The Rudolf Steiner Archive

A translation of the writings of Tertullian by Peter Holmes, D.D., is contained in several volumes of the series: Ante-Nicene Christian Library; Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325. (Published by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1874.)

The text of the translation of De Carne Christi (On the Flesh of Christ) is to be found in Vol. XV (vol. 2), pp. 163–214.

Vol. XV (vol. 1) includes Tertullian's Apologeticus, one of the writings in which he inveighs against the Romans for their persecutions of the Christians. The following is a typical passage from chapter 1:

‘And then, too, you do not in that case deal with us in the ordinary way of judicial proceedings against offenders; for in the case of others who deny, you apply the torture to make them confess.—Christians alone you torture to make them deny; whereas, if we were guilty of any crime, we should be sure to deny and you with your tortures would force us to confession. ... So that you act with all the greater Rerversity when, holding our crimes proved by our confession of the name of Christ, you drive us by torture to fall from our confession. Thus, in repudiating the name, we in like manner repudiate also the crimes with which, from that same confession, you had assumed that we were chargeable’ (p. 57).

It is also in the Apologeticus (p. 99) that a passage occurs on the subject of possession by demons: ‘Let a person be brought before your tribunals, who is plainly under demoniacal possession. The wicked spirit, bidden speak by a follower of Christ, will as readily make the truthful confession that he is a demon, as elsewhere he has falsely asserted that he is a god ...’

In Vol. VII of the same series, The Five Books of Tertullian against Marcion, the translator includes in his Introductory Notice (p. XVI) the following quotation from Vincentius Lirinesis:

‘And for his (Tertullian's) wit, was he not so excellent, so grave, so forcible, that he scarce ever undertook the overthrow of any position, but that either by quickness of wit he undermined, or by weight of reason he crushed it? Further, who is able to express the praises which his style of speech deserves, which is fraught (I know none like it) with that cogency of reason, that such as it cannot persuade, it compels to assent: whose so many words almost are so many sentences; whose so many sentences, so many victories? This know Marcion and Apelles, Praxens and Hermogenes, Jews, Gentiles, Gnostics, and divers others, whose blasphemous opinions he hath overthrown with his many and great volumes, as it had been with thunderbolts ...’

You will easily believe what very deep satisfaction it gives me to take up work again among you all on this building of ours. It is a fact that anyone coming into intimate contact with the whole aura of this building today would be able to receive the impression, as a result not only of deep reflection but also of quite superficial thought; that something connected with the most significant, the most weighty tasks of man's future is bound up with this building. And it goes without saying that after long, forced absence one is profoundly satisfied on finding oneself once more at this place where this building stands as a symbol of our cause.

To this I would add that particularly for me, my dear friends, it is a matter of infinite gratification every time I now return after long absence to be able to see how beautifully and significantly the work on the building has progressed through the active devotion of the workers. In these months of my recent absence in particular, when work has been carried out under such difficult conditions, part of the artistic work has gone forward in an unprecedented way; it has made progress in the spirit that should permeate the whole.

With deep pleasure too, I see, as a consequence of the spirit in our work, as consequence of all that is originating here, the real feeling of solidarity among many of our friends—the genuine feeling towards all that this building incorporates. What reveals itself to the soul when one lets this whole matter renew its effect upon one is that here we have a place with which is united such a true sentiment in a number of the friends of our spiritual movement, so sincere a sentiment that it promises a continuance of the best impulses in this movement for the future of mankind for which they are so necessary. In the work devoted to this building there is already something that could serve as a model for all that, in common with what we call today the Anthroposophical Society, is actually intended.

On the other hand, I have a strong feeling that what is favourable, what is so significantly good found here in our building, in the harmony of human work, and human feeling consists in this building being able through its objective nature to free what our movement wills from the subjective interests of individual men.

Concerning what we have just touched upon, my dear friends, there have been indeed, and still are, in all similar societies as well as in the Anthroposophical Society, certain remarkable views, that to be more exact, are remarkable illusions. A great deal is preached about selflessness and universal love between men; this is often, however, a mere mask for certain artful egoistic interests of individual human beings. It true that these individuals do not know that this is a question of mere egoistic interest; in face of their own consciousness they are innocent nevertheless, the fact remains.

The building itself, however, claims from a relatively large number of our friends a selfless devotion to something objective, to something standing out as a symbol of our cause, and free from all that is personal. And what is connected with our building can to that extent very well be, the model for what is sought in our Movement.

My dear friends! When, as today, we greet each other again, we need especially to dwell upon what if fruitful and all-embracing in the spiritual movement of ours. Meeting thus again, we need to reflect upon how earnestly we can believe that however it may happen—and the manner in which it does so depends upon how conditions take their course—man will never find his way out of the appalling blind alley into which he has come today until he decides in some way to seek a starting point for fruitful work, fruitful action, within a spiritual movement such as ours. We shall certainly not insist egoistically that the truth is to be found only in our small confined circle where it is recognised, through the very nature of the matter, that man has landed himself in the present terrible situation by neglecting his own spiritual substance. We should be able to recognise ourselves as men who are united in those ideas that alone can lead mankind out of this blind alley.

In the soul of modern men there is indeed very much that is not clear. When it has been possible to renew our knowledge here or there about the needs prevailing in our spiritual movement the following may be said on one hand: Yes indeed, the number of souls of those who are thirsting for spiritual life in our sense has very greatly increased. The longing for such spiritual life can well be said to have become infinitely greater; the attention given to our impulses has recently become undeniably greater, at least in those spheres that have been outwardly accessible to me in these last years and especially in recent months. It is not without meaning that I remark upon this distinct increase and strengthening of man's longing for the spiritual life. It is true that over against this strengthening and sharpening of the desire for spirit life there stands the terrible confusion from which the greater part of mankind is suffering. This terrible confusion among men comes about through the outworn ideas, or it would be better to say the outworn lack of ideas, the easy-going comfort where all keen vigorous thought concerned, the comfort that comes from the laxity, the indolence, with which during many decades, the thought-life on earth has been carried. This laxity, this laziness, leads souls astray in the present yearning after spiritual life. On the one hand, men are immersed in a genuine longing for spirituality, for strong supersensible impulses. On the other hand, these souls are fettered by the old powers that do not wish to withdraw from the scene of human activity, but should be able to see from this very activity how far they are removed from having any further place there. It might be said that one finds everywhere this dark impression, this impression of a cleft.

In many places in connection with repeated lectures with lantern slides, I have talked a great deal with our members about the Group that will take the chief place in our building. It could be seen on the one hand what powerful impulses have actually entered those souls who, by reason of the conditions during past years, have not even had a glimpse of what is going on here. A new human understanding is already arising from the very way in which what is ahrimanic and what is luciferic has been thought out in connection with what belongs to the Christ and has been represented and revealed in our Group. It makes a deep impression on souls when they are approached by all that is thus given. On the other hand, however, my dear friends, we find everywhere the obstructive influences of what is widespread among men in the remnants of what is old, rotten, in their so called cultural life.

This could be seen particularly in what might be called in a real sense the humorous frame of mind with which the lectures were received that were given at the art centre of our friend Herr von Bernus in Munich, when I tried to show a large audience the inner impulses active here in our conception of art. That did indeed arouse interest in people to an extraordinary degree, for I held lectures of this kind in Munich in February and in May and had to give each of them twice. Herr von Bernus assured me there were so many enquiries that I should have been able to give four times over each of the public lectures dealing with the principles of my conception of art, as they have found expression in the building here. Interest was certainly there, but it goes without saying one could find less reason to be pleased in the agreement shown with what was said by the critic of a Munich newspaper, which might be called a showing of teeth though politely and humorously. It was particularly facetious since inner resentment made itself felt against what could not be understood. It was all—not spoken,—but spat out, if you forgive the inelegant expression. And it was shown up by the very interest aroused by the matter where honesty and sincerity spoke in opposition to what was otherwise noticeable in this artistic centre (that is Munich, it goes without saying; it is a well-known fact). Thus was shown how in this centre of artistic activity the most intelligible as well as the unintelligible stuff was talked... It is just in this sort of discrepancy that we get an example of how today the two streams of which I have been speaking are present, and how we need to stand consciously within what is essential and important, towards which we must struggle for the sake of the world and its future.

I am certainly not saying all this because when our matters have publicity anywhere I would strive for what is called a “good press” for the moment we had a “ good press” I should think there must be something wrong, something of ours must have been untrue.

All these things are suitable for calling up in us a consciousness that it is very necessary for us to take a decided stand on the grounds of our cause. For nothing could promote greater confusion among us than our wishing to make any kind of compromise with—well with what the external world would consider it right for us to do. In what we do it is only towards the principles for which we stand that must look for guidance.

Another example of what we have been discussing, less directly connected with our cause, nevertheless connected inwardly, is the recent increasing interest shown in the most varied places for Eurythmy. And when we who were present remember how Eurythmy was received particularly in one place, where it had scarcely been seen before, it was partly something entirely new to the audience, namely in Hamburg, we have really to remember this reception with the deepest satisfaction. The significance of the impulses going out from even an affair of that kind was especially evident in Hamburg. People were there who to all intents and purposes were witnessing a proper performance of Eurythmy for the first time. And the possibility will yet arise perhaps for Eurythmy to be performed publicly. It is just at this juncture, however, that we must stand on the very firmest ground with our cause and do nothing that is not entirely consistent with it.Otherwise, my dear friends, it would soon be seen that, from a certain point of view, it must not be thought that I shall yield when some particular matter is in question that depends upon me. Most of you already know that where no principle is concerned, when some purely human affair comes to the fore, it goes without saying that I am always in it all with best of you. When it is a question, however, of approaching the boundary where any principle whatever has to be forsworn—even in the smallest degree—I shall show myself inflexible. Therefore, at the present time, when so much dancing can be seen—for there is dancing everywhere, it is quite dreadful, if you live in a town any night you join in a dance evening—when there is show-dancing everywhere, if it should be thought (I do not say all this without good reason; although I do not specify any particular instance, I have good reason to speak) if it should be thought that by giving public performances of Eurythmy, we meant to identify ourselves with any kind of journalistic stunt to put forward some kind of claim for attention, then I should take precautions against this in the most determined manner. A feeling for what is in good taste must be forthcoming solely out of our cause.

You see my dear friends, we have sometimes also to remember, especially on meeting again, to conduct according to the standard of spiritual impulses the necessary direct activity resulting from the will. These spiritual impulses will have to fight against a great deal of what today we can no longer call prejudice, for things work too powerfully be described by such a weak term. I do not say in a conceited, egoistical way “We” have to fight, but these impulses will have to fight against many different things. Now over and over again we have to refer to the terrible malady of our age, that consists in lack of control where the life of thinking is concerned. For, rightly conceived, the life of thought is already a spiritual life. It is because men give so little heed to their life of thinking that they seldom find their way into the spiritual worlds.

There is one thing upon which I must repeatedly touch from the most varied sides, namely, what an appalling value is put today upon the mere content of thoughts. The content of thoughts, however, is what is of least importance! The content of thoughts—Look! a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, this cannot be gainsaid. Even though a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat, however, when you put it into suitable, good, fruitful ground you get a juicy ear, and when you, put it into ground that is barren and stony, you get either nothing at all or a rotten ear. But each time you are dealing with a grain of wheat.

Let us speak of something other than a grain of wheat. Let us say instead of ‘grain of wheat ’, ‘idea of free man’ which is so much discussed today. Some will say ‘idea of free man’ is the ‘idea of free man.’ It is just the same as a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat. But there is a difference in whether ‘idea of free man’ flourishes in a heart, in soul where this heart and soul is fruitful ground, or whether the ‘idea of free man’, exactly the same idea with the same foundation, flourishes in Woodrow Wilson's head! It matters not in the least if a grain of wheat is sown in stony ground or right into the rock, and it is just true that all the so called beautiful ideas that we are given in the programmes of Woodrow Wilson signify nothing if they come out of his head. But this is something that modern man comes to understand with such infinite difficulty, for he holds the view that it is the content of a programme, the content of the idea, has as little significance as the germinating power of a grain of wheat before it is planted in fertile ground.

To think with reality! Man has the greatest need of this. And something else is connected with the present unreality in thinking namely, men are taken unawares by almost all that happens. Indeed one might ask when has that not occurred in these last years?. Men are surprised by everything, and they will go on being more and more surprised. But they will not have anything to do with what is really working in the world, and this today makes it impossible for them to bring any foresight to bear on their affairs.

Working merely with ideas, one can from any side base anything upon anything. If one works with the content of ideas alone it is actually possible to base everything on anything. This is also something it is necessary to see into increasingly and ever more deeply; it is necessary but there is little will for it.

Generally, when such things are spoken of, and examples of them given, one meets with no real response because the examples seem too grotesque. But our whole life of soul and spirit today fairly hums with these things that give so grotesque an impression on being brought to light—my dear friends, they buzz around us! I know that many of you may feel resentment if I give you a really outstanding idea as an example—I will, however, quote this instance.

Now it is a case here of a University professor, an old respected professor at a university, who lit on the fact that Goethe during his long life was attracted by various women. Yes, our professor came up against this idea and took upon himself the task of making a real study of both the life of Goethe and that of the spirits connected with him. And we see how he obviously makes it his business, in spite of not being professor at a European university, to go to work as thoroughly as a mid-European professor usually does, and he made to pass before his soul the whole procession of Goethe's ladies in their relation to Goethe. What did he discover? I can quote this for you almost in his very words.

He discovered that each woman Goethe loved momentarily during his life can be said to have been for him a kind of Belgium, the neutrality of which he violated and then bemoaned that his heart bled for having been obliged to assail shining innocence. Neither did he forget to assert, each time, like the German Chancellor, that this sphere of violated neutrality had deserved a better fate but that he, Goethe, could not do otherwise since his destiny and the rights of his spiritual life obliged him to sacrifice the loved one—yes, even to offer up the pain of his very heart on the altar of the duty he owed to his own immortal ego.

Now I could give you here many other ideas that come in this book. You might ask for, what purpose? But, my dear friends, there is very good reason. For you find this kind of idea all over the world. The ideas of modern men are like that! And it is not without reason that such ideas should show themselves in literature where the essence of human thinking appears. This conception is upheld by Santayana, a professor at Harvard University in America, a much esteemed Spaniard who is, however, completely Americanised. His book was written during this present catastrophe, or at least Boutroux has translated it into French during the war. Shortly before this Boutroux gave a lecture in Heidelberg in which he eulogised German Philosophy in the most flattering terms! The book is called The Errors of German Philosophy and is entirely characteristic of present-day thinking. The appearance of this book was certainly not just a casual event but is very characteristic of modern thought and compares man with what is very far removed from him, with the same facility we find in Professor Santayana when he compares Belgian neutrality with Goethe's treatment of various women. For, if you have eyes to see it, this kind of thinking meets you in every sphere of so-called modern science. It is a fact; you come across it everywhere.

Now it is just the task of the spiritual impulse to which our Anthroposophy is devoted, to make a stand against three fundamental evils in the present so-called culture of mankind. There is nothing for it but to fight against these fundamental evils. One fundamental evil shows itself in the sphere of thinking, another in the sphere of feeling and the third fundamental evil is seen in the sphere of the will.

In the sphere of thinking we have gradually reached the point where men can only think in the way the thinking takes its course when it is strictly bound up with the brain. But this thinking, so closely connected with the brain, this thinking that refuses to make a flight to the spiritual, is condemned in all circumstances to be narrow and confined. And the most significant symptom of present scientific thinking in particular is narrowness and limitation. In the field of his narrowness and limitation great things can certainly be done. It is done for example, in modern science. But the thought applied to science today has no need of genius, my dear friends! Thus, narrowness, limitation, is what must be striven against, especially in the intellectual sphere. Today I will simply give these things in outline, but later we shall be describing them more in detail.

In the sphere of feeling it is a question of men having gradually arrived at a certain philistinism—we can only call it so—philistinism, lack of generosity, and being bound to a certain confined circle. It is the chief characteristic mark of the philistine that he is incapable of being interested in the big affairs of the world. Village pump politicians are always philistines. Naturally, in the sphere of Spiritual Science this does not suffice, for here one cannot confine oneself to a narrow circle, we have to be interested in what is outside the earth, therefore in a very wide circle indeed. And people get quite annoyed at the mere suggestion that there should be a desire to know something about a circle wide enough to embrace Moon, Sun, Saturn. In all spheres, however, philistinism must soften into non-philistinism if Spiritual Science is to penetrate. Sometimes that is not convenient or comfortable, for it means facing up unreservedly to the matter. It demands a more unprejudiced facing up to the matter.

Recently an awkward thing happened in our midst—but I stopped it because otherwise perhaps—well, nothing actually happened but something could have happened. Now you will remember the Zurich lectures of last fear; among various examples I gave then of how Darwinism can be overcome through the growth of natural science itself, I pointed to the excellent book by Oskar Hertwig called Des Werden der Organismen (How Organisms come into Being). Here, and every time the opportunity occurred, I referred to this excellent book. Very soon after this work a shorter book appeared by this same Oskar Hertwig, in which the same Oskar Hertwig spoke about the social, the ethical and the political life. And I then thought to myself: it may happen that some of our members having heard me call Oskar Hertwig's book about organisms an outstanding book will assume that this second volume is excellent also, when it is actually a worthless book, a book written by a man who in this particular sphere—in the sphere of the social life, the ethical life and the political life—cannot put into shape a single orderly thought. I feared lest certain of our members might already have judged that since it came from Hertwig this book too would have some kind of merit. So I had to step in and again whenever I could seize the opportunity I availed myself of it to point out that I considered this second book of the author, who had previously written so well about natural science, to be the worthless and foolish effort of a man who had no ability to speak of the things of which he spoke here.

Our Spiritual Science does not admit of one thing conveniently following from another, without each new fact being confronted and judged impartially. Spiritual Science demands from men actual proof of the concrete nature of every single case. Philistinism is something that will vanish when the impulse of Spiritual Science spreads. So much for the sphere of feeling.

And in the sphere of the will there is something that recently has particularly and in the widest sense taken hold of mankind, something I can only term lack of skill. As a rule, a man today is very able within the narrow circle of what he learns, but he is considerably inept about everything outside this circle. One comes across people who can't even sew on a button—that is only one example. There are men who are unable to sew on a button! Lack of skill in anything beyond a narrow circle is what is specially prevalent in the sphere of the will. Whoever takes what we call Spiritual Science with his whole soul, and not just with abstract thinking, will see that it makes a man more dexterous and fits him actually to spread his interest over a wider area, to extend his will over a wider world. Naturally it is just where this lack of skill is concerned that spiritual science is still too weak; but the more intensively we take it the more will it contend with unskillfulness.

This is what confronts the present-day acceptance of Spiritual Science with what might be called a trinity: narrowness in the intellectual sphere; philistinism, which means a lack of generosity, in the sphere of feeling; unskillfulness in the sphere of will.

And the three are loved nowadays even if loved unconsciously. Nothing in the world today is more loved than unskillfulness, philistinism and narrow-mindedness. Because they are loved it will not be easy for men to progress to the wide views to which they must come—to the way in which we must look at all that is connected with the names Ahriman and Lucifer. And it is just here that something important must understood today. For today among many other things there is an important transition from the luciferic to the ahrimanic. And as this transition is shown not simply elsewhere but also here in Switzerland one may well speak of it here. In this region the first has perhaps less significance owing to the very habits of the Swiss. The second, however, shows every prospect of attaining more importance precisely in this country. Where certain things are concerned mankind is indeed in a state of transition from faults that are luciferic to those that are ahrimanic, from luciferic impulses that run counter to human development to ahrimanic counter-impulses.

Now certain impulses of earlier days holding good in educational matters were of a thoroughly luciferic nature. Ambition and vanity were counted on in educational matters. (All of us when young, with the exception of the youngest among us, have known this quite well.) Perhaps this applies less to Switzerland but elsewhere it is pretty prevalent—this reckoning on ambition and vanity—orders, titles, and so on and so forth! Some people's whole career was based on the luciferic impulses of vanity and ambition, on the being worth more than other men. Just try to think back to how educational affairs were indeed built up on such luciferic impulses.

At the present time there is an endeavour to put ahrimanic impulses in the place of those that are luciferic. Today they hide themselves behind the elegant term “ability tests”. In the ahrimanic sphere this corresponds to what in the luciferic sphere was boasting about vanity and ambition even among children. Today there is an endeavour to seek out those the most gifted, or those who apart from that are most successful in class; out of these again individuals are taken. Among these gifted ones tests are made, intelligence tests, memory tests, perception tests and so on. This is something very suited to the Swiss disposition. And should the luciferic play a very small part here, the ahrimanic shows itself nicely in bud in the understanding for these ability tests. For these ability tests proceed from the intelligence, from science, from the present-day psychology of the learned. Then these gifted ones who are to be tested are made to sit down and are given the written words: murdered, looking-glass, the murderer's victim. And they sit there, poor lambs, in front of the three words murderer, looking-glass, the murderer's victim, and are supposed to look for a connecting link between them. One child finds that the murderer steals upon his victim, but the victim has a looking-glass in which the murderer is reflected so that the victim is able to save himself. So much for the first child. His gift of perception takes him as far as connecting the three words in this way.

Now comes another:—A murderer is creeping on his victim and sees himself in a looking-glass. His face appears to him in it as the face of somebody with a bad conscience, so he leaves his victim on account of seeing the reflection of his own face. That is the second child.

The third child makes yet another combination. A murderer comes creeping, he finds a mirror and falls against it so that the mirror falls down with a terrible noise, it makes a regular disturbance. The victim hears the noise and is in time to defend himself against the murderer.

The last child is the most talented! The first only found the nearest combination of ideas; the second an obvious matter of morals; the third child found a very complicated connection of ideas, and this one is the most talented!—That is more or less how it is. When describing things briefly one naturally gives them a little colouring of one's own. But this is how the ability of children is henceforward going to be tested to find out who is the most talented.

One thing is certain, my dear friends—if the men who invent these methods would just think of the great people they revere, Helmholtz for instance, and so on, Newton and so on, these great ones would one and all, if given these tests, have been looked upon as the most untalented little rascals. Nothing would have come of it. For Helmholtz who is certainly considered by those who give these tests today as a very great physicist—as I think you will agree—was a hydrocephalic and not at all gifted in his youth, and so on and so forth.

What is it that people want to test? Simply the outer organism, entirely what may be counted as the physical instrument of man, what is purely ahrimanic in human nature. If ever the fruits of these ability tests are to come to anything, more ghastly thought-pictures will arise than those that have led to the present human catastrophe. When, however, one speaks today about anything that may lead to catastrophic events in perhaps a hundred years, this does not interest man. For we live now in this transition from a luciferic educational system to an educational system that is ahrimanic; and we must belong to those who understand how to see clearly into such matters:

Men must change what is active force for the future into forces of the present. For this is what is demanded from us today—to confront concrete reality in a true, genuine, unprejudiced way.

Here one may have very strange experiences. I do not remember if I have already mentioned here a very interesting experience of mine. There are writings of Woodrow Wilson's—one about “Freedom”, another just called “Literature”. These writings have been very much admired—are still very much admired. In the publication called “Literature” an interesting lecture appears again which Woodrow Wilson once gave about the historical evolution of America. And elsewhere, too, interesting lectures by Woodrow Wilson have been repeated having wide historic standpoints. And reading these writings I had an interesting experience. In them one finds isolated sentences which appeared to me extraordinarily familiar yet certainly not copied from anywhere—certainly not copied they nevertheless seemed to me wonderfully familiar. And the idea soon struck me that these sentences of Woodrow Wilson's might just well have been written by Herman Grimm, that quite a number of these sentences indeed are found word for word in Grimm. Herman Grimm I love; Woodrow Wilson—Well, you know by now that I do not exactly love him! Nevertheless I cannot on that account conceal the objective fact that where the content of the subject is concerned one could simply take over whole sentences from Herman Grimm's lectures and articles and transpose them into those of Wilson—and, vice versa, transpose sentences of Wilson's into the works of Herman Grimm. Here are two people who as far as the actual text is concerned are saying just the same thing. We have, however, to learn today that when two people say the same thing it is not the same! For the interesting fact meets us that Herman Grimm's sentences are personally striven for, bit by bit they are wrenched from the soul. The sentences of Woodrow Wilson that sound so similar come from a kind of characteristic frenzy. The man is possessed by a subconscious ego forcing these sentences into the conscious life.

Whoever can judge of such things realises that this is the point here! A grain of wheat is a grain of wheat: The difference, however, lies in where it is sown, in what kind of soil. There is a difference in whether an idea becomes so much part of a personality because he has striven for it bit by bit in his own particular way, or whether one gets the idea by being possessed by the subconscious, everything sounding out of a possessed subconscious, out of a consciousness that is possessed by the subconscious.

Thus it is a question today of understanding that the content of thoughts, the content of programmes, are not of importance—the important thing is the livingness of the life lived by mankind.

My dear friends! We can teach materialistic philosophy, we can teach the philosophy of mere ideas; we can teach a science that is merely materialistic, and in this merely materialistic science become a most excellent European teacher, a credit to the university and a good citizen of the State. The type is not so rare, I fancy you can find them anywhere, these ornaments and lights of science, who at the same time are quite exemplary good citizens; one can well be this, my dear friends! But take some ideas, I should say an idea of a definite kind, let us take as a trivial idea the struggle for existence, for instance, or those ideas that are advocated by more peaceable people such as Oskar Hertwig, and so on, or ideas upheld by Spencer, Mill, Boutroux or Bergson who certainly are not wishing to press forward to the spiritual life, but are confined to the philosophy of mere ideas. But still more, take the materialistic ideas of science, take these ideas! It is true they might be able to spring up in the brain of the good subjects of the State. Very well. But, my dear friends, a grain of wheat is a grain of wheat; nevertheless it makes a difference whether it grows in soil that is fertile for it or in rocky soil, and it makes a difference whether these scientific ideas which can be striven for in Europe as a credit to science, and hold good in the universities, thrive in the brains of the university students, or whether they spring up in the brain of a man whose brother already as a young man at the end of the eighties was counted a shining light in science at the Petersburg laboratory... Such facts certainly like a flash of lightning illumine things that are working at the present time! Take this young man who was there in the Petersburg laboratory about the year already a shining light in science, full of productive ideas in chemistry with a medal—a very rare thing—distinguished by this special medal from all those working with him, and highly esteemed even as a young man—and suddenly he disappears! Even marked out by the university authorities—he is suddenly no longer there! In all manner of roundabout ways his colleagues have to find out that meanwhile he has been hanged for taking part in a conspiracy against the reactionary Alexander III. It makes a difference whether the same idea enters the brain of a worthy university professor of Western Europe, or the brain of the brother of the man who was hanged under such conditions. When it enters the brain of this brother it changes this brother into a Lenin—for the hanged mans brother is Lenin—then this idea becomes the driving force behind all that you now see in Eastern Europe.

Idea is idea, as grain of wheat is grain of wheat; one has, however, to realise whether something is the same idea that arises either in the brain of a university professor or in the brain of the brother of this man they hanged. We must have the will to see into the background of existence where lie the actual impulses behind events. And we must have the courage to reject all the empty nonsense about programmes, ideas, sciences, of those who believe in them. Something depends on what they uphold. This or that may be upheld according to its content, nevertheless it is of consequence in what sphere of actual life what is thus upheld lies, just as it is of consequence where the grain of wheat falls, whether in fertile or unfertile ground. In every sphere man must find the way out of the abstraction that in the present grave conditions is everywhere leading to illusion or to chaos; he must find the way to the reality that can be found in spirituality alone! And however long it be, this is the only road by which man can find his way out of the present confusion to what can bless and heal him.

This is what should be written on our hearts, my dear friends, something in which we can all be united. this is something with which we should greet each other in earnest, associating ourselves in this knowledge with what must be the cure for man's failings. For it is possible to cure them. But, my dear friends, this may not be done with quack remedies, they must be healed by something the lack of which has brought mankind into this chaos.

Leninism would never have taken hold of the East had not materialistic science—not always recognised as such—been taught in the West. For what has been produced in the East is the direct child of materialistic science. It is just a child of materialistic science. Through Karl Marx a changeling has arisen; the real child of materialistic science already exists in the East. But we must have the will really to see into these things.

This, my dear friends, is as it were the background against which our building is being erected. And individual men who work here at this building think about it quite apart from the ideas today affecting men in so many lands. We can well imagine that outside, in other countries, there may be people who consider that men are living here who keep aloof from what concerns the world and, as these people believe, should concern it. It is easy to imagine people looking reproachfully at this place. Those who have their whole heart and soul in this building need not worry themselves about being thus reproached. For even if this building does not perhaps fulfil its task, if it never reaches its goal, what works on the building, my dear friends, and what proceeds from those working with devotion on the building, is today the most important thing of all; it is what must rescue men from everything into which they have fallen. And when people outside believe that here men are working with no thought for the task of present-day mankind, the answer must be that here we are working on what is of supreme importance today, on what is preeminently essential, only others know nothing of it, it is something of which as yet they are ignorant. But the important point is that mankind will want to know something of what is happening here.

Once again let it be emphasised. It is not important whether this building attains its goal—although it would be good were it to do so. What is important is that this building should be worked upon out of certain ideas that men have discovered for this work. It is not the content of these ideas but the way in which they live that gives them their impulses for the future, whereas the ideas so many believe in today are simply and solely ideas that incline towards the grave, ideas of a former age which are passing into dissolution and are ripe for dissolution.

Today I should like to start by giving a kind of sketch of the human soul, as this human soul stands in relation to the world and to itself. I should like to give this sketch in such a way that it can be said: we are looking at the profile of man as a soul being. So that we understand ourselves just as if we were to look at the physical man—not the soul-being (see Head in diagram 1)—not perhaps seeing him full-face but, let us say, from the right in profile. Let us observe him thus. If we try to sketch in outline anything like this we must naturally always keep in mind that we have to do with imaginative knowledge, that the reality behind the matter therefore is being given in picture form. The picture refers to the matter and is given, too, in such a way that it correctly indicates the matter. Naturally, however, we may not have the same idea of a drawing, a sketch, meant to represent something of a soul and spirit nature as we do of anything that in a naturalistic way is copied from an external perceptible reality. One must be conscious all the time of what I am now saying. I shall therefore omit all that concerns the physical and lower etheric organism of man and try to sketch only what is soul—soul-and-spirit (see diagram 2). As you know from the various descriptions that have been given, the soul-and-spirit stands in a more direct connection with the world of soul-and-spirit than physical man stands in connection with his physical environment. Towards his physical perceptible environment physical man is rather an isolated being; one might even say that physical man of the senses is really shut up within his actual skin.

It is not so where what can be called the men of soul-and-spirit is concerned. There we have to think of a continual crossing of the currents pulsating in the inner depths of man's soul-and-spirit—of all the movements and currents existing in the general, universal world of soul-and-spirit.

If I want first of all to describe from the one side the kind of relation the human soul-and-spirit has to what is of soul-and-spirit in the cosmic environment, I should have perhaps to do it in this way. I should, first of all, have to paint what enters in a soul-spiritual way from the universal, from the infinity of space, like this. Naturally I should have to paint the whole space in a way... but that is not really necessary. I shall only paint man's immediate environment. Thus it is now what we may understand as the surrounding world. (see blue in diagram 2).

Now imagine in this picture form of the soul-spiritual that into which man is placed. Man indeed is not yet there, but indicated in this blue is only the edge of the environment. Imagine this like a surging blue sea filling space. (When I say ‘blue’ sea this must naturally be taken as I have often described it in books available to you, namely, colours are to be grasped in the description of the aura, of the soul-spiritual.) Borne like a wave, swimming, I might say, or hovering, so nothing else is borne up which is of soul-and-spirit. This is what I should now have to represent perhaps in the following way.

Thus, if we pass from the cosmic environment to man, we may be able to think of ourselves and what belongs to the human spirit-and-soul as perhaps hovering in this red.

There we should have first of all part of the soul-spiritual; and if we would make the sketch in accordance with reality it is only the upper part we should have to give in a kind of violet, in lilac graduating into red. This could only be given correctly by toning down the red into violet.

Thus, you see, with this I have given you first what might be called the one pole of man's spirit-and-soul nature. We get the other pole when we can perhaps incorporate in the following way what, adjoining the universal soul-spiritual here, is swimming and hovering towards the human physical face: yellow, green, orange; green running into the blue.

Here you get from the right side what I might call the side view of the normal aura of man. I say expressly a normal aura seen from the right side. What is presented to the view in this figure shows how man is placed into his environment of soul-and-spirit. But t also describes where man, the soul-and-spirit in man, stands in relation to itself. When everything represented by this figure is studied, it can clearly be seen how man is a being bounded an two sides. These two sides where man has his limits are always observed in life; but they are not indicated correctly nor considered in the right way—at least they are not understood. You know how in external science it is said that when man observes the world, when with his science he wishes to gain knowledge of the world, he comes to definite limits. We have often spoken of these limits, of the famous ignorabimus (“we shall never know”) which holds good with scientists and many philosophers. It is said that man comes indeed to certain limits in his cognition, in his conception, of the external world. I have certainly already quoted to you du Bois-Reymond's famous statement that in his seventieth year he made to the Scientific Congress in Leipzig; Human cognition will never penetrate into the regions haunted by matter—this is roughly what he said at the time. Perhaps the more correct way of speaking about the limits to human knowledge would be the following. In observing the world it is necessary for man to hold fast certain concepts which he penetrates neither with his scientific cognition nor with his ordinary philosophical cognition, we need only consider such concepts as that of the atom. The atom, however naturally has meaning only when we cannot actually speak of it, when we cannot say what it is. For the moment we were to begin describing the atom, it would no—longer be an atom. It is simply something unapproachable. And it is thus already matter, actual substance. Certain concepts have to be maintained that can never be approached. It is the same with knowledge of the external world; inaccessible concepts like matter, force and so on, must be maintained. That they should have to be maintained, depends here simply upon the inner light of man's soul-and-spirit stretching out into the darkness. What is stated to be the limit of knowledge can, I might say, actually be seen clearly in the aura.

Here lies a boundary in front of man. His being, what he himself is, is here represented in the aura by what I nave made run from bright green into blue violet (see diagram 2). But by passing over into blue-violet it leaves off being man and becomes the encircling cosmos. There with his being, which is the inner force of his world outlook, man comes to a boundary; there in a sense he reaches nothingness and he has to hold fast to concepts having no content—concepts such as matter, atom, substance, force. This lies in the human organization, it lies in man's connection with the whole cosmos. Man's connection with the whole cosmos actually stands out in front of him. If we describe this boundary in accordance with the ideas of spiritual science, we can do so by saying (diagram 3): this boundary allows man with his soul to come into contact with the universe. If we indicate the direction of the universe in one loop of a lemniscate we can with the other loop show what belongs to man, only what proceeds from man goes out into the universe, into the infinite.

Therefore we must make the line of the loop, the lemniscate, open on one side, closed on the other, and draw it like this—here the line of the loop is closed and here it goes out into infinity. It is the same line that I drew there, only here the arm goes out at this end into infinity (see diagram 4 of lemniscate open to the outside). What I have here drawn as an open lemniscate, as an open loop, is not just something thought out, but something you can actually look upon as flashing in and out of a gentle, very slow movement as the expression of man's relation to the universe. The currents of the universe continually approach man; he draws them towards him, they become intermingled in his vicinity and proceed outward again. Thus this kind of thing streams towards man, interweaves and then goes out again; man is permeated by these currents belonging to the universe, which stop short in front of him.

As you may imagine, through this man is surrounded by a kind of wave-like aura; these currents enter from the universe, form a whirlpool here, and by making this whirlpool in front of him, as it were, salute man. So that here he is surrounded by a kind of auric stream.

This is essentially an expression of man's relation to the cosmos, to the surrounding world of soul-and-spirit. You can, however, find all that you actually experience as lying in your consciousness represented here as a mixture of blue, green and yellow running into orange towards the inside. But that pushes up against here; within the soul part of man this yellow-orange collides with what waves on the blue sea as the soul-and-spirit of the lower man, of the man below. What I have shown here in red passing into orange, belongs to the subconscious part of man, and corresponds to those processes in the physical that take place principally in the activity of the digestion and so forth, where consciousness plays no part. What is connected with the consciousness would be described, where the aura is concerned, in the bright parts that I have applied here. (see diagram 2)

Just as here the soul-spiritual of man meets the soul-spiritual of the surrounding world, so what is within man as his soul and spirit meets his subconscious—that actually also belongs to the universe. I shall have to draw this meeting of the currents so that one of the streams goes out into the infinite; within man I must draw this meeting differently. Here I must also draw a loop line but this must be done so that it runs towards the inside. Now please notice that I am keeping entirely to a looped line but I take the under loop and turn it around so that it goes thus (diagram 6).

Thus, I turn the lower loop around. In contrast to the above diagram 5, where I have made one loop run out to infinity, widen out into the infinite, I now turn back the lower loop; with this I have shown diagrammatically the obstacles, dams, that arise where the spirit and soul here in the inside enter the subconscious spirit-and-soul and therefore also that of the cosmos.

I must therefore describe these obstacles if I draw them as corresponding to what arises in man, in the following way; seven lemniscates with turned back loops—those are the obstacles that correspond to an inner wave in man (diagram 7). If you wish actually to follow up this inner wave, its main direction—but only its main direction—would perhaps take the course of running along beside the junction of man's wrongly named but so-called sensory and motor nerves. This is only said by the way for today I am going to describe the matter chiefly in its soul-spiritual aspect.

By this you can see the strong contrast existing in man's relation to the spirit and soul environment and to himself, namely, to that bit he takes in out of the spirit-soul environment as his subconscious, and what I have had to sketch as the red wave swimming on the universal blue sea of the spirit-soul universe.

We said that this wave here (see right of diagram 2) corresponds to the barrier against which man pushes if he wishes to know about the external world. But there is a limit here too (see left of diagram 2); within men himself there is a barrier. Did this limit, this barrier, not exist you would always be looking down into what is within you, my dear friends. Everyone would look within himself. In the same way that man would look into the external world were the barrier (on the right) not there, if the boundary on the left were not present he would look into himself. If man looked into himself in this present cycle of evolution this would indeed give him little joy, because what he would see there would be a most imperfect, chaotic seething upheaval in man's inner nature—something that certainly could not arouse joy in him. It is, however, that into which imaginative mystics believe they are able to link when they speak of the mysticism that is full of fantasy. All that the mystics of fantasy very largely look upon as a goal worthy of their striving, what, particularly in the case of many such mystics who really believe that in looking within themselves they are able to learn about the universe, what figures with them as mysticism—all that is concealed, entirely concealed, from men by just this dam.¹

Man cannot look into himself. what is formed inside this region (left) is dammed up and reflected, it can t be reflected back into itself; and the expression of this, reflection is memory—remembrance. Every time a thought or an impression that you have received comes back in memory it does so because this damming process begins to work. If you had not this stemming wave, every impression received from outside, every thought you grasp and which permeates you, would be unable to remain with you and would go out into the rest of the soul-spiritual universe. It is only because you have this obstructing wave that you can preserve the impressions you receive.

Through certain processes still to be described you are in a position to call back your impressions. And this is expressed in the functioning of recollection, of memory. You can therefore picture to yourself that you have in you something that here in this diagram is drawn in profile (for so it is drawn; there is in you just such a flat surface); There we find thrown back what should not penetrate. When you are awake you remain united with the external world, otherwise in the waking condition everything would go through you. You would actually know nothing of impressions; you would nave impressions but be unable to keep them.

This is what memory signifies. And the surface of this dam that brings about our memory conceals what the imaginative mystic would like to look at, within himself. One could say of what is underneath that for those who really know these things, the saying holds good that man should never be curious to see what the beneficent Godhead has covered with night and obscurity, but the mystics are fantastic and wish to look down into it. All the same, they cannot do so, however, for they would so bore into and destroy the normal consciousness that the waves of memory would not be thrown back. All that produces our memory, all that is so necessary for external life, conceals from us what the fantastic mystic would like to see but men should not look upon. Beneath recollection, beneath what causes recollection, beneath the surface of recollection, lies an essential part of man. Just like the back of a mirror, the mercury being a mirror, what is in front, what is thus in your consciousness works; it does not go inside but is thrown back and is therefore able to continue there as memory. In this way our whole life is reflected as a memory. And what we call the life of our ego is essentially reflection in memory.

Thus you see that we actually live our conscious life between this wave (right of Diagram 2) and this other wave (left). We should be mere funnels, therefore, letting everything flow through us; had we not this dam as the basis of memory, and we should see into the secrets beyond our boundary of knowledge were we not obliged to place ourselves outside the sphere of perceptible concepts for which we have no content. We should be funnels were we not so organised that we could not produce this dam, organised so that we should not be obliged to set up before us concepts as it were without a content, obscure concepts, we should become loveless beings, empty of love, with dry, stony natures. Nothing, in the world would please us and we should be so many Mephistopheles. Because we are organised so that we are unable to approach what is of soul-and-spirit in our environment with our abstract concepts, with our intellectual powers—to this we owe our capacity to love. For we are not meant to approach what we should love by analysing it in the ordinary sense of the term, nor by tearing it to pieces and treating it as chemicals are treated by the chemist in a laboratory. We do not love when we analyse like a chemist or synthesise chemically. The power of memory, the capacity to love—these are two capacities that correspond at the same time to two boundaries of human nature. The boundary towards within, corresponds to the power of memory; what lies beyond the memory zone is the subconscious within man. The other zone corresponds to the power of love, and whet lies beyond this zone corresponds to what is of the nature of soul-and-spirit in the universe. The unconscious part of man's nature lies beyond this zone as far as what is within man reaches; the soul-spiritual of the universe goes out boundlessly from the other zone into the wide space.

We can therefore speak of the zone of love and the zone of memory and can include man's soul-and-spirit in these zones. We must however seek beyond the one zone above (see right of diagram 2) whet is unconscious, and because it remains unconscious is on that account very closely connected with the bodily nature of man, with his bodily organisation. Naturally things are not in reality so simple as they must be in any representation, because everything is interwoven. What is red here (diagram 2) runs into things and is changed; again, what is green and blue is also changed. Actually, things all intermix with one another: in spite of this, however, the sketch is correct in the main and corresponds with the facts.

But from this we see that for physical life here on earth the spiritual is both strong and conscious. Here (left) the spiritual that actually merges into the universe is unconscious. These two parts of man are very clearly differentiated. The spiritual here (in the middle) is for this reason above all for earthly life a very finely woven spiritual element. Everything here (yellow) is what might be called finely woven light. Were I obliged to show where this finely woven light is in man, I should have to go to what I have been so minutely describing—the human head.

What I have thus described, what I have sketched in yellow, yellow-green, yellow-orange, on the other side, is what I might cell the finely woven spirit light. This has no very strong connection with earthly matter; it has as little connection with earthly matter as is possible. And because it has so little connection it cannot well unite with matter, and thus, for the greater part, remains unconnected with it; to this part matter is given that actually always comes from time to time from man's previous incarnation, and there is but a loose connection between this finely woven soul-spiritual element and what belongs to the body, what has actually been held together out of the foregoing incarnation. Your physiognomy, in its arrangement and characteristics, you carry over, my dear friends, from your previous incarnation. And those who are thoroughly able to explain man actually look through the physiognomy of the head; not through what has its origin in the luciferic within men, but more through the manner in which he adapts himself to the universe.

The physiognomy must be looked upon as though it were stamped into man, not to the extent of being the product of this stamping, but rather one has to see in it the negative of the soul; it is this that is seen in the negative of the face. If you were to make an impression of any face you would actually see there the physiognomy that relentlessly betrays what has been made of the last incarnation. On the other hand, all that I have sketched down there as being only connected with the surging sea of the world of soul and spirit, all that is to be understood as corresponding to man's subconscious or unconscious, is closely related to the bodily nature; it permeates the bodily nature. The bodily nature is united with the spiritual in such a way that the spiritual is wholly incapable of appearing as such.

For this reason were we to look down we should see this seething and merging of the spiritual and the bodily behind the threshold of memory. It is this that pares the head of the next incarnation and seeks to transform what will take definite material form only in the future and will not become head until the next incarnation. For man's head is something that outstrips his stage of development. The head in its development therefore—as you may remember from lectures previously held here—has actually come to an end by man's twenty-seventh, twenty-eighth year. (See NSL 122-123 Historical Necessity and Free Will and R-LII Ancient Myths and Their Meaning). In the form of the head there is already our development of man.

But, strange as it may seem, the rest of man is also a head only it is not so far advanced as the other head. If you picture to yourself a decapitated man, what remains is another head but at a more primitive stage. When further developed it become head, whereas what you have as the human head is the rest of the organism of a previous incarnation. If you picture what in your present organism is discarnated, free of the body, if you think away the head of your present organism, the organism that will become head in the next incarnation (and this organism is but an image, everything physical being an image of something spiritual), if you imagine the spiritual element of what in its external form has not yet appeared in man, then you see this in the Group in our luciferic figure—there you have it!

Now imagine compressed into the human head all the soul-spiritual that is merged into man, and held back in you from the head, all that forms a barrier, that is to say, which man cannot penetrate (see right in diagram 2); then man will not have the old dignified head that he ordinarily has; he will have a bony head, and will be altogether bony, like the figure of Ahriman in our Group. (see Der Baugedanke des Goetheanum.)

What I have here been explaining to you has not only great significance for understanding man, but also great significance for understanding what is going on spiritually in mankind's evolution. If we have not a fundamental comprehension of these things we shall never understand how Christianity and the Christ-impulse have entered human evolution. Neither shall we understand what part is played by the Catholic Church, what part is played by the Jesuits and similar currents, what functions belong to the East, what to the West, if all this cannot be considered in connection with these things.

I shall take upon myself to tell you something of these currents tomorrow, currents such as those of East and West, Jesuitism, and the tendency to put everything into terms of mathematics, which really can only be rightly understood if we take into consideration what lies at the basis of soul-spiritual man.

• 1. Mysterien Wahrheiten und Weihnachtsimpulse. 6 Lectures 24-31, December 1917. (Mystery Truths and the Christmas Impulse), 4 lectures in Magazine, 24-29)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Should anyone wish to understand the age in which he is actually living, he must do so out of wider cosmic connections. The pettiness of this age lies in man refusing, out of these wider connections, to enlighten himself about the impulses, the forces, working into the present time. And to understand what is working anywhere nowadays it will become increasingly necessary to hark back to the conditions through which mankind's development passed at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha—this Mystery of Golgotha—we have presented it from the most various points of view, and have seen how deeply and with what significance it has taken hold of the whole course of evolution, the whole evolution of man. We know how differently men perceived and experienced before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. Naturally one condition did not pass over immediately into the other. But when we make a retrospective survey, we discover what has been stated from so many points of view. Today, so that a certain basis may be made for our further studies, there is one thing to which I should particularly like to point.

If we consider the mood, the condition of man's soul, before the Mystery of Golgotha, we can say in general that in the culture of mankind, the mankind from whom the present cultural life has arisen, a certain capacity existed in the soul to look into the secrets of the cosmic, spiritual world. Before the Mystery of Golgotha it went without saying that men did not look up to the starry heavens in the way they do today. We know how men now look at the stars and say: other planets are connected with our earth and with it revolve around the sun, and there are innumerable other fixed stars also having their planets. And if men notice what kind of thoughts they are harboring in these reflections they have to own that they are thinking of a great world machinery. Present day man has very little idea that anything beyond the forces of this great world machinery is ruling and working; but for man before the Mystery of Golgotha this was more or less self-evident. It was particularly natural for him to regard the Sun, for example, quite differently from the way in which the modern physicist regards it—roughly speaking, simply as a kind of glowing ball in universal space. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men knew that the Sun thus spoken of in physics is only one element of the whole Sun, at the basis of which lies what is of the soul and what is of the spirit. And the Spiritual lying at the Sun's basis the wise men of Greece called the universal good of the world, the goodness of the world, the unity, the good seething through the universe. That was to him the spirit of the Sun. To this Greek sage it would have seemed crass superstition to think as the modern physicist thinks—that there outside in universal space a mere glowing ball is floating. To him this glowing, floating ball was the manifestation of unified goodness, the active centre of the world. With this central good that is of a spiritual nature there was united what was of a soul nature called by the Greeks Helios. Then, third, there came the physical expression of the Good and of Helios, the physical Sun. Thus, where the Sun is, the man of that day saw what was threefold. And with this three foldness then seen in the Sun, the men who were thinking at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, prepared as the were by their knowledge of this Mystery of Golgotha, and also of the ancient mysteries—united the threefold Sun-mystery of the sages with the Christ Mystery, with the Mystery of Golgotha itself. For those who knew, veneration of the Sun was one with veneration of the Christ; for them the Sun-wisdom was united with the Christ-wisdom.

To feel all this in accordance with nature, to experience it as a matter of course, it was necessary to have the constitution of soul existing at that time. But this constitution of soul vanished. It was already vanishing by the eight pre-Christian century, beginning in the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha—747 the actual date of the Foundation of Rome. At the time of the Foundation of Rome the old possibility was vanishing of seeing the spiritual outside in the Cosmos, and as Rome enters history, what we may call the ‘prosaic element' comes into human evolution. The Greeks, for instance, preserved in the whole of their world-conception the power of seeing the other two Suns behind the Sun—the soul and the spirit of the Sun—and only because the Mystery of Golgotha did not descend purely into the wisdom and perception of Greece, but into the wisdom and perception of Rome, has it happened that knowledge of the connection of Christ with the spiritual Sun has been cut off. Thus the Christian gathers and Teachers of the Church have had particularly to concern themselves with shrouding the Mystery of the Sun, making mankind forget this mystery, not allowing it to become known. Throughout the further course of the development of Christianity (as it is called) a veil was destined to be spread over the deep, the significant and all-embracing wisdom of Christ's connection with Sun-Mystery.¹

Should we wish to define the task of the Church, the Church that owed its origin to Christianity having come down into all that was Roman, we should have to say that this Christian Church, colored as it was by Rome, had the particular task of shrouding as far as possible the Christ-Mystery, as far as possible keeping people in ignorance of it. The organisation the Church experienced through Romanism was especially suited to keep men as far as possible from knowledge of the Christ-Mystery. By this, the Church has become an institution for holding back the mystery of Christ, an institution for admitting the world as little as it could to the Christ-Mystery. This is something that today must become ever clearer to mankind, for the age must begin that is in the position to work with other concepts than those of Rome. Roman concepts are precisely those that have the hard outlines, the hard form of the corpse. The concepts that are developed to grasp, for example, the truth about man, as I drew him on the blackboard for you a week ago, in what I might call his normal aura, the concepts necessary for man's true reality to be grasped again and through that the reality of the world, these concepts must be flexible, they should not have sharp outlines. For reality is not rigid, it is something that is becoming. And should we want to understand reality with our concepts and ideas, we have with these to pursue the flow, the becoming of reality.

When this fluidity of the concept is ignored there arises what to the undoing of mankind can be observed today in countless places. Take a phenomenon that forces itself on the attention of any observer of the world who is wide awake and in earnest. It is as follows: you will allow it to be true that we have among us in the world men of learning in the most various spheres. These learned ones are the champions, the keepers of knowledge. Although modern man is not a believer in authority, in spite of having rid the world of such superstition, he takes on trust everything upheld in the various spheres by the learned. And these among themselves, always believe their brethren concerning a matter outside their own sphere. Men today do not willingly see into these connections for should they do so they would be shocked at the disconnected and chaotic nature of our culture. We have, however, experienced the following, for example. Let us suppose some learned man—and we can always pick one out of the various spheres has for his particular sphere, let us say, Egyptology—I will take something exotic, so let it be Egyptology. So, we will agree that his profession is to instruct other men, unable to avail themselves of the sources of such knowledge, concerning the particular qualities of the Egyptian people. He gives these men instruction also concerning the relations of the Egyptians to other peoples of antiquity. It is the part of these men to take all this on trust for the instructor is an authority on Egyptology. Now something most unfortunate is a feature of our age—a great number of these learned men who represent such special subjects have not remained silent. It would have been better had they kept silence but this they have not done; for instance, they have today applied their way of thinking, their thought structure, under the impression of these events to their own people and its relation to other peoples. Here we have a good opportunity of seeing what nonsense is talked. Now from this we have to draw our conclusions, and conclusions founded on reality in thought. We may say that quite a number who are authorities in the domain of Egyptology, and are thought to hold incontestable concepts in regard to the particular qualities of the Egyptian people and their relations to other peoples, now, suddenly at the present time, are talking utter nonsense about their own people and the relation of these to other folk: Do you really believe that they are talking, have talked, more intelligently about the Egyptians and their relations to other peoples? When Balfour speaks today about the relation of his people to the rest of the world, or when Houston Stewart Chamberlain is continually uttering rubbish about the connections between men, one can gather without much reflection that they are simply talking nonsense—pure nonsense: And now Chamberlain has written The Foundation of Culture in the Nineteenth Century, and a number of other books for which there has not been the opportunity to verify the history. In these he will naturally have talked exactly the same nonsense.

Already now the time of testing has come, the time of trial, when we have at last to see that it is not a matter simply of delivering judgment that only has limited value by being right in a certain sphere—that is true of almost every judgment, the most false is right in some particular—but what matters is to seek for that flexible, fluid judgment that presses on to the reality, and only through spiritual science can that be found.

How remarkable it is what conflict today comes to the surface between sound thinking and the thinking of the times. Recently we have heard of a religious discussion that has taken place in what was St. Petersburg. A religious discussion right in the midst of Bolshevism: About a religion and its development there spoke Socialists, Priests of the Greek Church, and it goes without saying, all kinds of bourgeois folk who naturally were not the most intelligent of the speakers. And from the discussion that was carried on there—which was of course tinged with modern colour, but throughout had recourse to the most rigid and ancient concepts—from this discussion, as it appears, it was possible to learn much. For instance, one Priest brought forward something of the greatest interest. He felt himself obliged, it seems, to speak as he was accustomed to address his flock. Now formerly he had naturally told his flock that everything in the world—including Czarism, of course and indeed everything—was from God. And what can this good Priest do now? Naturally he still has somehow to follow the same theme that he used in speaking to his flock—no longer now his flock—for he has no wish to take on new concepts. So he says: The world is from God, all comes from God. As we now have Soviet rule that is from God too. Bolshevism is certainly sent man by God. Since everything is from God, Bolshevism as well must come from Him.—What else was he to say? I am quite sure that the deduction could be pressed further; why should it not be made beautifully plausible that the devil is from God? Naturally the devil is appointed by God—according to the same deduction. This is how things are—by getting deeper light on what is necessity, it is natural that one should meet on all sides with the strongest opposition. But no one can go to sleep who has undertaken to play a part in the remodeling of man's powers of conception.

Now concepts worked out by materialism—concepts that pass current as being incontestable belong to all that must be most thoroughly overcome. Nothing meets us with more persistence from the so-called authority of science than what is known as the law of the conservation of energy and of matter, of force and of substance. That has grown very near to man's heart. It is true, is it not, that the world conception that has become entirely mechanistic and physical, wants to be deaf in face of the actual presence of the spirit. As it refuses to recognise the spirit it cannot ascribe to it either duration or eternity so it ascribes eternity to its little idol, the atom, or anyhow to some matter or force. But the truth is, my dear friends, that of all that is extended around you as what you can look upon with your senses, what surrounds you in the world as matter and forces—of all this in accordance with normal laws there will be nothing left by the time of the Venus age. We know that after the Earth evolution there follows that of Jupiter, after the Jupiter evolution that of Venus, and then that of Vulcan. As man finds himself again in different incarnations, so the earth finds itself as Jupiter, from the Jupiter evolution as Venus and then again as Vulcan. What today from any experiment in physics is found as matter and the structure of matter, will not be there after the Venus existence. There is no conservation of matter and force, the matter and force of which physicists speak, beyond the existence of Venus. The whole law of the conservation of matter and of force is pure superstition, and is something by which all concepts in physics are governed. Something is concealed, however, when the world is spoken of as consisting of indestructible matter that is continuously being submitted to different grouping, different arrangement. And what is thus concealed is the answer to the question: what then remains of all that is so widely spread out before our senses when this is no longer there—when the Venus age has come or when it is already half way through its term? What then remains? Where is there anything? What is still there?

Now, my dear friends, direct your gaze outside into the vast circumference that you can see. Look at everything, look at the whole of the kingdoms of mineral, plant, animal and man; look at all you can see in the way of stars, light-phenomena; see what happens in air and water; look wherever you like, include everything that can possibly be included in your external sense perceptions—then ask yourselves: Where is anything in which there will remain a vestige of our present existence? And the answer is: In no animal, in no plant, in no mineral, not in any air, or any water—nowhere but in man: Of what you see today man himself alone contains anything that in accordance with law continues beyond the Venus existence—Nowhere else can you seek anything permanent, anything that can be referred to by the concept of eternity—nowhere save in man. That is to say, if we are looking for the seeds of the real future of the world where have we to seek? We must seek them in man. We cannot look for them in any other creation or any other kingdom. But before the Mystery of Golgotha, men of old naturally in spirit—saw through the kingdoms the cosmic All. If we take the representative, the Sun, they saw a glowing ball, but through the glowing ball they saw Helios and the Good. Nevertheless this glowing sphere of the Sun will not exist beyond the Venus age; it will then disappear. And everything through which man, in ancient times, saw in a veiled way, the constituents of some spiritual existence will also disappear. And of all that is here now there will remain for the future only what is planted seedwise into man.

What then has actually happened? Before the Mystery of Golgotha men used to look out into the wide Cosmos; they saw stars upon stars, they saw Sun and Moon, air and water, the various kingdoms. But they did not see them in the same way as modern man, for they saw them all with the divine spiritual being behind. And behind all that, they saw the Christ who had not then descended to earth. In those olden times Christ was seen to be united with the cosmos; he was seen outside the earth. There is nothing in which Christ was thus seen that will last beyond the Venus age. Everything through which the spiritual and also Christ in the cosmos were revealed to man before the Mystery of Golgotha will last only to the Venus existence. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men lived with the heavens, but these heavens are so physical that they too will vanish with the Venus existence. What will last longer than that has its seed in man alone. The Christ had to come to man out of the cosmos if He wished to tread with man the path to eternity. Because all that I have described to you is so, Christ descended from the cosmos in order henceforth to be with what as seed in man, will last on into eternity.

That is the great cosmic event that must be understood. Before the Mystery of Golgotha men could worship the God, the Christ, in the cosmos. Since the Mystery of Golgotha the time has come when the seed for the eternal future of the world is increasingly only in man; and the men who were to come after had to have a Christ who is not outside in the cosmos which will disintegrate, but be united with man, united with the human organisation, with the human kingdom. It is literally true that what are there for the senses in the whole wide circumference as stars, as heavenly bodies, will pass away.² But the word will remain, the Logos, who has appeared in the Christ and is united with the eternal essential being of man. And this is literally true, as things in the real occult, religious primal record are literal truth.

That is also the reason why a double name has to be given—I have already given indications of this—the double name Christ-Jesus. It must not be forgotten that on the one hand we must recognise the Christ who belongs to the cosmos beyond the earth, the spiritual being who before the mystery of Golgotha was not bound up with man on earth. Then He descended and united Himself with human nature—with the Jesus. In the twofold name Christ-Jesus there lies what it is necessary to understand. In the Christ we have to see the cosmic, the spiritual; in Jesus we must see that through which this cosmic, spiritual being entered historic evolution, binding Himself to mankind in such a way that He can now live on with the seed of man into eternity.

And as the centuries flowed on it was the task of the Church to conceal, to misrepresent, this mystery of Christ which was connected with the ancient mysteries. Just try really to study what during all those early centuries was passed through by man, try to see clearly how it was with the individual man who really wanted to seek Christ-Jesus, who really wanted to find the path to Him—it was a long path of martyrdom. Christ-Jesus had always to be sought in defiance of convention—as even today he must be sought against the stream of those conventions that still persist.

One cannot, however, come near the Christ-Mystery if one does not connect it with the mystery of nature. For you see what we have placed before our souls, namely, the necessity for the descent of Christ from cosmic heights to the seed in man, the mystery of Christ becoming Jesus, can be understood only when the study of nature, the study of the world, cosmology, the knowledge of man's becoming, and of the divine in man—when all these form a unity. In a certain sphere it is sought to prevent natural science becoming at the same time spiritual science, or spiritual science becoming natural science. That is what most theologians try to do, and, in another domain, what most modern physicists try to do—to erect a barrier between physical science, on the one side, spiritual science on the other. On no account must anything be said about Christ-Jesus that is connected at the same time with the evolution of the earth; nor anything be said about earth-evolution, that is, about its details, that is connected with the great spiritual mystery.

Touching on these things, one actually touches on what is of most importance, of supreme importance in the life of modern man. For confused chatter about all kinds of spiritual things, that has indeed been brought to one's attention by our friends, brought to one's attention ad nauseam—this sort of confused chatter profits no one. I am referring to how constantly people come to one saying: Just listen: So and so has been speaking quite theosophically—or anthroposophically he has said such and such a thing: This facile looking around for support in the present confusion is not what we are meant to be striving for: we should stand on the firm ground that spiritual science will surely give us. The time is too grave for further compromise, particularly in this sphere. For to build the bridge between the knowledge of nature, that is, the knowledge of anything perceived, and the knowledge to which belong sin and redemption, in short, the religious truths—to set up a bridge between these two domains can be done only when man finds the courage really to penetrate to the spiritual. And what is more, should he not have this same courage he will never be able to discover reason where the truths of life are concerned. For penetrating spiritual reality we need above all the possibility of being able to in some measure look back to the threefold Sun-Mystery of olden days, to look back, however, in the new way suitable for present-day mankind. Precisely in the same way as the sun is a trinity so also is man. But it is important that we should really study this threefold man, and this study is of the utmost importance at the present time. Today I should like to give you diagrammatically something of a preparatory nature that can guide you to the path that must really be sought for the understanding of threefold man. Tomorrow and the day after we shall bring this important subject to a close.

Just imagine the following. What I am now sketching is only meant as a diagram. (see diagram 1). Imagine you had a figure that was merely a picture, an image, having no meaning in itself, in fact an image. I shall draw it like this—in a simple circle (see blue in diagram 1) a circular surface, that is, a form that is the image of something else, but through being an image has entirely consumed that something, of which it is the image. It sounds strange when I say the following but just consider it. In our cupola, in the small cupola, four ladies are working. Let us suppose these four ladies—two on either side—paint their own portraits, and that this has a particular sequel. Imagine these four ladies painting their own pictures in the small cupola, portraying themselves there, imagine that this self-portraiture has a quite definite sequel—the ladies disappear, pass over into their image and cease to exist. Having completed their work they no longer are there. Through the coming into existence of their images they are no longer there. Behind what I have here sketched, picture to yourselves a figure like that, a figure that has originated through being made by something of which it is the image but this something being absorbed, sucked up by the existence of the image. Now what is thus absorbed is not alone in the world. Picture to yourselves that we have not finished with these four ladies. Very good; these four ladies have disappeared—they have painted their own portraits and disappeared but the pictures are still there. And they are not alone there in the cosmos, the cosmos is still there with its forces besides. The ladies have vanished and have been as it were sucked up by the pictures; but by the pictures being there substance is assembled again out of the cosmos and the ladies are built up anew, as children new, it is true, but new; they gradually grow up again, grow up near by. And so, by the side of this figure, its original image blossoms anew (see yellow in diagram). I must make a little addition to the drawing, put it by the side—this is the archetypal image. It is the archetype, the prototype, but there is a very loose connection between the image and its prototype, a very loose connection indeed. The one has almost nothing to do with the other. The image has definitely hardened and has almost lost all connection with its prototype.

And now imagine a second figure. I will sketch the second figure so that I make it also as an image (see violet in centre diagram), only the first is inside the second. Thus I boldly draw the second over the first. This is again an image of the same kind. Again an image resembling another that I will draw here also (see red in diagram); but these have now to be more closely connected. Therefore, as the matter stands, I cannot use the same comparison as I did earlier with the four ladies, but now when I want to make a comparison with regard to this picture and its image I must say: The four ladies are there: they are painting in the small cupola, and as they paint something actually—goes out from them, is sucked out. They are, however, only half sucked out, and finally they are—no I will say something else that will not call up an inartistic comparison—from one the left half of the body is sucked up while the right projects out of the picture; from the other the right side is sucked out, the left still projecting. Thus they are partly sucked out and partly still jut out. That is the second.

Now picture a third that again embraces the first and also the second (see green in diagram.) This, however, is to a great extent connected with its image, not yet separated from it. So that if I want to keep strictly to the comparison I have to say: The ladies are painting, but they are still there as ladies, and everything I have before me as a whole is the ladies and their images—that is there (see orange in diagram) and the greatest part is also present in the prototype.

So you have here drawn diagrammatically, first above, an image grown hard, crystallized, that has as little as possible to do with its prototype; the latter being by the side of it, newly arising. That is indeed your head, the most material and the hardest part of human nature. Its prototype has just nothing to do with it, arises afresh. And when you reach twenty-eight years of age, your head becomes so that out of itself nothing is forthcoming, nothing is to be developed. In the constitution of man the greatest materialist is the head.

A second figure is breast and breathing and everything belonging to these. I could almost use the second as a model. That is rather more connected, spirit and matter depending more upon each other; here it is more permeated with spirit. All that is lung and breathing process is for the earth already more spiritual.

And what remains, the limb system in connection with all that has to do with sex, there spiritual and physical are one, there they are still together. This belongs to the third diagram. And you have threefold man.

Today I have been able to draw this only diagrammatically on the board. This majestic and profound mystery, at the same time wonderful and fearful, is connected with the Mystery of the threefold Sun. This again is connected with all the truths that we need, as we need the bread of life, for everything that must be put in place of what is chaos, what has reached a blind alley, and has led to the present human catastrophe.

We shall speak of this further tomorrow.

• 1. Compare The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ 24.IV.22
  
  Compare An Occult Psychology Lecture. I 17.VIII.18.
• 2. See Whitsuntide lecture Dornach 6-9-24 page 7.

Yesterday I showed you threefold man diagrammatically. It is indeed true that in our present life of spirit very little feeling exists for the understanding of man's being as it must be grasped from the standpoint of spiritual science. Nevertheless, we must bestir ourselves to get a clearer understanding of man's being. For it is out of the understanding bound up with threefold man that we are able to master also the most significant conceptions that must be gained concerning the whole of human life, including man's development between death and a new birth.

Today let me just consider in detail this threefold man. Yesterday indeed we saw how first of all we have to point to man's head. In a certain sense this human head is really a kind of independent form of being. You can picture to yourselves the human skeleton and how easily the head can be detached; it can be lifted off like a ball. It is true that in reality the separation between the three members of man's nature is not so simple that we can describe what can thus easily be lifted off like a ball as the head part. Things are not so definitely separated. We have gradually to work ourselves away from the purely diagrammatic away too, from what nature herself suggests, to a living feeling, a living experience And, as you saw, I had yesterday to draw not indeed three circles lying next each other, but one circle for the head, a second circle that overlapped the head, and a third circle that overlapped both the others. So that if we would draw threefold man diagrammatically in accordance with his physical nature, we should have to show him thus: Head part (see circle A in diagram 1; body (oval); and the limb-system; really three balls even if these balls have to be drawn out longwise. With the head part, with what is here shown as the red circle A, is connected the spiritual which is, as you saw yesterday, a young formation (see small yellow circle) This spiritual part of the head is a young spiritual formation whereas the head itself is an old physical formation, a physical form-being. For the head, what is applied to man in general is pre-eminently right; it is not right when applied thus in general but for the head it is right. What with regard to the head, I have shown here as white, spiritual, is outside the head when you are asleep. When you are awake it is united with the head and then for the most part inside the physical head. It is therefore separated most easily from the physical head, going out and coming back inside again.

That is certainly not so as soon as we come to the middle man, the breast man, shall we call him? What is enclosed by the thorax, by the breast cavity, enclosed by the ribs and the backbone, is bound up with the spiritual, and when you sleep the spiritual is not so pronouncedly outside; for this breast man during sleep it remains in close connection with the physical.

And for the third man of the limb-system, to which sex man belongs, there is practically no real separation between the sleeping and waking conditions. One definitely cannot say that the soul-spiritual actually disconnects itself in sleep; it remains more or less united. So that one can well draw this other diagram of waking man saying: when physical man is awake (see a in diagram 1) then the spiritual man would be thus (yellow with circle a) And this would be sleeping man (see b diagram 1); the spiritual remains you see more or less connected with the body, and only this goes outside. From a certain standpoint this would be the actual drawing for the contrast between waking and sleeping man.

Now if you are to understand the important things now to be described, you will only do so by crossing this membering of threefold man with another membering of man that is linked with what I was describing here recently.

And if once more we go over head, breast man, man of the limb system, we can say that in the truest sense man is only breast-man. He it is into whom the Elohim breathed the breath of life. He is the breathing man. The division here is not so simple as in the skeleton; the breathing process through nose and mouth belongs to the breast man. Thus the partition in reality is not so easy, to show diagrammatically as one would wish. However these are the difficulties to be expected in understanding a matter of this kind.

Thus the actual man, man on earth, is in a sense breast-man. And head-man, as physical form, is something that is not man through and through. It cannot be said that it is man all through. It even has in it much that is ahrimanic. In effect, it is organized as it is because certain formative principles are particularly present in it that have remained there since the old Sun—the second stage of earth-evolution. Our head, in all its complicated formation, would not be as it is had it not received its first form in those primeval days of the old Sun-evolution. Thus they are actually old, primeval formative principles today projected into the earth-sphere, and for this reason we must call them ahrimanic. Survivals of old principles are always to be looked upon according to the point of view as either ahrimanic or luciferic. The middle-man, the breast-man is what makes man of the earth, and where the principles of becoming earthly are mainly in play.

Neither is the man of the limb-system wholly man, but is permeated by the luciferic; its formative principles are not yet complete in their development, and will not be so until the earth has reached its Venus stage, or till the Jupiter age is passing over into the Venus age. By the time the Venus age has come these formative principles will be working at their full intensity, in their correct form. (He might say that today they are still developing mere shadows of the real being of this third part of man's nature, the extremities-man.) Thus we presuppose what will only be in existence at the time of Venus, and make an incomplete picture of it in seed form, not letting it go beyond the seed form.

This is how the matter stands when considered cosmically. To look cosmically at our formation, in our heats-forces we are repeating the old Sun-period, in our breast we carry the earth evolution, and in so far as we are extremity man we bear in us the seed of the Venus evolution. This is regarded from the cosmic point of view.

Considered humanly—it is rather different. There we must look upon the human individuality as it progresses from incarnation to incarnation. Then we have to say: what in this incarnation we carry as our head, shows itself to be connected with our previous incarnation; what we now bear in us as breast-man is really only related to our present incarnation; what we have in us as as extremity man will become head in our next incarnation, is already related to our next incarnation. I have said previously: there is something revealing in the head especially in its negative. If you were to take an impression of the physiognomy of your head and consider it, you would recognise in this negative much of what had its origin in your previous incarnation.¹

It is just the other way round with the extremities man. You cannot here take an impression but must proceed differently. Think away in man the head and the breast-system. But imagine all that your hands and legs do now—make a picture of what they do. Here you have to make a kind of map. You see, every time you do anything with your hands this is done at another place. They go around outside, they come into relation with other beings. If you would paint all that your hands and legs do, if you would draw a picture of what your hands and feet, arms and legs do in the course of your life—and this would be a very animated picture!—in this drawing you would discover a complicated map, where you would find revealed what is stored up in you karmically for your next incarnation. In this map you would be able to read a great deal of the karma of your next incarnation. This is of profound significance. As the negative impression of the physiognomy when at rest, reveals in the firm outlines of the drawing, what in the previous incarnation has already happened, so what one can jot down of the movements of arms, hands, legs and feet are extraordinarily instructive about what the man will do in his next incarnation. This is particularly instructive about what he will carry out, where he will go, where his legs will take him. If you simply follow in his track to all the places where his legs will carry him, you could make a map of it. You would get remarkable patterns on which men's secret inclinations are not without their influence. Much of man's secret inclinations are not without their influence. Much of man's secret inclination is expressed in these patterns. These traces that are there are most revealing for what his next incarnation will bring to a man. Now we have been considering this from the human point of view, whereas the other was a cosmic view.

This membering of man that has the present in view signifies, however, a connection with the secrets of the old Mysteries, in which the matter was recognized in a more atavistic way, but where the secrets I have just been disclosing to you were already known. There is a beautiful saga concerning King Solomon about the certainty with which man sets his foot on the place where he is destined to meet his death. The meaning of the saga is that a definite place exists on earth where man will die, and thither man directs his footsteps.² This is connected with the old Mystery-Knowledge.

Now when man is living his ordinary life he has actually only his ordinary consciousness; but as we have seen this man is a highly complicated being. When he is awake, when he has his head, his most recent spiritual member, in his physical head, he knows nothing of this head. You will be right in saying: Thank God we do not know anything of our head for knowing of our head means to have a headache. Men only know about their head when it aches; then they are conscious of having a head, otherwise they are unconscious of it—unconscious to a most remarkable degree, far more so than in the case of any other member of the human physical body. Man may count himself lucky when in normal consciousness he knows nothing of his head. But beneath this consciousness of the head that ordinarily takes notice only of the outer world, that only gets as far as knowing what is around it—beneath this consciousness lies another, a kind of dream consciousness, dream-knowing. Your head, my dear friends, is always dreaming. And while you are conscious of the outer world in the way familiar to you, under the threshold of consciousness, in the subconscious, you are actually perpetually dreaming. And what you are dreaming, if you were able to bring this head dreaming into your consciousness and fully grasp it, would give you a picture, a correct comprehensive picture, of your previous incarnation. For in your head unconsciously, you are dreaming of your former incarnation. That is indeed so. There is always a slight consciousness of your previous incarnation going on, a dreaming consciousness, only it is overpowered by the strong light of of ordinary consciousness.

By the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, the external consciousness had become so strong that gradually this subconsciousness of the previous incarnation was completely extinguished. Before that year, however, man knew a great deal about this dream consciousness of the head. For this reason you find everywhere at the basis of the ancient cultures repeated lives on earth treated as a fact. This is due simply to the sub-consciousness of the head not then having receded so completely into the background as it did in the course of the fourth, but principally the fifth post-Atlantean age. Even in ordinary consciousness very little is known of what is connected in a soul-spiritual way with the thorax and the middleman. It is in itself of a dream nature. This middle, thorax consciousness sometimes pushes up into man's dream consciousness, but only very chaotically and irregularly. If a man is able to breathe regularly, when his heart beat even is when in fact all the functions of man's thorax, his middle part, are in order, the consciousness of this part is not so clear as that of the head; it too in ordinary life runs its course dream fashion. We dream in our feeling, as I have stated here during past years, in feeling we dream of this middle man. But when we bring to light through consciousness, that becomes more clairvoyant, what lies in the feeling, what man experiences only in his feeling, or to put it differently, when man learns to look at what is going on in his thorax, as otherwise he can only look at what is in his head consciousness, then the consciousness of the thorax, the middle-body splits definitely into two parts. One part dreams itself back into the whole time between the previous death and the most recent birth or conception. Therefore while in your head consciousness in a dream way, in deep dreaming, you have unconsciously what was in your previous incarnation, in the dreams of your thorax you have what has meantime been passing since that incarnation up to your present birth. And in the dreams that belong more to the lower part of the thorax you have a definite consciousness of what there will be between your coming death and next earth life. Thus the consciousness concentrated in the breast, which, however, for modern man remains more or less subconscious, is in reality a dream consciousness of both the time before this birth and the time after the next death. For this subconsciousness in the middle man the riddle is solved of what lies between our last earthly death and the following earthly conception, with the exception of or even including what we are now experiencing between birth and death.

Out of the third man, out of the subconsciousness of the extremities man, the tableau of the next incarnation on earth can be developed in what during the whole of life remains strictly subconscious. This can only be brought to the surface when a man is able to draw it up through ceaseless activity in the study and exercises of spiritual science, so that certain moments of sleep-life that otherwise would pass in unconscious sleep, are lifted to the surface and the man then becomes conscious during sleep. What today man has as waking consciousness is really a kind of collateral impulse of his which rays into the head from outside. Behind this consciousness, however, lies another that stretches itself over the former incarnation, over the life of that incarnation to this one, over the life of this incarnation to the next, and then over the next again. But man sleeps away this consciousness.

In the head it is the consciousness of the previous incarnation. In all the organs that principally serve the out-breathing there works a strong consciousness of the life between the previous incarnation and this one. In all the principle functions that serve the in-breathing works a consciousness of the present incarnation up to the next incarnation on earth. And in the limb-system, in all its most secret processes, works a consciousness of the next human incarnation, which remains pre-eminently subconscious.

These states of consciousness have become more less veiled since the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, 747 years before the Mystery of Golgotha. And the cry of our age is for the definite consciousness of the concrete events of cosmic and human evolution to be brought back out of the general chaos of human consciousness.

We must meet all that I have just been developing with another aspect of what is part of the being of man. You see it is really necessary that we should enter into these difficult details, otherwise we cannot arrive at an exact understanding. I should very much welcome it if such knotty points were met not only by a certain passive acceptance, but—and this is so necessary for present day man—that even for these difficult matters a little enthusiasm were aroused, a little keen participation, which is exactly what is so hard in any society today.

Now, you turn your senses outward. There by means of your senses you find the external world spread out as something perceptible. I will draw diagrammatically what lies around us outside as something spread out for the senses. Allow this (see blue in diagram 2) to be what is lying outside. When you direct your eyes, your ears, your sense of smell, or whichever sense you like, to the external world, the inner side of this outside turns towards you, turns towards your senses Thus this is the inner side of the outside (see left of diagram). Suppose you turn your senses here to what I have drawn (see arrows). These are the senses directed towards the outer world and you see what here inside inclines within. Now follows the difficult conception to which, however, I have to come. Everything you look at there presents itself to you from inside. Imagine it must also have an outside. So I will call it up diagrammatically before your souls saying: When you look out thus you see the permanent as the limit of your vision; that is approximately so, only I have drawn it small. But now imagine you could quickly fly out there, fly beyond there and take a peep through from the other side and from the other side see your sense impressions. You could look out thus (see upper arrows in diagram). No, naturally you do not see this but, could you thus look at it, it would be the other aspect. You would have to go outside yourself, you would have to look from the other side at your whole perceptible world. You would see the reverse side of what meets you as color, what meets you as sound, and so on. You would see the reverse of what comes to you as smell, you would receive the smell in your nose from behind. Thus, imagine your view of the world from the other side; imagine the perceptible things spread out like a carpet, and now the carpet viewed from the other side. You see only a little bit of this reverse side, a very little bit indeed. I can only represent this little bit by doing it like this. Imagine now that I am drawing in red what you would see from the other side, so that I can say, one sees the perceptible diagrammatically thus. To one's ordinary view it appears blue; seen from the other side it appears red (but naturally one does not see it.) In what you would see red, is hidden first that is experienced between death and a new birth; secondly, everything described in Occult Science as the evolutions of Saturn, Sun, Moon, Earth and so forth. Everything hidden from sense perception lies there stored up. There it is, on the other side of the sphere, but you see only a little bit. I can indicate this best by saying: take this small bit of red; this goes over (see below in diagram) and crosses the blue, so that the blue instead of being, as now, in front, is behind. (were I to draw in accordance with reality, I should have to do so in four dimensions, so I can only keep to what is quite diagrammatic.) Thus the senses here are now turned to the blue (left); there they do not turn to the blue but to the red which moreover you do not see. Behind the red, however, there crosses what otherwise would be seen and that is now underneath. And this little bit that crosses the other there, you see continually with your ordinary consciousness. It is indeed your stored up memories. What arises as memory does not arise in accordance with the laws of the outer world of the senses but according to laws suitable to this world that is behind. What is within as your memories is what is suited to the other side (right). As you look within on all your memories you are actually looking at a bit of the world on the other side; the other projects inwards a little and then you see the world from the other side. And if now you could slip through your memories thus received (I spoke of this a week ago,)³ if you could get underneath and see below your memories, look at them from the other aide from down there (see right in diagram), you would see them as your aura, There you would see man as a being with a soul-spiritual aura just as ordinarily you look at the external world of sense perceptions. But as I showed you a week ago this would be hardly pleasant because man on this other side is not yet beautiful.

Thus these are the interesting features of what must work across the other knowledge we have of threefold man. This crossing takes place here in the middle man, the breast-man. You remember the drawing I made a week ago where I had the lemniscates with one loop reversed, turned inside out; I must draw those here I must draw here the breast man with the leminscates described. (see below on left of diagram.) That would coincide with the sphere of memory. So that in his middle part the threefold man has this turnabout where the inner becomes outer and the outer inner. Here you now have in your own small microcosmic memory a tableau, what otherwise you would see as the cosmic tableau—as the great cosmic memory. In your ordinary consciousness you see what you have been collecting since about your third year until now; this is an inner record, a little bit of what is of the same kind as the other record for the whole world-evolution and lies on the other side.

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It was not without reason that I once told you that man actually has twelve senses. Most of you know this quite well and I have mentioned it also in the notes at the end of my last book Riddles of the Soul. We must think of the senses in this way: that a number of them are turned towards what is sense-perceptible, whereas others are directed backwards. Below they are directed towards what is turned back. Those directed towards what is perceptible to the senses are: the ego sense, and the senses of thinking, speech, hearing, seeing, taste and smell; they go towards what is sense perceptible. The other senses do not come into man's consciousness because they are first of all directed toward what is within him and then to what in the world is reversed. These are the senses of warmth, life, balance, movement and touch. We can therefore say that for the ordinary consciousness seven senses lie in the light (above in diagram 3) and five in the dark (below). And the five senses lying in the dark are turned to the other side of the cosmos, turned also to the reverse side in man (see diagram 2).

You therefore have a complete parallel between the senses and something else of which we are going to speak. (see diagram 3) Let us suppose we have to note down as senses: hearing, speaking, thinking, the ego-sense, and the senses of warmth, balance, movement, touch, smell, taste, sight; then you will have essentially all of them from ego-sense to sense of smell lying in the light, in what is accessible to the ordinary consciousness (see shading in diagram 3). And all that is turned away from ordinary consciousness, as night turns away from day, belongs to the other senses.

Naturally the boundary is also diagrammatic, there is an overlapping—reality is not always accommodating. But this membering of man according to his senses is so that, even in the diagram, you only need draw in place of the senses the signs of the Zodiac, and you have Ram, Bull, Twins, Cancer, Lion, Virgin, Scales, seven signs for the light side and five for the dark: Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Waterman, Fishes; day, night: night,day, Here you have a perfect parallel between microcosmic man—what is turned towards his senses and what is turned away but really turned towards the senses—and what in the cosmos signifies the change from day to night. In a way the same thing happens to man, as in the cosmic edifice. In the cosmic edifice there is an interchange between day and night, in man there is also the interchange of day and night in his waking and sleeping, even though both may have emancipated themselves from each other for the present cycle of man's consciousness. During the day man is turned towards his day-senses, or we might say to Ram, Bull, Twins, Cancer, Lion, Virgin, Scales, as we might say ego-sense, sense of thinking, speech and so on. Every ego can see that of another man, you can understand the thoughts of another man, you can hear, see, taste, smell—those are day-senses. In the night it is the same with man as when the earth is turned towards the other side; man is turned in the night to his other senses, only these are not yet fully developed. Not until the Venus age will they be so fully developed that they can perceive what is on the other side. They are not yet sufficiently developed to perceive what is towards the other side. This is shrouded by night just as the earth is shrouded when passing by night through the other heavenly bodies, the other pictures of the zodiac. The passage of man through his senses is a perfect parallel with the course—whether you say the course of the sun round the earth or the earth round the sun is immaterial for our purpose; but those things are connected. And with these connections, the wise men of the Old Mysteries were very well acquainted.

In the fourth post-Atlantean period this gradually vanished from consciousness but it must be brought back in spite of the resistance put up against this; it must be reinstated in the cultural life of mankind. For in these concepts that man makes his own there lies what lets us see quite clearly all that is happening now in the social, historical life. So long as you separate the life of nature from that of the spirit, as modern man loves to do, you do not arrive at concepts that can play a part in historical evolution; you are overpowered by the concepts that are working in historical life. Overpowered: There are indeed many instances of this.

Now you will agree that men believe that, shall we say, for two hundred years they have been thinking a tremendous deal. We can gather up what they have been thinking for two hundred years, what they have developed as ideals, what they have talked of still talk of, as great ideals. We can do this from the time of the ideals of the age of enlightenment to that of the great would-be Caesar, Woodrow Wilson. All that is talked of about the various ideals, men have been thinking during these centuries, these last two centuries; this has formed men's thoughts. World history, however, is very little affected by these thoughts, world history has been affected by something quite different, by the thoughts that have been working and weaving in things. And in reality never were the thoughts filling men's heads farther removed from the great cosmic thoughts living in things than at the present time. What for the last hundred and fifty years, shall we say, has prompted man to work for a definite fashioning of the world is not thoughts of freedom, equality, brotherhood, justice, and so on and so forth, it is the thoughts interwoven with the coming of the machine loom. That the machine loom arose in modern development in the second half of the eighteenth century; that this significant invention took the place in mankind's evolution of the old hand-weaving; that from the machine loom came the whole machine civilisation of modern times; in all this there weave the objective thoughts the real thoughts, that have given the world its present form, out of which has arisen the present chaotic catastrophe. Should we wish to write a history of this catastrophe, we have not to turn to the thoughts teeming in human consciousness; we must turn to the objective thoughts of the founding, the invention, of the machine loom up to the development of big industry with its shadow, socialism. for even if these two things, big industry and socialism, appear as opposites they are polaric opposites belonging to one another, and as such inseparable.

We must put our questions to these objective thoughts and observe history in its becoming. Then we find that during the eighteenth century, all through the nineteenth, and especially so far as we have gone in this our twentieth century, men have given themselves up to many illusions. They are given over to illusion in their thoughts; but the objective, historic-cosmic thoughts have completely overwhelmed them. These are weaving in things. And an interest—though terribly one-sided—for these objectively weaving thoughts has really been gradually developed only by those who have built up socialism as a world-conception. That is something tremendously characteristic. If you follow the course of the nineteenth century you will see that the bourgeoisie increasingly loses interest in the great questions of world outlook. These great questions are indeed becoming most distasteful to the bourgeoisie; where possible they relegate them to aesthetics. A perfectly average bourgeois will listen in the theatre to all kinds of discussions about whether there are spiritual beings or not, when there is no need to believe in them, and when it is not a question of the truth of anything. Then the most varied matters can be put forward by Björnsen and people of that ilk. And what concerns the conception of the world is today for the bourgeoisie transferred into the realm of aesthetics, into all manner of dabbling with so-called art. In recent years people have been breaking each others heads over questions concerning conceptions of the world in the sphere of socialism. (I don't look on this as an ideal in a physical sense but in a spiritual sense in a certain way it is so. You know how I have hinted emphatically that I like a little warmth even in the treatment of anthroposophical truths.) The other people have not troubled themselves about this head-breaking but have left those alone who have looked at the world from what is really a very narrow point of view, those who have only seen the world from the aspect of the factory, from the inside of factories, from the inside of printing works, and so on. And it is extremely interesting what kind of world outlook has been produced out of the point of view of the factory—for that is socialism, my dear friends. It is the factory aspect, the aspect of men who know nothing beyond the inside of their factories. And in all that has developed in this sphere, little interest has been really shown by the bourgeoisie with their abstract ideas; the bourgeoisie who even concern themselves with aesthetics in an abstract way to avoid the breaking of heads. Thus in a curious way the bourgeoisie have found themselves between the old completely moribund world-conception bereft of the spiritual that would prefer to relegate all great questions to the realm of aesthetics, and what has newly arisen as socialism. This socialism has so far no concepts at all; it is a system founded entirely on words. This is because as yet it has no view of the world whatever and can only see the factory, and even so only the most external part of the mechanism. Just imagine what it really means when a man has no inner knowledge of the kingdoms of the minerals, the plants, the animals, and only knows of the way in which a certain cock is moved mechanically up or down in a machine, this or that filed or planed, and things of that kind: Socialism is a world-outlook founded on the perception of a purely mechanical world. It is the bit of the world cut out by the socialist—the bit that is mechanical, and on this he builds his concepts.

This has been allowed to arise through men adopting the principle of only troubling themselves about things aesthetically. When the Theosophical Society was first formed it had as its basis principle the mutual love of all mankind. How this was breached: But I have said enough on that point; its easiness equals its fruitlessness. But this also arises from the desire whenever possible to push what has actual content into the realm of what has none. So there could be no genuine interest in the real course of things. Individual people however have found pleasure in the peculiar—we should say conventional—way of considering history.

Now let us take an example of this; let me take whatever example you like from the time of the Caesars; try to learn about this time from the text books, or any books written by the great historical authorities. I fancy you will gain very little knowledge in this way about a certain personality who in the reign of Nero played an important political part (so even under Nero you could have political aspirations!) This personality aroused quite special notice and gained considerable influence on Roman politics under Vespasian and Titus, so much so that it may be said that he was the soul of the Government under these two emperors. Then this personality went over to the other side in the reign of Domitian considering him as a disaster for the Roman Empire. He turned to the other side and a lawsuit was brought against him, a lawsuit that made a great deal of stir in Rome and was of much interest. During this case Domitian changed suddenly from the tyrant into one who did not know how to proceed in the lawsuit and was therefore unable to pass sentence on the man. Then again, as Nero succeeded Domitian, we see this personality actively connected with the Emperor, the Caesar. We watch him creating out of the whole world-conception of that day what was great in politics, and at the same time see how he once more sought to implant for the last time during the Roman Empire into the political events really vast concepts brought down from the cosmos. Strangely enough in no current history book do you find any accurate account of this personality, not even in Seutonius or Tacitus, only in Philostratus. And Philostratus describes him in such a way that one does not know whether he is giving a picture of any Roman or of a real man—he paints the life of Apollonius of Tyana. For it is Apollonius of Tyana of whom I have been speaking as having had so great an influence on politics from the time of Nero to that of Nerva, and especially under Vespasian and Titus; and Philostratus describes him. Bauer the theologian and historian of Tübingen was absolutely astounded that one should thus find nothing about such a personality as Apollonius who played a part of the utmost importance in what is historically represented. Naturally Bauer did not see into the real reason for this; for it is a question of our having in Apollonius a historical personality wielding indeed this great influence but drawing down his principles straight from the cosmos above. That was in the highest degree fatal for the Christianity then arising in Rome. And now I shall ask you to take notice that everything in history is there by grace of the Church. There is nothing in history except what the Church has allowed man to have. Not without justification has an old and by no means foolish man maintained that there was never a Plato nor a Sophocles, but that monks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries wrote their plays—for there is no proof, no strict proof of their existence. Even though the assertion is untenable, is indeed nonsense, nevertheless, as we have often emphasised, all that is conventional history is most uncertain. And we should be quite clear about it. We must indeed bring the present into connection with the past, for we are now coming to a great and pregnant question.

We have once more this time from the modern point of view, referred to threefold man, his connection with cosmic truths and the necessity for all this again to be disclosed. Now, my dear friends, in what has consisted the main activity of the Church, especially since the eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 869? What has been its chief activity? Its chief activity has been to wipe out, to blot out from man's consciousness, what in those ancient times even Christianity still understood as the connection of man with the cosmos, with the great spiritual world. Everything betraying this connection has been suppressed in real alarm. And only because not everything can be suppressed, because Karma is working against this suppression, have such works remained as those of Philostratus. Therefore you can understand when now you bring the present into connection with the past that certain churchman are made terribly uneasy by the growing tendency to foster the connection between what makes roan a cosmic being, this man himself, and his task.

It is important that we do not merely pursue half-asleep what should be the will of the Anthroposophical Movement. We must pursue it as indeed is necessary with our consciousness full of life and force.

With this I have indicated what is to be continued and enlarged upon tomorrow.

• 1. See Lecture Z 104. 12.VIII.1916 The Twelve Senses and the Seven Life-Processes.
• 2. See Lecture Z 243. A Fragment of the Jewish Haggada
• 3. See lecture of 18.VIII.1918; Occult Psychology.

Certain questions will increasingly obtrude themselves upon those who really think, even though in these times of overwhelming materialism these thinkers would prefer to keep them more or leas at a distance. There are many such questions, and today I should like, out of all of them, to pick a few that arise from man, in spite of resisting it, becoming aware of the spiritual world. To such questions belong those, for instance, raised in the course of everyday life; certain men die young, others in old age, others again in middle life. Concerning the fact that on the one hand young children die and on the other hand people grow to old age and then die—concerning this fact questions arise in man to which by the means today called scientific the answer can never be found. Everyone has to own this after inner reflection. Yet in human life these are burning questions; and surely anyone can feel that infinitely much in life must receive enlightenment when we can really get down to these questions: why do some human beings die early, some as children, some as adolescents, some in the middle of the normal period of life? Why do other die old? What significance has this in the whole cosmos?

Men still had ideas, concepts, with which to answer these questions up to that point of time described in these lectures, the time at the beginning of the fourth post-Atlantean period, that is, up to approximately the middle of the eighth pre-Christian century. Men had concepts that came down out of ancient wisdom. In those olden times before the eighth pre-Christian century, ideas were in fact circulating everywhere in the cultural life of the earth giving men, in conformity with the mind of those times, the solution to such questions as are here mentioned. What today we call science cannot connect the right meaning with these questions and has no idea that there is something in them for which men should be seeking a possible answer. All this arises because since the point of time indicated, all conceptions related to spiritual and therefore to immortal man have actually been lost. Only these conceptions remain that are connected with man's transitory nature, man between his birth and his death. I have drawn attention to how in all the old world-conceptions they spoke of the Sun as being threefold; the same sun that is perceived out there by the physical senses as a shining sphere in cosmic space. But behind this sun the wise men of old saw the soul-sun, according to the Greeks Helios, and behind this soul-Sun again, the spiritual-Sun, still identified by Plato, for example, with the Good. Modern men do not see any real sense in speaking of Helios, the soul-Sun, or for that matter of the spiritual-Sun, the Good. But as the physical sun shines upon us here between birth and death, there shines into our ego, if I may say so, during the time we pass between death and a new birth, the spiritual sun identified by Plato with the Good. And during this time between death and a new birth, to speak of a shining sphere in the way it is spoken of in our modern materialistic world-conception has no meaning. Between death and a new birth there is only meaning when we speak of the spiritual-Sun Plato still referred to as the Good. A concept of this kind is just what should show us something. It should lead us to reflect how the matter really stands with regard to the physical representation we form of the world. It is not taken seriously in its full sense, at any rate not so seriously that our outlook on life is actually permeated by it, that in all our physical representations of the world, in what is spread out perceptibly before us, we have to see a kind of illusion, Maya.

It is indeed fundamentally this kind of representation of the Sun that anyone accepts when taking as his authority modern physics, astrophysics, whatever you like to call it. If he were able to travel to the place where the physicist places the sun, on approaching it he would—now let us turn from the conditions of human life and assume that absolute conditions of life could prevail—he would become aware of overpowering heat, this is how he would picture it. And when he had arrived inside the space that the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist considers to be filled by the sun, he would find in this space red hot gas or something of the kind. This is what the physicist actually pictures—a ball of glowing gas or something like it. But it is not so, my dear friends, that is definitely maya, complete illusion. This representation cannot hold water in face of true physical perception that is possible, let alone what can actually be perceived spiritually. Were it possible to get near the sun, to reach where the sun is, we should find yes, indeed, an getting near, we should find something that would have the same effect as going through floods of light. But when we came right inside, where the physicist supposes the sun to be, we should find first what we could only call empty space. Where the physical sun is supposed to be there is nothing at all, absolutely nothing. I will draw it diagrammatically (blue centre in yellow circle, diagram not available) but in reality nothing is there; there is nothing, there is empty space. But it is a strange kind of empty space: When I say there is nothing there I am not speaking quite accurately—there is less than nothing there. It is not only empty space for there is less than nothing there. And that is something that is an extraordinarily difficult idea for the modern western man to picture. Even today men of the east take this as a matter of course; for them there is absolutely nothing strange or difficult to understand when they are told that less than nothing is there. The man of the west thinks to himself—especially when he is a hard and fast follower of Kant, and there are far more followers of Kant today than those who are consciously so—he thinks to himself that if there is nothing in space then it is just empty space! However this is not the case, there can also be exhausted space. And if indeed you were to look right through this corona of the sun, you would feel the empty space into which you would then enter most uncomfortable—that is to say it would tear you asunder. By that it would show its nature, that it is more—or it is less, however we can best express it, than empty space. You need only seek the help of the simplest mathematical concept and when I say empty space is less than just emptiness you will no longer find my meaning so puzzling. Now let us assume you possess some kind of property. It can also happen that you have given away what you possess and have nothing. But we can have less than nothing, we can have debts. Then we do actually have less than nothing. If we pass from fullness of space to its ever diminishing fullness, we can come to empty space; and we can still go an beyond mere emptiness just as we can go beyond having nothing to having debts. It is a great weakness of the modern world outlook that it does not know this particular kind of—if I may so express it—negative materiality, that it only knows emptiness or fullness and not what is less than emptiness. For because knowledge today, the world outlook today is ignorant of what is less than emptiness, this world outlook is more or less held in the bonds of materialism, strictly confined by materialism—I should like to say, under the ban of materialism. For in man also there is a place that is emptier than empty, not in the whole of him but where there are layers of what is emptier than empty. As a whole, man, physical man, is a being who materially fills a certain space; but there is a certain member of man's nature, of the three I have referred to, that actually has something in it like the sun, emptier than empty. That is—yet, my dear friends, you'll have to put up with it—it is the head. And it is just because man is so organised that his head can become empty and in certain parts more than empty, that this head has the power to make room for the spiritual. Now just picture the matter as it actually is.

Naturally we have to picture things diagrammatically, but use your imagination and picture that everything materially filling your head I am going to draw in the following way. This is the diagram of your head (see red in diagram 5). but now, if I want to draw it properly, I shall have to leave empty places in this head, these naturally are not very big; but there inside are empty places. And into these empty places can enter what I have recently been calling the young spirit. In these spaces the young spirit with its rays, as it were, is drawn (see yellow in diagram 5).

Now, my dear friends, the materialists say that the brain is the instrument of the soul-life, of the thinking. The reverse is the truth. The holes in the brain, what indeed is more than holes, or one could just say as well less than holes, what therefore is emptier than empty, that is the instrument of the soul-life. And here where the soul-life is not, into which the soul-life is continually pushing, where the space in our skull is filled with brain substance here nothing is thought, here is no soul-experience.

We do not need our physical brain for our life of soul; we need it only to lay hold of our soul-life, physically to lay hold of it. And if the soul-life were not actually alive in the holes of the brain, pushing up everywhere, it would vanish, it would never reach our consciousness. But it lives in the holes of our brain that are emptier than empty.

Thus we have gradually to correct our concepts. When we stand in front of a mirror we do not perceive ourselves but only our reflected image. We could forget ourselves ... We see ourselves in the mirror. In the same way man does not experience himself by putting together with his brain what is lying in the holes in that brain. He experiences the way in which his soul-life is everywhere reflected by pushing up against the brain substance. It is reflected everywhere, and man experiences it; what he experiences is actually its reflected image. All that has slipped into the holes, however, because it is then permeated by consciousness in the contrary sense is what makes man conscious when without the resistance of the brain he goes through the gate of death. Now I should like to draw another diagram. Take the following: forgive me if I am rather drastic in portraying the brain and how the holes are left (blue in diagram 6). Here is the brain substance and here the brain leaves its holes and into these holes goes the life of the soul. (yellow)

This soul-life, however, continues, just outside the holes. There come to what naturally is only seen near man but projects indefinitely—man's aura. Now let us think away the brain and imagine we are looking at the soul-life of an ordinary man between birth and death. We should then have to say that seen in this way the condition of the real man between birth and death is such that actually his face is turned to his body thus (see lilac). It is true I shall have to draw this diagram differently. He turns his soul-life to the corporeal. And when we look at the brain the soul-life stretches out like a feeler that creeps into the holes of the brain. What there I made yellow here I make lilac, because that is more appropriate for the view into the living man. Thus, that would be what runs into the brain of the living man.

If after this I want to draw, let us say, physical man, I could best indicate that by perhaps here drawing in for you the boundary set to the faculty of memory. You would go outside there and there you would have the outer boundary, the boundary of cognition, of which I have also spoken to you. For that you will just have to remember diagram 5 and diagram 3 drawn yesterday).

But now this is the reality—when man is looked at spiritually from without, his soul-life stretches into him thus... so I will draw the single elongation only where the brain is concerned (diagram 7). But this soul-life in itself is also differentiated. So to follow up this soul-life further I should have to draw... another region here (red under the lilac), here another region blue); thus all this would belong to what constitutes man's aura. Then another region (green). You see how this part I am now drawing lies beyond the boundary of man's cognition. Then the region (yellow)—in reality all this belongs to man—and this region (orange.)

When man is asleep this moves more or less out of the body, as it was drawn yesterday (diagram 2), but when man is awake it is more or lass within the body. So that actually, perceived with the soul, the aura is in the immediate vicinity of the body. And if the physical man is described this is done by saying that this physical man consists of lungs, heart, liver, gall and so on; This is done in physical anatomy, this is done in physiology. But you can do the same when describing the man of soul and spirit who in this way actually stretches out into the holes in man, in what is more than empty in man. You can describe this in the same way—only then you must mention of what this soul-and spirit man consists. just as in physical man the organs are differentiated, here the different currents must be separated. It can be said: in here where it is red, physical man would stand thus in profile, the face turned in this direction, for example, the eyes here (diagram 7), and here would be the region of burning desire (red). That would be part of the man of soul-and-spirit who has taken his substance from the region known in my book Theosophy as the region of burning desire. Thus something taken from burning desire and introduced into man gives this part of him.

If I am describing this in detail what I have here colored lilac I should have to call soul-life. As you know, a certain part of the soul-sphere, of the soul-land, has been given the name soul-life. This substance of it would have this violet color,this lilac, and forms in man a part of his soul-spiritual being.

And if we continue in this way the orange here would have to be called active soul-force. So that you have to remember that your soul-life is what during your life between birth and death enters you with most intensity by way of your senses. And behind, checking itself, not so well able to enter, held up by the soul-life, there is the active soul-force.

Still further behind there is what is called soul-light (yellow in diagram 8). To a certain extent attached to this soul-light, pressing itself through, there would be what is taken from the region of liking and disliking which I should have to give to the green area. Wishes, we should ascribe to the sphere of what is approximately blue. And now pushing up here, the real blue, that is approaching blue red, this would be the region of mobile susceptibility. These are auric currents that I here call burning desire, mobile susceptibility, and wishes. As you know, these auric currents, these auric streams, constitute the world of soul, they also constitute the man of soul and spirit who may be said to be built out
of the ingredients of this soul world.

Then when death comes the physical body falls away, and man withdraws what has projected into the holes in the body. He takes it away and by so doing (we can now think away physical man) he comes into a certain relation with the soul-world and then with the spirit-land as you will find it described in Theosophy. He has this relationship by having in him its ingredients, but during physical life these are bound up with the physical body and then they become free. Becoming free, however, as a whole it is gradually changed. During physical life—if I leave out the differentiations and draw the soul-life thus—the feelers (lilac in diagram 8) reach out into our holes; after death these feelers are drawn back. By their being drawn back, however, the soul-life itself becomes hollowed out and the life of the spirit coming from the other side rises into the life of soul (yellow).

In the same degree as man ceases to dive into the physical, the soul-spiritual lights up and, from the other side, penetrates his aura with light. And just as man is able to acquires a consciousness through the reflection caused by the continual pushing of the soul-spiritual against the physical body, he now acquires a consciousness by drawing himself back against the light. This light is that of the Sun, the original light that is the Good. Thus, whereas during his physical life as man of soul and spirit he pushes against what is related to the Sun, namely, against the more than empty holes in the brain, after death when he withdraws himself he pushes against the other Sun, the Good-Sun, the original sun.

You see, my dear friends, how the possibility of receiving concepts of life between death and a new birth is bound up with the basic ideas of primeval mysteries. For we are placed into this whole cosmic life in true way I have been picturing during these last few days. It is true, however, that we have to go more deeply into the framework of actual human evolution throughout earthly time to come to correct concepts of these matters. I think you will agree it might be possible that someone through a special stroke of luck—if one might so call it—were able to see clairvoyantly, the whole of what I have been describing. This stroke of luck, however, could only bring him to the point of seeing ever changing images. It is something like this—a man through some kind of miracle—but nowadays it would not happen through a miracle—or let us say through clairvoyant vision, super-sensible vision, a man might see something of the nature of what I have been trying to picture, namely man's life of soul and spirit. You will find it obvious that this should look rather different from what a short time ago I was describing as the normal aura, if you understand what I was describing only a few days ago as the aura revealed when the whole man is seen, that is, physical man with his encircling aura. But now I have taken out the man of soul und spirit, so that this man of soul and spirit has been abstracted from the physical man.

From this you recognise that in one case the colors have to be arranged in one way, in another case in another way; you recognise also that for super-sensible consciousness things look very different. Try simply to see man's aura—as it is while man is in the physical body—then look at this aura. Turn your attention that is, from the man of soul and spirit, and try to see the man why stretches out his organs into physical man. But when you see the man during the time between death and a new birth, then you also see how the whole changes. Above all, the region that is red here (Diagram 7) goes away, goes here, and the yellow goes below, the whole gradually gets into disorder. These things can be perceived but the percept has something confusing about it. Therefore it will not be easily possible for modern man to bring meaning and significance into this confusion if he does not turn to other expedients.

Now we have shown that man's head points to the past whereas the extremities man points to the future. This is entirely a polaric contrast, both the head and the extremities of man (remember what was said yesterday) are actually one and the same, only the head is a very old formation, it is overformed. That is why it has the holes; so far the extremities man has not these holes; on the surface he is still full of matter. To have these holes is a sign of over development. Development in a backward sense can be seen in the head and much hangs on that. Much depends too on man being able to understand that extremities man is a recent metamorphosis—the head an old metamorphosis. And because extremities man is a recent metamorphosis he has not so far developed the capacity to think in physical life but his consciousness remains unconscious; he does not open up to the man of soul and spirit such holes as are in the brain.

You see it is infinitely important for spiritual culture, and will in future become more and more so, for us to perceive that these two things that outwardly, physically, are as totally different from one another as the head man and extremities man, are according to soul and spirit, one and the same, and only differ because they are at different stages of development in time. Many mysteries lie in this particular fact that two equal physical things at different stages of their development in time, can be really one and the same that, though outwardly physically different, this is only due to the conditions of their change, of their metamorphosis.

Goethe with his theory of metamorphosis began in an elementary way to form concepts by which all this can be understood. Whereas otherwise since ancient times there has been a deadlock in the formation of concepts, with Goethe the faculty of forming concepts once more arose. And these concepts are those of living metamorphoses. Goethe, it is true, always began with the most simple. He said: when we look at a plant we have its green leaf; but the green leaf changes into the flower petal, into the colorsome petal of the flower. Both are the same, only one is the metamorphosis of the other. And as the green leaf of the plant and the red petal of the rose are different metamorphoses, the same thing at a different stage, man's head and his extremities organism too are simply metamorphoses of one another. When we take Goethe's thought on the metamorphosis of the plant we have something primitive, simple; but this thought can blossom into something of the greatest and can serve to describe man's passing from one incarnation to the next. We see the plant with its green leaf and its blossom, and say: this blossom, this red blossom of the rose is the metamorphosis of the green leaf of the plant. We see a man standing before us and say: that head you are carrying is the metamorphosis of arms, hands, legs, feet of your previous incarnation, and what you now have as arms, hands, legs and feet will be changed into your head of the next incarnation.

Now, however, will come an objection that evidently sits heavily on your souls. You will say: good gracious but I leave my legs and feet behind, my arms and hands too; I do not take them into my next incarnation ... how then should my head be made out of them? It is true, this objection can be made. But once again you are coming here up against Maya. It is not true that you actually leave behind your legs, feet, hands, arms. It is indeed untrue. You say that because you still cling to Maya, the great illusion.

What indeed with the ordinary consciousness you refer to as your arms, hands, legs and feet, are not your arms, hands, legs and feet at all, but what as blood and other juices fills out the real arms, hands, feet and legs. This again is a difficult idea but it is true. Suppose that here you have arms, hands, feet and legs, but that what is here is spiritual, spiritual forces. Now please to think that your arms, hands, legs and feet are forces—super-sensible forces. Had you these alone you would not see them with your eyes; they are filled out, these forces, with juices, with the blood, and you see what as mineral substance, fluid or partly solid—the smallest part solid—fills out what is invisible (hatching in diagram 9). What you leave in the grave or what is burnt is only what might be called the mineral enclosure. Your arms and hands, legs and feet are not visible, they are forces and you take them with you, you take the forms with you. You say: I have hands and feet. Anyone who sees into the spiritual world does not say: I have hands and feet, he says; there are spirits of form, Elohim, they think cosmic thoughts, and their thoughts are my arms and hands, my legs and feet; and their thoughts are filled out with blood and other fluids. But neither are blood and the other fluids what they appear physically; these again are the ideas of spirits of wisdom, and what the physicist calls matter is only outer semblance. The physicist ought to say when he comes to matter: here I come to the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom, the Kyriotetes. And where you see arms, hands, feet, legs, you cannot touch them but should say: here the spirits of form are building into these shapes their cosmic thoughts.

In short, my dear friends, strange as it sounds, there are no such things as your bodies, but where your body is in space there intermingled with one another live the cosmic thoughts of the higher hierarchies. And were you able to see correctly and not in accordance with Maya, you would say: into here there project the cosmic thoughts of the Exusiai, the spirits of form, the Elohim. These cosmic thoughts make themselves visible to me by being filled out with the cosmic thoughts of the spirits of wisdom. That gives us arms and hands, legs and feet. Nothing, absolutely nothing, as it appears in Maya is there before the spiritual vision, out there stand the cosmic thoughts. And these cosmic thoughts crowd together, are condensed, pushed into one another; for this reason they appear to us as these shadow figures of ours that go around, which we believe to have reality. Thus, as far as the physical man is concerned, he does not exist at all.

With certain justification we can say that in the hour of death the spirits of form separate their cosmic thoughts from those of the spirits of wisdom. The spirits of form take their thoughts up into the air, the spirits of wisdom sink their material thoughts into the earth. This brings it about that in the corpse an aftershadow of the thoughts of the spirits of wisdom still exists when the spirits of form have taken back their thoughts into the air. That is physical death—that is its reality.

In short, when we begin to think about the reality we come to the dissolution of what is commonly called the physical world. For this physical world derives its existence from the spirits of the higher hierarchies pushing in their intermingled thoughts, and I beg you to imagine that finely distributed quantities of water are introduced in some way which form a thick mist. That is why your body appears as a kind of shadow-form, because the thoughts of the spirits of form penetrate those of the spirits of wisdom, the formative thoughts enter the thoughts of substance. In face of this conception the whole world dissolve into the spiritual. We must, however, have the possibility of imagining the world to be really spiritual, of knowing that it is only apparent that my arms and hands, my feet and legs are given over to the earth. That is what it seems; in reality the metamorphosis of my arms and legs, hands and feet begins there and comes to completion in the life between death and a new birth, when my arms and legs, hands and feet become the head of my next incarnation.

I have been here telling you many things that perhaps at least in their form may have struck you as something strange. But what is all this ultimately of which we have been speaking but an ascending from man as he appears, to man as he really is, ascending from what lives externally in Maya to the successive ranks of the hierarchies.

It is only when we do this, my dear friends, that we are able to speak in a form that is ripe today of how man is permitted to know a so-called higher self. When we simply rant about a higher self, when we simply say: I feel a higher self within me . . . then this higher self is a mere empty abstraction with no content; for the ordinary self is in the hands of Maya, is itself Maya. The higher self has only one meaning when we speak of it in connection with the world of the higher hierarchies. To talk of the higher self without paying heed to the world that consists of the spirits of form and the angels, archangels and so on, to speak of the higher self without reference to this world, means that we are speaking of empty abstractions, and at the same time signifies that we are not talking of what lives in man between death and a new birth. For as here we live with animals, plants and minerals, between death and a new birth we live with the kingdoms of the higher hierarchies of whom we have so often spoken. Only when we gradually come nearer to these ideas and concepts (in a week, perhaps, we shall be speaking of them) shall we approach what can answer the question: why do many human beings die as mere children, many in old age, others in middle age?

Now, my dear friends, what I have just given you in outline are concrete concepts of what is real in the world. Truly they are not abstract concepts I have been describing, they are concrete concepts of world reality. These concrete concepts were given, for a more atavistic perception, it is true, in the ancient mysteries. Since the eighth pre-Christian century they have been lost to human perception, but through a deepening of our comprehension of the Christ-Being they must be found again. And this can only be realised on the path of spiritual science.

Let us make ourselves from a certain point of view another kind of picture of human evolution. We will here keep before us exceedingly important concepts. Now it can be said that when we go back in the evolution of man we discover—and I have often described this—that in ancient days men had more of the group-soul, and that the individual souls were membered into what was group-soul. You can read about this in various cycles:¹ we can then diagrammatically represent human evolution and say: in olden days there were group-souls and each of these split up (it would appear thus to soul perception but different for the perception of the spirit). But each of these souls clothed itself with a body that here in this figure I indicate with red strokes. (Diagram 10).

Up to the time of the Pythagorean school this drawing, or something like it, was always made and it was said: look at your body, so far as that is concerned men are separated, each having his own body (that is why the red strokes are isolated). Where the souls are concerned however, mankind is a unity, since we go back—it is true a long way back—to the group-soul. There we have a unity. If you think away the red, the while will form a unified figure (see diagram.)

There is sense in speaking of this figure only if we have first spoken of the spiritual as has been done here today; for then we know everything that is working together in these souls, how the higher hierarchies are working together on these souls. There is no sense in speaking of this figure if our gaze is not fixed on the hierarchies. It was thus that they spoke up to the time of the Pythagorean School; and it was from the Pythagorean School that Apollonius learned what I spoke about yesterday and about which I shall be talking further in these next weeks. But then after the eighth pre-Christian century, when the Pythagorean Schools were in their decadence, the possibility of thus speaking was lost. And gradually the concepts that are concrete, that have reality by being related to the higher hierarchies—these concepts have become confused and hazy to people. Thus there has come to them in the place of Angels, Archangels, Archai, Spirits of Form, Spirits of Movement, Spirits of Wisdom, Thrones, instead of all this concrete weaving of the spirit, they arrived at a concept that now played a certain part in the perception of the Greeks—the concept of the pneuma. Everything became hazily confused: Pneuma, universal spirit, this indistinct concept still so loved today by the Pantheists ... spirit, spirit, spirit ... I have often spoken of how the Pantheists place spirit everywhere; that goes back to Greek life. Again this figure is portrayed ... but you can now see how what was once concrete, the fullness of the Godhead, now became an abstract concept—Pneuma. The white is Pneuma, the red physical matter (see diagram 10) if we are considering the evolution of man. The Greeks, however, at least still preserved some perception of this Pneuma, for they always saw something of the aura. Thus, for them, what you can picture in these white branches was always of an auric nature, something really perceptible. There is the great significance of the transition from that constituted Greece to all that was Roman—that the Greeks still in their perception experienced Pneuma as something actual and spiritual, but that the Romans did so no longer. Everything now becomes quite abstract with the Romans, completely abstract; concepts and nothing more. The Romans are the people of abstract concepts.

My dear friends, in our days you find in science the same diagram! You can come upon it today in materialistic books on science. You will find the same diagram, exactly the same, as you would have found in the old Mysteries, in the Pythagorean Schools, where everything was still related to the hierarchies. You have it with the Greeks where everything is related to the Pneuma; again today you find it drawn, and we shall see what it has now become. Today the scientist says as he makes this same drawing on the blackboard for his students: in the propagation of the human race the substance of the parents' germ cells passes over to the children; but part of this substance remains so that it can again pass over to the children and and again there remains some of this to pass over anew to the children. And another part of the germ cell substance develops so that it can form the cells of the physical body. You have exactly the same diagram, only the modern scientist sees in the white (see diagram) the continuity of the substance of the germ cell. He says; if we go back to our old human ancestors and take this germ cell substance of both male and female, and then go to present day man and take his, it is still the same stream, the substance is continuous. There always remains in this germ substance something eternal—so the scientist imagines—and only half of the germ plasma goes over into the new body. The scientist has still the same figure but no longer has the pneuma; the white is now for him the material germ substance—nothing is left of soul and spirit, it is just material substance. You can read this today in scientific books, and it is taken as a great and significant discovery. That is the materialising of a higher spiritual perception that has passed through the process of abstraction; in the midst stands the abstract concept. And it is really amusing that a modern scientist has written a book (for those whose thinking is sound, it is amusing) in which he says right out: what the Greeks still represented as Pneuma is today the continuity of the germ substance. Yes, it is foolish, but today it counts for great wisdom.

From this you can, however, see one thing, it is not the drawing that does it! And you will therefore understand why to a certain extent I have always been against drawing diagrams so long as we were still trying to run our Anthroposophy within the Theosophical Society. One had only to enter any theosophical branch and the walls as a rule would be plastered with all manner of diagrams; there were drawings of every possible thing with words attached; there ware whole genealogical trees and every possible kind of sketch. However, my dear friends, these drawings are not important. What matters is that we should really be able to have living conceptions; for the same drawing can represent the soul-spiritual in the flowing of hierarchies, the purely material in the continuous germ-plasm. These things are seen very hazily by modern man. Therefore it is so important to be clear that the Greeks still knew something of the real self in man, of the real spiritual and that it was the Romans who made the transition to the abstract concept. You can see all this in what is external. When the Greek talked about his Gods, he did so in a way that made it quite evident that he was still picturing concrete figures behind these Gods. For the Romans the Gods, in reality, ware only names, only expressions, abstractions and they became abstractions more and more. For Greek a certain idea was ever present that in the man before him the hierarchies were living, that in each man the hierarchies were living a different life. Thus the hierarchies were living differently in every man. The Greek knew the reality of man, and when he said, that is Alcibiades, that is Socrates, or that is Plato, he still had the concept that there in Alcibiades, Socrates or Plato ware rising up, within each in a different way, the cosmic thoughts of the hierarchies. And because the cosmic thoughts arose differently these figures appeared different.

All this was entirely lacking in the Roman. For this reason he formed for himself a system of concepts that reached its climax when from the time of Augustus on and actually from an earlier date, the Roman Caesar was held to be God. The Godhead gradually became an abstraction and the Roman Caesar was himself a God because the concept of God had become completely abstract. This applies to the rest of their concepts; and it was particularly the case with the concepts that lived deeply in the Roman nature as concepts of rights, moral concepts. Thus, in place of all that in olden days was a living reality, there arose a number of abstractions. And all these abstractions lasted on as a heritage throughout the middle ages and descended to modern times, remaining as heritage down to the nineteenth century—abstract concepts carried into every sphere.

In the nineteenth century there came something startling. Man himself was entirely lost sight of among all these abstract concepts! The Greeks still had a presentiment of the real man who descends here after being formed and fashioned out of the cosmos; in the time of the Roman empire all knowledge of him was lost. The nineteenth century was needed to rediscover him through all the connections I have been showing you and will go on showing you even more exactly. The discovery of man took place now from the opposite pole. Greece wanted to see man as descending from the hierarchies, divine man; in place of this the Romans set up a series of abstract concepts; the nineteenth century—the eighteenth century too but particularly the nineteenth—was needed to rediscover man from the other side, from his animal side. And he could not be grasped with abstract concepts; this was the great shock. This was the great shock and the deep cleft that arose; what is this actually that stands there on two legs and fidgets with its hands, and eats and drinks all manner of things; what is it? The Greeks still knew, then a change took place when concepts became abstract. Now it comes as something startling to men of the nineteenth century; it stands there and there are no concepts with which to grasp it. It is taken for simply a higher form of animal. On the one hand, in science it produces Darwinism, on the other hand, in the spiritual it brings about socialism which would place man into society as a mere animal. Here is man standing transfixed before himself—what is this thing? And he is powerless to answer the question.

That is the situation today; that is the situation that will produce not only concepts that are right or wrong according as men will them, but is called upon to create facts either catastrophic or beneficial. And the situation is—the shock men have when seeing themselves. We must find the elements once more for te understanding of spiritual man. These elements will not be found unless we turn to the theory of metamorphosis. There lies the essential point. Goethe's concepts of metamorphosis are alone able to grasp the ever changing phenomena which offer themselves to the perception of the reality.

Now one might say that spiritual evolution has always moved in this direction. Even at the time when the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz in the seventeenth century was being published in so wonderful a way—other writings too—the endeavour was already there to provide for the arising of a social structure for man compatible with his true nature. (In Das Reich I have referred to this in a series of articles concerning The Chemical Wedding). In this way the Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz by the so-called Valentin Andreae arose. On the other hand, however, there also arose the book he called Reformation des Ganzer Menschengeschlectes (Reformation of the whole Human Race), where he gives a great political survey of how social conditions ought to be. Then, it was the thirty years war that swept the thing away! Today, there is the possibility that the ordering of the world either sweep things away once more ... or carry them right into human evolution. With this we are touching an the great fundamental questions of the day, with which men should be occupying themselves instead of with all the secondary matters that engross them. If only men concerned themselves about basic questions they would find means and ways of bringing fruitful concepts into modern reality—then we could get away from abstract concepts.

It is not very easy to distinguish reality from illusion. For that, we must have the will to go right into life with all seriousness and all good will, and not be bound down by programmes and prejudices. I could tell many tales about this but now I will refer to one fact only. In the beginning of the nineties of the last century a number of people foregathered in various towns of Europe and brought about something of an American nature, namely, the Movement for Ethical Culture. At that time it was the intellectuals who were connected with founding these societies for Ethical Culture. These people produced very beautiful things, and if today you read the articles written at that time by the promoters of Societies for Ethical Culture ... if you have a taste for butter, you will probably even today be enchanted by all the beautiful, wonderfully beautiful ideals, in which these people indulged. And indeed it was no pleasant task to go against this reveling in butter: However, I wrote an article at the time in one of the first numbers of Die Zunkunft (The Future), against all this oiliness in “ethical culture,” and denounced it in awful words. Naturally it was a shameful deed—how should it not have been when these people had set out to make the whole world ethical, moral—how should it not have been disgraceful to turn upon anything so good: At that time I was living in Weimar but on paying a visit to Berlin I had a conversation with Herman Grimm who said:

“What is the matter with ‘ethical culture'? Go and see the people themselves. You will find that here in Berlin those who hold meetings about ethics are really thoroughly nice kind people—one could not have any objection to them. They can even be congenial and very pleasant.” This was not to be denied and at the moment Herman Grimm had just as much right on his side as I had. Outwardly and momentarily, one of us was as right as the other, one could be proved right just as well as the other. And I am not for maintaining that from the point of view of pure logic my grounds for opposing these ethical philosophers were any more sound than those brought forward by them—I wouldn't be sure. But, my dear friends, from all this highfalutin idealism the present catastrophe has arisen! And only those people were right, and have been justified by events, who said at the time; with all your talking and luxuriating in buttery ideals, by means of which you would bring universal peace and universal morals to man, you have produced nothing but what I then called social carcinoma that had to end in this catastrophic present. Time has shown who was working with concrete concepts, who with merely those that are abstract. When they are simply abstract in character, there is no distinguishing who is right and who is wrong. The only thing that decides is whether a concept finds its right setting in the course of actual events. A professor teaching science in a university can naturally prove everything he says to be right in a most beautiful and logical way. And all this goes into the holes in the head (and this today I naturally may be allowed to say with the very best intention). But you see it is not a question of bringing forward apparently good logical grounds; for when these thoughts sink into a head such as Lenin's they become Bolshevism. What matters is what a thought is in reality, not what can be thought about it or felt about it in an abstract way, but what force goes to the forming of it in its reality. And if we test the world-conception that is chiefly talked of today—for the others, specified yesterday, were more in picture form—when one brings socialism to the test, it is not a question today of sitting oneself down to cram (as we say for ‘study') Karl Marx, or Lassalle, or Bernstein, to study their books, to study these authors. No! It is a question of having a feeling, a living experience for what will become of human progress if a number of men—the sort of men who stand at a machine—have these thoughts. That is what matters, and not to have thoughts about the social structure in the near future that are learnt in the customary course of modern diplomatic schooling, Now is the time when it is important to weigh thoughts so as to be able to answer the question: what are the times wanting for the coming decades? Today the time has already come when it is not allowed to sit in comfort in the various magisterial seats and to go on cherishing what is old. The time has come when men must bear the shock of seeing themselves, and when the thought must rise up in those responsible anywhere for anything: How is this question to be solved out of the spiritual life?

• 1. For example: Universe, Earth and Man, and Egyptian Myths and Mysteries.

Recently, I have presented a number of important facts about the human being that can be investigated by spiritual science. I attach less importance to the details of these facts being grasped – for I have often spoken about the nature of these facts – than to a certain impression being awakened by them: the impression of the nature of what may be called the deception of the physical physical world, so that you get a sense of what is actually meant when one speaks of the outer world as we see it around us - I say see, not have - is deception at first, and behind it lies the true, the real world. And I wanted to evoke a more thorough sense of what is meant when one speaks of the real world on the basis of spiritual science. So it is more about these general feelings. And with that, I have arrived at the point where we have, so to speak, another opportunity to tie our spiritual-scientific observations to important and significant interests in the spiritual life of the present, whereby I am thinking, of course, of a broader present, not just of today, but of the centuries in which we live.

Our intellectual life is caught in a conflict, a conflict that can be characterized in a variety of ways, that can be defined in many ways. But all these definitions must ultimately converge into a kind of feeling for two currents that we must form for ourselves as currents of ideas from the intellectual culture of the present, and that, to a certain extent, cannot be properly united. Two currents of ideas are present. One of them, we may call it in the broadest sense the scientific current, by which I do not mean merely what is thought and asserted in the circles of natural scientists, but that scientific current which today lives more or less in the perception of all mankind. This scientific current has gradually become a popular, widespread view. It produces concepts that have become deeply, deeply rooted in the soul life of people today. One can best see how this scientific world view has taken root when one considers that it is most deeply rooted where one believes one is penetrating to spiritual life. After all, what is commonly called spiritualism and what is advocated by very many as a theosophical theory is nothing more than an emanation of a materialistic worldview. What is generally known about the etheric body and the astral body, what is produced experimentally in spiritualistic séances, is entirely captured in concepts borrowed from the scientific world view, which is best demonstrated by people like du Prel, who believes he is addressing the spiritual world. But everything he says about the spiritual world, he thinks in scientific terms, that is, in terms in which one should think only about nature, not about the spirit. Similarly, it is downright laughable how materialistic the theories of most Theosophists are, how they positively endeavor to attach conceptions such as etheric body or even astral body to the scientific concepts that should only be applied to nature. The etheric body is very often imagined as something quite material, as a fine haze or the like. Now, I have often spoken about these things.

This is the one conceptual mass, I would say, that we have: the concepts of natural science. And, to avoid being misunderstood, I would like to emphasize once more that it is not so important that these scientific concepts be found in the natural sciences themselves, where they are largely justified. Rather, the important thing is that they creep into the general world and that they are used to understand spiritual matters, so that some people are even under the delusion that they are saying something special when they emphasize the similarity between the concepts they have in spiritual matters and the concepts of natural science.

The significant fact that we have to consider is that these scientific concepts can only capture a certain sphere of our world, a certain sphere of the world in which we live, in our understanding, that another world must remain beyond our understanding if we only apply scientific concepts. These scientific concepts thus form one current.

The other current is formed by certain concepts that we form about the ideal or the ideal, and probably also today, for a long time, about the moral. Take a scientific concept such as the concept of inheritance or the concept of development. You think scientifically when you think these concepts purely and cleanly; you think in terms when you extend these concepts of inheritance and development, as they are commonly used in science, to spiritual matters. Take certain concepts that are needed in life, for example, the concept of the inner freedom of our soul, the concept of goodwill, the concept of moral perfection, or higher concepts, the concept of love and the like, and you again have a stream of ideas, of concepts, that are also justified because they are needed for life. But only by indulging in self-deception can one build a bridge from the way of scientific thinking today to the way of thinking in terms of ideals, ideas or morals today. If someone thinks purely scientifically, that is, if they seek a scientific world view, as is the ideal of many people today, then within a world that corresponds to this world view there is no place for anything that is understood by terms such as goodwill, or, for that matter, happiness, love, inner freedom, and so on. A certain ideal of scientific thinking is to bring everything, as they say, under the concept of causality, to think of everything in terms of cause and effect. And a very popular generalization is – I have already mentioned this here – the law of the conservation of energy and of matter. If you form a worldview using only the concepts of cause and effect in the scientific sense, or of the conservation of energy and matter, then you can only either be ideologically dishonest or you have to say: Within such an order of the world, in in which only the law of causality, only the law of cause, applies, or in which the law of the conservation of matter and force applies, in such a world everything that is an ideal, that is an idea, that is a moral concept, is basically just nonsense. For a worldview that universally conceives of the law of the conservation of energy and matter, nothing else makes sense except to say: our world order develops according to this law of the conservation of energy and matter. Out of certain causes, the human race has also emerged within this world order. This human race dreams of goodwill, of love, of inner freedom, but all these are concepts that people make up, and when the time comes that such a state of affairs must occur in our world system according to scientific conceptions, then there is actually a general grave for all such ideas of goodwill, inner freedom, of love and so on. These are dreams that people dream while they are completing their existence within the evolution of the earth in accordance with the pure natural-law order, and there is no point in speaking of anything else in terms of the validity of ideals and ideas other than that they are dreams of people, because within such a natural-scientific world view, ideas and ideals have no power to realize themselves. What then should become of ideas and ideals if the world really corresponds to the scientific world view, once the state has been reached that one must necessarily think if one thinks only in scientific terms? They are buried, the ideas and ideals! But today people think in such a way — even if they do not admit it — that they have no inner power to realize themselves. They are mere thoughts that are realized when people attach their feelings to them, when people behave towards each other in a way that corresponds to the ideas. But they have no inner power to realize themselves, as magnetism, electricity or heat have – they have inner power to realize themselves! Ideas as such – so always think of moral ideas for my sake – do not have such inner power to realize themselves within our world view if we think only scientifically.

Of course, very few people are aware of the dichotomy that exists between these two currents of our present time, but it is there, and the fact that it is at work in the subconscious of people is much more important than being aware of it in theory. Only one class of people is theoretically aware of what I have just said, and it is this one class of people that we should keep an eye on in the present day. Clearly stated, the fact of the matter is that the whole world is only scientifically ordered and that ideas and ideals only have a meaning because people feel that they must follow them in their mutual behavior, this view can only be found within the socialist theory of the present. Contemporary socialist theory therefore rejects all spiritual science, even regards the traces of old spiritual science that can still be found in jurisprudence, morality and theology as prejudices that belong to the infancy of human development, and it wants everything that could be called spiritual science to be understood as social science: it wants to form socialist social science as merely valid for the mutual behavior of people. The world is organized by natural science, and apart from the natural scientific explanation of the world, there is only one social science left. This is the fundamental conviction of every self-aware socialist.

If you want to get to the bottom of such things, you cannot indulge in confused concepts. Of course I know that one can come and say: Yes, but that is not how socialists think! But that is not the point. As I explained in the first few days of my return here, it is not the content of ideas that is important, but how ideas are put into practice, how they penetrate and take root. And the socialist idea takes root by rejecting any talk of any spiritual world content, by claiming that the world content is only scientifically organized and that spiritual science is to be replaced by mere social science.

Now man feels that mere ideas and ideals, if they are thought as they are thought in the present, really have no more power than to find their way into the human emotional life and thereby to realize themselves, to realize themselves as a dream that humanity dreams within the evolution of the earth. No idea, however beautiful or ideal, has the power to bring anything into being, to generate warmth anywhere, to move a magnet or the like. Thus it is already condemned to be a mere dream, because — as long as one thinks of the world order only as the sum of electrical, magnetic forces, of light forces, heat forces and so on — it cannot intervene in the structure of these forces, especially if one postulates the law of the conservation of force and matter, according to which force and matter are supposed to have eternal validity. Because then they are always there, and then ideas can't intervene anywhere, because force and matter then have their own eternal laws.

With this law - I say only in parentheses - of the conservation of force and matter, a lot of nonsense is done. As one finds spoken of in the literature today of the law of conservation of force and matter, namely of force and energy, it is also often attributed to Jz / ius Robert Mayer. Anyone who is really familiar with Julius Robert Mayer's writings knows that it is just as foolish to attribute the law of the conservation of energy and matter to Julius Robert Mayer, as is done in the literature today, as it would be to attribute the invention of the printing press to Gutenberg in the case of pulp fiction. For what is presented in textbooks and popular manuals as the law of conservation of energy and matter has nothing to do with the law of Julius Robert Mayer, who was locked up in an insane asylum for his work.

Now, for anyone who takes spiritual science seriously, the question arises from all that I have presented: what is the relationship, what is the connection between what can never be united within the present world view: moral idealism and naturalistic observation of the world? This question cannot be answered theoretically without further ado. In many cases, the present age craves theoretical answers, and even those who turn to theosophy or anthroposophy sometimes crave theoretical and dogmatic answers more than anything. But the answers that are to be given on the basis of spiritual science must be answers based on direct perception. In this respect, it is not acceptable to carry the present age's preference for dogmatism into spiritual science. Spiritual science demands something else. Of course, in many cases scholars demand that other dogmas be established, but spiritual science cannot agree at all with the view that other dogmas should be established than those that already exist. Rather, it demands that thought be approached differently and viewed differently, that certain things be thought of from completely different points of view. What is often practiced today as spiritual science, especially as theosophy, can often give the impression of a somewhat modified scholasticism of the Middle Ages. I do not want to speak out against scholasticism, because scholasticism has things in it that are much more significant than what is produced philosophically in the present. But the tendency of many people today is to have only other dogmas, about God and immortality and heaven and hell, and to think differently about these things, but only to think, not to arrive at views that are based on quite a different ground than earlier ideas. If one is truly grounded in spiritual science, one says to oneself: During the scholastic period, there was enough speculation about the Trinity, about the nature of man, about his immortality, about the Christ problem, if I do not use the term now with any kind of unpleasant connotation. For the real value of this scholasticism does not lie in the dogmas it has established, but in the technique of thinking, as I once described it in my writing 'Philosophy and Anthroposophy', which is now being republished in a new edition that has been significantly expanded; it lies in the way of thinking about things. But nowadays it is actually better to learn this thinking by going to the scholastics than by turning to the often confused ideas that have been called theological or philosophical in recent times. There has been enough theorizing about these things in the Middle Ages. For example, the Christ-problem was wrestled with in such a theoretical way. Those who know the nature of this struggle cannot derive much benefit from a somewhat modified scholasticism, as it has been practiced in theosophy, for example, where, instead of having, in the past, trinity, immortality or other things, one now has again physical body, etheric body, astral body. It is a different kind of theotizing, but basically it is qualitatively the same thing. Those who are well informed about this school of the Middle Ages know that it is a moot point to want to penetrate, let us say, to the Mystery of Golgotha. Today it is much more important, for example, to penetrate to the figure of Christ Jesus, which is being attempted by us here in the center of the structure, where we are trying to really find the figure of Christ Jesus again. Those who are really interested in earlier dogmas will be much more interested today in bringing the figure of Christ out of spiritual life, because today is the time to do so. The Middle Ages were the time for keen reflection and the spinning out of scholastic concepts; today — as I have already characterized many times — is such a point in the fifth post-Atlantic period, where man's view must be directed towards spiritual forms. What was previously sought as the form of Christ are, after all, fantastic forms. I have often spoken here about the development of the figure of Christ. The form of the Christ will be found again through spiritual vision. Each time has its special task. It is not important that something is fixed, but that humanity seeks in its development and thereby reaches ever further and further stages of its development.

What is important, then, is to find a kind of bridge where the modern world view cannot find a bridge, but where, if it understands itself correctly, it must necessarily come to socialism, that is, to socialist theory – not to socialism in its justification; I have spoken about this before. But this bridge can only be found if one has the honest will to penetrate into what happens between birth and death, and also into what happens between death and a new birth, if one does not just have the will to analyze the world here, so to speak, but if one has the will to really engage with the spiritual. One speaks of man and says: Man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, the I and so on. That is certainly justified; but it is justified for the human being who lives here between birth and death. However, what I explained last time and the time before that can already point out to you that one can now speak in a similar way about the human being after death, about the human being between death and a new birth. If you want to ask: What does the human being consist of? you cannot merely ask: What does the human being consist of here on earth? And answer: He consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. Rather, we must now also raise the question: What does the human being consist of when he is not on earth, but in a spiritual world between death and a new birth? How can one speak of the members of human nature there? One must be able to speak of the members of human nature in just as real a way there. And if one is completely honest with oneself in such a matter, one must realize that each age has its special task.

People do not really realize that the way they think, imagine, even feel, yes, even look at the outside world – just remember certain statements I made in my “Riddles of Philosophy” about the relatively short period of six hundred years before our era to us – is only like this now. We cannot go back over the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha with the thinking and the feeling and the looking that we have now. I have given you the exact year: 747 BC before the Mystery of Golgotha is the true founding date of the city of Rome. If we go back beyond this 8th century BC, then the whole way of human life is different from the one we now know as the life of the soul. All ways of looking at the world become different. There is, however, one boundary that can be observed better than the others, which can actually be observed well, but not yet for the present-day human being: the boundary that lies in the 15th century. The 15th century is too close for present-day people; they cannot really put themselves in the place of the great change that occurred there. On the whole, people imagine: they have always thought and felt the same way as they do now, even if they go further and further back; but how little they go back! Well, the thing is that as soon as you go back beyond the 8th century BC, you have a completely different way of thinking. And now we can ask the question: why did they have a different way of thinking back then? Nowadays, when people imagine things, they come up with rather foolish ideas, one might say. When people of the present day hear how, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries — which were the most sought-after in those days — it was taught, when they hear how the truths were discussed there, they think: Well, that corresponds to the fantastic times of yore, when people were not as clever as they are now, when they still had childish ideas; now we have the right thing! It is particularly easy for a modern person to think this way, because they cannot imagine anything different, since they have sunk so terribly into this way of thinking in the present. Let us assume that a Greek, Pythagoras for example, came to Egypt and studied there, just as someone today goes to a famous university to learn. But what did he learn? I will tell you something that Pythagoras really could have learned there: He learned that in primeval times Mercury once played chess with the moon, and in this chess game Mercury won. He won twenty minutes from the moon for each day, and these twenty minutes were then added up by the initiates. How much do these twenty minutes amount to in three hundred and sixty “days”? They amount to exactly five days. Therefore, the year was not counted as three hundred and sixty days, but rather as three hundred and sixty-five days. These five days are what Mercury won from the moon in the game and what he then gave to the other planets and to the whole human race, in addition to the three hundred and sixty days in a year.

Now, if you say that Pythagoras could have learned something like this from the wise Egyptians, then every person in the present will laugh, quite naturally. Nevertheless, it is only another clothing for a deep spiritual truth - we will speak of it again in these days - that the present has not yet rediscovered at all, but it is a truth.

You may ask: Why was it calculated quite differently in the past? Compare the lecture of such an Egyptian sage, who lectures the clever fox Pythagoras: Mercury has won twenty minutes from the moon for each day in the game of chess – with a lecture on modern astronomy, which is held in a lecture hall, you will better notice the difference. But if you ask yourself why there is such a difference, then you have to delve a little deeper into the whole nature of human development. For if we go back to the 8th century BC – Pythagoras does not belong to this early time, but in Egypt the remnants of a wisdom have been preserved that was founded well before the 8th century BC, when it could still be imprinted – if it was taught in this ancient time, there is a profound reason for it. The whole relationship of man to the world had been viewed differently, and had to be viewed differently in those days.

I would like to point out that various remnants of old views have been renewed again and again atavistically, whereby I do not mean or understand the word “atavistically” to mean anything derogatory. Anyone who, for example, reads a work like Jakob Böhme's “De signatura rerum” will, if he is honest, actually say today: he cannot do anything with it. For there are given very strange arguments that either have to be judged from a higher point of view – then they make sense – or that, from the point of view of a modern-thinking person, should actually be rejected as the unreasonable stuff of a layman who has gone a little crazy. All the fantastic talk that is often heard in immature theosophical circles about Jakob Böhme is actually harmful. Nevertheless, from a higher point of view, Jakob Böhme is reminiscent of modern science in his whole way of thinking, in the way he analyzes certain words, for example, when he breaks down words like sulfur and searches in the broken-down parts for something. We do not want to look at the material but on the way he proceeds in his work 'De Signatura rerum', he reminds us much more of a certain concrete connection of the human being with the entire spiritual world than any of the abstract sciences, which only exist in public today. He, Jakob Boehme, is much more immersed in this spiritual world. And this immersion in the spiritual world is characteristic of thinkers who lived before the 8th century BC, before our era. They did not think with the individual, separate reason with which we think today. We all think with our individual reason; they thought more with cosmic reason, with creative reason, with the reason that one must, I would like to say, still listen to in some of its creations if one wants to come upon it.

Today there is actually only one area in which one can perceive a little bit of how something like creative reason still pours into and works in human life. One can still perceive something of a realization of the ideal in one area; but, I would like to say, there is only a shadow of it left, and this shadow is mostly not taken into account. Today, there are a number of naturalistic anthropological theories about the origin of language and how it is thought to have developed. As you know, there are two main theories, as I have mentioned before. One is called the 'wauwau' theory, the other the 'bimbam' theory. The woof-woof theory is advocated more by continental scholars, while the Max Müller school of thought favors the ding-dong theory. The woof-woof theory is based on the idea that humans started out in a very primitive state and that their internal organic experiences barked out like a dog when it goes “woof woof.” Through a corresponding development evolution - everything develops, doesn't it, from the primitive to the perfect - the dog's “bow-wow”, which can still be seen in humans at its primitive level, has become human language. If you follow the development from the baying of the dog to today's speech, in a similar way to the theory of evolution, Darwin or Haeckel, starting with the simplest monera, that is, from the simplest, most inarticulate form to today's language, then that is just the baying theory. Another theory says that one can develop a certain feeling of kinship with the tones of the bell: ding dong; one would have a certain inner sound each time that one imitates. According to this, one would follow more of an evolutionary theory with the woof woof, and more of an adaptation theory with the ding dong, an adaptation of the human being to the inner nature of the material words. Then you can also combine things in a witty way, the Bim-Bam theory with the Bow-Wow theory, which is then something more perfect, then you have combined development with adaptation. Well, these things are more or less common practice today. There are also those who laugh at these two theories and have other theories; but in principle they are not much different either.

From a spiritual point of view, there can be no question of the development of language being as it has just been characterized. Rather, purely externally, the structure of language shows that real reason prevails in the formation and development of language. And it is interesting to trace the workings of reason precisely in language, for the simple reason that it is still in language that an ideational element lives most vividly, that is to say, that which is observed in the one current today, and because language does not merely address itself to the human mind, but has its own laws, so that the ideational is already realized in it in a certain way, even if only shadowily, in relation to natural laws. Take, for example, a word – I will only draw your attention to a few very elementary cases – where you can see how inner reason prevails in the emergence of language; take a word like: oratio, speech. It is remarkable when we take a word like oratio, speech, and then observe what becomes of this word in the life of man after death, for there is a remarkable similarity with what has been the work of nascent reason in the development of language. This gives us a certain certainty that today can hardly be gained in any other way. At best, we can only arrive at hypotheses by other means. The dead person will rarely, at least after a certain time has passed since death, still understand the word oratio; he will no longer understand it, he loses the understanding of it. On the other hand, he will still understand a contemplation, an imagination that leads back to what can be expressed by the words: Os, Oris, Mund, and: Ratio, Vernunft. The dead man breaks down the word oratio into os and ratio. And in evolution the reverse process has actually taken place: the word oratio has actually come into being through a synthesis of original words, os and ratio. Oratio is not as original a word as os, oris and ratio, but oratio is formed from os and ratio.

I would like to give you a few more examples of such elementary things. These things can be most vividly studied in the Latin language because they are most clearly evident there, but the laws that can be found are also important for other languages. Take, for example, three original words: Ne ego otior; that would mean, if taken as a word: I am not idle. Ego otior: I am idle; ne ego otior: I am not idle. These three words are composed through the ruling cosmic reason in Negotior, that is, doing business. There you have three words put together into one, and you see the structure of the words in a rational way. You see reason at work in the development of language.

I would not, as I said, assert this so strictly if the remarkable fact did not occur that the dead dissolve what has been put together here in the world. The dead dissolve something like negotior into: Ne ego otior, and he understands only these three words or ideas, which he combines from this trinity, and he forgets that which was created by the combination.

Another obvious example is: unus, the one, and alterque, the other; this is combined into the Latin word uterque, each of the two. We would be quite happy if we had a word in modern languages like Uterque, which gives that concept; the Frenchman can only express it by staying with the upper one: I'un ct l'autre; he doesn't have a single concept to express that. But Uterque expresses it much more precisely.

Take an example to illustrate the principle I am talking about. You all know the word “se”, the French word “se”: to oneself. You know the word “hors” (out): you could also say “hors de soi” (out of oneself), and “tirer” (to draw) – I'll just keep the “tir” – “tir”: to draw, to draw away. If you then combine these three things according to the same principle, you get “sortir”, to go away, which is nothing more than a combination of “se hors tir”; “tir” is the rest of the word “tirer”. So you can still see the same governing reason at work in a modern language. Or take an example where the matter is somewhat obscured by the fact that different levels of language are at work: “coeur, the heart; ‘rage’, that is the lively, the invigorating, the enthusiasm that comes from the heart; composed: ‘courage’. These are not just any inventions, but real events that really happened. That is how the words are formed.

But the possibility of forming words in this way no longer exists today. Today, man has stepped out of the living connection with cosmic reason, and therefore there may be a possibility at most in very sporadic cases of venturing to approach language in order to extract from it words that are, as it were, in the spirit of language. But the further back one goes, and especially the further back one goes behind the 8th century BC, also in the Greek and Latin languages, the more the principle is active in real life that language develops in this way. And what is significant here is that one has to point to this as if it were eurythmic, by discovering in the dead person: he pulls the words apart again, he breaks them down again into their parts. He has more feeling, the dead man, for these parts of the words than for the whole words. If you think about it consistently, you would break the words apart into the sounds, and if you then translate the sounds, not into movements in the air but into movements of the whole human being, then you have eurythmy. Eurythmy is therefore something that the dead can indeed understand very well when it is practised perfectly. And you can see that such things, like eurythmy, cannot be judged externally, but that one can only understand their place in the overall structure of human development if one is also able to enter into this overall development of the human being.

Much more could be said about what eurythmy actually aims to achieve, but there will be an opportunity to do so later. For now, I wanted to draw your attention to a field, however shadowy, where, even in ancient times, the ideal was still reflected in the real through the living activity of human beings themselves. I said at the beginning today: In today's world view, we no longer find the possibility of building a bridge between the ideal, the moral, and that which lives in nature. The bridge is missing. It is also quite natural for the bridge to be missing in the current cycle of human development. The ideal no longer creates. I wanted to show you an example in the human realm itself, even if, as I said, it is a shadowy one, where something ideal still exists in the human being himself. For in the composition of such words, it was not the agreement of people or the consideration of a single human individuality or personality that was at work, but reason, without the human being being really present. Today, people want to be present in everything they do: Now, if something as beautiful, great and meaningful as this were to be done – you should see what would come of today's human wisdom if language were to be formed today! But it was precisely in those times when man was not yet so self-aware that these great, wise, significant things happened in humanity, and they happened in such a way that in this event, a close coexistence of the ideal and the real interacted, namely, ideal, that is, rational becoming, and real movement of air through the human respiratory organs. Today we cannot build a bridge between the moral idea and, for my sake, the electrical force; but here a bridge is built between something that happens and something that is rational. Of course, this does not lead us to build the same bridge – I will elaborate on this tomorrow – it must be built in a completely different way today. But you can see from this that humanity has progressed to its present state from a different state: from being inside a living web that was close to what, in a certain way, takes place in reverse post mortem, that is, after the death of human beings. Today, after death, in order to find his way between death and a new birth, man must again take apart what has been so joined together by forces - we will speak of this again tomorrow - that this joining together can still be clearly seen if one goes back to the older stages of speech formation.

These are important things, things that we really must consider when we turn our attention to the question of how spiritual science can be integrated into the whole structure of contemporary spiritual life. We have often spoken about this, and it is something we must consider. And if we repeatedly speak of the importance of integrating spiritual science into the whole of evolution, then we must also think concretely in this field. In these lectures I would now like to contribute something to this concrete thinking. If it were possible for spiritual science to be carried by a certain movement in the present day, by a human movement, then this spiritual science would be able to have a fruitful effect in all fields. But above all, there would have to be the will to respond to such subtleties, as they are often emphasized here. For it is on these subtleties, which always relate to the relationship of our spiritual science to contemporary spiritual culture, that we must base what we can call our own engagement with the spiritual movement of the present day through spiritual science. It is truly the case that the sad, catastrophic events of the present should make people aware that old worldviews have gone bankrupt. Not from spiritual science alone, but from its relationship to these old worldviews, one could see what has to happen for us to emerge from the bankruptcy of the present time.

To do this, it would of course be necessary to finally address the intentions that I have often expressed as those of the spiritual scientific movement. It would truly be necessary to recognize the reasons why, for example, working on the building has become so fruitful within certain circles, while other endeavors of the Anthroposophical Society have remained equally fruitless, so to speak; why, if one disregards what it has really achieved, namely the Dornach building, the Society often fails. On the one hand, if it is not to evoke the opposite, such an achievement always requires that many other things happen. It is necessary that the Anthroposophical Society should not fail in other respects, as it has completely failed in during the years of its existence. This failure need not be emphasized again and again if the opinion were much more widely spread that one must reflect on why the Anthroposophical Society fails in so many other respects. If people would reflect more deeply, they would recognize, for example, why the opinion keeps spreading in the world that I only lead the Anthroposophical Society by the hand and give everything away; while there is hardly a society in the world where less happens that a so-called leader wants than in the Anthroposophical Society! As a rule, the opposite of what I actually intend happens. So, it is not true that the Anthroposophical Society in particular can show how far reality is from its so-called ideals in practice. But then one must also have the will to stand on the ground of reality. In a society, there are naturally personal issues; but one must also understand these personal issues as personal. If people in some branch are fighting for purely personal reasons, one should not make black out of white or white out of black, but one should calmly admit: We have personal reasons, we do not like so-and-so for personal reasons. Then one is speaking the truth; there is no need to distort reality into an ideal. It is therefore necessary to recognize that while on the one hand I am endeavoring to lift everything of an intellectual nature out of the sectarian, to strip away everything that is sectarian, the Anthroposophical Society is increasingly sinking into sectarianism and has a certain love for the sectarian. If there is anywhere an effort to get out of the sectarianism, then this very desire to get out of the sectarianism is hated.

Of course, I do not want to criticize anyone, nor do I want to be ungrateful for the beautiful aspirations that are everywhere, I fully recognize everything, but it is necessary to reflect a little on some things, otherwise things will arise again and again, and I have been told about them again in these days. Isn't it true that the personal is also intimately entwined with the matter? If some kind of disaster occurs in a country, the constitution of the Anthroposophical Society is such that I might say the Society has the sensation of quarreling a little, and from all this quarreling, I myself am personally insulted in the most disgraceful way. Yes, if this repeats itself over and over again, we will not get anywhere. If I am always insulted in the most vicious way because the others quarrel and I am played out, if it always comes down to me being played out, then of course I can no longer hold the anthroposophical movement in the world. It would be possible to work in a positive way if one wanted to focus more on the positive, which I am always hinting at enough. It would be possible to keep such things in the background, which are mostly based on terribly inferior things. But in many circles there is much more desire to quarrel, much more desire for dogmatic disputes, out of which personal quarrels often develop. And then it happens that the cursing usually turns against me – which of course leaves me personally highly indifferent, but the movement cannot continue if it is to go on like this. It is not that I am criticizing what the friends have done in such a case, but I would point out that they have not done something else, which is not for me to suggest in a blunt way, but which would much more surely prevent what is constantly happening than the way it is constantly being attempted. Today it is already the case that one can say: We have only given cycles to members of the Society, and I know how I myself am often strangely approached by this or that member of the Society when I am much more liberal than members on the fringes often want to be in giving cycles. Yes, what has been brought into the world through the cycles could never have fared worse through outsiders than it has through members of the Anthroposophical Society! This must also be taken into account. Today we have already reached the point where the cycles are being abused by members, by apostate members of the Anthroposophical Society, to such an extent that it may soon be said that we no longer set any limits, we sell the cycles to anyone who wants them. It cannot get much worse.

I am not saying that it will happen tomorrow, but I am merely hinting that society does not work as a society at all – always except for the building and except for individual circles – that it does not actually do what a society would otherwise do. As a result, society is of no help at all; it is not at all what a movement would result in.

Here it is so clear that I cannot mean anyone personally, that I can discuss this here quite impartially, for the simple reason that this is precisely the place where work is being done fruitfully out of society, namely on the building. This is already a real thing that has emerged out of society. And if other things that could be much cheaper than construction were to be worked on by such a social spirit as the workers on our construction site, then the Anthroposophical Society would be able to produce tremendous blessings. But then one must call white white and black black. One must also really say when personal matters are at hand: these are personal matters — and not inflate them into lofty idealism; otherwise one will just have to consider what needs to be put in the place of the Anthroposophical Society. A society could not be substituted, because it would be the same old misery all over again! Right? The society cannot be just a means to an end, a way of dealing with all kinds of inferior personalities. But it has become a means that forces you to take into account all kinds of inferior stuff.

Well, I don't want to bore you any longer with this matter today, but I just wanted to add it after the time was up. I finished the lecture beforehand; I only say such things when the lecture time is up, afterwards as an appendix.

I will have to organize the reflections we are now cultivating here in such a way that today I present the arguments developed yesterday in a broader way, in order to then come to a certain preliminary conclusion tomorrow. Therefore, today's lecture will have more of an episode to it.

In the present, one has a great deal of reason to reflect on this or that, including current events, if one does not intend to oversleep the most important impulses of our time. Particularly striking in the present, and, I would say, challenging questions is the phenomenon, which is well known to you, that in the broadest sense, the most monstrous dishonesty has taken hold in this present time, that precisely where the comprehensive plays out today, dishonesty is present. Such things, such an effective and drastic occurrence of untruthfulness, then also prompts spiritual scientific investigation into all kinds of related matters. And there, one can say, one often encounters in particular the fact, which I have also touched on here several times, that what is usually communicated as human history is a kind of fable convenante. It is not so much a matter of the facts that are communicated not being considered correct to a certain extent, but other facts – you will recall that I recently discussed here how the most profound influences of a person from Roman history have simply been erased – they are simply erased. The Church has erased an enormous amount of facts from history because it was important to the Church that certain facts not come to the knowledge of men.

Yesterday, we again spoke from one point of view about the period that introduced the Greco-Latin cultural period, about the important period in the 8th century BC. It is a time from which not much of the historical traditions speak. The historical traditions are already very, very uncertain, but a personality shines out from the beginning of this epoch, who has wrested considerations of the most diverse kind from very, very many people. The name of Pyzbagoras stands out from the time of origin, that is, after the 8th century BC, and with it the name of the Pythagorean School. And yesterday I pointed out what Pythagoras was able to receive from the remnants of the ancient Egyptian mystery truths, what these things were that Pythagoras was able to receive.

Now it is not only interesting to look at what Pythagoras and his students said and did, which was very incisive, because they not only developed a teaching activity, but also an extensive political activity. What Pythagoras and his students did is interesting, but it is also significant to consider the world that, in a sense, surrounds this Pythagorean activity, the world from which later Greek culture also grew, which had already absorbed a certain influence of that which, illuminated by special splendor, one finds in Pythagoras. If we take the life that later developed into Greek and Latin, in the 7th, 6th, and 5th centuries BCE, and we locate it on the Greek peninsula and the neighboring countries and the Italian peninsula, then, if you look at things not in terms of historical fable convenue, but if you look at them in the light of truth - and spiritual scientific research must always contribute to this - you will notice that one characteristic of humanity was very widespread in this life. There was hardly a time when so much lying occurred as during this period in the Mediterranean countries. The lies that people told one another were a very striking characteristic of the whole of that life out of which the later Greek and Roman civilizations developed.

There is no need to deceive ourselves in such matters. All that we see developing in Roman civilization—the tremendous beauty, the admirable sum of imaginative creations of Greece, the greatest sum of abstractions that the world has ever seen— , all of this grows out of the same soil as the plant world grows out of fertilizer, out of a soil that extends over the Mediterranean countries, out of a soil that is inhabited by people who are full of the addiction, the passion of lying. This is something that is not emphasized by history, but it must be understood if one wants to properly understand the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period. We are dealing with the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period, coming from earlier centuries and millennia to the eighth century BC. And the people who were the cultural bearers of the declining third post-Atlantic cultural period were essentially great liars. This is also the epoch in which the ability I spoke to you about yesterday developed in a very special way, and which is so extraordinarily interesting: the ability to form language out of the cosmic of reason. And the greatest talent was present precisely at that time, in addition to such things as I discussed yesterday in the great addiction to lying.

In these matters, one must not be deceived if one wants to see reality, just as one must not be deceived about the fact that the violet, which blossoms in spring, will wither away again and already carries within itself the forces of the ephemeral while it blossoms beautifully and gloriously. In the violet, one has, so to speak, successive formative and destructive forces. In human life, especially in the great life of humanity, we see this very, very often, even at the same time. We do not grasp reality if we do not grasp the necessity for such things to develop side by side: evolution and devolution, the possibility of having a constructive effect, as in the formation of language, for example, and at the same time that devastating effect, which has a destructive effect on spiritual life.

This is, so to speak, the other side of what I discussed with you yesterday. There is also a bright side. This bright side is of an even more spiritual-scientific nature. I already pointed out yesterday that it would not be possible to speak with such certainty about the things of language formation that we discussed yesterday if the life of man after death did not give one clear proof of it, in that what is composed here in life, for example, from individual word atoms or parts of words, is in turn dissolved. And this disintegration of words, this atomization of words, plays a significant role in the life of the dead. In a sense, the dead person lives from this atomization of words. And the dead person has the most definite feeling that he was cut off from the spiritual world in which he finds himself after his death by forming words out of sounds, out of letters, during his life, that is, before his death. The dead person has the feeling that language is, so to speak, a carpet that was laid in front of the spiritual world during life. And in the disentanglement of this carpet, in the disintegration of words, he has the feeling that he is now entering the spiritual world again. Therefore, one of the characteristics of the dead person is to dissolve, to pull apart, to disintegrate into their component parts the human passions that the person in question has encountered during the time between birth and death. The dead person, for instance, experiences a very solemn, great feeling when he succeeds in acquiring a certain understanding through such dissolution. I have often told you that the moment of death is, in a way, something frightening for the life here in the physical body. People also like to turn their faces away from death. After death the vision of death is always there – I have emphasized this often enough – but it does not mean anything terrible then; but by looking at his own death from the other side of life, there is always the certainty in this vision that he is an ego and remains an ego. I have emphasized this often.

But now it is a matter for the 'dead man to understand that which is revealed to him in the sight of death from the other side of life. He understands this better and better by the fact that, depending on whether he has spoken this or that language, he dissolves these or those words. The ancient Hebrews, and to a certain extent the Romans, had their so-called sacred name, the unutterable name of God, Yahweh. For the Hebrews, this unutterable name consisted of a certain combination of sounds that we perceive as five vowels, which were thought of as connected during physical life. Even in the Roman Jovis, Jupiter, only another form of the name of Jahwe is hidden; fundamentally, in relation to the five vowels, it is connected in a certain way in Jovis. In the dissolution of that which was connected here in this name of God, the dead man lived, and by dissolving the vowels that were composed in life, the meaning of death was also revealed to him at the same time, one could say. One must only try to fathom the revelation of this meaning of death in the right way. One must understand that this meaning of death is revealed to the dead through the dissolution of the holy name into its components, which then fade away and fade away into the world. The dissolution of this holy name is connected with the understanding of the spiritualization of death. It is a concept that is extremely difficult to describe. Death, viewed from the other side, can be called spiritualization. By looking at death from the other side, this sight is connected with the emergence of spirituality. And in the dissection of the word after the vowels, the spiritual reveals itself out of the decay that death signifies. Decay is at the same time the birth of the spiritual, the emergence of the spiritual. While we perceive decay in an unpleasant way, as something ugly, like any destruction, when seen from the other side, this destruction reveals itself as a spiritual illumination, which is then understood in the fading away. It is as if the sacred word resounded and radiated far and wide, and in radiating out dissolved into its vocalic components, which are then audible as if coming from the periphery of the world, and then make audible the meaning of death, the spiritual meaning of death.

This will already suggest to you that it is justified, just as one speaks of the members of human nature here in life – physical body, etheric body, astral body and I – to speak of the members of human nature that human nature has between death and a new birth. For inasmuch as I have, as it were, presented to you the central phenomenon that man continually has between death and a new birth, this unveiling of the spiritual meaning of death itself, the question must arise: What does this world, which is said to be revealed to people after death, actually look like? But this cannot be grasped other than by getting to know something of the nature and essence of the human being itself.

Today, let us first try to describe the dead in the same way as one would otherwise describe the living. We can begin with that part of the dead person that still has a great deal of connection – not kinship, but connection – with what a person experiences here between birth and death. So we are dealing here with the first part of human nature, which we can also call the ego, as we call, so to speak, the highest part of human nature between birth and death. We shall now omit the fact that immediately after death it still has the cover of the etheric body, which is then detached, and still has the cover of the astral body, which is also detached over time; these are components that, so to speak, do not belong. When we speak of the dead person, the only thing that can be recognized as the dead person's very own element is the ego. I said that there is a connection with the ego of earthly life, but not an actual kinship; for in fact, after death, this ego presents itself in a completely different way than the ego is experienced between birth and death. Between birth and death, the ego is, so to speak, something fluid, something that feels the power to change every day. Just think how terrible it would be in your physical life between birth and death if you were unable to grasp the thought: I did something bad yesterday, but I can make amends for it, I can do something good in return. Or if you, even younger, would have to say: I have learned little, but I cannot learn anything new. At no moment in life between birth and 'death is the ego so fixed that it could not, so to speak, be changed from within by its own willpower. That which you experience as the ego after death is something that has become fixed, that has taken on certain characteristics that cannot be changed immediately; it remains as it is. The transformation of the ego, which is in a state of constant flux during life between birth and death, into a fixed entity in which nothing can change, and which remains as it has formed itself during life, is the essential thing that must be grasped in order to understand this ego after death. There can be no question of development after death, which we must indeed speak of for the ego between birth and death. After death, the ego is, so to speak, a fixed spiritual entity that arises out of the vision of death itself, and nothing about this ego can be changed. One could say, if one wanted to express this matter in a more or less banal way: after death, man is condemned to view all the details of his life as something fixed. Just as you, when you look over a field, see the nearby plantings and the distant plantings next to each other, and as you see nothing fluid in them, but a fixed, extensive, and enduring structure, so you see the whole course of your course of your life, but not in such a way that what is in front is always obliterated by what is behind, as it is in the life of the physical body. You see it as a permanent, concrete field in which you cannot change anything at first merely by looking at it. It would also be bad for the dead person if that were not the case; for his gaze, the gaze of the dead person, is actually primarily absorbed by this ego. He is as if transfixed in this ego. And if this ego were to disappear, it would be for the dead person just as if the surrounding world of the senses were to disappear for the living. The individual human being in his ego is actually, if I may express it thus, as important to himself — but in saying this we are speaking an important truth — as the whole world of the senses, which we as human beings have in common, is for the human being here in physical life. A tremendous abyss would open up, an abyss of nothingness, if we were not able to see the frozen ego, the ego frozen from the liquid state, after death.

Secondly, we have a kind of spiritual being that we can also call a spirit self by analogy with what we already know. So, as the second link of the human being after death, we have a kind of spiritual being. This spiritual being is mainly perceived by the human being in such a way that this awareness of the spirit self arises from within. While the I presents a kind of external view, the consciousness of this spirit self arises from within. And to the same extent that one feels that this spirit self comes to life, to the same extent the beings of the higher hierarchies emerge from consciousness so that one knows that they are there. I call this, therefore, the spirit-self. I must define it exactly as I now write it on the blackboard, otherwise I would be writing something inaccurate for you.

What I have written now gives the facts quite correctly. You have the feeling that there is a being from the hierarchy of the Angeloi, from the hierarchy of the exusiai, that is now directing its gaze to your ego. By directing your gaze to the I, either through some being of a hierarchy or through the fact that you know that your gaze is now directed to the I through a being of the other hierarchy, you get to know this hierarchy within the activity of your spiritual self. So you get to know the hierarchies through your own activity. Through your spiritual self you begin to find yourself in the company of the hierarchies. And while before this spirit self lights up, you still have the feeling that only you are dealing with it, directing your gaze at your own ego, you get the feeling more and more clearly that more and more entities of the higher hierarchies are taking care of you and interfering with your looking, directing your gaze. By developing your higher sensory activity, you feel more and more that the beings of the higher hierarchies are co-operating with you in this sensory activity. What would be unbearable for a person in the sense world here, becomes the very element of life for a person in the state after death.

Imagine you are standing here at the window looking out and observing the surroundings. One of you stands there and wants to look at the surroundings, and the first person sitting here goes over, turns your head to one side so that you look at something in that direction; a second person goes over, turns your head up a little so that you look at something else; a third person in turn a little around, so that you look at something else, and so the whole company sitting here would approach you from behind, and you would only have the aspect of your surroundings outside in that what is sitting here inside would constantly turn your head towards it. Do not think of this now from the outside, but as an inner experience, as an inner feeling. Then you have something that is quite analogous to this experience, which you have as your spiritual self. You become more and more immersed in the life of the higher hierarchies by the fact that these higher hierarchies come into your line of vision.

In the dissolution of words, of which we have already spoken, the beings of the higher hierarchies are already at work. That is one aspect of what is experienced. But it is the continuous enrichment of life that arises from gradually becoming more and more familiar with the hierarchies. And in a very similar way, one becomes acquainted with the beings with whom one has been somehow karmically connected before death. And there one feels that one is, so to speak, guided and directed. That is what can be said about the second link of the human being in the life between death and a new birth.

The third link is something that might at first seem a little shocking to a person's understanding. One gradually feels, by living into this life after death, permeated by a certain power, I might perhaps say, by a context of powers. By first feeling that the hierarchies approach and guide one in the supersensible activity of the senses – if I may use the expression – one gradually feels that these hierarchies imbue one with power and give one power. One gradually feels filled with this power, which the hierarchies infuse along with themselves, by implanting themselves in one, by instilling their nature in one. One feels this power gradually. One feels that one is not only directed by the hierarchies to this or that, but one feels that one oneself becomes inwardly filled with power through this activity of the hierarchies, which initially appears as an activity that mediates vision. One feels the forces of the cosmos, really the cosmos within oneself, flowing in like invigorating juices. But now, what is shocking, is that the forces that one now feels flowing into oneself are of a very peculiar kind. They are forces that are not at all constructive at first, but rather dissolving and destructive for what we call life here in the physical world. One gradually feels filled with cosmic, death-bringing world power.

It is important to take in such strange ideas, because only in this way can the spiritual world be truly understood. Imagine for a moment that you, in your spiritual and soul essence, are gradually filled with forces, by becoming aware of them within yourself: Through these powers, everything that lives here on earth would be killed if you were to touch it. — So, thirdly, you clothe yourself in what I can call, in analogy to something we already know, the spirit of life. You clothe yourself in something that can be called the spirit of life, but which derives its main properties from the fact that it is deadly to that which can otherwise be called the power of the life body. And you acquire a third link to your being, through which you are able to kill any etheric body that comes your way. Everything you touch through this link of your being becomes dead in the sense in which one speaks of death here on earth. And by killing through the powers you receive, you awaken spiritual substance from what you have killed, initially actually soul substance. It is a remarkable experience, which consists in the fact that through the touch of the living, the living is killed, but from this killing, soul-like arises, soul-like is released. It is a killing, but at the same time it is a release of the soul-like from the bonds of life. So that one can say: The spirit of life kills earthly life, releasing the soul in it. And one comes to this strange experience through the fact that in life, in the living, the soul is, as it were, enchanted, and that through this process, which is practiced after death, the enchanted soul is released from the living. One might be inclined to see something terrible and unappealing in the killing, in which, after all, the power we are talking about essentially works. This is not the case for life after death, because in killing, in the killing power, lies the continuous illumination of the soul, because through this the continuous arising of the soul is ignited. But the dead must be aware of this: not only must he always look to the death he himself has undergone, but he must also be aware that what is the essence of his death, so to speak, spreads over the foundation of everything he now experiences in the spiritual world. It is as if one now lived in the spiritual world in such a way that one can say: Here in this spiritual world, spiritual forms arise continually, initially actually soul forms; the soul shines forth in the most diverse ways. But if one were to inquire what the soil is from which all these soul forms sprout, it is this killing power that we have just discussed. So this life-destroying power, which is found here on earth, is our essential soul, which we have to acquire between death and a new birth, just as we have to acquire our physical body here in life.

As a fourth link, I can say, again in analogy to what we already know: the spiritual man. This spiritual man is felt to be something that one is inclined to count towards oneself in the time between death and a new birth, in that now, with the forces that are already being instilled through the hierarchies, as I have described, the possibility is now instilled in one, not only to kill, destroy, dissolve life - what one calls life here on earth - but also to destroy forms or to transform them into others. [It is written on the blackboard:]

1. The ego
2. The spiritual self
3. The spirit of life
4. The spiritual man.

directed by the hierarchies to the ego kills earthly life, releasing the soul in him.

It is naturally becoming more and more difficult to describe these things. But essentially the power of this spiritual man, as one has it between death and a new birth, consists in doing the opposite activity - if I may express it this way - of all that could be called: producing forms in the broadest sense. Here, if I want to concentrate on a specific example, I draw triangles, squares, and so on. After death, by virtue of the forces that are developed here, one 'redraws', one dissolves all that has been drawn, the forms. But the peculiar thing is that this does not just mean that one redraws something, but that at the same time it is a cosmic activity. One is now part of the cosmic activity, one is linked to the cosmic activity. For this dis-forming, this dis-solving of forms, is a cosmic activity, and man, by acquiring, after being imbued with the spirit of life, this power of dis-solving, has become part of the cosmic world. He works within the cosmos.

What we call destruction and downfall here on earth has a lot to do with formation and development in the spiritual worlds, and vice versa. What appears here as destruction, as demise, as a dissolving of forms and signs, has much to do with the genesis in the other, in the spiritual worlds. So that when I speak of dissolving of forms and signs, I am not speaking of demise in the spiritual world, but only of demise in the soul world, whereas I am speaking of the emergence of spiritual novelty in the spiritual world.

These things are connected with many secrets in the world. Today they approach southern Italy from central Italy; as you approach southern Italy, you come to areas that are poor, not particularly fertile, where few natural resources are available to people. These are the same areas where Pythagoras worked at the time of the rising of the fourth post-Atlantic period. And Pythagoras' effectiveness was at that time in the midst of the most fertile, richest, lushest areas. As short as the time has been since that epoch: by pointing out this very spot on earth where Phythagoras worked, one has transformed the transformation from a fertility and lushness that went to the degree of Sybatis, the Sybaris into poverty, even to the emergence of worrying disease phenomena. In place of the burgeoning, abundant life that existed in those times, of which only a little history remains, something develops that, compared to that abundant, burgeoning life, is also a poverty of nature. And it is really most interesting to observe such transitions in the outer world. In this outer world, the process of becoming is constantly giving rise to decay. People, in their historical research, do not think far enough to properly link the continuous process of becoming with decay. In the midst of the luxuriant abundance, in which there was a great deal of lying, Pythagoras developed his activity, and this activity continued after his death. And that which Pythagoras and the Pythagorean souls had to do after death is in many ways connected with what manifested itself in the decline of the flourishing, sprouting life in the midst of which Pythagoras was. Pythagoras and the souls of his followers were not entirely uninvolved in the work of destruction that took place in the post-Pythagorean period. And if you want to understand the world as a whole, you just have to realize that from the different aspects here between birth and death and between death and new birth, things look quite different. He who would commit an outrage if he were to artificially undermine abundant, burgeoning life here is, as it were, only doing something that happens in the sense of eternal necessity when he participates in such a work in the life between death and new birth, which here obviously means destruction.

With the third post-Atlantic period, something should also perish, and that left its shadows. Much should perish in a different area than the one just discussed. And it is essentially connected with this decline of the third post-Atlantean epoch that there was so much lying at that time. People lied on earth because, as I explained to you yesterday, they were still in contact with the cosmic powers. But the cosmic powers that were involved in the evolution of the earth before the 8th century BC were often lying powers. Demonic liars were active in the sphere into which the human being's soul developed by developing words in the way I discussed yesterday. He had to, as it were, plunge the head of his soul into a sphere in which he could do so: the sphere of cosmic reason. But when he put the head of his soul into it, there was in it that Ahrimanic power, which expressed itself in the activity of innumerable demons of lies. And out of this same source, out of which the speech-forming power of that time was drawn, out of the same power developed on the soil of Mediterranean culture this enormous power, this gigantic power of lying. Men lied because the demons who were connected with those other demons who inspired the speech-forming faculty were liars. And these demonic liars, who were of an Ahrimanic nature, had the task of bringing to destruction that which had to be destroyed in order that the third post-Atlantean period might go down and the fourth post-Atlantean period might come up.

The world is organized according to necessity, and one must look to this necessity if one wants to answer the great question that we posed yesterday at the beginning of our reflections, the great question of the connection between the moral and the ideal with the natural event. I will talk about this further tomorrow, in order to bring these reflections to a small conclusion for the time being.

The considerations we are currently undertaking concern matters that are treated as mysteries by many people who know something about them in one form or another. And for certain reasons, knowledge of these things is kept away from the world from many sides, because it is believed that the things in question are parts of a comprehensive knowledge of supersensible matters that should not yet be communicated to mankind. I do not consider this view to be correct with regard to certain things that are being discussed here. On the contrary, it seems to me necessary for humanity to make the courageous decision to enter into a real consideration of the supersensible worlds. And one cannot do that otherwise than by directly grasping what is specifically considered in relation to the question in question.

Today, I would like to deal with a preliminary question first. Yesterday we spoke about the stages a person goes through between death and a new birth. A very common objection to discussing these things, not on the part of the initiated, but on the part of the uninitiated, is that one simply says: Yes, why is it necessary to know something about these things? One could indeed wait until one passes through the gate of death, and then one will see what it is actually like in the spiritual world. It is something that is said very often. Now, the thing is that we can never answer such questions from a so-called absolute point of view when we talk about reality, but that we, from a spiritual-scientific point of view, must always answer them from the point of view of the time in which we live. We live in the fifth post-Atlantic period, which began in the 15th century of our calendar. It concluded the fourth post-Atlantic period, which, as we know, began in the 8th century BC and came to an end in the 15th century AD. There are seven such cultural periods. From this, however, it can be seen that we have passed the midpoint of the cultural development of the earth, which was in the fourth post-Atlantic period, and that we are simply entering – we are, after all, also in the fifth great earth period – the time when the earth is in a descending development.

The considerations we have been making in these days can already draw your attention to the fact that it is important to look at the descending development, at that which is, so to speak, not in evolution but in devolution, which is in retrogression. Our whole evolution on earth is in retrogression. Certain abilities and powers that were present in the previous period of ascending development cease to exist, and others have to take the place of these ceasing powers and abilities. This is particularly the case with certain inner psychic abilities of the human being. It can be said that until the fourth post-Atlantic period, until around the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, people still had the ability to have a certain connection with the supersensible world. We know that these abilities have disappeared in the most diverse ways. They no longer exist as elementary abilities; they have, so to speak, dwindled away. Not only has the life of man on earth changed between birth and death with regard to such abilities, but actually, and even more radically, has the life of man changed between death and a new birth. And it must be said that for this period of time, from death to a new birth, in the present cycle of mankind, which thus already belongs to the descending ones, it is so that men, when they go through the gate of death , they must have certain memories of what they have acquired here in the physical body if they want to find the right attitude and the right relationship to the events to which they are exposed between death and a new birth. It is one of the necessary prerequisites for a right life after death that people here before death acquire more and more certain ideas about life after death, because only when they remember these ideas, which they have acquired here, can they orient themselves in the time between death and a new birth. It is factually incorrect to claim that one can wait until death to have such ideas about the life between death and a new birth. If people continued to live in these prejudices, if they persistently refused to want to gain insights here already about life between death and a new birth, then this life, this life free of the body, would become a dark one for them, one in which they would be disoriented; they would not be able to penetrate their spiritual surroundings in the right way through everything that I described to you yesterday. Until almost the Mystery of Golgotha, it was the case that people brought abilities into their physical life here that originated in the spiritual world. That is why they had atavistic clairvoyance. This atavistic clairvoyance came from the fact that certain spiritual abilities extended from the pre-birth state into this life. That stopped. People no longer have abilities here in physical life that extend from the prenatal life. You know that. But the other thing must be done instead: people must acquire more and more ideas here on earth about the post-mortem life, the life after death, so that they can remember after death, so that they can carry something through the gates of death.

That is what I want to comment on in particular regarding this preliminary question. So the comfortable notion that one can wait until death to form such ideas does not apply if one considers in concrete terms at what point in time of the development of the earth we actually are. And this must always be borne in mind. For views that are absolutely valid, that apply at all times, do not exist; there are only views that can guide people for a certain period of time. This is what one must acquire in such an eminent sense through spiritual science.

And now I would like to discuss a few things that can bring our considerations to a preliminary conclusion. We started from the assumption that the present human being feels a gulf between what he calls ideals, be they moral or other ideals, which he also calls ideas, and what he feels to be his views on the purely natural order of the world. The concepts and views that man forms about the natural order of the world do not enable him to assume that what he carries in his heart as ideals has real power and can actually be realized like a natural force.

The essential thing to consider in this question is now the following: We now know how it is with the structure of the human being here on the physical earth. We also know how it is with the structure of the human being in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Some time ago I raised a question which actually already comes before the human soul as a concrete question when the human being looks at life, but which is precisely a question to which one cannot say anything when one is faced with the gap just characterized between idealism and realism between idealism and realism, that is the question: How is it that in our world order some people die very young, as children or young people or in middle age, while others only die when they have grown old? What is the connection with the order of the world? Neither idealism on the one hand nor realism on the other, which cannot regard ideals as real powers, can shed any light on such questions, which are, however, questions of life. These questions can only be approached if one has something very definite in mind. And that is to realize that the present human being, as he will one day stand before us as an earthly human being, can cope relatively easily with space, but he does not cope in the same way with time. In this respect, the sum of all existing philosophical views does not really offer any significant insight, and the question of the nature of time has so far only been treated in the narrowest human circles. It is not that easy to speak about time and its essence in a way that is accessible to the general public, but perhaps I can succeed in giving you an idea of what I mean by bringing time into discussion in analogy to space. I will have to tax your patience a little, because the brief consideration I want to give to this subject seems to have a somewhat abstract character.

If you simply overlook a piece of the room, you know that what you overlook reveals itself to you in a perspective character. You have to take into account the perspective of the room when you overlook a piece of it. If you now bring the piece of room that you overlook and to which you instinctively ascribe a perspective character onto a surface, then you take the perspective into account. If you look down an avenue, you see the distant trees of the avenue as smaller and closer together. You can express this in perspective, and you can, in a sense, express in perspective on a surface what you see in space.

Now it is clear that what you see in space is juxtaposed in a flat surface. In space, it is not juxtaposed; there are two trees in front (see drawing on p. 164), and two trees are far away. But by bringing the visible space into the flat surface, you place what is behind one another next to one another. You have the instinctive ability to transpose what you have painted or drawn on a surface into three dimensions. That you have this ability is due to the fact that man, as he is now as an earthly man, has become relatively detached from space as such.

Man has not detached himself from time in the same way. And that is something tremendously important and significant, but something that unfortunately is hardly noticed, hardly noticed by science. Man believes that when he develops in time, he has time. But in reality he does not have real time. He does not have real time at all, but what you experience as time is actually, in relation to real time, something that can be called an image. Just as this image (see drawing) in the plane relates to space, so what the ordinary person calls time relates to real time. The ordinary person does not experience real time, but rather experiences an image of time. And that is very difficult to imagine.

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For example, it is extremely difficult for you to imagine that something that is effective today does not need to be present at the present moment in time, but is real at a much earlier point in time and is not real at the present moment in time. You can, so to speak, project that which is present in a very early period of time into your own time.

What I have just said has a very significant consequence. It has the consequence that everything we call nature has a completely different character than everything we have to regard as a certain part of the human being itself. For example, Ahriman also works in nature outside, or rather the Ahrimanic powers work; but the Ahrimanic powers never work in nature outside at the present time. If you look at nature as a whole, Ahriman is at work in nature, but he is working from a distant time. Ahriman works from the past. And whether you look at the mineral, the vegetable or the animal kingdom, you must never say that there is something in what is currently unfolding before your eyes in which Ahriman is active. And yet Ahriman is active in it; but from the past. If I were to describe the matter, I would have to say: Here is the line of development from the past into the future, and here you survey nature.

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Yes, now you have to imagine looking into it. What you see before you in the present contains no ahrimanic powers, but Ahriman works through nature from the past, from a particular past.

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And to you, Ahriman appears in nature, when you become aware of him there, in perspective. If you were to say: Ahriman is at work in the present — then you would be making the same mistake in relation to nature as if you were to say: When I survey a room, the distant trees stand beside the near trees (see drawing on page 164) because they can be placed in perspective within the space.

A fundamental requirement for a real view into the spiritual world is this: that one learns to see in perspective in time, that one learns to place every being at its correct point in time.

If I said yesterday that after death the I is, as it were, transferred from a fluid state into a kind of solid state, that is not all there is to it. Suppose you lived here on earth with your I from 1850 to 1920, and in 1920 you became aware of your I. I mean: you will become aware of it earlier, but now you look back, with the spirit self through the hierarchies you look back at your ego; there you see your ego always as it was from 1850 to 1920. The ego stays there, stays put. This means that your experiences do not go with you soon after your death, but you look back on them. You now look back from a temporally distant perspective and you see into the length of time, just as you see into the length of space here in the physical world. I can also express it this way: when you die, say, in 1920, you live with all that I described to you yesterday as the members of your being, but then you look back on the stretch of time in which you lived here on earth with your ego. And that stretch of time remains there, and you always see it as you continue to live in perspective, at the point in time where it was. And so you have to imagine that Ahriman is active outside in nature, but from an earlier point in time.

This is very important. It is something that is given very little consideration. If one wants to understand the world, if one wants to speak spiritually of time, then one must absolutely imagine time in a spatial way and must consider this connection of the spiritual substance with time. This is very important.

Now, what I said to you about the Ahrimanic powers, that they work from the past, is true for nature. But with human beings it is different. For the human being, while he lives here between birth and death, it is different precisely because everything that comes to an end in time becomes maya, deception, for him. While he lives here, the human being lives within the course of time itself, and by living through a certain number of years, he lives through the course of time. As time passes, he himself passes with time. That is not the case with space. When you walk down an avenue, the trees remain behind and you move forward, and you do not take the trees, which are left behind, and your impressions with you in such a way that you would have the impression that the tree image is moving with you when you take a step. You do that with the image of time. Here in the physical body you actually do this – because you yourself continue to develop in time – by allowing yourself to be deceived about time in relation to its perspective. You do not notice the perspective of time. And in particular, the subconscious mind does not notice it. The subconscious mind does not notice this living with time at all, and gives itself over to a complete deception with regard to the perspective of time. But this has a very definite consequence. It has the consequence that Ahrimanic powers can now work as present powers in what happens in man. Ahrimanic powers work in the life of the human soul as present powers. So that man stands in relation to nature in this way: when he looks out into nature, there is nothing Ahrimanic in the present. The Ahrimanic works in him as a presence, precisely as Maja, as deception. But the human being is given over to this deception about the things that I have explained to you, so that through the human being the Ahrimanic powers gain the possibility of creeping into the present, of walking into the present. We can say that the Ahrimanic forces – and the same applies to the Luciferic forces, albeit from a somewhat different point of view, which we will discuss in a moment – work in nature in such a way that they actually have nothing to do with the present, but extend their effects from prehistoric times. These Ahrimanic forces are currently at work in the human being.

What are the consequences? The consequence is that, in his deepest soul, man cannot feel related to nature in relation to the point just discussed. He looks at his being, or rather feels himself in his being, senses the nature-based being. Because ahrimanic powers are countervailing powers in him, and ahrimanic powers are past powers in nature, everything that is natural appears to him differently from that which develops within himself. Man does not unravel the difference he perceives between himself and nature in the right way. If he unraveled it in the right way, it would be as I have just explained. He would say: Outside in nature, Ahriman works from the past; in me, Ahriman works as a present power. But because of this, even if he does not know the difference, he behaves in the sense of this difference and perceives nature as spiritless. He does perceive that in the present the Ahrimanic powers are not directly active in nature, but he perceives nature as spiritless because he does not say to himself: Ahriman works from the past – instead, he only looks at present-day nature. Ahriman does not work in it.

But Ahriman, however strange it may sound, is the power that the general creation of the world uses to bring forth nature. When one speaks of the spirit of nature, when one speaks of the pure spirit of nature, one should actually speak of the ahrimanic spirit. There it is fully justified, the ahrimanic spirit. The beings of the normal hierarchies make use of the ahrimanic spirit to bring forth what extends around us as nature. The fact that we do not perceive nature in a spiritualized way is precisely because in the present life of nature the spirit is not contained, but works from the past. And that is the secret, I would say, of the world-creative powers, that they make use of a spirit that they have left at an earlier stage to work at a later stage, but let it work from the past.

When we speak of nature, we should not speak of matter, nor of forces; we should speak of ahrimanic entities. But then we would have to place these ahrimanic entities in the past. The result is a strange one: suppose some natural philosopher ponders, ponders what is behind the phenomena of nature. Well, he comes up with all sorts of theories and hypotheses about atomic connections and the like. But that is not the case. Behind what is spread out around us in a way that appeals to the senses, there is not actually what the natural philosophers usually assume, but behind all of this there is the sum of the Ahrimanic powers, but not as a presence. So if the natural philosopher is compelled to assume, let us say, that there are some atomic structures behind the chemical elements, then that is wrong; behind the chemical elements there are Ahrimanic powers. But if you could detach what you see from the chemical elements and look beyond, you would see nothing behind them in the present: it would be hollow where you look for atoms, and what is at work there comes from the past and works in this hollow space. That is how it is in reality. Hence the many unsuccessful theories about what the “thing in itself” is; for this “thing in itself” is not there at all in the present. Rather, where the “thing in itself” is sought, there is nothing; but the effect is there from the past. So that one could say that if Kart had sought his “thing in itself,” he would have had to say: Where I want to approach the 'thing in itself', there I cannot approach. — That is what he said. But he did not realize that in the beginning he would have found nothing there at all, and that if he had gone behind the veil of things, he would have had to go far back; then he would have found Ahrimanic powers.

In man himself it is different. It is precisely because man is vividly placed in time that it has been possible for the Ahrimanic powers to enter our world through the gateway of humanity and to work within man as such. And the consequence of the Ahrimanic powers working in man is that man detaches what he sees in the present from the spiritual, that man detaches his present existence from the spiritual. This is the consequence of our carrying the Ahrimanic powers within the Maja in us. So that one can say: Just as we view the world materially, detached from the spirit, as a mere natural order that believes it has reached its peak in the law of the conservation of energy and matter — which is an illusion — what we see as a natural order is merely brought about by the fact that we carry the Ahrimanic powers within us, and that they are not present as powers in nature outside us. Therefore, what we think about nature, in that we think of it merely materially, does not correspond to nature, but only to present nature. But this present nature is precisely an abstraction, because the past Ahriman always works in it.

Now, not only the Ahrimanic but also the Luciferic is at work in people. This Luciferic, however, has, so to speak, a different tendency in the universe than the Ahrimanic. Let us visualize the tendency of the Ahrimanic as we have now expressed it. The tendency of the Ahrimanic in us is to present the world in materialistic terms. That we conceive the world materialistically, that we think of a mere natural order, is the consequence of the fact that we carry Ahrimanic in us. That we carry ideals within us, which detach themselves from the general nature, according to which we want to orient ourselves in our mutual behavior, but which must appear to us only like dreams within the present world view, which are dreamed out when, according to the natural order, the earth has arrived at its final state , that is the consequence of the fact that the luciferic powers, which, like the ahrimanic ones, live in us, are constantly striving to tear the part of us that is accessible to them completely out of the natural order and to spiritualize it completely. The main tendency of the luciferic powers, insofar as they live in us, is to make us as spiritual as possible, to tear us away from all material life if possible. That is why they present us with ideals that are not natural powers, but that are powerless in the present natural order. And if, in the course of the future period of the earth, man were to fall entirely prey to the influence of Lucifer, so that he would believe that ideals are just imagined things towards which the mind can be directed, then this man would follow the luciferic powers. The material earth, to which we belong, would decay, scatter in the universe, would not fulfill its purpose, and the luciferic powers would lead man into another spiritual world to which he does not belong. To do this, they need the trick of making us believe in ideals that are actually mere dreams. Just as Ahriman, on the one hand, presents us with a world that is a mere natural order, so Lucifer, on the other hand, presents us with a world that consists purely of imagined ideals.

This is something very significant. And at present, I would say, a balance is only being struck in those areas that still lie in the human unconscious. But people must become more and more aware of this, otherwise they will not get out of this dilemma, they will not be able to build a bridge between idealism and realism, but this bridge is necessary.

What currently still creates a kind of balance is the following. When very young people die, for example children, these children – and the same applies to young people – have just looked into the world; they have not fully lived out their existence here on the physical plane. With a life unlived on the physical plane, they pass over into the other world, which is lived between death and a new birth, as I described yesterday. Because they have only lived part of their earthly life, they bring something of earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be brought across when one has grown old. You arrive differently in the spiritual world if you have grown old than if you die young. If you die young, you have lived your life in such a way that you still have a lot of strength in you from your prenatal life. As a child and as a young person, you have lived your physical life in such a way that you still have a lot of the strength in you that you had in the spiritual world before you were born. In this way, a close connection has been created between the spiritual part that one has brought with one and the physical part that one has experienced here. And through this close connection, one can take something that one acquires on earth with one into the spiritual world. Children or people who have died young take something from earthly life with them into the spiritual world that cannot be taken at all if one dies as an older person. That which is taken along is then over there in the spiritual world, and what is carried over by children and young people gives the spiritual world a certain heaviness that it would not otherwise have, the spiritual world in which people then live together, gives a certain heaviness to the spiritual world and prevents the luciferic powers from completely separating the spiritual world from the physical one.

So you see, we are looking at an enormous secret! When children and young people die, they take something with them from here, which the luciferic powers use to prevent us from completely detaching ourselves from earthly life. It is extremely important to realize this.

If you get older here on earth, you cannot thwart the luciferic powers in the way described, because after a certain age you no longer have that intimate connection between what you brought with you at birth and physical life on earth. When one has grown old, this inner connection is dissolved and just the opposite occurs. From a certain age onwards we instill our own nature in a certain way into the spiritual substance within the physical earth. We make the physical earth more spiritual than it would otherwise be. So from a certain age onwards we spiritualize the physical earth in a certain way, which cannot be perceived by the outer senses. We carry spiritual into the physical earth, as we carry physical up into the spiritual world when we die young; we squeeze out, so to speak, spiritual when we grow old, I cannot say it any other way. Growing old consists in the spiritual sense from a certain aspect of squeezing out spiritual here on earth. This in turn prevents the reckoning of Ahriman. As a result, Ahriman cannot, in the long run, have such an intense effect on people that the opinion that ideals do have a certain meaning could completely die out. But in today's time frame, we are already very, very close to people falling into the most terrible errors precisely with regard to what has been said. Even well-meaning people easily fall into such errors with regard to what has been said. And these errors will become ever greater and greater and, with increasing earth development, can become enormous.

To give you an example: a very ingenious philosopher, Robert Zimmermann, wrote an “Anthroposophy” in 1882. I have already mentioned this in a context. This “Anthroposophy” is not what we now call Anthroposophy, it is more or less a concept jungle. But that is because Robert Zimmermann was not able to see into the spiritual world, he was only a Herbartian philosopher. Now he has written this “Anthroposophy”. But it is precisely in this “Anthroposophy” that Robert Zimmermann deals with the question that I have placed at the top of our considerations these days from his point of view. On the one hand, he sees ideas: logical ideas, aesthetic ideas, ethical ideas; on the other hand, he sees the order of nature. And he cannot somehow find a bridge between the logical, the aesthetic, the ethical ideas and the order of nature, but he does stop at it: on the one hand, there is the order of nature, and on the other hand, there are the ideas. And the conclusion he comes to is extremely interesting, because it is actually typical of a person in the present day. He comes to the conclusion that it is forbidden to man once and for all to populate nature with ideas and to ascribe to ideas the power of nature. The two worlds can actually only be connected in the mind of man. So he says. And so he means at one point, where he summarizes almost everything he says and thinks: “The realization of ideas is neither a fact of the past nor a fact of the present, but a task whose fulfillment lies in the future and in the hands of man. The dream of a “golden age”, of which a sober rationalist like Kant as of that of “eternal peace, as an extreme positivist like Comte as the ‘état positif’, raved about, will be fulfilled when the entire world of ideas has become real and the entire reality is permeated by the ideas, that is to say, when that which Schiller called “the secret of the master's art,” the “consumption” of matter by form, becomes manifest, or, as Schleiermacher put it, “when ethics become physics and physics become ethics.”

Yes, but that can never be! It can only be that people realize ideas in their social order. But when the earth has reached its end, the whole dream of ideas will have been dreamt. Nothing else is possible according to such a philosophy. Therefore such a philosophy always remains abstract and must finally confess: “A philosophy which, like the one above, neither takes the theocentric point of view, inaccessible to human knowledge, as in theosophy, and regards the ‘dream of reason’ as a reality that has long since been created, nor, like anthropology, takes the anthropocentric but uncritical standpoint of common experience, in order to view from there a reality filled with ideas as a 'dream of reason', which thus simultaneously wants to be anthropocentric, that is, starting from human experience, and yet philosophical, that is, going beyond it, at the hand of logical thinking, is Arihroposophie.” “Anthroposophy” is therefore here the admission that one can never cross this chasm between unreal ideas and idea-less reality.

But in man himself there is a natural being, which thus belongs to the natural order, connected with a spiritual being that can absorb the spiritual. This is not denied by an anthroposophist like Robert Zimmermann. But man cannot be regarded by contemporary science either in such a way that the riddle would be solved through man, through this microcosm.

Let us now look back at something we have already mentioned during this stay. We have said that we actually have to divide the human being into three parts, not as conveniently as the skeleton, of course, as I have already explained. But I have also spoken about this in the final notes to my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' (Mysteries of the Soul). We can divide the human being into three parts: the head, the trunk and the extremities, with everything that belongs to the extremities belonging to the extremities, including everything sexual. If we divide the human being in this way and now apply what we already know: that the formation of the head, the shape of the head points to forces of the previous incarnation, the limb man points to the future incarnation and actually only the trunk belongs to the present. So, after what I have explained today, you will no longer find it very incomprehensible when I tell you: insofar as the human being carries his head, this head points back to the earlier incarnation, into the past. The forces of the past, Ahrimanic forces, are at work in the head, and what applies to Ahrimanic forces in general applies to the human head in particular. Everything that is actually formed in the human head does not actually belong to the present, but the forces of the previous incarnation have an effect on the head; and the creative powers make use of the ahrimanic powers to shape our head, to give our head its actual form. If the creative powers did not make use of the ahrimanic spirits to shape our heads, then we would all – forgive me, but it is so – wear a much softer head, but we would all have an animal head: one who is bullish in character would have a bull's head, another who is lamb-like in character would have a lamb's head, and so on. It is due to the influence of the Ahrimanic powers, which the creative forces use to shape us, that this animal head, which we would otherwise wear, does not really sit on us, as the Egyptians drew it on some of their figures; that we do not go around like these Egyptian figures, who have good reasons for this, because in the Egyptian mysteries, too, though from an atavistic point of view, things were taught that can be taught again now. We also do not go around like that, as in the Rosicrucian pictures, where every woman is painted with a lion's head and every man with an ox's head. That is the Rosicrucian painting of man. The Rosicrucians chose a more average animal and therefore gave the women the head of the animal that most resembles them, the lion, and the man the head of the animal that most resembles him, the ox, the bull. That is why in Rosicrucian figures you see man and woman placed side by side: the woman with the most beautiful lion's head, the man with a bull's head. But this is absolutely correct. That metamorphosis – to use a Goethean term – can take place, that our head, which tends towards the animalistic in its form, can be shaped so that it is a human head, comes from the influence of the Ahrimanic powers. If the deities did not make use of Ahriman to shape our bony heads, then we would walk around with animal heads.

But the divine powers also make use of the luciferic spirits. If they did not make use of these luciferic spirits, our limbless man would not be able to transform from the present to the next incarnation. The luciferic beings are necessary for this. And it is to the luciferic entities that we again owe the fact that, by dying, the form that the man of the extremities still has now is gradually transformed into the broader form that he is to have in the next incarnation. Then, in the middle of the path between death and a new birth, Ahriman must intervene to take on the other task: to reshape the head in the appropriate way. Just as we would go around with animal heads if we did not owe it to Ahriman that we get a human head, so our nature of the extremities would not metamorphose into the human until the next incarnation, but would pass over into the demonic. We lose our head, as we now have it, under all circumstances through death, not only as matter that unites with the earth, but also as form; in the next incarnation we carry over what will become the head from the extremity of man. But this would become a demonic being if we did not have the luciferic powers, who are connected with us, to thank for the fact that the transformation can take place from a demon, which is merely a spiritual soul, into the human form of the next incarnation.

Thus, Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers must participate in our becoming human, and the human cannot be understood without calling upon the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic for help. Humanity cannot be spared the task of truly understanding the activity of Ahriman and Lucifer in the future. The Bible quite rightly says that the Deity of whom it speaks at the beginning breathed the living spirit into man. But the living spirit works in the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the normally functioning divine entities, we are dealing only with the trunk of the human being. Insofar as we are dealing with the head man, we are dealing with an opponent of the powers of Yahweh, and thus also with an opponent of the Christ. And insofar as we are dealing with the man of the extremities, we are dealing with the Luciferic opponent.

Therefore, one will only understand the human being if one presents him under these three aspects. In our central group for our building, we therefore have this trinity: the representative of humanity, who is trained in such a way that the forces of breathing, of the trunk, of heart activity and so on are primarily active in him – this is the middle figure; then the figure in which everything main, head-related is active: Ahriman; and the figure in which everything extremity-related is active: Lucifer.

We must dissect the human being in this way if we want to understand the human being, because in the human being, the human being as such is united with Ahriman and Lucifer. At the same time, this is an indication that everything that is more or less connected with human thinking, which, after all, is bound to the head in relation to

its physical connection to the head — human thinking flows on the basis of perceptions as something external and obvious — that all this has an Ahrimanic character. Through the senses of the head we perceive nature primarily, and we build up an image of nature with the ahrimanic character just described, because we ourselves carry the ahrimanic in the formation, in the shaping of our head.

Ideals, on the other hand, have a great deal to do with love, with everything that belongs to the man of the extremities, inwardly, psychologically. I shall come back to this in the near future. That is why the Luciferic power has special access to ideals. Ahriman takes hold of us through our head, Lucifer through our extremities. Through our head Ahriman tempts us to conceive of nature without spirit; through our extremity man Lucifer tempts us to conceive of ideals without the power of nature.

But it is the task of the present human being, by surveying such things, to arrive at a correct overview. For you see, there is a certain boundary within us, precisely in our chest-humanity, in our trunk-humanity, whereby the forces of the head, which are Ahrimanic forces, are separated from the luciferic forces that belong to the extremity-humanity. If we were able to see ourselves completely by looking mystically into ourselves, then we would indeed comprehend the natural order through the head, but we would also see into ourselves through the natural order. And if the luciferic powers were to decide in us, then the luciferic powers would also enlighten us about the ahrimanic powers, and in this way we would come to a connection between the natural order and the spiritual order. But for a certain reason we cannot do this, and that is because we have a memory. What we absorb from nature in the way of ideas and concepts, of impressions, we store in our memory. And if here (see diagram on page 179) we have only schematically drawn the head human being, the trunk and torso human being, and the extremities human being, then in the trunk human being there is the septum, which leads to that which we take in through the head, in the natural order, coming back to us as memory material. As a result, we do not see down to the Luciferic, and thus we do not notice the Ahrimanic, as we do not see what is behind a mirror, but rather what is reflected. Here the natural order is reflected in what at the same time separates our Ahrimanic from our Luciferic, and what is the basis for the forming memory, for the forming power of recollection. If we could not remember the things we have experienced, if this partition were not there, if, looking into ourselves, we could see through ourselves, we would look down into ourselves as far as the Luciferic. Then we would also perceive the Ahrimanic.

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But now consider: what appears to us in this mirror is what we live through in the course of our lives, what we look back on after death, what becomes a solid ego from a fluid ego. This is what we look back on. That is what we live with. And Ahriman and Lucifer work with us, working with us in such a way that Ahriman brings us to wearing a human head, and Lucifer brings us to not becoming a demon, but to having the possibility of coming to a next incarnation.

I have perhaps tried your patience a little with things that are perhaps a little more difficult to understand, but I wanted to at least evoke a feeling for what actually creates the gap between idealism and realism. It arises from the fact that the Luciferic in us arouses idealism, which is powerless in nature, that the Ahrimanic in us evokes the mere natural order, which appears spiritless to us. Thus idealists, abstract idealists, are actually under the influence of Lucifer, while materialists are under the influence of Ahriman. It is necessary to engage with these things, not just to engage in so-called theosophy in a schematic way, but to engage with these more precise things. For it is necessary that man should become conscious of the fact that he must do something to remain united with the spirit for the rest of his development on earth. It is an uncomfortable truth, one might say, even a hated truth, truly a hated truth, for it contradicts so much that is pleasant to man, that is pleasant to him out of laziness. Nothing is more difficult for people today than when they are told: If you want to maintain your connection with the spirit in the future, you have to do something about it. Most people would like the Mystery of Golgotha to have dissolved into the ground, so that they have nothing to do with their own affairs, so that they can be redeemed from their sins through Christ and go to heaven without having to do anything. And that is why most theologians get so angry about anthroposophy, because the anthroposophical side can never admit that man has nothing to do to maintain his connection with the spirit, that this can also happen in the future of the development of the earth without any action on his part. The connection between the physical and the spiritual, between what the members of man are between birth and death, and what the members of man are between death and new birth, this connection is called into question by the future development of the earth, and it will only not come into disorder if men will really occupy themselves with the spiritual towards the future. Spiritual scientific evidence for this already exists today. This spiritual scientific evidence is highly, highly inconvenient truth, but it sheds light on important and significant matters.

I would like to say that the connection between the soul-spiritual and the physical-etheric in the human being of the counterweight has already become very loose, and it is necessary for the human being to be more and more alert to himself, so that nothing happens in the connection between his physical-etheric and soul-spiritual that could, so to speak, suck him dry, that could suck him dry soul-spiritually. For when such prejudices become more and more active, when one does not need to know anything about what happens after death in life, or when the gulf between so-called idealism and pure natural order becomes ever greater, then people are in danger of losing their soul more and more. Today, I might say, this loss is still held in check by the fact that when young people die, a certain heaviness is given to the spiritual world and Lucifer is thwarted, and when old people die, so much spirituality is poured into the physical world that Ahriman is thwarted. But one must not forget that as a result of people turning away from the spiritual realm, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers become more and more powerful, and that little by little, as the devolution of the earth goes on and on, this dam could no longer be fully effective.

That is what I would like to see emerging from our deliberations as a kind of bottom line, a feeling – and feelings are always the most important thing that can arise from spiritual scientific life – of the necessity of dealing with the spiritual from the present earth cycle onwards. I have emphasized this from the most diverse points of view, that it is necessary from the present point of view that people occupy themselves with the spiritual. And there will be no other way of dealing with spiritual matters in the future than by acquiring understanding and not resisting the process of really absorbing even the more difficult considerations such as we have been discussing in recent days and particularly today. People must come to understand the perspectivity of time. When this understanding of the perspectivity of time comes among people, then they will no longer say: Here is idealism, but it is only a mere dream that has no force of nature, and on the other side lies the natural order. Instead, people will come to recognize that what lives in us as ideals is the germ for the future, and that what is the natural order is the fruit of the past.

This sentence is a golden rule: every ideal is the germ of a future natural event; every natural event is the fruit of a past spiritual event. Only by this rule can one find the bridge between idealism and realism. But for this one thing is necessary: any ideal could never become the germ of a future natural event if this future natural event were prevented by the present natural event. We can put any hypothesis before our eyes. Let us assume the possibility that applies today, that through the so-called law of entropy, the evolution of the earth will one day pass into a kind of general warming, and that all other natural forces will cease, then within this final state, of course, all ideals would have died out. This final state follows quite well if one assumes that, according to pure causality, the present physical states will simply continue. If one thinks as present-day physics does, that such a final state will one day exist according to the law of conservation of energy and matter, then there is no room in this final state for an ideal to arise in it as a future natural event, because the future will simply be the consequence of the present natural event. But that is not how it is, that is not how it presents itself to the present study of nature, but it presents itself differently. All the substances and forces that exist today will no longer be there in the future. The law of conservation of matter and energy does not exist. Where we look for substance, we find nothing but the influence of something Ahrimanic that has passed away. And what surrounds us in the world of the senses will no longer be there in the future. And then, when nothing of what is physical now remains, when all this has been completely dissolved, the time will have come when the present ideals will join the natural process of what is now perishing.

This is how it is in the great universe. And for the individual human being, it is the case that he will be incarnated again in the next world incarnation when everything that he has grown into with the present incarnation has been partially overcome, when, that is, an environment can be created for him that is different from the present environment, when everything that is keeping him here on earth can be removed from the present environment. If all this has changed so that he can experience new things, then he will be incarnated again. The present ideals that can form in man will be nature, when all that is now nature will no longer be there, but something new will have emerged. But the new that arises is nothing other than the spiritual that has become nature.

Behind appearances and ideals we must seek that which forms the bridge over the abyss. But one must discover it. Today one can only discover it if one is not afraid to develop the concepts so powerfully that they themselves can penetrate reality. Therefore, the present time really has the necessity to engage very much in everything that can be experienced spiritually. But — let me add this as a postscript — it will be necessary for people to be able to develop ever greater and greater impartiality towards spiritual considerations. The day before yesterday, I ended by pointing out, as it might seem unnecessary to do for some people, but I do not like to do it, it is never unnecessary, a number of things that stand in the way of fruitful spiritual scientific work, including on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Above all, what is needed here is real impartiality. Time and again, we see that the dissolving power that actually brought about materialism and destroyed the old spirituality is penetrating into human thinking, especially into the spiritual, into the willed spiritual. I have pointed out how materialistic some theosophical views are. Of course, it is not easy to find the right words when discussing spiritual-scientific matters, because our language today is no longer suitable for the spiritual, because we first have to search again for such a connection between language and the subject that is suitable for the spiritual. But it is necessary that the spiritual-scientific movement is not always corrupted by what is most harmful. One must characterize impartially what takes place in the spirit. Again and again I experience that I am asked: There is someone, there is someone who has spiritual experiences. — The meaning of the questions, which are often asked in this way, is that the actual question is: Is it now possible to surrender to what this or that person sees with blind faith in the truth? And if the answer is in the affirmative, then blind devotion arises; if it is in the negative, then the person in question is immediately denounced as a heretic and it is said: Well, that is atavistic clairvoyance, you don't give anything to that. — Yes, this either-or must be taken quite differently in this field. We must really face up to the statements about the spiritual with all our healthy reason. But if we want to become dogmatists, we cannot become spiritual scientists. If we want to either idolize or condemn, we cannot become spiritual scientists. There will also be infinitely valuable contributions to the characterization of the spiritual world from sides that one does not necessarily want to swear by.

On the other hand, there are times when people swear by some esoteric personality. Then it can be shown that this seer personality has at some point – well, maybe even once – retouched a little, or retouched a lot; then that personality is finished. Before, the same people swore by them, and now they have been undone.

Yes, you don't get ahead within humanity in this way. You don't get ahead within humanity with the either/or of deification or demonization, but only by facing things with your common sense. For example, it may also be the case that someone, of whom one even knows: Well, he does not disdain to tell a tall tale now and then – something quite true, important, essential comes out of the spiritual world.

We would not have the either/or that I am talking about if we wanted to introduce dogmatics, but if we wanted to place ourselves with common sense, precisely within this anthroposophical movement. That is one thing. The other is this: it is extremely difficult, because of the way things are often handled within our circle, to place the Anthroposophical Society in the cultural movement of the present day. This requires discernment on the part of those who are already members of this society. Once you are a member, you have a certain obligation to exercise this discernment. For we will go completely wrong with this Anthroposophical Society if we do not seek to connect with the general spiritual culture of the present, if we repeatedly and repeatedly fall back into the error of being sectarian. That will be the death of our movement if we become sectarian. Just consider that things like the ones we have discussed these days will not seem particularly strange to someone who is currently involved in science and cultural life, if he or she only acquires the necessary lack of prejudice. But in order to achieve something in this way, it is necessary to have the will to distinguish. With us it can easily happen that a question is asked in a stereotyped way when it is a matter of: should someone listen to anthroposophical lectures or should he be given a cycle? So the question is asked in a stereotyped way, without taking into account the level of education, the whole world position of the person concerned. But the stereotyped way is what is absolutely harmful to us. It is the schematic that makes it possible for a person like the one in Holland, around whom a whole bunch of nonsense has crystallized, to swim into the Anthroposophical Society and find protectors there, while people who are capable of judgment are often repelled by it.

To mention a specific example: some time ago, Mr. von Bernus appeared within the Anthroposophical Society with the clear aim — which one may find a little better, a little worse, as common sense may speak — of building a bridge between the general cultural life, the literary and scientific life of the present, and our anthroposophical life. Now, Mr. von Bernus, in his own way, has poetically reworked and brought out into the world a number of things, some of which are in my books and some of which are in cycles. He showed me himself: he has received a pile of letters, letters of criticism, because a truly contemporary attempt has been made here! One would not be surprised if someone who perhaps has a lot at stake could be repelled by such behavior as was perpetrated against him by the Anthroposophical Society in the past. Nevertheless, the journal he founded will be of tremendous service to the Anthroposophical Movement. He had, after all, managed to get the Anthroposophical Society represented in Munich in his art gallery. But everywhere one could see certain resistances to something that was as justified as possible! And if one looks at Bernus' experiences, they give a good picture of how the Anthroposophical Society should learn to be a real society.

In so far as the Dornach structure came into being, it is a society. But much else, in particular, is left undone, clearly showing that the Anthroposophical Society does not see itself as a society at all, but as a sum of individual sectarian little circles. But we must get beyond this stage of sectarianism. And we will not get beyond it unless some thought is given to the matter.

It is so difficult, and it is true that one does not like to say such things, but after all, many things are necessarily said to me because I am personally so closely involved with this anthroposophical movement. If the Anthroposophical Society should gradually develop more and more into a society with an expressed tendency to keep me completely quiet — which is what it is actually developing into and what it has always had as a tendency — then it is not a matter of personal vanity when I emphasize this. It makes me very uncomfortable that I have to emphasize it, but in the Anthroposophical Society there is a tendency to keep quiet about me, and there the personal is linked to the factual. Because of this – because everything that a society otherwise does is not being done – only the venomous words that the apostate members have created bubble to the surface.

Yes, these are things that I sometimes have to point out and that must not remain unspoken. I have raised them in the places where I have been able to speak recently, because I really believe that in these catastrophic times it is very important that anthroposophy is represented in the world in the right way. But it is so difficult to get people to reflect more deeply on how one should actually proceed in the anthroposophical field in order to make this Anthroposophical Society a real society. — Individuals have indeed made a start, but as a rule everything gets stuck in the starting blocks. Now, I think that perhaps, by drawing attention to the matter a second time, it will be given a little thought. I am not saying this for personal reasons, but because of certain necessities of the time, as you will indeed gather from what I have just said, from which you will be able to discern many seeds that can serve to help you understand our catastrophic times.

[Blackboard writing] September 2, 1918

Every ideal is a germ for a future natural event.

Every natural event is the fruit of past spiritual events.