorporation, inspiration or even astral appearance. This is indicated by the note handed down from an esoteric lesson in which the way Master Kuthumi works was discussed and it was said “that this incarnation was not in a particular personality, but that his power was at work here and there.” (Berlin, December 13, 1905, p. 213). It is obvious that these are occult phenomena that are difficult or impossible for the ordinary conscious mind to grasp, which is why the different ways in which the Mahatmas appear in H.P. Blavatsky and others in the T.S. have led to great misunderstandings. However, Rudolf Steiner did not doubt the possibility of materialization either, because Friedrich Rittelmeyer related that Rudolf Steiner once spoke to him about it:

“I vividly remember a conversation after a Berlin branch evening. Dr. Steiner told of the previous incorporations of the masters. ‘Someone enters the room. They shake hands and talk to him, he leaves the room again, but you won't notice that he leaves the house’.”

Friedrich Rittelmeyer also reports, however, that however willingly Rudolf Steiner answered his questions, he gradually distracted him in two directions: on the one hand, to spiritualize thinking, which is the most important task today, and on the other hand, to the historical context.

The Seven Great Mysteries of Life and the Masters

If, in relation to the work of the Masters in humanity, we move from the question of the ratio of twelve to seven to the question of the ratio of seven to four, we encounter an even more complicated problem. To make it clear, we must start from the letter to Günther Wagner of December 24, 1903. This letter answers the request for a more detailed explanation of what had been hinted at at the first general assembly of the German section, which had taken place in October 1903 in Berlin, namely that each of the seven races had a secret to solve. The answer to Günther Wagner begins with a sentence from the “Secret Doctrine” by H.P. Blavatsky:

“Of the seven truths or revelations, only four have been handed down to us, since we are still in the fourth round.”

This sentence comes from Blavatsky's commentary on the ten stanzas from the so-called Book of Dzyan, which, as a theosophical cosmogenesis, form the core of the “Secret Doctrine”. The rest of the content is a single commentary on them. Although Rudolf Steiner was generally very critical of H.P. Blavatsky's commentaries, he always spoke with the greatest appreciation of the Dzyan verses themselves (e.g. in the lecture Düsseldorf, April 12, 1909). He once translated the first verse from English into German himself as follows.⁷

"The Eternal Mother, clothed in her eternally invisible robes, had once again slumbered for seven eternities.

There was no time, for she lay asleep in the boundless bosom of duration.

Universal thinking was not, for there was no Ah-hi to contain it.

The seven wise (ways) to bliss were not. The great causes of suffering were not, for there was nothing that could have become entangled in them.

Darkness alone filled the infinite universe, for Father (Law, Necessity), Mother (World Substance) and Son (Lawful World, Substance, Cosmos) were as one, and the Son had not yet awakened to a new cycle and pilgrimage.

The seven sublime entities and the seven truths had ceased to be, and the universe, the son of necessity, had plunged into Paranishpanna to be exhaled by that which is and is not. Nothing (overseen) was.

The causes of existence were extinguished; the visible that was and the invisible that is remained in eternal non-being - the One Being (overseen).

Only this One Form of existence (of being) stretched endlessly, without limit, without cause, in dream-like sleep; and life wove unconsciously (blissfully) in universal space, through and through that omnipresence, which is felt only by the opened eye of the Dangma.

But where was Dangma when the A-laya of the universe was in Paramartha and the great cycle was Anupadaka?

Ah-hi = soul of the Dhyan-Choans
Paranishpanna = perfection
Dangma = seer
A-laya = soul of the world
Paramartha = accomplishment (parama = above all, artha = grasp)
Anupadaka = parentless.

H.P. Blavatsky's commentary on the sixth sentence of the first Dzyan verse, to which Rudolf Steiner refers in his letter of December 24, 1903, to Günther Wagner, reads in full: ⁸

"The ‘seven exalted rulers’ are the seven creative spirits, the Dhyan-Choans, who correspond to the Hebrew Elohim. It is the same hierarchy of archangels to which St. Michael, St. Gabriel and others belong in the Christian theogony. Only, while St. Michael, for example, is only allowed to guard the promontories and gulfs in dogmatic Latin theology, in the esoteric system the Dhyanis in turn guard one of the rounds and the great root races of our planetary chain. It is further said that they send forth their Bodhisattvas, the human representatives of the Dhyani Buddhas during each round and race. Of the “seven truths” or revelations, or rather revealed secrets, only four have been handed down to us, because we are still in the fourth round and the world has had only four Buddhas so far. This is a very complicated question and will be dealt with in detail later.

In this respect, Hindus and Buddhists say: “There are only four truths and four Vedem.” For a similar reason, Irenaeus insisted on the necessity of four Gospels. But since every new root race must receive its revelation and its revealers at the beginning of a round, the next round will bring the fifth, the following the sixth, and so on.

Of the seven truths or revelations, only four have been given to the world so far, according to H.P. Blavatsky – confirmed by Rudolf Steiner's letter of December 24, 1903 to Günther Wagner. And because every revelation needs its revelator, the world has had only four Buddhas. Whether and in what way these four Buddhas are identical with the four masters of whom Rudolf Steiner spoke within the Esoteric School must remain an open question, although he once equated the two ranks of “master” and “Buddha” (Lugano, September 17, 1911).

This immediately raises the question of the relationship between the masters and the buddhas or bodhisattvas, for Rudolf Steiner speaks of both as the greatest spiritual teachers of humanity and of both as forming a twelve-fold unity whose task it is to regulate ongoing development and to teach the significance of the Christ impulse for human development. The prerequisite for a closer study of this question is certainly that the terms Master, Buddha, and Bodhisattva are not proper names, but ranks, or dignities in the hierarchy of adeptness, which can be achieved by a human individuality with appropriate development. In the lecture Berlin, October 1, 1905, the term Bodhisattva is defined as a person who has absorbed all earthly experiences so that he knows how to utilize every thing and can thus work creatively. The wise men of the earth are not yet Bodhisattvas, because there are still things in life that even the wise cannot yet find their way around in. After a long period of working as a teacher of humanity with the rank of a Bodhisattva, he ascends to the dignity of a Buddha; he no longer needs to incarnate, but works purely spiritually for further development.

Since Rudolf Steiner calls the same individualities, for example Zarathustra, sometimes a Bodhisattva, sometimes a Master, and sometimes equates the Mastership and Buddhahood (Lugano, September 17, 1911), it may well be assumed that the same ranks are meant by the great masters of wisdom and harmony of feelings, which in the Oriental tradition of wisdom are understood as the Bodhisattva and the Buddha. But the fact that an extraordinarily complicated structure arises from the interaction of beings from the higher hierarchies, which comes into play for the realization of the concrete interrelations, has been presented by Rudolf Steiner on various occasions.⁹

An understanding of the relationship of seven to four, which H.P. Blavatsky already described as very complicated, only opens up through Rudolf Steiner's descriptions of the so-called “seven great mysteries of life”. They are none other than the “seven truths or revelations, or rather revealed mysteries”, as they were described by H.P. Blavatsky. In his letter, Rudolf Steiner also calls them the seven “esoteric root truths”. In the notes from the lecture in Berlin on October 28, 1903, it says:

"We speak of seven great mysteries. There are seven great mysteries that reveal the seven great phases of life. They are called the ‘ineffable’.” (Berlin, October 28, 1903).

In the General Assembly that took place ten days before this lecture, Rudolf Steiner had already hinted at this “in the sense of a certain occult tradition” (letter of December 24, 1903). This tradition had already been expressed in writing by the English occultist C. G. Harrison. In the book “The Transcendental Universe”, London 1894,¹⁰ From the standpoint of traditional European-Christian occultism, he critically examines the theosophy of H.P. Blavatsky's Theosophy, but admits that its “Secret Doctrine” contains very valuable information about prehistoric civilizations and religions, alludes to certain secrets “whose existence itself was not suspected” and that some of them “have been tested and found correct by a process known to occultists.” (1st lecture). In the sixth lecture, Harrison then lists the “seven great mysteries.” It is said that they apply to all levels of consciousness and cannot be explained in words, but require the application of a symbolic system, the nature of which he is not at liberty to discuss. In a footnote they are listed as follows: “1. Abyss, 2. Number, 3. Elective Affinity, 4. Birth and Death, 5. Evil, 6. The Word, 7. Bliss”.

In the very fragmentary notes from the first years of Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific lecture work, these seven secrets are usually only partially mentioned and the name Harrison never appears. Even in later, even more concrete descriptions, they are only partially treated, so that it is not recognizable that it is a seven-part whole. ¹¹ Only once are all seven secrets found in the same terms as in Harrison's list. This is in the Paris lectures of May/June 1906. In the lecture of June 13, 1906, it says:

"There are seven secrets of life that have never been spoken of outside the occult brotherhoods until today. Only in the present era is it possible to speak of them exoterically. They are also called the seven “inexpressible” or “unspeakable” secrets.¹²

These are the secrets:

1. The secret of the abyss.
2. The secret of the number. (It can be studied in Pythagorean philosophy).
3. The secret of alchemy. (This can be understood through the works of Paracelsus and Jakob Böhme).
4. The mystery of birth and death.¹³
5. The mystery of evil, which deals with the Apocalypse.
6. The mystery of the Word, the Logos.
7. The mystery of bliss; it is the most profoundly hidden.

The fact that these seven great mysteries or esoteric root truths are not just principal concepts that “run like leitmotifs through the entire esoteric movement” (Paris, May 5, 1913), but that they point to high spiritual beings, is clear from notes that Marie von Sivers made during a private lesson (Berlin, July 2, 1904). According to this, the seven possible relationships that the Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit enters into are to be understood as entities, and the designations given for these seven possible relational entities correspond in turn to those for the seven secrets of life. In the first lecture cycle on spiritual cosmology (October 17 to November 10, 1904), there is a fundamental discussion of how all development is determined by the three principles of consciousness, life and form, and how each of these three principles has to pass through seven stages or phases. The stages or phases of life mentioned in it correspond in turn to the seven great mysteries of life. Their realization and the soul experiences associated with them constitute the two halves of the initiation and thus the content of anthroposophy as a modern science of initiation (Dornach, December 30, 1914).

While the seven stages of consciousness and form are repeatedly encountered as the seven principles of the structure of man and the world in Rudolf Steiner's spiritual science, this is not the case to the same extent with the seven phases of cosmic life. This is apparently due to the fact that the planetary spirit keeps its life of feeling to itself (Berlin, November 3, 1904). This is presumably why the seven secrets of life are also called the “unspeakable” ones, the description of which must be very difficult, as indicated, for example, in the lectures Munich, December 4, 1907, and Dornach, December 30, 1914.

The most decisive clue to the question of the ratio of seven to four, both in relation to the seven mysteries and to their revealers, the masters, is given in the notes from the lecture Berlin, November 1, 1904. According to these notes, the main characteristic of the seven mysteries of life is that they apply to all developmental cycles because they are always repeated “in every round and racial development, also in all other cyclic developments, including the human being. This reference makes it possible to understand why, according to the letter of December 24, 1903 to Günther Wagner, “the fourth of the... seven truths goes back to seven esoteric root truths and that of these partial truths (the fourth considered as a whole) one is delivered to each race, as a rule.”

From this, three things can be deduced:

1. The seven root truths or secrets apply primarily to the great developmental cycles of the planetary chain Saturn-Sun-Moon-Earth-Jupiter-Venus-Vulcan.

2. The fourth secret of birth and death applies to the entire development of the earth.

3. Since the seven mysteries are always repeated, they also apply to all sevenfold subdivisions of the overall development of the earth, but as partial truths of the overarching fourth mystery (see, for example, Dornach, November 3 and 4, 1917).

The question arises: how does Rudolf Steiner's work and activity relate to the seven great mysteries of life?

Rudolf Steiner's work and the fifth of the seven great mysteries of life

Since the seven great mysteries of life apply to all sevenfold developmental cycles, the fifth mystery, that of evil, must become decisive for our immediate present as the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch. Not as a whole, but as a partial truth anticipated, for the fourth mystery still applies as the overriding principle for the overall development of the earth. The fifth secret will reveal itself more strongly than it is doing today in the fifth cultural epoch and in its full power at the fifth stage of the earth's life, when the earth will have developed to the fifth planetary stage, the consciousness of Jupiter. (Munich, January 16, 1908).

If it is stated in the letter of December 24, 1903 to Günther Wagner that Theosophy, the partial Theosophy that lies, for example, in Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine” and its “Esotericism” (the third volume of the “Secret Doctrine”), is a sum of partial truths of the fifth secret, this raises the serious question: What can evil have to do with Theosophy?

This question finds a certain answer in the spiritual-scientific view of good and evil. According to this, the recognition of good and evil in our cultural epoch is bound up with the recognition of the spiritual developmental impulses of the human being and the cosmos. (Dornach, September 28, 1918). Evil occurs when the individual or the community strays from harmony with the progressive impulses of the cosmos. There is no such thing as evil in itself. All evil is not absolutely real, but arises from the fact that something that is good in some way is used in the world in an inappropriate way. This turns a good into an evil. (Munich, August 25, 1913).

Another concept of evil was decisive for the previous cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin period, because it was the fourth epoch under the fourth secret, that of birth and death. This can be seen from the following modification of the seven stages of initiation. The Christian-Gnostic path of initiation, as it was decisive in the fourth epoch, had the seven stages: foot washing, flagellation, crowning with thorns, crucifixion, mystical death, entombment, ascension. The Christian-Rosicrucian path of initiation, which is decisive for the fifth cultural epoch, has the seven stages: Study for True Self-Knowledge, Imagination, Learning Occult Writing or Inspired Knowledge, Rhythmization of Life (Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone), the Correspondence between Microcosm and Macrocosm (Knowledge of the Connection between Man and the World), Dwelling or Immersing Oneself in the Macrocosm, and Divine Bliss. Now, in both paths of initiation, the experience of evil lies on the fifth step, but in the Christian-Gnostic path of the fourth epoch it was connected with the experience of the mystical death as the so-called “descent into hell”. In the path of initiation of our fifth epoch, on the other hand, one gets to know true good as the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm and evil as the respective deviation from this correspondence on the fifth initiation level. Since the path of initiation that is decisive for an epoch is always connected with the forces that are to be developed in the respective epoch in connection with the seven secrets of life, anthroposophy was bound to become the science of the correspondences or non-correspondences of microcosm and macrocosm. The question of good and evil must therefore be resolved today through the knowledge of the right correspondence.

Seen in this light, the statement in the letter of December 24, 1903, that Theosophy is a sum of partial truths of the fifth secret, can be explained to mean that only the double meaning of the fifth step of the modern path of initiation can be meant: the correspondences of microcosm and macrocosm on the one hand, evil as the aberrations of this on the other. Thus, in the spirit of the fifth epoch, knowledge of good and evil, which in the fourth epoch had a more fixed, more spatial character, takes on a more fluid character. It becomes more and more a question of recognizing the right impulses of time, or, to put it another way, the right impulses of cosmic-historical development. This developmental step from a more spatial to a more temporally shaped knowledge is based on a certain lawfulness, to which Rudolf Steiner once drew attention when he spoke about the relationship of the first four cultural epochs to the three that followed. He said:

“When a spatial relationship is to become temporal, it happens in such a way that it happens in the ratio of four to seven, that the tetrad expands into the heptad... The ratio of four to seven is based on a very specific law.” (Berlin, October 28, 1904)

The fact that a completely different position must be taken to the question of good and evil than had been correct for the preceding epochs, is also expressed in the following entry in a notebook: ¹⁴

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

In connection with the seven great mysteries of life, it can be said in the sense of H.P. Blavatsky that “each new root race at the beginning of a round must receive its revelation and its revelators.” Rudolf Steiner in his work can only be understood as the first proclaimer of the fifth esoteric root truth, the fifth of the seven great mysteries of life, and in its double meaning: the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm on the one hand, and the aberrations from it as evil on the other.

In the written records from the early years of his spiritual scientific lectures, the proclamation of the mystery of evil appears only in hints, but already in its full and profound significance. For example, the report of Rudolf Steiner's remarks at the first general assembly of the German Section of the T.S. (Berlin, October 18, 1903) that among the many reasons that led to the founding of the Theosophical Society as an “occultly powerful necessity”, one of the most important is that each human race is given “a secret” and that we, as the fifth race, are at the fifth secret, which, however, cannot be pronounced today. The text continues:

"We are gradually living into it. What kind of secret it is, is already hinted at by Paul, who was an initiate. It will only be revealed in the course of the development of our race. A premature guessing of this secret through purely intellectual abilities would mean an indescribable danger for humanity. Since such a guess has almost been made twice already ¹⁵ and will happen again in the foreseeable future, the great teachers of humanity have brought about the theosophical movement. Humanity is to be prepared for the great truth. Theosophy is working towards a certain point in time. A core is to be formed that understands this truth when it emerges undisguised one day – a core that grasps it correctly and uses it not as a curse but as a blessing for humanity. The earlier races were formed from an already existing one, by selecting suitable individuals or families and continuing them through the Manu in suitable uninhabited landscapes. This procedure is no longer feasible with today's global transportation, but it is also no longer necessary. In its place, education is provided by the cosmopolitan International Theosophical Society, which is to form this core.” (Berlin, 18.10.1903).

If the fifth secret of life was characterized more generally at that time, it was later described in more concrete terms as the unlawful use of the sacred powers of transformation:

"It truly allows us to gain deep insights into the mystery of existence when we know the source of injustice, evil, crime and the misfortunes that befall the world. As a result, the best and most sacred forces that exist, namely the powers of transformation, are applied in the wrong way. There would be no evil in the world if it were not for the most sacred powers of transformation.

More and more urgently and in ever greater detail, Rudolf Steiner spoke of the reign of evil, especially of its reign in history as the aberrations from the progressive evolutionary current, particularly since the outbreak of the First World War. The great significance of the realization that evil is the fundamental mystery of our time also makes it possible to understand why the visible emblem of the Anthroposophical Movement, the Goetheanum, was associated with it. At the laying of the foundation stone (Dornach, September 20, 1913), the Fifth Gospel, the Gospel of Knowledge, was mentioned for the first time, in accordance with an “occult obligation”. The core of this gospel, the macrocosmic Lord's Prayer, reads:

Evil reigns
Witnesses of dissolving egoity
From other selfhood guilt incurred
Experience in daily bread
In which heaven's will does not prevail
Because man separated himself from your kingdom
And forgot your name
You fathers in the heavens.

And in the following ten years of intensive construction work, with the help of many volunteers, the central motif, the sculptural group “The Representative of Humanity between Lucifer and' Ahriman”, was created as an artistic expression of the dual nature of the fifth secret of life. The Representative of Humanity – Christ, as seen by Rudolf Steiner in his recognition as the Master of all Masters – represents the full correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm and overcomes the powers of aberration, of evil: Lucifer and Ahriman, through his radiance of love. When the building, almost completed, was destroyed by fire on New Year's Eve 1922/23, the only thing that remained was this wooden sculpture – a legacy and a memorial from its creator for the realization of the deepest secret of life in our fifth period.

• 1. Autoreferat ‘Occult Historical Research in ’Lucifer-Gnosis,” GA 34.
• 2. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, “My life-encounter with Rudolf Steiner”.
• 3. Concerning space and time in connection with the numbers 7 and 12, see also the lecture in Munich on August 31, 1909.
• 4. Also in the writing “From the Akasha Chronicle”, GA 11, it is implied that there are actually twelve levels of consciousness, but only seven of them can be described. The eye of the seer can see five more, but a description of them is quite impossible.
• 5. As reported by Friedrich Rittelmeyer.
• 6. See, for example, Lecture Berlin, October 25, 1909 in “The Christ Impulse and the Development of I-Consciousness”, GA 116.
• 7. Notebook from 1903, archive number 427 and notepad 580/81.
• 8. Blavatsky, “Secret Doctrine”, I. Volume, German edition, Leipzig, no year, page 73. f
• 9. On the Bodhisattva-Buddha question, see ” The Bodhisattva-Buddha Question, CW 93a; Spiritual Hierarchies and their Reflection in the Physical World, CW 110; The Christ Impulse and the Evolution of I-Consciousness, CW 116; Esoteric Christianity and the Spiritual Guidance of Humanity, CW 130.
• 10. German translation 1897 by the Theosophist Carl Graf zu Leiningen-Billigheim, “Das transzendentale Weltall”. New edition Stuttgart 1990.
• 11. See “The Secrets of the Threshold”, GA 147; “Occult Reading and Occult Hearing”; GA 156; “Spiritual-Scientific Explanations of Goethe's Faust” (3.,4.Nov.1917)GA 273.
• 12. The paper by Schure was originally written in French. In the German translation in GA 94 “Kosmogonie” it says “namenlose” (nameless) instead of “unsagbaren” (innomable), which is a translation error.
• 13. This fourth mystery is only recorded in Schur's presentation as “The Mystery of Death,” which is likely to be a defect in the transcript.
• 14. 1906, archive number 105; cf. in the appendix to the section 'Individually Given Exercises', 5. 188.
• 15. More details are not known.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

Recently, Ludwig Jacobowski ¹ with his “Loki” a narrative poem that depicts in symbolic acts the heavy, hot struggles that take place at the bottom of every human soul that does not merge into the hustle and bustle of everyday life, but leads a deeper life. Those who immerse themselves in this “novel of a god” will be captivated by the poet's deep insight into the workings of the soul and his powerful sense of everything that shakes, elevates and plunges the human heart into abysses.

Now Jacobowski has followed up this creation with his “New Poems”*. Through them we can look into the depths of his own soul, into the experiences of his inner life, into everything that has lifted him up to the high vantage point from which he surveys the world and its mysteries in “Loki”. The great, free worldview that we encounter in the novel is deeply rooted in the poet's nature. Two character traits are inherent in this nature, which, in their harmonious interaction, always determine the significant personality: a fine, receptive sense for all the individual things that confront us in life, and a mind that grasps the great connections between the details in their true significance. We owe the fresh, rich colors that shine out at us from Jacobowski's poems to his receptive senses; and it is through his mind that the poet always points out to us what “holds the world together at its core”. In the “Shining Days” we never miss the great view of the essence of the world that lies behind the eternal flow of appearances. Rather, these poems constantly direct our feelings and our imagination towards this essence. One always has the feeling that this poet draws from the eternal source from which the best content of life flows to us.

For those whose spirit is directed in such a way, life is not easy. For every step means a test for them. The world has many secrets to reveal to them. But nature does not give anything away voluntarily. It wrings everything from us in a hard struggle. It paves the way to every goal with suffering and deprivation. But the essence to which it ultimately always leads us is that which satisfies the heart and mind. The mists of existence dissolve; and the sun of life smiles upon us. The true artist shows us this sun. Because it is the sun that, as a spiritual bond, causes the connection of things. All genuine art is therefore “cheerful”. And a sunny cheerfulness, a cheerfulness born out of the difficult struggle of life: these are the things that flow from Jacobowski's poems to us.

Oh, our shining days
Shine like eternal stars.
As a consolation for future lamentation
They glow from a golden distance.

Don't cry because they're gone!
Smile because they have been!
And even if the days are gloomy,
our stars will redeem them!

Jacobowski introduces the collection with this poem, as if with an artistic gospel, and he ends it with the confession:

Sinking arms,
folded hands,
Around me the warm,
land illuminated;
Eyelashes closed
In the flattering light,
flowing around
The brown face.

Stand in the sun
that I fade away...
Wistfulness becomes bliss,
And bliss becomes woe!
If only I had grace
And kindness and pleasure,
To bathe in the glow
The darkest breast! ...

Shining days,
Now you sink slowly!
Alas, without complaint
I look after you.
Secret glow,
That so surrounds me,
Shines forever
The blooming world!

The liberating keynote that resounds throughout the book is expressed in these verses. However powerful the individual experiences may be that inspire the poet, his mind always pushes him towards the heights of existence, towards those bright regions for which the transience of everyday life is only a metaphor. Just as every individual experience becomes a symbol of the eternal ideas of world events for the philosopher, so for the true lyricist every individual feeling, every particular mood becomes a symbol of the entire fate of the soul. And Jacobowski is a true lyricist in this highest sense. See how in the following verses ($. 56) a single feeling comes to life in a universal one.

Brown twigs protrude from a white vase
And drag heavily on the densely filled lilac.
Bright green leaves push through
through the brown branches. The wind gently brushes the blossoms,
A scent runs up and down in shivers.
The whole room drinks itself full of lilac,
And even the soul feels the blossoms softly.

Once I was so happy in my heart
suck sweets from lilac stems. —
Oh, I do it again and make children's eyes
And feel the youth in the sap of the blossom!

This diversion of the individual experience into the general is a fundamental trait of Jacobowski's personality. It works in him like a natural process of life in the human organism. He does not seek depth anywhere, he does not strive beyond the individual. This lives in his soul in an immediate way, as the individual plant appears before us as a representative of its entire species. One need only compare his poetry with that of Richard Dehmel to grasp the immediacy of his universal feelings. In Dehmel's work, the path from the individual experience to the great world connections always leads through the idea, through abstraction. In Jacobowski's work, this is not necessary. For he feels universally. He does not need the world of imagination to rise to the primal facts of the soul; every experience of the soul has for him the character of the eternally significant.

This trait in Jacobowski is inextricably linked to another, without which greatness in the human soul is not possible. This is the feeling for the great, simple lines in the world. Everything great in the world is simple; and if someone does not feel the simple greatness of the simple, but seeks the significant in the strange, in the so-called secrets of existence, this only proves that he has lost the sense of the great that meets us at every moment of life. The sins of some modern poets, who seek salvation in random, remote moods because they lack a sense of the simple, the “simple-minded”, are far removed from Jacobowski. Just as in a folk song, an everyday event can trigger a gigantic strength of feeling, so in Jacobowski's work a simple event becomes great because he transports it into the sphere of his mind. It is the simplest thing in the world; and at the same time it is one of the deepest experiences that can happen to a person, as is shown in the poem “The Old Woman” (p. 207):

The old woman

I

I have an old woman,
She lives right next to heaven,
For it is exactly ninety steps,
And children on it, a real muddle.

In her little room, clean and bright
The loud echo of the streets resounds. And slowly night falls in
Darkening on the masses of houses.

The full moon climbs over the roof,
the stars shine in a circle,
The wall clock ticks only slowly...
We sit there motionless and silent.

II

What do I have in common with the old woman?
I don't know exactly.
It can't be her coffee,
she puts too much milk in it,
I only love her baked apples,
She cooks them for me in the oven."
What do I have in common with the old woman?
That makes a narrow grave far away. There she laid her hopes,
A slim, blonde maiden. She went through life quietly,
And thought of one and that was me. And no one else realized
That she was the sweetness of my life. When I feel life is confused and rough,
Then I climb up to the old woman.
For her modest little chamber
Holds my soul's blossom within.
And when I come to her, I feel pain. And only when I leave her!

The following lines will describe the outstanding place that Jacobowski occupies among contemporary poets and present the character of his lyrical creations in detail.

II

Looking back on the “Shining Days” as a whole, after enjoying the individual poems, a unified, self-contained work of art stands before the soul. All the lyrical creations form a stylish harmony. The circle of human soul life passes before us. The feelings that are aroused in us by the sublimity and perfection of the whole world, the relationship of the soul to the world, human nature in various forms, the joys and sorrows of love, the pain and happiness of knowledge, the social conditions and their repercussions on the human mind, the mysterious paths of fate: all these elements of the life organism find expression. Nothing is alien to the personality that lives itself out in this book; it is at home on the heights and in the depths of existence. And one has the feeling that in this personality every feeling is given the right measure, the right degree. None pushes itself forward at the expense of the others. A harmonious universality, radiating from the central interests of life, is Jacobowski's essence. And his feelings are driven by these interests in life with a warmth and strength that have a personal and immediate effect in the most beautiful sense of the word. What moves all of humanity becomes, in a truly lyrical way, a matter of its own for this poet. We do not need to put ourselves in the place of a single individual in order to understand his creations; he guides us to our own inner selves. He expresses in his own way what moves us all. He has the magic wand to strike poetic sparks from life everywhere, and therefore does not need to look for peculiarities. Sentimentalism is as foreign to him as delicate sensitivity is his own; he is not a dreamer, but a powerful grabber. A rare confidence in his spiritual direction, a sure, firm feeling of the fruitfulness of his striving speaks from his poems. There is something pithy and delicate at the same time in his nature; he is like a tree that is exposed to strong storms, but is firmly rooted in the ground. He knows that he can abandon himself to life, to the everyday, because he finds treasures everywhere, even on the most trodden paths.

Compare Jacobowski with contemporary poets of note. How many believe that they will only find what is valuable if they search for the shells and extract rare, precious pearls from them. Jacobowski is not looking for shiny pearls; the seed that he reaches for, the common flower at the edge of the meadow, is enough for him. If one wants to name contemporary poets who, after having delighted us with his “Shining Days”, now stand with him in the front row, then only two names will come to mind: Detlev von Liliencron and Otto Erich Hartleben. The differences between the three poets are, however, great. And it is difficult for us to assess them when they are still in the prime of their lives, still stirring up new feelings in us every day. We can only give a provisional and very subjective judgment. Otto Erich Hartleben, the lyricist, seems to me like Goethe's description of the artist in “Winckelmann”. With his admirable taste and his cult of beauty, he communicates something to us that flows over us like ancient art. In this respect, he stands so much alone that we would rather isolate him than compare him. Detlev von Liliencron is the lyrical master of detail. His eye sees every thing in the light of the eternal. But his mind knows nothing of this eternity; that is why he tells us nothing about it. With Liliencron, it is as if we had to hear a second voice if we are to understand the coherence of his images. We must have a kind of second sight with this poet: then we will see what he gives us in the light of the eternally meaningful. Jacobowski has this second sight himself. And with it he achieves something that only poets achieve who create from a worldview, and what I must regard as the hallmark of the true poet: that the philosopher must call him a “brother poet” and at the same time that the simplest mind finds itself in him. The simplest nature and the highest spirit that can be drawn from this nature are one and the same.

Jacobowski's poetry will pass the highest test there is for a poet: to be equally appealing to the man who goes to work in the morning and can only use the festive moments on Sundays to let the serene realm of art work its magic on him, and to the true philosopher who is on familiar terms with the eternal riddles of existence. Like the philosopher, Jacobowski is a world thinker. See how he translates the great idea of Indian wisdom, that everything in the world is only an illusion and therefore need not touch us, into a very individual feeling:

“It's nothing! Just walk past the world!”

This strange word does not set my heart free.
How gladly would I pass by the world,
But, alas, the world does not pass me by!

For even if I stand in hiding like children,
fearfully turned away from the dance of the days, —
They drag me out of the corner by force,
And each one presses pain into my hand.

In a poem like this, the highest wisdom seems like the most charming naivety; the three most monumental forms of the soul reveal their innermost relationship: the childlike, the artistic and the philosophical.

Because Jacobowski unites these three forms in the most original way, I believe that as a poet he surpasses his contemporary Dehmel. He is a complete poet; Dehmel is half poet and half thinker. And two such halves make as little of a whole as a half lens and a half bean. In Dehmel's work, you will look in vain for a poem as simple as the following, which could almost serve as a motto for many of the greatest philosophical creations:

Soul, tell me, what are you struggling for?
“I am of the earth, but I long to be of heaven!"
Soul, you only achieve night and death?
“A morning red glows over nights!"

In a beautiful psychological study in “Pan” (1898, 3rd [issue, 4th year]), the brilliant Lou Andreas-Salome hit the nail on the head when she said: “In our time, many, and not the worst, turn away from the whole outer life and even despise it as a mere occasion for personal activity and self-realization, because they feel themselves hemmed in and robbed of their individual existence by the entire cultural conditions in which we live. [...] There is a search and longing for solitude in the most advanced people, in all those who carry something within themselves that cannot be born on the market, in all those who carry hope and future within themselves and secretly fear that these could be desecrated. They know full well that the great works that stride across the earth with brazen steps of victory and ringing music, century after century, arise from full contact with the full breadth and depth of real life, but until then – they also know this – many other, quieter works must precede them in white robes, with shy buds in their hair, and testify that there are human souls that are festively dressed and willing and ready for a new beauty in their lives.” On the other hand, it is safe to say that in the future, people with white robes and shy buds in their hair will be interesting symptoms of the end of the nineteenth century, people who will be studied for their peculiarity, but that the real signature of this period will be the spirits with healthy senses, with developed blossoms in their hair, who love fresh colors and not the pale, sickly white. We count Jacobowski among them.

Our healthy thinking has given rise to Darwinism and all its consequences in the second half of the century; on the paths along which this healthy thinking and healthy feeling walks, we also meet poets like Jacobowski. Alienated from the world, lost in aesthetic and philosophic-mystical quirks, we encounter poets with white robes and shy buds in their hair. Artificial poetic forms are of little value, as are bizarre, ingenious ideas. Both, however, always arise in times of powerful spiritual struggle. However, they never appear in the case of strong, original, independent minds, but rather in the case of weak, dependent minds that cannot produce original content from their souls, that have to extract everything from themselves with pliers and pumps, but that would still like to participate. Such minds are not equal to the demands and tasks of the time. They do not know any simple, straightforward answers to the questions that are buzzing around us. That is why they seek the abstruse, the sophisticated. The profound connoisseur of the workings of nature, Galileo, spoke the wise words that the true is not hard and difficult, but simple and easy, and that in all its works nature uses the closest, simplest and easiest means. Only the mind that knows how to use the simplest and easiest means, just like nature, truly lives in harmony with nature. Jacobowski appears as such a mind among the host of contemporary poets. Dehmels' artificial forms and artificial feelings seem like a departure from natural simplicity.

III

What a mistake it is for individual contemporaries to seek the salvation of poetry in formlessness and to believe that the “old” forms have been used up is best shown by contrasting the creations of these enthusiasts of formlessness with poems such as those of Jacobowski. The philosopher Simmel has written an interesting essay about a follower of formlessness, Paul Ernst. According to Simmel, this formlessness represents progress in that the artist no longer seeks the higher, the divine in art through artificialization, through the manipulation of immediate natural phenomena, but rather sees a divine significance in every experience that takes place before our senses, a significance that deserves to be captured in this immediacy. On the basis of such views, poetry that is nothing more than prose divided into verses is considered “modern” today. Those who hold such views live in the mistaken belief that the “old” forms are something that the artist arbitrarily adds to the phenomena of nature from his subjective essence. He does not realize what Goethe repeatedly explained in the most illuminating way, that the external course of events is only one side of natural existence, the surface, and that for those who look deeper, higher laws of form are expressed in nature itself, which they recreate in their artistic forms. There is a “higher nature” in nature. What Goethe has the Lord say to the angels in “Faust”: “But you, the true sons of the gods, rejoice in the living, rich beauty! That which is becoming, which eternally works and lives, embrace with the love of gentle boundaries, and what floats in a wavering appearance, fasten with lasting thoughts,” expresses the artist's mission. Only the “shaky appearance” presents itself in formlessness; the eternal becoming is full of form; it is inwardly, through its essence, bound to form. The rejection of form is nothing more than an expression of the inability to see the “higher nature” in nature, to find the subjective, stylish expression for its innermost harmony. In the face of all such aberrations of the time, Jacobowski, out of an inner necessity of his artistic sensibility, takes the safe path of the artist. One can see what he achieves with the proven “old” forms in a poem like “The Four Robbers”, which forms the conclusion of “Shining Days”. In this legend, simple simplicity is combined with symbolic allusions to the deep connections of world events and with a noble, closed form. What I said at the beginning of this essay about Jacobowski's poetry, that this poet draws from the eternal source from which the best content of life comes, is the reason why he stands out as such a pleasing, refreshing poet from other fellow poets. These others, however, only know derived sources. They are driven by a purpose in life that is unable to fulfill them. At best, they see branches and shoots, but they are unable to penetrate to the fertile, constructive elements of the life organism. Only those who direct their gaze to these fertile beings will find life's higher justification. When it is so often said that spiritual greatness leads to loneliness, one must reply that the proud, necessary loneliness that arises from the feeling of the eternal in the world has nothing to do with the accidental loneliness that arises from someone withdrawing into some isolated corner of existence. If he sees nothing in this corner but “what lives in a fluctuating appearance”, then his report cannot captivate us, even though he speaks of things that are hidden from the everyday eye. The cultural content of the world is not enriched by adding isolated phenomena to the old stock, but by leading the eternal becoming to a new stage of development. The way in which an artist who is capable of such things relates to life phenomena that appear new and “modern” in his time is evident in the part of “Leuchtende Tage” entitled “Großstadt” (Big City). Here, a spirit speaks of the social life of our day that does not see it in the perspective of the moment, but rather in the perspective that arises from the contemplation of the great laws of the world. The singers of social passions and conflicts often see only a few steps ahead. The light that falls on contemporary phenomena when they are placed in the context of a world view is what gives our feelings about these phenomena the right nuance. Modern big-city life, for example, is given such a nuance in Jacobowski's poem “Summer Evening”:

Summer evening. —
The air is soft and warm;
a distant scent from a garden,
The wide expanses of the sky are still pale,
here and there pale traces of stars;
On the street, the crack of whips and noise,
boys who are infatuated with young girls;
Children play with hoops in front of the doors,
coachmen knock their pipes;
knights on steeds, who are thinking of love,
honestly endeavor to win the favor of the ladies on bicycles, ...
And all the soft, warm air,
And from gardens a stray scent.

The poet experiences a “modern” situation; he portrays it in the context of the whole world. We do not see the city scene in isolation, but in such a way that the rest of the world plays into it. In this sense, “The Soldier, Scenes from the Big City” is a truly modern creation, in which the fate of a person transplanted from the countryside to the big city is described. Moving images pass before our soul, and from them we see the suffering of a man who is caught in the snares of eternal, gigantic fate, with the part of unreason that is in the world, and crushed. A poem like this teaches us how much a person's attitude, such as Jacobowski's, can deepen their feelings about modern life:

The mother once carried vegetables,
And when the cherry harvest came,
Then dear Liese stole for me,
as much as her little apron could hold.
How we feasted in the fields and meadows!

Mother sits in front of her baskets;
Now she is old, but happy in her mind,
So she boasts to her neighbor:
“My girl can't go wrong,
For she knows how to earn
And still puts something aside for later!"

I gave her a present yesterday
And recognized her face at once.
I stood in silence in the crowd,
until her Rembrandt feathers faded
In the street bustle slowly faded.

I couldn't move from the spot,
Her gaze burned into me.

IV

Jacobowski's ability to see the deeper connections of existence in the individual experience makes it possible for him to also poetically shape what reveals itself to us in life as chance, as blind necessity. In such poetic creation, the senseless approximation then appears as the expression of a meaningful guidance in world events. The kind of poetry that arises from such a view is usually called symbolist. A versatile nature like Jacobowski's will always push towards the symbolic representation of certain experiences. The serious play of the imagination will seek eternal laws even where they do not impose themselves in reality. But it is precisely this universality that prevents symbolism from being exaggerated in a one-sided way. For the harmonious personality always feels more or less what Goethe felt when he saw the Greek works of art in Italy: that the true artist proceeds according to the same laws as nature itself when creating its creatures. When the imagination of such a poet works symbolically, it does not do so in the obtrusive way in which many contemporary symbolists would like to force their subjective and arbitrary ideas on us as revelations, but with that spiritual chastity that allows nature itself to speak in the symbol, without distorting or contorting the inner truth of its expressions. In this beautiful sense, Jacobowski's “Frau Sorge” is a symbolizing poem:

A couple walks through the evening light,
he is a blacksmith's apprentice, she is a seamstress.

"Rosel, when we both pull a cart,
It's twice the joy and half the effort!"

And she leans wearily against her beloved;
A tear now and then runs down her cheek.

"Rosel, stop crying for your daily bread;
If it was enough for one, it's enough for two!"

He took her in his arms, asked no more questions,
caressed her warm, glowing face...

Gradually the light faded and they walked far

A woman sat down in the same place,

Looked with a gray gaze, raised her withered hand,

Threatened with the crutch, murmured and vanished...

The couple strode into the city,
Mrs. Worry was already sitting in the middle of her little room.

Jacobowski's imagination has a similar symbolic effect on the phenomena of nature. This is also evident in his prose stories. It appears so enchanting in his “Loki”. The spiritual in him grows out of the natural, as it were; it reflects its soul-stirring power back onto nature and receives from it a firm basis in reality. In the “Shining Days”, this trait is particularly evident in the section “Sun”. I will quote the poem “Shining”:

Just now, when the sun is shining,
my darling is walking across the field;
A glow passes over the field,
Catches itself, as if it were meant for her,
shining in her blonde hair.

Just now, when my sweetheart is running
over the blooming field,
Where her laughter falls down,
the stalks glisten like dewdrops,
The flowers glisten in the grass.

Just now, when the golden trace
Brightly glows in my eyes,
I see only blessings, only love, only happiness,
I see only a single glow
over the blossoming world.

And the poem “Maienblüten” seems to me like a bond that nature and the soul form in the imagination – in the best sense of a symbolist inspiration of nature:

Bear it silently when from the branches,
From the overfilled branches,
flowers blow into the pious hair,
And gently bend over,
So in thirst, lean over,
lips to lips
. See, a sweet and wondrous tremor
runs through the rows of leaves,
All the blossoms that they scatter,
they scatter blessings on you and me.

If we let the various currents of modern poetry pass us by, we are sure to encounter many a magnificent blossom. But we see only too often that beauty in the individual must be paid for with one-sidedness. It is harmonious universality that makes Jacobowski significant. He knows no poetic dogma; he knows life, and his interests end where life ends.

• 1. Not«Leuchtende Tage». New poems (1896-1898) by Ludwig Jacobowski. J. C. C. Bruns Verlag, Minden in Westf.