The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Let us on this day in particular, turn our hearts with special devotion to those who are without on the scene of action, and who have to devote their lives and souls to the great task of the age; and let us say:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the Earth-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And for those who have already passed through the portal of death in consequence of the severe duties demanded of them in these times, we will repeat the same words in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your care,
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may radiate helpfully
To the souls it lovingly seeks.

And may that Spirit Whom we seek in our spiritual strivings, the Spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha for the sake of the freedom and progress of humanity, the Spirit Whom we must specially bear in mind to-day, may He be with you in your severe tasks.

Let us call to mind the decree ringing forth from the depths of the Mystery of the Earth's evolution.

‘Revelation of the Divine in the heights of existence and peace to men on earth who are permeated by good will.’ And as Christmas Eve approaches, we must (this year in particular) ask ourselves: ‘What are the feelings that unite us with this saying and its deep cosmic meaning?’ That deep cosmic meaning in which countless men feel the word ‘peace’ resounding, at a time when peace keeps away from a very large part of our earth. How should we think of these Christmas words at such a time?

There is one thought, which, in connection with this verdict, sounding through the world, must concern us far more deeply at this present epoch than at any other time—one thought. Nations are facing each other in enmity. Much blood has saturated our earth. We see and feel countless dead around us at this time. The atmosphere of sensation and feeling around us is interwoven with infinite sorrow. Hate and aversion are heard murmuring through the spiritual realm and might easily testify how very far removed men still are in our day from that love which He wishes to announce Whose birth is celebrated on Christmas Eve. One thought, however, arises: we think how opponents can face each other, enemy face enemy, how men can mutually bring death to one another and how they can all pass through the same Gate of Death with the thought of Christ Jesus, the Divine Light-Bringer. We recall how, in the whole earth, over which war, suffering and discord are spread abroad, these men can still be one at heart, however greatly they may otherwise be disunited, who in the depths of their hearts are united in their connection with Him Who entered the world on the day we commemorate at Christmas. We see how through all enmity, aversion and hatred, one and the same feeling may everywhere penetrate the human soul at this time: out of the blood and hatred may spring the thought of an inner union with One, with Him Who has united the hearts through something higher than anything which can ever separate mankind on earth. Thus the thought of Christ Jesus is a thought of immeasurable depth of feeling, a thought of infinite greatness uniting mankind, however disunited it may be as regards all that is going on in the world. If we grasp the thought in this way, we shall want to comprehend it still more deeply at the present time. We shall feel how much there is that can become strong and powerful within human evolution if connected with this thought—this thought which must develop in order that many things may be acquired by human hearts and souls in a different way from the present tragic method of learning them.

That He may strengthen us,
That He may invigorate us,

That He may teach us all over the earth really to experience in the truest sense of the words the utterance of the Christmas Eve saying, which transcends all that separates men from one another. This it is which he who really feels himself united with Christ Jesus solemnly vows anew at Christmas time.

There is a tradition in the history of Christianity which repeatedly appears in later times and for centuries became a custom in certain Christian regions. In olden times representations of the Christian Mysteries were organised chiefly by the Christian Churches for believers in many different regions. And in the remotest times these representations began by reading, occasionally even by enacting, the story of Creation as it occurs at the beginning of the Bible. There was first shown just at Christmas time, how the Cosmic Word sounded forth from the depths of the Cosmos and how out of the Cosmic Word Creation gradually arose: how Lucifer appeared to man, and how men thereby began their earth-existence in a manner different from what was originally destined for them before the approach of Lucifer. The entire story of the temptation of Adam and Eve was brought forward, and it was then shown how man was, as it were, embodied in the Old Testament history. Then as time went on there was added that which was presented in more or less detail in the performances which evolved during the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries in the countries of Central Europe (of which we have just seen one small example). Very little now remains of the grand thought which united the beginning of the Old Testament at this Christmas Eve festival with the secret history of the Mystery of Golgotha. Only this one thing remains, that in our calendar, before the actual Christmas Day comes the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. But in olden times, for those who through deeper thinking, through deeper feeling, or through a deeper knowledge, were to grasp the Mystery of Christmas and the Mystery of Golgotha, with the help of their teachers, there was exhibited also again and again a great comprehensive thought: the thought of the Origin of the Cross. The God Who is introduced to man in the Old Testament gives to man, as represented by Adam and Eve, this commandment: ‘Ye may eat of all the fruits of the garden, but not of the tree—not of the fruits which grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’ Because they did eat of this they were driven from the original scene of action of their being.

But the tree—as was shown in many different ways—came by some means into the line of generations, into the original family from which proceeded the bodily covering of Christ Jesus. And it so came about that (as was shown at certain times) when Adam, the man of sin, was buried, there grew out of his grave the tree which had been removed from Paradise. Thus the following thoughts are aroused: Adam rests in his grave: the man who was led astray by Lucifer and passed through sin, rests in his grave. He has united himself with the Earth-body. But from his grave sprouts the tree which can now grow out of the earth, with which Adam's body is united. The wood of this tree descends to the generations to which Abraham and David belong. And from the wood of this tree, which stood in Paradise and which grew forth from Adam's grave, was made the Cross upon which Christ Jesus hung.

That is the thought which again and again was made clear by their teachers to those who had to understand the Mystery of Golgotha and its secrets from a deeper point of view. A deep meaning lies in the fact that in olden times profound thoughts were expressed in such pictures. And even at the present day this is still the case, as we shall presently see.

We have made ourselves acquainted with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha which reveals to us that the Being Who passed through the body of Jesus has poured out over the Earth and into the Earth's aura what He was able to bring to the Earth. That which the Christ brought to the Earth is since united with the whole body of the Earth. The Earth has become quite different since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Earth-aura there lives what the Christ brought out of the heavenly heights to the Earth. If we unite this spiritually with that old picture of the tree, it shows us the whole connection from another point of view. The Luciferic principle drew into man as he began his earthly career. Man as he now is belongs to the Earth, through his union with the Luciferic principle. He forms part of the Earth. And when we lay his body in the earth, this body is not merely that which anatomy sees, but is at the same time the outer mould of what man is in his inner being within his earthly nature. Spiritual Science makes it quite clear to us that what goes through the gates of death into the spiritual worlds is not the only part of man's being, but that man through his whole activity, through his deeds, is united with the Earth. He is really united with the Earth as are those events which the geologists, mineralogists and zoologists, connect with the Earth. We might say that that which binds man to the Earth is at first concealed from the human individuality on going through the gates of death. But we surrender our external form in some manner to the Earth. It enters the Earth-body. It carries in itself the imprint of what the Earth has become through Lucifer's entering the Earth evolution. That which man accomplishes on the Earth bears the Luciferic principle in it. Man brings this Luciferic principle into the Earth-aura. There springs forth and blossoms from man's deeds and activities not only that which was originally intended for man but that which has mingled with the Luciferic principle. This is in the Earth-aura. And when we now see on the grave of the man Adam led away by Lucifer, that tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which through the Luciferic temptation has become different from what it originally was, we then see everything that man has become through forsaking his original state, when he submitted to the Luciferic temptation and brought something into the Earth's evolution not previously determined. We see the tree grow out of what the physical body is for the Earth, that which has been stamped in its Earth form, and causes man to appear in a lower sphere on the Earth than the one originally destined for him, which would have been his if he had not succumbed to Lucifer. There grows out of the whole Earth existence of man something which has entered human evolution through the Luciferic temptation. While we seek knowledge, we seek it in another way than that originally destined for us. That however allows us to recognise that what grows out of our earthly deeds is different from what it would have been according to the original Divine decree. We form an earth existence other than the one laid down by the original Divine Will. We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it.

We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution. What I give to the Earth evolution through my deeds bears fruit. It bears the fruit of knowledge which comes to me through my participation in the knowledge of good and evil on the Earth. This knowledge lives on in the evolution of the Earth and is present therein. When, however, I behold this knowledge it becomes in me something different from what it would have been originally, it becomes something which I must alter if the Earth's goal and task are to be reached. I see something grow out of my Earth deeds which must become different. The tree grows up, the tree which becomes the Cross of earth existence. It becomes something to which man must acquire a new relation, for the old relation does no more than allow the tree to grow.

The tree of the Cross, that Cross that grows out of the Luciferically tainted Earth evolution, springs up out of Adam's grave, out of the man-nature which Adam acquired after the fall. The tree of knowledge must become the stem of the Cross because man must unite himself anew with the correctly recognised tree of knowledge as it now is in order to reach the Earth's goal and task.

Let us now ask—and here we touch a significant Mystery of Spiritual Science: How does the case stand with those principles which we have learnt to recognise as the principles of human nature? Now we all know that the highest member of human nature is the Ego. We learn to utter ‘I’ at a definite time of our childhood. We enter into relation with the Ego from the time to which in later years memory carries us back. This we know through various lectures and books upon Spiritual Science. Up to that time the Ego worked formatively upon us, up to the moment when we have a conscious relation to our Ego. The Ego is present in our childhood, it works within us, but at first only builds up our physical body. It first creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. After passing through conception and birth, it still works for a time—lasting for some years—on our body, until that becomes an instrument capable of consciously grasping the Ego. A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the Ego into the human bodily nature. We ask a man we meet how old he is, and he gives as his age the years which have passed since his birth. As has been said, we here touch a certain mystery of Spiritual Science that will become ever clearer and clearer in the course of the near future, but to which I shall now merely refer. What a man gives as his age at a definite time of his life, refers only to his physical body. All he tells us is that his physical body has been so many years evolving since his birth. The Ego takes no part in this evolution of the physical body but remains stationary. It is a Mystery difficult to grasp, that the Ego, from the time to which our memory carries us back, really remains stationary: it does not change with the body, but stands still. We have it always before us, because it reflects back to us our experiences. The Ego does not share our Earth journey. Only when we pass through the gates of death we have to travel back again to our birth along the path we call Kamaloka in order to meet our Ego again and take it on our further journey. Thus the Ego remains behind. The body goes forward through the years. This is difficult to understand because we cannot grasp the fact that something remains stationary in time, while time itself progresses. But this is actually the case. The Ego remains stationary, because it does not unite with what comes to man from the Earth-existence, but remains connected with those forces which we call our own in the spiritual world. There the Ego remains; it remains practically in the form in which it was bestowed on us by the Spirits of Form. The Ego is retained in the spiritual world. It must remain there, otherwise we could never, as man, fulfil our original task on Earth and attain the goal of our Earth-evolution. That which man here on Earth has undergone through his

Adam-nature, of which he left an imprint in the grave when he died in Adam, that belongs to the physical body, etheric and astral body and comes from these. The Ego waits; it waits with all that belongs to it the whole time man remains on Earth, ever looking forward to the further evolution of man, beholding how man recapitulates when he has passed through the gates of death, and retraces his path. This implies that as regards our Ego we remain in a certain respect behind in the spiritual world. Man will have to become conscious of this, and humanity can only become conscious of it because at a certain time the Christ descended from those worlds to which mankind belongs, out of the spiritual worlds Christ descended, and in the body of Jesus prepared, in the twofold manner we already know, that which had to serve Him as a body on Earth.

When we understand ourselves aright, we continually look back through our whole Earth life to our childhood. There, in our childhood, precisely the spiritual part of us has remained behind. And humanity should be educated to look back on that to which the spirit from the heights can say: ‘Suffer the little children to come to Me!’ Not the man who is bound to the Earth, but the little child. Humanity should be educated to this, for the Feast of Christmas has been given to it, that Feast which has been added to the Mystery of Golgotha, which need otherwise only have been bestowed on humanity as regards the three last years of the Christ life, when the Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. It shows how Christ prepared for Himself this human body in childhood. This is what should underlie our feelings at Christmas: the knowledge of how man, through what remains behind in heavenly heights during his years of growth, has really always been united with what is now coming. In the figure of the Child man should be reminded of the Human-Divine, which he left behind in descending to Earth, but which has now again come to him. Man should be reminded by the Child of that which has again brought his child-nature to him. This was no easy task, but in the very way in which this Festival of the Cosmic Child, this Christmas Festival, was developed in Central Europe, we see the wonderful, active, sustaining force within it.

What we have seen to-day is only one of many Nativity Plays. There have remained from olden times a number of so-called Paradise Plays which were produced at Christmas and in which the story of Creation is enacted. In connection with the representation of to-day, which is merely a pastoral play, there has also remained behind the Play of the Three Kings offering their gifts. A great deal of this was recorded in numerous plays which for the most part have now disappeared.

About the middle of the eighteenth century the time begins in which they disappear in country districts. But it is wonderful to trace their existence. In West Hungary, about 1850, Karl Julius Schröer, made a collection of Christmas Plays such as these in the neighbourhood of Pressburg. Other people made similar collections in other places. But what Schröer then discovered of the customs connected with the performance of these plays may sink deeply into our hearts. These plays were there in manuscript in certain families of the villages and were regarded as something especially sacred. With the approach of October preparations were always begun to perform this play at Christmas before the people of the place. The well- behaved youths and maidens were sought out and during this time of preparation they ceased to drink wine or alcohol. They might no longer romp and wrestle on Sundays. They had really to lead what is called a holy life. And thus a feeling prevailed that a certain moral tone of the soul was necessary in those who devoted themselves at Christmas to the performance of such plays, for they could not be performed in the quite worldly atmosphere. They were performed with all the simplicity of the villagers, but profound seriousness prevailed in the entire performance. In all the plays collected by Schröer and earlier by Weinhold and others in many different regions, there is everywhere this deep earnestness with which the Christmas Mystery was approached. But this was not always so. We need only go back two centuries further to find something else which strikes us in the highest degree as peculiar. The very manner in which these Christmas plays became part of the life of the central European villages in which they arose and gradually evolved, shows us how powerfully the Christmas thought worked there. It was not immediately taken up in the manner just described; the people did not always approach it with holy awe, with deep earnestness, with a living feeling of the significance of the occurrence.

In many regions it was begun by erecting a manger before the side altar of some church. This was in the fourteenth or fifteenth century; but it goes back to still earlier times. A manger was erected, a stall with an ox and an ass, the Child and two figures representing Joseph and Mary. Thus at first it was attempted with simple art; later an attempt was made to bring more life into it, but on the spiritual side. That is, priests took part; one priest represented Joseph and another Mary. In earlier times they spoke their parts in the Latin tongue, for in the old churches great stress was laid on this—it was considered very important that the spectators should understand as little as possible of the matter and should only behold the external acting. But this could no longer continue to please, for there were among the spectators those who wanted to understand something of what was being enacted before them. Gradually it became customary to recite certain parts in the dialect used in the district. Finally the wish arose in people to participate, to take part in the experiences themselves. But the thing was still quite strange to them. We must remember that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was not as yet the knowledge of the Holy Mysteries, of the Mystery of Christmas, for instance, which we to-day regard as a matter of course. We must remember that although the people year in and year out attended Mass, and at Christmas the Midnight Mass, they did not possess the Bible, which was only there for the priests to read; they were only acquainted with a few extracts from the Holy Scripture. And it was at first really to acquaint them with what had once occurred that these things were dramatised in this fashion for them by the priests. The people first learnt to know of them in this way.

Something must now be said which I must ask you not to misunderstand, but it may be brought forward because it expresses purely historical truth. It was not that the participation in the Christmas plays proceeded from some mysterious influence or anything of that nature; what attracted the people was rather the desire to take part in what was presented before them and to draw nearer to it. At last they were permitted to share in it. Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger. They had never seen such a thing as a child in a manger. Ear her when they were not allowed to understand anything, they accepted it: but now they wanted to share in it, it had to be made comprehensible to them. And so a cradle was brought and as the people passed, each one took part by rocking the child for a moment. Thus similar details were developed in which they took part. Indeed there were even districts in which all was quite serious at first, but when the child was brought, they made a tremendous uproar, everyone screaming and showing by dancing and shouting the pleasure they felt in the birth of the child. It was then received in a mood that felt a passion for movement and a desire to experience the story. But in this story lay something so great and mighty that, out of this quite profane feeling there gradually evolved that holy awe of which I have already spoken. The subject itself impressed its holiness on a performance which could not at first have been called in the least holy. Precisely in the Middle Ages the holy story of Christmas had first to conquer mankind. And it conquered the people to such an extent that in the performance of their plays, they desired to prepare their lives with this moral intensity.

What was it that thus overcame the feelings, the soul of man? It was the sight of the Child, of that which remains holy in man whilst his other three bodies unite with the Earth evolution. Even though in some districts at different times the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, yet it lay in human nature to evolve this holy regard for the child-nature, which is connected with what entered into the development of Christianity from the very beginning. And that is the consciousness of the necessity of a reunion of what remains stationary in man when he commences his Earth evolution, with what has connected itself with Earth-man, so that man gives over to the Earth the wood from which the cross must be made with which man has to form the new union.

In the more remote times of Christian development in Central Europe, nothing but the conception of Easter was popularised, and only in the manner described was the conception of Christmas gradually developed. For what appears in ‘Heliand,’ for instance, was composed by various individuals, but never became popular.

The observance of Christmas grew into a popular custom as described, and it shows in a manner really startling how man acquired the thought of the union with the child-nature, that pure and noble childlike character that appeared in a new form in the Jesus-Child. When we so grasp the power of this thought that it lives in the soul as the only conception in our existence capable of uniting all men, then we have the true Christian conception. This Christ-Thought becomes mighty in us, it becomes something which must grow strong within us if the further Earth evolution is to proceed aright. Let us remember here how far removed man is in his present Earth-existence from what is really contained in the depths of the Christ-Thought.

A book by Ernst Haeckel has recently appeared called Thoughts about Life, Death, Immortality and Religion, in Connection with the World-War. Now a book by Ernst Haeckel certainly springs from a deep love of truth, certainly the deepest truth is sought for in it. The following may give some idea of what the book is intended to convey. It sets out to indicate what now transpires on the Earth, how the nations are at war with each other, living in hate, how countless deaths take place every day. All these thoughts which obtrude so painfully on mankind are mentioned by Haeckel, but naturally with the underlying thought of considering the world from his own point of view. We have said that Haeckel may, even by Spiritual Science, be considered a profound investigator. His point of view may indeed lead to other results, but leads to what can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's evolution. Now Haeckel forms thoughts on the world-war. He too remarks how much blood is flowing, how greatly we are encompassed by death. And he asks: ‘Can the thoughts of religion endure by the side of this? Can one anyhow believe (he asks) that some wise Providence—a kindly God—rules the world, when one sees so many dying every day through mere chance (so he says)? They do not perish from any cause attributable to a wise cosmic ordering, but through the accident of meeting a possible shell. Have these thoughts of the wisdom of Providence any meaning in the face of this? Must not just such events as these prove that man is nothing more than what external materialistic history of evolution declares and that all earth existence is fundamentally directed not by a wise Providence but by chance? In the face of this, can there be any other thought than that of resignation (continues Haeckel), of saying: ‘We give up our bodies and pass out into the thought of the cosmic all?’ But if one questions further, (though Haeckel does not put the question), if this ‘all’ is nothing but the play of endless atoms, has the life of man any meaning in earth-existence? As said above, Haeckel does not pursue the question, but in his Christmas book he gives the answer: ‘These very events which touch us so painfully show us that we have no right to believe that a good Providence or wise cosmic ruling or anything of the kind moves and lives in the whole world. So we must be resigned—we must put up with things as they are!’

And this is a Christmas book! A book nobly and honourably planned. But this book is based on the remarkable prejudice that it is useless to seek for a meaning to the earth. That it is denied to humanity to seek in a spiritual way for a meaning!

If we only observe the external course of events we do not see this meaning. Then it is as Haeckel says. And at that it has to remain, that is, that this life has no meaning! That is his opinion. A purpose may not be sought. But perhaps someone else may say: The events now taking place show us, for the very reason that, if we look at them externally and point only to the fact that numberless bullets are ending the lives of men to-day, they appear without purpose—those very events show us that we must seek more deeply to find the purpose. We must not simply seek a purpose in that which happens on the Earth alone, when these human souls forsake the body, but we must investigate the life that now begins for them when they pass through the gate of death. In short, another man may say: ‘Just because no meaning can be found in the external, it must be sought elsewhere, in the super-sensible.’ Is that anything else than to take the same thought into another—quite different—domain? Haeckel's science may lead those who think as he does to-day to deny all meaning to Earth-existence. It may seem to prove, from what happens so painfully to-day, that the Earth-life as such has no meaning. But if we grasp it in our way—as we have often done before—then this very same science becomes a starting point for showing what deep and mighty purpose can be discovered by us in the world phenomena. For this, however, there must be the spiritual active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual. For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding. Because the learned cannot yet grasp this and cannot yet unite the Christ-Impulse with what they see in the external world, it is impossible for them to find a real true meaning in the Earth. And so we must say: The Science of which man is so proud to-day—and rightly so—with all its immense progress is not in itself in a position to lead man to any satisfactory philosophy. It can just as easily lead to a lack of sense and meaning as to a meaning for the Earth, just as in any other domain. Let us consider science in the later centuries, especially in the nineteenth and up to the present day—evolving so proudly all its wonderful laws, and let us look at what surrounds us to-day. It has all been produced by science. We no longer burn, as Goethe did, a night-light. We burn something else and illumine our rooms in a very different fashion. All that possesses our souls to-day, as the result of our science has arisen through the immense progress of which man is so proud, so justly proud. But how does this science work? It works beneficially when man evolves what is good. But to-day, just through its very perfection, it produces invincible instruments of murder. Its progress serves the cause of destruction as well as that of construction. Just as on the one side that science of which Haeckel is a follower may lead either to sense and meaning or to nonsense and lack of meaning, so, in spite of its greatness, it may serve both destruction and construction. And if it depended on science alone what was produced, then, from the same sources from which it constructs, science would bring forth ever more and more fearful instruments of destruction. Science itself has no direct impulse to bring humanity forward! If this could be realised, science would then, and then only, be valued in the right way. We should then know that in the evolution of man there must be something more than man can reach by means of science.

What is this science of ours? In reality none other than the tree growing out of Adam's grave; and the time is drawing near when man will recognise this. The time will come when man will know that this tree must become the wood which is the Cross of humanity and which can only become a blessing when on it is crucified and properly united with it, that which lies on the further side of death, yet fives already here in man. That it is to which we look up in the Holy Christmas Eve, if we feel this Mystery of the sacred Festival aright—and that is what can be represented in childlike fashion, and yet is the cloak of the greatest Mysteries. Is it not really wonderful that in this simple way it could be brought home to people that something had appeared which, though it cannot extend beyond childhood, yet governs a man during his whole Earth- life? It is related to that to which man, as a super-sensible being, belongs. Is it not wonderful that this, which is in the highest degree invisible and super-sensible, could approach so near to those simple human souls through simple pictures such as these?

Indeed those who are learned will also have to follow the same path as those simple souls. There was even a time when the Child was not represented in the cradle nor in the manger, but when the sleeping child was placed upon the Cross! The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderful, profound picture, which expresses the whole thought I wished to lay before your souls to-day.

Cannot this thought in reality be very simply stated? Indeed it can! Let us just seek the origin of those impulses which to-day oppose each other so terribly in the world. Whence do they originate? Whence originates all that to-day is in such bitter conflict, all that makes life so difficult for humanity? It all originates in what we become in the world after the time of our earliest recollection. Let us go back beyond that time, let us go right back to the point when we are called the little children who may enter the kingdom of heaven. We do not find it then, there was then nothing in the human soul of what to-day is strife and hatred. In this simple way the thought can be expressed and to-day we must visualise spiritually that there is in the human soul an original condition rising above all human strife and disharmony.

We have often spoken of the old Mysteries, which were intended to awaken in the nature of man that which allowed him to perceive the super-sensible; and we have said that the Mystery of Golgotha represents on the stage of history clearly for all mankind, the story of the super-sensible Mystery. Now that which unites us with the true Christ-Thought is within us, it is really in us—to enable us to have moments in our life (this is to be taken literally not symbolically) moments when, in spite of everything we may be in the external world, we can yet make that which we have received as children alive within us, moments in which we behold man in his development between birth and death, and can feel the child-nature in ourselves.

In my public lecture on Johann Gottlieb Fichte, I might have added a few words more—perhaps they might not have been thoroughly understood then, they would, however, have explained many things which dwelt in this particularly devout person. I might have said why he became such a very special person; it was because, in spite of his age, he retained more than most people of the child-nature. There is more of the child-nature in such men than in others. Men like these, men who retain more of their child-nature, keep their youth and do not grow old as do others. This is really the secret of many great men, that they can in a sense remain children—speaking relatively, of course, for they have had to lead the life of men.

The Christmas Mystery appeals to the child-nature within us. It points us to the vision of the Divine Child that is destined to take up the Christ—and to which we look up as to something over which the Christ, Who went through Golgotha for the salvation of the Earth, already hovers.

Let us be conscious of this when we give over the imprint of our higher man, our physical body, to the Earth. This is not a mere physical event, for something spiritual takes place. But this spiritual event only takes place aright because the Christ-Being, by going through the Mystery of Golgotha, has flowed into the aura of the Earth. We do not behold the entire Earth in its completeness unless we visualise also the Christ, Who, since the Mystery of Golgotha, is united with it. We may pass Him by, as we pass by anything super-sensible if we are merely equipped in a materialistic sense; but we cannot pass Him by if the Earth is really to have for us a true and actual purpose. Everything rests upon our being able to awaken in ourselves that which opens our gaze to the spiritual world.

Let us make this Christmas Festival what it should be to us, a Festival which not merely serves the past—but also the future; that future which is gradually to bring forth the birth of the spiritual life for the whole of humanity. We must unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, with the prophetic premonition, that such a birth of the spiritual life in man must be accomplished, that a mighty Christmas must work to influence the future of humanity, a bringing to birth of that which in the thoughts of man gives a meaning to the Earth, that meaning which became the objective of the Earth when the Christ-Being united Himself with the Earth-aura, through the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us meditate at Christmas on the thought how from the depths of darkness light must enter human evolution. The old light of the spiritual life which was gradually dying out before Golgotha had to pass away and has now to arise anew, it must since Golgotha be born again through the consciousness in the human soul that this soul of man is connected with what the Christ had become to the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When more and more men arise who can thus grasp Christmas in the sense of Spiritual Science, it will become a force in the hearts and souls of men which has a meaning for all times, whether in such times as men give themselves over to feelings of happiness, or when they must feel sorrow and pain such as we feel to-day, when we think of the great misery of our time.

Concerning the vision of the spiritual which gives meaning to the Earth, it has been expressed in beautiful words which I will put before you to-day: (Here follows a rough translation):—

That which gives mine eyes the power
To cause deformity to disappear,
To turn dark nights to radiant suns of brightness,
To turn disorder into order, and decay to life;—
Life, which through the ages,
Weaves invisibly in space,
Leading me on to th' eternal sources
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good.
The source of all Delight,
In which immersed, my strivings are but vain.
Life it is, which since in Urania's eyes I gazed,
The deep, the clear, the blue—pure flames of light—
I have silently perceived and looked upon.
Since then I see those eyes in deeps profound,
The only permanent things in my existence,
They live on in me, part of my life,
And see through my beholding.

And in another small poem:—

Nothing is but God, and God is naught but Life.
Thou knowest this, as I myself know too,
And yet our knowing would ne'er have power to be,
Unless t'were knowledge of the Life of God.
How fain would I devote myself to this!
But where shall it be found; if into some knowledge it doth flow,
Forthwith it is transformed into a semblance.
Commingled with Him, surrounded by His sheath,
When thou dost wake the true sheath to behold, It is thy Self!
Let all that perishable is, decay.
Henceforth let God alone dwell in thy strivings,
Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the Sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.

It is true men do not always know how to understand those who lead them to a vision of the spiritual which gives a meaning to the Earth. The materialists are not alone in this. Others, who believe themselves to be no materialists because they continually repeat, ‘God, God,’ or ‘Lord, Lord,’ too often do not know what to make of these guides to the spiritual. For what could one make of a man who says:

‘Learn to discern what beyond all striving yet lives on;
Then will the sheath itself become perceptible,
And unveiled be the Life Divine.’

Who sees Divine Life in everything? He might be reproached with holding the world away from him, with denying its existence. Such a man might be accused of denying the existence of the world. His contemporaries accused him of denying God, of being an atheist, and drove him away from the High School on that account. For the words I have just quoted were written by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. He is a case in point. When there lives on in a human soul all through his earthly life that which dwells as an impulse from the Mystery of Golgotha and the notes of which may be heard in the Christmas Mystery, a way is then opened in which we can find that consciousness in which our own ego flows in union with the Earth-Ego. For the Earth-Ego is the Christ. In this way something is developed in man which must become greater and greater if the Earth is to achieve that evolution for which it was destined from the beginning of all things.

And so from the spirit of our Spiritual Science we have to-day tried to transform the Christmas thought into an impulse; and while looking up to it from that which is now going on around us, we shall try not to behold a want of purpose in the Earth-evolution, but rather in the midst of sorrow and pain, even in strife and hatred, to see something which finally helps man a step forward.

More important than the search for the causes of what happens to-day is this: that we should turn our gaze to the possible effects, to those effects which we must conceive as bringing healing to mankind.

That nation or people will do the right thing which is able to fashion something healing for mankind in the future, from what springs up out of the blood- saturated Earth. But this healing can only come about when man finds his way to the spiritual worlds: when he does not forget that not only a transitory but an eternal Christmas exists, an everlasting bringing to birth of the Divine Spiritual in the physical Earth-man.

Especially to-day let us retain the holiness of this thought in our souls, and keep it there, even beyond the Christmas season, during the time which can be for us in its external course, a symbol of the evolution of light. Darkness, the most intense Earth-darkness prevails at this time of the year. But we know that when the Earth lives m the deepest outer darkness, the Earth-soul experiences its light, its greatest time of growth begins.

The spiritual time of awakening coincides with Christmas and with this spiritual awakening should be united the thought of the spiritual awakening of the earth-evolution through Christ Jesus. For this reason the Christmas Festival was placed just at this particular time.

In this cosmic and at the same time earthly and moral sense let us fill our souls with the thoughts of Christmas and then, strengthened and invigorated with this moral thought, let us, as far as we can, turn our gaze on everything around us, desiring what is right for the progress of events and especially as regards the present occurrences. And as we begin at once to make active within us the strength we have been able to acquire from this Christmas Festival, let us conclude once more by turning to the Guardian Spirit of those who have to take a difficult part in the great events of the times.

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the earth-men committed to your charge,
That, united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And for those who have already passed through the gates of death while fulfilling the severe tasks given to man as a result of the great demands of our present time, let us repeat those words again in a slightly altered form:

Spirits of their souls, active Guardians,
May your vibrations carry
The imploring love of our souls
To the sphere-men committed to your charge,
That united with your power,
Our prayers may helpfully irradiate
The souls they lovingly seek.

And may the Spirit Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Spirit Who, for the progress and salvation of the Earth, has made Himself known in the Mystery of Christmas, which men will gradually learn to understand better and better, may He be with you in the severe tasks that he before you.

Especially this year as Christmas approaches, we must think of the kind of feelings that unite us with these words and their deep and universal meaning—that deep meaning for the world experienced by countless people in such a way that the word peace resounds through it, the word peace in a time when peace is utterly absent in the widest circles of humanity. How do we think of these Christmas words in this time?

Nevertheless, it is a thought that, perhaps in connection with these words resounding through the world, touches us ever more deeply in the present than in other times. One thought! Nations confront one another full of animosity. Blood, so much blood saturates our earth. We have witnessed and must feel countless deaths around us in this time. Infinite suffering weaves around our inner atmosphere of feeling. Hate and antipathy race through spiritual space and can easily show how far human beings in our time still are from that love spoken about by the One whose birth is celebrated at Christmas. One thought, however, is especially predominant. We think how enemy stands against enemy, opponent against opponent, how human beings can bring death to each other and how they then can go through the same portal of death with the thought of the divine leader of light, the Christ Jesus. We think of how, all over the earth, where there is war and pain and discord, those who are otherwise in such discord can be united. Within their deepest hearts they carry their connection with Him who entered the world on the day we celebrate at Christmas.

We think how through all animosity, through all antipathy, through all hate, a feeling can impress itself into all human souls everywhere in these times, can impress itself in the midst of blood and hate: the thought of the innermost link with the One, with Him who thereby united hearts through something higher than what is able to separate human beings on earth. And so it is nevertheless a thought of infinite greatness, a thought of infinite depth of feeling, this thought of the Christ Jesus who harmonizes human beings no matter what their discord might be, no matter what goes on in the world.

If we take hold of the thought in this way, we will want to grasp it even more intensely, especially in our time. Then we will have an intimation of how strongly this thought is connected with what must become great and strong and powerful within human evolution. If this were to happen, much that must still be fought for in such a bloody way at this time could be achieved in another way by human hearts, by human soul.

That He makes us strong, that He strengthens us, that He teaches us all over the earth really to feel in the truest sense of the word the Christmas verse, transcending everything that separates us: those who truly feel themselves connected with the Christ Jesus must promise this to themselves on Christmas night again and again.

There is a tradition within the history of Christianity that arose repeatedly in later times and was a custom in certain Christian regions over many centuries. Already in far distant times in various regions, mostly emerging from Christian churches, there were presentations for believers of the mystery of Christmas night. Especially in these most ancient times, the presentation of the mystery of Christmas night began with a reading, yes, at times even with a presentation of the story of Creation, the story of Creation as it is presented at the beginning of the Bible. Especially around the time of Christmas it was described how, out of the depths of the cosmos, the universal Word resounded, how out of the universal Word creation arose gradually, bit by bit. It was described how Lucifer approached the human being and how human beings thereby began earthly existence in a different way from what would have been the case had Lucifer not approached, in a way different from what was originally destined. The entire story of the temptation of Adam, and Eve was presented, and then it was shown how the human being was integrated, as if were, into ancient, pre-testamental history.

Only as time went on do we find what was presented in more or less detail in the various plays that developed in the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in Central Europe, of which we have seen a small example just now.

At the Christmas festival, an infinitely great thought originally drew together the beginning of the Old Testament with the mysterious story of the Mystery of Golgotha. Very little indeed has remained of what it was from this thought that drew together the two sacred stories. Only a little of this insight has remained, one contemporary example being our calendar, in which the day before Christmas Eve is called the day of Adam and Eve. This has its origin in the same thought. In more ancient times, however, there were those with deeper thoughts, with deeper feelings, a deeper knowledge received from their teachers who taught them how they were to grasp the mystery of Christmas and the mystery of Golgotha. For them a great, encompassing symbolic thought was always being presented: the thought of the origin of the Cross.

The God who is presented to us in the Old Testament gives one commandment to the human being, represented by Adam and Eve: “You may eat from all the fruits of the garden; only the fruits that grow on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must you avoid, because they who have eaten of that fruit would be cast out of the original scene of their existence.”

The tree, however—which was now represented in the most varied ways—came by some means into the sequence of generations that were the original generations from which the bodily sheath of the Christ Jesus proceeded. This came about in the following way (as it was presented in certain periods of time): when Adam, the sinful man was buried, this tree again grew out of his grave and was thus removed from Paradise. In this story we see the thought suggested that Adam rests in the grave, the human being who went through sin, the human being who was misguided by Lucifer; he rests in the grave and he unites himself with the body of the earth; but out of his grave the tree grows, the tree that can now grow out of the earth with which Adam's body has been united.

The wood of this tree passes over to the generations to which Abraham also belongs, to which David belongs. And out of the wood of this tree, which actually stood in Paradise, which then grew again out of Adam's grave, out of the wood of this tree, the Cross was made on which Christ Jesus was crucified.

This is the thought that was made clear again and again by the teachers of those who were to understand the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha out of deeper foundations. There is a deep meaning in the fact that in ancient times deep thoughts came to expression in such pictures, and this meaning holds good for the present as well. It will become clear to us that it still holds true for today.

We have also acquainted ourselves with the thought of the Mystery of Golgotha that says to us; the Being who has lived on earth through the body of Jesus poured out over the earth what He could bring to the earth, He poured it into the aura of the earth. What the Christ brought into the earth has since then become united with the entire corporeality of the earth. The earth has become something different since the Mystery of Golgotha. What Christ brought out of heavenly heights down to the earth is living in the earth aura.

If we consider this spiritually in connection with the ancient picture of the tree, this picture shows us the entire relationship from a higher point of view. The Luciferic principle entered the human being when the human being made his beginning on earth. The human being, as he is now in his union with the Luciferic principle, belongs to the earth, indeed he forms a part of the earth. And when we lay his body into the earth, this body is not rust as anatomy sees it; this body is at the same time the outer mold of what the human being is in his inner being within the earthly realm. It can then also be clear out of spiritual science that it is not just what goes through the portal of death into the spiritual world that belongs to the being of man; rather it becomes clear that the human being through all his activity, through all his deeds, is united with the earth. He is really united with it in the same way as those happenings that the geologist, the mineralogist, the zoologist, etc., find connected with the earth.

It is only when the human being goes through the portal of death that one could say that there is a termination for the human individuality of that which unites him to the earth. Our outer form, however, which we surrender in some way to the earth, enters the body of the earth. It carries in itself the stamp of what the earth has become through the fact that Lucifer entered into earthly evolution. What the human being achieves on the earth carries the Luciferic principle; the human being brings this Luciferic principle into the aura of the earth. It is not only what was originally the intention of the human being that arises, that blossoms out of human deeds, out of the activities of human beings; out of human deeds there arises something that has the Luciferic element mixed in with it. This then is in the aura of the earth. And when we now look upon the tree growing out of the grave of the human being Adam, who was led astray by Lucifer, if we look at the tree that has become something different through the Luciferic temptation—this tree that was originally the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil—we see everything that the human being brought about by the fact that he left his original state of existence, that he became something different through, the Luciferic temptation and that something was thereby brought into earthly evolution that had not previously been intended.

We see the tree grow out of what forms the physical body for the earth, which was stamped in its earthly form by that which permits the human being to appear on the earth in a lower sphere than he would have if he had not gone through the Luciferic temptation. Something grows out of man's entire earthly existence that has come into humanity's evolution through the Luciferic misguidance, through the temptation. When we seek knowledge, we seek it in a different way than was originally predestined. This makes it appear that something different grows out of our earthly deeds from what would have been the case in accordance with the gods' original intention. We form an earthly existence that is not as the gods originally intended for us; we mix something else into it, and we must form very definite pictures of this if we wish to understand it. Definite mental images are required if we wish to understand, to understand properly.

We must say to ourselves: I am placed into earthly evolution. What I give to earthly evolution through my deeds bears fruit; it bears the fruit of knowledge that has become muse by the fact that I have gained the knowledge of good and evil on the earth. This knowledge lives in the evolution of the earth, this knowledge is there. As I look at this knowledge, however, it becomes something different for me, something that is different from what it originally should have been. It becomes something that I must change if the goal and task of the earth are to be achieved, I see growing out of my earthly deeds something that must become different. The tree grows forth, the tree that becomes the Cross of earthly existence, the tree that becomes something to which the human being must gain a new relationship. For the old relationship allows this tree to grow. The tree of the Cross, of that Cross which grows out of the Luciferically colored evolution of the earth, grows out of Adam's grave, out of the humanity that Adam has become since the temptation. The Tree of Knowledge must become the trunk of the Cross, because the human being must unite himself anew with the properly understood Tree of Knowledge as it is now in order to achieve the goal and task of the earth.

Let us ask ourselves—and here we touch on a significant mystery of spiritual science—what is really the situation with the members we have come to know as the members of human nature? We know to begin with that the highest member of human nature is the “I.” We learn to express our “I” at a definite moment in childhood. We gain a relationship to this “I” at the point to which we have memories in later life. We know from the most varied spiritual scientific considerations that until this point in time the “I” itself was active in forming and structuring us. This remains the case until the point at which we begin to have a relationship, a conscious relationship, to our “I.” In the child, this “I” is there also, but it works within, its first task is to form our body. To begin with it creates the super-sensible forces in the spiritual world. When we have gone through conception and birth it still works creatively on our body for a period of time that lasts a few years, until we have our body as a tool so that we can consciously comprehend our self as an “I.”

A deep mystery is connected with this entry of the “I” into the human bodily nature. When we meet a person we ask him, “How old are you?” He gives his age as the years that have passed since his birth. As has been said, we touch here on a certain mystery of spiritual science that will become more and more clear as time passes. Today, however, I will only touch on it, will only share it with you. What a person gives as his age at a definite time of his life is connected with his physical body. He says nothing other than that his physical body has been developing for so-and-so long since his birth. The “I” does not go along with this development of the physical body. The “I” stays there,

This is a difficult mystery to grasp, that the “I” stays at the point of time to which we can recollect, the point at which we remember ourselves. It does not change with the body, it stays there. For just this reason we always have it in front of us so that, as we look, it can mirror our experiences for us. The “I” does not take part in our earthly journey. Only when we have gone through the portal of death must we take the path that we call Kamaloca backward again to our birth in order to re encounter our “I” and then to take it along on our further journey. The “I” remains behind. The body pushes itself forward in years while the “I” remains behind, the “I” stays there. This is difficult to comprehend because one cannot imagine that something remains standing in time while time keeps moving. Nevertheless this is so, the “I” stays there, and it remains there because the “I” does not actually unite itself with what approaches the human being from earthly existence. It remains united with those forces we call ours in the spiritual world. The “I” remains there, the “I” fundamentally remains in the form in which it has been conferred on us, as we know, by the Spirits of Form.

This “I” is retained in the spiritual world. It must be held in the spiritual world, for otherwise we would never be able to achieve again the earth's original goal and aim as human beings during our earthly evolution. What the human being underwent here on earth because of his Adam nature, you could say, of which he takes an impress into the grave when he dies as Adam—this clings to the physical body, etheric body, and astral body, this comes from these. The “I” waits, waits with everything that is in it, waits the entire time undergone by the human being on the earth. It looks only toward the further development of the human being as he repeats it for himself when he has gone through the portal of death and follows this path in reverse. This means that we remain with our “I” back in the spiritual world (this is meant in a specific sense). Humanity ought to become conscious of this fact. And humanity is only able to become conscious of this fact because at a certain time the Christ descended out of those worlds to which the human being belongs, out of the spiritual worlds. In the body of Jesus He prepared for Himself, in the way we know, in a twofold way, what was to serve Him as body on the earth.

If we understand ourselves correctly, we always look back through our entire earthly life, back to our childhood. Our spiritual element has remained back in our childhood. We always look toward this if we wish to understand things correctly. And humanity ought to be instructed to look toward what the spirit out of the heights can say: “Let the little children come to me.” Not adults, who are connected with the earth, but rather the little children. In having been given the festival of Christmas in addition to the Mystery of Golgotha, humanity ought to be instructed in this. Otherwise the Mystery of Golgotha would only need to have been conferred on humanity in relation to the last three years of Christ's life, when Christ was in the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Christmas festival shows how Christ prepared the human body for himself during childhood. This is what should lie at the basis of the Christmas experience: to know how the human being has actually always remained connected with what is approaching now through what remained behind during growth, remaining in the heavenly heights. In the form of the child, the human being should be reminded of the human-divine element from which he has distanced himself on descending to the earth but that now has returned to him. The human being ought to be reminded of this childlike element in him. He ought to be reminded of Him who brought back the childlike element to him again. Though it was not easy, one can see the force that works so wonderfully to carry this precisely in the way in which the festival of the World Child, the Christmas festival, was developed in areas of Central Europe.

What we have seen today was only a small example of the Christmas plays, of which there are many. It comes from olden times and is one of the kind of Christmas plays that I have already pointed to. Only a few of these so-called Paradise Plays have remained, which were performed at Christmas and in which the story of Creation was presented. It has remained connected to the Shepherds' Play and with the play of the Three Kings, who bring their gifts. Much of this used to live in numerous Christmas plays, but to a large extent they have now disappeared.

These plays disappeared even in rural areas in approximately the middle of the eighteenth century, but it is wonderful to see how some remained alive. A man about whom I have spoken, Karl Julius Schröer, collected such Christmas plays in the area of western Hungary in the 1850's. He searched for them in the area around Pressburg, and then further beyond Pressburg into Hungary. Others collected such Christmas plays in different areas, but what Karl Julius Schröer was able to find at that time of the performance of these Christmas plays and the customs connected with them can enter our hearts deeply. These Christmas plays, handwritten, remained in the hands of certain families in the villages and were treasured as something especially sacred. When October came around, people began thinking about having to perform these plays during the Christmas season for the people of the village. Then the best behaved boys and girls were selected, and they began to prepare themselves: they were not permitted to drink wine or any alcoholic beverages, nor were they permitted—which could well happen in such places, as we know—to be rowdy and rambunctious on Sundays, and they were not permitted any other transgressions. They really had to “lead a holy life,” as is said. Thus people were aware that a certain moral mood of the soul had to be assumed by those who were to devote themselves to the performance of such plays during the Christmas season. Such plays were not to be performed out of ordinary worldliness.

They were performed with all the naïveté with which the peasants could perform something like that. And yet the whole performance was permeated with deepest seriousness, with infinite seriousness. The plays gathered by Karl Julius Schröer and others in the most varied areas have in common this deep seriousness, the seriousness with which one approached the Christmas mystery. But this was not always the case. We only need to go back just a few centuries to find something different, to encounter something most curious. In looking at how these Christmas plays arose and gradually developed in areas of Central Europe, we are able to see especially clearly how overwhelmingly the Christmas thought was active.

But this thought was not immediately taken up in the way I have just described it, approached with a certain kind of sacred modesty, with great seriousness and awareness of the significance of the event that lived in the feeling. No indeed! In many areas it began by simply placing a manger in some kind of side altar in this or that church. (This was still the case in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it goes back to still earlier times.) A manger was placed there, and therefore a stall, in which were placed an ox and an ass, as well as the Child and two dolls representing Joseph and Mary. At first they used a very naive sculptural technique, but then it was desired to bring more life to the figures. This came first from the side of the clergy. Thus priests dressed themselves up, one as Joseph, the other as Mary, and they then represented these figures. They played these roles instead of using the dolls. In the earliest times they even presented the scene in Latin, because in the old churches, if the performance was to present a deep meaning it was considered important that those who saw or listened understand as little as possible, that they only see the outer mimicry.

After some time this was no longer tolerated. The people also wanted to understand what was performed in front of them. Gradually there was a transition to presenting portions of it in the local language spoken in those regions. And finally the people awoke to a feeling of wanting to participate, to experience it themselves. Yet it remained foreign to them, quite foreign. We need only consider that in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, for example, familiarity with these holy mysteries of Christmas night, for example, did not exist. Today we take these things for granted, but at that time it was not there. You have to keep in mind that year in and year out people heard the mass, also hearing it at Christmas (held at midnight during the holy night), but that they did not hear the Bible—the Bible was only there for the priest to read. Thus they knew only single fragments of the sacred story. The initial attempts by the priests to present these things dramatically were really in order to acquaint the people with what had once taken place. In this way the people learned to know what was written in the Bible.

I must say something now that I beg you not to misunderstand. It can be mentioned because it corresponds to purely historical truth. Some kind of mystery mood or something similar did not immediately emanate from these presentations once people wanted to participate in the Christmas plays. This is not how it was. Rather the longing to take part in what was presented to them, to be more active participants, was what brought people closer to the situation. And finally they had to be permitted to participate to some extent; things had to be made more comprehensible to the people. By making it more comprehensible, things moved forward step by step. For example, people did not understand initially that in the manger lay the Child. They had never seen that, they had never seen a child in a manger. Certainly earlier, when they were not permitted to understand anything, they just accepted it, but new that they wanted to participate it needed to be made completely comprehensible to them.

At that time only a rocking cradle was placed in front of them, and people began to take part by walking by the cradle, each person rocking the Child in it for a little while. Gradually similar moments of participation developed. There were even regions where first a person approached the manger very seriously and then, on finding the Child there, incredible noise erupted and everyone screamed and pointed and danced, indicating the pleasure they now experienced because the Child had been born. This was taken up entirely in a mood emanating from the longing to participate themselves, the longing to experience a story. In the story, however, there was such grandness, something so powerful, that out of this completely profane mood—for it was initially a profane mood—there developed gradually, bit by bit, the holy mood about which I have just been speaking. The situation itself poured its holiness out over a reception that initially could not have been called holy. Especially in the Middle Ages, the holy story of Christmas first had to conquer the people. And the story conquered them to such an extent that while they were performing their plays they wanted to prepare themselves morally m such an intensive way.

What was it that conquered human feelings, the human soul? It was the tow of the Child, the view of what has remained holy in the human being while the three remaining bodies unite themselves with earthly development. Although in certain regions and during certain periods the story of Bethlehem took on grotesque forms, it was inherent in human nature to develop this holy view toward the nature of the Child, which is connected with what entered into Christian evolution from the very beginning: the consciousness of how what remains behind in the human being when he begins his earthly development must enter into a new bond with that which united itself with earthly man. He gives over to the earth the wood out of which the Cross must be made, through which he establishes a new bond.

In older times of Christian development in Central Europe, only the Easter thought was present among the people. Only in the way in which I have described it has the Christmas thought gradually been added. What we find written in the Heliand, or similar works, was recorded by individual poets, but it did not become popular. The popular aspects of Christmas arose in the way I have just described, which shows in a truly grand way how the thought of the bond with the childlike, with the pure, truly childlike element that appeared in a new form in the Jesus Child, has conquered the human being. If we bring the power of this thought together with the fact that this thought can live in souls so as to unite all people (and to begin with it is the only thought in our earthly existence that can do so), we come to the true Christ thought. The Christ thought therefore becomes great and must gradually become stronger in us if the further evolution of the earth is to take place in the right way.

Just consider how far removed the human being in present earthly existence still is from what is concealed in the depths of the Christ thought. A book has just recently been published—perhaps you have read it—written by Ernst Haeckel, World War Thoughts About Life, Death, and Infinity and Religion. A book by Ernst Haeckel is certainly one that proceeds from the most serious search for truth. This book by Ernst Haeckel points to what is now taking place on the earth, how people are at war with one another, how they hate one another, how countless deaths result every day. Haeckel mentions all these thoughts that obtrude upon people so painfully. Certainly he always mentions these thoughts with the background of looking at the world as he sees it from his standpoint. We know about his standpoint, having often spoken about it and about how we can recognize in Haeckel one of the greatest scientists. This standpoint leads also to other things, but it leads to something that can be observed in the newer phases of Haeckel's development.

Haeckel offers some thoughts about the World War. He also remarks on how much blood is flowing now, how many deaths surround us, and he asks himself, “Can the thoughts of religion survive next to these events?” As Haeckel asks it, “Can one believe that there is in any way a wisdom-filled providence, a beneficent God who rules the world, when every day one sees that by mere chance,” so he says, “so many people's lives are ended, that they die by no cause that can be proven to be related in any way to some kind of wise world rulership? Instead, by chance” he says, “this one or that one is struck by a bullet, suffering either death or injury. In the face of all these events, do thoughts of wisdom, thoughts of divine providence, have any meaning? Must not just such events as these prove that the human being must stay in one place, that he is nothing but what the outer, materialistically conceived history of evolution shows us, and that fundamentally everything in earthly existence is ruled not by divine providence but by chance? Is it possible in the face of all these events to have another religious thought” says Haeckel, “to do something other than resign oneself, saying that a person simply surrenders his body and dissipates into the cosmos?”

One can ask further, however—Haeckel no longer asks this question—“If this cosmos is nothing but the play of atoms, does human life really provide a meaning for earthly existence?” As I said, Haeckel does not ask this question anymore, but he does give an answer in his Christmas book: “Precisely events such as those that touch us so painfully now, just such events show that there is no justification for believing in any kind of beneficent providence or wise guidance of the world or anything like it; it is impossible now to maintain that anything like this weaves through and guides the world. Therefore resignation, seeing one's own way, is all there is.”

Haeckel's book is also a Christmas book! It is a Christmas book meant very sincerely and honestly. But this book is based on a significant prejudice. It rests on the prejudice that, it is not permissible to seek in a spiritual way for the earth's meaning, that humanity is prohibited from looking for a meaning of the earth in a spiritual way.

If it is only the outer course of events that is considered, one does not see this meaning. This is what happens to Haeckel. Then the situation must remain with the recognition that this life has no meaning. This is what Haeckel means. Looking for meaning is not permitted! But is it not so that another might come and say something further: that if we look only at these contemporary events externally, pointing out that countless bullets are destroying human lives, if we look only at these events and no meaning results, then precisely because of this we must seek for this meaning in a deeper way. It is precisely events such as these that show us we cannot amply look for and believe in meaning by looking just at what is going on now on the earth—by seeing only that these human souls vanish like their bodily natures. Instead we must look at what they are now beginning as they pass through the portal of death. In short, another person could come and say that precisely because no meaning can be found in the outer events, the meaning must be looked for outside the outer, the meaning must be looked for in the super-sensible.

Is this any different from looking at the same matter in a completely different realm? For one who thinks the way Haeckel thinks today, Haeckel's science can become a refusal to recognize any meaning in earthly existence. It can happen that a person wants to prove out of the events that are taking place so painfully today that earthly life as such has no meaning. But, if one takes hold of the problem in our way—we have done this frequently—precisely this same science takes as its starting point the deep and great meaning that can be unraveled by us in world phenomena. For this to happen, however, something spiritual must be active in the world; we must be able to unite ourselves with the spiritual, It is impossible for people to find a meaning for the earth, a real meaning, because our educated people do not yet understand that it is necessary to permit the power to work upon them that once so wonderfully conquered hearts, souls: the power that arose on looking at the Christmas mystery, from which a profane comprehension evolved into a sacred comprehension. Scholars are unable to grasp this yet; they cannot yet unite the Christ impulse with what they see in the outer world, and thus it is impossible for them to find a meaning for the earth.

Thus one must say that science, for all its great progress of which people are so proud today—and justifiably so - is not in a position out of itself to lead to a view that satisfies the human being. As it goes its way, it can lead in the same way either to meaninglessness or to the meaning of the earth, just as in any other domain. Consider this outer science so proudly developed in the last few centuries, especially from the nineteenth century until today, with all its wonderful laws. Consider everything that surrounds us today. It has been brought forth by this science. We no longer burn light at night in the same way that Goethe burned his. We burn light in a completely different way, and we illuminate our rooms in a completely different way. Consider everything that lives in our souls today out of our science; it has arisen through the great progress of science, of which humanity is justifiably proud. What is the effect of this same science? It is a blessing if man develops it as such. But today, especially since it is such a complete science, it produces indomitable instruments of death. Its progress serves destruction just as well as construction. Just as the science acknowledged by Haeckel can lead to either meaning or meaninglessness, so the science that can achieve such great things can serve either construction or destruction. Arid if the main thing is this science, science will bring forth evermore horrible and frightful works of destruction out of the same source that leads to constructive ends.

Science does not directly have an impulse to bring humanity forward. If only this were seen once, this science would be evaluated in the right way! Only then would it be known that something else must be an integral part of humanity's evolution than what the human being can achieve through this science. For what is this science, after all? In reality it is nothing but the tree that grows out of the grave of Adam. And the time is fast approaching when people will recognize that this science is the tree growing out of Adam's grave. And the time will come when people will recognize that this tree must become the wood that is the Cross of humanity. This wood can lead to a blessing only if that which unites in the right way with what lies beyond death, but lives already here in the human being, is crucified on the Cross: that which we behold on the holy Christmas night if we experience it in the right way, in its true mystery, that which can fee presented in a childlike way but that bears the highest mysteries. Isn't it actually wonderful that in the simplest way it can be said to the people: something entered which is active through human life on earth, something that actually may not go beyond childhood. It is related to what the human being belongs to as a super-sensible being. Isn't it wonderful that this super-sensible-invisible element, in the most eminent sense, can come so near to human souls in such a simple picture? Simple human souls!

Yes, those who are educated must also undertake the path taken by those simple human souls. There was a time when the Child was not presented in the manger. The Child in the manger was not presented, but instead the Child sleeping on the Cross was presented. The Child sleeping on the Cross! A wonderfully profound picture, bringing the entire thought to expression that I have wanted to let arise before your souls today.

And is it not basically very simple to express this thought? Yes, it is. Indeed, let us look once for the origin of those impulses that oppose each other in the world today in such a horrible way. Where do these impulses originate? Where does everything originate that makes the life of humanity so difficult today? Where is the origin of all this? It lies in everything we become in the world only after that point of time at which we can recollect ourselves. If we go back beyond this point of time, if we go back to the point in time at which we are called the “little children who are able to enter the kingdom of heaven”—this is not where it originates. At that point nothing of what today is in battle and dispute resides in human souls. The thought can be expressed this simply, but spiritually we must consider the fact that there is something so original in the human soul that it goes beyond all human strife, beyond all human disharmony.

We have often spoken of the ancient mysteries that wanted to awaken in human nature that which permits the human being to look up into the super-sensible. And we have spoken of the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha, perceptible for all human beings on the stage of history, has presented the super-sensible mystery. There is something that fundamentally unites us with the true Christ thought. We have this by virtue of the fact that we are able to have moments in our life (I am now speaking directly, not in a pictorial way) in which, despite everything we are in the outer world, we can bring alive in us what we received as a child. We can do this by going backward, feeling ourselves back at the child's standpoint? we can do this by looking toward the human being as he develops between birth and death, so that we are able to sense within us what we received as a child.

In the public lecture about Johann Gottlieb Fichte which I gave last Thursday, I could have added something, but at the time it would not have been understood. I could have said something that would have clarified a great deal that lives in this devout man in such a peculiar way. I would have spoken about why he actually developed the very particular way he did, and I would have had to say that this was because, more than other people, he retained the childlike quality in himself despite growing old. He retained more of the childlike quality in himself than other people do. Such people actually grow less old. It is really true that what existed in childhood remains more in such people than in others. This is generally the secret of many great human beings, that right into their oldest age they are able to remain children in a certain way; even when they die, they die as children, though this must be expressed only partially, since one must be connected with life.

The Christmas mystery thus speaks to what lives in us as a childlike quality, it speaks with a view to the divine Child who was selected to take up the Christ, it speaks with a view to the one who was already overshadowed by the Christ, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha in reality to heal the earth.

Let us become conscious of the fact that when we surrender the imprint of our higher self, when we surrender our physical body to the earth, it is not a merely physical process. Something spiritual is also taking place. But this spiritual aspect takes place in the right way only by virtue of the fact that the Christ being has streamed into the earth aura, the Christ being who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot see the earth in its completeness if we do not see that since the Mystery of Golgotha the Christ has been united with the earth. We can bypass the Christ, just as we can bypass everything super-sensible, if we feel ourselves constituted only of earthly matter and only able to relate to it. But if the earth is to have a real and true meaning for us, we can not bypass Christ. For this reason everything depends on our being able to awaken in ourselves something that will open the view into the spiritual world.

Let us make our Christmas festival into something that it must be especially for us. Let us make it into a festival that serves not only the past but the future, the future that little by little is to bring to birth the spiritual life for all humanity. We want to unite ourselves with the prophetic feeling, the prophetic intimation, that such a birth of the spiritual life must be brought to humanity, that presiding over humanity's future a great holy night must be active, coming to birth out of what gives meaning to the earth from human thoughts. The earth received this meaning objectively through the fact that the Christ being united Himself with the earth aura through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the holy night let us think of how, out of the depths of darkness, light must enter human evolution, the light of spiritual life. The old light of spiritual life that was there before the Mystery of Golgotha had to pass away, gradually it had to be extinguished. The light must arise again, must be reborn after the Mystery of Golgotha through the consciousness in the human soul, that this human soul is connected with what Christ became for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha,

If there are more and more people who come to know how to conceive of Christmas in such a spiritual scientific sense, this Christmas night will develop a force in human hearts and human souls that will have its meaning in all times. It will have meaning in times in which people surrender themselves to feelings of joy but also in times in which people have to surrender themselves to the feelings of pain that must penetrate us today when we think of the great misery of our tune.

Since looking up to the spiritual gives meaning to the earth, I would like to share with you today the words of one who expressed this so beautifully:

What gave my eye this force,
That all misshapen forms have dissolved.
That the nights become like brilliant suns.
Disorder becomes order, decay life?

What intricate weaving through time, through space,
Guides me surely to the eternal well
Of the Beautiful, the True, the Good, and of all delight.
And in destroying immerses all my striving?

It is this: into Urania's eye, the deep,
Itself clear, blue, still, pure
Lightflame, I myself have quietly gazed.

Since then, this eye rests in my depths
And is in my being—the eternal
One, Lives in my life, sees in my seeing.

And in a second small poem:

Nothing is but God, and God is nothing but life,
You know it, you and I know it together,
But how would knowing be there
If it were not knowing of God's life?

“How gladly would I surrender myself to this,
Yet where do I find it? Somehow it flows
Into knowing, then transforms itself into seeming,
Mingling with it, surrounded by its sheaths.”

Quite dearly the sheath rises up before you,
It is your I, what is destructible dies,
And henceforth only God lives in your striving.

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath.
And unveiled you see divine life.

Certainly people do not always know what they ought to do with those who point to perceiving the spiritual that gives meaning to the earth. It is not only materialists who do not know what to do. Others who believe they are not materialists because they are always saying, “God! God! God!” or “Lord! Lord! Lord!” often do not know what to make of these individuals who guide us to the spiritual. For what can one do with a person who says. “There is nothing but God! Everything is God! Everywhere, everywhere is God!” He was seeking for God in everything, the one who said:

See through what survives this striving,
Then the sheath becomes visible to you as sheath
And unveiled, you see divine life!

An individual who wants to see divine life everywhere could be accused of not allowing the world to exist, of denying the existence of the world. Though one could call him a world-denier, his contemporaries called him a denier of God, and they therefore chased him away from the colleges and universities. The words I have read to you are those of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. If the Mystery of Golgotha continues to live on in the human soul through earthly existence—amid what is connected with this Mystery of Golgotha in the Christmas mystery—it can serve as an impulse resounding in the soul. Fichte is a perfect example of how, when this is the case, a path is opened on which we can find the consciousness in which our own “I” flows together with the earth “I”—for this earth “I” is the Christ. Through this, we develop something in the human being that must become greater and greater if the earth is to move toward the development for which it was destined from the beginning.

Therefore we especially wish, out of the spirit of our spiritual knowledge renewed in the sense it has been today, to let the Christmas thought become an impulse in us. By looking up to this Christmas thought, we wish to attempt to see from what surrounds us not the meaninglessness of earthly evolution; rather, in the suffering and pain, in the strife and hate, we hope to see something that ultimately helps humanity forward, something that really brings humanity a bit forward.

It is not so important to look for causes, which anyway are so easily concealed in partisan strife. It is much more important for what happens today to focus on the possible effects, those effects that we must picture to ourselves as healing, as bringing healing for humanity.

The nations and people who are in a position to shape something that can be healing for humanity of the future out of what is able to sprout from the blood-drenched soil will be led to the right approach. What can be healing for humanity, however, can develop only if people find the way into the spiritual worlds, if people do not forget that there was not only one Christmas but that there must be an everlasting Christmas, an everlasting coming-to-birth of the divine- spiritual in the physical, earthly human being.

Especially today we wish to enclose the sacredness of this thought in our souls, we wish to hold it for the time surrounding Christmas, which can he a symbol for the evolution of light also in its outer course. In these days, at this time of year, darkness, earth darkness, will be here to the greatest degree possible on earth. When the earth lives in this deepest outer darkness, however, we know that the earth soul experiences her light, beginning to awaken to the highest degree.

The time of Christmas, then, is connected with the time of spiritual awakening. And with this time of spiritual awakening, the memory of the spiritual awakening for earthly evolution through the Christ Jesus shall be united. We therefore have the institution of the Christmas festival especially at this time.

Let us unite the Christmas thought with our soul in. this cosmic, and at the same time earthly, moral sense. Then, reinforced and strengthened with this Christmas thought as best as we can, let us look upon everything surrounding us to want what is right for the progress of events, also wanting what is appropriate in the development of deeds of the present time.

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Originally published in Anthroposophical Quarterly, Volume 22, Number 4, Winter 1977.

Yesterday I called your attention to the fact that the birth of Jesus gradually conquered men’s hearts and souls, that the Christmas Plays which can now be performed, only developed little by little their present beautiful form, together with that atmosphere of earnest devotion which streamed into them during the times when they were at their height. It is really still possible to say of the early forms of these Christmas Plays that people tried, in an entirely secular mood, to participate in something which they had seen for centuries in a form which they could not grasp. We may say that Christ, the Child, conquered the hearts of men only gradually. Indeed, He conquered the hearts of men quite slowly. In the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, when the people themselves gradually began to take part in the Plays which in the past could be performed only by priests, we do not find the noble form which the Christmas Plays assumed later on. We have just seen two examples of these Plays,¹ and I have tried to explain to you their different origin, for they clearly reveal this. The first play has a simple, popular character. Its chief aim is to set forth how the Child, in whom the great Cosmic Spirit incarnated and began to work on earth, entered the world as a Child, and how He was, on the one hand, received by the publicans and on the other hand by the shepherds. This appears particularly in the first Christmas Play which was performed yesterday: the great difference in the reception given to the Child by the publicans and by the shepherds comes to expression in it.

The other Christmas Play is quite different. It immediately reveals to us that wise men—and for the people of those days wise men were at the same time Kings, Magi—had read in the stars what a significant destiny was awaiting mankind. In the action of this Play we therefore see ancient occult wisdom. And in the course of the action we see that in accordance with this occult wisdom, with these truths discovered in the stars, Herod enters the earthly events and faces us as the one by whose side we clearly recognise Evil, the Principle that remained backward, the devilish Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle. We see how the Christ Principle and the Luciferic-Ahrimanic Principle confront each other. But we also see the manifestation of forces which enter the course of events from the spiritual world. The Angels appear, as the manifestation of guidance from spiritual spheres; they lead and guide the action in order to frustrate Herod’s aims, and the events follow another course. Forces from the spiritual world pervade the will of men.—This is consequently a play containing forces which undoubtedly lead us beyond the events pertaining merely to the earth.

When we consider how these two plays face each other, one of them filled by the primitive conception of common folk, and the other by a wisdom which really indicates a primeval wisdom of the earth’s development, then we are induced to call up within ourselves thoughts concerning the events which took place in the course of time and the whole significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the earth.

Let us bear in mind that at the time—but this in a wider meaning—at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, there existed in certain circles a profound wisdom in connection with spiritual matters. This deep wisdom which existed at that time is called Gnosis.

In the external world, when considering the course of Europe’s spiritual culture, we may say: This Gnosis, this deeply spiritual science which existed in connection with the mysteries of the spiritual world, vanished from the cultural life of Europe, as far as the outer world is concerned,—and in the spiritual life of the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th centuries, etc., there existed only a very dim idea of what was contained in this science.

Those who knew something (I mean, those who knew what could be known by a Christian priest, a Christian scientist), those who had the knowledge which could be acquired in those days, were only aware of the existence of the Gnosis, because people had opposed it in the early Christian centuries, because opponents had fought against the Gnosis. Imagine the situation if to-day all the books and lecture-cycles which constitute our Anthroposophical literature were to be suppressed and burned, so that nothing remained—if the only writings on Anthroposophy available to posterity were books written by opponents! Imagine the situation that in centuries to come, people were to get hold of these books written by antagonists, acquiring from these their conception of the truths contained in our writings! This is what happened to the Gnosis.

An outstanding writer of the early Church was Irenaeus, the pupil of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who had been a disciple of the Apostles. But Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of the Gnosis. In the course of the centuries, the teachings of the Gnostics were gathered by reading what Irenaeus had written as a refutation of the Gnosis. In regard to this ancient wisdom, we must reckon with everything brought about by the circumstance that these teachings were trans-mitted by an opponent.

This shows you that the whole development of the Occident is really based on the fact that something handed down from past ages was blotted out, stamped out completely. Outwardly we see how new was the beginning brought by the Mystery of Golgotha, what an entirely new impulse it brought to the culture of the West. In reality it began everywhere with an entirely new impulse. Indeed, I might use the following comparison: The ancient writings lay deeply buried underground, like some ancient-city covered by the earth; deeply buried, when we consider the writings of Ambrose and Augustine, old Fathers of the Church, to Scotus, and so forth. A new beginning, a new element arose like a new city over apparently new ground, under which an ancient city lies buried, whose aspect is unknown. This is what took place in the course of the development of European culture.

If there is to be a spiritual deepening in the present age, it is therefore evident that this must be drawn out of man’s own forces and that human beings themselves must discover truths which cannot be handed on to them traditionally from outside, at least not in the course of the spiritual development of Europe. And it is out of the question (I cannot deal with this to-day, for it would lead us too far away from our subject), it is out of the question to draw in Oriental documents as a substitute for the external documents which have been lost in the spiritual life of the Occident. This is impossible for the simple reason that the Oriental documents convey something which is far more primitive than that which developed in the world by spreading from Asia Minor to North Africa, Southern Europe, and even as far as Central Europe. Spiritual knowledge was blotted out completely in the early Christian centuries; it reached posterity only through the writings of opponents.

The Gnostic writings which have been destroyed, do not only contain a knowledge of the spiritual worlds, the spiritual knowledge of these worlds—apart from the truths relating to Christ—but also the whole encompassing spiritual wisdom of ancient times in connection with the Mystery of Christ Jesus. The loss of these documents implies the loss of all this knowledge. The Gnostics (—if we wish to give them this name—) tried to grasp in their own way the course of the earth’s development and the true nature of Christ. In those days it was not yet possible to grasp these things as they can be grasped now, by drawing down from the spiritual worlds truths which need not be recorded in writing, because they exist in an immediately living form in the spiritual world. In those days the truths relating to the real being of Christ-Jesus could not be drawn down in this way. But certain truths relating to Christ-Jesus were known in an older form of wisdom which has been lost.

Quite recently, a few scant remains of a book entitled Pistis-Sophia were discovered, and of another one entitled "The Mystery of Jeû". Also in an external way, they draw, as it were, attention to the fact that the truths relating to Christ, which we should now strive to attain with the aid of anthroposophical methods, are not as foolish as the opponents of our Movement wish to make them appear. Only a small fragment, in Coptic writing, has been preserved of the "Book of Jeû"; nevertheless it calls attention to the fact that what we read in the Gospels is not the only wisdom which lived in the thoughts of men during the first centuries of Christian development.

The "Book of Jeû" describes how, after His Resurrection, Christ spoke to those who were at that time able to understand Him, to those who had become His disciples. The strange thing about this "Book of Jeû" (I mean, the small existing fragment of this book) is that it clearly speaks of Christ and of His true being in a way which differs completely from the Gospel of St. John. There is one thing which recurs again and again in this book, which clearly shows that it seeks to attract our attention to something quite definitive. This thing to which it draws attention over and over again, may, in other words, be explained as follows:

Suppose that in those days someone had wished to explain why Christ Jesus had entered the evolution of the earth; he would have had to do it in the following way—To those who were able to understand him, he would have said: "Behold, a new age is dawning, in which man will enter the future epoch of the development of the Consciousness-Soul. An age is approaching when the world will have to be grasped through man’s external physical organs, through organs which are essentially connected with the physical body. This age is approaching. The age in which revelations could be obtained through an originally primitive clairvoyance has gone by. Past is the age when knowledge could be gathered, not only by using the physical body with its instruments, but by using the etheric body independently of the physical body. This age has gone by—henceforth people will have to use as their only instrument the physical body. But also in future it will be possible to know things which in the past could only be known through the etheric body. In the external world, there will only exist a knowledge connected with the physical body, which is subjected to death. But a knowledge of the spiritual world cannot be gained through the instruments linked with the physical body. A Helper must come who kindles the etheric element in man, a Helper connected with the living essence, with everything in man’s earthly life which does not pertain to the earth. A Helper must come, Who tears out of the indolent, lifeless, physical body an understanding which is able to grasp the spiritual world, an understanding which lives in man and is connected with heaven; that understanding which cannot be crucified by the world, because it belongs to heaven, the understanding which crucifies the world, that is to say, which overcomes the world."

We should imagine that in earlier epochs, when people could not yet see Christ in His true Being, as He passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, they still felt connected with the spiritual world through the etheric body. When the physical body hardened more and more, thus becoming the instrument it is now, it was necessary that One should come, Christ, in order to draw a living essence out of the indolent instrument of the physical body. This is what we should imagine.

But let us now consider this "Book of Jeû". After having passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, Christ spoke to those who had learned to lean on Him and on the wisdom contained in His words: He said,

"I loved you, and I wished to give you Life."

In the words, "and I wished to give you Life", we hear that He wished to draw the indolent physical body out of its indolence, by giving it something which only the etheric body can give.

"Jesus, the Living One, is the Knowledge of Truth."

The Living One—that is, He who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha—speaks in such a way as to appear as the Representative of Life. The text then continues:

"This is the Book dealing with the Knowledge of the Invisible God through the hidden Mysteries"—, that is to say, of Mysteries which lie concealed in man—"which indicate the path to man’s chosen Being, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the World, in the arrival of the Redeemer, the Saviour of the souls who receive within them the Word of Life, higher than every other life—, in the knowledge of Jesus, the Living One, Who through the Father came out of the Aeon of Light into the All-ness of the Pleroma"—(i.e. of the other Aeons, of all the Spiritual Beings)—"in the teaching, which cannot be matched by any other, the teaching given by Jesus, the Living One, to His Apostles, when He said: This is the Teaching in which the whole Knowledge reposes."

We should thus imagine the Risen One Who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha speaking to His Disciples, who had learned to listen to Him.

Jesus, the Living One, began to speak to His Apostles as follows:

"Blessed is he who crucified the world and who did not let the world crucify him" (he who can grasp that part in man which cannot be conquered by matter, by external physical matter).

The Apostles replied unanimously by saying: "Teach us, O Lord, this way of crucifying the world, that the world may not crucify us, and we may not perish and lose our life."

Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: "He who has crucified the world is one who has found my Word and fulfils it in accordance with the will of Him who sent me."

And the Apostles replied by saying: "Speak to us, O Lord, that we may hear you! We followed you with all our heart, we left father and mother, vineyards and fields, we left estates and the glory of the external king and we followed you, that you might teach us the Life of your Father, who sent you." And Christ, the Living One, met this appeal of His apostles by revealing to them what He had to say.

Christ, the Living One answered and spoke: "The Life of my Father is this: that out of the human essence of that understanding you receive your soul, which is not of this earth …"

What the Living One expects, is this: That those who are His disciples should grasp that in man lives an understanding of spiritual things which may tear itself away from the physical body, an understanding that is not of this earth. If they call to life within them this understanding, they will in truth have grasped His Word.

… "this essence of every soul, may be grasped through what I reveal to you in the progress of my Word. And that you may fulfil it, and this before the Archon" (—i.e. before the essence of this Aeon, this age—), "his snares" (the Ahrimanic-Lucifer Being) "and his traps, which have no end,—that you may be saved from these. But you, my disciples, hasten to receive my Word with greatest care, so that you may recognise it, and that the Archon of this Aeon" (i.e. the Ahrimanic-Luciferic) "may not be at strife with you, because he cannot find any of his commands in me" (—he therefore finds his commands outside the One who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha): "that you yourselves, O! my Apostles, may fulfil it in regard to myself, and that I myself may free you, and you be hallowed by that freedom which has no blemish. Even as the Spirit of the Holy Ghost is holy, so will you become holy through the freedom of the Spirit, of the Holy Spirit."

Unanimously the Apostles—Matthew and John, Philip, Bartholomew and James—replied by saying:

"O! Jesus, Living One, whose goodness is spread out over those who have found your wisdom and your form in the Illumination, O! Light, burning in the Light you have kindled in our hearts, when we received the Light of Life, O veritable Logos, that through the Gnosis, has become for us true knowledge of what the Living One has taught!"

Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: "Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven down to the earth." (i.e. who is conscious of the fact that there is something in him which is not dependent on his earthly body, but on the Beings of Heaven, and who leads into the earthly events that part in him which is connected with heaven.)

"Blessed is he who recognises this and leads heaven downwards, who carries the earth and sends it up to heaven" (—who connects the earthly part in him with the heavenly, so that when he passes through the portal of death with the fruits of his earthly life, he may lead the earth back to heaven).

The Apostles replied by saying: "Jesus, Living One, explain to us how we may bring down heaven to earth. For we have followed you, in order that you might teach us the true Light."

And Jesus, the Living One, answered and spoke: “The Word that lives in heaven”—(He means, the wisdom or knowledge which may be gained independently of man’s physical being) ... “the Word lived in heaven before the earth, which is called world, came into being. But if you know my Word, you will lead heaven down to earth and the Word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible Word of the Father. If you know this, you will lead heaven down to the earth. I will teach you how the earth may be sent up to heaven, that you may know: To send the earth up to heaven, is to listen to the Word of Knowledge, that is no longer mere knowledge of an earthly human being, but knowledge of a heavenly human being ...” (one who has severed his understanding from the external physical body, who has ceased to be an earthly human being and has become a heavenly human being. His understanding has ceased to be earthly: it has become heavenly).

"You will instead be saved from the Archon of this Aeon" (from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic Being).

Here, therefore, is a fragment which has been preserved and has been found again, a fragment which calls attention to the infinitely profound knowledge which once—during the first centuries of the Christian era—connected man with the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Editor’s Note

The two independent discoveries in the forties of this century of the Coptic manuscripts in Upper Egypt in 1945 and the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947 have both proved of very great importance for the study of primitive Christianity. In particular, the Scrolls have led the way to a new understanding of the Messianic prophecies while the Coptic manuscripts, apparently the library of a Gnostic sect, have given unexpected opportunity to learn at first hand the teachings and beliefs of various sects, or groups, belonging to a widespread spiritual movement active in the first and second centuries of our era.

Of the few discoveries of Gnostic writings made earlier it is invaluable to have Dr. Steiner’s interpretation of the concepts that appear in the fragments from the Books of Jeû, with his interpretation of the phraseology which may be almost incomprehensible to the reader of today. Now that some of the new discoveries are available in English translation they can be approached in the light of this lecture, and much that seems incomprehensible—even bizarre—reveals itself as having a meaning based on a profound spiritual knowledge. Of the new discoveries, perhaps the books that comprise what is called The Jung Codex have excited the most interest. They were sent to Dr. Carl Jung at Zurich on account of the fact that he was known to be deeply interested in Gnosticism. These writings were first made known to the public in a newspaper report of November 1953, just on thirty three years after Rudolf Steiner gave his lecture.

In one of his Letters to the Members (No. 22 in The Michael Mystery) Dr. Steiner wrote of the Gnosis and its relation to Anthroposophy, pointing out that the Gnosis was properly connected with the development of the Sentient Soul while Anthroposophy is, "by the light of Michael’s agency, to evolve out of the Spiritual Soul a new form of understanding of Christ and the World."

• 1. A Shepherds Play from the Palatinate and a Three King’s Play from Oberufer, near Pressburg. These plays were performed at Dornach on the stage of the Schreinerei for the first time at Christmas 1915.

In my lecture yesterday, I tried to indicate an important fact related to the Christ problem as a whole—a fact that is no doubt surprising. A great store of wisdom has in fact disappeared, and it is known today only through a few fragments. From one of these fragments, I cited certain passages to you yesterday from the beginning of the Book of Jeû.¹ We must indeed ask ourselves now if it possible that a store of wisdom that once existed can disappear completely. In other words, can the reasons for such a disappearance be completely external? You will recall the analogy I used: I said that it is possible to imagine that everything we publish today and that all our existing writings have been burned, so that only the writings of our opponents remain, and posterity can be reconstructed only from those records and not from what we have said. This is quite possibly what did occur. Nevertheless, this hypothesis cannot be sustained as-is and without qualification. Even if all the writings were to disappear, many of us would still be alive—at least, we could assume this possibility—and we know the content of those writings and would be able to communicate those truths without the help of the works of our adversaries, so that the store of wisdom would continue to grow and spread, in spite of everything.

To bring about a complete disappearance, it would in fact be necessary to eradicate, to a certain extent, the capacity to understand our writings, the ability to preserve them, and the possibility of communicating them from generation to generation. This must be what occurred at that time. It must have happened that people lost the capacity to understand such teachings as the Gnosis of Valentinus, for example, or the content of the Pistis Sophia manuscript, or the Book of Jeû, and so on. In fact, this is what happened.

We must vividly imagine to ourselves that, based on the broad foundation, so to speak, of that ancient inheritance—which had already fulfilled its purpose in the form of a primitive clairvoyance that then gradually grew dim and faded away—a higher form of knowledge evolved. It was nurtured by only the few who were initiated into the Mysteries, yet it was a widespread knowledge nevertheless. And we must imagine further that it was because of the gradual paralysis of the capacity to understand such things that this knowledge was not just forgotten, but it eventually disappeared. People simply no longer had the capacity to understand such teachings. Only this could bring about such a complete loss of a treasure of wisdom.

Thus, we may indeed say that, when we look back at the time just before the period following the Mystery of Golgotha, we can see how ancient capacities disappear, far and wide, and how something new develops out of entirely new and fresh forces. We may say without hesitation that, as human evolution approached the Mystery of Golgotha, we can see a gradual darkening and disappearance of a certain view and way of thinking, which had a spiritual quality and would have enabled human beings to understand the coming of Christ into the world as a spiritual being. But this form of knowledge, as we said, had disappeared.

As a result, at the very time when the Christ united with earthly evolution, humankind lost the kind of knowledge that might have enabled people to understand, in a true and profound way, the nature of the Christ being. This is a very important fact. Furthermore, I have already indicated, several times, something very significant. I stated that the announcement of Christ's coming was not itself a new revelation, made known through the Mystery of Golgotha; in the Mysteries, the Christ had already been mentioned as the “coming one.” There were special teachings in the Mysteries that proclaimed the coming of Christ. One viewed the Christ being, of course, in the light of a past spiritual wisdom, but these Mysteries had gradually degenerated, so that, when the Christ did come, people were less able than ever to speak, as human beings, about the Christ. This is evident not only from all that I have just explained, but also from what remained alive in the souls of those who tried to conceive of the Christ Mystery out of a fresh, new impulse.

Thus, during the very first centuries of the Christian era, we find great spirits arising, such as Clemens of Alexandria, for example, and Origenes—very lofty spirits, both of them. If we want to describe them from one perspective—Clemens, as well as Origenes, who came after the Gnostics when Gnosis itself was already waning—we must say that they did in fact strive for this knowledge. They asked themselves: What is the truth behind the Mystery of Golgotha? On the one hand, we are concerned with the Christ (they still knew this, of course); the Christ can be understood only as a spiritual being connected with spiritual and suprasensory impulses. This Christ descends from cosmic spiritual spheres. They could no longer comprehend how the ancient Gnosis had been able to understand the Christ, but they knew that he could be understood, as a spiritual being, only through spiritual faculties. This was what they knew about the Christ.

On the other hand, they viewed Jesus as a historical personality. For them, the coming of Jesus was a historical fact. Them might have said: A number of years ago, in a certain part of the Middle East, a man named Jesus was born; he carried the Christ, and God lived in that human being. For them, this was the great problem. They thought: During the course of historical evolution, we are concerned with a historical personality; but in the realm of spiritual knowledge, we are concerned with the Christ. How should we conceive the union of these two? Thus we see great spirits like Clemens of Alexandria and Origenes working and struggling with the problem of how the Christ could have lived in the man Jesus.

Now, let us first consider Clemens of Alexandria, the head of the catechetical school of Alexandria, where those who wished to become Christian teachers were trained. When we consider this significant individual, we find something in his teachings that we may describe in this way: The Christ belongs, of course, to the forces that participated in the creation of the earth; he belongs to the spiritual world; he entered earthly evolution through the body of Jesus of Nazareth. In this way, Clemens of Alexandria looked up, first of all, to the Christ as a spiritual being and tried to comprehend him in spiritual realms. But Clemens also knew something else, which we have emphasized often—that the Christ had, in fact, always existed for human beings, but not in the earthly sphere. The only ones who could reach him were those who had developed, through the Mysteries, forces that enabled them to leave the physical body. When human beings left their physical bodies through forces acquired in the Mysteries and ventured into the spiritual realms, they were able to recognize the Christ and felt that he was the “coming one.” Clemens of Alexandria knew this. He knew that the ancient Mysteries spoke of the Christ as the coming one, who was not yet united with earthly evolution. He expressed this by saying that human beings were, of course, inspired to expect the Christ.

Clemens of Alexandria went so far as to say that, especially at two particular points in the spiritual evolution of humanity, something was nurtured as a kind of preparation for Christ's coming. He said, on the other hand, that this took place through Moses and the prophets. What came into the world through Moses and the prophets, said Clemens, was a preparation—humankind first needed to become acquainted with what came through Moses and the prophets, so that they might, through personal experience, come to feel they had found the Christ. This was the concept they had to form.

So we see that Clemens knew nothing about the old Gnostic wisdom—or, at least, he did not use it. But Clemens designated what entered human capacity through Moses and the prophets as a “preparation.” Then, as the second turning point, or “preparation” (and this is very significant), Clemens placed Greek philosophy—Plato and Aristotle—at the side of Moses and the prophets. He said, approximately, that Moses and the prophets as well as the philosophers prepared humanity for the event that took place with the Mystery of Golgotha.

Origenes said, on the other hand, that we are dealing with the Christ—the Christ who can be grasped as a spiritual being with the aid of spiritual forces. And we are dealing with the historical Jesus, who in fact once existed as a real person in the sensory world. How can these two be united, the God and the human being? How does the “God human” come to be? Origenes, accordingly, constructed a view that said: It is impossible for a god, without preparation, to live within an ordinary physical human body; a specially prepared soul, therefore, must have lived in Jesus so that his soul could mediate between God and the human being and might united the God, as a pure spiritual being, with physicality.

Thus, Origenes brought in the soul element and, within Jesus Christ, distinguished between the God, the pure Pneuma-being of pure spirit being—the psyche, or soul—and the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He tried to imagine how the Christ could dwell within Jesus of Nazareth. He no longer possessed the early Gnosis, which would enable him to imagine the dwelling of Christ on earth and the union of the Christ with earthly evolution. It was necessary to make up an understanding out of completely new and fresh elements, and his efforts went toward achieving this. So we see that, right at the time when Christ as a real being united with earthly evolution, human beings had the greatest possible difficulty in understanding this fact; the capacity for such understanding had never been so limited.

Clemens of Alexandria still preserved at least some idea of why this was so. He wondered what it was that inspired humankind in the ancient Mysteries. He thought that they were inspired through the Christ's influence, although from suprasensory worlds while they were out of their physical bodies. Clemens of Alexandria expressed this clearly when he said that Christ sent the angels to humankind. Indeed, he said openly that, when the Old Testament mentions the appearance of an angel, this means that the angel was sent by the Christ. He states explicitly that, when Yahweh appears to Moses as the burning bush, it is in reality the Christ who appears in this earthly, soul-spiritual manifestation. Clemens of Alexandria thus states clearly that, in the past, before the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ appeared to human beings through angels. If people developed the capacity to understand the message of the angel, they were capable of standing as disembodied initiates in the presence of the Christ and in the presence of the spiritual world.

Thus Clemens of Alexandria was still able to go as far as this. Further, he said—and this was also part of the knowledge retained by Clemens—that clearly, over the course of time, the Christ passed from the nature of angel to the “Son nature”; he became “Son.” Previously, he was able to manifest and reveal himself through angels or as a host, or multitude, of angels. When it so pleased him, he appeared to one person in one angelic form, and to another as a different angel. Thus he appeared to human beings in many and various forms. Later, however, he appeared in the one form as the “Son.”

Here we come to a very important element, which I must ask you to note carefully, because it is extremely important. Clemens of Alexandria still held to the view that the Christ already existed before the Mystery of Golgotha in the spiritual realms. The Christ had already reached the point where he could reveal himself through angels, or messengers. But now, he came even further by being able to fulfill himself as the Son. His ability to fulfill his mission as the Son has the greatest imaginable importance. What was it that now entered human understanding?

When we go through the entire ancient Gnosis, we find a peculiar trait. If, for example, I were to outline it in the form of a diagram, I might say something like this: The Gnosis conceives, in evolution, the existence of a human “person” as proceeding from the Father—from the primal Father, the so-called Stillness, or primal Spirit. These ancient Gnostics indicated thirty different stages, and named them “Aeons,” and now I could name thirty of these. And then comes the second current, or stream. Whereas the first stream is spiritual, they also spoke of a second stream that belongs to the realm of soul. Within these streams they saw the Christ and the Sophia as the two principal Aeons, and as the source of all being. Then there were numerous other Aeons besides. Moreover, the Gnostics indicated yet a third stream—that of the Demiurge and matter. These all united and formed humankind. It is possible to form such an outline out of the way those Gnostics thought. Such concepts as theirs are not entirely unreal, because human beings are complicated. In a lecture once, I explained how many groups, or stages, containing seven parts make up the human being, our friends were very surprised to hear that so many differentiations must be looked for in the human being.² Yet it is just these differentiations that remind us of what the Gnostics, from their perspective, knew already.

On the other hand, we always find, when we approach the Gnosis, one particular point that impresses us—that the concept of time plays a very minor role. Gnostic ideas may be expressed spatially; the role of time as an idea is unimportant. Or we could say that Gnostic understanding is not capable of understanding it completely. And to this extent we may indeed call it progress from the Gnosis to Clemens of Alexandria. Although the whole encompassing fullness of spiritual wisdom had been lost, it was nevertheless a step forward that led to Clemens of Alexandria, since he brought the concept of time into the evolution of the Christ. He taught that the Christ had already existed earlier—that he had previously revealed himself through angels and later on as the Son; this was his evolutionary course.

Thus, the concept of development, or evolution, was introduced. This, you can see, is the significant point. Indeed, we cannot emphasize too often that the development of civilization in the West occurred in order to bring an understanding of the concept of time to the human worldview in the right way. This is what is so important, so radically important—to view the course of evolution and to realize that the Christ was first able to manifest only through angels, and that afterward, when he passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, he is able to manifest as the Son. Through the angels, he is the messenger of something outside the world. It is true that it permeates the world completely, but to understand it correctly, we must nevertheless recognize that it comes from outside the world, as the messenger. Later, however, he appears as Son; he imbues all things.

Just as the Son is one blood—one with the Father in the physical world—we must also conceive the spirit as one and the same being with the Father in the spiritual world. To be a Son is something other than being merely an angel. So, when this being reveals itself as Son, it is an evolutionary progress, in contrast to the earlier manifestations, whereby he was able to appear only as an angel, or messenger. There was, as it were, a kind of understanding of the Christ that went further than the understanding of the ancient Gnosis. Yet, the effects of the Gnosis were needed in order to say even what Clemens could say. When the Gnosis gradually disappeared altogether, it was no longer possible to say even what Clem- ens of Alexandria and Origenes had said. People became increasingly familiar with those impulses that belonged to a later period: purely materialistic impulses.

So it came about that the teachings of Origenes were condemned. They were pronounced heretical. The element in them that caused them to be declared heretical was the fact that people wished to renounce any form of understanding that came from humanity itself and its own forces. This was what they wanted to renounce; they felt that such an understanding was no longer possible. And how do matters appear to us now? What aspect must they assume for us? We see, in fact, that an ancient form of spiritual wisdom had established itself extensively on the foundation of ancient clairvoyance. It was there, but it gradually disappeared. Contained in this spiritual wisdom—though it dealt with a supra- sensory being—was wisdom related to the Christ. Just at the time when the Christ descended to earth, however, the wisdom had disappeared. The real Christ was now united with the earth; knowledge about the Christ, however, had disappeared by this time.

Here you have an example, on a grand scale, that I must ask you to please consider in the right way. We can cast our glance over the earth that was known to humanity at that time—the earth as it was before the Mystery of Golgotha. The further back we go, the more knowledge we find about the Christ, who must be thought of as existent in suprasensory realms. The farther back we go, the more knowledge we find, but it is knowledge that can be communicated only through angels. This constitutes evolution. This knowledge, this view of Christ, is made known to many people. The Christ lived as the inspiration of many human beings: evolution.

This knowledge slowly fades away and disappears, and its influence weakens. And in one being, Jesus of Nazareth, we find everything concentrated that had previously been distributed among many. Imagine, in the course of evolution, a drop of the inner being of the Christ as living in a priest of the Mysteries, another drop in a second priest, yet another drop in a third, and so on. In the case of each of these initiates, you would find that, when he went out of his body—when his spirit abandoned his body—he had some portion of the Christ within him. The Christ is thus multiplied in them. All of this disappears, because everything that had once been distributed is drawn together and concentrated in a single point, in the body of Jesus of Nazareth: involution.

Involution is the very principle or being that was taken away from all the others and appeared in one body. Thus, we see that what had lived in evolution in a distributed form had to disappear from the earth by becoming concentrated into one point—the body of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the important fact. Evolution ceases within the most significant involution. Now begins the time, therefore, when the Christ himself lives with the earth, but when the knowledge of the Christ no longer lives in the earth; knowledge of the Christ must evolve anew.

At this point, the very difficulties we spoke of appeared. On the one hand, we have Jesus of Nazareth, and on the other, we have the Christ. Keep in mind that the ancient wisdom concerning the connections of things in human beings themselves were now completely lost. During that entire period, there was no longer the slightest knowledge of anything concerning humankind. Not until now are we beginning again to differentiate in the human being our physical body, ether body, sentient soul, and so on. Only now are we beginning this. Now, in a single individual, we again differentiate between the physical earthly part, which continues the line of heredity, and the higher spiritual part, which has descended again from spiritual worlds.

Origenes did not know this, nor did Clemens of Alexandria. They did not know about the spiritual soul and the physical part in each individual human being who walks on the earth. This was why they found it so difficult to understand the single members of the being of Jesus Christ. The knowledge related to the Christ became more and more at variance, and it is infinitely important for an understanding of our own age to realize how all of this, in turn, influences our own time, inasmuch as it was necessary for the knowledge of spiritual science to appear today. It is extremely important to keep in mind this separation of Jesus and the Christ. This is a very serious and important matter. And we encounter in a myriad of forms.

The Christmas event was entirely unknown at that time. It entered human hearts only gradually. This was the outer aspect: People came to know in images what had occurred in Palestine; only gradually, with the aid of dramatic performances, did they begin to form an idea of what took place there. This was the aspect, I might say, of the Jesus Mystery. We have seen the Christmas plays performed for us here. We could still feel something of the Christ in one of them, the second. And we could feel Jesus in his purity of form in the first play, which is so primitive and simple. We could say that the child Jesus—the first appearance of “Jesus”—gradually conquered human hearts. Around the middle of the Middle Ages, we find that people began to look up to the child; before then, Christians participated in the Mass and heard about the Mystery of Christ. They heard that he had passed through the experience of death, about St. Paul's teachings, and so on, but the Bible, as we know, was not allowed to become popular; it was kept entirely in the hands of the priests. Believers were expected to participate in the Mass, which was, moreover, celebrated in Latin. But there was no real participation in the events of the holy rite itself. The essence of the Gospels conquered human hearts and souls only very gradually. So it happened that only after the middle of the Middle Ages could such plays portraying the appearance of Jesus and so on be given to ordinary people. Today, the actual view that we maintain is that the Mystery of Golgotha once took place and that, after that event, people knew something of this Mystery of Golgotha. Yet, what they really knew was simply this: Christ had died on the cross; it was mainly the Easter event that people felt.

We must keep in mind that all of this took place at the same time when mystics such as Tauler, Meister Eckhardt, and others were seeking the Christ through mysticism. Thus, on the one hand, we have the first appearance of the Christmas plays; Jesus is sought in the most external form possible—in the form of a direct physical portrayal—whereas the mystics sought the Christ. They worked to develop the soul to such an extent that they could experience the Christ arising within them; they sought to apprehend the Christ in completely changed form, within the soul, a Christ far removed from the world, existing as pure spirit. Mysticism, on the one hand, and the Christmas plays on the other—Jesus and the Christ being sought simultaneously along two different and widely separated paths. What was a theoretical difficulty in the case of Origenes—the impossibility of uniting the Christ with Jesus—appears directly before us out in the villages. There, among the simple folk, Jesus is shown as a child, whereas the deep- natured mystics looked for the Christ by trying to guide their own souls to an inner experience—to inner contact, so to speak—of the Christ.

But where can we find the connecting link? Where is it? Events follow their course, side by side. Just consider the wide gulf between the childlike gaze of the villagers and what they see in the Christmas plays and the deep mysticism of a Meister Eckhardt or a Johannes Tauler. And yet, the beginnings of these Christmas plays actually appear at the same time. In fact, mysticism also continues to live. And today, in our own time, just think what the whole event of the Mystery of Golgotha has become for many theologians. Among the most advanced theologians, what is it that draws their attention? They consider that, once upon a time, at the beginning of our era, a man was born in Nazareth, or Bethlehem, or somewhere else—a chosen one, chosen especially to experience gradually within himself the human connection with the spiritual world. He was a noble man, the noblest of all—so noble, in fact, that one might say that he was almost ... but here, you see, they are somewhat at a loss. Here they are not so sure of themselves. What is there to add to the fact that he was viewed absolutely as a god during the evolutionary course of Christianity? And so they turn backward and forward, until all the theories and teachings of Euken and Harnack come along. Isn't it true that they cannot understand it al all, yet they wish, in one way or another, to appear smart and to be able to view Jesus as something special—and to be able to conceive of the Christ. Then they consult the Gospels, and as modern persons, of course, they are ashamed to admit the truth of the miracles, so they struck out whatever can be struck out, and construct from the Gospels something as natural as possible—something that may be explained away.

Then we come to the event of Jerusalem and the death on the cross. Theologians can pursue things as far as this death, you see, but they are unable to go so far as the resurrection. And then we see examples such as Harnack's statement that this resurrection, the grave from which Jesus Christ supposedly arose—indeed, this Easter Mystery—allows us to penetrate only the knowledge that this Easter Mystery took place in the garden, near the Place of the Skulls. It was there that the Easter Mystery arose, and the idea of the resurrection comes from there. We are expected to hold to this, without concerning ourselves with what actually occurred there, because the conviction of the resurrection proceeded from there.

This is indeed very strange, is it not? If you read Harnack's book The Essence of Christianity, you will find this extraordinary idea of the resurrection. I once pointed this out in a certain city at a meeting of the Giordano Bruno Union by saying that this is a strange thought indeed. If you wish to solve the problem of the resurrection with such a statement, it is better to leave the actual event untouched and to point our simply that the resurrection belief—the belief in the Easter Mystery—arose from that grave. A certain gentleman who was present objected by saying that Harnack could not have written this, since this would in fact be almost Roman Catholic—a Roman Catholic superstition. It would be no different than believing that the holy garment of Treves had some hidden meaning. This would indeed be superstition, and Harnack could not have written it. Yet it is a fact that he did write it, and since I did not have the book handy, I had no choice but to send that gentleman a post card the next day, stating that the passage could be found on such and such a page. This are the sort of thing that leads to many difficulties. People are at a loss when they try to find the path leading from Jesus to the Christ. Someone once said to me, “We modern theologians can no longer do anything with a Christology. The only thing that is of any real use to us is a ‘Jesuology.’” And it was that same person, not I, who added this statement: “What a pity that the name Jesuits is already taken, since the followers of modern theology really ought to be called ‘Jesuits.’” Please note that it was not I who said this, but a modern theologian.

Now this is one side of the historical picture. The other side is this: A number of modern theologians are, in turn, holding more to the Christ. They study the Gospels, but they do not interpret certain passages in the Gospels, as do the other theologians I've mentioned. They do not speak of what one is able to believe, as a rational person might believe about another human being, even if that human being is divine. Yet, when describing this individual as a divine being, they are not at all clear in their minds about how far they should go in their application of divine status. “A noble man,” they say, more noble than Socrates, certainly, but here they go no further.

Thus we have the one class of people, the “Jesuolgians,” since it would be difficult indeed to apply to them the name theologians. The word theology means “wisdom of God,” but it is just this godly element that they wish to eliminate. And then there is the other group, who take things more seriously and who find, after studying certain Gospel passages, that it is impossible to view the one who pronounced such words as an ordinary human being. There are passages in the Gospels, as we know, that cannot, if we are honest, be so lightly attributed to a mere human being. Furthermore, such people take the story of the resurrection seriously. They consider themselves “Christologians,” in contrast to the “Jesulogians.” At the same time, they come to yet another conclusion. For example, just read the book Ecce Deus, among others. In this book, they say, “If you read the Gospels honestly, it is impossible to believe that they refer to an ordinary human being. They speak of a God—of a true and real God.” Hence, these people, for their part, lose Jesus; they lose him very seriously, because here they say, “Throughout the Gospels, certainly, we find the mention of God; but God can not possibly have existed—in fact, he could not have lived on earth. Therefore, we must hold on to the Christ. But the Christ is the one of whom people have said that he never lived on earth.” Christology without Jesuology; this is the other direction. Yet these two directions find no way to unite. This is true today; those who speak of the Christ have lost Jesus, and those who speak of Jesus have lost the Christ. Christ has become an unreal god, and Jesus an unreal man. And it would have to continue this way, inevitably, if something new could not be added.

The new element to be added must be spiritual science, which is capable of understanding anew how the Christ could live in Jesus. In fact, one of the most important points in the spiritual scientific teaching is this: It can lead us to understand how the Christ, by way of the two Jesus children, could actually become the one who assumed the position at the center of earthly and human evolution. Spiritual science can do this, because it has a new vision of what the human being really is and how the spirit, soul, and body are united in the human being. Consequently, if we build on this, we can understand once again how the Christ united with Jesus. This is complicated, of course, and it is not easy to understand. Nevertheless, it can be understood. You will thus be able to see how what humankind has lost can, with the help of spiritual science, be built up again from its original source. This is also true of our comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha. When the Christ appeared in the world, it was impossible for people to understand him. Such understanding can be acquired only gradually. His achievements took the form of actual facts. The points of departure that can lead us to an understanding can be found everywhere. Even the simplest Christmas play can help us find such points.

What do such plays show us? So far as the Paradise Plays are concerned, the following fact is placed before us: A human being enters the world, and we realize, merely through incidental occurrences, that this human being is Jesus. We enter the world as children. I said that the Paradise Play—the beginning of earthly evolution—was connected with this, the Mystery of Golgotha.

Certainly, we must consider the fact that, at the beginning of earthly evolution, human beings were exposed to luciferic temptation. Consequently, their normal progress of evolution was changed. Thus we are faced, symbolically, with Adam cast out of paradise; his being is other than what it was destined to be before luciferic temptation. How does this manifest? Imagine that Lucifer had never approached humankind, and that human beings had lived without the luciferic impulse. In that case, human beings would have lived in a different way in their ether body. When we pass through the portal of death, we still retain our ether body, and then we cast it off. Nevertheless, this ether body more or less continues its existence. As a result of luciferic temptation, it caries the impressions of everything we do and think. We know that human beings die; that they pass through the portal of death; that the physical body is surrendered to the elements; that, after a few days, the ether body detaches itself from the human being; and that human beings then continue along whatever path them must take. At the same time, in this etheric part are the impressions of what the ether body had become as a result of thinking, feeling, and actions, in an inevitable accordance with luciferic temptation.

Now imagine the earth. The human physical body enters this earth; it is given over to the earthly elements, but the ether body remains connected with the earth. Thus, we have the ether bodies of human beings; they are present in the atmosphere of the earth. And they are different from what they would have been had the luciferic temptation never taken place. Everything I've said thus far about ether bodies in general refers, of course, to these ether bodies. But what I am saying today also refers to them. So we may repeat: Human beings are embedded in the earth; what we leave behind on the earth—all that our ether body has become during earthly life—has become more dry, more “woody,” than it would have become had the luciferic temptation not occurred. More wood-like, drier—in fact, this difference does exist. Imagine that the luciferic temptation had never taken place; after death, human beings would leave behind a far more rejuvenated ether body, a much “greener” ether body, as it were. Because of the luciferic temptation, human beings leave behind a far more dried-up ether body than would have otherwise been the case.

This was expressed in the legend that tells us a dried-up Tree of Paradise arose from Adam's grave. But what lives in the earth actually lived before the Mystery of Golgotha in the human ether body, infected by Lucifer. It was precisely this element into which the body of Jesus of Nazareth entered as a healer, or as a “phantom,” as I explained in my lectures at Karlsruhe.³ Imagine that Adam's grave—Adam surrendered as a physical body to the earthly elements. Arising from his grave is the dried-up ether body, the representative of the human past that was infected by Lucifer and remains intact after death. This is, at the same time, the tree upon which one may be crucified. In fact, such a crucifixion actually does take place when the “phantom” of Jesus of Nazareth remains behind on earth after the Mystery of Golgotha, and through it unites with the earth. This is expressed in the legend that tells us this tree was handed down from generation to generation and became, in turn, the cross on Golgotha. This is a pictorial view that corresponds to the fact—that, through the crucifixion, the phantom of Jesus of Nazareth united with what lived in the earth etherically, as a totality of ether bodies infected by Lucifer. Those bodies were, of course, scattered, rarified, and dissolved, but they were nevertheless existent in the form of forces. This is very significant and infinitely profound fact that we must keep in mind, and it illuminates for us the mysteries of the earth.

But what is it, in fact, that brings about our connection with the ether body infected by Lucifer? It is the fact that we enter the physical world as children. We still do not, of course, find the whole answer in that point were one becomes a child, because if we look with the right feeling, we see in the child a being free of Lucifer. And if we are able to do this—to look at a child with the right feeling, seeing how one enters the world—we can see the human relationship to the Christ.

This, it was expected, would be the feeling experienced by those seeing Jesus thus portrayed in the Christmas plays: They were expected to feel what I have described in the first pages of my little book on the progress of the human being and humanity.⁴ There I spoke of the first three years of human life and about our entrance into the world. If the same thing that permeates the human being during those first years were to permeate one in the middle of life (as I mentioned in the book), one would have some idea of the way the Christ lived in Jesus. This opportunity to see something in children that is not yet infected by Lucifer is also possible when we see the Christmas plays.

Now let's consider what all of this means. It is indeed tremendously important when we look at the child. In that little book I explained that during our earliest years we are far wiser than we are later on—although unconsciously—because we must then build up the body; later, we can no longer do that. We are far smarter and wiser than we are later on, and we are much better at penetrating our human nature, but we do not yet posses the Luciferic element. In working on ourselves inwardly in this way, during our earliest infancy—before that time we can recall later on—we work on the most delicate shaping of the body, and we work according to infinitely wise laws. Once Lucifer and Ahriman have permeated our knowledge later on, we haven't the faintest notion of those laws. While we are at work within this infant being, we are free of everything we enter later on, when we experience the world through the body; we are still unhampered by all differences, even by the difference of the sexes. We do not live during early infancy within the male or female element; we are not yet involved in the differences created by social position and race; we are not yet involved in national differences. We are human beings, pure and simple. We are then, in reality, within the same element inhabited by those who face one another in war, impelled by something they experience externally for the first time: hatred.

The fact that it is possible for human beings in the world to face one another in hatred, just because they belong to different nationalities, is something that develops through forces into which we enter through the connection with our physical body. Before acquiring such a connection through the physical body, children still live in an element that transcends all national and social differences. They live in an element where all souls could live, no matter where they were born on earth. Consider this: Human beings may face one another as bitter enemies and kill one another, yet those who have killed may pass through the portal of death, mutually united in the Christ who belongs to them all, the Christ in whom they live, if they have remained unaffected by the differences that exist among humankind. What makes people fact one another in hatred is something that they acquire only through the physical body; but this has no connection whatsoever with what lies outside the physical body.

Our age has much to learn—especially this age. It must find its way back to veneration for the infant Jesus, when he is portrayed as a child and not yet as one who has entered the element that brings differences among human beings, leading them into conflict and strife. It is only when their experiences change human beings from the child, about whom we are told at Christmas, that war and strife arise. It is human beings themselves who are portrayed in the Christmas play, human beings as they really are in their connection with cosmic powers—but portrayed in such a way that it reveals, in a unique way and on the physical level, something that does not become involved in strife; it is something that may even be carried, in a similar way, in the hearts of those who are fighting a physical battle to the death with one another.

It is profoundly significant that this is presented to humankind in particular relation to the “Nathan” Jesus Child. We connect with the side of our being, so to speak, through which we enter the world, without the slightest trace of discrimination, because we have not yet become involved in distinguishing nationality and so forth. We develop such discrimination only through our life in connection with the physical body. The Jesus idea, which is expressed fully only in the Jesus child, unites with the Christ idea, which is fulfilled when human beings are able go clearly recognize the spiritual also in Jesus as a man, when he was between thirty and thirty-three years of age—in other words, the Christ being. In a twofold way, through the “Nathan” Jesus and the “Solomon” Jesus, a body is prepared, which is able to remain apart from all that causes discrimination among human beings. The Christ is able to reveal himself only in such a body.⁵

Thus we see, according to spiritual science (and I have explained this in a similar way in my little book on the progress of the individual and humanity), the coalescence of the Jesus idea and the Christ idea. This is the greatest, most meaningful human need of our time. Until now, human beings have had a Christmas festival and an Easter festival, but these two festivals remained unrelated. Easter is a Christ festival, and Christmas a Jesus festival. Easter and Christmas eventually become related as we gain the ability to understand how the Christ and Jesus are interrelated. It is spiritual science that builds the bridge between the Christmas festival and the Easter festival. From the simple “Shepherd Play,” a bridge will lead us to the finest attainable comprehension if we cultivate spiritual science to the degree that we have the mentality of the shepherds rather than that of the innkeepers. The contrast between materialism and spiritualism is wonderfully described in the characters of the innkeepers and the shepherds. In fact, the great problem of our time is whether we wish to be innkeepers or shepherds. Many of today's events may be traced to the fact that people prefer to be innkeepers. The innkeeper nature is widespread in the world today; we must again work to become the shepherds. Naturally, there are many disbelievers, even among the shepherds. When one of the shepherds says, “I think I see a light yonder” (which means, “I perceive something of a spiritual nature.), there will always be another shepherd who will be slow to agree, saying it is just a fantasy.

There is one detail, however, that must not be ignored. Of course, we must be able to distinguish between the nature of an innkeeper and a shepherd; after all, don't innkeepers surround us on all sides? Wherever we go, they surround us, yet we convince ourselves that we are shepherds. This is natural, but we must not ignore this: We must investigate, at least in a small way, the innkeeper's nature within ourselves, and not view ourselves too certainly as the shepherds. We must occasionally ask ourselves, “Are we already able to see the approaching light, which will proclaim what must come through the new spiritual science?” We should cultivate inwardly everything that can keep alive the inner feeling for celebrating Christmas in our hearts through this new spiritual direction; this feeling will help us seek the light in the midst of darkness. We must seek and truly be willing to seek, however, in the right way. While we are seeking, we must truly have the feeling that we cannot reach our goal by trying only once; we must return again and again as the shepherds did, for they promised that they could come again and would not be satisfied to come only once.This is a fact; yet, people can become shepherds if they can begin now to develop within themselves the side of their nature that is not derived from earthly experience—if they can find, instead, a connection with what they brought to earth with them in their innermost being from the heavenly realms. People today stand far too firmly within the “house” where they can get what the innkeeper has to offer—what was brought from the earthly realms, and this can be evaluated only through earthly discrimination. On the other hand, those who still have a certain relationship with everything spiritual that surges and pulses through the world—those who have kept their shepherd nature—will be able to find the paths; they are able to discover that, in reality, ordinary knowledge finds only the outer appearance. People will gradually begin to understand Christmas when they learn to distinguish the innkeeper's nature from that of the shepherd, and when they come to realize how predominant the innkeeper's nature is today.

There is still much to be learned through the simple Christmas play, and because of this it seems to me a good idea to cultivate among us and to experience the Christmas mystery in this simplest of all forms. There are many and diverse hard battles ahead, my dear friends. They must be faced in the near future by just this sort of spiritual scientific work. To find the path, we must truly learn to be shepherds through spiritual understanding of the Christmas mystery—possessing all the humility of the shepherds, but at the same time, all the wisdom in seeking that belongs to the shepherds who are united with the universe. Let us engrave this in our hearts and souls at this Christmastime, so that we may continue to become seeking shepherds, and so that we may eventually learn to find what is holy within the human soul, just as it was found in the ordinary, everyday atmosphere of the simple folk. I have explained how this most sacred form of Christmas play arose, little by little, out of a carnival holiday mood, not from any sort of holy recreation. If we look for the spiritual in connection with what the Christmas plays show us, we find it in the right way as shepherds, not as innkeepers who have already lost their connection with the Christmas child, just as the play shows us symbolically. This is sorely needed in our age, when materialism has conquered such broad and far-reaching areas of life, both outer and within the human life of feeling. There, a spiritual worldview finds it difficult even to rediscover the right words—in contrast to the misused words that people use to express themselves—so that it may say what the right words mean.

• 1. The two books of Jeû are contained in the Bruce Codex. The first is considered speculative and cosmological, the second practical and related to overcoming the hostile world powers and securing salvation by practicing certain rites. The latter book is called “The Book of the Great Logos according to the mystery.” See G.R.S. Mead's introduction to Pistis Sophia (Spiritual Science Library, 1984, p. xxxv). The Bruce Codex was translated into German by C. Schmidt in 1892 and is probably the source quoted by Rudolf Steiner.
• 2. This reference is to a course of lectures by Rudolf Steiner in Oslo, Norway, June 2–12, 1912, Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy, and Philosophy, Rudolf Steiner Press, 1964 (GA 137).
• 3. Steiner refers to his 11 lectures in Karlsruhe, October 4–14, 1911 (GA 131), From Jesus to Christ, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1973.
• 4. See The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity: Some Results of Spiritual-Scientific Research into Human History and Development, written in 1911 from 3 lectures, Copenhagen, June 1911 (GA 15), Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, NY, 1991.
• 5. For more about Steiner's views on the two Jesus children, see his course of 10 lectures in Basel, September 1909 (GA 114): According to Luke: The Gospel of Compassion and Love Revealed, Anthroposophic Press, Great Barrington, MA, 2001.

A lecture delivered in Dornach, on December 31st, 1915. Lecture 17 of 19 from the lecture series: The Festivals of the Seasons (1928), and lecture 6 of 13 from the lecture series: The Spiritual Union of Humanity through the Christ Impulse. Published in German as: Die Geistige Vereinigung der Menschheit Durch Den Christus-Impuls.

Much that I should like to say regarding the spiritual world has to be hinted at pictorially, or rather half pictorially for the pictures must be taken in a real and active sense.

It is necessary to indicate pictorially such things as I desire to bring before your souls to-day for further meditation, because if one were not to speak symbolically but in ideas, one would have to speak at very great length. Each one of you can himself reach the depths of that of which I shall speak to-day, if he holds and ponders over it to a certain extent within his soul.

Every year at this season we pass from one division of time to another. This may at first appear simply a matter of convenience; but it is not so. The men who had to separate time into seasons followed by profound instinct certain great laws regulating the course of time. The festival of the passing of one year into another takes place with us in the depths of winter (naturally, I speak of our part of the world) at the time when all plants have suspended their growth, their blossoming and fruit-bearing. Only certain forest trees remain what is called evergreen through winter. The power of the Sun is then at its lowest.

We know that in all events and occurrences that take place before our senses, spiritual events are interwoven. We know that when we walk through the forest, we have not only the trees about us with their green foliage, but that in the background of existence spiritual and psychic beings are everywhere active. We are already familiar with this thought, which the clever people of our time regard as a childish superstition; we realise it as a true and actual fact.

It is absolutely clear to us that behind all the things of sense, whether they be solid or whether they be happenings which our senses perceive—are spiritual activities, and spiritual life.

Now let us, to begin with, consider what people call our lifeless inorganic Earth, the mineral kingdom of our Earth. This which is apparently lifeless substance, the mineral which to the materialist is merely lifeless, is to us not only endowed with life, but with soul and spirit, so that we speak also of a soul-and-spirit part of our so-called lifeless inorganic, purely mineral Earth. True, when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we do not in the first place see in the geological-mineral substance that which may be compared to a man's muscles and blood, but we see only what may be compared to his bony system, namely, the solid earth ; so that when we speak of the consciousness of the Earth, we have to think of it as connected with the whole Earth, not only with its bony system, but with water, air, ether, etc., corresponding to the muscles, blood, and so on.

The whole Earth has consciousness, a consciousness belonging to the mineral kingdom. We shall not occupy ourselves with the differences in this consciousness of the Earth in special regions during the course of the year, but we shall endeavour to evoke in our souls the conception that the whole Earth has consciousness. Let us now turn from the mineral Earth, and direct our attention to all that springs forth and sprouts on Earth, to the plant world.

Looked at in accordance with Spiritual Science, we must regard the plant world, in the first place, as an independent entity in reference to the Earth. That the whole plant world is an independent entity as regards the Earth only comes clearly before us when we consider the consciousness of these two entities or beings. We can speak of a consciousness of the whole mineral Earth, but we can equally speak of a consciousness of the whole plant world which evolves on the Earth. The laws of this consciousness are certainly entirely different from the laws of human consciousness. In speaking of plant consciousness, we must always speak of it as regards certain districts only, because it changes with different regions of the Earth.

As men we are not aware that there really is a certain parallel between our consciousness and the consciousness of the whole plant world, for we are apt to look on our waking consciousness as our complete consciousness, without taking our sleeping consciousness into consideration. To simplify our subject, we say: In the daytime when awake, our ego and astral body are within our physical body. I have, however, often remarked that this in fact refers to our blood and nervous system only, not to the remaining parts of our system. When the ego and astral body withdraw from our head, for instance, they are so much the stronger within other parts of us.

A parallel thing happens on the Earth, when on one part of it there is summer and on the other winter; this also is merely a change of consciousness. The case is the same with ourselves. We are not aware of this, however, because in man the two kinds of consciousness are not of equal clearness; they are of different strength. Night consciousness is beclouded consciousness, for us practically no consciousness at all; while day consciousness is full consciousness of our other side. In the night our lower nature wakes, while with our higher nature we sleep, and it is exactly the same with the Earth, when on the one hemisphere there is winter, on the other there is summer. On one side the consciousness is awake, on the other side it sleeps and vice versa. As I have just said, and as I have often explained, this only holds good in respect to the plant world. We know that the plant world sleeps in the height of summer when there is growth on every side; while it is outwardly unfolding its physical nature—it is asleep. But it wakes to full consciousness during the time when physically, externally, it is going through no development; then the plant world is awake. Thus we speak of all plant life on Earth as a whole; and this plant life, as a whole, has a consciousness.

When speaking of this consciousness which as a second consciousness intermingles with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, we can really say that during the height of summer in our part of the Earth the plant consciousness is asleep, and in depth of winter it is awake. At this season, however, during the time at which we now are, something further takes place.

Now I beg you to note that these two states of consciousness, that is, the general consciousness belonging to the mineral earth, and the general plant consciousness—are always distinct. They are throughout the whole year two separate beings. But these are not only two distinct Beings, for at one season they unite, so that at the present time of year, the one interpenetrates the other. At the time when one year is passing over into the other, the mineral things and events of the Earth and the whole plant world have but one consciousness, which means that these two consciousnesses interpenetrate each other.

What is the nature of the mineral consciousness of the Earth, the varieties of which (as I have said) we shall not study to-day as we shall those of the plant consciousness, which we realise wakes during winter time and sleeps in summer? What is the peculiar nature of this mineral consciousness, this consciousness of the great Earth-Being?

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness. Spiritual Science, however, can instruct as to what this Earth-consciousness really thinks—thinks as we think of plants, animals, air, rivers, mountains, etc. Just as with our ordinary waking consciousness, we think of the things round about us, so, in like manner does the Earth think. Let us inquire to-day: of what does the Earth consciously think?

The Earth thinks with its consciousness the whole firmament of heaven nearest to the Earth. As we look with our eyes on trees and stones, so does the Earth consciously look into space and contemplate all that takes place in the stars. The Earth is a being that meditates on the occurrences of the stars.

Thus fundamentally the mineral consciousness contains the secret of the whole Cosmos. While we men move about on the Earth in a superficial way, thinking merely of the stones against which we knock, or of the many things which our senses reveal to us, the Earth thinks with its consciousness—through which we are passing as we move through space—of the whole Cosmos. She has indeed greater, more all-embracing thoughts than we have. In truth, it is an extraordinarily exalting thought, when we realise: ‘I am not simply passing through the air; I am moving through the thoughts of the Earth.’

Now let us again consider the other consciousness, that of the plants. These are not able to think so much as the Earth can. The thinking consciousness of the plants—not of individual plants, but of the whole united plant-world—is a much more restricted consciousness, it embraces a smaller circle of the Earth throughout the year; but this is not the case at the present season. Plant consciousness is now one with the whole consciousness of the Earth, and because the plant consciousness interpenetrates the earth-consciousness, the plant-world at New Year time, knows the secrets of the stars and applies them. Plants are thus able to unfold again in spring in accordance with the secrets of the cosmos, and can bring forth their blossoms and fruit. In this unfoldment the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained, in the way plants bring forth their leaves, blossoms and fruit.

But during the time the plants are producing their leaves, flowers and fruit, they are not able to meditate upon it. It is only at this present season they can think—now—when the plant consciousness is united with the consciousness of the whole mineral world. This is why it is said in Spiritual Science: About the season of the New Year, two cycles interpenetrate each other.

This is the main secret of all existence—that two cycles penetrate each other; then parting, continue separately their further development; again intermingle, and so on. Only think how marvelous this secret of existence is! Plant-consciousness and mineral-consciousness, two streams of evolution—progress apart through the whole year, then at the time when one year passes over into another, they unite. Again they pass through the year apart, uniting once more at the festival of the New Year. The cyclic advance of history is similar to this.

We turn from this mystic event, through which we are now passing, and which fills us with a deep feeling of holy awe in respect of the passing of one year into the other—we turn to a still deeper mystery.

We know that we are now living in that cycle in which the consciousness-soul is unfolding, that this was preceded by that of the unfolding of the rational or intellectual-soul, which was again preceded by the cycle in which the sentient soul was developed, before which again we go back to the time of development of the sentient body. This takes us back 6,000 years before our Christian era, to a time when all human thought was evolved within the cycle of the sentient body—of the so-called astral body.

We have now to advance through the cycle of the spiritual or consciousness-soul, and through that of the Spirit-Self, and further still man has to develop.

The consciousness-soul (since 1923 translated by Dr. Steiner as the spiritual-soul) is principally developed at the present time because man chiefly makes use of his physical body alone as an instrument. On this account—as you know already from many lectures—this present age is the high tide of materialism. A time will come, however, when man will not only make use of his physical body, but will again learn to use his etheric body, as in earlier times he used his astral body, in the cycle of evolution when that body was the main element of consciousness.

We can therefore say: Our condition at one time on Earth was such, that our soul experienced a contact of its consciousness with the consciousness of our astral body. Just as at New Year, plant-consciousness penetrates mineral consciousness, so, thousands of years ago, did our soul intermingle with our astral body. At that time our soul was one, in its consciousness, with the astral body. The time of that type of consciousness was six thousand years before our era. When that consciousness came about man celebrated a New Year on Earth; a mighty New Year!

Just as we regard the New Year as the mingling of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so we must realise that 6,000 years before our era a great, a mighty cosmic New Year of our Earth took place. Our Soul-consciousness then united with—passed through—the astral consciousness of our body.

What was it that then took place?

At that time when our inner soul-consciousness passed through (or intermingled with) the astral consciousness of our body—then our limited human consciousness, the consciousness which we have to-day, had progressed as far as the present plant-consciousness at New Year. Just as plants gaze abroad into the heavens because their consciousness has been united to the mineral consciousness of the Earth, so did man then see and perceive a wide field of wisdom six thousand years before our era, when his soul was united with his astral body at the time of the cosmic New Year.

From this time originated the knowledge which we have now lost, since the wisdom of the Gnostics has perished. The source of this knowledge must be sought in the earthly and cosmic New Year about 6,000 B.C. This was the knowledge from which Zarathustra gave forth his teaching; the knowledge, whose last great rays still illuminated the Gnostics, but of which only a few fragments remain. It is the winter of the Earth, but the Earth's New Year to which we here look back.

If we now add four thousand years more to the years we have passed through since the founding of Christianity, we again come to a similar intermingling as that I have just indicated; to the mingling of our soul-consciousness with our astral consciousness, but at a higher stage. Man will once more experience a universal stellar consciousness. For this we endeavour to prepare ourselves through our Spiritual Science, so that there may be men ready to receive it.

We will seek to prepare for this cosmic New Year. If we prepare for it through the keeping of the Christmas Festival, as I indicated in a recent lecture, we are preparing ourselves in the right way. If the birth of spiritual knowledge within us leads to that frame of mind which is in accord with the ‘Christmas Initiation,’ we are preparing ourselves for that new cosmic New Year on which we shall enter twelve thousand years after the previous cosmic New Year.

Twelve months pass by between one union of the plant-consciousness with the mineral consciousness of the Earth, and another. Twelve thousand years pass between one cosmic New Year and another: between one intermingling of the human soul with the Astral World-Soul, and another.

So at this sacred season, we turn from the little New Year to the great cosmic New Year, from the New Year's Eve of our year, to that for which we are preparing ourselves, by endeavouring—now in this winter time—to behold the light, which in a normal elemental way flows into man as inhabitant of the Earth, only at the cosmic New Year.

We really only see the world in the true light, when we grasp what is around us, not only as it is presented to our senses,—as materialists do—but when we accept all that is about us in the outer world as a symbol of the great secrets of the universe.

Then when New Year draws near, it seems as if a message from spiritual worlds approaches, and unveils for us the mysteries connected with the birth of the New Year; and declares, ‘Behold, now in the depths of the dark cold winter, the consciousness of the plant world unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be to you a sign that the Earth too has its year—the great cosmic year, of which Zarathustra spoke long ago, explaining how the world passed on from one great New Year's Eve to another; this must be understood by those who really seek to comprehend the course of human evolution.’

Zarathustra spoke of epochs of twelve thousand years. He meant the great cosmic years of which I have spoken to you to-day. He represented the course of human evolution as being divided into four divisions within the Earth year. This fact is deeply rooted in spiritual mysteries.

So, from a deeper understanding of our Spiritual Science, let us accept a true Christmas attitude of reverence. Let us develop within our hearts that inner warmth which comes, when in the frosty night of winter we receive the first intimation of the dawning of the Sun-Spirit on the Earth, and with it the mystery of the revolving year. The thirteen days are the days in which the plant-consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If a man is but able to place himself within the plant consciousness, he can dream of—can gain a conception of—the many mysteries which then crowd into his heart, such as did in the dream of Olaf Oesteson, the description and explanation of which entered into and stirred our souls here, this time last year. When we feel such a mood of initiation, we evoke the proper feelings and the perceptions for the aims and objects of our spiritual knowledge and with such warmth of heart we shall make preparations for the new cosmic New Year. Through it we can worthily expect that day which is to usher in a New Year for the world. Thus: when in succeeding incarnations our souls experience the cosmic New Year under quite new conditions on Earth, we shall be able to pass through it as those can for whom the small New Year's Eve (which recurs every twelve months instead of every twelve thousand years) becomes a symbol of the great New Year's Eve of the world.

This is the secret of our existence. Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries. Let our endeavour be, so to attune our souls, that they may look forward to the New Year with this conscious thought: I will accept the year as a symbol of the great cosmic year which contains all mysteries, through which pass and re-pass the Divine Beings who accompany our souls from aeon to aeon, as the lesser Gods follow the secret development of plant and mineral existence throughout the course of an Earth year.

My dear friends, many secrets of the spiritual world must first be explained symbolically or half symbolically, although the images are real and should be taken as realities. It is necessary to use an imaginative language, as I mean to do to-day, it is necessary to speak in the form of images which you can meditate in your soul, because long explanations would be needed if one were to speak: in the form of concepts and not symbolically. But those who bear in mind the things which I shall explain to you to day and who meditate upon them, will not fail to discover the deeper essence which they contain.

About this time of year we always pass over from one period into another. To be sure, this may at first appear to us a mere subdivision of time, but this is not the case. For a deeper instinct led the people, who had to fix the seasons of the year, to follow certain great laws governing the course of time. The festival which marks the transition from an old year to a new one is celebrated in our part of the world in the midst of winter, when the plants cease to grow, blossom and bear fruit. Only certain forest trees keep their so-called evergreen foliage throughout the winter. The sun unfolds its weakest power.

We know that spiritual processes are interwoven with all the processes which we perceive through our senses. We know that when we go through the woods we are not only surrounded by the trees with their green needles or leaves, but that a soul-spiritual essence weaves and works in the mysterious depths of life. We have already seen that things which in the eyes of our “clever” modern people appear as childish superstition, can be experienced as something which points to the real essence of the world.

We are therefore convinced that spiritual forces and influences lie at the foundation of everything physical, of the solid substances or of the physical phenomena which we can perceive through our senses. Let us now look upon the so-called lifeless an-organic earth, upon everything which constitutes the earth's mineral kingdom; let us look upon everything which is not endowed with life. To the materialist these lifeless substances appear devoid of life. But in every lifeless object we can see a soul-element, a spiritual element, so that we can also speak of a soul and spirit pertaining to our so-called lifeless, an-organic, purely mineral earth. When we speak of the consciousness of the earth, we cannot perceive in its geological-mineralogical substance even the trace of anything that can be compared with man's muscles and the blood; we can only see the earth's skeleton, or the earth's solid substance, so that when we speak of the earth's consciousness, we must think of it as being contained in the whole earth, which does not only consist of a skeleton, or of solid parts, but also of water, air, etc., which correspond to the muscles, the blood, etc. of man. The whole earth is endowed with consciousness, with a consciousness which forms part of the mineral kingdom. We shall not speak of the change in the earth's consciousness during the course of the year in a definite region, but shall instead enter more deeply into the idea that the whole earth is endowed with consciousness. Let us now turn away our gaze from the whole mineral earth and observe the plants which sprout and blossom out of the earth.

If we study the vegetable kingdom from the standpoint of spiritual science we must first look upon it as an independent being in respect to the earth. The fact that the vegetable kingdom as a whole is an independent being in respect to the earth, becomes clearly evident if we study the consciousness of these two beings. We can speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole mineral earth, but we can also speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole vegetable kingdom which develops upon the earth. The laws which govern this consciousness of course differ from the laws which govern human consciousness. When we speak of the consciousness of plants, we can only bear in mind a definite region of the earth, because the consciousness changes according to the various regions of the earth.

As human beings we do not notice that there is a certain parallelism between our consciousness and, for instance, the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom of the whole earth, because our daytime consciousness, not our night-consciousness, is a fully conscious state. In order to simplify matters, let us say that during our waning daytime consciousness our Ego and our astral body are within our physical body. I have already explained to you that in reality this only applies to our blood and nerve system, but not to the other systems. For when the Ego and the astral body are, as it were, outside the head, they permeate all the more the remaining parts of our organism.

Parallel to this we have the fact that when, for instance, there is winter on one side of the earth, there is summer on the other side. This too is only a transformation of consciousness. It is the same with us human beings. But we do not notice it, because these two states of consciousness are not equally clear. They have different degrees of strength. The night-consciousness is a dulled state of consciousness, practically no consciousness at all, and the daytime consciousness is a full state of consciousness pertaining to the other side of our being. Our lower nature is awake during the night, when our higher nature is asleep, and this is also the case with the earth, for when it is winter on one side, it is summer on the other side. When there is a waiting state of consciousness in one part of our being, there is a sleeping state in the other and vice-versa.

As explained just now (this has frequently been dealt with in other lectures) this only applies to the vegetable kingdom. In the height of summer the vegetable kingdom sleeps, because it sprouts and grows; it sleeps, while it unfolds its physical part to the utmost. And it is fully awake at that time of the year when it does not pass through any external physical development. The vegetable kingdom is then awake. We therefore speak of all the plants upon the earth as a whole; and this whole is endowed with consciousness.

When we speak of this consciousness, which therefore constitutes a second state of consciousness permeating the earth's mineral consciousness, when we speak of this plant-consciousness; we can really say that in our part of the world this plant-consciousness is asleep during the summer and awake during the dark winter season.

But at this time of the year something else takes place. You see, these two states of consciousness, viz. the whole earth-consciousness pertaining to the mineral kingdom and the whole plant-consciousness are distinct and separate: throughout the year they are two separate beings. Yet they are not ONLY two beings, for they permeate each other, so that one is filled by the other during that time of the year in which we are now living. When the old year passes over into the new year, the mineral objects and processes of the earth and the whole vegetable kingdom have ONE consciousness; that is to say, the two states of consciousness interpenetrate.

Of what kind is the MINERAL consciousness of the earth? To-day, however, we shall not consider its different stages in the same way in which we shall consider the consciousness of the plants, which is awake in the winter and asleep in the summer. What is the characteristic of the mineral consciousness, of the consciousness pertaining to the great being of the earth? Those who only rely upon their physical senses and upon the intellect which they think forms part of the physical senses, cannot know anything of this great consciousness of the earth. But spiritual science teaches us to observe the thoughts of the earth-consciousness, for the earth has thoughts, even as we have thoughts of minerals, plants and animals, of the air, the rivers and mountains. The earth has thoughts, in the same way in which we have thoughts concerning our environment, when we live in our ordinary daytime consciousness. What does the earth think? What thoughts live in its consciousness?

In the consciousness of the earth there are to begin with, thoughts connected with the whole heavenly space pertaining to the earth. Even as our eyes look upon the trees and stones, so the consciousness of the earth looks out into the heavenly spaces and harbours thoughts of all that goes on in the stars. The earth is a being that thinks about the stars and the events connected with them.

The mineral consciousness thus contains the secrets of the whole cosmos in the form of thought. Whereas we human beings walk over the surface of the earth and only think of the stones on our path or of many other things in our surroundings which we perceive through our senses, the earth thinks of the cosmos outside; these are the things which live in the consciousness of the earth, and as we walk through space we pass through the consciousness of the earth. The earth has a far wider consciousness and far greater thoughts than we. And it is really an uplifting thought to know: “As you walk along over the surface of the earth, you do not only pass through its atmosphere, but you pass through the thoughts of the earth.”

Let us now envisage something else—let us consider the consciousness of the plants. You see, plants cannot have great thoughts like those of the earth, for their consciousness, the thinking consciousness of the vegetable world (of the WHOLE vegetable kingdom, not of single plants) is far more limited; throughout the year it embraces a far smaller sphere pertaining to the earth—EXCEPT IN THESE DAYS, for at this time of the year (end of December/early January) the consciousness of the plants permeates the consciousness of the earth. The vegetable kingdom becomes aware of the secrets of the stars, it comprehends the mysteries of the stairs and uses them, so that in the springtime the plants may unfold again and bear blossoms and fruits in accordance with the mysteries of the cosmos. For the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained in the way in which the plants bear leaves, blossoms and fruits.

But while the plants develop their leaves, flowers and fruits they cannot develop thoughts about these processes. They can think of these processes only at this time of the year, when the consciousness of the vegetable world unites with the consciousness of the mineral world.

In spiritual science we therefore say; Two cycles interpenetrate at this time of the year, approximately around New Year's Eve.

The secret of existence consists in the fact that cycles INTERPENETRATE, continue their development separately and again interpenetrate. How wonderful is this secret of life! Two streams of development—the vegetable consciousness and the mineral consciousness, which take their course separately throughout the year, unite when one year passes over into the next. Then they develop separately until the end of the year when they unite once more. This constitutes the cyclic course of history.

Let us now pass over from this mystery, which can fill us with a deep, sacred feeling of reverence for the secret of the transition of one annual cycle into the next, let us now pass over to a still greater mystery. You know that we are living in the cycle which is connected with the development of the Consciousness-soul, which was preceded by the cycle connected with the development of the Understanding or Intellectual soul and by the cycle connected with the Sentient soul? If we go back still further, we come to the development of the Sentient Body. This leads us to the year 5000 B.C., when all human thinking developed under the influence of the sentient body, the so-called astral body.

In the course of human evolution we shall have to pass through the consciousness soul, the Spirit-Self, and still higher stages of development.

At the present time the consciousness-soul develops chiefly through the fact that the human being only uses his physical body as an instrument of perception. This brought us to the present; climax of materialism (we dealt with this in other lectures), for we use above all our physical body. But a time will come when we shall not only use the physical body, but also the etheric body, even as we once used our astral body, during the epoch of human development when the astral body supplied the chief foundation of consciousness.

We may therefore say: Once upon a time we lived upon the earth in such a way that our soul passed through a phase in which its consciousness contacted with the consciousness of our astral body. Even as at the end of the year the plants' consciousness passes through the. mineral consciousness, so thousands of years ago our soul passed through our astral body, through the consciousness pertaining to our astral body. At that time, the consciousness of our soul and the consciousness of our astral body were one. This leads us back thousands of years, to the year 6000 B.C. When this state of consciousness began, humanity on earth celebrated a new year, a great cosmic new year. Even as the new year now brings with it a union of the consciousness of the plants with the consciousness of the minerals, so 6000 years before our Christian ere marked the beginning of a new cosmic year upon the earth. It was a great cosmic new year! Our soul's consciousness then passed Through the astral consciousness. of our body.

What took place at that time? At that time, 6000 years B.C., when our inner soul-consciousness passed through the astral consciousness of our body, our limited human consciousness, such as we have it now, extended as far as the consciousness of the plants at New Year. Even as the plant looks out into the heavenly spaces, through the fact that its consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness, so 6000 years B.C. the human being saw and perceived an extensive field of wisdom, during that ancient cosmic NEW YEAR, when his soul united with the astral body.

From that time comes the lost wisdom (we spoke of this a few. days ago), the gnostic wisdom which disappeared. We must look for the origin of this wisdom in the cosmic New Year about 6000 years before our era. This, is the source from which Zarathustra drew his knowledge; it is the wisdom that illumined the Gnostics with its last rays, but as already explained, only a few traces of this gnostic wisdom have remained to us. It is the winter of the earth, but at the same time a cosmic new year of the earth, to which we go back.

Now add about 4000 years to the time which has passed since the founding of Christianity; this will bring us to a time when we shall again pass through our astral consciousness, but upon a higher stage. Our soul will again pass through our astral consciousness, through a cosmic star-consciousness. Let us prepare ourselves for this event, so that it may not find us unprepared.

Let us prepare ourselves for this Cosmic New Year! By preparing ourselves for the Christmas Festival, as explained during one of my last lectures, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the Cosmic New Year. If the birth of spiritual knowledge lives within us as a sacred Christmas feeling, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the new Cosmic New Year, which begins 12,000 years after the old cosmic year.

Twelve months of the year pass by from the union of the earth's vegetable consciousness with the mineral consciousness, to another union. Twelve thousands of years pass by from one Cosmic New Year to the other Cosmic New Year of the earth, from one passage of the human soul through the astral world to a new passage of the human soul through the astral world.

In this solemn hour, we thus look from the new year upon a small scale to the New Year upon a great cosmic scale, from the ordinary New Year's Eve to the cosmic New Year's Eve, for which we prepare ourselves if we try to perceive in the very midst of winter the light which only streams towards us, as inhabitants of the earth, during a cosmic New Year. Then it comes to us in a natural, elemental way.

We really see the world in its true light if we perceive the surrounding world not only in the way in which it appears to our senses, not only in accordance with a materialistic mentality, but if we look upon the external physical world as a symbol for the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The approach of New Year's Eve may therefore appear to us like the approach of a messenger from the spiritual world, revealing to us the mysteries connected with the end of the year and bringing us the following message:

“Behold, in the midst of the dark cold winter season the vegetable consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be a sign to you that the earth too has its own cycle, namely the great cosmic year mentioned by Zarathustra, which goes from one Cosmic New Year's Eve to the other, and which we must understand if we wish to grasp the course of human development.”

Zarathustra speaks of twelve thousands of years, the twelve thousand years mentioned just now. He described the course of one Earthly Year, and divided it into four seasons representing the course of human evolution upon the earth. This is deeply rooted in the spiritual mysteries.

Let us fill our hearts and souls with a festive, earnest feeling, born out of a deeper comprehension of our spiritual science. Let us unfold within our heart that inner warmth which can be felt when in the midst of the cold winter night we hear the message of the Sun-Spirit's descent to the earth and then learn to know the mystery of the year's course.

The thirteen days from the 24th of December to the 6th of January are the days in which the plants' consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If the human being can transfer himself into the consciousness of the plants, he can see and dream of many mysteries which pass through his heart in many forms—he can have dreams such as that of Olaf Åsteson.

If we develop such feelings and moods, we obtain the right attitude towards the aims of our spiritual knowledge; these warm feelings which stream through our heart are a preparation for the New Cosmic Year, and they enable us to await it worthily, to look forward to that cosmic New Year's Eve which brings a new cosmic year. In future incarnations, when our souls will pass through the great Cosmic New Year, we shall experience it in the right way if the end of the year which closes the small cycle of twelve months becomes a symbol for the great end of the year which closes a cycle of twelve thousand years.

This is the secret of our existence. The things which take place upon a small scale always correspond to the things which take place upon a large scale, and upon a large scale the things are the same as upon a small scale. The small scale, the course of one year, can only be grasped if it becomes a symbol for the great cosmic course, for the cycle which encompasses thousands of years.

The year is an image for the Aeons. And Aeons are the reality of symbols which we encounter in the course of one year. If we really understand the year's course, our hearts will be deeply moved toy the mysteries of the cosmos, at this time of the year which marks the beginning of a new year. Let us try to attune our soul so that it can look into the new year conscious of the fact that it can bear within it the year's course as a symbol for the great COSMIC course, which encompasses all the mysteries pursued, by spiritual Beings who surge and weave through the universe from aeon to aeon, in the same way in which the Lesser Gods pursue the mysteries connected with the development of the vegetable and mineral Kingdoms during the course of one year.

It seemed well yesterday, on the last night of the year, to enter deeply into many of the secrets of existence connected with the great super-sensible mysteries, such as the annual passing of one year into another—and of the great cosmic New Year's Eve and New Year. It seemed good to enter yesterday into those things which speak to the depths of our souls, mysteries far removed from the outer world; so, at the beginning of a New Year, it may perhaps be important to let a few at least of our great and important duties be brought before our souls.

These duties are connected above all with that which is made known to us in the course of human evolution, through Spiritual Science. They are associated with the knowledge of the road humanity must travel as it advances towards its future. A man cannot recognise the duties here mentioned, if he does not, in his own way, keep an open view in many directions. We have again and again endeavoured to do this in the course of our studies. To call up a few only of such duties before our souls may perhaps be fitting at this time, at the opening of a New Year.

It is true, that in view of this material age and all that it brings in its train, we recognise that Spiritual Science must form the basis from which we can work in a higher way for the progress of mankind. It is true, that all that seems to us necessary is so enormous, so incisive—there is (to put it mildly) so much to do at the present time, that we cannot believe that with our feeble powers we should ever be in a position to do much of what has to be done. One thing at least is important, that we should connect our interest with what has to be done, that we should acquire ever more and more interest in those things of which humanity in our time has need.

As a beginning, a group of people, however small, must be interested in that of which humanity has need, and gain a clear insight into those forces which in the evolution of time have a downward tendency, those that are harmful forces. At the opening of a New Year it is specially good to turn the interest of our circle somewhat from our own personal concerns and to direct them to the great objective interests of the whole of humanity.

To do this requires, as I have said, clear insight into that which is moving along the downward path in the human evolution of to-day. We need only carry those very thoughts which have been ours during the last few days over into the realm of the actual, there to find many of the things of which the men of the present day have need.

We have seen how at a certain moment of evolution, a far-reaching wisdom was actually lost to man; how this wisdom of the Gnostics perished; and how it is now necessary to work, so that an understanding of spiritual things may again be established, though of course in accordance with the progress of the time.

During the past autumn we have considered the deeper causes of the flood tide of materialism which took place in the nineteenth century, and I have again and again emphasised that the view of Spiritual Science in regard to this flood of materialism, in no way tends to a lack of appreciation, or want of understanding of the great progress of external, material science. This has always been recognised by us. But what we must keep specially before us is this, that the great progress made in the materialistic realms of natural science during the nineteenth century and on into the present time, has been accomplished with a falling off in the power of thought—of clear, precise thinking.

This decline in the power of thinking has taken place more especially in the domain of science. There—however much people may disbelieve it—the faith in authority has never been so strong as in our day, so that want of confidence as regards the certainty of thinking has spread widely through all the realms of popular thought. We live in an age of the most careless thinking and at the same time it is an age of the blindest trust in authority. People live to-day entirely under the impression that they must believe in, they must recognise authority, that they must have the sanction of outside powers. They desire a warrant for this or that. For the most part men do not consider to-day that it is an individual concern, that they will eventually have to take up the matter for themselves! So, they go to whom ‘right and law is bequeathed like a hereditary sickness’ and accept conclusions without weighing how those conclusions were reached; for they consider it right to accept authority blindly.

A man is ill—he takes not the least trouble to learn the simplest thing about the illness. Why should he? We have recognised and certified physicians whose business it is to look after our bodies; we need not trouble in the least about them!

If information on any subject be desired, people go to those who ought to know, to the theologian, to the philosopher, to this one or to that.

Any one following up this line of thought for himself, will find that on numberless points he himself is sunk in blindest belief in authority. If he cannot find them—do not take it ill of me, if I say—that the less he finds of this belief in authority in himself, the larger the dose he must have swallowed!

But I would now like to show how a narrow, cramped and impoverishing mode of thought has slipped even into the finest domain of spiritual life, all the world over—without distinction of nation, race or colour; that a certain element of cramped thinking is to be found where the life of spiritual culture exists in its finest form. Let us take a philosophical idea and watch how it has developed. Who is not convinced to-day, on the grounds of a belief in an authority which has come down to him through very many channels—who is not convinced that one cannot by any means arrive at the ‘thing in itself,’ but can only catch the outward phenomena, the impression on the senses, the impression made on the soul by the thing. Man can but arrive at the ‘results’ of things, but not at the ‘thing in itself.’ This is indeed the fundamental type of the thought of the nineteenth century. I have described the whole wretched business in that chapter in my book Riddles of Philosophy, which is called ‘The World of Illusion.’ Anyone who studies this chapter will find a résumé of the whole matter. Man can only perceive ‘effects,’ he cannot attain to ‘the thing in itself;’ this remains unknown.

The most capable thinkers of the nineteenth century, if we can speak of them as capable in this connection, are infected by this necessary ignorance regarding ‘the thing in itself.’

If we now turn to the trend of thought which is at the base of what I have just described, it presents itself thus: It is wrongly insisted on, that the eye can only reflect that which it can evoke within itself by means of its nervous or other activities. When an external impression comes, it responds to it in its own specific way. One only gets as far as the impression—not to that which causes the impression on the eye. Through his ear a man only gets as far as the impression made on the ear—not to the thing that makes the impression, and so on.

It is, therefore, only the impressions of the outer world that act on the senses of the soul. That which was at first established as regards a certain realm, that of colour, tone and the like, has now for a long time been extended to the whole thinking world—that can receive only the impression or effects of what is in the world. Is this incorrect? Certainly it is not incorrect, but the point—as has often been said—is not in the least whether a matter is correct or not, quite other things come into consideration. Is it correct that only pictures, only impressions of things, are called forth by our senses? Certainly it is correct, that cannot be doubted; but something very different is connected with this. This I will explain by means of a comparison.

If someone stands before a mirror and another person also stands there beside him, it cannot be denied that what is seen in the mirror is the image of the one man and also of the other. What is seen in the mirror is without doubt images—merely images. From this point of view all our sense perceptions are in fact mere images: for the object must first make an impression on us and our impression—the reaction as one might say—evokes consciousness. We can quite correctly compare this with the images which we see in the mirror; for the impressions are also images.

Thus in the Lange and Kant train of thought we have a quite correct assertion—that man is concerned with images and that therefore, he cannot come into touch with anything real, with any actual ‘thing in itself.’ Why is this? It is solely because man cannot think things out further than one assumption, he remains at one correct assumption. The thought is not incorrect, but as such it is frozen in—it can go no further—it is really frozen in. Just consider: The images that we see in the mirror are true images, but suppose the other person who stands beside me and looks into the mirror too, gives me a box on the ear, would I then say (as these are but images I see in the mirror) that one reflection has given the other reflection a box on the ear? The action points to something real behind the images! And so it is. When our thoughts are alive and not frozen, when they are connected with realities, we know that the Lange-Kantian hypothesis is correct, that we have everywhere to do with images; but when the images come in touch with living conditions, these living conditions reveal what first leads us to the thing in itself. It is not so much the case here that certain gentlemen who have thus led thoughts astray, have started from a wrong hypothesis; the whole matter hangs on the fact that we have to reckon with thoughts that were frozen, with thoughts which when at last they are reached, make people say: true, true, true—and get no further. This unworthy thinking of the nineteenth century is wanting in flexibility, in vitality. It is frozen in, truly ice-bound.

Let us take another example. During the past year I have often communicated certain things to you from a celebrated thinker—Mauthner, the great critic of language. Kant occupies himself with Critique of Idea. Mauthner went further, (things that follow must always go further)—he wrote a Critique of Speech. You will remember that during the autumn I gave you examples from the Critique of Speech. Such a man has many followers at the present day. Before he took up philosophy he was a journalist. There is an old saw which says: ‘One crow does not peck out the eyes of another.’ Not only do they not peck out each other's eyes, but the others even give eyes to the crows that are blind, especially when these are journalists! And thus this critic of language—but as I said I wish in no way to raise any question as regards the honesty of such a thinker, even as regards his solidity and depth, for I must always insist again and again that it is incorrect to say that criticism of natural or of any other science is practised here, its characteristics are only defined. So I say expressly, that Mauthner is an honourable man, ‘so are they all honourable men’—but just let us consider one process of thought which is along the lines of this Critique of Language. For example it is stated there: Human knowledge is limited. Limited—why limited according to Mauthner? Well, because all that man experiences of the world enters his soul by way of his senses. Certainly there is nothing very profound in this thought, but yet it is an undeniable fact. Everything comes to us from the outer world through the senses. But now the thought came to Mauthner that these senses are merely accidental-senses, which means that supposing that we had not our eyes and ears and other senses, we might have other senses instead, then the world around us would appear quite different. An exceedingly popular thought, especially among many philosophers of our day! So it is actually by chance that we have these particular senses, and therewith our conception of the world about us. Had we different senses we should have a different world! Accidental senses!

One of the followers of Fritz Mauthner has said roughly as follows: ‘The world is infinite; but how can man know anything of this infinite world? He can but gain impressions through his accidental senses. Through the door of these chance-senses many things enter our souls and group themselves, while without, the infinite world goes on, and man can learn nothing of the laws in accordance with which it progresses. How can man believe, that what he experiences through these chance-senses of his, can have any connection with the great cosmic mysteries beyond?’ So speaks a follower of Mauthner, who did not, however, look upon himself as an adherent of his, but as a clever man of his day. Yes, so he said. But you can transpose this line of thought into another. I will absolutely retain the form and character of the thought, but translate it into another. I will now state this other thought.

One cannot form any idea of what such a genius as Goethe really has given to mankind, for he has no other means of expressing what he had to say to men, than by the use of twenty-two or twenty-three chance letters of our alphabet which must be grouped in accordance with their own laws and set down on paper. This goes still further. How is it possible to learn anything of the genius of Goethe, through the chance grouping of letters on paper?

Clever such a man might be who believes that because Goethe had to express his whole genius by means of twenty-three letters, A.B.C. and so on,—we could learn nothing of his genius or of his ideas,—clever he might be who used such an excuse and still maintained that he had before him nothing but the twenty-three chance letters grouped in various ways! ‘Away with your explanations,’ he would say, ‘they are but fancy, I see nothing before me but letters!’ Clever, in the same way, is he who says: The world beyond is infinite, we cannot learn anything of it, for we know only what comes to us through our chance-senses.

The fact is that such inaccurate thinking does not only exist in the domain of which I am speaking, where it comes very crudely into evidence, it is present everywhere. It is active in the profoundly unhappy events of the present day, for these would not be what they are if the thinking of all humanity was not permeated with what has been pointed out in a somewhat crude form.

People will never be able to take the right interest in such things, I mean the things concerned with the true efforts of man for his real progress—true effort in the, sense of Spiritual Science—if they have not the will really to enter into such matters, if they have not the desire to recognise the things of which man stands in need. Objections are ever being raised from this side and from that, to the teaching of Spiritual Science, that it is only accessible to those who have clairvoyant perception of the spiritual worlds. People will not believe that this is not true, that what is required is, that by thought they should really be able to attain understanding of that which the seer is able to bring forth out of the spiritual world. It is not to be wondered at that people cannot to-day grasp with their thought what the seer derives from the spiritual world, when thought is built up in this way I have described. This kind of thought is ‘trumps’ and rules life in every department.

It is not because man is unable to understand with his thoughts all that Spiritual Science teaches, that it fails to be understood, but because he permits himself to be infected with the slip-shod thinking of the present day. Spiritual Science should stimulate us to intensive, courageous thinking; that is what matters: and it is well able to do this.

Of course, as long as we take Spiritual Science in such a way that we only talk about the things with which it is concerned, we shall not advance very much in the establishing of the thought for the future of humanity, which is exactly the mission of our movement to establish. When, however, we take the trouble really to understand—really to grasp the things, the matter taught,—we shall certainly make progress.

Even the conceptions of Spiritual Science are affected by the careless thinking of the present day. I have explained to you how this careless thinking acts; I quoted: ‘results only do we have in the external world, so we cannot attain to the thing in itself.’ This thought is as it were immediately frozen in; people do not wish to go any further, the thought is frozen in, they no longer see that the living interchanging activity of the reflected images leads further than to the mere image-character. This method is then applied to the conceptions of Spiritual Science. Because people are fully infected by such kind of thoughts, they say: Yes, what Spiritual Science tells on page a,b,c, are facts of Spiritual Science; these facts we cannot have before us, if we have not acquired the seer's gift. Therefore, they do not go on to think whether in their present attitude to what Spiritual Science teaches they are not making the same mistake that the whole world makes to-day. The worst of it is, that this fundamental failing of contemporary thought is so little recognised. It is dreadful how little it is recognised. It enters into our everyday thinking, and makes itself felt there, just as in the more advanced thinking of the philosophers and scientists. It is but seldom that people recognise what a really tremendous duty springs from an insight into this fact, how important it is to be interested in such things, how lacking in responsibility to permit our interest in them to be blunted.

The fact is now apparent, that in the course of the last century purely external sense-observation obtained and gave its tone to science; people laid the greatest value on the results of observation in the laboratory, or in the clinic, in the Zoological Gardens and the like, (the value of which observation must be recognised, as I have often remarked) but they desired to hold to these only and go no further. It is true that extraordinary progress has been made by these methods of natural science, quite extraordinary progress; but it is just through this progress that thought has become quite unreliable. Therefore it becomes a duty not to allow those persons to attain power in the world, who exercise this power from the standpoint of a purely materialistic experimental knowledge,—and it is power that such people want. At the present day we have reached the point, when all that is non-materialistic learning is to be driven out of the world by the brutal language of force which is used in materialistic erudition. It has already become a question of force. Among those who appeal most eagerly to the external powers to gain their external privileges, we have to recognise those who stand on the foundation of material science alone. Therefore, it is our duty to understand that force rules in the world. It is not enough that we should be interested only in what concerns ourselves personally, we must develop interest in the great concerns of the whole of humanity. It is true that as individuals and even as a small society we cannot do much to-day, but from small germs like these a beginning must be made. What is the use of people saying to-day that they have no faith in doctors; that they have no confidence in the system, and seek by every other means, something in which they can feel confidence? Nothing is affected by this, all that is but personal effort for their own advantage. We should be interested in establishing, alongside the material medicine of to-day, something in which we can have confidence. Otherwise things will get worse from day to day. This does not only mean that those who have no faith in the medical science of the day should seek out someone whom they can trust; for this would put the latter in a false position, unless he interests himself in seeing that he too should be suitably qualified to interest himself in the progress of the general condition, of humanity. It is true that to-day and tomorrow we cannot perhaps be more than interested in the matter, but we must bear in our souls such interest for the affairs of humanity if we wish to understand in their true meaning the teaching of Spiritual Science. We still often think that we understand the great interests of humanity, because we frequently interpret our personal interests as if they were the greatest interests of mankind.

We must search deeply, within the profoundest depths of our soul, if we wish to discover in ourselves how dependent we are on the blind faith in authority of the present day—how profoundly we are dependent on it. It is our indolence, our love of ease that withholds us from being inwardly kindled, and set aflame by the great needs of humanity.

The best New Year greeting that we can inscribe in our souls is that we may be enkindled and inspired by the great interests of the progress of mankind—of the true freedom of humanity. So long as we allow ourselves to believe that he who blows his trumpet before the world must also be able to think correctly,—so long as we hold beliefs derived from the carelessly organised thinking of the present day,—we have not developed within ourselves true interests in the great universal cause of mankind.

What I have just said is in no way directed against any great man in particular; I know that when such things are said especially in a public lecture, there are many who say: Natural Science and the authorities of the day were attacked by Spiritual Science; and the like. I specially quote instances from those of whom I can say, on the other hand, that they are great authorities of the present day, that they are great men,—to show that they support things which Spiritual Science has to extirpate, root and branch. Even without being a great man, one can recognise the careless thinking of great men, which has been so greatly enhanced just because of the brilliant advance in the experimental science of the day. One example, one among many,—I choose a book written by one of the best known men of the day and which is translated into German. No one can say that greatness is unrecognised by me. I repeat, I choose a book by a celebrated man of the day, in the domain of experimental Natural Science. I look up a passage in the introduction to the second volume, which deals specially with the question of the cosmology of the day; in which the great man goes into the history of the development of cosmo-conception. It runs somewhat as follows: In the times of the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, men tried to form a picture of the world in such and such a way; then in the last four hundred years there arose the Natural Science of to-day, which has at last drawn the great prize, which has swept all previous ideas aside and has attained to actual truth, which now has but to be further built up.

I have often laid stress on the fact that it is not so much the individual assertions that people make, it is the Ahrimanic or Luciferic characteristics which at once lay hold on people, so that they become Ahrimanic or Luciferic. Thus at the close of this introduction we read the following, which is in the highest degree noteworthy. Take a special note of what is presented to us by one who is without doubt a great and celebrated man of the day. After remarking how grand the knowledge of Natural Science is to-day, he says: ‘The time of sad decline endured until the awakening of humanity at the beginning of the new age. The new age placed the art of printing at the service of learning, and contempt of experimental work disappeared from the minds of educated people. Opposition to old opinions as expressed in the writings of various investigators, advanced at first but slowly. These hindering conditions have since disappeared, and immediately the number of workers and the means of furthering Natural Science increased in rapid succession. Hence the extraordinary progress of recent years.’

There then follows the last sentence of this introduction—‘We sometimes hear it said that we live in the best of all possible worlds: there might be some objection raised to this, but we scientists at least can assert with all certainty, that we live in the best of times. And we can look forward with confidence to a still better future. ...’ Now follows what really is astounding! This author attaches to himself, and to his age, that which great men have discovered and thought, regarding nature and the world. Therefore he says: In the firm hope that the future may be better, we can say with Goethe,—the great authority on man and nature:

‘Es ist ein gross Ergotzen
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir's dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.’

[‘It is a great delight, to enter into the spirit of the age, to see how wise men thought before our time, and how splendidly we have advanced things.’]

In all seriousness a great man closes his remarks with these words, the pronouncement of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man; words to which Faust replies,—for it is Wagner who says:

‘By your leave it is a great delight,
To enter into the spirit of the age, etc.—’

But Faust answers: (and perhaps we may accept what Faust says as the thought of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man.)

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!’

This is exactly fitted for a man who can reach as far as to the stars, thus:

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!
The ages that are past, my Friend,
Are for us a book with seven seals;
What we call the spirit of the age,
Is in fact the spirit of ourselves
In which the times are mirrored.
This is in truth, often but a wail!
Men fly from the first glance of it.
A rubbish heap, a lumber room,
At most some act or state of law
With excellent pragmatic maxims
Such as are put in puppets' mouths!’

And so on. ...

Thus in 1907 wrote one of the greatest men of the day who had surely got ‘as far as to the stars,’ and who looking back on all those who had worked before him had also got so far as to make use of the saying ‘of Goethe, the great authority on man and nature.’

It is a great delight
To enter into the spirit of the age.

You smile! One could wish that this smile always might be directed against those who are capable at the present day of making such carelessness valid; for the example I have given shows that it is those who are firmly established on the ground of the scientific outlook of the day, and who are associated with progress in this domain, who are able to put forth such negligent thinking. It just proves that what is called Natural Science to-day by no means excludes the most superficial thinking. A man may be a thoroughly careless thinker to-day, and yet be held to be a great man in the realm of natural science. This has to be recognised, and in this sense we must approach it. It is a sign of our time. If this were to continue; if any one is labeled as a great man, and given out as a great authority and if people put forward what he says in this or that domain without proof, as of something of great worth—then we should never surmount the great misery of our time. I am fully convinced that countless people pass over the sentence I read out to you to-day, without a smile, although it shows forth in the most eminent degree, where the greatest faults of our day lie, which are bringing about the decline of the evolution of humanity.

We must see clearly where to make a beginning with those things necessary for man; and also see that in spite of the immense advance in external natural science, the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, even down to our own day, have shown themselves the worst dilettantists in regard to all questions of world-outlook. The great fault of our day is, that this is not recognised—that people do not recognise that the greatest investigators in natural science in the nineteenth century proved themselves the worst of dilettantists in the question of world-outlook, when they entirely left out that which as spirit rules in the realm of natural science. People blindly followed after these great persons, not only when they gave out the results of investigations in the laboratory, or of clinical research, but also when they asserted things regarding the secrets of the universe.

So, parallel with the popularising of science which is useful and beneficial in the highest degree, we have at the same time a deterioration as regards all questions of wide import and a heedlessness of thought which is infectious and very harmful, because it is founded on the very worst kind of dilettantism of great men.

Here are to be found the tasks with which our interests must be closely associated, even if we ourselves are not able to produce anything. We must at least look things in the face, we must see clearly that it will above all lead to far, far more unhappy times than we are at present passing through, if mankind does not realise what has been here pointed out;—if, in place of careless, inexact thinking, a clear and genuine method of thought be not established again among men. Everything can be traced back to this careless thinking. All those external, often very unhappy phenomena which we encounter would not exist if this inexact, negligent thought were not there.

It seems to me specially necessary to speak of these matters at the beginning of a New Year, for they are connected with the character and attitude of our whole task. For when we accustom ourselves to consider without prejudice the method and nature of modern thought, and see how powerful it is in all the varied conditions of life, we can then form some picture of what we have to do and of what mankind stands in need. We must in the first place overcome all tendency to slackness, all love of sloth and laziness, we must see clearly that a spiritual-scientific movement has duties other than that of merely listening to lectures or reading books.

I must continually remind you to make yourselves acquainted with the necessary ideas. It is clear to all that as a few individuals,—as a small society—we cannot do much. But our own thought must move in the right direction; we must know what is in question, we must not ourselves be exposed to the danger (to put it trivially) of succumbing to the different conceptions of the world, of those who are the great men of the day in the external sciences. Great men, but dilettante thinkers as regards questions of universal import, found numerous associations of monistic or other nature without the opposition that would arise if at least it were realised that, when such societies are founded, it is as if one said: ‘I am letting this man make a coat, because he is a celebrated cobbler!’

This is foolishness, is it not? But it is just as foolish when a great chemist or a great psychologist is accepted as an authority on a conception of the world. We cannot blame them if they claim it for themselves, for naturally they cannot know how inadequate they are; but that they are so accepted is connected with the great evils of the present day. To me it seems as if a thought for New Year's Eve must ever be associated with our feelings; whereas it seems to me that that which faces us as the more immediate duty of the day, must be directly associated with our reflections on New Year's Day; I thought therefore, that the tone of what has been said to-day might be fitly associated with what was said yesterday.

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Let us think of the human etheric body as it is connected with the physical body. We shall sketch it thus: representing it entirely diagrammatically, and we shall sketch the physical body as a kind of rind of the etheric body, though it must be understood that in reality it interpenetrates the whole human etheric body, except the most external part of the latter. Let this then be the etheric and physical body, and there, belonging to them, as is understood, in the whole system of man, his astral body and ego. Let us now recall that the etheric body of man naturally consists of the different kinds of ether which we have learnt to distinguish.

We recognize these as consisting of:

warmth-outer ether,
light-ether,
chemical-ether [by which the music of the spheres is communicated]
and life-ether.

Let us turn our attention to the light-ether. It is true that the whole etheric body consists of an inner blend—an inwardly organised blend of the four kinds of ether, but we shall only consider today that part of the ether body which is light-ether; and in order to fix our attention on that part of the etheric body which we call the light-ether, we have sketched it above.

Now I have often said that man really only gains consciousness of things from being actually within them with his ego and soul being. It is in the daytime, when we are awake, that the astral body and ego are within the physical and etheric bodies; one may add, as regards that part of them which is not within things. Keeping this in view we say that we have sense perceptions. The cause of this is that the human ego and astral body first receive a revelation of things, and this revelation which remains unconscious, is then reflected on the instruments of the senses and their nerve extensions in the physical body. This has often been explained.

Now we shall inquire today: How does memory come about? How is it that we have remembrance of many things, of objects and experiences that we have passed through? How does it come to pass that we have memory?

Take this case. We meet a man today, whom we first saw five days ago. We remember that we saw him five days ago, that we spoke with him, that he told us his name. We say: we recognize this man. What is it that really takes place in us when we thus remember a man and our former meeting with him?

This is what occurs; the first thing we have to take into consideration is this, that when we met the man five days ago our etheric body experienced certain movements. It is the light part of the etheric body that we are now considering; of course, the other members of the etheric body—the heat, chemical and life parts also vibrate in sympathy, but it is the light part that we are considering today; I will speak of it therefore as the light-body. Our etheric body, then, experienced certain movements, for the thoughts evoked by the man whom we met, revealed themselves within our light-body as movements—as inner light-movements; so that apart from our having perceived the man with our senses, we received impressions [not communicated through the senses] that gave rise to movements in our light-body. Thus the whole result of our meeting with the man consisted in our light-body experiencing all kinds of movements. Picture this vividly to yourselves. While you stood before the man and spoke to him, your etheric light-body was in continual movement. What you said to him, what you felt and thought regarding him, is all disclosed in the movements of your light-body. When, several days after, you see this man again, the fresh sight of him stirs your soul, and this movement causes your etheric body, purely because of its laws of continuity, to reproduce the movements it experienced five days before, when you met the man and exchanged thoughts with him. Very well, we encounter this man again after five days. The etheric light-body, stirred by this meeting, experiences again the same movements which it did at the first meeting; and because man is always with part of his astral body and ego in the outer ether, he feels the movements which stir the outer ether, and thus because of its law of continuity [or persistence] he again becomes aware of what he experienced previously. We have really to picture to ourselves, that during the waking state we are both with our ego and astral body within the outer light-ether; sleep only consists in that part of the astral body and ego, which during the day, when we are awake, is within the physical and etheric body, also withdrawing into the outer ether.

Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: that is, to remember.

Suppose, for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other's face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

When the physical body is not there, that is when the body has passed through the gates of death, the ego and astral body are naturally at first far more intensely within the outer ether, till after a few days they leave the outer ether. The inner light-ether is then no longer stirred by impacts on the physical body to conceptions that are only possible in the physical body. Therefore the dead see everything that they have experienced, which the etheric body, now freed from the physical body and no longer restrained by it, throws off and allows to pass before it. During the first few days after death man sees everything pass before him; for the etheric has the tendency continually to repeat and to reproduce from within itself all those movements which the experiences of the physical body had at one time aroused in it. The man's whole life passes before him, set in motion by the vibrations of the ether body. It is seen projected as a mighty picture—one may say that all the etheric movements reflect, as in a panorama, the life just passed on earth.

If it were possible for us always so to control the physical body as we could make ourselves so independent of it—not letting it disturb us—that the etheric body also were set free, as can be done by certain meditations connected with the process described in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, it might be that even in life we might see, not the results of memory—not what arises through the impact of the etheric body on the physical body, but the actual swayings and movements of the etheric body itself. We should be then in the outer ether and look at the movements of our light-body.

Why can we not do this in ordinary life? Why in ordinary life does it happen that when Miss A meets Mr. B, for example, and recognises him; she remembers him—that is, she recalls the memory-picture of him, but she does not in ordinary circumstances, leaving clairvoyance out of the question, see what she otherwise could: the inner movements of her ether body which would give her the inner experience: ‘Thus has my etheric body always been stirred on meeting Mr. B.’ Light would then perceive light, that is, the outer world perceive the inner—because the astral body and ego of Miss A would perceive the tendency to continual movement of her own light-body, and would know how to interpret them so as to say: ‘These are the movements my light-body always experiences when I meet Mr. B.’ The phenomenon would then occur, that through dwelling in the ether—which is what we are always doing with a large part of our ego and astral body—through dwelling in the ether, through perceiving the weaving and flowing in the light-ether, we see our own little organised etheric body with its movements. We perceive light by the light, the light that is ourselves. Why can this not be done in ordinary life? Why is it that we first perceive the results of the impacts of the etheric body on the physical body?

It is because Ahriman and Lucifer are bound up with the earthly world, because Ahriman has shackled the physical body so firmly to the whole being of man, that the etheric body cannot easily free itself; because he has so densely compressed the physical body to the etheric body; and because the spirits that serve Ahriman are always present, they bring it to pass that when man is in the light, his light-body with its movements are darkened, so that he cannot behold them. Demons continually keep the light-body of man in darkness. This is because the organisation of the physical body and etheric body is brought about by Ahriman. We can therefore say [and I shall write this sentence on the blackboard, for it is of great importance]:

“When from out of and by light the human soul is capable of observing what takes place in its own light-body, it has liberated itself from the Ahrimanic forces which otherwise obscure what takes place therein.”

What might a soul wishing to attain this long and pray for? It might thus address certain powers that are in the spiritual world and which it recognizes.

‘Oh, ye Powers in the spiritual world, let me in my physical body be conscious in the world of Light, let me be in the Light so as to perceive my own light-body, and let not the power of the Ahrimanic forces be too strong for me, so as to prevent me from beholding what takes place in my light-body.’

Once more I will repeat what a soul by whom these Powers are to some extent recognised in the spiritual world, might say in longing, in a kind of prayer:

‘Oh, ye Powers, let me consciously, in the light, from out of and by the light behold the occurrences within my own light-body; weaken and take away the power of the Ahrimanic forces which obscure them. Let me consciously by the light perceive my own light, and remove the force that hinders me from seeing the light from out of and by the light.’

What I have just repeated to you is not simply an invented prayer, but it was thus that Christ taught those to pray who were able to understand Him after He had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, during that time when He still lingered among His most intimate disciples.

This belonged to the understanding, to the Gnostic understanding that such disciples of Christ could still evoke at that time and which, as I have explained to you, disappeared about the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

Those souls which were so intimately associated with the Christ could raise their eyes to this power—who for them was the Christ—and pray Him that it might be possible for them by the light to perceive their own light-essence; pray Him to restrain the opposing Powers of Ahrimanic nature, that their vision might not be obscured and darkened, and that they might see the light-movements of their light-body. These things were learnt by the intimate disciples of Jesus Christ during the time I have indicated. They were well aware how all things I have mentioned were brought about, and were instructed in all these matters during the time that Christ held intercourse with them after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Among the fragments that remain of ancient Gnostic wisdom I have mentioned the Pistis-Sophia script. I shall now read you an extract from it as follows:

‘I will extol thee, O Light, for I desire to come to thee.’

‘I will extol Thee, for Thou art my Saviour.’

‘Leave me not in chaos (when I am withdrawn from the physical body). Leave me not in chaos, O Light of Heaven, for it is Thou whom I have glorified.’

‘Thou hast endowed me with thy Light and saved me; Thou hast led me to the upper Gods of Chaos (consciously, when out of the physical body). May the offspring of evil now be driven out (of Ahriman, but Ahriman is not written there), who follow me, and may they sink down among the lower Gods of Chaos; and let them not come near the upper Gods, that they may behold me. May great darkness cover them and black darkness come over them; and do not let them behold me in the Light of Thy Power, which Thou hast sent me to save me, so that they may not again have power over me. The determination that they have made, to take my strength, let it not take effect nor let them gainsay me to take from me my light. Take theirs rather than mine. They have desired to take away all my light, and have not been able to do so, for Thy Light-force was with me. Because they decreed, without Thy command, to take away my light, Thou has not allowed them to take it. Because I have believed in the Light I shall not fear. The Light is my Saviour, I shall not be afraid.’

When we fear, we must think of Ahriman as we saw him in one of the Mystery Plays.

Look at this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia. Does it not appear as if it had been saved on purpose to enable us to speak somewhat as follows: Behold, you opponents of the new Spiritual Science. Does not this new Spiritual Science say: that by the light, the light-movements of the light-body can be seen, when the opposing Ahrimanic demons do not prevent it. There was once a time when this was already known; and the Pistis-Sophia presents a physical evidence of that time. For what I have read to you really speaks of nothing else than that power that I have interpreted for you from the activities of the light-body, and the sojourning of the soul within this light-body. It is not possible to understand this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia unless you understand what I have just explained to you. Therefore those who come across this script of the Pistis-Sophia and attempt to read it have to admit to themselves that they do not understand it at all. They are not humble enough to be able to do so.

This is something, however, that we must possess—this humility, this great modesty as regards the things contained in it, so that we feel constrained to say to ourselves:

‘Here is a fragment of the Pistis-Sophia, which says, “I will extol Thee, O Light! for I desire to draw near unto Thee. I will extol Thee, O Light, for Thou art my Saviour.” Reading it thus I do not understand it’—but one must have such humility, such modesty, that one will not desire to understand it until one has called forth in one's self the possibility of understanding it. It is precisely in our age that such humility is hardly to be found.

The explorers who discover such writings among ruins and wreckage are frequently the least endowed with this modesty. They either explain what they find in the most trivial way saying, ‘The light spoken of here is a nebulous conception intended to be taken allegorically.’ Or else they say: ‘Those who wrote this long ago were at a childish stage of human evolution; we have made splendid progress since then! [You will remember what I said of this yesterday] We have indeed made such magnificent progress that it is easy for us to realise that these forefathers of ours with all their wisdom, were but at a childish stage.’ It is not so much a question in our day of not being able to understand, but above all that we cannot so easily come by a certain attitude of soul, which is necessary if spiritual knowledge is really to be attained.

This attitude of soul is that which existed in the Mysteries, and it consisted in a man's developing within him the feeling that it is not possible for a matter to be understood without first preparing the soul for it—without preparing ourself for the understanding of it. In our day a far more prevalent attitude of soul is that a clever man [and in his own opinion every grown man is very clever today] that the clever man can form an opinion regarding any matter. But the world is profound; and all that is connected with the hidden things of the world is also profound. Because of this belief in his own cleverness which every grown man has today, he simply ignores the most profound problems of the world; and when these mysteries are mentioned or written about they are treated with scorn, are flung aside into the obscurest corner and labeled—fanaticism and superstition, or even worse.

It is needful to see these facts clearly, for it is very important to recognize how at present those who do not desire to understand, spread scorn and derision on all that can only be reached by a soul that has first prepared itself with meekness and humility—with meekness and humility as regards knowledge. It is not only the knowledge of spiritual truths that is primarily wanting in our time, but rather that attitude of soul which shows true striving after knowledge.

The world now knows, however, that there are a few men—who will be more and more numerous—who recognise this very clearly, and note carefully and with interest, that therein lies the main driving force of true progress. One must first know what must happen and recognise clearly and without any illusion, that those who have already covered all true effort after knowledge with scorn and ridicule will attempt to interfere with everything that still has to enter into the spiritual development of mankind. It is now sought to fill mankind from childhood with materialistic ideas. This materialistic training lords it even over the tender souls of your children; materialistic schools are forced upon them, which, less through the content of their teaching than through their whole nature, imbue the children's souls with materialism.

In accordance with the illusion of the times, people veil this domination by saying: This is demanded by the age of liberty and freedom! What people call freedom in the age of materialism is the very opposite of all freedom; but things are so arranged that people hardly notice it. Those who have some insight into how things are do no more than combat this bondage by that which must be forbidden, others again cast sheep's eyes at those in power and seize in their grasp everything that ought to be as free as the flowers that grow in the fields.

It is necessary that we should possess that really fine attitude of mind that can only come from Spiritual Science. Then before all else, it is clear to us that what should be inculcated during the tender years of childhood into the human soul is not to be found on the path followed by the methods of thought of the outer materialism of today. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words, this we must understand. Further, it is necessary that we should free ourselves from the whole ‘aura’ of prejudice met with everywhere; that we should feel truly within us that attention of mind which springs from Spiritual Science and frequently ask ourselves what is within our souls from the whole essence of Spiritual Science and what is to be found there merely because we have received those forces of thought prevalent in the world today?

Perhaps as yet we can do nothing in our age to stem the course of the unfree materialistic tone of the day. But at least we must learn to feel it a bondage. Here it is that a beginning must be made. We must not be taken by illusion. For, if the world proceeds in its evolution according to the wishes of this materialistic impulse we shall gradually enter an evolution in which not only will anyone be forbidden to do anything for the health of humanity unless he is certificated, but no one will be allowed to say a word regarding science of any kind, except one who has taken a vow to speak only of such things as are patented with the stamp of the materialistic order of thought. At present the constraint of the things forbidden is not much felt. But a time is coming when, just as every effort for the healing of mankind that is not stamped and certificated will be forbidden, so every word will be forbidden that is said otherwise than in the form patented and guaranteed by the materialistic powers.

If people do not perceive the whole course of what is coming about, they will enter full-sail into this future ‘freedom.’ This will consist in promulgated laws forbidding people to teach differently from what is taught in a recognized school. Everything will be forbidden that recalls in the most distant way what, for instance, is taking place amongst us here. Because people do not see how the course of evolution is tending, they do not realize this.

It is true very little can be done in our day; but in our thoughts we must make a beginning by realising the trend of events—wherever we can, we must make a beginning. No matter how such remarks as these are received, I had to give expression to them at this turning point of the year; for the Festival of the New Year is a kind of sign marking the progress of time generally; and at this season we can best be made aware of what is contained in time as it runs its course. It cannot be sufficiently, or too frequently impressed on you, how dependent man is today on the opinions that whirl around him—what whirl about more especially when they are made permanent with foul printers' ink in the newspapers, and this printers' ink possesses infinitely active magical powers as regards all that is believed by people throughout the world. It is interesting to note what takes place when these gentlemen are not quite united among themselves. For then there occurs what overwhelms all thinking souls, things called into being by this black printers' ink which work dreadful magic in the masses of mankind today. Naturally there are always some who believe what one paper says, and others, again, who hold as irrefutable what is scribbled in another paper. They are divided among themselves. It is thus easy to see where the real fault and blame should lie. I will not say much on the subject, myself. You can read in Dr. Ed. Engel's book on the “Psychology of Newspaper Readers”: what he has to say on this matter. He says,

‘The reader of newspapers is a much muddled person. His countless valuable qualities disappear behind two: He believes everything and he forgets everything. On these two principal qualities, possessed by all newspaper readers, is founded the secret of the daily press as it exists today. Most people read but one paper, and believe what they see there. Their ideas regarding the world in the evening are the creation of what they read in the morning. When they meet other people who have read other papers and who put forward their opinions, they consider them either mad or paradoxical. Newspaper editors thoroughly understand the soul of their readers, they nurse the beliefs of their readers with tender care. A newspaper never brings to the mass of its readers a proof of what it has to communicate; even in the not uncommon case of a false presentation of facts having led to the publication of something completely foolish, they defend themselves, sheltering themselves behind the infallibility of their paper. They are, of course, obliged to publish the truth a few days later. The second quality of their readers, that of forgetfulness, then comes in usefully!’

When we come to think what a power newspapers have in the 19th century and the large share the belief in them has had in the decline of our culture, it is quite time the whole wretched business was put clearly before you. What often depresses one is, that the method of communication that we have chosen, and which should be a very different one, has to be preserved by printing. This indeed cannot be otherwise, for the Black Art is present there, and the White Art must of course reckon with this Black Art which finds expression in printed matter. We must have books, and lectures, but we ought to be awake to the fact that care must be taken that things which are now entrusted to print should not be cast abroad in the world in the same way as that which whirls through the minds of mankind on the wings of the newspapers of today.

I wish to make you realise that this is a serious matter. That is why I have permitted myself to join these observations to what I said today and yesterday in connection with great mysteries of existence, such as that of the human Earth-year, and the possibility of beholding the Light by man by the Light.

Now that we can be together again, it will be my task in the coming days to speak about important but rather difficult aspects of human and world existence, and we shall certainly not be able to reach any conclusion about these in this lecture; we can only make a beginning. As we proceed we will see how tremendously important these very questions are if we are to connect ourselves inwardly with the soul-stirring events of our times. If I had to summarize in a few words what I am going to speak about, I would say “necessity in world events and in human actions” and “human freedom in these two domains.”

There is hardly anyone who is not more or less intensely concerned with these problems, and perhaps there are hardly any events on the physical plane that urge us as strongly to deal with these questions as the ones that are at present overshadowing the peoples of Europe and reverberating in their souls. If we look at world events and our own actions, feeling, willing, and thinking within these events, considering them for the moment in conjunction with what we call divine cosmic guidance, wisdom-filled cosmic guidance, we see that this divine guidance is at work everywhere. And if we look at something that has happened and that perhaps we ourselves have been involved in, we can ask afterwards “Was the reason for this event we were involved in so much a part of wise cosmic guidance that we can say it was inevitable for it to happen as it did, and we ourselves could not have acted differently in it?” Or, looking more toward the future, we could also say “At some time in the future one or another thing will happen in which we believe we may be playing a part. Ought we not assume of the wise world guidance we presupposed that what happens in the future will also come about inevitably or, as we often say, is predetermined?” Can our freedom exist under such conditions? Can we resolve to use the ideas and skills we have acquired to intervene in some way? Can we do anything to alter things through the way we intervene if we do not want them to happen in the way they would be bound to happen without our intervention?

If we look back on the past, we tend to have the impression that everything was inevitable and could not have happened differently. If we look more toward the future, we have the impression that it must be possible for us to intervene in the course of events with our own will as much as we can. In short, we will always be in a conflict between supposing an absolute and all-pervading necessity on the one hand and necessarily assuming that we are free on the other. For without this latter assumption we cannot maintain our world view and would have to accept the fact that we are like cogs in the huge machine of existence, governed by the forces ruling the machine to the point where even the duties of the cogs are predetermined.

As you know, the conflict between choosing one thing or the other runs to some extent through all our intellectual endeavors. There have always been philosophers called determinists who supposed that all the events we are involved in through our actions and our willing are strictly predetermined, and there have also always been indeterminists who supposed that, on the contrary, human beings can intervene in the course of evolution through their will and their ideas. You know too that the most extreme form of determinism is fatalism, which clings so firmly to the belief that the world is pervaded by spiritual necessity as to presuppose that not one single thing could possibly happen differently from the way it was predetermined, that human beings cannot do other than submit passively to a fate that fills the whole world just because everything is predetermined.

Perhaps some of you also know that Kant set up an antinomian chart on one side of which he wrote a particular statement and always set its opposite on the other side.¹ For example, on one side stood the assertion “In terms of space the world is infinite,” and on the other side “In terms of space the world is finite.” He then went on to show that with the concepts at our disposal we can prove one of these just as well as the other. We can prove with the same logical exactitude that “the world is infinite with regard to both space and time” or that “the world is finite, boarded-up, in terms of space and that it had a beginning in time.”

The questions we have introduced also belong among the ones Kant put on his antinomian chart. He drew people's attention to the fact that one can just as well prove positively, in as proper and logical a way as possible, that everything that happens in the world, including human action, is subject to rigid necessity, as one can prove that human beings are free and influence in one way or another the course of events when they bring their will to bear on it. Kant considered these questions to be outside the realm of human knowledge, to be questions that lie beyond the limits of human knowledge, because we can prove the one just as easily and conclusively as the other.

Our studies of the last few years will actually have more or less given you the groundwork to get to the bottom of this strange mystery. For it certainly is a mysterious question whether human beings are bound by necessity or are free. It is a puzzling matter. Yet it is even more puzzling that both these alternatives can be conclusively proved. You will find no basis at all for overcoming doubt in this sphere if you look outside of what we call spiritual science. Only the background spiritual science can give will enable you to discover something about what is at the bottom of this mysterious question.

This time we will deal with our subject in very slow stages. I would just like to ask in anticipation, “How is such a thing possible that human beings can prove something and also prove its opposite?” When we approach a matter of this kind, we are certainly made aware of certain limits in normal human comprehension, in ordinary human logic. We meet with this limitation of human logic in regard to other things too. It always appears when human beings want to approach infinity with their concepts.

I can show you this by means of a very simple example. As soon as human beings want to approach infinity with their intellects, something occurs that can be called confusion in their concepts. I will demonstrate this in a very simple way. You must just be a little patient and follow a train of thought to which you are probably not accustomed. Suppose I write these figures on the blackboard one after the other, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. I could write an infinite number of them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., couldn't I? I can also write a second column of figures; on the right of each number I can put double the number, like this:

Again I can write an infinite number of them. Now you will agree with me that each number in the right-hand column is in the left-hand column too. I can underline 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. Look at the left column for a moment; an infinite series of numbers is possible. This infinite series contains all the numbers included in the right column. 2, 4, 6, and so on are all there. I can continue underlining them. If you look at the figures that are underlined, you will see that they are exactly half of all the numbers together because every other one is underlined. But when I write them on the right-hand side, I can write 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on into infinity. I have an infinite number both on the left and on the right, and you cannot say that there are fewer on the right than on the left. There is no doubt that I am bound to have just as many numbers on the right as on the left.

And yet, as every other number would have to be crossed out on the left to make the left column the same as the right, the infinite number on the left is only half the infinite number on the right. Obviously I have just as many numbers on the right as on the left, namely an infinite number, for each number on the right has one corresponding to it on the left—yet the amount of numbers on the right cannot but be half that of the numbers on the left.

There is no question about it, as soon as we deal with infinity, our thinking becomes confused. The problem arising here also cannot be solved, for it is just as true that on the right there are half as many numbers as on the left as it is true that there are exactly as many numbers on the right as on the left. Here you have the problem in its simplest form.

This brings us to the realization that our concepts cannot actually be used where infinity is concerned, where we go beyond the sense world—and infinity does go beyond the sense world. And do not imagine this to apply only to unlimited infinity, for you cannot use your concepts where limited infinity is concerned either, as the same confusion arises there.

Suppose you draw a triangle, a square, a pentagon, a hexagon and so on. When you reach a construction with a hundred sides, you will have come very close to a circle. You will no longer be able to distinguish the small lines very clearly, especially if you look at them from a distance. Therefore you can say that a circle is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. If you have a small circle there are an infinite number of sides in it; if you have a circle twice the size, you still have an infinite number of sides—and yet exactly twice as many!

So you do not need to go as far as unlimited infinity, for if you take a small circle with an infinite number of sides and a circle twice the size with an infinite number of sides, then even in the realm of visible, limited infinity you can encounter something that throws your concepts into utter confusion. What I have just said is extremely important. For people completely fail to notice that there is only a certain field where our concepts apply, namely the field of the physical plane, and that there is a particular reason why this has to be so.

You know, at a place where people are attacking us rather severely—which is now happening in many places from a great many people—a pastor gave a speech opposing our spiritual science, and thinking it might be especially effective, he concluded with a quotation from Matthias Claudius.² This quotation says roughly that human beings are really poor sinners who cannot know much and ought to rest content with what they do know and not chase after what they cannot know. The pastor picked this verse out of a poem by Matthias Claudius because he thought he could charge us with wanting to transcend the sense world—after all, had not Matthias Claudius already said that human beings are nothing but sinners who are unable to get beyond this world of the senses?

“By chance,” as people say, a friend of ours looked up this poem by Matthias Claudius and also read the verse preceding it. This preceding verse says that a person can go out into the open and, although the moon is always a round orb, if it does not happen to be full moon, he sees only part of the moon even though the other part is there. In the same way there are many things in the world people could become aware of if only they looked at them at the right moment. Thus Matthias Claudius wanted to draw attention to the fact that people should not confine themselves to immediate sense appearance and that anyone who allows himself to be deceived by this is a poor sinner. In fact, what the good pastor quoted from Matthias Claudius reflected on himself.

The sense world—if we happen not to be just like that pastor—at times makes us aware that wherever we look we should also look in the opposite direction and adjust our first view accordingly. However, the world of the senses cannot supply this immediate adjustment with regard to what transcends the sense world. We cannot just quote the other verse. That is why human beings philosophize away and, of course, are convinced of the truth of their speculations, for they can be logically proved. But their opposite can also be logically proved. So let us tackle the question today, “Why is it that when we transcend the sense world our thinking gets so confused?” And we will now look at the question in a way which will bring us closer to an answer. How does it happen that two contradictory statements can both be proved right? We will find this has to do with the fact that human life is in a kind of central position, a point of balance between two polar opposite forces, the ahrimanic and the luciferic.

You can of course cogitate on freedom and necessity and imagine you have compelling evidence that the world contains only necessity. But the compelling force of this argument comes from Ahriman. When we prove things in one direction, it is Ahriman who leads us astray, and if we prove their opposite, we are misled by Lucifer. For we are always exposed to these two powers, and if we do not take into account that we are placed in between them, we shall never get to the bottom of the conflicts in human nature, such as the one we have been considering.

It was actually in the course of the nineteenth century that people lost the feeling that throughout the world order there are, besides a state of equilibrium, pendulum swings to the right and the left, a swing toward Ahriman and a swing toward Lucifer. This feeling has been totally lost. After all, if you speak nowadays of Ahriman and Lucifer, you are considered not quite sane, aren't you? It was not as bad as this until the middle of the nineteenth century, for a very clever philosopher, Thrandorff, wrote a very nice article here in Berlin in the middle of the nineteenth century in an attempt to refute the argument of a certain clergyman.³ This clergyman let it be known—and it should be alright to say this in our circles—that there is no devil and that it is really a dreadful superstition to speak of one. We speak of Ahriman rather than of the devil. The philosopher Thrandorff spoke out against the clergyman in a very interesting article, “The Devil: No Dogmatic Bogy.” As late as the middle of the 1850s he tried as it were to prove the existence of Ahriman on a strictly philosophical basis.

In the course of the public lectures I am to give here in the near future I hope I can speak about this extinct part of human spiritual life, about an aspect of theosophy that completely disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century. Right up to that time people had still spoken about these things, even if they called them by other names. The feeling for these things has now been lost, but basically it was there in a delicate form right into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, until it had to recede into the background for a while in the natural course of things. We know of course, as I have often emphasized, that spiritual science does not in the slightest way deny the great value and significance of progress in the natural sciences. But this progress in science would not have been possible unless the feeling for this opposition between Ahriman and Lucifer, which can be discovered only on a spiritual level, had been lost. It now has to emerge again above the threshold of human consciousness.

I would like to give you an example of how things stood in regard to Ahriman and Lucifer in the days when people had only a feeling left that there are two different powers at work. Here is an example to illustrate this.

In the old town hall in Prague there is a remarkable clock that was made in the fifteenth century. This clock is really a marvel. At first sight it looks like a sort of sundial, but it is so intricately constructed that it shows the course of the hours in a twofold way: the old Bohemian and the modern way. In the old Bohemian way the hours went from 1 or rather from 0 to 24, and the other way only to 12. At sunset the pointer or gnomon—and there was a shadow there—always pointed to 1. The clock was so arranged that the pointer literally always indicated 1 at sunset. That is to say, despite the varying times of sunset the hand always showed 1.

In addition to this, the clock also showed when sun or moon eclipses occurred. It also showed the course of the various planets through the constellations, giving the planetary orbits. It really was a wonderful construction and even showed the movable festivals, that is to say, it indicated on what day Easter fell in a particular year. It was also a calendar, giving the course of the year from January to December, including the fact that Easter is movable. A special pointer showed on what day Easter fell, despite it being movable, and it also showed Whitsun.

This clock, then, was constructed in the fifteenth century in an extraordinarily impressive way. And the story of how it was constructed has been investigated. But apart from this story—and the documents are there for you to read, with lots of descriptions—there is a legend that also aims at giving an account of the marvelous quality of this clock: first regarding its wonderful construction, and then regarding the fact that the man who was gifted enough to make such a clock always wound it up as long as he lived. After his death nobody could wind it, and they searched everywhere for people who could put it in order and get it going. As a rule they only found people who damaged it. Then someone would be found who said he could sort it out and did so, yet time and again the clock went wrong.

These facts grew into a kind of folk tale, which runs as follows: Once upon a time through a special gift from heaven a simple man acquired the ability to make this clock. He alone knew how to look after it. The legend attaches great significance to the fact that he was only a simple man who acquired this ability through special grace; that is to say, he was inspired by the spiritual world. But it came about that the governor wanted to keep this clock specially for Prague and prevent any other town from having one like it. So he had the inspired clockmaker blinded by having his eyes plucked out. Thus the man withdrew from the scene. But just before his death he begged once more to be permitted a moment in which to set the clock to rights again, and according to the legend he used this moment to make a quick manipulation and put the clock into such disorder that nobody could ever put it right again.

At first sight this seems a very unpretentious story. But in the way the story is constructed there is a sure feeling for the existence of Ahriman and Lucifer and the balance between them. Think how sensitively this story has been formed. The same sensitive construction can be found in countless such folk tales; it grows out of this same sure feeling for Lucifer and Ahriman. The story begins with the position of equilibrium, doesn't it? Through an act of grace from the spiritual world the man acquires the ability to construct an extraordinary clock. There is no trace of egotism in it, though anybody can give way to egotism. It was a gift of grace, and he really did not build the clock out of egotism. Nor was there any intellectuality in it, for it is expressly stated that he was a simple man. This whole description of the skill being an act of grace with no trace of egotism, and of his being a simple man who was free of intellectuality, was in fact given in order to indicate that there was no trace of Ahriman and Lucifer in this man's soul, but that he was entirely under the influence of divine powers that were good and progressive.

Lucifer lived in the governor. It was out of egotism that he wanted to keep the clock exclusively for his own town, and this was why he blinded the clockmaker. Lucifer is placed on the one side. But as soon as Lucifer is there, he always allies himself with his brother Ahriman. And because the man has been blinded, this other power acquires the capacity to attack from outside through skillful manipulation. That is the work of Ahriman.

Thus the power for good is placed between Lucifer and Ahriman. You can find a sensitive construction like this in many of the folk tales, even the simplest of them. But it was possible for this feeling of the intervention of Ahriman and Lucifer in life to get lost at a time when a sense had to gain ground that positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on, are the basic forces of the material world. This feeling for perceiving the world spiritually had to withdraw in order for scientific investigation to flourish.

We shall now look at how Ahriman and Lucifer intervene in what human beings call knowledge, in what people call their relation to the world in general, in a way that leads to the very confusion we were speaking about. This confusion is especially evident in the questions we have introduced. Let us take a simple hypothetical example. I could just as well have taken this from great world events as from everyday occurrences. Let us suppose that three or four people are preparing to go out for a drive. They plan to travel, let us say, through a mountain pass. This pass has overhanging rocks. The people are ready for the drive and intend setting out at an arranged time. But the chauffeur has just ordered another mug of beer which is served a bit too late. He therefore delays the departure by five minutes. Then he sets out with the party. They drive through the ravine. Just as they come to the overhanging rock it breaks loose, falls on top of the vehicle, and crushes the whole party. They all perish, or perhaps it was only the passengers who were killed and the chauffeur was spared.

Here we have a case in point. You could ask whether it was the chauffeur's fault, or whether the whole thing was governed by absolute necessity. Was it absolutely inevitable that these people should meet with this disaster at that precise moment? And was the chauffeur's tardiness just part of this necessity? Or could we imagine that if only the chauffeur had been punctual, he would have driven them through the mountain pass a long time before the rock fell, and they would never have been hit by it?

Here in the midst of everyday life you have this question of freedom and necessity which is intimately connected with “guilty” or “innocent.” Obviously, if everything is subject to absolute necessity, we cannot say that the chauffeur was guilty at all from a higher point of view, as it was entirely inevitable that these people met their death.

We meet this problem in life all the time. It is, as we have said, one of the most difficult of questions, the kind of question in which Ahriman and Lucifer interfere most easily when we try to find a solution. Ahriman is the one who appears first when this question is being tackled, as we shall see.

We will have to approach this question from a different angle if we want to get at an answer. You see, if we set about solving a question like this by starting with the thought “I can easily follow the course of events: the boulder fell—that happened,” and then ask “Is this actually based on necessity or freedom? Could things have happened differently?” we are only looking at the external events. We are looking at the events as they happen on the physical plane. Now people follow this approach out of the same impulse that leads them, if they have a materialistic outlook, to stop short at the physical body when contemplating the human being. Anyone who knows nothing about spiritual science will stop short at the physical body nowadays, won't he? He will say “The human being you see and feel is what exists.” He does not go beyond the physical body to the etheric body. And if he is a thoroughly pig-headed materialist, he will jeer and scoff when he hears people saying there is a finer, etheric body underlying the dense physical body. Yet you know how well-founded the view is that among the members of the human being the etheric body is the one most closely associated with the physical body, and in the course of time we have become accustomed to knowing that we must not just speak of the human physical body but also of the human etheric body, and so on.

Some of you, however, may not yet have asked yourselves “What kind of world is that other world outside the human being, the world in which the ordinary world events occur?” We have of course spoken of a number of things in this connection. We have said that to begin with when we perceive the external events of the physical plane with our senses, we have no idea that wherever we look there are elemental beings; it is exactly the same when we first look at the human being.

Human beings have an etheric body, which we have often also called an elemental body. Outside in nature, in external physical happenings in general, we have a succession of physical events and also the world of elemental existence. This runs absolutely parallel: the human being with a physical and an etheric body, and physical processes with events of the elemental world flowing into them. It would be just as one-sided to say that external processes are merely physical as to say that a human being has a physical body only, when we ought to be saying that he also has an etheric body. What we perceive with our physical senses and physical intellect is one thing. But there is something behind it that is analogous to the human etheric body. Behind every external physical occurrence there is a higher, more subtle one.

There are people who have a certain awareness of such things. This awareness can come to them in two different ways. You may have noticed something like the following either in yourself or in other people. A person has had some experience. But afterwards he comes to you and says—or it may be something you experienced and you may say, “Actually I had the feeling that while this experience was taking place externally, something quite different was happening to me as well, in a higher part of my being.” This is to say, deeper natures may feel that events not taking place on the physical plane at all can yet have an important effect on the course of their life. First, such people know something has happened to them. Others go even further and see things of this kind symbolically in a dream. Someone dreams he experiences this or that. He dreams, for instance, that he is killed by a boulder. He wakes up and is able to say, “That was a symbolic dream; something has taken place in my soul life.” It can often be proved true in life that something took place in the soul that was of far greater significance than what happened to the person on the physical plane. He may have progressed a stage higher in knowledge, purified part of his will nature, or made his feelings more sensitive or something of that kind.

In lectures given here recently I drew attention to the fact that what a person knows with his I is actually only a part of all that happens to him, and that the astral body knows a very great deal more, though not consciously. You will remember my telling you this. The astral body certainly knows of a great deal that happens to us in the supersensible realm and not in the realm of the senses. Now we have arrived from another direction at the fact that something is continually happening to us in the supersensible realm. Just as in the case of my moving my hand, the physical movement is only part of the whole process and behind it there is an etheric process, a process of my etheric body, so every physical process outside me is permeated by a subtle elementary process that runs parallel with it and takes place in the supersensible realm. Not only beings are permeated by a supersensible element, but so is the whole of existence.

Remember something I have repeatedly referred to and which even seems somewhat paradoxical. I have pointed out that in the spiritual realm we often have the opposite of what exists on the physical plane, not always, but often. Thus if something is true here for the physical plane, the truth with regard to the spiritual aspect can look quite different. Not always, as I say. But I have counted many cases over the years where one would have to say that on the spiritual level there is exactly the opposite result from what one would expect to happen on the physical plane.

With regard to supersensible occurrences running parallel with those of the sense world, this is occasionally, in fact very often, the case. So let us examine it. If we see a party of people setting off by coach and taking a drive, and a piece of rock falls and crushes them, that is the physical occurrence. Parallel with this physical event, that is to say, within it in the same way as our etheric body is within us, there is a supersensible occurrence. And we have to recognize that this may be the exact opposite of what is happening here on the physical plane. In fact it is very frequently the exact opposite.

This can also create great confusion if we do not watch out. For instance, the following may happen. If someone has acquired atavistic clairvoyance and has a kind of second sight, he or she may have the following experience: Supposing a party of people is setting out on a journey, but at the last moment one of the party decides to stay behind, the person who has second sight, let us say. Instead of going with the others, that person stays behind and after a while has a vision. In this vision any event can appear to that person. He or she could of course just as well see the party being hit by boulders as see, for instance—and this can be a matter of disposition—that some especially good fortune happens to them. He or she could very well see the party having a very joyful experience, and might subsequently hear that the party had perished in the way I described.

This could happen if the clairvoyant were not to see what was happening on the physical plane—which he might very well have seen—but had seen what was happening as a parallel event on the astral plane: for the moment these people left the physical plane they may well have been called to something special in the spiritual world, something that filled them with an abundance of new life in the spiritual world. In short, the clairvoyant person may have seen an event of the supersensible worlds going on in exactly the opposite direction, and this absolutely contradictory event could be true. It might really be the case that here on the physical plane a misfortune exists that corresponds in the supersensible world to some great good fortune for those same souls.

Now someone who thinks he is smarter than the wise guidance of the world (and there are such people) might say, “If I ruled the world, I would not do it in such a way that I call souls to happiness in the spiritual world and at the same time shower them with misfortune here on the physical plane. I would do it better than that!” Well, all one can say to people like that is, “Surely one can understand that here on the physical plane people can easily be misled by Ahriman. But cosmic wisdom always knows better.” It could be a matter of the following: The task awaiting the souls in the spiritual world requires their having this experience here on the physical plane, so that they can look back, so to speak, to this physical event of their earthly lives and gain a certain strength they need. That is to say, for the souls who experience them these two occurrences, the physical and the spiritual one, may necessarily belong together.

We could quote hypothetical examples of all kinds, showing that when something takes place here on the physical plane there exists, as it were, an etheric body of this event, an elemental, supersensible event belonging to it. We must not merely generalize like pantheists do and stop short at the general statement that there is a spiritual world underlying the physical, but we must give concrete examples. We must be aware that behind every physical occurrence there is a spiritual occurrence, a real spiritual occurrence, and both together form a whole.

If we follow the course of events on the physical plane, we can say that we get to the point where we link together the events of the physical plane by means of thoughts. And as we watch things happen on the physical plane we actually reach the point of finding a “cause” for each “effect.” That is how things are. People everywhere look for the cause belonging to each effect. Whenever anything has happened, people always have to find the cause of it. But this means finding the inevitability. If you look with sufficient pedantry at the simple example I chose, you could say, “Well now, this party had gathered and had fixed their departure for a definite time. But if I follow up why the chauffeur was tardy, I will go in several directions. First of all, I may look at the chauffeur himself and consider how he was brought up and how he became tardy. Then I will look at the various circumstances leading to his getting his mug of beer too late. All I will be able to find in this way is merely a chain of causes. I will be able to show how one event fits in with the others in such a way that the affair could not possibly have happened otherwise. I will gradually come to the point where I completely eliminate the chauffeur's free will, for if we have a cause for every effect, this includes everything the chauffeur does as well.” The chauffeur only wanted another mug of beer, didn't he, because he had probably not been thrashed sufficiently when he was young. If he had been thrashed more often—and it is not his fault that he was not—things would not have turned out as they did. Looking at it this way we can base the whole thing on a chain of cause and effect.

This has to do with the fact that it is only on the physical plane that we can use concepts. For just consider: if you want to understand something, one thought must be able to follow from another, that is to say, you depend on being able to develop one thought out of another. It lies in the nature of concepts that one follows from the other. That must be so.

Yet, what can be clearly and necessarily linked together through concepts on the physical plane immediately changes as soon as we enter the neighboring supersensible world. There we have to do not with cause and effect but with beings. This is where beings are active. At every moment one or another being is working on or withdrawing from a task. There it is not at all a matter of what can be grasped by concepts in the usual sense.

If you tried using concepts for what is happening in the spiritual world, the following could happen. You might think, “Well, here I am. Certainly I am far enough advanced to perceive that something spiritual is happening. At one moment a gnome approaches, then a sylph, and soon afterwards another being. Now all the beings are together. I will do my best to fathom what the effects will have to be.” On the physical plane this is sometimes easy to do, of course. If we hit a billiard ball in a certain direction, we know which way the other one will go, because we can calculate it. Yet on the spiritual plane it may happen that when you have seen a being and now know “Ah, that is a gnome, he is setting out to do something and will do such and such; he is joining forces with another being, thus the following is bound to happen,” you think you have figured it all out. But the next moment another being appears and changes the whole thing, or a being you were counting on drops out and disappears and no longer participates. There, everything is based on beings. You cannot link everything together with your concepts in the same way as you can on the physical plane. That is quite impossible. There, you cannot explain one thing following from the other on the basis of concepts. Things work together in an entirely different manner in the spiritual world, in the series or stream of spiritual happenings running parallel with physical happenings.

We must become familiar with the fact that underlying our world there is a world we must not only assume to be spiritual in comparison to ours, but we must also assume its events to be connected with each other in a totally different way than those in our world. For we can do nothing at all in the spiritual world, in the actual reality of this spiritual world, with the way we are used to explaining things in the world of our concepts.

Thus we see that two worlds interpenetrate; one of them can be grasped with concepts and the other cannot, but can only be perceived. I am pointing to something that goes very deep, but people are not aware how deep it goes. Just consider for a moment that if someone were to believe he could prove everything, and that only what has been proved is true, the following could happen. That person could say, “As a matter of fact, everything has to be proved, and what has not been proved is unacceptable. Therefore everything that happens in the course of the history of the world must be capable of being proved. So I only need to think hard and I am bound to be able to prove, for instance, whether the Mystery of Golgotha took place or not.” Indeed, people are so very inclined nowadays to say that if the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be proved, the whole thing is nonsense and there never was such an event.

And what do people think of proofs? They think that one starts with one definite concept and proceeds from this to the next one, and if it is possible to do this right through, the matter is proved. But no world other than the physical functions according to this kind of proof. This reasoning does not apply to any other world. For if we were able to prove that the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place of necessity, and this could be concluded from our concepts, it would not have been a free deed at all! Christ would then have been compelled to come down to the earth from the cosmos simply because human concepts prove and therefore dictate it. However, the Mystery of Golgotha has to be a free deed, that is to say, it has to be just the kind of deed that cannot be proved. It is important that people come to realize this.

It is the same thing, after all, when people want to prove either that God created the world or that he did not. There, too, they proceed from one thought to another. But “creating the world,” at any rate will have been a free deed of a divine being! From this it follows that we cannot prove the Creation as following of necessity from our series of concepts; rather, we have to perceive it to arrive at it.

So we are saying something of tremendous importance when we state that the very next world to ours—which, as a supersensible world, permeates ours—is not organized in a way we can penetrate by means of our concepts and their conclusiveness, but that there a kind of vision comes into its own in which events are arranged in a totally different way.

Today I would just like to add a few words about the following. When I was here at Christmas, I drew your attention to the fact that in our time especially, such contradictory things are emerging, that they are quite confusing for human thinking. Just imagine, a book has just been published by the great scientist Ernst Haeckel called Thoughts about Eternity,⁴ I have already mentioned it earlier. These Thoughts about Eternity contain exactly the opposite of what many other people have concluded as a result of living through recent world events. Just think, there are many people today (we shall come to speak of this fact in its particular connection with our present studies, but today I just wanted to give an introduction) who have experienced a deepening of their religious feelings just because world events are having such a terribly overwhelming effect on their souls; for they say, “Unless there is a supersensible world underlying our physical world, how can we explain what is happening in our time?” Many people have rediscovered their feeling for religion. I do not need to describe their train of thought; it is obvious and can be discerned in so many people.

Haeckel arrives at a different train of thought. He explains in his recently published book that people believe in immortality of the soul. However, he says, current events prove clearly enough that any such belief is ridiculous, for we witness thousands of people perishing every day for no reason at all. With these events in mind, how can any sensible person imagine that there can be any talk about the immortality of the soul? How is it possible for a higher world order to stand behind things of this sort?

These shocking events seem to Haeckel to prove his dogma that one cannot speak of immortality of the soul. Here we have antinomy again: A large proportion of humanity is experiencing a deepening of religious feeling, while the very same events are making Haeckel tremendously superficial where religion is concerned.

All this is connected with the fact that nowadays people are unable to understand the relationship between the world accessible to their senses and their brain-bound intellect and the supersensible world underlying it. No sooner do they approach these things than their thinking gets confused. Yet despite all the disillusionment it brings, our time will certainly in one way also bring about a deepening of people's souls, a turning away from materialism. It will be necessary that knowledge of the way supersensible events complement happenings in the world of the senses arise from a pure activity of the soul devoting itself to an impartial exploration of the world. It is necessary that there should be at least a small number of people who are able to realize that all the pain and suffering being experienced at present on the physical plane are, from the point of view of the whole of human evolution, only one side and that there is also another side, a supersensible side.

We have drawn your attention to this supersensible aspect from various points of view, and we will speak of still further ones. But when peace returns to Europe's blood-stained soil, we will again and again experience the need for a group of people capable of hearing and sensing spiritually what the spiritual worlds will then be saying to humanity in times of peace. And we must never tire of impressing the following lines upon our hearts and souls, for it will be proved over and over again how deeply true they are:

Out of the courage of the fighters,
Out of the blood of battles,
Out of the grief of the bereaved,
Out of the peoples' deeds of sacrifice
There shall arise spirit fruit
If only souls, in spirit-mindfulness,
Will reach out to the spirits' realm.

• 1. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher of the Enlightenment. For his antinomian chart see his book Critique of Pure Reason published in 1781.
• 2. Matthias Claudius, 1740-1815, German poet.
• 3. K. F. E. Thrandorff, 1782-1863. Wrote an open letter entitled “The Devil—No Dogmatic Bogy” to a preacher in Berlin in 1853.
• 4. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919, German scientist and philosopher. Adherent of Monism.

The day before yesterday I endeavored to show you the universal mystery of necessity and freedom in its two equally significant aspects: world processes and human action. I began by drawing your attention to the full significance and difficulty of this mystery that is both cosmic and human, and today we will continue along the same lines. I used a hypothetical example demonstrating this difficulty in regard to world events. I said, “Suppose a party of people had set out to drive through a ravine where there is an overhanging rock, and had arranged to go at a definite time. The chauffeur, however, is negligent and delays the departure by five minutes. Because of this, the party arrives at the spot beneath the rock at the very moment when the rock falls down.” According to external judgment, and I say “external” deliberately, one would have to say that all those people were buried beneath the rock because of the chauffeur's negligence, that is, because of a circumstance that was apparently someone's fault.

Last time I wanted mainly to emphasize that we should not approach a problem of this sort too hastily with our ordinary thinking and believe we can solve it that way. I showed that in the first place we use our thinking only for the physical plane, therefore it has become accustomed to dealing with those requirements only, and gets confused if we go a bit beyond these.

I would like today to go on to show the serious nature of the whole problem. For we shall not be able to approach any kind of solution in the lecture intended for Sunday, unless we also examine all the implications for human knowledge itself, unless we fully examine why we get lost in blind alleys of thinking precisely in life's most difficult problems, why we are, so to speak, lost in the woods and imagining we are making progress when we are really just going round in circles. We do not notice we are going round in circles until we realize we are back at our starting point again. The strange thing is that where our thinking is concerned, we do not notice that we return again and again to the same point. We will have more to say about this.

I have indicated that this important problem has to do with what we call the ahrimanic and luciferic forces in world events and in what approaches the human being in his actions and his whole thinking, feeling, and willing. I mentioned that as late as the fifteenth century people had a feeling that just as positive and negative electricity play a part in natural processes, and no physicist would hesitate to speak about them, so Ahriman and Lucifer could also be seen in events of the world, even if people did not use these names. I showed this by the apparently remote example of the clock in the old town hall of Prague that is so ingeniously constructed that in addition to being a clock it is also a sort of calendar showing the course of the planets and eclipses of the sun and moon. In fact, it is a great work of art created by a very talented man. I told you that there are documents showing that it was a professor of a Prague university who made this work of art, though this point is of no further interest to us, for those are only the processes that took place on the physical plane.

I explained that a simple folk tale grew out of the feeling that in an affair of this sort ahrimanic and luciferic forces play their part. The story tells us that this clock in the Prague town hall was made beautifully by a simple man who received the power to create it entirely through a kind of divine inspiration. The story then goes on to say that the governor wanted to keep this clock all for himself and would not allow anything like it to be made in any other town. So he had the clockmaker blinded and forced him to retire. Not until he felt death approaching was the clockmaker allowed to touch the clock again. And then, with skillful manipulation, he gave the clock such a jolt that it could actually never be put right again.

In this folk tale we feel that on the one hand there was a sensing of the luciferic principle in the governor who wanted to have sole possession of the clock that could only be constructed by a gift of grace from the good, progressive powers, and that as soon as Lucifer appeared, he was joined by Ahriman, for the clock-maker's ruining of the clock was an ahrimanic deed. The moment Lucifer is summoned—and the opposite is also the case—he is countered by Ahriman. It is not only in the composition of this story that we see people's feeling for Ahriman and Lucifer, we also see it in another aspect, namely in the form of the clock itself. We see that the clockmaker, too, wanted to include ahrimanic and luciferic forces in the very construction of the clock, for besides all that I have already told you of its artistic perfection, this clock included something else as well. Apart from the clock face, the planetary dial, and all the other things it had, there were figures on both sides of the clock, Death on one side and two figures on the other. One of these figures was a man holding a money-bag containing money he could jingle, and the other figure represented a man holding a mirror in which he could see himself all the time.

These two figures are exceptionally good examples of the person who gives himself up to external values: the rich miser, the ahrimanic person—and the luciferic person who wants perpetually to have his vanity aroused, the man looking at himself in the mirror. The clockmaker himself confronts ahrimanic and luciferic qualities and on the other side there is Death, the balancer (we shall say more about this later), put there as a reminder that through the constant alternation of life between death and birth and between birth and death human beings rise above the sphere in which Ahriman and Lucifer are active. Thus in the clock itself we see a wonderful presentation of the feeling still existing at that time for the ahrimanic and luciferic element.

We must bring a feeling for this element to life again in a certain way if we want to solve the difficult question we have introduced. Basically the world always confronts us as a duality. Look at nature. Mere nature always bears the stamp of rigid necessity. In fact, we know that it is the scientists' ideal to be able to calculate future occurrences mathematically on the basis of past ones. Ideally, scientists would like to deal with all natural phenomena in the same way as with future sun and moon eclipses, which can be predicted through calculations based on the constellations in the heavens. In relation to natural phenomena people feel they are confronting absolute rigid necessity. Ever since the fifteenth century people have grown accustomed to accepting rigid necessity as the model for their world outlook. This has gradually led to historical phenomena also being perceived as imbued with a similar rigid necessity.

Yet where historical phenomena are concerned we should also consider another aspect. Let us take an example quite apart from our own life situation, for instance, Goethe as a historical phenomenon.¹ In certain respects we also are inclined to regard the appearance of Goethe and all he produced as being based on a sort of rigid necessity. But someone might bring the argument “Goethe was born on August 28, 1749. If this boy had not been born into this family, what would have happened? Would we have had Goethe's works?” It might be pointed out that Goethe himself refers to the fact that his father and mother brought him up in a special way, each contributing something toward what he later became. Would his works have been created if he had been brought up differently? Again, let us look at Goethe's meeting with Karl August, Duke of Weimar.² If the duke had not called Goethe to him and given him the kind of life we know he had from the 1770s onward, would entirely different works have resulted? Or might not Goethe even have been quite an ordinary cabinet secretary if he had been brought up differently at home, and the poetic urge had not already been so alive in him? What would German literature and art after Goethe's time have been like if all these things had been different?

All these questions can be asked, and they show the very profound significance of this question. But we have not yet fully arrived at an answer which would be other than superficial. We can go deeper still and ask different questions. Let us return to the artist who made the old Prague town hall clock. He put on it the figures of the rich miser with the money-bag, the vain man and, opposite them, Death. Now it is possible to say that the man accomplished something by putting the figures there. But if we express it like that, we are naming a cause of countless possible effects. For just imagine how many people have stood in front of that rich miser, the vain man looking at his reflection, and Death. And how many people have also seen an even smarter thing the clockmaker arranged. Namely, every time the clock was about to strike, Death began to move first, accompanying the striking of the hour with a ringing apparatus, then the other figure moved. Death nodded to the miser and the latter nodded back. All these things were there to be seen, and they were important guides for life. They made a deep impression on the beholder.

We see this from the fact that the folk tale goes on to relate something unusual. Whenever the clock was about to strike, the skeleton, Death, opened its mouth and people saw inside it a sparrow that longed for nothing more than to break free. But just as it was about to do so, the mouth closed, and it was shut in again for an hour. People told an ingenious legend about this opening and shutting of the mouth, showing what a significant thing “time” is—what we so abstractly call “time” and “the marching on of time.” They wanted to give an indication that there are deep secrets hidden here.

Let us imagine that a person might have stood in front of the clock. I want to mention this folk tale as an indication of the thoughts a person might have about it, or rather the imaginations a person might see, for that sparrow was not mere invention. Some of the people who looked at the clock saw the sparrow as an imagination. I just wanted to mention that. Let us look at it rationally for a moment. A person in a state of moral uncertainty might observe the clock and see Death nodding both to the rich man, who has become dependent on his riches, and to the vain man. And the impression this has on him could divert him from the possibility of being misled in his own state of moral wavering.

We can also imagine something else. Taking this aspect into consideration we could say that the man who constructed this work of art through divine inspiration has done a great deal of good. For a lot of people may have looked at this work of art and improved morally in certain respects. It might be said what a favorable karma this man must have had, being able to have a good effect on so many people's souls! And one might begin to wonder just how many people's souls he had helped by means of this imagination. One might begin to think of the artist's karma. One might say that the making of that clock and placing Death and Ahriman and Lucifer upon it was the most wonderful starting point for a favorable karma. One might indulge in such an outlook and say that there are people who trigger off a whole series of good deeds by means of one single deed. So this series of good deeds must be put down in their karma. And one could begin to wonder how each of one's own deeds should be carried out so that a similar series of good deeds can arise.

Here you see the beginning of a train of thought that can go astray. An attempt to think out how to set about doing deeds that produce a series of good deeds would be nonsense when it comes to making it a principle of life, wouldn't it? Someone might suggest that a stream of good deeds does spring from what that man did. But someone else could argue “No, I have followed up the matter of this clock and am convinced that there has not been much in the way of such results.” That person might be a pessimist and say that times are too evil for such good effects. People do not believe it when they see things like that. He has seen something quite different happening in many cases. He has seen people looking at the clock who had a democratic frame of mind and a smoldering hatred of the rich. And when a person like that saw the clock, he noticed that it was only the rich man to whom Death nodded and who nodded back. “I will put that into practice” he said, looked for the first miser he could find and murdered him. Similar deeds of hatred were done by other people. The clock-maker brought all these about through his work of art. That is what will have to be put down in his karma.

And again, taking a shortsighted view, someone could say “Perhaps after all one should not make a perfect work of art, one that has great inner value, because it might have the worst possible effects; it might have countless bad effects on one's karma.”

This draws our attention to an immense temptation for the whole range of human soul capacities and knowledge. For one only needs to look at oneself a little to see that people have the greatest inclination to ask about everything, “What was the result of it?” and to estimate the value of what has been done in accordance with the results. But in the same way as we started to speculate when we tried to think out whether the double numbers in the right column were as many as those in the left column or half as many, which was the example I gave you last time—just as we became mentally confused then, we are bound to become confused in our thinking now if we want to judge our actions by asking, “What result will they have, what effect will they have on my karma?”

Here again the folk tale is wiser, even more scientific, in the sense of spiritual science. For it is a very trivial thing to say, of course, but the folk tale does say that the clockmaker was a simple man. He had no intentions beside the thought that inspired him; he made the clock according to that, and did not speculate on what the results of his deed might be in any direction.

True, it cannot be denied—and this is what is so tempting—that you really may get somewhere if you think along these lines and ask what the results of a deed will be. It is tempting for the very reason that there are such things as actions where you have to ask what the consequences will be. And it would obviously be one-sided to draw the conclusion from what I have said that we should always behave like that clockmaker and not consider the consequences of our actions. For you have to have the consequences in mind if you thrash a boy for having been lazy. There are obviously cases like this where we have to have the consequences in mind. However, here lies the very point we must take to heart and examine closely, namely, that we relate to the world in two ways.

On the one hand, we receive impressions from the physical plane, and on the other hand we receive impressions from the spiritual world, as indicated in the legend, when it tells us that the artist was a simple man inspired by a gift of grace from above. When we are given these impressions by the spiritual world, when our souls are stimulated to do a particular thing, those are the moments in life when we have a second kind of certainty, a second kind of truth—not in an objective but a subjective sense—when we are guided by truth, we have a second kind of certainty, which is direct, and which we cannot but accept as such. This is the root of the matter.

On the one hand we are in the physical world, and in this world it looks as though every event follows naturally from the preceding one. But we are also within the spiritual world. In the last lecture I tried to show that just as we have an etheric body within our physical body, there is also a supersensible element active in the whole stream of events of the physical world. We are also placed within this supersensible activity, and from this proceed those impulses that are absolutely unique and that we have to follow quite regardless of the results, especially those in the physical world. Because human beings are in the world, they acquire a kind of certainty when they examine external things. This is how people observe nature. Observing natural phenomena is the only way to come to any certainty about cause and effect. On the other hand, however, we can receive direct certainty if we want it, by really opening our souls to its influences. Then we have to stop and give our full attention to a phenomenon, and know to evaluate it on the basis of its intrinsic value.

This, of course, is difficult. Yet we are constantly being given a chance, a crucial one, by the very phenomena themselves, particularly historical ones, to appreciate events and processes according to their intrinsic value. This is always necessary. But if we go more closely into questions that would lead us very far if we understood them rightly, we find a sphere where confusion in thinking is very marked. As a rule this confusion cannot be controlled by the individual. Let us take the phenomenon of Goethe's Faust.³ It is an artistic creation, isn't it? There will be very few people in this hall, particularly as we have made a number of studies of Faust, who will not hold the opinion that Goethe's Faust is a great work of art, one that is tantamount to an inspiration of grace.

Through Goethe's Faust, German cultural life in a sense conquered the cultural life of other nations too. Even in Goethe's lifetime Faust had a strong influence on many people. They regarded it as an absolutely unique work of art. However, a certain German was particularly annoyed that Madame de Stael expressed such an extraordinarily favorable opinion of it.⁴ I would just like to read you this man's opinion, so that you see that about such things that have to be judged individually there can be different opinions from those you may consider at this moment to be the only opinions one can possibly have of Goethe's Faust.

This critical opinion was written down in 1822 by a certain Franz von Spaun.⁵ Here is his criticism of Goethe's Faust, which begins right away with the “Prologue in Heaven:”

[Right from the Prologue] we see that Herr von Goethe is a very bad versifier and that the Prologue itself is a true sample of how one ought not to write verse.

Past ages show nothing that can compare with this Prologue for presumptuous paltriness. ... But I must be brief, for I have undertaken a long and, alas, wearisome piece of work. I have to point out to the reader that this notorious Faust enjoys an usurped and unmerited renown that it owes only to the pernicious esprit de corps of an Associato obscurorum vitorum. ... It is not because I wish to rival this renown that I am compelled to vent the sarcasm of harsh criticism upon Goethe's Faust. I do not travel by his path to Parnassus, and should have been glad if he had enriched our German language with a masterpiece. ... Among the multitudes who applaud, my voice may be extinguished, yet it is enough for me to have done my best; and if I succeed in converting even one reader and recalling him from the worship of this atrocity, I shall not grudge my thankless labor. ... The wretched Faust speaks an incomprehensible gibberish, in the most atrocious rhyme of any fifth grade student. My teacher would have thrashed me soundly if I had made inferior verses such as the following:

Oh, broad bright moon, if this might be
The last of the nights of agony,
The countless midnights of toil and ache,
I've pass'd at this dreary desk awake!

Concerning the baseness of the diction, the paltriness of the verse, I will henceforth be silent; what the reader has seen is sufficient proof that the author, as far as the construction of his verse is concerned, cannot stand comparison with the mediocre poets of the old school. ...

Mephistopheles himself realized even before the contract was signed that Faust was possessed by a devil. We, however, think he belongs in a lunatic asylum rather than in Hell, with all his accessories—hands and feet, head and posterior. Of sublime galimatias, of nonsense in high-faluting words, many poets have given us samples, but Goethe's nonsense or galimatias might be called a popular galimatias, a genre nouveau, for it is presented in the commonest, most atrocious language.

The more I think about this long litany of nonsense, the more probable it seems to me that there must have been a wager to the effect that if a celebrated man permitted himself to patch together the dullest, most boring nonsense, a legion of literary simpletons and deluded readers would find deep wisdom and great beauty in this insipid nonsense and know how to expound upon it. Famous men have this in common with Prince Piribinker and the immortal Dalai Lama that their rubbish is served up as sweetmeats and revered as relics. If this was Herr von Goethe's intention, he has won the wager....

There may well be some intentions behind Faust, yet a good poet does not hurl them at his readers; he should know the art of presenting and illuminating them properly. A richer theme for poetry than this is not easy to find, and people will be cross with him for bungling it so miserably. . ..

This diarrhea of undigested ideas is not caused by an excessive flow of healthy fluids but by a relaxation of the floodgates of the mind, and is an indication of a weak constitution. There are people from whom bad verse flows like water, but this incontinentia urinae poeticae, this diabetes mellitus of lame verses never afflicts a good poet. ... If Goethe's genius has freed itself from all fetters, the flood of his ideas cannot break through the dams of art, for they have already been broken through. Yet although we do not disapprove of an author's breaking away from the conventional rules of composition, he must still hold sacred the laws of sound human reason, of grammar and rhythm. Even in dramas where magic plays a part, he is only allowed the machinery of hypothesis, and he must remain faithful to this. He must make a good plot with a knot to be unraveled and the magic must lead to grand results. In the case of Faust the outcome is to seduce the victims to dastardly crimes, and his seducer does not need magic; everything he does any matchmaking scoundrel could have done just as well without witchcraft. He is as stingy as a miser, not using the hidden treasures at his command.

In short, a miserable wretch who might learn something from Lessing's Marinelli. Therefore, in the name of sound human reason I quash the opinion of Madame de Stael in favor of the aforesaid Faust and condemn it, not to Hell, which might be cooled off by this frigid production that even has a wintry effect on the devil, but to be thrown into the sewer of Parnassus. And by rights.

As you see, this judgment was actually passed upon Faust at one time, and the context in which the man passed it does not at all prove him to be entirely dishonest, but someone who believed what he wrote. Now imagine what would have happened if this man, who said that his own fifth grade teacher would have kept him from writing such rubbish as Faust, had himself become a school teacher and passed on this nonsense to a great number of boys. These boys might in their turn have become teachers and remembered something of this verdict on Faust. Just think of all the speculations you can make regarding all the karmic damage this person might have done by means of his judgment.

However, I am less concerned about that than about the fact that it is difficult to form a true, permanent judgment concerning events possessing their own intrinsic value. I have emphasized in some of my lectures that many a great personality of the nineteenth century will no longer be considered great in centuries to come, whereas people who have been quite forgotten will by that time be regarded as very significant indeed. Time puts such things right. I only wanted to point out how extremely difficult it is to form a judgment about an event needing to be looked at on its own merit.

We must now ask why that causes us such difficulty. We shall begin our reflections by seeing the critic as a different person from the one who is being judged. Nowadays we would say that the people who even in those days considered Goethe's Faust to be a great work of art and in a certain way judged it objectively eliminated themselves, so to speak. The man who wrote what I have just been reading to you did not eliminate himself. How do we arrive at judgments that are not objective? People judge without objectivity so often that it never occurs to them to ask why they do this. They do it because of the forces of sympathy and antipathy. Without sympathy and antipathy our judgments would never be other than objective.

Sympathy and antipathy are necessary in order to obscure the objectivity of judgment. Does this mean they are bad, however, and that we ought immediately to do away with them? We need only reflect a little to find that this is not so. For no sooner do we engross ourselves in Goethe's Faust than we like it and develop more and more feelings of sympathy towards it. We must have the possibility to develop sympathy. And after all, if we were unable to develop antipathy we would not arrive at an absolutely correct judgment of the man whose opinion we have just heard. For I imagine some antipathetic feelings against the man may have arisen in you, and they could well be justified.

But there again we see that it depends on not accepting these things as absolute but considering them in their whole context. It is not merely that human beings are brought to feelings of sympathy and antipathy by outer things but that we carry sympathy and antipathy into life. We bring our sympathy and antipathy to meet the things themselves, so that they do not work upon us but upon our sympathy and antipathy. What does this mean? I approach an object or a process accompanied by my sympathy and antipathy. Naturally the man I was speaking about did not exactly bring along his antipathy to Faust but he brought the kind of feelings that made him see Faust as antipathetic. He judged absolutely according to his instincts.

What does this signify? It means that sympathy and antipathy, to start with, are only words for real spiritual facts. And the real spiritual facts are the deeds of Lucifer and Ahriman. In a certain way Lucifer is in every expression of sympathy and Ahriman in every expression of antipathy. By letting ourselves be carried through the world by sympathy and antipathy, we are letting ourselves be carried through the world by Lucifer and Ahriman. Only we must not fall into the mistake I have often described and say yet again “We must flee from both Lucifer and Ahriman! We want to become good. So we must avoid Lucifer and Ahriman, avoid them at all costs! We must drive them away, right away!” For then we should also have to leave the world. For just as there can be both positive and negative electricity and not only the balance between them, so we encounter Lucifer and Ahriman wherever we go. It all depends on how we relate to them. These two forces must be there. The important thing is that we always bring them into balance in life. For instance, without Lucifer art would not exist. What matters is that we create art that is not purely luciferic.

Thus it is a matter of becoming aware that when we confront the world with sympathy and antipathy, Lucifer and Ahriman are at work in us. That is to say, we must be able to allow Lucifer and Ahriman really to be active in us. But while we are conscious that they are at work in us, we must nevertheless acquire the capacity to confront things objectively. This we can do only if we consider not merely how we judge external things and events in the world outside us, but also consider how we judge ourselves in the world. And this “judging ourselves in the world” leads us a step further into the question and the whole complex of questions we started with. We can form a judgment of ourselves in the world only if we apply to ourselves a uniform method of consideration. We must now consider this problem.

We look out upon nature. On the one hand, we see rigid necessity; one thing arising from another. We look at our own deeds and believe that they are subject only to freedom and are connected solely with guilt and atonement and so on. Both views are one-sided. In what follows it will be shown that each view is one-sided because neither correctly estimates the position of Lucifer and Ahriman. If we look at ourselves as human beings existing here on the physical plane, we cannot look into our own souls and see only what is taking place in the immediate present. If each one of us were to ask ourselves what is taking place within us right now, it would certainly be a piece of insight into ourselves. Yet this insight would be far from giving us everything we required even for superficial self-knowledge.

Without hurting anyone's feelings, of course, let us consider all of us here: I who am speaking and you who are listening. I would not be able to speak as I do if it were not for everything that has previously happened in my present life and in other incarnations. Looking only at what I am saying to you now would produce a very one-sided kind of self-knowledge. But without hurting anyone's feelings it must be obvious that each one of you listens differently, and understands and feels what I say slightly differently. That goes without saying. In fact your understanding is in accordance with your life up to now and your previous incarnations. If each one of you did not grasp differently what is being said, you would not really be human beings.

But that leads much further. It leads to the recognition of a duality in ourselves. Just think for a moment that when you pass judgment, you do it in a certain way. Let us take a random example. If you see one thing or another, a play directed by Max Reinhardt, for example, you say, “It is charming!” while someone else says “That is the ruin of all art!”⁶ I am certainly not criticizing either opinion just now. It is possible for one person to say this and another that. On what does it depend that one person has a different opinion from another? That depends again on what is already in them, upon the assumptions with which they approach matters.

But if you think about these assumptions, you will be able to say “At one time these assumptions did not exist.” What you saw when you were eighteen, for instance, or learned at the age of thirteen, enters into your present judgments. It has become part of your whole thinking, resides in you, and contributes to your judgment. Everyone can of course perceive this in himself if he wishes to do so. It contributes to your judgment. Ask yourself whether you can change what is now in you, or whether you can tear it out of yourself. Think about it for a moment! If we could tear it out, we would be taking away the whole of our life up to now; we would be obliterating ourselves. We can no more get rid of our previous resolutions and decisions than we can give ourselves another nose if we do not like what we see in the mirror.

It is obvious that you cannot obliterate your past. Yet if you wish to rise early in the morning, you see, a resolution is always necessary. This resolution, however, is really dependent upon the prior conditions of your present incarnation. It depends on other things as well. If we say it depends on this or that, does that detract from the fact that I have to resolve to get up? This decision to get up may be so faint that we do not notice it at all, but at least a faint resolve to get up has to be there, that is to say, getting up must be a free deed.

I knew a man who belonged for a time to our Society and who is a good illustration of this, for he actually never wanted to get up. He suffered terribly because of it, and often deplored it. He said, “I simply cannot get up! Unless something occurs in the way of an external necessity to make me rise from my bed, I would stay there forever.” He confessed this openly, for he found it a terrible temptation in life not to want to get up. From this you can easily see that it really is a free deed. And although certain prior conditions have been laid down in us which suggest one or another motive, it does not prevent our doing a free deed in the particular instance.

In a certain way it is like this: Some people drag themselves out of bed with the help of strong determination, while others enjoy getting up. We could easily say that this shows us that the existing prior conditions signify that the one was brought up well and the other badly. We can see a certain necessity there, yet it is always a free decision. Thus we see in one and the same fact, in the fact of getting up, free will and necessity interwoven, thoroughly interwoven. One and the same thing contains both freedom and necessity. And I beg you to note well that, rightly considered, we cannot dispute whether a person is free or unfree in a certain matter, but we can only say that first of all freedom and necessity are intermingled in every human deed.

How does this happen? We shall not progress with our spiritual science unless we realize that we have to consider things both from the human and the cosmic standpoint. Why is this so? It is because what works in us as necessity—I will now say something relatively simple yet of tremendous significance—what we regard as necessity belongs to the past. What works in us as necessity must always be from the past. We must have experienced something, and this experience must have been stored up in our souls. It is then within our soul and continues to work there as necessity.

You can now say that everybody bears his past within him, and this means bearing a necessity within him. What belongs to the present does not yet work as necessity, otherwise there would be no free deed in the immediate present. But the past works into the present and combines with freedom. Because the past works on, freedom and necessity are intimately connected in one and the same deed.

Thus if we really look into ourselves, we will see that necessity exists not only outside us in nature but also within ourselves. When we look at this latter kind of necessity, we have to look at our past. This is an extremely important point of view for a spiritual scientist. He learns to understand the connection between past and necessity. Then he begins to examine nature, and finds necessity there. And in examining natural phenomena he realizes that all the necessities the natural scientist finds in nature are the result of past events. What is nature as a whole, the whole realm of nature with its necessity?

We cannot answer that unless we look for the answer on the basis of spiritual science. We are now living in earth existence, a condition which was preceded by the moon, sun and Saturn conditions. In the Saturn condition, as you see in Occult Science, the planet did not look like the earth does now but entirely differently.⁷ If you examine Saturn, you will see that then everything was still of a thought like nature. Stones did not yet fall to the ground. Dense physical matter did not exist as yet. Everything came from the activity of warmth. This state is similar to what goes on within the human being itself. Everything is soul activity, thoughts that divine spirits have left behind. And they have remained in existence.

All of present nature that you understand with its necessity was once in a state of freedom, a free deed of the gods. Only because it is past, because what developed on Saturn, sun, and moon has come to us in the same way as our childhood thoughts continue to work in us, the thoughts of the gods during Saturn, sun, and moon continue their existence on earth. And because they are past thoughts, they appear to us as necessity.

If you now put your hand on a solid object, what does that mean? It means that what is in the solid object was once being thought in the long distant past, and has remained in the same way as your childhood thoughts have remained in you. If you look at your past, regarding past activities as something living, you see nature in the process of becoming within you. Just as what you now think and say is not a necessity but is free, so earth's present state was once free in earlier stages of existence. Freedom continually evolves, and what is left behind becomes necessity. If we were to see what is taking place in nature now, it would not occur to us to see it as a necessity. What we see of nature is only what has been left behind. What is happening now in nature is spiritual, and we do not see that.

This gives human self-knowledge a very special cosmic significance. We think a thought. It is now within us. Certainly we might also not think it. But if we think it, it remains in our soul, where it becomes an activity of the past. It now works on as a necessity, a delicate, insubstantial necessity, and not dense matter like outer nature because we are human beings, not gods. We can perceive only the inner nature that remains in us as memory and is operative in what are necessities for us. But our current thoughts will become external nature in the coming Jupiter and Venus conditions. They will then be the external environment. And what we now see as nature was once the thoughts of the gods.

Nowadays we speak of angels, archangels, archai, and so on. They were thinking in the past, just as we are thinking today. And what they thought has remained as their memory, and it is this memory we now perceive. We can only perceive within us what we remember during earth existence. But inwardly it has become nature. What the gods thought during earlier planetary conditions has been externalized and we see it as external nature.

It is true, profoundly true, that as long as we are earthly human beings we think. We send our thoughts down into our soul life. There they become the beginning of a natural world. But they remain in us. Yet when the Jupiter existence comes, they will come forth. And what we are thinking today, in fact all that we experience, will then be the external world. The external world we will then look down upon from a higher level will be what is now our inner world. What is experienced at one time in freedom changes into necessity.

These are very, very important aspects, and only when we see the world in this way will we be able to understand the real course of historical events and the significance of today's events. For these lead us directly to the point where we always pursue the path from subjectivity to objectivity. Strictly speaking, we can be subjective only in the present. As soon as the present is over, and we have pushed the subjective elements down into our soul life, they acquire independent existence, though at first only within us. As we continue living with other thoughts, the earlier thoughts live on, only in us, of course. For the time being we still house them. But this covering will some day fall away.

In the spiritual realm matters are very different. So you must look at events, such as the hypothetical one I gave you, from this different point of view. Looked at from outside, a boulder fell and buried a party of people. But that was only the external expression of something that happened in the spiritual world, this latter event being the other half of the experience and existing just as objectively as the first one. This is what I wanted to present to you today, showing how freedom and necessity play into one another in world evolution and in the evolution in which we are involved as living beings; how we are interwoven with the world, and how we ourselves are daily, hourly, becoming what nature shows us externally. Our past, while within us, is already a piece of nature. We progress beyond this piece of nature by evolving further, just as the gods progressed in their evolution beyond their nature stage and became the higher hierarchies.

This is only one of the ways, of which there are many, that ought to show us again and again that nothing taking place on the physical plane can be judged solely according to its physical aspect, but should be judged based on the knowledge that it has a hidden spiritual content in addition to the physical one. As sure as our physical body has an etheric body in it, everything perceived by the senses has a supersensible part underlying it. Therefore, we must conclude that we are really regarding the world in a very incomplete way if we examine it solely according to what it presents to our eyes and according to what takes place externally, for while something quite different is taking place externally, inwardly something can be happening spiritually that belongs to the outer event and is of immensely greater significance than what is presented to our senses. What the souls of the people who were buried under the boulder experienced in the spiritual world may be infinitely more important than what happened physically. The occurrence has something to do with the future of those souls, as we shall see.

Let us interrupt these thoughts at this point today and continue them next Sunday. My aim today was to bring your thoughts and ideas into the direction that will show you that we can only acquire correct concepts of freedom and necessity, guilt and atonement, and so on, if we add the spiritual aspect to the physical one.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet, playwright, and novelist.
• 2. Karl August, Duke of Weimar, 1757–1828, Duke of Saxony and Weimar 1758–1828.
• 3. Faust, dramatic poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• 4. Madame de Stael (Germaine de Stael), 1766–1817, French writer and intellectual.
• 5. Franz von Spaun, 1753–1826, German essayist. The quotation from Faust is from Part I, “Night,” Translated by Sir Theodore Martin. Everyman's Library, (London: Dent, 1971).
• 6. Max Reinhardt, 1873–1943, director of the German theater in Berlin.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1972).