The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Anthroposophical comprehension of spirit is not intended to be a merely theoretical world-philosophy, but rather to be the full content and energizing power of life.

And it fulfills its mission only if we so strengthen our anthroposophical apprehension of the world that it becomes fully alive within us.

For in thus uniting our souls with the anthroposophical conception of spirit we have become, in a certain sense, guardians who watch over definite and significant processes in human evolution.

Apart from Anthroposophy, whether men are followers of one system or of another they are as a rule convinced that thoughts and ideas, besides what they are in their own minds, are not also something else in their connection with the outer world. They expect thoughts and ideas, as ideals, to become operative in the world only in proportion as titan, by his deeds in the realm of the senses, succeeds in establishing their value.

The whole anthroposophical attitude presupposes our clear understanding that our thoughts and ideas must find still other means of realization besides the results of our deeds in the outer sense-world.

In the very recognition of this vital necessity lies the demand that the anthroposophist bear his part in watching over the signs of the times. Much is happening in earthly evolution; and upon malt, and particularly upon man in our own time, lies the obligation to gain a genuine under-standing of what occurs in the evolution of the world in which he has been placed.

With regard to a single individual everyone knows that his development must be taken into account, and not the mere outer facts that are about him. Just consider, roughly speaking, the present external facts surrounding human beings who are five years, ten years, twenty, thirty, fifty, or seventy years of age. Vet no one who is reasonable will demand the same attitude towards these things from the five-year-olds, the ten-year-olds, the twenty-year-olds as from men of fifty or seventy. What a man’s reaction to his environment should be can be determined only by taking into consideration his personal development. This is universally admitted in regard to individuals.

But as the individual man is subject to a definite development, having a different kind of powers in childhood, middle life, and old age, just so has general humanity different powers at different periods of its evolution. One is, as it were, sleeping in the midst of the world evolution if one fails to note that humanity, in its essence, is different in the twentieth from what it was in the fifteenth century, or even at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha and earlier. Ignoring of this fact—the idea that one may speak of a mail or of general humanity abstractly, without consideration of their continuous evolving—belongs to the greatest errors, defi-ciencies, and aberrations of our time.

Now it may be asked: How is man to arrive at a more exact insight into these things? You know that we have often discussed one important point in regard to this evolution. The Greco-Latin period, from the 8th century B. C. to about the 15th century of our own era, we have to count as the so-called culture period of the Intellectual or Mind Soul; and the time since the 15th century as the culture period of the Consciousness Soul. This is an essential factor in the evolution of humanity precisely as regards our own time. Thus we know that the principal force in human development from the 15th century until the third millennium is the Consciousness Soul.

But in Spiritual Science, in real Spiritual Science one may never stop at generalities and abstract statements; one must seek at all times to grasp concrete facts. Abstractions are useful only when one is curious in a very ordinary sense. If it is intended to make Spiritual Science into life’s content, into a life-force, you must be more serious than curious, and you must not stop at such abstractions as I have just described. That we are living in the period of the Consciousness-Soul, that the development of the Consciousness-Soul is counted upon, is quite correct and extraordinarily important too, but we must not stop at that.

If we wish to attain to a definite view of these things we must first of all consider somewhat more exactly the essential constitution of man. As men we are divided, in the sense of Spiritual Science and counting from above downward, into the ego or 1, the astral body, the etheric body (which I have latterly called also the body of formative forces,) and the physical body. Among these different members of our human nature we live, for the time being, psychically and spiritually, only in the ego or I. The ego is given to us through our earthly evolution and the Spirits of Form who direct it. Everything, really, that enters our consciousness enters it through our ego. If the ego does not so unfold that it can maintain its connection—even though by means of the bodies—with the outer world, then we have as little consciousness as during sleep. The ego connects us with our environment. The astral body was given to us during the Moon-evolution that preceded the present Earth-evolution: our etheric body during the still earlier Sun-evolution; the physical body, in its inception, during the Saturn-evolution.

But when you go through the description of these bodies in Occult Science you will see in what a complicated way the adjustment of these four members was brought about in order to make man what lie is today. Do we not learn from the facts described in Occult Science that in the formation of the three sheaths of the human being spirits from all possible hierarchies took part? Do we not see that what enfolds its as physical body. etheric body, astral body is of a very very complicated nature? But not only did these hierarchies work together in bringing our vehicles into existence—they are still working within them. And no one understands man who believes him to be only a conjunction of flesh, blood, bones. etc., which natural science, physiology, biology, and anatomy describe.

Approaching the truth of this human sheath-being, seeing him in his reality, we perceive that beings from the higher hierarchies are working together wisely, as predetermined, in all that takes place unconsciously in his bodies. You may gather from the rather sketchy outlines which I have given in my Occult Science that this co-operation of individual spirits from the higher hierarchies in fashioning man must be very intricate in its details. But, nevertheless, if you wish to understand man you must come at these things ever more concretely, more in detail.

Now in this field of research it is extremely difficult even to focus the attention upon a concrete question; they are tremendously complicated, these concrete questions. Just suppose someone were to ask: What is the hierarchy of the Seraphim or of the Dynamis doing in the etheric body of man in the year 1918 of the present cycle of human evolution? For one can as easily ask this question as to ask, for instance, whether it is raining at the moment in Lugano. Of course, one can answer neither of these questions by mere thinking or by mere theories, but only by ascertaining the facts. Just as one must find out by a letter or telegram whether or not it is raining in Lugano, so we must inform ourselves through a real penetration of the facts regarding the present task, let us say, of the Spirits of Wisdom or the Thrones in the human etheric body. Such a question is of extraordinary complexity, and we can only persevere in our gradual approach to the spheres where such questions properly arise. And in this field of inquiry care is taken that man’s wings shall not grow up into the sky, and he become arrogant and proud, in his striving for real knowledge!

The nearest vistas, so to speak, which concern us most directly, are those upon which we can form a definite opinion. But these we ought to see clearly if we do not wish to remain asleep in regard to our own place in human evolution.

So I shall speak to you of a question which is not as vague and indefinite as the question: What are the Dynamis or the Thrones doing in our etheric body?—although this also is very concrete. Instead I shall put before you a question which really concerns men of the present day. This is: What are the angels (those active beings closest to man) doing in this present age within the astral body?

When we look into our inner being we see that the astral body lies nearest to our ego, so it is to be hoped that the reply to this question may vitally concern us. The angels are the hierarchy directly above the human hierarchy itself. So we are asking a moderate question, and later we shall see how we can answer the inquiry: What is being done by the angels in the human astral body, right now in the present age of mankind, which is passing through the 20th century, the period which began in the 15th century and will last into the beginning of the 3rd millennium?

Now what can be said as to the means of answering such a question? One can only say that spiritual research, if earnestly pursued, is not a trifling with concepts or words, but really works into the sphere where the spiritual world becomes perceptible. And anything so close to us may certainly be observed, but this question may be answered profitably only in the age of the consciousness-soul itself.

You might easily think that if this question could have come up in earlier ages and an answer been demanded, that this answer would now be at hand. But neither in the age of atavistic clairvoyance, nor in the Greco-Latin period could this question be answered, for the reason that the soul-pictures obtained by atavistic clairvoyance obscured the observation of the angelic activity in our astral body. There was nothing to be seen, just because of these atavistic pictures; and in the Greco-Latin period, thinking was not yet as forceful as it now is ... thinking has been strengthened, particularly through the era of natural science. So the age of the consciousness-soul is the one in which such questions may be consciously and effectively considered.

The productive quality of our Spiritual Science must be shown in that we do not put people off with theories, but are able to offer knowledge that is definitely applicable to life.

What are the angels doing in our astral body? We can convince ourselves of what they are doing only by rising to a certain degree of clairvoyant observation, so that we see what takes place in our astral body. We must attain at least to a certain degree of imaginative cognition if the formulated question is to be answered.

Then it becomes evident that these beings from the hierarchy of the angels—each angelic individual having its responsibility towards one 1w-man being, but also all working together—form pictures in the human astral body. They produce pictures tinder the guidance of the Spirits of Form

Unless we rise to imaginative cognition we do not realize that images are induced continuously in our astral body. They arise, these pictures, and then fade away. Were they not so created there would he in the future no development for man that would express the intention of the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form propose to accomplish with us during and beyond the Earth evolution they must first model, as it were in images, and later their objective reality will appear in a transformed humanity.

Today the Spirits of Form are already creating these images in the astral body through the angels. The angels form pictures in the astral body upon a plane which man may reach by raising his thinking to clairvoyance. And if we can follow up these pictures, then we see that they are constructed according to definite impulses and principles, and in such a way that in the manner of their inception lie certain forces for the future development of mankind. If we watch the angels at their work (however strange this may sound, we can only express it in that way), if we watch, we shall notice that the angels have in their work a very definite intention in regard to future social conditions on earth. They aim to implant in the astral bodies such images as will bring about in the future certain determined social conditions in the united life of humanity.

Men may resist the admission that angels are releasing within them ideals for the future, but it is nevertheless true. And there is a fundamental principle in this picture-forming by the angels: the fundamental rule that in the future no one is to find peace in the enjoyment of good fortune while others beside him are unhappy. There reigns an impulse of the most perfect fraternity—of brotherhood rightly understood—of the most absolute unification of the human race with relation to social conditions in physical life. That is one standpoint, according to which the im-ages are formed by the angels in the human astral body.

But there is a second impulse with reference to which the angels form these images. They have certain objectives, not only in relation to the outer, social life, but also in relation to the soul itself, and to the soul-life of men. Through pictures imprinted upon the astral body they aim to so affect the soul-life that in the future every man shall see in his neighbor a hidden divinity.

Mark well, my dear friends: the angels intend through their work to bring about changes. These will be such that we shall no longer consider man, either in theory or practice, as a highly developed animal—according to his physical qualities alone. Instead we shall approach everyone with the fully developed realization that in every man something appears that takes its rise in fundamental divine sources, revealing itself through flesh and blood. To conceive of man as a manifestation, a revelation from the spiritual world, as earnestly as possible, as strongly as possible, as intelligently as possible—all this is being put into their pictures by the angels.

When this comes true it will have quite definite results. All the free religious instinct that will unfold in humanity will be founded upon the fact that in every man the image of God will he acknowledged in immediate life practice rather than in mere theory. Then there will be no religious coercion; none will be needed, for then every meeting between men will be as a matter of course a religious act, a sacrament, and no one will need any particular church organization upon the physical plane to support his religious life. The church, if it rightly understands itself, can have but one object: to render itself unnecessary upon the physical plane in that all life is being made into an expression of the supersensible.

To pour out upon mankind complete freedom of the religious life underlies the impulses of the angels’ work.

There is also a third intention: to give to humanity the possibility of attaining to the spirit through thought, through thinking to leap across the chasm, and arrive at direct spiritual experience.

Spiritual Science for the spirit, religious freedom for the soul, fraternity for the body—that resounds like cosmic music through the work of the angels in human astral bodies. Man needs only to lift his consciousness to a different level to feel himself removed to this wonderful workshop of angelic activity.

Now the fact is that we are living in the age of the consciousness-soul, and in this age the angels work within the astral body as I have just described. Man is to come gradually to conscious comprehension of these things. This belongs to human development. 1-low then, does one come to say anything like that which I have just told you? Where, so to say, is this activity to be found?

Well, it is still found today in the sleeping man. It is found in the conditions of normal sleep, and it is also found in waking sleep conditions. I have often explained how men, though supposedly awake, sleep their life away in the midst of most important matters. And I can give you the not very cheering assurance that anyone who goes through life consciously finds today many many sleepers. What is happening in the world they permit to happen, without interesting themselves in it, or troubling themselves about it, or taking any part in it. Great world-events often pass by men, as that which takes place in the city passes by sleepers—although the people are apparently awake. Then, however, if such men, though waking, are wholly unaware of something important, we can see in their astral bodies—quite independently of what they do or do not wish to know—how this important work of the angels goes on, of which I have spoken.

Such things often proceed in a manner which must seem to humanity very puzzling, very paradoxical. Many a man is regarded as quite unworthy to enter upon this or that connection with the spiritual world. But in truth such an one is in this incarnation just a fearful sleepyhead, who dozes through everything that goes on around him. Yet in his astral body one of the company of angels is working for the future of mankind. The astral body is nevertheless made use of, and all this may be observed within it.

But the point is that such a thing as this must force its way into the human consciousness. The consciousness-soul must be lifted to recognition of that which may be found only in this way.

Having accepted these assumptions, you will understand when I now call to your attention that this epoch of the consciousness-soul presses forward to a definite event, and that since it is with the consciousness-soul that we have to do, it will depend upon men how this event takes place in human evolution.

You see, it may come a hundred years earlier or later, but it really would have to enter the sphere of human development. And this happening may be thus described: men must come, purely through their consciousness-soul, through their own conscious thinking, to actual sight of the way in which the angels prepare the future of mankind. What spiritual science teaches on this subject must become the practical worldly wisdom of humanity, so practical that men may be firmly convinced, and of their own knowledge, that the angels intend what I have indicated.

Now the human race is so far advanced in its approach to freedom that it depends upon man himself to face this event in full consciousness, or to sleep it away. What would it mean to meet it in full consciousness? This means the following: It is possible today to study spiritual science; it is there; and it is only necessary to study it. It will be an aid if, in addition, various meditations are used, and such practical directions as are given in Knowledge of she Higher Worlds and its Attainment. But all that is really necessary is to study spiritual science, and consciously and rightly understand it. Without the development of clairvoyance any man may study it understandingly who does not himself set up the obstacle of prejudice. And if men study it ever more and more, assimilating its concepts and ideas, then their consciousness will so awaken that, instead of dozing through important events, they will become aware of them.

These events may be more exactly characterized, for just to know what the angel is doing is only a preparation. The main thing is to realize the threefold truth which mankind is to receive through the angelic activity, and which will make its entrance earlier or later, according to man’s receptivity, or at worst—not at all.

First: It will be shown how man, by means of his most immediate interest can comprehend the deeper side of human nature.

Yes, my dear friends, a moment will come, which men should not lose by sleeping, when they will receive from the spiritual world through their angels a stimulating impulse, which will lead them to feel a much deeper interest in every man than we are inclined to feel today. This heightened interest in our fellow man is not to develop subjectively in man’s usual indolent fashion, but suddenly, as with a leap, through the spiritual infusion of a certain secret—what the other man really is. I mean by this something concrete, not a theoretical abstraction: men will learn something that will arouse their continuous interest in each other. This is the first point in this threefold truth, and it will profoundly affect our social life.

The second point in it will be that the Christ-impulse requires, besides all else, complete religious freedom, and that no Christianity is genuine which does not make this freedom possible. This will be shown to each man spiritually, irrefutably by his angel.

And the third is the indisputable insight into the spiritual nature of the world.

This event, as already stated, is to take place in such a way that the consciousness-soul may acquire a definite relation to it. This is imminent in human evolution, for to this end the angel is working through its images in the astral body.

But I now point out to you that this approaching event is dependent upon the human will. Men may leave many things undone, and many are failing today in much that should lead to a conscious experience of this great moment.

There exist, however, as you know, other beings in universal evolution that have an interest in turning man from his course: the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings. The divine evolution of mankind includes the development I have described. If man were left to his own nature he would arrive in time at the perception of what the angel is unfolding in his astral body, but the Luciferic influence tends to force man away from this insight into the work of the angels. The Luciferic beings do this by curbing his will. They try to darken man’s understanding of the exercise of his own free will while making him into a good, even a spiritual being—indeed from the point of view which I am considering. Lucifer desires for man goodness, spirituality—but wishes to make it automatic, without free will. Man is to be raised to clairvoyance, in accordance with good principles, but automatically: he is to act as a spiritual reflection, an image of the divine, but without free will and the possibility of evil.

This is connected with definite evolutionary secrets. The Luciferic beings, as you know, have stood still at different stages of development, and they introduce elements foreign to normal evolution. They are interested in taking such a hold upon man that he may not attain to free will because they have never won this for themselves. Free will can be gained only upon earth, and they want to have nothing to do with the earth. They wish only Saturn, Sun. and Moon development—and to stop at that. These Luciferic beings hate in a sense the free will of man. They act in a highly spiritual way, but automatically—this is most significant—arid they want to lift man to their own spiritual height. They want to make him automatic—spiritual, but automatic. From this arises the danger that if man should become an automatic spiritual being before his consciousness-soul functions fully he might miss in the drowsiness of insensibility the revelation that is to come.

But the Ahrimanic Icings also work against this revelation. They do not strive to render man especially spiritual, but rather to kill in him the consciousness of his own spirituality. They try to induce in hint the belief that he is really only a completely developed animal. Ahriman is in reality the great teacher of materialistic Darwinism. He is also the teacher of all that technical and practical activity which admits the value of nothing beyond the external life of the senses, which desires an extensive technology only in order that man may satisfy, with greater finesse, hunger, thirst, and other animal needs. Working upon the consciousness-soul by all sorts of subtle scientific methods; the Ahrimanic beings strive to obscure, to kill in man the realization that he is an image of Deity.

In earlier ages it would have been useless for the Ahrimanic spirits to try in this way through theories to becloud the truth. Why? In the Greco-Latin period, and even more truly in earlier times, when man still possessed atavistic clairvoyance, the manner of his thinking was unim-portant, for he still had the pictures through which he looked into the spiritual world. Whatever Ahriman might have suggested about his relation to the animals would have had no effect upon his conduct. Thinking became powerful—powerful in its weakness, one might say—only in our own fifth post-Atlantean period. Only since the 15th century has thinking been competent to lead the consciousness-soul into spiritual realms—or, on the other hand, to hinder it from entering the spiritual world. Only now are we living in an age when a theory, a science, by a conscious method may rob man of his divinity, or his experiences of divinity. This is possible only in the period of the consciousness-soul. Therefore the Ahrimanic spirits are striving to spread a teaching that will obscure the divine origin of man.

From the description of these influences, adverse to man’s normal divine evolution, it may be gathered how he must order his life, so that he may not permit to pass unobserved the revelation that is to come. For otherwise a great danger will arise. And against this man must be on the alert. or else instead of this momentous event, which is intended to affect powerfully the future form of Earth-evolution, something may take place which would seriously impair it.

You see, certain spiritual beings, attain their own development through maps, concomitantly with man’s unfolding. The angels who produce their images in the human astral body do not 4o this as a game, but in order that thereby something may be achieved. Vet, since results must be sought within humanity, the whole thing would be rendered futile if man, having acquired the consciousness-soul, should deliberately disregard it. The whole thing would become play! The angels would be only playing a game in the development of man’s astral body! Only by coming to realization within humanity does it become, not a game but a matter of serious import.

From this you may learn that the work of the angels must remain earnest under all circumstances. Consider what might be behind the scenes of existence if men could reduce the angelic activity to play, simply through their drowsy insensibility.

And what if that should nevertheless happen! What if humanity should persist in remaining stolidly unaware of the important spiritual revelation of the future! If, for example, men permit to pass unnoticed the middle part—that relating to religious freedom—and so miss the repe-tition of the Mystery of Golgotha upon the etheric plane, of which I have often spoken, the reappearance of the etheric Christ, and other important things; if men should lose all this, then what should be accomplished through pictures in the astral body would have to be brought about by the angels in another way.

If man, by failing to become alert, should prevent what ought to be done in his astral body, then an effort would be made to reach the same results through sleeping human bodies. That which man would remain densely unaware of in his waking condition would be carried out-by the angels with the help of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep. There, forces would be sought in order to produce effects unattainable when the waking soul is within these bodies, but which may be induced while man, who ought to have been awake to these things, is outside his physical and etheric bodies, with his I and astral body.

That is the great danger for the period of the consciousness-soul. That is what might occur if men should not turn to the spiritual life before the beginning of the third millennium! We are separated from it, as you know, by only a brief time, since the third millennium begins with the year 2000. It might come to pass that what the angels are to gain as the result of their labor they would have to seek in the sleeping bodies of men instead of in waking humanity. They might be forced to withdraw all their work from the astral body and submerge it in the etheric body in order to bring it to realization. But man would have no part in this. It would have to be accomplished during his absence from the etheric body, for if he were present in his waking state he would prevent it.

Now I have given you a general idea of the matter. But what would be the result if the angels should be obliged to carry out such work through man’s physical and etheric bodies during sleep without his conscious cooperation?

Its effect upon human evolution would be undoubtedly threefold. First of all there would be engendered in man’s sleeping bodies, in the absence of his Ego and astral body, something not aroused through his free choice, but which he would find present when he awoke in the morning. It would always be present, and it would be instinct instead of conscious freedom, and therefore detrimental. And certain instinctive knowledge, which is to enter human nature, regarding the mysteries of birth, conception, and the entire sexual life, truly threatens to become harmful tinder the dangerous conditions which I have described: that is, the danger that certain angels would themselves then undergo a change, of which I cannot now speak further, since this change belongs to the deeper mysteries of the science of initiation, of which nothing may be given out at present. It may be said, however, that the effect upon human evolution would be such that certain instincts relating to sexual life would arise, not wholesomely in clear waking consciousness, but in a pernicious, destructive way. These instincts would not be mere personal errors, but would pass over into social life, bringing about conditions—through the effects of this sexual life upon the blood—which would prevent men from developing any sort of brotherhood on earth, but instead would cause them to oppose it. This would all be a matter of instinct.

Thus there is coming a decisive point where one may turn to the right, remaining watchful and alert; or to the left—and sleep! But in this latter case instincts will appear that will be horrible!

What will the natural scientists says if such instincts appear? They will say that they are a normal development, an inevitable stage in human evolution. Man cannot be warned of such dangers by natural science for. from the scientific standpoint, it is equally explicable whether men become angels or devils. In regard to either, science says the same thing: the later is derived from the earlier—the great wisdom of the causal explanation! Natural science will he quite unaware of the event of which I have spoken: for if human beings become half-devils through their sexual instincts, science will look upon it as a necessity of nature. In short, the matter cannot he explained scientifically, although whatever may happen, science will regard it as susceptible of explanation.

Such things are to be comprehended only through spiritual insight, by supersensible cognition.

Such would be the first result of the changes evoked within the angelic activity. The second would bring to mankind an instinctive knowledge of certain remedies—but a destructive knowledge!

In a materialistic sense everything connected with medicine would make an enormous advance. Men would have instinctive insight into the curative power of certain substances and combinations, and by this knowledge would do fearful harm. But the harm would be called useful. That which is unhealthy would be called healthy, for it would be discovered that certain processes would have enjoyable results. Certain methods leading in unwholesome directions would simply be found agreeable.

The knowledge of the healing power of various processes would be increased, but would take a harmful direction, for through certain instincts it would also be discovered what kind of diseases could be brought forth by different substances and agencies. And a man could decide, according to his selfishness and egotism, whether to bring about illness or to refrain from doing so.

The third result would be mail’s acquaintance with definite powers by which, with the slightest stimulus—through the harmonizing of certain vibrations—great mechanical forces could be unleashed in the world. A sort of mental guidance of mechanism, of everything of a mechanical nature, would be developed in this way, and the whole technique be led into a vicious channel, which would, however, inordinately please and serve man’s egoism.

That, my dear friends, is a concrete statement of possible developments, and a conception of life and being which can be rightly appreciated only by those who realize that an unspiritual conception of life cannot clarify the situation. If a pernicious medicine were produced, if a terrible aberration of the sex instincts should develop, or an evil motive power in world-mechanics through the application of spiritual powers to natural forces, all unspiritual world-philosophy would not see through it, nor realize its deviation from the true path … just as little as a sleeper, so long as he sleeps, could see the approach of a thief who is coming to rob him. He sees what has happened only when he awakes in the morning—and what a terrible awakening would await mankind! Yet without this awakening man would continue to pride himself upon the broadening of his medical knowledge, and find such satisfaction in certain sex aberrations that lie would praise these errors as superhuman, as freedom from prejudice, as open-mindedness! Ugliness would be beautiful, and beauty ugly in some connections, and it would not be noticed because all this would be looked upon as a natural development. But it would be a wandering from the path which, within humanity itself, is prescribed for man’s essential nature.

I believe, my dear friends, if any feeling has been gained of the way in which spiritual science presses into our whole attitude of mind and soul, that one may also be possessed of the earnestness necessary for the reception of such truths as have been presented today. We may derive from them—as from all aspects of spiritual science—the recognition of a certain responsibility, a life-obligation. Whatever our circumstances, whatever we may have to do in the world, the important point is to be able to preserve this thought: that our actions must be saturated and irradiated by our anthroposophical consciousness. Then we shall contribute something towards the true progress of mankind.

A man is entirely mistaken if he ever believes that true spiritual science, seriously and rightly understood, could ever divert him from the practical, intensive work of life. True spiritual science brings awakening—awakening to the kind of things that I have pointed out today. My dear friends, if we may use the comparison that seeing into the spiritual world is a further awakening, just as ordinary awakening is an awakening from sleep, we can then, in order to understand the comparison, ask this other question: Can the waking state be harmful to our sleep?

Certainly, if it is not what it should be! If a man’s waking life is wholesome he will have healthy sleep, but if his waking hours are stupid, lazy, comfort-loving, without exertion, then his sleep will be unhealthy. And it is just the same with the waking life to which we are attuning ourselves through spiritual science. If through spiritual science we establish in ourselves a proper relation to the spiritual world, this will guide the interests of the ordinary sense-world in right directions, in the same way that a healthy waking life regulates our sleep.

Anyone who considers the life of our own times must indeed be asleep if he remain unaware of several things. How men have boasted, especially in recent years. of their efficiency! They have brought it about that those who most despise the realm of ideas, the mental, and spiritual, now occupy all the responsible positions. And one could go on declaiming about efficiency in this life so long as mankind has not been actually dragged into the abyss. Just now a few are beginning—in most cases only instinctively—to croak that a new time must conic, that all sorts of new ideals must arise! But it is only croaking. And should these things appear as instincts only, without conscious adaptation to the life of spiritual science, they would lead to the degeneracy of that which ought to be experienced in the waking state, rather than to any advantageous evolutionary transition.

He who appeals to people in familiar phrases may still meet with sonic success, but men will have to endure other words, unaccustomed expressions, in order that out of chaos a social cosmos may again emerge.

If in any age the men who should wake fail to do so, and do not recognize what ought to be done, then nothing authentic happens, but the ghost of the preceding epoch wanders around. In many religious organizations ghosts of the past move about, and our legal systems are still haunted by the ghost of ancient Rome. In the age of the consciousness-soul spiritual science is to free men from this bondage, and lead them to actual observation of a spiritual fact: What does the angel do in our astral body? To theorize about the angels, etc., is at best but a beginning. Progress requires us to speak factually, both in regard to our own period, and in an-swering the question which most immediately concerns us. It does concern us because the images that the angel is evoking in our astral body are to determine our future conditions, which must he brought to actuality through the consciousness-soul.

If we had no consciousness-soul we should not need to trouble ourselves, for other spirits, other hierarchies, would enter and work out what the angel is weaving; but since we are to develop the consciousness-soul no other spirits will step in to bring the angel’s work to realization.

Of course in the Egyptian age different angels performed this work of weaving. But soon other spirits entered, and to man this was darkened by his atavistic-clairvoyant consciousness. Thus men wove—these men, because of what they saw clairvoyantly—a (lark veil over the angels’ pictures. But now man himself is to unveil them. Therefore, he must not miss by sleeping that which will be brought into his conscious life during the period which is to close even before the third millennium. Let us extract from anthroposophically oriented spiritual science not merely all sorts of doctrines, but also resolutions; and these will give us strength to be wakeful. We can accustom ourselves to being wakeful human beings. We can he mindful of many things.

We can begin at once with watchfulness, discovering that not a (lay passes in which some miracle does not take place in our lives. We may also reverse this statement. We may say: If on any given day we call find nothing wonderful in our experience, we have simply overlooked it. Try at night to look over your life. You will find in it some circumstance great or small, of which you may say to yourself: It entered my life most strangely, and was accomplished quite unusually. You will succeed in this if you think comprehensively enough, if you fix your soul’s eye upon the association of events. In ordinary life this is not done because people seldom ask themselves: What, for instance, was prevented by this or that?

We seldom trouble ourselves to consider the things which have been prevented and which, had they occurred, would have entirely altered our lives. Back of these things, which were removed in one way or another, there exists a great deal that may well educate us in wakefulness. How many things might have happened to me today? If I ask myself this question every evening, and then think over single circumstances that might have brought about this or that result, there will attach to such questions reflections that will lead to watchfulness and self-discipline. This is something which, once begun, will take us further and further, until at last we do not try to find out only what was meant by the fact that we, for example, wanted to go out some morning at half-past ten, and that just at the very last moment some man or other came who detained us…

We are annoyed by the delay, but we do not ask what might have happened if we had really gone at the time planned. What was altered thereby?

I have already spoken to you more explicitly of these practices. From observation of the negative in our lives (which, however, bears eloquent witness to the wisdom guiding us), up to observation of the angel weaving and working in our astral body, there is a direct path, a very direct path, and one which we may safely follow.

In the cycle of lectures in Vienna on The Inner Nature of Man and the Life between Death and New birth, you will remember that I described concepts—or rather, inner experiences of soul—through which the human being can approach those worlds of which we have spoken and which we share with the disembodied souls of those who have passed the portal of death and are preparing themselves for a new life on earth. On the basis of those lectures, you will be able to imbue with life a concept which is indispensable if we seek to arrive at a true understanding of the spiritual world, and that is that many things—I say many things, not everything—are, from the point of view of the spiritual world, entirely the opposite of what is revealed in the physical world. On this basis, let us consider the way the human being steps over, and also looks over, into the life of the spiritual world.

Here on earth, bound to our physical body as we are between waking up and going to sleep, using this physical body as a tool for our experiences in the world, we feel a lack of ability to comprehend the spiritual world and grasp its revelations. As long as we are enclosed within our physical body, and in order to perceive anything, we have to use the rough and ready instruments of this physical body. We cannot avoid using them. And when we are unable to use them, as is the case between going to sleep and waking up, our astral body and our ego-being—which are recent additions from the time of ancient Moon and the earlier periods of Earth—are too attenuated, too intimate, to detect anything. Of course the spiritual world is ever about us, just as the air surrounds us constantly. And if our astral body and our ego-being were—let me say—sufficiently dense, we should always be able to perceive, to grasp, what is all around us in the spiritual world. We cannot do so because in our astral body and our ego-being we are too attenuated; they are not yet fully-formed instruments, like the physical senses or the brain, which our capacity for forming ideas uses in order to attain waking experiences in the soul.

Having stepped through the portal of death, human beings find themselves on the whole, as you know—at least for the first few decades—endowed with a degree of substance similar to that of our sleeping state while on earth. This substance cannot remain quite so attenuated as that pertaining to the time of our physical incarnation, otherwise all experiences between death and a new birth would remain totally unconscious. They do not, as we know. On the contrary, a certainly different, but much brighter and more powerful consciousness than that which prevails while we are in our physical body comes about between death and a new birth. So we must ask how this form of consciousness emerges while we dwell in our astral body and ego-being.

In physical life here on earth we possess our physical instrument which permeates us—or we could say envelops us—with all the ingredients which make up the physical world: that is, the mineral, the plant and the animal kingdoms. The physical body thus prepared for us is our tool for waking life. In a similar way a tool is prepared for us which serves us between death and a new birth. Because we are human beings, the first thing to be prepared for us after death, as soon as we have laid aside our etheric body, is something that comes from the hierarchy of the angeloi. We are mingled with the substance of the hierarchy of the angeloi. One being from this hierarchy actually belongs to us, is the leading being of our human individuality. As we now grow upwards into the spiritual world this being from the hierarchy of the angeloi who belongs to us is joined by other beings from this hierarchy, and together they mould in us—or rather for us—a kind of angeloi organism, the structure of which differs from that of our physical organism.

To make a diagram of this, we could say: We grow upwards through the portal of death into the spiritual world. This is a sketch of our own individuality (mauve in the diagram). Linked with it is the one angel being who, we feel, is given to us by the hierarchy of the angeloi (red). But when we lay aside our etheric body, this angel being forms a relationship with other beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi—it links up with them, and we feel the whole of the world of the angeloi within ourselves. We feel it to be within ourselves, it is an inner experience—except, of course, for the external experiences which also result.

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This permeation by the world of the angeloi makes it possible for us to relate to other disembodied human beings who have passed through the portal of death before us. Let me put it like this: Just as here our senses link us to the external world, so the condition of being embedded in the world of the angeloi links us to the spiritual beings, including human beings, whom we find in the spiritual world. Just as here in the physical world, in accordance with the prevailing conditions, we receive an organism which is organized in a certain way, so do we receive an organism of spirit which is brought into being by this network of angeloi substances. How this network of angeloi substances is structured, however, depends very much on the manner in which we work our way up to the spiritual world. If we work our way up in such a way that we have little sensitivity for the spiritual world because we have far too many echoes of physical pleasures, urges and instincts, physical sympathies and antipathies, then the formation of our angeloi organism is difficult. This is why we tarry for a while in the soul world, as we called it, so that we can free ourselves from all that permeates us from the physical world and prevents us from forming our angeloi organism properly. It is gradually developed while we tarry in the soul world. We grow towards this angeloi organism. But concurrently another necessity arises—the necessity to permeate ourselves not only with this angeloi organism but also with another substance, that of an archangeloi organism. Our consciousness in the spiritual world between death and a new birth would remain exceedingly dull if we could not permeate ourselves with the archangeloi organism. If we were to be permeated only with the angeloi organism, we would be dreamers in the spiritual world. We would be woven out of all kinds of Imaginative substances belonging to the spiritual world, but we would dream away our time between death and a new birth. So that we do not dream this time away, so that a strong, clear consciousness can come about, we have to be permeated by the archangeloi organism (blue in the diagram).

This gives our consciousness the right clarity. Only through this do we wake up in the spiritual world. Now the degree to which we wake up in the spiritual world determines the degree to which we can have a free relationship with the physical world. And a free relationship with this physical world is something we must have. Let us ask what is the relationship of the physical world with the excarnated human beings who have passed through the portal of death. You can find the answer to this, too, in the lectures given in Vienna. Here in the physical world it is difficult for human beings, however strong their yearning, to rise up in thought and feeling to a perception of the spiritual, heavenly world. Human beings thirst for ideas about the heavenly world, but they cannot easily unfold the powerful capacity for forming ideas necessary to bring this heavenly world into their reach. In a certain sense the situation is the opposite during life in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. Into this world we are followed by what we experience in the physical world; we are followed by what was important in the physical world, by what we perceived here. We are followed by all this in a very extraordinary way. The examples I give will show you how complicated these things are. In the light of our capacity to form ideas in the physical world, these examples will sometimes appear grotesque—even paradoxical—but it is impossible to enter in a concrete way into the spiritual world without also taking account of precisely these ideas.

Perception of all that exists in the mineral kingdom is lost almost as soon as we step through the portal of death. Here in the physical world, because we have senses, our capacity for perception is greatest with regard to the mineral kingdom. Indeed, we could almost say it is virtually exclusive, for other than the mineral kingdom there is not much that we can perceive as long as we are confined to our senses. You might say that we perceive animals and plants as well. Why do we? A plant is full of minerals, and what we perceive in the plant is everything mineral that streams and pulsates through it. The same goes for the animals. So it is true to say that here on earth human beings perceive with their senses almost exclusively what belongs to the mineral kingdom. When we die this mineral kingdom, so clearly perceived here, disappears. Take an example. Every day you perceive salt on your table, you perceive it as an external mineral product. But someone who has left his body and gone through the portal of death cannot see this salt in the salt-cellar. However, when you sprinkle the salt in your soup, and then swallow it, a process takes place within you, and that process, which is accompanied by the sensation of the salty taste, is perceived by the one who has died. From the moment when your tongue begins to taste the salt, from the moment when a process takes place within you, the one who has died can perceive the salt in the way it works. This is how things are. So those who have gone through the portal of death cannot perceive the mineral kingdom unless it has an influence in some way on a human or animal or plant organism. This shows that what might be called the external environment of the dead is quite different from what we are accustomed to calling our environment here between birth and death.

One thing, however, always remains perceptible to the dead, and it is important to pay attention to this. It is whatever has been filled with human thoughts and feelings; it is the human thoughts which are perceived. Salt in a salt-cellar, as a product of nature, is not perceived by the dead. Nor do they perceive the salt-cellar, whether it is made of glass or any other material. But in so far as human thoughts have come to rest in the salt-cellar during the process of its manufacture, these human thoughts are perceived by the dead. When you consider how everything around us, except what is purely the product of nature, bears the signature of human thoughts, you will have a good idea of what the dead can perceive. They also perceive all relationships between beings, including those between human beings. All this is alive for them.

There are certain things in the physical world, however, of which the dead endeavour to rid themselves; they want to expel them from their ideas and soul experiences—as it were, wipe them out. Their desire to do this is comparable to the longing on the part of human beings here on earth to gain certain insights about the world beyond. Here we long to achieve ideas about the next world. After death, as regards certain human matters here on earth—the world beyond, from the viewpoint of the dead—we long to extinguish them, to wipe them away. But to do this it is necessary to be filled with the substances of the higher hierarchies of angeloi and archangeloi. Once the dead are filled with these substances they can extinguish from their consciousness what must be extinguished.

This, then, gives you an idea of how the dead grow into the spiritual world by filling their individuality through and through with the substances of beings of the higher hierarchy. It is very important to understand that in order to remove from consciousness all the things with which they are more or less personally connected—and that means everything manufactured and consequently bearing within it human thoughts which enable the dead to perceive it—the dead must, above all else, fill themselves with the substance of the angeloi. Other things, too, must be cast aside, must be extinguished, so that the dead can find their way to a proper sojourn in the spiritual world.

Strange though it may sound from our standpoint here on earth, there is an obstacle to growing into what gives us a clear, enlightened consciousness in the spiritual world. This obstacle standing in the way of growing easily into the spiritual world is, strangely enough, human language, the language we use here on earth for the purpose of a physical understanding from one human being to another. The dead have to gradually grow away from language, otherwise they would remain stuck in the affinities which bind them to language and which would prevent them from growing into the kingdom of the archangeloi. Language is definitely only suitable for earthly conditions. And within earthly conditions the human being has, in his soul, become very strongly linked with language. For many people, especially now in this materialistic age, thinking has come to be virtually contained in language. People today think hardly at all in thoughts but very strongly indeed in language, in words. That is why they find it so satisfying to find the right term for something. But such terms, such definitions in words, are only valid here in physical life, and after death our task is to extricate ourselves from definitions in words.

In such matters, too, spiritual science gives us a certain possibility to find our way into the realm of the super-sensible. How often do I say to you that to reach a genuine concept we can only approximate; we can only, so to speak, feel our way all around the actual words. How often have I not shown you how we have to endeavour to reach the concept by approaching it from all sides, by experimenting with the use of different expressions in order to free ourselves of the actual words. Spiritual science in a certain sense emancipates us from language. Indeed it does this very fully, thus bringing us into the sphere which we share with the dead.

Emancipation from language is intimately bound up with the way the dead grow into the substance of the archangeloi. By emancipating ourselves from language in spiritual science, by creating concepts in spiritual science which are more or less independent of language, we build a bridge between the physical and the spiritual world.

Take a clear look at what I have just said. You will then find that you have understood an important connection between the physical and the spiritual world. And if you think the thought through in a living way you will discover an important means by which to understand all kinds of impulses that emanate from those brotherhoods about which we have spoken on numerous occasions in the past weeks. From various things I have said you will have gathered that these brotherhoods make it their business to fetter human beings to the material world. Just recently we spoke of how these brotherhoods are eager to make materialism super-materialistic or, in a way, to create a kind of ahrimanic immortality for their members. They can do this most strongly by representing group interests, group egoisms, and they certainly do this outstandingly.

One way of representing a group interest is followed by the most influential among these brotherhoods, whose point of departure is something I have already described to you. It is their aim to thoroughly immerse the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period in everything connected with the English language. To these brotherhoods the very definition of the fifth post-Atlantean period is that every English-speaking element belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean period. Thus, even in their primary principle, they restrict things to an egoistic group interest.

This involves something extremely important from the spiritual point of view. It means that their intention is nothing less than the aim of influencing not only human individuals while they are incarnated in physical bodies between birth and death, but indeed all human individuals, including those who are living between death and a new birth. They are striving to let human individualities enter into the spiritual world and become immersed in the hierarchy of the angeloi, but then to prevent them from becoming immersed in turn in the hierarchy of the archangeloi. The aim is, one could say, to depose the hierarchy of the archangeloi from the evolution of mankind!

Perhaps not those of you who have recently joined us, but certainly those who have been with us for some considerable time will discover, if you pay close attention to many things you have been told, that there are clear signs of such things, even in the Theosophical Society. Those of you who shared in the life of the Theosophical Society will surely remember that certain leading members of that society, especially the notorious Mr Leadbeater, said in so many words that in many ways the life between death and a new birth was a kind of dream-life. Those of you who had been members of the Theosophical Society for some time will know that such things were circulated.

It is not extraordinary that such things have been said, for in the case of some souls, who had been successfully influenced in this way and who were found by Leadbeater in the spiritual world, this had actually happened. These souls had indeed been prevented from contact with the world of the archangeloi and they therefore lacked any strong, clear consciousness. So in his way Leadbeater was observing souls who had fallen prey to the machinations of those brotherhoods, only he did not go so far as to observe what became of those souls after a while. Such souls cannot spend their whole time between death and a new birth without the ingredients which would normally be given to them by the world of the archangeloi, so they have to receive something else instead. And they do indeed receive something that is an equivalent; they are indeed permeated by something; but what? They are permeated by something that comes from archai who have remained behind at the stage of the archangeloi. So, instead of being permeated by the substance of the real archangeloi—as would be normal—they are permeated by archai, by time spirits, but by those who have not ascended to the level of the time spirits but have remained behind at the level of the archangeloi. They would have become archai if they had evolved normally, but they have remained behind at the level of the archangeloi. That means that these souls are permeated by ahrimanic influences in the strongest manner.

You need to have a proper idea of the spiritual world in order to comprehend the full significance of a fact such as this. When occult means are used in an endeavour to secure for a single folk spirit the rulership over the whole world, this means that the intention is to influence even the spiritual world. It means that in the place of the legitimate rulership of the dead by the archangeloi, is put the illegitimate rulership by archai who have remained at the stage of the archangeloi and who are, therefore, illegitimate time spirits. With this, ahrimanic immortality is achieved.

You might ask why human beings can be so foolish as to allow themselves to be programmed away from normal evolution and into quite another evolutionary direction. This is a short-sighted judgement, for it fails to take into account that out of certain impulses human beings can indeed come to long for immortality in worlds other than those that would be normal. It is well and good that you do not long for any part in some kind of ahrimanic immortality! But just as all kinds of things are incomprehensible, so you will have to admit that it must be allowed to remain incomprehensible, if people in the normal world—including life between death and a new birth—want to escape from this normal world, saying—as it were: We do not want Christ to be our guide, Christ, who is the guide for the normal world; we want a different guide, for we want to oppose this normal world. From the preparations they undergo—I have described these to you—from the preparations brought about by ceremonial magic, they gain the impression that the world of ahrimanic powers is a far more powerful spiritual world and that it will above all enable them to continue what they have achieved in the physical world—making immortal their materialistic experiences in physical life.

The time is ripe for looking into these things, because those who do not know about them, those who do not know that such endeavours exist today, are not in a position to understand what is going on. Behind everything visible in the physical world there lies something that is supernatural, something physically imperceptible. And there are today not a few who work, either for good or for bad, with means, with impulses that are hidden behind what the senses can perceive. It can be said that the world in which we live will follow its proper evolution if human beings place themselves in the service of Christ. But there are many and varied means by which this can be avoided, and some of these are so close to home that it is not easy to speak about them. People have no idea of what can spread through human souls, yet at the same time work as an immeasurably strong occult impulse.

You know—now this is close to home—that at a certain point of time the doctrine of infallibility was declared. This doctrine of infallibility—and this is the important aspect—is accepted by many people. But someone who is a true Christian might wonder about this doctrine of infallibility. He could ask himself what the early fathers of the Church, who were much closer to the original meaning of Christianity, would have said about it. They would have called it a blasphemy! In a truly Christian sense, this would hit the nail on the head. And at the same time it would point to an exceptionally effective occult method of stimulating faith by means of something eminently anti-Christian. This faith represents an important occult impulse in a particular direction, away from normal Christian evolution. As you see, we can touch on something quite close to home, and wherever we do so in the world we find occult impulses.

A similarly powerful occult impulse, which failed, was sought by Mrs Besant when she launched the Alcyone fiasco. If a belief in the incarnation of Jesus in Alcyone had taken hold, this would have become a strong occult impulse. So you see that even the mere spread of certain concepts, certain ideas, can contain strong occult impulses. And since those brotherhoods of whom I have spoken have set themselves the task of making the fifth post-Atlantean period—in the egoistic interest of their group—into the long-term aim of earthly evolution, eliminating what ought to come into this earthly evolution in the sixth and seventh post-Atlantean periods, you will understand why these brotherhoods send out into the world the things that I have described. To achieve their aims they have to create impulses which are meaningful not only for incarnated human beings but also for those who are not incarnated. The time has come when it is necessary that at least a few solitary individuals understand these things so that they can gain an idea of what is actually going on and being accomplished.

For this to be possible, concepts about the life of mankind on earth must come into being which are ever more and more right. It is unthinkable that those concepts can continue which are causing so much harm in our time. For the more human beings there are who have the right concepts, the less will certain occult trends be able to stir up trouble. However, as long as the things which are being said continue to be said in Europe today, things deliberately distorting the truth about the relationships of nations with one another, this is a sign that many occult impulses are at work with the aim of distracting earthly evolution away from the sixth post-Atlantean period. After all, important things are going to be brought about by the sixth post-Atlantean period. I have stressed very strongly that Christ died for the individual human being. We must see this as an essential aspect of the Mystery of Golgotha. He has an important task during the fifth post-Atlantean period which we shall leave aside for the moment. But He also has an important task in the sixth period. This is to help the world to overcome the last vestiges of the principle of nationality. That this should not happen, that steps should be taken in good time to prevent any influence by Christ in the sixth post-Atlantean period—this is the purpose served by the impulses of those brotherhoods who want to preserve the fifth post-Atlantean period in the manner I have shown.

The only counter-measure is to create the right concepts and gradually imbue them ever increasingly with life. These right concepts must live. Nations could dwell so peacefully side by side if only they would endeavour to discover the right concepts and ideas about their relationships. As I have said, no programme, no abstract idea, but solely the right concrete concepts, can lead to what must come about. Difficult though it is in the face of current ideas, by which our friends, too, have of course been not a little infected, nevertheless it is necessary to draw people's attention to various aspects which can lead to the right concepts. You all have at your disposal the necessary materials on which to base these right concepts, but these materials are not illuminated properly. As soon as they are correctly illuminated you will arrive at the correct, concrete ideas.

Let us now take up something we have already discussed from a certain viewpoint. Here on this globe, in the Europe we inhabit, the relationships between nations are spoken about in a way that inflicts utter torture on the dead, for all the ideas and concepts are based on the peculiarities of language. By forming concepts about nationality based on the peculiarities of language, people persistently torture the dead. One way of torturing the dead, one way of failing to show them love, is to participate in spiritualist seances. For this forces them to manifest in a particular language. The dead person is expected to speak a particular language, for even with table-rapping the signs have to refer to a particular language. What is done to the dead by forcing them to express themselves in a particular language might very well be compared with pinching someone living in the flesh with red-hot tongs. So painful for the dead are spiritualist seances which expect them to express themselves in a particular language. For in their normal life the dead are striving to free themselves from the differentiations between languages.

So, simply by speaking about the relationships between the peoples of Europe in concepts based on language, we are doing something about which we are barely able to communicate with the dead. That is why I could say that it is necessary today, or beginning to be necessary, to form concepts of a kind which can be discussed with the dead, or about which we can have communication with the dead. Of course there is no need to inundate the world with Volapuk or some other constructed language, for though it is true that all people wear clothes, they need not all wear the same clothes. On the other hand, though, we cannot be expected to see our clothes as part of ourselves. Similarly something we need for the physical world, namely the differentiation between languages—which serve the purpose of bringing the spiritual realm into the physical world—cannot be seen as belonging to our inmost archetypal being. We must be clear about this.

So how can we arrive at concepts which gradually rise above the ethnic elements which are almost exclusively based on language? In this, too, Anthroposophy must rise above mere anthropology, which has really no other means of answering this question except by referring to the differentiations of language.

As I said, the peoples of Europe could easily live in peace if only they could find suitable concepts, concepts which are alive. We took a step towards this when we discussed Grimm's law of sound-shifts. There I showed you how some languages have remained behind at an earlier stage. We spoke of the sequence of stages: Gothic, Anglo-Saxon—present-day English—and then High German. High German has continued to advance while English has remained at a certain stage. This is not a value judgement but merely a fact which has to be observed as objectively as a law of nature. In English we have d where in High German there is t, and we saw that this conforms with a certain law, the law of sound-shifts. However, this law of sound-shifts is, in a certain sphere, an expression of more profound conditions prevailing in the whole of European life. In this connection it is worth noting that certain concepts and ideas work with a vengeance, albeit unconsciously, to bring about misunderstandings. These things, too, must be seen entirely objectively.

Taking our departure from what we have said so far, we could state that in Central Europe there existed what we might call the ‘primordial soup’ for what later streamed out to the periphery, particularly towards the West. Let us take a closer look at this ‘primordial soup’ (see diagr, below). For a very long time it has been customary for the nation which represents this ‘primordial soup’ to call itself ‘das deutsche Volk’. The peoples of the West have exercised a kind of revenge on this nation by refusing to call them by the name they have chosen for themselves, a name which signifies a profound instinct. They are called ‘Teutons’, ‘Allemands’, ‘Germans’, all kinds of things, but never, by those who speak a western language, ‘Deutsche’. Yet this is the very name that has deep links with the nature of this people which is, in a way, the ‘primordial soup’. One stream of this went southwards. We described it as the papal, hierarchical cultic element.

Another stream went towards the West. We described this when we spoke of the diplomatic, political element. And a third stream went towards the North-west. We described it in connection with the mercantile element. At the centre there remained something that has retained a fluidity which allows for further evolution. You need only remember that in the periphery even language has stopped developing, whereas in the German language of Central Europe there still exists, in the sound-shifts, the possibility of growing beyond the sounds and ascending to the next stage of sound-evolution.

What is the basis for this? The ‘primordial soup’ was still virtually undifferentiated, bearing within it all the elements which then streamed outwards. They really did stream outwards. The migrating peoples moved right down through Italy. Present-day Italians are not the descendants of the Romans; they are the result of all that arose through the mingling of the Germanic tribes as they moved southwards. The whole process began when the Romans used the Germans whom they had absorbed to wage war on other Germans, for these were their best warriors. Things then continued in the manner familiar to us from history. Similarly, the Franks migrated westwards and the Anglo-Saxons north-westwards. How can we gain a proper conception of what it was that migrated outwards in this way?

The undifferentiated ‘primordial soup’ of humanity was not quite without structure, even though it was undifferentiated. It is right to distinguish between what was at first undifferentiated and what later became differentiated. The ‘primordial soup’ contains what migrated down towards the south; it is there as one of the parts. This part (red in the diagram) migrated southwards with all its one-sidedness. Drawing an analogy to what people meant by the ancient castes, we could say that a caste migrated southwards, a caste with a capacity for priestly things—a priestly caste. Since then a priestly element has always emanated from that part of the periphery. This has taken many forms and, although in an extraordinary way, even the latest phase has a kind of priestly character. Not only is the impulse called ‘holy egoism’, sacro egoismo, but also, d'Annunzio, for instance, could not have used words of a more priestly nature. Right down to the rephrased ‘Beatitudes’, everything that came from that quarter was clothed in priestly robes. Whether good or bad, everything was of a priestly nature. What remained in the ‘primordial soup’ became the opposition to all this, in the way I have described. What appeared in the Reformation was the element which had remained in the ‘primordial soup’; it came to be the opponent of the one-sided priestly element. The fact that today nothing more can be detected of this priestly element, or that all that can be detected is what is obviously there, is simply the result of that hollowing-out of which I have spoken.

The second element migrated westwards: the warrior caste, the kingly caste, the element of kingship. We have spoken of this, too. This western part only fell into republicanism because of an anomaly. In actual fact it is inwardly structured through and through in a warlike, kingly manner and it will ever and again fall back into this warlike, kingly element. Again we have something that has streamed out, so that a part of this element which has streamed out towards the West has also remained in the ‘primordial soup’ and will in turn have to provide the opposition to what takes place in the West (blue).

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And north-westwards went the mercantile element. It, too, remains as a part (orange) and will have to stand in opposition to what has developed one-sidedly. No moral evaluation is meant by this, for let no one believe that I in any way share the opinion, expressed so frequently, that the mercantile element is something despicable in comparison with the priestly element. All these things must be seen in their dissimilarity, but they must not be labelled and evaluated. Indeed, for the fifth post-Atlantean period, as we have seen, the mercantile element is something utterly essential. But we really must see the realities as they exist. If people cannot see them now, then they will come to see them in the future.

From one quarter many occult impulses have emanated which have used the priestly element in the interests of certain groups, and from another quarter have come occult impulses which have used the warlike element. In the same way, from a third quarter, occult impulses are emanating today which prefer to use the mercantile element as their vehicle. They will be stronger than the others, for numbers I and II are only repetitions of the third and fourth post-Atlantean periods, whereas number III belongs fully to the fifth post-Atlantean period. Therefore, all the impulses that come from the third quarter will be stronger than those coming from the first and second quarters because they coincide with the fundamental character of the fifth post-Atlantean period. They will be as strong as certain impulses were during the Egyptian civilization in the third post-Atlantean period, and others which emanated from the Near East and transplanted themselves through the cultures of Greece and Rome during the fourth post-Atlantean period. The sorcery of the ancient Egyptians and the blood sacrifices—these are the forerunners of what comes from the secret brotherhoods of which we have been speaking, though what comes from them will be something different. Because it makes use of the mercantile element it will have a more common-or-garden character in the ordinary human sense.

We really must be clear about these things. Only if human beings feel themselves to be immersed in a living way in what truly exists can healing come to evolution. Through this alone is it possible, within what happens, to learn to distinguish what is true from what is untrue. We have heard how necessary it is to learn to distinguish between truth and falsehood—that falsehood which is the cause of the huge groundswell of impulses now running through the world. So many false ideas bear within them a powerful occult force if they are believed by human beings.

Just as in earlier times other media served the impulses which were at work, so in our own time, in the fifth post-Atlantean period, the art of printing books and everything that exists in the mercantile element serves these purposes. We have a foretaste of the terrible things to come in people's strong dependence on everything put out in the Press by mercantile groups by means of the medium of printing. The aims of these groups are anything but what they say they are in their newspapers. They want to make profits, or achieve certain things through doing business, and for this they possess the means by which they can disseminate views whose truthfulness is irrelevant but which serve the purpose of entering into certain kinds of business. In the case of much of the printed matter distributed around the world today the right question to ask is not: What does this person mean? but: In whose service does this person stand? Who is paying for this or that opinion? This is often the crucial question these days. The secret brotherhoods about whom we have been speaking are not concerned with suppressing these things, but rather promoting them as an important occult means of which they can make use. An important aim is achieved by them when what is said no longer matters, as long as it exercises influence over people in the interests of certain groups.

The important thing is to see these things as clearly and soberly as possible. And we can only discern the nuances sufficiently if we see them properly in their connections with the spiritual worlds. I am referring to the symptoms, to the symptoms of history, as I have said. Of course you must not expect to find black magic behind every phenomenon. But there are phenomena which are used in the service of grey or black magic. It is also not necessary to pass moral judgements on everything; you must simply see things in the proper light.

For someone who wants to see things in the proper way, certain words spoken by Sir Edward Grey will surely be unforgettable and startling—words appearing among other, less important, things which nevertheless also had to be said in order to make the whole thing credible. These words were part of the great speech he made to introduce England's entry into this European war, and they are saturated with the blood—I mean the soul blood—of the fifth post-Atlantean period. These words are not only true but more than true; their truth is drawn from what lives in a materialistic way in the fifth post-Atlantean period. ‘We are going’, says Grey, ‘to suffer, I am afraid, terribly in this war whether we are in it or whether we stand aside. Foreign trade is going to stop, not because the trade routes are closed, but because there is no trade at the other end. Continental nations engaged in war—all their populations, all their energies, all their wealth, engaged in a desperate struggle—they cannot carry on the trade with us that they are carrying on in times of peace, whether we are parties to the war or whether we are not,’ and so on.

The whole of western Europe stands today under the dominion of a single question of power. This talk of trade, and that it is for considerations of trade that it is important not to remain detached from the war—this is far more profoundly truthful than all the other things contained in this speech, things which only had to be said in order to make this speech credible. It no longer matters what people say, as long as it is believed. They might even say it unconsciously. Neither am I passing a moral judgement on anyone. What does matter is the ability to recognize—on the basis of the inner truth of human evolution—where the truth is being expressed. And this was a point at which the truth in the truest sense was spoken. The same facts, the same truths are truthfully expressed which, once they have been suitably developed by those brotherhoods of whom we have spoken, lead to the impregnation of the mercantile trend with occult impulses.

This must become known to mankind; it must be experienced by mankind. If human beings were not to experience this, they would not grow sufficiently strong. They must harden themselves by opposing what lies in the impulses we have described. In an earlier age there existed a tyranny which forced people to believe only what was recognized by Rome. A far greater tyranny will come about when neither philosophers nor scientists decide what should be believed but when the tools of those secret brotherhoods alone specify what is to be believed, when they alone make sure that no human soul may harbour any beliefs other than those dictated by them, when nothing new is done in the world except what is stipulated by them alone. This is the goal of these brotherhoods. And though I have nothing against idealists—for idealism is always something good—certain idealists are naive if they believe that these things are only temporary and will disappear again once the war comes to an end. The war is only the beginning of the way things are tending to go. And the only possibility of getting beyond this lies in the clear and proper understanding of what is going on. Nothing else is of any use. Therefore—although certain quarters will not be pleased to hear and see them and will take steps against them—there will always have to be people who clearly point out the full intensity of what is really going on, people who cannot be deterred from pointing out the full intensity of what is happening.

At the beginning of these considerations I said that the Germans called themselves ‘Deutsche’, but that they met with no understanding on the part of those who call them ‘Germans’, or whatever else. Seen from their own point of view, ‘German’ is exactly what they are not, for those who call themselves ‘Deutsche’ consider that ‘Germanic’ refers to all those whose languages are at the same stage historically, and this does not include High ‘German’ or anything that is ‘Deutsch’. From their point of view the Scandinavians, the Anglo-Saxons, the Dutch are ‘Germans’, and they mean by this nothing more than that below the surface their languages are related. So ‘Germans’ no longer means much to those who call themselves ‘Deutsche’ because all of this no longer has any reality today. Thus, when outside Germany the phrase ‘pan-Germanic’ is coined, this is quite meaningless to those who call themselves ‘Deutsche’ because for them ‘Germanic’ can no longer have any real substance. Different national structures have formed, and to use the purely theoretical expression ‘pan-Germanic’ is simply to regress to an earlier age; it expresses nothing that has any connection with the future or even with the present. The designation ‘Deutsch’, however, is based on a profound instinct.

Differentiated out of what I called the ‘primordial soup’ came the three castes, the first, the second and the third caste. They developed and migrated. The fourth caste I have already described as those who simply wanted to be human beings, and nothing else. They always remained where they were and, as a result, underwent developments which to the others seemed grotesque—for instance, in relation to the first sacramental stage of alliteration, which went on to develop into the sound-shift. This is most interesting because it is a link among many others.

Let us put it this way: Those who migrated were various differentiations of ‘the people’; and those who remained were ‘the people’ per se, the ‘volk’, the ‘diet’. The name Dietrich, for instance, means ‘he who is rich in people’. ‘Diet’ later became ‘deutsch’, and to be ‘Deutsch’ means nothing other than to be ‘the people’. The people who remained where they were are the fourth caste. The other three migrated, ‘the people’ remained.

So this is the profound instinct that lies behind the designation ‘Deutsch’; it simply denotes the human element. Therefore, what stayed where it was as ‘the people’ has the capacity to be felt, not as something that has developed organically, but as something that has remained fluid in its development so that it can go beyond all the differentiations. Certainly the priestly element is there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the priestly element. The warlike element is there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the warlike element. The mercantile element is also there, but there is the possibility of going beyond the mercantile element. Similarly in language; the older form was there, but there was the possibility of going beyond it.

Connected with this, though, is a phenomenon which understandably has led to endless misunderstandings. Seen at a deeper level, these are tragic misunderstandings, but they come about because, of course, in the ‘primordial soup’ there is much which contains the germs of what later reappears in the periphery. Yet whereas in the periphery it is seen as characteristic and fitting, when it is discovered in the ‘primordial soup’ it is thought to be totally abnormal. Let us take militarism. This does not belong to the nature of the German people at all, it belongs to the French. In France no fault is found with it, because there it has developed organically. But when it is discovered in Germany it is seen as something improper which ought not to be there. Fault is found with it when it comes to the fore as a result of some emergency situation such as the geographical situation we discussed at length earlier. Or take the German ‘Junker’; all he represents is what developed in the British Empire into something absolutely acceptable, the aristocratic squire. Simply because it developed in its own way in Central Europe it stands out like a sore thumb and is seen as a provocation. Thus there arise endless misunderstandings; indeed the world is full of things that are misunderstood, it is full of subjective interpretations of reality. Wherever you look, you find all kinds of ideas which crumble on closer inspection. Those who really understand what is going on have no use for these things, those whose thinking is based on reality have no use for them, and yet they work as impulses; in public opinion they act like dynamite. They elbow their way into public opinion. Some would be infinitely funny if they were not so infinitely tragic.

Here is an example. Treitschke is described by the nations of the Entente as a monster, as a person whose views are an abomination for Europe. He is presented as typifying those views about Central Europe which justify inflicting on Central Europe its just deserts. But let us look at some of Treitschke's views. What does he think, for instance, of the Turks? He thinks that they should depart from Europe, that they should not be allowed to live in Europe but should scatter themselves across Asia. What we read today in the note to Wilson exactly expresses Treitschke's view! Fault is found with Treitschke, but in this matter, as in countless others, his opinion is taken up and even acted upon. His views on Turkey might just as well have been copied straight down in the note to Wilson. This is what I mean by an idea which crumbles; as soon as you apply any knowledge or understanding it disintegrates. Other concepts disintegrate, too, as soon as a little knowledge is applied. But most people today make statements without any knowledge, much to the advantage of those who want to spread their ideas in the dark. How often do we hear today that it is perfectly ‘humane’ to surround and starve out Central Europe. Among the various reasons given for this most humane method of warfare is the justification that in 1870 the Germans did just the same. They found it perfectly ‘humane’ to surround and starve out Paris; and the relative size of the territories in question is irrelevant. Only someone who knows nothing of history can talk like this—of course I do not mean the history you can read in the newspapers!

But what were the facts? In 1870/71 Bismarck, who was responsible for starving Paris out, was totally against doing any such thing. You can read in his book how distressed he was that the impulse came from England, via the English princess who later became the Empress Friedrich, to conquer Paris by starvation rather than by any other means. He writes that unfortunately they were forced by the Englishwoman to apply ‘this humane method’ to Paris; he speaks of the humane English method.

That is the real historical context. But, of course, you have to know about it if you want to judge things without using ideas which crumble. Comparing the two situations, they seem so truly alike. But very often things are not at all alike when they are compared against the full background. In this case the ‘humane’ method of starving Paris out is an English invention of recent history. So the objection now being made should not be made, if reality is to be the basis. To work with reality, to understand things on the basis of reality—this alone can lead to salvation today.

To be able to meet the request of many of our friends to investigate current events, we have had to discuss things we usually discuss in other connections, in order that our souls might experience the deep seriousness with which the reality of events must be seen. If just a few people can be found who are willing to see things as they really are, then the grim times we are about to face will be followed by better times. The seeds take a while to ripen. But if you sow thoughts of reality in your souls today, these are real seeds capable of ripening, and we can add that these are thoughts about which one can be in agreement with the dead. It is so painful to hear on all sides these days that ‘we owe this or that to the dead’. This event, which for convenience sake is still termed ‘war’, though it has long since become something utterly different—how often do those who want to prolong this event proclaim all the things we are supposed to owe to the dead, to those who have fallen! If people only knew how they blaspheme against God when they maintain that we owe it to the dead to prolong these bloody events; if only they knew the position of the dead in this matter, they would quickly distance themselves from this blasphemy!

So, my dear friends, from all these things which come about through human beings, you see how necessary it is to build a bridge between the living and the dead. Spiritual science will build this bridge. Spiritual science will bring about a possibility of reaching an understanding, even with those who have passed through the portal of death. A life of community will embrace all human souls—those embodied on the earth and those living between death and a new birth—when the fundamental nature of the human being is understood, when it is understood that life in the body and life without the body are simply two forms of one and the same all-embracing life. This knowledge, that the human being has two forms of life, one in the body and one without the body—this knowledge, if it is fundamentally understood, bears within it salvation for the future, but only if human beings fill themselves with these ideas in a truly living way.

Today I shall speak more generally, perhaps aphoristically, to prepare the way for Tuesday, when I shall discuss our anthroposophical spiritual science and its significance for the present time and for human evolution. I shall then bring to your notice some things which we should certainly take to heart. On the one hand we will look back on our work, and on the other hand I shall present certain matters which are important for the whole way in which we assess our spiritual scientific movement, as well as the manner in which we relate to it. It seems to me to be appropriate, at this time, to take into our hearts a consideration of this kind.

Let me start today with some remarks on what it is that can give us, as human beings, a sense for our situation in the cosmos. Actually, human beings in this materialistic age feel, you might say, deserted and isolated in the cosmos. If you cut off a person's finger or hand, or amputate his leg, he feels you have taken away something that belongs to his physical, bodily nature; he feels that the missing part belongs to the whole of his bodily nature. In earlier periods of human evolution people felt quite differently about this. Not only did they feel their hand, or arm or leg to be a part of their whole being, but they felt that they were, in turn, a part of a totality. In those days it was possible to speak quite differently about a group-ego. Tribes, families, for generations back, felt themselves to be a totality. We have gone into this frequently. As for their external, physical existence, however, people felt something quite different. They felt in a way as though they stood within the cosmos as a whole, as though they had been formed out of the whole cosmos.

Just as today we feel that our finger, our hand, is one member of our total organism, so in olden times people felt: Up there is the sun; it runs its own course but it is not unrelated to us; we are a part of the region traversed by the sun; we are a part of the universe as it is given certain rhythms by the moon. In short, they felt the universe to be one great organism and that they were within it, just as today our finger might feel that it is part of our body. The fact that this feeling, this perception, is virtually lost to us today has not a little to do with the rise of materialism. Today's science, in particular, disdains to have anything to do with an idea that man might be a part of the cosmos. Science regards a human being as an individual body, of which the separate parts are examined and described anatomically and physiologically. It is no longer customary in science to regard the human being as a member of the total organism of the universe in so far as this is physically visible.

But people's view of things, especially their scientific view, will have to return to the concept of man embedded in the whole cosmos. Human beings will have to sense once again that they stand within the cosmic universe. This will not be possible in the way that was the case in olden times. They will have to achieve it by expanding their science, which today is abstract and directed to the individual, to include certain considerations. They will have to apply certain judgements, of which we shall discuss only one today—which we mentioned several weeks ago. This will show us the direction scientific thinking will have to take—having become far more human than current scientific thinking—if human beings are to find once again an awareness of how they stand within the universe as a whole.

You know that the position of the sun on the ecliptic at the spring equinox moves forward in the Zodiac. You know that this point has always been designated, ever since mankind began to think, according to its position in the Zodiac. So from about the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha until about the fifteenth century after the Mystery of Golgotha, the sun at the spring equinox rose in the sign of the Ram, though not always at exactly the same spot. During this period the sun traversed the sign of the Ram. Since then, the sun at the spring equinox has been rising in the sign of the Fishes. Note, please, that astronomy takes no account of the constellations, so you will find that calendars still say that the sun rises in the constellation of the Ram at the beginning of spring, which is in fact not the case. Astronomy has stuck to the earlier cycle. It simply divides the Zodiac into twelve equal parts, each of which is named after one of the signs. You know from our calendar what the situation is.

However, this is immaterial as far as we are concerned. What is important for us is the fact that the position of the sun at the spring equinox moves forward, passing through the whole Zodiac little by little. It traverses the whole Zodiac until it finally returns to the original position, taking approximately 25,920 years. These 25,920 years are termed the Platonic Year, the Cosmic Year. The exact figure varies according to the various methods of calculation. However, we are not concerned with exact figures but with the rhythm this precession entails. You can imagine that a cosmic rhythm must lie in this movement which repeats itself every 25,920 years.

We can say that these 25,920 years are very important for the life of the sun, for during this time the life of the sun passes through one unit, a proper unit. The next 25,920 years are then a repetition. We have a rhythm in which one unit measures 25,920 years.

Having looked at this great Cosmic Year, let us now turn our attention to something small, something intimately connected with life between birth and death, that is, with our life in so far as we are inhabitants of the physical universe. It is indisputable that one of the most important things in this life in the physical body is a single breath, an in-breath and an out-breath, for our very life depends on this breathing in and breathing out. If it were to be interrupted, we should cease to be capable of living. One breath is indeed something very important. A breath brings in the air which enlivens us in a particular way. Within our organism we transform this air into the breath of death, for it would kill us if we were to breathe it in again once we have breathed it out.

On average, a human being takes eighteen breaths a minute. Not all breaths are equal, for those in youth differ from those in old age, but the average is eighteen breaths a minute. Eighteen times a minute we rhythmically renew our life. Multiply this by 60 and you have 1,080 times an hour. Now multiply by 24, and the number of breaths in twenty-four hours comes to 25,920!

You see how a remarkable rhythm underlies the course of our life in one day. Let us take one unit of life to be one breath. This is something very important for us, since the rhythmical repetition of our breathing maintains our life. In one day we are given exactly as many units of life as the years it takes the sun to return to its original position on the ecliptic at the spring equinox. This means that if we imagine one breath to correspond to one microcosmic year, then we complete one microcosmic Platonic Year in one day, an image of the macrocosmic Platonic Year. This is most exceptionally significant, for it shows us that the process of our breathing, something which takes place within us, is based on the same rhythm, on a different time-scale, as the great rhythm of the sun's passage.

It is important for us to consider such a thing in our soul. For if we transform what has been said into a feeling, then this feeling will tell us that we are an image of the macrocosm. To say that the human being is an image of the macrocosm is no mere empty phrase, no idle chatter, for it can be proved down to the last detail. From this you can gain a feeling of the solid foundation on which stand all the laws that come from spiritual science. They are all based on similar intimate knowledge of the inner connections of the cosmos, even though it is not always possible to go into every detail.

Now in considering these things, it must above all be clear to us that the human being is, in some way and to some extent, detached from the cosmos. He stands within the rhythm of the cosmos and yet he is to some extent free. He changes things subtly, so that the rhythms do not exactly match, but it is just this fact of not quite matching which gives him the possibility of freedom. In general, however, he stands within the rhythms of the cosmos.

I had to bring forward these considerations so that what I now want to say might not be misunderstood. Having considered the rhythm of breathing, let us now turn to a larger one, the next in size: the alternation of sleeping and waking. A single breath is the smallest element of life. Now let us look at the alternation between sleeping and waking, which is indeed, to some extent, an analogy to the rhythm of breathing.

As you know, I have often described the taking in of the astral body and ego on waking up, and the letting go of the astral body and ego on going to sleep, as a breathing in and a breathing out in the course of a day and a night. But we can look at this in an even more materialistic sense. When we breathe the air, it goes in and it goes out. We inhale, we exhale. Something material swings back and forth like a pendulum; out, in, out, in. The alternation of sleeping and waking occurs as a very similar rhythm. In the morning, when we wake up and take in our ego and our astral body, our etheric body is displaced, is pushed down from the head and more into the other elements of the organism. And when we go to sleep again, pushing out our astral body and our ego, then our etheric body spreads back into our head and is there just as it is in the whole of the rest of our body. Thus there is an incessant rhythm. When the etheric body is pressed down, we wake up, and it stays down while we remain awake. When we go to sleep it is pushed back up into our head. Up and down it goes in the course of twenty-four hours. The etheric body moves rhythmically during the course of twenty-four hours. Of course there are irregularities, and this is in keeping with the human being's capacity for freedom, his degree of freedom. But, overall, what I have described takes place.

We could say that something breathes in us—though it is not an in-and-out but an up-and-down—something breathes in us during the course of a day which resembles our breathing every eighteenth of a minute. Let us see whether what breathes in this up-and-down of the etheric body also represents a kind of circulation, something which returns to its starting-point. We must fathom the meaning of 25,920 days, for 25,920 such up-and-down movements could be seen as a replication of the Platonic Year. Just as a day corresponds to 25,920 breaths, so 25,920 days ought to correspond to something in human life too. How many years does this come to?

A year has 365¼ days and if we divide 25,920 by 365.25 the answer is: nearly 71. Let us say 71 years, which is the average life-span of the human being. The human being is free, however, and often lives much longer, but you know that the patriarchal life-span is given as 70 years. The span of a human life is 25,920 days, 25,920 great breaths, and so we have another cycle wonderfully depicting the macrocosm in the microcosm. We could say that by living for one day, taking 25,920 breaths, we depict the Platonic Cosmic Year, and by living for 71 years, waking up and going to sleep 25,920 times—a breathing on a larger scale—we once again depict the Platonic Year.

Now let us turn to something which time will not allow us to discuss in detail today, but which I nevertheless want to indicate, something that can be sensed in an occult way. We are surrounded by air. It is the air which gives us the possibility of that closest element of life that takes place in the rhythm of breathing. This rhythm is given to us by the air, which is something belonging to the earth. And what gives us the other rhythm? The earth itself! That rhythm arises because the earth turns on its own axis—speaking in accordance with modern astronomy—and brings about the alternation of day and night. So the air breathes in us when we take a breath. And the earth, by letting us wake up and go to sleep, breathes, pulses in us by turning on its axis and giving us the alternation of day and night. Our life-span can be seen in relation to the earth as one day in the life of an organism which, instead of taking one breath every eighteenth of a minute, takes one breath in one day and night. For such an organism seventy years are one day, and ordinary days and nights are its breaths.

You see how we can feel ourselves to be within a life on a larger scale, a life which takes one breath every twenty-four hours and for which one day takes seventy, seventy-one, years. We can feel ourselves to be within a living being which has much longer rhythms of pulse and breathing. So you see that it is quite correct to speak of the microcosm as being an image of the macrocosm, for every part of the image can be proved mathematically. If we maintain that the air breathes within us, that it breathes itself in us, that the earthly realm breathes in us because we belong to this greater living organism, then we might come to ask: Apart from being related to the air, which is on the earth, and to the whole of the earth with its rhythm of day and night, are we perhaps also related in a certain way to the rising of the sun as a whole, as it progresses during the course of the Platonic Year, returning to the position from which it set out?

These things are of the utmost interest, yet science today takes no more notice of them than of shadows. On one occasion I found myself startlingly confronted by this contrast between today's science and the science which must come in the future. Perhaps I have told you that in the autumn of 1889 I was called by the Goethe and Schiller Archive in Weimar to edit Goethe's natural-scientific works for the extended complete works. I had to examine all the documents left behind by Goethe containing his studies on anatomy, physiology, zoology, botany, mineralogy, geology and also meteorology. He made an enormously thorough study of the weather during the course of a year, recording especially the barometric data, and it is astonishing how many tables he worked out in this connection. Only small parts of this work have been published. A few of the tables are reproduced in my edition, but otherwise little is publicly known. Like temperature charts, he made graphs showing the barometric data at a particular place compared with other places and he recorded his readings every few hours for months on end. In this way he hoped to show how the curves differed in different places.

Graphs showing barometric data are something for which today's science has little use as yet. But Goethe wanted to record these curves which for him represented an analogy with the pulse as we record its fluctuations in temperature charts. He wanted to record a kind of pulse of the earth, the regular, day-to-day earth-pulse. Why? He wanted to prove that the fluctuations in the barometric data during the course of the year are not as irregular as ordinary meteorology supposes but are subject to a certain degree of regularity which is only modified by secondary conditions pertaining at certain times. He wanted to prove that the earth's gravity depicts a breathing out and a breathing in during the course of a year; he wanted to point to the very thing that is expressed in the human being's breathing out and breathing in. He wanted to find the same thing in the barometric data. Science will embark on such projects in the future, when once again the microcosm will be examined in its relationship to the macrocosm.

So you see how Goethe was working towards a form of science which will come about at some time in the future. We also gain an idea of the immense diligence he applied in order to reach the results he achieved. He never simply makes an assertion, as is so often the case with others. When others speak of the pulse of the earth, they often intend this simply as a metaphor, an aperçu. But when Goethe says, in three or four lines, for instance, that the earth breathes, he can back this statement with a large pile of tables. Empirical knowledge is behind whatever he says. Yet most people consider empirical knowledge to be stuff and nonsense. We can learn from Goethe that one must have material with which to back one's assertions. In this way we now have material to back our statement that the earth breathes like a great organism.

Let us now see whether we can speak in a similar way about breathing if we place ourselves within the great Platonic Year of the sun, which has a span of 25,920 years. Without more ado let us now regard these 25,920 years as a single year, and let us see how much a single day amounts to. To do this we must divide by 365¼, and the answer will be a single day. We have already done this sum, and the answer was seventy-one years, the span of a human life. This means that a human life takes one day of the whole Platonic Year. So we could look at the whole Platonic Year with regard to the human life-span as follows: As physical beings we are breathed out by the whole process of the Platonic Year, so that if seventy-one years are seen as a single day, this would be one breath of the being who lives in the rhythm of the Platonic Year.

With regard to an eighteenth of a minute we are a limb of the life of the air, and with regard to a day we are a limb of the life of the earth. With regard to our life-span it is as though we were breathed out and breathed in again in one day of that being who lives in the rhythm of 25,920 years. So we could consider our physical body, which lives out its patriarchal span, to be a single breath of that great being which lives so long that 25,920 years are as one year for it. Our patriarchal life-span is then one day. So looking at a being who lives with our earth and experiences day and night in twenty-four hours, this is one breath for our etheric body. And one breath for our astral body is our actual breath of one-eighteenth of a minute.

Herein you have an analogy for an ancient assertion, for something that was called the ‘days and nights of Brahma’. Think of a spiritual being for whom our seventy-one years are as is a single breath for us. We find we are a single breath for that being. When we enter the world as a tiny baby, that being for whom the Platonic Year is one year breathes us out. It breathes us out into the cosmos, and when we die it breathes us in again; we are breathed out and we are breathed in. Now turn to the earth: It breathes us out and in again in one day. Now turn to the air, which is a part of the earth: It breathes us out and in again in an eighteenth of a minute. Whichever way we look at it, the number 25,920 represents the return to the starting point. This is a regular rhythm; it gives us the feeling of being embedded in the cosmos; it teaches us that the span of a human life, and one day in a human life, are indeed, for greater, more all-embracing beings, the same as is one breath for us. If we can transform this knowledge into feeling, then the expression ‘resting in the world-all’ assumes immense significance.

Such things really do belong in the orbit of scientific research, and nothing other than the attitude of mind of spiritual science will lead to such research into these figures, which are to be found, after all, in any encyclopaedia. One day such research will be carried out and then ordinary science will be able to find a link with anthroposophical spiritual science.

As we have seen, everything is ordered according to numbers. But it is also ordered according to measure. Human science will lend great depths to the Biblical words: Everything in the universe is ordered in accordance with measure and number.

Let us continue. There is something connected with our breathing, a kind of dependant of our breathing, and that is our speech. Organically, speech is connected with breathing. Not only does it emerge from the same organ but it is also connected with the rhythm of breathing, the rhythm of an eighteenth of a minute. Thus we speak, and thus speak those who are with us on the earth. Just as the air surrounds us on the earth, so are we surrounded by human beings whose speaking bears a relationship to the rhythm of breathing. It should follow that the other breathing, the breathing connected with day and night, also has a kind of speaking linked with it. This would be a speaking by beings who belong to the organism of the earth, just as human beings belong to the air.

In olden times, the wisdom imparted to human beings by higher beings came, not via the breathing rhythm of an eighteenth of a minute, but via the rhythm of breathing which has one day as its unit. In those ancient days they could not learn as quickly as we can today; they had to tarry longer for words which were linked to a breathing rhythm of twenty-four hours. In this way ancient knowledge came to man, knowledge which is at the foundation of everything and which can be discovered in various traditions. It was brought by higher beings who are linked to the earth in the way man is linked to the air, and who approach man. Those who today work towards an initiation still notice something of this. For knowledge which comes from the spiritual world comes to us far, far more slowly than does that which is imparted to us on the wings of our ordinary air processes.

That is why it is so important for one striving for initiation to learn to sense within himself the great significance of the transitions of going to sleep and waking up. In going to sleep and in waking up, in this transition, we are most likely to sense how spiritual beings mysteriously speak with us. Later we can then gain some control over this. If you seek entry into the world inhabited by the dead, it is good to be aware that the dead are most likely to speak at the moment of going to sleep and the moment of waking up. The moment of going to sleep is more difficult, because here we usually become immediately unconscious and fail to perceive what the dead have said. But in waking up, if we succeed in becoming fully aware of the moment of waking up, that is when the dead are most likely to communicate with us. But we must seek to gain a firm hold of the moment of waking up. This means that we must endeavour to wake up without immediately entering into the light of day. You know that there is a—shall we say—superstitious rule, that if we want to hold on to a dream we must not look at the window or the light because if we do, we will forget easily. This applies just as much to the delicate observations which flow to us from the spiritual world. We must endeavour to wake up in the dark, in darkness which we wilfully create by not listening to noises, by not opening our eyes, by waking up consciously while not yet going out to meet the day. That is when we best notice the approach of communications from the spiritual world.

You could say that if this is the case we shall receive precious few communications during the course of our lifetime! For just think how difficult it would be if this situation meant that in the course of our lifetime we could only receive as many communications as could come to us during the course of one day. This would be sufficient, no doubt, but we should have no chance of making use of any of them, for think of the time taken up by our childhood, and so on. However, the earth takes part in all this—please bear this in mind—the earth receives these communications into its etheric body. And because they are inscribed on the earth's etheric body, the communications remain available for study. We can also study, in the sun-ether which fills the whole world, the more comprehensive communications given to us by the being whose life element is the Platonic Year. This is described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and other books.

You see how a thread can be spun to link ordinary science with spiritual science, although those who are strangers to spiritual science will hardly find themselves in a position to evaluate what ordinary science gives them in a suitable way. But those who have the attitude of mind of spiritual science will not doubt, when they approach these matters, that a time will come one day when external science and spiritual science will join forces fully.

As I said, I have only spoken to you about a part of all this, namely, the rhythmical process which is built into breathing. There are many other things which, if studied in relation to numbers, show how the microcosm is in harmony with the macrocosm, and human beings can gain a comprehensive sense for this harmony. Such a comprehensive sense for this harmony was given to the pupils of the ancient Mysteries, right up to the fifteenth century. Before any knowledge was imparted to them, their teachers endeavoured to imbue them with a feeling for the way man stands within the cosmos. It is another sign of these materialistic times that knowledge today can be absorbed without any preparation in the feeling life. I pointed this out in the opening words of the first chapter in Christianity as Mystical Fact.

A feeling for the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm will be especially important when the endeavour is made to reach concrete concepts for what at the moment only exists in abstractions. For instance what is ‘a people, a nation’ in today's abstract materialism? Nothing but so and so many people who speak the same language! For our materialistic age has, of course, no conception of a folk being as a separate individuality, such as we have often described. We speak of a folk being as a separate individuality, a real single individuality. But in the materialists' view a folk being is merely a collection of people who speak the same language. This is an abstraction, for the concept does not refer to a concrete being. So what does it mean to you when discussing a people or a nation to speak, not of an abstraction but of a concrete being?

Well, in Anthroposophy we have the possibility of studying the human being, who is also a concrete being, and who possesses a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego. So can we assume that a folk being is also a concrete being with differentiated parts?

Indeed we can. In addition to man, true occultism studies all the beings who exist, and who are as concrete as man. However, in the case of a folk soul we have to look for different elements, for if they were the same as in man, then a folk soul would be a human being, but it is not; it is a different kind of being. In fact, in the case of folk beings we have to study each folk soul individually in order to arrive at concepts which are real. Generalization would lead us back to abstraction, so each has to be considered individually.

Let us do so. Take the folk soul which today rules the Italian people to the extent that the individual members of a people can be ruled by a folk soul. What can we say about it? In the case of a human being we say that he has a physical body consisting of various salts, various other minerals, five per-cent solids, so much that is liquid, so much that is gaseous, and so on. That is his physical body. A folk soul such as that of the Italian people does not possess a human body, but it does possess something which can be seen as analogous to the physical body. The Italian folk soul does not have a physical body made up of salts or solids or liquids, though this does not mean that other folk souls have no liquid components. However, the Italian folk soul has none; it begins with components which are aeriform. There are no liquid or other components, for the most densely material part of the Italian folk soul is woven out of air. All its other components are even less dense. The human being has earthly substance, whereas the Italian folk soul has, to start with, aeriform substance. And where the human being has liquid substance, the Italian folk soul has warmth. The human being has aeriform substance which he breathes in and out, and the Italian folk soul has light which corresponds to air in the human being. The human being has warmth, and the Italian folk soul has sounds instead, the sounds of the spheres.

This is approximately what corresponds to the physical body, but the ingredients are different. Instead of solid, liquid, gaseous and warmth elements, as in the human being, the Italian folk soul has something similar—though not a physical body in the same sense—consisting of air, warmth, light, sound. From this you can see that if the Italian folk soul wants to ensoul the human beings who belong to it, this can take place via their breathing, since its lowest, densest component is air. And indeed it is so that the communication between the individuals and the Italian folk soul takes place through the breathing process. In the breathing the folk soul spreads down into the human beings. This is an actual, real process. Of course breathing is done through something quite different, but in the actual breathing process the folk soul steals in and influences its people.

In a similar way we could consider what corresponds to our etheric body. This would start with the life ether, and then in place of the light ether there would be what I called in my Theosophy ‘burning desire’; then, corresponding to the sound ether, would be what is there described as ‘mobile sensitivity’, and so on. You can find all the ingredients in Theosophy, but you have to know how to apply them. If you were to take further this study of the correspondence, the communication, between the folk soul and the individual human being; if you were to continue on the basis of what we have said so far, you would find that all the qualities in the character of the Italian people are connected with these things. This can be studied concretely in every detail.

Only examples can be given here. Suppose we wanted to study the Russian folk soul. We would find that the lowest component has nothing material in it, nothing solid, liquid, gaseous, aeriform, not even warmth. The lowest component, what in the Russian folk soul corresponds to the salt, the solid element in the human being, would be found to be the light ether. The sound ether would be what corresponds to the liquid element in the human being; the life ether would correspond to the air in the human being; the ‘burning desire’ to warmth in the human being. Then we could ask how the Russian folk soul communicates with the individual Russian human being. This takes place in that light, streaming down, is reflected in a certain way by the earth. Light exercises certain influences on the earth. It is reflected not only physically, but also out of the vegetation, out of whatever is in the soil. The light does not work directly on the individual Russian. First it works into the earth, not the coarse, physical earth, but the plants and everything that grows and flourishes on the earth. And this light is reflected. In what is reflected back lies the medium through which the Russian folk soul communicates with the individual Russian. That is why the Russians' relationship to their soil, to everything brought forth by the earth, is so much stronger than is the case with other nations. It is because of this extraordinary bearing of the folk soul. And ‘mobile sensitivity’—this is immensely significant—is the first etheric ingredient of the Russian folk soul, corresponding to light in the human being.

Thus we come to the concrete folk being; thus we can study how one spirit speaks to another, when one is a human being and the other a folk soul. This takes place in the subconscious realm. When an Italian breathes, when he maintains his life by breathing—when what he consciously wants is to maintain his life by breathing—then, in his unconscious, the folk soul speaks and whispers to him. He does not hear it, but his astral body perceives it and lives in the exchange that goes on beneath the threshold of consciousness between the folk soul and the individual human being.

And in what streams back out of the Russian soil, fructified by sunlight, are contained the mysterious runes, the whispering runes by which the Russian folk soul speaks to the individual Russian while he paces across the face of his land or senses the life which rays forth from the light. Do not imagine that these things must be taken in a material way. Of course a Russian might live in Switzerland, but in Switzerland, too, there is light which is reflected by the earth. If you are an Italian you will hear your folk soul whispering in your breathing when you are in Switzerland. If you are a Russian you will feel rising up from the soil of Switzerland whatever it is you can hear as a Russian. You must not take these things in a material way. Such things are not tied to locations—though, of course, because the human being is to some extent material, one's own location yields more. The air of Italy, together with the whole climate there, naturally facilitates and promotes the kind of speaking I have described. And the soil of Russia facilitates and promotes that other kind of speaking. But you must not take these things materialistically, for of course a Russian can be a Russian not only in Russia—although it is Russian soil which especially promotes Russian-ness. You see, on the one hand materialism is given its due, but on the other hand we have here something relative, not absolute. For light above the soil of Russia is not only part of the body of the Russian folk soul, but it is also light, as elsewhere. On the other hand the Russian folk soul—I have described all this before—has the rank of an archangel. And archangels are not fettered to one location, they are supra-spatial.

Concrete concepts such as these are what ought to underlie any talk of the relationship of the individual to his people. Yet consider how far mankind is today from even the faintest notion of what is contained in the name of a people. Notwithstanding such considerations, world programmes are scattered abroad and the names of nations cast in every direction. When you take proper account of the fact that a folk-being is a concrete being and that every folk-being differs from every other, you will be able to realize fully just how much of what is flying around in the world today is nothing but empty phrases. What is air for the Italian folk-being is light for the Russian folk-being, and these things lead to quite different kinds of communication between the folk-being and the individual human being. Anthropology is the materialistic, external view; Anthroposophy will have to reveal the true conditions, the actual realities. Since, in their materialism, people today are such a long way from any reality, it is no wonder that things which are included in world programmes are spoken about in such an arbitrary and mendacious manner.

On Tuesday we shall continue to speak about the nature of our anthroposophical spiritual science. In connection with this I also want to refer to a number of things at the present time which can really only be properly understood from the standpoint of spiritual science. The suffering mankind is having to bear today is connected in large measure with the fact that people do not want to find clarity with reference to the things they discuss. Instead they send into the world furious messages which bear no relation to reality. This is once again brought home to us when we come across something like the pamphlet which has been published in Switzerland, Conditions de Paix de l'Allemagne by someone who calls himself ‘Hungaricus’. For those of us whose attitude of mind is that of spiritual science, we need only read this through in order to discover every single defect in present-day materialistic thinking with all its awkward complications. So on Tuesday I shall say a few words about this pamphlet and its method and the kind of thinking it reveals, for it really is so very characteristic of today's awkward and complicated materialistic thinking.

Today it seems appropriate to mention certain thoughts on the meaning and nature of our spiritual Movement—anthroposophical spiritual science, as we call it. To do so will necessitate references to some events which have occurred over a period of time and which have contributed to the preparation and unfolding of this Movement. If, in the course of these remarks, one or another of them should seem somewhat more personal—it would, at any rate, only seem to be so—this will not be for personal reasons but because what is more personal can be a starting point for something more objective. The need for a spiritual movement which makes known to people the deeper sources of existence, especially human existence, can be easily recognized by the way in which today's civilization has developed along lines which are becoming increasingly absurd. No one, after serious thought, will describe today's events as anything other than an absurd exaggeration of what has been living in more recent evolution.

From what you have come to know in spiritual science, you will have gained the feeling that everything, even what is apparently only external, has its foundation in the thoughts of human beings. Deeds which are done, events which take place in material life—all these are the consequence of what human beings think and imagine. And the view of the external world, which is gaining ground among human beings today, gives us an indication of some very inadequate thought forces. I have already put into words the fact that events have grown beyond human beings, have got out of hand, because their thinking has become attenuated and is no longer strong enough to govern reality. Concepts such as that of maya, the external semblance which governs the things of the physical plane, ought to be taken far more seriously by those familiar with them than they, in fact, often are. They ought to be profoundly imprinted on current consciousness as a whole. This alone might lead to the healing of the damage which—with a certain amount of justification—has come upon mankind. Those who strive to understand the functioning of man's deeds—that is, the way the reflections of man's thoughts function—will recognize the inner need for a comprehension of the human soul which can be brought about by stronger, more realistic thoughts.

In fact, our whole Movement is founded on the task of giving human souls thoughts more appropriate to reality, thoughts more immersed in reality, than are the abstract concept patterns of today. It cannot be pointed out often enough how very much mankind today is in love with the abstract, having no desire to realize that shadowy concepts cannot, in reality, make any impact on the fabric of existence. This has been most clearly expressed in the fourteen-, fifteen-year history of our Anthroposophical Movement. Now it is becoming all the more important for our friends to take into themselves what specifically belongs to this Anthroposophical Movement. You know how often people stressed that they would so much like to give the beautiful word ‘theosophy’ the honour it deserves, and how much they resisted having to give it up as the key word of the Movement. But you also know the situation which made this necessary.

It is good to be thoroughly aware in one's soul about this. You know—indeed, many of you shared—the goodwill with which we linked our work with that of the Theosophical Movement in the way it had been founded by Blavatsky, and how this then continued with Besant's and Sinnett's efforts, and so on. It is indeed not unnecessary for our members, in face of all the ill-meant misrepresentations heaped upon us from outside, to persist in pointing out that our Anthroposophical Movement had an independent starting-point and that what now exists has grown out of the seeds of those lectures I gave in Berlin which were later published in the book on the mysticism of the Middle Ages. We must stress ever and again that in connection with this book it was the Theosophical Movement who approached us, not vice versa. This Theosophical Movement, in whose wake it was our destiny to ride during those early years, was not without its connections to other occult streams of the nineteenth century, and in lectures given here I have pointed to these connections. But we should look at what is characteristic for that Movement.

If I were asked to point factually to one rather characteristic feature, I would choose one I have mentioned a number of times, which is connected with the period when I was writing in the journal Lucifer-Gnosis what was later given the title Cosmic Memory. A representative of the Theosophical Society, who read this, asked me by what method these things were garnered from the spiritual world. Further conversation made it obvious that he wanted to know what more-or-less mediumistic methods were used for this. Members of those circles find it impossible to imagine any method other than that of people with mediumistic gifts, who lower their consciousness and write down what comes from the subconscious.

What underlies this attitude? Even though he is a very competent and exceptionally cultured representative of the Theosophical Movement, the man who spoke to me on this was incapable of imagining that it is possible to investigate such things in full consciousness. Many members of that Movement had the same problem because they shared something which is present to the highest degree in today's spiritual life, namely, a certain mistrust in the individual's capacity for knowledge. People do not trust the inherent capacity for knowledge, they do not believe that the individual can have the strength to penetrate truly to the essential core of things. They consider that the human capacity for knowledge is limited; they find that intellectual understanding gets in the way if one wants to penetrate to the core of things and that it is therefore better to damp it down and push forward to the core of things without bringing it into play. This is indeed what mediums do; for them, to mistrust human understanding is a basic impulse. They endeavour, purely experimentally, to let the spirit speak while excluding active understanding.

It can be said that this mood was particularly prevalent in the Theosophical Movement as it existed at the beginning of the century. It could be felt when one tried to penetrate certain things, certain opinions and views, which had come to live in the Theosophical Movement. You know that in the nineties of the nineteenth century and subsequently in the twentieth century, Mrs Besant played an important part in the Theosophical Movement. Her opinion counted. Her lectures formed the centrepiece of theosophical work both in London and in India. And yet it was strange to hear what people around Mrs Besant said about her. I noticed this strongly as early as 1902. In many ways, especially among the scholarly men around her, she was regarded as a quite unacademic woman. Yet, while on the one hand people stressed how unacademic she was, on the other hand they regarded the partly mediumistic method she was famous for, untrammelled as it was by scientific ideas, as a channel for achieving knowledge. I could say that these people did not themselves have the courage to aim for knowledge. Neither had they any confidence in Mrs Besant's waking consciousness. But because she had not been made fully awake as a result of any scientific training, they saw her to some extent as a means by which knowledge from the spiritual world could be brought into the physical world. This attitude was extraordinarily prevalent among those immediately surrounding her. People spoke about her at the beginning of the twentieth century as if she were some kind of modern sibyl. Those closest to her formed derogatory opinions about her academic aptitude and maintained that she had no critical ability to judge her inner experiences. This was certainly the mood around her, though it was carefully hidden—I will not say kept secret—from the wider circle of theosophical leaders.

In addition to what came to light in a sibylline way through Mrs Besant, and through Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, the Theosophical Movement at the end of the nineteenth century also had Sinnett's book or, rather, books. The manner in which people spoke about these in private was, equally, hardly an appeal to man's own power of knowledge. Much was made in private about the fact that in what Sinnett had published there was nothing which he had contributed out of his own experience. The value of a book such as his Esoteric Buddhism was seen to lie particularly in the fact that the whole of the content had come to him in the form of ‘magical letters’, precipitated—no one knew whence—into the physical plane—one could almost say, thrown down to the physical plane—which he then worked into the book Esoteric Buddhism.

All these things led to a mood among the wider circles of the theosophical leaders which was sentimental and devotional in the highest degree. They looked up, in a way, to a wisdom which had fallen from heaven, and—humanly, quite understandable—this devotion was transferred to individual personalities. However, this became the incentive for a high level of insincerity which was easy to discern in a number of phenomena.

Thus, for instance, even in 1902 I heard in the more private gatherings in London that Sinnett was, in fact, an inferior spirit. One of the leading personalities said to me at that time: Sinnett could be compared with a journalist—say, of the Frankfurter Zeitung—who has been dispatched to India; he is a journalistic spirit who simply had the good fortune to receive the ‘Master's letters’ and make use of them in his book in a journalistic way which is in keeping with modern mankind!

You know, though, that all this is only one aspect of a wide spectrum of literature. For in the final decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth, there appeared—if not a Biblical deluge, then certainly a flood of—written material which was intended to lead mankind in one way or another to the spiritual world. Some of this material harked back directly to ancient traditions which have been preserved by all kinds of secret brotherhoods. It is most interesting to follow the development of this tradition.

I have often pointed out how, in the second half of the eighteenth century, old traditions could be found in the circle led by Saint-Martin, the philosophe inconnu. In Saint-Martin's writings, especially Des erreurs et de la vérité, there is a very great deal of what came from ancient traditions, clothed in a more recent form. If we follow these traditions further back, we do indeed come to ideas which can conquer concrete situations, which can influence reality. By the time they had come down to Saint-Martin, these concepts had already become exceedingly shadowy, but they were nevertheless shadows of concepts which had once been very much alive; ancient traditions were living one last time in a shadowy form. So in Saint-Martin's work we find the healthiest concepts clothed in a form which is a final glimmer. It is particularly interesting to see how Saint-Martin fights against the concept of matter, which had already come to the fore. What did this concept of matter gradually become? It became a view in which the world is seen as a fog made up of atoms moving about and bumping into one another and forming configurations which are at the root of all things taking shape around us. In theory materialism reached its zenith at the point when the existence of everything except the atom was denied. Saint-Martin still maintained the view that the whole science of atoms, and indeed the whole belief that matter was something real, was nonsense; which indeed it is. If we delve into all that is around us, chemically, physically, we come in the final analysis not to atoms, not to anything material, but to spiritual beings. The concept of matter is an aid; but it corresponds to nothing that is real. Wherever—to use a phrase coined by du Bois-Reymond—‘matter floats about in space like a ghost’: there may be found the spirit. The only way to speak of an atom is to speak of a little thrust of spirit, albeit ahrimanic spirit. It was a healthy idea of Saint-Martin to do battle against the concept of matter.

Another immensely healthy idea of Saint-Martin was the living way in which he pointed to the fact that all separate, concrete human languages are founded on a single universal language. This was easier to do in his day than it is now, because in his time there was still a more living relationship to the Hebrew language which, among all modern languages, is the one closest to the archetypal universal language. It was still possible to feel at that time the way in which spirit flowed through the Hebrew language, giving the very words something genuinely ideal and spiritual. So we find in Saint-Martin's work an indication, concrete and spiritual, of the meaning of the word ‘the Hebrew’. In the whole way he conceived of this we find a living consciousness of a relationship of the human being with the spiritual world. This word ‘the Hebrew’ is connected with ‘to journey’. A Hebrew is one who makes a journey through life, one who gathers experiences as on a journey. Standing in the world in a living way—this is the foundation of this word and of all other words in the Hebrew language if they are sensed in their reality.

However, in his own time Saint-Martin was no longer able to find ideas which could point more precisely, more strongly, to what belonged to the archetypal language. These will have to be rediscovered by spiritual science. But he had before his soul a profound notion of what the archetypal language had been. Because of this his concept of the unity of the human race was more concrete and less abstract than that which the nineteenth century made for itself. This concrete concept of the unity of the human race made it possible for him, at least within his own circle, to bring fully to life certain spiritual truths, for instance, the truth that the human being, if only he so desires, really can enter into a relationship with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. It is one of his cardinal principles, which states that every human being is capable of entering into a relationship with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies. Because of this there still lived in him something of that ancient, genuine mystic mood which knew that knowledge, if it is to be true knowledge, cannot be absorbed in a conceptual form only, but must be absorbed in a particular mood of soul—that is after a certain preparation of the soul. Then it becomes part of the soul's spiritual life.

Hand in hand with this, however, went a certain sum of expectations, of evolutionary expectations directed to those human souls who desired to claim a right to participate in some way in evolution. From this point of view it is most interesting to see how Saint-Martin makes the transition from what he has won through knowledge, through science—which is spiritual in his case—to politics, how he arrives at political concepts. For here he states a precise requirement, saying that every ruler ought to be a kind of Melchizedek, a kind of priest-king.

Just imagine if this requirement, put forward in a relatively small circle before the outbreak of the French Revolution, had been a dawn instead of a dusk; just imagine if this idea—that those whose concepts and forces were to influence human destiny must fundamentally have the characteristics of a Melchizedek—had been absorbed, even partially, into the consciousness of the time, how much would have been different in the nineteenth century! For the nineteenth century was, in truth, as distant as it could possibly be from this concept. The demand that politicians should first undertake to study at the school of Melchizedek would, of course, have been dismissed with a shrug.

Saint-Martin has to be pointed out because he bears within him something which is a last glimmer of the wisdom that has come down from ancient times. It has had to die away because mankind in the future must ascend to spirituat life in a new way. Mankind must ascend in a new way because a merely traditional continuation of old ideas never has been in keeping with the germinating forces of the human soul. These underdeveloped forces of the human soul will tend, during the course of the twentieth century, in a considerable number of individuals—this has been said often enough—to lead to true insight into etheric processes. The first third of the twentieth century can be seen as a critical period during which a goodly number of human beings ought to be made aware of the fact that events must be observed in the etheric world which lives all around us, just as much as does the air. We have pointed emphatically to one particular event which must be seen in the etheric world if mankind is not to fall into decadence, and that is the appearance of the Etheric Christ. This is a necessity. Mankind must definitely prepare not to let wither those forces which are already sprouting.

These forces must not be allowed to wither for, if they did, what would happen? In the forties and fifties of the twentieth century the human soul would assume exceedingly odd characteristics in the widest circles. Concepts would arise in the human soul which would have an oppressive effect. If materialism were the only thing to continue, concepts which exist in the human soul would arise, but they would rise up out of the unconscious in a way which people would not understand. A waking nightmare, a kind of general state of neurasthenia, would afflict a huge number of people. They would find themselves having to think things without understanding why they were thinking them.

The only antidote to this is to plant, in human souls, concepts which stem from spiritual science. Without these, the forces of insight into those concepts which will rise up, into those ideas which will make their appearance, will be paralysed. Then, not the Christ alone, but also other phenomena in the etheric world, which human beings ought to see, will withdraw from man, will go past unnoticed. Not only will this be a great loss, but human beings will also have to develop pathological substitute forces for those which ought to have developed in a healthy way.

It was out of an instinctive need in wide circles of mankind that the endeavours arose which expressed themselves in that flood of literature and written material mentioned earlier. Now, because of a peculiar phenomenon, the Anthroposophical Movement of Central Europe was in a peculiar position relative to the Theosophical Movement—particularly to the Theosophical Society—as well as to that other flood of written material about spiritual matters. Because of the evolutionary situation in the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was possible for a great number of people to find spiritual nourishment in all this literature; and it was also possible for a great number of people to be utterly astounded by what came to light through Sinnett and Blavatsky. However, all this was not quite in harmony with Central European consciousness. Those who are familiar with Central European literature are in no doubt that it is not necessarily possible to live in the element of this Central European literature while at the same time taking up the attitude of so many others to that flood. This is because Central European literature encompasses immeasurably much of what the seeker for the spirit longs for—only it is hidden behind the peculiar language which so many people would rather have nothing to do with.

We have often spoken about one of those spirits who prove that spiritual life works and weaves in artistic literature, in belletristic literature: Novalis. For more prosaic moods we might equally well have mentioned Friedrich Schlegel, who wrote about the wisdom of ancient India in a way which did not merely reproduce that wisdom but brought it to a fresh birth out of the western cultural spirit. There is much we could have pointed to that has nothing to do with that flood of written material, but which I have sketched historically in my book Vom Menschenrätsel. People like Steffens, like Schubert, like Troxler, wrote about all these things far more precisely and at a much more modern level than anything found in that flood of literature which welled up during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. You have to admit that, compared with the profundity of Goethe, Schlegel, Schelling, those things which are held to be so marvellously wise are nothing more than trivia, utter trivia. Someone who has absorbed the spirit of Goethe can regard even a work like such as Light on the Path as no more than commonplace. This ought not to be forgotten. To those who have absorbed the inspiration of Novalis or Friedrich Schlegel, or enjoyed Schelling's Bruno, all this theosophical literature can seem no more than vulgar and ordinary. Hence the peculiar phenomenon that there were many people who had the earnest, honest desire to reach a spiritual life but who, because of their mental make-up were, in the end, to some degree satisfied with the superficial literature described.

On the other hand, the nineteenth century had developed in such a way that those who were scientifically educated had become—for reasons I have often discussed—materialistic thinkers about whom nothing could be done. However, in order to work one's way competently through what came to light at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century through Schelling, Schlegel, Fichte, one does need at least some scientific concepts. There is no way of proceeding without them. The consequence was this peculiar phenomenon: It was not possible to bring about a situation—which would have been desirable—in which a number of scientifically educated people, however small, could have worked out their scientific concepts in such a way that they could have made a bridge to spiritual science. No such people were to be found. This is a difficulty that still exists and of which we must be very much aware.

Supposing we were to approach those who have undergone a scientific education, with the intention of introducing them to Anthroposophy: lawyers, doctors, philologists—not to mention theologians—when they have finished their academic education and reached a certain stage in life at which it is necessary for them, in accordance with life's demands, to make use of what they have absorbed, not to say, have learnt. They then no longer have either the inclination or the mobility to extricate themselves from their concepts and to seek for others. That is why scientifically-educated people are the most inclined to reject Anthroposophy, although it would only be a small step for a modern scientist to build a bridge. But he does not want to do so. It confuses him. What does he need it for? He has learnt what life demands of him and, so he believes, he does not want things which only serve to confuse him and undermine his confidence. It is going to take some considerable time before these people who have gone through the education of their day start to build bridges in any great numbers. We shall have to be patient. It will not come about easily, especially in certain fields. And when the building of bridges is seriously tackled in a particular field, great obstacles and hindrances will be encountered. It will be necessary above all to build bridges in the fields encompassed by the various faculties, with the exception of theology.

In the field of law the concepts being worked out are becoming more and more stereotyped and quite unsuitable for the regulation of real life. But they do regulate it because life on the physical plane is maya; if it were not maya, they would be incapable of regulating it. As it is, their application is bringing more and more confusion into the world. The application of today's jurisprudence, especially in civil law, does nothing but bring confusion into the situation. But this is not clearly seen. Indeed, how should it be seen? No one follows up the consequences of applying stereotyped concepts to reality. People study law, they become solicitors or judges, they absorb the concepts and apply them. What happens as a consequence of their application is of no interest. Or life is seen as it is—despite the existence of the law, which is a very difficult subject to study for many reasons, not least because law students tend to waste the first few terms—life is seen as it is; we see that everything is in a muddle and do no more than complain.

In the field of medicine the situation is more serious. If medicine continues to develop in the wake of materialism as it has been doing since the second third of the nineteenth century, it will eventually reach an utterly nonsensical situation, for it will end up in absurd medical specializations. The situation is more serious here because this tendency was, in fact, necessary and a good thing. But now it is time for it to be overcome. The materialistic tendency in medicine meant that surgery has reached a high degree of specialization, which was only possible because of this one-sided tendency. But medicine as such has suffered as a result. So now it needs to turn around completely and look towards a real spirituality—but the resistance to this is enormous.

Education is the field which, more than any other, needs to be permeated with spirituality, as we have said often enough. Bridges need to be built everywhere.

In technology—although it may appear to be furthest away from the spirit—it is above all necessary that bridges should be built to the life of the spirit, out of direct practical life. The fifth post-Atlantean period is the one which is concerned with the development of the material world, and if the human being is not to degenerate totally into a mere accomplice of machines—which would make him into nothing more than an animal—then a path must be found which leads from these very machines to the life of the spirit. The priority for those working practically with machines is that they take spiritual impulses into their own soul. This will come about the moment students of technology are taught to think just a little more than is the case at present; the moment they are taught to think in such a way that they see the connections between the different things they learn. As yet they are unable to do this. They attend lectures on mathematics, on descriptive geometry, even on topology sometimes; on pure mechanics, analytical mechanics, industrial mechanics, and also all the various more practical subjects. But it does not even occur to them to look for a connection between all these different things. As soon as people are obliged to apply their own common sense to things, they will be forced—simply on account of the stage of development these various subjects have reached—to push forward into the nature of these things and then on into the spiritual realm. From machines, in particular, a path will truly have to be found into the spiritual world.

I am saying all this in order to point out what difficulties today face the spiritual-scientific Movement, because so far there are no individuals to be found who might be capable of generating an atmosphere of taking things seriously. This Movement suffers most of all from a lack of being taken seriously. It is remarkable how this comes to the fore in all kinds of details. Much of what we have published would have been taken seriously, would have been seen in quite a different light, if it had not been made known that it stemmed from someone belonging to the Theosophical Movement. Simply because the person concerned was in the Theosophical Movement, his work was stamped as something not to be taken seriously. It is most important to realize this, and it is just these trifling details which make it plain. Not out of any foolish vanity but just so that you know what I mean, let me give you an example of one of these trifles which I came across only the other day.

In my book Vom Menschenrätsel I wrote about Karl Christian Planck as one of those spirits who, out of certain inner foundations, worked towards the spiritual realm, even though only in an abstract way. I have not only written about him in this book, but also—over the past few winters—spoken about him in some detail in a number of cities, showing how he went unrecognized, or was misunderstood, and referring especially to ane particular circumstance. This was the fact that, in the eighties, seventies, sixties, fifties, this man had ideas and thoughts in connection with industrial and social life which ought to have been put into practice. If only there had been someone at that time with the capacity of employing in social life the great ideas this man had, ideas truly compatible with reality, then—and I am not exaggerating—mankind would probably not now be suffering all that is going on today which, for the greater part, is a consequence of the totally wrong social structure in which we are living.

I have told you that it is a real duty not to let human beings come to a pass such as that reached by Karl Christian Planck, who finally came to be utterly devoid of any love for the world of external physical reality. He was a Swabian living in Stuttgart. He was refused a place in the philosophy department of Tübingen University, where he would have had the opportunity to put forward some of his ideas. I entirely intentionally mentioned the fact that, when he wrote the foreword to his book Testament of a German, he felt moved to say, ‘Not even my bones shall rest in the soil of my ungrateful fatherland’. Hard words. Words such as people today can be driven to utter when faced with the stupidity of their fellow human beings, who refuse to see the point about what is really compatible with reality. In Stuttgart I purposely quoted these words about his bones, for Stuttgart is Planck's fatherland in the narrower sense. There was little reaction, despite the fact that events had already reached a stage when there would have been every reason to understand the things he had said.

Now, however, a year-and-a-half later, the following notice may be found in the Swabian newspapers:

‘Karl Christian Planck. More than one far-seeing spirit foretold the present World War. But none anticipated its scale nor understood its causes and effects as clearly as did our Swabian countryman Planck.’

I said in my lecture that Karl Christian Planck had foreseen the present World War, and that he even expressly stated that Italy would not be on the side of the Central Powers, even though he was speaking at the time when the alliance had not yet been concluded, but was only in the making.

‘To him this war seemed to be the unavoidable goal toward which political and economic developments had been inexorably moving for the last fifty years.’

This is indeed the case!

‘Just as he revealed the damage being done in his day, so he also pointed the way which can lead us to other situations.’

This is the important point. But nobody listened!

‘By him we are told the deeper reasons underlying war profiteering and other black marks which mar so many good and pleasing aspects of the life of the nation today. He knows where the deeper, more inward forces of the nation lie and can tell us how to release them so that the moral and social renewal longed for by the best amongst us can come about. Despite all the painful disappointments meted out to him by his contemporaries, he continued to believe in these forces and their triumphant emergence.’

Nevertheless, he was driven to utter the words I have quoted!

‘The news will therefore be widely welcomed that the philosopher's daughter is about to give an introduction to Planck's social and political thinking in a number of public lectures.’

It is interesting that a year-and-a-half later his daughter should be putting in an appearance. This notice appeared in a Stuttgart newspaper. But a year-and-a-half ago, when I drew attention as plainly as possible in Stuttgart to the the philosopher Karl Christian Planck, no one took the slightest notice, and no one felt moved to make known what I had said. Now his daughter puts in an appearance. Her father died in 1880, and presumably she had been born by then. Yet she has waited all this time before standing up for him by giving public lectures.

This example could be multiplied not tenfold, but a hundredfold. It shows once again how difficult it is to bring together the all-embracing aspect of spiritual science with everyday practical details, despite the fact that it is absolutely essential that this should be done. Only through the all-embracing nature of spiritual science—this must be understood—can healing come about for what lives in the culture of today.

That is why it has been essential to keep steering what we call anthroposophical spiritual science, in whatever way possible, along the more serious channels which have been increasingly deserted by the Theosophical Movement. The spirit that was even known to the ancient Greek philosophers had to be allowed to come through, although this has led to the opinion that what is written in consequence is difficult to read. It has often not been easy. Especially within the Movement it met with the greatest difficulties. And one of the greatest difficulties has been the fact that it really has taken well over a decade to overcome one fundamental abstraction. Laborious and patient work has been necessary to overcome this fundamental abstraction which has been one of the most damaging things for our Movement. This basic abstraction consisted simply in the insistence on clinging to the word ‘theosophy’, regardless of whether whatever was said to be ‘theosophical’ referred to something filled with the spirituality of modern life, or to no more than some rubbish published by Rohm or anyone else. Anything ‘theosophical’ had equal justification, for this prompted ‘theosophical tolerance’.

Only very gradually has it been possible to work against these things. They could not be pointed out directly at the beginning, because that would have seemed arrogant. Only gradually has it been possible to awaken a feeling for the fact that differences do exist, and that tolerance used in this connection is nothing more than an expression of a total lack of character on which to base judgements. What matters now is to work towards knowledge of a kind which can cope with reality, which can tackle the demands of reality. Only a spiritual science that works with the concepts of our time can tackle the demands of reality. Not living in comfortable theosophical ideas but wrestling for spiritual reality—this must be the direction of our endeavour.

Some people still have no idea what is meant by wrestling for reality, for they are fighting shy of understanding clearly how threadbare are the concepts with which they work today. Let me give you a small example, from a seemingly unrelated subject, of what it means to wrestle for reality in concepts. I shall be brief, so please be patient while I explain something that might seem rather far-fetched.

There were always isolated individuals in the nineteenth century who were prepared to take up the question of reality. For reality was then supposed to burst in on mankind with entirely fresh ideas about life, not only the unimportant aspects but especially the basic practical aspects of life. Thus at a certain point in the nineteenth century Euclid's postulate of parallels was challenged. When are two lines parallel? Who could have failed to agree that two lines are parallel if they never meet, however long they are! For that is the definition: That two straight lines are parallel if they never meet, whatever the distance to which they are extended. In the nineteenth century there were individuals who devoted their whole life to achieving clarity about this concept, for it does not stand up to exact thinking. In order to show you what it means to wrestle for concepts, let me read you a letter written by Wolfgang Bolyai. The mathematician Gauss had begun to realize that the definition of two straight lines being parallel if they meet at infinity, or not at all, was no more than empty words and meant nothing. The older Bolyai, the father, was a friend and pupil of Gauss, who also stimulated the younger Bolyai, the son. And the father wrote to the son:

‘Do not look for the parallels in that direction. I have trodden that path to its end; I have traversed bottomless night in which every light, every joy of my life has been extinguished. By God I implore you to leave the postulate of the parallels alone! Shun it as you would a dissolute association, for it can rob you of all your leisure, your health, your peace of mind and every pleasure in life. It will never grow light on earth and the unfortunate human race will never gain anything perfectly pure, not even geometry itself. In my soul there is a deep and eternal wound. May God save you from being eaten away by another such. It robs me of my delight in geometry, and indeed of life on earth. I had resolved to sacrifice myself for the truth. I would have been prepared for martyrdom if only I could have handed geometry back to mankind purified of this blemish. I have accomplished awful, gigantic works, have achieved far more than ever before, but never found total satisfaction. Si paullum a summo discessit, vergit ad imum. When I saw that the foundation of this night cannot be reached from the earth I returned, comfortless, sorrowing for my self and the human race. Learn from my example. Desiring to know the parallels, I have remained without knowledge. And they have robbed me of all the flowers of my life and time. They have become the root of all my subsequent failures, and much rain has fallen on them from our lowering domestic clouds. If I could have discovered the parallels I would have become an angel, even if none had ever known of my discovery.

... Do not attempt it ... It is a labyrinth that forever blocks your path. If you enter you will grow poor, like a treasure hunter, and your ignorance will not cease. Should you arrive at whatever absurd discovery, it will be for naught, untenable as an axiom ...

... The pillars of Hercules are situated in this region. Go not a step further, or you will be lost.’

Nevertheless, the younger Bolyai did go further, even more so than his father, and devoted his whole life to the search for a concrete concept in a field where such a concept seemed to exist, but which was, however, empty words. He wanted to discover whether there really was such a thing as two straight lines which did not meet, even in infinity. No one has ever paced out this infinite distance, for that would take an infinite time, but this time has not yet run its course. It is nothing more than words. Such empty words, such conceptual shadows, are to be found behind all kinds of concepts. I simply wanted to point out to you how even the most thorough spirits of the nineteenth century suffered because of the abstractness of these concepts! It is interesting to see that while children are taught in every school that parallel lines are those which never meet, however long they are, there have been individual spirits for whom working with such concepts became a hell, because they were seeking to push through to a real concept instead of a stereotyped concept.

Wrestling with reality—this is what matters, yet this is the very thing our contemporaries shun, more or less, because they ‘realize’, or imagine they realize, that they have ‘high ideals’! It is not ideals that matter, but impulses which work with reality. Imagine someone were to make a beautiful statement such as: At long last a time must come when those who are most capable are accorded the consideration due to them. What a lovely programme! Whole societies could be established in accordance with this programme. Even political sciences could be founded on this basis. But it is not the statement that counts. What counts is the degree to which it is permeated by reality. For what is the use—however valid the statement, and however many societies choose it for the prime point in their programmes—if those in power happen to see only their nephews as being the most capable? It is not a matter of establishing the validity of the statement that the most capable should be given their due. The important thing is to have the capacity to find those who are the most capable, whether they are one's nephews or not! We must learn to understand that abstract concepts always fall through the cracks of life, and that they never mean anything, and that all our time is wasted on all these beautiful concepts. I have no objection to their beauty, but what matters is our grasp and knowledge of reality.

Suppose the lion were to found a social order for the animals, dividing up the kingdom of the earth in a just way. What would he do? I do not believe it would occur to him to push for a situation in which the small animals of the desert, usually eaten by the lion, would have the possibility of not being eaten by the lion! He would consider it his lion's right to eat the small animals he meets in the desert. It is conceivable, though, that for the ocean he would find it just and proper to forbid the sharks to eat the little fishes. This might very well happen. The lion might establish a tremendously just social order in the oceans, at the North Pole or wherever else he himself is not at home, giving all the animals their freedom. But whether he would be pleased to establish such an order in his own region is a question indeed. He knows very well what justice is in the social order, and he will put it into practice efficiently in the kingdom of the sharks.

Let us now turn from lions to Hungaricus. I told you two days ago about his small pamphlet Conditions de Paix de l'Allemagne. This pamphlet swims entirely with the stream of that map of Europe which was first mentioned in the famous note from the Entente to Wilson about the partition of Austria. We have spoken about it. With the exception of Switzerland, Hungaricus is quite satisfied with this map. He begins by talking very wisely—just as most people today talk very wisely—about the rights of nations, even the rights of small nations, and about the right of the state to be coincident with the power of the nation, and so on. This is all very nice, in the same way that the statement, about the most capable being given his due, is nice. As long as the concepts remain shadowy we can, if we are idealists, be delighted when we read Hungaricus. For the Swiss, the pamphlet is even nicer than the map, for rather than wiping Switzerland off the map, Hungaricus adds the Vorarlberg and the Tyrol. So I recommend the Swiss to read the pamphlet rather than look at the map. But now Hungaricus proceeds to divide up the rest of the world. In his own way he accords to every nation, even the smallest, the absolute right to develop freely—as long as he considers he is not causing offence to the Entente. He trims his words a little, of course, saying ‘independence’ when referring to Bohemia, and obviously ‘autonomy’ with regard to Ireland. Well, this is the done thing, is it not! It is quite acceptable to dress things up a little. He divides up the world of Europe quite nicely, so that apart from the things I have mentioned—which are to avoid causing offence—he really endeavours to apportion the smallest nations to those states to which the representatives of the Entente believe they belong. It is not so much a question of whether these small territories are really inhabited by those nationalities, but of whether the Entente actually believes this to be the case. He makes every effort to divide up the world nicely, with the exception of the desert—oh, pardon me—with the exception of Hungary, which is where he practises his lion's right! Perfect freedom is laid down for the kingdom of the sharks. But the Magyar nation is his nation, and this is to comprise not only what it comprises today—though without it only a minority of the population would be Magyar, the majority being others—but other territories as well. Here he well and truly acts the part of the lion.

Here we see how concepts are formulated nowadays and how people think nowadays. It gives us an opportunity to study how urgent it is to find the transition to a thinking which is permeated with reality. For this, concepts such as those I have been giving you are necessary. I want to show you—indeed, I must show you—how spiritual thinking leads to ideas which are compatible with reality. One must always combine the correct thought with the object; then one can recognize whether that object corresponds to reality or not.

Take Wilson's note to the Senate. As a sample it could even have certain effects in some respects. But this is not what matters. What matters is that it contains ‘shadowy concepts’. If it nevertheless has an effect, this is due to the vexatious nature of our time which can be influenced by vexatious means. Look at this matter objectively and try to form a concept against which you can measure the reality, the real content with which this shadowy concept could be linked. You need only ask one question: Could this note not just as well have been written in 1913? The idealistic nothings it contains could just as easily have been expressed in 1913! You see, a thinking which believes in the absolute is not based on reality. It is unrealistic to think that something ‘absolute’ will result every time. The present age has no talent for seeing through the lack of reality in thinking because it is always out for what is ‘right’ rather than for what is in keeping with reality.

That is why in my book Vom Menschenrätsel I emphasized so heavily the importance not only of what is logical but also of what is in keeping with reality. A single decision that took account of the facts as they are at this precise moment would be worth more than all the empty phrases put together. Historical documents are perhaps the best means of showing that what I am saying has to do with reality, for as time has gone on the only people to come to the surface are those who want to rule the world with abstractions, and this is what has led to the plight of the world today. Proper thinking, which takes account of things as they are, will discover the realities wherever they are. Indeed, they are so close at hand! Take the real concept which I introduced from another point of view the other day: Out of what later became Italy in the South there arose the priestly cultic element which created as its opposition the Protestantism of Central Europe; from the West was formed the diplomatic, political element which also created an opposition for itself; and from the North-west was formed the mercantile element which again created for itself an opposition; and in Central Europe an opposition coming out of the general, human element will of necessity arise. Let us look once more at the way these things stream outwards. (See diagram.)

Even for the fourth post-Atlantean period—proceeding on from the old fourfold classification in which one spoke of castes—we can begin to describe this structure in a somewhat different way: Plato spoke of ‘guardian-rulers’; this is the realm for which Rome—priestly, papal Rome—seized the monopoly, achieving a situation in which she alone was allowed to establish doctrinal truths. She was to be the only source of all doctrine, even the highest.

In a different realm, the political, diplomatic element is nothing other than Plato's ‘guardian-auxiliaries’. I have shown you that, regardless of what people call Prussian militarism, the real military element was formed with France as its starting point, after the first foundations had been laid in Switzerland. That is where the military element began, but of course it created an opposition for itself by withholding from others what it considered to be its own prerogative. It wants to dominate the world in a soldierly way, so that when something soldierly comes to meet it from elsewhere it finds this quite unjustified, just as Rome finds it unjustified if something comes towards her which is to do with the great truths of the universe.

And here, instead of mercantilism, we might just as well write ‘the industrial and agricultural class’. Think on this, meditate on it, and you will come to understand that this third factor corresponds to the provision of material needs. So what is being withheld? Foodstuffs, of course!

If you apply Plato's concepts appropriately, in accordance with reality, then you will find reality everywhere, for with these concepts you will be able fully to enter into reality. Starting from the concept, you must find the way to reality, and the concept will be able to plunge down into the most concrete parts of reality. Shadowy concepts, on the other hand, never find reality, but they do lend themselves exceptionally well to idealistic chatter. With real concepts, though, you can work you way through to an understanding of reality in every detail. Here lies the task of spiritual science. Spiritual science leads to concepts through which you can really discover life, which of course is created by the spirit, and through which you will be able to join in a constructive way at working on the formation of this life.

One concept, in particular, requires realistic thinking, owing to the terrible destiny at present weighing down on mankind, for the corresponding unreal concept is especially persistent in this connection. Those who speak in the most unrealistic way of all, these days, are the clergymen. What they express about Christianity or the awareness of God, apropos of the war, is enough to send anyone up the wall, as they say. They distort things so frightfully. Of course things in other connections are distorted too, but in this realm the degree of absurdity is even greater.

Look at the sermons or tracts at present stemming from that source; apply your good common sense to them. Of course it is understandable that they should ask: Does mankind have to be subjected to this terrible, painful destiny? Could not the divine forces of God intervene on behalf of mankind to bring about salvation? The justification for speaking in this way does indeed seem absolute. But there is no real concept behind it. It does not apply to the reality of the situation. Let me use a comparison to show you what I mean.

Human beings have a certain physical constitution. They take in food which is of a kind which enables them to go on living. If they were to refuse food, they would grow thin, become ill, and finally starve to death. Now is it natural to complain that if human beings refuse to eat it is a weakness or malevolence on the part of God to let them starve? Indeed it is not a weakness on the part of God. He created the food; human beings only need to eat it. The wisdom of God is revealed in the way the food maintains the human beings. If they refuse to eat it, they cannot turn round and accuse God of letting them starve.

Now apply this to what I was saying. Mankind must regard spiritual life as a food. It is given by the gods, but it has to be taken in by man. To say that the gods ought to intervene directly is tantamount to saying that if I refuse to eat God ought to satisfy my hunger in some other way. The wisdom-filled order of the universe ensures that what is needed for salvation is always available, but it is up to human beings to make a relationship with it. So the spiritual life necessary for the twentieth century will not enter human beings of itself. They must strive for it and take it into themselves. If they fail to take it in, times will grow more and more dismal. What takes place on the surface is only maya. What is happening inwardly, is that an older age is wrestling with a new one. The general, human element is rising up everywhere in opposition to the specialized elements. It is maya to believe that nation is fighting against nation—and I have spoken about this maya in other connections too. The battle of nation with nation only comes about because things group themselves in certain ways but, in reality, the inward forces opposing one another are something quite different. The opposition is between the old and the new. The laws now fighting to come into play are quite different from those which have traditionally ruled over the world.

And again it was maya—that is, something appearing under a false guise—to say that those other laws were rising up on behalf of socialism. Socialism is not something connected with truth; above all it is not connected with spiritual life, for what it wants is to connect itself with materialism. What really wants to wrestle its way into existence is the many-sided, harmonious element of mankind, in opposition to the one-sided priestly, political or mercantile elements. This battle will rage for a long time, but it can be conducted in all kinds of different ways. If a healthy way of leading life, such as that described by Planck in the nineteenth century, had been adopted, then the bloody conduct of the first third of the twentieth century would, at least, have been ameliorated. Idealisms do not lead to amelioration, but realistic thinking does, and realistic thinking also always means spiritual thinking.

Equally, we can say that whatever has to happen will happen. Whatever it is that is wrestling its way out, must needs go through all these experiences in order to reach a stage at which spirituality can be united with the soul, so that man can grow up spiritually. Today's tragic destiny of mankind is that in striving upwards today, human beings are endeavouring to do so not under the sign of spirituality but under the sign of materialism. This in the first instance is what brought them into conflict with those brotherhoods who want to develop the impulses of the mercantile element, commerce and industry, in a materialistic way on a grand scale. This is today's main conflict. All other things are side issues, often terrible side issues. This shows us how terrible maya can be. But it is possible to strive for things in different ways. If others had been in power instead of the agents of those brotherhoods, then we would, today, be busy with peace negotiations, and the Christmas call for peace would not have been shouted down!

It is going to be immensely difficult to find clear and realistic concepts and ideas in respect of certain things; but we must all seek to find them in our own areas. Those who enter a little into the meaning of spiritual science, and compare this spiritual science with other things making an appearance just now, will see that this spiritual science is the only path that can lead to concepts which are filled with reality.

I wanted to say this very seriously to you at this time. Despite the fact that the task of spiritual science can only be comprehended out of the spirit itself, out of knowledge, and not out of what we have been discussing today, I wanted to show you the significance, the essential nature, of spiritual science for the present time. I wanted to show you how urgent it is for everything possible to be done to make spiritual science more widely known. It is so necessary in these difficult times for us to take spiritual science not only into our heads but really into our warm hearts. Only if we take it into the warmth of our hearts will we be capable of generating the strength needed by the present time.

None of us should allow ourselves to think that we are perhaps not in a suitable position, or not strong enough, to do what it is essential for us to do. Karma is sure to give every one of us, whatever our position, the opportunity to put the right questions to destiny at the right moment. Even if this right moment is neither today nor tomorrow, it is sure to come eventually. So once we have understood the impulses of this spiritual Movement we must stand firmly and steadfastly behind them. Today it is particularly necessary to set ourselves the aim of firmness and steadfastness. For either something important must come from one side or another—although this cannot be counted upon—in the very near future, or all conditions of life will become increasingly difficult. It would be utterly thoughtless to refuse to be clear about this. For two-and-a-half years it has been possible for what we now call war to carry on, while conditions remained as bearable as they now are. But this cannot go on for another year. Movements such as ours will be put te a severe test. There will be no question of asking when we shall next meet, or why do we not meet, or why this or that is not being published. No, indeed. It will be a question of bearing in our hearts, even through long periods of danger, a steadfast sense of belonging.

I wanted to say this to you today because it could be possible in the not too distant future that there will be no means of transport which will enable us to come together again; I am not speaking only of travel permits but of actual means of transport. In the long run, it will not be possible to keep the things going which constitute our modern civilization, if something breaks in on this civilization which, although it has arisen out of it, is nevertheless in absolute opposition to it. This is how absurd the situation is: Life itself is bringing forth things which are absolutely opposed to it.

So we must accept that difficult times may be in store for our Movement too. But we shall not be led astray if we have taken into ourselves the inner steadfastness, clarity and right feeling for the importance and nature of our Movement, and if in these serious times we can see beyond our petty differences. This, our Movement ought to be able to achieve; we ought to be able to look beyond our petty differences to the greater affairs of mankind, which are now at stake. The greatest of these is to reach an understanding of what it means to base thinking on reality. Wherever we look we are confronted with the impossibility of finding a thinking which accords with reality. We shall have to enter heart and soul into this search in order not to be led astray by all kinds of egoistic distractions.

This is what I wanted to say to you as my farewell today, since we are about to take leave of one another for some time. Make yourselves so strong—even if it should turn out to be unnecessary—that, even in loneliness of soul, your hearts will carry the pulse of spiritual science with which we are here concerned. Even the thought that we shall be steadfast will help a very great deal; for thoughts are realities. Many potential difficulties can still be swept away if we maintain an honest, serious quest in the direction we have here discussed so often.

Now that we have to depart for a while we shall not allow ourselves to flag, but shall make sure that we return if it is possible. But even if it should take a long time as a result of circumstances outside our control, we shall never lose the thought from our hearts and souls that this is the place—where our Movement has even brought forth a visible building—where the most intense requirement exists to bear this Movement so positively, so concretely, so energetically, that together we can carry it through, come what may. So wherever we are, let us stand together in thought, faithfully, energetically, cordially, and let us hear one another, even though this will not be possible with our physical ears. But we shall only hear one another if we listen with strong thoughts and without sentimentality, for the times are now unsuitable for sentimentality.

In this sense, I say farewell to you. My words are also a greeting, for in the days to come we shall meet again, though more in the spirit than on the physical plane. Let us hope that the latter, too, will be possible once more in the not too distant future.

It is a source of deep satisfaction to me that karma has brought it about that we can be together this evening and say a few words at this solemn time. Above all, however, let us remember at this moment those who are outside, who are sacrificing their courage, their lives, their blood for the tasks that this extraordinary time demands of people. Our loving thoughts and prayers for help we want to direct primarily to those who have often sat with us in our common contemplations and who are now standing outside and have to participate directly in the great events that are now taking place, bringing the karma of nations and people to development. First of all, those who are connected with us, and then, in a broader sense, all the others. Then we want to look ahead in a certain way to the narrower bonds and the widest bonds that we also seek in the field of our spiritual current and that are formed from every soul to every soul that is called by the great events. So we also turn our loving, pleading thoughts to those who are out in the field and, as a sign that we are united with them, we will rise from our seats and remember them in the following words:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the earthly people who trust in your protection,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine forth to help
The souls that seek them lovingly!

And we want to send our loving thoughts to you, so that He may be with you, the helper, the Christ whom we seek, the Christ who must call upon the souls of our time to seek harmony in disharmony, so that He will surely lead to the redemption they need, so that the purpose of the human and national karma may be fulfilled: With you, souls, we want to be united in the sign that connects us to the only earth spirit, the Christ.

What has now broken in so surprisingly over, one must indeed say, the earth's humanity, could be foreseen long in advance. It has broken in so surprisingly because, one may say, occult causes have also contributed to this event, which have actually only gradually shown themselves little by little since June 28. In our time especially, one can really see how new things can be recognized in the spiritual world. I can only hint at what I mean here with a few words. When I returned from Sweden in July from the Norrköping lecture series, I had to draw the attention of someone who is connected in a certain sense to current events to how the event of Sarajevo o for the occultist showed quite remarkable consequences, how it was an outward symptom, and how strangely different this dead man behaved than all the other dead that could be observed in the occult field earlier. And so it was that in the occult background of earthly events there occurred very quickly that which then also broke in with such dreadfully rapid strides on the outer physical plane during the last days of July and the first of August. But it has also, most certainly, given rise in the souls of those who have been distant from spiritual life in recent times, to many intuitions, many definite feelings for a spiritual world, for the existence of a spiritual world. Enormous, one may say, and incomparable are the experiences that humanity on earth is now going through.

If I, my dear friends, would like to address a word to you first, then let it be this, that I would like to tie it to many a comment that has been made often in recent years within our spiritual scientific contemplation. What then should the connection with the spiritual life in our deepest soul be, that we seek? It should give us certainty and inner strength, certainty that in the changing times and changing events there is something solid to hold on to. And in such times as these, something else should be able to enter our souls: faith in the invincibility of the spiritual life and its mission. We should learn to connect this faith in the victory and the victoriousness of the spirit with the external events of the day.

In the first days of August, when the storms of declarations of war came little by little from the most diverse, one might say, directions of the world, I had to remember words that have been spoken recently, words that can dig themselves deep right now, and that, what I have just said, basically, we are really, really close. A few weeks before the outbreak of war, an important person said the following at a significant point: We are on the most friendly terms with all powers. We fell out with each other after the press machinations in Russia began this spring and were also echoed in the German and Viennese newspapers; press machinations are to be ignored and the old friendly, neighborly relationship is to be maintained. A word that also gives cause for concern was spoken in June: the general relaxation has progressed – and another word from the same speech: the negotiations with England have not yet been concluded, but are being conducted in the friendly spirit that otherwise characterizes our relations with Great Britain. Think about it: now! Consider how changeable it is in the physical world for what people believe today to be forced by the course of events to be witnessed in the coming weeks. Imagine the surging, driving, staggering, storming of events on the physical plane, imagine how necessary it is, this surging, this storming. One would like to say: What can be believed today is no longer true tomorrow. How necessary it is to have something secure and firm in these storms, something that is true today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and through all eternities! What is true in this way is the truth of the spirit, of the mission of the spirit, which runs through the development of humanity.

I would like to mention the following as quite symptomatic, not because it is something personal, but because it really spoke to the soul in a symptomatic and symbolic way: you know, of course, that the first volume of my book 'The Riddles of Philosophy' was published in July. The second volume was printed up to page 206 when the war broke out. It was the transition of thoughts from the French philosophers Boutroux and Bergson to the German philosopher Preuss, the indication of how Bergson develops a thought, somewhat carelessly overlooked by the unknown, lonely thinker Preuss, who in the last third of the 19th century, with massive thoroughness, anticipated our theosophical world view. I am also trying to do justice to this lonely thinker. Then it happened that the printing had to be stopped, and the work had to be continued later. It broke off with the transition from France to Germany. The war broke out. I really had to regard the empty sheets on the two-thirds printed sheets as a symbol of what happened between Western and Central Europe, over which the path of my presentation went.

And many other things could also be seen symbolically. I might also mention our building in Dornach, which had indeed progressed to a certain degree, but not as far as we would have liked. Perhaps some of our friends know how much emphasis was placed, as long as it made sense in the face of the eloquent facts, how much emphasis was placed, not only as a heartfelt wish of mine, but as an obvious necessity, on the idea that the building should be completed by August 1st of this year. Perhaps one could now try to consider whether it would not have made sense, in view of what has now happened, if the construction had been completed exactly on August 1st. Of course, it was impossible to fight against the facts with something that looked like a wish, and among many things that I do not want to talk about today that were to be solved with the construction, was the fact that the problem of acoustics for a larger room was to be solved by a larger resonance. It was in July, when the construction was already in place, that one could, for the first time, have an inkling that it would be possible to truly solve this acoustic problem once the building was finished, if one said a few words in a certain place. At certain points, you could hear how the resonance turned out in a way that had to be expected based on the occult calculations for the location, and so it can be expected that the word and music will really sound as they should. It was something of an ideal to be able to hear the word, which was supposed to speak of the spirit, inside the building as early as August. What our friends first heard in our building was the echo of the cannons thundering in the immediate vicinity on the Alsatian battlefields. Thus the room for which we had in a sense requested the echo of the words dedicated to the spirit first witnessed the thunder of the guns, which sounded not too far away. Other friends of ours had, also in a certain way symbolically, seen something that we had expected as our great ideal. We had expected that the message of the light of the spirit, of the spiritual worlds, would be heard, that this light of the spiritual worlds would come into its own. On some nights, the glow from the Isteiner Fort was seen, stretching far and wide, and for four minutes its light also pushed and pushed through our building: sound and light of current events!

But other thoughts and feelings could also pass through the soul. On July 26, I had spoken to our friends about some things that affected our organization, and had briefly pointed out the serious times that look in at our windows. And I must say: I could only read the letter that one of our younger friends wrote to his mother, who had been present on July 26, through tears. Immediately afterwards he was drafted, went to his Austrian homeland, and precisely out of the strength of the spiritual life, which he – he is still a fairly young member – drew from our endeavors, he also gained the strength to fulfill his place in the most beautiful, I would say, in the most sacred, purest sense, to which karma had placed him.

And again it was someone else who had been present on July 26 who wrote to me when he set out for the Serbian theater of war, full of feelings that were nourished on the one hand by the certainty that flows from faith in victory and the triumph of the spirit, on the other hand, were nourished by the full enthusiasm for direct participation in the events of our time from the place where he was positioned.

Truly, my dear friends, during these times, souls grew and matured, and it was beautiful and grand to see that all the feelings and emotions that have been drawn into the souls of our friends over the years also prove to be suitable for guiding people to the right place in the right way in today's difficult situation.

When we speak of the certainty that can be gained by contemplating the spirit and spiritual essence, the feeling of this certainty is intimately connected with our motto, which is modeled on a saying of Goethe: “Wisdom lies only in truth.” Among the great hopes that we may cherish from current events, there is also this one, that everything connected with this: “Wisdom lies only in truth”, that everything will be impressed upon humanity precisely through the great, painful and deeply moving trials. Everything connected with the words, “Wisdom lies only in truth,” must have a deeper and deeper effect on people, and now much has already been accomplished through the great teacher who speaks through His projectiles in overcoming materialism. |

Shortly before the outbreak of the war, I read the following words written by a respected journalist: “Despite Mr. Liebknecht's rebuke, I maintain that responsible rulers are not only entitled, but obliged, to deny the truth and assert the false. This right, this duty of those guided by collective morality, is limited by two conditions: The untruth must be neither provable nor contrary to the interests of the state. Remember this saying together with the motto we chose when we founded the Anthroposophical Society: “Wisdom is only in truth”! Much will fall into place, for quite different feelings have already entered into the souls of those who sense the seriousness of the present situation.

How often, my dear friends, has the word been spoken on our soil that not only what happens on the external physical plane is reality, but the thoughts of men are greater reality, a force, a power of action. But let us admit it, because it is the truth: such things have only been spoken on soil that carried a spiritual current. Now, on the rather complicated journey I had to make, I came across a magazine dated September 1, 1914. It contains a very nice essay by a soldier, Robert Michel, who wrote down his thoughts in the field. The essay beautifully reflects how the mobilization was announced and how he and his comrades, as it were, went into the unknown. The last words are significant for us: “But every single person left behind in the monarchy has the duty to support to the best of their ability until the victorious decision has been made.” All the good words, hearty cries and blessings that we received when we left increased our confidence. They were splinters that did not get lost. This spiritual strength must continue to be supplied to the army, and the will to win must tremble from each individual to the fighters at the front. Therefore, let no one rush to the decision that is being prepared in the north. Those who must stand idly by and watch the tremendous feat of strength of the army and the empire should strive to contribute their mite along the path of the soul's strength. Those whom God hears pray; those who cannot pray gather all their thoughts and willpower into a fervent desire for victory; and those who can do nothing else cross their fingers in the palms of their hands and say, “We must win, we must win.” In this way, even the weakest will have contributed to the victory.

The soldier who goes off to the field writes back words that echo what has often been said on the spiritual plane: Those who cannot pray gather their thoughts and willpower in a fervent desire for victory. We now see faith in the Spirit at the beginning of the tremendous event.

We need have no illusions. Some things may look quite different in the near future, but there will also come times that will fulfill what is to be hinted at in a few words. The progress of the world must happen, that which is to happen happens; sometimes it happens in a very strange way, in that the wills of men are guided step by step, so that one sees how from stage to stage, truly not in any other way than an educator would do it, the directions in which they will later come are poured into the souls. One need only look back over a short span of time to see the spiritual forces that transcend human power and work pedagogically for the great progress of humanity.

It is now time to entertain a thought that may be obvious but is not always considered. In 1866, German brothers stood against German brothers, Germans against Germans. Not even a decade has passed – 1870/71: one part of the Germans had to follow a great event in which the other part could not participate. One of my teachers at the Vienna University of Applied Sciences often spoke the words that went deep into my heart at the time: “We Germans in Austria must be aware that what happened is our destiny, not our fault, that we were not allowed to participate in an outstanding event. Now is the time when the two parts, which were once opposed and then one without the other, are forged together, as if by an iron power.

It is no coincidence, it is significant, important – it has taken no century to send this great teaching into all subsequent times: human progress, what the spiritual hierarchies want for humanity, must happen; but it can happen in many different ways. By a certain point in time something very definite must have been achieved. Let us assume – not because what I am about to say is true – that by 1950 a certain amount of willingness to make sacrifices, of the ability to love and to be selfless, of the fight against selfishness, must have been poured out upon humanity. Let us assume that what must be achieved by 1950 is what the signs of the times demand. On the one hand, it is achieved by speaking to people's hearts, by trusting in the power of the word, by those who hold the destiny of humanity in their hands wanting to approach human individuality in a spiritual way and seeking to bring them so far that the spirit can take effect on them. But the other teacher must often step in, the second teacher, who speaks through living proofs. And how we have seen his successes! What an enormous amount of sacrifice, of human love and unselfishness has been produced in an amazingly short time in our age of materialism, when the great teacher appeared, war, which has such terrible effects on the one hand On the other hand, it has what leads to what is called in occultism the iron necessities that must occur in order to achieve something specific in a specific age of human development. Rivers of blood are shed, precious lives wither away, others are snatched from physical life in the blink of an eye when the enemy bullet hits them. All this is taking place on such a tremendous scale in our time. What is it all? It is a great sacrifice, my dear friends, a tremendous sacrifice that is made at the altar of the development of humanity as a whole. On the one hand, there is what should penetrate the development of humanity, what must be handed over to humanity so that humanity can move forward, and on the other hand, there is the necessity of sacrifice.

It was infinitely meaningful for me to witness how intimately connected beyond death the souls of those are who are now directly participating in the great events. There one could often see how those who had been struck down by the enemy's bullet were taken up into the spiritual worlds, not yet awakened with their great individualities, were still connected with what was going on down there. I don't know if you can feel with me what it means to see how, on the battlefield, the psychic personality of someone who has already met his death protects the warrior who is still fighting, and is with him while he is still bound to the physical plane. This is one of my occult experiences, which I can't really compare to anything else. Unawakened warriors who have fought below, who have gone through death, remain connected to the event and, as it were, are like a second personality behind the one who is still fighting on the physical plane. Even in the spiritual worlds there are things that can instill confidence in our hearts, even if this confidence does not come easily.

When you consider what percentage of humanity is fighting each other today, when you consider how we are at the beginning – this event has only lasted a few weeks – and what enormous losses of human life these few weeks have cost, you might become uncertain and think: What will happen if this has to last a long time? – And when I am often dismayed by this – it can dismay you – then the thought lifts me up: What is right will happen, what is ordained by the spiritual worlds will come to pass. And when one has the certainty that not only the living are fighting, but that the dead also remain connected to their destinies, then there will always be strength. During those times, other things occurred to me. Our society unites in a common spiritual current members of the most diverse races and peoples who are hostile to each other today. There is also a need for some consolation! We look back on a time that is quite unlike our own, not much in common with it, to the time that the Bhagavad Gita describes to us, to a time when the old, often described conditions of humanity still existed, when people still lived in small circles of blood relatives. The transition from this time of blood relationship to the time when blood relatives are at enmity is described by the Bhagavad Gita, where the great spirit points out to Arjuna: Over there truly stand the brothers and here you stand, you will fight with each other, in whose veins the same blood flows; but there is a possibility to lead the balance in spirit. From that which should not fight against each other, that which fights against each other develops: this too is one of the iron necessities necessary for the evolution of mankind! The spirit bridges the gap between brother and brother facing each other as enemies, and develops that which faces each other in disharmony. This time is unlike ours. We are going the opposite way within our spiritual current. We are seeking to gather together again what was scattered throughout the world, and members of the most diverse nations are embracing each other again fraternally, becoming brothers within our ranks. Now we see how one of us comes over from France, leaving the other behind, and enters the German army, expecting to face the other, whom he has left behind as an anthroposophical friend, in battle. It is the opposite situation: the scattered limbs of humanity are seeking each other out in the spirit, and we will find our way if we truly and earnestly understand the Spirit of Truth and earnestly grasp hold of it. We just have to seek out the paths.

I would like to say that we Germans have a hard time finding our way, perhaps the hardest of all! It may sound strange to you that I say this, but we really have a hard time of it, and the reason we have a hard time of it – without wanting to boast about it – is because it is always difficult for us to be fair to ourselves, because it is easier for us to be fair to others than to ourselves. It is difficult for us for the reason that it will not be very easy for present humanity, especially not in the present, to survey with the right objective, unbiased, unruffled gaze, I would say, all that has often been hinted at in our spiritual science, all that can also be found in the lectures on the folk souls. It will be necessary for all who grasp the spiritual life in its genuine, true sense in our time to learn to understand how these folk souls, the genuine, true folk souls, form a kind of choir in which they already live together harmoniously. But one must find one's way to their essence, and that can only be done in the spirit.

It is really not the right time at the present to draw attention to what speaks to feelings and sensations in the background of the soul, but I would like to draw your attention to something else, namely that we can have a way to find the path that our souls should take in the right way, in secret dialogue, intimate, inner dialogue with the spirit of the people to which we belong. I can only advise you, if you find a few minutes, especially in the present time, to use the following formula to find your way around in the current world situation:

You, my spirit of the earth!
Reveal the light of your age.

Why “age”? “Age” is said in the case of spiritual beings, where one would say “the light of your being” in the earthly sense. Age is to the spirit what essence is to the earthly.

You, the spirit of my earthly space!
Reveal the light of your age
To the soul endowed with Christ,
So that striving, it may find
In the choir of the spheres of peace
You, resounding with the praise and power
Of the Christ-devoted human spirit!

There we find the way to the spirit of the people, to which we belong, and the way from this spirit of the people to the dialogue of the spirit of the people with the Christ, who is the teacher of all spirits of the people. And when they come together in this Christ, the national spirits will come together in the right way, since all these national spirits who lead the nations correctly – one can see this from the book 'The Spiritual Leadership of the Human Being and of Humanity' – regard the Christ as their teacher.

Often I had to hope that it was not true at all, what had been communicated, that in a popular representation of the East, in the Duma, at the end of a speech in which the ruler called on his people to take part in the war, the last word spoken was: The God of Russia is great! It would be terrible if the words had been spoken thus: an unconscious invocation of the spirit, whose character one can imagine when the invocation occurs in relation to a limited area, when it does not occur to the spirit, which is so intertwined with the fate of humanity that even those who face each other as enemies place themselves at its service by seeking the salvation of humanity at the same time as their own. The Christ, when He leads a people, leads that people in such a way that He seeks the salvation of humanity with His own salvation. We rightly invoke the spirit of the people to whom we are closely attached, so that we look up to see how He, in turn, speaks with the Christ; through the spirit of the people we speak with the Christ. Through this many thoughts will be prepared that shall remain in the spiritual atmosphere of humanity until the times when a meaningful war is followed by a meaningful peace.

A sacrifice, I said, is being offered on the altar of humanity, and holy blood is flowing down upon our earth, a blood that bears witness to the fact that those who now, in this struggle of the nations, ascend with their souls from the physical world to the spiritual worlds, will again come back in future incarnations to be important links in the spiritual progress of humanity – a sacrifice, a great sacrifice! What is happening now must happen this way; and anyone who wants to look back into the past to search for the very first causes, must look back to the time of the Punic Wars in the 3rd century BC, to the time when the Roman general used the gangplanks – as can be read in history – to achieve a first significant success. Today, we stand alongside what was the first event to take place in this war. A future historiography will prove this; it is difficult to go into these things.

Another leads us back to the times when the Romans wrestled with the Germans, when the fate of humanity was decided for many millennia. And then comes the third great event, which is ours, which will really have a significance like the Punic Wars back then, which of course are small in scale compared to today's world event, but which, in terms of quality, still loom large in our time. How the great events that shaped people, which were linked to the migration of nations, are repeated in a certain way — an entire cycle of humanity is spanned by this time frame — and how in those days in Rome it was decided what had to happen then, that the form of the human ego, as it was in the 3rd century before the event of Golgotha, passed into the later one, so that this form of the I through the Romans would find the path that it had to find for all that has happened since then, today the form of the I, which is the decisive one in the next human cycle, must be similarly placed in a struggle of nations. This is part of the deepest impulses of humanity.

But then, when we are connected with what we have been pursuing together in spirit for years, we can carry within us the faith in victory and the victory of the spirit. Then we will face everything that comes with this faith and know that what is happening is under the guidance of the high hierarchies and will go its way. It is up to us to go along this path in the right way. But we do this when we find the right way to observe our karma, when we do not withdraw from the tasks that the great time presents us with. And if we can thank spiritual science for many things, one thing should be at the forefront: that spiritual science sharpens our mind and view, so that we can see that we are in the best place with our personality and doing the right thing. The more we do it objectively, impersonally, without having anything else in mind, the more spiritual science has sharpened our vision, made our hearts receptive, the more we will understand the language that is now being spoken to us in these serious times.

One of the formulas given by the spirit in this time, which can also be given here before our friends, is this: it brings to mind the meaning of the sight of pain, which we can now see so abundantly, abundantly. The pain in souls that is created in our times is enormous, the sacrifices that are demanded are enormous, and the willingness to make sacrifices and to be receptive to another's pain must also be enormous. The Christ has only risen for many when we understand Him in such a way that we know: there can be no pain for the other that is not also our pain; for wherever He has entered, it is one's own pain. As long as we are unable to recognize pain in another and feel for it as our own, Christ has not yet fully come into the world. Pain in another should not keep us from it! This ideal is difficult and great and wide, but the Christ ideal is also difficult and great and wide. It is fulfilled when the wound we carry within us does not burn more fiercely than that borne by the other. Therefore, it is good to prepare ourselves to intervene with the following words, which we address to a community or to the other who suffers pain: |

As long as you feel the pain
That shuns me
Christ is unrecognized
Working in the world being.
For the spirit remains weak only
When it is alone in its own body
In the power of feeling suffering.

Try to feel these words through with all your being. If the first formula helps us to connect with the spirit of the people, these lines will imbue us with the attitude that allows us to relive the pain of humanity, the pain of a human community, in our own being and to do everything we do in the true Christian sense. May we do it in this time, especially imbued with the spirit of the spirit!

The wound that the bullet inflicts, my dear anthroposophical friends, would not heal were it not for the healing powers in the wonderful microcosm that is the human organism. It is good that our branches practice how to dress wounds, as our dear friend Dr. Peipers is doing here. It is good because we can easily find ourselves needing to use it. But when we approach such a task, we must also know that the spirit is reality and that, whether we are helping with this or that injury or this or that ailment, we can do more with the spirit in the right way than we can without it. So that when we approach a wound in the human organism with the right thoughts, let us think:

Source of blood,
In the source work,
Active muscle
Activate the germs
Loving care
Warming heart,

For in this blood, which flows from the wound, lies the sign that behind it lie forces, which are the healing forces of the wound.

Source blood,
In the source, active,
Active muscle
Active the germs,

the germs that die when the bullet has passed through. Send the right feelings for the one who applies a bandage to help his fellow man:

Source of blood,
In the source, work;
Active muscle
Stimulate the germs;
Loving care
Warming heart,
Be a healing breath.

Let us allow this attitude to permeate our soul, let it fill our entire being, when we help our fellow human beings, then, my dear friends, the spirit will help in whatever way we, as physical human beings, can provide physical help. And let us often think as individuals of the individual who stands outside in an exposed place, let us think when we begin our meetings of those who stand outside our circle, working in the field. The formula for this is, and I addressed it at the beginning to those in the field – the individual can address it to the individual:

Spirit of thy soul, active guardian,
thy wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to thy care, familiar earth-man,
so that, united with thy power,
my request may radiate helpfully
to the soul that lovingly seeks it!

If someone wants to direct their thoughts to several or many who are outside, then they say:

Spirits of your souls, acting guardians,
your wings may bring
my soul's pleading love
to the earthly humans you watch over,
so that, united with your power,
my request may helpfully shine
on the souls it lovingly seeks!

A teacher of love and unselfishness will be the great events that are now taking place. And a teacher for the spiritual worlds, we hope they will become that! Then the great sacrifices, the tremendous sacrifices that people make through their blood, will have been offered at the altar of the spiritual beings, and that which can be so painful to see will serve to achieve the great goals of humanity. The more we imbibe these attitudes, the more thoughts we will have when a great peace is concluded after the war.

The twentieth century is destined to transform much in the destiny and ordering of human affairs. And that which has already been achieved after this first great event will spare humanity the need to repeat this event in the future. Victory and the triumph of spiritual life is a saying that has often found its way into our hearts during these times. Try to understand how we have witnessed the event, which is to be decisive for the development of the entire human spirit, not just for a short time, but for a long, long time! And let us try, out of this seriousness, to muster the love and selflessness that the paths lead us to, in order to put ourselves in the right place according to our strength and ability. Our karma will show us the way. And let him who cannot now intervene to help not be disconsolate. It is important that we also conserve our strength for what will still have to happen later for many, that we recognize at the right moment that our karma is calling us. Then what one would like to say as a confessor of spiritual science at this point in time would like to happen, that it becomes more and more apparent through what is happening in the outer world, how the essences, forces and impulses of will of the spiritual world are going into the human spirits, into the human souls, into the human hearts from all world events. The bond that may arise from all the grief and pain we experience, may the bond be established between the human soul and the divine spirits that effect, rule and guide the destiny of the human soul. And the human soul will find this point. May the human soul find what is meant when it is said in our formula: “The Christ-endowed human soul may find striving:

In the choir of the spheres of peace
You, resounding with praise and power
Of the Christ-devoted human soul!

Now, my dear friends, perhaps we cannot be there fighting everywhere, perhaps we cannot do everything that we would like to contribute to according to our ideals, but to take part in the great event in the sense in which it was meant in the words just spoken will be possible for all of us. We may be in our place in many different places, some here, some there; but wherever we are, because every human being is in their place, no matter what human context they belong to, that is the place where love should work, the power that comes from love, that is the place where pain, suffering and misery challenge people to act, to think, to participate, the place where we feel so keenly how we should be connected in the depths of our hearts with the other person, to whom we should look up because he is protecting our common most sacred goods with his courage, his life's blood, sacrificing it. Therefore, as at the beginning, so at the end, let our thoughts turn once more to those who, as just mentioned, are immersed in the events of our time:

Spirits of our souls, watchers in action,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the earthly beings who trust in your protection,
So that, united with your power,
Our plea may shine with your help
On the souls that you lovingly seek!

May the Spirit whom we seek, seek through our science, seek with our hearts, and whom our spiritual movement wants to serve, be our leader. But may He also be the leader of all mankind, for those among men whom He leads will not follow their goal alone, but will consider and follow that of all mankind.

The people who know how to trust the Christ will find the right way. So, my dear friends, we have endeavored to think for ourselves throughout the years that we have been striving towards this Christ. May the time that has now dawned be a time of trial for us, which we will pass, and may we so link the teaching of the spirit to our soul that it will be our helper in the time of trial, that it will have become for us the power that is not limited to us, but has gone out to all of humanity! May the spirit that leads us up to Christ help us to penetrate this living, cosmic-earthly Christ, so that we can always send our thoughts in the right way to those who are outside, where the destinies of nations and of humanity are being decided, so that they may be helped by the right spirit, which so wisely guides the evolution of humanity that this evolution of humanity may ultimately bring salvation and blessing to all mankind on earth! Let us do everything in our power to help those whose most sacred sacrificial blood is now watering the earth to come down when they are called upon to intervene as important links in the further course of earthly evolution, so that something will come to meet them from the spiritual progress of physical earthly evolution, from what has happened on earth itself, from which they will realize: Truly, it was worth shedding one's blood for this earth, which brings forth such things!

All those who cannot go directly to the front to shed their blood should remember that they should work in such a way that the spirit permeates the development of the earth, that they do everything so that such spirit can permeate the development of the earth, so that those who have shed their most sacred sacrificial blood may find something that was worth shedding their blood for. Then, when we are working on this development of the earth, we, too, as those who do not go directly to the front, will behave in such a way that we can look up into the circumstances with an open eye and have no need to be ashamed. If we did not do this, our eyelids might not really allow us a free view, when on the one hand we feel we belong to our time, and on the other hand we do not find the strength within us to belong to this time in a worthy manner. Spiritual science will contain a certain seal if it could help to give people this strength, strength on the one hand that sustains those who have shed their blood, but it must also give strength to those who must help in other ways, each in their own place.

And so spiritual science will be able to say: I was a means of enabling humanity to pass a great test. Then spiritual science will have achieved its divine goal.

With these simple words I would like to conclude this evening, my dear friends, which I was so happy to experience together with you.

A lecture such as was given the day before yesterday could easily give the impression that a people's soul should only be spoken for out of mere sympathy. If the spiritual researcher were to speak about these matters today purely out of sympathy, out of mere passion, then one could be certain that what he has to say has no particular value in terms of spiritual research, or that what he has to say, because it is imbued with passion, must be fundamentally untrue. Now, to what extent what was said the day before yesterday may, despite all this, be spoken as coherent with the deepest insights of spiritual science of the present day, that should emerge for you from the way in which the spiritual researcher must relate to one or the other folk soul.

We already know from the very elementary presentation in anthroposophy that when we speak of folk souls, we do not mean what the outer, exoteric world understands by an abstract term. We may say that quite definite entities, with archangelic rank — one has only to read about it in the lecture cycle on 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' — entities with a consciousness that is higher than human consciousness, guide the affairs of nations. And we look up to these folk souls, so we speak of them as real, actual entities, indeed more real entities than we human beings ourselves are. How does the human being enter into a relationship with these folk souls in relation to his spiritual soul? We will first raise this question.

We know that man alternates between waking and sleeping in relation to his consciousness; we know that man has to be awake within his physical and etheric bodies and that he then, between falling asleep and waking up, dwells in his astral body and in his I. If a person is outside of their physical body with their astral body and I between falling asleep and waking up, then they are in a region that is completely different in relation to the folk soul, to which they primarily belong in a particular incarnation, than the region in which the person is in relation to the folk soul when they are in their physical body. Through his language and many other things, man is born into the realm of his folk soul. How does this folk soul affect the human soul, that which is taken out of the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, but which is present in the body during waking? How does the folk soul of the people to which a person belongs affect the individual soul of the person?

It actually only has an effect during the time in which the human being is immersed in the physical body, from the moment of waking until the moment of falling asleep. The human being is immersed in the forces of the physical and etheric bodies, and what I would like to call the tentacles of the folk soul, the soul of the people to which the human being belongs in a particular incarnation, is also immersed in these forces. And we not only submerge in our physical body, we also submerge in a certain part of our folk soul, we live from waking up to falling asleep while we are in our physical body, with what is going on in the physical body, within the folk soul. We experience what we experience in communion with the folk soul during our waking hours, only that the folk soul does not speak directly into what is fully conscious in the I, that it speaks more into the subconscious of the astral body from the etheric body, that it tinges, nuances, gives our feeling and temperament a certain direction. This is the essential way in which we relate to it. The one who, through his corresponding initiation, is able to observe all that is involved when a person submerges into the physical body, he sees, looks at the encounter with the folk soul when submerging into the physical body. But he also sees something else. And when I speak of this, you will soon recognize that objectivity must prevail within what the spiritual researcher has to say about one or other folk soul.

The spiritual researcher lives in those moments when he is strengthened and illuminated in the right way by the spiritual and soul life and enables it to live consciously and independently of the body. He lives in such a way that he can observe where the human being is, even when he is outside of his physical body with his soul and spirit, with his astral body and I. The spiritual researcher observes how every human soul, unconsciously, between falling asleep and waking up, immerses itself in the entire environment of the folk souls that are relevant for a particular time. While the human being is immersed in the physical body, he is with the national soul of his nation. In the state of sleep, he is with all the other national souls of the time in question, with the exception of the one with which he is in the physical body during the waking state.

The spiritual researcher has ample opportunity to become acquainted with the characteristics of the other national souls, because as soon as he becomes aware of himself in his disembodied state, he lives spiritually and soulfully with the other national souls in the same way that he lives with his own national soul in the physical body. In this state it would be quite impossible to allow one's ordinary passions to lead one to speak in a one-sided way about the one folk soul. But when the spiritual researcher consciously lives with these other folk souls, this consciousness also shows him that every person unconsciously connects with the other folk souls between falling asleep and waking up, but somewhat differently than with his own folk soul. When you enter your physical body, you get to know the individual folk soul with its essential characteristics, essentially its activity in its effect on you, albeit in the subconscious. During sleep or in the state of initiation, one gets to know the other folk-souls, not as individuals, but in their interaction; only one's own folk-soul is not present. The others interact as in a round dance, and in that which their round dance activity is, one lives in it, as one lives with one's own folk-soul in the physical body during the day. Thus one lives

5 not with the peculiarity of the one national soul, but with the interaction. There is only one thing by which one can be condemned, quite certainly condemned, to be torn out of the normal togetherness with the dance of the national souls and to be together with only one foreign national soul in the body-free state, that is, in sleep. Do understand me: it is not normal to be with a foreign folk soul; but you can achieve it if you passionately hate this other folk soul. In this way you condemn yourself to be torn out of the dance of the other folk souls and to be together with this one folk soul in a sleeping state, as you are with your own folk soul during the waking state.

Yes, these are objective truths that spiritual research reveals. It shows you that it is bitterly serious about the sentence that is often spoken by spiritual science: that what confronts us in external reality, maya, is great deception, and that behind this aja, behind this veil, there are truths which he who is content with the veil of Maja cannot comprehend with his intellect and does not want to comprehend with his will. There are still many people in our time who cannot yet see what lies behind the veil of Maya, and therefore cannot understand that there is such a supersensible, invisible world and that in it the relationship of the human soul to the other folk-souls is quite different from anything one could dream of. If one takes spiritual science seriously precisely where it points to the spheres that are connected with our life, then one must bear that spiritual science points to conditions in the spiritual world that are so uncomfortable to immerse oneself in, even just with one's consciousness, that one resists it with one's will. One does not want to submerge, one would like the truth to be different with regard to very many things. That not only the intellect but also the will resists what spiritual science often has to say as something bitterly serious, that is something we may also bring before our soul one day. And from feelings that can be stimulated by such a discussion as the one just expressed, we feel that the principle we have within our spiritual movement, of a certain work, without distinction of race, color, nationality and so on, is so closely connected with the deeper essence of our spiritual-scientific movement that it is actually nonsense for anyone who truly understands the profound seriousness of spiritual-scientific truths not to support this first principle. It is indeed nonsense, for to hate the nature of some folk soul in the deepest human being means to condemn oneself to be in the subconscious with this folk soul during sleep in exactly the same way as one is in one's subconscious during waking with the folk soul that is one's own. For the normal interaction with national souls during sleep is this: to be together with the whole range of others for an age. That man must not become one-sided, the wise arrangement of the world takes care of that.

We have often emphasized that what a person has to go through in the next few years, the time between death and a new birth, depends to a certain extent on the after-effects of the life in the body between birth and death. Now, as we can see from what has just been discussed, being with the soul of a nation is part of this life in the body. This coexistence with the folk soul, I said, tinges us, nuances us; we take what the folk soul arouses as an impulse in our soul and spiritual being with us into the spiritual world when we pass through the gate of death, and we have to gradually shed it as such. If we bear this in mind, it will be readily understandable to us that it depends on the way in which the human being lives with his national soul, how he still stands in the aftermath of this national soul immediately after death.

Let us consider two European nations in terms of what has just been suggested: the Russian and the French people. The life of the folk soul is such that the folk soul must be active in a different way with its consciousness than a human being is with his consciousness. How is a human being active with his consciousness? He directs his gaze outwards to the horizon of external facts and can also turn his gaze back to his own soul. We know that human beings differ from one another in certain respects. Goethe, for example, belongs to the one group, with his objective view of things; Schiller, on the other hand, belongs to the other group, and is more concerned with his own inner life, and accomplishes what he has to create more from there. The souls of nations are also like this, but only approximately, because their consciousness is of a completely different nature than human consciousness. The national souls stand in a different relation to the individual members of the nation. When they direct their gaze outwards, it is more a glance of the will, sending impulses into the individual members of the nation. In this way they work objectively outwards, directing themselves towards the individual members of the nation. Or they can live more within themselves. The French national soul, in particular, belongs to the national souls that live more inwardly, one might say, and do not worship a national soul realism that spreads over the individuals, but a national soul idealism that lives more within itself. This French national soul, as it permeates the French people today, has a certain stability of consciousness in that it looks back to an earlier time.

I have often pointed out that we have our ordinary physical waking consciousness by immersing ourselves in our spatial body. After death, we have our consciousness by looking back in time at our earlier life. There we can already sense the characteristic of a higher consciousness, which unfolds not in space but in time. It kindles its self by looking back to ancient Greece, for it is essentially a kind of repetition, a reawakening of ancient Greekness. This ancient Greek element lives again in the French national soul, just as the Egyptian-Chaldean element of the third post-Atlantic cultural period lives again in the Italian national soul. Therefore, the Italian national soul has more opportunity to stimulate the sentient soul in the individual human beings who belong to the nation. The actual nature of the French national soul stimulates the intellectual or the emotional soul of the individual. This can be demonstrated quite clearly in detail. Indeed, even the individual historical facts can be explained in a wonderful way if one consults these general results of spiritual research.

Let us just point out a few things in this direction. Consider: what was the peculiarity of the Egyptian folk soul? At that time, there was still astrology that had a direct effect on the soul. The folk soul looked out at the movements of the heavenly bodies, did not see, as today's people do, only material processes in what happened in the cosmos, but really perceived the active spiritual beings behind what was going on outside. Their relationship to the whole cosmos was the same as that of a person to another person, in that they know that a soul looks at them through the whole physiognomy. Thus, everything was a physiognomy to the ancient Egyptians, and they perceived the soul in nature. The meaning of the further development in the new time lies in the fact that what used to be, as it were, an elementary ability, was directly ignited in the physical body of the human being, that it became his inwardness in the newer time, in our fifth post-Atlantic age. And just as what the Egyptian went through was more elemental, so the Italian, in what he repeats, in what he goes through in his sentient soul, goes through it more inwardly, in that he experiences in the sentient soul that which is spiritual and cosmic, but now more interiorized. What could be more internalized than the Egyptian astrology in Dante's Divine Comedy? The true resurrection of ancient Egyptian astrology, but internalized!

And in the same way we could prove that ancient Greek life is to be found, not in the consciousness of the individual Frenchman, but in the working of the impulses of the folk soul. This can be traced right down to the latest invention and into the details; it is just that such research is not taken seriously enough. Greece and, as the other peoples called it, “the barbarians,” even that is reviving. Thus one could prove that in all French literature and art — I do not mean consciously, but in the deeper impulses — ancient Greek life is revived in the way it must be revived in our time. We are therefore dealing with a national soul that has absorbed everything that was in Greek culture, a national soul that therefore has an extraordinarily strong effect on individual human beings, permeating and taking hold of them. The consequence of this is that when the individual French soul enters the physical and etheric body, it enters into the weaving and essence of the sharply defined activity of the national soul. He finds the impulses of this national soul sharply defined. That is why the Frenchman, by absorbing in his physical body this sharp, concise life and weaving of the national soul, lives more in it than in his elementary sense of self, that he lives more in the image, in the idea he forms of the Frenchman, which surges up from the national soul. He lives from the image of the Frenchman. And everything that is of great importance to him is connected with this image: 'Gloire' and so on. The Frenchman lives in his own image, which comes up from the etheric body. This fantasy image is strongly influenced and interwoven with the spiritual and soul nature of the individual, and the person takes it with them as an image that is strongly moved in the etheric body when they enter the spiritual world after death. It is very difficult for them to get rid of. It is very difficult for them to get rid of their ether image. The image he has formed of himself clings to him, is firmly connected to him.

The attitude of the Russian national soul towards the individual is quite different. This Russian national soul does not have to repeat any of the post-Atlantic cultures in the same way as the French nation; it is a youthful national soul that leaves few imprints on the etheric body. Therefore, when the individual belonging to this Russian national soul immerses himself in his physical body, little of significance happens to him. Consequently, when he enters the spiritual world, he takes little of significance with him, few ethereally woven images of the imagination.

Thus, the souls differ in relation to their national souls after death. On the one hand, we have the host of those individual souls who have passed through death, who carry into the spiritual world sharply woven images of their own being, and on the other hand, in the east, we see young souls ascending, belonging to a young national soul, bringing little in the way of sharply woven human images flooding in the etheric body.

Now, as I have often discussed, we are on the threshold of the great event of the coming time: the appearance of the Christ in a very special way. I do not need to discuss this today. But since the last third of the nineteenth century, He has been preceded by the spirit whom we call the spirit of Michael, the champion of the spirit of the sun, in his struggle to prepare humanity for the Christ event. Now everything depends on the spiritual world preparing for this event, which is to befall humanity spiritually, in an appropriate way. But this can only happen if work is done in the spiritual world, as it were, on the pure development of the Christ, who will appear in the etheric in the future, since he is to appear to man as an etheric form. But for this it is necessary that he who marches before the spirit of the sun, that Michael, fights a battle in the spiritual world. For this battle he needs the help of the souls who, through their bodies, have just been drawn up into the spiritual world, of those souls who bring little of sharply defined imaginative images with them into the spiritual world. And so we see the spirit Michael and in his wake a number of Russian souls fighting for the purity of the spiritual horizon and in a hard struggle with the souls that have come from the West, which bring sharply defined images of fantasy. These must be dispersed and dissolved. We have been seeing this battle between East and West in the making since the last third of the nineteenth century. It is a fierce battle that is to serve the progress of humanity and which consists in the spiritual struggle of European East against European West, in spiritual Russia waging a fierce spiritual battle against spiritual France. This, my dear friends, is one of the most harrowing events of the present time: to see how, to the same extent that the physical alliance between West and East is being carried out down here in the field of great deception, the sharp struggle of the European East, Russia, against the European West, France, is taking place up there in the spiritual world. We have here one of those cases that have such a shattering effect on the spiritual researcher, where one can see how what is behind the veil of the outer sense world is often the opposite of what happens down here in the realm of deception. But I would always and always admonish not to believe that one can determine such things through speculation. Anyone who, from what I have said in individual cases – that the spiritual presents itself as the opposite of what occurs in the realm of the great Maja – might conclude that it must always go to the opposite when it comes from the physical to the spiritual, would be very much mistaken. For there are cases in the spiritual world in which things take place exactly as they do in the physical. Between this case and the other, where they take place in such stark contrast as in relation to the alliance between France and Russia in the physical and spiritual, there are all possible gradations.

Today, we still have little sense of the impulses through which real spiritual science must communicate. I would say that our time has become, in a sense, careless, especially with regard to what appears to be worth communicating to the individual person; for very little is asked about the responsibility that lies behind what is to be communicated for the one who has to consider the connection between the spiritual and physical worlds. Perhaps I may say something to you, not for personal reasons, but only to illustrate, in connection with my lecture the day before yesterday. You see, in this public lecture, where of course I can only speak externally, exoterically, I do not speak as exoterically as one might think, and I would be glad if, especially in such lectures, one would take into consideration the cultural task that spiritual science has. In particular, the fact that spiritual science is behind it is expressed in the way in which what needs to be said is emphasized and said. It is not a matter of arbitrary ideas or something that has been cobbled together. Take this one example: I said that if one wants to assess the circumstances of the individual European nations in this war, one should proceed historically, that one should consider, for example, that Austria received that mission in the Balkans at the request of British politicians, and that basically everything that has happened to Austria is a consequence of what was imposed on it at the behest of Britain. And I said that this must be taken into account, that it must be taken into account that as a result Austria, and with it Germany, came into particular antagonism with Russia, and that England has abandoned its own work and is now fighting against Germany, while the Central Powers and Russia have come into antagonism because Austria, at England's behest, was entrusted with the Balkan mission and also, by coming to the aid of the Turks, was supposed to hold back the influence of the Russian East. Of course, in an exoteric lecture intended for a general audience, one can only hint at what might affect the perceptions that should be stimulated today. But what is behind this event? Outwardly, exoterically, we see English politics on the side of Russian politics, which has come to its consequences precisely through an act of England. We see that outwardly. The spiritual researcher who looks at things in the spiritual world can make a very peculiar discovery today, a most remarkable discovery. Let us assume that the spiritual researcher would look from bottom to top by taking a certain perspective point. He would take the perspective point below the physical plane and look up to the astral plane. He could also take it above the astral plane. Then he would see what is happening on the physical plane and, as it were, also what is happening on the astral plane. It would merge. It is not true that if one looks up from below or down from above through the astral plane, one sees through the astral to the physical and vice versa. If one now looks at the physical plane, it is true that England is fighting against Turkey since Turkey declared war on Russia. But that is mere Maya, for in reality the astral being of England is fighting with Turkey against Russia. So that one has the spectacle of England fighting for Russia in the northwest and for Turkey in the southeast, thus against Russia. Only one thing is decisive for the physical plane and the other for the astral plane.

When one is confronted with such knowledge of the world, one feels that one cannot, of course, communicate this knowledge to the public, but it does urge one to emphasize this one point about England's inconsistency in the East. The fact that this one point is emphasized arises from the recognition of the spiritual connections. This is how I would like to point out the responsibility that one simply has when compiling the individual truths and the way in which one presents them.

If one feels one's occult responsibility, then one does not pick and choose at random, as today's book-makers or journalists do, but one must extract what is to be said from the essence of the current situation. It is not to say something personal, but to draw your attention to the fact that spiritual science, when it steps forward before the world with full responsibility, should really be taken very seriously and should not be confused with all that is spreading today as journalism and book-making and which, in the way it is combined, is very far removed from such a sense of responsibility towards the spiritual powers of the time. I would like to draw your attention, my dear friends, to the seriousness of spiritual science, especially in our time. For our time shows us a serious face in many respects, a very serious face, and only those who understand the seriousness of this face will be able to cope with this time.

To substantiate this, I would also like to bring before you a context that is of interest to the student of spiritual science. It has been said many times that spiritual science truly does not enter the present because it arises from the arbitrariness of one person or another, or because one person or another has made it his ideal out of his own inclination and would like to bring it to other people, but because now is the epoch when the spiritual beings, which otherwise kept the gate of this truth to be revealed to mankind closed, have opened it so that this wisdom flows down into the human soul. And we are approaching a time when people will have to absorb more and more wisdom, which is appropriated by the soul not only in abstract concepts, not only in gray ideas of the mind. We are living towards times when what we call imagination wants to enter into human souls, into human minds. One would like to say, when one sees through the matter: There they hang, like dense clouds hanging over the landscape before a storm, there they hang in the spiritual world and want to enter human minds, and wait until these human minds are ripe. Yes, that is the time; that is how it is.

Now there is a peculiar law: that which is imaginative, which wants to enter into human minds and cannot yet be received as imagination in any age, casts something like a mirage-like image just as far down below the physical plane as it itself is above the physical plane. The imaginations evoke passions in human beings, feelings, urges, instincts, which express themselves in antagonism. And if we take today the instincts, the outbursts of passion with which the nations insult each other, they are nothing other than the result of imaginations that should be taken up by the European nations but cannot be taken down, for they are reflected in the subconscious of human beings in such instincts and passions that contradict the truth. Basically, we can say that all the discharge of instincts and passions that we are experiencing in the present is an expression of the fact that renewed imaginations want to break into the world of human cultural development. All the often so sad phenomena that the war brings to the surface are the transformed imaginations that humanity cannot grasp.

Again, and this never seems unimportant to me, I would like to point out that one should not say: So every war is transformed imagination. Wars can also be something completely different. Today's war is what I have said. Generalization, which is important for understanding the physical plane, is not important for the spiritual world. Here, things must be investigated individually.

Today we see – and I would now like to present an appearance from a certain perspective for you to consider and also explain – today we see how members of different nations persecute each other in hatred and how they insult each other. Where does this come from? Now, since we have already taken on board in all seriousness the essence of repeated earthly lives, it does not seem particularly incomprehensible to us that the soul passes through different nationalities in its repeated lives. Someone who is incarnated today in a German body may already be preparing in his innermost being to undergo the next incarnation in an English body; someone who is incarnated today in an English body may already be preparing to undergo the next incarnation in a German body. Man is already this dual being, this duality. Outwardly, we stand before the world – not only in relation to the external physical-sensual view, but in relation to many other things – quite legitimately linked to the nature and weaving of the national soul through our physical body; but within, something is already asserting itself that will be quite different for the next incarnation. Now, of all the many things man is hostile towards, he is often most hostile towards his own innermost being. He fights against that the most. He does not know that it is his innermost being. Take an Englishman, who is predestined by the innermost part of his soul to be a German in his next incarnation. There we see him today, fighting against his own inner being. He fights against the next German incarnation. This comes to expression today in the fact that he rails shamefully against everything German. Because he sees the goal in the German body, he rages against what, in the spiritual world, is his innermost being. It is basically a conflict of the soul with itself, and only externally, in the Maja, is it the case that over there, beyond the Channel, people here in Central Europe are being ranted against. Basically, what is being ranted about refers to one's own soul. This shows the deep tragedy that must overcome people in their whole being and in their innermost impulses when, where the matter becomes bitterly serious, they compare the outer Maja with what is within.

And so we can see the souls of nations as real living entities that permeate and pervade the individual closed individuals. And what the individual experiences, he experiences in connection with his national soul. On the physical plane, in the outer life, people face each other today. One nation blames the other for the war and believes it is saying something special. But what about this blaming of guilt? The karma of each nation and the karma of the nation in question are, of course, connected with what the soul of the nation is experiencing in the people and directing into the individual etheric bodies and thus also into the astral bodies. Thus the individual nations live side by side and with one another in relationships that are an expression of the relationship between their national soul and the karma of the national soul. And when one nation experiences this or that through another, when this or that happens to one nation through another, it does not happen without it being connected with the innermost karma. Insofar as the national soul is a closed entity, there is also a national karma. And while in the outer exoteric one believes that one nation does this or that to another, it is the case that each nation experiences its own individual national karma in what it experiences. When one of them inflicts a defeat on the other, something takes place in the defeated nation that it has inflicted on itself through its own karma. And when one speaks in the very rough manner, as is outwardly justified, of the right of one and the other, it is really no different than when an old man sees a small child beside him, fresh and growing into youthful vigor, and he says, “Why am I getting older, why does decay show itself more and more to me? I see: the child takes away my strength; as it grows older, the child takes away my strength. While he is losing his strength in a perfectly natural way, he can succumb to the delusion – he will not do it, but I have heard of such things – that the child is taking his strength from him. You can see right away that this is nonsense, because the causal connection lies in every single being. But it is the same with the karma of nations. Nations live side by side, and when one conquers the other, the victory is due to its karma; even if with the same victory the other nation must succumb, the defeat is caused by the karma of the other nation. Thus spiritual science really does bring peace to the soul, even if on the other hand it also realizes that the forces acting against each other must indeed act against each other.

It is precisely through such things that one would like to point out today that spiritual science does not want to be just a game with sensational concepts, but that spiritual science, when viewed in its bitter seriousness, really shakes and shakes our soul and makes a different being out of man when he takes it seriously. We must only take a good look at this, really take a good look at how superficially it is sometimes taken as a mere intellectual game, and how it should actually be taken as something that can truly make a completely different being out of a person. And much will come of engaging in such things, much of understanding the connections will come about.

When two people have different views about something that is happening in front of them, one of them will usually be wrong. It will be easy to prove that one of them is wrong. But the individual life of a human being is different from the life of nations. We must not identify the life of nations with that of individual human beings, nor must we believe that the deeds of nations can be subject to the same impulses of judgment as the lives of individual human beings. Otherwise, one judges in a way that one would never judge if one had a blue horizon about the relations between nations, as is the case, for example, when one says that one must declare war on Germany because it has violated Belgium's neutrality – as has been said – one must declare war on moral grounds. In politics, it is simply nonsensical to apply the same categories that are rightly applied in judging individuals. Because it is quite natural that Germany's interest requires it to advance on Belgium, and England's interest requires it to prevent that. At the moment you sincerely admit that the interest is there and there, you have something that indicates that there are contrasting interests. When two people claim something contrary, it will be necessary to prove that one of them is wrong. When two nations have to do something contrary, then they must do it. And to believe that the judgment of one side can sweep away that of the other is just as foolish as if someone were to say: You drew me a tree that has a branch here, one there, one there; that is quite wrong, the tree looks like that. And now he draws it so that the branch is here and the other one is there and so on. One person has drawn it from one side and the other from the other. Of course, you can put that together. But what is happening in world history cannot be balanced out by mere observation. When the souls of nations, with their different mindsets, have to do things through their people, it is impossible to somehow decide by judgments like: one is right and the other is wrong. There are contrasting interests that must necessarily be discharged in phenomena such as today's. You cannot refute what is said on one side or the other. Just as one must not believe that the karma of one does not stand independently beside that of the other, so one must not believe that one can refute the judgment of the other with the judgment of the one. For the one nation may have interests which it would be a breach of duty for the statesman of the other nation to oppose, while it is the duty of the statesman of the first nation to stand up for these interests.

Judgments of people, judgments in the consciousness that we have on the physical plane within our physical bodies, only come into consideration in the field of the mind and balance each other dialectically, with one knocking the other out of the field. The consciousnesses of the folk-souls judge differently. They also have judgments that differ from each other, but these judgments are not merely judgments of the mind, they are facts. When one judgment defeats the other in the human sphere, then it does not hurt, then one kills, but one does not see it as a death. But it is different when what prevails in the consciousness of the souls of nations, and what is not just an abstract judgment, but what works as facts, when that collides. Then one must recognize the necessity, the iron necessity, that it has come to this. And then one must have the possibility of adopting, so to speak, a form of judgment in one's mind, a form of spirit that does not agree with the form of spirit that one encounters in everyday life.

One must think, as it were, with the folk souls, not with the individual human souls. If one thinks with the individual human souls, then it is quite natural that one tries not to make a judgment that contradicts that of the other, because then one would not be able to live socially in the human world. If you have to think and feel with the soul of the people, then there will come times when it is impossible to relate to it in any other way than by identifying with it and considering its content to be justified, without stepping out of this people's soul, without comparing what it has to do with what the others have to do. Because that is the business of the others, it cannot be brought together in a common consciousness, it goes from consciousness to consciousness. From this point of view, you will understand that one can ask: What does the German people have to say about its mission, considering that it considers itself to be the descendant of Fichte, Schiller and the other greats? It has to say that what it is undertaking today is the outward expression of its spiritual mission and that it cannot fail to fulfill it. Those who are part of the people must feel with all their being that it must happen. And there is no possibility that anyone, when one sharply defines what must happen for the German people, could call this an attack. The attack, the assault on the other people only begins when one starts to curse about the other people. These are things that must be understood very deeply today: to stand up positively for the essence of a people basically means no more than what can be compared to the fact that one can only take care of one's own body, that it is in order, and not in the same way for another body.

Please note that this is a decisive factor for the judgment that we can gain from the sources of spiritual research.

And when we look into the weaving and nature of the folk souls and what is behind them, behind what is happening on the outside, I would like to say that for the spiritual researcher, especially today, the matter is becoming very, very serious, extraordinarily serious. But this seriousness is also fitting for our time, and it is as if the fact that we have seen the greatest military conflicts were connected with the great demand of the time to found a culture that takes into account what lies behind the veil of sense perception. And those who have the right sense will judge precisely what is taking place in the outer world today, who see in the outer events something like signs, like mighty world symbols for the dawning of something completely new in the evolution of mankind.

I said: Not only does the intellect and its prejudices rebel in man against what spiritual science has to say about the supersensible entity behind the external things, but the mind, the impulses of the will, rebel. They do not want it because the soul must change its way of thinking and feel and perceive differently about many things. — That I said. Yes, that is also a truth. You see, we not only sleep at night, we also sleep during the day, only that at night our attraction to the physical body is so strong that it permeates our astral body and our ego like a fog and dulls our consciousness. When we now descend with the same astral body and the same ego into our physical body to satisfy our desires, then what we develop as consciousness is permeated by the influences of the national soul and there again consciousness is interspersed, so that down there, despite our belief that we are quite awake, there is always something asleep in us. Basically, something is always asleep in us, and that in itself is a sleep within us, just as the folk soul works within us, because it does not happen with the same consciousness with which we make our day-waking judgments. And to this, to the sleep of the day, which is only covered by ordinary consciousness, to this also belongs the working over of the folk souls of the other nations. They also have an effect in a certain way on the sleeping human mind and produce different phenomena than during sleep, but they do produce phenomena on the physical plane.

For example, while the German people had an evolutionary theory through Goethe that came from the very depths of the German being itself, they left it unnoticed and accepted Darwinism. Just as the Italian people have to develop the sentient soul, the French the intellectual soul, and the English the consciousness soul, so the German has to develop the I, and much about the nature of the German people becomes understandable when one feels and realizes how everything that is German culture wells up from the I. This connection between the ego and the most sacred spiritual goods is a characteristic of the Central European people.

It is particularly evident in one phenomenon. If we take the occult truths themselves and look towards the West: external culture has little connection with what appears as mysticism, as occultism. There are actually always two parallel currents. It is not easy to find anything in an ordinary bookshop in Paris that is connected with occultism; you have to go to other places that present it. Now we see how it is in the German to bring everything out of the ego, how the German has Jakob Böhme, how German cultural development is unthinkable without this occult influence. Think of Goethe and Lessing. There are not two currents flowing side by side, but there is one stream, there is real life interwoven and permeated with the spiritual, and one cannot approach this with a materialistic view, as is propagated by the “Star of the East”, that Christ is still incarnating in a physical human being. Hence the necessity arose, as did the antagonism between Germany and England, which could not be allowed to wait until war brought it about: to clearly separate what German occultism is from what English occultism is. And perhaps one or other of them will now reflect on why this split has become necessary. But I only wanted to give a hint. Because some people may see a kind of archetype in the compilation of facts, the justification of facts, when they look at the letters from Grey and Annie Besant today: the way of proving, of putting things together, is very similar in both. But I only wanted to point out how what emerges from the German people is connected to the innermost soul. When the German is awake, he adheres, for example, to the profound theory of development of Goethe, who presented the sequence of organisms but took the impulse for the arrangement from the deepest interior of the I. I say this as a fact, without sympathy or antipathy. Half a century later, Darwin reproduced it from the consciousness soul, but with a materialistic slant. The world understood it more easily, and the German world also preferred to accept the theory of evolution in a Darwinian rather than a Goethean form. Goethe even founded a color theory out of the depths of the German being; the physicists still regard it as nonsense today, because the outer world has adopted Newton's color theory. When will the Darwinian and Newtonian theory be taken instead of Goethe's theory of development and color? Then, when within the German people, people are asleep and the other soul of the people can have an effect. There we have this sleeping in the midst of waking. And when the people are shaken up, they still fail to recognize the matter, then they realize: something is not right —, then they go and take their box in which they have the medals received from England. They send them back and just forget to send back the English coloring of the theory of evolution or the Newtonian coloring of the theory of colors. In particular, one could prescribe the example of a certain coloration of Haeckelianism as a good recipe. One experiences many things there. For example, one could still experience it in these days; one could hear that in a special scientific society in German cities a lecture was given about what has been disturbed in the international nature of the peoples by this war, and how attention was drawn to something that is true if you apply larger scales, but not if you apply those that this gentleman with his ordinary professorial mind applies. If you start from these standards, it sounds very strange when this gentleman says: Internationalism must reappear as soon as the war is over, because otherwise the German would lose a lot, and it would in turn, a special metaphysics would awaken that the German had previously unfolded, while he is glad that this German spirit, with its inclination towards the supernatural, has been flooded by the nations, who have little inclination towards the supernatural. — One could experience this in these days in a special economic lecture: the fear of the awakening of the German essence.

Much could be said, but I wanted to express just a few thoughts about what can be gained by taking seriously, bitterly but blissfully, an external view of life, which flows like a magic breath through us when we take spiritual science in its full depth. To consider, feel and sense this is our task in our time, and with such feelings we may survey this time and feel united with those who are standing outside and who have to stand up for what karma demands with their blood and their souls.

Thus we summarize what our knowledge and our task should be and what should inspire confidence in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit comes to life —
Guiding souls, conscious of the spirit
Into the realm of the spirit.

The first part of our lecture today is devoted to insights that are connected with real experiences that our social karma has led us to in recent times. The second part is intended to cast some highlights on what may interest us particularly in current events.

In these two public lectures, I had to emphasize how it is necessary for the presentation of the spiritual worlds to gradually get used to a kind of different language than the one we use to characterize the insights of the worlds in which we find ourselves through our sensory observation and through the mind that is bound to the brain. To support our friends, I would like to refer to specific recent experiences that have taken place within our wider circle, events for which I could certainly choose others, but I choose these events because they tie in with, I would say, recent experiences and can give us ideas about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds.

I have always emphasized that when the soul on its path of knowledge crosses the threshold that leads into the spiritual world, then one of the first experiences is becoming one with what one experiences, observes. Here on the physical plane, one is, so to speak, enclosed in one's skin when facing the things one observes. As soon as one enters the spiritual world, has something to do with the spiritual world, one does not feel enclosed in the way one does in the physical body in the skin; one feels one's whole being spread out, as if identified with the beings and events one is dealing with. To explain this, I will go into positive events.

Recently, an elderly member passed through the gate of death. For years this member had lived with all his mind and soul in the ideas that one acquires when one really feels what spiritual science can give. It is of very special importance and is therefore mentioned so often that the theoretical absorption of what is given as spiritual-scientific ideas cannot be everything. It can be a starting point, but not everything. These ideas must take hold of our feelings and perceptions. In my public lecture, I was even able to explain how the sentient soul is currently much more closely related to the eternal core of the human being, while what is experienced from the consciousness soul is more relevant to what the human being experiences in connection with the physical world in the present epoch. That is why it is so important to feel what one can feel when absorbing spiritual knowledge, because this feeling has a much greater power to grasp our soul and to really bring it into contact with the supersensible world than mere thinking, intellectual reasoning. So the personality I am talking about has lived a great deal in our spiritual-scientific ideas, and now I can see, I can say, a very short time after death – before the actual occurrence of death on the physical plane has been reported to me in any way , how this personality, while still in its etheric body, processed within itself what it had absorbed in the way of feeling and intuitive powers, what it had become through living for years in the spiritual-scientific current. When its etheric body was still united with the astral body and the ego, what I have described above entered of its own accord. The personality that had passed through the gate of death came and told me that she now feels within herself what she has become through spiritual science, what she feels within herself now that she is no longer confined by the physical body. And so, as it were, sentences sounded from the individuality that had passed through the gate of death, which I will read aloud.

You will notice that in the first three lines the dead personality uses a word that cannot really be justified when used by an individuality that has already discarded the physical body; but that is not the point. The word, which refers to the physical heart, is meant in a symbolic sense. Heart here stands for the etheric organ of feeling. We have here the case of an individuality that has passed through the gate of death, which summarized its strongest experience before death as a result of life, in order to say to itself: I am now in a certain situation to experience the nature of my self, how this nature of my self arises for me by dealing with it with the understanding that I have gained in my feeling recognition through spiritual science. So it was that this individuality, who had at most passed through the gate of death two hours earlier, allowed something to resound from within that sounded in such a way that I must say that the words were put in such a way that I myself did nothing to them, I only took in the words that came from this self. These words then served as the beginning and the end when I had to give the funeral oration at the cremation. They are read:

In world-wide I will carry
My feeling heart, that it may become warm
In the fire of sacred power;

In world-thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, that it may become clear
In the light of eternal becoming-life;

I will dive into the depths of the soul
With devoted thoughts, that they may become strong
For the true goals of human endeavor.

In God's rest I strive so,
With struggles and worries,
Preparing my self for the higher self;

Longing for a peace that is joyful to work for,
Sensing the existence of the world in my own existence,
I would like to fulfill my duty as a human being;

Then I may live in anticipation
of my destiny,
which will grant me a place in the spiritual realm.

Let us hear here, as it were, from the self, what the self feels within itself, through what it has become by filling itself with spiritual-scientific feeling. It is important to bear in mind that we are dealing here with a personality who had reached a ripe old age in this physical life and that the possibility of wanting to characterize the self is connected with this attainment of a higher age, that the self only after after death expresses itself so completely in its own being that one has nothing to do but to observe it, to lose oneself completely, to surrender, to identify with the being, that one can let it express itself completely.

It was different in another case. There one had to deal with a relatively early death. To look at such a case, especially the events of the time urge us, since so many people today pass through the gate of death at a young age. In the case I am talking about, it was not the cause that is the cause in many cases today, but it was an early death. When death occurs so early that one can say: If the person had grown old, he would have lived for many decades more, then we are dealing with an etheric body that will indeed be laid aside, but it is such that it could still supply the physical body with forces for many decades. Someone who dies in such a way that he could have lived for decades hands over to the spiritual elementary world an etheric body that is still unused. Countless such unused etheric bodies are now entering the spiritual world. When we say that we have great hope for the age that is developing from the womb of our events, based on spiritual science, it should be borne in mind that those who are now passing through death will be witnesses in the spiritual world for a spiritual work and will send forces into earthly life through their individuality. But their etheric body is still there as something second, something special, it is unused. A large number of such etheric bodies will represent a force that will have an effect on people who will live when peace has been restored, and they will be helpers so that the materialistic world view can be replaced by a spiritual one.

We can become attached when we experience people dying at a young age and we can then, so to speak, perceive what is happening.

In the second case, where again the karma of our spiritual current led to me having to speak at the cremation of a personality who had passed through the gate of death, it was the case that a long time had passed between the onset of death and the cremation, from Wednesday to Monday. By then, this etheric body had already been separated, and for my occult observation, I had lost the etheric body, so to speak, on the night before I had to speak; the etheric body had been lost for the observation. The individuality had already been separated from the astral body and I. Here the observing soul was confronted with an astral body and I, and the impulse arose to introduce and conclude the eulogy with words that had something to do with individuality. Something did not arise that the individuality itself had expressed. Because it was released from the etheric body and the physical body, it was possible to put into words, which I believe were precise, the whole way this individuality had been here on earth. Again, these words are not the way I made them, but the way an inspiration impulse made them, the way they had to be, the way they characterize the individuality that had passed through death. They arose as the inspiration of the contemplating soul, yielding to the impression of the personality that had passed through the gate of death. The words arose:

You came among us.
Your gentle nature moved
Spoke from your eyes of silent strength
Calm that soulfully animated,
flowed in the waves
with which your gaze
to things and to people
carried your inner weaving; –
And this being was imbued with it
your voice, which eloquently
through the nature of the word more
than in the word itself
revealed what dwells hidden
in your beautiful soul;
But the part of devoted love of compassionate people
revealed itself wordlessly in full – –
This being, of noble, silent beauty,
told of the receptive feeling of the creation of the soul of the world.

These words were spoken at the cremation, and the peculiar thing turned out to be that the moment, which could only be called a moment of awakening, occurred when the heat of the furnace was just taking hold of the personality's physical body. And so, for this personality that had passed through the gate of death, there was a moment when it was possible to develop consciousness, and not during the funeral ceremony, but when the heat surrounded the body that had been given over to the fire. Then unconsciousness set in again. After being interrupted by unconsciousness, such moments of consciousness can occur again until full consciousness sets in some time after death. In this case it was particularly clear how consciousness works when a person has passed through the gate of death. This consciousness perceives time in a different form than a person perceives time when he lives here in the physical body. In such a case, it is particularly meaningful. The perception of time by someone who does not have a physical body can only be compared to our perception of space. Here in the physical body, we can always look back; what we have seen remains. If something has passed us by in time, we have to look back on the image in our memory, it has to rise up in our consciousness. This is not the case with someone who no longer has a physical body. The disembodied soul looks back as we do in space.

So the dead woman looked back at what had been said, as one looks back in space. What had been said now stood before her soul. It is precisely in such concrete cases that the peculiarity of the spiritual world becomes apparent. Now I just said that at the time when the words of the funeral oration were to be formed, I had, so to speak, lost the etheric body for the observation, but a second observation showed that it was precisely this etheric body that made it possible to have the inspiration that was shaped into these words. When I was able to find the ether body again - I mean for the observation - I became aware of where this ether body was when I shaped the words. It was in the night from Sunday to Monday. I said I had lost it, I only realized much later where it actually was: I was in it myself. It was a dissolving cloud. The ego and the astral body had already been separated. Because I was inside it, I did not perceive the aetheric body, like a cloud in which one is stuck; but what lived in it gave the inspiration to shape the words I read.

They provide an insight into the intimate secrets of the human soul's coexistence with the spiritual worlds. I would not dare to say so out of hand if this had only occurred in a single case, but it was confirmed to me again in the third case. There I was again in the same situation of shaping words that characterized the individuality of this third personality who had passed through the gateway of death and was part of our circle. The death of this personality had something particularly painful for our feelings on the physical plane, because it gave the best hopes with regard to the spiritual scientific work within our circle. This personality, during the time she lived here on earth, absorbed much of what can currently be called scholarship, became completely immersed in it and had the firm desire to do something that is necessary in our spiritual movement, namely to immerse oneself in what is currently called science, and to transform this science in the soul itself in such a way that it gives birth again on a higher level to spiritual-scientific insight. Not everyone can do this, but it is one of the necessities of our spiritual science. Concordance between science and spiritual science can often lead someone who is unfamiliar with spiritual science to a conviction, but it is necessary to become imbued with contemporary science, and when this is there, to ascend with it in a living way in spiritual science. One then comes to a certain point where one feels so surely, so knows so surely in one's inner experience the agreement between what present science gives and what spiritual science gives that one can no longer be misled by anything that comes from the present materialistic culture of our time.

When this personality passed through the gate of death, the necessity arose again to shape the beginning and end of the funeral oration in a certain way at the cremation, and the special impulse arose, precisely in the face of this individuality, to point out the bridge that exists for our spiritual science movement between the physical plan and the spiritual world. For our feelings on the physical plane, it is particularly painful that this personality was taken from us young. But the spiritual current in which we live would not be able to awaken as much hope as it must awaken if we were not sure that the forces flowing in spiritual science come not only from those who live on the physical plane, but that such forces also come from those who have already passed through the gate of death and are equipped with spiritual science. Thus the soul was faced with the necessity of emphasizing: At this moment you are given a great thing where you have gone through death: a call to remain a loyal co-worker even now that you have gone through the gate of death.

Especially those who take spiritual science seriously must count on those who are no longer on the physical plane as real co-workers.

Thus it became necessary to coin words, in the coining of which I am, so to speak, completely uninvolved, which resulted from a necessary impulse in the way I will read them now. You will see in a moment what the significance of such coined words is. The words are as follows:

A hope that brings us happiness:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms,
Through the power of the soul's being,
Want to show themselves to research.

Your pure love of truth was your longing was kindred;
To create from the light of the spirit
Was the earnest goal of life
You strove for tirelessly.

You cultivated your beautiful gifts
in order to walk the bright path of spiritual knowledge,
unperturbed by the contradictions of the world,
as a faithful servant of the truth,
with sure steps.

You practiced your spiritual organs
So that they bravely and persistently
On both sides of the path
You pushed error aside
And created space for truth.

To reveal your true self
To create pure light,
So that the soul's solar power
radiates powerfully within you,
was your life's concern and joy.

Other concerns, other joys
hardly touched your soul,
because knowledge appeared to you as light,
which gives meaning to existence,
as life's true value.

A hope that makes us happy:
So you entered the field,
Where the earth's spiritual blossoms
Through the power of the soul's being
Would like to show themselves to research.

A loss that deeply hurts us,
So you disappear from the field,
Where the spirit's seeds of creation Matured in the womb of the soul, Your sense of the spheres.

Feel how we look lovingly Into the heights that now call you Towards other work. Give your strength from spiritual realms To your abandoned friends.

Hear our souls' request,
Sent to you in trust:
Here for our earthly work we need
Strong power from spiritual realms,
Which we thank our dead friends for.

A hope that makes us happy,
A loss that deeply pains us:
Let us hope that Thou, far-near,
Unlost, to our life dost shine
As a soul star in the realm of minds.

It was sometime during the following night when, as if it were an answer, it sounded to me from the being in question, not from its consciousness, but from its essence, so that one could immediately feel it as an answer to the words. Not as if the individuality had said it from the consciousness. The individuality resounded as if in sounds:

To shape my self to a revelation
of pure light,
That the soul's solar power
might radiate powerfully within me
Was my life's care and joy.

Other worries, other joys,
They hardly touched my soul,
Because knowledge appeared to me as light,
Which gives meaning to existence,
As the true value of life.

Only now did I realize that this was only a rearrangement of the two verses, a rearrangement of the second person into the first. From this example you can see how a correspondence takes place between the soul that dwells here in physical life and the soul that has passed through the gate of death. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that such things are given in such a way that the words cannot be changed, and you can see that I was not at all aware why the words of the two verses were so shaped. I only realized this from the answer that came the following night from the soul that had passed through the gate of death. We must get used to the fact that in this respect too, we cannot have direct feelings towards the spiritual worlds that are taken from our experiences here in the physical world. Note that much depends on this if we are to gain a true understanding of the relationship with the spiritual world. As a small example, I could also mention something that was taken from a completely different side. When these difficult days began, these formulas that we are using now were given as if from the spiritual worlds, which I also use today to guide the souls of those who are in the fields of the events or have passed through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, watchers in action,
your wings may bring
the love of my soul imploring
to the spheres (earthly people) entrusted to your care, so that, united with your power,
my plea may help to radiate to the souls that seek them lovingly.

It says: “Spirits of your souls.” I had to experience in Berlin that someone objected that this is grammatically incorrect, and now one does not know in the second line what the “your wings” refer to, because if one says, “spirits of your souls,” one turns to those who live as human beings, but one still turns to the spirits of those who live there. So the pedant might think that one should say, “Spirits of their souls.” Yes, we have to get used to the fact that in the spiritual world, the grammar that applies quite naturally to the sensual world is not always adhered to, that one must have more flexibility in the soul. One turns: “Spirits of your souls,” but in the second line it is understood that one does not turn to one or a number of people, that one turns to the protecting spirits there. Grammar is not the deciding factor. We must realize that in the higher worlds everything is much more mobile, that one does not need to divert one's conception of the human being when one turns to the protecting spirit. He is much more closely connected with the man himself than two people here. There one must apply physical grammar, because there need not be such a connection between two physical people as between the protecting spirit and the human being. So one could say: It is precisely through these given words, which are contestable before physical grammar, that something is given that is peculiar to the higher worlds. When one receives such things from the higher worlds, the words become teachings. Sometimes one only understands such things much later, and sometimes this learning is not as easy as prying into grammar, which is not a great art. We have to find our way into such an intimate relationship with the spiritual world. Even in the presentation of the higher worlds, it is important that one does not grasp them with the rough word combinations that one has acquired here in the physical world, so that it is often quite easy to find a presentation of the higher worlds, in which the realm of the spirits of form loses its special power, contestable. Crossing the threshold, we enter the realm of the spirits of movement. Even the style must become more flexible there. The spirits of form are for the world around us. Style must adapt to the realm of the spirits of movement. The time will come when we will find our way into such things, and we must not believe that we can truly depict what is mobile and fluid in the spiritual world with a style that is suitable for the physical world.

I wanted to explain a few things about the relationship between the human soul and the spiritual worlds, using specific cases that our social karma has brought us into contact with. Even more than in abstract descriptions, such concrete involvement in individual conditions of the spiritual worlds, and above all, we can develop a feeling that through our spiritual scientific movement, a living interaction between the physical world and the higher world must gradually come about. After the manifold experiences that have had to be made in recent times, it can be said that the hopes that certain things will already happen in relation to our spiritual movement can only be firmly held inwardly if one is certain that those who have already passed through the gate of death will be our helping co-workers. This does, however, require that we take the content and intention of our spiritual science with the utmost seriousness.

In summary, I would like to say something that has already been discussed in detail in the cycle in Vienna about life between death and a new birth, which is important to consider. One can say, because one must use certain words that serve the physical life: After death, the human being is in a kind of unconscious, sleeping state. Then he awakens, but “awakens” is not quite the right word. It seems as if one comes to a kind of consciousness upon awakening. This is not the case. When the human being has discarded the etheric body, he does not have too little or sleeping consciousness, he has too much consciousness. He has a kind of overflowing consciousness. Just as one cannot see when blinded by flooding light, so there is too much consciousness after death. We are completely flooded by infinitely effective consciousness, and it must first subside to the degree that we have acquired after our development in the physical world. We have to orient ourselves in the abundance of consciousness. What is called “waking up” is only an accustoming to the much higher degree of consciousness that we enter after death. It is a dimming of consciousness to the degree that we can bear.

Another thing is that, I would say, every observation shows more and more how, for certain conditions of existence, the experience in the spiritual worlds is exactly the opposite of the experience in the physical world. This is also the case with the one I am about to mention. Between birth and death, no one actually remembers their birth without higher knowledge. For no one is it a matter of their own observation. If you were to listen to those people who say they believe nothing except what their five senses give them, you might object: Then you cannot believe that you were once a small child either. You only believe that from the following two reasons: Because you see that all other people begin their lives that way, you conclude that it was the same for you. That is only an analogy, or the others have told you. - It is known through communication and not through observation that one also enters life through birth. No one realizes that this is only an analogy. One would have to say: I cannot know from my own observation about the origin of this physical body. When a person looks back in physical life, he does not see as far as his birth. It is different between death and a new birth. This is shown by the very case in which the inner impulse arose to send the one who had passed through the gate of death such words that had something to do with his self, that characterized him. This impulse comes from the urge to serve the one who has gone through the gate of death, to make it easier for him to have what he needs as soon as possible: an unobstructed view of the moment of death. For just as little as one looks back on birth in physical life, it is indispensable to look back on death between death and a new birth. Death is always there in retrospect, only from the spiritual side it looks different. From the physical point of view it may have been a terrible death, but from the other side it is the most glorious event one can look back on. It shows the glory of the spirit's victory over the physical by freeing itself from it. This is one of the most beautiful experiences one has between death and a new birth in retrospect. This is another example of how the physical world and the spiritual world are opposed to each other.

We are gradually getting to know the peculiarities of the spiritual world. These are aspects that I wanted to develop before you today in aphorisms. Another aspect is indirectly significant for things that we are experiencing now: the aspect that in the case of a person who could have lived here for a long time under normal circumstances, an unused etheric body stands as an individuality alongside the individuality. The dissolution of the etheric body only takes a short time in older people. We are always surrounded by such as yet unresolved etheric bodies. We are living towards a time when this will be particularly noticeable, because a kind of atmosphere is formed indirectly from these etheric bodies, the like of which has not yet been seen in the development of the earth. One might think that something similar has already occurred in earlier wars, but things are changing because people in the past went through death differently. There were not as many people in the past who were surrounded only by material thinking as there are now. This justifies the fact that these etheric bodies will give off spiritual impulses. Furthermore, there will be people here on earth who will feel and sense this. I have already hinted at this in the lectures I would like to call the lectures on current events. What our time wants to teach us is that, in addition to the spiritual shallowness, we also need to deepen what will later appear as the accompanying phenomena. Should we not be deeply saddened to learn that in our time, which considers itself so enlightened in terms of logic, where scientific culture has spread through all kinds of popular channels to the widest circles, that something can take hold again in the widest circles that we must regard as a judgment born of passion?

Those who follow the voices of those who consider Central Europe to be locked up in a large fortress will already have realized what this passion is doing to people's souls. One need only look to the west and northwest, where one can stand in amazement at what human passionate judgment has brought about. Better newspapers will be particularly instructive there. How is it shouted out by these or those: We did not want this war! — How is it senselessly blamed for this war by those who are hostile to the German essence, to that area that had the least reason for this war: the Central European one.

In this respect, the way in which German character has developed makes it objectively possible for the German people to achieve a kind of national self-awareness that is sorely lacking in other nations. It will certainly be a long time before most people, especially outside of Central Europe, will be able to see the situation clearly enough to get past the most foolish judgments of the present. For us, who are part of a spiritual movement that not only wants to pass on theory, it should be clear that an objective judgment can be gained in the face of such difficult events and that we can clarify many things in the present precisely because we live in these fateful days. How easily some short-sighted minds criticize what belongs to the impulses, to the core of our spiritual science. Painful things have had to be experienced in this field in recent months. There is a spiritual science movement that says it is lovingly working to want to reach people without distinction of race and so on. One can say: How does what I have put forward in this time relate to this? Before these difficult, fateful days befell us, I warned against interpreting the principle of equality in such a way that it is transformed into something completely abstract. Do you remember how I often said: When people come and say that Buddhists, Mohammedans, and Christians are only different forms of one being, that is like saying: salt, sugar, pepper are all food additives, so it doesn't matter what I take – and sprinkle sugar into soup and beer because it is a food additive. It may be convenient to apply such a principle in such an abstract way, but for the one who is seriously seeking, it cannot be the point. If we lovingly engage with the essence of the individual European nations, we come to recognize that the soul of the people speaks to the sentient soul in the Italians, to the intellectual soul in the French, to the consciousness soul in the British, and to the I in the Germans. We do not come to understand these things by pouring love over everything in the abstract. The essential thing in our movement is that the human soul, while recognizing national peculiarities, wants to rise to the general human level. Spiritual science can bring it about that someone born in Britain this time says: “I have recognized that I have the folk soul speaking particularly through the consciousness soul, through that which regulates the soul's relationship to the physical plane, which makes the human being suitable for being material. When he recognizes this, he recognizes that he must discard what stands in his way from his nationality if he wants to rise to the general humanity. This knowledge always helps, and it is important to recognize what is peculiar to the individual national entity. When the member of Russian culture will say to himself: The peculiarity of the national soul is that it hovers like a cloud over the individual, that the individual, in chaotic thinking, looks up to the national soul, and thus relies on finding his way into the productive life of other nations – then he will find his way. Those who recognize the essence of the Russian national soul through spiritual science will say: Why am I Russian? The strength that I have acquired as a result, I have to absorb the strength of other nations.

The German will recognize through spiritual science — he needs to understand this in all objectivity and humility — that he is predestined to seek the universal human through his nationality through what the national soul speaks to his ego. That he perceives what leads him beyond nationality, that is the national essence of the German. The specifically national essence of the German consists in this, that through nationality it is driven beyond the nation into the general human essence. Therefore the transition from German idealism to spiritual science is to be found in the flowing of German idealism into spiritual science. It is necessary to struggle through to a concrete grasp of spiritual realities. Spiritual science makes it possible to grasp these things concretely. When one learns that a Frenchman like Renan says that what he has received in German culture seems to him like higher mathematics compared to the lower mathematics of the experiences of other peoples, then what characterizes the German essence is being stated. It is our fate to have to recognize this. We must recognize it, we cannot help but recognize it, but with the same objectivity we must recognize that it is our destiny, if we are true Germans, to progress to spiritual life, just as it is necessary for the British to shed materialism in order to enter into the spiritual. Different tasks arise for different nations from their national character. It is particularly important for the German to immerse himself in the spiritual worlds of that which flows through German culture. For the Russian, there is no such thing as a national culture. For him, there is only the possibility of gaining the strength of blood that makes it possible for him to accept the essence of others. It turns out that the German essence underwent an important development in the evolution of the folk soul.

The folk souls, like human beings, undergo development. Between 1530 and 1550 something special happened to the Italian folk soul. Before that time this culture was not yet as separate from the rest of Europe as it was afterwards. Before that time the folk soul worked in the soul; afterwards it reached beyond the soul, shaping the physical into the national. The human being progresses to becoming independent of the physical. The folk soul does the opposite. It first affects the soul, then the body, so that the Italian folk soul before the 16th century only affected the soul, but later it reaches beyond the merely soulful into the physical, shaping the nervous system, shaping the etheric body, so that the human being is also defined and identified in terms of the physical. The human being becomes more rigid, more closed to the other cultures.

For the French national soul, such a point in time occurs in the middle of the 17th century. At that point, the national soul begins to shift from the soul to the body, making the nation rigid. For the British, this only happens from the middle of the 17th century onwards, and Shakespeare does not yet belong to an age when the national soul shifts to the body. In the period between 1750 and 1850, a kind of spillover from the German folk soul from the spiritual to the physical takes place, but it withdraws again. In Western peoples, the folk soul floats higher at first, then descends into the physical. That which previously descended into the physical then rose again into the spiritual. The descent occurred between the mid-17th and 18th centuries. As a result, the German national soul remains more flexible. It does not remain down there permanently, it goes up and down, takes hold of people and then releases them again.

These are things that will only be fully understood in the future. We must say that we cannot empathize enough with the present difficult time, with all its greatness and significance, in the depths of our soul. These present events must be infinitely significant for anyone who is interested in the spiritual essence that is weaving through the world. When people reflect on the causes that led to the present war events, one thing will become clear: the antagonism between the national souls has contributed to these present war events, but no matter how hard someone in the future will search for the causes on the physical plane, they will always find something that does not clarify the matter, because the causes do not lie on the physical plane, but because one can say about these events: spiritual individualities, spiritual impulses have an effect. Only when mankind will recognize this, will one speak reasonably about the causes that have led to these events. One will recognize that people were only the tools through which good and evil forces have worked. To come to this judgment, it is necessary to be unprejudiced, by penetrating ourselves with what spiritual science can be to the innermost part of the soul, not just to the intellect.

It may be important at some point to realize how much of what the British world has taken part in is really intimately connected with the national character. Then one will have to recognize something that has been impressed on me since July, before the war had even begun. Then one could hear different judgments. I am reporting objectively and would like you to disregard the personal aspect. It occurred to me that the world was in danger because such a terrible fool was in charge of foreign affairs in London. The world considers Grey to be a clever, perhaps shrewd man. I could never consider him to be anything other than a fool, from intuitive impressions, and today I must consider him to be an especially foolish person, chosen by Ahrimanic powers because he could cause particular harm through his ignorance of things. It is not really possible to prove that such a person is a fool on the basis of external reasons. Yesterday I bought a book and found a letter in it that a colleague of Grey's wrote. I only learned about the letter yesterday, but I have considered Grey a fool chosen by Ahriman to wreak havoc since July. It is interesting for us to see how the writer of the letter characterizes his cabinet colleague: “It is very entertaining for us, who have known Grey since the beginning of his career, to watch him impress his continental colleagues. They seem to suspect something in him that is not there at all. He is one of the Kingdom's most outstanding sports anglers and a reasonably good tennis player. He has no political or diplomatic abilities, unless one were to recognize a certain tiresome dullness of speech and a strange tenacity as such. Earl Rosebery once said of him that he makes such a concentrated impression because he never has an idea of his own that could distract him from a task that has been handed to him with precise instructions. When a somewhat temperamental foreign diplomat recently expressed admiration for Grey's quiet manner, which never revealed what was going on in his mind, a cheeky secretary said, “If a clay money box is filled to the top with gold, it certainly doesn't rattle when you shake it. But if there isn't a single penny in it, it doesn't rattle either. With Winston Churchill, a few nickels rattle so loudly that it gets on your nerves; with Grey, not a single rattle. Only the person holding the box can know whether it is completely full or completely empty!” That was impertinent, but well said. I believe that Grey has a very decent character, even if a certain stupid vanity may occasionally tempt him to get involved in matters that hands that insist on absolute cleanliness would do better to stay away from. But his excuse is always that he is incapable of overlooking and thinking through a matter on his own. He, who is in no way a schemer in his own right, can, as soon as a clever schemer uses him, appear to be the most accomplished schemer. This has always been a temptation for political schemers to choose him as their tool, and it is only thanks to this circumstance that he owes his present position."

This is an example of how one can err if one does not try to look at things objectively. In this personality, who is not distinguished by particular cleverness but by personal angling skills that have nothing to do with the skills that matter, one sees the Ahrimanic powers at work, which necessarily had to work from the inner side for the events to occur. We shall gradually realize that in the face of these events in particular, we must be clear about how the supersensible must be acknowledged in both good and evil. If we try to understand these events on the basis of what can be observed on the physical plane, we will not be able to understand them. One will realize how the various impulses have streamed across, how for a long time the East has been preparing what gave the impulse for these events, how from those things that can be observed in Eastern Europe, the factors developed which must necessarily one day ignite the torch of war, how the present moment brought the war because the western factors allowed themselves to be drawn into the arson from the east, for reasons that can only be recognized if one goes into the important causes. It will be important that precisely these historical events will force people, if they want to recognize the causes, to look to the supersensible, not to remain on the physical plane, because otherwise they will be able to argue for a long time. We shall have to recognize that it is more necessary for the man of letters than for other men to place himself on a surer horizon than that which can arise from the experience of the affairs of the physical world.

How narrow the physical horizon can become has been evident for years. For many, historical consideration only began in July. Even some in our circles made strange judgments. The elements of what I want to say have already been given in the cycle 'The Mission of Individual National Souls' in Kristiania. It also says that what wants to come forth in the sixth post-Atlantic culture is preparing itself in the East. We live here in the fifth culture. If you think abstractly, that humanity is rising higher and higher from the fifth culture to the sixth and seventh cultures, then you may get a stiff neck. But such penetration is not the progress of the cultural development of humanity. Up to the fourth culture, there was a repetition of the development of the earth. The fifth culture is the one that matters; it is something new that has been added, that must be carried over into the sixth age. The sixth culture will sink into decadence; it will be a descending culture. This must be taken into account. Connected with this is the fact that a mind like Solowjow, which in certain respects has outgrown the Russian national character with its habitual traits, has sunk into the Western world, that his philosophy is Western, although it is enclosed in the temperament of the East, but in the way the sentences flow, it reveals the Russian. It would be foolish to say that someone steeped in Western European culture could be given something that went beyond that Western European culture.

These have again been only brief sentences, but you will hear the appeal to our spiritual science to try to use this difficult time to see with concreteness and to grasp with concreteness that which can really flow into our feeling when spiritual scientific ideas flow into this our feeling. In the future, our spiritual science will have to prove itself precisely by finding its way through the raging passions of our time.

I am well aware that since the beginning of this difficult time for us, I have spoken neither here nor elsewhere about these matters in any other way than so that one can advocate these matters before an objective world view. But what all could one hear! From what has happened in the last few months, one can also learn how things stand with regard to much of what is being criticized in the outside world. One often had to hear the judgment that a large part of the members only listened to the judgment of one person, that it was all based on blind trust. — How far that blind trust went could be seen at that moment.

About what was said about me, one could hear: He uses his occult abilities to waste them on checking the Wolffian telegrams. — Strange trust for someone who is in our movement to say that I use the truth of the Wolffian telegraph office in favor of the enemies of Germany! That is only one of countless judgments. There you see how what is now flooding the world in desires and passions also plays a role in spiritual science. This must not deter us from fathoming the truth with regard to what it is our duty to emphasize now. You will be able to see that.

Basically, it has always been as it is now. What has been said now has always been said and done. I have emphasized before that this Theosophical movement, which has become the Anthroposophical movement, never wanted to develop in any other way than in the direct progression of Central European culture. It was never a matter of being taken in tow by someone. On the English side, when this was noticed, mistrust was immediately aroused against these Central Europeans, who were not the imitators of what was given by British Theosophy. The sense of truth had to reject the British view of the Christ problem, it was of such a nature that the belief could arise that Christ would re-embody himself in the physical body, because one could not understand a spiritual coming of the Christ. This showed the impossibility of the two directions going together. In English theosophical magazines you will now find letters from Mrs. Besant, who in every way calls upon the world of Theosophy to work against Germany. There you will find a subsequent explanation of why the German Theosophical movement had to break away from the English one at that time. Mrs. Besant says: ” Now, looking back, in the light of the German methods, as revealed to us by the war, I see that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I thwarted those efforts, the complaint that I had spoken about the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving honor to the Kaiser – that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, skillfully used by German agents here (in India) to push through their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into an armed force against the British government and trained it to look to Germany as its spiritual leader, instead of standing, as it always has, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India.

[Gap in the transcription] This personality has come up with what I wanted at the time. - There you can see the causes of why this war between Germany and England broke out. But you can also see that our spiritual struggle has preceded it. Many things that had to happen there will perhaps be understood differently now.

The assertion of occultism [...] is a double-edged sword. It must be said again and again that a sense of truth must intensively permeate the souls who, through occultism, want to bring salvation and not disaster into the world. How this is connected, what must penetrate our soul through the events of the time, what we, as occult students, should learn from the events of the time, can be revealed to us by the thought: When peace returns, there will be unused etheric bodies in the spiritual world that want to bring down forces. From souls that are stimulated by spiritual science, forces should also go up to connect with the forces from above. Then, for the progress and salvation of humanity, what spiritual science can be will be significant. If there are really quite a number of souls that feel this in truth and objectivity, if many souls with thoughts inspired by the spiritual world view long to reach up into the spiritual worlds, then the difficult times of our time will also have value for these souls. That is why I would like to express the connection of our spiritual striving today through the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
The fruit of the spirit will grow
Guiding souls, spirit-conscious
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

There is a time when the experience of death, from the point of view of the physical plane, comes before our souls in many ways, in a broader and in a narrower sense, a thousandfold outside in humanity and also in our immediate circle, from which, especially in the course of the last few years and also months, dear friends have passed through the gate of death. It is perhaps appropriate to direct our thoughts, to which we can feel connected here in this branch, to certain aspects of the mystery of death and many things related to it. We direct our contemplative gaze to the riddle of death, not merely because we are plagued by curiosity or a thirst for knowledge to recognize what is mysteriously connected with death, but because we have already sufficiently gathered from the insights that spiritual science can impart to us how intimately connected with the mystery of death, with the knowledge of it, is that which we need in the way of strengthening forces of life, how, in fact, the contemplation of death removes the gulf between the two worlds — the world we live through in the physical and the world of the spiritual. We have often realized and rightly called to mind again and again in the face of concrete deaths how those souls that were connected to us in physical life remain so even after they have passed through the gate of death. In this context, I was also able to say in this branch that it is one of the strengthening, invigorating thoughts that we can let carry us, that we have friend souls in the spiritual worlds who, through the way they were connected with our cause here on earth, have become and will become our loyal helpers and co-workers. It must be emphasized that we are now living in a time in which we feel obliged to elaborate spiritual science, but in which this spiritual science is still met with much misunderstanding and opposition arising from this lack of understanding. And sometimes doubts may arise as to whether, in the face of ever-increasing opposition - and it will truly take on even stronger forms - what forces are given to us within the physical world can suffice. Then we are consoled by the thought that the souls of our friends who have passed away and are still united with us in our work, who are not hampered by the obstacles that still confront us here on earth, combine their forces with ours. And out of such conviction we believe in the victorious, if also slow, advance of spiritual scientific work.

When a person passes through the gate of death, it is indeed, I would say, close to our soul to experience how he, after leaving his physical body on the scene of earthly existence, then ascends into the spiritual worlds, so to speak, leaving these physical worlds. If we have gained convictions in spiritual science, then we perceive the passing through of the gate of death in a human being as a leaving of the physical world. If now the spiritual scientific view is directed to the experience of death, that is, to the passing through of a human being through the gate of death, then to this spiritual scientific view the matter presents itself somewhat differently. What comes into consideration is mainly what the so-called dead person experiences himself, how he feels and experiences passing through the gate of death in his innermost being, and how it then unfolds for him between death and a new birth. And here it must be said that what passes through the gate of death is, as we know, first of all the etheric body with the astral body and the ego. Now, however, the dead person, by entering the spiritual world in this triad of his being, first feels the scene of the physical world and, standing on it, those people with whom he felt connected in life, and also everything else to which he felt connected, actually as if it were all leaving him, as if it were moving away from him, so to speak. And then the one who has passed through the gate of death and is settling into the etheric world with his etheric body, becomes one with this etheric world. And we also already know this: a kind of overview of the experience on earth in the last incarnation occurs before his eyes. This experience can really be compared to a kind of universal 'dream experience'. Life goes on for days in surging, weaving images that are meaningful and full of meaning. One feels like saying that this panorama of life enlarges as the dead person feels: 'This is what you see, your life unwinds, flows away.' And beyond this flowing life, the scene on which you were standing leaves you.

This is a completely ethereal experience. While we, when we experience physically and sensually, come across the solid and sturdy with our senses and know exactly: what we experience with our senses is out there and we feel ourselves within the boundaries of our skin, the one who has passed through the gate of death experiences his existence and his connection to the world in such a way that he does not distinguish in such a strong way; he feels, so to speak, what he has as a tableau of life, as a piece of his self. Yes, this tableau of life is his world in the first instance. He surveys what he has lived through in a great panorama of life, as his immediate world, in which he is at first. In a sense, earthly existence fades away from him, and from this fading earthly existence he extracts what he has experienced since his birth within this earthly existence. This unfolds like a powerful, vivid panorama of images, not with a dull 'dream consciousness', but with a clear consciousness, in which not only images are seen, but in which everything that we have experienced in life in some other way is revived. Every single conversation we have had with people: we hear it again; everything we have experienced with people, everything we have exchanged with them in terms of feelings: we experience it again. The fact that everything is flooded with life makes possible that abundance of life which, compressed into a few days, gives a complete overview – which is actually always before us at the same time – of what we have gone through in a sometimes long life on earth. And we go through it in such a way that we then know: earlier, on earth, you went through it in such a way that experience followed experience. You had an experience and were in a context of life. It flowed by, remained partly in your memory, was partly forgotten. Then something new occurred, and so the stream of life was composed over the years. Now all of this is standing before the mind's eye at the same time, and now all of this is, one might say, in the self expanded into the world.

In these days after death, one does not distinguish between the world and the self, but both flow together, and the world is simply what one has experienced oneself. Otherwise, at first there is nothing but what one has experienced oneself, in which everything we have lived through with other people on earth is also included. And then we feel as if the external ethereal material, which initially appears to be the carrier of this world of images, were to leave us, and as if this world of images were no longer like one we have seen, but one that we have now completely connected with our own being, that now forms our innermost being. And by absorbing it, as it were, into ourselves, we are able to perceive and experience the rest of the spiritual world, to survey it with our consciousness.

Now, little by little, human souls appear in the rest of the spiritual world. These are either souls who have gone through the portal of death before us and are now there too, or human souls who are still in the physical body, in earthly existence. One sees these human souls from the spiritual world by seeing them in their spiritual-soul aspect. The physical is, of course, only perceptible to physical organs, but the spiritual-soul that lines the physical is then also in the person before our soul's eye, rising up. We feel much more intimately connected to all that is now being experienced by us than we could feel connected to when we were actually on earth, where there are separating barriers due to the physical body.

There is just one thing we must always bear in mind: we must choose our words carefully when we want to describe the spiritual, because the experience in the spiritual world is simply much more intimate than the experience here on the physical plane. When we visualize how a thought, which represents an experience long past, emerges from within us, reminding us of that experience, and when we now now, I might say, imagine the reality of such a shadowy memory experience, then we gradually get an idea of how spiritual reality actually appears to us after we have passed through the gate of death. As a rule, it does not approach us from outside like the experiences of the physical-sensory world. The imaginations come up as they are, only with infinitely greater vividness than the memory images, but in such a way that we do not distinguish our I and the imaginations as we distinguish ourselves from the outside world here. They arise from within us like memory images, but in such a way that we know: what arises on the horizon of our consciousness is reality. An image arises and we know that it is connected to us in the same way that a memory image is connected to us here on the physical plane. It arises with all its vitality. But we know that we are connected to it, our I is within it. In this way the soul arises, and we feel ourselves in union with the souls and soul beings of the higher hierarchies that gradually arise. The spiritual world comes to me, I would say, from the indefinite twilight darkness, approaching my own soul, like memories that arise in our soul. Only that the memories are very dim and depict only an external reality, while the imaginations that arise become speaking imaginations, announcing themselves essentially through their revealing language, which then becomes for us a revelation of the souls, of the spirits, with whom we continue to be in the most varied ways warmer, more intimate, than we can be with a person here on the physical plane.

One must now be particularly aware of the significance of the very first experience that a person undergoes when he passes through the gate of death. This looking back at the last life has a great, an enormous significance for the whole of the subsequent experience between death and a new birth, and we can realize this significance if we think about how we actually come to our sense of self in physical life on earth; not to our self, but to our sense of self. We know how we come to the I from our study of spiritual science: the spirits of form give us this I by advancing us from a moon-based existence to an earth-based existence. But this I is initially subconscious. It becomes conscious through being reflected in the physical body. How is it reflected here on the physical plane? Well, you know that even in the ordinary dream experience you can see it: The I only very rarely becomes clearly aware of itself in the dream experience; the I becomes blurred with the experiences, with the images of the dream that emerge. How do we experience I-consciousness during waking hours? Become aware of how this I-consciousness is actually connected to all external perceptions and all external experiences. When we move our hand through the air like this, we feel nothing. But in the moment when we push through the air, we feel something. But we actually feel our own experience, feel what we experience through our fingers. It is by touching the outside world that we become aware of our self. And in another sense, we actually become aware of our self when we wake up, in that we descend from the consciousness of sleep into our physical body, we collide with our physical body. In this collision with the physical body, the consciousness of self is actually summoned to the soul.

Let us be clear about the fact that the consciousness of self must not be confused with the I. The I initially remains in the subconscious, one could say, incomplete. Only during the volcanic period will man experience what the I really is. But the I acquires earthly consciousness by submerging with the astral body into the etheric body and colliding with the etheric body and physical body. And in this collision with the physical body, the ego becomes aware of itself: this is how the sense of self arises from the moment when the physical body is so hardened that this collision is strong enough, that is, from a certain point in early childhood, as far as we can remember.

Now the soul must also collide with something in the life between death and a new birth. Here in the physical life, it collides with the physical body, which is given from the physical forces and substances of the outer nature, in order to come to the I-consciousness. After death, between death and a new birth, the soul, in order to come to its now spiritual self-awareness, collides with its own life, which it has just seen in the days after passing through the gate of death and which it keeps looking back on. First, life presents itself in a way that allows us to see it, then it becomes a constant looking back. As spiritual beings, after we have passed through the gate of death and continue to live in the stream of time, looking back on what we have directly experienced in and with death, the soul, as it continues to progress, always encounters this panorama of life in retrospect, which one has had, but which now remains as a spiritual memory. And just as the I is ignited to its I-consciousness here through its collision with the physical body, so after death the I-consciousness is ignited by the look back at our own life, which encounters the last life on earth. As we look back on it, we experience this I-consciousness between death and a new birth. It is different, this sense of self after death, but it is by no means weaker.

What is this sense of self actually like here in the physical world? It is the case that here in the physical world, if we want to become aware of our self, we actually have to rely on it being shown to us through something else in our physical body. It appears to us, as it were, in the mirror of our physical body, this physical self of ours. We feel quite passive in the production of our self, at least if we do not happen to live according to a philosophy like that of Johann Gottlieb Fichte. By contrast, after we have passed through the gate of death, we feel constantly active. We give ourselves, as it were, our now much more intense consciousness again and again by looking back at our own life and connecting with the consciousness of the self: we want us, and always want us again, and we may want us, because we remain unlosable to ourselves by the indelible impression of what we have once lived through. I would like to use these words to express very clearly what is experienced in the consciousness between death and a new birth. And the consciousness between death and a new birth is very different from the consciousness here on the physical plane. Here on the physical plane, no one can actually look back on their own birth from their own experience in normal consciousness. Someone cannot observe their own birth in their own experience with normal consciousness; remembering only begins later. I have said this before: if people only want to rely on experience, on what they have experienced themselves in life, then actually no one can believe in their own birth; basically, they only experience their birth when they look back clairvoyantly. If someone says: I will not believe in the spiritual world until I have seen it myself; I do not want to believe what spiritual science tells me, I only believe what I have seen myself - then one can basically answer: And your own birth? It seems as if you do believe that this has taken place? But you cannot have any experience of it. — This shows how even something quite significant for human life is only conscious of a conclusion for normal consciousness. We only ever assume for normal consciousness that we are born by concluding: we look just like the people we have already observed being born, so we must also be born. — But it is only based on a conclusion.

The situation is quite different in the time between death and a new birth. Just as little as one can look back in normal consciousness to one's own birth, so much one always looks with this remembered panorama of life to the moment of one's death. And just as birth fades away for earthly consciousness, so too does the event of death always stand in retrospective consciousness before the soul life between death and a new birth, but now viewed from the other side. Here on the physical plane, man sees the experience of death only from one side. There are many gruesome aspects to it. But one should not conclude from this that it is now terrible for the one who lives on to have to look back forever at the experience of death. Seen from there, this is the most beautiful, greatest, most significant experience that a human soul can ever have, because it always shows in a radiant way how the spirit conquers material existence. This continuous review of the experience of death has an invigorating, uplifting and elevating effect on all consciousness. It is mainly through this experience of death that the soul says to itself: I live here in the spiritual world, with the spiritual world. The fact that the soul has the strength to say this makes this experience of death of immense importance for the life that begins after death.

I said: Man feels how his body and everything that was on earth leaves him, and he feels how he must now balance his consciousness through inner activity, how he must achieve something for his consciousness that he used to receive through the instrument of the body. I can live consciously without the body within me: the possibility of grasping this thought produces a much stronger consciousness than one can have within earthly life. And this is the lesson that death teaches us: that one can feel that the body is leaving, but that now begins a time when you are no longer dependent on your body to feel yourself as an ego, now begins a time when you, so to speak, pour the spiritual forces into your soul-shell yourself, so that you continually call yourself to consciousness. By recognizing how this calling-oneself-to-consciousness can be there when one's body is snatched away, one has the life impression of the inner creation of existence. This begins with death, where one must begin to experience oneself as an ego without the body. This is the starting point for continuing to feel oneself as an ego without the body by looking back at the experience of death. When the spiritual researcher's gaze, by bringing the spiritual world to life within him, causes souls that have passed through the gateway of death to emerge in the imaginations on the field of consciousness within, one learns to recognize how the dead experience. One learns to recognize differences that arise. Of course, one can only describe individual cases. Let us consider one such difference.

One learns to recognize how human souls appear at the scene of the soul's observation after death. These human souls are of two kinds: those human souls that have already entered the spiritual world before our death, which we therefore find inside as disembodied souls, and those souls that are still embodied in the body on earth. We are also able to experience those that are still on earth in the same way. As the scene of earthly existence disappears from us, we are left with the possibility of still knowing ourselves connected to what was spiritual. Only the physical disappears from us, our soul expands, unites with the vast universe, and precisely because of this, the possibility is given to know and experience that we are still connected to the soul even as the physical, as it were, rushes away from us.

But there is now a difference between the experience of one kind of soul and the other kind of soul. When we experience a human soul in the spiritual world, then of course we do not experience it in such a way – it hardly needs saying, but those who have not yet understood anything about looking in the spiritual world believe that – that one confronts it as one confronts an external being; but one experiences it in such a way that one feels the being emerging in consciousness. And now, when we encounter a soul that has already been disembodied, that has already passed through the gate of death, we have the inner experience of its presence. This is where the impression begins. We know: there is a soul. But we must, as it were, live ourselves into it, feel into it. We must receive the imagination of it in such a way that we feel ourselves participating in the creation of the imagination.

It is really the case that one would like to describe the matter in the following way: One feels oneself in the spiritual world. The awareness arises: You are not alone now, a soul is approaching you. — Now it is as if, in the physical world, one carries a thought invisibly in one's soul. But one wants to make it visible. So one takes a piece of chalk and draws the thought, makes a picture of it. That is really how it is at first with experiences in the spiritual world. One knows that a real spiritual being is present. In order to see the soul, one must first come into contact with it in such a way that one draws it, as it were, into the spiritual realm as an image. And that is what one does, but one is aware of being active in creating the imagination. And when, through the music of the spheres, it wants to speak its essence to our essence, as the human being here announces his soul to us in the physical world through his speech, when it lets the music of the spheres resound from within, then one also feels that one cannot remain passive. If you hear someone speaking and you don't want to think about it, you don't have to understand it. You have to participate if you want to understand. So you have to participate everywhere here too. You live together so actively, you know that you have to co-create every piece of the manifestation of the essence of a soul that you can have before you as a manifestation. You create the manifestation, not the essence. There will also be times when you do not feel so intensely active that you know: now there is a human soul. But this soul impels us, without our participating as intensely as in the case just described, to imagination. Imagination arises more by itself before us. Then we are confronted with a soul that is still embodied on earth. And as the human being has passed through the gate of death and gradually lives on in the spiritual world, he gets to know the differences between souls, through the way he relates to the souls that he meets in the spiritual world and those that he imagines on earth.

This is one of the differences in how experiences take place in the spiritual world, as they are directly experienced. And so it is also necessary to distinguish between experiences, inner experiences, whether one is experiencing human souls or the souls of the beings of the higher hierarchies. Please consider what I have described as an experience of human souls. I said: One experiences human souls either in such a way that one creates or recreates the imaginations, or by creating them more or less by oneself. But then the experience can also be like this: One knows that a being is there. This being must also be present as an imagination, it must also be present in the experience if we really want to be with it. But we will not be able to produce the imagination directly in the same way as in the cases just described, where it even builds itself up by itself. We must, by having the experience that a being is there, develop something else in us. We must develop the feeling in us: we create this being in us. We give our powers so that the powers of this being may stream into us. While we feel ourselves as creating in our imagination with the human soul, we feel that with the beings of the higher hierarchies, the angeloi and the archangeloi, these beings create the imagination in us. And so we gradually live ourselves into this co-experience of the spiritual world.

We also know that in the concrete sense this co-experience happens in such a way that through a long series of years – we have already considered its length in relation to the last life on earth – life is experienced backwards again. First we have a few days of the panorama of life, then we begin to experience life on earth in reverse, but in a different way than we experienced it here between birth and death. We experience the last one first, then we experience what we experienced before that, and so back in our mind to birth. We experience it by looking at our life, but now from the other side. I can say that we look at it from the side of the effects. Let's assume something rough, I have said to a person at some time in my life: 'You are a base person', or I have hurt him in some way. Then I have experienced something during my life. What I have experienced is different from what he has experienced. He had experienced the hurt feeling, the insult, the pain, the suffering. Now, in the afterlife in the spiritual world, one experiences the effects of what one has done. The suffering that the other person experienced when we insulted him, we experience this suffering, this pain, in ourselves. We experience the effects of our actions in the other being by living back in this way. We get a certain insight into this experience after death when we focus on something that can reveal itself to the spiritual researcher as a connection between this experience after death and the experience here in the physical world.

What I am going to discuss now is something that can really make us aware of how the spiritual researcher gradually comes to his results, and how it is a prejudice to think that someone who has crossed the threshold to the spiritual world now knows the spiritual world from his own point of view, and that we can ask him anything. We must experience it again and again when the spiritual researcher talks about this and that, especially in public, and one - as it may seem desirable from certain points of view - gives a question-and-answer session on all things in heaven and on earth and the whole of infinity, by assuming that anyone who looks into the spiritual world already knows everything that can be known there. That is about as clever as if someone here would say: You have eyes, you know Munich, so describe California to me! — It is really the case in the spiritual world that one must acquire step by step what is to be understood from the spiritual world, and it is naive to believe that everything there does not have to be looked at step by step first. Now, the spiritual world is still different from here in the physical world. Here in the physical world, if you, I mean, have never been to Heidelberg and now want to describe Heidelberg, you go there, don't you, you set yourself in motion. In the spiritual world, things have to come to us, and we have to develop the power of waiting, the inner power of experience, in our souls. Things enter our field of vision when we have made ourselves capable of perceiving them. The Heidelberg of the spiritual world must come to us, we must prepare our soul for it. It is always in a sense dependent on the grace with which we are endowed, whether we can learn something about this or that in the spiritual world. In this way, the spiritual researcher can gradually be taught about the secrets of the spiritual world.

Now I would like to discuss a spiritual research result from a certain point of view today that I have not yet discussed here from this point of view. When, after developing certain inner, that is, spiritual powers of observation, one observes the soul experience of the human being between falling asleep and waking up in the spiritual world, when one observes the sleeping person as a soul, as he is outside of his physical body – one gets to know many things, but one must learn to look from a certain point of view if one wants to grasp something – then one notices that in sleep a person is actually constantly active in his soul, much more active than during waking hours. While awake, a person makes use of the activity that his body develops, and this is what he places himself in as a soul, this is what he lives in. In sleep, on the other hand, he lives in his own activity. And if you follow this, you will find that in sleep, man relives in a different way what he has experienced in the physical world from waking to falling asleep. Let us assume that I have done something, have read this or that: in my sleep I relive the whole reading, I go through everything again. We just don't have this kind of consciousness in our normal waking life yet, so that it also becomes I-conscious, but that is why it still takes place in the soul, only vaguely, but it is the soul that actually now actively processes what it has experienced during the day. The thoughts are transformed in such a way that they can bear fruit in the soul. We process as fruits of life what we have worked for during the day. During sleep, we always actively incorporate the fruits of life, the results of our life.

Then the spiritual researcher can make a discovery. When he compares this sleep experience that the person has here with the experiences that the person has in the years or decades after he has passed through the gate of death and thus walks through his life backwards, it is interesting that the person walks through his life in such a way that he actually lives through the nights, not the days. As he looked back on the day every night, he now experiences it in the world of the soul. It is the same thing that one experienced in the waking consciousness, but seen from sleep. We experience this in such a way that it is very strange. Most of the time, one does not think about it, but actually, in the physical life, our memory only extends to the experiences of the day. We remember what we have in our waking consciousness. Now, after death, we remember what we have relived during the nights, what we have gone through in our earthly life. Then the conscious memory of the night experiences occurs. I did not express this so clearly earlier, simply because I did not know it. Such things arise in a successive spiritual research.

But one thing comes to light that is important, important for the consciousness that we are to create in our collective work in the branches. I have previously – you can read about it – pointed out from a different point of view the fact that the life in the soul is about a third of the time one has lived through between birth and death. Reasons for this are given in the books. But these reasons are given from a different point of view than the one I am giving now. One lives through the nights of life. How long does one actually sleep normally? One sleeps through a third of one's life. It is approximately true that one sleeps a third of one's life. Now, by passing through the nights after death, a third of earthly life lasts. This is connected with passing through the nights. It is tremendously interesting and important. Because the previous statement was based on completely different reasons. I have recorded this again, for example in 'Occult Science in Outline': after death, reliving the same thing again takes a third of earthly life, the Kamaloka life. Now, from a completely different point of view, which was not thought of at all before, it turns out again: this Kamalokaleben is one third of earthly life - from the point of view that one lives through the nights. You see, these are the kinds of things that, when they occur again and again, are so tremendously supportive and strengthening as proving forces for what spiritual science can give to man. One searches for a truth from a certain starting point and arrives at the conclusion that the Kamaloka life lasts for a third of the earth-lives. Then one arrives at the same result from quite a different point of view. These results support each other. We come across this again and again and it gives precisely that certainty which is also given to him who cannot yet do research himself. I have often called attention to this harmony. By following in detail how things are found in the life of the branch, we gradually gain inner certainty and conviction, even though we still have a long way to go in making our own experiences and gaining our own experiences on our own path of knowledge.

And now, in conclusion, I would like to share with you a truth that is of particular interest for our time, although it can always interest people. In my public lecture, I already spoke from one point of view about the death that occurs when a person in the prime of life is hit by a bullet, for example, and his physical body is effectively taken away from him. As I said, I have shown what becomes of these unused forces. I have already shown this from various points of view. Today I would like to point out this experience of death from yet another point of view.

How does someone enter the spiritual world who has not lost his physical body through illness or old age, but who has lost his body violently through a bullet or other injury? I have discussed what remains of his unused powers. But how he enters the spiritual world himself, that becomes a mystery. Especially in a time like ours, when so many souls enter the spiritual world through the gate of death. Their body has been taken from them by an external influence. In the spiritual world they differ greatly from the souls whose bodies have been taken away through illness or old age. In order to explain and understand such things, one must be able to place the right thing next to the right thing in the spiritual world. One must now be able to ask: how must one combine the phenomenon that is becoming a mystery in order to solve it? And here it becomes evident that this phenomenon must be put together with something that is experienced in the physical world. Now, let us characterize the experience here in the physical world in such a way that we first look at the coarsely materialistic-minded spirits who want to accept nothing but what can be grasped in a rough way through sense experience, which, because it makes a rough impression, is designated as being. But there is something else in this world that makes this life valuable, and that something else is ideals. Of course, the most crude materialists will say: you cannot eat ideals, they have no proper being, they are mere thoughts. But those people who bring ideals into their lives are actually working for the right fertilization, elevation and enlivenment of earthly existence. That which is not in a purely materialistic sense must be brought into the course of earthly existence in order to make this life valuable. Idealists are those who, in a certain sense, are messengers from divine worlds for earthly existence. For ideals are something like messages from divine worlds, something that belongs to the physical world but does not come from it. You cannot observe ideals, nor can you experiment on ideals to demonstrate them through experience. Yet ideals are like messages from a spiritual world.

When the human soul, from whom the body has been taken, for example, by a bullet in the prime of life, passes through the gate of death into the spiritual world, it not only leaves unused powers that are used in the way I have already indicated, but it also brings a very specific consciousness into the spiritual worlds. Such a soul enters the spiritual world through the gate of death differently than other souls who were able to complete their lives or whose body was taken from them by an illness. These souls enter the spiritual world bringing with them the thought of something that could have been down there in the physical world, namely their own life from the point at which they sacrificed themselves. As far as the abilities are concerned, what could have been, was already destined for the physical world, could have been its natural life for the next few years. There would have been the possibility that, say, two years after the death the body would have existed as a physical body in front of others. Now it does not exist. There could have been something in the physical world that is now not there. This is taken up by the soul, from whom the body has been taken away, into the spiritual world.

Now it is just as necessary for the spiritual world to be able to proclaim that something exists up there as for something to exist down there in the world that has the potential of this coarse existence, but which does not live out as a coarse material existence. This proclamation is something similar for the spiritual worlds as the proclamation of ideals is for the physical world. These are the reverse idealists. Here below, life can take such a course that inclinations do not live out, that souls return from the physical world that have found violent death. This makes a proclamation up there among those who have not experienced this, which means the same as the proclamation of ideals here. Here in the physical existence one proclaims: Not only is valuable that which makes an impression on the senses, but also valuable are the ideals that come from the spiritual world. In the spiritual world, those who have been deprived of their bodies proclaim that there is an effective force that, although intended for the sensual world, does not enter into this sensual world, but enters the world in a different way, and that it animates the spiritual world just as ideals animate the sensual world. This is a very significant result of spiritual research, and it indicates to us that sacrificial deaths also have a significance for the spiritual world, not only the significance that I explained yesterday for the physical world, but also for the spiritual world. Among the souls of the spiritual world, there are those who look to the ordinary course of life, but there are also those who have learned that inclinations can be cut off with a single blow. And they are, so to speak, the reverse idealists for the spiritual world.

And so, little by little, the phenomena of life reveal themselves, the riddles of existence, and one really gains the impression, especially in such times as ours, when so much that is mysterious can be sensed in blood and suffering, of how spiritual science can first place man in the whole of full life. Humanity is progressing. Natural science as it exists today did not exist in the past; it has emerged out of the dim darkness of soul striving. In the same way, spiritual science must come into being. In the future, man will not be able to do without it. Today it still has many opponents, but man will feel more and more the riddles of existence and thereby more and more the necessity of approaching the riddles of existence in a spiritual-scientific way. This must arise again and again in our souls as the thought that holds us together with our spiritual movement, that points out to us, as it were, how we seek within our spiritual movement something that must spread more and more in humanity, and that we must persevere through all the opposition that still exists in our present time in a very natural way.

I would like to emphasize this in our time, especially in view of today's reflection, as the seriousness of our time should remind us in these days to do everything we can, out of our strength, to truly incorporate spiritual science into the development of humanity, as far as it is up to us. And I would like to focus this admonition to the effect that we must now make this thought all the more alive in us, because the circumstances of the times can really lead to our not being able to be together as often as in normal times. And so let me address this admonition to our souls, that we work all the more faithfully and devotedly in our individual branches in these times of war, even if the collaboration between you and me, for example, may now be less frequent until we return to normal times, because traveling around the world is now much more difficult than usual, and it may be that we have to learn right now to rely on ourselves and work independently in the individual branches. What we can do in this direction will bear real fruit for that spiritual striving in our minds that must flow into the evolution of humanity. For it must be pointed out again and again that The great sacrifices that so many people have to make in the present, and which are so intimately connected with what death, as a mystery and as pain, hides in the development of mankind, these events can only have a proper relationship to our soul life if we can look at them from the point of view of spiritual science, in the context of the history of mankind.

It is not my intention to go into all kinds of inhibiting and hindering things, which may already have reached your ears in the last few days because they had to be discussed somewhere. But these things have shown how necessary it is that we allow ourselves to be taken up quite objectively by the fruitfulness and necessity of the spiritual-scientific movement, and that we can separate from it that which arises as our personal wishes and desires and will always stand in the way of the right course of our spiritual-scientific work as an obstacle and hindrance. Spiritual science is so rich in content that it can occupy us entirely objectively. Let us try to remind ourselves often how easy it is for personal, ambitious or vain striving to mix with what we should actually take hold of and allow ourselves to be taken hold of by as a spiritual life pulsating through the world.

Some events that have taken place within our society have already suggested to our souls: Oh, there is blood flowing out there, a large part of humanity is struggling for things whose significance cannot yet be measured, and there is a spiritual movement that could truly stimulate interest in purely objective terms, in which one does not need to focus on what is only personal, but there is so much of the personal in it, and at such a time when the soul must feel obliged to live together with the great events. That is also a source of pain, what was possible in terms of mixing the personal with what should be impersonal.

Now, again and again, and especially today, we should look from our isolated lives at what all of European humanity and humanity beyond is experiencing, and say to ourselves: the right fruits, the hard-won ones, will only arise in the future if what spiritual science wants to incorporate into the development of humanity is added to humanity. When what can be achieved in thought through spiritual science unites with the fruits of blood and pain, of suffering and deprivation, which will live on for the future, then one day a spiritual life, a human life, will flourish in the fields that today claim so many victims, a life worthy of these victims. Looking at this, we want to conclude with the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the people's sacrificial deeds
Will grow spiritual fruit —
Guiding souls, spiritually aware
Their minds into the spiritual realm.

May many such souls arise within our ranks, directing their minds to the spiritual realm, then the fruits and blossoms that arise from their efforts will truly be able to become not only a personal blessing but also a blessing for all mankind. In this spirit, whatever life may bring, we want to continue to work together on our cause with great intensity!

Today I would like to take a starting point that can lead us to an understanding of many things that surround us in the present time and that we face with questions. Our time demands to be understood in such a way that man places himself in it with a deeper, a spiritual understanding. On the other hand, however, there is a deep-seated aversion in the broadest circles to a spiritual understanding of human affairs; indeed, there is such an aversion that the attempt at spiritual understanding, the attempt to understand such impulses, which are capable of supporting human actions in our difficult times, is rejected from the outset as something fantastic, something impossible, something childish. Nevertheless, these reflections, which we are able to cultivate here together, should be devoted to what, though it does not speak directly of the circumstances of the time – as is easily understandable – cannot, as is well known, lead to some understanding for those who make an effort to arrive at such an understanding from truly deeper starting points.

In order to understand an age in which the deepest human forces are, as it were, being stirred up, in which the deepest human forces are at work, even if quite unconsciously for most people, it is necessary not just to talk about all kinds of ideals and all kinds of things, but to seek understanding from a broader view of human development in general. We have always tried to arrive at such a larger view of the development of mankind in our spiritual scientific considerations, and much has already been done in this respect. Today I would like to present some of it from a slightly different point of view.

We know that within the development of mankind there has been what we call the passage through the great Atlantic catastrophe. We know that what is now alive as humanity can be traced back to certain developmental states that took place before that Atlantic catastrophe, and that after this Atlantic catastrophe we can record the first post-Atlantic cultural period, which I usually call the ancient Indian, the second, which I usually call the old Persian, the third the Assyrian-Babylonian-Egyptian, the fourth the Greco-Roman; and in the fifth we live and have to look at how the fifth is to be replaced by a sixth.

Now, the fact of the matter is that, as inwardly, as spiritually, I might almost say, as humanly, as the development within humanity is now taking place, it could only have taken place after the Atlantic catastrophe. People today, who are generally reluctant to look at things in context, think: a person is a person, and the way in which the souls of people develop today is the way they have been since people have existed; and if we go back from what is regarded as humanity today, we do indeed arrive at primitive conditions, but then down to animality. This material interpretation of the history of development cannot, of course, stand up to spiritual scrutiny; for precisely when we go back and go further and further back in the development of humanity, we find that the basic impulses, the basic forces on which development is based, become ever more spiritual and ever more spiritual, although, if we want to understand the matter properly, we must first come to a proper understanding of the spiritual.

For our post-Atlantean time, the fourth period is above all a significant one, the most significant for the meaning of the whole evolution of the earth: it is the period in which the Mystery of Golgotha plays a role. And this calls upon us to understand the time before as a kind of preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, and the time after as a kind of fulfillment of what came as an impulse through the Mystery of Golgotha. But if we go back in Atlantean evolution, we find that the fifth period within Atlantean evolution is the most important for this time between the Lemurian evolution and our own, because in this fifth period of Atlantean development within the Atlantean human life took place that was extraordinarily significant and incisive, because at that time, so to speak, the starting point was taken of something that we can call the more soulful development of the post-Atlantean time. If we go back to Atlantean times, we do not find the animalistic humanity that materialistic Darwinism so readily speaks of; we find a humanity that certainly had a life that was much duller than that of the post-Atlantean humanity , and when one speaks of the dullness of the soul life, one would indeed like to say — but the comparison remains a very external one — that this duller dream-like soul life of the Atlantean period resembles the dream-like soul life of the present higher animals. But this comparison, if made, would be a very inadequate one, because the present-day animals, in their dull, dream-like consciousness, do not experience what the Atlanteans experienced in their dream-like, dull consciousness almost up to the end of the fifth period.

What then is the most essential characteristic of this dream-like consciousness of the ancient Atlanteans? The most essential characteristic is that the people who lived at that time — forgive me if what I say seems materialistic; but you can only recognize the materialistic if you have mastered it, if you know about the impulses of the spiritual — lived in such a way that their nutritional and eating lives were very closely related to their spiritual lives. Of course, you may object: Well, there is already a sufficiently close relationship between the soul life of some people in the present and what they eat! — That is all true, we know that a large part of present-day humanity does not underestimate food at all. Nor does it need to be characterized as a reproach in itself. But there is a great difference between the inner experience of tasting a dish, the feeling of well-being that a modern person feels when they associate the dish with themselves physically, and the inner experience of Atlantean humanity in the time of which I am now speaking. The Atlantean ate, he ate this or that food; he thus took these or those substances into his body, and by connecting them with his physical existence, an awareness arose in his consciousness of which elemental spirits this substance is imbued with. He did not gulp down the food as the present-day man does, with a great lack of consciousness, but was aware of the elemental spiritualities he was uniting with himself by connecting the food with his bodily existence. Metabolism was then at the same time a change of mind, a change of elemental spirits.

It was the case that one could describe the substances as carriers of these or those elemental spiritual impulses or even entities, that one felt that spiritual forces entered one with the food, and that one felt that, by digesting, spiritual impulses were at work within one. Such a person did not just sit and digest like a present-day human being, but felt physically permeated by these or those elemental spirits, so that a materialism, as it prevails today, was actually not possible at that time. One could not say that one believed only in the mortality of existence, because one ate the spiritual impulses, they permeated one while one digested. To be an anti-materialist, one needed only to eat. And the descent into the dullness of the unconscious is essentially an achievement of this fifth Atlantean period. Eating and digesting became, so to speak, less spiritual; but something still remained in the sixth Atlantean period that was even more spiritual: that was breathing.

When a person breathes in or out today, they are aware that they are breathing in or out air; at least that is what the chemist tells them. In those days, however, it was not just in consciousness, but it was clear to man - this lasted for the whole of the sixth Atlantean period - that with the inhaled air he took in elemental spiritual forces, and with the exhaled air he breathed out elemental spiritual forces. From the very beginning, breathing was seen as a spiritual-soul process, not just as a physical-bodily process. And in the last Atlantean period, something that had remained until then, which later actually only lived in memory, then diminished: By hearing tones and seeing colors, one realized that spiritual life was in the tone one heard and in the color one saw, that spiritual forces penetrated the eye when one saw colors and spiritual forces penetrated the inner being when one “heard tones.” These things were all present in the dim consciousness of that time. People have conquered a brighter consciousness, but at the expense of their spiritual consciousness they have had to give up the spirituality of their interaction with the external world. Every epoch has its own special peculiarity. Just as the individual human being goes through different ages and these ages are different in terms of physical and mental constitution, so too does the whole of human development go through different states, and the later developmental states are different from the earlier ones. It would be foolish for a man between fifty and sixty years of age to believe that the nature of his physical and spiritual existence should recall his existence between the ages of ten and twenty, just as it would be foolish not to distinguish between the different ages of life in their qualities. It is foolish to believe that what is appropriate in a later period of life development was also so in an earlier one. Things never return, and they are more different in successive ages than one might think.

I have now made it a point to learn something about the ages of people in the post-Atlantic period. Those who proceed only from analogies can indeed look at the development of humanity and say: just as the individual human being goes through childhood, youth, manhood, old age, so will humanity. But if one goes into real observation, into the real facts of the situation, this is not true. You simply cannot use these analogies as a basis, and only if you are serious about spiritual research will you find what is actually at the root of it. And then it became clear to me that something quite different is at the root of it than what one might describe by saying that, like the individual human being, humanity also goes through youth, manhood and old age. — That is not correct. It has become clear to me that in the first post-Atlantean cultural period, the primeval Indian one, humanity did indeed live to a certain age, but one that cannot be compared to youth, but rather to the individual human age from fifty-six to forty-nine. So if you want to compare the age of yore for all of humanity with the age of the individual, you have to compare it not with the youth period, but with this more mature age. Then comes the primeval Persian cultural period. As humanity continues to develop, it passes through an age that, if you want to compare it with an age of the individual, corresponds to the age from forty-nine to forty-two. Man grows older, humanity grows younger. The Egyptian period must be compared with the age between thirty-five and forty-two in the individual. The Greco-Roman period can be compared to the age of the individual between thirty-five and twenty-eight years of age, and the present fifth post-Atlantic cultural period can be compared to the age of the human being from twenty-eight to twenty-one years. And if we ask: How old is present humanity? — we must answer: It has an age of about twenty-seven years. And only then can one understand everything that has taken place within humanity when one allows this remarkable secret of development to enter one's soul. For that is really how it is.

This, however, has very definite consequences and effects on the way people experience life. What does it mean: In the first post-Atlantic cultural period, all of humanity was between the ages of fifty-six and forty-nine? It means that the individual human being, of course, went through the fact that he first became one, two, three years old; but the fundamental aspect of humanity, in which the individual lived, which encompassed all of humanity, presented something that the individual human being first experienced between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six. That is why so much of the original, elementary knowledge of humanity comes to light during this time, which we can admire because all of humanity was so old and because one grew into such an old humanity. As a young badger of twenty-five, one took in the human aura that which was full of wisdom as if it came from an older person. The wisdom was poured out over all of humanity. One also took in morally in this way, appreciating that into which one grew, as in the human aura, just as one appreciates a gray head because it has turned gray. And so a feeling of devotion and reverence was poured out over human cultural life that was taken for granted. It had the further consequence that one only outgrew what was common property of humanity with one's individual development after one had reached the age of fifty-six. Only then could one speak of one's own development; only then could one individually stand out from the background of what flowed to one from outside. However, at that time many people did not get to undergo an inner development corresponding to the period of life between the forty-ninth and fifty-sixth year of life. Then they were seen as children, and they also felt like children, sensing the spiritual content of the age of humanity around them.

The next period, the ancient Persian period, no longer brought the same high revelations and cultural impulses as those brought to humanity by the wise fathers in the first post-Atlantic period through their contact with spiritual beings. The whole of humanity showed only that maturity which can be compared to the individual human age between the forty-ninth and forty-second year of life. And if one wanted to, so to speak, grow beyond the general human aura individually, one could only do so at the age of forty-nine. But through individual development one grew into a maturity that could only occur at the age of forty-nine.

And so it was again in the Chaldean-Egyptian time. The aura into which one grew can be compared with the age of the individual human being between the forty-second and thirty-fifth year of life; in the Greek-Latin time with the age between the thirty-fifth and twenty-eighth year. That is the remarkable thing about this Greco-Latin period, that the individual middle age of man coincides with the middle age of general humanity, except that humanity runs down in the general stream, but man ascends. Hence the peculiar harmony of Greek culture, of which present humanity has so little conception. But when a Greek was thirty-five years old, he remained, so to speak, an average human being, always remaining thirty-five years old, if he did not develop something individual in himself that went beyond the general aura of humanity. In older times, care was taken to ensure that the individual could develop upwards.

Now we are living in the fifth post-Atlantic age. In this fifth post-Atlantic age, humanity will undergo an age comparable to the individual age between twenty-eight and twenty-one years. This means that a person who simply surrenders to the stream of existence, to that which simply enters into the soul life by being human, will not get older than twenty-eight years. If he does not ensure, through spiritual development, that he advances his soul individually, he will always remain twenty-eight years old, or rather, he will not get over twenty-seven years. Mankind in general cannot give us more than it brings us up to the age of twenty-seven. If we do not seek in our time a kindling and encouragement of the individual soul forces that carry us across the stream of general human existence, we will never be older than twenty-seven, even if we live to be a hundred years old. And whether we are manual laborers or professors, or whatever: if we do not seek a spiritual development that gives the soul concepts that outer humanity cannot give it, we will always remain twenty-seven years old. Of course, outwardly we grow older, of course; time cannot be stopped; but without its own development our soul attains no more than a maturity of twenty-seven years. One really does not understand our time unless one bears in mind this peculiarity, which has just been described. Over the years, I have really asked myself many characteristic questions of our time, questions about life, the development of culture, the plight of humanity, about what makes present-day humanity happy and what it suffers from: the key to understanding our time will only be given when we face the fact that I have just discussed. We cannot penetrate what our time lacks if we do not face this fact.

We are experiencing philosophies that amaze us because they get stuck in general declamations and show not the slightest ability to delve into concrete realities. Where does this come from? I have posed this question to a single personality. I found that the standard-bearer of Eucken's philosophy is a man who has all the fire of someone who cannot be older than twenty-seven years old. Of course, he continues to talk – because he has already reached a considerable age today – he speaks in a somewhat hoarse voice, moves with different gestures, and is still learning. But that doesn't mean anything; the whole manner is no older than twenty-seven years old. This twenty-seven-year-old manner is carried through the whole of life. This becomes particularly noticeable when people are supposed to introduce ideas into life, when they are supposed to cultivate ideas by which life is dominated.

Now we are entering somewhat dangerous territory; but let us proceed by seeking examples as far as possible. I have posed the question to myself as to how it is with various personalities of the present day who have the task of developing ideas that intervene in present life, so that the events of the time are to be dominated by these ideas. There is now a characteristic personality. I have taken great pains not to go wrong in this area, but it is of no use if one does not get to the bottom of things in their concrete manifestations. If you look for a personality that is such that it can never be older than twenty-seven years, can never have more mature ideas than a person of twenty-seven years, you will find it, strangely enough, as a particularly characteristic personality, for example, in the President of the United States of America. If you study the various programs he has developed, they bear the stamp of a person who cannot grow older than twenty-seven, because this soul has never absorbed anything that was not brought to souls from the outside. Of course, a person can be more or less talented. —Talent may be conceded to such a person — but the ideas he develops are twenty-seven years old in terms of the maturity of their outlook, their penetrating power and the practicality of their view of life, and will not get any older, even if the man lives to be a hundred years old, if he does not begin to deepen spiritually and to supply the soul with firepower from within.

We live in such an age today that we have to supply what goes beyond the twenty-seventh year from within the souls. In the twenty-seventh year, people are not yet practical in life; however much they think they are, they are not practical in life. That is why Wilson's various ideas are so impractical and erratic, and why they are so popular in the widest circles. They are met with the same enthusiasm with which youthful ideas are met, youthful ideas that result in all sorts of declamations about the freedom of nations and the like. That's all very well! But that is not how you rule the world today, which demands that ideas be forceful, that you make a grand declamation about peace and then unleash war all the more!

One would really like to evoke a sense of what ideas that have an impact on reality are, ideas that have clout, that can grow together with reality. Ideas that are mere declamations, beautiful ideas are indeed much uttered; young ideas in particular are beautiful. But we need ideas that connect people with reality. What wonderful idea it is when someone today stands up and says: the world must receive a new orientation! — Of this, the word itself has so far proved to be the most beautiful! That is the only beautiful thing: the word itself, because if you stand up and talk about it, it is certainly very beautiful. It is also very beautiful to say: the most capable must be placed in the right place. Wonderful ideas! But what if the nephew or son-in-law is the most capable? The beautiful idea does nothing at all, but the real knowledge of reality, the ability for what is real, what is really is.

This is one of the aspects involved when one wants to understand in a deeper sense what the culture of the present time is like. This peculiarity of the time makes it clear how necessary it is for people today to deepen their souls, to seek to attain through individual development for their later individual age that which general humanity no longer provides. Of course, it is easier to speak in a Euckenian way of the renewal of life, the grasping of the powers of life within, of all kinds of things that can be used to rise up in a beautifully youthful way, but which are suitable for nothing more than declamations. And if you make political programs with such ideas as Wilson, then that is of incalculable consequences! It is of course easier than in serious research, in serious deepening to seek out reality and to penetrate into the deeper impulses of life.

If our spiritual scientific movement is to have a truly deep meaning, then above all it must contain the will to penetrate into the concrete developmental impulses of humanity. It must be there to grasp these great interrelationships of life, because otherwise everything remains mere theory within our spiritual science as well. And mere theory is worth nothing, no matter how much one wants to associate feelings of self-importance with it. Only that which is able to be absorbed into life, which captures life, is truly valuable. All kinds of mysticism, where people strive to find this or that within themselves, can indeed produce very beautiful results, but we must be able to look beyond ourselves and at the great tasks of humanity, in order to understand, above all, what is needed, what one must actually understand, what one should understand. Otherwise, we will simply ignore the most important things in spiritual science. And over the years, since we have had our anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, important things in spiritual science have actually been ignored on a large scale.

If our dear friends would just remember what answer I have always given for many years when I have been asked how it is with reincarnation, since humanity is always increasing, if the friends would like to remember how the stereotypical typical answer has been given: It could be that people will very soon learn what decimation of humanity could take place, especially in Europe – then you will realize what was meant when you look back now and when you remember the tone in which this answer was given. When speaking of the increase of population, it was always said: There could very soon come a time when there could also be a decrease in population, and in a painful way! — In the field of spiritual science, it is really not a matter of accommodating the light-hearted needs of some people with theories, but of also answering the questions posed by the impulses of the time. And in accepting spiritual science, it is much more a matter of taking the weight of what is to be said and closing it in one's heart, than of satisfying curiosity, however high it may appear to be.

This, my dear friends, I wanted to share with you first as the first part of the reflections, which, if given due consideration, should lead to an understanding of our time, and which we want to cultivate more deeply in these days.

Since the time allotted to general reflections has expired, I may perhaps, without anyone being able to reproach me for cutting something off from the actual anthroposophical content, move on to something that must be hinted at with a few words. But I cannot proceed without also mentioning some souls who have passed from the physical plane into the spiritual life, who were close to some of those sitting here today. It is not possible to mention all of them by name. Our dear friends are well aware of the sincerity of our feelings towards all those who have passed from the physical to the spiritual plane. However, I cannot help but mention the name of one man in particular, who, after many obstacles, finally found such a beautiful and intimate union with spiritual science, oriented as it is towards anthroposophy, and who, especially in recent times, has done quite a significant and meaningful work for the external representation of this spiritual science. I am referring to our dear friend Ludwig Deinhard, at whose handover of the physical body to the physical elements and the passing away of the soul into the spiritual world our dear friend Sellin spoke such beautiful words. He was all the more to be esteemed because he did not come to our movement out of blind faith or blind allegiance, but rather after much resistance, and in the last, increasingly difficult times, he had unreservedly spared nothing to stand up for this spiritual movement with all his soul before the broader public. I am not afraid to say explicitly that I consider the way in which Ludwig Deinhard stood up for this movement in front of the general public to be one of the most valuable things.

Then I would also like to mention Professor Sachs, who passed away a few days ago, who pursued a great idea his whole life, a great idea in the field of music technology, and who always knew how to combine the modest work that an individual can be harnessed to with overarching ideas, and with whom it was truly uplifting to speak, because what he wanted as a person always led to great artistic will. We can count ourselves lucky to have such people at the center of our movement.

After these uplifting perspectives, I am obliged once again to cultivate some less uplifting perspectives, because what has happened forces me to take drastic measures in a certain respect, insofar as my part in the spiritual scientific movement, which is to be cultivated by the Anthroposophical Society, is concerned. Over time, something that should be a great blessing in the present cultural development, the anthroposophical movement, has, through many of its manifestations, more or less developed into a kind of obstacle for what I mean by the spiritual-scientific movement. And it is of no use to deceive ourselves about these things, especially when there is a danger that various things connected with the Anthroposophical Society could become obstacles, precisely for anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Therefore, since we have worked together for many years, such things may be discussed without reservation, allow me to address these matters quite openly, as they lie close to my heart. It may be said that, in general, something has become habitual within the Anthroposophical Society that must not continue in this way, because the judgments of the present world about what Anthroposophy or spiritual science wants would have to be all too much clouded if it continued in the same way as it has done so far.

Let us take a single detail: It is often said in the outside world — and it has already become customary — that I am actually less attacked because of spiritual-scientific matters themselves, but very much because of what is connected with the Society. In particular, one of the accusations that is made is that a blind belief in authority prevails in the Society, a blind following, that much is done here out of pure devotion and the like. If I may also express my impression in response to this, I must say: for most things, what happens last of all is what I actually consider to be the right thing, what I consider to be what might be desirable. I do not believe that in any other society so little attention is paid to what might actually be the specific wishes of any individual active in it. Even if it looks different, that is how it is. But no one has to take offense at things. And to turn a blind eye, to bury one's head in the sand, that is only evil.

My dear friends, I have heard many things about the mood in the local Anthroposophical Society these days. I came here this evening, here into the vestibule, and the most pious incense aroma flowed towards me. Do not think that someone who is focused on the factual and the inner has any particular desire to have their speaking made difficult for the whole evening by resorting to this outwardness of the pious scent of incense, and that they has to carry a headache home because of the pious incense smell, and I am still completely ignoring how the truth is misunderstood when the incense smell - forgive me - smells out into the profane world. It may be unpleasant to mention such things, but they are symptomatic. Ask whether I have ever taken the initiative on such superficial matters. But that is only a side note.

What is most important to me, however, is how the membership feels connected to the spiritual life of the anthroposophically oriented spiritual scientific movement. As you know, various attacks have recently come to light, some of which have already been printed and some of which are still being printed. When the external world of today raises objections to spiritual science, we need neither be surprised nor feel particularly pained about it; it is only natural, self-evident. It can be countered. Spiritual science truly has no need to fear objective discussions. And perhaps one need not fear the reactions that are now arising from our own ranks. But the following does tremendous harm to what should be the real strength of our movement: It may be said that it is unique in this movement, in this society above all others, that the most benevolent intentions and measures, the most benevolent measures of conduct towards the members are here most of all immersed in poison and bile and also in the garment of slander, vilification, the most personal attack, all of which is aimed at a very well-known direction. The things that are done, perhaps out of a mystical need — I don't know —, the pure inventions, the pure untruths, are actually not so easily found anywhere else. But the will to behave correctly in relation to these things is not cultivated vigorously enough. Indeed, the will to see things truly impartially is not striven for vigorously enough either.

The seriousness that lies in the spiritual scientific movement, the special way in which it must be represented, should at least be studied. What the individual can do depends, of course, on the circumstances of life and on the most diverse factors; but one should still study what is, and not indulge in all sorts of delusions. Objectivity and impersonality are particularly necessary in our movement, which is devoted purely to spiritual things, and nothing is more harmful than when personal interests, vanity, ambition are brought into the ranks of our movement. Of course, things appear veiled and masked, but one should look at the true face of things, one should look at them in such a way that one comes to the truth of the matter. If someone writes a series of attacks and is well aware of what is behind the attacks, well aware of how precisely what he is attacking must be because of the peculiar character of spiritual science, then it is not enough to refute sentence by sentence. Much can be asserted and refuted, namely everything, but often it is not what is said that matters: the reasons lie in something quite different. If someone suggests a writing to the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House and it has to be rejected, and the person concerned then becomes an enemy, the reasons for this must be sought elsewhere than in the sentences that the person concerned twists. And one does not learn the truth when the most important thing, when the real reasons are pushed into the background.

If someone makes this or that attack about all kinds of foolish esoteric effects, the foolishness of which is obvious to anyone who is not blind, then one also misses the point if one does not trace such things, which are pure inventions, back to the whole situation. Then perhaps a person is behind it who once lived in a small town in central Germany and suddenly had the idea of becoming a great man. At first he tried to become a great man in a small way; he wrote to Dr. Steiner, asking what he should do to be freed from the narrow circumstances of the small town. Should he marry into a business, or bring this about in some other way? If it is then made clear to him that we do not concern ourselves with the decision of whether or not to marry into a family, he may still not be dissuaded. He will advance, come forward, take part in some events, and perhaps also stand before society at a large gathering and declaim a poem by Schiller with tremendous lung power, even though he has not the slightest idea of declamation. He is laughed at. That offends his sense of honor. Then he wants to be a great painter. The idea is even taken up to a certain extent. Everything is done to support the person in question so that he can learn something; concessions are made to him. But the person in question wants to be an artist, but finds it inconvenient to learn something. He doesn't really want to become an artist, he wants to be one, and when the others, out of their deepest conviction, can do nothing but advise him to learn something, then it is insulting. You are a genius after all, and they expect you to learn something first! They do everything they can to let him learn, but that is precisely what is insulting.

Well, a lot more could be said along these lines. These are the real reasons why one must become an enemy of such a detestable society. Then all kinds of stuff is written. What is written is of little consequence. Of course, something else could just as easily be written, because the real reasons are to be sought quite elsewhere. And so it can continue, and will continue, taking on completely different dimensions. All these things, however, have not the slightest thing to do with spiritual science as such. But they can develop with great intensity out of a society which tries to build itself not on the objective basis that spiritual science as such provides, but which seeks within it all kinds of cliquishness, all kinds of personal social relationships. You see, I am only hinting at one or the other. Perhaps one or the other can be said in the following days. But all this really does not go back to spiritual science, but goes back to the view that prevails in many quarters about what should happen in society. Precisely those for whom most has been provided are among those who are now most peddling calumnies, pure fabrications.

Therefore, my dear friends, I am obliged to take drastic measures. I ask you at least to always mention the two parts of these measures, so that no new defamations arise by only communicating one part. If this measure is hard for some, then please consider that it is as hard for me as it is for those affected by it, that I am just as sorry that it is necessary, and that you do not turn to me, but to those who have caused these measures. Look for the reasons there, but also look there to recognize what has to happen in the future by directing your attention to where the defamation originated. In many cases, this is what plays out as personal. Certainly, I have been of service to everyone with personal advice: for esoteric matters, this personal discussion was very often quite unnecessary and, as far as the esoteric is concerned, I will ensure that a good replacement can be found. But because the personal has led to this, it is necessary that in the future everything takes place in the full light of the public. I shall see to it that everyone can have their esoteric rights, but I shall no longer receive anyone from society for a so-called esoteric private meeting. I must stop these private visits without exception, so that the slander cannot be brought from these private visits. If this is hard for one or the other, then this measure must be taken for two reasons: firstly, because these things are not necessary for the operation of the esoteric life. I will prove this very soon. In a short time you will have a complete replacement, even though the private conversations, which often took place in such a way that the members approached me with things that had nothing to do with the esoteric life, have to be dropped. Secondly, because I thereby document how it is taken out of thin air that the esoteric life of one or the other is not taken care of. Just read “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Nobody needs to gain a personal impulse after so much time. The second thing that belongs to this measure and which I ask not to be forgotten is that I release everyone who has had private discussions so far from any promise, which was never given anyway, from any custom not to talk about such private discussions. As far as I am concerned, anyone can communicate as much as they like about what I have said to anyone, because I have nothing to hide. Anyone who wants to can tell everyone everything. Even the past can be placed in the full light of day. This is the best way to distinguish untruth from truth and to find a yardstick for measuring how much fibbing there is within our movement. But the two measures belong together. Once again, I repeat that anyone who only communicates the first part will not represent the matter in its true light; the other belongs to it.

I would also like to mention, my dear friends: Should it be difficult for some, then please turn to those places that you can easily find here in particular, turn to those who have made these things necessary. It is not acceptable that the spiritual scientific movement should be made impossible by the clique system within the Anthroposophical Society, because this exposes to misunderstanding in the outer world that which lives as the nerve of spiritual science. Do you believe that the things that have to be done in the interest of the Society are being done for my personal satisfaction? I have been reproached for withdrawing something from the Society in one direction or another because, for example, the Dornach building had to be undertaken. Do you believe that I personally care more about the Dornach building than any other member who is serious about our cause, that I have had any personal aspirations in this building? If the building had not been possible, I would have been the very last to have failed to comply with the necessity. That anything of what must be advocated should be advocated differently from such important matters as the Dornach building, other than it must be for the inner reasons of the matter, that should never happen.

The drastic measures just mentioned must be taken, especially for the reason that, after decades of my having spoken sufficiently about one thing and another, the seriousness of my words has never been felt. Perhaps this seriousness will be felt when this measure is introduced. There are, of course, other societies without them leading to the same things that have occurred in this society.

This, my dear friends, had to be said precisely because of our friendship, must not remain unsaid. Those who are serious about the anthroposophical movement will find the way, even if the seriousness of the situation makes such measures necessary. For the movement as such is too sacred to be extinguished by all kinds of personal aspirations, and enough has been done in this direction. Those of our dear members – and there are many who are just like that – who work in the movement, in society, in a devoted, self-sacrificing way, will be the last to complain about these measures; they will find them most meaningful. I do not think that I am misunderstood precisely by those who are really serious and sincere about our movement; they will agree with me. There will also be those who disagree with me; I gladly accept this disagreement.

Time has progressed. I will continue tomorrow with the considerations that I have undertaken today and perhaps also add some remarks about what I have said last about all kinds of things in society. It has often been quite hard to watch some things.

From yesterday's discussions, you were able to see how, in our time, the human being is part of the overall development of humanity. It was shown what, as it were, approaches the individual personality through the development of humanity itself, and how this development of humanity absolutely requires that the urge to fire and awaken the inner soul awakens more and more, so that man will find progress less and less as an external influence, so to speak, but that he will have to acquire it from within himself. That is the purpose of spiritual science: to enable human individuality to progress further, whereas in ancient times, simply by being born into humanity, a person had a certain amount of experiences that matured him to a certain degree. You will feel that the realization of such a fact, as we were able to describe it yesterday, is of tremendous importance and thoroughly illuminates what is needed in our time, what is needed by people of our time.

One can only really get into these things, as one should in the sense of a spiritual scientist, by looking with open eyes at the way in which people in the present day relate to the whole of earthly evolution. One can make discoveries of infinite significance. One must only make these discoveries in such a way that one is in a position to evaluate the facts. There are certainly people in our time who feel that something is needed to lead the soul, as it were, beyond itself, that is, beyond the twenty-seven years. But the courage and energy that accomplishes such wonders in external fields today, the courage and energy to really develop the inner soul forces, are not so common today. And so it happens that we meet people who have a certain striving in their nature to find something other than what can be offered by the culture of our time and the tasks of the world around us. But they do not have the courage to approach the kind of work and attitude that wants something truly new: spiritual science. And so we learn that such people do not clearly say to themselves, but feel: In the past, the environment gave people more, so we must again seek what the world gave people in the past, we must find the connection to earlier human gifts again.

That is why people who are more longing for the spiritual, I would say, out of powerlessness, take refuge in all sorts of things that have actually already been extinguished within human development. We could cite examples of this everywhere. Let us quote a very characteristic example from the writer Maurice Barres, who in his youthful impetuosity once wanted to storm, one might say, the spiritual heavens, but then, because he did not find the courage to join some new spiritual movement, sought to join Catholicism, as so many do in the present day. But it is a strange attitude that seeks a way backward instead of a way forward. And the words with which Barres describes his striving for Catholicism are characteristic, for these words testify to how a dispirited, energy-less soul, because it does not want to seek the new, reaches for the old. But how he reaches is the characteristic thing. Take the words of a man of this kind of mind, who has grown entirely out of the education of today, stands entirely in it, and out of this education has developed his inclination towards Catholicism. Take these words: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist!” Imagine someone who has sought this connection to Catholicism talking about the hereafter: “It is a futile effort to seek the hereafter. It may not even exist; and however we approach it, we cannot learn anything about it. Let us leave all occultism to the enlightened and the conjurers; whatever form mysticism may take, it contradicts reason. But let us turn to the Church, first of all because she is inseparably linked to the tradition of France. And then, because it formulates, with the authority of centuries and great practical experience, the rules of that ethic that must be taught to nations and children. And finally, because it, far from abandoning us to mysticism, defends us directly against it, silences the voices of the mysterious groves, interprets the Gospels and sacrifices the generous anarchism of the Savior to the needs of modern society.” You see the motives of a man who is characteristic of the present age, driven to seek the spirit of his own kind: he reaches for what humanity once had without human effort. But he takes it without really laying any claim to the full meaning of what he takes. One would be tempted to say that such a thing is cynical or frivolous if it were not for the great seriousness of the endeavor. But that is precisely the fatal thing: the seriousness of the endeavor itself becomes frivolous due to the conditions of the time. Do not take this word lightly! The great damage of our time is rooted in the fact that people are always inclined to take things lightly. Examples like that of Maurice Barres could be cited countless times. What is characteristic of our time, in the sense of what has just been explained, would emerge everywhere in the most diverse ways.

We ask ourselves: What is the cause of this? We ask ourselves this question because it is important for us to recognize how we must do things differently. However, we can only find our way around in this if we have a little insight into the plight of the time, into what underlies such an attitude. We must look back a little into the meaning of human evolution if we want to understand what we must understand in the present if we are to move forward. If we go back in the evolution of European humanity and the Asian part of humanity that belongs to it — we only need to go back to the first third of the post-Atlantic period — we find today, even by outwardly scientific means, that people in those days clearly distinguished between the three basic components of the human being, and that the old, albeit more vague and dreamlike, understanding has come to the point that people knew how to distinguish between the three basic components of the human being. And this, in turn, is the reason why I emphasized with particular clarity in my 'Theosophy' that these three basic components must be taken as the basis for the whole structure of the human being. If we go back, we find everywhere that people can see how the human being can be traced back to body, soul and spirit. But just think about the lack of clarity that has arisen today, even among those who seek clarity, with regard to an overview of the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit! You can pick up one philosophy after another today, you can study Wundt, who was not only famous in Germany but world-famous, with great zeal, and you will see that the gentleman is unable to distinguish the soul from the mind, even though distinguishing the soul from the mind is one of the most fundamental necessities today. When did it actually come to light that people have confused the soul with the spirit? As I said, you can find it everywhere: man is divided into body and soul, and the soul is confused with the spirit, without any distinction. This was clearly expressed in 869 at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was abolished, excuse the harsh expression, because the teachings that were formulated at that time essentially culminated in making it a dogma that man has a thinking soul and a spiritual soul within him. Thus the spirit was done away with, and what little spirit was still sensed at that time was smuggled into the soul by saying: It has the power of thinking and something spiritual as well. Then came the Middle Ages with their scholastic research, which was admirable in many respects; but this was everywhere subject to the strict constraints of dogma, and so-called trichotomy was strictly proscribed. Spirit had to be left out everywhere. And this is also the source of the way in which modern university professors, who, according to their own statements, pursue science without preconditions, think – or do not think – about soul and spirit. But they are unaware of the prerequisites, namely the decrees of the Council of 869. The fact that they have no idea what they actually depend on is the reason why they call themselves unconditional. That is the way things are, and they must be heard and vigorously considered; there is no point in closing our eyes to them. For if spiritual science oriented to anthroposophy is to become for man what it must become according to the laws of human evolution, then such things must above all be faced, and man must be given back an understanding of the threefold constitution of the human being as body, soul and spirit. Just as on the one hand there is the body, which between birth and death or conception and death, is the physical mediator of consciousness, so the spirit must be recognized as the spiritual mediator of that higher consciousness that man has to develop between death and a new birth. But this is connected with the deep inner, significant life circumstances of modern humanity. Let us take a characteristic example from our time. In many cases, public life is based on three abstract ideas, even though people have deviated from them here and there. And particularly in our time we see these three abstract ideas being wielded by the whole world against the center of Europe. But this center of Europe will only spiritually grasp its task if it is willing to make the three abstract ideas into concrete ideas imbued with reality. These three ideas were forcefully called into the consciousness of mankind at the end of the 18th century in the words: fraternity, freedom, equality. They almost remind us of three very concrete ideas, which are only now being understood in a very abstract way, but which were meant very literally in their time when they were incorporated into the consciousness of mankind. They remind us of faith, hope and love. But let us dwell on the three ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality. It is a shadowy thinking that one seeks to visualize these three ideas in the whole modern world. All the efforts that the human soul makes in this direction are based precisely on the fact that people do not have the inclination to enter into reality. They do not approach these three great, these three cardinal ideas any differently than they would the idea of reorientation: that every person should stand in the place that is best for them. They declaim beautiful ideas, make abstract concepts out of these ideas, but have no inclination to engage with reality. And this reality lies in understanding spiritual science.

Just as one muddles mind and soul, so one also muddles freedom, equality and fraternity. The idea of brotherhood will only be grasped by humanity in the right way when it becomes clear that man is only fully present here on the physical plane with one part of his being, the part we call the body. It is with the body that man stands here on the physical plane; but this body connects man with the whole human race through blood and other ties. Let us think back to older times, especially with regard to the way the physical human being relates to the physical human being here in the world. After all, the human being does not only have within him what he has inherited from his parents; he carries within him the part of immortality that passes through birth and death. But this is divided into embodiments in the physical body. In ancient times, as I discussed yesterday, the human being was able to perceive the spiritual in the environment by going through eating, digesting and breathing; he was capable of that. In this way, something was instinctive in him, so to speak, which we can call a sum of feelings, sensations, perceptions and concepts that regulated his behavior towards his fellow human beings. Instinctively, this was in him. We see this instinctive element diminishing in more recent times, and the terrible explosions of hatred that we are now encountering can only be understood if we understand their real basis, if we understand how the old instincts are diminishing. These instincts of hatred are much more serious than is still recognized today. We will experience terrible things as a result of this state of affairs. And if that which must be conquered in the sense of the developmental history of mankind could not be conquered, the instincts of hatred would grow ever greater and greater. For even if, especially in this age of freedom from authority, in this age of the unconditioned nature of science, there are individuals who particularly strive to be led by the hand again and again, the feelings that arise from the unconscious do not allow this. Today, such people seek out all kinds of leaders. The more unnatural it is for them to strive to follow these leaders unconditionally, the more they are exposed to the danger of their so-called love turning to hatred. This is not something that can be remedied by mere criticism, because it is deeply rooted in the entire laws of human development. The more philanthropy is preached as an abstract idea, the more fraternity is preached in the abstract, the more mutual antipathy between people will develop. This is also a truth that must be taken very seriously and deeply into consideration if one wants to understand the present. What must happen is that what we call the view of repeated lives on earth is transformed into feeling. Merely adhering to the theory of repeated lives on earth does not account for it!

But if we take together all that is being attempted to be gathered together in order to extract from the laws of human development, in the course of time, that which does not present itself to us as an abstract idea but as a concrete fact, that something lives in every human being that goes through birth and death, then the abstract idea is transformed into feeling, not into instincts like those that existed earlier, but into conscious instincts, into a certain way of relating to other people. Today, there is still all too much of an urge to interpret what one takes on board as the idea of repeated earthly lives in an egotistical way. And how much of it have we experienced, that one person or another is above all keen to know some earlier incarnation of themselves very well indeed! This cannot be the practical consequence of the idea of repeated embodiments, of the idea of repeated earthly lives. The genuine consequence must be that we learn more and more to look at each person as if there were much more to him than he can live in one earthly life, in which he is now standing before us. Above all, what is often mentioned is the sense of distance, the right measure, the feeling for finding the right relationship with the other person: without deifying him, but always seeking deeper and deeper what belongs to infinity in him.

It is a false mysticism to brood within oneself. The mysticism we need is the one that guides us to a practical, but intuitive knowledge of human nature, so that we do not approach a person from the outset as either sympathetic or unsympathetic, but with the awareness that every human soul is actually an infinite mystery. If we take the idea seriously, something streams forth from repeated earthly lives, and from this outpouring into our soul there wells up what should be experienced in the right sense for later humanity as brotherhood, as brotherly love. Such brotherly love will not typically and repeatedly want to help people only according to the idea that appeals to us; it will want to respond to people so that we help them in a way that is appropriate for them, that helps them as their deeper selves require. But such an idea will also keep us from the thoughtless criticism that often erects a barrier between us and the other person, especially today, which does not allow us to look impartially at what lives in another person. Only when the idea of repeated earthly lives is alive and practically working in our soul, then the idea of brotherhood for what people in their corporeality are for each other will be able to take on the right form.

A second factor that must be taken into account in the development of humanity is that we not only recognize the physicality of the human being, which materialism alone wants to recognize today, but that we also recognize the soul of the human being, that we consciously ascribe soul to every human being. But we do not ascribe soul to him if we only seek to violate this soul in our attitude, that is, if we think that we really respect the soul by expecting this soul to have our thoughts, especially the form of our thoughts. We must grant freedom to the soul; we cannot grant it to the body. Freedom is only the basis in the interaction between soul and soul, that on which it depends. And the fundamental nerve of freedom is, namely, freedom of thought. If we come to understand this second link of humanity, the soul alongside the physical, then we will no longer confuse freedom and brotherhood, but will say: brotherhood is necessary because people must establish a social order in the sense of brotherhood. A social structure in the sense of brotherhood must come about, and until people are seized by right, practical ideas of brotherhood, they will not be able to find state structures in which people can live together reasonably. But if people do not recognize that within the state structure man lives not only as a body but also as a soul, they will never be able to grasp the idea of freedom in the appropriate way. For freedom lies in the relationship from soul to soul, not from body to body. The freedom that bodies need comes about of its own accord as a necessary consequence when soul to soul expands in the sense of freedom of thought. Above all, however, this requires that we finally learn to no longer want to impose our own thoughts on people, but that we learn to duly respect the direction of thought in every soul. But above all, we must acquire a sense of reality, for there is no field in which more sins are committed than in the fields of science and religion.

I can only refer to an example that I once encountered in a town in southern Germany. I gave a lecture on wisdom and Christianity. It was a town in southwestern Germany, so two Catholic priests were also at my lecture. After the lecture, they said: Yes, after what you said today, there is not much to be said against your assertions in terms of content, but one cannot agree. — I said: Yes, why? — Yes, the main thing, said the two gentlemen, is that you talk about all these things in relation to Christianity in a way that can only be understood by certain people with a certain level of education, with certain needs and so on. But we are seeking a way of speaking that is for all people; we are formulating our thoughts so that everyone can agree. — I replied: Pastor, how I or you think about what is good for all people depends on you or me, you and I can certainly form ideas about that; and when we do form such ideas, we will of course be fully convinced that they are right. We would be strange old fogies if we formed ideas that we did not believe were suitable for all people. But what matters is not what you or I think, according to our particular development, that something is suitable for all people. In the end, that is completely irrelevant. We have to get beyond that through proper, active, practical self-knowledge. What matters is to study reality and ask: What does reality dictate, what does the time and its content teach us as necessary for people, what do people's longings teach us? But then a question arises that is different from the one you ask: Do all people today go to your church? If you spoke for all people, everyone would go to you. — There they could not help saying: It is true that not all people go to church anymore. — So, I said; you see, and among those who have sat here are mostly those who do not go to church, but who also have the right to find the way to Christ, and I speak for them.

One must not form an idea about what people need according to one's own stubborn opinions, but according to what reality says. But it is more uncomfortable to study reality. There one must always and again apply the sense of observation accordingly, always and again have the will to ask: What are the needs of the time? How does what is necessary in our time present itself? — And until this sense, this practical sense, which must underlie freedom of thought, enters into the souls of men, we will not come to a corresponding relationship from soul to soul. Just as the social structure towards which humanity must strive depends on arriving at a correct understanding of the body in the sense of spiritual science and being able to understand the idea of brotherly love, so we must learn to gain understanding for souls and to help realize the idea of freedom of thought in the field of science and education, in the field of religious sentiment.

And a third aspect is the spirit. If we now really succeed in reinstating the rights of the spirit, in reversing what the Council of Constantinople in 869 recognized, then the spirit, too, will come to what, in a practical sense, leads the life of the people of the future. We already have two tendencies today: one tends to move in the same direction as the Council of Constantinople, that is, to abolish the spirit. A monistic world view also seeks to abolish the soul, and anyone who thinks that scientific monism has so much tolerance – as the word is used today – that it would not be able to hold a council and ban the soul is thinking wrongly. The tendency is already moving towards abolishing not only the spirit but also the soul. And those who are today the little monists will want to grow into quite great monists, and even if they disdain to hold councils, for they are free spirits, because they have freed themselves from all spirit, if they disdain to hold councils, then they will have a certain custom naturalized. And it will come - do not let this be a joke! —that the soul will be abolished. In addition to the various physical remedies that exist today, a series of others will be added that will be designed to treat those who talk about such fantasies as spirit and soul; they will be cured, they will be given medicine so that they no longer talk about spirit and soul. The spirit could be done away with in a trice; the soul can only be driven out of man by treating the body in the right medical way. However grotesque it may appear today, there is a tendency in a certain direction to invent means by which all kinds of stuff is instilled into the child, so that his bodily organization is so enfeebled that the materialistic attitude lives quite well in him, and it does not even occur to him to treat the old idea of soul and spirit as anything other than something in which the old days believed and into which it is a great delight to look.

Of course, saying such things is considered madness by a great many people today; but if one does not have the courage to admit these things to oneself, one will never find the energy to bring spiritual science spirituality to full bloom and to spark it in the souls of others. Therefore, in addition to this tendency, which I have just characterized and which will also cure the soul because it will be considered an illness, the other tendency must be added: the tendency to assert again energetically that, in addition to the body and the soul, the human being also carries the spirit within himself. For this, however, it would be necessary that knowledge of the spirit take hold, that spiritual science really becomes established, that it is recognized by man what belongs to his nature when he has passed through the gate of death. And one of the old folk proverbs that so often carry old good views into the new time is this: In death, all are equal – because all become spirit, and because the idea of equality is the one that corresponds to the spirit. Equality to the spirits! One cannot confuse the three ideas – liberty, fraternity, equality – but one must know in the concrete, in reality, what man is, and that he should be free according to the soul, fraternal according to the body, that men must be equal

must be equal in spirit. For the inequality that exists among people is that specialization brought about by body and soul, in that the spirit specializes in body and soul. Pneumatology, spiritual teaching, spiritual insight is the basis for the idea of equality. And so we have the strange fact that at the end of the 18th century the idea of brotherhood, freedom, equality was shouted out all over the world in a chaotic way, but that gradually it must be understood how the ideas of brotherhood, freedom and equality can only be realized if one is also able to carry the knowledge of the threefold nature of

human being, in body, soul and spirit, into reality. This was the underlying reason for the attempt in my Theosophy to carry out this division into body, soul and spirit in such an energetic way: This division is a demand of our time and the near future. But it is only by realizing these ideas in practice, by learning to see humanity in this way, that one can go beyond the twenty-seven years; otherwise one gets stuck in the twenty-seven years. And just imagine the prospect: our fifth post-Atlantic period will be followed by a sixth and a seventh. In the sixth, general humanity will yield that which, in the individual development, corresponds to the time between the fourteenth and twenty-first year. No matter how clever the people are who direct education in the outside world, they will not be able to get more than what corresponds to individual development up to the age of twenty-one. One will not be able to live past the age of twenty-one, even if one does not die there. And in the seventh post-Atlantic age, one will not live beyond the age that corresponds to the fourteenth year of life in individual development. If one does not grow older through the inspiration of the inner being, then an epidemic of juvenile feeble-mindedness will seize humanity. Anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, and does not live thoughtlessly, can, armed with such ideas, already evaluate many phenomena of the present in the right way!

Let us take just one area: Where has our present age brought us in our understanding of, say, the Christ impulse? How many people are quite close to Barre's idea that the Savior's generous world view has been adapted by the Church to the needs of modern society, and that it is precisely for this reason that we can get along so well with the Churches? Who is making an effort – perhaps there are still individuals who do, but generally speaking – who is really trying to resurrect from the Gospels the teachings of Christ that were directed against the other, the principal opponent? How are the most significant and profound teachings of Christianity understood today? I would like to mention just one central Christian concept: the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. Even Blavatsky ridiculed the prediction that the Kingdom of Heaven would come, saying that at the time it should have come, no more wheat had blossomed than before, the grapes had not grown larger, in short, the Kingdom of Heaven had not come to earth.

One thinks oneself clever; but from this cleverness nothing else comes out than this judgment, and this cleverness does not allow the deeper question: Could not perhaps the Christ have meant something else? — One already recognizes the Christ today, but in such a way that one wants above all that one's own ideas, precisely as one has conceived them oneself, also live in the Christ. The socialist makes a good socialist out of him, the liberal a liberal, the Protestant a Protestant, and so on. A modern school theologian constructs him in the image of Professor Harnack, and people listen to how Professor Harnack speaks about the most important concepts of Christ Jesus. Once it happened that I had to give a lecture in a club whose chairman was a man well versed in the Bible and also in modern 'T'heology. In the course of this lecture I said that Harnack actually had a strange concept of resurrection, because in his “Essence of Christianity” there is the strange sentence: “Whatever may have happened in the Garden of Gethsemane, we can no longer judge it today, because it exceeds human knowledge and also exceeds the legitimate demands of faith. But from the garden in Gethsemane came the belief in resurrection, and this has become especially valuable to mankind. Whether it is true that the Christ was resurrected in some way is not the point! One should believe that from the garden in Gethsemane came faith. That is Harnack's doctrine. The man who was the chairman of the association said: You were mistaken, because in that case Harnack would be nothing less than a Catholic – the man in question felt quite Protestant and exalted – it would be just like the Catholics who say: Where the piece of clothing that is venerated as the Holy Robe of Trier comes from, or where any old knucklebone comes from, it doesn't matter, what matters is that faith has spread, that these things come from a particular saint. But that is Catholic, said the person concerned. Of course, we cannot believe in something like that. And it would be all the same if Harnack said that it does not matter whether it is true that Christ was resurrected in some way, but that people believe that faith originated in the Garden of Gethsemane. So, he said to me, you must have been mistaken. – So I said: Yes, you know, but it is written in 'The Essence of Christianity'. – No, he replied, it cannot be written there. Have you read it? – Oh, often, I said, tomorrow I will send you a postcard with the page and line from the book 'The Essence of Christianity' where it says that.

The man, who knew theology so well and was so well-versed in the Bible, could not read so carefully that he knew what was in the book. But it is in there. That is how today's thinking is. In all areas, it is quite strange, especially when one endeavors to make it so popular.

But not only theologians are guilty of sin; natural scientists are guilty too. There is a little book called “The Mechanics of the Spiritual Life”. I do not know whether there is already a book about the stiffness of iron. The author's name is Verworn. I esteem him, as I do many of those I criticize. In this little book he also deals with dreams and asserts that in dreams a subdued, paralyzed brain life takes place, that brain life is only partially active. If someone were to tap a pin against a windowpane, Verworn says, we may dream that cannon shots are going off one after the other. That is a well-known dream. Verworn says this at the top; then he says something in between, and at the end he says further down on the same page: The dream has its peculiar character because the brain is tuned down in its activity. Now imagine the cleverness: when we have a full brain, we hear the soft taps, the soft pinpricks; when the brain is down, less active, we hear the thunder of guns. — That is an explanation that is accepted, like much of Freud, and accepted with pleasure, because a few lines are in between.

But this is the basis of our time: the will to really go through with thinking what comes to one is very rare in our time. And so it is not particularly incomprehensible that one does not easily want to understand something like the coming of the “Kingdoms of Heaven”, because it takes a lot to do so. Until then, until the Mystery of Golgotha, the Kingdoms of Heaven approached man as in a dream. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, they were even assimilated through digestion. But now they had to come down. They came down, but in such a way that man had to exert his mind to grasp the Kingdoms of Heaven. It is not meant that the grapes become larger, that the ears of wheat become fuller, but that the kingdom lives in the midst of us, but we must find it through the preparation of our own spirit around us. |

This, as I have briefly outlined it, underlies the grandiose conception of Christ Jesus. This is, however, a conception that demands energy from our soul if we want to empathize with it. And so are many Christian conceptions. With these the Christ opposed the Imperium Romanum, the Roman Empire, which developed in complete opposition to Christianity. This Imperium Romanum, which had developed into Caesaranism, brought the old mysteries under its control through its tyranny. Augustus was the first Caesar who, because of his external power, had to be initiated into the mysteries. And his successors, Tiberius, Caligula and others, were people initiated into the mysteries. They only applied the mystery view to the external realm of the world; they did not, like the Egyptian temple priests, carry the realm of the spirit into the realm of the world. Commodus even had himself made an initiator, and when he initiated another man whom he had to initiate, he is said to have given him such a strong blow, symbolically, that he killed him.

So there were two powerful contradictions facing each other: the Imperium Romanum and Christianity. This contradiction must find its resolution. It has not yet found it to this day. We must become capable of recognizing the spirit and also of introducing the spirit into life. I only want to say so much about this point, because in our thinking, in our feeling, lives on in many ways that which has moved into people as the logic, the way of thinking and feeling, as it was dominant in the Roman Empire. Our grammar school pupils learned Latin first and with it the way of thinking of the Imperium Romanum, which has been passed on. We do not know how much of this is at the innermost nerve of our lives; we still do not know how to seek and find the spiritual path to Christ in the right sense. But this path can only be one that has the will to think, which has particularly declined in our time; one could say, intelligence itself. Our time, so proud of its intelligence, actually lacks intelligence because it lacks conscientiousness on the basis of thinking.

A much-read booklet, which deals with “Christianity in the ideological struggle of the present”, reproduces lectures that have been given to thousands upon thousands of people by a very leading spirit of the present day, who has of course thoroughly studied philosophy and theology. Ideas are developed there that make you want to climb up the walls! Finally, you come across a beautiful sentence, yes. Goethe is supposed to have said:

No created spirit can penetrate into the innermost nature

,

Happy the one to whom she only

reveals the outer shell!

We would actually have to get to that point in order to recognize something like that! The man knows his Goethe so well that he cites this saying of Haller as a saying of Goethe, despite the fact that Goethe said:

I curse it, but furtively.

Nature has neither core nor shell;

All at once it is everything.

You alone are tested most of all,

Whether you are core or shell.

So today people are talked into believing as a Goethean view what Goethe himself said: “I curse it”! But people listen willingly to it, that is the general thinking of today. It is of no use to look up with desire at certain ideas that come from spiritual science. These ideas must fully enter into the life of the soul, then the other current will establish itself, the spiritual current, which does not allow today's way of thinking to take over humanity, but allows people to develop individually so that they can bring into the general development that which can now be released from what is there by itself. But much must still come before such things are grasped in the right concrete sense, grasped in such a way that thinking really based on reality reaches people.

A very fine book has been published: “The State as a Form of Life” by Kjellen, the famous Swedish political scientist. I mention him because he is a man who has been very sympathetic to our cause, to my cause, so that one should not think that I am angry about anything. But for that very reason I may mention him as typical of certain ways of life.

In this book, he attempts to gain ideas about the state that may lead out of many an error. He naturally comes back to the idea of the state as an organism. He is further along than Wilson. Wilson in his time criticized very sharply the fact that in Newton's time people did not think independently about the state, but were so influenced by the theory of gravity that they judged the various impulses in human thought according to abstract gravity. One must think about the state as one would about an organism. In doing so, he fails to realize that people thought in Newtonian terms and he in Darwinian terms. Kjellén also thinks that the state is an organism; the individual people are then the cells. Now, of course, you can compare a whole that has impulses of life within it with an organism and its parts with cells. But you can actually compare anything if the ideas are not willing to delve into reality, ultimately even a lizard with a pocket knife. Everything can be compared. Only when one has a sense of reality does comparison lead to the right conclusion. In Kjellén's comparison, one state would be understood as a single organism and the other as a neighboring organism. However, anyone who can think realistically cannot possibly think of people as cells. The comparison could apply if one compares the whole of the states with an organism and the individual states as cells; but then the whole person does not merge into the state. Only social life over the whole earth can then be compared with the organism. But if one wanted to insert the human being now, it would look like this: if we imagine an organism, the cells would have to stick out everywhere. A strange kind of hedgehog would come out of it. But if that were the case, an organism with living things coming out everywhere, then that would be an organism with which we can compare the whole social life on earth.

But that means that the entire life of man cannot be absorbed into the state order at all. It must everywhere protrude into the spiritual from what the state is able to encompass. In practice, this is all too often forgotten in all areas today, and one could cite institution after institution that would prove how this is forgotten, how one forgets, in addition to the external, modeled on the Imperium Romanum, to establish the kingdom of the spirit that the Christ wanted to bring over the earth. It was very necessary to take this thought in its full seriousness.

You know, where it comes to the concrete, thinking usually does not extend. Think how in recent times everyone has sought to push back the autonomy of scholarly education in such a way that all the things that are associated with learned institutions have been pushed back and the principle of the state has been placed above them. Today, in order to become a medical doctor, one must first pass the state examination, and then one can receive the medical doctorate as a kind of decoration. The autonomy of the medical school as such has been completely suppressed. We could cite many examples where there is a real enthusiasm for moving in this direction. People cannot do enough to nationalize all titles. The word engineer was associated with “ingenium”. Now they no longer strive to do that, but they do strive for the diploma. If it says on it that you are an engineer, then you can call yourself that; otherwise the ingenium is of no use. This is a step away from a spiritual understanding of the world. People do not think about that. On the contrary, they are enthusiastic about this fight against the spirit in all areas. One would have to, in order to make this noticeable, because one likes to swear by words so much today, perhaps invent a new word and say: people are 'beleibert' for de-spiritualization. Then perhaps some would begin to pay a little attention to the direction one is taking! But the fact that people do not pay attention is precisely the proof of the thoughtlessness of life, of the hatred that one has almost against the will to think.

So you see how necessary it is to really introduce spiritual science into the most everyday life. Spiritual science is a serious matter. Therefore, in addition to yesterday's significant matter, the immediate current situation had to be mentioned. For the aims of spiritual science must not be compromised by its becoming philistine and ossified, by the Anthroposophical Society creating obstacle after obstacle for what spiritual science wants. Of course, reasonable people will always understand that the people who come to the Anthroposophical Society are those who have somehow come into conflict with life, and so strongly that they have lost their balance. The question then always arises: Do we want to accommodate these people, or be hard? — Sometimes such people change so much that they lose their balance even more, or they change so much that they tell stories like the ones they are telling now, which are likely to turn a sacred matter into gossip, into slander, into vilification. If what I said yesterday is considered unjust – that basically little is made of what I say – then of course that is the individual's prerogative. I only said: Outside, people speak of 'blind followers'. For the teaching, this is not necessary, because it can be examined. Only for some things that relate to institutions is trust sometimes necessary. But it is just in such matters that the opposite of what I myself mean usually happens. And so what I presented yesterday as a necessary measure may be felt to be unjust. But this measure will be maintained, although on the other hand it will be ensured that anyone who really wants to undergo it can go through the esoteric development. We must give it a little time. How many things will be revealed through the economy of the Anthroposophical Society, how much will be exposed to misunderstanding and calumny in the world! People who are well aware of how long some things have taken will be convinced that books that have not appeared will appear when this measure has been in force for some time. At the time, I was forced to print the cycles, which I cannot review. It was not my will; it was the will of others who want to read them. Certainly, one does not have to insist on one's will; it has been yielded; but you can read the accusations that are made, saying it would be a trick, and that the cycles have a style that one must only criticize. Everything is ultimately distorted by ill will. But, my dear friends, if spiritual science is to have the right relationship to the Anthroposophical Society, then the Anthroposophical Society must also feel connected to the life of spiritual science as such. But how many feel connected only to their own personal life!

There are, of course, and always have been, numerous people in the Anthroposophical Society who have simply said, in one form or another, that they actually only join the Anthroposophical Society in order to discuss this or that esoteric matter with me, and who refuse to trust people whom I myself trust. In this respect, something particularly bad is being experienced. It is of no use at all that I myself trust this or that friend in this or that society; they do not want the person concerned, and they try to ignore him. Now, these things all have their origin in the fact that so much, so much personal is brought into this Anthroposophical Society. Do you know which word I have really heard most often in the so-called esoteric discussions? Do not think that I heard most talk about such matters as freedom, equality, the evolution of humanity, and so on. Most of all I heard the word “I” from each individual. People come there with their most personal matters. This was also gladly taken into account, but it cannot go further, for the reasons given yesterday. And that must be understood.

I know that it will be best understood by those who really work devotedly and understandingly with the anthroposophical development, who are able to see in the anthroposophical development a task for humanity, who do not merely seek to facilitate their family or other personal affairs by belonging to the Anthroposophical Society, who are not merely seeking a back door to avoid the law because they would withdraw if it came to publicly opposing the materialistic medical system; but they are seeking a back door to be cured, apart from this materialistic medical system! There is no other way to counter all the things that have emerged from society to harm the Anthroposophical Society than through these measures, which I spoke of yesterday and which will certainly not be abandoned in the near future. Only in this way will it be possible to truly fight against what has become so terribly entrenched. The Anthroposophical Society will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. And esoteric life too — I will see to that — will flourish ever better and better precisely because of this. As for those inventions — and this is what matters — to which I referred yesterday, it may still be possible to somewhat undermine them if only the two-part measure mentioned yesterday is vigorously implemented. Please understand this, because by understanding this you show understanding for the nature and task of the anthroposophical movement. There are enough people outside today who do not feel able to fight anthroposophy, as it is meant here, [objectively]. That is also too uncomfortable for them, since it is necessary to first know anthroposophy. This is an uncomfortable thing for many who want to fight it. But to allow oneself to be slandered and vilified and to spread these things provides a means of fighting anthroposophy without understanding it. For our contemporaries are indeed very susceptible to slander and vilification. Nothing is read with more relish than calumny and vilification. If we take the task of Anthroposophy seriously, if we grasp the seriousness of the situation, then we will also be able to cope with this measure. In this spirit, we want to conclude. Hopefully we will remain, working in the appropriate way with our strengths, together.