The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I should like during these few days to say something rather especially for the friends who have come here to attend the Easter Course,¹ and who have not heard much of what has connections. Those who were present at the lectures before Easter may find some repetitions but the circumstances make this inevitable.

I have been laying particular emphasis on the fact that study of the historical development of the life of mankind must lead on to study of the human being himself. All our endeavours aim in the direction of placing man at the centre of our study of the world. Two ends are attained thereby. Firstly, it is only in this way that the world can be studied as it truly is. For all that man sees spread around him in nature is only a part—gives as it were one picture of the world only: and to limit study of the world to this realm of nature is like studying a plant without looking beyond root, green leaf and stem, and ignoring flower and fruit. This kind of study can never reveal the whole plant. Imagine a creature that is always born at a particular time of the year, lives out its life during a period when the plant grows as far as the green leaves and no further, dies before the plant is in blossom and appears again only when roots and green leaves are there.—Such a creature would never have knowledge of the whole plant; it would regard the plant as something that has roots and leaves only.

The materialistic mind of to-day has got itself into a similar position as regards its approach to the world. It considers only the broad foundations of life, not what blossoms forth from the totality of earthly evolution and earthly existence—namely, man himself. The real way of approach must be to study nature in her full extent, but in such a way as all the time to realise that she must needs create man out of herself. We shall then see man as the microcosm he truly is, as the concentration of all that is to be found outspread in the far spaces of the cosmos.

As soon, however, as we study history from this point of view, we are no longer able to regard the human being as a resultant of the forces of history, as a single, self-contained being. We must take account of the fact that he passes through different earthly lives: one such life occurs at an earlier time and another at a later. This very fact places man at the centre of our studies, but now in his whole being, as an individuality. This is the one end that is attained when we look in this way at nature and at history.

The other is this.—The very fact of placing man at the centre of study, makes for humility. Lack of humility is due to nothing else than lack of knowledge. A penetrating, comprehensive knowledge of man in his connection with the events of the world and of history will certainly not lead to excessive self-esteem; far rather it will lead the human being to look at himself objectively. It is precisely when a man does not know himself that there rise up in him those feelings which have their source in the unknown regions of his being. Instinctive, emotional impulses make themselves felt. And it is these instinctive, emotional impulses, rooted as they are in the subconscious, that make for arrogance and pride. On the other hand, when consciousness penetrates farther and farther into those regions where man comes to know himself and to recognise how in the sequence of historical events he belongs to the whole wide universe—then, simply by virtue of an inner law, humility will unfold in him. The recognition of his place in universal existence invariably calls forth humility, never arrogance. All genuine study pursued in Anthroposophy has its ethical side, carries with it an ethical impulse.

Unlike modern materialism, Anthroposophy will not lead to a conception of life in which ethics and morality are a mere adjunct; ethics and morality emerge, as if inwardly impelled, from all genuine anthroposophical study.

I want now to show you by concrete examples, how the fruits of earlier epochs of history are carried over into later epochs through human beings themselves. A certain very striking example now to be given, is associated with Switzerland.

Our gaze falls upon a man who lived about a hundred years before the founding of Christianity.—I am relating to you what can be discovered through spiritual scientific investigation.—At this period in history we find a personality who is a kind of slave overseer in southern Europe.

We must not associate with a slave overseer of those times the feelings that the word immediately calls up in us now. Slavery was the general custom in days of antiquity, and at the time of which I am speaking it was essentially mild in form; the overseers were usually educated men. Indeed the teachers of important personages might well be slaves, who were often versed in the literary and scientific culture of the time. So you see, we must acquire sounder ideas about slavery—needless to say, without defending it in the least degree—when we are considering this aspect of the life of antiquity.

We find, then, a personality whose calling it is to be in charge of a number of slaves and to apportion their tasks. He is an extraordinarily lovable man, gentle and kind-hearted and when he is able to have his own way he does everything to make life easier for the slaves. In authority over him, however, is a rough, somewhat brutal personality. This man is, as we should say nowadays, his superior officer. And this superior officer is responsible for many things that arouse resentment and animosity in the slaves. When the personality of whom I am speaking—the slave overseer—passes through the gate of death, he is surrounded in the time between death and a new birth by all the souls who were thus united with him on earth, the souls of the slaves who had been in his charge. But as an individuality he is very strongly connected with the one who was his superior officer. The fact that he, as the slave overseer, was obliged to obey this superior officer—for in accordance with the prevailing customs of the time he always did obey him, though often very unwillingly—this fact established a strong karmic tie between them. But a deep karmic tie was also established by the relationship that had existed in the physical world between the overseer and the slaves, for in many respects he had been their teacher as well.

We must thus picture a further life unfolding between death and rebirth among all these individualities of whom I have spoken.

Afterwards, somewhere about the 9th century A.D., the individuality of the slave overseer is born again, in Central Europe, but now as a woman, and moreover, because of the prevailing karmic connection, as the wife of the former superior officer who reincarnated as a man. The two of them live together in a marital relationship that makes karmic compensation for the tie that had been established away back in the first century before the founding of Christianity, when they had lived as subordinate and superior officers respectively. The superior officer is now, in the 9th century A.D., in a commune in Central Europe where the inhabitants live on very intimate terms with one another; he holds some kind of official position in the commune, but he is everyone's servant and comes in for plenty of knocks and abuse.

Investigating the whole matter further, we find that the members of this rather extensive commune are the slaves who once had their tasks allotted to them in the way I told you. The superior officer has now become as it were the servant of them all, and has to experience the karmic fulfilment of many things which, through the instrumentality of the overseer, his brutality inflicted upon these people.

The wife of this man (she is the reincarnated overseer), suffers with a kind of silent resignation under all the impressions made by the ever-discontented superior officer in his new incarnation, and one can follow in detail how karmic destiny is here being fulfilled.

But we see, too, that this karma is by no means completely adjusted. A part only is adjusted, namely the karmic relationship between the slave overseer and his superior officer. This has been lived out and is essentially finished in the medieval incarnation in the 9th century; for the wife has paid off what her soul had experienced owing to the brutality of the man who had once been the superior officer and is now her husband.

This woman, the reincarnation of the former slave overseer, is born again, and what happens now is that the greater number of the souls who had once been slaves and had then come together again in the large commune—souls in whose destiny this individuality had twice played a part—came again as the children whose education this same individuality in his new incarnation has deeply at heart. For in this incarnation he comes as Pestalozzi. And we see how Pestalozzi's infinite humanitarianism, his enthusiasm for education in the 18th century, is the karmic fulfilment in relation to human beings with whom he had already twice been connected—the karmic fulfilment of the experiences and the sufferings of earlier incarnations.

What comes to view in single personalities can be clear and objectively intelligible to us only when we are able to see the present earthly life against the background of earlier earthly lives.

Traits that go back not merely to the previous incarnation, but often to the one before that, and even earlier, sometimes show themselves in a man. We see how what has been planted, as it were, in the single incarnations, works its way through with a certain inner, spiritual necessity, inasmuch as the human being lives not only through earthly lives but also through lives between death and a new birth.

In this connection, the study of a life of which I spoke to those of you who were in Dornach before Easter, is particularly striking and interesting—the life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer.

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer presents a very special enigma to those who study the inner aspect of his life and at the same time greatly admire him as a poet. There is such wonderful harmony of form and style in his poems that we cannot help saying: what lives in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer always hovers a little above the earthly—in respect of the style and also in respect of the whole way of thinking and feeling. And if we steep ourselves in his writings we shall perceive how he is immersed in an element of spirit-and-soul that is always on the point of breaking away from the physical body. Study the nobler poems, also the prose-poems, of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer and you will say to yourselves: There is evidence of a perpetual urge to get right away from connection with the physical body. As you know, in his incarnation as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, it was his lot to fall into pathological states, when the soul-and-spirit separated from the physical body to a high degree, so much so that insanity ensued, or at any rate conditions resembling insanity. And the strange thing is that his most beautiful works were produced during periods when the soul-and-spirit had loosened from the physical body.

Now when we try to investigate the karmic connections running through the life of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, we are driven into a kind of confusion. We cannot immediately find our bearings. We are led, first, to the 6th century A.D., and then again we are thrown back into the 19th, into the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation. The very circumstances we are observing, mislead us. I want you to realise the extraordinary difficulty of a genuine search for knowledge in this domain. If you are satisfied with phantasy, then it is naturally easy, for you can make things fit in as you like. For one who is not satisfied with phantasy but carries his investigation to the point where he can rely upon the faculties of his own soul not to play him false—for him it is no easy matter, especially when he is investigating these things in connection with an individuality as complex as that of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. In investigating karmic connections through a number of earthly lives it is no great help to look at the particularly outstanding characteristics. What strikes you most forcibly in a man, what you see at once when you meet him or learn of him in history—these characteristics are, for the most part, the outcome of his earthly environment. A man as he confronts us is a product of his earthly environment to a far greater extent than is generally believed. He takes in through education what is present in his earthly environment. It is the more intangible, more intimate traits of a man which taken quite concretely, lead back through the life between death and a new birth into former earthly lives.

In these investigations it may be more important to observe a man's gestures or some habitual mannerism than to consider what he has achieved perhaps as a figure of renown. The mannerisms of a person, or the way he will invariably answer you—not so much what he answers but how he answers—whether, for example, his first tendency is always to be negative and only when he has no other alternative, to agree, or whether again in quite a good-humoured way he is rather boastful ... these are the kind of traits that are important and if we pay special attention to them they become the centre of our observations and disclose a great deal. One observes, for instance, how a man stretches out his hand to take hold of things; one makes an objective picture of it and then works upon it in the manner of an artist; and at length one finds that it is no longer the mere gesture that one is contemplating, but around the gesture the figure of another human being takes shape.

The following may happen.—There are men who have a habit, let us say, of making a certain movement of the arms. I have known men who simply could not begin to do anything without first folding their arms. If one visualises such a gesture quite objectively, but with inner, artistic feeling, so that it stands before one as a plastic, pliable form, then one's attention is directed away from the man who is actually making the gesture. But the gesture does not remain as it is; it grows into another figure which is an indication, at least, of something in the previous incarnation or in the one before that. It may well be that the gesture is now used in connection with something that was not present at all in the previous incarnation—let us say it is a gesture used in picking up a book, or some similar action. Nevertheless, it is for gestures and habits of this kind that we must have an eye if we are to keep on the right track.

Now in the case of an individuality like Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, the point of significance is that while he is creating his poems there is always a tendency to a loosening of the soul-and-spirit from the physical body. There we have a starting-point but at the same time a point where we may easily go astray.

We are led, as I told you, to the 6th century A.D. We have the feeling: that is where he belongs. And moreover we find a personality who lived in Italy, who experienced a very varied destiny in that incarnation in Italy, who indeed lived a kind of double existence. On the one side he was devoted with the greatest enthusiasm to an art that has almost disappeared in this later age, but was then in its prime; it is only in the remaining examples of mosaics that we are still able to glimpse this highly developed art. And the individuality to whom we are first impelled, lived in this milieu of art in Italy at the end of the 5th and the beginning of the 6th century A.D.—That is what presents itself, to begin with.

But now this whole picture is obscured, and again we are thrown back to Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. The darkness that obscures vision of the man of the 6th century now overshadows the picture of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in the 19th; and we are compelled to look very closely into what Conrad Ferdinand Meyer does in the 19th century.

Our attention is then drawn to the fact that his tale Der Heilige (The Saint), deals with Thomas à Becket, the Chancellor of Henry II of England. We feel that here is something of peculiar importance. And we also have the feeling that the impression received from the earlier incarnation has driven us up against this particular deed of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer. But now again we are driven back into the 6th century, and can find there no explanation of this. And so we are thrown to and fro between the two incarnations, the problematic one in the 6th century and the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation—until it dawns upon us that the story of Thomas à Becket as told in history, came up in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's mind owing to a certain similarity with an experience he had himself undergone in the 6th century, when he went to England from Italy as a member of a Catholic mission sent by Pope Gregory. There we have the second aspect of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer in his previous incarnation. On the one side he was an enthusiastic devotee of the art that subsequently took the form of mosaic.—Hence his talent for form, in all its aspects. On the other side, however, he was an impassioned advocate of Catholicism, and for this reason accompanied the mission. The members of this mission founded Canterbury, where the bishopric was then established.

The individuality who afterwards lived in the 19th century as Conrad Ferdinand Meyer was murdered by an Anglo-Saxon courtier, in circumstances that are extraordinarily interesting. There was something of legal subtlety and craftiness, albeit still in the rough, about the events connected at that time with the murder.

You know very well, my dear friends, how even in ordinary life the sound of something remains with you. You may once have heard a name without paying any particular attention to it ... but later on a whole association of ideas is called up in your mind when this name is mentioned. In a similar way, through the peculiar circumstances of this man's connection with what later became the archbishopric of Canterbury—the town of Canterbury, as I said, was founded by the mission of which he was a member—these experiences lived on, lived on, actually, in the sound of the name Canterbury. In the Conrad Ferdinand Meyer incarnation the sound of this name—Canterbury—came to life again, and by association of ideas his attention was called to Thomas à Becket, (the Lord Chancellor of Canterbury under Henry Plantagenet) who was treacherously murdered. At first, Thomas à Becket was a favourite of Henry II, but was afterwards murdered, virtually through the instigation of the King, because he would not agree to certain measures.

These two destinies, alike in some respects and unlike in others, brought it about that Conrad Ferdinand Meyer transposed, as it were, into quite different figures taken from history, what he had himself experienced in an earlier incarnation in the 6th century—experienced in his own body, far from what was at that time his native land. Just think how interesting this is! Once we have grasped it, we are no longer driven hither and thither between the two incarnations. And then, because again in the 19th century, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer has a kind of double nature, we see how his soul-and-spirit easily separates from the physical. Because he has this double nature, the place of his own, actual experiences is taken by another experience in some respects similar to it ... just as pictures often change in the play of human imagination. In a man's ordinary imagination during an earthly life, the picture changes in such a way that imagination weaves in freedom; in the course of many earthly lives it may be that some historical event which is connected with the person in question as a picture only, takes the place of the actual event.

Now this individuality whose experience in an earlier life worked on through two lives between death and rebirth and then came to expression in the story Thomas à Becket, the Saint,—this individuality had had another intermediate earthly life as a woman at the time of the Thirty Years' War. We have only to envisage the chaos prevailing all over Central Europe during the Thirty Years' War and it will not be difficult to understand the feelings and emotions of an impressionable, sensitive woman living in the midst of the chaos as the wife of a pedantic, narrow-minded man. Wearying of life in the country that was afterwards Germany, he emigrated to Graubünden in Switzerland, where he left the care of house and home to his wife, while he spent his time sullenly loafing about. His wife, however, had opportunity to observe many, many things. The wider historical perspective, no less than the curious local conditions at Graubünden, worked upon her; the experiences she underwent, experiences that were always coloured by her life with the bourgeois, commonplace husband, again sank down into the foundations of the individuality, and lived on through the life between death and a new birth. And the experiences of the wife at the time of the Thirty Years' War are imaginatively transformed in Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's tale, Jürg Jenatsch.

Thus in the soul of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer we have something that has gathered together out of the details of former incarnations. As a man of letters, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer seems to be an individuality complete in itself, for he is an artist with very definite and fixed characteristics. But in point of fact it is this that actually causes confusion, because one's attention is immediately directed away from these very definite characteristics to the elusive, double nature of the man.

Those who have eyes only for Conrad Ferdinand Meyer the poet, the famous author of all these works, will never come to know anything of his earlier lives. We have to look through the poet to the man; and then, in the background of the picture, there appear the figures of the earlier incarnations.

Paradoxical as it will seem to the modern mind, the only way in which human life can be understood in its deeper aspect is to centre our study of the course of world-events around observation of man himself in history. And man cannot be taken as belonging to one age of time only, as living in one earthly life only. In considering man, we must realise how the individuality passes from one earthly life to another, and how in the interval between death and a new birth he works upon and transforms that which has taken its course more in the subconscious realm of earthly life but for all that is connected with the actual shaping of the destiny. For the shaping of destiny takes place, not in the clear consciousness of the intellect, but in what weaves in the subconscious.

Let me now give you another example of how things work over in history through human individualities themselves.

In the first century A.D., about a hundred years after the founding of Christianity, we have an exceedingly significant Roman writer in the person of Tacitus. In all his work, and very particularly in his ‘Germania’, Tacitus proves himself a master of a concise, clear-cut style; he arrays the facts of history and geographical details in wonderfully rounded sentences with a genuinely epigrammatic ring. We may also remember how he, a man of wide culture, who knew everything considered worth knowing at that time—a hundred years after the founding of Christianity—makes no more than a passing allusion to Christ, mentioning Him as someone whom the Jews crucified but saying that this was of no great importance. Yet in point of fact, Tacitus is one of the greatest Romans.

Tacitus had a friend, the personality known in history as Pliny the Younger, himself the author of a number of letters and an ardent admirer of Tacitus.

To begin with, let us consider Pliny the Younger. He passes through the gate of death, through the life between death and a new birth, and is born again in the 11th century as a Countess of Tuscany in Italy, who is married to a Prince of Central Europe. The Prince has been robbed of his lands by Henry the Black of the Frankish-Salic dynasty and wants to secure for himself an estate in Italy. This Countess Beatrix owns the Castle of Canossa where, later on, Henry IV, the successor of Henry III the Black, was forced to make his famous penance to Pope Gregory.

Now this Countess Beatrix is an extraordinarily alert and active personality, taking keen interest in all the conditions and circumstances of the time. Indeed she cannot help being interested, for Henry III who had driven her husband, Gottfried, out of Alsace into Italy before his marriage to her, continued his persecution. Henry is a man of ruthless energy, who overthrows the Princes and Chieftains in his neighbourhood one after the other, does whatever he has a mind to do, and is not content when he has persecuted someone once, but does it a second time, when the victim has established himself somewhere else.—As I said, he was a man of ruthless vigour, a ‘great’ man in the medieval style of greatness. And when Gottfried had established himself in Tuscany, Henry was not content with having driven him out but proceeded to take the Countess back with him to Germany.

All these happenings gave the Countess an opportunity of forming a penetrating view of conditions in Italy, as well as of those in Germany. In her we have a person who is strongly representative of the time in which she lives, a woman of keen observation, vitality and energy, combined with largeness of heart and breadth of vision.

When, later on, Henry IV was forced to go on his journey of penance to Canossa, Beatrix's daughter Mathilde had become the owner of the Castle. Mathilde was on excellent terms with her mother whose qualities she had inherited, and was, in fact, the more gifted of the two. They were splendid women who because of all that had happened under Henry III and Henry IV, took a profound interest in the history of the times.

Investigation of these personalities leads to this remarkable result: the Countess Beatrix is the reincarnated Pliny the Younger, and her daughter Mathilde is the reincarnated Tacitus. Thus Tacitus, a writer of history in olden times, is now an observer of history on a wide scale—(when a woman has greatness in her she is often wonderfully gifted as an observer)—and not only an observer but a direct participant in historical events. For Mathilde is actually the owner of Canossa, the scene of issues that were immensely decisive in the Middle Ages. We find the former Tacitus now as an observer of history.

A deep intimacy develops between these two—mother and daughter—and their former work in the field of authorship enables them to grasp historical events with great perspicacity; subconsciously and instinctively they become closely linked with the world-process, as it takes its course in nature as well as in history.

And now, still later on, the following takes place.—Pliny the Younger, who in the Middle Ages was the Countess Beatrix, is born again in the 19th century, in a milieu of romanticism. He absorbs this romanticism—one cannot exactly say with enthusiasm, but with aesthetic pleasure. He has on the one hand this love for the romantic, and on the other—due to his family connections—a rather academic style; he finds his way into an academic style of writing. It is not, however, in line with his character. He is always wanting to get out of it, always wanting to discard this style.

This personality (the reincarnated Pliny the Younger and the Countess Beatrix) happens on one occasion brought about by destiny, to be visiting a friend, and takes up a book lying on the table, an English book. He is fascinated by its style and at once feels: The style I have had up till now and that I owe to my family relationships, does not really belong to me. This is my style, this is the style I need. It is wonderful; I must acquire it at all costs.

As a writer he becomes an imitator of this style—I mean, of course, an artistic imitator in the best sense, not a pedantic one—an imitator of this style in the artistic, aesthetic sense of the word. And do you know, the book he opened at that moment, reading it right through as quickly as he possibly could and then afterwards reading everything he could find of the author's writings—this book was Emerson's Representative Men. And the person in question adopted its style, immediately translated two essays from it, conceived a deep veneration for the author, and was never content until he was able to meet him in real life.

This man, who really only now found himself, who for the first time found the style that belonged to him in his admiration for the other—this reincarnation of Pliny the Younger and of the Countess Beatrix, is none other than Herman Grimm. And in Emerson we have to do with the reincarnated Tacitus, the reincarnated Countess Mathilde.

When we observe Herman Grimm's admiration for Emerson, when we remember the way in which Herman Grimm encounters Emerson, we can find again the relationship of Pliny the Younger to Tacitus. In every sentence that Herman Grimm writes after this time, we can see the old relationship between Pliny the Younger and Tacitus emerging. And we see the admiration that Pliny the Younger had for Tacitus, nay more, the complete accord and understanding between them, coming out again in the admiration with which Herman Grimm looks up to Emerson.

And now for the first time we shall grasp wherein the essential greatness of Emerson's style consists, we shall perceive that what Tacitus displayed in his own way, Emerson again displays in his own special way. How does Emerson work? Those who visited Emerson discovered his way of working. There he was in a room; around him were several chairs, several tables. Books lay open everywhere and Emerson walked about among them. He would often read a sentence, imbibe it thoroughly and from it form his own magnificent, free-moving, epigrammatic sentences. That was how he worked. There you have an exact picture of Tacitus in life! Tacitus travels, takes hold of life everywhere; Emerson observes life in books. It all lives again!

And then there is this unconquerable desire in Herman Grimm to meet Emerson. Destiny leads him to Representative Men and he sees at once: this is how I must write, this is my true style. As I said, he had already acquired an academic style of writing from his uncle Jacob Grimm and his father Wilhelm Grimm, and he then abandons it. He is impelled by destiny to adopt a completely different style.

In Herman Grimm's writings we see how wide were his historical interests. He has an inner relationship of soul with Germany, combined with a deep interest in Italy. All this comes out in his writings.

These are things that go to show how the affairs of destiny work themselves out. And how is one led to perceive such things? One must first have an impression and then everything crystallizes around it. Thus we had first to envisage the picture of Herman Grimm opening Emerson's Representative Men. Now Herman Grimm used to read in a peculiar manner. He read a passage and then immediately drew back from what he had read: it was a gesture as though he were swallowing what he had read, sentence by sentence. And it was this inner gesture of swallowing sentence by sentence that made it possible to trace Herman Grimm to his earlier incarnation. In the case of Emerson it was the walking to and fro in front of the open books, as well as the rather stiff, half-Roman carriage of the man, as Herman Grimm saw him when they first met in Italy—it was these impressions that led one back from Emerson to Tacitus. Plasticity of vision is needed to follow up things of this kind.

My dear friends, I have given you here another example which should indicate how our study of history needs to be deepened. This deepening must really be evident among us as one of the fruits of the new impulse that should take effect in the Anthroposophical Society through the Christmas Foundation Meeting. We must in future go bravely and boldly forward to the study of far-reaching spiritual connections; we must have courage to reach a vantage-point for observation of these great spiritual connections. For this we shall need, above all, deep earnestness. Our life in Anthroposophy must be filled with earnestness.

And this earnestness will grow in the Anthroposophical Society if those who really want to do something in the Society give more and more thought to the contents of the News Sheet that is sent out every week into all circles of Anthroposophists as a supplement to the weekly periodical, Das Goetheanum. A picture is given there of how one may shape the life in the Groups in the sense and meaning of the Christmas Meeting, of what should be done in the members' meetings, how the teaching should be given and studied. The News Sheet is also intended to give a picture of what is happening among us. Its title is: ‘What is going on in the Anthroposophical Society’, and its aim is to bring into the whole Society a unity of thought, to spread a common atmosphere of thought over the thousands of Anthroposophists everywhere. When we live in such an atmosphere, when we understand what it means for all our thinking to be stimulated and directed by the ‘Leading Thoughts’, and when we understand how the Goetheanum will thus be placed in the centre as a concrete reality through the initiative of the esoteric Vorstand—I have emphasised again and again that we now have to do with a Vorstand which conceives its task to be the inauguration of an esoteric impulse—when we understand this truly, then that which has now to flow through the Anthroposophical Movement will be carried forward in the right way. For Anthroposophical Movement and Anthroposophical Society must become one. The Anthroposophical Society must make the whole cause of Anthroposophy its own.

And it is true to say that if once this ‘thinking in common’ is an active reality, then it can also become the bearer of comprehensive, far-reaching spiritual knowledge. A power will come to life in the Anthroposophical Society that really ought to be in it, for the recent developments of civilisation need to be given a tremendous turn if they are not to lead to a complete decline.

What is said concerning successive earthly lives of this or that individual may at first seem paradoxical, but if you look more closely, if you look into the progress made by the human beings of whom we have spoken in this connection, you will see that what is said is founded on reality; you will see that we are able to look into the weaving life of gods and men when with the eye of spirit we try in this way to apprehend the spiritual forces.

This, my dear friends, is what I would lay upon your hearts and souls. If you take with you this feeling, then this Easter Meeting will be like a revitalising of the Christmas Meeting; for if the Christmas Meeting is to work as it should, then all that has developed out of it must be the means of revitalising it, of bringing it to new life just as if it were present with us.

May many things grow out of the Christmas Meeting, in constant renewal! May many things grow out of it through the activity of courageous souls, souls who are fearless representatives of Anthroposophy. If our meetings result in strengthening courage in the souls of Anthroposophists, then there will grow what is needed in the Society as the body for the Anthroposophical soul: a courageous presentation to the world of the revelations of the Spirit vouchsafed in the age of Light that has now dawned after the end of Kali-Yuga; for these revelations are necessary for the further evolution of man. If we live in the consciousness of this we shall be inspired to work courageously. May this courage be strengthened by every meeting we hold. It can be so if we are able to take in all earnestness things that seem paradoxical and foolish to those who set the tone of thought in our day. But after all, it has often happened that the dominant tone of thought in one period was soon afterwards replaced by the very thing that was formerly suppressed. May a recognition of the true nature of history, and of how it is bound up with the onward flow of the lives of men, give courage for anthroposophical activity—the courage that is essential for the further progress of human civilisation.

• 1. Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery-Wisdom of Man. (on-line as: The Easter Festival in Relation to the Mysteries) Dornach, 19th–22nd April, 1924.

Studies that are concerned with the karma of human beings must be undertaken with deep earnestness and inwardly assimilated. For it is not the mere knowledge of some particular karmic connection that is important. What is really important is that such studies should quicken the whole of man's nature, enabling him to find his bearings in life.

Such studies will never be fruitful if they lead to greater indifference towards human beings than is otherwise the case; they will be fruitful only if they kindle deeper love and understanding than are possible when account is taken merely of the impressions of a single life.

Anyone who reviews the successive epochs in the evolution of mankind cannot fail to realise that in the course of history very much has changed in man's whole way of thinking and perception, in all his views of the world and of life. Generally speaking, man is less interested in the past than in the future, for which the foundations have yet to be laid. But anyone who has a sufficiently clear grasp of how the souls of men have changed in the course of the earth's evolution will not shrink from the necessity of having himself to undergo the change that will lead him to study, not merely the single earthly life of some individual, but the succession of earthly lives, in so far as these can be brought within the range of his vision.

I think that the examples given in the last lecture—Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Pestalozzi, and others—can show how understanding of a personality, love for this personality, can be enhanced when the latest earth-life is viewed against the background of other lives of which it is the outcome.

And now, in order that our studies may be really fruitful, I want to return to a question to which, as many of those present here will know, I have already alluded. Reference is often made in spiritual science to the existence in olden times of Initiates possessed of clairvoyant vision, personalities who were able to communicate the secrets of the spiritual world. And from this the question quite naturally arises: Where are these Initiates in our own time? Have they reincarnated?

To answer this question it is necessary to point out how greatly a later earth-life may differ from a preceding one in respect of knowledge and also in respect of other activities of the soul. For when in the time between death and a new birth the moment approaches for the human being to descend to the earth and unite with a physical-etheric organisation, a very great deal has to take place. The direction towards family, race and so forth, has indeed long been determined, but the resolve to undergo this tremendous change in the form of existence, the change involved in the transition from the world of soul-and-spirit into the physical world—this resolve is a stupendous matter. For as you can well imagine, circumstances are not as they are on earth, where the human being grows weaker as he approaches the end of his normal life; after all his experiences on earth he will actually have little to do with the decision to enter into a different form of existence when he passes through the gate of death. The change, in this case, comes upon him of itself, it breaks in upon him.

Here on earth, death is something that breaks in upon man. The descent from the spiritual world is completely different. It is a matter, then, of fully conscious action, a deliberate decision proceeding from the deepest foundations of the soul. We must realise what a stupendous transformation takes place in the human being when the time comes for him to exchange the forms of life in the pre-earthly existence of soul-and-spirit for those of earthly existence. The descent entails adaptation to the prevailing conditions of civilisation and culture and also to the bodily constitution which a particular epoch is able to provide. Our own epoch does not readily yield bodies—let alone conditions of culture and civilisation—in which Initiates can live again as they lived in the past. And when the time approaches for the soul of some former Initiate to use a physical body once again, it is a matter of accepting this body as it is, and of growing into the environment and the current form of education. But what once was present in this soul is not lost; it merely comes to expression in some other way. The basic configuration of the soul remains but assumes a different form.

Now in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D. it was still possible for the soul to acquire a deep knowledge of Initiation truths, because at that time, especially in Southern Europe and Asia Minor, body followed soul, that is to say, the bodily functions were able to adapt themselves inwardly to the soul. One who may have lived in the early Christian centuries as an Initiate, with a soul wholly inward-turned and full of wisdom, is obliged to descend to-day into a kind of body which, owing to the intervening development, is directed pre-eminently to the external world, lives altogether in the external world. The result is that owing to the bodily constitution, the inner concentration of soul-forces that was still possible in the 3rd or 4th century of our era, is so no longer. And so the following could take place in the course of evolution.—I am telling you of things that reveal themselves to inner vision.

There was a certain Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, typical of all such institutions in that part of the world in the early Christian centuries. Traditions were everywhere alive in those olden days when men were deeply initiated into these Mysteries. But everywhere, too, men were more or less aware of the rules that must be imposed on the soul in order to acquire knowledge leading to its own deep foundations, as well as out into the cosmic All. And in the early Christian centuries these very Mysteries of Asia Minor were occupied with a momentous question.

Boundless wisdom had streamed through the sanctuaries of the Mysteries. If you will read what was described in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact—as far as description was possible in a printed publication at that time—you will see that the ultimate aim of all this wisdom was an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And in these Mysteries of Asia Minor the great question was: How will the sublime content of the Mystery of Golgotha, the reality of what has streamed into the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha—how will it evolve further in the hearts and minds of men? And how will the ancient, primeval wisdom—a wisdom that encompassed the Beings who have their habitations in the stars and the manifold orders of Divine-Spiritual Beings who guide the universe and the life of man—how will this primeval wisdom unite with what is concentrated in the Mystery of Golgotha? How will it unite with the Impulse which, proceeding from a sublime Sun-Being, from the Christ, is now to pour into mankind?—That was the burning question in these Mysteries of Asia Minor.

There was one personality who with his Mystery-wisdom and Mystery-experiences felt this question with overwhelming intensity. It is in truth a shattering experience when in the search for karmic connections one comes upon this man who was initiated in one of these Mysteries in Asia Minor in the early Christian centuries. It is a shattering experience, for with his Initiation-knowledge he was aware in every fibre of his being of the need to grasp the meaning and import of the Mystery of Golgotha, and he was faced with the problem: What will happen now? How will these weak human souls be able to receive it?

Weighed down in soul by this burning question concerning the destiny of Christianity, this Initiate was walking one day in the wider precincts of his Mystery-centre, when an experience came to him of an event that made an overwhelming impression—the treacherous murder of Julian the Apostate. With the vision and insight of Initiation he lived through this event.

It was known to him that Julian the Apostate had attained a certain degree of Initiation in the ancient Mysteries, that he wanted to preserve for the spiritual life of mankind, the impulses that had been cultivated in the ancient Mysteries, to ensure their continuance, in short to unite Christianity with the wisdom of the Mysteries. He knew that Julian the Apostate proclaimed, in the sense of the Mystery-wisdom, that as well as the physical Sun there is also a Spiritual Sun, and that whoever knows the Spiritual Sun, knows Christ. But this, teaching was regarded as evil in the days of Julian the Apostate and led to his treacherous murder on his journey to Persia. This most significant, symptomatic event in world-history was lived through by the Initiate of whom I am speaking.

Those of you who for many years have been listening to what has been said on the subject of karmic connections in world-history, will remember that in the lectures I once gave in Stuttgart on certain chapters of occult history—reference was also made to the same theme at the Christmas Foundations Meeting¹—I spoke of the deep tragedy of Julian the Apostate's position in the history of humanity.

His death was felt and experienced by the Initiate to whom I am now referring, whose Initiate-knowledge, received in a Mystery-centre in Asia Minor, was shadowed by the question: What will become of Christianity? And through these symptomatic events there came to him the crystal-clear realisation: A time will come when Christianity will be misunderstood, will live only in traditions, when men will no longer know anything of the glory and sublimity of Christ, the Sun-Spirit Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth.

All this lay like a weight upon the soul of the Initiate. And for the rest of his life at that time he was heavy-hearted and sorrowful in regard to the evolution of Christianity. He experienced the consternation and dismay which a symptomatic event of the kind referred to must inevitably cause in an Initiate.—It made an overwhelming, shattering impression upon him.

And then we go further.—The impression received by this Initiate was bound to lead to a reincarnation comparatively soon afterwards—in point of fact at the time of the Thirty Years' War, when very many outstanding, interesting incarnations took place, incarnations that have played an important part in the historical evolution of mankind.

The Initiate was born again as a woman, at the beginning of the 17th century, before the actual outbreak of the Thirty Years' War. She lived on into the time of the conflict and was in contact with certain attempts that were made from the side of Rosicrucianism to correct the tendencies of the age and to make preparation in a spiritual way for the future. This work, however, was largely overshadowed and submerged by the savagery and brutality prevailing during the Thirty Years' War. Think only of the Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreuz which appeared shortly before its outbreak. And many other significant impulses came into the life of mankind at that time, before being stamped out or brutalised by the War.

This personality, who as an Initiate had experienced the deeply symptomatic event connected with Julian the Apostate and had then passed through the incarnation as a woman in the 17th century, was born again in the 19th century. All that had become even more inward during the incarnation as a woman, all that had formerly been present in the soul—not the Initiation-wisdom but the horror caused by the terrible event—all this, in the last third of the 19th century, poured into a peculiarly characteristic view of the world which penetrated deeply into the prevailing incongruities of human existence.

The whole tenor and trend of the present age is such that it is difficult for one who has carried over ancient Initiation-wisdom from an earlier earth-life into the life of the 19th and 20th centuries, to work effectively through deeds. And so, in this case, what was brought over—deeply transformed and apparently externalised, though in reality still inward—pressed its way from the heart—the seat of the old Initiation-wisdom—towards the senses and sense-observation, striving to find expression in poetry, in literature.

That is the reason why recent times have produced so many really splendid examples of literature. Only they are incoherent, they are simply not intelligible as they stand. For they have been created not only by the personality who was present on earth at the end of the 19th or beginning of the 20th centuries, but an additional factor has been some experience in a past life such as I have related, an experience that had such a shattering effect upon an Initiate—albeit an Initiate in Mysteries already decadent. This shattering experience in the soul works on, streams into artistic, poetic qualities of soul—and what, in this case, comes over in so characteristic a way, lives itself out in the personality of Ibsen.

When this vista is open to one, the secrets of the evolution of humanity light up from writings which appeared at the end of the 19th century and which cannot be the work of a single man but of a man through whom and in whom earlier epochs are also coming to expression.

In approaching a theme like this, we shall certainly not lose respect either for the course taken by world-history or for the single personality who stands before us with greatness and distinction. In very truth, the experiences that come upon one in this domain are shattering—that is to say when such matters are pursued with the necessary earnestness.

Now you will often have heard tell of an alchemist who lived in a comparatively early period of the Middle Ages: Basilius Valentinus (Basil Valentine), a Benedictine monk. His achievements in the spheres of medicine and alchemy were of momentous significance and to study him in connection with karmic relationships in world-history leads to remarkable results, results which show very clearly how difficult it is to understand the age in which we ourselves are living.

Many things in our time are not only incomprehensible but often repellent, disagreeable, horrifying in a certain respect, and if we look at life merely as it is perceptible to the senses, it is impossible not to feel indignation and disgust.

It is different, however, for one who can perceive the human and historical connections. Things are by no means what they seem! Traits may show themselves in life to-day for which the onlookers have, quite understandably, nothing but censure and indignation. And yet all the time, even in the unpleasant elements themselves, there may be something that is intensely fascinating. This will be the case more and more frequently.

As I said, there in the early Middle Ages we find Basilius Valentinus, a Benedictine monk, engaged in the pursuit of medicine and alchemy in his cellars in the monastery and making a number of important investigations. There are others with him who are his pupils and they write down what Basilius Valentinus has said to them. Consequently there are hardly any original writings of Basilius Valentinus himself; but there are writings of pupils which contain a great deal that is genuinely his wisdom, his alchemical wisdom.

Now when, at a certain time of my life, one of the pupils of Basilius Valentinus who especially interested me came into my field of vision, I realised: This pupil is again in incarnation, but spiritually there has been a remarkable metamorphosis. He has come again in the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.

But the alchemical activity, directed without co-ordination towards the senses, manifested outwardly as a view of life in which alchemical concepts are always, so to speak, being welded into sense-observations. In this later incarnation the man observes external facts—how people act, how things happen among them, how they talk to one another—and he groups it all together in a way that is often repellent. But the explanation lies in the fact that the personality in question had, in an earlier incarnation, worked at alchemy under Basilius Valentinus. And now he jumbles everything together—the relationships between people, how they behave to one another, what they say, what they do and so forth. He does not look at these things with the eyes of a modern philistine—far from it!—but with the eye of a soul in which impulses from his former alchemical pursuits are still alive. He jumbles up events that occur among men, makes dramas out of them, and becomes: Frank Wedekind.

These things must of course be studied in pursuance of a longing for a genuine understanding of man. When this is the case, life becomes, not poorer, but infinitely richer. Take Wedekind's ‘Hidalla’ or any other of his dramas which make the brain reel when one attempts to find the thread connecting what comes first with what comes later. Yet there is something fascinating about it for anyone who can look beyond the surface, and the commonplace judgments of the critics sitting in the stalls will leave him untouched. From their own standpoint, of course, these critics are justified—but that is of no account. The real point is that world-history has here produced a strange and remarkable phenomenon.—Alchemical thinking, flung as it were across centuries, is now applied to human life and human deeds; these, together with human rules and standards are all jumbled into a hotchpotch, just as once in alchemical kitchens—at a time when alchemy was already on the decline—substances and their forces were mixed in retorts and tests made of their effects.

Even in respect of the point of time at which they occur on earth, the lives of men are determined by connections of destiny and karma. Let me give you another example in corroboration of this.

We turn our gaze back to the time when the Platonic School flourishes in Greece. There was Plato, surrounded by a number of pupils. In their characters these pupils differed greatly from one another and what Plato himself depicts in the Dialogues, where characters of the most varied types appear and converse together, is in many respects a true picture of his School. Very different characters came together in this School.

In the School there were two personalities in particular who imbibed, each in a very different way, all that fell from Plato's lips, bringing such sublime illumination to his pupils, and that he also carried further in conversations with them.

One of these two pupils was a personality of rare sensitiveness and refinement. He was particularly receptive to everything that Plato did, through his teaching on the Ideas, to lift men's minds and hearts above the things of earth. Everywhere we find Plato affirming that over against the transitoriness of the single events in man's life and environment, stand the Eternal Ideas. The material world is transitory; but the material world is only a picture of the Idea which—itself eternal—passes in perpetual metamorphoses through the temporal and the transitory. Thus did Plato lift his pupils above the transitory things belonging to the external world of sense to contemplation of the eternal Ideas which hover over them as the heavens hover over the earth.

But in this Platonic treatment of the world, man in his true being fares rather badly. For the Platonic conceptions and mode of thinking cannot properly be applied to man, in whom the Idea itself becomes alive in objective reality. Man is too individual. The Ideas, according to Plato, hover above the things. This is true in respect of the minerals, crystals and the other phenomena of the lifeless sense-world; Goethe too, while on the track of the archetypal plant (the ‘Urpflanze’) was observing the varying types; and the same applies in the case of the animals. With man, however, it is a matter of seeking the living Idea within each single human individuality. It was Aristotle—not Plato—who taught that the Idea as entelechy has entered into the human being.

The first of the two pupils shared with whole-hearted fervour in this heavenward flight in Platonism. With his spiritual vision he could accompany Plato in this heavenward flight, in this soaring above the earth, and words of mellowed sweetness would fall from his lips in the Platonic School on the sublimity of the Ideas that hover over and above the things of earth. In his soul he soared to the Ideas. When he was not lingering in his world of vision but living again in his heart and mind, going about among the Greeks as he loved to do, he took the warmest interest in every human being with whom he came into contact. It was only when he had come down as it were to everyday life that his heart and feelings could be focused upon the many whom he loved so well, for his visions drew him away from the earth. And so in this pupil there was a kind of split between the life of heart when he was among living human beings and the life of soul when he was transported to the Eternal Ideas, when he was listening in the Academy to Plato's words or was himself formulating in words full of sweetness, the inspirations brought by Platonism. There was something wonderfully sensitive about this personality.

Now a close and intimate friendship existed between this man and another pupil in the Platonic School. But in the course of it, a different trend of character which I will now describe, was developing in the friend, with the result that the two grew apart. Not that their love for one another cooled, but in their whole way of thinking they grew apart; life separated them. They were able, at first, to understand one another well, but later on even this was no longer possible. And it led to the one I have described becoming irritable and ‘nervy’ as we should say to-day, whenever the other spoke in the way that came naturally to him.

The second pupil was no less ready than the first to look upwards to the Eternal Ideas which were the inspiration of so much living activity in the School of Plato. This pupil, too, could be completely transported from the earth. But the deep, warm-hearted interest in numbers of his fellow human beings—that he lacked. On the other hand he was intensely attracted by the myths and sagas of the ancient gods which were extant among the people and were well-known to him. He interested himself deeply in what we to-day call Greek Mythology, in the figures of Zeus, Athene and the rest. It was his tendency more or less to pass living human beings by, but he took a boundless interest in the gods whom he pictured as having lived on earth in a remote past and as being the progenitors of humanity.

And so he felt the urge and the strong desire to apply the inspiration experienced in his life of soul to an understanding of the profound wisdom contained in the sagas of the gods and heroes. Men's relation to such sagas was of course completely different in Greece from what it is to-day. In Greece it was all living reality, not merely the content of books or traditions.

This second personality who had been on terms of intimate friendship with the first, also grew out of the friendship—it was the same with them both. But as members of the Platonic School there was a link between them. Now the Platonic School had this characteristic.—Its pupils developed forces in themselves which tended to separate them from one another, to drive them apart after the School had for a time held them close together. As a result of this, individualities developed such as the two I have described, individualities who in spite of their different natures belonged together and who then grew apart.

These two individualities—they were born again as women in Italy in the days of the Renaissance—came again to the earth in modern times; the first too early and the second rather too late. This is connected with the strong resolution that is required before making the descent to incarnation.

Having passed through the gate of death, the one I described first, who had soared in spirit to super-earthly realms but without the fullness of human nature which expressed itself only in his heart and feelings, was able between death and rebirth to apprehend what pertains to the First Hierarchy, the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; to some extent he could also apprehend the Second Hierarchy, but not the Hierarchy immediately above man, not, therefore, the Hierarchy, through which one learns how the human body is built up and organised here on earth.

He thus became a personality who in pre-earthly existence had developed little insight into the constitution and nature of the human body; hence, when he was born again, he did not take into himself the final impulse. He made a partial, not a full descent into the body, did not come right down into it, but always hovered a little above it.

His friend from the Platonic School waited before descending to incarnation. The reason for the waiting was that had the two of them met, had they been actual contemporaries, they would not have been able to tolerate one another. And yet, for all that, the one who had been wont to speak at such length about his intercourse with men, recounting it with such charm and sweetness to the other—who did not go among his fellows but was engrossed in the myths and sagas of the gods—this first personality was destined to make a deep impression upon the other, to precede him. The second followed later.

This second personality, having steeped himself in Imaginations of the gods, had now developed a high degree of understanding of all that has to do with man. Accordingly he wanted to extend his time in the spiritual world and gather impulses that would enable him to take deep hold of the body. And what actually happened was that he took hold of the body too forcefully, he sank too deeply into it.

Thus we have here two differing configurations of destiny. Of two members of the Platonic School, one takes too slight a hold of the body in the second incarnation afterwards and the other takes too strong a hold. The one cannot completely enter his body; he is impelled into it in his youth but out of it again soon afterwards and is obliged to remain outside. This is Hölderlin.

The other is carried so deeply into his body that he enters with too much force into his organs and suffers almost lifelong illness. This is Hamerling.

Thus we have before us great human destinies stretching through the ages of time, and the impulses which gave rise to these destinies; and we are now able to divine how the spiritual impulses work. For we must place this fact in all clarity before our souls: an individuality like Hölderlin, who has come from the Platonic School and who cannot enter fully into his body but has to remain outside it, such an individuality experiences in the dimness of insanity, impulses that work in preparation for coming earthly lives, impulses that destine him for greatness. And it is the same with the other, Robert Hamerling.

Illness and health appear in quite a different light when considered in the setting of destiny than when they are observed within the bounds of the single earthly life.

I think it can surely be said that reverence will arise in men's hearts and minds when life is treated in this way—reverence and awe for the mysterious happenings brought about by the spiritual world. Again and again I must emphasise that these things are not being told in order to satisfy cravings for sensation, but to lead us more and more deeply into a knowledge and understanding of the spiritual life. And it is only through this deeper penetration into the spiritual life that the external, sense-life of man can be explained and illumined.

• 1. Lecture-Course XVI. Occult History. Stuttgart, December 27th–31st, 1910 and January 1st, 1911. World-History in the Light of Anthroposophy. Dornach. December 24th–31st, 1923.

We have now studied a number of examples showing how destiny unfolds, examples which can explain and illumine the life and history of mankind. The purpose of these studies has been to show that individuals themselves carry into later epochs of earthly existence what they have experienced and assimilated in earlier times. Connections have come to light which enable us to understand how certain decisive actions of men have their roots in moral causes created by themselves in the course of the ages.

It is not this kind of causal connection only that the study of karma can disclose to us. Many other things, too, become intelligible, which to external observation seem at first obscure and incomprehensible. But if we are to participate in the great change in thinking and perception that is essential in the near future if civilisation is to progress and not fall into decline, it is incumbent upon us to develop, in the first place, a sense for what in ordinary circumstances is beyond our grasp and the understanding of which requires insight into the deeper relationships of existence. A man who finds everything comprehensible may, of course, see no need to know anything of more deeply lying causes. But to find everything in the world comprehensible is a sign of illusion and merely indicates superficiality. In point of fact the vast majority of things in the world are incomprehensible to the ordinary consciousness. To be able to stand in wonder before so much that is incomprehensible in everyday life—that is really the beginning of a true striving for knowledge.

A call that has so often gone out from this platform is that anthroposophists shall have enthusiasm in their seeking, enthusiasm for what is implicit in Anthroposophy. And this enthusiasm must take its start from a realisation of the wonders confronting us in everyday life. Only then shall we be led to reach out to the causes, to the deeper forces underlying existence around us.

This attitude of wonder towards the surrounding world can spring both from contemplation of history and from observation of what is immediately present. How often our attention is arrested by events in history which seem to indicate that human life here and there has lost all rhyme and reason. And human life does indeed lose meaning if we focus our attention upon a single event in history and omit to ask: How do certain types of character emerge from this event? What form will they take in a later incarnation? ... If such questions remain unasked, certain events in history seem to be entirely meaningless, irrelevant, pointless. They lose meaning if they cannot become impulses of soul in a subsequent life on earth, find their balance and then work on into the future.

Now there is certainly something that really does not make sense in the phenomenon of a personality such as the Roman Emperor Nero. No reference has yet been made to Nero in lectures in the Anthroposophical Movement.

Think of all that history recounts of Nero. In face of such a personality it seems as if life could be mocked and scorned with impunity, as if the utterly flippant disregard for life displayed by one in a position of great power and authority, brought no consequences. Anyone hearing of Nero's deeds must be dull-witted if he is not driven to ask: What becomes of a soul such as this, who scorns the whole world, who regards the life of other men, nay even the existence of a whole city, as something he can play with? “What an artist is lost in me!” is a saying attributed to Nero, and it seems to be in line with his whole attitude and tenor of mind. Utmost flippancy, an intense desire and urge for destruction, acknowledged even by himself—and the soul actually taking pleasure in it all!

One can only be repelled by the story, for here is a personality who literally radiates destruction. And the question forces itself upon us: What becomes of such a soul?

Now we must be quite clear on this point: Whatever is discharged, as it were, upon the world, is reflected in the life between death and a new birth, and discharged in turn upon the soul who has been responsible for the destruction. A few centuries later, that is to say, a comparatively short time afterwards, Nero appeared again in the world in an unimportant form of existence. During this incarnation a certain balance was brought about in respect of the mania for destruction, the enthusiasm for destruction in which he had indulged as a ruler, simply out of an inner urge. In that next life on earth something of this was balanced out, for the same individuality was now in a position where he was obliged to destroy; he was in a subordinate position, acting under orders. The soul had now to realise what it is like when such acts are not committed out of free will while in a position of supreme power.

Matters of this kind must be studied quite objectively and all emotion avoided—that is absolutely essential. In a certain respect, such a destiny calls for pity—for to be as cruel as Nero, to have a mania for destruction as great as his, is, after all, a destiny. There is no need for hatred or censure; moreover such an attitude would prevent one from experiencing all that is required in order to understand the further developments. Insight into the things that have been spoken of here is possible only when they are looked at objectively, when no hostile judgment is passed but when human destiny is really understood. Things disclose themselves quite clearly, provided one has the faculty for understanding them ... That this Nero-destiny came vividly before me on one occasion was attributable to what seemed to be chance—but it was only seemingly chance.

One day, when a terrible event had occurred, an event of which I shall speak in a moment and which had a shattering effect throughout the region concerned, I happened to be visiting a person frequently mentioned in my autobiography: Karl Julius Schröer. When I arrived I found him profoundly shocked, as numbers were, by what had happened. And the word “Nero” fell from his lips—apparently without reason—as though it burst from dark depths of the spirit. To all appearances the word came entirely out of the blue. But later on it became quite clear that in reality the Akashic Record was here being voiced through human lips. The event referred to was the following.—

The Austrian Crown Prince had always been acclaimed as a brilliant personality, and great hopes were entertained for the time when he would ascend the Throne. Although all kinds of things were known about the behaviour of the Crown Prince Rudolf, they were accepted as almost inevitable in the case of one of such high rank; nobody dreamt for a moment that the things told about him might lead to any serious, tragic conflicts. It was therefore an overwhelming shock when it became known in Vienna that the Crown Prince Rudolf had met his death in mysterious circumstances near the Convent of the Holy Cross, outside Baden, near Vienna. Details gradually came to light and at first there was talk of a “fatal accident”—indeed this was officially announced. Then, after the official announcement, it became known that the Crown Prince had gone to his hunting lodge accompanied by the Baroness Vetsera and that there they had both met their death.

The details are so well-known that there is no need to recount them here. All that followed made it impossible for anyone acquainted with the circumstances to doubt that this was a case of suicide. For what happened first of all was that after the issue of the official announcement of the fatal accident, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Koloman Tisza, took exception to this version, and obtained from the then Emperor of Austria the promise that this incorrect statement should not be allowed to stand. The Hungarian Prime Minister refused to be responsible for making this announcement to his people, and he was very emphatic in his refusal. Besides this, there was a man on the medical staff who was one of the most courageous doctors in Vienna at the time and who was to assist at the post-mortem examination; and this man said that he would sign nothing that was not corroborated by the objective facts.

Well, the objective facts were a clear indication of suicide; this was officially admitted and the earlier announcement corrected. And if there were no other circumstances than the admission of suicide by a family as fervently Catholic as that of the Austrian Emperor, that alone would have precluded the slightest shadow of doubt.

Nobody who can judge the facts objectively will think of doubting it, but there is one very obvious question: How was it possible that anyone with such a brilliant future should turn to suicide when faced with circumstances which, in his position, could easily have remained concealed? Obviously, there was no objective reason why a Crown Prince should commit suicide on account of a love affair—I mean that there was no objective reason attributable to external circumstances.

There was no objective reason for such an action, but the fact was that this heir to a Throne found life utterly worthless—a state of mind which had, of course, a psychopathological basis. This itself needs to be understood, for a pathological condition of the soul is also connected with destiny. And the fundamental fact here is that one to whom a brilliant future was beckoning, found life utterly worthless.

This, my dear friends, is one of those phenomena in life which seem to be wholly inexplicable. And in spite of all that has been written or said about the whole affair, a true judgment can be formed only by one who says to himself: This single human life, this life of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, gives no clue to the suicide or to the causes of the preceding pathological state of mind; something else must be at the bottom of it all.

And now, if you picture to yourself the Nero soul, having subsequently experienced what I described and passing at length into that heir to a Throne who does away with himself, who forces the consequences by means of suicide ... then the whole setting is altered. Within the soul there is a tendency which originates in preceding earthly lives; in the time between death and rebirth the soul perceives in direct vision that nothing but forces of destruction have issued from it—and now the ‘grand reversal’, as I will call it, has to be experienced.

And how is it experienced?—A life abounding in things of external value reflects itself inwardly in such a way that its bearer considers it utterly worthless, and commits suicide. The soul becomes sick, half demented, seeking an external entanglement in the love affair, and so forth. But these things are merely the consequences of the soul's endeavour as it were to direct against itself all the arrows which in the past had been directed to the world. And then, when we have insight into these relationships, we perceive the unfolding of an overwhelming tragedy, but for all that a righteous, just tragedy. The two pictures are co-ordinated.

As I have said so often, it is the underlying details that make real investigation possible in such domains. Many factors in life must work together here.

I told you that when this shattering event had just occurred, I was on my way to Schröer. The event itself was not the reason for my visit—I happened to be on the way to him and he was the first person to whom I spoke about the matter. He said: “Nero! ...”—quite out of the blue, and I could not help asking myself: Why does he think of Nero just at this moment? He actually introduced the conversation with the mention of Nero. This amazed me at the time. But the shattering effect was all the greater in view of the particular circumstances in which the word “Nero” was uttered. Two days previously—all this was public knowledge—a Soirée had been held at the house of Prince Reuss, then German Ambassador in Vienna. The Austrian Crown Prince was present, and Schröer too, and the latter saw how the Crown Prince was behaving on that occasion—two days before the catastrophe. The strange behaviour at the Soirée, the suicide two days later, all of it described so dramatically by Schröer—this, in connection with the utterance of the name “Nero”, made one realise that there was good reason for further investigation.

Now why did I often follow up things that happened to fall from Schröer's lips? It was not that I simply took anything he said as a pointer, for he, of course, knew nothing of such matters. But many things he said, especially those which seemed to shoot out of the blue, were significant for me because of something that once came to light in a curious way.

A conversation I had with Schröer on one occasion led to the subject of phrenology. Not humorously, but with the seriousness with which he was wont to speak—of such things, employing a certain solemnity of language even in everyday matters, Schröer said to me: “I too was once examined by a phrenologist. He felt my head all over and discovered up there the bump of which he said: ‘There's the theosophist in you’.”—Remember that this was in the eighties of last century when there was as yet no talk of Anthroposophy. It was Schröer, not I, who was examined by the phrenologist who said: “There's the theosophist in you.” Now Schröer, outwardly, was far from being a theosophist—my autobiography makes that abundantly clear. But it was just when he spoke of things without apparent motive that his utterances were sometimes profoundly significant. And so there seemed to be a certain connection between the utterance of the word ‘Nero’ and the outer confirmation of his theosophical trend. This was what made him a personality to whose spontaneous utterances one paid heed.

And so investigation into the Nero destiny shed light on the subsequent Meyerling destiny and it was found that in the personality of the Austrian Crown Prince Rudolf one actually had to do with the Nero soul.

This investigation—which has taken a long time, for in matters of this kind one must be extremely cautious—presented special difficulties to me because I was continually being diverted by the fact that all kinds of people—you may believe it or not—were claiming with fanatical insistence that they themselves had been Nero! So it was a matter, first of all, of combating the subjective force emanating from these alleged reborn Neroes. One had to get through a kind of thicket.

But what I am telling you now, my dear friends, is much more important because it has to do with an historical phenomenon, namely, Nero himself. And to understand the further development is much more important than to understand, let us say, the actual catastrophe at Meyerling. For now we see how things which, to begin with, arouse horror and indignation—as does the life of Nero—live themselves out according to a perfect world-justice; we see how this world-justice is fulfilled and how the wrong returns, but in such a way that the individuality is himself involved in creating the balance.—That is what is so stupendous about karma.

Still more can become clear when such wrong is balanced out in the course of particular earthly lives. In this case the balance will be almost complete, for you will realise how closely the fulfilment is bound up with the compensatory deed. Just think of it ... a life which considers itself worthless, so worthless that a whole Empire (Austria was then a great Empire) and the rulership of it are abandoned! The suicide in such circumstances bears the consequence that after death it all has to be lived through in direct spiritual vision. This is the fulfilment, albeit the terrible fulfilment, of what may be called the righteous justice of destiny, the balancing out of the wrong.

But on the other hand, leaving all this aside, there was a tremendous force in Nero—a force which must not be lost for humanity. This force must of course be purified and we have spoken of the purification. If this has been accomplished, such a soul will carry its forces into later epochs of the earth's existence with salutary effects. When we apprehend karma as righteous compensation, we shall never fail to see how it tests the human being, puts him to the test even when he takes his place in life in a way that horrifies us. The just compensation is brought about, but the human forces are not lost. What has been committed in one life may, under certain circumstances, and provided the righteous justice has taken effect, even be transformed into a power for good. That is why a destiny such as the one described to-day is so profoundly moving.

This brings us to the consideration of good and evil, viewed in the light of karma: good and evil, fortune and misfortune, happiness and sorrow—as man experiences them breaking into, shining into, his individual life.

In regard to perception of a man's moral situation there was far greater sensitivity in earlier epochs of history than is to be found in modern humanity. Men of the present age are not really sensitive at all to the problem of destiny. Now and again, of course, one comes across someone who has an inkling of the onset of destiny; but real understanding of its problems is shrouded in darkness and bewilderment in our modern civilisation, which regards the single earthly life as something complete in itself. Things happen—and that is that. A disaster that befalls a man is commented on but not really pursued in thought. This is pre-eminently the case when through something that seems to be pure chance, a man who to all appearances is thoroughly good and who has committed no wrong, either perishes, or perhaps does not actually perish but has to endure terrible suffering on account of some injury, or other cause. No thought is given to why such a fate should cut in this way into a so-called innocent life.

Humanity was not always so obtuse and insensitive with regard to the problem of destiny. We need not go very far back in time to find that blows of destiny were felt to strike in from other worlds—even the destiny a man has brought upon himself.

What is the explanation of this? The explanation is that in earlier times men were not only endowed with instinctive clairvoyance but even when this had faded, its fruits were still preserved in traditions; moreover external conditions and customs did not conduce to such a superficial, commonplace view of the world as prevails to-day, in the age of materialism. There is much talk nowadays of the harmfulness of purely materialistic-naturalistic thinking which has become so universal and has even crept into the various creeds—for the religions too have become materialistic. In no single domain is outer civilisation sincerely desirous of knowing anything about the spiritual world and although men talk in theory of the need to fight this trend, a theoretical battle against materialistic ideas achieves very little. The point of salient importance is that by reason of the conception of the world which has led men to freedom, which will do so still more, and which constitutes a transitional period in the history of human evolution—by reason of this conception of the world, a certain means of healing that was available in earlier epochs for outer sense-observation has been lost.

In the early centuries of Greek civilisation—in fact it was so for a considerable time—men saw in nature around them the outer, phenomenal world. The Greek, as well as modern man, looked out at nature. True, the Greek saw nature in a rather different aspect, for the senses themselves have evolved—but that is not the point here. The Greek had a remedy wherewith to counteract the organic harm that is caused in man when he merely gazes out into nature.

We do not only become physiologically long-sighted with age as the result of having gazed constantly at nature, but this gives our soul a certain configuration. As it gazes at nature, the soul realises inwardly that not all the demands of vision are being satisfied. Unsatisfied demands of vision remain. And this holds good for the process of perception in general—hearing, feeling, and so forth. Certain elements in the perceptive process remain unsatisfied when we gaze out into nature. It is more or less the same as if a man in physical existence wished to spend his whole life without taking adequate food. Such a man deteriorates physically. But when he merely gazes at nature, the perceptive faculty in his life of soul deteriorates. He gets a kind of ‘consumption’ of soul in his sense-world. This was known in the old Mystery-wisdom.

But it was also known how this ‘consumption’ in the life of soul can be counteracted. It was known that the Temple Architecture, where men beheld the equipose between downbearing weight and upbearing support, or when, as in the East, they beheld forms that were really plastic representations of moral forces, when they looked at the architectural forms confronting the eye and the whole of the perceptive process, or experienced the musical element in these forms—it was known that here was the remedy against the consumption which befalls the senses when they merely gaze out into nature. And when the Greek was led into his temple where he beheld the pillars, above them the architrave, the inner composition and dynamic of it all, then his gaze was bounded and completed. When a man looks at nature his gaze is really no more than a stare, going on into infinity, never reaching an end. In natural science too, every problem leads on and on, in this way, without coming to finality. But the gaze is bounded and completed when one faces a work of great architecture created with the aim of intercepting the vision, rescuing it from the pull of nature. There you have one feature of life in olden times: this capturing of the outward gaze.

And again, when a man turns his gaze inwards to-day, it does not penetrate to the innermost core of his being. If he practises self-knowledge, what he perceives is a surging medley of all kinds of emotions and outer impressions, without clarity or definition. He cannot lay hold of himself inwardly; he lacks the strength to grasp this inner reality in imaginations, in pictures—as he must do before he can make any real approach to the inmost kernel of his being.

It is here that cult and ritual enacted reverently before men take effect. Everything of the nature of cult and ritual, not the external rites only but comprehension of the world expressed in imagery and pictures, leads man towards his innermost being. As long as he strives for self-knowledge with abstract ideas and concepts, nothing is achieved. But when he penetrates into his inmost being with pictures that give concrete definition to experiences of soul, then he achieves his aim. The inmost kernel of his being comes within his grasp.

How often have I not said that man must meditate in pictures, in images. This has been dealt with at ample length, even in public lectures.

And so, looking at man in the past, we find on the one side that his gaze and perception, when directed outwards, are as it were bounded, intercepted, by architectonic forms; on the other side, his inward-turned gaze is bounded and held firm by picturing his soul-life; and this can also be presented to him through the imagery of cult and ritual.

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On the one side, therefore, there is the descent into the inmost being; on the other, the outward gaze lights upon the forms displayed in sacred architecture. A certain union is thereby achieved. Between what comes alive within and that upon which the gaze falls, there is an intermediate domain, imperceptible to man in his everyday consciousness because his outward gaze is not captured by forms of architecture born of deep, inner knowledge, nor is his inward gaze given definition by pictures and imaginations. But there is this intermediate domain ... if you let that work in your life, if you go about with inner self-knowledge deepened through imagination, and with sense-perceptions made whole and complete through forms created and inspired by a real understanding of man's nature ... then your feeling in regard to strokes of destiny will be the same as it was in olden times. By cultivating the domain that lies between the experience of true architectonic form and the experience of true, symbolic imagery along the path inwards, a man becomes sensitive to the strokes of destiny. He feels that what befalls him comes from earlier lives on earth.

This again is an introduction to the studies which we shall be pursuing and which will include consideration of the good and the evil in connection with karma.

But what is of salient importance is that within the Anthroposophical Movement there shall be right thinking. The architecture that would have fulfilled the needs of modern man, that would have been able to capture his gaze in the right way and to have led naturalistic perception, which veils and obscures the vision of karma, gradually into real vision—this architecture did once exist, in a certain form. And the fact that anthroposophical thoughts were uttered in the setting of those forms, kindled the inner vision. Among its other aspects the Goetheanum Building, together with the way in which Anthroposophy would have been cultivated in it, was in itself an education for the vision of karma. And that is what must be introduced into modern civilisation: education for the vision of karma.

But needless to say, it was in the interests of those who are opposed to what ought now to enter civilisation, that such a Building should fall a prey to the flames ... There, too, it is possible to look into the deeper connections. But let us hope that, before very long, forms that awaken a vision of karma will again stand before us, at the same place.

This is what I wanted to say in conclusion to-day, when so many friends from abroad are still with us after our Easter Meeting.

We have considered a series of karmic relationships in the historical development of mankind, and have observed how one or other relationship flows over from one earthly life into another. We will now pass on to the consideration of karmic relationships from a fresh point of view, and you will find that it is one which leads still more directly into life. For the study of karma has real value only when it flows into the moral character of our life, into the whole mood and tenor of our life and soul; so that in taking our place in the world as human beings we can experience through the study of karma an invigoration as well as a deepening of our life. Life has many riddles, and it is wrong to regard them all as insoluble. If that were so, man would gradually be torn right out of his true being. Were the riddles of the nature of man to remain quite unknown to him, he would have to pass through existence like an unconscious being. But it is the task of man to grow ever more and more conscious. And this he can do only when he learns to penetrate with some degree of insight into all that is connected with him, all that is connected with his soul and his spirit.

As karma is a component part of our whole life and existence, it goes without saying that the study of karma is a study that has directly to do with the very foundations of human life. Nevertheless, it is very difficult for us in our present-day consciousness to undertake a study of karma in its direct application to life. For any at all adequate study of the working of karma in actual life, the life in which we ourselves are immersed, calls for a far more objective outlook than is possible for the kind of consciousness which arises from present-day conditions of living and education. In these conditions there is much that hides karmic connections, makes them invisible; for this reason, the very things that would make life comprehensible from the point of view of karma and destiny are extraordinarily difficult to observe.

Present-day man is very little inclined to detach himself from his own being and to give himself wholly to some other being or object. Modern man lives very strongly within himself. And the strange thing is that when he strives towards the spirit, when he receives into himself the spiritual, he runs great danger of living all the more within himself! For what do we find when someone begins to enter more deeply into anthroposophical life? Many a person who in the course of his life has come into the Anthroposophical Movement will be able to say to himself: As long as I lived in the outside world I had these or those relations with life: they absorbed me and I accepted them as belonging intimately to me. I prized this or that; I believed that this or that was necessary for living. Moreover, I had friends with whom I was on terms of intimacy by virtue of the habits and circumstances of daily life. Then came the time when I found Anthroposophy. Since that moment, much in my life has come to a stop. I have moved right away from many of the old connections; or at least they no longer have the same value for me. Many things that I enjoyed doing have become repulsive to me; I can no longer regard them as things with which I want to remain connected.

And if, having embarked on these reflections, he carries his thought a little farther, and tries to find what it is that has taken the place of these things, he will very quickly discover that his egoism has not decreased. I do not say this reproachfully, no, not even with the faintest shadow of reproach; I merely wish to state it as a fact which anyone is quite well able to observe in himself. His egoism has, in fact, increased; he pays far more heed now to the special way in which he himself is constituted. He asks more than he ever did before: “What sort of impression does my neighbour make on me?” Previously he had been accustomed to take the actions of another person more or less for granted. Now he enquires about the impression they have made on himself. Or, again, he may have been placed within some connection of life which used to seem quite satisfactory. He fulfilled his duties, and so forth. Now his duties become repulsive to him; he would like to quit them because he feels they are not sufficiently spiritual, and so forth.

Thus it is that spiritual endeavour within Anthroposophy may very easily lead into a kind of egoism; a man tends to attach far greater importance to himself than he did before.

But it all rests on the fact that, in such a case, there has been no expansion of interest towards the outside world; on the contrary, interest has been thrust back within. I have often pointed out that one who grows in a true and right way into anthroposophical life, does not take less interest in external life; rather does he, by reason of his Anthroposophy, take far more interest. Everything outside himself begins to be far more interesting to him than before; it has far more value for him. For this, however, it is necessary that he should not withdraw from external life, but perceive, rather, the spirituality in it.

This of course means that certain things begin to show themselves in other human beings which had not been noticed before. But then we must also have the courage to notice these things, and not to overlook them. For consideration of life from the point of view of karma, it is absolutely necessary that we acquire in some measure the power to go out of ourselves and into the other man.

Naturally, this is peculiarly difficult when the other person becomes a means for karmic adjustments in life which are unpleasant, and possibly even painful to us! But unless we are able to go out of ourselves, even in matters which are disagreeable and painful to us, no true and valid study of karma is possible. For let us remind ourselves:—what are the conditions that have to exist in the world for karma to be brought into being?

We are each placed within a certain human life. In the course of it we act, think, and feel in one way or another. We enter into certain relationships with other human beings and within these relationships things happen. We think, feel, will and do things that call for a karmic adjustment. We enter into relationships with other men, and again things happen which demand a karmic adjustment. Try to survey from this point of view one human earthly life and then observe how at the end of it a man passes through the portal of death into the spiritual world. He now lives within the spiritual world. In the spiritual world it is not as in the physical world. In the physical world you stand outside the other man. You stand outside even those people with whom you come in close contact. Between you and the other man there is at least air, and each one has his own skin! So that when you approach another ever so closely, you can always in a certain measure keep yourself to yourself. This, however, is no longer possible when you have gone through the portal of death and dwell in the spiritual world. Let us take a typical case. You have done something to another man which calls for a karmic compensation. You go on living with him, after you have both passed through the portal of death. You live then within the other man; and this not by virtue of your good will or your inner perfection, but compulsorily, if I may put it so.

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Suppose A and B go through the portal of death. Afterwards they are in the spiritual world. They confront one another in the spiritual world. Yet, whereas here B lived within himself and A lived within himself, after death A lives in B as well as in himself, and B lives in A as well as in himself. In the spiritual world, men live entirely within one another; and in so doing they are maintained by the forces which they have stored up in their lives on earth. After death we do not enter into relation with just any kind of men; we enter into relation with those with whom we have already established a connection for good or for ill. And it is these connections which bring it about that we live not merely within ourselves but within the other. Now imagine, you have done something to another man,—or, let us say, B has acted towards A in a way which demands karmic compensation. When B passes through the portal of death, then after death, in the passage through the world between death and a new birth, he lives in A. He experiences, within A, what he did to A. And while he is thus living outside himself, he provides for the karmic compensation to be brought about. Thus all that is to be brought to pass as karmic compensation during the next earthly life, you yourself cause by living in the other man. It is only on descending again to the physical world that A makes what you have put into him into his own deed. In the next earthly life he comes to meet you with what you really have willed to inflict upon yourself through him.

When, therefore, in the next earthly life, something is inflicted on me by another man as a karmic compensation, this happens because I laid it into him during the time I lived within him between death and a new birth. At that time it was not his deed at all; it becomes his deed only as he descends again into earth-life. Thus the conditions for the working of karma in the course of evolution arise from the fact that karmically-connected human beings dwell within one another in the time between death and rebirth.

Now when we consider ordinary life on earth, we do not really penetrate very deeply into it. As far as the other man is concerned, we are extraordinarily little aware of him, consciously. For instance, how little we notice any slight difference in the behaviour of another man in relation to ourselves! Suppose we meet a man in life, and he behaves towards us in a certain way. We are aware of it, but we use very little discrimination. We do not observe what entirely different motives and impulses may account for his behaviour. A man, let us say, is antagonistically disposed towards me. This antagonism may be caused by the mere fact that my existence irritates him, because he is attuned to something quite different in life. Therefore he treats me in a certain way. This treatment can be of such a nature that only in the next life is it karmically balanced. In such a case the antagonism can be quite original, not in the least conditioned by preceding earthly lives.

But I may also receive a similar, perhaps even identical, treatment from another man, into whom I myself implanted bit by bit all that comes to me with this treatment, in the time between death and rebirth.

The feeling which can differentiate between two such kinds of treatment, externally similar, is very little developed to-day; it must show itself again, in order that the moral tenor of life may become purer, and man's moral perception stronger. In earlier epochs—in epochs not even very remote from us—such a distinction lay within human comprehension. One felt, e.g. towards one man: He hates me and does this or that out of hate for me; while with another man one had the feeling; he must do something against me, he simply cannot help it, he is inwardly predestined to act in this way.

This feeling, which can be subtly discerned in the facts of life, must again become more general. It will give to life many fine nuances which are of great importance.

There is another difference we must learn to observe. You will readily admit that when a man comes into relation with other men, all manner of things are connected with this relationship, things which do not interest him as much as the relationship itself. Again, I will take a characteristic instance. Suppose you enter a society—I am not thinking now of the Anthroposophical Society; I exclude it for reasons that will emerge in the course of these lectures. The reason why you enter this society may be that you have a karmic link with one or two persons, perhaps with only one person in the society; but you have to participate in everything connected with the society in order to approach this one person as closely as your karmic relations with him demand. While from the point of view of karma the relation to this one man only is important, you share in everything that you come up against in this society, through the people you meet there, etc. So we have to recognise that life confronts us in such a way that the relations into which it brings us are of the most varied shades; quite indifferent relationships may stand side by side with the most significant, in the deepest sense of the word.

But note in this connection, how true it is that external life is frequently only Maya, is in many respects the Great Illusion. Thus it can happen—I will again construct a hypothetical case—that you enter a society, and the relation to the one person, which is well determined karmically, has difficulty in establishing itself. You have to link on to all sorts of people in order to approach that one man. With these other men you make connections which—let us say—appear extremely important to a more rough-and-ready consideration of life; yes, it may be, they make themselves very strongly felt, whereas perhaps the connection which you approach last of all, and which is of real karmic importance, takes its course gently, softly, unobtrusively.

Thus it can really be that the karmically important element in some connection of life appears like a little mount beside giant mountains, which are in reality of lesser importance. To a spiritualised consideration, however, the little hillock reveals itself in its right significance. The events which occur in life cause us many illusions. As a rule we do not know how to judge them if we take only one earthly life into consideration. It is only when we perceive other earthly lives in the background that we can estimate correctly the one earthly life in all its events.

I should like to illustrate this by an example. Strange personalities have appeared in our time. Apart from those of whom I have spoken to you in our studies on karma, a number of quite remarkable personalities have appeared here and there. External study often does not lead at all into karmic connections; we need a study which is able to take note of incisive moments in life. Then we come to see, in all clarity, just those facts which make us realise how illusory external life is unless it is considered on the basis of the spiritual. Recently I mentioned here an example which may have appeared to you very strange, the example of an alchemist of the school of Basil Valentine, who reappeared again as Frank Wedekind.

My starting-point for the observation of this strange karma—the starting-point is not always significant in itself; if afterwards the starting-point has led on to inner clarity, then naturally the whole thing changes—the starting-point in this case was the circumstance that I had hardly ever before seen such hands as Frank Wedekind's, and I saw Frank Wedekind gesticulate with those hands of his when he acted in his own “Hidalla”. The whole apparent chaos of this play (which, as I recently mentioned, is a perfect horror from the ordinary, conventional point of view) connected itself with the impression of his hands that I had had before, and conjured up before my vision the chemical manipulations on which, in a former life, he had been engaged. On the basis of his “Hidalla”, in connection with these strange hands, appeared the earlier incarnation which one could then follow further.

You will see from this how one must develop an eye for what is of real significance in a human being. There are men in whom the countenance is the most characteristic element. But there are also men in whom the most important characteristic is not the face at all, but, for instance, the hands; from the face of such a man one can infer nothing, only from the hands. When you pass on from the individual to the general, precisely in the example which I have just brought forward, you can realise quite clearly how it stands. For these medieval alchemists were of course obliged to acquire extraordinary dexterity with their hands.

In earlier lectures I have spoken of how nothing is suffered to remain of all that man has developed in his head. But that which he bears in the rest of his organism is subsequently brought to expression in the (next) head. Now in childhood the whole forming of the body takes its start from the head. Above all, such expressive organs as the hands are shaped in accordance with the most intimate impulses of the head. We may therefore expect that something very characteristic will appear in the hands or feet of one who has worked in the manner of alchemists.

I say all this to show you how important it is to take one particular thing in its full significance, and to regard as insignificant what frequently presents itself in the sense-world as the most evident, the most essential, the greatest, etc. In our time, as I said, there have appeared many strange and remarkable personalities who stand before us without our being able to arrive at any complete survey of the karmic connections. Just in the case of such personalities it is a question of observing in them what is striking and significant. The fact that somebody was a great artist, for example, is something which may possibly be determined only in the very smallest measure by his karma. But what exactly he does in his art, how he conducts himself in it, these are things that are specially determined in karma. Thus, the very things which, one may say, make life really poetic, reveal themselves to a study of karma.

Let us suppose we can look back on a man's previous incarnations. In respect of the present incarnation they are remarkably illuminating in certain points. But we can never understand how to find our way intelligently in these investigations as long as we make use of the ordinary criteria for understanding and interpreting life. Life becomes a reality in quite a different sense when one resolves to pursue a study of karma in all earnestness.

Let me give you an example. I will in the first place relate quite simply what happened. I was walking one day along a street and I had a picture before me. I see a ship-wrecked man. His ship is far away, and sinking. The man is in a lifeboat, hurrying towards a fairly large island. His gaze is directed strangely, considering that he is still in doubt whether his boat will reach land and his life be safe! He is looking at the bubbling, foaming billows. I am impressed by the fact that he can still gaze at the waves, even though he is liable at any moment to be drowned. A disturbed and shaken soul, but in the shock—and so in a body-free manner—deeply united with Nature.

While still on the same walk—the picture had of course no connection whatever with my surroundings—my way led me to an Art Exhibition where I saw for the first time Boecklin's “Toteninsel” (Island of the Dead). I mention this only that you may see how in approaching these things we must take a wider outlook. It is not simply a matter of meditating upon all one can think and feel about Boecklin from the starting point of his picture, “Island of the Dead”. It need not be so at all; it is quite possible that under certain circumstances one has to revert to something one has seen prophetically, and link that on to one's experience of the picture.

And so, too, when we meet a man in real life. Then, in order to find karmic connections, it is not only important to consider what we experience just in the moment of meeting him; it is often most illuminating to recall some intimate previous experience, for we may find that we understand it only when we see how it connects with what we afterwards perceive in him or through him.

The very things that prove so illuminating for karma are often things that throw their shadows in advance—or, we may also say, their light. We need a fine sense for the intimacies of life, which sometimes means that we not only connect the future with the past, but regard the past as something that elucidates the future. Unless we can learn to look at life in this intimate way, we shall not easily develop that inner mobility of soul which is necessary for a deeper penetration into karmic connections.

It is indeed a fact that when specially significant karmic events enter a man's life, they are connected with inner events in his life which may date from several years previously. We have to acquire in this way an expanded view of life.

For think of the following:—When you look at the thinking element in man, as it exists in ordinary consciousness, you find it related only to the past. When, however, you look at human feeling, with the many shades and nuances it receives from emotional and temperamental depths, then you come upon very strange secrets of life. The course of a man's life can be very little gauged by the way he thinks; but very much by the way he feels. And when you observe such a life, let us say, as Goethe's, and ask yourself: How did Goethe feel in the year 1790?—then, through the peculiar stamp and character of Goethe's feeling in the year 1790 you get the entire later colouring of his life; it is all present as a nucleus in the feeling of 1790. As soon as we descend into the depths of the human soul we really perceive the peculiar colouring—not of course the details—of the subsequent life. A man might gain a great deal of illumination on his own life if he paid more attention to the inexplicable shades of feeling which are not caused from without but from the depths within.

Men will accustom themselves to taking this kind of thing specially into account if they pay attention to the points I have mentioned to-day. I shall have more to say about them: they are important for a consideration of life that intends to take note of karmic connections. And this holds good, whether one is dealing with karmic connections in one's own life, or with karmic connections of those who are dear to one. For you must understand that if one desires to consider karma, it is a question really of looking through a human being in a certain way. When no more than the ordinary physical human being stands in your field of vision, he stands there before you non-transparent. You look at his face, at the way he moves about and behaves, at the way he speaks, or perhaps even also at the way he thinks,—the latter being, on the whole, generally only a conventional reflection of his upbringing and experience. But so long as you look no further than this, the karma of this human being does not stand objectively before you.

When, however, a man becomes transparent for you, then at first you really have the feeling that he is hovering in the air. Gradually it comes about that you no longer think of him as walking or moving his arms and hands. You lose all sense of this. Understand me aright, my dear friends. In ordinary life what a man does with his arms and legs is extremely important. But this loses its importance when one wishes to observe the deeper elements in man. You must take what I am saying in its fullest meaning. Can you look right away from what a man achieves by means of his arms and hands, and see him hovering, as it were, not so much in respect of space as in respect of life? I mean, take no account of journeys he has made, of all his goings and comings, in short, of all he does with his legs; and attach equally little importance to the work he does with his hands. Watch rather his mood, his temperament; watch everything in him in which arms and legs take no part. Then you have, so to speak, the first transparency to which you can attain. And what will this first transparency show? Picture to yourselves, you have here an object. At first you see nothing but the object. Well and good. But then something is drawn upon the object. And now it is again erased. This is how it is with man when you arrive at the first transparency, when you look away from the man of ordinary life and completely disregard his arms and legs. You have to tear him right out of the connections into which he has come through the activity of his arms and legs. If you now observe him, something in him becomes transparent, and you look through to what was previously covered up by the activity of arms and legs.

And what is it you see? You begin to understand that behind the man the Moon appears. I will draw here diagrammatically the threefold man. Now suppose, this (i.e. the lower part) first becomes transparent; we disregard the arms and legs. Then the man no longer appears to us detached from the universe as he otherwise does; he begins to reveal behind him the Moon, with all the impulses which work in man from the Moon. We begin to say: “Yes, man has a certain power of phantasy,—whether it be developed or no, he has this power in him. He cannot help it. Moon forces are behind this. They are hidden from us only by the activity of arms and legs. But now all that has vanished, and in the background appears before us the creative Moon.”

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We go on. We try to make man still more transparent. By a kind of suggestion, we think away all that makes man emotional, all that endows him with a certain temperament—in short, those features—of his every-day life in which his soul-nature is chiefly expressed. Still more disappears; he becomes still more transparent. And we can go farther. We can disregard all that exists in man, because he has senses. First, you disregard everything that is in man by virtue of his having arms and legs. Now you ask yourself: what remains over from man, when I ignore the fact that he has ever perceived anything by means of his senses? There remains a certain direction of thought, a certain impulsive force of his thought, a tendency of life. At this point, however, the whole rhythmic system, the breast of man, becomes transparent. It vanishes, and in the background appears before you all that exists there as Sun-impulse (see diagram). You look through man and behold in reality the Sun, when you ignore all that man has perceived by means of his senses. You can try this on yourself. You can ask yourself: what do I owe to my senses? And then, when you look away from all this, you see through yourself and behold yourself as a Sun-being.

And when further you disregard man's thoughts, the direction of his thinking, then the head too disappears. Now the whole man is gone. You look through, and finally behold Saturn in the background. But in this moment, the man's karma, or your own karma, lies open before you. For in the moment when you observe the working of Saturn in a man, when a man has become entirely transparent to you, and you observe him so extensively that you behold him on the background of the whole planetary system—on the background of Moon, Sun and Saturn—in that moment the karma of the man lies open before you. And if one is going to speak of practical karma-exercises—I told you already that I wanted to do it at the beginning of the foundation of the Anthroposophical Society, but did not succeed at that time—then one must really begin in this way. One must say: It is a matter first of all of disregarding—in ourselves or in others—all that we are in life, inasmuch as we are beings endowed with arms and legs. Cut this right out of your thought. All you have ever attained through the fact that you are a being endowed with arms and legs—this you must ignore.

Then you will say: “Yes, but we fulfil our karma just because we have arms and legs!” So you do. So long, however, as you look at your arms and legs, you are not aware of what it is you fulfil through having arms and legs. This you see only when you no longer look at your arms and legs any more, but find in the activity of arms and legs the impulses of the Moon. Then it is a matter of going a step further, and disregarding all that man absorbs by means of his senses, what he has in his soul by means of his senses—whether you are practising the exercise with yourself or with others. You behold man then as Sun-being, you see the Sun-impulse in him. And again, you must disregard the fact that he has a certain tendency of thought, a certain tendency of soul—then you realise him to be a Saturn-being.

Should you arrive thus far, then you have man once more before you, but now—as a spirit. Now the legs move and the arms work, but spiritually, and they show us what they do. But they show us this according to the forces which work and rule in them. This is what we have to learn and experience.

When I do the most trifling thing, when I pick up the chalk here—as long as I merely see this fact, the picking-up of the chalk, then I know nothing of karma. I must do away with all this. I must bring it about that all this can reproduce itself in a picture, can appear again in a picture. Not in the strength that is contained in my muscles—this can explain nothing at all—but in the picture that takes the place of the act, appears the force that induces the hand to move, in order to pick up the chalk. And it appears as something coming from previous incarnations.

This is how it is, when I gradually do away with visible man in the above manner and see behind him his Moon-impulses, his Sun-impulses, and his Saturn-impulses. Then the image or picture of the man comes to meet me again from the cosmos. But it is not the man in his present incarnation; it is the man in one of his preceding incarnations or in several previous incarnations. I must first bring it about that the man who is walking here at my side, becomes transparent for me, ever more and more transparent, in that I put away from my vision his whole life. Then there comes to the same spot, but now proceeding from cosmic distances, the man as he was in his previous earthly lives.

Perhaps what has been placed before you to-day about these connections is not at once altogether clear and comprehensible. But I wanted to point the way prospectively, as it were, and in the coming lectures we shall enter into more and more detailed considerations of the nature of karma as it flows in human life from one incarnation to another.

To-day we shall begin to consider the inner activities of the soul which can gradually lead man to acquire conceptions, to acquire thoughts, about karma. These thoughts and conceptions are such that they can ultimately enable a man to perceive, in the light of karma, experiences which have a karmic cause.

Looking around our human environment, we really see in the physical world only what is caused by physical force in a physical way. And if we do see in the physical world something that is not caused by physical forces, we still become aware of it through external physical substances, through external physical objects of perception. Of course, when a man does something out of his own will, this is not caused by physical forces, by physical causes, for in many respects it comes out of the free will. But all that we perceive outwardly is exhausted in the physical phenomena of the world we thus observe. In the entire sphere of what we can thus observe, the karmic connection of an experience we ourselves pass through cannot reveal itself to us. For the whole picture of this karmic connection lies in the spiritual world, is really inscribed in what is the etheric world, in what underlies the etheric world as the astral world, or as the world of spiritual beings who inhabit this astral outer world. Nothing of all this is seen, as long as we merely direct our senses to the physical world.

All that we perceive in the physical world is perceived through our senses. These senses work without our having much to do with it. Our eyes receive impressions of light, of colour, of their own accord. We can at most—and even that is half involuntary—adjust our gaze to a certain direction; we can gaze at something or we can look away from it. Even in this there is still much of the unconscious, but at all events a fragment of consciousness. And, above all, that which the eye must do inwardly in order to see colour, the wonderfully wise, inner activity which is exercised whenever we see anything—this we could never achieve as human beings if we were supposed to achieve it consciously. That would be out of the question. All this must, to begin with, happen unconsciously, because it is much too wise for man to be able in any way to help in it.

To attain a correct point of view as regards the knowledge possessed by the human being, we must really fill our thoughts with all the wisdom-filled arrangements which exist in the world, and which are quite beyond the capacity of man. If a man thinks only of what he can achieve himself, then he really blocks all paths to knowledge. The path to knowledge really begins at the point where we realise, in all humility, all that we are incapable of doing, but which must nevertheless come to pass in cosmic existence. The eye, the ear—yes, and the other sense-organs—are, in reality, such profoundly wise instruments that men will have to study for a long time before they will be able even to have an inkling of understanding of them during earthly existence. This must be fully realised. Observation of the spiritual, however, cannot be unconscious in this sense. In earlier times of human evolution this was possible even for observation of the spiritual. There was an instinctive clairvoyance which has faded away in the course of the evolution of humanity.

From now onwards, man must consciously attain an attitude to the cosmos through which he will be able to see through into the spiritual. And we must see through into the spiritual if we are to recognise the karmic connections of any experience we may have.

Now it is necessary for the observation of karma that we at least begin by paying attention to what can happen within us to develop the faculty of observing karmic connections. We, on our part, must help a little in order to make these observations conscious. We must do more, for example, than we do for our eye in order to become conscious of colour.

My dear friends, what we must learn first of all is summed up in one word: to wait. We must be able to wait for the inner experiences.

About this “being able to wait”, I have already spoken. It was in the year 1889—I tell about this in the Story of my Life—that the inner spiritual construction of Goethe's “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” first came before my mind's eye. And it was then, for the first time, that the perception as it were of a greater, wider connection than appears in the Fairy Tale itself presented itself to me. But I also knew at that time: I cannot yet make of this connection what I shall some day be able to make of it. And so what the Fairy Tale revealed to me at that time simply remained lying in the soul.

Then, seven years later, in the year 1896, it welled up again, but still not in such a way that it could be properly shaped; and again, about 1903, seven years later. Even then, although it came with great definition and many connections it could not yet receive its right form. Seven years later again, when I conceived my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation—then only did the Fairy Tale reappear, transformed in such a way that it could be shaped and moulded plastically.

Such things, therefore, demand a real waiting, a time for ripening. We must bring our own experiences into relation with that which exists out there in the world. At a moment when only the seed of a plant is present, we obviously cannot have the plant. The seed must be brought into the right conditions for growth, and we must wait until the blossom, and finally the fruit, come out of the seed. And so it must be with the experiences through which we pass. We cannot take the line of being thrilled by an experience, simply because it happens to be there, and then forgetting it. The person who only wants his experiences when they are actually present will be doing little towards ultimate observation of the spiritual world. We must be able to wait. We must be able to let the experiences ripen within the soul.

Now the possibility exists for a comparatively quick ripening of insight into karmic connections if, for a considerable time, we endeavour patiently, and with inner activity, to picture in our consciousness, more and more clearly, an experience which would otherwise simply take its course externally, without being properly grasped, so that it fades away in the course of life. After all, this fading away is what really happens with the events of life. For what does a man do with events and experiences, as they approach him in the course of the day? He experiences them, but in reality only half observes them. You can realise how experiences are only half observed if you sit down one day in the afternoon or in the evening—and I advise you to do it—and ask yourself: ‘What did I actually experience this morning at half-past nine?’ And now try to call up such an experience in all details before your soul, recall it as if it were actually there, say at half-past seven in the evening—as if you were creating it spiritually before you. You will see how much you will find lacking, how much you failed to observe, and how difficult it is. If you take a pen or pencil to write it all down, you will soon begin to bite at the pen or the pencil, because you cannot hit upon the details—and, in time, you want to bite them out of the pencil!

Yes, but that is just the point, to take upon oneself the task of placing before the mind, in all precision, an experience one has had,—not at the moment when it is actually there, but afterwards. It must be placed before the soul as if one were going to paint it spiritually. If the experience were one in which somebody spoke, this must be made quite objectively real: the ring of the voice, the way in which the words were used, clumsily or cleverly—the picture must be made with strength and vigour. In short, we try to make a picture of what we have experienced. If we make a picture of such an experience of the day, then in the following night, the astral body, when it is outside the physical body and the etheric body, occupies itself with this picture. The astral body itself is, in reality, the bearer of the picture, and gives shape to it outside the body. The astral body takes the picture with it when it goes out on the first night. It shapes it there, outside the physical and etheric bodies.

That is the first stage (we will take these stages quite exactly): the sleeping astral body, when outside the physical and etheric bodies, shapes the picture of the experience. Where does it do this? In the external ether. It is now in the external etheric world; it does this in the external ether.

Now picture to yourself the human being: his physical and etheric bodies lie in bed, and the astral body is outside. We will leave aside the ego. There outside is the astral body, reshaping this picture that has been made. But the astral body does this in the external ether. In consequence of this the following happens—think of it: the astral body is there outside, shaping this picture. All this happens in the external ether which encrusts, as it were, with its own substance that which is formed as a picture within the astral body. So the external ether makes the etheric form (dotted (dark) outline) into a picture which is clearly and precisely visualised by the eye of spirit.

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In the morning you return into the physical and etheric bodies and bear into them what has been made substantial by the external ether. That is to say: the sleeping astral body shapes the picture of the experience outside the physical and etheric bodies. The external ether then impregnates the picture with its own substance. You can imagine that the picture becomes stronger thereby, and that now, when the astral body returns in the morning with this stronger substantiality, it can make an impression upon the etheric body in the human being. With forces that are derived from the external ether, the astral body now stamps an impression into the etheric body.

The second stage is therefore: The picture is impressed into the etheric body by the astral body.

There we have the events of the first day and the first night. Now we come to the second day. On the second day, while you are busying yourself with all the little things of life in full waking consciousness, there, underneath the consciousness, in the unconscious, the picture is descending into the etheric body. And in the next night, when the etheric body is undisturbed, when the astral body has gone out again, the etheric body elaborates this picture.

Thus in the second night the picture is elaborated by the man's own etheric body. There we have the second stage:—The picture is impressed into the etheric body by the astral body; and in the next night the etheric body elaborates the picture. Thus we have: the second day and the second night.

Now if you do this, if you actually do not give up occupying yourself with the picture you formed on the preceding day—and you can continue to occupy yourself with it, for a reason which I shall immediately mention—if you do not disdain to do this, then you will find that you are living on further with the picture. What does this mean—to continue occupying yourself with it? If you really take pains to shape such a picture, vigorously, elaborating it plastically in characteristic, strong lines on the first day after you had the experience, then you have really exerted yourself spiritually. Such things cost spiritual exertion. I don't mean what I am going to say as a hint—present company is, of course, always excepted in these matters!—but after all, it must be said that the majority of men simply do not know what spiritual exertion is. Spiritual exertion, true spiritual exertion, comes about only by means of activity of soul. When you allow the world to work upon you, and let thoughts run their course without taking them in hand, then there is no spiritual exertion. We should not imagine, when something tires us, that we have exerted ourselves spiritually. Getting tired does not imply that there has been spiritual exertion. We can get tired, for instance, from reading. But if we have not ourselves been productive in some way during the reading, if we merely let the thoughts contained in the book act on us, then we are not exerting ourselves. On the contrary, a person who has really exerted himself spiritually, who has exerted himself out of the inner activity of his soul, may then take up a book, a very interesting one, and just “sleep off” his spiritual exertion in the best possible way, in the reading of it. Naturally, we can fall asleep over a book if we are tired. This getting tired is no sign at all of spiritual exertion.

A sign of spiritual exertion, however, is this: that one feels—the brain is used up. It is just as we may feel that a demand has been made on the muscle of the arm when lifting things. Ordinary thought makes no such strong claims upon the brain. The process continues, and you will even notice that when you try it for the first time, the second, the third, the tenth, you get a slight headache. It is not that you get tired or fall asleep; on the contrary, you cannot fall asleep; you get a slight headache from it. Only you must not regard this headache as something baleful; on the contrary, you must take it as actual proof of the fact that you have exerted your head.

Well, the process goes on ... it stays with you until you go to sleep. If you have really done this on the preceding day, then you will awake in the morning with the feeling: “There actually is something in me! I don't quite know what it is, but there is something in me, and it wants something from me. Yes, after all it is not a matter of indifference that I made this picture for myself yesterday. It really means something. This picture has changed. To-day it is giving me quite different feelings from those I had previously. The picture is making me have quite definite feelings.”

All this stays with you through the next day as the remaining inner experience of the picture which you made for yourself. And what you feel, and cannot get rid of through the whole of the day—this is a witness to the fact that the picture is now descending into the etheric body, as I have described to you, and that the etheric body is receiving it.

Now you will probably experience on waking after the next night—when you slip into your body after these two days—that you find this picture slightly changed, slightly transformed. You find it again ... precisely on waking the third day you find it again within you. It appears to you like a very real dream. But it has undergone a transformation. It will clothe itself in manifold pictures until it is other than it was. It will assume an appearance as if spiritual beings were now bringing you this experience. And you actually receive the impression: Yes, this experience which I had and which I subsequently formed into a picture, has actually been brought to me. If the experience happened to be with another human being, then we have the feeling after this has all happened, that actually we did not only experience it through that human being, but that it was really brought to us. Other forces, spiritual forces, have been at play. It was they who brought it to us.

The next day comes. This next day the picture is carried down from the etheric body into the physical body. The etheric body impresses this picture into the physical body, into the nerve-processes, into the blood-processes. On the third day the picture is impressed into the physical body. So the third stage is: The picture is stamped into the physical body by the etheric body.

And now comes the next night. You have been attending throughout the day to the ordinary little trifles of life, and underneath it all this important process is going on: the picture is being carried down into the physical body. All this goes on in the subconscious. When the following night comes, the picture is elaborated in the physical body. It is spiritualised in the physical body. First of all, throughout the day, the picture is brought down into the processes of the blood and nerves, but in the night it is spiritualised. Those who have vision see how this picture is now elaborated by the physical body, but it appears spiritually as an altogether changed picture. We can say: the physical body elaborates the picture during the next night.

1st Day and 1st Night:

When outside the physical and etheric bodies, the astral body shapes the picture of the experience. The outer ether impregnates the picture with its own substance.

2nd Day and 2nd Night:

The picture is stamped by the astral body into the etheric body. And the etheric body elaborates the picture during the next day.

3rd Day and 3rd Night:

The picture is stamped by the etheric body into the physical body. And the physical body elaborates the picture during the next night.

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Now this is something of which you must make an absolutely correct mental picture. The physical body actually works up this picture spiritually. It spiritualises the picture. So that when all this has really been gone through, it does happen—when the human being is asleep—that his physical body works up the whole picture, but not in such a way that it remains within the physical body. Out of the physical body there arises a transformation, a greatly magnified transformation of the picture. And when you get up in the morning, this picture stands there, and in truth you hover in it; it is like a kind of cloud in which you yourself are. With this picture you get up in the morning.

So this is the third day and the third night. With this picture, which is entirely transformed, you get out of bed on the fourth day. You rise from sleep, enveloped by this cloud. And if you have actually shaped the picture with the necessary strength on the first day, and if you have paid attention to what your feeling conveyed to you on the second day, you will notice now that your will is contained in the picture as it now is. The will is contained in it! But this will is unable to express itself; it is as though fettered. Put into somewhat radical terms, it is actually as if one had planned after the manner of an incredibly daring sprinter, who might resolve to make a display of a bravado race: I will run, now I am running to Ober-Dornach, I make a picture of it already, I've got it within me. It is my will ... But in the very moment when I want to start, when the will is strongest, somebody fetters me, so that I stand there quite rigidly. The whole will has unfolded, but I cannot carry out the will. Such, approximately, is the process.

When this experience of feeling yourself in a pillory develops—for it is a feeling of being in a pillory after the third night—when you again awake in it, feeling in a pillory as it were, with the will fettered through and through, then, if you can pay attention to it, you will find that the will begins to transform itself. This will becomes sight. In itself it can do nothing, but it leads to our seeing something. It becomes an eye of the soul. And the picture, with which one rose from sleep, becomes objective. What it shows is the event of the previous earth-life, or of some previous earth-life, which had been the cause of the experience that we shaped into a picture on the first day. By means of this transformation through feeling and through will, one gets the picture of the causal event of a preceding incarnation.

When we describe these things, they appear somewhat overpowering. This is not to be wondered at, for they are utterly unfamiliar to the human being of the present time. They were not so unknown to the men of earlier culture-epochs. Only, according to the opinion of modern men who are clever, those other men—in their whole way of living—were stupid! Nevertheless, those ‘stupid’ men of the earlier culture-epochs really had these experiences, only modern man darkens everything by his intellect, which makes him clever, but not exactly wise.

As I said, the thing seems somewhat tumultuous, when one relates it. But after all, one is obliged to use such words; for since the things are utterly unknown to-day, they would not appear so striking if they were worded more mildly. They must appear striking. But the whole experience, from beginning to end, throughout the three days, as I have described it to you, must take its course in inner intimacy, in rest and peace of mind. For so-called occult experiences—and these are such—do not take their course in such a way that they can be bragged about. When one begins to brag about them, they immediately stop. They must take their course in inner repose and quietude. And it is best when, for the time being, nobody at all notices anything of the consecutive experiences except the person who is having them.

Now you must not think that the thing succeeds immediately, from the outset. One always finds, of course, that people are pleased when such things are related. This is quite comprehensible ... and it is good. How much there is that one can learn to know! And then, with a tremendous diligence people start on it. They begin ... and it doesn't succeed. Then they become disheartened. Then, perhaps, they try it again, several times. Again it does not succeed. But, in effect, if one has tried it about 49 times, or, let us say, somebody else has tried it about 69 times, then the 50th or the 70th time it does succeed. For what really matters in all these things is the acquisition of a kind of habit of soul concerning them. To begin with, one must find one's way into these things, one must acquire habits of the soul. This is something that certainly ought to be carefully observed by the Anthroposophical Society which, since the Christmas Foundation, is intended to be a complete expression of the Anthroposophical Movement.

Really a very great deal has been given within the Anthroposophical Society. It is enough to make one giddy to see standing in a row all the Lecture-Courses that have been printed. But in spite of it, people come again and again, asking one thing or the other. In the majority of cases this is not at all necessary, for if everything that is contained in the Lecture-Courses is really worked upon, then most of the questions find their own answer in a much surer way. One must have patience, really have patience. Truly, there is a great deal in anthroposophical literature that can work in the soul. We must take to heart all that has to be accomplished, and the time will be well filled with all that has to be done. But, on the other hand, in regard to many of the things which people want to know, it must be pointed out that the Lecture-Courses exist, that they have been left lying there, and after they have been given many people trouble about them only inasmuch as they want a “new” Course; they just lay the old ones aside. These things are closely connected with what I have to say to-day.

One does not reach inner continuity in following up all that germinates and ripens in the soul, if there is a desire to hurry in this way, from the new to the new; the essential point is that things must mature within the soul. We must accustom ourselves to inner, active work of the soul, work in the spirit. This is what helps us to achieve such things as I have explained to you to-day; this alone will help us to have, after the third day, the inner attitude of soul in connection with some experience we may wish to see through in the light of karma.

This must always be the mode of procedure if we are to learn to know the spiritual. To begin with, we must say to ourselves: the first moment when we approach the spiritual in thought in some way, was the first beginning; it is quite impossible to have any kind of result immediately; we must be able to wait. Suppose I have an experience to-day that is karmically caused in a preceding incarnation. I will make a diagrammatic sketch. Here I am, here is my experience, the experience of to-day (right). This is caused by the quite differently-constituted personality in the same ego in a previous earth-life (left). There it is. It has long ceased to belong to my personality, but it is stamped into the etheric world, or into the astral world, which lies behind the etheric world. Now I have to go back, to retrace the way backwards.

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I told you that at first the thing appears as if some being were really bearing the experience towards me. This is so, on the second day. But after the third day it appears as if those who have brought it to me, those spiritual beings, withdraw, and I become aware of it as something of my own, which I myself, in a previous incarnation, laid down as cause. Because this is no longer within the present, because this is something I must behold in the past earth-life, I seem to be fettered. This state of being fettered ceases only when I have perceived the thing, when I have a picture of what was in the previous incarnation, and when I then look back to the event which I have not lost sight of through the three days. Then I become free, as I return, for now I can move about freely with the effect. As long as I am only within the cause, I cannot move about with the cause. Thus I go back into a previous incarnation, there become fettered as it were by the cause, and only when I now enter right into this present earth-life, is the thing resolved.

Now let us take an example: suppose somebody experiences at a certain time on a certain day that a friend says something to him that is not altogether pleasant—perhaps he had not expected it. This friend says to him something not altogether pleasant. He now ponders what he experiences in listening to what his friend says. He makes a vivid picture of what he has experienced, how he got a slight shock, and how he got vexed, perhaps he was also hurt, or the like. This is an inner working, and as such it must be brought into the picture. Now he lets the three days elapse. The second day he goes about and says to himself: ‘This picture which I made yesterday has had a strange effect upon me. The whole day long I have had within me something like an acid, as it were, something that comes from the picture and makes me feel inwardly out of sorts ...’ At the end of the whole process, after the third day, he says to himself: ‘I get up in the morning and now I have the definite feeling that the picture is fettering me.’ Then this event of the previous incarnation is made known to me. I see it before me. Then I pass over to the experience which is still quite fresh, which is still quite present. The fettering ceases, and I say to myself: ‘So this is how it was in the previous earth-life! This is what caused it; now there is the effect. With this effect I can live again ... now the thing is present again.’

This must be practised over and over again, for generally the thread is broken on the very first day, when we make the first effort. And then nothing comes.

It is particularly favourable to let things run parallel, so that we do not stop at one event, but bring a number of. events of the day into picture-form in this way. You will say: ‘Then I must live through the next day with the greatest variety of feelings.’ But this is quite possible. It is not at all harmful. Only try it; the things go quite well together. ‘And must I then be fettered so and so often after the third day?’ This does not matter either. Nothing of this matters. The things will adjust themselves in time. What belongs, from an earlier incarnation, to a later one, will find its way to it. But it will not succeed at once; it will not succeed at the first attempt; the thread breaks. We must have patience to try the thing over and over again. Then we feel something growing stronger within the soul. Then we feel that something awakens in the soul, and we say to ourselves: ‘Until now you were filled with blood. You have felt within you the pulsation of the blood and the breath. Now there is something within you besides the blood. You are filled with something.’

You can even have the feeling that you are filled with something of which you can say quite definitely that it is like a metal that has become aeriform. You actually feel something like metal, you feel it in you. It cannot be described differently; it really is so. You feel yourself permeated with metal, in your whole body. Just as one can say of certain waters, that they ‘taste metallic’, the whole body seems to ‘taste’ as if it were inwardly permeated by some delicate substance, which, in reality, is something spiritual.

You feel this when you come upon something which was, of course, always in you, but to which you only now begin to pay attention. Then, when you begin to feel this, you again take courage. For if the thread is always breaking and everything is as it was before—if you want to get hold of a karmic connection, but the thread is always breaking—you may easily lose courage. But when you detect within yourself this sense of being inwardly filled, then you get courage again. And you say to yourself: it will come right in time.

But, my dear friends, these things must be experienced in all quietude and calmness. Those who cannot experience them quietly but get excited and emotional, spread an inner mist over what really ought to happen, and nothing comes of it.

There are people to-day in the outside world who know of Anthroposophy only by hearsay. Perhaps they have read nothing at all of it, or only what opponents have written. It is really very funny now.—Many of the antagonistic writings spring out of the earth like mushrooms—they quote literature, but among the literature they quote there are none of my books at all, only the books of opponents! The authors admit that they have not really approached the original sources, that they know only the antagonistic literature. Such things exist to-day. And so there are people outside who say: “The Anthroposophists are mad.” As a matter of fact, what one can least of all afford to be in order to reach anything at all in the spiritual world is to be mad. One must not be mad in the very slightest degree if one hopes to come to anything in the spiritual world. Even the tiniest fragment of madness is a hindrance to reaching anything. This simply must be avoided. Even a slight fancifulness, slight capriciousness, must be avoided. For all this giving way to the moods of the day, the caprices of the day, forms obstacles and handicaps on the way to progress in the spiritual world. If one desires to progress in the field of Anthroposophy, there is nothing for it but to have an absolutely sane head and an absolutely sane heart. With doting sentimentality (Schwärmerei) which is already the beginning of madness, one can achieve nothing.

Things such as I have told you to-day, strange as they sound, must be experienced in the light of absolute clarity of mind, of absolute soundness of head and heart. Truly, there is nothing that can more surely save one from very slight daily madness, than Anthroposophy. All madness would [disappear] by means of Anthroposophy if people would only devote themselves to it with real intensity. If somebody were to set himself to go mad through Anthroposophy, this would certainly be an experiment with inadequate means!

I do not say this in order to make a joke, but because it must be an integral part of the mood and tenor of anthroposophical endeavour. This is the attitude that must be adopted towards the matter, as I have just explained to you, half in joke, if we want to approach it in the right way, with the right orientation. We must set out to be as sane as possible; then we approach it in the right spirit. This is the least we can strive for, and above all, strive for in respect to the little madnesses of life.

Once I was friends with a very clever professor of philosophy, now long since dead, who used to say on every occasion: “We all have some point or other on which we are a little mad!” He meant, all people are a little mad ... but he was a very clever man. I always believed there was something behind his words, that his assertion was not altogether without foundation! He did not become an Anthroposophist.

To-day we shall begin a series of studies which will throw light on the unfolding of human karma from the side of the external bodily form as we encounter it in the physiognomy, the play of gestures, in all the external manifestations of the human being in the physical world. For in considering individual karmic connections, I have already drawn attention to the fact that it is precisely by observing apparently insignificant trifles in the human being that karmic connections may be perceived. It is also a fact that the external appearance of the human being gives in many respects a picture of his moral and spiritual tenor in his previous earthly life, or in a series of previous lives.

Along these lines certain types of human beings can be observed, and it will be found that a certain type leads back to a definite attitude and behaviour in one of the previous earthly lives. In order to avoid vague abstractions, let us consider examples.—Suppose, for instance, some human being's life on earth has been spent in occupying himself very closely with the things which confronted him in life; he has had intimate and real interest for many things, not passing by or missing anything about men, things or phenomena of the world. You will certainly have opportunity to observe this in human beings in the present life.

We may meet people who have a better knowledge—let us say—of the statesmen of ancient Greece than of the statesmen of our own time. If they are asked about somebody such as Pericles, Alcibiades or Miltiades, they know all about them, because they learnt it at school. If they are questioned about a person of the same kind belonging to the present day, they can hardly give any information. But the same thing exists in the sphere of the ordinary observation of life. In this connection I have often mentioned details which have certainly seemed strange to those who imagine that they are standing at the highest peak of idealism. There are men, for instance, who, in talking to you in the afternoon, will tell you that they saw a lady in the street in the morning. When you ask them what sort of dress she was wearing, they do not know! It is really incredible, but it is a fact—there are such people.

Now of course, such a thing can be interpreted in all sorts of different ways. It can be said: This is a case of such lofty spirituality that a man who happens to find himself in these circumstances considers it much too trifling to take notice of such things. But this is not a sign of a really penetrating spirituality. It may be lofty spirituality, but loftiness alone is not the point; what really matters is whether the spirituality is penetrating or superficial. There is not, in this case, any penetrating spirituality, because, after all, what a human being needs in the way of clothing is quite significant, and in a certain sense it is just as significant as, for instance, the type of nose or mouth he has. Again, there are human beings who are attentive to everything in life. They judge the world according to what they experience from it. Others go through the world as if nothing in it were of the slightest interest to them. They have taken in everything only as a kind of dream which quickly flows away again.

These are—I might say—two polar opposite types of human beings. But however you may judge of it, my dear friends, whatever opinion you may have about whether a man is at a high or low level because he does not remember the dress worn by the lady he saw in the morning—that is not the point. Today we want to discuss what influence this has on the karma of the human being. It actually makes a great difference whether a man pays attention to things in life, whether he takes interest in every detail, or whether he does not pay attention to things. Details are of enormous importance for the whole structure of spiritual life—not because they are details, but because a detail like the one mentioned points to a very definite constitution of soul.

There was a professor who always lectured extremely well and who, all the time he was lecturing, stared at one point—the upper part of the chest of someone in the audience; his eyes were riveted on this particular point. He never lost the thread of his lectures, which were always admirable. But one day he did lose the thread; he kept on looking and then turning away. Afterwards he went to the person in the audience and asked: “Why did you sew on the button that had always been missing? It has made me lose my head!” He had always been looking at the place of the missing button and this gave him concentration. Always to be looking at the place where a button is torn off or not, seems trifling, but as a matter of fact, so far as the inner attitude of soul is concerned it is significant whether such a thing is done or not. And when it is a question of observing the lines of karma, it is of extraordinarily great importance.

Let us therefore look a little more closely at these two types of human beings of whom I have been speaking. You need only remember what I have frequently told you about the passing over of the human being from one incarnation into the other. In earthly life man has his head, and he has, as well, the rest of his body. This part of his body, outside the head, contains a certain concatenation of forces. The physical body of the human being is finally given over to the elements. The physical substance, of course, is not carried over from one earthly life into the other. But the concatenation of forces which a man has in his organism, apart from his head, is carried through the life between death and a new birth and becomes the head of the next earthly life, whereas the head of the present incarnation has been formed out of the limb-system and the rest of the organism of the previous earthly life. Thus the non-head nature—if I may coin this expression—of the one earthly life transforms itself into the head of the following earthly life. The head is always the product of the non-head nature of the preceding earthly life. This holds good for the whole concatenation of forces in the constitution of the human being.

When somebody goes through life with great attentiveness to everything, he must, in the nature of things, move about a great deal. Human beings who lead an entirely sedentary life are very difficult to study to-day from the point of view of karma, because there was no such mode of life in earlier times. It remains to be seen what men with an exclusively sedentary mode of life will be like in the next earthly life, for sedentary existences have become customary only in this age. But when, in earlier times, a man was attentive to the things in his environment, he always had to go to them; he had to make his limbs mobile, to bring his limbs into activity. The whole body was active, not only the senses which belong to the head-system. Everything in which the whole body takes part, when the human being is attentive and observant, passes over into the structure of the head of the next earthly life, and has a definite effect. The head of the human being in the next earthly life is so constituted that he has then a very strong urge to send into the rest of his organism such forces as cause the forces of the earth to work very strongly into his organism. In the first seven years of life, everything contained in the organism, muscles, bones, etc., is formed from out of the head. The head sends out these forces. Every bone is shaped as it must be shaped, by means of the head. If, because of the type of incarnation which I have described to you, the head has the tendency to develop a strong relationship to the forces of the earth, what happens then? Then by the grace of the head—if I may put it so—the earth-forces are very much favoured during the formation of the human being in the embryonic period, but also, especially, in the life up to the change of teeth. The forces of the earth are very strongly propagated by the head. The result is that in such a human being there is a special development of everything that depends upon the forces of the earth. He gets big bones, strong bones, extremely broad shoulder-blades, for instance, and the ribs are well developed. Everything bears the stamp of good development.

But now, all that is connected with the carrying over of the faculty of attention from the past into the present earthly life, with the way the organism is formed—all this, it is true, proceeds spatially from the head, but nevertheless, in reality, from the soul and spirit. For in all these formative forces the soul and spirit participate; from such forces we can always look to the soul and spirit. In such human beings the head has become related to the earth as the result of the conditions in the previous earthly life which I have described. We can see this in the brow, which is not particularly lofty—for lofty brows are not allied to the earth—but it has definition, strength, and similar characteristics.

So we see that the human being develops in such a way that his bones are strongly formed. And the strange thing is: when these forces that are allied to the earth work forcefully over from the previous earthly life, the hair grows very quickly. In observing children whose hair grows very quickly we must always connect this with their powers of attention in the previous earthly life. It is a fact that out of his moral and spiritual attitude in any one incarnation the human being forms his body in the next earthly life.

Now we shall always find confirmation of how the forces of the soul and spirit participate in this shaping of the human being. A man whose karma it is, in the next earthly life, to have strong bones, well developed muscles, as the result of attentiveness to life—such a man, we shall see, goes through life with courage. Through this attentiveness he has also acquired the natural force belonging to a courageous life.

In times when men ceased to describe successive earthly lives, they still had the knowledge that really exists only when repeated earthly lives are taken into account. This was still so in the days of Aristotle. Aristotle has described this beautifully in his Physiognomics. He was still able to show how the external countenance is connected with the moral attitude, the moral tenor of a man.

And now let us think of cowards, faint-hearted men. They are those who took no interest in anything during the previous earthly life. You see, the study of karma has a certain significance for taking one's place in life in connection with the future. After all, it is only a craving for knowledge that we satisfy—though not only this craving—when we trace back a present earthly life to earlier lives. But if we go through our present earthly life with a certain amount of self-knowledge, then we can prepare for the next earthly life. If we drift superficially through life, without taking interest in anything, then we can be sure that we shall be a coward in the next earthly life. This is because a detached, inattentive character forms few links with its environment, and consequently the head-organisation in the next life has no relation with the forces of the earth. The bones remain undeveloped, the hair grows slowly: very often such a person has bow-legs or knock-knees.

These are things which in a very intimate way reveal the connection between the spirit and soul on the one side and the natural-physical on the other. Yes, my dear friends, from the very details of the shape of the head and of the whole structure of the human being, we can as it were look over into the previous earthly life.

These things are not said, however, in order that the observation itself shall be made through them. All the observations of which I have told you here, as a preparation for studies of karma, have not been made in an external, but in an entirely inner way, through spiritual-scientific methods. But precisely these spiritual-scientific methods show that the human being in his external form cannot be studied as is done in modern physiology and anatomy. There is really no sense in simply becoming familiar with the organs and their interconnections. For the human being is a picture. In part he is the picture of the forces holding sway between death and a new birth, and in part a picture of his previous earthly life. There is no sense in working at physiology and anatomy as they exist to-day, where the human being is taken and one organ after another in him is studied. The head, for instance, is much more closely connected with the previous earthly life than with the body which the human being receives in his present earthly life.

We can therefore say: certain physical processes are to be understood only when we look back to previous earthly lives. A man who learnt to know the world in a previous earthly life has quick-growing hair. A man who learnt to know little of the world in a previous life, has slow-growing hair. The hair grows very slowly; it lies along the surface of the body; whereas those who interested themselves intensely in life during a previous earthly life, who interested themselves all too intensely and poked their noses into everything, have loose, straggly hair. This is an absolutely correct connection. The most manifold bodily configurations can be referred back to experiences in one of the preceding earthly lives. This holds good into the very details of the constitution.

Take for instance, a man who ponders much in one incarnation—who thinks and ponders a great deal. In his next incarnation he will be a thin, delicately made man. A man who ponders little in one earthly life, but lives a life more concerned with grasping the outer world, tends, in the next life, to accumulate a good deal of fat. This, too, has a significance for the future. Spiritual “slimming cures” cannot well be managed in one earthly life; for this one must resort to physical cures—if indeed they are of any help! But for the next earthly life it is certainly possible to undergo a “slimming cure” if one ponders and thinks a great deal, especially if one thinks about something that calls for effort, of the kind I described yesterday. It need not be meditated, but simply pondered about a great deal, with the willingness to make many inner decisions.

There is an actual connection of this kind between the spiritual and moral way in which a man lives during one earthly life, and his physical constitution in the next earthly life. This cannot be emphasised sufficiently.

Take another case. Suppose, for instance, that in one earthly life a man is a thinker. I do not mean a professor—(this is not a joke!)—but a man who, possibly, walks behind a plough and who yet can think a great deal. It does not matter at all in what circumstances of life a man thinks, for he can be a real thinker when he follows a plough or is engaged in a handicraft of some sort. But because in his thinking the forces which fall away when earthly life comes to an end are mainly engaged, and he leaves unused those which are carried over into his next incarnation and take part in the building up of his head, such a man will appear again in a new earthly life with soft flesh, with delicate soft flesh.

The peculiar point, however, is this.—When a man thinks a great deal, then, in his next earthly life, he will have a good skin; the whole surface of the body, the skin of the body, will be very well constituted. Again, when you see people whose skin has spots, for instance, then you can always infer from this that they did little thinking in their past life. (Of course, one needs other grounds for this inference as well; it is not possible to deduce with absolute certainty from one symptom. Nevertheless, in general, the indications which I have given to-day about the inter-connection of the soul and spirit with the physical are correct). When you see people with some impurity in their skin, you can always conclude that they did little thinking in their past earthly life. People with many freckles have certainly not been thinkers in a previous earthly life.

These are the things which show at once that Spiritual Science does not pay attention merely to spiritual abstractions, but also to the working of the spiritual in the physical. I have often emphasised that what is harmful about materialism is not that it pays attention only to matter; the harmful element, the tragedy of materialism, is that it cannot really know anything about matter, because it does not recognise the spiritual workings within matter.

It is precisely in the study of the human being that attention must be paid to matter, for in matter, above all in the human form, in the whole human being, the working of the spiritual is expressing itself. Matter is the outer revelation of the spiritual.

You can glean from the “Leading Thoughts” which have lately appeared in the News Sheet issued with the periodical Das Goetheanum, that the head of man is observed in the proper way only when Imaginative cognition is applied even to its external appearance. For the human head in its formation, in the formation of the ears, particularly also in the formation of the nose and eyes, is actually according to the pattern of Imagination. It consists of outwardly visible Imaginations.

This is also connected with the life of the human being. There are human beings in whom the lower part of the trunk is longer than the upper part; that is to say, the part from the lowest point of the trunk up to the breast is longer than the part from the centre of the chest up to the neck. If the part from the centre of the chest to the neck is shorter than the lower part of the trunk, then we have to do with a human being who, in the life between death and a new birth, has made the ascent to the mid-point very quickly. He passed through this period very quickly. Then he descended slowly and comfortably to the new earthly life.

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Where, on the other hand, the upper part from the neck to the middle of the chest is longer than the lower part from the middle of the chest to the end of the trunk, we have to do with a human being who passed slowly and sedately as far as the middle of his life between death and new birth, and then descended more quickly into earthly life.

In the physiognomy, indeed, in the proportions of the trunk, we find the after-effect of the way in which the human being passed through the first period of his existence between death and a new birth, in comparison with the latter period.

Truly, what is physical in the human being is through and through a copy of the underlying spiritual. This has a consequence in life. For those who have the long lower trunk and short upper trunk are of a type showing from the outset that they need a great deal of sleep; they like to have long sleep. (The diagram is, of course, rather exaggerated). With the other type, who have the short lower trunk and long upper trunk, this is not so; they do not need so much sleep.

Thus, according to whether a human being needs sleep or not, which again expresses itself in the proportions of his trunk, you can see whether he has gone through the first part of the life between death and a new birth quickly or slowly, and also whether he has gone quickly or slowly through the second part of this life.

But this again is connected with the previous incarnation. Take the case of a man who was dull—not so much in disposition as because of his education and his mode of life. I do not mean that he was altogether lacking in interest, but he was dull; he could not really do anything properly, he never set about getting a real grip of things; he may have been attentive enough to poke his nose into everything, but it did not go beyond curiosity and a superficial understanding. He remained dull. Such a man has no interest for the first part of his life between death and a new birth. He develops an interest only when he has left behind the midnight summit of this life and begins his descent.

On the other hand, a man who is accustomed to penetrate everything both with his mind and with his feeling—he takes great interest in the first half, in the ascent, and then quickly completes the descent. Thus again it can be said: When you meet a man who is a sleepy-head, then this is to be traced to a dull life, such as I have described, in the previous incarnation. A man who is not a sleepy-head, who may even have to do something in order to go to sleep—we know there are books which can be used for the purpose of sending one to sleep!—a man who needs these things has not been dull, but attentive; he has been active with his mind and his feeling.

We can go further. There are men ... how shall I speak of them? Let us say they are ready eaters; they are fond of eating. Others are not so fond of eating. I do not want to say gluttonous people and non-gluttonous people for this would hardly be in place in a serious study. But I will say: there are people who are fond of eating and there are others who are less fond of it. This too is connected in a certain sense with what the human being experiences in his passage between death and a new birth, before and after the midnight summit of existence. The middle point here is the midnight summit of existence.

There are human beings who, as I will put it, ascend very high into the spiritual, and there are others who do not rise so high. Those who ascend very high will eat in order to live. Those who do not rise so high will live in order to eat.

These are certainly differences in life, and if we look at the way in which a man behaves in such actions as are connected with the fostering or non-fostering of his physical existence, we can say that here is something which enables us to perceive how his karmic life is flowing over from a previous existence.

Those who have acquired powers of observation in this direction perceive, for instance, in the way a man takes something at table, in the way he helps himself, a gesture which points very strongly indeed to the way in which the past earthly life is shining over into the present.

To-day I am speaking of the physical. To-morrow I shall speak more about the moral sides, but the physical must certainly be kept in mind, otherwise the opposite will become less intelligible. Men who help themselves vehemently, who when they so much as take a pear into their hands at table do it—well, with enthusiasm—are those who clung more to the trivialities of life in the previous incarnations who could not rise above trivialities; who were stuck in habit, convention, etc., unable to get a moral grasp of life. This, too, has great practical significance. As we are not used to such considerations, these things will often seem curious and we laugh about them. But they are to be taken with the deepest seriousness, for you see, there are in society to-day certain classes of people who spend their time and energy in the trivial customs of life; they do not willingly make anything their own which goes beyond the ordinary, habitual customs of life.

Nor must these things be applied merely to modes of behaviour. They can likewise be applied, for instance, to speech. There are languages in which you cannot say anything arbitrarily because everything is strictly prescribed in the construction of the sentence; the subject cannot be put in another place, and so on. There are other languages where the subject may be placed wherever you like, and the predicate too. These languages are of such a character that they help human beings to individual development.

This is only an example of how trivial habits are acquired, and how the human being cannot get out of triviality. An earthly life spent in such triviality leads to one in which the human being is gluttonous. He does not rise high enough in the life between death and a new birth—he becomes gluttonous.

In our day the time should dawn when men no longer reckon only with one earthly life, as was the case in the materialistic epoch of evolution, but take into account the whole of earthly evolution, in the knowledge that what is done and achieved by a man in one earthly life is carried over into the next earthly life; that what happens in one epoch is carried over into another by human beings themselves. As this awareness has to come, it is necessary that such knowledge should find a place in the education of growing children as well as of adults.

I should like to speak of two more types. There is a type of human being who can take everything seriously, and here I do not mean merely the external kind of seriousness. There may quite well be thoroughly serious people, who may even have a strongly tragic vein in their souls, but who all the same can laugh. For if a man is not able to laugh, if everything goes by him—and there are countless things in life to make one laugh—if he lets everything go by and cannot laugh at anything, then he must be dull. After all, there are things to laugh at! But a man may be able to laugh heartily at something that is funny, and still be, fundamentally, a serious man.

Then there is another type of person who does nothing but laugh, whom everything incites to laughter, who laughs when he is telling anything, whether or not it happens to be funny. There are people whose faces distort into laughter the moment they begin to relate anything, and who speak of even the gravest matter with a kind of grin, with a kind of laughter. I am describing extremes here, but these extremes exist.

This is a fundamental trait of the soul. We shall see tomorrow how it has its moral side. To-day I shall deal mainly with the physical side. This trait, in its turn, leads back to the karmic stream of evolution. A man who has a trait of gravity in his life, even if he can laugh too, has strong, steady forces working out of his previous incarnation into his present earthly life. In meeting a serious man of this kind, a man who has an understanding for the grave side of life, who stops to observe the grave side of life, we can say: one can feel in this man that he is bearing in his being and nature his past earthly life. A serious conception of life arises when the past earthly lives continue working, working on in the proper way. On the other hand, a man becomes an incessant chatterbox, laughing even when he is talking of the gravest matters, when past earthly lives are not working on in him. When a man has gone through a series of earthly lives—or at least through one—in which he has lived as if half asleep, then, in his next earthly life, he becomes a person who is never serious, who is unable to approach the things of life with the necessary seriousness. Thus from a man's attitude it can be seen whether he has spent his past earthly lives to good purpose, or whether he has more or less slept through them.

All this leads us to realise how false it is to take a mechanical view of a human being when he comes before us in his human guise, or even to see no further than the stereotyped pattern of his organism. This is quite wrong. The human being in his form, and right down into his possibilities of movement, must be regarded as an image of the spiritual world.

First of all there is the head-organisation. This is essentially determined by the previous earthly lives. We observe a human head in the right way when we learn to know all there is to be learnt about Imaginative ideation. Here, in connection with the human head, and nowhere else, we can apply, in the sense-world, Imaginative ideation, which is otherwise used for gazing into the spiritual world. We must begin with Imagination if we wish to look into the spiritual world. Then, first of all, the spiritual-etheric pictures of the spiritual beings appear before us. In the physical world, with the exception of the human head, there is nothing that is reminiscent of Imagination. But in the human head, right into its inner organisation, right into the marvellous structure of the brain, everything is really a physical mirror-image of the Imaginative.

Then, proceeding further, you may begin to study in the human being something that is really much more difficult to observe, although it is generally thought to be easy—that is, to gain an understanding of how the human being takes breath, how he sets his rhythmic system in movement, and how the breath leads over into the blood circulation. This tremendously living play, which penetrates the whole body, is far more complicated than it is thought to be. The human being takes in the breath, the breath transforms itself into blood circulation, but on the other side the breath again passes over into the head and is related in a definite way to the whole activity of the brain. Thinking is simply a refined, delicate breathing. The blood circulation, again, passes over into the impulses of the movements of the limbs.

This rhythmic system of the human being does not express itself in a static condition but in a continuous mobility, and this difference must be clearly observed. The head of man is best studied by considering it as a self-contained formation at rest; by studying its interior, the various parts of the brain, for instance, and how one part lies alongside another. Nothing can be known about the head if, say, the blood circulation in the head is studied by means of anatomy or physiology; for what the blood circulation achieves in the head is not connected with the head itself; it is connected merely with what the head needs from the rhythmic system. What can be seen when a portion of the cranial bone is raised, and the circulation exposed, is not really connected with the head. The head must be studied as an organ which is at rest, and where one part lies alongside another.

This method is not applicable to the rhythmic system, which has its seat in the breast. Everything there must be studied in its mobility, in the mobility of the blood circulation, of breathing, of thinking, of self-movement. This process can even be traced much farther into the physical.

Consider the breathing process as it passes over into the blood-process, and thence works over also into the brain. Carbonic acid is formed in the first place: that is to say, an acid is formed in the human organism. But when the breathing process passes over into the brain and into the nervous system, salt substances are formed out of the acids; salt substances are deposited.

Thus we may say: when the human being thinks, solids are precipitated. In the circulation, we find fluidity. In the breath, the gaseous. And in the principle of mobility when this passes over into movements, we find the fiery. The material elements are contained in all this, but the elements in mobility, in a constant state of arising and passing away. This process cannot really be grasped by sense-observation. Those who set out to grasp it, anatomically, by means of sense-observation, never really understand it; much must be added out of the inner creative force of the spirit if this process is to be understood. If we listen to explanatory discourses on the rhythmic process, as they are given in ordinary lectures on anatomy and physiology, we feel that it is all very remote from reality. (Those of you who have had this experience will be able to substantiate what I am saying). Yes, whoever listens to all this with an unbiased mind, and then watches the audience, actually feels as if the barrenness offered to the listeners must cause their very death; as if they must remain fixed to the desks, unable to move, unable even to crawl away! For this system of circulation ought to be described with such living vitality that the hearers, being continually carried from the sensible into the super-sensible, from the super-sensible back again into the sensible, enter into a kind of musical mood during the description.

When this is done, the human being develops inner habits of soul through which karma can be understood. We shall speak of that tomorrow. But what we have here is a sense-picture of Inspiration. Whereas in the study of the head we have a sense-picture of Imagination, so we have a picture of Inspiration in a study of the rhythmic system of the human being, if this study has the right character.

We pass now to the metabolic-limb system. In what modern anatomy and physiology have to say of the metabolic-limb system, we do not come to the forces of this system, but only to what falls away and is discarded by it. Everything that in the modern view is the content of the metabolic-limb system does not belong at all to the real human structure and organisation, but is expelled. The content of the bowels is only the extreme instance. Whatever else is physically perceptible in the metabolic-limb system does not belong to the human being but is deposited by him; some of it remains within him for a longer time, some for a shorter time. The content of the bowels remains a short time; what is deposited by the muscles, nerves, etc. remains longer. Any physical substance that can be found in the metabolic-limb system does not belong to the human being; it is excretion, deposit. Everything that belongs to the metabolic-limb system is of a super-sensible nature. So that in studying the metabolic-limb system of man we have to pass over to what has a purely super-sensible existence within the physical.

We must therefore picture the metabolic-limb system in such a way that physical arms, etc., are in reality spiritual, and within this spiritual the Ego unfolds.—When I move my arms or my legs, deposits are continually taking place, and these deposits are observed. But they are not the essential. You cannot refer to the physical when you want to explain how the arm or the hand grasps something; you must refer to the spiritual. The spiritual that runs all along the arm—that is the essential in the human being. What you perceive is merely a deposit of the metabolic-limb system.

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How, then, can we even start on a study of karma if we believe that what we see in the metabolic-limb system is the human being? The human being is not this at all. We can only start on a study of karma when we know what the human being really is. We must include something that is to be found, certainly, in the sense-world, but which is, nevertheless, a super-sensible picture of Intuition.

And so, my dear friends, you can say: A study of the head is an Imaginative process, projected into the sense-world; a study of the rhythmic system must be truly Inspired, though active in the realm of sense-observation, within the sense-world; a study of the metabolic-limb system must be Intuitive, a super-sensible activity in the sense-world.

It is very interesting to find that in the study of the human being we have images for Intuition, Inspiration and Imagination. In a proper study of the metabolic-limb man we can learn what Intuition really is in the super-sensible. In a proper study of the rhythmic man we can learn what Inspiration really is in the super-sensible. In a proper study of the head we can learn what Imaginative observation is in the super-sensible.

Study of the Head: Imaginative, projected into the sense-world.

Study of the Rhythmic System: Inspired, working in the sense-world.

Study of the Metabolic-Limb System: Intuitive, supersensibly in the sense-world.

This is what is indicated in the latest ‘Leading Thoughts’, and it is something which everyone who carefully studies the existing Lecture-Courses can indeed find for himself.

To-day, my dear friends, we have tried to consider karmic connections in relation to the physical. To-morrow we will pass on to a closer study of karmic connections in relation to the moral and spiritual nature of man.

We shall continue for a time to study the laws prevailing in the development of human karma, and I shall say something to-day about the inner aspect of the shaping of karma, of the part of karma that is connected especially with the moral, ethical and spiritual life.

You must remember that directly we look beyond the physical world—and this is always so in studying karma—the karmic connections are spiritual. Even when they take effect in the physical, for example in illness, whatever is karmic in an illness has a spiritual cause. So that under all circumstances we come to the spiritual whenever we approach the study of karma. To-day, however, we shall turn our attention more particularly to the ethical aspect of karma, to the workings of karma in the life of soul.

I have already told you that the forming of karma is connected with those Beings who in very ancient times of evolution were actually present on the earth and who departed from the earth at the time of the separation of the moon, taking up their abode in the cosmos as Moon-inhabitants, Moon Beings.

What we call Moon—of which the physical part as ordinarily described is no more than an indication—must be regarded as the bearer of certain spiritual beings, the most important of whom once lived on earth as the great primeval Teachers. It was they who established among men on earth that ancient wisdom of which I have so often spoken. These Beings were on the earth before the separation of the moon. In those times they infused the primeval wisdom into man who acquired it through a kind of inner illumination. And the way in which these Beings worked was altogether different from the way in which men can work on the earth to-day.

The activity of these ancient, primeval Teachers among men must in truth be described as a kind of magic, taking effect inasmuch as the influence of the human will upon happenings in the external world was infinitely greater than is possible to-day. Nowadays the will can work on the external world only through physical means of transmission. If we want to push some object we must put our will into operation through the arms and hands. But in the days of the primeval Teachers the human will still had a direct and immediate action upon processes in the outside world, upon the very processes of nature. It was a kind of action that we should now call magical. But in point of fact the last vestiges of this power of the human will persisted until comparatively recent times. Rousseau, for example, tells us that in certain warmer regions he was able to paralyse and even kill toads which came near him, simply by fixing them with his gaze. This power of the human will which in warmer climates persisted until the 18th century, has diminished through the course of the ages and has now vanished. But in ancient Egypt man was still able to influence and promote the growth of plants through his will. And when the primeval Teachers were on the earth, even inorganic processes of nature could be brought under the sway of the human will.

These things of course depended upon a true, instinctive insight into the connections of world-existence which remain completely hidden from the crude, material science of modern times. It is evident, however, that the influence of warmth upon the working of the human will must be taken thoroughly into account, for Rousseau, who was able, in warmer regions, to kill toads with his gaze, subsequently tried in Lyons to stare at a toad in the same way, supposing that it would at least be paralysed. But the toad was not paralysed; on the contrary it fixed its eyes upon him and he himself became partially paralysed and had to be restored to life by snake-poison administered by a doctor.

This way of activating the will is of course dependent upon an instinctive knowledge of the whole environment of man.

Out of their own spiritual foundations the primeval Teachers possessed a totally different, far deeper and more penetrating knowledge of nature than is within the reach of man to-day. They were endowed with powers which cannot be comprised in natural laws. Nor was this necessary when the primeval Teachers were working on the earth, for nothing in the least resembling modern natural science was then in existence. It would have seemed utterly pointless and nobody would have understood its purpose. For in those days all such activity was founded upon a far deeper, more inward knowledge and understanding than is possible to-day.

These primeval Teachers transferred the scene of their work from the earth to the moon and as everything in the cosmos is interconnected, a mighty task is now allotted to them within the nexus of cosmic happenings. They are Beings who have a great deal to do with karma, with the forming and shaping of human karma. For an essential part of the weaving of karma is to be observed when, after having laid aside his etheric body a few days after death, the human being lives through his sleeping life (not his waking life) backwards. When he passes through the gate of death he has, first of all, a clear retrospective vision of what he has experienced in life—a grand and majestic panorama in pictures. After a few days this panorama slowly fades away as the etheric body dissolves in the cosmic ether, and then an actual journey backward begins.

Earthly existence flows in such a way that although we grasp it in remembrance as a unity, this is an illusion. Life does not flow onwards uninterruptedly. We live through the day consciously, the night unconsciously; the day consciously, the night unconsciously, and so on.

When in remembrance man thinks back over his life, he forgets that the nights are always there between the days. During the nights a very great deal happens to the soul, to the astral body and ego, only man knows nothing about it. What happens to him while he is unconscious during the nights in earthly existence, this he lives through in a backward course after death, so that time actually seems to him to be flowing backwards; in full consciousness he lives backward through the nights.

As approximately a third of life is spent in sleep, this backward journey is also lived through in a third of the time of the earthly life. If, therefore, a man has reached the age of 60, some 20 years have been spent in sleep and the backward journey lasts for about 20 years. Then he enters the Spirit-land proper, into a different form of existence. This backward journey, this vision of what has happened during the nights, is lived through after death in such a way that the great and significant difference between its experiences and those of ordinary sleep is strikingly apparent.

With the exception of the dreams rising out of sleep which do not, after all, reproduce the experiences of earthly life very faithfully but in an illusory, fantastic shape—with the exception therefore of the dreams welling up from the night-life, the human being has little consciousness of all the manifold happenings in which he is involved. In earlier lectures here I have described what happens to the human being during sleep; but after death he experiences it with extraordinary clarity and definition. This life in the soul-world after death is much richer in impressions than earthly life. The pictures a man experiences and how he himself is involved in them—all this comes to him with extraordinary intensity; there is nothing dreamlike about it. It is experienced, if I may put it so, as a kind of photographic negative. If you caused suffering to some person during your earthly life, you experienced this infliction of suffering as it proceeded from yourself. You experienced what proceeded from yourself, was done by yourself. But journeying backward after death you do not feel what you experienced during earthly life, but you slip as it were into the other person and feel what he experienced as the result of your action.

To take a drastic example.—If you gave someone a box on the ears, you do not experience what you felt in earthly life as you planned and carried out this act, but on the backward journey you experience, instead, the feelings of the other person whose ears you boxed. You live through it as your own experience, and indeed with extraordinary concreteness, with greater intensity. No impression on earth is as powerful as the impressions along this backward course after death for a third of the time of the earthly life. During this period the whole karmic fulfilment of what was done in life is experienced—from the standpoint of the other man. You live through the whole karmic fulfilment, but not, of course, as earthly experience—that will come in the subsequent life on earth. Even though it is not as intense as regards the action as it will be in a later incarnation, you experience the impression more strongly than could be the case in any earthly life.

This is a very striking fact. It is the intense reality of the experiences that is so remarkable.

But even if the human being were able to unfold in his ego and astral body the degree of strength that is his when he passes through the gate of death, he would experience this whole backward journey at most as a very vivid dream. And he might expect it to be so if, after death, he were merely to look at the earthly life and what it has made of him. But this backward journey is not a vivid dream; it is an experience of far greater intensity than any experience in earthly existence. Only now there is no physical body, no etheric body, through which man's experiences are mediated to him on earth.

Just think what you would experience on earth with your ordinary consciousness if you had no physical body and no etheric body. You would flit over the earth with now and again a dream arising; then you would sleep again, and so it would continue.

It is easy to conceive that after his earthly life a man who had reached the age of 60 lives through a dream continuing for 20 years; but what he lives through is by no means a dream, it is an experience of the greatest intensity. What makes this possible? It is because the moment a human being has passed through the gate of death, has laid aside his etheric body and begins his backward journey, the Moon Beings draw near him and with their ancient magical powers they pass into him, into his experiences, and impregnate his pictures with cosmic substance.

If I may use an analogy, what happens is just as if I were to paint a picture. In the first place it is simply a picture and doesn't cause actual pain—provided it is not too hideous—and even then the impression is only a moral or aesthetic one. It hurts nobody. But suppose I were to paint a picture, let us say, of three of you here and the picture were permeated with some magic power causing these three to step from the picture and carry out everything they had planned against others. You would react with more force and vigour than anthroposophists are wont to reveal! So it is after death. The experiences are full of living force, living activity, because these Moon Spirits permeate the pictures with their own substantiality; they saturate these pictures with a super-reality of being.

After death, therefore we pass through the region of the Moon Beings and what we experience as the balancing-out of our own deeds is stamped with mighty force in the cosmic ether. This backward journey—when it is described not merely in principle as in the book Theosophy, but when one tries to describe it as concretely as I want to do now—this backward journey after death is extraordinarily interesting and a highly important section of life.

In our time the experiences that may come to a human being during this period after death are particularly complicated. Just think how essentially the whole constitution of soul of these Moon Beings differs from that of the inhabitants of the earth. These Moon Beings with whom we have so much to do after death once imparted to men that primeval wisdom which in our time has completely faded away. As I have often explained, men could not have attained their freedom if the mighty wisdom of these primeval Teachers had remained. It has faded away and been replaced by something else, namely, abstract thinking. The human being to-day thinks in concepts which no longer have any very real relationship with the spiritual world. Let me repeat an example I gave on another occasion.—Aristotle has bequeathed to us ten concepts which were really a survival of ancient wisdom: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Position, Space, Time, Possession, Action, Suffering. He called them the ‘Categories’. They are ten simple concepts. These ten concepts are generally enumerated in our text-books of Logic. In classical schools they have to be learned by heart; professors of philosophy are familiar with them. But nothing more is known than just the ten concepts by name: Being, Possession, Position, Space, Time, and the rest. To what does such knowledge amount? These ten concepts seem tedious and dry to a modern man. But to one who perceives their significance they are no more tedious than are the 22 or 23 letters of the alphabet: a, b, c, d, e, f, g, ...

Just think of it.—If you knew nothing more about the alphabet than a, b, c, d, e, f, g, up to z, if you knew this and nothing more, what would you make of Goethe's Faust? You would open the book and find these 22 signs scattered about in manifold permutations and combinations. Faust contains nothing but these 22 signs inter-connected in different ways. And if you knew nothing more, if you had never learnt to read but merely opened the book and saw these signs, just think how different it would be from what it is now, when you can take Faust and read it. That is a different matter altogether! No book in the world contains anything except these 22 signs and yet just think what you can make of them! The whole world of the mind is open to you because by juggling with these 22 letters you can apply them.

But the logicians who have accepted the ten Categories to-day: Being, Quantity, Quality, Relation, Space, Time, Position, Possession, Action, Suffering—these men know as little to what these Categories really apply as someone who has never learnt to read and simply recognises a, b, c, d, e, f, knows of all the books of the world. It is exactly the same thing. For these ten concepts of Aristotle's Logic have to be understood in such a way that they can be applied in manifold permutations, just as the letters are manipulated in the physical world by multifarious combinations and permutations. Then, with these ten concepts we read in the spiritual world. They are the letters.

But in our time the concepts are known by name and that is all—which is equivalent to knowing nothing more of the alphabet than the letters in their sequence. Think what you would miss if you could not read but only knew a, b, c, d! Correspondingly, men miss everything that is in the spiritual world if they are unable to manipulate and apply the ten concepts of Aristotle in all manner of ways, in order to read in the spiritual world.

In this connection something very droll has been happening among philosophers for a long time. About the middle of the Middle Ages there lived a very astute and clever man, by name Raymond Lully. From tradition he still knew something about this permutation of the categories of logic, of the fundamental concepts of logic, and he gave out what he knew—clothing it in the form of pictures as was customary in those times. What he really wanted to say, or rather, what he would have said if he had expressed the reality, was this: My contemporaries are all blockheads, because they only know a, b, c, d; they do not know how to read with the fundamental concepts, the root concepts. A man must understand in his head how to combine these fundamental concepts as letters are combined into words and sentences. Then he can read in the spiritual world.—Raymond Lully did not say this in such direct words for that was not the custom in his days. He said: Write the fundamental concepts on slips of paper, then take a kind of roulette, spin it and the concepts will be thrown about among each other; and then read. Then there will be results.

This, however, was only an analogy, for he did not really mean anything like a dead, mechanical roulette; he meant the spiritual head which must manipulate and combine these concepts. But those who heard of it took the analogy literally and have laughed about it ever since, considering it to be a piece of childishness on the part of Raymond Lully. The childishness, however, is purely on the side of modern philosophy which does not understand what was meant.

Practically everything that in olden days was brought to humanity by the primeval Teachers whom we know as the Moon Beings, has been lost. But during his backward journey in the first period after death the human being becomes acquainted in a very special way with this knowledge. He knows then how these ancient Sages thought, what kind of wisdom they possessed. Hence the graphic, concrete reality of his experiences during this period.

But in our time things have become complicated and confused owing to a kind of lack of understanding. Human beings, who since the fading of the primeval wisdom have been living here on earth with their abstract concepts, have not the power to understand the inner soul-constitution of these primeval Teachers since they entered the Moon-existence.

When a modern scholar is passing through this period of his life after death, be speaks a very different language from these primeval Teachers who, as I shall describe to you in more detail, have a very great deal to do with the shaping of karma. These primeval Teachers and the men of to-day who die imbued with modern culture and the fruits of modern civilisation do not really understand one another.

It is extremely difficult to form a clear conception of these things, for observation of what is happening to human beings in this connection is by no means easy. But in characteristic cases observation is possible: for instance, one can study two men who died not so very long ago and who have gone their way backward after death, two men who were steeped in modern culture and who nevertheless were very different from each other.

We can take a man who was brilliant in his own way, a scientist of average calibre like Du Bois-Reymond, or someone of the same type, and observe his backward journey after death. Another personality, too, can be observed in the same way. A very interesting personality as regards this backward journey through the soul-land is the one who hovered before me while I was composing my Mystery Plays and who took shape in the character of Strader. Strader in the Mystery Plays is an image of an actual person who in his youth entered the monastic life but subsequently abandoned it and worked in the field of rationalistic philosophy as a professor in a University. This man—he was responsible for a number of writings—has all the abstraction of a modern thinker, but his thoughts are extraordinarily penetrating, full of warmth and vigour. It does one good to find this quality of heart in a modern thinker.

The full-blooded vigour of Hegel, for example, who could present the highest abstractions with tremendous depth of emotion but also with utmost concreteness, is of course no longer possible to the same extent in a man of to-day. Hegel was a thinker who was able to imbue concepts and ideas with such concrete reality that he could, so to speak, hack wood with them. But the man to whom I am now referring revealed something of the same heart-quality in handling abstract concepts. As I said, his life hovered before me when I was shaping the figure of Strader in the Mystery Plays.

When this man died his backward journey was particularly interesting to me. A fact to be taken thoroughly into account was that all his thinking had a certain theological bent. Like that of a modern scientist, or at least a natural philosopher, it was entirely abstract, but all the time there was this nuance of theology (coming of course from earlier incarnations) and his thinking was lit by a gleam of consciousness that it is possible to speak, at least, of the reality of a spiritual world.

Hence this man's thinking has more affinity with the soul-constitution of the Moon Beings than has the thinking of an average scientist like Du Bois-Reymond, for example. When such men are passing through the soul-world, through the Moon sphere, one can perceive a marked lack of understanding—it is like someone who lives in a foreign country and never learns the language; the others do not understand him and he does not understand them. This, broadly speaking, is the fate of a man who is a typical product of modern civilisation when he enters upon this backward journey after death.

But it was rather different in the case of this personality, the prototype of Strader.—I have to resort to earthly language although it is utterly inadequate when applied to what I am here describing.—When, after death, this personality was journeying backward through the course of his life, it could be observed that the Moon Beings took a certain interest in the way he was bringing his thoughts, his abstract thoughts, into the soul-world. And he, in his turn, experienced a very remarkable awakening, an awakening in which he seemed to be saying to himself: ‘Ah, now I see that all I fought against is, in reality, quite different.’ (He had fought against many things that were traditional).—‘I see now that it only gradually came to be what it is, because the ancient truths have become abstract words. I was often fighting against windmills; now, however, I see realities.’

Something of extraordinary interest is happening here—and a whole number of such men in modern life might be cited as examples. There is something extremely interesting in this backward journey after death where the foundations of karma are laid.

An even more striking figure in this connection is the philosopher Jacob Frohschammer, who wrote Die Phantasie als Weltprinzip (Imagination as a World-Building Principle). I have often mentioned him. There was still a great deal of inner substance in his abstract concepts, but, like the man just described, he was an abstract thinker. He could, however, so little tolerate the abstractions of modernism—I do not now mean ‘modernism’ in the terminology of Roman Catholicism—that he simply refused to acknowledge concepts as world-building forces; he would acknowledge only imagination. He said: imagination is working everywhere; the plants grow, the animals exist and so forth, through imagination. In this respect Frohschammer's book is extraordinarily interesting.

It is wonderful to observe how such a personality, who has still retained much of what was alive in cultural life before the modern, abstract way of thinking became customary, is able to blend with the substance of the Moon Beings. Investigations of this kind are profoundly interesting because a closer insight into the laws of the evolution of karma grows out of them. And when one is drawn by a certain sympathy to such a personality—as I myself was drawn to the prototype of Strader in the Mystery Plays—it is the warmth of soul by which one is united with him that makes it possible to share the experiences of this very significant journey after death.

The fact that the impressions are so strong for the man who is passing through these experiences has an after-effect, too, upon the person who is following them with knowledge. And that in itself is a very remarkable thing. For it becomes evident how much more impressive are the experiences after death than those of earthly life. I ask myself to-day in all earnestness: If I should wish to add a fifth Mystery Play to the four already written, would it be possible for me again to include the figure of Strader, now that for some considerable time I have watched these pictures of what Strader's prototype experienced after death? ... It would be quite impossible, because the moment I want to present the earthly figure, where the impressions are far less intense, the pictures of the impressions experienced by Strader's prototype after death are there before me. And they are far, far stronger; they blot out what was there during the earthly life.

I can observe this quite clearly in myself. As you may imagine, I took an extraordinary interest in the life of this man, for he was the prototype of Strader. He has since died and the impressions coming to him, after death, are incomparably more interesting to me than anything I can find out or describe about him while he was alive.

When I think about my Mystery Plays I realise that because of the vivid impressions of this prototype of Strader in the life after death, the character of Strader is the one that fades away from me most completely of all. This does not apply to the same extent to the other characters in the Plays. You see there how what is here on earth aligns itself in true observation with what is beyond the earth, and how the effect of such things enables one to realise the tremendous intensity of the life after death on this backward journey. The sheer intensity of it blots out the impressions of earthly life.

Still more can be said about these matters. I am not speaking here of anything that has been invented, but of realities. We may know a man very well in his earthly life and then experience what he has to undergo in the backward journey after death. Everything takes a different form because of the intensity of the pictures. If we have been exceedingly interested in a man's earthly life—as I was in that of a man who died a number of years ago—then our whole relation to the earthly life changes; it has an entirely different character when we subsequently share in the experiences of the personality in question during the backward journey after death. And many things in the earthly relationships are only now revealed in their whole truth.

This is all the more the case when the relationships in the earthly life were not of a spiritual nature; when they were, when they were essentially spiritual, there is, as it were, a continuous, onflowing development. If, however, there had been, for example, a human relationship without agreement in ideas and thoughts, then in certain circumstances this relationship may be transformed after death into something quite different, into an entirely different life of feeling and the like. The cause of this change is the vividness of the pictures which then appear.

I am describing these things in order to call up before you a concrete image of types of realities differing from those of earthly existence. There are many different types of realities. And when, so to speak, the deeds of the Moon Beings flow into the pictures which a man himself shapes, this reality is such that it appears even more wonderful than the subsequent reality when the man is passing through the spiritual world proper and in union with the Hierarchies is concerned with the elaboration of the results of his earthly life; this state of existence runs a much simpler course because it is a kind of continuation. But the radical transformation of the human being after death, due as it is to the fact that he enters into relation with Beings who left the earth long ago and founded a kind of Moon colony in the cosmos—this is something that with tremendous forcefulness discloses to us a reality which, because it follows immediately after the life on earth, is closely related to and yet essentially different from earthly reality.

When human beings cling too strongly to earthly things it may be difficult for them to find their bearings in the sphere of the Moon Beings. Something happens then which I will describe in the following way. Picture to yourselves the earth here, the moon there.—Now the active moon-influences which are, in reality, reflected sun-influences, penetrate just so far into the earth ... At this point they cease. The moon-influences do not penetrate very deeply into the earth, actually only as far as the roots of the plants spread in the soil. The moon-influences are not really active below the stratum of the roots of plants. There is only a shallow layer up here where the moon-influences are held fast. Sun-influences, of course, penetrate deeply into the earth. The warmth of the sun in the summer is preserved; when you lay potatoes in the soil the sun's warmth is still there during the winter. The sun-influences penetrate deeply into the earth, the moon-influences only as far as the level of the roots of plants ... a shallow layer.

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The moon-influences, rising up like mist from this shallow layer, may cause human beings who have to pass after death into the Moon sphere—the soul-world—but are unable to understand the Moon Beings, to be trapped by this shallow stratum of moon-influences and they can actually be seen by sensible-super-sensible perception wandering about as ghosts, as spectral shades.

The legends and poems which tell of these things are based upon reality, but in order to form a sound judgment in this domain we must be entirely free from superstition, we must proceed with critical deliberation and accept only what can be put to the test.

In this backward journey after death which lasts for a third of the time of the earthly life, karma is prepared. For the Moon Beings mingle in these ‘negatives’ of a man's deeds, also of his deeds in the life of thought. The Moon Beings have a good memory and they inscribe into the cosmic ether every experience they share with the human being.

We pass through the life between death and a new birth and then, on the return journey when we come back once more into the Moon sphere we find everything inscribed there. And we bear it all with us into our life in order to bring it to fulfilment by means of our earthly will.

This, my dear friends, is what I wanted to place before you to-day as a theme of study.

In the last lecture we spoke of how the seed of karma is formed in the period immediately following a man's death. And I tried to describe to you with what living force and intensity the experiences undergone during this period work upon him and also upon one who is able to follow the life of a human being through this period—which, as you know, lasts for about a third of the time of the earthly life. We must, of course, bear in mind how the terrestrial world in which the fulfilment and development of karma take place, works upon man, and in what a different way he is influenced by the extra-terrestrial world.

When we survey the scene of our karma—the earth—it is obvious that everything belonging to the earth, all the beings of the kingdoms of nature, exercise a very real influence upon man. This influence makes itself felt in his life even when his cognition is not directed to his earthly surroundings. He must be nourished, he must grow; to this end he must take into himself the substances of the earth. These substances work upon him through their qualities and inner forces quite independently of anything he may know about them. And expressing it rather radically, we may say that no matter what attitude a man adopts in his life of soul towards the kingdoms of nature surrounding him in earthly existence, he is related in a very definite way to the facts and realities of his physical environment.

This can be observed in many domains of life. How would it be, for instance, if the quantity of foodstuffs we consume were determined by what we know about the effects of the various foodstuffs upon the organism? Obviously we cannot wait until we possess such knowledge; we are obliged to eat. Our relationship to our earthly environment is entirely independent of our knowledge, independent too, in a certain sense, of our life of soul.

But now think of the utterly different character of our relationship to the world of stars. Influences of the world of stars cannot be said to have the same instinctive basis as the influences of the kingdoms of nature. The starry worlds fill man with wonder, he can be moved and inspired by them. But just think to what an extent his life of soul is involved in everything that concerns the world of stars, how his life of soul is affected. Take the nearest heavenly body that is related to man—the moon. That the moon has an influence upon man's life of phantasy and imagination is common knowledge. And even those people who repudiate everything else in respect of influence of the celestial bodies upon the human being will not deny that the ‘magic of moonlight’—to use a romantic phrase—has an effect upon phantasy.

But it is impossible to imagine that even this crudest and most obvious influence of the world of stars could take effect if man had no life of soul. Without the life of soul there could be no such relationship as exists between man and his earthly environment, where in truth nothing essential depends upon whether he admires or does not admire, shall we say, a cabbage—it is simply there to be eaten—or upon what he knows of its effect upon his organs; what he has to do is to eat it! In this case, knowledge is merely an accessory. Knowledge does indeed, raise man's life of soul above the life of nature; but man lives his life within the realm of nature, and the spiritual life itself is an accessory. But if the spiritual life is excluded we cannot conceive that any influence could be exercised upon man by the world of the stars—let alone by the world lying still further beyond: the world of the Hierarchies, of the higher Spiritual Beings.

On the lowest level, so to speak, of the Hierarchies are those Beings of whom I said in the last lecture that inasmuch as they themselves live within the experiences of man after death, they impart tremendous power and intensity to these experiences. If these Moon Beings who were once the great primeval Teachers of humanity on earth did not live, as it were, within man's very being after death, his experiences would be like dreams. But they are anything but dreamlike; they are stronger, more full of reality than the so-called normal experiences of earthly life. Karma is actually prepared by means of these experiences, because we live with such intensity in others, not in ourselves, and have to establish the balance for our deeds. We experience things as the others experienced them, and with tremendous intensity. In this way our karma is prepared. And then comes a transition. Having shared these experiences with the Moon Beings, man passes on to experiences shared with Beings who have never been on the earth. The Moon Beings of whom I spoke in the last lecture were at one time on the earth. But now, in a later period between death and a new birth, man ascends to Beings who were never on earth. The Beings belonging to the first group of the higher Hierarchies are those we know by the name of the Angels. These Beings guide and accompany us from one earthly life to another. Among the ranks of the higher Beings they are the nearest to us and they are also very near to us throughout our earthly life.

When we reflect about the external circumstances of our earthly life, about things we have seen or heard, about what we have gleaned from the world of nature or from history, or about what other people have said to us ... when our thinking is occupied exclusively with what comes to us from outside during earthly life, then that Being of the Hierarchy of the Angels to whom we belong has little to do with our thoughts; for the Angels never dwelt on the earth—unlike the primeval Teachers who although they were present in etheric bodies only, did nevertheless inhabit the earth. The Angels were never earth-dwellers. Our relation to them is therefore different from our relation to the Moon Beings of whom I have been speaking to you.

But for all that, as we follow the paths which lead us after death in a certain sense past the planets, and come, first of all, into the domain of the Moon Beings, we are also in the realm of the Angels. Thus while we are living together with the primeval Teachers of humanity who have now become Moon-dwellers, we are living, too, with the Angels.

Then, as our path leads further, we enter the sphere which in all spiritual science that has ever existed, is known as the sphere of Mercury. None of the Beings in this region were ever on the earth. Here live only Beings who were never earth-dwellers. When we pass into the sphere of Mercury between death and a new birth, we come into the realm of the Archangels. And when subsequently we pass into the sphere of Venus we come into the realm of the Archai.

In passing through these realms of the Third Hierarchy we approach what is in reality the spiritual sphere of the Sun. And the spiritual Sun-sphere is truly, in the most sublime sense, the dwelling-place of those Beings who in the ranks of the higher Hierarchies are named Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. Thus it is the Second Hierarchy which, in reality, is the soul, the spirit, of the Sun-existence. We enter this sphere and spend in it the greater part of the time between death and a new birth.

Now these Beings can of a truth be understood only when we remember that their existence is entirely remote from what makes us into earth-men and holds us within the bounds of natural law. In the realm of true Sun-existence there are no natural laws as we know them on earth. In the realm of spiritual Sun-activity, spiritual laws—including, for example, the laws of will—and natural laws, are one. In that realm, natural laws do not in any way run counter to spiritual laws, for natural law and spiritual law are completely at one.

Let us be quite clear as to the consequences of this.—We live here on earth and have our various experiences. Perhaps we strive for goodness, we endeavour not to deviate from a path we consider morally right. With these intentions we perform certain deeds. We see someone else to whom such intentions cannot possibly be ascribed, to whom we can attribute only evil purposes. We wait a few years, continuing to unfold side by side with the other man's evil purposes, what we consider to be our own good intentions. But now we perceive that nothing has been achieved; our good intentions have had no effect and, in addition, ill-luck may have befallen us, whereas the other man whose purposes we deemed evil is living by our side in what appears to be good fortune.

This is something that leads so many people who have eyes only for earthly life, to rebel against it and to declare that in this earthly life there is no evidence of a power that deals justly with good and evil. And indeed no really unbiased observer will be able to say that a man who says this is entirely in the wrong. For would any reasonable person be prepared to insist that every occurrence in a man's life is connected, in respect either of merit or guilt, with what has come from his intentions in this earthly life? When we consider how earthly life takes its course we can only say that it is impossible to find any kind of balance there for the moral impulses issuing from the soul. Why is this impossible?

It is because we are not in a position, of ourselves, to translate our intentions, those innermost forces which by freely willed assent hold sway in our life of soul, into the reality wherein we live on earth. There, in the outer world, natural laws prevail and events occur for which the influences of many different human beings are responsible. We cannot but realise that in earthly life there is an abyss between the impulses of will in our souls and what we see taking effect in external life as our destiny.

Just ask yourselves how much of what is destiny in this external life and therefore significant for you is a direct realisation of the intentions you bear within your soul? The terrestrial world is not the realm in which the spiritual laws in accordance with which man allows himself to be governed, or governs himself, are at the same time natural laws. In this earthly world, spiritual laws are not identical with natural laws; spiritual laws hold sway in man's inner being only. And if we face the world fairly and squarely, we can only say: if someone misconstrues my good intentions, deeming them evil, if he does not recognise my good intentions and judges them by what my destiny may be after a few years ... if, therefore, someone says that my good intentions are, in reality, bad, and when ill-luck befalls me a few years later justifies himself by saying: ‘See what has happened now; I said all along that his intentions were bad ...’ then this would be an impossible way of living. The spiritual must work from soul to soul. But in the external, earthly world, the spiritual does not yet work as a force of destiny.

Thus we must keep vividly in mind that in earthly life there is an abyss between the moral and psychical on the one side and the natural and physical on the other. This abyss is caused by the fact that spiritual laws are not identical with natural laws.

Now if men leave entirely out of account the world which leads on from terrestrial existence—the world from B to C, from death to a new birth—whether they simply disregard it or whether they think that owing to the boundaries of cognition nothing can be known of it—what will such men say? They will say: ‘Natural laws and what the human being does and experiences because his life is involved in them—that is actually, that is real. Our knowledge, our science can encompass it. But the outcome of the intentions which are present within us as experiences of soul-and-spirit—that we cannot know.’ Nothing, indeed, can be known, if the life from B to C is ignored. That these things living within the soul will in some way find fulfilment can only be a matter of belief. In the measure in which, since ancient times, knowledge of the span from B to C has faded, in that same measure has this separation arisen between knowledge and belief.

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But we cannot speak of karma as we speak of knowledge and belief. For karma is the expression, the manifestation, of law—not of something that is mere belief—just as is the case with natural law.

Returning now to man's life between death and a new birth, after the earliest period which I have already described to you, our study brings us to a world where dwell the Beings of the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and instead of earthly existence we have a Sun-existence. For even when we pass beyond the region of the stars, the sun still radiates, though not in the physical sense; and it continues to radiate as we live through the time between death and a new birth. Whereas here on earth the sun shines down upon us with its physical influences, in the life between death and a new birth the sun shines upwards to us; that is to say, we are borne and sustained by the Beings of the sun, by Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes. But in the world wherein we are then living, the natural laws which obtain in earthly life have no meaning at all, for everything is governed by spiritual laws, laws of soul-and-spirit. In that world there is no need for grass to grow; no cow needs grass to eat; for neither cows nor grass exist. Everything is spiritual. And within this Spirit-realm we can bring to realisation the intentions in the soul which cannot be realised in the earthly realm, so little realised that in extreme cases the good can lead to unhappiness and the evil to happiness. Everything in the realm of the sun finds fulfilment and expression according to its inner worth, its intrinsic nature, and it is therefore impossible for the good not to take effect in proportion to its power of goodness and the evil in proportion to its power of evil.—There is a very special reason why this is so.—From the Sun-existence which enshrines the Second Hierarchy, the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, a kindly, gracious welcome is extended to all the good intentions and purposes that were harboured in our life of soul on earth. This could also be expressed by saying that whatever has lived in a man's soul with any nuance of goodness is received in this Sun-existence with graciousness, but the evil is utterly rejected; it cannot enter.

In a series of lectures¹ I was able to give in the Goetheanum before its destruction by fire—the French Course as it is called—I spoke of how a man must leave behind his bad karma before a certain point of time is reached between death and a new birth. Evil cannot enter the realm of Sun-existence. There is a proverb which, to the modern mind, refers of course only to the physical effects of the sun. This proverb says that the sun shines equally upon the evil and the good. That is indeed so; but the sun does not admit evil into its realm. If you can perceive spiritually what is good in a man's soul, you will see it bright as sunlight—bright in the spiritual sense. If you perceive what is evil in him, it is dark, like a spot where no sunlight can penetrate. Whatever is evil in a man must be left behind when he enters the Sun-existence. It cannot go with him.

But think of it: in his earthly life man is one whole. His physical existence and his existence of soul-and-spirit are linked together, they form a unity. Although it cannot be proved with crude instruments, it is a fact that not only does the blood of a man who harbours only evil, flow differently, but the very composition of the blood is different from that of a man who has goodness in his soul!

Picture to yourself that in the life between death and a new birth a really evil man arrives at the threshold of the Sun-existence. He must leave behind him all that is evil. Yes, but this means that a considerable part of him remains behind, for the evil is bound up with him, is one with him. In so far at least as the evil is one with him, he must leave part of himself behind. But if at this threshold a man has to leave behind something of his own being, what is the consequence? The consequence is that he is maimed, stunted, and he passes into the Sun-existence as a kind of spiritual cripple. The Sun-existence can have an effect only upon what a man brings of himself into this realm. And in this realm those Beings who can work together with him between death and a new birth are led to him.

Let us take an extreme case—the case of someone who was so evil, so utterly inhuman that he wished ill to all men. Let us imagine him to have been evil to a degree in which evil does not really exist ... but hypothetically at any rate we will imagine him to have been an unmitigated villain. What will become of such a man who has identified his whole being with evil? What will become of him when he arrives at the point where he must leave behind everything of himself that is evil, or connected with evil? He will be obliged to leave the whole of himself behind! He will have passed through the realm of the Moon Beings, will have encountered the Being of the Hierarchy of the Angels who is specially connected with him, and also other Beings of that Hierarchy. But now, having reached the end of this realm, and pursuing his way through the spheres of Mercury and Venus, he approaches the realm of the Sun. Before entering this realm of Sun-existence he must leave all of himself behind, because he was wholly evil.—What is the consequence? The consequence is that he does not pass into the Sun-existence at all. And if he is not to disappear from the world altogether he must at once prepare to reincarnate, to enter again into an earthly life.

In the case of a hardened evil-doer, therefore, you will find that very soon after his death he comes back again to earthly life.

There are, in reality, no such unmitigated villains in existence, because in a certain sense there is some good in every human being. All of them, therefore, can enter a little way into the realm of Sun-existence. Whether a man penetrates far or only a little way into this realm depends upon the extent to which he has crippled himself in soul-and-spirit. And this also determines what measure of power he is able to draw from the Sun-existence for his next earthly life. What a human being has within him can be founded only upon forces gathered from the Sun-existence.

You know the scene in the second part of Faust, where Wagner produces Homunculus in the retort.—Now to be able actually to create a being like Homunculus, Wagner would have needed the knowledge possessed by the Sun Beings. But Goethe does not depict Wagner as such a man; if Wagner had possessed that knowledge, Goethe would not have used the words “soulless groveller” in connection with him. Wagner is undoubtedly very clever but he lacks the knowledge possessed by the Sun Beings. That is the reason why Mephistopheles—a spirit-being who has this knowledge—must come to his aid. Wagner could have achieved nothing without the help of Mephistopheles. Goethe divined quite clearly that only so could there be produced in the retort a being like Homunculus who can then himself actually accomplish something.

We must be quite clear that the human cannot proceed from the earthly but only from the Sun-nature. What is earthly in man is only an image. Man bears the Sun-nature within him; the earthly is but an image, a picture, of his true being.²

So you see, the World Order commits us into the care of the sublime Sun Beings during our life between death and a new birth. And together with us, these Sun Beings work upon as much of our being as we have been able to bring into the realm of Sun-existence. The rest remains behind and must be gathered in again when we return to earthly life.

Man passes out into cosmic existence—I shall describe the further stages in the lecture the day after tomorrow—and then he returns to the earth. On the path of return he passes once more through the Moon region. There he finds the evil he left behind and he must receive it into his being, it must again become part of himself. He receives it in the form in which he experienced it immediately after having passed through the gate of death; and now he makes it so truly a part of himself that it comes to realisation in earthly existence.

Let us think once again of the rather unpleasant example I gave a little while ago.—If during my life on earth I have given someone a box on the ears, then after my death, in the course of the backward journey, I live through the pain he felt. This experience too I find again on my return and strive for its realisation. If, therefore, something befalls me that is the consequence of what the other human being experienced, I myself have striven to this end on departing from the last life on earth. And when I return to the earth I bring with me the impulse for its realisation.—But let us leave that for the time being.—I shall speak in the next lecture about the fulfilment of karma. What I want to impress upon you now is that what I find again as I return, has not passed through the Sun-existence. I have taken through the Sun-existence only that in me which was related to the good.

Having built up in the realm of the Sun a somewhat stunted human being, I now take into myself once again what I left behind. What I now take into myself forms the basis of my earthly-bodily organisation. As I brought into the realm of Sun-existence only the part of myself that was able to enter this realm, I can only bring back, quickened and spiritualised by the Sun-existence, the part of my human being that was able to accompany me through that realm.

Let us therefore make this distinction:

1. A part of man that has passed through the realm of Sun-existence appears on earth.

2. A part of man that has not passed through the realm of Sun-existence appears on earth.

What I have been saying hitherto concerns man's life between death and a new birth and its after-effects in the earthly life. But the sun also works upon the human being while he is on the earth. And the other realms too, especially the realm of the Moon, work upon man in earthly existence. There is, firstly the influence of the Sun-existence between death and a new birth, and, secondly, the influence of the Sun-existence during life on earth. Similarly, if we take together the workings of Moon, Mercury and Venus, we have, firstly, the influence of the Moon-existence between death and a new birth, and, secondly, the influence of the Moon-existence upon the human being while he is on earth.

During earthly life we need the sun, in order that we may have a head-life. What the sun sends to us in its rays calls forth the head-life from our organisation. This is the part of man that is conditioned by the Sun-existence, that is dependent upon the workings of the head. I say “the head”, meaning the whole life of the senses and of ideation. The other part of man, the part that is dependent upon the influences of the spheres of Moon, Mercury, Venus, is connected, not with the head-life, but with the life of procreation in the widest sense.

There you have something very remarkable. The Sun-existence works upon man between death and a new birth, making him truly ‘man’, elaborating in him what is connected with the good. During earthly life, however, the sun can work only upon what is connected with the head. Of a truth this head-life has not very much to do with the good, for a man can also use his head to make himself into an out-and-out scoundrel. He can let his very cleverness make him an evil-doer.

Everything in earthly existence that promotes continuity of evolution is based upon the life of procreation. This life of procreation is under the influence of the moon and during the period between death and a new birth is connected with the part of man that does not share his existence in the cosmic spheres.

If you keep this in mind it will be easy for you to understand how what is connected with it makes its appearance in the human being during his earthly life.

We have, firstly, the part of man that has passed through the Sun-existence. In earthly life the Sun-existence works upon the head only; nevertheless what is connected with the Sun-existence remains in the being of man as a whole; it remains as his predisposition to health. That is why the predisposition to health is also connected with the head. The head becomes ill only when the illness is projected into it from below, by the metabolic process or by the workings of the rhythmic system.

On the other hand, the part of man that does not pass through the Sun-existence is connected with his predisposition to illness.

And so it will be clear to you that illness is woven into man's destiny below the realm of Sun-existence and is connected with the effects of the evil which are experienced as soon as he has passed into the life between death and a new birth. The realm of the Sun is connected with the predisposition to health. And only when influences from the Moon-sphere penetrate into the Sun-sphere in man's organism can that part of him which in earthly life is connected with the Sun-sphere—namely, the head—suffer any condition of illness. You see now that real insight into those great karmic connections is possible only when we follow the human being into the realm where spiritual laws are natural laws, and natural laws are spiritual laws.

You must forgive me for using trivial words in describing matters that are anything but trivial, and for speaking the language of ordinary life. To do so is not unnatural for one who stands within the spiritual world. When we talk with human beings here on earth, we recognise by the way in which they speak that they stand within the realm of nature. Their very language betrays it. But when one comes into the realm I described in the last lecture—the realm into which man passes directly after death—and has converse there with the Beings who were once the primeval Teachers of mankind, or with the Beings of the Hierarchy of the Angels, then there is something strange in this converse. For in that realm—how shall I put it?—folk talk as though they were speaking of natural laws, but these are natural laws in which magic is operating and which are governed by the spirit. These Beings understand magic; but of natural laws they know only that men have such laws on earth. They themselves are not concerned with these natural laws. Nevertheless the processes and happenings in yonder realm appear in pictures which resemble the processes taking place on the earth. Hence the spiritual workings resemble the workings of nature, but are stronger, of greater intensity, as I have described.

When man leaves this sphere and enters the realm of Sun-existence, then no more at all is heard of the natural laws belonging to the earth. The language of the Beings in this realm has reference to spiritual workings, spiritual causes only. In that world nothing is heard of natural laws.

After all, my dear friends, these things must be made known some time or other. For when on earth it is constantly insisted that natural laws are absolute, universal—or even, foolishly enough, eternal—one would fain reply: But there are realms in the universe through which man has to pass in the life between death and rebirth where these natural laws are passed over with a smile because they have no significance there; they exist at most as tidings from the earth, not as any real factor in life. And when man passes through this realm between death and a new birth, and has lived long enough in a world where there are no natural laws but only spiritual laws, he ceases to think of natural laws as something to be taken seriously. Natural laws are not taken seriously between death and rebirth. Man lives in a realm where his spiritual intentions can be realised, where realisation is insight.

But if in the realm of Sun-existence there were only the Second Hierarchy, if we were to experience in that realm only the kind of realisation that is possible there, then, having passed through this state of existence and desiring to enter earthly life again, we should stand at this point (see diagram) burdened with our karma, knowing that no progress is possible unless what has been brought, spiritually, to realisation, can be led over into the physical. Spiritually, our karma has been brought to realisation when we descend to earth; but the moment we enter earthly existence, the spiritual laws and spiritual aspects must be transformed into the physical. Here is the region where the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones transform the spiritual into the physical.

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And so in the next earthly life, what has already been brought to spiritual realisation comes also to physical realisation in karma. Such is the onward course of karma.

• 1. Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion. Ten lectures, September, 1922.
• 2. Man as Picture of the Living Spirit. Lecture given by Rudolf Steiner, 2nd September, 1923, in London.

It has been more than 100 years since Schiller made the momentous statement: “Science and philosophy will continue to go their separate ways for a long time, only to come together in harmony in a distant time.

Have we come closer to the period of reconciliation in some respects? As a philosopher, Schiller came to the confession and observation that spiritual life is behind the physical.

What we call theosophy today brings us a different kind of knowledge of the spiritual world. Science, too, has experienced a lot in a century. That knowledge of the spiritual world shines into what is important to us, it speaks to our feelings and emotions. It might now seem that we are far from an understanding between science and philosophy. Those who only half understand a theosophical lecture or read about it often think that theosophy is empty chatter, a fantasy, and the theosophist who is under the influence and hypnosis of the scientific creed finds this justified. For many, theosophy is a temporary folly.

Today I want to give you a picture of the real situation today between natural science and spiritual science. I will sketch out the picture of natural scientific views and show you, firstly, the contradiction and how Theosophy stands in relation to it. Secondly, we will see how human life stands in relation to it.

What is the basis of this world? First, let us see what the mind can make of it. If we look around, we are surrounded by the world of sound, the world of colors, the world of smells, tastes and feelings. All of this assails our senses. Now, in the course of the nineteenth century, a certain scientific creed has emerged. In our educational institutions, the image is no longer emphasized so strongly, but through books and many other channels, it has become so widespread that it is generally assumed to be true. This raises the question of what lies behind these perceptions. From a seemingly fully developed scientific premise, it is assumed that all this diversity actually exists only in our sensory perception.

Many emphasize that, for example, color only exists in us, while outside there is only vibrating, moving matter. Color arises from ether vibrations. If we close our eyes, there is no red, only colorless moving matter. If we continue in this direction and assume that all beings lose their eyes, there would no longer be any red, only colorless, vibrating ether matter.

This has been imagined not only in relation to color, but to all sensory perceptions. At that time, for example, it was said: If you dip your hands into a kettle of hot substance and feel warmth, this perception is only contained in your feeling; in the kettle is only moving matter. If there were no eye, the world would be dark and colorless, only moving matter. If you take away all beings, what remains is moving matter. — You also said: Behind the diversity of our perceptions, the world is filled with colliding particles of matter; they give color and warmth.

In their time, there were some consistent scholars who are not held in particularly high regard today, but who had the courage to think these ideas through consistently and draw conclusions. Büchner, [Vogt], Moleschott: what did the image of the world reveal to them? It follows that man also consists of nothing more than moving atoms and molecules.

What happens then? Here you are, there is the world, and there arises the whole world that you imagine. It is impossible for this to remain mere theory. For these thinkers, it did not remain theory. They said: If man is nothing but swirling matter, then death is a falling apart, and all existence that is supposed to continue is a delusion. They regarded all talk about immortality as playing with words, and thought it should be consigned to the past.

Helmholtz, a cautious thinker, regards all sensory perceptions as signs of objective existence.

It was now found that these substances, which surround matter, can be broken down, and 70 different substances were distinguished. They said to themselves: All matter in space is divided into the smallest parts, into granular matter. They imagined that water is formed in this way: oxygen and hydrogen face each other in the smallest parts, and when they march through each other, they embrace and are water.

So what is eternal after all? Eternal is only the atom of a simple element. Science makes the atom its fetish, its idol. Everything else is a rising and falling of matter. Everything disappears in death, the world is haze and fog, behind it lies the eternal atom.

Now let us consider the second question and see how human life relates to it. When the question arose: Where did man come from, where did he come from? – it was found: Man originated from lower, imperfect creatures. It was said that speech, thought, and moral sense are only a development of what the animal also has. The animal has a voice and shows memory; the dog shows an echo of religious feelings in the loyalty with which it worships its master; these are echoes of the feelings of man towards his God.

Let us, instead, replace these with the two images of the theosophical world view. For them, color, warmth, properties, are real existence. We can experience color, sound, smell, taste, feeling; and when we find them, like color, hardness and so on, in a thing, we recognize a material body. For the theosophist today, these sensory perceptions are something that can be experienced and learned. The one who sees spiritually sees the active spirit.

Just as ice is related to water, so is matter related to spirit in spiritual research. Theosophy sees, roughly speaking, condensed spirit in all matter. Sound, color, even movement is condensed spirit. What we see behind it, we know because we experience it ourselves. If we search within ourselves, we feel spirit; we see the active spirit in things, the spirit of whose substance we ourselves consist.

What does spiritual science have to say against the atomistic worldview? We ask: What is the atom? We cannot regard as reality that which is not colored, that which does not taste, for these are not qualities of the atom. The atom has no color, no, for this is caused by the movement of matter. The atom would be a figment of the imagination if it were presented as reality.

What is the attitude of natural science towards this atomistic world view? Du Bois-Reymond expressed himself in a lecture to the effect that I am briefly hinting at here, that the genuine, true natural scientist traces everything he perceives in the world back to moving matter. He said something at the time that is important for spiritual science today. He repeated Leibniz, who said: Imagine that the human brain is so large that you could put yourself inside it. If the soul has the perception that I see red, I smell the scent of roses, I hear the sound of an organ, then one could examine how certain parts of carbon, nitrogen and oxygen move. The movement in the brain could also be seen, but the sensation of “I see red” cannot be understood. Du Bois-Reymond says: A bridge will never be built, it is never possible to see how the atoms move. He concluded his observation as follows: Let us now consider a sleeping person. For him, the experience of “I see red” has sunk into an unconscious darkness. The natural scientist can explain what is lying in the bed, but when “I see red” arises in the morning, we cannot build a bridge to this sensation. “Ignorabimus” — we will never recognize. The natural scientist can never build a bridge to the spiritual.

Here is another view. I will tie in with a natural science meeting. In his speech ‘Overcoming Materialism’, the chemist Ostwald showed that the assumption of a material behind the phenomenon makes no sense. What lies behind it is forces, energy. When you receive a blow, you are first interested in the force of the blow. Thus a sum of force took the place of a sum of atoms. We see from this how a doubt arose in the mind of a natural scientist. Then a natural scientist came up with the idea that man descended from apes, from imperfect living beings.

What does spiritual science have to say in place of this view? What is man in his sleep to spiritual research? It would be nonsense to think that the sum total of experiences disappears in the evening only to reappear the next morning. What is the carrier of “I see red” is not united with the sleeping person. In the theosophical view of the world, we recognize four real parts of the human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body and the “I”. The physical and etheric bodies are, roughly speaking, a condensed astral body. The astral body is nothing more than a tumult of pain, joy, suffering, and inner experiences. Material processes are the effects of spiritual processes.

In response to this, it has been said: You don't imagine that pain and suffering resonate freely in space? This “great foolishness” is true.

What is the material effect of the spiritual? I will mention two processes: the feeling of shame and the feeling of fear and terror. These are mental processes. The blood is distributed differently in the organism.

There is a materialistic world view: pragmatism – a combination of cause and effect – which says: a person does not cry because he is sad, but he is sad because he cries.

They know that the emotional process of feeling fear causes material effects. What today appears to be only a kind of residue was present to a much greater extent in the past.

What is the sleeping human being for spiritual science? Physical and etheric body. The astral body with the ego is elevated. In the future, when we have developed astral qualities, we will know more during sleep than during the day. What does the astral body have to do at night? It is busy removing the accumulated fatigue. The materialist will also say: Don't you know that science knows the reasons for fatigue? The answer to this is a [parable]: a person gives another a good slap in the face. A third person says: I know very well that anger is the reason. The other person says: You fantasist, you are talking about emotional events, I only saw him raise his hand and strike.

Man started out as spirit. Let me give you an image of the development: Imagine many lumps of water. Suppose a part inside formed into ice lumps; in some the ice lump would fall out, in others it would be retained. In the latter case, the ice lump can become larger and larger. Now some of these would let a larger ice lump fall out. Those that fell out remained on their step, those that remained inside continued to develop until each had created its own image in the water. That is the image of man.

The astral man forms a tiny physical body for himself. Some of them fell out. Today these are the most imperfect creatures. In others, in whom the development continued, where more was forced in, the fish emerged; then other animals followed until the development of man. He left the stages of his continuous development behind in the animals. They are degenerated developments of man.

Perfection consists in his expressing in an external material image that which he previously had only internally.

What does science say about its own image of the origin from the ape? Some naturalists have come to the conclusion that, no, when we look at the ape, we can no longer justify the assumption that the ape is the ancestor of man. We cannot find the intermediate form. We can only follow the mammal downwards, man is in the ascent. Thus, natural science is on the right path. It can only not yet imagine that what forms man is of a spiritual nature; but we see it in the direction of seeking man's origin in the spiritual.

But a new discovery has brought about a revolution in natural science: radium. What does this discovery hold for us? The fact that there are substances that have very different effects, effects on photographic plates, among other things. These effects are produced by gas emissions and electrical air. It loses this property after some time and then regains it. It is the uranium salt.

I mention here what natural science has learned about transformation. It has been forced to the following: It used to proclaim: the atom is eternal, indestructible. Now it has learned: this atom decays, becomes fragmented.

And the matter went further. The English scholar Ramsay shows how diverted substance passes over into quite different substance, into the metal helium. Here one would like to say: There the dreams of the old alchemists have been fulfilled. But if one substance passes over into another, what has become of the eternal?

In his lecture on the philosophy of life, Balfour, the English minister, declared that the atom is electricity flowing in space.

Others have said: When chlorine and copper combine, something else happens. When they march together, heat is released and flows out. The strange thing is that this heat must be the same when chlorine and copper separate. We imagine this as sacks that are puffed up with warmth. If you release them and then give them warmth again, they will puff up again. Atoms are shells, their interior is warmth. They themselves are nothing but condensed warmth. Today, science calls matter condensed electricity. It is on the way to recognizing matter as condensed spirit.

Thus we have seen in two areas, firstly, a transparent and clear picture of the world, and secondly, that the facts of natural science point to the spiritual.

The doctrine of the atomic world is based on fantasy. Theosophy is a dissolution of all fantasy. The facts themselves will shine in and show how the atom is being split. Natural science is on its way up to spiritual science. We see how Theosophy shines in, and what our eyes see becomes explainable up to our physical existence.

We stand at the threshold of a new era. In those days, natural science was earthbound; today, through the latest research, it is being pushed up to the spiritual.

Natural science and philosophy must be reconciled. It will come to the true salvation and progress of the human race.

The theosophical worldview seeks to deepen our spiritual life, not arbitrarily, but because it wants to serve, to satisfy the deeply felt yearning of our time. That the theosophical worldview is not arbitrary can be seen by comparing it with other spiritual currents.

Today we want to consider a cultural current in art in relation to Theosophy. We want to talk about Richard Wagner. Richard Wagner always emphasized that he wanted to serve an ideal that could permeate people like any other religious ideal.

Goethe longed for an interpreter of art. Richard Wagner endeavored to be such an interpreter throughout his life. One could say: What is not said about Richard Wagner, what is not thought of him! Richard Wagner himself would not have thought that. Nor is it necessary that he should have consciously thought all this so clearly. Just as a plant cannot itself say what a poet might say about it, so Richard Wagner does not need to have said or thought all that is said about him. The botanist cannot place himself above the forces of the plant. He only knows their laws. The plant, on the other hand, can grow according to these laws without knowing them. The same applies to the artist: he implements the laws of art. Richard Wagner himself was of the opinion that truth comes to light in philosophy and that the secrets of the world are revealed in art. He says of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that in such a creation there is a revelation of another world, much more than through logical thinking.

Richard Wagner always had the feeling that the spiritual world, as the basis of the sensual world, stands behind this sensual world. He sees beings in the devachanic world, as we call it, that are connected to the physical bodies. An extract of this spiritual world is the physical. One must have what Goethe calls spiritual eyes and ears in order to see and perceive this spiritual world.

The Pythagorean spoke of the harmony of the spheres, which is not an arbitrarily chosen, superficial image. Goethe speaks very clearly about this spiritual world of the music of the spheres. For him, what is around us is the material expression of this spiritual world. He says in Faust:

What a roar brings the light! It trumpets, it trombones, the eye blinks and the ear is amazed, the unheard does not listen.

And elsewhere:

The sun sounds in the ancient manner In the song of the spheres, And it completes its prescribed journey With a thunderclap.

A great artist does not just use images like these as pictures.

Richard Wagner said that the individual musical instruments are like individual organs through which the world expresses itself in primal feelings. He had no theosophical view. However, since he was imbued with a theosophical attitude, he always knew that there are deep relationships between people and what stands behind them. Much of this is contained in old legends, for example in the legend of “Poor Henry”. A maiden must sacrifice herself so that the sick Poor Henry can be healed. The sacrifice acts as a force from one to the other. The outer science can find nothing of the magical power that passes from the redeemer to the redeemed.

In the Flying Dutchman, we have before us a man who has become sinful. The sacrifice of Senta, the power that passes from person to person, must have an effect here.

The whole music drama is imbued with this idea. Richard Wagner felt: In the ordinary drama, only the external action takes place, only the purely external expression of inner experiences. In the symphony, on the other hand, we experience the feeling only inwardly, that is, what is missing in the drama. Beethoven sought a balance in the Ninth Symphony, in which the feeling resonated in the word. Wagner's music drama also arose from the same endeavor.

Richard Wagner saw the ideal human behind the ordinary everyday person. He saw this ideal human in myths and legends, which contain in the imagination what man contains in his nature and in his germs. The saga of the Nibelungs is a particularly vivid expression of this. At the time of the ancient Atlantis, people lived under very different conditions than we do today. Year in, year out, Atlantis was covered by dense masses of fog. Rain and sunshine were not distributed as they are today, so that the rainbow could only appear after the great flood, the Deluge, because only then were the conditions for its appearance present. Noah saw the first rainbow. In myths and legends, the memory of the old conditions has been preserved, for example in the name Niflheim – Mistheim. We receive truer knowledge from the myths than from materialistic science. The state of mind at that time was such that the individual ego did not yet exist. In the course of the migration from the west to the east, the human being developed his ego nature. The Atlanteans had a collective consciousness at that time. The Germanic tribes, for example the Cherusci, still had this collective consciousness as well. Legends and myths depicted this in images.

In the transition from the collective self to the individual self, to the single self, the self contracts more and more around the individual human being. This increasingly contracting individual self was depicted as a ring. Truth and wisdom are interwoven with the image of poetry. The human egoistic self is expressed in the ring. The masses of mist flowed together to form rivers where people now live. In the Rhine, the myth sees what has become of the harmonious, collective consciousness of the self. The last stragglers of those endowed with universal consciousness have been drawn into the waves of the Rhine, as it were. Gold is the symbol of power.

With love, the possibility of selfish love also flows into the soul of the self. What is represented by gold, the symbol of power, is what the egoistic self strives for. Alberich kills love in order to take for himself what used to come to every individual from the All-consciousness. In the long-held E-flat major pedal in the prelude to “Rheingold”, we see the drawing in of the self into the human being.

The relationship between people must be regulated by external law. We find this with Wotan. Through his love for his wife, he loses his only eye, even if it is only slightly clairvoyant. For what the giants have done for him, he wants to give up the representative of love, of that which preserves youth, love for selfish power. Wotan still has connections to the All-consciousness. This emerges in Erda, this ancient consciousness, which is a dim but clairvoyant consciousness. She experiences the depths of the natural world clairvoyantly in what lives and weaves in springs and waters:

Her sleeping is dreaming, her dreaming is sensing, her sensing is prevailing knowledge.

This ancient consciousness cannot be expressed better, and all this is also expressed in drama and music. When the I was locked in the ring, it was locked in the skin. People who have the clairvoyant consciousness and the consciousness of today are called initiates. This was always represented in the image of the feminine. Goethe's words:

The Eternal Feminine

Draws us upward

refers to the higher human consciousness that humanity yearns for. Every nation has leaders who correspond to its character. Here, among the Germanic peoples, bravery is the corresponding characteristic. The soul of the warrior rises above the ordinary consciousness. This is symbolized in a female personality, the Valkyrie. Those who do not die on the battlefield die a death on the battlefield. But those who fall in battle are led up by the Valkyries. The feminine leads into the spiritual realm.

The initiate experiences in life what the ordinary person experiences only after death. Siegfried is an initiate. He unites with the Valkyrie already here. The All-consciousness passes over into the I-consciousness. From close marriage gradually arises distant marriage. The mixing of related blood gave the power of vision. This power passes with distant marriage. When distant blood is brought to distant blood, clairvoyance and ruling knowledge perish.

This transition to long-distance marriage can be found in the world of legends, where a member of the blood relationship goes out and marries outside of it. This is characterized in the saga in such a way that it is always associated with suffering and hardship. Siegmund and Sieglinde are characteristic representatives of close marriage. The child of this marriage, Siegfried, must not know any of this. He must grow up, completely on his own. Fricka, the representative of the new order, rebels against the union of Sieglinde and Siegmund.

In his unfinished drama “Der Sieger”, begun in 1856, Richard Wagner incorporated theosophical teachings. Amander, an Indian prince, is loved by a Jandalah maiden. He does not consider her worthy of him and enters a monastery. The maiden remains behind and later realizes that in a previous incarnation she was a king's daughter and that the present prince was a Jandalah, whom she did not want to marry. A balance had now been struck. She too enters a Buddhist monastery. This would have been a purely theosophical drama with reincarnation in it, but Richard Wagner did not yet feel up to it.

The following year he was invited to stay at Villa Wesendonck. From his window he saw spring outside, the first signs of sprouting, the resurrection of nature. He recognized the connections between this cosmic event and the mystery of resurrection. The “Parsifal” was created from this. The symbol at the center of the Parsifal problem is the Holy Grail. There really was a school of the Holy Grail. It still exists today: the realization of the pure ideal.

What the Grail student and the Rosicrucian student go through is to be reflected in a dialogue that did not take place literally in this form, but in spirit. The pupil was shown: Look at the plant. The root goes down into the soil, the sap – the “blood” – goes up, where the fruit attaches itself. It stretches the calyx towards the sunbeam, the holy lance of love. Compare this with man. Unconscious, the plant is not yet permeated by desires. It develops upwards to become human. Then the plant sap becomes blood, permeated with desires, the plant leaf becomes flesh. By incorporating the desires, the human being acquires day-consciousness in contrast to the sleep-consciousness of the plant.

One also spoke of future development: everything is in development. The human being will develop to ever more perfect levels. Richard Wagner also points this out. An organ that is still developing, that is still at the lowest level – every materialist will find what I am about to say terrible, but that does not matter, it is still true – the heart, it is indeed a real crux for materialistic science; it is an involuntary muscle with striated fibers like the voluntary muscles. This already points to a later stage of development. The human larynx will also have a higher development. It will be productive, it will create the image of man: it will become the future organ of reproduction. Later, like the plant now, man will turn his chalice chastely towards the sun, towards the holy lance of love. This was said to the Grail disciple. One can only arrive at this knowledge through spiritual insight, not through speculation. The Grail disciple should feel and relive it.

In “Parsifal” the one who strives for the Grail ideal is portrayed, the Christian initiate. The pure fool, he knows nothing through his own speculation, but he has felt it, he knows through compassion.

In Kundry, Wagner depicts the lower sensuality that passes from incarnation to incarnation. Kundry is Eve, is Herodias. She mocked the Redeemer. But she must not be lost; she must also be redeemed. This happens through the kiss of Parsifal. Klingsor represents black magic, brute force.

In Siegfried, the old initiation is combined with the Christian initiation. Siegfried is vulnerable only in one place: where the Redeemer later carried the cross. The old can only develop into unselfish free love if Christian love is grasped. This is expressed in Richard Wagner's transition from the “Nibelungen” to “Parsifal”, when he moved from the Nibelung saga to the Parzival saga. Richard Wagner himself felt he was a herald.

Wahnfried shall this house be called,
Where my delusion found peace.

That is written on his house. Man must pass through delusion if he wants to ascend to the spiritual world.

If one wants to interpret the secrets of the world, one must turn to art.