The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Our studies of karma, which have led us lately to definite individual examples of karmic relationships, are intended to afford a basis for forming a judgment not only of individual human connections, but also of more general historical ones. And it is with this end in view that I would like now to add to the examples already given. Today we will prepare the ground, and tomorrow we will follow this up by showing the karmic connections.

You will have realised that consideration of the relation between one earth-life and the next must always be based upon certain definite symptoms and facts. If we take these as our starting-point, they will lead us to a view of the actual connections. And in the case of the individualities of whom I have ventured to tell you, I have shown where these particular starting-points are to be found.

Today I want, as I said, to prepare the way, placing before you problems of which we shall find the solutions tomorrow.

Let me first draw your attention to the peculiar interest that one or another personality can arouse. I shall speak of personalities of historical interest as well as of personalities in ordinary life; the very interest that some persons arouse in us will often urge us to find a clue to their life-connections. Once we know how to look for these clues in the right way, we shall be able to find them. As you will already have noticed from the way in which I have presented the cases, it is all a matter of seeking in the right way. Let us then not be deterred, but proceed boldly.

Whatever one's attitude to the personality of Garibaldi may be in other respects, there can be no doubt that he is an interesting figure in the history of Europe; he played, as we all know, a remarkable part in the events of the 19th century. Today, then, we will make a preparatory study of Garibaldi, and to begin with I will bring to your notice certain facts in his life which, as we shall find, are able to lead the student of spiritual science to the connections of which we shall learn tomorrow.

Garibaldi is a personality who participated in a remarkable way in the life of the 19th century. He was born in the year 1807 and he held a prominent and influential position on into the second half of the century. This means that the way he expresses himself as a man is highly characteristic of the 19th century.

When we come to consider the features of his life, looking especially for those that are important from a spiritual aspect, we find Garibaldi spending his boyhood in Nice as the son of a poor man who has a job in the navigation service. He is a child who has little inclination to take part in what the current education of the country has to offer, a child who is not at all brilliant at school, but who takes a lively interest in all sorts and varieties of human affairs. What he learns at school has indeed the effect of inducing him very often to play truant. While the teacher was trying in his own way to bring some knowledge of the world to the children, the boy Garibaldi much preferred to romp about out-of-doors, to scamper through the woods or play games by the riverside. On the other hand, if he once got hold of some book that appealed to him, nothing could tear him from it. He would lie on his back by the hour in the sunshine, absolutely absorbed, not even going home for meals.

Broadly speaking, however, it was the great world that interested him. While still quite young he set about preparing himself for his father's calling and took part in sea voyages, at first in a subordinate, and afterwards in an independent position. He made many voyages on the Adriatic and shared in all the varied experiences that were to be had in the first half of the 19th century, when Liberalism and Democracy had not yet organised the traffic on the sea and put it under police regulations, but when some freedom of movement was still left in the life of man! He shared in all the experiences that were possible in times when one could do more or less what one wanted! And so he also had the experience—I believe it happened to him three or four times—of being seized by pirates. As well as being a genius, however, he was sly, and every time he was caught, he got away again, and very quickly too!

And so Garibaldi grew up into manhood, always living in the great world. As I have said, I do not intend to give you a biography but to point out characteristic features of his life that can lead us on to a consideration of what is really important and essential. He lived in the great world, and there came a time when he acquired a very strong and vivid impression of what his own inner relationship to the world might be. It was when he was nearly grown up and was taken by his father on a journey through the country, as far as Rome. There, looking out from Rome as it were over all Italy, he must have been aware of something quite remarkable going through his soul. In his voyages he had met many people who were, in general, quite alive and awake, but were utterly indifferent to one particular interest—they were asleep as regards the conditions of the time; and these people made an impression on Garibaldi that nearly drove him to despair. They had no enthusiasm for true and genuine humanity, such as showed itself in him quite early in life—he had indeed a genius for warm, tender-hearted enthusiasm.

As he passed through the countryside and afterwards came to Rome, a kind of vision must have arisen in his soul of the part he was later to play in the liberation of Italy. Other circumstances also helped to make him a fanatical anti-cleric, and a fanatical Republican, a man who set clearly before him the aim of doing everything in his power to further the well-being of mankind.

And now, taking part as he did in all manner of movements in Italy in the first half of the 19th century, it happened one day that for the first time in his life, Garibaldi read his name in the newspaper. I think he was about thirty years old at the time. It meant a good deal more in those days than it would do now, to read one's name in the newspaper. Garibaldi had, however, a peculiar destiny in connection with this reading of his name in the newspaper, for the occasion was the announcement in the paper of his death-sentence! He read his name there for the first time when his sentence to death was reported. There you have a unique circumstance of his life; it is not every man who has such an experience.

It was not granted to Garibaldi—and it is characteristic of his destiny that it was not, considering that his whole enthusiasm was centred in Italy—it was not granted him at first to take a hand in the affairs of Italy or Europe, but it was laid upon him by destiny to go first to South America and take part in all manner of movements for freedom over there, until the year 1848. And in every situation he showed himself a most remarkable man, gifted with quite extraordinary qualities. I have already related to you one most singular event in his life, the finding of his name in the newspaper for the first time on the occasion of the announcement of his own death-sentence. And now we come to another quite individual biographical fact, something that happens to very few men indeed. Garibaldi became acquainted in a most extraordinary way with the woman who was to be the mainstay of his happiness for many years. He was out at sea, on board ship, looking landwards through a telescope. To fall in love through a telescope—that is certainly not the way it happens to most people!

Destiny again made it easy for him to become quickly acquainted with the one whom he had chosen through the telescope to be his beloved. He steered at once in the direction in which he had looked through the telescope, and on reaching land he was invited by a man to a meal. It transpired, after he had accepted the invitation, that this man was the father of the girl he had seen! She could speak only Portuguese, and he only Italian; but we are assured by his biographer, and it seems to be correct, that the young woman immediately understood his carefully phrased declaration of love, which seems to have consisted simply of the words—in Italian of course—“We must unite for life.” She understood immediately. And it really happened so, that from this meeting came a life-companionship that lasted for a long, long time.

Garibaldi's wife shared in all the terrible and adventurous journeys he made in South America, and some of the recorded details of them are really most moving. For example, the story is told of how a report got about that Garibaldi had been killed in battle. His wife hurried to the battlefield and lifted up every head to see if it were her husband's. After a long time, and after undergoing many adventures in the search, she found him still alive. It is most affecting to read how on this very journey, which lasted a long time, she gave birth to a child without help of any kind, and how, in order to keep it warm, she bound it in a sling about her neck, holding it against her breast for hours at a time. The story of Garibaldi's South American adventures has some deeply moving aspects.

But now the time came, in the middle of the 19th century, when all kinds of impulses for freedom were stirring among the peoples of Europe, and Garibaldi could not bring himself to stay away any longer in South America; he returned to his fatherland. It is well-known with what intense energy he worked there, mustering volunteers under the most difficult circumstances—so much so that he did not merely contribute to the development of the new Italy: he was its creator.

And here we come to a feature of his life and character that stands out very strongly. He was, in every relationship of life, a man of independence, a man who always thought in a large and simple way, and took account only of the impulses that welled up from the depths of his own inner being. And so it is really very remarkable to see him doing everything in his power to bring it about that the dynasty of Victor Emmanuel should rule over the kingdom of Italy, when in reality the whole unification and liberation of Italy was due to Garibaldi himself. The story of how he won Naples and then Sicily with, comparatively speaking, quite a small force of men, undisciplined yet filled with enthusiasm, of how the future King of Italy needed only to make his entry into the regions already won for him by Garibaldi, and of how, nevertheless, if truth be told, nothing whatever was done from the side of the royal family or of those who stood near to them to show any proper appreciation of what Garibaldi had accomplished—the whole story makes a deep and striking impression. Fundamentally speaking, if we may put it in somewhat trivial language, the Savoy Dynasty had Garibaldi to thank for everything, and yet they were eminently unthankful to him, treating him with no more than necessary politeness.

Take, for example, the entry into Naples. Garibaldi had won Naples for the Dynasty and was regarded by the Neapolitans as no less than their liberator; a perfect storm of jubilation always greeted his appearance. It would have been unthinkable for the future King of Italy to make his entry into Naples without Garibaldi, absolutely unthinkable. Nevertheless the King's advisers were against it. Advisers, no doubt, are often exceedingly short-sighted; but if Victor Emmanuel had not acted on his own account out of a certain instinct and made Garibaldi sit by him in his red shirt on the occasion of the entry into Naples, he himself would most certainly not have been greeted with shouts of rejoicing! Even so, the cheers were intended for Garibaldi and not for him. He would most assuredly have been hissed—that is an absolute certainty. Victor Emmanuel would have been hissed if he had entered Naples without Garibaldi.

And it was the same all through. At some campaign or other in the centre of Italy, Garibaldi had carried the day. The commanders-in-chief with the King had come—what does one say in such a case, putting it as kindly as one can?—they had come too late. The whole thing had been carried through to the finish by Garibaldi. When, however, the army appeared, with its generals wearing their decorations, and met Garibaldi's men who had no decorations and were moreover quite unpretentiously attired, the generals declared: it is beneath our dignity to ride side by side with them, we cannot possibly do such a thing! But Victor Emmanuel had some sort of instinct in these matters. He called Garibaldi to his side, and the generals, making wry faces, were obliged to join with Garibaldi's army as it drew up into line. These generals, it seems, had a terribly bad time of it; they looked as though they had stomach-aches! And afterwards, when the entry into a town was to be made, Garibaldi, who had done everything, actually had to come on behind like a rearguard. He and his men had to wait and let the others march in front. It was a case where the regular army had in point of fact done absolutely nothing; yet they entered first, and after them, Garibaldi with his followers.

The important things to note are these remarkable links of destiny. It is in these links of destiny that we may find our guidance to the karmic connections. For it has not directly to do with a man's freedom or unfreedom that he first sees his name in print on the occasion of his death-sentence, or that he finds his wife through a telescope. Such things are connections of destiny; they take their course alongside of that which is always present in man in spite of them—his freedom. These are the very things, however—these things of which we may be sure that they are links of destiny—that can give a great stimulus to the practical study of the nature and reality of karma.

Now in the case of a personality like Garibaldi, traits that may generally be thought incidental, are characteristic. They are, in his case, strongly marked. Garibaldi was what is called a handsome man. He had beautiful tawny-golden hair and was altogether a splendid figure. His hair was curly and gleaming gold, and was greatly admired by the women! Now you will agree, from what I have told you of Garibaldi's bride—whom he chose, you remember, through a telescope—that only the highest possible praise can be spoken of her; nevertheless, it seems she was not altogether free from jealousy. What does Garibaldi do one day when this jealousy seems to have assumed somewhat large proportions? He has his beautiful hair all cut away to the roots; he lets himself be made bald. That was when they were still in South America. All these things are traits that serve to show how the necessities of destiny are placed into life.

Garibaldi became, as we know, one of the great men of Europe after his achievements in Italy, and traveling through Italy today you know how, from town to town, you pass from one Garibaldi memorial to another. But there have been times when not only in Italy but everywhere in Europe the name of Garibaldi was spoken with the keenest interest and the deepest devotion, when even the ladies in Cologne, in Mainz and in many another place wore blouses in Garibaldi's honour—not to mention London, where Garibaldi's red blouse became quite the fashion.

During the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, Garibaldi, now an old man, put himself at the disposal of the French, and an interesting incident took place. His only experience, as we know, had been volunteer fighting, such as he had conducted in Italy and also in South America, yet on a certain occasion in this full-scale war he was the one to capture a German flag from under a pile of men who were trying to protect it with their bodies. Garibaldi captured this flag. But he had such respect for the men who had hurled themselves upon the flag to guard it with their own bodies, that he sent it back to its owners. Strange to relate, however, when he appeared in a meeting at some place or other soon afterwards, he was received with hisses on account of what he had done.

You will agree—this is not merely an interesting life, but the life of a man who in very deed and fact is lifted right above all other greatness in evidence in the 19th century! A most remarkable man—so original, so elementary, acting so evidently out of primitive impulses, and at the same time with such genius! Others working with him may perhaps have been better at leading large armies and doing things in an orderly way, but none of them in that deeply materialistic period had such genuine, spontaneous enthusiasm for what they were aiming at.

Here, then, is one of the personalities whom I would like to place before you. As I said, I shall give preparatory descriptions today, and tomorrow we will look for the answers.

Another personality, very well-known to you by name, is of exceptional interest in connection with investigations into karma. It is Lessing.

The circumstances of Lessing's life, I may say, have always interested me to an extraordinary degree. Lessing is really the founder of the better sort of journalism, the journalism that has substance and is really out to accomplish something. Before Lessing, poets and dramatists had taken their subjects from the aristocracy. Lessing, on the other hand, is at pains to introduce bourgeois life, ordinary middle-class life, into the drama, the life concerned generally with the destinies of men as men, and not with the destinies of men in so far as they hold some position in society or the like. Purely human conflicts—that is what Lessing wanted to portray on the stage. In the course of his work he applied himself to many great problems, as for example when he tried to determine the boundaries of painting and of poetry in his Laocoon. But the most interesting thing of all is the powerful impetus with which Lessing fought for the idea of tolerance. You need only take his Nathan the Wise and you will see at once what a foremost place this idea of tolerance has in Lessing's mind and life. In weaving the fable of the three kings in Nathan the Wise, he wants to show how the three main religions have gone astray from their original forms and are none of them really genuine, and how one must go in search of the true form, which has been lost. Here we have tolerance united with an uncommonly deep and significant idea.

Interesting, too, is the conversation between Freemasons, entitled Ernst und Falk, and much else that springs from Freemasonry. What Lessing accomplished in the way of critical research into the history of religious life is, for one who is able to judge its significance, really astounding. But we must be able to place the whole Lessing, in his complete personality, before us. And this we cannot do by reading, for example, the two-volume work by Erich Schmidt which purports to be a final and complete study of Lessing. Lessing as he really was, is not portrayed at all, but a picture is given of a puppet composed of various limbs and members, and we are told that this puppet wrote Nathan the Wise and Laocoon. It amounts to no more than an assertion that the man portrayed here has written these books. And it is the same with the other biographies of Lessing.

We begin to get an impression of Lessing when we observe, shall I say, the driving force with which he hurls his sentences against his opponents. He wages a polemic against the civilisation of Middle Europe—quite a refined and correct polemic, but at every turn hitting straight home. You must here observe a peculiar nuance in Lessing's character if you want to understand the make-up of his life. On the one hand we have the sharpness, often caustic sharpness, in such writings as The Dramatic Art of Hamburg, and then we have to find the way over, as it were, to an understanding, for example, of the words used by Lessing when a son had been born to him and had died directly after birth. He writes somewhat as follows in a letter: Yes, he has at once taken leave again of this world of sorrow; he has thereby done the best thing a human being can do. (I cannot cite the passage word for word, but it was to this effect.) In so writing, Lessing is giving expression to his pain in a wonderfully brave way, not for that reason feeling the pain one whit less deeply than someone who can do nothing but bemoan the event. This ability to draw back into himself in pain was characteristic of the man who at the same time knew how to thrust forward with vigour when he was developing his polemics. This is what makes it so affecting to read the letter written when his child had died immediately after birth, leaving the mother seriously ill.

Lessing had moreover this remarkable thing in his destiny—and it is quite characteristic, when one sets out to find the karmic connections in his case—that he was friends in Berlin with a man who was in every particular his opposite, namely, Nikolai.

Of Lessing it can be said—it is not literally true, but it is none the less characteristic—that he never dreamed, because his intellect and his understanding were so keen. On this account, as we shall see tomorrow, he is for the spiritual researcher such an extraordinarily significant personality. But there is something in the very construction of his sentences, something in the home-thrusts with which he lays his opponent in the dust, that really makes every sentence a delight to read.

With Nikolai it is just the opposite. Nikolai is an example of a true philistine. Although a friend of Lessing, he was none the less a typical philistine-bourgeois; and he had visions, most strange and remarkable visions.

Lessing, genius as he was, had no visions, not even dreams. Nikolai literally suffered from visions. They came, and they went away only after leeches had been applied. Yes, in extremity they actually applied leeches to him, in order that he might not be for ever tormented by the spiritual world which would not let him alone.

Fichte wrote a very interesting essay directed against Nikolai. He set out to give a picture of the typical German-bourgeois as shown in the personality of Nikolai. For all that, this same Nikolai was the friend of Lessing.

Another thing is very remarkable in Lessing. In his own Weltanschauung, Lessing concerned himself very much with two philosophers, Spinoza and Leibniz. Now it has often attracted me very much, as an interesting occupation for spare hours, to read all the writings in which it is proved over and over again that Lessing was a Leibnizian, and on the other hand those in which it is proved on still more solid ground that he was a Spinozist. For in truth one cannot decide whether Lessing, acute and discerning thinker as he was, was a Leibnizian or a Spinozist, who are the very opposite of each other. Spinoza—pantheist and monotheist; Leibniz—monadist, purely and completely individualistic. And yet we cannot decide whether Lessing belongs to Leibniz or to Spinoza. When we try to put him to the test in this matter, we can come to no conclusive judgment. It is impossible.

At the close of his life Lessing wrote the remarkable essay, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which, quite isolated, as it were, the idea of repeated earth-lives appears. The book shows how mankind goes through one epoch of development after another, and how the Gods gave into man's hand as a first primer, so to speak, the Old Testament, and then as a second primer the New Testament, and how in the future a third book will come for the further education of the human race. And then all at once the essay is brought to a close with a brief presentation of the idea that man lives through repeated earth-lives. And there Lessing says, again in a way that is absolutely in accord with his character (I am not quoting the actual words, but this is the gist of it): Ought the idea of repeated earth-lives to seem so absurd, considering that it was present in very early times, when men had not yet been spoilt by school learning? The essay then ends with a genuine panegyric on repeated earth-lives, finishing with these beautiful words: “Is not all Eternity mine?”

One used to meet continually—perhaps it would still be so if one mixed more with people—one used to meet men who valued Lessing highly, but who turned away, so to speak, when they came to The Education of the Human Race. Really it is hard to understand the state of mind of such men. They set the highest estimation on a man of genius, and then reject what he gives to mankind in his most mature age. They say: he has grown old, he is senile, we can no longer follow him. That is all very well; one can reject anything by that method! The fact is, no one has any right to recognise Lessing and not to recognise that this work was conceived by him in the full maturity of his powers. When a man like Lessing utters a profound aphorism such as this on repeated earth-lives, there is, properly speaking, no possibility of ignoring it.

You will readily see that the personality of Lessing is interesting in the highest degree from a karmic point of view, in relation to his own passage through different earth-lives. In the second half of the 18th century the idea of repeated earth-lives was by no means a commonly accepted one. It comes forth in Lessing like a flash of lightning, like a flash of genius. We cannot account for its appearance; it cannot possibly be due to Lessing's education or to any other influence in this particular life. We are compelled to ask how it may be with the previous life of a man in whom at a certain age the idea of repeated earth-lives suddenly emerges—an idea that is foreign to the civilisation of his own day—emerges, too, in such a way that the man himself points to the fact that the idea was once present in very early times. The truth is that he is really bringing forward inner grounds for the idea, grounds of feeling that carry with them an indication of his own earth-life in the distant past. Needless to say, in his ordinary surface-consciousness he has no notion of such connections. The things we do not know are, however, none the less true. If those things alone were true that many men know, then the world would be poor indeed in events and poor indeed in beings.

This is the second case whose karmic connections we are going to study.

There is a third case I should like to open up, because it is one that can teach us a great deal in the matter of karmic relationships. Among the personalities who were near to me as teachers in my youth there was a man to whom I have already referred; today I should like to speak of him again, adding some points that will be significant for our study of karma.

There are, of course, risks in speaking of these matters, but in view of the whole situation of the spiritual life which ought to proceed from Anthroposophy today, I do not think such risks can be avoided.

What I am now going to tell you came to my notice several years after I had last seen the person in question, who was a greatly beloved teacher of mine up to my eighteenth year. But I had always continued to follow his life, and had in truth remained very close to him. And now at a certain moment in my own life I felt constrained to follow his life more closely in a particular respect.

It was when, in another connection, I began to take a special interest in the life of Lord Byron. And at that same time I got to know some Byron enthusiasts. One of them was the poetess, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie, of whom I shall have much to say in my autobiography. During a certain period of her life she was a Byron enthusiast. Then there was another, a most remarkable personality, a strange mixture of all possible qualities—Eugen Heinrich Schmidt. Many of you who know something about the history of Anthroposophy will be familiar with his name.

Eugen Heinrich Schmidt first became known in Vienna during the eighties, and it was then that I made his acquaintance. He had just written the prize essay that was published by the Hegel Society of Berlin, on the Dialectics of Hegel. Now he came to Vienna, a tall, slight man filled with a burning enthusiasm, which came to expression at times in very forcible gestures and so on. It was none the less genuine for that. And it was just this enthusiasm of Schmidt's that gave me the required “jerk,” as it were. I thought I would like to do him a kindness, and as he had recently written a most enthusiastic and inspired article on Lord Byron, I introduced him to my other Byron enthusiast, Marie Eugenie delle Grazie. And now began a wildly excited discussion on Byron. The two were really quite in agreement, but they carried on a most lively and animated debate. All we others who were sitting round—a whole collection of theological students from the Vienna Catholic Faculty were there, who came every week and with whom I had made friends—all we others were silent. And the two who were thus conversing about Byron were sitting like this.—Here was the table, rather a long one, and at one end sat delle Grazie and at the other end, Eugen Heinrich Schmidt, gesticulating with might and main. All of a sudden his chair slips away from under him, and he falls under the table, his feet stretching right out to delle Grazie. I can tell you, it was a shock for us all! But this shock helped me to hit upon the solution of a particular problem.

Let me tell you of it quite objectively, as a matter of history. All that they had been saying about Byron had made a strong impression upon me, and I began to feel the keenest need to know how the karmic connections might be in the case of Byron. It was, of course, not so easy. But now I suddenly had the following experience.—It was really as if the whole picture of this conversation, with Eugen Heinrich Schmidt being so terribly impolite with his foot!—as if this picture had suddenly drawn my attention to the foot of Lord Byron, who was, as you know, club-footed. And from that I went on to say to myself: My beloved teacher, too, had a foot like that; this karmic connection must be investigated. I have already given you an example, in the affliction of the knee from which Eduard von Hartmann suffered, of how one's search can be led back through peculiarities of this kind. I was able now to perceive the destiny of the teacher whom I loved and who also had such a foot. And it was remarkable in the highest degree to observe how on the one hand the same peculiarity came to view both in the case of Byron and of my teacher, namely, the club-foot; but how on the other hand the two persons were totally different from one another, Byron, the poet of genius, who in spite of his genius—or perhaps because of it—was an adventurer; and the other a brilliant geometrician such as one seldom finds in teaching posts, a man at whose geometrical imagination and treatment of descriptive geometry one could only stand amazed.

In short, having before me these two men, utterly different in soul, I was able to solve the problem of their karma by reference to this seemingly insignificant physical detail. This detail it was that enabled me to consider the problems of Byron and my geometry teacher in connection with one another, and thereby to find the solution.

I wished to give these examples today and tomorrow we will consider them from the point of view of karma.

From what has already been indicated about the life between death and the new birth you will recall that during that period a human being continues, to begin with, to live in conditions and with relationships he himself prepared during his existence on Earth. It was said that when we again encounter some personality in the spiritual world after death, the relationship between us is, at first, the same as was formed during our existence on Earth and we cannot, for the time being, change it at all. Thus if in the spiritual world we come into contact with a friend or an individual who has predeceased us, and to whom we owed a debt of love but during life withheld that love from him, we shall now have to experience again the relationship that existed before death because of the lack of love of which we were guilty. We confront the person in question in the way described in the last lecture, beholding and experiencing over and over again the circumstances created during the life before our death. For instance, if at some particular time, say ten years before the death of the person in question, or before our own death, we allowed the relationship caused by our self-incurred debt of love to be established, we shall have to live through the relationship for a corresponding length of time after death and only after that period has elapsed shall we be able to experience once again, during our life after death, the happier relationship previously existing between us. It is important to realise that after death we are not in a position to expunge or change relationships for which we had been responsible on Earth. To a certain extent change has become impossible.

It might easily be believed that this is inevitably a painful experience and can only be regarded as suffering. But that would be judging from the standpoint of our limited earthly circumstances. Viewed from the spiritual world things look different in many respects. It is true that in the life between death and the new birth the individual concerned must undergo all the suffering resulting from the admission: I am now in the spiritual world and realise the wrong I committed, but I cannot rectify it and must rely upon conditions to bring about a change. An individual who is aware of this undergoes the pain connected with the experience, but he also knows that it must be so and that it would be detrimental for his further development if it were otherwise, if he could not learn from the experience resulting from such suffering. For through experiencing such conditions and recognising that they cannot be changed we acquire the power to change them in our later karma. The technique of karma enables these conditions to be changed during another physical incarnation. There is only the remotest possibility that the dead himself can change them. Above all during the first period after death, during the time in Kamaloka, an individual sees what has been determined by his life before death, but to begin with he must leave it as it is; he is unable to bring about any change in what he experiences.

Those who have remained behind on Earth have a far greater influence on the dead than the dead has on himself or others who have also died have upon him. And this is tremendously important. It is really only an individual who has remained on the physical plane, who had established some relationship with the dead, who through human will is able to bring about certain changes in the conditions of souls between death and rebirth.

We will now take an example that can be instructive in many respects. Here we can also consider the life in Kamaloka, for the existing relationships do not change when the transition takes place into the period of Devachan. Let us think of two friends living on Earth, one of whom comes into contact with Anthroposophy at a certain time in his life and becomes an anthroposophist. It may happen that because of this, his friend rages against Anthroposophy. You may have known such a case. If the friend had been the first to find Anthroposophy he might himself have become a very good adherent. Such things certainly happen but we must realise that they are very often clothed in maya. Consequently it may happen that the one who rages against Anthroposophy because his friend has become an adherent is raging in his surface consciousness only, in his Ego-consciousness. In his astral consciousness, in his subconsciousness he may very likely not share in the antipathy. Without realising it he may even be longing for Anthroposophy. In many cases it happens that aversion in the upper consciousness takes the form of longing in the subconsciousness. It does not necessarily follow that an individual feels exactly what he expresses in his upper consciousness. After death we do not experience only the effects of the contents of our upper consciousness, our Ego-consciousness. To believe that would be to misunderstand entirely the conditions prevailing after death. It has often been said that although a human being casts off physical body and etheric body at death, his longings and desires remain. Nor need these longings and desires be only those of which he was actually aware. The longings and desires that were in his sub-consciousness, they too remain, including those of which he has no conscious knowledge or may even have resisted. They are often much stronger and more intense after death than they were in life. During life a certain disharmony between the astral body and the ‘I’ expresses itself as a feeling of depression, dissatisfaction with oneself. After death, the astral consciousness is an indication of the whole character of the soul, the whole stamp of the individual concerned. So what we experience in our upper consciousness is less significant than all those hidden wishes, desires and passions which are present in the soul's depths and of which the ‘I’ knows nothing.

In the case mentioned, let us suppose that the man who denounces Anthroposophy because his friend has become an adherent passes through the gate of death. The longing for Anthroposophy, which may have developed precisely because of his violent opposition, now asserts itself and becomes an intense wish for Anthroposophy. This wish would have to remain unfulfilled, for it could hardly happen that after death he himself would have an opportunity of satisfying it. But through a particular concatenation of circumstances in such a case, the one who is on Earth may be able to help the other and change something in his conditions. This is the kind of case that may frequently be observed in our own ranks.

We can, for instance, read to the one who has died. The way to do this is to picture him vividly there in front of us; we picture his features and go through with him in thought the content, for example, of an anthroposophical book. This need only be done in thought and it has a direct effect upon the one who has died. As long as he is in the stage of Kamaloka, language is no hindrance; it becomes a hindrance only when he has passed into Devachan. Hence the question as to whether the dead understands language need not be raised. During the period of Kamaloka a feeling for language is certainly present. In this practical way very active help can be given to one who has passed through the gate of death. What streams up from the physical plane is something that can be a factor in bringing about a change in the conditions of life between death and the new birth; but such help can only be given to the dead from the physical world, not directly from the spiritual world.

We realise from this that when Anthroposophy actually finds its way into the hearts of men it will in very truth bridge the gap between the physical and the spiritual worlds, and that will constitute its infinite value in life. Only a very elementary stage in anthroposophical development has been reached when it is thought that what is of main importance is to acquire certain concepts and ideas about the members of man's constitution or about what can come to him from the spiritual world. The bridge between the physical world and the spiritual world cannot be built until we realise that Anthroposophy takes hold of our very life. We shall then no longer adopt a merely passive attitude towards those who have passed through the gate of death but shall establish active contact with them and be able to help them. To this end Anthroposophy must make us conscious of the fact that our world consists of physical existence and superphysical, spiritual existence; furthermore that man is on Earth not only to gather for himself the fruits of physical existence between birth and death but that he is on Earth in order to send up into the superphysical world what can be gained and can exist only on the physical plane. If for some justifiable reason or, let us say, for the sake of comfort, a man has kept aloof from anthroposophical ideas, we can bring them to him after death in the way described. Maybe someone will ask: Is it possible that this will annoy the dead, that he does not want it? This question is not entirely justifiable because human beings of the present age are by no means particularly opposed to Anthroposophy in their subconsciousness. If the subconsciousness of those who denounce Anthroposophy could have a voice in their upper consciousness, there would be hardly any opposition to it. For people are prejudiced and biased against the spiritual world only in their Ego-consciousness, only in what expresses itself as Ego-consciousness on the physical plane.

This is one aspect of mediation between the physical world and the spiritual world. But we can also ask: Is mediation also possible in the other direction, from the spiritual to the physical world? That is to say, can the one who has passed through the gate of death communicate in some way with those who have remained on the physical plane? At the present time the possibility of this is very slight because on the physical plane human beings live for the most part in their Ego-consciousness only and not in the consciousness connected with the astral body. It is not so easy to convey an idea of how men will gradually develop consciousness of what surrounds them as an astral or devachanic or other spiritual world. But if Anthroposophy acquires greater influence in the evolution of humanity, this will eventually come about. Simply through paying attention to the teachings of Anthroposophy men will find the ways and means to break through the boundaries of the physical world and direct attention to the spiritual world that is round about them and eludes them only because they pay no heed to it.

How can we become aware of this spiritual world?

Today I want to make you aware of how little a man really knows about the things of the world surrounding him. He knows very little indeed of what is of essential importance in that world. Through his senses and intellect he gets to know and recognise the ordinary facts of life in which he is involved. He gets to know what is going on both in the world and in himself, establishes some kind of association between these happenings, calls the one ‘cause’ and the other ‘effect’ and then, having ascertained some connection based either upon cause and effect or some other concept, thinks he understands the processes that are in operation. To take an example: We leave our home at eight o’clock in the morning, walk along the street, reach our place of work, have a meal during the day, do this or that to amuse ourselves. This goes on until the time comes for sleep. We then connect our various experiences; one makes a strong impression upon us, another a weaker impression. Effects are also produced in our soul, either of sympathy or antipathy. Even trifling reflection can teach us that we are living as it were on the surface of a sea without the faintest idea of what is down below on the sea's bed. As we pass through life we get to know external reality only. But an example will show that a very great deal is implicit in this external reality. Suppose one day we leave home three minutes later than usual and arrive at work three minutes late; after that we carry on just as if we had left home at the usual time. Nevertheless it may be possible to verify that had we been in the street punctually at eight o'clock we might have been run over by a car and killed; if we had left home punctually we should no longer be alive. Or on another occasion we may hear of an accident to a train in which we should have been travelling and thus have been injured. This is an even more radical example of what I just said. We pay attention only to what actually happens, not to what may be continually happening and which we have escaped. The range of such possibilities is infinitely greater than that of actual happenings.

It may be said that this happening had no significance for our outer life. For our inner life, however, it is certainly of importance. Suppose, for instance, you had bought a ticket for a voyage in the Titanic but were dissuaded by a friend from travelling. You sold the ticket and then heard of the disaster. Would your experience have been the same as if you had never been involved? Would it not far rather have made a most striking impression upon you? If we knew from how many things we are protected in the world, how many things are possible for good or for ill, things which are converging and only through slight displacement do not meet, we should have a sensitive perception of experiences of happiness or unhappiness, of bodily experiences which are possible for us but which simply do not come our way. Who among all of you sitting here can know what you would have experienced if, for example, the lecture this evening had been cancelled and you had been somewhere else. If you had known about the cancellation your attitude of mind would be quite different from what it now is, because you have no idea of what might conceivably have happened.

All these possibilities which do not become reality on the physical plane exist as forces and effects behind the physical world in the spiritual world and reverberate through it. It is not only the forces which actually determine our life on the physical plane that stream down upon us but also the measureless abundance of forces which exist only as possibilities, some of which seldom make their way into our physical consciousness. But when they do, this usually gives rise to a significant experience. Do not say that what has been stated, namely that numberless possibilities exist, that for example this lecture might have been cancelled, in which case those sitting here would have had different experiences—do not say that this invalidates karma. It does nothing of the kind. If such a thing were said it would imply ignorance of the fact that the idea of karma just presented holds good only for the world of realities within the physical life of men. The truth is that the spiritual life permeates our physical life and there is a world of possibilities where the laws operating as karmic laws are quite different. If we could feel what a tiny part of what we might have experienced is represented by the physical realities and that our actual experiences are only a fractional part of the possibilities, the infinite wealth and exuberance of the spiritual life behind our physical life would be obvious to us.

Now the following may happen. A man may take serious account in his thoughts of this world of possibilities or perhaps not in his thoughts but only in his feelings. He may realise that he would probably have been killed in an accident to a train which he happened to miss. This may make a deep impression upon him and such happenings are able as it were to open the soul to the spiritual world. Occasions such as this with which we are in some way connected may actually reveal to us wishes or thoughts of souls living between death and the new birth.

When Anthroposophy wakens in men a feeling for possibilities in life, for occurrences or catastrophes which did not take place simply because something that might have happened did not do so, and when the soul abides firmly by this feeling, experiences conveyed by individuals with whom there had been a connection in the physical world may be received from the spiritual world.

Although during the hurry and bustle of daily life people are for the most part disinclined to give rein to feelings of what might have happened, nevertheless there are times in life when events that might have happened have a decisive influence upon the soul. If you were to observe your dream-life more closely, or the strange moments of transition from waking life to sleep or from sleep to waking life, if you were to observe with greater exactitude certain dreams which are often quite inexplicable, in which certain things that happen to you appear in a dream-picture or vision, you would find that these inexplicable pictures indicate something that might have happened and was prevented only because other conditions, or hindrances. intervened. A person who through meditation or some other means makes his thinking more mobile, will have moments in his waking life during which he will feel that he is living in a world of possibilities; this may not be in the form of definite ideas but of feelings. If he develops such feelings he is preparing himself to receive from the spiritual world impressions from human beings who were connected with him in the physical world. Such influences then manifest as genuine dream-experiences which have meaning and point to some reality in the spiritual world. In teaching us that in the life between birth and death karma holds sway, Anthroposophy makes it quite clear that wherever we are placed in life we are faced perpetually with an infinite number of possibilities. One of these possibilities is selected in accordance with the law of karma; the others remain in the background, surrounding us like a cosmic aura. The more deeply we believe in karma, the more firmly we shall also believe in the existence of this cosmic aura which surrounds us and is produced by forces which converge but have been displaced in a certain way, so that they do not manifest on the physical plane.

If we allow our hearts and minds to be influenced by Anthroposophy, this will be a means of educating humanity to be receptive to impressions coming from the spiritual world. If, therefore, Anthroposophy succeeds in making a real effect upon culture, upon spiritual life, influences will not only rise up from physical life into the spiritual world but the experiences undergone by the dead during their life between death and the new birth will flow back. Thus here again the gulf between the physical and the spiritual worlds will be bridged. The consequence will be a tremendous widening of human life and we shall see the purpose of Anthroposophy fulfilled in the creation of an actual link between the two worlds, not merely a theoretical conception of the existence of a spiritual world. It is essential to realise that Anthroposophy fulfils its task in the real sense only when it permeates the souls of men as a living force and when by its means we not only comprehend something intellectually but our whole attitude and relationship to the world around us is changed.

Because of the preconceptions current in our times, man's thinking is far too materialistic, even if he often believes in the existence of a spiritual world. Hence it is extremely difficult for him in the present age to picture the right relationship between soul and body. The habits of thought peculiar to the times tend to make him picture the life of soul as being connected too closely with the bodily constitution. An analogy may be the only means of helping to clarify what must be understood here.

If we examine a watch we see that it consists of wheels and other little metal parts. But do we look at our watch in the course of everyday life in order to study the works or the interplay of the wheels? No, we look at our watch in order to find out the time; but time has nothing whatever to do with any of the metal parts or wheels. We look at the watch and do not trouble about what there is to be seen inside the watch itself. Or let us take another example. When somebody speaks of telegraphing today he has the electric apparatus in mind. But even before electric telegraphy was invented, telegraphing went on. Provided the right signs, etc. are known it would be possible for people to speak from one town to another without any electric telegraph—and perhaps the process would not be very much slower. Suppose, for instance, pillars or poles were erected along the highway between Berlin and Paris and a man posted on the top of each pole to pass on the appropriate signs. If that were done quickly enough there would be no difference between this method and what is done by means of the electric telegraph. Certainly the latter is the simpler and much quicker method but the actual process of telegraphing has as little to do with the mechanism of the electric telegraph as time has to do with the works in a watch.

Now the human soul has just as much and just as little to do with the processes of the human body as the communication from Berlin to Paris has to do with the mechanism of the electric telegraph. It is only when we think in this way that we can have a true conception of the independence of the soul. For it would be perfectly possible for this human soul with all its content to make use of a differently formed body, just as the message from Berlin to Paris could be sent by means other than the electric telegraph. The electric telegraph merely happens to be the most convenient way of sending messages, given the conditions of our present existence, and in the same sense the body with its possibility of movement and the head above provides the most convenient means, in the conditions of our existence on Earth, for the soul to express itself. But it is simply not the case that the body as such has anything more directly to do with the life of the soul than the electric telegraph with its mechanism has directly to do with the transmission of a communication from Berlin to Paris, or a watch with time. It would be possible to devise an instrument quite different from our watches for measuring time. Similarly it is possible to conceive of a body—quite different from the one we use in the conditions prevailing on Earth—that would enable the soul to express itself.

How are we to picture the relation of the human soul to the body? A saying of Schiller, applied to man, is particularly relevant here: “If you are seeking for the highest and the best, the plant can teach it to you.” We look at the plant which spreads out its leaves and opens its blossoms during the day and draws them in when the light fades. That which streams to the plant from the sun and the stars has been withdrawn. But it is what comes from the sun that enables the leaves to open again and the blossom to unfold Out yonder in cosmic space, therefore, are the forces which cause the organs of the plant to fold up limply when they withdraw or unfold when they are active. What is brought about in the plant by cosmic forces is brought about in the human being by his own Ego and astral body. When does a human being allow his limbs to relax and his eyelids to close like the plant when it draws in its leaves and blossoms? When his Ego and astral body leave his bodily organism. What the sun does to the plant, the Ego and astral body do to the organs of the human being. Hence we can say: the plant's body must turn to the sun as man's body must turn to the Ego and astral body and we must think of these members of his being as having the same effect upon him as the sun has upon the plant.

Even externally considered, will it still surprise you to know what occult investigation reveals, namely that the Ego and astral body originate from the cosmic sphere to which the sun belongs and do not belong to the Earth at all? Nor will you be surprised, after what has been said in previous lectures, to realise that when human beings leave the Earth, either in sleep or at death, they pass into the conditions prevailing in the Cosmos. The plant is still dependent upon the sun and the forces operating in space. The Ego and the astral body of man have made themselves independent of the forces in space and go their own way. A plant is bound to sleep when the sunlight withdraws; in respect of his Ego and astral body, however, man is independent of the sun and planets which are his real home, and for this reason he is able to sleep by day, even when the sun is shining. In his Ego and astral body man has emancipated himself from that with which he is really united—namely the forces of the sun and stars. Therefore it is not grotesque to say that what remains of man on the Earth and in its elements after death belongs to the Earth and to its forces; but the Ego and astral body belong to the forces of the Cosmos. After the death of the human being Ego and astral body return to those cosmic forces and pass through the life between death and rebirth within their spheres. During the period on Earth between birth and death, while the soul is living in a physical body, the life of soul which strictly belongs to the sun and the stars has no more to do with this physical body than time as such—which is in reality conditioned by the solar and stellar constellations—has to do with the watch and its mechanism of wheels. It is quite conceivable that if, instead of living on the Earth, we were born on some other planet, our soul would be adapted to a quite different planetary existence. The particular formation of our eyes and ears is not attributable to the soul but to the conditions prevailing on the Earth. All we do is to make use of these organs. If we make ourselves consciously aware of the fact that with our soul we belong to the world of the stars, we shall have taken a first step towards a real understanding of our relationships as human beings and our true human nature. This knowledge will help us to adopt the right attitude to our conditions of existence here on Earth. To establish even this more or less external relationship to our physical body or etheric body will give us a sense of security. We shall realise that we are not merely beings of the Earth but belong to the whole Universe, to the Macrocosm, that we live within the Macrocosm. It is only because a man here on Earth is bound to his body that he is not conscious of his connection with the forces of the great Universe.

Wherever and whenever in the course of the ages a deepening of the spiritual life was achieved, efforts were made to bring this home to the souls of men. In point of fact it is only during the last four centuries that man has lost this consciousness of his connection with the spiritual forces weaving and holding sway in cosmic space. Think of what has always been emphasised: that Christ is the great Sun-Being who through the Mystery of Golgotha has united Himself with the Earth and its forces and has thus made it possible for man to take into himself the Christ-force on Earth; permeation with the Christ Impulse will include the impulses of the Macrocosm and in every epoch of evolution it will be right to recognise in Christ the power that imparts feeling of kinship with the Macrocosm.

In the twelfth century a story, a splendid allegory, became current in the West. It was as follows: Once upon a time there was a girl who had several brothers, all of whom were as poor as church mice. One day the girl found a pearl, thereby becoming the possessor of great treasure. All the brothers were determined to share the wealth that had come her way. The first brother was a painter and he said to the girl: “I will paint for you the finest picture ever known if you will let me share your wealth.” But the girl would have nothing to do with him and sent him away. The second brother was a musician. He promised the girl that he would compose the most beautiful piece of music if she would let him share her wealth. But she sent him away. The third brother was an apothecary and, as was customary in the Middle Ages, dealt chiefly in perfumes and other goods that were not remedial herbs but quite useful in life! This brother promised to give the girl the most fragrant scent in the world if she would let him share her wealth. But she sent this brother away too. The fourth brother was a cook. He promised the girl that he would cook such good dishes for her that by eating them she would get a brain equal to that of Zeus and would be able to enjoy the very tastiest food. But she rejected him too. The fifth brother was an innkeeper (Wirt) and he promised to find the most desirable suitors for her if she would let him share her wealth. She rejected him too. Finally, or so the story tells, came one who was able to find his way to the girl's soul, and with him she shared her treasure, the pearl she had found.

The story is graphically told and it has been narrated in greater detail and even more beautifully by Jakob Balde,¹ a lyric poet of the seventeenth century. There is also an exposition dating from the thirteenth century by the poet himself, so it cannot be called a mere interpretation. The poet says that he had wanted to portray the human being and the free will. The girl represents the human soul endowed with free will. The five brothers are the five senses: the painter is the sense of sight, the musician the sense of hearing, the apothecary the sense of smell, the cook the sense of taste, the innkeeper the sense of touch. The girl rejects them all, in order, so the story tells, to share her treasure of free will with the one with whom her soul has true affinity—with Christ. She rejects the attractions of the senses in order to receive that to which the Christ Impulse leads when it permeates the soul. The independence of the life of the soul—the soul that is born of the Spirit and has its home in the Spirit—is beautifully contrasted with what is born of the Earth, namely the senses and all that exists solely in order to provide a habitation—an earthly body—for the soul.

In order that a beginning may be made in the matter of showing that right thinking can lead beyond the things of everyday life, it will now be shown how reliable and well-founded are the findings of occult investigation when the investigator knows from his own direct vision of the spiritual world that the Ego and astral body of man belong to the world of the stars. When we consider how man is related to those members of his being which remain together during sleep, how this condition is independent of the world of the stars, as indicated by the fact that a man can also sleep in the daytime, and if we then make a comparison with the plant and the sunlight, we can be convinced of the validity of occult investigations. It is a matter of recognising the confirmations which can actually be found in the world. When someone asserts that the findings of occult research lack any real foundation, this is only a sign that he has not paid attention to everything that can be gathered from the external world and lead to knowledge. Admittedly this often calls for great energy and freedom from bias—qualities that are not always put into practice. But it may well be insisted that someone who genuinely investigates the spiritual world and then passes on the results of his investigation to the world, passes it on, presumably, to sound judgement. Genuine occult research is not afraid of intelligent criticism; it objects only to superficial criticism which is not, properly speaking, criticism at all.

If you now recall how the whole course of the evolution of humanity has been described, from the Old Saturn period, through the periods of Old Sun and Old Moon up to our Earth period, you will remember that during the Old Moon period a separation took place; a second separation occurred again during the Earth period, one of the consequences being that the life of soul and the bodily life are more widely separated from each other than was the case during the Old Sun period. As a consequence of the separation of the Moon from the Sun already during the Old Moon period, man's soul became more independent. At that time, in certain intervals between incarnations, the element of soul forced its way out into the Macrocosm and made itself independent. This brought about those conditions in the evolution of the Earth which resulted in the separation of the Sun from the Earth and later of the Moon, during the Lemurian epoch. As a consequence, a host of individual human souls, as described in detail in the book Occult Science—an Outline,² pressed outwards in order to undergo particular destinies while separated from the Earth, returning only at a later time. Now, however, it must be made clear that when a man has passed through the gate of death into the spiritual world which is his real home, he—or rather what remains of him—lives a life that is radically different from and fundamentally has very little relationship with the former earthly body.

In the next lecture we shall be able to learn what is necessary for more detailed knowledge of the life between death and the new birth.

• 1. Jakob Balde, born in Ensisheim, Upper Alsace, 4th January, 1604, died 9th August, 1668. Entered the Order of Jesuits in 1624. Was widely acclaimed during his life but after his death was neglected as a poet until the end of the eighteenth century. Herder translated many of Balde's lyrics and brought his genius to the notice of scholars.
• 2. See PP. 177–9 in the translation by George and Mary Adams, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1963.

In earlier lectures we have heard that the imperishable part of the human being which at death leaves the physical body and, to a considerable extent, the etheric body too, passes through a life between death and the new birth, and that during this period its forces are drawn from the world of the stars. We have also heard how the human being is able to draw these forces from the world of stars to the extent to which he developed moral and religious qualities during his life on Earth. It was said that, for example, from the region which receives forces radiated from the planet known in occult science as Mercury, a man will be able to draw the requisite forces if, during his life on Earth before death, he developed a genuinely moral disposition; from the Venus region he can draw the forces he needs for his further life in the spiritual worlds, also for his subsequent life on Earth, if he developed a truly religious attitude before his death. To sum up, we may say that as long as a human being is making use of his senses, as long as he lets himself be guided and directed by the intellect that is bound to the brain as its instrument, he is connected with the forces of the Earth; in the life between death and a new birth he is connected with the forces radiating from the worlds of the stars. In man of the present age, however, there is a certain difference between his connection with the forces of the Earth during his physical life and his connection with the forces of the stars between death and the new birth. The forces which man draws into his consciousness during his earthly life, that is to say, the forces he experiences consciously during earthly life, contribute nothing essential to what he needs for the up-building and vitalising of his own being; for they give rise to catabolic processes, processes of destruction. Evidence for this is the simple fact that during sleep the human being has no consciousness. Why not? The reason is that he is not meant to witness what happens to him during sleep. During sleep the forces used up during waking life are restored and man is not meant to witness this process, which is the antithesis of what is in operation during waking life and is concealed from human consciousness. The Bible uses profoundly significant words to express this fact. It is one of the passages in the Bible which, as is the case with all occult principles in religious records, is very little understood. In the story of the expulsion from Paradise it is said that the Divine Spirit resolved that when the human being had acquired certain characteristics, for instance, the faculty of distinguishing between good and evil, insight into the forces of life should be withheld from him. That is the passage in the Bible where it is announced that the human being was not to witness the revivification of his members either during sleep or during his entire existence on Earth. While man is awake the whole life-process is one of destruction, of wear and tear. During waking life nothing in man's being is restored. In the very earliest years of childhood, when any actual inflow of life can still be observed, the child's consciousness is still dim and the whole restorative process is concealed from the human being in his later years. Evidence for this is the fact that he does not remember his earliest childhood. We can therefore say that the whole life-giving, restorative process is concealed from man's conscious life on Earth. Processes of perception, of cognition, lie within the field of his consciousness; the life-giving process does not.

This is different during the period of existence between death and the new birth. The purpose of the whole of that period is to draw into the being of man the forces which can build up and fashion the next life, to draw these forces from the world of the stars. But this process is not as things are on Earth, when man does not really know his own being. What, after all, does he know about the processes working in his organism? He knows nothing of them through direct perception and what is learnt from anatomy or biology conveys no real knowledge of his being but is something quite different. In the life between death and rebirth, however, a man beholds how forces from the world of stars work upon his being, how they gradually rebuild it. From this you can gather how greatly perception between death and rebirth differs from perception on Earth. On Earth the human being stands at a particular point, directs his senses outwards and then his sight and hearing expand into space; from the centre where he is standing he faces the expanse of space. Exactly the opposite is the case during the life after death. There man feels as if his whole being were outspread and what he perceives is really the centre. He looks at a point. There comes a period between death and the new birth when the human being describes a circle which passes through the whole Zodiac. He looks out as it were from every point of the Zodiac, that is to say from different viewpoints, upon his own being, and he feels as if he were gathering from each particular section of the Zodiac the forces which he pours upon his being for the needs of the next incarnation. He looks from the circumference towards a centre. It is as if you could duplicate yourself, move around while leaving yourself at the centre, and could drink in the forces of the Universe, the life-giving ‘soma’ which, streaming as it does from different points of the Zodiac, assumes different characteristics as it pours into your being which you have left at the centre. Translated into terms of spiritual reality, this is actually how things are during the life between death and the new birth.

If we now think of the difference between a condition that is really very similar to life between death and rebirth, namely, the condition of sleep, this difference can be characterised very simply, although people who are not accustomed to these ideas will not be able to make much of it. Put simply, the condition of sleep can be characterised as follows.

When the human being sleeps during his earthly existence, that is to say when he has left his physical and etheric bodies and is living in his Ego and astral body which are then in the world of stars, he too is actually in that world. And it is a fact that our condition in sleep is objectively far more similar to the condition between death and rebirth than is usually imagined. Objectively, the two conditions are very similar. The only difference is that during sleep in normal life the human being has no consciousness of the world in which he is living, whereas between death and the new birth he is conscious of what is happening to him. That is the essential difference. If the human being were to awake in his Ego and astral body when these members are outside his physical body during sleep he would be in the same condition as he is between death and the new birth. The difference is actually only a state of consciousness. This is a matter of importance because as long as the human being lives on Earth, therefore also during sleep, he is bound to his physical body. Nor does he become free from the physical body until it passes into the lifeless condition and undergoes a change at death. As long as the physical body remains alive, the union is maintained between the spiritual man, that is to say, Ego and astral body and the physical and etheric bodies.

Our conception of the state of sleep is, as a rule, too simple; and that is quite comprehensible because usually we describe things from one point of view only, whereas when a human being passes into the higher worlds conditions are complicated. A complete picture becomes possible only as we progress patiently in Spiritual Science and learn to view things from all sides. We generally characterise the state of sleep—and rightly so—by saying that the physical and etheric bodies remain in the bed, while the Ego and astral body move outwards and unite with the forces of the stars. But correct as this is from one point of view, it nevertheless presents only one aspect of the matter, as we can realise if we consider from the standpoint of Spiritual Science the sleep that occurs at a more or less normal time. Objectively speaking, an afternoon nap is a quite different matter from ordinary sleep at night. What I have now said is concerned not so much with a man's ordinary state of health but rather with his whole relationship to the world. We will therefore not consider an afternoon nap but the sleep of a healthy human being, let us say at midnight, regarded from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness.

During the waking life of day there is a certain regulated connection between the four members of man's being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego. This connection can be indicated if I make sketches to show how the so-called aura of the human being appears to clairvoyant consciousness—but of course the sketches are only very rough.

The important point is that what may be called the auric picture of the Ego when a human being is asleep, actually becomes twofold. During the waking state the Ego-aura holds together in the form of an oval (A) but during sleep divides into two parts (B), one of which turns downwards as the result of a kind of gravity and spreads out below. This part of the Ego-aura appears to clairvoyance as a very dark area tinged with dark red shades. The other, upper part streams upwards from the head and then expands into the infinitudes of the world of stars. The Ego-aura is thus divided—in appearance at all events; we cannot, however, speak of an actual division of the astral aura.

This occult spectacle is a kind of pictorial expression of the fact that the human being; with the Ego-forces that permeate him in the waking condition, goes forth into cosmic space in order to be united with the world of stars and draw its forces into himself.

(Note by translator. Dr. Steiner's drawings were probably made with coloured chalks which would have indicated the several members of man's being with greater clarity than is possible in the printed reproductions. Comments made in connection with the drawings have been abbreviated as follows:

Figure A. Waking state. The physical body is indicated by the innermost darker dotted outline, the etheric body by the fainter dotted outline, the astral body by the sloping lines; the Ego-aura seems to envelop the human form.

Figure B. Indicates the difference in the auric picture while a human being is asleep. The upper part of the Ego-aura radiates outwards and upwards without defined limit, and the lower part radiates downwards without defined limit.)

Now that part of the Ego-aura which streams downwards and becomes dark and more or less opaque while the part streaming up wards is luminous and radiant—all this lower part is particularly exposed to the influence of Ahrimanic powers. The adjacent part of the astral aura is, on the other hand, particularly exposed to the Luciferic forces. The account that has been given—quite rightly from a certain standpoint—that the Ego and astral body leave the human being during sleep is, however, strictly true only as regards the upper parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura. It is not correct as regards the parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura which correspond more to the lower areas of the human figure, particularly the lower parts of the trunk. Actually, during sleep, these parts of the astral aura and of the Ego-aura are more closely bound up with the physical and etheric bodies than is the case during the waking state, and below they are denser, more compact.

Now it is extremely important to know that in view of the evolution of our Earth and all the forces that have played their part in that evolution—which you will find described in the book Occult Science—an Outline,—it was ordained that man should not participate in this more lively activity of the lower aura during sleep, that is to say he was not to witness this activity. The reason for this was that the revitalising forces needed by man for the restoration of what has been used up during the waking hours, are kindled by the lower Ego-aura and lower astral aura. The vitalising forces must be drawn from these parts of the aura. That they work upwards and revitalise the whole man depends upon the upper aura developing powers of attraction drawn from the world of stars; it can therefore attract the forces which rising from below, act restoratively. That is the objective process.

Understanding of this fact is the best equipment for understanding certain information available to one who studies ancient records or records based on occultism. You have always heard—and from a certain standpoint the statement is quite correct—that man leaves his physical and etheric bodies in the bed and goes forth with his astral body and Ego; this is absolutely correct as regard the upper parts of the Ego-aura and astral aura, especially of the Ego-aura. But if you study Eastern writings, you will find a statement that is exactly the opposite. It is stated there that during sleep what is otherwise present in man's consciousness penetrates more deeply into the body. This is the opposite description of sleep. And especially in certain Vedanta writings you will find it stated that the part of man of which we say that during sleep it leaves the physical and etheric bodies, sinks more deeply into those bodies, and that what gives us the power of sight withdraws into deeper regions of the eye so that sight is no longer possible. Why is the process described in this way in Eastern writings? It is because the Oriental still has a different standpoint. With his kind of clairvoyance he pays more attention to what goes on within the human being; he pays less attention to the emergence of the upper aura and more to the permeation by the lower aura during sleep. Hence from his particular point of view he is right.

The processes which take place in the human being in the course of his evolution are very complicated and as evolution progresses it will become more and more possible for him to picture the whole range of these processes. But evolution consists in human beings having gradually acquired knowledge of particular processes, hence the differing statements in the different epochs. Although the statements seem to differ they are not for that reason false; they relate to the particular condition prevailing at the time. But the process of evolution as a whole becomes clear only when all the various processes are taken into account.

We ourselves have now reached the point when it is possible to survey a certain definite portion of the process of evolution. There is a most significant difference in the whole attitude and disposition of man's soul when we observe its development during incarnations, let us say in the Egypto-Chaldean period, then in the Graeco-Roman period and then again in our own. Even externally it is not difficult to discover what the soul is experiencing. I think that even in this enlightened audience there will be quite a number of individuals who when they look at a star-strewn sky cannot locate the particular constellations or perceive how their positions change in the heavens during the night. Speaking generally it can be said that the number of individuals who are still well-informed about the starry sky will steadily decrease. There will even be people, among town-dwellers for example, whom one might ask in vain: Is there now Full Moon or New Moon? This does not in any way imply reproach, for it lies in the natural course of development. What holds good for the soul now would have been utterly impossible during the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, particularly during its earlier periods. In those days men's insight into the heavens was very great. Our present age, however, has a definite advantage over the Egypto-Chaldean epoch, inasmuch as logical thinking—of which most people would be capable today if they were to make efforts—was quite beyond the men of that earlier epoch. They lived their lives and carried out their daily tasks more instinctively than we do today. It would be quite erroneous to imagine that when a building or, say, an aqueduct was to be constructed, engineers would sit in their offices and work out the project with the help of plans and the other methods employed nowadays. Engineers in those times no more worked from plans than the beaver does today when with such skill and accuracy he sets about building his den.

In those early times there was no logical, scientific thinking such as is general today; the activities of men during waking life were instinctive. They had acquired their knowledge—and stupendous knowledge has been preserved from the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—in a quite different way. They knew about the secrets of the stars in the night, about the heavens, although they had no Astronomy of the kind that is available for men of the present age. They watched the spectacle presented by the stars in the heavens on successive nights and the whole power of the astral forces in space worked upon them, not merely the sensory impressions made by what they observed. For example, the passage of the Great Bear or of the Pleiades was an actual experience within them and the experience continued while they were asleep, for they were sensitive to the spiritual reality connected with the passage of a constellation such as the Great Bear across the heavens; together with the spectacle perceived by the senses they were inwardly aware of the living spiritual reality in cosmic space. Something came into their consciousness which ours today is quite unable to experience. Nowadays man has eyes only for the material picture of the stars in the sky. And being very clever he looks at a chart of the heavens into which figures of animals are inscribed, and says: The ancients inscribed symbols here and there to represent their idea of the grouping of the stars, but we have now progressed sufficiently to be cognisant of the reality. A man of the modern age does not know that the ancients had actually seen what they inscribed into their charts; they drew something of which they had had direct vision. Some of them were more skilful draftsmen than others, but they drew what they had actually perceived. They did not, however, perceive in the way that is customary in physical life. When they experienced, for example, the passage of the Great Bear across the heavens at night they saw the physical stars implanted in a mighty spiritual Being whom they could actually perceive. But it would be childish to imagine that they saw an animal moving across the heavens in the way we should see a physical animal on the Earth. This experience of the passage of the constellation of the Pleiades, for example, across the heavens affected them intimately. They felt that the experience had an effect upon their astral bodies and caused changes there.

You can form an idea of this experience by picturing that there is a rose in front of you but you are not looking at it; you are merely holding it and what you experience is your own contact with it. You then form an idea of the rose. It was in this way that the ancients ‘contacted’ as it were with their astral bodies what they experienced about the constellation of the Great Bear; they ‘felt’ the astral reality and experienced their own contact with it. This brought about changes in their very being, changes which are still brought about today but are unnoticed.

Evolution leading into our modern scientific age with its power of rationalistic judgement consists in the fact that direct experience of spiritual processes has ceased and that we are left with the world of the senses and the brain-bound intellect. Thus when in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men spoke of the spiritual Beings in space and drew figures of these Beings, inscribing physical stars as focal points, this was in keeping with the reality—which was an actual experience. Hence in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men had a faculty of perception far more in line with the life between death and rebirth than is our present physical consciousness. When it is realised how the astral body and the Ego experience what is happening in the heavens it is also obvious that we are then living outside our physical and etheric bodies and there is not the slightest reason for believing that a life in which such experiences occur is impossible when the physical and etheric bodies are actually laid aside (at death). Thus in the men of old it was a matter of direct knowledge that between death and the new birth they would experience the happenings in the world of stars. A man living in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch would have thought it ridiculous if anyone set out to prove to him the immortality of the soul. He would have said: ‘But that needs no proof!’ He would not even have understood what a proof is in our meaning of the word, for logical thinking did not yet exist. If he had learnt in an occult school what in the future would be meant by ‘proof’, he would still have insisted that it is unnecessary to prove the immortality of the soul, because in experiencing the nocturnal starry heavens one is already experiencing something that is independent of the body. Immortality was thus an actual experience and the men of those times knew a great deal about what we today describe in connection with perception in the disembodied state.

And now, turning from the more remote worlds of stars to the planets, these men of old experienced the spiritual sphere that is connected, for instance, with Saturn. They were able to perceive—this is true especially of the earlier periods of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—what remains of a human being during his life in the Saturn sphere between death and the new birth. People would have thought it very strange if it had been suggested to them that they should try to establish connection with Mars as is sometimes hinted at today, for they were quite conscious of being related to these worlds. If someone has knowledge of Saturn or Mars or other planetary sphere and can follow its functions in our planetary system, this leads to knowledge of the pre-earthly conditions of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon described in the book Occult Science—an Outline. This was once a matter of actual experience. There would have been no need to lecture about it. All that was necessary would have been to make men conscious that it was simply a matter of inducing in those no longer capable of perceiving such things conditions which made perception possible. This could not otherwise have been achieved.

By the time of the Graeco-Latin epoch this state of things had already changed. Men had lost their sensitivity for everything I have been describing and remembrance of it alone remained. In the Graeco-Latin epoch, among the leading peoples, for example of Southern Europe, there was no longer any equal possibility of direct vision of the spiritual Beings of the heavens, but remembrance of that vision remained. Just as a man remembers today what he experienced yesterday, so did souls in the Graeco-Latin epoch still remember what they had experienced of the Universe in earlier incarnations. This radiated into the souls of men and was a living experience. Plato speaks of it as ‘recollection’, but men do not always call it so. Progress in evolution consisted in the suppression of this direct experience and the development during the Graeco-Latin epoch of the faculty of judgement and the formation of concepts. Hence the earlier vision was bound to recede and could survive only as recollection, remembrance. This is exemplified most clearly of all in Aristotle who lived in the fourth century BC. and was the founder of logic, of the art of judgement; he himself was no longer able to perceive anything of the spiritual realities in the worlds of the stars, but in his writings he brings all the old theories back again. He does not speak of the physical heavenly bodies as we know them today but of the ‘Spirits of the Spheres’, of spiritual Beings. And a great many of his utterances were an enumeration of the individual planetary Spirits and of the fixed stars, finally leading to the one universal Godhead. The Spirits of the Spheres still play an important role in the works of Aristotle.

But even the remembrance in Graeco-Latin times of the Spiritual Beings in the Universe was gradually lost to humanity and it is interesting to watch how the ancient knowledge disappears gradually as later epochs approach. The more spiritually minded among men still drew from their remembrance the consciousness that spiritual Beings are connected with all physical bodies existing in space—as Anthroposophy describes today. A great deal in this connection was presented magnificently by Kepler. But the nearer we come to modern times, the more does the possibility fade of even a remembrance of what the soul experienced in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch from contemplation of the heavens. As the age of Copernicanism approached even the remembrance that still survived in the Graeco-Latin epoch faded, and men had eyes only for the physical globes moving through space. Occasionally something plays into the consciousness of more modern men that there is still a possibility of gleaning from the constellations in the heavens genuine knowledge of spiritual events. Kepler, for example, set out independently to calculate from the stars the date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Such a calculation was possible because Kepler's whole being was still permeated through and through with spirituality. The same applies to his realisation that a certain constellation of stars in the year 1604 would be followed by further suppression of the ancient remembrances.

The nearer we come to the modern age the more is humanity dependent upon the physical senses and the brain-bound intellect, because what the souls of men experienced in ancient times has been thrust down into the deeper strata of consciousness. The souls of all of you once harboured the experiences known to men when they were still able to be aware of the spiritual life pervading cosmic spheres. This is everywhere present in the depths of your own souls. But it is not possible today to lead souls during the hours of darkness and guide their vision, let us say, to the constellation of the Great Bear and enable them to experience as realities the spiritual forces emanating from that group of stars. It is not possible because the powers of vision and perception lie in such depths of the soul. During sleep at night man experiences the heavens with the radiating upper part of the aura but is not conscious of it. Hence for souls of the present age the right procedure is to raise into consciousness by valid methods the forgotten impressions received in olden times. And how is this done? As we do it in Anthroposophy! Nothing new is imposed upon souls but what they experienced in earlier epochs is drawn forth. What souls could no longer actually experience in the Graeco-Latin epoch but had not yet entirely forgotten—today it is entirely forgotten but can be drawn forth again. Anthroposophy is the stimulus for drawing forth the forces of knowledge which lie deep in the souls of men. All human beings who have partaken in evolution up to the time of Western culture have in the depths of their souls the conceptions which should be kindled to life through Anthroposophy; and the methods used in Anthroposophy are the stimuli for achieving this.

We will now consider the difference between these two attitudes to the world, between that of a human soul incarnated in the Graeco-Latin epoch and one incarnated today. We have heard that during the Graeco-Latin epoch, in earthly life too, the soul had a certain connection with and capacity for perception of what is lived through in the period between death and the new birth. These experiences had not yet withdrawn into such deep strata of the soul. Hence in those very ancient times there was much less difference between men's consciousness on Earth and between death and rebirth than there is today. The ancient Greeks had some remembrance of what they had once experienced, but even so the difference was already great. Conditions today have reached the stage when between death and the new birth, consciousness can still be kindled in a human being in the Venus sphere if, on Earth, he has cultivated a moral and religious attitude of soul. But in and especially beyond the Sun sphere it is impossible for consciousness to be kindled if during his life on Earth a man has made no attempt to raise to the level of waking consciousness the concepts lying in the depths of the soul. Here, in earthly life, Anthroposophy seems to be a kind of theoretical world-conception which we master because it interests us. After death, however, it is a torch which from a certain point of time onwards between death and rebirth illumines the spiritual world for us. If Anthroposophy is disdained here in the physical world, no torch is available in that other world and consciousness is dimmed. To pursue Spiritual Science is not merely a matter of imbibing so many theories; it is a living force, a torch which can illumine life. The contents of the spiritual teachings here on Earth are concepts and ideas; after death they are living forces! But this applies to consciousness only. It will be clear to you from what I said at the beginning of the lecture that already in earthly existence the spiritual ideas we acquire are life-giving forces. But a man cannot witness the outcome of these life-giving forces because knowledge of the powers from which they originate is withheld from him. After death, however, he actually beholds them. Here on Earth, Anthroposophy seems to be so much theory and the human being in his waking state has no consciousness of what is spiritually life-giving but nevertheless objectively present. After death man is a direct witness of how the forces he took into himself together with the spiritual teachings received during his life on Earth have an organising, vitalising, strengthening effect upon what is within his being when he is preparing for a new incarnation.

In this way spiritual teaching actually becomes part of the evolution of humanity. But if this spiritual teaching were to be rejected—at the present time it suffices if only a few accept it but in the future more and more individuals must do so—then, as they return to incarnations on Earth, human beings will gradually find that they lack the life-giving forces they need. Decadence and atrophy would set in during the subsequent incarnation. Human beings would quickly wither, be prematurely wrinkled. Decadence of physical humanity would set in if the spiritual forces were not received. The forces that were once drawn by men from the worlds of stars must now be drawn from the depths of their own souls and used for furthering the evolution of humanity.

If you reflect about these matters you will be filled through and through with the thought that existence on Earth is of immense significance. It was necessary that the human being should be so inwardly deepened by his union with the worlds of stars that the forces he had otherwise always drawn from those worlds would become the inmost forces of his soul and be drawn up again from its depths. But that can be done only on Earth. One could say: in primeval times the soma-juice rained down from the heavens into individual souls, was preserved there and must now be drawn forth again from those souls. In this way we acquire a conception of the mission of the Earth. And having presented this conception today we will proceed to study the life between death and the new birth in even greater detail.

I shall not be speaking today about the Christmas Festival as in previous years, for I propose to do that on Tuesday. I would ask you to think of what I shall say as a gift placed under the Christmas tree in the form of an anthroposophical Christmas study—a study which because of the significant knowledge it contains may well be the subject of lengthy reflection and meditation. At this Christmas season we may very properly think of an individual considered by many people to be a mythological or mystical figure but with whose name we ourselves connect the spiritual impulses of Western cultural life. I refer to Christian Rosenkreutz.

With this individuality and his activity since the thirteenth century we associate everything that has to do with the propagation of the impulse given by Christ's appearance on the Earth and the fulfilment of the Mystery of Golgotha. On one occasion I also spoke of what may be called the last Initiation of Christian Rosenkreutz in the thirteenth century. Today I shall speak of a deed he performed towards the end of the sixteenth century. This deed is of particular significance because it linked with the Christ Impulse an achievement of supreme importance in the history of human evolution—an achievement before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha.

One of the innumerable factors which enable us to grasp the supreme significance of the Mystery of Golgotha in the history of mankind on Earth is the deed of Gautama Buddha, the founder of a different religion. Eastern tradition tells us that in the life usually spoken of as the Buddha life, Gautama Buddha rose in his twenty-ninth year from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddhahood. We are aware of what that ascent means and also of the world-wide significance of the Sermon at Benares, the first great accomplishment of the Buddha who had previously been a Bodhisattva. Of all this we are deeply conscious. Today we will think especially of one aspect only, namely, what it signifies in the history of worlds when a Bodhisattva rises to the rank of Buddhahood. The Eastern teaching—which does not differ from that of Western occultism in regard to this event—is that when a human being rises from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddhahood, he need not henceforward incarnate on the Earth in a physical body but can continue his work in purely spiritual worlds. And so we recognise as a valid truth that the individuality who lived on Earth for the last time as Gautama Buddha has since then been present in lofty spiritual worlds continuing to influence evolution and sending impulses and forces from those spheres to further the development and stature of mankind.

We have also spoken of a significant deed of the Buddha, a deed that was his contribution to the Mystery of Golgotha. We have been reminded of the beautiful narrative in the Gospel of St. Luke concerning the shepherds who had gathered together at the time of the birth of the Jesus Child described in that Gospel.¹ The narrative tells of a song which rang out from Angels and resounded in the devout, expectant souls of the shepherds. ‘Revelations shall tell of the Divine in the Heights and there shall be peace on Earth among men who are of good will.’ It is the song which tells of the revelation of the divine-spiritual forces in the spiritual worlds and the reflection of these forces in the hearts of men who are of good will. We have heard that the song of peace which then rang out was the contribution of the Buddha from spiritual heights to the Mystery of Golgotha. The Buddha united with the astral body of the Jesus Child of whom we are told in St. Luke's Gospel, and the song of Angels announced in that Gospel is to be understood as the influx of the gospel of Peace into the deed subsequently to be wrought by Christ Jesus. The Buddha spoke at the time of the birth of Jesus, and the song of Angels heard by the shepherds was the message from ancient, pre-Christian times, of peace and all-embracing human love which were also to be integrated into the mission of Christ Jesus.

Thereafter the Buddha continued to be active in the advancing stream of Christian evolution in the West and special mention must be made of his further activity. The Buddha was no longer working in a human body but in the spiritual body in which he had revealed himself at the time of the birth of Jesus; and he continued to work, perceptible to those who through some form of Initiation are able to establish relationship not only with physical human beings but also with those sublime Leaders and Teachers who come to men in purely spiritual bodies.

A few centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, in a Mystery school situated in the region of the Black Sea in the South of Russia, there were Teachers of great significance. What actually took place there can be no more than indicated—and even then half metaphorically. Among the Teachers present in the School in physical incarnations there was one who did not work in a physical body and could therefore be contacted only by pupils and neophytes able to establish relations with Leaders and Teachers who appeared in this Mystery Centre in spiritual bodies. One such Teacher was the Being spoken of as Gautama Buddha. And in the seventh/eighth century after the Mystery of Golgotha this Being had a notable pupil. At that time the Buddha, in his true nature, was in no way concerned with propagating Buddhism in its old form, for he too had advanced with evolution. He had taken the Christ Impulse into the very depths of his being, had actually co-operated in its inception. What had still to be transmitted of the old form of Buddhism came to expression in the general tone and character of what the Buddha imparted in the Mystery Centre referred to above; but everything was clothed in a Christian form. It may truly be said that when the Buddha had become a Being who need no longer incarnate in a human body, he had co-operated from the spiritual world in the development of Christianity. A faithful pupil of his had absorbed into the depths of his soul the teaching which the Buddha gave at that time but which could not become the common possession of all mankind. It was teaching which represented a union of Buddhism and Christianity. It implied absolute surrender to what is super-sensible in human nature, the abandonment of any direct bond with the physical and earthly, complete dedication in heart and soul, not merely in mind and intellect, to what is of the nature of soul-and-spirit in the world; it meant withdrawal from all the externalities of life and absolute devotion in the inner life to the mysteries of the Spirit. And when that being who had been a pupil of the Buddha and Christ, who had learnt of the Christ through the Buddha, appeared again on Earth, he was incarnated as the person known in history as Francis of Assisi. Those who desire to understand from occult knowledge the absolutely unique quality of soul and manner of life of Francis of Assisi, especially what is so impressive about him because of its remoteness from the world and everyday experience—let them realise that in his previous incarnation he was a Christian pupil in the Mystery Centre of which I have spoken.

In this way the Buddha continued to work, invisibly and supersensibly, in the stream that had become part of the process of evolution since the Mystery of Golgotha took place. The figure of Francis of Assisi is a clear indication of what the effect of the Buddha's activity would have been in all subsequent times if nothing else had happened and he had continued to work as he had done while preparing Francis of Assisi for his mission in the world. Numbers and numbers of human beings would have developed the character and disposition of Francis of Assisi. They would have become, within Christianity, disciples and followers of Buddha. But this Buddha-like quality in those who became followers of Francis of Assisi would have been quite unable to cope with the demands that would be made of humanity in modern civilisation.

Let us remind ourselves of what has been said about the passage of the human soul through the various regions of the Cosmos between death and the new birth. We have heard how during that period of existence the soul of a man has to pass through the planetary spheres, to traverse the expanse of cosmic space. Between death and the new birth we actually become inhabitants, in succession, of Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. We then draw our life together again in order to incarnate through a parental pair and undergo the experiences that are possible on Earth but not in other planetary spheres. Since the last death, every soul incarnated on the Earth has undergone the experiences that belong to the heavens. Through birth we bring into our existence on Earth the forces we have acquired in the various heavenly spheres.

Now let us remind ourselves of how life flows by on Earth, how at each new incarnation the human being finds that the Earth has changed and that his experiences are quite different. In the course of his incarnations an individual will have lived in pre-Christian times and have been incarnated again after the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha had been given to evolution. Let us picture with the greatest possible clarity how the Earth evolves, descending from divine-spiritual heights to a certain nadir. The impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha then made an ascent possible in the evolutionary process. The ascent is at present only beginning, but it will continue if human souls receive the impulse of this Mystery and so, later on, rise again to the stage they had reached before the temptation of Lucifer. Let us realise that, in accordance with the fundamental laws of evolution, whenever we return to the Earth through birth we find quite different conditions of existence.

The same applies to the heavenly spheres into which we pass between death and a new birth. Like our Earth, these heavenly bodies also pass through descending and ascending phases of evolution. Whenever we pass into a planetary sphere after death—let us say of Mars, or Venus, or Mercury—we enter different conditions and have different experiences receive different impulses, which we bring back again into physical existence through birth. And because the heavenly bodies are also undergoing evolution, our souls bring back different forces into each incarnation.

Today, because of the profound significance of the Christmas Festival, our thoughts are directed to the spiritual realities of cosmic space itself and we will consider a particular example of evolution. This example is revealed to occult investigation if that investigation is able to penetrate deeply enough into the spiritual nature of other planets and planetary systems as well as into that of the Earth. In the spiritual life of the Earth there was a descending phase of evolution until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and thereafter a phase of ascent—now latent for the sole reason that a deeper understanding of the Christ Impulse is necessary. Similarly, there were phases of descent and ascent in the evolution of Mars, into whose sphere we pass between death and rebirth. Until the fifteenth/sixteenth century the evolution of Mars was such that what had always been bestowed upon it from the spiritual worlds was undergoing a phase of descent, just as was the case in the evolution of the Earth until the beginning of the Christian era. By the time of the fifteenth/sixteenth century it was necessary that the evolution of Mars should become a process of ascent, for the consequences of the phase of descent had become all too evident in that sphere. As already said, when we pass again into earthly existence through birth we bring with us the impulses and forces gathered from the worlds of stars, among them the forces of Mars. The example of a certain individuality is clear evidence of the change that had come about in the forces brought by human beings from Mars to the Earth.

It is known to all occultists that the same soul which appeared on Earth in Nicolas Copernicus,² the inaugurator of the dawn of the modern age, had been previously incarnated from 1401 to 1464 in Cardinal Nicolas of Kues, Nicolas Cusanus. But how utterly different were these two personalities who harboured the same soul within them! Nicolas of Cusa in the fifteenth century was dedicated in mind and heart to the spiritual worlds; all his study was rooted in the spiritual worlds, and when he appeared again as Copernicus he was responsible for the great transformation which could have been achieved only by eliminating from the conception of space and the planetary system every iota of spirituality and thinking only of the external movements and interrelationships of the heavenly bodies. How was it possible that the same soul which had been on the Earth in Nicolas of Cusa and was wholly dedicated to the spiritual worlds, could appear in the next incarnation in an individual who conceived of the heavenly bodies purely in terms of their mathematical, spatial and geometric aspects? This was possible because a soul who passed through the Mars sphere during the interval between the time of Nicolas of Cusa and that of Copernicus had entered into a phase of decline. It was therefore not possible to bring from the Mars sphere any forces that would have inspired souls during physical life to soar into the spiritual worlds. The souls who passed through the Mars sphere at that particular time could grasp only the physical and material nature of things. If these conditions on Mars had continued without change, if the phase of decline had been prolonged, souls would have brought with them from the Mars sphere forces that would have rendered them incapable of anything except a purely materialistic conception of the world. Nevertheless the results of the decline of Mars were responsible for bringing modern natural science into existence; these forces poured with such strength into the souls of men that they led to triumph after triumph in the domain of materialistic knowledge of the world; and in the further course of evolution this influence would have worked exclusively for the promotion of materialistic science, for the interests of trade and industry only, of external forms of culture on the Earth.

It would have been possible for a class of human beings to be formed entirely under the influence of certain old Mars forces and interested in external culture only; these human beings would have confronted another class of individuals, composed of followers of Francis of Assisi, in other words, of Buddhism transported into Christianity. A Being such as the Buddha, having continued to work until the time of Francis of Assisi as previously indicated, would have been able to produce on the Earth a counterweight to the purely materialistic conception of the world by pouring strong forces into the souls of men. But this would have led to the formation of a class of individuals capable only of leading a monastic life patterned on that of Francis of Assisi; and these individuals alone would have been able to scale the heights of spiritual life.

If this state of things had remained, humanity would have divided more and more sharply into two classes: the one composed of those who were devoted entirely to the interests of material existence on the Earth and the advancement of external culture, and the other class, due to the continuing influence of Buddha, would have consisted of those who fostered and preserved spiritual culture. But the souls belonging to the latter class would, like Francis of Assisi, have been incapable of participating in external, material forms of civilisation. These two categories of human beings would have become more and more sharply separated. As the inevitability of this state of things could be prophetically foreseen, it became the task of the individual whom we revere under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz to prevent such a separation taking place in the further evolution of mankind on the Earth. Christian Rosenkreutz felt it to be his mission to offer to every human soul, living no matter where, the possibility of rising to the heights of spiritual life. It has always been emphasised among us and is clearly set forth in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it Achieved? that our goal in the sphere of occult development in the West is not to rise into spiritual worlds as the result of ascetic isolation from life but to make it possible for every human soul to discover for itself the path into the spiritual world. That the ascent into spiritual worlds should be compatible with every status in life, that humanity should not divide into two categories, one composed of people devoted entirely to external, industrial and commercial interests, becoming increasingly ingenious, materialised and animalised, whereas those in the other category would hold themselves aloof in a life patterned on that of Francis of Assisi—all this was the concern of Christian Rosenkreutz at the time when the approaching modern age was to inaugurate the epoch of materialistic culture during which all souls would bring with them the Mars forces in their state of decline. And because there could not be within the souls of men the power to prevent the separation, it has to be ensured that from the Mars forces themselves there would come to man the impulse to work with his whole being for spiritual aims. For example, it was necessary that human beings should be educated to think in terms of sound natural scientific principles, to formulate ideas and concepts in line with those principles, but at the same time the soul must have the capacity to deepen and develop the ideas spiritually, in order that the way can be found from a natural scientific view of the world to lofty heights of spiritual life.

This possibility had to be created! And it was created by Christian Rosenkreutz, who towards the end of the sixteenth century gathered around him his faithful followers from all over the Earth, enabling them to participate in what takes place outwardly in space from one heavenly body to another but is prepared in the sacred Mystery Centres, where aims are pursued leading beyond those of planetary spiritual life to the spiritual life of cosmic worlds. Christian Rosenkreutz gathered around him those who had also been with him at the time of his Initiation in the thirteenth century. Among them was one who for long years had been his pupil and friend, who had at one time been incarnated on the Earth but now no longer needed to appear in a physical incarnation: this was Gautama Buddha, now a spiritual Being after having risen to the rank of Buddhahood. He was the pupil of Christian Rosenkreutz. And in order that what could be achieved through the Buddha should become part of the mission of Christian Rosenkreutz at that time, a joint deed resulted in the transference of the Buddha from a sphere of earthly activity to one of cosmic activity. The impulse given by Christian Rosenkreutz made this possible. We will speak on another occasion in greater detail of the relationship between Gautama Buddha and Christian Rosenkreutz; at the moment it is simply a matter of stating that this relationship led to the individuality of the Buddha ceasing to work in the sphere of the Earth as he had formerly worked in the Mystery Centre near the Black Sea, and transferring his activity to Mars. And so at the beginning of the seventeenth century there took place in the evolution of Mars something similar to what had come about at the beginning of the ascending phase of Earth evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. What may be called the advent of the Buddha on Mars was brought about through Christian Rosenkreutz and the ascending phase of Mars evolution began from then onwards just as on Earth the ascending phase of culture began with the Mystery of Golgotha.

Thus the Buddha became a Redeemer and Saviour for Mars as Christ Jesus had become for the Earth. The Buddha had been prepared for this by his teaching of Nirvana, lack of satisfaction with earthly existence, liberation from physical incarnation. This teaching had been prepared in a sphere outside the Earth but with the Earth's goal in view. If we can look into the soul of the Buddha and grasp the import of the Sermon at Benares we shall witness the preparation of activity that was not to be confined to the Earth. And then we shall realise how infinitely wise was the contract between Christian Rosenkreutz and the Buddha, as the result of which, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Buddha relinquished his activity on the Earth through which he would have been able, from the spiritual world, to influence human souls between birth and death, in order henceforward to work in the Mars sphere for souls between death and rebirth.

This is the momentous outcome of what might be called the transference of the essence of the Christmas Festival from the Earth to Mars. As a result, all the souls of men, in a certain sense, pass through a phase of being followers of Francis of Assisi and thereby, indirectly, of the Buddha. But they do not pass through this phase on the Earth; they pass through their monasticism—to use a paradoxical expression—their adherence to Francis of Assisi, on Mars, and bring forces from there to the Earth. As a result, what they have thus acquired remains in the shape of forces slumbering in their souls and they need not adopt a strictly monastic life in order to undergo the experiences undergone by intimate pupils of Francis of Assisi. This necessity was avoided by the transference of the Buddha to cosmic worlds by agreement with Christian Rosenkreutz whose, work on Earth now continued without the collaboration of the Buddha. If the Buddha had continued his activity on the Earth, all that he could have achieved would have been to make men into Buddhist or Franciscan monks and the other souls would have been abandoned to materialistic civilisation. But because what may be called a kind of ‘Mystery of Golgotha’ for Mars took place, during a period when human souls are not incarnated on Earth, these souls absorb, in a sphere outside the Earth, what they need for their further terrestrial existence, namely, an element of true Buddhism, which in the epoch after Christ's coming can be acquired only between death and a new birth.

We are now at the threshold of a great mystery, a mystery which has brought an impulse still operating in the evolution of mankind. Those who genuinely understand this evolution know that any truly effective influence in life on the Earth inevitably becomes part of the general stream of evolution. The event that may be called the Mystery of Golgotha on Mars was different from the Mystery of Golgotha on Earth—less powerful, less incisive, not culminating in death. But you can have some idea of it if you reflect that the Being who was the greatest Prince of Peace and Love, who was the Bringer of Compassion to the Earth, was transferred to Mars in order to work at the head of the evolution of that planet. It is no mythological fable that Mars received its name because it is the planet where the forces are involved in most bitter strife. The mission of the Buddha entailed his crucifixion in the arena of the planet where the most belligerent forces are present, although these forces are essentially of the nature of soul-and-spirit.

Here, then, we face a deed of a Being whose destiny it was as a great servant of Christ Jesus, to receive and carry forward the Christ Impulse in the right way. We stand face to face with the mystery of Christian Rosenkreutz, recognising his wisdom to have been so great that, as far as lay within his power, he incorporated into the evolution of mankind as a whole the other impulses that had been decisive factors in preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha.

A subject such as this cannot be grasped merely in terms of words or intellect; in its depth and range it must be felt—with the whole heart and soul. We must grasp what it signifies to be aware that among the forces we bring with us in the present epoch when we pass into incarnation on the Earth there are also the forces of the Buddha. Those forces were transferred to a sphere through which we pass between death and the new birth in order to enter in the right way into earthly life; for in this earthly life between birth and death it is our task to establish the right relationship to the Christ Impulse, to the Mystery of Golgotha. And this is possible only if all the impulses work together in harmony. The Christ descended from other worlds and united with the Earth's evolution. His purpose is to give to men the greatest of all impulses with which the human soul can be endowed. But this is possible only if all the forces connected with the evolution of humanity take effect at the right point in the process of that evolution. The great Teacher of the doctrine of Nirvana, who exhorted men to liberate their souls from the urge for reincarnation, was not destined to work in the sphere of physical incarnation. But in accordance with the great Plan designed by the Gods—in which, however, men must participate because they are servants of the Gods—in accordance with this Plan, the work of that great Teacher was to continue in the life that lies in the realm beyond birth and death.

Try to feel the inner justification of this conception and in its light follow the course of evolution; then you will realise why the Buddha had necessarily to precede Christ Jesus, and how he worked after the Christ Impulse had been given. Think about this and you will understand in its true light the phase of evolution and of spiritual life which began in the seventeenth century and in which you yourselves are living; you will understand it because you will realise that before human souls pass into physical existence through birth they are imbued with the forces that bear them forward.

At the time of an important Festival, instead of a seasonal lecture I wanted to lay under the Christmas tree, as a kind of Christmas gift, certain information about Christian Rosenkreutz. Perhaps some or even many of you will receive it as was intended—as a means of strengthening the heart and the forces of the soul. We shall need this strengthening if we are to live with inner security amid the harmonies and disharmonies of existence.

If at Christmastide we can be strengthened and invigorated by consciousness of our connection with the forces of the great Universe, we may well take with us from this centre of anthroposophical work something that was laid as a gift under the Christmas tree and as an encouragement can remain a living force throughout the year if we nurture it during our life from one Christmas season to the next.

• 1. See the Lecture Course entitled The Gospel of St. Luke, given in Basle, 15th–26th September, 1909.
• 2. Born 1473, died 1543.

We have already considered certain aspects of man's life between death and rebirth, and a short time ago an account was given of the relationship between Christian Rosenkreutz and Buddha. This was done because since the time indicated then, the Buddha has been connected with the planetary sphere of Mars and because the human being, after experiencing the Christ Event in the Sun sphere between death and rebirth, passes into the Mars sphere and there undergoes an experience connected with Buddha in the form that is right for the present age, though not, of course, for the age when the individuality of whom we are now thinking lived on the Earth as Gautama Buddha. Genuine enlightenment about the being of man and his connection with the evolution of worlds is possible only if our understanding keeps abreast of that evolution.

We know that in the post-Atlantean era there have so far been five main consecutive epochs during which the human soul has undergone significant experiences. These epochs are: the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Graeco-Latin, and our own. We also know that in each such epoch the next is prepared—as it were in germ. In our present epoch the sixth post-Atlantean period is already slowly being prepared in the souls of men. The preparation consists in human souls being helped to understand what is now spreading in the world in the form of occult teachings, of Spiritual Science. In this way not only will a knowledge of the being of man that is necessary for the future be promulgated but there will also be an ever deepening understanding of the Christ Impulse. Everything that contributes to this increasing understanding of the Christ Impulse is comprised for the West in what may be called the Mystery of the Holy Grail. This Mystery is also closely connected with matters such as the one spoken of recently, namely, the mission for Mars being delegated by Christian Rosenkreutz to Buddha. This Mystery of the Holy Grail can impart to men of the modern age knowledge that will help them to understand the life between death and rebirth in the way that is right for our time. This understanding depends upon resolute efforts to answer a question of vital importance, and unless we try to carry this question to greater depths than has hitherto been possible, we shall be unable to make further progress in our studies of man's life between death and the new birth. The question is this: Why was it that even in areas where Christianity was proclaimed in its deeper aspect, certain teachings were left in the background—teachings that must be introduced today into the presentation of Christianity in its more advanced form?

You are aware that everything connected with the subject of reincarnation and karma was left in the background not only in the outer, exoteric presentations of Christianity but also in the more esoteric expositions of past centuries. And many people who hear about the content of anthroposophical views, ask: How comes it that although Rosicrucianism must, we are told, be included in everything that occultism has to give—how comes it that hitherto, indeed until our own time, Rosicrucianism did not contain the teachings of reincarnation and karma? Why had these teachings now to be added to Rosicrucianism?

To understand this we must again consider man's relationship to the world. The prelude to the advanced study we hope to reach in these lectures is already to be found in the book Occult Science—an Outline But we must now consider closely how man is related to the world in our own main epoch, in the epoch that was preceded by the planetary stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon.

We know that the human being on Earth consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ‘I’ or Ego, together with everything that belongs to these members. We know, too, that when an individual passes through the gate of death he leaves behind him, first of all, his physical body; then, after a certain time, most of the etheric body dissolves into the cosmic ether and only a kind of extract of it remains with him. The astral body accompanies him for a considerable time but again a kind of sheath of that body is cast off when the Kamaloka period is over. After that the extracts of the etheric and astral bodies are subject to the further transformation undergone by the human being between death and rebirth. In the innermost sphere the human ‘I’ remains unchanged. Whether the human being is passing through the period between birth and death in the physical body, through the period of Kamaloka when he is still completely enveloped by the astral body, or through the period of Devachan which lasts for the greater part of the time between death and rebirth—it is the ‘I’ or Ego which, basically speaking, passes through all these periods. But this ‘I’, the real, true ‘I’, must not be confused with the ‘I’ which the human being on Earth recognises as his own. Philosophers have a good deal to say about this ‘I’ of man in the physical body, which they think they understand. They say, for instance, that the ‘I’ is the principle that remains intact although everything else in the human being changes. The true ‘I’ does indeed remain but whether this can be said of the ‘I’ of which the philosophers speak is another matter altogether. Anyone who insists on referring to the persistence of that ‘I’ of which the philosophers speak is refuted by the simple fact that during the night the human being sleeps, for then the ‘I’ of the philosophers is extinguished, is simply not there. And if during the whole period between death and rebirth conditions were the same as they are during sleep at night, to speak of the permanence of man’s soul during that period would be meaningless. Fundamentally speaking, there would be no difference between the ‘I’ not being there at all or merely continuing to live knowing nothing of itself, as if it were something external. In the question of immortality it cannot be a matter of the ‘I’ simply being there, but it must also have some knowledge of itself. Thus the immortality of the ‘I’ of which human consciousness is first aware is refuted by every sleep at night, for then this ‘I’ is simply extinguished. The real, true ‘I’ lies much deeper, much, much deeper! How can we form an idea of this real ‘I’, even if we cannot yet claim to have any knowledge of occultism?

We can form a valid idea if we say to ourselves: the ‘I’ must be present in the human being even when he cannot yet say ‘I’, when he is still crawling on the floor. The real ‘I’—not the ‘I’ of which the philosophers speak—is already present and manifests itself in a very striking way.

Our observation of the human being during the first months or even first years of his life will seem to external science to be quite without significance. But for one who is intent upon acquiring knowledge of the nature of man, this observation is of supreme importance.

To begin with, the human being crawls about on all fours and very special effort is required on his part to lift himself out of this crawling position, out of this subjection to gravity, into the vertical position and maintain this. That is one thing. The second is the following: We know that in the first period of his life the human being is not yet able to speak and has to learn how to do so. Try to remember how you first learnt to speak, how you learnt to utter the first word of which you were capable and to formulate the first sentence. Try to remember this, although without clairvoyance you will be as little able to remember it as you can remember how you made the first effort to lift yourself from the crawling into the vertical position. And a third capacity is thinking. Remembrance does indeed go back to the time when you were first able to think, but not before that time.

Who, then, is the actor in this process of learning to walk, to speak and to think? The actor is the real, true ‘I’! Now let us observe what this real ‘I’ does.

Man was ordained from the very beginning to walk upright, to speak and to think. But he is not at once capable of this. He is not immediately the being he is intended to become as a man of the Earth. He does not at once possess the capacities that enable him to participate in the evolving culture of mankind; he has to acquire these capacities gradually. In the earliest period of his life there is a conflict between the spirit living within him when he stands permanently upright and the spirit living within him while he is still under the sway of gravity and crawls on all fours, while his faculties of speaking and thinking are still undeveloped. When the human being reaches the level ordained for him, when he can stand upright, walk, speak and think, he is an expression of the form proper to mankind. There is, in fact, a natural correspondence between the true form of man and the faculties of standing and walking upright, speaking and thinking. It is impossible to conceive of any other being who can walk as man does, that is to say with a vertical spine, and who can speak and think. Even a parrot is able to talk only because its form is upright. The fact that it is able to talk is connected fundamentally with the vertical position. Animals with an intelligence much greater than that of a parrot will never learn to talk because their backbone is horizontal, not vertical. Other factors too, of course, play their part. The human being is not at once able to adopt the posture ultimately ordained for him. The reason for this is that after the exertions made by his real ‘I’ or Ego which have enabled him to think, to speak and adopt the upright posture, the human being is ultimately embedded, as it were, in the spheres of the Spirits of Form, the Exusiai. These Spirits of Form, known in the Bible as the Elohim, are the Beings from whom the human form actually stems; it is the form in which the human ‘I’ has its natural habitation and asserts itself during the first months and years of life.

But there is opposition from other Spirits who cast man down to a level below that of these Spirits of Form. To what category do these other Spirits belong?

The Spirits of Form are the Beings who enable man to learn to speak, to think and to walk upright. The Spirits who cast him down, causing him to move about on all fours and to be incapable in his earliest years of speaking and thinking in the real sense, are Spirits whom he has to overcome in the course of his life, who give him, to begin with, a perverted form. These Spirits ought really to have become Dynamis, Spirits of Movement, but fell behind in their evolution and have still not reached the level of the Spirits of Form. They are Luciferic Spirits who have come to a standstill in their evolution, who work upon man from outside, consigning him to the sway of gravity out of which he must lift himself with the help of the true Spirits of Form.

Observing how a human being comes into existence through birth, in the efforts he makes to acquire capacities which he will need later on in life, we can perceive the true Spirits of Form battling with those other Spirits who ought already to have become Spirits of Movement but have remained at an earlier stage. We see the Spirits of Form battling with Luciferic Spirits who in this sphere are so strong and forceful that they suppress the consciousness belonging to the Ego. Otherwise, if Luciferic Spirits did not suppress this consciousness, the human being at this stage of his life would realise: You are a warrior; you are aware of your horizontal position and consciously desire to stand upright, to learn to speak and to think! All this is beyond his power because he is enveloped by the Luciferic Spirits. There we have a dim inkling of what we shall gradually come to recognise as the true ‘I’, in contrast to an ‘I’ which merely appears in the field of our consciousness.

At the beginning of this series of lectures it was said that we should endeavour to vindicate to healthy human reason what occultism and seership have to say about the nature of man. But this healthy human reason must be willing to recognise how during the earliest periods of his life the human being is only gradually finding his bearings in the physical world. Which part of him is most completely formed? His stature as a whole is still not particularly noticeable because there is inconsistency between the human being himself and his outer form. By his own efforts he has to make his way into the form destined for him. Which part of him is most completely finished—not only after but also before birth? The head! The head is the most fully developed of all the physical organs, even in the embryo. Why is this? The reason is that the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, the Spirits of Form, pervade and weave through all the organs of the human being quite differently in each case—the head in one way, the trunk to which the legs and arms are attached, in another. There is an essential difference between the head and the rest of man's physical body. If we observe the human head with clairvoyance a remarkable difference is revealed between the head and, for example, the hand. When we move a hand, the physical hand and the etheric hand move together. But when a certain stage in the development of clairvoyance has been reached, the clairvoyant can hold the physical hands still and move the etheric hands only. To hold mobile parts of the body still and move only the corresponding etheric parts is a specially important exercise. If this is achieved, the clairvoyance of the future will develop to further and further stages, whereas to indulge in any way in unconscious, convulsive movements is a resurgence of Dervish practices which are already obsolete. Repose of the physical body is the requirement of modern clairvoyance; convulsive movements of every kind were characteristic of epochs now past. It would be a very noteworthy achievement if a clairvoyant were, for example, to hold his hands quite still in a certain position—perhaps crossed over the breast—and yet maintain complete mobility of the etheric hands. He would be keeping his physical hands still while engaging in all kinds of super-sensible activities with the etheric hands. This would be an indication of very marked development, coming to expression in conscious control of the hands.

Now there is one organ in man in which, even if he is not clairvoyant, the etheric part moves freely while the corresponding physical part remains immobile. This organ is the brain around which the cosmic Powers have placed the hard skull; the lobes of the brain would certainly like to move but they cannot. Thus the brain of an average human being is permanently in the condition of a clairvoyant who while he holds his physical hands still, moves the etheric hands only. The brain is seen by a clairvoyant to be something that comes out of the head like writhing snakes. Every head is, in fact, a Medusa head. This is a very real phenomenon. The essential difference between the human head and the rest of the body is that in respect of the rest of the body the human being will need to undergo a lengthy process of evolution to achieve what has already been achieved by the head in the way of ordinary thinking. In a certain respect the strength of thinking lies in the ability of the human being, while he is thinking, to bring the brain to rest even down to the finer, invisible movements of the nerves. The more thoroughly he can keep the brain at rest while he is thinking, including the more delicate movements of the nerves, the subtler, more deliberate and more logical his thoughts will be.

So we can say that when the human being passes into physical existence through birth, it is his head that is the most perfect because in the head there has already been achieved what in the case of the hands—the part of the human being which expresses itself through gestures—can be achieved only in the future. In the evolutionary period of Old Moon the brain was still at the stage of the hands at the present time. On the Old Moon the head was still exposed in several places and not yet enclosed by the skull. Whereas it is now fixed and static in a kind of prison, it could then expand outwards on all sides. All this applies, of course, to the conditions of existence in the Old Moon epoch, when man was still living in the fluid or watery element that had not yet condensed to the solid state.¹ Even in a certain period of the ancient Lemurian epoch, when man had reached the stage of evolution recapitulating the Old Moon period—even then it was still the case that at the top of the brain there appeared not only the organ we have often mentioned, but a kind of efflux of thoughts. A formation like a fiery cloud was still to be seen over the head of man even as late as the Atlantean epoch. Without super-normal clairvoyance, simply with the clairvoyant faculty possessed by every single human being at that time, an Atlantean could see whether a man was or was not a thinker in the sense of that ancient epoch. Over the head of a man who was a thinker there was a luminous, fiery cloud but no such phenomenon was present in the case of one who was not.

These are matters of which we must have knowledge if we are to understand the transformation that takes place in man’s nature when, after living in a physical body, he dies and passes into the other period of existence between death and the new birth. All the forces that have been at work to enable a human being to come into existence disappear when he is already in the physical world; but they become all-important when he has laid aside his physical body. During his life between birth and death man is quite unaware of the forces which moulded the physical brain. But everything of which he is aware between birth and death vanishes and is of no significance when he passes through the gate of death. He lives then within the forces of which he is unconscious during his physical life on Earth. Whereas during this physical life he experiences his ‘I’ as pictured during the waking state, in the period between death and the new birth he experiences that higher ‘I’ of which we can have a dim inkling when we contemplate how a human being learns to walk, to speak and to think. While a man is on Earth he is unaware of this ‘I’; it does not penetrate into his consciousness. What thus remains entirely concealed we can follow back as far as birth and before birth, even still further back, when we contemplate the life that takes its course after death. That which is most completely hidden because it has built up the human being and vanishes while he is living on Earth is most fully in evidence when he is no longer on Earth, namely during the period of his existence after death. The forces of which we can have a faint inkling only, the forces which, working from within, enable the human being to walk, which launch the sounds of speech, which make him into a thinker and mould the brain into becoming the organ of thinking—these are the forces of supreme importance during man's existence between death and the new birth. It is then that his true ‘I’ comes to life. Of this we will speak in the next lecture.

• 1. See Occult Science—an Outline, pp. 137–161 in the Rudolf Steiner Press 1963 edition. The section on the Old Moon period of evolution is included in Chapter IV.

During this Winter we have prepared the ground in various ways in order to understand with greater exactitude than has hitherto been possible man's life between birth and death in the physical world on the one side and on the other between death and rebirth in the spiritual world. And there will be still more to say about this subject in the coming months.

Efforts will be needed to draw together a number of details that will contribute towards a thorough understanding of this subject and throw new light upon many topics we have already studied from a different point of view. Today, then, I will ask you to think, above all, of the course of man's physical life—about which something has also been said in my book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy—and of how it progresses in cycles: one from birth until about the seventh year, or until the change of teeth; a second cycle from the change of teeth until puberty at about the fourteenth year; then a third cycle, and so on in periods of seven years. Even to ordinary observation it will be clear that this systematic arrangement into periods of seven years is well founded, but on the other hand it will also be evident that in the actual life of the human being other facts of incisive significance cut across these seven-year periods. We ourselves have repeatedly considered a crucial occurrence in a man's life which eludes this division into cyclic periods. It is the point of time back to which a man's memory extends in later life, the moment when he begins to feel and know himself as an ‘I’, when Ego-consciousness dawns in him. This experience does not by any means occur at exactly the same point of time, but in most cases it may be said that Ego-consciousness flashes up in the human being at some point between birth and the seventh year. And something similar can be said to hold good in the later period of a man's life. Although with less abruptness than the sudden flashing-up of Ego-consciousness, there are other occurrences which as it were invalidate the regular seven-year cycle. We shall, however, always discover that whatever comes in this way into the life of man and cuts across the cyclic periods, occurs much more irregularly than the experiences connected with the actual seven-year cycles. You will hardly find two human beings whose memories go back to exactly the same point of time, that is to say who experienced the flashing up of consciousness of ‘I’ at the same age. Nor does the change of teeth occur at precisely the same age in different individuals. But why this is so in the latter case, we shall still have to consider.

When we study the cyclic periods already referred to and mentioned in my little book, Education of the Child, we shall notice that they begin in connection with the most physical, the most external member of man's being and are then concerned with the other, more inward members of his constitution. From birth until the seventh year development is connected primarily with the physical body, then for seven years with the etheric body, then for seven years with the astral body, the sentient soul, and so on. The evolutionary factors pass over more and more decisively from the external to the inner nature of man. That is essentially characteristic of the seven-year periods.

What, then, is there to be said about occurrences which cut across these seven-year periods? The flashing-up of ‘I’-consciousness during the first cycle is an emphatically inner event. For the sake of clarity, here let us consider something that seems to be in contrast with this flashing-up of Ego-consciousness. If we observe human life with discernment we shall find that the cessation of growth may be compared with some happening which cuts across the seven-year cycles of evolution. We will therefore think about the cessation of growth which after all occurs comparatively late in life, and study its implications.

The first seven-year period ends with the change of teeth. The appearance of the second teeth is, as it were, the final act of what may be called the formative principle. The last contribution made by the forces that give the human being his form is when they drive out the second teeth. That is the culmination of the formative process, for the principle which builds up the human form is no longer in action. With the seventh year the formative principle ceases to be active. What comes about later on is only an expansion of what has already been established as form. After the seventh year there is no more remodelling of the brain. All that happens is growth of what is already established as basic form. Therefore we can say that the principle of form unfolds its activity specifically in the first seven years of the life of a human being. The principle of form stems from the Spirits of Form; thus these Spirits of Form are active in the human being during the first seven years of his life. It can therefore be said that when the human being enters into life through birth, his actual form is not complete. What happens is that the Spirits of Form continue their active intervention during the first seven years of life; the human being has then reached the point when his form merely needs to grow. The basis for the form has been established by the seventh year, and the second teeth are what the formative principle still produces out of the human being. The formative principle has now come to its conclusion. Were its activity to continue, the second teeth would inevitably make their appearance later than is now the case.

Here we may ask: When these Spirits of Form have worked on the human being until the seventh year of his life, does everything they do for him come to an end?

The answer is ‘No’, for the human being goes on growing and the basic principles of his form develop still further. If nothing else intervened, growth would be able to continue without interruption. If we think only of the principles of form that are active in the human being until the seventh year there is no more reason in the case of man than in that of other beings why these forms should not continue to grow if nothing were to intervene. But something does intervene. When the human being stops growing, certain principles of form still have an effect upon him. They have already been drawing near to him but now they unite in the fullest sense with his organism, lay hold of it, but in such a way that they now act as a hindrance, and further growth is prevented. The formative principles that are active until the seventh year of life allow the human being a certain elasticity. But at that point other formative principles approach him; their nature is such that they capture and confine what is elastic in the demarcated form, thus preventing any further growth. That is why growth stops at some point. When growth stops, this means that formative forces approaching from outside are at work. Whenever formative principles are active, whenever forms grow larger, provision must be made for the stoppage of growth by the appearance of counter-formative principles which oppose the first category as its polar antithesis. When man's form has developed until about the seventh year of life (indicated in the shaded portion of the diagram) this form can continue to grow.

The formative principles have been at work until the seventh year; these principles work from within. Then different formative principles work in opposition from outside, so that the human being can grow only to the limit indicated by the line b–b. It is really as if until the seventh year of his life the human being were given an elastic garment which he can constantly stretch and enlarge. But at a specific point of time he is given one that is not elastic; he is obliged to put it on, and thenceforth cannot grow beyond its limits.

We can therefore say that in the human being a confrontation takes place between two kinds of formative principles, one working from within and the other from without. The formative principles belonging to the first category come from the Spirits of Form, from those Spirits of Form who have passed through a perfectly normal process of evolution in the Cosmos. The formative principles working from without are not of the same kind. They come from Spirits of Form whose development has been retarded and who have acquired a Luciferic character. They are the factor which works in the purely spiritual domain, whereas the forces working in the material sphere have had a normal development; having evolved through the stages of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, they then pass to the Earth in the regular way and shape the human form from within. The ‘irregular’ Spirits of Form take what is presented to them and hold back its further development. Thus the process of growth in the human being is brought to a halt by these backward Spirits of Form. The Beings of the higher Hierarchies have the most varied tasks, among them the one that has been characterised today.

We have now been able to consider many different aspects of the work of the ‘regular’ Hierarchies and also of the work of the backward spiritual Beings belonging to the different Hierarchies. In the book Occult Science—an Outline¹ you can read how the human being reached the stage where through the Spirits of Form he could be endowed with the germinal foundation for the ‘I’, the Ego. We know that man received the germ of his physical body from the Thrones, of his etheric body from the Spirits of Wisdom, of his astral body from the Spirits of Movement, and the germinal foundation for the ‘I’ from the Spirits of Form. Bearing this in mind we can say that man, in his outer stature, has been organised by the regular Spirits of Form into an Ego-bearing being and that this comes into manifestation in the first seven-year cycle of his life. But then the backward Spirits of Form who are the opponents of the regular Spirits of Form, put a stop to his growth. This is actually the antithesis of the first, most deeply inward experience in the human being, namely, the kindling of the consciousness of ‘I’—the Ego. This happens in the early years of life, in the innermost realm of being. The outermost manifestation, the form, is checked at a later age, as a final act. Thus we perceive two evolutionary—but antithetical—processes in the human being. Of the one I have said that it comes from without and moves inward, taking hold of the sentient soul and so on, in the twenty-first year of life. Then there is another evolution proceeding from within outwards until the growth of the physical form is checked. The one evolution, the regular evolution, proceeds from the spiritual to the corporeal, from within outwards and is of interest especially for education. The other evolution—which is a much less regular and also more individual process—proceeds from without inwards and, when the human being has reached a certain age, it comes to expression in the completion of the outermost principle—the physical body.

It is very important that teachers should have knowledge of these two antithetical lines of evolution. Hence in the book The Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy it was right to call attention to the first process of evolution which proceeds from within outwards, because it is only there that education is possible. On the other line of evolution—from without inwards—which is the line of individual development, it is impossible to make any actual impression. This is something of which account can be taken but which cannot be halted; neither can much be achieved in the way of education. And to be able to distinguish between where education is possible and where it is not, is of fundamental importance.

Just as the cessation of growth is caused by the backward Spirits of Form, the first actual manifestation of the ‘I’ in the human being during early childhood is the work of the backward Spirits of Will (Thrones). Between these two extremes there are other happenings which are to be attributed to backward Spirits of Wisdom and backward Spirits of Movement.

No adequate characterisation of man's life as a whole, including the existence between death and the new birth, is possible unless we take account of all the factors which have an effect upon him, and recognise that even in everyday life the influences of Luciferic beings take effect in many different ways. This influence is evident in other spheres as well. And as our endeavour in these lectures is to acquire a really fundamental understanding of man's life as a whole, we will not hesitate to think about matters which seem to be somewhat remote.

Attention shall first of all be drawn to a phenomenon from which it is evident that on the physical plane too, between birth and death, man's life has undergone essential changes in the course of evolution. If we realise this, it will, become evident that the life between death and rebirth has also changed. Those who think intellectually, but superficially, about life today may readily believe that, in essentials, things were always the same as they are at present. By no means was it so! And in certain cases we need go back only a few hundred years to find that conditions were very different. Thus at the present time there is something that has a very great influence upon man's life of soul between birth and death but that simply did not exist in its present form only a few centuries ago. It is what we today mean by the expression ‘public opinion’. Even as recently as the thirteenth century it would have been nonsense to speak of public opinion as we do today. A great deal is said nowadays against belief in authority, although in actual fact it exists in a much more oppressive form in our time than it did in these earlier, often despised centuries. In earlier centuries there were, of course, defects, but there was no blind belief in authority such as exists at present. This blindness of belief in authority is usually revealed by the fact that the authority in question cannot be specified. A person today will readily be floored when he is told that science has proved this or that. In earlier centuries, however, people attached more weight to authorities whom they encountered physically. Reference to an intangible ‘something’ is implied when it is said: ‘There is scientific proof of it.’ Such a saying urges belief in authority when confronted with something incomprehensible. Such belief did not exist in earlier centuries. People belonging to our civilisation usually concern themselves very little with matters about which the simplest, most, primitive human being in earlier centuries endeavoured to have some knowledge—matters relating, for example, to health and illness. Why, it is asked today, should anyone need to know about health and illness? The doctors know about these matters and the problems concerned can be left to them. This is also an example of what comes into the category of intangible but sovereign authority. But countless other influences make their way into life; from earliest youth the human being becomes dependent upon them and his trends of judgement and feeling force themselves into our life! These living currents swirling around among human beings are usually referred to as ‘public opinion’—and prompted the saying from philosophers: ‘Public opinions are mostly private errors.’ To realise this, however, is not as important as it is to be aware that public opinions exert tremendous power upon the life of an individual. It would be a complete misconception of history to speak about the influence of public opinion upon the life of an individual living in the thirteenth century. In those days there were single personalities who admittedly exerted a great deal of authority either in affairs of Government or in practical life, and in these spheres it was obeyed. But at this time there was nothing resembling what impersonal public opinion has become today. Anyone who is unwilling to believe this on the basis of the occult facts should study the history of Florence during those centuries and in later times too—when the government of the city passed into the control of the Medici. The tremendous power of individual authorities will then be apparent, but there was no such thing as public opinion. It first arose in an epoch preceding our own by four or five centuries and one can speak of its actual beginning. Such things must be regarded as realities, for a world of swirling thoughts does indeed exist.

What is the origin of this public opinion which we often accept as something that cannot be verified? What is public opinion in reality? You may remember that I have spoken of certain spiritual Beings belonging to the Hierarchy immediately above man—Beings who participate in various ways in the guidance and leadership of humanity. In my little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity, you will find a great deal on the subject of spiritual Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. Now we know that the mightiest incision in the evolution of humanity was made by the Mystery of Golgotha. In that event there came to pass something that was most wonderfully expressed in the esoteric teaching of St. Paul. Paul spoke in simple language but the actual way in which he spoke was rooted in profound esotericism. It was not possible for him always to give out openly what he, as an Initiate, knew; for in the first place he wanted to speak to a wider circle of people and, secondly, it was not possible in his day to give out everything he knew in the way of which he would have been capable. Nevertheless his very presentation was based upon profound esoteric knowledge. We find, for example, that there is a deeply significant truth in the distinction he makes between the ‘first Adam’ and the ‘higher Adam’—the Christ. According to Paul, the various generations of human beings are to be traced back to Adam, that is to say, the bodies of men descend from Adam. Hence it can be said that the physical increase of humanity over the Earth during the different periods, leads back finally to the physical body of Adam—Adam and Eve, naturally. We can then ask: What lies at the basis of the physical evolution of mankind from Adam onwards? Naturally, the evolution of souls! The physical bodies which have descended from Adam are the habitations of living souls. These souls had descended from cosmic worlds and had brought with them to the Earth a certain spiritual heritage, a spiritual endowment. But in the course of time this spiritual endowment had undergone decline. Individuals who lived, say, six or seven thousand years before the founding of Christianity had within them much stronger, more extensive spiritual forces than those who lived a mere thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha. The spiritual heritage which once came to the Earth with human beings had gradually withered away in the soul. Now the life between death and rebirth is of particular significance for this spiritual heritage. If we go back to the epoch long before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that after death men had an active, inwardly illumined life of soul; but then this life of soul became dimmer and dimmer, darker and darker. An ever-fading life of soul came with human beings when they passed through death. This was particularly the case among the Greeks although they were the most advanced peoples then on the Earth, and their sages had every reason to say, in view of the stage reached in evolution: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades.’ We know that this saying was true when applied to the Greeks who lived a fully satisfying life on the physical plane; but as soon as they had passed through the gate of death their life became dim and shadowy.

In the fullest sense it is true that the spiritual life which men had brought with them to the Earth and which manifested after death as a somewhat dim clairvoyant consciousness, had become even dimmer. And especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, the Graeco-Latin epoch, during which the Mystery of Golgotha took place, the spiritual life had reached the stage of its greatest darkness.

The all-important purpose of the Baptism by John the Baptist was that some of those who sought to be baptised should be made conscious of the conditions just described. The individuals baptised by John were completely submerged in the water. As a result, the etheric body of these individuals was liberated from them and for a short time, while under the water, they became clairvoyant. John was able to reveal to them that there had been such deterioration in the life of soul in the course of time that a human being now possessed very little of the spiritual treasure that he had once been able to take with him through the gate of death and that could give him clairvoyant consciousness. A man whom John baptised in this way became aware that a revitalisation of the life of soul was essential, that something new must radiate into human souls in order that after death there might be a life in the real sense. This new impulse streamed into the souls of men through the Mystery of Golgotha. You need only read my lecture-course entitled From Jesus to Christ and you will realise that a rich and abundant spiritual life streams from the Mystery of Golgotha into the souls of individuals who develop a relationship to that Mystery.

Hence Paul could say: just as the physical bodies of men descend from Adam, so will the content of their souls in greater and greater measure ‘descend’ from the Christ who is the second Adam, the spiritual Adam. It is a profound truth that Paul uttered here, clothed in his simple words. If the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, men would have become progressively empty in soul and would either have developed a longing only to live outside the physical body or to live on Earth with no other wishes or desires than for a purely physical life, and so would have become more and more materialistic. Because all development is a slow and gradual process there are still some peoples on the Earth who have not yet wholly lost the original spiritual treasure, who still retain some measure of it in spite of having failed to establish any relationship to the Mystery of Golgotha. Individuals belonging to the most advanced peoples, however, can become conscious after death only to the extent to which they have learnt ‘to die in Christ’, as the second line of the Rosicrucian formula expresses it. And so in actual fact the Mystery of Golgotha has acted as illumination in men's souls.

With this clearly in mind we shall understand the gist of a question relating to man's evolution. It is the question: How came it that understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha enabled the content of man's soul to be carried into the sphere of his ‘I’, his Ego? How did this soul-content differ from what existed before the Mystery of Golgotha as an ancient heritage? The difference is that, before the Mystery of Golgotha, in respect of the content of their souls men were far less independent. They were under the direct guidance of the Beings we know as the Angeloi, Archangeloi and so on. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men were under the leadership of the Beings of the nearest higher Hierarchies to a far greater extent than was the case after that event. Indeed the progress of these Beings themselves—Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai—consists in the fact that they have learnt to lead human beings in a way that respects their independence. Men were intended to live on the Earth in a state of greater and greater independence. The leading spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies have recognised this and therein consists their progress.

But it is possible for these Spirits too to remain behind in their evolution. Not all the Spirits who participated in the leadership of humanity have acquired through the Mystery of Golgotha the power to guide and lead men while ensuring their freedom. Among these Beings of the higher Hierarchies there are some who remained backward and have become Luciferic spirits. What we call ‘public opinion’ is an example of the way in which some of them are active. Public opinion is not created by human beings alone but also by a certain category of Luciferic spirits of the lowest rank—retarded Angeloi and Archangeloi. These spirits are only beginning their Luciferic career and have not yet risen very high in the ranks of the Luciferic spirits, but they are definitely Luciferic in character. With the eye of seership one can perceive how certain spirits of the higher Hierarchies did not keep pace with evolution after the Mystery of Golgotha, how they adhere rigidly to the old kind of leadership and therefore cannot make any direct approach to men. Those who have kept pace with evolution can make regular and direct contact with men; the other spirits are incapable of this and they manifest their activity in the muddled, turbulent thinking that comes to expression as public opinion. The function of public opinion is intelligible only when it is realised that this is how it has made its way into human life.

Thus we have among us beings who abandon the regular course of evolution and become Luciferic in character. It is important that this should be known. The work of the Luciferic beings of whom we have already spoken and who now have great power, also began on a small scale. Indeed this is true in the case of the whole host of Luciferic beings. Admittedly, on the Old Moon there was no public opinion as we know it but something that can be compared with it—a kind of guidance of men. Some among this host of Luciferic spirits of whom we have spoken are powerful and important beings, for example backward Spirits of Form who surge in upon the human being with such violence that they stop his growth. The others are merely the recruits; nevertheless this is the beginning of the career of the Luciferic spirits, a career which later on will assume a quite different dimension because the spirits become more and more powerful. Public opinion, which under the guidance and direction of certain Luciferic spirits of the lowest order, influences human beings because they absorb it between birth and death, must necessarily have its counterweight during the life between death and rebirth. That is to say, because a human being in his life between birth and death has been caught up into the current of public opinion described, he must experience the counterweight in his life between death and rebirth. Otherwise the following would ensue.

The backward spirits who are responsible for the creation of public opinion have no significance or power whatever in man's life between death and rebirth. They have relinquished all possibility of working in that sphere because they are active here, on the physical plane, in a spiritual way—indeed in a way that is only possible in the form of public opinion. A man can take no iota of anything like public opinion with him into the spiritual world and whatever element of it he might want to accompany him into the life after death would be entirely out of place. It must be said, although it will seem strange to many people, that life in Kamaloka becomes very difficult for one who clings to public opinion or has been caught in the coils of his own judgement very early in life. This applies particularly to persons who believe that within the world of public opinion there can still be independent judgement—which is an utter impossibility. For such people Kamaloka is admittedly difficult. But when the period of Kamaloka is over, public opinion has no weight or significance whatever, and after death it is irrelevant whether people adhered to nuances of it, such as liberal or conservative, radical or reactionary. This has no significance whatever in the different groupings of human beings and moreover exists on Earth solely for the purpose of hindering men from making progress towards illumination of consciousness after death. The beings behind public opinion resolved to forgo the progress made possible by the Mystery of Golgotha. But the Mystery of Golgotha will become of greater and greater importance for the Earth's evolution. We must clearly understand that the future of the Earth's evolution cannot be assured simply by rectifying phenomena such as public opinion and the like which are inevitable in the course of evolution. Men can, however, become better in their own inner nature, therefore the process of evolution must take root more and more deeply in their inner life. In the future, men will be still more exposed to the pressure of public opinion, but inwardly they will have developed greater strength. This is possible only through Spiritual Science. But if man is gradually to become a match for those spirits who are now exerting their influence in public opinion as recruits of the Luciferic beings, this will be possible only if, between death and rebirth too, he undergoes something that strengthens him inwardly, strengthens the principle in him that is independent of life on Earth. Whereas through the influence of public opinion he becomes more and more dependent upon earthly life, in the life between death and rebirth he must receive into his very self something that in the next life on Earth will make him ever freer from the influence of public opinion.

Connected with this is the fact that at the time when public opinion began to assume importance, the Buddha-realm was established in the Mars sphere—as we heard in the lecture at Christmas. Consequently between death and rebirth man passes through this Buddha-realm on Mars. Christian Rosenkreutz had entrusted to Buddha a special mission in the Mars sphere. And what would be futile on Earth, namely the desire to flee from the conditions of terrestrial existence—this is an experience which man must undergo between death and rebirth during his passage through the Mars sphere. Among other things he strips off the incubus of public opinion which takes effect only on Earth. Many, even more overbearing influences will come in the future and it will be more than ever necessary to undergo the experience that is possible for man as a pupil of Buddha in the Mars sphere. Here on Earth, men can now be pupils of the Buddha in the orthodox sense only if they refuse to participate in the progress made by the most advanced people on Earth. But between death and rebirth Buddha unfolds what has developed from the teaching he gave on Earth, which was that man should free himself from the need for further incarnations. This has been developed into a doctrine that is inapplicable to the Earth, where life must progress from incarnation to incarnation. Thus the doctrine preached by Buddha on Earth contained the seed of what man must acquire in the disembodied state of existence. In this advanced form, Buddha's teaching is right for the period between death and rebirth. The Buddha himself appeared in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel² and Christ Himself leads men between death and rebirth through the Mars sphere, enabling them there to receive the Buddha's advanced teaching. Thus in the Mars sphere men can be emancipated from the tendency to uniformity resulting from the effects of public opinion which are detrimental for their further progress on Earth. Whereas in earlier times Mars was said to be the planet of warlike traits, it is now the Buddha's task gradually to transform these warlike traits in such a way that they become the foundation of the sense for freedom and independence needed in the present age. Whereas nowadays men have the tendency to surrender their sense of freedom and succumb to the fetters of public opinion, on Mars between death and rebirth they will strive to throw off these fetters and not bring them again into the life on Earth when they return to new incarnations.

It seems to me that here we have something that characterises most wonderfully how wisdom holds sway in the world, how everything that progresses or remains backward is manipulated in such a way that the final outcome is harmony in the evolution of worlds. Man cannot achieve progress by keeping as it were to the middle line, although there are many who realise the uselessness of adopting a one-sided standpoint. Admittedly, we come across idealists, materialists and other ‘-ists’ who swear by their own standpoint, but truly great individuals such as Goethe do no such thing. They try to grasp material conditions by means of material thinking. When men of less eminence imagine that they have understood this, they say: truth lies in the middle, between two different standpoints. But that would be the same as if someone in practical life wanted to sit between two chairs! The truth cannot be found by a one-sided adoption of this or that standpoint but by applying the modes of knowledge appropriate either for materialism or idealism, The world does not progress by undeviating adherence to a middle course: a middle course is appropriate when the opposing sides are also present and are recognised as forces. If something has to be weighed, the two scalepans are needed as well as the beam. Thus there must be a counterbalance to public opinion; and this is provided by Buddha's teaching in the Mars sphere—which would not be necessary if public opinion had never existed. Life needs antithesis; life progresses in and through polarity. Somebody might think that as the North and South Poles are antitheses, it would be better if neither existed! They are not, of course, antithetic in the sense implied by a certain Professor of whom it was said that because he had written his books in such haste he could not think about their contents and stated that civilisation could develop only in the middle zone of the Earth because at the North Pole people would freeze through cold and at the South Pole melt through heat! In another connection, of course, North and South Poles are genuine opposites and are necessary because progress is not achieved by adopting a neutral course but by the maintenance and harmonising of opposites. Thus what develops on Earth had to undergo a process that lies below the level of progress. Public opinion is of less value than the judgements which an individual can reach on a path of progress. Public opinion is sub-human and it is this sub-human influence that is counteracted by the Buddha-stream through which man passes between death and rebirth. Both influences are necessary and it is extremely important to bear this in mind in connection with evolution.

It can therefore be said with truth: yes, there are indeed backward spirits, but everything that remains behind on the one side and on the other outstrips the evolutionary process, is manipulated by the wisdom of the Universe in such a way that harmony is the final result. The backward spirits are utilised to constitute the opposite pole to the spirits who have progressed to further stages.

If we look at life in this way it will be clear to us that in the future course of Earth evolution the human being will bring into life more and more qualities which will have greater weight and influence than the purely physical qualities. And it will be increasingly apparent that qualities other than the purely physical will have to be taken into account. Physical qualities will be evident, which—although they become manifest only gradually—can be traced back to infancy; but there will be other qualities to which this does not apply and which show themselves in a marked form only comparatively late in life. A characteristic feature of evolution in the future will be the existence of an increasing number of individuals about whom it will inevitably be asked: What can have happened to that individual at a certain age in his life? He has completely changed; it is as though he has become a different being! Qualities that were completely absent in earlier life, that appear only when a certain age has been reached, will reveal themselves. This will happen in the case of souls who are the most highly developed and in whom a certain break in their life becomes evident. For the fact that an individual was a pupil of Buddha in the life between death and rebirth reveals itself only at a certain age. This would apply to persons of whom it can be said: Up to a particular point in their lives their individual qualities were in evidence; but then entirely new trends appeared and they were able to understand matters altogether different from those for which they had previously shown understanding. These will be individuals who in the future will be the vehicles of true spiritual progress although they may simply be regarded as late developers, manifesting these qualities only late in life. In truth, however, the reason why these individuals display these qualities only in later life is that in previous incarnations on the Earth they had established the causes which enabled them to experience the spiritual life in the Mars sphere with particular intensity and so to acquire qualities which enabled them to bring a new impulse into the evolution of humanity. True spiritual culture will more and more be in the hands of individuals of this kind, who in their youth showed little aptitude for the spiritual standpoint they adopt in later life.

We now see that this is the reason why a certain fact has always been stressed in the Rosicrucian line of thought of which we ourselves have heard in the past, although it could not then be substantiated because our studies were not as advanced as they now are. Representatives of the Rosicrucian principle of Initiation in the West have always emphasised that it is impossible to discover in their childhood those who are to become leading figures, because these are individuals who give evidence of that fundamental change in later life of which I have spoken. When a seer speaks of Buddha today, he knows that Buddha has faithfully adhered to what his teaching promised; he has continued to work for that in human nature which has no direct urge for physical embodiment and therefore does not appear at the beginning of life in a physical body but only when the physical body has undergone a certain development, when a certain stage towards spirituality has been reached. Then, at a later stage of life the gift of the Buddha to man becomes an effective influence.

All this must be borne in mind if we are to understand the whole process of man's development. What it signifies for each individual in his life between birth and death—of this we shall hear later.

• 1. See pp. 180 onwards in the Rudolf Steiner Press 1963 edition.
• 2. See the lecture-course, The Gospel of St. Luke given by Dr. Steiner in Basle, September 1909, particularly lectures four to nine.

When with the normal perception belonging to outer existence we study human life in its relation to life in the rest of the Universe, we are observing only the smallest part of world-existence that is connected with man himself. In other words, what a man can observe if he is not prepared to penetrate behind the mysteries of existence, can throw no real light upon his essential nature and being. For when we look around us with the ordinary organs of perception, with the organ of thinking, we have before us only that which does not in any way contain the deepest and most significant secrets of existence. This fact will strike us most strongly of all if we succeed in developing, even to a comparatively small extent, the capacity to view life and the world from the other side, namely, from the side of sleep. What can be seen during sleep is for the most part concealed from man's present faculty of perception. As soon as a person goes to sleep, from then until the moment of waking he really sees nothing at all. But if and when in the course of development the time comes when observation is also possible during sleep, most of what a man sees to begin with is connected with him as a human being but remains entirely hidden from ordinary observation. It is easy to understand why this is so, for the brain is an instrument of judgement, of thinking. Hence we must use or at least activate the brain when in everyday life we want to think or form judgements, but for that very reason we cannot see it. After all, the eye cannot see itself while it is actually observing something, and the same holds good of the whole organism. We bear it about with us but we cannot observe it in the real sense, we cannot penetrate it to any depth. We direct our gaze out into the world but in modern life we cannot direct this gaze into our own being.

Now the greatest mysteries of existence are not to be found in the outside world but within man himself. Let us recall what we know from Spiritual Science, namely that the three kingdoms of nature around us owe their existence to a certain retardation in evolution. Mineral kingdom, plant kingdom, animal kingdom are, fundamentally speaking, entities attributable to the fact that something remained backward in the evolutionary process. Normal progress in evolution has in point of fact been made only by beings who have reached the stage of human existence during the Earth period. When a man looks at the mineral, plant or animal kingdoms, he is really observing in the world that which amounts in his own existence to what he ‘remembers’, to the content of his memory of his actual experiences; he is in fact contemplating what has taken place in the past and still enjoys a certain existence. But he is not experiencing the living, invisible soul-life of the immediate present when he concerns himself only with his memory. The memory with all its mental pictures represents something that has been deposited in our living soul-existence, is fixed there. All this is, of course, to be taken metaphorically, but the memories embedded in the soul are not the direct, basic elements of its life. The same applies to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms in outer nature. The thoughts conceived by divine-spiritual Beings in the past live on in these kingdoms and they continue into present existence, just as our memory-pictures continue into our present life of soul. Hence we have in the world around us, not the thoughts of the immediately present, living, divine-spiritual Beings but the memory-pictures, the preserved thoughts of the Gods.

As to the content of our memory, this may well be of interest because with our memory we grasp a tiny corner of world-creation, we grasp what has passed over from creation into existence. Our memory-pictures are the first, the lowest, the most fugitive stage of created existence. But when we waken spiritually during sleep we see something quite different. We see nothing of what is outside in space, nothing of the processes manifesting in the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms or in the external aspects of the human kingdom. But then we know that the essential realities which we are there beholding are the creative, life-giving principles working on man himself. It is actually as if everything else were blotted out and as if the Earth, observed from the viewpoint of sleep, contained nothing except Man. What would never be seen by day, in the waking state, is revealed when contemplated from the viewpoint of sleep. And it is then, for the first time, that knowledge dawns in us of the thoughts which the divine-spiritual Beings kept in reserve in order to work at the creation of man, at a level above that of mineral, plant and animal existence.

Whereas through physical perception of the world we see everything except the real being of man, through the spiritual perception exercised from the viewpoint of sleep, we see nothing except man—as a creation, together with happenings in the human kingdom—that is to say, from the viewpoint of sleep we see everything that is hidden from the ordinary perception of waking life. This accounts for the element of strangeness that is present in our vision when we are contemplating the world from the viewpoint of sleep, in other words, when we become clairvoyant, having wakened spiritually during sleep.

Now the human body—and here I mean the physical and etheric bodies together—which lies in the bed during sleep, this human body itself has a singular appearance, a characteristic of which can be expressed in words somewhat as follows. Only in the very first years of a child's life does this human body as seen during sleep show a certain similarity with the weaving life and activity in the other kingdoms of nature. The body of a grown-up person, however, or of a child from a certain age onwards, when seen from the viewpoint of sleep, reveals a constant process of decay, of destruction. Every night during sleep the forces of destruction are ever and again subjugated by the forces of growth; what is destroyed by day is repaired during the night, but the forces of destruction are always in excess. And the consequence of this fact is that we die. The forces that are renewed during the night are never the equal of those that have been used up during the waking life of day, so that in the normal life of the human being a certain surplus of destructive forces is always present. This surplus accumulates and the natural death of old age ensues when the destructive forces eclipse the upbuilding forces.

Thus when we observe the human being from the viewpoint of sleep we are actually witnessing a process of destruction—but without sadness. For the feelings we might have in our waking life about this process of destruction are absent when we see it from the viewpoint of sleep, because then we know that it is the precondition of man's true spiritual development. No being who did not destroy his body in some measure would be capable of thinking or of developing an inner life of soul. No life of soul as experienced by man would be possible if the process of growth were not opposed by processes of destruction. We therefore regard these processes of destruction in the human organism as the precondition of man's life of soul and feel the whole development to be beneficial. Looked at from the other side of life, the fact that man's body can gradually be dissolved is felt to be a blessing. Not only do things look different when viewed from the other side of life but all our feelings and ideas are different; consciousness during sleep has always before it the spectacle of the body in decline—and rightly in decline.

Study of the life between death and rebirth, however, affords a different spectacle. A certain connection with the preceding life is experienced for a time after death. All of you are aware that this is the case during the period of Kamaloka; even after that period, however, the experience of connection with the previous life continues for a time. But then, at a certain point during the life between death and rebirth, a reversal of all ordinary vision and perception takes place, a reversal far more radical than takes place during sleep-consciousness. During existence on Earth we look out from our body into the world that is not our body; from the point of time to which I have just referred, between death and the new birth, we direct hardly a gaze to the universe around us but look with all the great intensity at what may now be called the human body; we discern all its secrets. Thus between death and rebirth there comes a moment when we begin to take special interest in the human body. It is extremely difficult to describe these conditions and it can really only be done with halting words. There comes a time between death and the new birth when we feel as if the whole universe were within us and outside us only the human body. We feel that the stars and other heavenly worlds are within our being, just as here on Earth we feel that the stomach, the liver, the spleen, are within us. Everything that here, in life on Earth, is outside us becomes in that other life an inner world, and just as here we look outwards to the stars, clouds and so forth, in that other life we gaze at the human body. At which human body?

To understand this we must be clear that the new human being who at his next birth is to enter into existence, has for a long time previously been preparing his essential characteristics. Preparation for a return to the Earth begins a long time before birth or conception. The conditions of central importance here are quite different from those accepted by modern statistical biology which assumes that when a human being comes into existence through birth he simply inherits certain traits from his father, mother, grandparents and the whole line of ancestors. Quite an otherwise attractive little book about Goethe has recently been published, in which his characteristic qualities are traced back to his ancestors. Outwardly speaking, that is absolutely correct in the sense I have often indicated, namely, that there is no contradiction between a scientific fact that is correctly presented and the facts brought forward by Spiritual Science. It is just as if someone were to say: Here is a man; how comes it that he is alive? It is because he has lungs inside him and there is air outside. Needless to say, that is quite correct. But someone else may turn up and say: This man is alive for an entirely different reason. A fortnight ago he fell into the water and I jumped in after him and pulled him out; but for that he would not be alive today! Both these assertions are correct. In the same way, natural science is quite correct when it says that a man bears within himself characteristics inherited from his ancestors; but it is equally correct to attribute them to his karma and other factors. In principle, therefore, Spiritual Science cannot be intolerant; it is external natural science alone that can be intolerant, for example, in rejecting Spiritual Science. Someone may insist that he has preserved the characteristics of his own ancestors. But there is also the fact that from a certain point of time between death and rebirth a human being himself begins to develop forces which work down upon his ancestors. Long before an individual enters into physical existence there is a mysterious connection between himself and the whole line of his ancestors. And the reason why specific characteristics appear in a line of ancestors is that perhaps only after hundreds of years a particular individual is to be born from that ancestral line. This human being who is to be born, perhaps centuries later, from a line of ancestors, regulates their characteristics from the spiritual world. Thus Goethe—to take this example once again—manifests the qualities of his ancestors because he worked continuously in the spiritual world with the aim of implanting into these ancestors qualities that were subsequently to be his. And what is true of Goethe is true of every human being.

From a specific point of time between death and rebirth, therefore, a human being is already concerned with the preparation of his later earthly existence. The physical body which a man has on Earth does not by any means derive in all details from the physical lives of his ancestors, nor indeed from processes that can operate on the Earth. The physical body we bear is in itself fourfold. It has evolved through the periods of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth. Its very first foundation was laid during the Old Saturn period; during the Old Sun period the etheric body was woven into this foundation; during the Old Moon period the astral body was added and then, during the Earth period, the Ego, the ‘I’. As a result of these processes the physical body has undergone many changes. Thus we have within us the transformed Saturn foundation, the transformed Sun and Moon conditions. Our physical human body is the product of transformed physical conditions. The only part of all this that is visible is what has come from the Earth; everything else is invisible. Man's physical body is visible because he takes in the substances of the Earth, transforms them into his blood and permeates them with something that is invisible. In reality we see only the blood and what has been transformed by the blood, that is to say, a quarter of the physical human body; the other three-quarters are invisible. In the first place there is an invisible framework containing invisible currents—all this exists in the form of forces. Within these invisible currents there are also the influences exercised by one current upon another. All this is invisible. And now this threefold entity is filled out, permeated by the foodstuffs that have been transformed into blood. It is through this process that the physical body becomes visible. And it is only when we come to deal with the laws governing this visible structure that we are in the earthly realm itself. Everything else stems from cosmic, not from earthly conditions and has already been prepared when, at the time of conception, the first physical atom of the human being comes into existence. Thus what is later on to become the body of the human being has been prepared in past ages without any physical connection with the ultimate father and mother. It was then that the qualities transmitted by heredity were first worked into the process of development.

The human soul looks down upon what is thus being prepared from the above-mentioned point of time onwards between death and the new birth. It is the spiritual embryo, the spiritual seed of life. This is what constitutes the soul's outer world. Notice the difference between what is seen when we wake spiritually during sleep and have clairvoyant perception of the human body undergoing a process of continual destruction, and what is seen when our own inner organism is perceived as outer world. The outer world is then the inner man in process of coming into being. This means that we are then seeing the reverse of what is perceived clairvoyantly during sleep. During sleep we feel that our inner organs are part of the outer world, but otherwise what we see is a process of destruction. From the above-mentioned time onwards between death and rebirth our gaze is focused upon a human body in process of coming into being. Man is unable to preserve any remembrance of what he has seen between death and rebirth, but the spectacle of the building of the wonderful structure of the human body is veritably more splendid than anything to be seen when we gaze at the starry heavens or at the physical world with vision dependent in any respect upon the physical body. The mysteries of existence are truly great, even when contemplated from the standpoint of our physical senses only, but far greater still is the spectacle before us when, instead of external perception of our inner organs, we gaze at the human body that is in process of coming into being with all its mysteries. We then see how everything is directed to the purpose of enabling the human being to cope with existence when he enters the physical world through birth.

There is nothing that can truly be called bliss or blessedness except vision of the process of creation, of ‘becoming’. Perception of anything already in existence is trivial compared with vision of what is in process of coming into being; and what is meant by speaking of the states of bliss or blessedness which can be experienced by man between death and rebirth is that during this period he can behold what is in process of coming into being. Truths such as these, that have been revealed through the ages and grasped by minds adequately prepared, are indicated in words to be found in the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ in Goethe's Faust:

Das Werdende, das ewig wirkt und lebt,
Umfass' euch mit der Liebe holden Schranken,
Und was in schwankender Erscheinung schwebt,
Erfistiget mit dauernden Gedanken.

May that which works and lives, the ever-growing,
In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught,
And Seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing,
Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!

(Tr. Anna Swanwick, L.L.D.,
Bohn's Standard Library)

The difference between vision in the world between birth and death and the world between death and rebirth is that in the former we behold what is already in existence and in the latter what is coming into being.

The thought might occur: Is a man, then, concerned only with the vision of his own being? No, that is not the case. For at the stage of coming into being this body is actually part of the outer world; it is the manifested expression of divine mysteries. And it is then that we realise for the first time why the physical body—which after all is only maltreated between birth and death—may be seen as the temple of cosmic mysteries, for it contains more of the outer world than is seen when we are within it during earthly existence. At that stage between death and rebirth what is otherwise outer world is our inner world; what is otherwise called Universe is now that of which we can say ‘I’—and what we then behold is outer world. We must not allow ourselves to be shocked by the fact that when we are looking at our body—or rather the body that will subsequently be ours—all other bodies which are coming into being must naturally also be there. This is of no significance because here it is simply a matter of number. In point of fact, differentiation between human bodies that can be of interest and importance to us has little significance until shortly before human beings enter into physical existence. For the greater part of the period between death and the new birth, when we are looking down upon the body that is coming into being, it is actually the case that the single bodies are differentiated only according to their number. If we want to study the essential properties of a grain of wheat, it will not make much difference whether we pick an car from a grain of wheat in a particular field or go fifty paces farther on and pick one there. As far as the essential properties are concerned, one grain is as good as another. Something similar applies when between death and rebirth we are gazing at our own body; the fact that it is our own has significance only for the future because later on we are to inhabit it on the Earth. At the moment it interests us only as the bearer of sublime cosmic mysteries and blessedness consists in the fact that it can be contemplated just like any other human body. Here we stand before the mystery of Number which will not be further considered now, but among many other relevant aspects there is this, namely, that Number—that is to say, multiple existence—cannot be regarded from the spiritual standpoint exactly as it is from the physical. What is seen in countless examples will again be seen as a unity.

Through the body we feel ourselves to be in the Universe and through what in physical life is called Universe we feel that we are living within our own Ego-hood. Such is the difference when the world is contemplated at one time from this world and at another from yonder.

For the seer, the most significant moment between death and the new birth is when the human being concerned ceases to concern himself only with his last life and begins to direct his attention to what is in process of coming into existence. The shattering impression received by the seer when, as he follows a soul between death and the new birth, this soul begins to be concerned with what is coming into being—this shattering impression is due to the fact that the soul itself at this moment experiences a severe shock. The only experience comparable with it is the coming of death in physical existence, when the human being passes over from life into being. In the other case—although it is impossible to describe it quite exactly—the transition is from something connected with a life that ended in death to experience of the process of ‘becoming’, of resurrection. The soul encounters that which bears a new life germinally within it. This is the moment of death in reverse. That is why it is so immensely significant.

In connection with these things we must turn our minds to the course of human evolution on the Earth. Let us look back to an age, for example the ancient Egypto-Chaldean epoch, when our souls, looking out through physical bodies, did not see the stars merely as material bodies in the heavens; spiritual Beings were connected with the stars—although this experience occurred only in certain intermediate states during the life between birth and death. The souls of men were deeply affected by this vista and in those times impressions from the spiritual world crowded in upon them. It was inevitable that in the course of evolution the possibility of beholding the spiritual should gradually cease and man's gaze be limited to the material world. This came about in the Graeco-Latin epoch, when men's gaze was diverted to an ever greater extent from the spiritual world and limited to the world of the senses. And now we ourselves are living in an era when it is becoming more and more impossible for the soul to see or detect spiritual reality in the life of the physical environment. The Earth is now dying, withering away, and man is deeply involved in this process. Thus whereas in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men still beheld the spiritual around them, they now see only what is material and actually boast of having established a science which deals only with what is physical and material. This process will go to further and further lengths. A time will come when men will lose interest in the direct impressions of the world of the senses and will concentrate attention on what is sub-material, sub-sensory. Today, in fact, we can already detect the approach of the time when men will be interested only in what is sub-sensory, below the level of the sense-world. This often becomes very obvious, for example when modern physics no longer concerns itself with colours as such. In reality it takes no account of the actual quality of colour but concerns itself only with the vibrations and oscillations below colour. In many books today you can read the nonsensical statement that a yellow colour, for example, is merely a matter of oscillations, wave-lengths. Observation here is already diverted from the quality of the colour and directed to something that is not in the yellow colour at all but yet is considered to be the reality. You can find books on physics and even on physiology today in which it is emphasised that attention should no longer be fettered to the direct sense-impression but that everything resolves itself into vibrations and wave-lengths. This kind of observation will go to further and further extremes. No attention will be paid to material existence as such and account will be taken only of the working of forces. Historically, one example suffices in order to provide empirical evidence of this. If you refer to du Bois-Reymond's lecture ‘On the Boundaries of Knowledge’, given on 14th August, 1872, you will find a peculiar expression for something that Laplace already described, the expression ‘astronomical knowledge of a material system’—that is to say when what lies behind a light- or colour-process is presented as something only brought about by mathematical-physical forces. A time will come when human souls—and some of those who are being educated in certain schools today will have the best possible foundations for this attitude in their next incarnation—will have lost real interest in the world of light and radiant colour and enquire only into the working of forces. People will no longer have any interest in violet or red but will be concerned only with wave-lengths.

This withering of man's inner spirituality is something that is approaching and Anthroposophy is there to counter it in every detail. It is not only our present form of education that helps to bring about this withering; the trend is there in every domain of life. It is in contrast to everyday life when with our Anthroposophy we want to give again to the souls of men something that fertilises them, that is not only a maya of the senses but springs forth as spirit. And this we can do when we impart to human souls knowledge that will enable them to live in the true world in their following incarnations. We have to speak of these things in a world which with its indifference to form and colour is in such contrast to what we ourselves desire; for it is particularly in regard to colours that the world of today is preparing souls to thwart what we want to achieve. We must work not only according to the concepts and ideas of everyday existence but with cosmological ideas. Hence it is not a mere liking on our part when we arrange surroundings such as those to be seen in this room¹ but it is connected with the very nature of Spiritual Science. Immediate response to what is presented to the senses must again be generated in the soul in order that active life in the spirit may begin. Now, in this incarnation, each one of us can assimilate Anthroposophy in the life of soul; and what is now assimilated is transformed into faculties for the new incarnation. Then, during his life between death and the next birth, the individual sends from his soul into his body that is coming into being influences which prepare his future bodily faculties to adopt a more spiritual view of the world. This is impossible for him without Anthroposophy. If he rejects Anthroposophy he prepares his body to see nothing but barren forces and to be blind to the revelations of the senses.

And now something shall be said that enables a seer to form a judgement of the mission of Anthroposophy.

When a seer today directs his gaze to the life between death and the new birth of souls who have already passed beyond the above-mentioned point of time and are contemplating the body that is coming into being for a further existence, he may realise that this body will afford the soul no possibility of Developing faculties for the comprehension of spiritual truths. For if such faculties are to be part of life in the physical body, they must have been implanted before birth. Hence in the immediate future more and more human beings will be devoid of the faculties needed for the acceptance of spiritual knowledge—a state of things that has existed for some time already. Before the seer there will be a vista of souls who in previous lives deprived themselves of the possibility of accepting any knowledge of a spiritual kind. In their life between death and rebirth such souls can indeed gaze at a process of development, but it is a development in which something is inevitably lacking—that is the tragic aspect. These vistas lead to a grasp of the mission of Anthroposophy. It is a shattering experience to see a soul whose gaze is directed towards its future incarnation, its future body, beholding a budding, burgeoning process and yet being obliged to realise: something will be lacking in that body but I cannot provide it because my previous incarnation is responsible. In a more trivial sense this experience may be compared with being obliged to work at something knowing from the outset that ultimately it is bound to be imperfect. Try to be vividly aware of the difference: either you can do the work perfectly and be happy in the prospect, or you are condemned from the outset to leave it imperfect.

This is the great question: are human souls in the spiritual world to be condemned in increasing numbers to look down upon bodies which must remain imperfect, or can this be avoided? If this fate is to be avoided, souls must accept during their life in physical bodies the proclamation and tidings of the spiritual worlds.

What those who make known these tidings regard as their task is verily not derived from earthly ideals but from the vista of the entire span of life, that is to say, when to life on Earth is added the period of existence between death and the new birth. Herein is revealed the possibility of a fruitful future for humanity, the possibility too of militating against the withering of the souls of men. The feeling can then be born in us that Spiritual Science must be there, must exist in the world. Spiritual Science is a sine qua non for the life of mankind in the future but not in the sense that is applicable to some other kind of knowledge. Spiritual Science imparts life, not concepts and ideas only. But the concepts of Spiritual Science, accepted in one incarnation, bring life, inner vitality, inner forcefulness. What Spiritual Science gives to man is an elixir of life, a vital force of life. Hence anyone who regards himself as belonging to a Movement for the promulgation of Spiritual Science should feel Spiritual Science to be a dire necessity in life, unlike anything that originates from other unions and societies. The realisation of being vitally involved in the necessities of existence is the right feeling to have in regard to Spiritual Science.

We have embarked upon these studies of the life between death and rebirth in order that by turning our minds to the other side of existence we may receive from there the impulse that can kindle in us enthusiasm for Spiritual Science.

• 1. Dr. Steiner recommended that restful and refreshing colours should be displayed in lecture halls and rooms used for the presentation and study of Spiritual Science, also in rooms for the sick.

At the time when materialism—mainly theoretical materialism—was in its prime, in the middle and still to some extent during the last decades of the nineteenth century, when the writings of Buchner and Vogt (‘bulky Vogt’ as he used to be called) had made a deep impression upon people who considered themselves enlightened, one could often hear a way of speaking that is occasionally also heard today, because stragglers from that epoch of theoretical materialism are still to be found in certain circles. When people do not flatly deny the possibility of a life after death, or even here and there admit it, they are wont to say: Well, there may be a life after death but why should we trouble about it during life on Earth? When death has taken place we shall discover whether there is indeed a future life, and meanwhile if here on Earth we concern ourselves only with the affairs of earthly existence and take no account of what is alleged to come afterwards, we cannot miss anything of importance. For if the life after death has anything to offer we shall then discover what it is!

As I said, this way of speaking could be heard time and time again and this is still the case in wide circles today; in the way the subject is expressed it may often, in a certain respect, almost seem acceptable. And yet it is utterly at variance with what is disclosed to spiritual investigation when the facts connected with the life between death and rebirth are considered in their spiritual aspect. When a man has passed through the gate of death he comes into contact with many and infinitely varied forces and beings. He does not only find himself living amid a multitude of super-sensible facts but he comes into contact with definite forces and Beings—namely, the Beings of the several higher Hierarchies. Let us ask ourselves what this contact signifies for one who is passing through the period of existence between death and the new birth.

We know that when an individual has spent this period of life in the super-sensible world and passes into physical existence again through birth, he becomes in a certain way the moulder of his own bodily constitution, indeed of his whole destiny in the life on Earth. Within certain limits the human being builds and fashions his body, even the very convolutions of his brain, by means of the forces brought with him from the spiritual worlds when he enters again into physical existence through birth. Our whole earthly existence depends upon our physical body possessing organs which enable us to come in touch with the outer physical world, to act and moreover to think in that world.

If, here in the physical world, we do not possess the appropriately formed brain which, on passing through birth we formed for ourselves out of the forces of the super-sensible world, we remain unable to cope with life in this physical world. In the real sense we are fitted for life in the physical world only when we bring with us from the spiritual world forces by means of which we have been able to build a body able to cope with this world and all its demands. The super-sensible forces which man needs in order to fashion his body and also his destiny are received by him from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies with whom he has made contact between death and the new birth. What we need for the shaping of our life must be acquired during the time that has preceded our birth since the last death. Between death and the next birth we must approach, stage by stage, the Beings who can endow us with the forces we need for our physical existence.

In the life between death and rebirth we can pass before the Beings of the higher Hierarchies in two ways. We may recognise them, understand their nature and essential characteristics, be able to receive what they can give us and what we shall need in the following life. We must be able to understand or at least to perceive what is being offered us and what we shall subsequently need. But we might also pass before these Beings in such a way that, figuratively speaking, their hands are offering gifts which we do not receive because it is dark in the higher world in which we then live. Thus we may pass through that world with understanding, with awareness of what these Beings are offering us, or we may pass through it without understanding, unaware of what they wish to bestow. Now the way in which we pass through this spiritual world, which of the two ways we necessarily choose in our life between death and the new birth, is predetermined by the after-effects of the previous life and of earlier lives on Earth. A person whose attitude in his last life on Earth was unresponsive and antagonistic to all thoughts and ideas that may enlighten him about the super-sensible world—such a person passes through the life between death and rebirth as if through a world of darkness. For the light, the spiritual light we need in order to realise how these different Beings approach us and what gifts we may receive from them for our next life on Earth—the light of understanding for what is here coming to pass cannot be acquired in the super-sensible world itself; it must be acquired here, during physical incarnation on Earth. If, at death, we bear with us into the spiritual life no relevant ideas and concepts, we shall pass unknowingly through our super-sensible existence until the next birth, receiving none of the forces needed for the next life. From this we realise how impossible it is to say that we can wait until death itself occurs because we shall then discover what the facts are—whether indeed we shall encounter any reality at all after death. Our relationship to that reality depends upon whether in earthly life we have been receptive or antagonistic in our souls to concepts or ideas of the super-sensible world that have been accessible to us and will be the light through which we must ourselves illumine the path between death and rebirth.

Something further can be gathered from what has been said. The belief that we have, so to say, only to die in order to receive everything that the super-sensible world can give us, even if we have made no preparation for it—this belief is utterly false. Every world has its own special mission. And what a man can acquire during an incarnation on Earth he can acquire in no single one of the other worlds. Between death and the new birth he is able, in all circumstances, to enter into communion with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies. But in order to receive their gifts, to avoid having to grope in darkness through life there or in fearful loneliness, in order to establish contact with those Beings and receive their forces, the ideas and concepts which are the light enabling the higher Hierarchies to be visible to the soul must be acquired in earthly life. And so an individual who in earthly life during the present cycle of time has rejected all spiritual ideas, passes through the life between death and rebirth in fearful loneliness, groping in darkness. In the next incarnation he will fail to bring with him the forces wherewith to build his body efficiently and mould his organs; he can fashion them in an imperfect form only and consequently he will be an inadequate human being in his next life.

We realise from this how Karma works over from one life to the next. In one life a man deliberately scorns to develop in his soul any relationship with the spiritual worlds; in the next life he has no forces wherewith to create even the organs enabling him to think, feel or will the truths of spiritual life. He remains dull and indifferent to spiritual things and spiritual life passes him by as though in dream—as is so frequently the case today. On the Earth such an individual can take no interest in spiritual worlds; and his soul, after passing through the gate of death, is an easy prey for the Luciferic powers. Lucifer makes straight for such souls. Here we have the strange situation that in the next life in the spiritual world, the life that follows the dull, unreceptive one, the deeds and the Beings of the higher Hierarchies are indeed illumined for such an individual but in this case not as a result of what he acquired in earthly life but by the light which Lucifer sends into his soul. It is Lucifer who illumines the higher worlds for him when he passes into the life between death and rebirth. Now, he can, it is true, perceive the higher Hierarchies, recognise when they are offering their gifts to him. But the fact that Lucifer has tainted the light means that all the gifts have a particular colouring and character. The forces of the higher Hierarchies are then not exactly as the human being could otherwise have received them. Their nature then is such that when the human being passes into his next life on Earth he can certainly form and mould his body, but he moulds it then in such a way that although he becomes an individual who is, admittedly, able to cope with the outer world and its demands, in a certain respect he is inwardly inadequate, because his soul is tinged with Lucifer's gifts or at least by gifts that have a Luciferic trend.

When we come across individuals who have worked on their bodies in such a way that they are able to make effective use of their intellect and acquire certain skills which will help them to raise their status in the world, although to their own advantage only, snatching at what is in their own interest, dryly calculating what is beneficial to themselves without any consideration for others—and there are many such people nowadays—in these cases the seer will very often find that their previous history was what has been described. Before they began to display their dry, intellectual, sharp-witted character in life, they had been led through their existence between death and rebirth by Luciferic beings who were able to approach them because in the preceding incarnation they had lived an apathetic, dreamy existence. But these traits themselves had been acquired because such individuals had passed through an earlier existence between death and rebirth groping in darkness. The Spirits of the higher Hierarchies would have bestowed upon them the forces needed for fashioning a new life, but they were unable to receive these forces; and that in turn was because they had deliberately refused to concern themselves with ideas and concepts relating to a spiritual world. That is the karmic connection. Such examples do certainly occur; they appear before the eyes of spirit only too frequently when with the help of powers of spiritual investigation and knowing the conditions of human life, we penetrate into higher worlds.

It is therefore wrong to say that here on Earth we need concern ourselves only with what is around us in earthly existence because what comes later will be revealed in all good time. But the form in which it will be revealed depends entirely upon how we have prepared ourselves for it here.

Another possibility may occur. I am saying these things in order that by understanding the life between death and rebirth, life between birth and death may become more and more intelligible.

When we study life on Earth with discernment, we see many human beings—and in our time they are very numerous—who can, as it were, only ‘half think’, whose logic invariably breaks down when faced with reality. Here is an example: A certain free-thinking cleric, an honourable man in all his endeavours, wrote in the first Freethinkers' Calendar as follows: Children ought not to be taught any ideas about religion for that would be against nature. If children are allowed to grow up without having any ideas about religion pumped into them, we find that they do not of themselves arrive at ideas of God, immortality, and so forth. The inference to be drawn from this is that such ideas are unnatural to the human being and should not be drummed into him; he should work only with what can be drawn from his own soul. As in many other cases, there are thousands and thousands of people nowadays to whom an utterance such as this seems very clever, very subtle. But if only genuine logic were applied the following would be obvious: If we were to take a human being before he has learnt to speak, put him on a lonely island and take care that he can hear no single word of speech, he would never learn to speak. And so anyone who argues against children being taught any ideas about religion would logically have to say that human beings should not have to learn to speak, for speech does not come of itself. So our free-thinking cleric cannot propagate his ideas by means of his logic, for both he and his logic come to a halt when confronted by the facts. His logic can be applied to a small area only, and he does not notice that his idea, assuming one can get hold of it, cancels itself out.

Anyone who is alert to his surroundings will find that this inadequate, pseudo-thinking is very widespread. If with the help of super-sensible research we trace the path of such an individual backwards and come to the regions through which his soul passed between the last death and the last birth, when this illogical mentality was caused, the seer often finds that this type of human being, in his last life between death and rebirth, passed through the spiritual world in such a way that he encountered the spiritual Beings and forces while under the guidance of Ahriman; and that although those Beings would have bestowed upon him what he needed in life, they could not make it possible for him to develop the capacity for sound thinking. Ahriman was his leader and it was Ahriman who contrived that the gifts of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies could only be received by him in a form that would finally result in his thinking coming to a halt when confronting actual facts, and in his inability to make his thinking exhaustive and valid. A large proportion of those human beings—and their number is legion—who are incapable of genuine thinking today owe this to the fact that in their last life between death and rebirth they were obliged to submit to Ahriman's guidance; they had somehow prepared themselves for this in their last earthly life—that is to say, in the incarnation preceding the present one.

And what was the course of that preceding life as viewed by a seer? It is found that these were morose, hypochondriacal individuals, who shied away from facts and people in the world and always found it difficult to establish any relation with their environment. Very often they were intolerable hypochondriacs in their previous life; on medical examination they would have been found to be suffering from the type of illness occurring very frequently in hypochondriacs. And if we were to go still further back, to the life between death and rebirth that preceded the hypochondriacal incarnation, we should find that during that period such human beings were obliged again to forego the right guidance and could not become truly aware of what the gifts of the higher Hierarchies would have been. And how had they prepared themselves for this fate in the life preceding the last two incarnations? We should find that they had developed what it is certainly true to call a religious, pious attitude of soul but an attitude based on sheer egoism. They were people with a pious, even mystical nature emanating from egoism. After all, mysticism very often has its origin in egoism. An individual of this type might say: I seek within myself in order that there I may recognise God. But what he is seeking there is only his own self made into God! In the case of many pious souls it becomes evident that they are pious only in order that after death one or another of their spiritual inclinations may bear fruit. All that they have acquired is an egotistic attitude of soul.

When in the course of spiritual research we trace the sequence of three such earthly lives, we find that in the first, the basic attitude of the soul was that of egotistic mysticism, egotistic religiosity. And when today we observe human beings with this attitude to life, we shall be able, by means of spiritual investigation to trace them back to times when souls without number developed a religious frame of mind out of sheer egoism. They then passed through an existence between death and rebirth without being able to receive from the spiritual Beings the gifts which would have enabled them to shape their next life rightly. In that life they became morose and hypochondriacal, finding everything distasteful. This life again prepared them for the ensuing one when, having passed through the gate of death, Ahriman and his hosts became their leaders and the forces with which they were imbued manifested in the following earthly life as defective logic, as an obtuse, undiscerning kind of thinking.

Here, then, we have another example of three successive incarnations. And we realise again and again what nonsense it is to believe that we can wait until death to establish connection with the super-sensible world. For how this connection is established after death depends upon the inner tendencies of soul acquired here on Earth towards the super-sensible world. Not only are the successive earthly lives connected as causes and effects, but the lives between death and the new birth are also connected in a certain way as causes and effects. This can be seen from the following.

When the seer directs his gaze into the super-sensible world where souls are sojourning after death, he will find among them those who during part of this life between death and rebirth are servants of those Powers whom we may call the Lords of all healthy, budding and burgeoning life on the Earth. (In the very lengthy period between death and rebirth, innumerable experiences are undergone and in accounts of the present kind, parts only can be described.) Among the dead we find souls who for a certain length of time in the super-sensible world co-operate in the wonderful task—for wonderful it is—of pouring, infusing into the physical world everything that can further the health of beings on the Earth, can help them to thrive and blossom. Just as in certain circumstances we can become servants of the evil spirits of illness and misfortune, so too we can become the servants of those spiritual beings who promote health and growth, who send down from the spiritual world into our physical world forces that help life to flourish. It is nothing but a materialistic superstition to believe that physical hygiene and external regulations are the sole means of promoting health. Everything that happens in physical life is directed by the beings and powers of higher worlds who are all the time pouring into the physical world forces which in a certain way work freely, upon human or other beings, either promoting or harming health and growth. Certain specific spiritual powers and beings are responsible for these processes in health and illness. In the life between death and rebirth man co-operates with these powers; and if we have prepared ourselves in the right way we can experience the bliss of co-operating in the task of sending the forces which promote health and growth, from the higher worlds into this physical world. And when the seer enquires into why such souls have deserved this destiny, he becomes aware that in physical life on Earth there are two ways in which human beings can execute and think about what they want to achieve.

Let us take a general look at life. We see numbers of human beings who carry out the work prescribed for them by their profession or office. Even if there is no radical case of any one of these people regarding their work as if they were animals being led to the slaughterhouse, it is at least true to say that they work because they are obliged to. Of course they would never neglect their duty—although of course anything may happen! In a certain sense it cannot be otherwise in the present phase of man's evolution; the only urge such people feel towards their work is that of duty. This does not by any means suggest that such work should be criticised root and branch. It should not be understood in this sense. Earth-evolution is such that this aspect of life will become more and more widespread; nor will things improve in the future. The tasks that men will have to carry out will become increasingly complicated in so far as they are connected with outer life and men will be condemned more and more to think and do only that to which duty drives them. Already there are hosts of human beings who do their work only because duty forces them to it, but on the other hand there will be people who look for a Society such as ours in which they can also achieve something, not simply from a sense of duty as in everyday life but for which they feel enthusiasm and devotion. Thus there are two aspects of a man's work: has it been thought out or done as an outer achievement merely from a sense of duty, or has it been done with enthusiasm and inner devotion, solely out of an inner urge of his own soul? This attitude—to think and act not merely out of a sense of duty, but out of love, inclination and devotion—this prepared the soul to become a server of the beneficent Powers of health and salutary forces sent down from the super-sensible world into our physical world, to become a servant of everything that brings health and to experience the bliss that can accompany these circumstances.

To know this is extremely important for the general well-being of man, for only by acquiring during life the forces that will enable him to co-operate with the Powers in question will he be able to work spiritually for an ever intensifying process of healing and betterment of conditions on the Earth.

We will now consider still another case, of one who makes efforts to adapt himself to his environment and its demands. This by no means applies to everybody. There are some people who take no trouble to adjust themselves to the world and are never at home with the conditions either of spiritual or outer physical life. For example, there are individuals who notice an announcement that here or there an anthroposophical lecture will be given; they go to the place but almost as soon as they get seated, they are already asleep! In such cases the soul cannot adapt itself to the environment is not attuned to it. I have known men who cannot even sew on a button to replace one that has been torn off; that again means that they cannot adapt themselves to physical conditions. Countless cases could be quoted of people who cannot or will not adapt themselves to life. These symptoms are very significant, as I have said. At the moment, however, we will think only of the effects upon the life between death and rebirth.

Everything becomes cause and everything produces effects. A man who makes efforts to adapt himself to his environment, someone, that is to say, who can actually sew on a button or can listen to something with which he is unfamiliar without immediately falling asleep, is preparing himself to become, after death, a helper of those Spirits who further the progress of humanity and send down to the Earth the spiritual forces which promote life as it advances from epoch to epoch. After death we can experience the bliss of looking down upon earthly life and co-operating with the forces that are perpetually being sent to the Earth to further its progress, but this is possible only if we endeavour to adapt ourselves to our environment and its conditions. To be rightly and thoroughly understood Karma must be studied in details, in details which reveal the manifold ways in which causes and effects are connected here in the physical world, in the spiritual world and in existence as a whole.

Here again light is thrown upon the fact that our life in the spiritual worlds depends upon the mode of our life in the physical body. Each world has its own specific mission; no two worlds have an identical mission. The characteristic phenomena and experiences in one world are not the same in another. And if, for example, a being is meant to assimilate certain things on Earth, it is on Earth that he must do so; if he misses this opportunity he cannot acquire them in some other world. This is particularly the case in a matter which we have already considered but of which it will be well to be thoroughly aware. The matter in question concerns the acceptance of certain concepts and ideas needed by man for his life as a whole. Let us take an example that is near at hand. Anthroposophy is a timely and active force in our epoch. People approach and accept Anthroposophy during their life on Earth in the way known to you, but again the belief might arise that it is not necessary to cultivate Anthroposophy on Earth, for one will be in a position after death to know how things are in the spiritual worlds; that moreover the higher Hierarchies will also be there and able to impart to the soul what is necessary.

Now it is a fact that having passed through the phase of development leading to the present cycle of evolution, the human being, with his whole soul, has been prepared to contact on Earth the kind of anthroposophical life that is possible only while he is incarnated in a physical body. Men are predestined for this and if they fail they will be unable to establish relationship with any of the spiritual Beings who might have been their teachers. One cannot simply die and then, after death, find a teacher who might take the place of what here, during physical life on Earth, can come to souls in the form of Anthroposophy. We need not, however, be dejected by the fact that many individuals reject Anthroposophy and it is therefore to be assumed that they will not be able to acquire it between death and the new birth. We need not despair about them for they will be born in a new earthly life and by that time there will be a strong enough stimulus towards Anthroposophy and enough Anthroposophy on the Earth for them to acquire it. In the present age despondency is still out of place, but that should not lead anyone to say: I can acquire Anthroposophy in my next life and so can do without it now. No, what has been neglected here cannot be retrieved later on.

When our German Theosophical Movement was still very young I was once giving a lecture about Nietzsche, during which I said certain things about the spiritual worlds. At that time it was customary to have discussions and on this occasion someone got up and said that such matters must always be put to the test of Kant's philosophy, from which it would be evident that we can have no knowledge of these things here on Earth and can begin to know them only after death. That, quite literally, was what the man said. As I have repeatedly emphasised, it is not the case that one has only to die in order to acquire certain knowledge. When we pass through the gate of death we do not experience anything for which we have not prepared ourselves. Life between death and rebirth is throughout a continuation of the life here, as the examples already given have shown. Therefore as individuals we can acquire from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies only that for which we have prepared ourselves on Earth—perhaps by having become anthroposophists. Our connection with the Earth and our passage through the life on Earth have a significance which nothing else can replace.

A certain form of mediation is, however, possible in this connection and I have already spoken of it. A person may die and during his lifetime have had no knowledge at all of Spiritual Science; but his brother or his wife or a close friend were anthroposophists. The man who has died may have refused to have anything to do with Anthroposophy during his life; perhaps he consistently abused it. Now he has passed through the gate of death and Anthroposophy can be conveyed to him in some way by other personalities on Earth. But there must be someone on Earth who passes on the knowledge to him out of love. Connection with the Earth must be maintained. This is the basis of what I have called ‘reading to the dead’. We can render them great benefit even if previously they would listen to nothing about the spiritual world. We can help them either by putting what we have to say into the form of thoughts, conveying knowledge in this way, or we may take an anthroposophical book, visualise the personality concerned, and read to him from it; then he will learn. We have had a number of striking and beautiful examples in our Movement of how it has been possible in this way to benefit the dead. Many of our friends read to those who have died. I recently had an experience that others too may have had. Someone asked me about a friend who had died very recently and it seemed that he was trying to make himself noticed by means of all kinds of signs, especially at night, creating disturbance in the room, rapping and so on. Such happenings are often indications that the dead person wants something; and in this case it was quite evident. In his lifetime the man had been very erudite but had always rejected any knowledge of the spiritual world that might come his way. It became obvious that he would greatly benefit if a particular Lecture Course containing the subject-matter for which he was craving, were read to him. In this way very effective help can be given beyond death for something left undone on Earth.

The fact that can convince us of the great and significant mission of Anthroposophy is that Anthroposophy can bridge the gulf between the living and the dead, that when human beings die they have not really gone away from us but we remain connected with them and can be active on their behalf. If it is asked whether one can always know whether the dead soul also hears us, it must be said that those who do what has been described with genuine devotion will eventually become aware from the way in which the thoughts which they are sending to the dead live in their own souls that the dead person is hovering around them. But this is an experience, a feeling, of which sensitive souls alone are capable. The most distressing aspect is when something that might be a great service of love is not heeded; in that case it has been done unnecessarily for the person concerned, but it may still have some effect in the general pattern of worlds. In any case one should not grieve excessively about such lack of success. After all, it happens even here that something is read to people who do not listen!

These things may well give a true conception of the seriousness and worth of Anthroposophy. But it must constantly be emphasised that the conditions of our life in the spiritual world after death will depend entirely upon the manner of our life here on Earth. Even our community with others in the spiritual world depends upon the nature of the relationship we sought to establish with them here. If there has been no relationship with a human being here on Earth it cannot be taken for granted that any connection can be established in the other world between death and rebirth. The possibility of being led to him in the spiritual world is as a rule dependent upon the contact established here on Earth—not necessarily in the last incarnation only but in earlier lives as well.

In short, both objective and personal relationships established here on Earth are the decisive factor for the life between death and the new birth. Exceptions do occur but must be recognised as such. What I said here at Christmastime (in Lecture Five) about the Buddha and his present mission on Mars is one such exception. There are numbers of human souls on the Earth who were able to contact the Buddha—even in his previous existence as Bodhisattva—as a result of inspirations received from the Mysteries. But because the Buddha was incarnated for the last time as the son of Suddodana, then worked in his etheric body as I have described¹ and has now transferred his sphere of activity to Mars, at the present time the possibility exists that even if we never previously came in contact with the Buddha, we can establish a relationship with him in the life between death and rebirth; and we can then bring the results of that contact with us into the next incarnation on Earth. But that remains an exceptional case. The general rule is that after death we find those individuals with whom we had actual contacts here on Earth and continue these relationships in that other state of existence.

What has now been said is closely related to the information given during this Winter about the life between death and the new birth, and the aim has been to show that if Anthroposophy remains simply a matter of theory and external science, it is only half of what it ought to be; it fulfils its true function only when it streams through souls as a veritable elixir of life and enables these souls to experience in depth the feelings that arise in a human being when he acquires some knowledge of the higher worlds. Death then ceases to appear as a destroyer of human and personal relationships. The gulf between life here on Earth and the life after death is bridged and many activities carried out with this in mind will develop. The dead will send their influences into life, the living their influences into the realm of the dead.

My wish is that your souls will feel more deeply that life is enriched, becomes fuller and more spiritual when everything is influenced by Anthroposophy. Only those who feel this have the right attitude to Anthroposophy. What is of prime importance is not the knowledge that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, that he passes through many incarnations, that the Earth too has passed through the several incarnations of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, and so forth. The most important and essential need is to allow Anthroposophy to transform our lives in a way commensurate with the Earth's future. This feeling can never be experienced too deeply, nor can we bestir ourselves too often in this connection. The feelings we bear with us from these meetings and then move through life under the stimulus of the knowledge of the super-sensible worlds acquired here—these feelings are the really important element in anthroposophical life. Merely to have knowledge of Anthroposophy is not enough; knowledge and feeling must be combined. We must realise, however, how false it is to believe that without any understanding of the world we can do it justice. Leonardo da Vinci's saying is true: “Great love is the daughter of great understanding.” He who is not prepared to understand will not learn how to love.

It is in this sense that Anthroposophy should find entry into our souls, in order that from this influence which proceeds from our own being a stream of spirituality may find its way into Earth-evolution, creating harmony between spirit and matter. Life on the Earth will, it is true, continue to be materialistic—indeed outer life will become increasingly so—but as man moves over the Earth he will bear within his soul the realisation of his connection with the higher worlds. Outwardly, earthly life will become more and more materialistic—that is the Earth's karma—but in the same measure, if Earth-evolution is to reach its goal, souls must become inwardly more and more spiritual. My purpose today was to make a small contribution towards understanding this task.

• 1. See Lectures Three, Five and Six of the course, The Gospel of St. Luke

We have undertaken to study the life between death and rebirth from certain points of view and the lectures given during the Winter¹ endeavoured to present many aspects of this life; moreover it has been possible to make important additions to the more general descriptions contained in the books Theosophy and Occult Science—an Outline Today we shall occupy ourselves chiefly with the question: How is the information given, for example, in the book Theosophy on the subject of the life between death and rebirth related to what has been said in the course of the lectures given during the Winter?

In the book Theosophy there is a description of the passage of the soul after death through the Soul-World. This Soul-World is divided into a region of ‘Burning Desires’ (Begierdenglut), a region of ‘Flowing Susceptibility’ (fliessende Reizbarkeit), a region of ‘Wishes’ (Wunsche), a region of ‘Attraction and Repulsion’ (Lust und Unlust), and then into the higher regions of ‘Soul-Light’ (Seelenlicht), of ‘Active Soul-Force’ (tatige Seelenkraft), and the true ‘Soul-Life’ (das eigentliche Seelenleben). That was how the Soul-World through which the soul has to pass after death was described. Thereafter the soul has to pass through what is described as the Spiritland and this sphere, too, with its successive regions, is described in the book Theosophy by using certain earthly images: the ‘continental’ region of Spiritland, the ‘oceanic’ region, and so forth.

In the course of these lectures descriptions have been given of how the soul, having passed through the gate of death, lays aside the physical body, then the etheric body, and then expands and expands, lives through regions which for reasons that were explained may be called the region of the Moon, then that of Mercury, of Venus, of the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, of Saturn, and then of the starry firmament itself. The soul or, let us say, the actual spiritual individuality of the human being concerned, continually expands, lives through these regions which enclose ever more extensive cosmic spaces and then begins to contract, becoming smaller and smaller, in order finally to unite with the seed which comes to it from the stream of heredity. And through this union of the human seed which the individual acquired through heredity with what has been absorbed from the great macrocosmic spheres, there arises the human being who is to embark on the course of earthly life, the being who is to live through his existence between birth and death.

Now as a matter of fact, what was said in the book Theosophy and in the lectures was fundamentally the same, and your attention has been called to this. In Theosophy the description was given in certain pictures more closely related to inner conditions of the soul. In the lectures given here during the Winter the descriptions dealt with the great cosmic relationships connected with the functions of the several planets. It is now a matter of harmonising the two descriptions.

During the first period after death the soul has to look back upon what was experienced on Earth. The period of Kamaloka, or call it what you will, is a period during which the soul's life is still concerned entirely with earthly conditions. Kamaloka is fundamentally a period during which the soul feels bound to disengage itself gradually from any direct connections still persisting from the last incarnation on Earth. In the physical body on Earth the soul has experiences which depend upon the bodily life, indeed very largely upon sense-impressions. If you ‘think away’ everything that sense-impressions bring into the soul and then try to realise how much still remains in it, you will have a picture of a very meagre content indeed! And yet on final consideration you will be able to say: When the soul passes through the gate of death, everything given by the senses comes to an end and whatever is left can at most only be memories of earlier sense-impressions. If, therefore, you think about how much of what is yielded by sense-impressions is left in the soul, it will be easy for you to form an idea of what remains of these impressions after death. Recall any sense-impressions experienced, for example, yesterday, while they are still comparatively vivid, and you will realise how pale they have already become compared with their former vividness; that will give you some idea of how little of what the sense-impressions have conveyed is left to the soul as remembrance. This shows you that basically all the soul's life in the world of the senses is specifically earthly experience. When the sense-organs fall away at death, all significance of the sense-impressions falls away as well. But because the human being still clings to his sense-impressions and retains a longing for them, the first region through which he passes in the life after death is the region of Burning Desires. He would like still to have sense-impressions for a long time after death, but this is impossible because he has discarded the sense-organs. The life spent in longing for sense-impressions and being unable to enjoy them is life in the region of Burning Desires. It is a life that does actually burn within the soul and is part of the existence in Kamaloka; the soul longs for sense-impressions to which it was accustomed on Earth and—because the sense-organs have been laid aside—cannot have them.

A second region of the life in Kamaloka is that of Flowing Susceptibility. When the soul lives through this region it has already ceased to long for sense-impressions but still longs for thoughts, for thoughts which in life on Earth are acquired through the instrumentality of the brain. In the region of Burning Desires the soul gradually realises that it is nonsense to wish for sense-impressions in a world for the experience of which the necessary sense-organs have been discarded, a world in which no being can possibly have sense-organs formed entirely of substance of the Earth. The soul may long since have ceased to yearn for sense-impressions but still longs to think in the way that is customary on Earth. This earthly thinking is discarded in the region of Flowing Susceptibility. There the human being gradually recognises that thoughts such as are formed on Earth have significance only in the life between birth and death.

At this stage, when the human being has weaned himself from fostering thoughts that are dependent upon the physical instrument of the brain, he is still aware of a certain connection with the Earth through what is contained in his Wishes. After all, wishes are connected with the soul more intimately than thoughts. Wishes have their own distinctive colouring in every individual. Whereas thoughts differ in youth, in middle life and in old age, a particular form of wishing continues throughout a man's earthly life. This form and colouring of wishes are only later discarded in the region of Wishes. And then finally, in the region of Attraction and Repulsion, man rids himself of all longing to be connected with a physical body, with the physical body which was his in the last incarnation. While a man is passing through these regions, of Burning Desires, of Flowing Susceptibility, of Wishes, of Attraction and Repulsion, a certain longing for the last earthly life is still present. First, in the region of Burning Desires the soul still longs to be able to see through eyes, to hear through ears, although eyes and ears no longer exist. When the soul has finally cast off any such longing, it still yearns to be able to think by means of a brain such as was available on Earth. Having got rid of this longing too, there still remains the desire to wish with a heart as on Earth. Finally, the human being ceases to long for sense-impressions or for thoughts formed by his brain or for wishes of his heart, but a hankering for his last incarnation on Earth taken as a whole, still lingers. Gradually, however, he then rids himself of this longing too.

You will find that all the experiences in these regions correspond exactly with the passage of the expanding soul into the region called the Mercury sphere, an expansion through the Moon sphere into the Mercury sphere. On approaching the Mercury sphere, however, the soul encounters conditions described in the book Theosophy as a kind of spiritual region of the Soul-World. Read the description of the passage of the soul through this region and you will see from what is said about the kind of experiences undergone there that what is generally called the unpleasant element of Kamaloka already comes to an end in the region of Soul-Light. This region of Soul-Light corresponds with what I have said about the Mercury sphere. If you compare what was said about the life of the soul when it has expanded to the Mercury sphere with what is contained in the book Theosophy about the region of Soul-Light, you will realise that endeavours were made to describe this region first from the aspect of inner influences of the soul and then from the aspect of the great macrocosmic conditions through which the soul passes.

If you read what is said in Theosophy about the ‘Active Soul-Force’, you will realise that the inner experiences undergone in that region are in keeping with what is decisive during the passage through the Venus sphere. It has been said that if the soul is to pass in the right way through the Venus sphere it must have developed certain religious impulses during earthly life. In order to progress through the Venus sphere with companionship and not in compulsory isolation, the soul must be imbued with certain religious concepts. Compare what was said about this with the description given in the book Theosophy of the region of Active Soul-Force and you will find that they agree, that in one case the inner aspect of the conditions was described, in the other, the outer aspect.

The highest region of the Soul-World, the region of pure Soul-Life, is experienced by the soul in passing through the region of the Sun. So we can say that the sphere of existence in Kamaloka extends to and somewhat beyond the Moon sphere; then the more luminous regions of the Soul-World begin and extend to the sphere of the Sun. The soul experiences in the Sun sphere the region of true Soul-Life. We know that in the Sun sphere after death the soul comes into contact with the Light-Spirit, with Lucifer, who on Earth has become the tempter, the corrupter. When the soul has expanded into the cosmos it comes more and more closely into contact with those forces which now enable it to develop what is needed for the next incarnation on Earth. Not until the soul has passed through the region of the Sun has it finished with the last earthly incarnation. As far as the region of Attraction and Repulsion is concerned, that is to say the region between the Moon and Mercury, the soul is still burdened inwardly with yearning for the last life on Earth; moreover even in the regions of Mercury, Venus and the Sun the soul is not yet completely free from the ties of the last incarnation. But then it must finally have finished even with everything that transcends merely personal experience; in the Mercury region with whatever moral concepts have or have not been acquired, in the region of Venus with whatever religious conceptions have been developed, in the region of the Sun with whatever understanding has been acquired of the ‘human-universal’ quality in existence—that which is not confined to any particular religious creed but is concerned with a religious life befitting all mankind. Thus it is even the higher interests that can develop in the further evolution of humanity with which the soul has finished by the time it enters into the region of the Sun.

Then the soul passes into cosmic-spiritual life and finds its place in the Mars region. This region corresponds with what is described in Theosophy as the first sphere of the ‘Spiritland’. This description portrays the inner aspect of the fact that the soul is spiritual to the extent of being able to behold as something external to itself the ‘archetype’, as it were, of the physical bodily organisation and of physical conditions on the Earth in general. The archetypes of physical life on Earth appear as a kind of ‘continental’ mass of the Spiritland. The external configurations of a man's different incarnations are inscribed in this ‘continental’ region. There we have a picture of what, in terms of cosmic existence, the human soul has to experience in the Mars region. It might seem strange that this Mars region which has repeatedly been described in these lectures as a region of strife, of aggressive impulses until the beginning of the seventeenth century, should be said to be the first region of Devachan, of the true Spiritland. Nevertheless this is the case. Everything that on Earth belongs to the actual material realm and causes the mineral kingdom to appear as a purely material realm is due to the fact that on Earth the forces are engaged in perpetual conflict among themselves. This also led to the result that at the time when materialism was in its prime and material life was assumed to be the sole reality, the ‘struggle for existence’ was regarded as the only valid law of life on Earth. That is, of course, an error, because material existence is not the only form of existence evolving on Earth. But when the human being assumes embodiment on Earth he can only enter into the form of existence that has its archetypes in the lowest region of what is, for the Earth, the Spiritland. Read the description of the lowest region of Spiritland as given in the book Theosophy. I want to quote this particular chapter today in connection with our present studies. Towards the beginning of the description of the Spiritland you will find the following passage.²

“The development of the spirit in Spiritland takes place through the man throwing himself completely into the life of the different regions of this land.”

Thus as the result of our studies in the course of the Winter we could now say that from the Mars region onwards the human soul begins to live more deeply into spiritual conditions of existence.

To continue:

“His own life as it were dissolves into each region successively; he takes on, for the time being, their characteristics. Through this they permeate his being with theirs, in order that his being may be able to work, strengthened by theirs, in his earthly life. In the first region of the Spiritland, man is surrounded by the spiritual archetypes of earthly things. During life on earth he learns to know only the shadows of these archetypes which he grasps in his thoughts. What is merely thought on the earth is in this region experienced, lived. Man moves among thoughts; but these thoughts are real beings.”

Again, a little later:

“Our own embodiments dissolve here into a unity with the rest of the world. Thus here we look upon the archetypes of the physical, corporeal reality as a unity, to which we have ourselves belonged. We learn, therefore, gradually to know our relationship, our unity, with the surrounding world, by observation. We learn to say to it: ‘That which is here spread out around thee, thou art that.’ And that is one of the fundamental thoughts of ancient Indian Vedanta wisdom. The sage acquires, even during his earthly life, what others experience after death, namely, ability to grasp the thought that he himself is related to all things, the thought, ‘Thou art that’. In earthly life this is an ideal to which the thought-life can be devoted; in the Land of Spirit it is an immediate reality, one which grows ever clearer to us through spiritual experience. And man himself comes to know more and more clearly in this realm that in his own inner being he belongs to the spirit-world. He is aware of himself as a spirit among spirits, a member of the Primordial Spirits, and he will feel in his own self the word of the Primordial Spirit: ‘I am the Primal Spirit.’ (The Wisdom of the Vedanta says, ‘I am Brahman’, i.e. ‘I belong to the Primordial Being in Whom all beings have their origin’.)”

From this passage it is clear that when, during the life between death and rebirth man enters into the Mars region, he grasps the full significance of the saying, ‘Tat tvam asi’, ‘Thou art that’, and of the other saying, ‘I am Brahman’. ‘Tat tvam asi’, ‘Thou art that’, is only an earthly rendering of what is a self-evident experience in the Mars region, the lowest region of Spiritland. If we now ask whence the wisdom of ancient India derived the deeply significant affirmations, ‘Tat tvam asi’, ‘Thou art that’, ‘I am Brahman’, we have now identified the region in question and those Teachers in ancient India are revealed to us as beings belonging to the Mars region but transferred to the Earth. To what was said years ago in the book Theosophy about the Mars region, the lowest region of Devachan, there can now be added what we have heard in these lectures. Namely, that at the dawn of the modern age the Buddha was transferred to this same region, the Mars region. Half a millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Buddha—regarded as one who was to prepare spiritually for this Mystery—had come to the Earth, to the territory where Mars wisdom had been proclaimed since times primeval. And centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha he was, as we know, sent by an act of Rosicrucian wisdom to the Mars region in order to continue working there. (See Lecture Five.) In ancient times Brahmanism belonged intrinsically to the Mars region of the Cosmos. At the beginning of the seventeenth century after the Mystery of Golgotha, Brahmanism passed over into the Buddha-impulse and the reflection of this on Earth was the absorption of Brahmanism into Buddhism in the cultural life of India.

What takes place on Earth, therefore, is in a wide and ample sense an image of happenings in the Heavens.

If you have read the chapter in Theosophy which deals with what you now know to be the Mars region and in which a self-evident expression is the ‘I am Brahman’, you will be able, if you read that chapter again, to picture how an event here on Earth is also an event in a region of the Cosmos, how this event can be understood, and how the Buddha-impulse as a cosmic happening is related to the circumstances described in the relevant chapter of that book. We shall realise that our studies during the Winter were closely linked with the theosophical work we began more than ten years ago. We then described the ‘Spiritland’ and a ‘continental’ mass of Spiritland; the lowest region of Spiritland was characterised in relation to the inner life of the soul. The description given was such that if you have understood it, you will realise that the Buddha-impulse has its place in the lowest region of Spiritland as described in these lectures. Here is an example of how the details of spiritual research harmonise with each other.

If we now pass on to consider the cosmic aspects of the second region of Spiritland as described from the inner point of view of the soul, we shall find that this second region, the ‘oceanic’ region of Spiritland corresponds with the Jupiter region. Further, if we pass to the third region of Devachan, the ‘Airy’ region of Spiritland, we shall find that it corresponds with the influences of the Saturn region. What was described in Theosophy as the fourth region of Spiritland already extends beyond our planetary system. There the soul expands into still wider spaces, into the starry firmament itself. From the descriptions that were given from the inner standpoint of the soul, it will be quite clear to you that the experiences of the soul in the fourth region of Spiritland could not be undergone in any realm where the spatial relationship to the Earth is still the same as that of the planetary system. There is something so utterly foreign in what is conveyed by the fourth region of Spiritland that it can never correspond with what can be experienced even within the outermost planetary sphere, the Saturn sphere.

Therefore the soul passes into the starry firmament, that is to say into distances more and more remote both from the Earth and also from the Sun. These distant realms are described in the account of the three highest regions of Spiritland traversed by the soul before it begins to draw together again and to pass, in the reverse order, through all the preceding conditions. On this journey the soul acquires the forces by means of which it can build up a new life on Earth.

In general it can be said that when the soul has passed through the Sun region it has finished with every element of ‘personality’. What is experienced beyond the Sun region, beyond the region of Soul-Life in the true sense, is spiritual; it transcends everything that is personal. What the soul then experiences as ‘Thou art that’—and especially in our time as the Buddha-impulse in the Mars region—is something that seems strange here on Earth, though it is not so on Mars; it is the impulse denoted by the word ‘Nirvana’. This means liberation from everything that is significant on the Earth, for the soul begins to realise the great cosmic significance of universal space. In living through all this the soul emancipates itself entirely from the element of personality. In the Mars region, the lowest region of Spiritland, where the soul acquires understanding of the ‘Thou art that’, or, as we should put it today, receives the Buddha-impulse, it frees itself from everything that is earthly. After the soul has become inwardly free of this—and the Christ Impulse is needed here—it also liberates itself spiritually by recognising that all ties of blood are forged on Earth and therefore belong by nature to the Earth. But the soul then passes on to new conditions.

In the Jupiter region, conditions which force the soul into some particular creed are dissolved. We have heard that the soul can pass through the Venus region with companionship only if it had adopted a creed; without religion in some form it would be lonely and isolated. We have also heard that the soul can pass through the Sun region only when it has learnt to understand the creeds of all religions on the Earth. In the Jupiter region, however, the soul must liberate itself entirely from the particular creed to which it belonged during life on Earth. This was not an essentially personal attachment but something into which it was born and was shared in company with other souls. Thus the soul can pass through the Venus region only if it has acquired religious ideas in earthly life; it can pass through the Sun region only if it has developed some measure of understanding of all such beliefs. The soul can pass through the Jupiter region only if it is able to liberate itself from the particular confession to which it belonged on Earth; merely to understand the others is not enough. For during the passage through the Jupiter region it will be decided whether in the next life the soul will have to be connected with the same creed as before, or whether it has experienced everything that can be offered by one particular creed. In the Venus sphere the soul garners the fruits of a particular faith; in the Sun sphere the fruits of an understanding of all forms of religious life; but when it reaches the Jupiter region the soul must be able to lay the foundation for a new relationship to religion during the next life on Earth.

These are three stages experienced by the soul between death and the new birth: first it experiences inwardly the fruits of the faith to which it belonged in the last life; then the fruits of having developed the capacity to appreciate the value of all other religious beliefs; and then it must free itself so completely from the beliefs held in the last life that it can wholeheartedly adopt a different religion. This cannot be achieved by attaching equal value to all creeds; and we know that on its return journey through these regions the soul comes once again into the Jupiter region and there prepares the traits enabling it to live in the fullest sense in a different religion in the next life. In this way the forces which the soul needs in order to shape a new life are gradually impressed into it.

If you now read what is said in the book Theosophy about the third region of the Spiritland, the ‘airy’ or ‘atmospheric’ region, you will find again what has been said here in connection with the Saturn region. In this region, companionship and the avoidance of terrible loneliness is possible only for souls already able to exercise a certain degree of genuine self-knowledge, of completely unbiased self-knowledge. Only by being able to put self-knowledge into practice can the soul find entrance to the regions beyond Saturn, therefore even beyond our solar system and leading into that cosmic life from which souls must bring the qualities that ensure progress on the Earth. If souls were never able to live in companionship in realms beyond the Saturn region progress on Earth would not be possible. Think, for example, of the individuals sitting here today. If the souls incarnated in the world at the present time had never passed beyond the Saturn region between death and rebirth, culture on Earth would still be at the stage reached, for example, in the epoch of Ancient India. The Ancient Indian culture was able to progress to that of ancient Persia only because in the intervening periods souls had passed beyond the Saturn region; and again, the progress from Ancient Persian culture to Egypto-Chaldean culture was made possible by impulses for progress brought into the Earth from the realms beyond the Saturn region. What human beings have contributed to the progress of culture on Earth has been gathered by their souls from realms beyond the Saturn region.

The external progress of mankind originates in the new impulses brought from beyond the Saturn region; in this way the various culture-epochs progress and new impulses take effect. But as well as this there is the stream of inner experiences which is to be distinguished from the progress of external culture and has its ‘centre of gravity’ in the Mystery of Golgotha. When we know that the stream of experiences in man's inner life of soul on Earth has its centre of gravity in the Mystery of Golgotha, while on the other hand this Mystery of Golgotha is connected with the Sun region, a question arises; it is a question that might well occupy our minds for a very long time but we will at least consider it today. It is good that on the basis of what can already be found in lectures and lecture-courses, we should be able to form our own thoughts about such questions—thoughts which can then be rectified by reports of investigations given here.

On the one hand we have the fact that Christ is the Sun Spirit who united Himself with the life of the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. You will find the most detailed account of this in the lecture-courses entitled The Gospel of St. John—in its Relation to the Other Three Gospels, particularly to the Gospel of St. Luke, given in Kassel, and From Jesus to Christ. And now we have heard of the other fact, namely that all external progress on Earth from one culture-epoch to the next is dependent upon influences from beyond the Saturn region. A question arises here: Progress on Earth from one culture-epoch to another is dependent upon influences connected with a world beyond the Saturn sphere—a world altogether different from the one where progress is brought about by the stream of spirituality that flows through the evolution of humanity, that approached humanity in ancient times, has its centre of gravity in the Mystery of Golgotha and thereafter took its course in the way often described. How do these two facts harmonise? The truth is that they harmonise completely.

You need only picture to yourself that our Earth evolution as it is today was preceded by the earlier incarnation of the Earth, namely Old Moon. Now think of Old Moon as we have often described it, followed by the present Earth. Midway in the process of evolution between Old Moon and Earth something like a condition of cosmic sleep took place. During the transition from Old Moon to Earth, everything that had existed on Old Moon passed into a kind of germinal state from which, at a later stage, everything in existence on Earth came forth. But all the planetary spheres also came forth from that cosmic sleep. During the epoch of Old Moon, therefore, the planetary spheres were not in the state in which they exist today. Old Moon passes into the cosmic sleep and out of this condition the planetary spheres develop into what they now are. Everything that evolved in the Cosmos between the era of Old Moon and that of the Earth is contained within the range of the Saturn sphere. The Christ Impulse, however, does not belong to what evolved in the Cosmos during the period of transition from Old Moon to Earth, but it already belonged to the Old Sun and remained in the Sun sphere when Old Moon eventually separated from it. The Christ Impulse continued to evolve onwards towards the Earth but remained united with the Sun sphere after the Saturn sphere, the Jupiter sphere and so forth, had separated from it. And so, in addition to what the human soul was, before the Mystery of Golgotha, it now has within it something that is more than all that is contained in the planetary spheres, something that is founded in the depths of the Cosmos, that does indeed come over from Sun to Earth but belongs to far deeper regions of the spiritual world than do the planetary spheres. For these planetary spheres are a product of what took place when Old Moon evolved to become Earth. What streams to us from the Christ Impulse, however, comes from Old Sun which preceded Old Moon.

From this we realise that external culture on Earth is connected with the Cosmos, whereas the inner life of soul is connected in a much deeper sense with the Sun. Thus in all these connections—in their spiritual aspect too—there is something of which the following can be said: When we look out into the stellar spheres there is revealed to us, as it were outspread in space, a world that is embodied in culture on Earth because souls of men have entered into these stellar spheres between death and rebirth; but when we gaze at the Sun we behold something that has become what it is today because behind it there is an infinitely long period of evolution. In an age when it was not yet possible to speak of a connection between culture on Earth and the stellar worlds as can be done today, even then the Sun was already united with the Christ Impulse. Thus everything brought from the stellar worlds for the promotion of culture on the Earth is to be regarded as a kind of Earth-body which needed to be—and actually was—ensouled by what came to the Earth from the Sun, namely by the Christ Impulse. The Earth was ensouled when the Mystery of Golgotha took place; it was then that culture on Earth received its ‘soul’.

The death on Golgotha was only seemingly a death; in reality it was the birth of the Earth-Soul. And everything that can be brought to the Earth from cosmic expanses, also from beyond the Saturn sphere, is related to the Earth-Sphere as the Earth-Body is related to the Earth-Soul.

These reflections can show us that the presentation given in the book Theosophy—in rather different words and from a different point of view—contains what has been described as the cosmic aspect in the lectures given this Winter. You need only be reminded that in the one case the account is given from the point of view of the soul, and in the other from that of the great cosmic conditions, and you will find that the two descriptions are in complete harmony.

The conclusion which I should like to be able to draw from these lectures is that you realise how vast is the range of Spiritual Science and that its method must be to gather from every possible side whatever can throw light on the nature of the spiritual world. Even when additions are made to what had been said years ago, there need be no contradiction, for what is said is not the outcome of any philosophical argument or reflective thinking, but of occult investigation. Yellow today will still be yellow ten years hence, even though the essential quality of yellow as a colour is grasped for the first time ten years later. What was said years ago still holds good, although light is shed upon it from the new points of view which it has been possible to contribute during last Winter.

• 1. As well as referring to Chapter III in the book Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man in connection with this lecture, students are advised to turn to Occult Science—an Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press 1963 edition, Chapter III, pp. 74–101. (Note by translator.)
• 2. See Section III.4 in Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1963.

We stand today, as it were, at the starting-point of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society in the narrower sense, and we should take this opportunity of once more reminding ourselves of the importance and significance of our cause. It is true that what the Anthroposophical Society wishes to be for the newer culture should not in principle differentiate it from that which we have always carried on in our circle under the name of theosophy. But perhaps this giving of a new name may nevertheless remind us of the earnestness and dignity with which we intend to work in our spiritual movement, and it is with this point in view that I have chosen the title of this course of lectures. At the very outset of our anthroposophical cause we shall speak on a subject which is capable of indicating in manifold ways the remarkable importance of our spiritual movement for the civilisation of the present day.

Many people might be surprised to find two such apparently widely different spiritual streams brought together, as the great Eastern poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of one who was so closely connected with the founding of Christianity, the Apostle Paul. We can best recognise the nearness of these two spiritual streams to one another if, by way of introduction, we indicate how at the present day, is to be found, on the one hand, that which appertains to the great Bhagavad Gita poem, and on the other the Paulinism which originated with the beginning of Christianity.

Certainly much in the spiritual life of our present time differs from what it was even a comparatively short time ago, but it is just that very difference that makes a spiritual movement such as Anthroposophy so necessary.

Let us reflect how a comparatively short time ago if a man concerned himself with the spiritual life of his own times he had in reality, as I have shown in my Basle and Munich courses, to study three periods of a thousand years each; one pre-Christian period of a thousand years, and two other millennia, the sum of which is not yet quite completed; two thousand years permeated and saturated with the spiritual stream of Christianity. What might such a man have said only a short time ago when contemplating the spiritual life of mankind when, as we have said, there was no question of a theosophical, or anthroposophical movement as we now understand it? He might have said: “At the present time something is making itself prominently felt which can only be sought for in the thousand years preceding the Christian era.” For only during the last thousand years before the Christian era does one find individual men of personal importance in spiritual life. However great and powerful and mighty much in the spiritual streams of earlier times may appear to us, yet persons and individuals do not stand out from that which underlies those streams. Let us just glance back at what we reckon in not too restricted a sense, as the last thousand years before the Christian era. Let us glance back at the old Egyptian or the Chaldean-Babylonian spiritual stream; there we survey a continuity so to speak, a connected spiritual life. Only in the Greek spiritual life do we find individuals as such standing out as entirely spiritual and living. Great, mighty teachings, a mighty outlook into the space of the Cosmos; all this we find in the old Egyptian and Chaldean-Babylonian times, but only in Greece do we begin to look to separate personalities, to a Socrates or Pericles, a Phidias, a Plato, an Aristotle. Personality, as such, begins to be marked. That is the peculiarity of the spiritual life of the last three thousand years; and I do not only mean the remarkable personalities themselves, but rather the impression made by the spiritual life upon each separate individuality, upon each personality. In these last three thousand years it has become a question of personality, if we may say so; and the fact that separate individuals now feel the need of taking part in the spiritual life, find inner comfort, hope, peace, inward bliss and security, in the various spiritual movements, gives these their significance. And since, until a comparatively short time ago, we were only interested in history inasmuch as it proceeded from one personality to another, we got no really clear understanding of what occurred before the last three thousand years. The history, for which alone we had, till recently, any understanding, began with Greece, and during the transition from the first to the second thousand years, occurred what is connected with the great Being, Christ Jesus. During the first thousand years that which we owe to Greece is predominant, and those Grecian times tower forth in a particular way. At the beginning of them stand the Mysteries. That which flowed forth from these, as we have often described, passed over into the Greek poets, philosophers and artists in every domain. For if we wish rightly to understand AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides we must seek the source for such understanding in that which flowed out of the Mysteries. If we wish to understand Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, we must seek the source of their philosophies in the Mysteries, not to speak of such a towering figure as that of Heraclitus. You may read of him in my book, Christianity as Mystical Fact, how entirely he depended upon the Mysteries.

Then in the second thousand years we see the Christian impulse pouring into spiritual development, gradually absorbing the Greek and uniting itself with it. The whole of the second thousand years passed in such a way that the powerful Christ-impulse united itself with all that came over from Greece as living tradition and life. So we see Greek wisdom, Greek feeling, and Greek art slowly and gradually uniting organically with the Christ-impulse. Thus the second thousand years ran its course. Then in the third thousand years begins the cultivation of the personality. We may say that we can see in the third thousand years how differently the Greek influence is felt. We see it when we consider such artists as Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci. No longer does the Greek influence work on together with Christianity in the third thousand years, as it did in the culture of the second; not as something historically great, not as something contemplated externally was Greek influence felt during the second thousand years. But in the third thousand we have to turn of set purpose to the Greek. We see how Leonardo da Vinci, Michael Angelo and Raphael allowed themselves to be influenced by the great works of art then being discovered; we see the Greek influence being more and more consciously absorbed. It was absorbed unconsciously during the second thousand years, but in the third millennium it was taken up more and more consciously. An example of how consciously this Greek influence was being recognised in the eyes of the world is to be found in the figure of the philosopher, Thomas Aquinas; and how he was compelled to unite what flowed out from Christian philosophy with the philosophy of Aristotle. Here the Greek influence was absorbed consciously and united with Christianity in a philosophic form; as in the case of Raphael, Michael Angelo and Leonardo da Vinci, in the form of art. This whole train of thought rises higher through spiritual life, and even takes the form of a certain religious opposition in the cases of Giordano Bruno and Galileo. Notwithstanding all this, we find everywhere Greek ideas and conceptions, especially about nature, cropping up again; there is a conscious absorption of the Greek influence, but this does not go back beyond the Greek age. In every soul, not only in the more learned or more highly educated, but in every soul down to the simplest, a spiritual life is spread abroad and lives in them, in which the Greek and Christian influences are consciously united. From the University down to the peasant's cottage Greek ideas are to be found united with Christianity.

Now in the nineteenth century something peculiar appeared, something which requires Anthroposophy to explain it. There we see in one single example what mighty forces are at play. When the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita first became known in Europe, certain important thinkers were enraptured by the greatness of the poem, by its profound contents; and it should never be forgotten that such a thoughtful spirit as William von Humboldt, when he became acquainted with it, said that it was the most profoundly philosophical poem that had ever come under his notice; and he made the beautiful remark, that it was worth while to have been allowed to grow as old as he to be enabled to become acquainted with the Bhagavad Gita, the great spiritual song that sounds forth from the primeval holy times of Eastern antiquity. What a wonderful thing it is that slowly, although perhaps not attractive as yet to large circles, so much of Eastern antiquity was poured out into the nineteenth century by means of the Bhagavad Gita. For this is not like other writings that came over from the ancient East which ever proclaim Eastern thoughts and feelings from this or that standpoint. In the Bhagavad Gita we are confronted with something of which we may say that it is the united flow of all the different points of view of Eastern thought, feeling and perception. That is what makes it of such significance.

Now let us turn back to old India. Apart from other less important things, we find there, in the first place, three shades, if we may so call them, of spiritual streams flowing forth from the old Indian pre-historic times. That spiritual stream which we meet with in the earliest Vedas and which developed further in the later Vedantic poems, is one quite definite one—we will describe it presently—it is, if we may say so, a one-sided yet quite distinct spiritual stream. We then meet with a second spiritual stream in the Sankhya philosophy, which again goes in a definite spiritual direction; and, lastly, we meet a third shade of the Eastern spiritual stream in Yoga. Here we have the three most remarkable oriental spiritual streams placed before our souls. The Vedas, Sankhya, and Yoga.

The Sankhya system of Kapila, the Yoga philosophy of Patanjali and the Vedas are spiritual streams of definite colouring, which, because of this definite colouring, are to a certain extent one-sided, and which are great because of their one-sidedness. In the Bhagavad Gita we have the harmonious inter-penetration of all three spiritual streams. What the Veda philosophy has to give is to be found shining forth in the Bhagavad Gita; what the Yoga of Patanjali has to give mankind we find again in the Bhagavad Gita; and what the Sankhya of Kapila has to give we find there too. Moreover, we do not find these as a conglomeration, but as three parts flowing harmoniously into one organism, as if they originally belonged together. The greatness of the Bhagavad Gita lies in the comprehensiveness of its description of how this oriental spiritual life receives its tributaries from the Vedas on the one side, on another from the Sankhya philosophy of Kapila, and again on a third side from the Yoga of Patanjali.

We shall now briefly characterise what each of these spiritual streams has to give us.

The Veda stream is most emphatically a philosophy of unity, it is the most spiritual monism that could be thought of; the Veda philosophy which is consolidated in the Vedanta is a spiritual monism. If we wish to understand the Veda philosophy, we must, in the first place, keep clearly before our souls the fact that this philosophy is based upon the thought that man can find something deeper within his own self, and that what he first realises in ordinary life is a kind of expression or imprint of this self of his; that man can develop, and that his development will draw up the depths of the actual self more and more from the foundations of his soul. A higher self rests as though asleep in man, and this higher self is not that of which the present-day man is directly aware, but that which works within him, and to which he must develop himself. When man some day attains to that which lives within him as “self,” he will then realise, according to the Veda-philosophy, that this “self” is one with the all-embracing self of the world, that he does not only rest with his self within the all-embracing World-Self, but that he himself is one with it. So much is he one with this World-Self that he is in two-fold manner related to it. In some way similar to our physical in-breathing and out-breathing does the Vedantist picture the relationship of the human self to the World-Self Just as one draws in a breath and breathes it out again, while outside there is the universal air and within us only the small portion of it that we have drawn in so outside us we have the universal, all-embracing, all-pervading Self that lives and moves in all things, and this we breathe in when we yield ourselves to the contemplation of the spiritual Self of the World. Spiritually one breathes it in with every perception that one gets of this Self, one breathes it in with all that one draws into one's soul. All knowledge, all thinking, all perception is spiritual breathing; and that which we, as a portion of the world-Self, draw into our souls (which portion remains organically united to the whole), that is Atman, the Breath, which, as regards ourselves, is as the portion of air that we breathe in, which cannot be distinguished from the general atmosphere. So is Atman in us, which cannot be distinguished from that which is the all-ruling Self of the World. Just as we breathe out physically, so there is a devotion of the soul through which the best that is in it goes forth in the form of prayer and sacrifice to this Self. Brahman is like the spiritual out-breathing. Atman and Brahman, like in-breathing and out-breathing, make us sharers in the all-ruling World-Self. What we find in the Vedantas is a monistic spiritual philosophy, which is at the same time a religion; and the blossom and fruit of Vedantism lie in that which so blesses man, that most complete and in the highest degree satisfying feeling of unity with the universal Self powerfully weaving through the world. Vedantism treats of this connection of mankind with the unity of the world, of the fact of man's being within a part of the whole great spiritual cosmos. We cannot say the Veda-Word, because Veda means Word, but the Word-Veda as given is itself breathed forth, according to the Vedantic conception, from the all-ruling unitary Being, and the human soul can take it into itself as the highest expression of knowledge. In accepting the Veda-Word the best part of the all-mighty “Self” is taken in, the consciousness of the connection between the individual human self and this all-mighty World-Self is attained. What the Veda speaks is the God-Word which is creative, and this is born again in human knowledge, and so leads it side by side with the creative principle which lives and weaves throughout the world. Therefore, that which was written in the Vedas was valued as the Divine Word, and he who succeeded in mastering them was considered as being a possessor of the Divine Word. The Divine Word had come spiritually into the world and was to be found in the Veda-Books; those who mastered these books took part in the creative principle of the World.

Sankhya philosophy is different. When one first meets with this, as it has come down to us through tradition, we find in it exactly the opposite of the teaching of the Unity. If we wish to compare the Sankhya philosophy to anything, we may compare it to the philosophy of Leibnitz. It is a pluralistic philosophy. The several souls mentioned therein—human souls and the souls of Gods—are not traced back by the Sankhya philosophy to unitary source, but are taken as single souls existing, so to speak, from Eternity; or, at any rate, their origin is not traced back to Unity. The plurality of souls is what we find in the Sankhya philosophy. The independence of each individual soul carrying on its development in the world enclosed within its own being, is sharply accentuated; and in contrast to the plurality of souls is that which in the Sankhya philosophy is called the Prakriti element. We cannot well describe this by the modern word “matter,” for that has a materialistic meaning. But in Sankhya philosophy we do not mean to convey this with the “substantial” which is in contrast to the multiplicity of souls, and which again is not derived from a common source. In the first place, we have multiplicity of souls, and then that which we may call the material basis, which, like a primeval flood, streams through the world, through space and time, and out of which souls take the elements for their outer existence. Souls must clothe themselves in this material element, which, again, is not to be traced back to unity with the souls themselves. And so it is in the Sankhya philosophy that we principally find this material element, carefully studied. Attention is not so much directed to the individual soul; this is taken as something real that is there, confined in and united with this material basis, and which takes the most varied forms within it, and thus shows itself outwardly in many different forms. A soul clothes itself with this original material element, that may be thought of like the individual soul itself as coming from Eternity. The soul nature expresses itself through this material basic element, and in so doing it takes on many different forms, and it is in particular the study of these material forms that we find in the Sankhya philosophy. Here we have, in the first place, so to speak, the original form of this material element as a sort of spiritual primeval stream, into which the soul is first immersed. Thus if we were to glance back at the first stages of evolution, we should find there the undifferentiated material elements and immersed therein, the plurality of the souls which are to evolve further. What, therefore, we first find as Form, as yet undifferentiated from the unity of the primal stream, is the spiritual substance itself that lies at the starting-point of evolution. The first thing that then emerges, with which the soul can as yet clothe itself individually, is Budhi. So that when we picture to ourselves a soul clothed with the primal flood-substance, externally this soul is not to be distinguished from the universal moving and weaving element of the primeval flood. Inasmuch as the soul does not only enwrap itself in this first being of the universal billowing primal flood but also in that which first proceeds from this, in so far does it clothe itself in Budhi. The third element that forms itself out of the whole and through which the soul can then become more and more individual, is Ahamkara. This consists of lower and lower forms of the primeval substance. So that we have the primeval substance, the first form of which is Budhi, and its second form which is Ahamkara. The next form to that is Manas, then comes the form which consists of the organs of the senses; this is followed by the form of the finer elements, and the last form consists of the elements of the substances which we have in our physical surroundings. This is the line of evolution according to Sankhya philosophy. Above is the most super-sensible element, a primeval spiritual flow, which, growing ever denser and denser, descends to that which surrounds us in the coarser elements out of which the coarse human body is also constructed. Between these are the substances of which, for instance, our sense organs are woven, and the finer elements of which is woven our etheric or life-body. It must be carefully noticed that according to the Sankhya philosophy, all these are sheaths of the soul. Even that which springs from the first primeval flood is a sheath for the soul; the soul is at first within that; and when the Sankhya philosopher studies Budhi, Ahamkara, Manas, the senses, the finer and the coarser elements, he understands thereby the increasingly dense sheaths within which the soul expresses itself.

We must clearly understand that the manner in which the philosophy of the Vedas and the Sankhya philosophy are presented to us is only possible because they were composed in that ancient time when an old clairvoyance still existed, at any rate, to a certain extent. The Vedas and the contents of the Sankhya philosophy came into existence in different ways. The Vedas depend throughout on a primeval inspiration which was still a natural possession of primeval man; they were given to man, so to speak, without his having done anything to deserve them, except that with his whole being he prepared himself to receive into his inner depths that divine inspiration that came of itself to him, and to receive it quietly and calmly. Sankhya philosophy was formed in a different way. That process was something like the learning of our present day, only that this is not permeated by clairvoyance as the former then was. The Veda philosophy consisted of clairvoyant knowledge, inspiration given as by grace from above. Sankhya philosophy consisted of knowledge sought for as we seek it now, but sought for by people to whom clairvoyance was still accessible. This is why the Sankhya philosophy leaves the actual soul-element undisturbed, so to say. It admits that souls can impress themselves in that which one can study as the super-sensible outer forms, but it particularly studies the outer forms, which appear as the clothing of those souls. Hence we find a complete system of the forms we meet with in the world, just as in our own science we find a number of facts about nature; only that in Sankhya philosophy observation extends to a clairvoyant observation of facts. Sankhya philosophy is a science, which although obtained by clairvoyance, is nevertheless a science of outer forms that does not extend into the sphere of the soul: the soul-nature remains in a sense undisturbed by these studies. He who devotes himself to the Vedas feels absolutely that his religious life is one with the life of wisdom; but Sankhya philosophy is a science, it is a perception of the forms into which the soul impresses itself. Nevertheless, it is quite possible for the disciples of the Sankhya philosophy to feel a religious devotion of the soul for their philosophy. The way in which the soul element is organised into forms-not the soul element itself, but the form it takes-is followed up in the Sankhya philosophy. It defines the way in which the soul, more or less, preserves its individuality or else is more immersed in the material. It has to do with the soul element which is, it is true, beneath the surface, but which, within the material forms, still preserves itself as soul. A soul element thus disguised in outer form, but which reveals itself as soul, dwells in the Sattva element. A soul element immersed in form, but which is, so to say, entangled in it and cannot emerge from it, dwells in the Tamas-element; and that in which, more or less, the soul element and its outer expression in form, are, to a certain extent, balanced, dwells in the Rajas-element. Sattva, Rajas, Tamas, the three Gunas, pertain to the essential characteristics of what we know as Sankhya philosophy.

Quite different, again, is that spiritual stream which comes down to us as Yoga. That appeals directly to the soul-element itself and seeks ways and means of grasping the human soul in direct spiritual life, so that it rises from the point which it has attained in the world to higher and higher stages of soul-being. Thus Sankhya is a contemplation of the sheaths of the soul, and Yoga the guidance of the soul to higher and ever higher stages of inner experience. To devote oneself to Yoga means a gradual awakening of the higher forces of the soul so that it experiences something not to be found in everyday life, which opens the door to higher and higher stages of existence.

Yoga is therefore the path to the spiritual worlds, the path to the liberation of the soul from outer forms, the path to an independent life of the soul within itself. Yoga is the other side of the Sankhya philosophy. Yoga acquired its great importance when that inspiration, which was given as a blessing from above and which inspired the Vedas, was no longer able to come down. Yoga had to be made use of by those souls who, belonging to a later epoch of mankind, could no longer receive anything by direct revelation, but were obliged to work their way up to the heights of spiritual existence from the lower stages. Thus in the old primal Indian times we have three sharply-defined streams, the Vedas, the Sankhaya, and the Yoga, and today we are called upon once more to unite these spiritual streams, so to say, by bringing them to the surface in the way proper for our own age, from the foundations of the soul and from the depths of the Cosmos.

You may find all three streams again in our Spiritual Science. If you read what I have tried to place before you in the first chapters of my Occult Science about the human constitution, about sleeping and waking, life and death, you will find there what in our present-day sense we may call Sankhya philosophy. Then read what is there said about the evolution of the world from Saturn down to our own time, and you have the Veda-philosophy expressed for our own age; while, if you read the last chapters, which deal with human evolution, you have Yoga expressed for our own age. Our age must in an organised way unite that which radiates across to us in three so sharply-defined spiritual streams from old India in the Veda-philosophy, the Sankhya philosophy, and Yoga. For that reason our age must study the wonderful poem of the Bhagavad Gita, which, in a deeply poetical manner, represents, as it were, a union of these three streams; our own age must be deeply moved by the Bhagavad Gita. We should seek something akin to our own spiritual strivings in the deeper contents of the Bhagavad Gita. Our spiritual streams do not only concern themselves with the older ones as a whole, but also in detail. You will have recognised that in my Occult Science an attempt has been made to produce the things out of themselves. Nowhere do we depend on history. Nowhere can one who really understands what is said find in any assertion about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, that things are related from historical sources; they are simply drawn forth from the matter itself. Yet, strange to say, that which bears the stamp of our own time corresponds in striking places with what resounds down to us out of the old ages. Only one little proof shall be given. We read in the Vedas in a particular place, about cosmic development, which can be expressed in words somewhat like the following: “Darkness was enwrapt in darkness in the primal beginning, all was indistinguishable flood-essence. Then arose a mighty void, that was everywhere permeated with warmth.” I now ask you to remember the result of our study of the evolution of Saturn, in which the substance of Saturn is spoken of as a warmth-substance, and you will feel the harmony between the so-called “Newest thing in Occult Science,” and what is said in the Vedas. The next passage runs: “Then first arose the Will, the first seed of Thought, the connection between the Existent and the Non-existent, ... and this connection was found in the Will ...” And remember what was said in the new mode of expression about the Spirits of Will. In all we have to say at the present time, we are not seeking to prove a concord with the old; the harmony comes of itself, because truth was sought for there and is again being sought for on our own ground

Now in the Bhagavad Gita we find, as it were, the poetical glorification of the three spiritual streams just described. The great teachings that Krishna himself communicated to Arjuna are brought to our notice at an important moment of the world's history—of importance for that far-distant age. The moment is significant, because it is the time when the old blood-ties were loosening. In all that is to be said in these lectures about the Bhagavad Gita you must remember what has again and again been emphasised: that ties of blood, racial attachment and kinship, were of quite special significance in primeval times, and only grew less strong by degrees. Remember all that is said in my pamphlet, The Occult Significance of Blood. When these blood-ties begin to loosen, on account of that loosening, the great struggle began which is described in the Mahabharata, and of which the Bhagavad Gita is an episode. We see there how the descendants of two brothers, and hence, blood relations, separate on account of their spiritual tendencies how that which, through the blood, would formerly have given them the same points of view, now takes different paths; and how, therefore, the conflict then arises, for conflict must arise when the ties of blood also lose their significance as a help for clairvoyant perception; and with this separation begins the later spiritual development.. For those to whom the old blood-ties no longer were of significance, Krishna came as a great teacher. He was to be the teacher of the new age lifted out of the old blood-ties. How he became the teacher we shall describe tomorrow; but it may now be said, as the whole Bhagavad Gita shows us, that Krishna absorbed the three spiritual streams into his teaching and communicated them to his pupil as an organised unity.

How must this pupil appear to us? He looks up on the one side to his father, and on the other side to his father's brother the children of the two brothers are now no longer to be together, they are to separate now a different spiritual stream is to take possession of the one line and the other. Arjuna's soul is filled with the question: how will it be when that which was held together by the ties of blood is no longer there? How can the soul take part in spiritual life if that life no longer flows as it formerly did under the influence of the old blood-tie? It seems to Arjuna as if everything must come to an end. The purport of the great teachings of Krishna, however, is to show that this will not be the case, that it all will be different. Krishna now shows his pupil—who is to live through the time of transition from one epoch to another, that the soul, if it is to become harmonious, must take in something of all these three spiritual streams. We find the Vedistic unity interpreted in the right way in the teachings of Krishna, as well as the principles of the Sankhya teaching and the principles of Yoga. For what is it that actually lies behind all that we are about to learn from the Bhagavad Gita? The revelations of Krishna are somewhat to this effect: There is a creative Cosmic Word, itself containing the creative principle. As the sound produced by man when he speaks undulates and moves and lives through the air, so does the Word surge and weave and live in all things, and create and order all existence. Thus the Veda principle breathes through all things. This can be taken up by human perception into the human soul-life. There is a supreme, weaving Creative-Word, and there is an echo of this supreme, weaving Creative-Word in the Vedistic documents. The Word is the creative principle of the World; in the Vedas it is revealed. That is one part of the Krishna teaching. The human soul is capable of understanding how the Word lives on, in the different forms of existence. Human knowledge learns the laws of existence by grasping how the separate forms of being express, with the regularity of a fixed law, that which is soul and spirit. The teachings about the forms in the world, of the laws which shape existence, of cosmic laws and their manner of working, is the Sankhya philosophy, the other side of the Krishna teaching. Just as Krishna made clear to his pupil that behind all existence is the creative cosmic Word, so also he made clear to him that human knowledge can recognise the separate forms, and therefore can grasp the cosmic laws. The cosmic Word, the cosmic laws as echoed in the Vedas, and in Sankhya, were revealed by Krishna to his pupil. And he also spoke to him about the path that leads the individual pupil to the heights where he can once again share in the knowledge of the cosmic Word. Thus Krishna also spoke of Yoga. Threefold is the teaching of Krishna: it teaches of the Word, of the Law and of reverent devotion to the Spirit.

The Word, the Law, and Devotion are the three streams by means of which the soul can carry out its development.

These three streams will for ever work upon the human soul in some way or another. Have we not just seen that modern Spiritual Science must seek for new expression of these three streams? But the ages differ one from the other, and in many different ways will that which is the threefold comprehension of the World be brought to human souls. Krishna speaks of the Cosmic Word, of the Creative Word, of the fashioning of existence, of the devotional deepening of the soul,—of Yoga. The same trinity meets us again in another form, only in a more concrete, more living way—in a Being who is Himself to be thought of as walking the Earth—the Incarnation of the Divine Creative Word! The Vedas came to mankind in an abstract form. The Divine Logos, of whom the Gospel of St. John speaks is the Living and Creative Word Itself! That which we find in the Sankhya philosophy, as the law to which the cosmic forms are subject, that, historically transposed into the old Hebrew revelation, is what St. Paul calls the Law. The third stream we find in St. Paul as Faith in the risen Christ. That which was Yoga in Krishna, in St. Paul was Faith, only in a more concrete form—Faith, that was to replace the Law. So the trinity, Veda, Sankhya and Yoga were as the redness of the dawn of that which later rose as sun. Veda appears again in the actual Being of Christ Himself now entering in a concrete, living way into historical evolution, not pouring Himself out abstractly into space and the distances of time, but living as a single Individual, as the Living Word. The Law meets us in the Sankhya philosophy, in that which shows us how the material basis, Prakriti, is developed even down to coarse substance. The Law reveals how the world came into existence, and how individual man develops within it. That is expressed in the old Hebrew revelation of the Law, in the dispensation of Moses. Inasmuch as St. Paul, on the one hand, refers to this Law of the old Hebrews, he is referring to the Sankhya philosophy; inasmuch as he refers to faith in the Risen One, he refers to the Sun of which the rosy dawn appeared in Yoga. Thus arises in a, special way that of which we find the first elements in Veda, Sankhya and Yoga. What we find in the Vedas appears in a new but now concrete form as the Living Word by Whom all things were made and without Whom nothing is made that was made, and Who, nevertheless, in the course of time, has become Flesh. Sankhya appears as the historical representation based on Law of how out of the world of the Elohim, emerged the world of phenomena, the world of coarse substances. Yoga transformed itself into that which, according to St. Paul, is expressed in the words; “Not I, but Christ in me,” that is to say when the Christ-force penetrates the soul and absorbs it, man rises to the heights of the divine.

Thus we see how, in a preparatory form, the coherent plan is present in world-history, how the Eastern teaching was a preparation, how it gives in more abstract form, as it were, that which, in a concrete form, we find so marvelously contained in the Pauline Christianity. We shall see that precisely by grasping the connection between the great poem of the Bhagavad Gita and the Epistles of St. Paul, the very deepest mysteries will reveal themselves concerning what we may call the ruling of the spiritual in the collective education of the human race. As something so new must also be felt in the new age, this newer age must extend beyond the time of Greece and must develop understanding for that which lies behind the thousand years immediately before Christ—for that which we find in the Vedas, Sankhya and Yoga. Just as Raphael in his art and Thomas Aquinas in his philosophy had to turn back to Greece, so shall we see how in our time, a conscious balance must be established between that which the present time is trying to acquire and that which lies further back than the Greek age, and stretches back to the depths of oriental antiquity. We can allow these depths of oriental antiquity to flow into our souls if we ponder over these different spiritual streams which are to be found within that wonderfully harmonious unity which Humboldt calls the greatest philosophical poem the Bhagavad Gita.