The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] In looking at the world at the present time with open eyes we are constantly confronted with what is called the social question. Those who take life seriously have in some way to consider what is involved in this question. And it must appear as a matter of course that a way of thinking that has undertaken to promote the highest ideals of humanity should somehow come to terms with the demands made in social life. The way of thinking practiced by the science of spirit sets out to do just this for the present time. It is therefore only natural if questions arise about the relationship of the science of spirit to the social question.

[ 2 ] Now it may appear at first as if the science of the spirit has nothing in particular to say about this. What characterizes it more than anything else is the deepening of the soul life and the awakening of the ability to see into the spiritual world. Even those who have had only a passing acquaintance with the ideas promoted by speakers and writers whose work is based on the science of spirit are able by means of unbiased observation to give recognition to this striving. It is, however, more difficult to see that this striving has practical significance at the present time. And in particular it is not easy to see its connection with the social question. Someone may well ask how such a teaching can improve our bad social conditions, a teaching which is concerned with reincarnation, with “karma,” with “the super-sensible world,” with “the origin of man” and so on. Such a way of thinking appears to be divorced from all reality, whereas in fact it is now an imperative necessity for everyone to take his whole thinking in hand in order to do justice to the tasks which the reality of earthly life places before us.

[ 3 ] We shall now take two of the many views concerning the science of spirit which we inevitably come across today. The one is, that it is seen as the expression of uncontrolled fantasy. It is only natural for such a viewpoint to exist. And least of all should it be inconceivable to someone striving according to the method of the science of spirit. Every conversation that takes place in the presence of such a person, everything that goes on around him that brings happiness and joy to the human being, all this can teach him that he makes use of a language which for many is bound to be quite ludicrous. He must of course add to this understanding of his surroundings the absolute certainty that he is on the right path. Otherwise he would hardly be able to hold his own when he becomes aware of the clash between his ideas and those of others who belong to the educated and thinking part of humanity. If he has the necessary assurance, if he knows the truth and weight of his views, he can say: I know quite well that at the present time I can be regarded as an oddity and I can see why this is, but the truth is sure to prevail even when it is ridiculed and mocked, and the effect it has does not depend upon the views which people have about it, but upon its own firm foundations.

[ 4 ] The other view affecting the science of spirit is that although its thoughts may be beautiful and satisfying, these really apply only to the inner life of the soul and cannot be of any value for the struggles of daily life. Even those who turn to this substance of the science of spirit to satisfy their spiritual needs can all too easily be tempted to say: This world of ideas cannot tell us anything about how to deal with social needs and material needs.—But this opinion is based upon a complete misjudgment of the real facts of life and in particular upon the misunderstanding about the fruits of the way that the science of spirit looks at things.

[ 5 ] Practically the only question that is asked is: What does the science of spirit teach? How can what it teaches be proved? And then what people seek to get out of it is found in the feeling of satisfaction which is given by the teachings. Nothing Could be more natural. For we have first to acquire a feeling for the truth of statements that we meet. But what we really have to seek, the real fruit of the science of spirit cannot be sought in this. For this manifests itself only when those who are inclined toward the science of spirit tackle tasks in practical life. It depends on whether the science of spirit helps them to take up these tasks judiciously and with understanding to seek ways and means of solving them. If we want to work effectively in life we have first to understand life. Here we come to the heart of the matter. As long as we only ask: What does the science of spirit teach, we shall find its teachings too “exalted” for practical life. But if we direct our attention to the schooling that our thinking and feeling go through by means of these teachings, we shall then stop raising such an objection. However odd it may appear to a superficial view, it is nevertheless true that the ideas of the science of spirit, even if they may appear to be lost in the clouds, create an eye for the proper conduct of daily life. The science of spirit sharpens our understanding of the demands which social life makes just because it leads the spirit into the luminous heights of the super-sensible. However paradoxical this may appear, it is nevertheless true.

[ 6 ] An example will show what is meant. An extremely interesting book has recently appeared called As a Worker in America (Berlin, K. Siegismund). The author is a certain government councilor named Kolb who took it upon himself to spend several months as an ordinary worker in America. Through doing this he acquired a judgment about human beings and life which apparently neither the education which led to his councillorship had been able to give him, nor the experiences he had had in his post and in the other positions one occupies before becoming a councilor. Therefore for years he held a relatively responsible position, and it was only after he had left this and lived for a short time in a distant country that he got to know life in such a way that he was able to write the following noteworthy sentence in his book: “How often had I asked with moral indignation when I saw a healthy man begging: Why doesn't the scoundrel work? Now I knew. Yes, in practice things are different from what they seem to be in theory, and even the most unpleasant aspects of political economy can be managed quite bearably at one's desk.” Now there is not slightest intention here of creating a misunderstanding. The fullest possible recognition must be given to a man who persuades himself to leave his comfortable position in life and to undertake hard work in a brewery and a bicycle factory. The high esteem accorded to this deed is strongly emphasized in order to avoid the impression that we are about to indulge in negative criticism of him.—But to everyone who wants to see, it is absolutely clear that all the education and knowledge that he had gained had failed to give him the means of judging life. Let us try to understand what is implied in this admission: We can learn everything that makes us capable of taking a relatively important position, and at the same time we can be quite isolated from the life which we are supposed to influence.—Is this not rather like being educated at an engineering school and then, when faced with building a bridge, not knowing anything about it? But no: it is not quite like that. A person who has not studied the building of bridges properly will soon have his weaknesses made clear to him when he begins the actual work. He will prove himself to be a bungler and will be rejected everywhere. But a person who is insufficiently prepared in social life will not reveal his weaknesses so quickly. Badly built bridges collapse, and even the most prejudiced will realize that the builder was a bungler. What is bungled in social life only comes to light in the sufferings of those whose lives are regulated by it. It is not as easy to have an eye for the connection between the suffering and this kind of bungling as it is for the relationship between the collapse of the bridge and an incapable builder.—“But,” someone will say, “what has all this to do with the science of spirit? Does the scientist of spirit really believe that his teachings would have helped Councillor Kolb to have a better understanding of life? What use would it have been to him to have known something about reincarnation, karma, and all the super-sensible worlds? No one would want to maintain that ideas about planetary systems and higher worlds would have enabled the councilor to avoid having to admit one day that the most unpleasant aspects of political economy can be managed quite well at one's desk.” The scientist of spirit can really only answer—as Lessing did in a particular case: “I happen to be this `no one,' and I insist upon it.” Only this does not mean to say that the teaching of “reincarnation,” or knowledge about “karma” enables a person to act in the right way in social life. That would naturally be naive. It would of course be no good directing those destined to be councilors to Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine instead of sending them to Schmoller, Wagner or Brentano at the university.—What it depends upon is this: Would a theory of political economy originating from the scientist of spirit be such that it could be managed well at one's desk but would let one down in actual life? And this would not be the case. When can a theory not hold its own in life? When it is produced by means of a thinking that is not trained for life. Now the teachings of the science of spirit are just as much the real laws of life as are the theories of electricity for a factory for electrical apparatus. In setting up such a factory we have first to acquaint ourselves with theories about electricity. And in order to work in life we have to know the laws of life. The teachings of the science of spirit may appear to be remote from life, but they are, in fact, just the opposite. To a superficial view they appear divorced from the world; to a true understanding they reveal life. It is not just out of curiosity that we retire into a “spiritual-scientific circle,” in order to get hold of all sorts of “interesting” information about the worlds beyond, but we train our thinking, feeling and willing on the “eternal laws of existence” in order to enter into life and to understand it clearly. The teachings of the science of spirit are a roundabout way to thinking, judging and feeling according to life.—The movement for the science of spirit will not be rightly orientated until this is fully realized. Right action arises out of right thinking, and wrong action arises out of wrong thinking or out of a lack of thinking. If we believe that something good can be brought about in the social sphere, we have to admit that it depends on human capacities. Working through the ideas of the science of spirit brings about an increase in the capacities needed for working in social life. In this connection it is not simply a matter of which thoughts we acquire through the science of spirit, but of what is made of our thinking through them.

[ 7 ] Of course it must be admitted that within the circle of those who have taken up the science of spirit, there is not all that much to show so far. Nor can it be denied that just for this reason those outside the science of spirit have every reason to doubt what has been maintained here. But it must also not be overlooked that the movement for the science of spirit as it is at the moment is only at the beginning of its work. Its further progress will consist in entering into all the practical spheres of life. We shall then see, for instance, as far as the “social question” is concerned that instead of theories “which can be managed quite well at one's desk” there will be ideas which give us insight to reach unprejudiced judgments about life and to stimulate our will to such action as brings welfare and blessing to our fellow human beings. Some people would say that the case of Kolb shows that it would be superfluous to refer to the science of spirit. It would only be necessary that in preparing themselves for any particular occupation people would not learn only theories in their studies, but that they be brought into touch with life through having a practical as well as a theoretical training. For as soon as Kolb had a look at life, what he learned was sufficient to change his opinions.—No, it is not sufficient, because the lack lies deeper than this. If someone sees that his insufficient education only enables him to build bridges which collapse, this does not say that he has already acquired the ability to build bridges that do not collapse. He must first undergo a really suitable preparatory training. Of course we need do no more than look at social conditions, however insufficient a theory we may have about the fundamental laws of life, to prevent us from saying to someone who does not work: “Why doesn't the scoundrel work?” We can understand from the conditions why such a person does not work. But does this mean that we have learned how conditions should be brought about in which human beings can prosper? It is doubtless true that all the well-intentioned people who have thought up plans for the improvement of man's lot have not judged as Councillor Kolb did before his journey to America. They were surely all convinced before such an expedition that not anyone who gets on badly can be dismissed with the phrase, “Why doesn't the scoundrel work?” Therefore are all their plans for reform fruitful? No, because they often contradict one another. And so we have the right to say that the positive plans for reform which Councillor Kolb had after his conversion cannot have much effect. It is an error of our times that everyone considers himself capable of understanding life, even when he has not taken the slightest trouble to come to grips with the fundamental laws of life and when he has not first trained his thinking to see the real forces at work in life. Furthermore, the science of spirit is a training for a true judgment of life because it gets to the roots of life. It is no use seeing that conditions bring the human being into unfavorable situations in life, in which he is found; we have to acquaint ourselves with the forces by means of which favorable conditions can be created. Our experts in political economy can do this just as little as someone can do arithmetic who does not know his two times table. However many rows of numbers are put before him, merely looking at them will not help him. If reality is placed before someone who understands nothing about the underlying forces of social life, however penetratingly he may be able to describe what he sees, he will not be able to make anything of how the forces of social life interact to the well-being or detriment of man.

[ 8 ] A way of looking at life that leads to the real sources of life is necessary at the present time. And the science of spirit can be just such a way. If all those who wish to form an opinion as to “social needs” were to go through the teachings about life to be found in the science of spirit, we should get much further.—The objection that those who take up the science of spirit only “talk” and do not “act,” is no more valid than the one that the opinions of the science of spirit have not yet been tested and so could be exposed as vague theories like the political theory of Kolb. The first objection does not mean anything because it is naturally not possible to “act” as long as the ways to action are barred. However much a person who has great experience in dealing with people knows what a father should do to bring up his children, he cannot “act” unless the father employs him to this end. In this respect we have to wait patiently until the “talk” of those working according to the science of spirit has some effect on those who have the power to “act.” And this will happen. The other objection is just as irrelevant. And it can be raised only by those who are unfamiliar with the real nature of the truths put forward by the science of spirit. Those who are familiar with them know that they do not come into existence as things can be “tried out.” The laws of human well-being are laid in the fundament of the human soul just as surely as the two times table. We have only to penetrate sufficiently deeply into this fundament of the human soul. Of course, we can make what is written into the soul in this way evident just as we can make evident that twice two are four if we place four beans in two groups next to each other. But who would maintain that the truth “twice two are four” first has to be “tested” with beans? The true situation is: Whoever doubts a truth of the science of spirit has not yet recognized it, just as only a person could doubt that “twice two are four” who has not yet recognized the fact. However much the two differ, because the latter is so simple and the former so complicated the similarity in other respects is nevertheless there.—Naturally this cannot be realized so long as we do not enter into the science of spirit itself. This is why it is not possible to offer a “proof” of this fact for someone who does not know the science of spirit. We can only say: First get to know the science of spirit and then all this will become clear to you.

[ 9 ] The important role of the science of spirit in our times will be revealed when it has become like a leaven in the whole of our life. As long as the way into this life is not trodden in the full sense of the word, those working in harmony with the science of spirit will not have advanced beyond the first beginnings of their work. And as long as this is the case they will no doubt also have to listen to the reproach that their ideas are inimical to life. Yes, they are just as inimical to life as was the railway to a life that regarded the mail coach as the “symbol of true life.” They are just as inimical as the future is inimical to the past.

[ 10 ] In what follows, particular aspects of the relationship between “the science of spirit and the social question” are discussed.—

[ 11 ] There are two opposing views concerning the “social question.” The one sees the causes of good and bad in social life more in the human being, the other more in the conditions in which men live. Those who represent the first view want to encourage progress by endeavoring to increase the spiritual and physical ability of the human being and his moral feeling; those who tend toward the second view are above all concerned to raise the standard of life, for they say that when men learn to live properly, their ability and ethical feelings will rise by themselves to a higher level. We cannot deny that today the second view is constantly gaining ground. To stress the first view is felt in many circles to be the expression of a quite antiquated way of thinking. The point is made that anyone who has to struggle with the bitterest poverty from morning to night cannot do anything about the development of his spiritual and moral powers. Such a person should first be given bread before you talk to him about spiritual matters.

[ 12 ] This last assertion in particular can easily become a reproach to a striving like the science of spirit. And it is not the worst people who make such reproaches today. They say, for instance: “The genuine theosophist does not descend willingly from the devachan and karmic spheres to the earth. One prefers to know ten words of Sanskrit rather than be taught what ground rent is.” This we read in an interesting book, The Cultural Situation of Europe at the Reawakening of Modern Occultism, by G. L. Dankmar (Leipzig, Oswald Mutze, 1905).

[ 13 ] This is an easy enough way of putting the objection. It is pointed out that nowadays families of eight people are herded together into a single room so that even air and light are insufficient, and the children have to be sent to school where weakness and hunger cause them to break down. It is then said: Should not those who are concerned about the progress of the masses concentrate all their efforts on alleviating such conditions? Instead of directing their thinking to teaching about the higher worlds of the spirit they should direct it to the question: How can these terrible social conditions be dealt with? “Let Theosophy descend from its icy loneliness to the people; let it put the ethical demand of universal brotherhood earnestly and truly at the top of its program, and let it act according to this without worrying about all the consequences; let it make the word of Christ about loving one's neighbor a social deed and it will become and remain a precious and indispensable possession of humanity.” This is what we read in the above-mentioned book.

[ 14 ] Those who make such an objection against the science of spirit mean well. In fact, we must even admit that they are right concerning some people who have studied the teachings of the science of spirit. Among the latter there are, without doubt, some who are interested only in their own spiritual needs, who only want to know something about the “higher life,” about the destiny of the soul after death, and so on.—And it is certainly not wrong to say that at the present time it appears more necessary to work for the common good and to develop the virtues of loving one's neighbor and of human welfare than, in isolation from the world, to cultivate any higher faculties which might be dormant in the soul. To desire the latter above all else could mean a kind of refined egotism where the well-being of one's own soul is placed higher than the normally accepted human virtues. Another remark that is heard just as frequently is that only those who are “well off” and who therefore have “time to spare” can take an interest in such things as the science of spirit. And therefore we should not wish to stuff people who have to toil from morning to night for a miserable wage with talk about universal human unity, about “higher life,” and similar things.

[ 15 ] It is only too true that in this respect quite a number of sins are committed by those following the science of spirit. But it is just as correct to say that life led according to the science of spirit, rightly understood, must lead the human being, as an individual, to the virtues of willingly offered work, and of striving for the common good. At any rate, the science of spirit cannot prevent anyone from being just as good a person as the others who do not know or do not want to know anything about the science of spirit.—But as far as the “social question” is concerned, all this misses the main point. Much more is necessary to penetrate to this main point than the opponents of the science of spirit wish to admit. We can agree without hesitation with these opponents that much can be achieved with the means that have been suggested by many for the improvement of man's social condition. One party wants one thing, others something else. To a clear-thinking person, some of the demands which such parties make prove to be devoid of any real substance; on the other hand, some of it certainly contains the making of something really substantial.

[ 16 ] Robert Owen, who lived from 1771 to 1858 and who certainly was one of the noblest social reformers, emphasized again and again that the human being is molded by his environment in which he grows up, that his character is not formed by himself, but by the conditions in which he lives. What is so obviously right in such a statement should not be disputed. But neither should it be treated with a disdainful shrug of the shoulder, even if on the surface it appears to be more or less self-evident. Rather, it should be readily admitted that much in public life can be improved by working according to such ideas. The science of spirit, therefore, will never prevent anyone from doing anything for human progress which sets out to produce a better lot for the oppressed and suffering classes of humanity.

[ 17 ] The science of spirit must go deeper. Really effective progress cannot be achieved by such means any longer. If we do not admit this, we have not recognized how conditions come about in which people live. For inasmuch as the life of man is dependent on these conditions the latter themselves are brought about by man. Or who has arranged it that one person is poor and another rich? Other people, of course. But the fact that these other people have normally lived before those who flourish or do not flourish under the conditions, does not alter anything in this situation. The sufferings which nature itself places upon the human being are not directly concerned with our social position. These sufferings have to be mitigated or even removed by human action. If something is lacking in this respect it is in the arrangements that human beings make for each other.—A thorough knowledge of things teaches us that all evils connected with social life originate in human actions. In this respect it is not the individual human being but the whole of humanity that is the “fashioner of individual fortune.”

[ 18 ] However certain this is, it is also true that by and large no part of humanity, no caste or class, maliciously causes the suffering of another part. All the statements that support this are based on a lack of understanding. Nevertheless, although this too is really a self-evident truth, it must be mentioned. For even if such things can easily be grasped with the understanding, in practice people still act in a different way. Those who exploit their fellow men would naturally not want the victims of their exploitation to suffer. We would make considerable progress if people not only found this self-evident, but also adapted their feelings to it.

[ 19 ] This is air very well, but what are we supposed to do about such statements? Thus, without doubt, a “socially minded person” might object. Is the exploited person supposed to look at the exploiter with benevolent feelings? Is it not only too understandable that the former hates the latter and out of hate is led to his party views? It would certainly be a bad recipe—the objection would continue—if the oppressed were admonished to practice human love for his oppressor, somewhat in the same sense as the saying of the great Buddha: “Hate will not be overcome by hate, but only by love.”

[ 20 ] Even so, it is only the knowledge which follows from this point that can lead us to truly “social thinking” at the present time. And it is here that the approach of the science of spirit begins. This of course must not cling to the surface of our understanding, but must penetrate into the depths. It therefore cannot remain satisfied with merely showing that misery is created by any particular conditions, but it has to advance to the only knowledge that is fruitful, that is, as to how these conditions are created and continuously created. Compared with these deeper questions, most social theories prove to be only “vague theories” or even mere manners of speech.

[ 21 ] As long as our thinking remains on the surface, we attribute quite a wrong influence to conditions and to external things altogether. These conditions are in fact only an expression of an inner life. Just as the human body can be understood only when it is known to be the expression of a soul, the outer conditions of life can be rightly judged only if they are seen as the creation of human souls that embody their feelings, attitudes and thoughts in them. The conditions in which we live are created by our fellow human beings, and we shall never create better ones unless we set out with other thoughts, attitudes and feelings from those that those creators had.

[ 22 ] Let us consider these things in detail. A person who maintains a home in grand style, who can travel first class on the railway, may easily appear on the surface to be an oppressor. And a person who wears a threadbare coat and who travels fourth class will appear to be the oppressed. But one does not have to be an incompassionate individual nor a reactionary in order to understand the following clearly. Nobody is oppressed or exploited because I wear a particular coat, but only because I pay the man who made the coat for me too little. The poor worker who has acquired his inferior coat for little money is, in relation to his fellow human beings in this respect, in exactly the same position as the rich man who had a better coat made. Whether I am poor or rich, I exploit if I acquire things for which insufficient payment is made. Actually today nobody ought to call someone else an oppressor; he ought first to look at himself. If he does this carefully he will soon discover the “oppressor” in himself. Is the work which you have to deliver to the well-to-do delivered only to them at the price of bad wages? No, the person who sits next to you and complains to you about oppression enjoys the work of your hands on exactly the same conditions as the well-to-do whom you have both turned against. One should think this through and one will then find a different way of approaching “social thinking” from the more usual ones.

[ 23 ] Thinking things over in this way makes it clear that the concepts “rich” and “exploiter” must be completely separated. It depends on individual ability or on the ability of our forefathers, or on quite different things, whether we are now rich or poor. The fact that we exploit the work of others has absolutely nothing to do with these things. At least not directly. But it is very much connected with something else. And that is, that our social situation and environment are built upon personal self-interest. We have to think very clearly for otherwise we shall arrive at a quite wrong idea of what is said. If I acquire a coat today it appears quite natural, according to the conditions which exist, that I acquire it as cheaply as possible. This means: I have only myself in mind. Here, however, we touch the point of view that governs our whole life. Of course, it is easy to raise an objection. We can say: Do not the socially-minded parties and personalities try to do something about this evil? Is there not an effort to protect “work?” Do not the working classes and their representatives demand higher wages and shorter working hours? It has already been said above that the present-day view can have absolutely nothing against such demands and measures. Nor is there any intention here of agitating for one or the other of the existing party demands. From the present point of view, we are not concerned with taking sides on particular points, “for” or “against.” This, in the first place, lies quite outside the approach of the science of spirit.

[ 24 ] However many improvements are introduced to protect a particular class of workers and that would certainly contribute much to the raising of conditions of one or the other group of people, the actual nature of exploitation will not be mitigated. For this depends on a person acquiring the products of another person's work from the point of view of self-interest. Whether I have much or little: if I make use of what I have to satisfy my self-interest, the other person is bound to be exploited. Even if in maintaining this point of view I protect his work, it may seem that I have done something, but in fact I have not. For if I pay more for the work of the other person he will also have to pay more for mine, providing the one is not supposed to acquire a better position through the deteriorating position of the other.

[ 25 ] This can be clarified by another example. If I buy a factory in order to earn as much as possible for myself, I shall see that I acquire labor as cheaply as possible, etc. Everything that happens will be done from the point of view of self-interest.—If, on the other hand, I buy a factory from the point of view of looking after 200 people as well as possible, all my actions will take on a different character.—In practice today the second case can certainly hardly be differentiated from the first. This simply depends on the fact that a solitary selfless person cannot achieve much in a community which otherwise is based on self-interest. It would be quite different, however, if work not based on self-interest were universal.

[ 26 ] A “practical” thinker will naturally be of the opinion that no one could manage to help his workers get better wage conditions just by a “good attitude.” For we cannot increase the return on our goods through meaning well, and without this it is not possible to offer better conditions for the workers.—But it is important to realize that this objection is completely erroneous. All our interests, and therefore all our social conditions, change when in acquiring something we no longer have ourselves in mind, but others. What does a person have to look to who only looks after his own well-being? To seeing that he earns as much as possible. How others have to work in order to satisfy his needs cannot be his concern. He therefore has to develop his powers in the struggle for existence. If I establish an undertaking which is to bring in as much as possible to myself, I do not ask how labor that works for me is mobilized. If I do not consider myself but hold the point of view: How does my work serve others? everything changes. Nothing then forces me to undertake anything prejudicial to someone else. I then place my powers not at my own disposal, but at someone else's. The consequence of this is a quite different unfolding of the powers and capacities of the human being. How this changes social conditions in practice will be discussed at the end of the essay.—

[ 27 ] In a way Robert Owen can be called a genius in practical social activity. He possessed two characteristics which may well justify him being called this: a far-ranging eye for measures that would serve social life, and a noble love for human beings. We only have to consider what he achieved by means of these two capacities in order to appreciate their significance. He created a model industrial set-up in New Lanark and employed his workers in such a way that they not only had a dignified existence materially, but that they also lived in conditions which were satisfactory from a moral point of view. The people who gathered there were in part those who had come down in the world and were given over to drink. Better elements were mixed with these, and their example had an effect. And so the best possible results imaginable were attained. What Owen achieved there makes it impossible to place him on the same level as other more or less fantastic “improvers of the world”—the so-called Utopians. He restricted himself to measures which could be put into practice, that anyone not inclined to day-dreams could assume would lead, within a particular limited area, to the abolition of human suffering. And it is not being impractical to believe that such a small area could serve as an example, and that from it a healthy development of the human condition in the social sphere could be stimulated.

[ 28 ] Owen presumably thought along those lines. That is why he was not afraid to take another step in the direction he had already taken. In 1824 he worked toward setting up a kind of small model state in Indiana, in North America. He acquired a district where he wanted to found a human community based upon freedom and equality. Everything was so arranged that exploitation and servitude were an impossibility. Whoever takes such a task upon himself has to bring with him the best social virtues: a desire to make one's fellow men happy, and a belief in the goodness of human nature. He must be convinced that if work organized in the appropriate way appears certain to bring blessing, the desire to work will unfold within human nature.

[ 29 ] Owen believed this so strongly that a lot of serious things had to happen before he began to waver.

[ 30 ] These serious things really did begin to happen. After much noble effort Owen had to admit that “the realization of such colonies must always come to grief unless the general way of living is transformed first;” and that it would be more valuable to influence humanity in a theoretical way rather than by practical measures. This social reformer was forced to this view by the fact that there were sufficient people who disliked work, who wished to get rid of their work on others, for strife, quarrels and finally bankruptcy to ensue.

[ 31 ] Owen's experience can be a lesson to all who really want to learn. It can be a bridge for all artificially created and thought-out measures for the salvation of humanity to a social work which is more fruitful and which reckons with actual reality.

[ 32 ] Through his experience Owen was able to be completely cured of the belief that all human misery comes about through bad “conditions” in which people live, and that the goodness of human nature would come to life of itself if these conditions were improved. He was forced to the conviction that good conditions can be maintained only if the human beings who live in them are naturally inclined to maintain them, and when they do this with enthusiasm.

[ 33 ] One might at first think that it would be necessary to give theoretical instruction to those who are to live in such conditions, that is, in explaining to them that the measures are right and meet the purpose. It is not difficult for an unbiased person to read something like this into Owen's confession. But even so, it is only possible to achieve a really practical result by penetrating more deeply into the matter. We have to advance from merely a belief in the goodness of human nature that deceived Owen, to a real knowledge of man.—However clear people have been about how purposeful certain measures are which can bring blessing to humanity—in the long run all such clarity cannot lead to the desired goal. For the human being is not able to gain the inner impulse to work by having a clear understanding if, on the other hand, the impulses to be found in egotism rear their heads. This egotism happens to be part of human nature. And this means that it stirs in the feelings of the human being when he lives together with others and has to work within a community. This necessarily leads to the fact that in practice most people think the best social conditions to be those where the individual can best satisfy his needs. Thus under the influence of egotistical feelings the social question comes to be formulated quite naturally as follows: What must be done in society in order that each person can have the returns of his work for himself? And particularly in our own times with their materialistic way of thinking, only a few people would base their view on any other assumption. How often does one hear it accepted as a matter of course that a social order based on goodwill and feeling for one's fellow human beings is an absurdity. Rather it is assumed that the totality of a human community can prosper best when the individual can pocket the “full” or greatest possible yield of his work.

[ 34 ] Exactly the opposite of this is taught by the science of spirit, which is founded on a deeper knowledge of the human being and of the world. It shows that all human misery is simply a consequence of egotism, and that misery, poverty and distress must necessarily arise at a particular time in the human community if this community is based on egotism in any way. It is naturally necessary to have deeper knowledge than the kind to be found here and there sailing under the flag of social science, in order to understand this. This “social science” takes only the outer aspect of human life into account, and not the forces which lie deeper. In fact, it is even very difficult with the majority of modern people to awaken even a feeling in themselves that one can speak about such forces. They regard anyone who comes along with such ideas as peculiar. Now in this essay it is not possible to attempt to evolve a social theory based on these deeper-lying forces. For this would need a much fuller work. The only thing that can be done is to point to the true laws which govern how people work together, and to show what reasonable social considerations arise for someone familiar with these laws. Only a person who builds up his view of the world on the science of spirit can have a full understanding of the matter. And it is to convey such a view of the world that this whole magazine works. One cannot expect it from a single article on the “social question.” All that this article can hope to do is to shed some light on this question from the spiritual point of view. After all, there will be some people who are able to have a feeling for the Tightness of what is briefly described here and which cannot possibly be explained in every detail.

[ 35 ] Now, the main social law set forth by the science of spirit, is the following:“The well-being of a total community of human beings working together becomes greater the less the individual demands the products of his achievements for himself, that is, the more of these products he passes on to his fellow workers and the more his own needs are not satisfied out of his own achievements, but out of the achievements of others.” All the conditions within a total community of people which contradict this law must sooner or later produce misery and distress somewhere. — This law holds good for social life with absolute necessity and without any exceptions, just as a natural law holds good for a particular sphere of natural processes. But it should not be thought that it is sufficient for this law to be held as a universal moral law, or that it should be translated into the attitude that everyone should work in the service of his fellow men. No, in actual fact the law will be able to exist as it should only if a total community of people succeeds in creating conditions where no one ever can claim the fruits of his own work for himself, but where, if at all possible, these go entirely to the benefit of the community. And he in turn must be maintained by means of the work of his fellow human beings. The important thing is to see that working for one's fellow human beings and aiming at a particular income are two quite separate things.

[ 36 ] Those who imagine that they are “practical people”—the scientist of spirit has no illusions about this—will only be able to smile about this “hair-raising idealism.” But despite this, the above law is more practical than anything which has ever been thought out by “practical people,” or that has actually been introduced. If we really study life we can find that each human community that exists or has existed has two tendencies in its social set-up. One of these corresponds to this law, the other contradicts it. This has to be the case, irrespective of whether people want it or not. Every community would collapse immediately if the work of the individual did not benefit the whole. But from times immemorial human egotism has thwarted this law. It has sought to get as much as possible for the individual from his own work. And it is just what has been produced through egotism in this way that has always led to distress, poverty and misery. This means that the aspect of human conditions that is bound to prove impractical is the one that is introduced by the “practical people,” that reckons either with one's own egotism or somebody else's.

[ 37 ] Now of course we are not only concerned with understanding such a law, but actual practice begins with the question: How can the law be carried out in real life? It is clear that it says nothing less than this: The smaller the egotism is, the greater the human well-being. Thus in putting the law into practice, our concern is with people who extricate themselves from the path of egotism. This is in practice, however, quite impossible if the well-being of the individual is measured according to his work. Whoever works for himself is bound gradually to succumb to egotism. Only someone who works for others can gradually become an un-egotistical worker.

[ 38 ] For this, one prerequisite is necessary. If a person works for another he must find in this other person the reason for his work; and if someone is supposed to work for the community he must be able to feel the value, the being and the significance of this community. He can do this only if the community is something quite different from a more or less undefined collection of individuals. It has to be permeated by a real spirit in which each person can partake. It has to be such that everyone says: It is right, and I want it to be like that. The total community must have a spiritual mission; and each individual must wish to contribute to the fulfillment of this mission. None of the indefinite and abstract ideas of progress which we normally read about are able to provide the formulation of such a measure. If only these ideas prevail, an individual will work here or a group there without seeing that their work is of any use beyond satisfying their own needs or perhaps the interests they happen to have. This spirit of the total community must be alive right down into each individual.

[ 39 ] From earliest times good has prospered only where such a life has been somehow permeated by a spirit common to the whole community. An individual citizen of an old Greek city, or even a citizen of a free city in the Middle Ages, had at least something of a vague feeling of such a spirit. In this respect it makes no difference that, for instance, the Greek way of life was dependent on an army of slaves who did the work for the “free citizens,” and who were not urged on by the spirit of the community, but by the compulsion of their masters.—The only thing we can learn from this example is that human life is subject to development. Humanity has reached a stage today where the kind of solution of the social question practiced in ancient Greece is no longer possible. Even the most noble Greek did not find slavery wrong, but a human necessity. That is why, for instance, the great Plato could put forward an ideal for the state in which the spirit of the community finds its fulfillment in the fact that the majority of workers are compelled to work by the few with understanding. The task of the present day, however, is to put people in a position where each one can do his work for the whole community out of the impulse to be found within his own being.

[ 40 ] This is why no one should think of looking for a solution to the social question applicable to all times, but of how we must formulate our social thinking and actions in accordance with the immediate needs of the present in which we live.—It is not possible today for anyone to think up something theoretical or to put it into practice so that it could solve the social question. For he would have to have the power to force a number of people into the conditions he has created. There can be no doubt that had Owen had the power or the will to force all the people of his colony to do the work appointed them, the undertaking must have succeeded. But at the present time, such force cannot be used. It must be possible for each person to do what he is called upon to do according to his ability and measure of power, out of his own accord. Just because of this, it can never be the case that a mere point of view can convey to people how economic conditions can best be ordered—in the way that Owen in the above-cited confession thought that people should be influenced “from a theoretical point of view.” An economic theory by itself can never be a stimulus to work against the powers of egotism. Such an economic theory can for a while give the masses life which on the surface, appears like idealism. But in the long run, such a theory can help no one. Whoever injects such a theory into a crowd of people without giving it something really spiritual, commits a sin against the real purpose of humanity.

[ 41 ] The only thing that can help is a spiritual view of the world which can permeate the thoughts, feelings and will, in short, the whole soul of the human being, out of what it is in itself and out of what it is able to offer. The faith that Owen had in the goodness of human nature is only partly right, the other part being a gross illusion. He is right, inasmuch as a “higher self,” that can be awakened, slumbers in everyone. But it can only be redeemed from its slumber by a view of the world which has the characteristics mentioned above. If people are brought together in conditions such as were thought out by Owen, the community will prosper in the best possible way. But if people are brought together who do not have such a view of the world, what is good in these conditions will sooner or later of necessity have to become worse. With people who do not have a view based on the spirit, the conditions which further material well-being must also necessarily intensify egotism and thereby produce distress, misery and poverty.—The original meaning of the saying is undoubtedly right: Only an individual can be helped by the gift of bread alone; a community can only acquire its bread by being helped to a view of the world. It is also of no use to wish to procure bread for each individual in the community. After a while it would inevitably come about that many have no bread.

[ 42 ] Knowledge of these fundamentals removes several illusions from those who set themselves up to be bringers of happiness to the people. For it makes work designed to improve the social well-being a really difficult matter. And it means too that the overall success of such work can, in certain conditions, only be pieced together out of very small individual successes. Most of what whole parties proclaim as remedies for social life loses its value and proves to be vain delusion and empty talk without sufficient knowledge of human life. No parliament, no democracy, no agitation of the masses, nothing like this can have any meaning for someone who looks more deeply, if it goes against the law mentioned above. Such things can only have a favorable effect if they conform to the intention of this law. It is a serious illusion to believe that an elected member of a particular parliament can contribute anything to the salvation of humanity unless his work is carried out in conformity with the main law of social life.

[ 43 ] Wherever this law appears, wherever someone works according to it as far as is possible in the position which he occupies in the human community, good is achieved, even if in very small measure in individual cases. And it is only by means of such isolated examples of work which arise in this way, that beneficial progress in the whole social sphere will come about.—It is also true that in some cases larger communities have a natural tendency which enables them to achieve a greater result in this direction. There are also some particular human communities where something of this sort is being prepared within their natural tendencies and capacities. They will make it possible for humanity to take a step forward in social evolution. Such communities are known to the science of spirit, but it cannot undertake to speak publicly about such matters.—And there are also means of preparing larger groups of people to take such a step forward, even within a reasonable space of time. What anyone can do, however, is to work in conformity with the above law in his own particular sphere. There is no position which a person might have in the world where this is not possible, however insignificant or without influence it may appear to be.

[ 44 ] The most important thing is that each person seek out the ways to a view of the world which is based on real knowledge of the spirit. The spiritual approach of anthroposophy can develop into such a view for everyone, when it evolves more and more according to its content and inherent possibilities. By means of it the human being comes to know that it is not by chance that he is born in a particular place at a particular time, but that he is placed out of necessity into the situation in which he is by the spiritual law of cause, karma. He can see that it is his own well-founded destiny that has placed him into the human community in which he lives. He can also become aware of how his abilities have not come to him haphazardly, but that their existence is dependent on the law of cause.

[ 45 ] And he can realize all this to the extent that it does not remain just a matter of sense or reason, but gradually fills his whole soul with inner life.

[ 46 ] He will come to feel that he is fulfilling a higher purpose when he works in accordance with his place in the world, and in accordance with his abilities. The result of realizing this will not be a kind of shadowy idealism but a tremendous impulse of all his powers, and in this respect he will regard his action just as much a matter of course as in other respects he regards eating and drinking. And furthermore, he will realize the particular significance of the human community to which he belongs. He will come to understand the relationships which his human community has to other communities, and so the individual personalities of these communities will draw together through a unified picture of spiritual aims, a picture of the common mission of the whole human race. And his knowledge will be able to reach out from the human race to the meaning of the entire earth existence. Only someone who will have nothing to do with a view of the world tending in this direction could be doubtful that it could have the effect suggested here. Of course, it is true that today most people have little inclination to go into such things. But the right approach of the science of spirit cannot fail to attract increasingly wider circles. To the extent that it does this, people will do the right things to further social progress. One cannot doubt this, just because no particular view of the world has so far brought happiness to humanity. According to the laws of human evolution it has never been possible to achieve what is now gradually becoming possible: to transmit a view of the world to every person with the prospect of the practical result already indicated.

[ 47 ] The views of the world that have existed so far have been available only to individual groups of people. But what good has been achieved in the human race so far, stems from the various views of the world. Only a view of the world that can inspire everyone and can kindle inner life in everyone is in a position to lead to a universal salvation. This the approach of the science of spirit will always be able to do, where it really evolves according to what is latent within it.—Of course, we should not only look at the form which this way of looking at life happens to have at this moment, in order to recognize what has been said as right, it is imperative to realize that the science of spirit has still to evolve and rise to its lofty cultural mission.

[ 48 ] Until today, for several reasons it has not been possible for it to show the countenance it will have one day. One of these reasons is that it must first gain a foothold somewhere. It has therefore to turn to a particular group of people. And naturally this can only be one that through the particular nature of its development has a desire to seek a new solution to the riddle of the world, and which can bring to such a solution understanding and interest by means of the few people in it who have the necessary preparatory training. Of course, the science of spirit has for the moment to clothe its message in a language suited to this group of people. The science of spirit will find further means of expression to speak to wider circles of people to the extent that conditions allow. Only someone who insists on having fixed dogmas can believe that the present form of the message of the science of spirit is a lasting or even the only possible one.—Just because the science of spirit is not concerned with remaining a mere theory, or merely with satisfying curiosity, it has to work slowly in this way. To its aims belong the practical points of human progress characterized above. But it can bring about this progress of humanity only if it creates the necessary conditions for it. And these conditions can be created only when one person after the other is conquered. The world moves forward only when human beings want it to. But in order to want it, everyone has to work in his own soul. And this can only be achieved step by step. If this were not the case, the science of spirit also would produce a lot of woolly ideas and do no practical work.

If Theosophy were to assert that it has in the last few decades brought any new thing into the world, it could easily and very effectively be contradicted. For it is easy to believe that any particular truth or achievement in a special branch of human knowledge, in man's conception of the world or in his world of thought, might enrich the advancing ages, but not that which concerns his innermost and deepest being—the source and origin of all human wisdom—could appear at any particular time. This in itself could not be believed; hence it is only natural that the belief that Theosophy could bring in or want to bring in anything completely new, must call forth a certain distrust against the movement itself.

But ever since Theosophy set out to obtain an influence upon modern civilisation, it has always described itself as possessing the old primeval wisdom, which man has ever sought and endeavoured to acquire in many different forms in the various ages. It is the task of the Theosophical Movement to look for these forms in the various religions and world-conceptions through which the peoples, throughout the ages, have striven to press through to the source of truth. Theosophy has brought to light the fact that in the various ages, even in the most primeval times, that wisdom by which man sought to attain his goal, has always in its really most profound essence been one and the same. That is a truth, Theosophy teaches us to be modest concerning the acquirements of our own times.

The well-known statement, which, in its lack of humility, boasts of the progress made in the 19th century, is felt to be particularly limited when we observe life in a deeper sense, extending through hundreds of thousands of years. But I do not wish to lead you back to those primeval ages.

I should like to ask you, by means of the example of a great personality of modern times, how he tried to carry out the wisdom-teaching inscribed in the Greek Temples; “Know thyself!” He, who made this saying his own, was really in complete harmony with the teaching and views of Theosophy. This personality is none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. He certainly belongs not only to the German nation, but to many other civilized men of the present age and belongs indeed more or less to us all. Goethe is a spirit who affects us in a very special way. No matter to what part of his life we turn in study, we find, not only the great Poet very pre-eminently there, but, if we go more deeply into the subject, we soon discover in him the Wise One, to whose wisdom we turn back again after long years, always to discover something new.

We find that Goethe was one of those spirits who had within him an inexhaustible fund of greatness. And if we have learned to add to our own small stock of wisdom, by turning back to Goethe again and again, we are constantly astonished anew and stand in admiration before that which before was hidden from us, because there was in ourselves no responsive echo of the realm which expressed itself through him. No matter how polished a man may be, no matter how much wisdom he may have discovered in Goethe, if after some years he turns to him again, he will convince himself anew that there is still an infinite fund of what is beautiful and good in the works of Goethe. This experience may come in particular to those who believe profoundly in the evolution of the human soul. It has often been said that in his “Faust,” Goethe produced a sort of Gospel. If this be so, then, besides his Gospel, Goethe also produced a sort of secret Revelation, a sort of Apocalypse. This Apocalypse is concealed within his works, it forms the conclusion to his “Unterhaltung deutscher Ausgewanderten,” and is read only by few. I am always being asked where in Goethe's works this “Märchen” is to be found! Yet it is in all the editions and forms, as I have just said, the conclusion to the above. In this fairy tale, Goethe created a work of art of eternal beauty. The direct, symbolical impression of the work of art will not be interfered with, if I now try to give an interpretation of this fairy tale; Goethe put into this tale his most intimate thoughts and conceptions.

In the latter years of his life he said to Eckermann: “My dear friend, I will tell you something that may be of use to you, when you are going over my works. They will never become popular; there will be single individuals who will understand what I want to say, but there can be no question of popularity for my writings.” This referred principally to be the second part of “Faust,” and what he meant was that a man who enjoyed “Faust” might have a direct artistic impression, but that one who could get at the secrets concealed in “Faust” would see what was hidden behind the imagery. But I am not speaking of the second part of “Faust,” but of the “Fairy Tale of the Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily,” in which Goethe spoke in an even more intimate way than in the former. I shall try to disclose in the course of this lecture the Mysteries concealed in these remarkable pictures, and to explain why Goethe made use of these symbolical images to express his most intimate thoughts. Anyone who is capable of understanding the Fairy Tale knows that Goethe was a Theosophist and a mystic. Goethe was acquainted with that wisdom and conception of the world which we try to give forth in a popular way in Theosophy; and the Fairy Tale itself is a proof of this; only, at the time when Goethe was writing, the endeavour had not yet been made to clothe the highest truths in words and to give them forth in open lectures by the power of reason; these most intimate human psychic truths were not then spoken of openly. Those who gave a hint of them put them into symbolical form, and expressed them by symbols. This was an old custom, dating from the middle ages, when it was thought that it would be impossible to put the highest insight into the abstract form, but that a sort of experience or initiation was necessary. This made it impossible for people to speak of these truths, who believed that a particular sort of mood, a sort of special soul-atmosphere was needed in order to understand such truths; they could not be grasped merely by the intellect. A certain mood was necessary, a certain disposition of the soul, which I will call a psychic atmosphere. The language of reason seemed to them to be too arid, too dry and cold to express the highest truths. Besides which they still retained a sort of conviction that those who were to learn these truths should first make themselves worthy of them. This conviction brought it to pass, that in the olden times, down to the 3rd century A.D.—the truth about the human soul and the human spirit was not given out publicly as it is now, but those who wished to attain to such knowledge had first to be prepared to receive that which was to be given to them in the Sanctuaries of the Mysteries. Therein all that had been preserved of the secrets of nature and of the laws of cycles, was given out as something which, to put it concisely, could not be learned and recognised as dry truths, but which the students had to recognise as living truths and learn to live them. It was not then a question of thinking wisdom, but of living it; not merely a question of permeating wisdom with the glow of the intellect, but of making it the mainspring of life, so that a man is transformed thereby. A certain shyness must possess a man before the Holy of Holies; he had to understand that truth is divine, that it is permeated by the Divine Cosmic Blood, which draws into the personality, so that the divine world lives anew within. The recognition of all this was included in the word “development.” This had to be made quite clear to the Mystic, and this it was which he was to attain through the stages of purification, on the way to the Mysteries, he was to acquire the holy shyness before the Truth, and to be drawn away from the longing for the things of the senses, from the sorrows and joys of life, from all that surrounds us in ever-day life. The Light of the Spirit, which is necessary to us when we withdraw from the profane life, we shall receive when we give up the other. When we are worthy to receive the Light of the Spirit, we shall have become different people; we shall then love with real, earnest sympathy and devotion, that which we are wont to look upon as a shadowy existence, a life in the abstract. We then live the Spiritual life which to the ordinary man is mere thought. But the Mystic learns to sacrifice the Self that clings to the everyday life, he learns not only to penetrate the truth with his thought but has to live it through and through, to conceive it within him as Divine Truth, as Theosophy. Goethe has expressed this conviction in his “West-Ostlichen Divan:”—

So lang dud as nicht hast,
Dies ‘stirb im Werde’,
Bist du nur ein trüber Gast
Auf der dunkeln Erde—

This it is that the Mystics of all ages have striven for,—to let the lower nature die out, and to allow that which dwells in the Spirit to spring forth; the extinction of sense reality, that man may ascend to the Kingdom of “Divine Purposes.” “To die in order to become.” If we do not possess this power we do not know of the forces that vibrate into our world, and we are but a “trüber Gast” (gloomy guest) on our Earth. Goethe gave expression to this in his “West-Ostlichen Divan,” and this he tries to represent in all the different parts of the “Fairy Tale” of the “Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily!” The transition of man from one stage of existence to a higher one. That was the riddle he wanted to solve, the riddle as to how a man who lives in the everyday world,—and who can only see with his eyes, and hear with his ears,—can lay hold of this “dying and becoming!”

This was the question for the Mystics of all ages; and this great question was always called “Spiritual Alchemy.” The transmutation of man from the every-day soul to the Spirit-soul, one to whom the things of the Spirit are just as real as the things of this Earth, such as tables and chairs and so on, are to the ordinary man. When the alchemical transmutation had taken place in a man, he was then considered worthy to have the highest truths communicated to him, he was then led into the Holy of Holies. He was then initiated, and supplied with the teachings which instructed him as to the purposes of nature, those purposes which run through the plan of the world. It is an initiation of this kind which is described by Goethe, the initiation into the Mysteries, of one who has been made worthy to receive them.

There are two proofs of this—in the first place Goethe himself took a great deal of trouble to become acquainted with the secret which may be called the Secret of Alchemy. Between the studies he made at Leipzig and Strassburg he had already discovered that Alchemy had a Spiritual side, and knew that ordinary Alchemy was nothing but a reflection of the Spiritual, and all that is known of Alchemy consisted only in the symbolical expressions of realities. That is to say, he referred to that Alchemy which is concerned with the forces of the inner life.

Alchemists have also left indications of how this could be worked. As they were only able to describe the transmutation of the human forces by means of symbols, they therefore spoke of one substance being transmuted into another. All they related concerning the transmutation of matter, referred to what the human soul-life developed within itself at a higher stage, when it became transmuted spiritually. All that the great Spirits have disclosed about the Spiritual Realms to those men who are still bound to the life of every day, was taken by them as referring to the transmutation of substances and metals in the retorts, and they took great trouble to try and discover by what mysterious methods the transmutation of substances could be brought about.

Goethe, in one part of his “Faust,” shows us what he himself understood as to such things. In the first part of “Faust,” in the walk in front of the garden, he points clearly to the false, wrong and petty material conceptions that are held as to Alchemy. He makes fun of those who strive with such feverish efforts to discover these secrets, and who pour forth the lower substances, according to numberless receipts, in company of the Adepts.

“There a Red Lion, with the Lily wedded,
“A wooer bold, within the tepid bath,
“From bridal-bower to bridal-bower was speeded
“Racked by the naked fire's flaming wrath.”

The union with the Lily, which is made fun of by Goethe is what he wished to illustrate in his Fairy Tale, of the Green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

The highest transmutation which man can accomplish is illustrated by Goethe in the symbol of the Lily. It is of like significance with what we call the Highest freedom. When a man follows the primal and eternal laws, in accordance with which we have to complete the primal and eternal circuit of our existence, and if he also recognises the primal and eternal evolution of his freedom, he will then find himself at a certain stage of his development which is accomplished by a disposition of the soul, which may be described by the symbol of the Lily. The highest forces of the soul, the highest state of consciousness, in which a man may be free because he will then not misuse his freedom, and will never create a disturbance in the circle of freedom,—this state of soul, which was communicated to the Mystics in the Mysteries, in which they were collectively transmuted,—this was from all time described as the “Lily.”

That which Spinoza expresses at the end of his “Ethics,” (dry and mathematical as he was in his other writings)—when he says that man ascended into the higher spheres of existence and penetrated them by means of the laws of nature,—this state of mind may also be described as the Lily, Spinoza describes it as the realm of Divine Love in the human soul, the realm in which man does nothing under compulsion, but in which everything belonging to the domain of human development takes place in freedom, devotion and utter Love, where everything arbitrary is transmuted by that Spiritual Alchemy in which every activity flows into the stream of freedom.

Goethe has described that Love as the highest state of Freedom, as the being free from all desires and wishes of our every-day life. He says, “Self-seeking and Self-will are not permanent, they are driven out by the Ego. Here we must be good.” The Divine Love, which is referred to by Spinoza, and which he wishes to attain through Spiritual Alchemy,—that it is with which man should unite himself, that it is with which man should unite his will. Human will active at every stage, is that which in all ages was known as the “Lion,” the creature in which the Will is most strongly developed, and that is why the Mystics have always called the will of man: the “Lion.” In the Persian Mysteries there were seven Initiations; there were the following: first the Raven, then the Occultist, then the Fighter; at the fourth grade the student was already able to look back at his life from the other side, and had really become Man, hence the Persians called one who had overcome the Lion stage a Persian. That was the fifth stage, and a man who had got so far that his actions flowed quickly along, just as the Sun runs its course in the Heavens above, was called a Sun-runner. But he who accomplished all his actions out of absolute and ceaseless love, was looked upon by the Persians as belonging to the grade of the “Father.” At the fourth grade, a man stood at the parting of the ways; he had then, besides his physical body, his etheric double, and that body which is subject to the laws of passions and desires, wishes and instincts; he was now organized for a higher life. These three bodies form, according to Theosophy, the lower part of man. From these the lower man is born. When a man was initiated into this grade and could see this connection the Persians called him a “Lion.” He then stands at the parting of the ways, and that which compelled him to act according to the laws of nature is transmuted into a free gift of Love. When he reaches the eighth stage of Initiation, when he has evolved himself into a free man, one who can allow himself to do, out of free love, what he was formerly driven to do by his own nature, this connection between the Lion and the free loving being, is described in Alchemy as “the mystery of human development.” This is the mystery Goethe represented in his Fairy Tale. First of all he shows us how this man of will stands there, drawn down to the physical world from higher spheres, from spheres of which he himself knows nothing. Goethe is conscious of the fact that man, in so far as his spiritual nature is concerned, comes originally from higher spheres; that he was led into this which Goethe represents as the world of matter, the world of sense-existence, this is the Land on the bank of the River.

But in the Tale of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily, there are two Lands, one on this side of the River, and the other beyond. The unknown Ferryman conducts the man across from the far side into the Land of the sense-world;—and between the Land of spiritual existence and the sense-world there flows the River, the water which divides them. By water, Goethe describes that which the Mystics of all ages have symbolized as water. Even in Genesis the same meaning is applied to this word as we find in Goethe. In the New Testament too we find this expression in the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. “He who is not born again of water and the Spirit, cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” Goethe understood perfectly what was signified by the expression “born again of water.” And we can see in what sense he understood it by his “song of the Spirit.”

Seele des Menschen	Soul of humanity
Nie gleichat du dem Wasser!	How like to the water!
Schicksal des Menschen	Fate of humanity
Wie gleichst du dem Wind!	How like to the wind!

The world of humanity, the world of longing and wishes, the world of passions and desires, is a land inserted between our Spirit and our senses. Our senses know neither good nor evil, they cannot err. Anyone who goes into this question, knows that when we study the laws of nature, we cannot speak of good or evil. When we study nature in the animal world, we find that there are objectionable animals and useful ones, but we cannot speak of good and evil ones. Only when man plunges into the water—into the soul-world—does he become capable of good and evil. This world which is inserted between the Spiritual and the world of senses, is the River over which the Spirit passes from the unknown spheres. The innermost of man came across the River of passions and desires—and when he goes through further development he becomes like the Will-o'-the-wisp.

Thus man is subject to the laws within him, after he has crossed the River, and before he has received the Divine Spark which will take him across to the other world. He is therefore put ashore by the Ferryman who brings men across the River from the far bank to the near one. Nobody can be guided over by the Ferryman but all can be brought over by him. We feel ourselves being brought over without any action of our own, by the forces lying beneath our consciousness, which go ahead of our actions. By means of these forces we feel ourselves placed in the world of sense,—on the hither side; the Ferryman who brought us across from the Land of the Spirit, has put us into this world and cannot take us back to that country again to which we must however return, the Land of the beautiful Lily. The Will-o'-the-wisps wanted to pay the Ferryman his fare with gold, but he demanded fruits of the Earth, which they did not possess; they had nothing but gold, and he would not be paid with that. Gold coins, said he, were injurious to the River, it cannot bear such gold; which signifies that man can purchase wisdom with the fruits of the Earth. This is a profound wisdom; gold signifies the force of wisdom dwelling in man, and this is his guide through life. This force of Wisdom makes itself felt when a man is placed among the things of sense, as the forces of knowledge and reason. But this wisdom is not the wisdom which furthers his development. When it forms part of a man's nature, it makes him self-seeking and egotistical. If this force of reason and this knowledge were to join forces with what flows in the River, their passions would throw up huge waves; for whenever man does not place his wisdom at the service of selflessness, but simply throws it into the River, when he cultivates (frohmen) his passions, the River throws up great waves. Hence it is impossible to satisfy the River with gold; with that wisdom. So the Ferryman throws back the wisdom which has not yet passed through the stage of selflessness. He throws it back into the chasm, where reigns the profoundest darkness, and there it is buried. We shall hear why this is so.

The Ferryman demanded three cabbages, three artichokes, and three onions.—Thus he demands the fruits of the Earth. Now by what means can man attain his development? By ennobling the lower desire-forces of his nature, so that he purifies the sense-nature within him and casts this purified nature into the River, and thereby .................. this it is which Schiller refers to in his letters on the aesthetic education of man. He alone understands freedom who has set his own nature free;—when the outer sense-nature is so ennobled that it seeks for the good and the beautiful because it is no longer misled by passion, when we no longer throw our wisdom into the River, but reward our passions with the fruits of the Earth so that our sense-nature itself is taken up by them, just as the fruits of the Earth would be accepted by the River, we have then attained the first grade of initiation as expressed in the words, “Ye must know that I cannot be paid except with the fruits of the Earth.” Then the Will-o'-the-wisps proceed further on this side of the River, that means that man tries to follow his own way of life further.

On this side of the River he meets with the green Serpent, the symbol of human endeavours, of human knowledge. This Serpent had previously had a wonderful experience—the Ferryman had ferried over the piece of gold and concealed it in a cleft of the Earth, and here the Serpent had found it. The wisdom that brings men forward is still a hidden treasure, concealed in the mysteries, hence if a man wishes to find wisdom he must seek it far from all human self-seeking. When a man had made himself worthy to receive it, it will be found in its proper place;—the Serpent, the symbol of human striving after knowledge, permeates itself with the gold; this “self” is entirely permeated with wisdom, and becomes luminous. Then the Serpent desired from the Will-o'-the-wisps that which is a cause of pride to the self-seeking man, when he throws about him and pricks himself with,—this human knowledge which when used in the service of egoism is objectionable and worthless, will be attained when man crawls humbly on the ground as does the Serpent, and strives to recognize the reality piece by piece. If a man stands there, proud and stuck-up, he will never attain it, he can only receive it when like the Serpent, he goes horizontally on the ground and lives in humility,—then the gold of wisdom is in its place. Then the man may venture to permeate himself with wisdom—that too is why the Will-o'-the-wisps call the Serpent their relation, and say “We really are related on the side of light.” Indeed they are related, the wisdom that serves the self is related to the wisdom which serves humility; the Serpent is related to the Will-o'-the-wisps.

Now the tale relates further that the Serpent had been under the Earth in the clefts of the rock, and there had met something resembling human forms—the Serpent had reached a temple; this is none other than a symbol of the Mystery Temples of all ages,—this concealed Temple which was in the clefts below the Earth is the symbol of the Sanctuaries of Initiation. In this Temple the Serpent found the three great priests of Initiation; these priests were gifted with the highest forces of human nature, which theosophy calls Atma, Buddhi, Manas. They are called by Goethe the King of Beauty, the King of Wisdom, and the King of Strength or Will;—with these three basic forces of the soul, into which the human soul must be initiated, the Mystic had to be united in the Temple of the Mysteries—and Goethe represents the Serpent, all luminous within, because it had taken in the gold of wisdom, humility.

The old man with the lamp is another figure—what does he represent? He has a lamp which has the peculiarity of only shining when another light is there. Because the Serpent is luminous and illuminates the inner Hall of the Mystery Temple with its own radiating light,—Goethe expresses these thoughts in another passage in the words “If the eye were not sensitive to the Sun it could not perceive the light.” Here he expresses in poetic words what he expressed in the fairy tale in pictures; what we in Anthroposophy call “occult knowledge” is expressed by the old man with the lamp,—the light of occult knowledge cannot shine to anyone who had not prepared himself to receive it.

It appears to no one who has not worked his way up to that higher stage of development at which his higher self, his selfless nature shines forth from within, bringing light to meet light,—the highest wisdom is called occult, because it only appears when a man brings his own light to meet it. When those two lights, the intuitive light from above, and the light that comes from the personal, shine into one another, they then give that which man experiences in his transmutation as Spiritual Alchemy—then the space around him become light, he then learns to recognise the highest Spiritual forces, the gifts of the three Kings; Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the gift of the golden King is Wisdom, that of the silver King is Beauty or Piety, the gift of the bronze King is Strength or force of Will. Man can only understand his innermost forces, he can only understand himself when he meets with the light of the lamp which can only shine when there is already a light. Then the three Kings appear in their radiance, and at the same time the significance of the fourth King becomes apparent—the King who is composed of the metals of the three others;—he is the symbol of the lower nature, in which the noble forces of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength work together as disorderly and inharmonious chaos. These three forces that live in a highly developed soul are also to be found in lower natures, though there they are chaotic and inharmonious. This fourth King is the Kingdom of the present world;—the Chaotic mixture of Wisdom, Beauty, and Strength,—the soul-forces which can only attain the highest when they work together harmoniously,—affect one another in a chaotic way in the present age. The old man said of the fourth King “Er wird sich setzen” (here he will sit down)—The Chaotic mixture will have disappeared when that which Goethe so ardently longed for shall have come to pass, that is, that the Temple shall no longer be hidden, but shall be raised to the full light of day, when it shall have ascended from the depths, and all men will be able to serve in the Temple of Initiation, which will be a bridge across which all men may pass to and fro. That will be a time when all men will have made themselves worthy of being influenced by the highest wisdom, piety, and strength and will. The Temple will then have fulfilled its task. It will have raised itself above the river of passions, and the forces of passion will have become so pure and noble that the highest Spiritual can uplift itself in the Temple, in the clear light of day, above the stream of passions and desires. To this end it is necessary that mankind should be filled with the “Stirb und werde” (dying and becoming) which Goethe so distinctly outlined in his “West-Ostlichen Divan.” Goethe was frequently asked for the solution of the riddle and he replied “The solution of the riddle lies in the fairy tale itself, and not in one word alone.” There is a passage during the conversation in the Temple which we take to be the solution of the riddle. The solution is not a thing which can be expressed in words, but in an inner resolve; that was indicated by Goethe in the fairy tale. The Serpent said “I will sacrifice myself, I will purify myself through selflessness.” It is precisely this which must be taken as the profoundest solution of the riddle, it is an act, and not a doctrine. Till now one could only pass across the River in two ways. The one was when at noon the green Serpent laid itself across the River and formed a bridge, so that at the mid-day hour it was possible to go across the River. This means that at the present age there are moments in a man's life when the Sun is at noon for him, when he is ripe to yield himself to the highest Spiritual light; but he is always drawn away again and again from these noon-tide moments of life, into the lower world full of passions. In such noon-tide moments the elect of the Spirit can pass across from the shore of the sense-life to the shore of the Spirit.

But there is yet another way to pass over the River, and that is in the evening, when the shadow of the great giant is thrown across the River,—that too can form a bridge, but only in the hour of twilight. What is this shadow of the great giant? Goethe went into this question more deeply with his intimate and trusted friends; with them he spoke about the forces symbolized by him in the “Fairy Tale.” On one occasion when Schiller was planning a journey to Frankfort, Goethe wrote to him: “I am very glad you did not come here, to the West, for the shadow of the giant might have got hold of you unawares.” The meaning of the giant is moreover clearly expressed in the “Fairy Tale” itself, the giant who is weak, can do nothing of himself; but his shadow can form a bridge across to the far side. This giant is the crude mechanical forces of nature. Its shadow is sometimes able, when the light is no longer strong, to conduct the men of crude passions across the River. These are the people who, when their clear day consciousness is extinguished, pass over into the Land of the Spirit in trance, somnambulism, psychic vision, or some of the many similar conditions of the soul. Thus the clear day consciousness was also extinguished in the wild delirious acts by which at that time men tried to push their way into this realm of Freedom.

They wanted to penetrate into the realm of the beautiful Lily—But the shadow of the giant can alone reach across. Man is only able to overcome his passions in the twilight of his consciousness, when he is in an almost unconscious state, and not when living in clear consciousness. These are the two ways of reaching the opposite bank: First, in the holy moments of the noon-day hour, by the Serpent; and secondly, in the twilight of the consciousness—by the shadow of the giant.

But this one thing must be striven after:—the Serpent must sacrifice itself completely. Not only should it lead men over the River of passions at the noon-day hour, but at all hours of the day it should be ready to form the bridge from one side to the other; so that not only a few may be able to wander across, but that all men should be able to cross backwards and forwards at any time. The Serpent made this resolution, and so did Goethe; Goethe points to an age of selflessness, when man will not put his forces at the service of his lower self but at the service of unselfishness.

There are a few other thoughts connected with these basic thoughts about the Fairy Tale. I cannot go into them all today, and will only touch upon a few. We find the wife of the old man with the lamp, she is connected with the representatives of human occult knowledge. She keeps the house of the old man. To her come the Will-o'-the-wisps, they have licked off all the gold from the walls, and had at once given away all the gold which enriched them, so that the living “Mops,” who ate up the gold, had to suffer death. The old man is the force of reason, which brings forth that which is useful. It is only when occult force unites with this which forwards material civilization, when the highest is united with the lowest in the world, that the world itself can follow its proper course of development. Man should not be led away from everyday life, but should purify the everyday civilization. In the world man is surrounded in his dwellings by that which hangs as gold upon the walls. All that is around him is the gold. On the one hand he is a man of knowledge and on the other a useful man. Thus he has around him the two-fold experience of the human race; all the collective experience of humanity has been collected together in human science. Those who strive after this, seek what is written in the scriptures. They lick off the historical wisdom, as it were.

This it is which surrounds man in his strivings; this it is with which man must entirely permeate himself. But it can not be of use to that which is alive. The living Mops swallowed the gold and died of it. That wisdom which only rules as the dead wisdom of books, and which has not been made alive by the Spirit, kills everything living. But, when it is once again united with the origin of Wisdom, with the beautiful Lily, then it wakes to life again. That is why the old man gives the dead Mops to his wife, that she may carry it to the beautiful Lily. The Lamp has one great peculiarity, everything dead was made alive through it; and what was alive was purified by it. This transmutation is brought about in man by occult knowledge. Besides this, the old woman is begged by the Will-o'-the-Wisps to pay their debts to the Ferryman. These three fruits represent the human sense for usefulness in material civilization, which is to pay tribute to the passions. For from whence should the actual driving forces of nature come, if not from the technique, from the cultivation of material nature? It is an interesting fact that the shadow of the giant as it comes up from the River, takes one of the fruits of the Earth away with it, so that the old woman only has two left. Now she required three for the Ferryman and so had to renounce the River. Something then happens, something full of significance. She has to plunge her hands into the River, whereby she turns so black that she scarcely remains visible. She is still there, but she is almost imperceptible. That shows us the connection between external civilization and the world of the passions. Material civilization must be placed at the service of the Astral, of the soul. As long as the nature of man is not sufficiently ennobled to offer itself as tribute to the River of the passions, so long does technique remain in debt to the River of man (the soul of man). As long as human endeavours are devoted to human passions, man works invisibly at something of which he cannot perceive the final aim. It is invisible, yet it is there; it can be felt, but is not externally perceptible. Everything man does on the road to the great goal, until he pays his debts to the River or the Soul,—all that he has to throw into the River of passions becomes invisible, like the hand of the wife of the old man with the Lamp. As long as the sense-nature is not fully purified, as long as it is not consumed, as it were, by the fire of the passion it cannot shine, and remains invisible; that is what excites the old lady so much that she can no longer reflect any light of her own. This might be gone into more fully, in greater detail; every single word is fraught with meaning. But it would lead us too far to go into all that to-day.

So let us hurry on to the great procession in which we encounter a youth, who tried to capture the beautiful Lily too early, and in so doing crippled all his life forces. Goethe says (in another place): “A man who strives for freedom without having first liberated his own inner self, falls more deeply than before into the bonds of necessity. If he does not set himself free, he will be killed.” A man who has prepared himself, who has been purified in the Mysteries, and the Temple of the Mysteries, so that he may unite himself in a proper way with the Lily, he alone will escape death. One who has died to the lower to be born again in a higher sense, can grasp the Lily. The present time is represented by the crippled youth, who wanted to attain the highest by violence. He complains to all whom he meets that he cannot secure the Lily. He must now make himself ripe enough to do so, and to this aim those forces must be combined which are symbolized by those who took part in the procession. It consisted of the old man with the Lamp, the Will-o'-the-Wisps and the beautiful Lily herself. The procession thus included all the different beautiful forces, and it was led down into the clefts of the Earth to the Temple of Initiation. That too, is a profound feature of the enigmatical Fairy Tale, in that it allows the Will-o'-the-Wisps to open the door of the Temple. The self-seeking wisdom is not without object, it is a necessary stage of transition. Human egoism can be overcome if it is nourished by wisdom and permeated with the gold of true knowledge. This wisdom can then be used to open the Temple. Those who unconsciously serve wisdom in an external sense, will be led to the real sanctuaries of wisdom. Those learned men who only bury themselves in books are nevertheless our guides. Goethe does not undervalue science. He knew that science herself uncloses the Temple of Wisdom; he knew that everything must be proved and accepted by science, and that without her we cannot penetrate the Temple of the highest Wisdom. Goethe himself sought this wisdom everywhere. He only considered himself worthy of recognizing the highest revelation in Spiritual life, in Art, after he had gone through the study of Science. He sought wisdom everywhere, in physics, biology, etc.,—And so, he admits the Will-o'-the-Wisps into the Temple, they who resting on themselves alone occupy a false position towards the others, towards the others who enter through experience and observations, like the Serpent. They cause the Temple to be opened and the procession passes in. Now follows what Goethe intended to apply to the whole of mankind; the whole Temple moves up and ascends through the cleft in the Earth. The Temple can now be set up over the River of the Soul, over the River of passions and desires, because the Serpent sacrificed itself. The Self of man has become selfless, the Serpent is transformed into precious stone, which forms the piles of the bridge. And now men can more freely go to and fro from the world of sense to the world of the Spiritual.

The union between sense and spirit is brought about by man, when he becomes selfless, by a sacrifice of himself, such as was made by the Serpent, which offered itself as a bridge over the River of passions. Thus the Temple ascended from the clefts of the Earth and is now accessible to all who cross the bridge, to those who drive over as well as to those who go on foot. In the Temple itself we meet once more with the three Kings; and the youth who had been made pure by having recognized the three soul-forces, is now presented to them. The golden King goes up to him and says “Feed my Sheep,”—in this Goethe gave expression to a thought which was very deeply engraved in his soul, that of uniting beauty with piety. It is the commandment given in the Bible. He applied these words to the youth in the same sense as when in Rome he stood before the statue of a God, and said “Here is necessity (notwendigkeit) it could not be different from what it is, this is a God. I feel that the Greeks worked according to the same Divine Laws that I am seeking.” It is a personal note of Goethe's when he causes the silver King to appear as Beauty and Piety: And then the King of Strength comes to the youth and says “The sword in the left hand, and the right hand free,”—the sword was not to serve for attack but for defence. Harmony was to be brought about, not conflict. After this event the youth was initiated into the three soul-forces; the fourth King has nothing more to say, he subsides into himself. The Temple has risen from its concealment into the clear light of day. Within the Temple there was raised a small silver Temple, which is none other than the transformed hut of the Ferryman. It is a remarkable feature that Goethe transformed the hut of the Ferryman,—he who carries us over into the land of the Spirit,—into pure molten silver so that it becomes a small altar, a small Temple, a Holy of Holies. This hut which represents the holiest in man, the deepest core of his being which he has preserved as a recollection of the land from which he came and to which the Ferryman cannot take him back, represents something which existed before our evolution. It is the memory that we are descended from the Spirit,—the memory of this stands as a Holy of Holies within the Temple.—The giant,—the crude force of nature, which lives in nature without the Spirit, and could not work through itself alone, but only as a shadow,—has been given a remarkable mission. Now this giant stands upright, and now only does he show the time. This is a profound thought—when man has laid aside everything belonging to his lower nature and has become entirely spiritualised, then the lower forces of nature will no longer spring up around him in their original elemental power,—in the form of storms, as they now do—the mechanical crude force of nature will then only perform mechanical service; man will always require these mechanical nature-forces, but they will no longer have power over him, he will use them in his service. His work will be the hour-hand of Spiritual culture, it will be the hour-hand pointing to the regular mechanical necessity, and will go regularly as the course of a clock. The giant himself will then no longer be necessary. We must not interpret the Fairy Tale pedantically, by interpreting every word, but we must feel our way into what Goethe wanted to say, and which he painted in such beautiful pictures. Goethe in his Fairy Tale brought out what Schiller expressed in his Aesthetic Letters;—the union of Necessity with Freedom. What Schiller tried to express in these letters Goethe could not grasp in abstract thought, but gave in the form of a Fairy Tale. “When I want to express these thoughts in all their living force I require pictures and pictures and pictures, such as the ancient priests of Initiation made use of in the Mysteries.” He did not teach his pupils by means of abstract thoughts, but by bringing the whole drama of Dionysos before them, by showing them the great course of the evolution of man, of the resurrection of Dionysos; and he also showed that which went on invisibly in the drama of “Dionysos and Osiris.”

Thus Goethe wished to express what lived in him in the form of drama and pictures, so we will not interpret the Fairy Tale in the ordinary way, but as theosophy would teach us to do, as representing the uniting of the lower nature of man with the higher; the union of the physical with the etheric body; the life-force and the passions and desires, with the higher nature of man:—the three purely Spiritual soul forces Atma, Buddhi, Manas, which we represented as the three Kings. This is the course of the evolution of man up to the time when every man will be himself an Initiate. This is what Goethe tried to express in a truly theosophical fashion. Just as those priests of Initiation expressed their wisdom in the form of pictures, so Goethe expressed in pictures in his Apocalypse that which represents the evolution of humanity,—that which will some day become the highest act of man—the transformation of the lower nature into the higher and the transmutation of the lower metals, the lower soul-forces into the gold of wisdom. The transmutation of that which dwells alone in the pure noble metal of wisdom is represented by the King who is embodied in the gold. Goethe wished to express this human alchemy, this Spiritual transmutation, in a somewhat different manner from what he had concealed occultly in the second part of “Faust.” Goethe was in the true sense of the word a Theosophist. He understood what it means that all the transitory things we see with our senses, are nothing but symbols, but he also understood that what man is trying to do is impossible to describe, but can be accomplished by an act, and that the “Unzulängliche” is that which lives among us on this side of the River, and we must experience it if the purpose of human evolution is to be fulfilled. Goethe also expressed this to this end in the “Chorus Mysticus” and included it in the second part of “Faust.” The highest soul-force in man is symbolically represented as the beautiful Lily, and the male principle—the force of Will unites with her. He expresses this in the beautiful and expressive words with which the second part of “Faust” concludes. These final verses are a mystical creed. We can only understand them completely when we see our own intimate life come to life again in the story of the green Serpent and the beautiful Lily.

Even before the close of the 18th century, when Goethe passed on to his work on the second part of “Faust,” his nature had already been transmuted and he had attained the vision of a higher world.

It is of profound significance if we are able to understand the words written by Goethe in his testament, the second part of “Faust,” when he had completed his course on the Earth. After his death, this second part was found in his writing table, closed and sealed. He put this book as a gospel into the world, as a testament. And this testament closes with his mystical creed:

Alles Vergängliche ist nur sin Gleichnis
Das Unzulängliche hier wird's Ereignis.
Das Unbeschreibliche, hier ist's getan,
Das ewig Weibliche zieht uns hinan.

One translation is as follows:

All things transitory
But as symbols sent,
Earth's insufficiency
Here grows to event.
The indescribable, here it is done.
The Woman Soul leads us upward, and on.

We have over and over again laid stress on the fact that Anthroposophy is no new thing brought to humanity only in our own times. It is particularly interesting that certain individuals not far behind us in time may be reckoned among those who may be described as Anthroposophists. Besides Herder, Jean Paul, Novalis and Lessing—Goethe steps forth as one of the most prominent. Many will object to this statement, because not much Anthroposophy can be traced in his well-known works. At the time of Goethe it was not possible to give out esoteric truths to all the world. Only in small circles, such for instance as that of the Rosicrucians, could the higher truths be promulgated. Nobody was admitted into this society without proper preparation: but those who belonged to it gave various hints as to its existence, and this Goethe did in many different parts of his works. Only a man filled with the wisdom of Anthroposophy can read Goethe aright. It is impossible for instance rightly to understand “Faust” without this help. The “Fairy Tale” is Goethe's Apocalypse, his Revelations and in its symbolical presentation the profoundest secrets are concealed. We can only understand when we have the key to it, that in this Fairy Tale Goethe revealed his Anthroposophical conception of the world. Schiller asked Goethe to work with him on a magazine called “die Horen” to which Schiller had contributed an article “On the aesthetic education of the human race”. In this the question was put:—“How can a man living in the every-day world preach the highest ideals, and establish communion between the super-sensible and that which belongs to the world of sense?” In a wonderfully impressive way he found words to point out that which to him seemed the bridge leading from the world of sense to the super-sensible world.

Goethe, however, declared that it would be impossible to him to speak of the highest questions of existence in philosophical terms, but that he would do so in a great picture. He then contributed the Fairy Tale, in which he tried to answer his question in his own way, and sent it to the Magazine, “Die Horen”.

Elsewhere too Goethe expressed himself in an absolutely Anthroposophical sense. In his earlier youth he had already concealed his conceptions in Faust. Between his student years in Leipzig and his stay in Strassburg, Goethe received an Initiation at the hands of a man who was himself deeply initiated into the secrets of the Rosicrucians. From that time on, Goethe spoke a mystical Anthroposophical language.

In the first part of Faust there is a remarkable sentence which comes under the introductory notices. It is: “The Sage speaks”. At this time Goethe already had the Anthroposophical idea that there are beings among us to-day who are further on in evolution than man, and form a ladder between him and the super-earthly spheres, although they too are incarnated in bodies.

They have attained to a knowledge reaching far beyond what can be understood by the senses. The passage is as follows:

“The Spirit world is not locked;
Thy mind is closed.
Thy heart is dead!
Up, Disciple, bathe, and cleanse.
Thy earthly breast in Morning-Redness.”

When you become acquainted with Jacob Boehme you find one of the sources (Dawn of the moving Redness, the astral world) from which Goethe created his world of Theosophy. There is much in Goethe which we can only understand when we take it in this sense. In the poem “The Divine”, Goethe speaks of the law which we call Karma, and also speaks of exalted beings:

“Nach ewigen ehern'n
Grossen Gesetzen
Müssen wir alle
Unser's Daseins
Kreise Vollenden.
Heil den unbekannten
Höheren Wesen
Die wir ahnen.”

In accordance with mighty iron laws
We must all accomplish the cycles of our being—
Hail to the unknown higher Beings
Whom we divine!

Volume 2, Page 67 – 68.

Anyone who wants a verbal proof of Goethe's Anthroposophical line of thought, need only read the poem which, under the title “God and the World” is called “Howard's memory”.

When Goethe spoke intimately to those who were in the same Lodge, he spoke of the ideal Divine Beings, which are ahead of man and shone forth to him as a prototype. What he wrote in the poem “Symbolum” for instance was intended for a small circle:

“Doch rufen von drüben
Die Stimmen der Geister
Die Stimmen der Meister.”

The voices of spirits,
The voice of the Masters,
Call from above.

He here speaks openly of the Masters, for he is speaking intimately to his brethren of the Lodge. But he leads us furthest of all in his Fairy Tale of the “Green Serpent and the Beautiful Lily”. Therein we find represented the three kingdoms in which man lives, the physical, the soul-world or Astral world, and the Spirit-world. The symbol of the astral or soul-world is the water. By water Goethe always symbolised the soul, as in his poem “Fate and the Soul”. Book 11, Page 46.

He was also acquainted with the Spiritual realms in which man lives between two incarnations, between death and re-birth; that is Devachan, the Kingdom of the Gods. Man is ceaselessly striving to reach this kingdom. The Alchemists took the chemical processes as the striving after this Spiritual kingdom. They called it “the Lily”, “the realm of the Lily”. And man they called “the Lion” who fights for the kingdom, and the Lily is the bride of the Lion. Goethe indicated this in his Faust, when he says:

“Then a red Lion with the Lily wedded,
A wooer bold.”

Therein Goethe speaks of the marriage of man with the spirit. (“in tepid bath”, the bath of the soul. The soul, the water, the red Lion, man) In the Fairy Tale Goethe also represents the three kingdoms. The kingdom of the senses—as the one shore; the kingdom of the soul—as the river, and Devachan (the Spiritual Realm) as that shore on which is to be found the garden of the beautiful Lily, which to the Alchemists is the symbol of Devachan. The whole relation of man to the three kingdoms is symbolised in this beautiful story. We came across from the kingdom of the Spirit and are striving, to get back there.

Goethe had the Will of the Wisps brought across by the Ferryman from the kingdom of the spirit to that of sense. The Ferryman can bring anyone across, but he may not take them back. We come across by no will of our own, but we cannot get back again in that way. We must ourselves find the way back into the Spiritual realm.

The Will of the Wisps take gold as nourishment, they eat it, and it permeates their bodies. But at the same time they throw it from them on all sides. They wish to throw it to the Ferryman as payment, he says however, that a River cannot bear gold, it would make it surge up wildly. Gold always signifies wisdom. The Will of the Wisps are those who seek after wisdom, yet do not mingle it with their nature, but give it away again undigested. The River is the Soul-life; the totality of human instincts, desires and passions. When wisdom is introduced into that, the soul is thrown out into a state of disturbance. Goethe always pointed out that a man must first undergo Catharsis (purification) before he can take in wisdom. For if wisdom is brought into the uncleansed passions, they become fanatical; and a man then remains the slave of his lower ego. The ascent from Kama to Mana is dangerous, unless at the same time the lower ego is sacrificed. With reference to this Goethe says in his “Westöstlichen Divan”, Book 4, Page 17

A man must be prepared to sacrifice himself. The Will of the Wisps are still in Ahamkara, the slaves of the lower Ego. This wisdom cannot endure. The soul-life must be purified slowly and must ascend slowly.

The Will of the Wisps scatter their gold about in the meadow. There they meet with the Serpent who devours it and unites itself with it. The Serpent has the strength not to fill its Ego with pride, not to allow it to become self-seeking, not to raise itself up in pride to an upright position, but to pursue its way in a horizontal position and to move into the clefts of the Earth and there attain perfection gradually.

A Temple is represented, which is to be found in the clefts of the earth.

The Serpent had already passed in and out of this, and had sensed that mysterious beings are to be found therein. And now comes the Old Man with the Lamp. The Serpent, through the gold it had swallowed, has become luminous, and the Temple is illuminated by its radiance. The lamp of the Old Man has the property of only shining where light is, and it then shines with a very peculiar light. Thus, on the one hand there is the Serpent, luminous through the gold, and on the other the Old Man with the Lamp, which is also a light. Through this two-fold illumination every thing in the Temple becomes visible. In the four corners are four kings; a golden, a silver, a bronze king and one composed of a mixture of them all. Till now they could not be seen by the Serpent, he could only find them by the sense of touch; but they now become visible through their own light. They are the three higher principles of man, and the four lower principles. The bronze king is Atma—the divine Ego; the silver king is Buddhi—the love whereby all men can understand one another, and the golden king is Manas, the Wisdom that radiates out into the world and can take in the radiating Wisdom. When man has acquired Wisdom in a selfless way, he can then see things in their true nature, without the veil of Maya. The three higher principles of man now become visible to the Serpent. The golden king is Manas, for gold always signifies Manas. The four lower principles of man are symbolically represented by the fourth king, who is composed of mixtures. Atma, Buddhi and Manas are drawn into the spheres of Phenomena, but in a state of disharmony. Only when this is purified can something develop which could not live where there was a lack of harmony.

The Temple is the Sanctuary of Initiation, the Mystery school which can only be entered by those who themselves bring light, when they also are selfless like the Serpent. The Temple was one day to be revealed, and to raise itself above the river. That is the kingdom of the future, towards which we are striving, the secret places of learning must be brought up into the light of day. Everything which is man must struggle upwards, must become harmonious, must strive after the higher principles. That which was formerly taught in the Mysteries must become an open secret. The wanderers are to cross the river, must pass from the world of sense to the super-sensible world and vice versa. All mankind shall be united in harmony. The Old Man with the Lamp represents man who can today attain knowledge without climbing to the apex of wisdom, namely to the forces of piety of mind and of faith. Faith requires light from without, if it is really to lead to the higher Mysteries. The Serpent and the Old Man with the Lamp have the forces of the Spirit, which already shines in those who are to lead in the future. Even to-day anyone who feels these forces is aware of this, through certain secrets. The Old Man says he knows three secrets. But the strangest thing is said of the fourth secret. The Serpent whimpers something into his ear, whereupon the Old Man calls out, “The time has come when a great number of people shall understand which is the right road. The Serpent has proclaimed that it is ready to sacrifice itself. It has reached the point of recognising that man must die, in order to become.” (‘Denn so lang du das nicht hast, dieses stirb and werde’) (As long as thou hast not, this ‘dying and becoming’!)

To become”, in order in the fullest sense of the word “to be”; that man can only accomplish through love, devotion and sacrifice. The Serpent is ready for this. This will be made manifest, when man is ready for this sacrifice, then the Temple will be raised above the river.

The Will of the Wisps were not able to pay their debt; they had to promise the Ferryman to settle it later. The river received three of the fruits of the Earth; three cabbages, three onions and three artichokes. The Will of the Wisps go to the Wife of the Old Man and there they behave in a very curious manner; they licked the gold off the walls. They wanted to stuff themselves with wisdom in order to be able to give it forth again. Mops eats the gold and dies; for everything living must die of it; he cannot take in the truth and transmute it as does the Serpent, and therefore it is death-giving. The Old Woman had to promise the Will of the Wisps to settle their debts with the Ferryman. When the Old Man with the Lamp comes home he sees what has occurred. He tells the Old Woman she must keep her promise, but must also carry the dead Mops to the beautiful Lily, for she can bring all dead things to life. The Old Woman goes with her basket to the Ferryman:—on the way she has two remarkable experiences. She meets the great Giant, whose peculiarity is that in the evening he throws his shadow across the River so that the wanderer can pass over on it. Besides this the way is also passable when at the noonday hour the Serpent ramps across the river. The Giant can make a bridge across, but when the Sun is at its highest point, the Serpent can do so too; when through the radiant Sun of knowledge man raises his Ego to the Divine. In the sacred moments of life, at the moments of the complete blotting out of self, man unites himself with the Godhead.

The Giant is the rude physical development along which man must necessarily pass. In so doing he also reaches the yonder realm, but only in the twilight, when his consciousness is blotted out. That however is a dangerous path, which is followed by those who develop psychic forces and go into states of trance. This crossing of the bridge is accomplished in the twilight of trance. Schiller also wrote on one occasion about the Shadow of the Giant: “These are the dark powers which lead man across the Threshold.”

When the Old Woman passes him by, the giant takes from her one cabbage, one onion, and one artichoke, so that she only retained a part of that with which she was to pay the debt of the Will of the Wisps. The three-fold number is thus no longer complete. That which we require and which we must weave into our soul-life is taken from us by the twilight forces. There is danger in yielding oneself to such forces. The lower forces must be purified by the soul-forces, the body itself can only ascend when the soul completely absorbs it. Everything which encloses an inner kernel as in a shell, is a symbol for the sheaths of man. Indian allegory describes these sheaths as the petals of the lotus flower. The physical nature of man must be purified in its shell. We must pay our debts, and yield our lower principle to the soul-life. We have expressed the paying of this debt by saying that payment must be made to the river. That is the whole course of Karma. As the payment of the Old Woman was insufficient, she had to plunge her hand into the river; after that she could only feel her hand, but could no longer see it. That which in man's external, physical appearance, that which is visible in him, is the body. That must be purified by the Soul-life. This means that if man cannot pay with the plant-nature, he remains in debt. Then the actual bodily nature of man becomes invisible; because the Old Woman was not able to pay her debt she becomes invisible. The Ego can only be seen in the light of day, when purified by the soul-life;—“Oh, my hand, the loveliest part of me” The very part of man which distinguishes him from the animals. That which as spirit shines through him—becomes invisible if it is not purified by his Karma.

The beautiful youth who strove after the kingdom of the Lily (Spirituality) was crippled by her.

Goethe by this meant the ancient Wisdom, for which man must be prepared and purified and have undergone Katharsis, so that he should no longer reach Wisdom through sin but might take into himself the higher Spirituality. The youth had not been prepared by Katharsis. Every living thing which is not yet mature, is killed by the Lily. All the dead that have passed through “Stirb und Werde”, “Dying and Becoming”, are brought to life again by the Lily. Now Goethe says that one who has attained freedom within himself, is ripe for freedom. Jacob Boehme too says that man must develop himself out of his lower principle. He who does not do this before he dies, is destroyed at death. Man must first mature and be purified, before he can enter the kingdom of the Spirit (The Lily). In the old Mysteries a man had to go through various stages of purification before he could become a Mystic. The Youth too had first to pass through these stages, and he is guided through them by the Lily. The Serpent signifies development. We see the Lily gathering those together who are seeking the new way, all those who are striving after the Spiritual. But the Temple must first be lifted up above the river. They all move towards the River, the Will of the Wisps are in front and they open the door. The self-seeking Wisdom is the bridge to the selfless Wisdom. Wisdom leads a man through self to selflessness. The Serpent sacrificed itself. And now we understand the meaning of love, it is a Sacrifice of the lower self for the good of humanity, of complete brotherhood. The whole company moves towards the Temple, which rises above the river. The youth is brought to life again. He is furnished with Atma, Buddhi, Manas; Atma, in the form of the Bronze King, appears before him and gives him a sword. This represents the higher will, and is not connected with the lower will. Atma is so to work in man that the sword shall be on his left and the right hand free, till then man works separately;—the War of all against all. But when man is purified, peace comes instead of war. Only when man is purified will peace take the place of War; the sword will then be worn on the left side, for defence only, leaving the right hand free for well-doing.

The second King signifies that which at one time was known as the second principle. Buddhi (Piety, the mood in which a man turns in faith to the highest). Silver in the symbol of piety. The second King says “Feed my sheep”, for here we are concerned with the force of the spirit. The radiance here is that of Beauty. Goethe connected with art a feeling of religious reverence. He saw in it the manifestation of the Divine of the kingdom; the beautiful radiance, the realm of piety. The Bronze King signifies strength without the lower principles, the Silver King signifies peace, and the Golden King Wisdom. He says “Recognise the highest” The youth is the four principled man, who is developing his higher principles. The four lower ones are crippled by the spirit until they have undergone the purifying development; after that the three higher principles work together harmoniously in Man. He then becomes strong and able, and may mate with the Lily. That is the union between the soul and the spirit of man. The soul is always represented as something feminine in man. The Mystery of the eternal and immortal is here represented. “The eternal feminine draws us along”. Goethe makes use of the same image in his story, in the union of the Youth with the beautiful Lily. Now the sacrificed human self and all living, pass over the bridge that arches across the river. Wanderers go to and fro and all the kingdoms are now united in beautiful harmony. The Old Woman grows young, and the Old Man with the Lamp is rejuvenated; old age has passed away and everything has become new.

The Ferryman's little hut has been gilded over, and is now preserved as a sort of Altar in the Temple. What man formerly took over unconsciously, he now takes over in full consciousness. The king of many parts has collapsed. The Will of the Wisps lick the gold out of him, for that is still connected with the lower. The Giant now indicates the time. What formerly were the sense-principles (which can only lead into the shadows) which lead man across in the hour of twilight and belong to the things of sense, to nature-conditions, now points to the even and regular course of time. As long as man has not developed the three higher principles, the past and the future are in conflict. The giant then works inharmoniously. Now, through these ideal conditions, time is in harmony. Thought permanently strengthens that which was wavering, and makes it steady.

“Was im schwankende Erscheinung lebt
Befestigt mil dauernden Gedanken”.

What lives in transient phenomena
Is justified by lasting thoughts.

Faust, Prologue in Heaven.

That which in the Pythagorean schools was called the “Rhythm of the Universe”, “The Music of the Spheres”, of the planets, rhythmically revolving around the Sun, is brought about by the accomplishment of Divine Thought. To the mystic a planet was a Being of a higher order. Thus Goethe too says:

Die Sonne tönt nach Alter Weise,
In Bruder-Sphären Wettgesand,
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.

The sun rings forth in ancient fashion
In the spheres of his brother-singers.
He accomplishes his allotted journey
‘Midst resounding claps of thunder.

That man indeed has the capacity of developing to the highest Divine, Goethe says in the words; “Wär nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, Die Sonne könnt es nicht erblicken; wohnt nicht in uns des Gottes eigene Kraft, Wie könnt uns Göttliches entzücken?”

If the eye were not fashioned for the sunlight
It could not gaze upon the Sun!
If there were not in us the very force of God
How could we be charmed by the Divine?

When we see the Christmas trees in the streets today, we might think that the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is an ancient one. The custom itself, however, shows how the habits of men change. Christmas trees, which are to be found in almost every home today, represent a custom that did not exist a hundred years ago. A century ago you would not have found the streets bedecked with trees, nor would you have been able to find in the poetry and songs of that time any mention of them. The custom is a quite recent phenomenon that has been in vogue in Europe and America only since the second half of the nineteenth century. Trees first appeared as symbols of the Christmas festival around 1800. The festival itself, however, is ancient, even older than Christianity. Indeed, it was celebrated in all historical ages.

In Christianity the Christmas festival has been taken as a symbol for the birth of the Christian Redeemer only since the fourth century A.D. In the first Christian centuries, December 25th was by no means celebrated as the birthday of the Representative of Christianity. This has been so only since the fourth century. Nevertheless, in Roman times and among the Celts and Germanic peoples—even in ancient Egypt and other regions—a festival was celebrated at the same time of the year, but it was of a different character from the later Christian festival.

Now the conclusion could be drawn from this that the Christian Church, in establishing December 25th as the birthday of Jesus, did something that was against all historical tradition and constituted a kind of correction. This is not the case. To understand the significance of the Christmas festival, one must recognize the ancient wisdom hidden in it. Festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide are nothing but dates inscribed in the times by our ancestors, and they show us, their descendants, how the relationship of world and man and the great mysteries of existence were understood in earlier times. The one who is able to decipher the script that is written in the great festivals, or is able to read the hieroglyphics that time itself presents to us, finds there deep and significant mysteries of human development.

I said, and we shall see presently in what sense it is meant, that the Christmas festival has been celebrated since the beginning of history. Recorded history dates back to the Egypto-Chaldean or third post-Atlantean period. Our own period, the fifth post-Atlantean, in which the science and culture of the physical world is being developed, began in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The preceding period, the Greco-Roman, goes back to the eighth and ninth centuries B.C. to the time when Homer sang his poems to the Greeks. This age has left a record of the feelings and deeds that occurred during the fourth post-Atlantean period. Then we reach back to a still more ancient time, the gray antiquity of the age of the Judaic people, and the time when the Egyptian priests preserved a lofty wisdom that they disseminated to the common people only in an esoteric form. Here recorded history ceases.

What we know today of Persian history was recorded much later than when it actually occurred. The sublime religion of ancient India that is recorded in the Vedas and the Vedanta philosophy is of much later date than the actual age in which the great thoughts of the Rishis of ancient India, which were received directly from the divine spirits themselves, flowed through to mankind. So we can look back from our own period, which will still last for a considerable time, to the Greco-Roman period when Christianity appeared, and still further back to the age of the Egyptian priests. Then the paths disappear and only one who is able to look at history with different means can gain knowledge of ancient Persia, and even older times.

To really understand Christmas one must look back to that turning point in time when mankind, newly risen, was taught a new wisdom. At that time a great flood deluged the continent of the ancient Atlantean culture and a new culture, to which the epochs I have enumerated belong, was founded. An entirely new mode of thought and feeling arose in this new mankind, but nothing has been preserved of the culture of the Atlanteans, nor of that even more ancient people, the Lemurians, who perished when Lemuria was destroyed by fire.

When mankind reaches a new turning point in its evolution, it must briefly recapitulate what it has previously passed through. Thus, the peoples of the first three post-Atlantean periods had briefly to recapitulate three important evolutionary epochs of mankind. In ancient India the wise Rishis looked back to a time when the sexes did not yet exist, to a time when man was sexually still a unity. They looked back to a primeval man, known in occult teachings as Adam Kadmon, who was both man and woman. The highest cosmic being expressing this primeval unity was indicated by the sacred name, Brahman. All manifoldness proceeded from Brahman, the Divine Unity. This unity was present for men on earth only as long as the male and female sexes did not exist. Thus, in the spirit of the great Indian Rishis there appears, like a mirrored image, the divine primeval unity of man, the pre-human Adam Kadmon, in whom lived peace, spirit, clarity and harmony. He it is who speaks in the Vedas that poured from the lips of the Indian Rishis. This occurred in the first period of human civilization after the great flood. At that time one did not yet speak of a trinity, of a threefold Divine Person, but solely of a primeval Unity, of Brahman, in whom everything was contained and in whom everything originated.

Then a time came when the Persian priests of Zarathustra, the wise Parsis, looked back to the epoch in which the two sexes were born out of fire, and man became a duality. With the birth of sexual man out of fire, evil, which had not previously existed, entered the world. Evil in the human sense did not exist before the division of the sexes that occurred in the middle of the Lemurian age. Good and evil have existed only since that time when they came to fill the last part of the Lemurian age and the first part of the Atlantean.

It is interesting to investigate in the spiritual accounts called the Akashic Record the way this twofold form of mankind expressed itself. Even the spiritual scientist, who is able to decipher these wondrous documents, is astonished to find how different the male and female elements of that time were as compared with what they are at present. Under the guidance of the wise leaders of mankind, woman developed the soul element, and man the element of will. In this way, the duality of will and soul arose and confronted each other in the two sexes in the Atlantean period. Through the fact that the soul entered the physical body, evil entered mankind, and because mankind had to recapitulate the epoch that is characterized by the difference between good and evil, the fire worship of the religion of the Parsis appeared, that is, the doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahriman. This, as the Persian period of culture, precedes recorded history.

The duality of good and evil was taught in the religion of Zarathustra. Men were not yet concerned with a trinity, which came later at about the time when the first historical documents appeared. The Akashic Record gives no information of a trinity existing in pre-historical times. It only became necessary for people to look up to a third power after they came to distinguish between good and evil. Thus the figure of the mediator appeared—the conciliator, the redeemer from evil, who led mankind from evil to good, and he was most clearly present in the Mysteries of Mithras that originated in Persia and spread finally over the whole world.

In those ancient times men saw earthly events as a reflection of the Divine and of what had occurred in the great celestial vault of the heavens. If you study the Zodiac, you will find there the signs of Cancer, Gemini, Taurus and Aries. The vernal point of the sun advances according to certain laws so that in ancient times the sun rose in spring in the sign of Cancer, later in the sign of Gemini, then in Taurus, and still later in the sign of Aries. At about the eighth century B.C. the sun had entered the sign of Aries, the Lamb. In our age it has entered the sign of Pisces.

Earthly events are determined by what occurs in spiritual realms. Take the sign of Cancer, for example. Its true significance is not always known, but this sign, which consists of two intertwining spirals, when rightly understood points to the dawn of a new age. Whenever an important event occurs in the world, whenever one stage of evolution is superseded by another thereby bringing something new into the world, two such spiral movements intertwine. One spiral of the sign of Cancer indicates the end of the Atlantean culture; the other, the beginning of the Aryan culture. Our ancestors thus perceived in the heavens the outward sign for the rise of the new Aryan culture. At a later time the sun entered the sign of Gemini, the Twins. This is the sign of good and evil, the sign that governed Persian thinking. Then the sun entered Taurus. Here we have the third post-Atlantean period with its veneration of the Bull in the Egyptian Apis cult, the Babylonian cult of the Bull and its sacrifice, and the Mithraic cult of ancient Persia. Man brought the sacrifice of the Bull down to earth from the heavens where it was inscribed.

The fourth post-Atlantean period, in which Christianity arose, began with the entrance of the sun into Aries. This important turning point in history is indicated by the story of the Greek hero, Jason, who captured the Golden Fleece. A further important turning point is indicated by the sacrifice of the Mystical Lamb upon the Cross.

Let us understand this whole course of evolution correctly. After the duality of good and evil had been comprehended in human consciousness, the concept of the trinity arose and appeared in various religions. We recognize it in the Mithraic Mysteries that existed in many Mediterranean countries. Let us look at one of these Mystery temples. Only a symbolic action was performed for those who participated in the lesser Mysteries, but for those who were permitted to participate in the greater Mysteries, the same events also took place as an event in the astral world. I can only describe the lesser Mysteries of the Mithraic cult now. The symbolic Bull became visible and the Mediator, the God, rode upon his back. He covered the Bull's nostrils, plunged a sword into his side and a snake and a scorpion appeared. Above the head of the God Mithras was a bird and over the whole group, on one side a being soared with a lowered torch, on the other a being with a raised torch, symbolizing the course of the sun across the heavens.

This description represents human life as it lived in the consciousness of the men of that time. Man had reached the point of looking within himself for redemption, for the third divine principle that could lead him beyond evil, reconciling evil with good. Evil here consisted of the passions that drag man down to earth, symbolized by the Bull. The Mediator who killed the lower nature by thrusting the sword into the side of the bull appeared as the immortal in man that can raise him to his higher self. Thus, during the time of the third post-Atlantean period a divine trinity appeared as mediator between good and evil, and mankind came to comprehend what is called in theosophy, atman, buddhi and manas. At the moment the mediator appeared, the mystical secret was accomplished; the trinity had been awakened in man's consciousness.

Through his recognition of the unity, the duality and the trinity, man was led to atman, buddhi and manas. Atman, or spirit-man, is the unity man comes to experience in himself when he has achieved that stage. Buddhi, or life-spirit, will find expression in man through the overcoming of evil by good. Duality will purify the lower instincts and desires, and all evil will be consumed in the fire of love. Manas, or spirit-self, is the spiritual principle that rules human development even now. As the Messiah, the Redeemer, created a unison in the world that leads from disharmony to harmony, so duality is redeemed through the trinity in which evil is conquered by good.

So the human race reached the point of perceiving its destiny, pre-ordained by the eternal world order, in the Trinity. Man looked up to the threefold aspect of the Godhead and perceived a divine Trinity in the world upon which he himself was dependent. In truth, however, he first had to experience the descent of the Trinity to the earth embodied as a human being, as his human brother. This was the great event that stands at the beginning of our era, and the Trinity thereby acquired an entirely new significance for human consciousness.

We can understand the deeper meaning of the Christmas festival only if we comprehend the Mediator in the right way. Out of unity, duality has developed, and out of duality, a chaos from which harmony is to be re-created—a re-creation that can only be brought about by the Mediator. This harmony can only find its expression in an eternal law that, in the time of the Mithraic cult, found its symbolical expression in the fact that in man himself people saw an image of the cosmic law that creates the everlasting harmonies of the world.

In the Mysteries of the Persian religion already mentioned you will find a sevenfold initiation of those permitted admission to the holy secrets. Those who had some knowledge of the most elementary secrets belonged to the first degree of initiation, and were given the symbolic name of the “Ravens.” The second degree was that of the “Occult Ones,” the third, that of the “Warriors” or “Fighters” for the sacred truth. The fourth degree was that of the “Lions,” and the fifth, the “Persians.” Only one in whom the consciousness of spirituality we call manas had awakened was considered to be a full “Persian,” an initiate of the fifth degree. A member of his people in the true sense of the word, he represented the destiny of his people. If he advanced to the next degree of initiation, he no longer represented the character of his people but that of all mankind in its development from the third phase of evolution, that is, the middle of the Lemurian epoch, into the fifth phase, the post-Atlantean. Such an initiate was called a “Sun Runner” or a “Sun Hero,” and all Sun Heroes mentioned in ancient books are initiates of the sixth degree. The last degree of initiation was that of the “Father,” which was connected with the future development of mankind.

What does the name “Sun Runner” signify? If you were to look back into the primeval ages of our solar system, you would find that it arose from out a battle of chaotic heat; you would find that harmony in our world emerged out of disharmony, and that peace and law developed from non-peace and disharmony. The course of the sun is so regular that we cannot imagine that it might deviate and turn from its path even momentarily. Our universe is so firmly and harmoniously grounded that nothing can throw the sun off its destined course. In the path of the sun across the sky the ancient Persian initiate of the sixth degree saw his own inner destiny. The sun of his inner life, the sun of his spirit, had to shine for him with the same certainty as the outer sun, making it impossible for him to deviate from the path of the good and the wise. The human being who had reached the sixth degree of initiation had to be so permeated by this lawfulness that it was impossible for him to stray from the path. He was a Sun Hero, a Sun Runner. The goal of all previous degrees of initiation was to give this inner certainty to man.

Men who knew something about the Mysteries saw a deep harmony between human destiny and the course of the sun across the sky. They said that the sun makes the days grow shorter as autumn approaches, that everything withdraws into the earth. When Christmas arrives, a turning point is reached. The light increases, days grow longer and nature reawakens. So the birth of the light at Christmas time has been celebrated since the times when the light became the symbol of revelation in the world and man. In the East all men of the post-Atlantean epoch saw in the light the garment of the wise world order, of world wisdom.

Gazing into cosmic space today, we see the light shining steadfastly and harmoniously from the stars. In reality, however, the Spirits of Wisdom reveal themselves through the light, which in ancient religions was conceived of as the garment of cosmic wisdom. It was at first celebrated as the unity, the primeval wisdom, then as the duality of light and darkness, and finally as the trinity, the illuminated human being, the teacher and mediator, Mithras. But mankind could be blessed by this cosmic harmony only when a consciousness of it arose from the human heart itself. The external light, the light that is born out there in the universe, must today be born also in the human heart.

Christianity stands as the external mystical fact for the birth of the light. Christ brought to the earth what had existed from the beginning, although it was hidden from mankind throughout the ages we have been speaking of. Now, however, a new climax was reached. Even as the light is born anew at the winter solstice, so in the fourth post-Atlantean period the Savior of Mankind, the Christ, was born. He is the new Sun Hero who was not only initiated in the depths of the Mystery temples, but who also appeared before all the world so that it could be said, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). When it was recognized that the Divine could descend into a personality, the festival celebrating the birth of the Sun Hero, the Christ, came to replace the festival celebrating the birth of the light.

What formerly was impossible could now be attained. Man could now give birth to light in his own soul. He could do this because the principle of light had incarnated in a human being for the first time. In this way the festival of the winter solstice was of necessity brought together with the Christ festival. The whole significance of the preceding evolutionary periods is determined by the establishment of the festival of the birth of Christ at the time of the festival of the winter solstice. Wisdom and light first appeared to men externally, but now, after the Christ event, the light must be kindled in man's own heart. Christ Himself must be born in man. It was for that reason that the Event of Palestine—a mystical as well as an historical fact—had to occur.

Thus, we are faced with an historical event, a great mystery that is little understood. The event that occurred in Palestine took place literally as it is described in the Gospel of St. John, and it is also a mystical fact. To conceive of this event otherwise is to misunderstand it. But if it is comprehended in this way, it will also be understood why from this moment onward God can be thought of as a personality, and the Trinity, which previously was thought of differently, can now be understood in the form of three Divine Persons. Christ had now become a Person, thus proving that the Divine can be realized in man. He was the First on earth in Whom the Divine had dwelled, and henceforth this could become a constant, indestructible ideal for man.

All the great teachers of wisdom—the Egyptian Hermes, the ancient Indian Rishis, Confucius, the Persian Zarathustra—have spoken the Divine Word. In Jesus the Christ, however, the Divine Word Itself walked on earth in a living shape for the first time. Before this time there was on earth only the Path and the Truth. Now we have the Path, the Truth and the Life. The great difference between earlier religions and Christianity consists in the fact that Christianity is the fulfillment of the previous religions, that in Christ we are not concerned with a great teacher of wisdom—teachers of wisdom were present in all other religions—but with a human personality who at the same time must be revered as a Divine Personality. Herein is to be found the importance of the disciples' message, “We have laid our hand into His wounds, we have heard His message.” The emphasis is placed on the appearance, on the direct impression. It does not merely listen to the word but considers the personality. The conviction prevailed that Christ was, in a unique fashion, the Cosmic Sun Hero.

If we comprehend this, we also understand that the ancient festival of the winter solstice signified something different from the present Christmas festival. In Egypt we find Horus, Isis and Osiris, the archetypal image of what also lives in Christianity. In ancient India we have the birth of Krishna by the holy virgin. We find echoes of this myth everywhere, but what is important in Christianity is what I have just expressed. That is the fact that not only the Threefoldness, but the Fourfoldness has become sanctified, that Holiness has descended right down into the personality. Previously, Holiness was divine and dwelled in unattainable heights above men. The ancient Rishis revered it as the indefinable, unutterable Brahman; the ancient Zarathustrian pupils saw it in the duality of good and evil; in Egypt we have the triad of Isis, Osiris and Horus. The fact that the Divine has dwelled among men, that it has become Personality, however, was the secret of the fourth post-Atlantean period. The most important event for the men of this age is the fact that the Christmas festival, which always represented the birth of an initiate, now represents the birth of the greatest Sun Hero, of Christ Himself. Thus these two facts of necessity sound together in the world's course.

When we look at the fourth post-Atlantean period and compare it with the time in which we ourselves are living, we see that the Divine has descended still further. Today it has taken on a peculiar form, which must be understood if we wish fully to decipher the Christmas festival. Let us go back to the fourth post-Atlantean period, back to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries A.D. You will find full comprehension of the real personality of Christ by those who knew this mystery. The personality of Christ is comprehensively described, for instance, in the poem, The Heliand, which puts Christ into a German setting. The Christ as personality is firmly implanted within mankind so that the conditions of other countries can be connected with His deed of redemption.

But another mood also arises. The belief in this archetypal image of mankind has been shaken. Something has appeared that in some ways signifies progress since a much larger part of humanity participates in the course of the further development of Christianity. But these people have ceased to grasp the fact that the center of their thinking, feeling and willing lies in the individual personality of Christ. Fewer and fewer men dare admit to themselves that it is not a question of doctrine, but rather of the Personality of Christ. This finally dissolves into a veneration of an abstract ideal that is conceived by the intellect and toward which men then come to strive.

Summing up, at the time of the first post-Atlantean period the Divinity was Brahman; during the second, it was the duality of light and darkness; in the third, it was the trinity. Then, during the time of the fourth post-Atlantean period, the trinity descended into a person on earth, and now this Personality has descended even further to the stage of mere intellect, which has dissolved it so that it is revered only as an abstract ideal.

In our own fifth post-Atlantean period the time is being prepared that must come, bringing with it a belief in the new initiates, the Fathers. The initiates of the seventh degree are called the Fathers, as we have said, and in spiritual science we speak of the knowledge of the Masters, because it will be to the Masters, as the great leaders of mankind, to whom mankind will look in gratitude and veneration. The fifth post-Atlantean period repeats the three preceding periods in the great process of Advent. The three weeks of Advent symbolize these earlier periods, and man must once again pass through briefly the way the birth of the light was experienced at Christmas.

The birth of the light will be followed by life in the light. Christians, therefore, should not see in the Christmas festival something that passes. It is not a memorial festival commemorating what has occurred in the past. The Christmas message does not say, “Christ has been born, Christ was born.” It says, “Today Christ is born.” Today is always emphasized. This is significant. The emphasis on today should be understood in the sense in which Christ has spoken, “I am with you always even unto the end of days.” This confronts us anew each year and reveals to us the connection between man and the heavens. It shows us that what has occurred in the heavens must also take place in man. Just as the course of the sun cannot be altered a fraction without causing chaos, so likewise man must keep to his path. He must attain to that inner harmony and rhythm that is exemplified in Christ, Who was incarnated in Jesus and Who will be active in the Fathers whose guidance man will follow in future ages.

This is the connection between man and the heavens. Not only is the sun to travel its unchanging course in the heavens, gaining new forces at the winter solstice. It will also bring about in man a birth of the light out of his deepest soul that will be a resurrection, a Sun Heroship of the fifth post-Atlantean period. For this reason do we have the Christmas saying, “Peace to men on earth who are of good will.” Inner peace will bring the evolution of mankind into a rhythmical course, just as the sun has acquired a regular rhythm in its course. In the course of the sun we see an image of the eternal circular course of the cosmos. It has overcome its chaos and has attained peace. In this sense, Christmas is a festival of peace, streaming forth a mood of peace and harmony. When this is brought about, it will be celebrated in the right sense. In the tolling of the Christmas bells we hear not only the sounds of the church, but also the striving of the whole of mankind as it works and has worked toward its further development since the time when the earth with its spirituality arose from the great cold.

What the preceding races have longed for as their future, has come to birth during the fourth post-Atlantean period. What the three subsequent ages must strive for resounds from the Christmas chimes because, if we truly understand what the Christmas festival expresses, the harmonies of the heavens speak to us. Every festival of the year is firmly based in primeval wisdom. They have not been arbitrarily established but have been created out of the deepest wisdom of the world. The one who can really understand them, celebrating them with full comprehension, finds in them the signs of ancient wisdom, of events that have taken place since the very beginning and that will continue into the future. In this way the festivals lose their conventional meanings and gain new significance. Thus, to read the great cosmic truths in this manner, means to celebrate the cosmic festivals correctly. When you come to read the primal truths of the heavens in this way, you celebrate the great cosmic festivals with your heart, your senses and your mind. Then they are celebrated genuinely out of the spirit and are of significance to mankind.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit is not mere abstract thoughts or a web of dogmas. It has a great task and world mission to accomplish in order to enliven again what mankind has forgotten, to strike fire again into what our ancestors have given us. Then human egotism will cease. Men will learn to live in the unitary spirit of the world, in a wisdom which, besides much else, streams from spiritual science. Spiritual science is practical in the best sense and gives us inner strength and certainty of hope. It makes possible the mood of peace and confidence of spirit that flow from the Christmas festival to permeate deeply the souls of those striving for spirit knowledge.

Exalted spiritual leaders of mankind have prescribed this festival for us in primeval ages. So at the end of this hour let us place before our souls the following as true Christmas wisdom.

Advanced human brothers are the leaders of the spiritual movement. They were already present at the beginning of the post-Atlantean age when the great cosmic festivals were established. Today, as the great teachers of mankind, they again reveal such truths to us. These teachings are not imparted to us out of speculation or as their own opinions, but because they were present when these things occurred. They have prepared the peace, which is to stream over mankind in the future, and they have created the holy script in these festivals. From this is to be read the message of peace, the message of inner soul bliss attainable through spiritual science. If we live in the way put forth by the Masters of Harmony, we will gradually approach the great ideal that they themselves live. Spiritual science reminds us of these exalted leaders when we are seized by the Christmas mood. It speaks of peace and of the sacrificial gifts of the great Masters—a peace that streams into the future of mankind. We see it surrounded by the radiance of spiritual light and concordance of feelings. In the glory in which the Fathers appear, we recognize those who lead us into the future. In our striving toward them, a life is born out of our own soul that is immersed in peace and harmony, which, as the birth of peace at Christmas, is an image of the course of the sun through the universe.

This is what the wise Magi, the great Masters, teach us. It is this that we are told by those human beings who speak, not out of mere blind faith in these Masters, but out of their full knowledge. The Masters are, and the spiritual world movement, under the guidance of the Masters, is the great, sublime movement of peace that leads man to the cosmic harmony in which human souls will live with the unerring regularity of the sun coursing through the universe, showing us the path to the radiant beauty of the Spirit Sun.

Just think how few people today are able to awaken in their souls a clearly pertinent understanding of all the preparations now being made everywhere for Christmas. Clear ideas about this festival are scarce, and most of them correspond only in small degree with the intentions of those who in the past established the great festivals as symbols of the Infinite and Imperishable in the world. The preparations being made for Christmas that are published in our newspapers convince us of this. There is hardly anything more hopeless and alien to a true understanding of Christmas than the material being published today.

Now let us summarize in our souls the whole range of spiritual science that has been offered in various lectures this autumn. Let us not make it the pedantic summary of a schoolmaster, however, but one that will arise in our hearts when, from the standpoint of spiritual science, we connect it with a Christmas festival imbued with a spiritual-scientific concept of life that is not gray theory or an outer confession and philosophy, but life itself pulsing through us. Modern man, more than he thinks, confronts nature as a stranger—certainly more so now than in the time of Goethe. Who today can still experience the great depths of the words spoken by Goethe at the beginning of the Weimar period of his life? At that time he addressed a hymn or prayer to nature with its mysterious forces:

“Nature! By her we are encompassed and enfolded, unable to withdraw from her, nor yet to penetrate her deeper. Unbid and unforewarned, into the gyrations of her dance she lifts us, whirling and swirling us onward, until exhausted from her arms we fall.

“Unceasingly she generates new forms; what exists was never here before, what was does not return—all is new yet always the old.

“We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks with us unceasingly and does not divulge her secret to us. We affect her constantly and yet have no power over her.

“She seems to aim in everything toward individuality, and does not trouble about individuals. Now she builds and now destroys, and her workshop is inaccessible.

“She lives in countless children, and the mother, where is she? She is the only artist: from the simplest substance to the greatest contrasts, without seeming exertion to the greatest perfection, the most exact acuteness, always clothed with gentleness. Each of her works has its own being, each of her phenomena the most isolated concept, and yet all is one. She acts a show: whether she sees it herself we do not know, and yet she plays for us who are standing in the corner.

“An eternal living, growing and moving is in her, and yet she does not advance. She is forever changing and in her, nothing for a moment still. She has not concept of rest and has attached her curse to stagnation. She is firm. Her tread is measured, rare her exceptions, her laws immutable ...”

We are all children of nature and when we believe we are not acting in the least according to its laws, we are acting perhaps all the more in accordance with the great law flowing through it and streaming into us. Who can feel deeply today these other significant words of Goethe in which he tries to express how man can penetrate with his feelings into the hidden forces common to himself and nature? Here Goethe addresses nature not as a lifeless being, as modern materialistic thought would have it, but as a living spirit:

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me all, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Thou has not turned in vain
Thy countenance to me in fire and flame.
Thou gav'st me glorious nature as a royal realm,
The power to feel and to enjoy her.
Not Amazed, cold visits only thou allow'st;
Thou grantest me to look in her deep breast
Even as in the bosom of a friend.
Thou leadest past a series of the living
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In silent covert and in air and water.
And when the storm roars screeching through the forest,
When giant fir-tree plunges, sweeping down
And crushing neighboring branches, neighboring trunks,
And at its fall the hills, dull, hollow, thunder:
Then leadest thou me to the cavern safe,
Show'st me myself, and my own heart becomes
Aware of deep mysterious miracles.¹

Here is expressed the mood through which Goethe, out of his feeling for nature, endeavored to enliven what flowed out of feeling allied with knowledge. This is the mood of a time when wisdom was in league with nature and there were created those signs of feeling united with nature and the universe, which we in spiritual science recognize in the great festivals. Now they have become abstractions, and the soul and heart meet them almost with indifference. In many instances today, the word, which we can dispute or swear by, means more than what it originally represented. What has become an external, literal word was really intended to be the representative, the herald, the symbol of the great creative Word that lives in nature and the whole universe and that can again arise in us if we truly know ourselves. The intention, when the great festivals were established on the occasions provided throughout the course of nature, was to make men conscious of this Word. Let us use the knowledge acquired in the course of our spiritual-scientific lectures to understand what the ancient sages expressed in the Christmas festival.

The festival held at Christmas time is not only a Christian event. It has existed wherever religious feeling was expressed. If you direct your gaze back thousands of years before our era to ancient Egypt, Asia or other regions, you find a festival being celebrated at the same time of year that Christianity recognizes the birth of Christ.

What was the nature of this primeval festival that was celebrated all over the earth at this time of year? In answering this question, we shall restrict our considerations today to those marvelous fire festivals that were celebrated in ancient times in regions of Europe, Scandinavia, Scotland, and in England by the ancient Celtic priests, the Druids.

What was the nature of their celebration? They celebrated the end of the winter season and the approach of spring. Though, to be sure, winter deepens as we move toward Christmas, nevertheless, a victory proclaims itself in nature at this time that is the symbol of hope, confidence and trust for man. In this way the victory of the sun over the counter forces of nature was expressed in most languages. Today we have felt how the days have grown shorter, which is an expression of the withering and falling asleep of the forces of nature, and this will continue until the day we celebrate as Christmas, a day that was also celebrated by our ancestors. From this day on, the days begin to grow longer. The light of the sun celebrates its victory over darkness. Materialistic thought does not reflect much on this event, but for those endowed with vital feeling and knowledge, it was the living expression for a spiritual experience of the Godhead that guides our lives. As an important and decisive event is experienced in the individual personal life of a man, so the winter solstice was experienced as a decisive event in the life of a higher being—as the memorial of something uniquely sublime. We are thus led to the fundamental concept of the Christmas festival as a cosmic festival, a festival of the first order for humanity.

In those ages in which genuine esotericism was alive and active like the very life blood of people—a fact that is denied by the materialistic world view of today—one observed an event taking place in nature at Christmas time that was considered a monument, a memorial of a great event that once had taken place on earth. During those days the priests collected the faithful ones, the teachers of the people, around them at the midnight hour and endeavored to divulge a great secret. What they said to them was somewhat as follows. I am not relating something here that has been discovered and thought out by abstract science, but what has lived in the Mysteries, in the secret shrines, in those earlier times.

Today, so said the priests, we see the victory of the sun over darkness ushered in. This also once took place on earth in a larger sense when the sun celebrated its great victory over darkness. Up to that time, everything physical, all bodily life on earth had only reached the level of development of the animals. The highest kingdom on earth at that time, prepared itself for the reception of the immortal human soul. Then, in this primeval age, the great moment in the evolution of mankind arrived when the immortal soul descended from divine heights. The surging life had developed to the point where the human body was able to receive the imperishable soul. This human ancestor was at a higher stage than that imagined by materialistic naturalists, but even so the spiritual, immortal part did not live in him yet. The human soul descended to earth from a higher planet, and the earth was now to become its field of action, its dwelling place.

We call these human ancestors the Lemurians. They were followed by the Atlanteans, who preceded the present-day Aryans. The human bodies of the Lemurians were fructified by the higher human soul—a great moment in the evolution of man that spiritual science calls “the descent of the Divine Sons of the Spirit.” Ever since Lemurian times the human soul has worked in and formed the human body for its higher development. I can only give an indication of what I am now going to say, but I have spoken in detail about these things in other lectures. Those who are here for the first time should take this into consideration and not take what I say as mere fantasy.

At the time when the human body was first fructified by the imperishable soul, the situation was quite different from the way materialistic natural science conceives of it today. An event took place in the universe that belongs to the most important in the evolution of man. Gradually, the constellation of earth, moon and sun arose that made the descent of the souls possible. It was in that period that the sun gained its significance for the growth and prospering of man on earth, and also for his fellow creatures, the plants and animals. To grasp this connection of sun, moon and earth with earth-man in the right way, one must make spiritually clear to himself the whole development of man and earth. There was a time—so ancient wisdom taught—when the earth was united with the sun and moon, forming one body. At that time, the earth beings of today had different shapes and appearances that conformed with the consolidated cosmic body of sun, moon and earth. Every living thing on earth received its being through the fact that first the sun, and then the moon separated from the earth and formed an external relationship to it. The mystery of the union of the human spirit with the universal spirit is connected with this development. In spiritual science the universal spirit is called the Logos. It embraces the sun, moon and earth, and in it we live, weave and have our being.

Just as the earth was born from the body that also comprised the sun and moon, so is man born from a spirit or soul to which the sun, earth and moon belong. When man looks up to the sun or the moon, what he sees should not be limited only to these external physical bodies, but he should perceive them as the external bodies of spiritual beings. Modern materialism can no longer accomplish this. Yet, one who is unable to see the sun and moon as bodies of spirits, will be unable to recognize the human body as that of a spirit. As truly as the human body is the bearer of a spirit, so the celestial bodies are likewise bearers of spiritual beings. Man belongs to these spiritual beings. His body is separated from the forces that rule in sun and moon but his physical nature nevertheless harbors forces that are active in them. The same spirituality is active in his soul, however, that governs the sun and moon. By becoming an earth being, man became dependent upon the sun's activity as a separate body shining upon the earth.

Our ancestors felt themselves to be spiritual children of the whole universe and understood that we have become human beings through what the sun spirit had called forth as our spirit. For us, the victory of the sun over darkness signifies a memory of the victory for our soul when for the first time the sun shone down upon the earth as it does today. It was a sun victory when the immortal soul descended into the physical body and immersed itself in the darkness of instincts, desires and passions.

Let us visualize the life of the spirit. For early man, darkness, which followed upon a previous sun period, preceded the victory of the sun. But the human soul, which sprang from the Divinity, had to dip down into unconsciousness for a time in order to form there the lower nature of man. It was the human soul that gradually built up the lower nature of man so that later it could come to dwell in it. If you imagine an architect using the best forces in himself to build a dwelling into which he subsequently moves, you will have an adequate likeness of the entrance of the immortal human soul into the physical body. At that early time, however, the soul could work only unconsciously on its dwelling place, and it is this that is expressed in the picture of darkness. The lighting up of consciousness in the human soul is expressed, of course, in the picture of the sun victory.

For those who had a living feeling for the connection of man with the universe, the sun victory signified the moment in which they received what was of the greatest importance for their earth existence. It was this great moment that was commemorated in the festival celebrating this event at the winter solstice.

In all earlier times, man's course through his earth development was seen to resemble increasingly the regular rhythmical course of nature. When we look up from the soul of man to the course of the sun in the universe and all that is related to it, we experience the great rhythm and harmony existing there as contrasted with the chaos and disharmony of our own natures. How rhythmical is the path of the sun; how regular is the return of the phenomena of nature in the course of the year and day!

I have frequently mentioned the rhythmical nature of the development of the lower beings. Just imagine the sun leaving its orbit for a fraction of a second and the unbelievable, indescribable disorder that would result. Our universe is only made possible through the great, tremendous harmony of the sun's orbit. With this harmony are connected the rhythmical life processes of all the beings dependent upon the sun. Picture to yourself how the sun calls forth the beings of nature in spring. It is not possible to think the violet might bloom at a different time from the one we are accustomed to. Imagine seeds to be broadcast or harvests to be gathered at times different from the usual ones. Right up to animal life we see how everything is dependent upon the rhythmical course of the sun. Even in man everything is rhythmical, regular and harmonious insofar as it is not subject to human passions, instincts and the human intellect.

Observe the pulse or the processes of digestion and admire the great rhythm and infinite wisdom of nature flowing through them. Then compare them with the irregularity and chaos holding sway in human passions, instincts, desires and particularly in the human intellect. Visualize the regularity of the pulse and breath and contrast it with the irregularity of thinking, feeling and willing. They are will-o'-the-wisps in comparison. Imagine the wisdom with which the life forces are organized, or how the rhythmic system must struggle against rhythmless chaos. Just think how much human passion and the desire for enjoyment trespass against the rhythms of the body! I have often mentioned how marvelous it is for the person who, through an anatomical study of the heart, learns to know the beautiful construction of this organ. Such a person must then come to realize how miraculous it is that the heart still continues its harmoniously rhythmical pulsation in spite of the abuse that can be heaped upon it through the use of tea and coffee. But, like our ancestors, who were filled with admiration for nature with its soul, the sun, in rhythmical orbit, we, too, can acquire feelings for all of nature, permeated as it is by rhythm and wisdom.

In looking up to the sun, the sages and their followers said, “You are the image of what the soul born in me will become.” The divine world order revealed itself in its great glory to these wise men. This is also expressed in the Christian view when it says there shall be glory in divine heights. “Glory” means “revelation.” “Today God reveals Himself in the Heavens.” This is what “Glory to God in the Highest” means. It is the expression of the glory permeating the world. This world harmony was presented as the great ideal for those who, in earlier times, were to be leaders of mankind. In all times and wherever a consciousness of these things was alive, it was the Sun Hero who was spoken of.

There were seven degrees of initiation in the ancient Mystery Temples. I shall cite them for you with their Persian names. In the first degree, man went beyond everyday feeling and attained to a higher soul experience and cognition of the spirit. Such a man was designated a “Raven.” The Ravens were those who communicated to the initiates in the temples what happened in the outside world. This was the case in the medieval saga of the Emperor Barbarossa who, surrounded by the earth's treasures of wisdom, awaits inside the earth the great moment when mankind is to be rejuvenated by a newly deepened Christianity. Here also the Ravens are the messengers. Even the Old Testament speaks of the Ravens of Elijah.

Those initiated into the second degree were called the “Occult Ones,” those of the third, the “Warriors,” and those of the fourth, the “Lions.” The initiates of the fifth degree were called by the name of their people—Persian or Indian, for example—because only these initiates were true representatives of their peoples. The initiate of the sixth degree was called a “Sun Hero,” that of the seventh, bore the name “Father.”

Why was the initiate of the sixth degree called a Sun Hero? Such a one, who had climbed the ladder of spiritual knowledge to that stage, had so far developed his inner life that the pattern of its course followed the divine rhythm of the universe. His feeling and thinking no longer contained anything chaotic, unrhythmical or disharmonious, and his inner soul harmony was in accord with the external harmony of the sun. This level of development was demanded of the initiates of the sixth degree, and as a result, they were looked up to as holy men, as examples and ideals. Just as it would be a great disaster for the universe if the sun were to leave its path for only a quarter of a minute, similarly, it would have been just as great a disaster if it had been possible for a Sun Hero to stray only for a moment from his path of high morality, soul rhythm and spirit harmony. He who had found as sure a path in his spirit as the sun outside in the universe, was called a Sun Hero, and they were to be found among all peoples.

Our scientists know little about these things. To be sure, they see that sun myths are crystallized around the lives of all the great founders of religions. But they do not know that in the initiation ceremonies the leaders were raised to Sun Heroes, and it is not at all remarkable when materialistic research rediscovers these customs of the ancients. Sun myths connected with Buddha and even with Christ have been searched out and found. Here you have the reason why they could be found in these myths. They had been put into them in the first place because they represented a direct imprint of the sun rhythm and were the great examples that should be followed.

The soul of such a Sun Hero who had attained this inner harmony was no longer considered to be a single individual human soul, but one that had brought to birth in itself the universal soul streaming through the whole cosmos. This universal soul was called “Chrestos” in ancient Greece, and the sublime sages of the Orient knew it by the name, “Buddhi.” When one has ceased to feel himself to be only the bearer of his individual soul and comes to experience the universe within himself, then he has created an image in himself of what as Sun Soul was united with the human body at that time. Then he has achieved something of tremendous significance for the evolution of mankind.

When we consider such a human being with his soul ennobled in this way, we can visualize the future of the human race and the whole relationship of this future to the idea, the percept of humanity in general. Today, disputing and quarrelling, people decide things by majority vote. As long as such majority resolutions are deemed to be the ideal, one has not yet grasped real truth. Where does real truth live in us? Truth lives in us when we endeavor to think logically. It would be nonsense to decide by majority vote that two times two equals four, or that three times four equals twelve. Once man has recognized what is true, millions of others may dissent but he will remain certain within himself.

In scientific thinking we have advanced as far as the use of logic, that is, thinking untouched by passions, drives and instincts. Wherever these come into play, they bring about chaos and cause men to quarrel and fight in wild confusion. When, however, in the future, these passions, drives and instincts will have been purified and become what is called Buddhi or Chrestos, when they will have reached the level of development at which logical, passionless thinking stands today, then the ideal of mankind, which radiates from the wisdom of ancient religions, from Christianity, and from the anthroposophical science of the spirit, will have been reached. When our feelings will have become so purified that they sound harmoniously together with what others feel, when for our feelings and sensations the same stage will have been achieved on earth as that of our intellects, when Buddhi and the Chrestos will have been incorporated into the human race, then the ideal of the ancient teachers of wisdom, of Christianity and of anthroposophy will have been fulfilled. Then it will not be necessary to determine by vote what is good, noble and right any more than one needs to decide by vote what is logically correct or logically false. Everyone can place this ideal before his soul and in so doing he raises the ideal of the Sun Hero, of all initiates of the sixth degree.

This was felt by the German mystics of the Middle Ages when they spoke the important word for “becoming Godlike,” “becoming one with the Divine” (Vergottung). What does this word signify? It means that those beings, whom we consider today to be the spirits of the universe, also passed through the stage of chaos upon which mankind stands today. The leading spirits of the universe have struggled up to the divine stage where their living utterances resound harmoniously through the All. What appears to us in the harmonious annual orbit of the sun, in the growth of plants, the life of animals was, in past ages, chaotic and a struggle had to be made to arrive at its present sublime harmony. Man stands today at a stage of development at which these spirits once stood. But he will develop out of chaos into a future harmony patterned after the present sun and the presiding universal harmony.

To allow these ideas to sink into our souls, not as theory or doctrine but as living sensation, yields the anthroposophical Christmas mood. Let us feel vividly that the glory and the revelation of divine harmony appears in the heights of heaven. Let us realize that the revelation of this harmony will resound from our own souls in the future. Then we will feel the peace of those who are of good will that will come about in mankind through this harmony. When from this great perspective we look into the divine world order, into the revelation and its glory in heavenly heights, when we look out upon the future of mankind, we may have now, today, a presentiment of the harmony that will reign in human beings on earth in the future. The more we let the harmony in the outer world sink into us, the more will there be peace and unity on earth.

If, during the time of Christmas, we feel and experience the orbit of the sun in nature in the right way, the great ideal of peace will be presented to our souls as a feeling of nature of the highest order. If we feel during these days the victory of the sunlight over darkness, we will gain from it the great confidence that unites our own developing souls with this cosmic harmony, and it will not flow in vain into our beings. Then something will flow and live in us that will be harmonious, and the seed of peace upon earth will sink into our souls. Those men are of good will who feel this peace, a peace that will prevail when the higher stage of harmony, which today has been attained only by the intellect, is reached by the feelings and heart. Strife and disharmony will have been replaced by the all-pervading love of which Goethe speaks in the Hymn to Nature I have quoted, when he says that a few draughts from the chalice of love are compensation for a life of trouble.

In all religions this Christmas festival has been a festival of confidence, trust and hope because they have felt that during these days the light must be victorious. This seed, placed in the earth, will sprout forth and prosper in the light of the newly arising year. A seed of a plant, when buried in the earth, will burgeon forth into the light of the sun. In the same way, divine truth, the divine and truthful soul, is sunk in the depth of the life of passions and instincts. There, in darkness, the divine Sun Soul will ripen. A seed in the earth sprouts as a result of the victory of light over darkness, and likewise, through the continuous victory of light over the darkness of the soul, the soul will become filled with light. In darkness there can only be strife; in light, only peace. Through true comprehension, world harmony, world peace will prevail. This is the deep and true word also of Christianity during these Christmas days: Glory, revelation of the divine powers in the heights of heaven, and peace to men who are of good will!

Out of this great cosmic feeling, the Christian Church resolved in the fourth century to establish the festival of the birth of the World Savior at the same time of year that all great religions had celebrated the victory of light over darkness. Before the fourth century, the time of the Christian festival, the festival of the birth of Christ, varied. It was not until the fourth century that it was resolved that the Savior of the Christians be born on the day on which the victory of light over darkness had always been celebrated.

Today we cannot deal with the wisdom of the teaching of Christianity itself. This will be the subject of a lecture next year. But one thing shall and must be said today. Nothing could have happened with more justification than the establishment of the birthday of Christ at that time of year. For that Divine Individuality, the Christ, is the guarantor for the Christian that his divine soul will be victorious over all that is darkness. Thus, Christianity is in harmony with all great world religions, and when the Christmas bells ring, we can remind ourselves that this festival was celebrated during these days throughout the world in the past. It was celebrated wherever on earth there was comprehension of the true progress of the human soul, wherever a knowledge prevailed of the significance of spirit and spiritual life, wherever self-knowledge was practiced.

We have not spoken of an abstract feeling for nature today. We have, rather, spoken of a feeling for nature in all its living spirituality. When we have connected our considerations with the Goethean words, “Nature! We are encompassed and enfolded! ...” we may be clear about the fact that we do not interpret nature in the materialistic sense. We see in it the external expression and physiognomy of the divine cosmic spirit. Just as the body is born out of the corporeal, the soul and spirit out of the divine soul and divine spirit, and just as the body united itself with merely material forces, so the soul unites itself with the spirit.

The great festivals stand as symbols leading us to use our feeling and thinking in order to bring about an experience of the union with the universe, not in an indefinite way but in a most decided fashion. If this is felt again, the festivals become something different from what they are today. They will become implanted in soul and heart in a living way, and they will become what they are intended to be for us, that is, focal points in the year that join us to the spirit of the universe. If, as the year proceeds, we have fulfilled our duties and tasks for everyday life, we can look to these focal points to what unites us with the eternal. Although we have had a hard struggle in the course of the year, during these festival days the feeling arises in us that beyond all struggle and chaos, peace and harmony exist. Therefore, these festivals are celebrations of the great ideals. The Christmas festival is the festival of the greatest ideal of humanity, and humanity must make it its own if it wishes to reach its destination. The Christmas festival, rightly understood, is the festival of the birth of mankind's highest feelings and will impulses.

The anthroposophical science of the spirit intends to contribute to this understanding. We do not wish to send a dogma a mere doctrine or philosophy into the world, but life itself. It is our ideal to have all that we say and teach, all that is contained in our writings and science, pass over into life itself. This will happen if men practice spiritual science in everyday relationships, if from the pulpits spiritual-scientific life resounds in the words that are spoken to the listeners, without special emphasis being put on the term, spiritual science. If in all courts of justice the deeds are judged with spiritual-scientific sensitivity, if the medical doctor feels and heals with spiritual-scientific insight, if in the schools the teachers develop spiritual science concerning the growing child, if on all the streets spiritual-scientific thoughts, feelings and actions prevail to the point of making spiritual-scientific teaching superfluous, then our ideal will have been achieved. Then the science of the spirit will have become an everyday affair. Moreover, spiritual science will then also be alive in the focal points of the great festivals throughout the year, and man will join his everyday life to the spirit through anthroposophical thinking, feeling and willing. Then the eternal, imperishable Spirit Sun will shine into his soul at the great festivals of the year, reminding him that in him there lives truth, a higher self, a divine, sun-like, light-filled Being. This Being will ever and again be victorious over all darkness and chaos, and will achieve soul peace and balance in the face of all disharmony, struggle and war in the world.

• 1. From Goethe's Faust, translated and edited by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

The Christmas festival, which we are about to celebrate, gains new life through a deepened spiritual world view. In a spiritual sense the Christmas festival is a sun festival, and as such we shall become acquainted with it today. To begin, we shall hear that most beautiful apostrophe to the sun that Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust.

Refreshed anew life's pulses beat and waken
To greet the mild ethereal dawn of morning;
Earth, through this night thou too hast stood unshaken
And breath'st before me in thy new adorning,
Beginst to wrap me round with gladness thrilling,
A vigorous resolve in me forewarning,
Unceasing strife for life supreme instilling.—
Now lies the world revealed in twilight glimmer,
The wood resounds, a thousand voices trilling;
The vales where mist flows in and out lie dimmer,
But in the gorges sinks a light from heaven,
And boughs and twigs, refreshed, lift up their shimmer
From fragrant chasms where they slept at even;
Tint upon tint again emerges, clearing
Where trembling pearls from flower and leaf drip riven:
All round me is a Paradise appearing.

Look up!—The peaks, gigantic and supernal,
Proclaim the hour most solemn now is nearing.
They early may enjoy the light eternal
That later to us here below is wended.
Now on the alpine meadows, sloping, vernal,
A clear and lavish glory has descended
And step by step fulfils its journey's ending.
The sun steps forth!—Alas, already blinded,
I turn away, the pain my vision rending.

Thus is it ever when a hope long yearning
Has made a wish its own, supreme, transcending,
And finds Fulfilment's portals outward turning;
From those eternal deeps bursts ever higher
Too great a flame, we stand, with wonder burning.
To kindle life's fair torch we did aspire
And seas of flame—and what a flame!—embrace us!
Is it Love? Is it Hate? that twine us with their fire,
In alternating joy and pain enlace us,
So that again toward earth we turn our gazing,
Baffled, to hide in youth's fond veils our faces.

Behind me therefore let the sun be blazing!
The cataract in gorges deeply riven
I view with rapture growing and amazing.
To plunge on plunge in a thousand streams it's given,
And yet a thousand, downward to the valleys,
While foam and mist high in the air are driven.
Yet how superb above this tumult sallies
The many-colored rainbow's changeful being;
Now lost in air, now clearly drawn, it dailies,
Shedding sweet coolness round us even when fleeing!
The rainbow mirrors human aims and action.
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life is but light in many-hued reflection.¹

Goethe lets his representative of mankind speak these mighty words in the presence of the radiant, rising morning sun. But it is not this sun, awakening anew every morning, with which we have to deal in the festival we will speak about today. This sun is a being of much profounder depths, and the nature of it shall be the leitmotif of our present considerations.

We shall now hear the words that reflect the deepest meaning of the Christmas Mystery. These words have been heard by the pupils of the Mysteries of all ages before they entered the Mysteries themselves:

Behold the Sun
At midnight hour,
And build with stones
In lifeless clay.
So find in world decline
And in the night of death
Creation's new beginning
And morning's youthful strength.
Let heights above reveal
The Gods' eternal word,
May depths preserve and seal
The peaceful treasure-hoard.
In darkness living
O now create a Sun!
In substance weaving
O know the Bliss of Spirit.²

Die Sonne schaue
um mitternächtige Stunde.
Mit Steinen baue
im leblosen Grunde.
So finde im Niedergang
und in des Todes Nacht
der Schöpfung neuen Anfang,
des Morgens junge Macht.
Die Höhen lass offenbaren
der Götter ewiges Wort;
die Tiefen sollen bewahren
den friedensvollen Hort.
Im Dunkel lebend
erschaffe eine Sonne.
Im Stoffe webend
erkenne Geistes Wonne.³

Many people who today merely know the Christmas tree with its candles believe that to have a tree symbolizing Christmas is a traditional custom dating from ancient times. This, however, is not the case. On the contrary, the custom of decorating a tree at Christmas is most recent and does not date back more than a few centuries. The custom of decorating a Christmas tree is a recent phenomenon, but the celebration of Christmas is old. The festival at Christmas time was known in the most ancient Mysteries of all religions everywhere, and has always been celebrated. It is not merely an outer sun festival, but one that leads man to a divination of the sources of existence. It was celebrated annually by the highest initiates in the Mysteries at the time of year when the sun's force was weakest and bestowed least warmth upon the earth. It was also celebrated by those who were unable to participate in the entire celebration, but were permitted to experience only the outer pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved throughout the ages and has assumed forms in accordance with the various religious confessions. The celebration of Christmas is the festival of the Sacred Night, which, in the great Mysteries, was celebrated by those personalities who were ready to bring about the resurrection of the higher self within their inmost being. Today we would say, "Within their inmost being they gave birth to the Christ."

Only those who know nothing of the fact that, besides the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are active, and that, just as the chemical and physical forces have definite times in the cosmos for their action, so likewise have the spiritual forces—only such people can remain indifferent when the awakening of the Higher Self occurs. In the great Mysteries man was permitted to behold the active forces in colored radiance, in brilliant light. He was permitted to perceive the world around him filled with spiritual qualities, with spiritual beings, to behold the world of the spirit around him in which he underwent the greatest experience possible.

This moment will arrive at some time for everyone. All men will ultimately experience it, even though perhaps only after many incarnations. The moment will arrive for everyone when the Christ will rise within them and new seeing, new hearing will awaken within them.

Those who were prepared for the awakening, as were pupils of the Mysteries, were first taught what the awakening signifies in the great universe; only then was the rite of awakening performed. It took place at the time when darkness on earth is greatest, when the outer sun has reached its lowest point at Christmas time, because those who are acquainted with spiritual facts know that at that time of year, forces stream through cosmic space that are favorable to such an awakening. In his preparation, the pupil was told that the one who really wished to know should not merely know what has taken place during thousands and thousands of years on earth, but he must learn to survey the entire course of human evolution, realizing that the great festivals have their place within this, and that they must be dedicated to the contemplation of the great eternal truths. The pupils directed their thoughts toward the time when the earth had not yet become what it is today. Sun and moon did not yet exist but were both united with the earth, and the earth, sun and moon still formed one body. Man already existed at that time but he had no body; he was a spiritual being upon whom no external sunlight shone. The sunlight was within the earth itself. Its nature differed from the present sunlight, which shines upon beings and things from without. It had the quality of being able to radiate within itself and, at the same time, to radiate within the inner nature of every earthly being. Then the moment arrived when the sun separated from the earth and its light fell upon the earth from without. The sun had withdrawn from the earth and the inner being of man had become dark. This was the beginning of his evolution toward that future time when he is to find the inner light again radiating in his inner nature. Man must learn to know the things of earth by means of his outer nature. He will evolve to the time when in his inner nature the higher man, the spirit man, will glow and radiate again. From light, through darkness, to light—such is the course of the evolution of mankind.

The pupils were prepared by these teachings, which were constantly impressed upon them. Then they were led to their awakening. The moment arrived when, as chosen ones, they experienced by means of their awakened spirit organs, the spiritual light within them. This holy moment came when the outer light was weakest, on the day when the outer sun shines least. On that day the pupils were gathered together, and the inner light revealed itself to them.

Those who were still unable to participate in this celebration were able to experience at least an outer likeness of it from which they learned that for them, too, the great moment would come. "Today," they were told, "you behold only an image; later you will experience what you now see as a likeness." These were the lesser Mysteries. They showed in pictures what the neophyte was to experience later. We shall hear today of what took place in the lesser Mysteries on Christmas eve. It was the same everywhere -in the Egyptian Mysteries, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Mysteries of the Near East, the Babylonian-Chaldaic Mysteries, as well as in the Mysteries of the Persian Mithras cult and the Indian Mysteries of Brahman. Everywhere the pupils of these Mystery Schools had the same experience at the midnight hour on the Night of Consecration.

The pupils gathered in the early evening. In quiet contemplation they had to make clear to themselves what this most important event signified. In deep silence they sat together in the darkness. By the time midnight drew near, they had been sitting in the dark room for hours. Thoughts of eternity pervaded their souls. Then, toward midnight, mysterious tones arose, resounding through the room, up welling and diminishing. The pupils who heard these tones knew that this was the music of the spheres. Then the room became dimly lit, the only light emanating from a dimly lighted disc. Those who saw this knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker, until finally it was quite black. Simultaneously the surrounding space grew brighter. Those who saw this knew that the black sphere represented the earth. The sun, however, which ordinarily irradiates the earth was concealed; the earth could no longer see the sun. Then around the earth-disc, at the outer edge, rainbow colors formed, ring upon ring. Those who saw it knew that this was the radiant Iris. At midnight a violet-reddish circle gradually arose in place of the black earth sphere. On it a Word was written. This Word varied according to the peoples whose members were permitted to experience this Mystery. In our language the Word would be Christos. Those who saw it knew that this was the sun, which appeared to them at the midnight hour, when the world around rests in deepest darkness. The pupils were now told that what they had experienced was called, "Seeing the sun at the midnight hour."

Whoever is really initiated learns to experience the sun at the midnight hour, for in him all matter is obliterated. The sun of the spirit alone lives in his inner self and radiates over all the darkness of matter. This is the moment of highest bliss in the evolution of man, when he has the experience that he lives in the eternal light freed from darkness. Year after year, at midnight on the Night of Consecration, this moment was thus represented in the Mysteries. This image represented the fact that alongside the physical sun there is a Spiritual Sun, which, like the physical sun, is born out of darkness. In order to make this clearer to the pupils, after they had experienced the rising of the Sun, of the Christos, they were led into a cave in which there was seemingly nothing but stone—dead, lifeless matter. There they beheld stalks of grain arise from the stones as a sign of life, as a symbolical indication of the fact that from apparent death life springs forth, that from dead stone, life is born. They were told that just as the sun force, after it had seemingly died, waxes anew from this day on, so does new life forever arise out of dying life.

The same event is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words, "He must increase, but I must decrease." John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the Spiritual Light, whose festival day falls in the course of the year in mid-summer—John must decrease, and simultaneously with his decrease the force of the coming light waxes, increasing in strength as John decreases. In like manner the new, the coming life prepares itself in the seed that must wither and decay in order that the new plant may spring forth from it. The pupils of the Mysteries were to experience that in death life resides, that out of decaying matter the new, glorious blossoms and fruits of spring arise, that the earth teems with the forces of birth. They were to learn that at this time something happens in the inner being of the earth—the overcoming of death by life that is present in death. This was shown them in the conquering light. This they felt and experienced when they saw the light arise and shine in the darkness. They beheld in the stone cave the sprouting life arising in splendor and abundance out of the seemingly dead.

Thus, faith in life was fostered in the pupils. Thus were they led to arouse in themselves what may be called faith in man's greatest ideal. Thus they learned to look up to the highest ideal of mankind, to the time when the earth will have completed its evolution and the Light will shine forth in all mankind. The earth will then crumble to dust but the spiritual essence will remain with all men who have become radiant in their innermost nature through the spiritual Light. Earth and humanity will then awaken to a higher existence, to a new phase of existence.

When Christianity arose in the course of evolution, it bore this ideal within it in the highest sense. Man felt that within Christianity the Christos was to appear as the great Ideal of all men, that He had been born on the Night of Consecration about the time of deepest darkness as a sign that out of the darkness of matter a higher man can be born in the human soul.

In the ancient Mysteries, before men spoke of a Christos, they spoke of a Sun Hero who embodied the same ideal as is connected with the Christos in Christianity. The bearer of this ideal was called the Sun Hero. Just as the sun completes its orbit in the course of the year bringing about an increase and decrease in light, and its warmth apparently withdraws from the earth and then again radiates anew, just as it contains life in its death and lets it stream forth anew, so like wise does the Sun Hero, through the power of his spiritual life, become master over death and night and darkness.

In the Mysteries there were seven degrees of initiation. First the degree of the "Ravens," who were able to approach only as far as the portal of the temple of initiation. They became the intermediaries between the external world of material life and the inner world of spiritual life, and no longer belonged to the material nor yet to the spiritual world. These Ravens are to be found everywhere. They are always the messengers who pass to and fro between the two worlds and transmit messages. They are to be found in the Germanic sagas and myths also. The Ravens of Wotan, the Ravens who fly around the mountain of Kyffhäuser.

In the second degree the disciple was led away from the portal into the interior of the temple of initiation. There he matured until he reached the third degree, the degree of the "Warrior," who stepped before the world to proclaim the occult truths that he was permitted to experience in the interior of the temple.

The fourth degree, that of the "Lion," was attained by one whose consciousness was not merely that of an individual human being, but encompassed an entire tribe. Thus the Christ was called "the Lion of the Tribe of David." A man whose consciousness encompassed a whole nation had attained the fifth degree. He no longer had a name of his own but was designated by the name of his nation. Thus, people spoke of the "Persian," or the "Israelite." Now we can understand how it was that Nathanael, for instance, was called a "true Israelite." It was because he had reached the fifth degree of initiation.

The sixth degree was that of the "Sun Hero," and we must understand what this name signifies. We shall then realize what awe and reverence passed through the soul of the pupil of the Mysteries who knew something of a Sun Hero, and who experienced at Christmas the Birth Festival of a Sun Hero.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course. The stars as well as the sun follow a great rhythm. Were the sun to change this rhythm but for a moment, were it to leave its orbit only for a moment, a revolution would result in the entire universe of quite unheard-of significance. Rhythm rules all nature, right up to man. Only with man does the situation change. The rhythm that rules until death throughout the course of the seasons in the forces of growth, propagation, etc., ceases with man. He is to stand in freedom, and the more highly civilized he is, the more does this rhythm decrease. Just as the light disappears at Christmas, so apparently has rhythm disappeared from the life of man and chaos prevails. Man, however, gives birth to this rhythm out of his own initiative out of his own inner nature. He must so fashion his life out of his will that it takes its course within rhythmical boundaries, steadfast and sure, like the course of the sun. Just as a change in the course of the sun is unthinkable, even so is it unthinkable that the rhythm of such a life be interrupted. The embodiment of such a life rhythm was to be found in the Sun Hero. Through the strength of the higher man born in him, he gained the power to rule the rhythm of the course of his life. This Sun Hero, this higher man, was born in the Night of Consecration.

Christ Jesus was also a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christianity. His birth festival was, therefore, placed at the time of year when, since primeval days, the birthday of the Sun Hero has been celebrated. This is also the reason for all that was linked with the life story of Christ Jesus. The Midnight Mass, which the first Christians celebrated in caves, was in memory of the Sun Festival. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a memory of the rising sun in the Mysteries. Christ was thus born in a cave in remembrance of the cave of rock out of which, symbolized in the growing stalks of grain, life was born. Earthly life was born out of the dead stone. So, too, out of the lowly, the Highest, Christ Jesus, was born!

The legend of the three priest-sages, the three kings, was linked with the Christ Birth Festival. They brought to the Child gold, the symbol of the wisdom-filled outer man; myrrh, the symbol of life's victory over death, and finally, frankincense, the symbol of the cosmic ether in which the spirit lives.

Thus, in the meaning of the Christmas Festival, we feel something echoing to us from the most ancient ages of mankind, and it has come down to us in the special coloring of Christianity. In its symbols we find images for the most ancient symbols of mankind. The Christmas tree with its candles is one of them. For us, it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, which represents all of material nature. Spiritual nature is represented by the tree in Paradise that encompassed all Knowledge, and by the Tree of Life. There is a narrative that imparts clearly the significance of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Seth stood at the Gates of Paradise and begged to be allowed to enter. The Archangel guarding the portal let him pass. This is a sign for initiation.

Seth, now in Paradise, found the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge closely intertwined. The Archangel Michael, who stands in the presence of God, let him take three seeds from these intertwining trees, which, standing there as a single tree, pointed prophetically to the future of mankind. Then the whole of humanity shall have been initiated and shall have found knowledge. Only the Tree of Life will still exist and death will be no more. For the time being, however, only the initiate may take the three seeds from this Tree, the three seeds that signify the three higher members of man.

When Adam died, Seth placed these three seeds in Adam's mouth, and from them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new shoots and green leaves continually burst forth. Within the flaming circle of the bush, however, was written, "I am He Who was, Who is, Who is to be." This points to the entity that passes through all incarnations, the force of evolving man repeatedly renewing himself, who descends from light into darkness and ascends from darkness into light.

The rod with which Moses performed his miracles was carved from the wood of the flaming bush. The portal of Solomon's Temple was fashioned from it. This wood was carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda, and from it the pool derived its power.

From the same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus was fashioned, the wood of the Cross that shows us life passing into death, but which at the same time bears the power in itself to bring forth new life. The great world symbol stands before us here—life, which overcomes death. The wood of this Cross grew out of the three seeds from the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross also expresses this symbol of the death of the lower nature and, springing from it, the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

As long as you have not
Died and been reborn,
You are but a gloomy guest
Upon the darkened earth.

What a wondrous connection there is between the Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross! Even though the Cross is a symbol of Easter, it also deepens our Christmas mood. We feel in it how the Christ Idea streams toward us in new welling life on this night of Christ's Nativity. This idea is indicated in the living roses that adorn this tree.⁴ They tell us that the tree of the Sacred Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross, but the power to become this wood begins to arise in it. The roses that grow from the green symbolize the Eternal that grows from the Temporal.

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The square is the symbol of the fourfold nature of man: physical body, ether body, astral body and ego.

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The triangle is the symbol of the higher man: Spirit Self, Life Spirit and Spirit Man.

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Above the triangle is the symbol of the Tarok. Initiates of the Egyptian Mysteries knew how to read this sign. They also knew how to read the Book of Thoth, which consisted of seventy-eight cards on which were recorded all world events from beginning to end, from Alpha to Omega, and which could be read if they were joined and assembled in the right way. The Book of Thoth, or Hermes, contained in pictures the life that fades in death and again sprouts forth anew into life.

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Whoever could combine the right numbers with the right pictures was able to read it. This wisdom of numbers and pictures has been taught since primeval ages. In the Middle Ages it still played an important role, but today there is little left of it.

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Above the Alpha and Omega is the sign of Tao. It reminds us of the worship of God by our primeval ancestors because this worship took its origin from the work Tao. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were lands of human culture, our ancestors lived on Atlantis, which was submerged by a flood. In the Germanic sagas of Niflheim, the land of the mists, the memory of Atlantis still lives. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Its atmosphere was filled with enormous masses of mist similar to the clouds and mists in high mountains. The sun and moon were not seen clearly in the sky, but were surrounded by a rainbow, and sacred Iris. At that time man still understood the language of nature. What speaks to him today in the lapping and surging of the waves, in the whistling and rushing of the wind, in the rustling of the leaves, in the rumbling of thunder, is no longer understood by him, but at that time he could understand it. He felt something that spoke to him from everything about him. From the clouds and waters and leaves and winds the sound rang forth: Tao (the I am). Atlanteans heard it and understood it, and knew that Tao streamed through the whole world.

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Finally, all that permeates the cosmos is present in man and is symbolized in the pentagram at the top of the tree. The deepest meaning of the pentagram may not now be mentioned, but it is the star of mankind, of mankind developing itself. It is the star that all wise men follow as did the priest-sages in ancient ages.

It symbolizes the earth that is born on the Night of Consecration, because the most sublime light radiates from the deepest darkness. Man lives on toward a state when the light shall be born in him, when one significant saying shall be replaced by another, when it will no longer be said, “The Darkness does not comprehend the Light” but when the truth will resound into cosmic space with the words, “Darkness gives way to the Light that radiates toward us in the Star of Mankind, Darkness yields and comprehends the Light.”

This shall resound from the Christmas celebration, and the spiritual light shall radiate from it. Let us celebrate Christmas as the festival of the most lofty ideal of the Idea of Mankind, so that in our souls may rise the joyful confidence: Indeed, I, too, shall experience the birth of the higher man within myself. The birth of the Savior, the Christos, will take place in me also.

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• 1. From Goethe's Faust, translated by George Madison Priest; copyright by, and reprinted here with permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
• 2. Translated by Henry B. Monges.
• 3. By Rudolf Steiner.
• 4. This lecture was delivered beside a lighted Christmas tree adorned with the signs depicted here, as well as with thirty-three wax candles and fresh red roses.

One of the repeated objections to the search for spiritual knowledge, in the last third of the nineteenth century, is this: when a man has passed through the gates of death he will see the nature of the spiritual life as lived without the physical body, but while here in the physical body attention must be paid to earthly life; here man should live as if the earth were his sole sphere of activity. A deeper study of Spiritual Science shows us increasingly what a superficial grasp of spiritual life is contained in such a statement. It teaches us that things are not really as though life in a physical body before death were entirely separate from life in the spiritual world after death, as if the one did not contact the other. We shall best come to a common understanding for study, if we consider what we already know of the connection of the spiritual life with physical life. Let us begin by reminding ourselves of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science about the alternating life of man between sleeping and waking. We speak of this rightly when we say: The Ego and astral body are outside the physical body during sleep. This is a sufficient answer for the immediate demand for knowledge, but only one aspect of the full truth; it is as though we were to say: the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, and is not there in the interval. We know that for the earth this is not the case; we know that during the time the sun is not shining for us it is shining elsewhere, giving its light to other inhabitants of the earth when it is dark for us. It is much the same with the life of the Ego and astral body in. relation to that of the physical and etheric bodies, if we take a wide view of it. True, the Ego and astral body are outside the physical body during sleep, but only partially they are outside the blood and nerve-systems. When we all asleep the sun of our Ego and astral body sets in this way for the blood and nerve-systems; yet from the Ego and astral body outside, the forces radiate while we are sleeping into those organs not connected with the blood and nerves. Our body lives in two spheres. We live in one while awake, when we are ensouled by our Ego and astral body; and in the other when we sleep, in the sphere from which the radiations and force of our Ego and astral body pour into the activities of our body-with the exception of the functions connected with the blood and nerves. Actually during sleep we are in the spiritual world with our Ego and astral body—as it were inserted into it—and just those forces of the astral body and Ego of which man is unconscious in normal human life, stream into his bodily organs when he is asleep. Thus we see the enormous significance of sleep for healthy human life on earth. I will make this clear by a little diagram. Let us take (a) for the sphere of the spiritual world, and (b) our body on earth. I will then shade the part connected with the blood and nerves; the other contains the organs apart from the system of blood and nerves. This cannot really be so sharply divided, for in a certain sense the nerve and blood systems are themselves organs with activities of their own like the other organs; but in so far as they are instruments for the conscious soul-life they may be considered as ensouled and inspired by the Ego and astral body.

This same Ego and astral body are taken into the sphere of spiritual life during the night and they thence radiate their forces into the other organs of the body. Thus we may say: There is in our physical body something that is strengthened and revived by what our soul in its sleeping condition draws into itself from the spiritual world and with which it is permeated by the spiritual world. The sun of our Ego and astral body sets for the nerves and blood, in so far as the Ego is connected with the blood, and the latter is not merely bodily life. It sets for the blood and nerves when the human being sleeps, and shines into the other organs functioning in our body. From this fact we can easily understand that sleep is an important Healer, and that unhealthy sleep may be regarded as one of the most deep-seated causes of illness, especially in relation to certain inner functions of our bodily life. Spiritual Science shows us that the way in which our Ego and astral body leave the blood and nerve-systems during sleep and enter spiritual life, is a matter of great consequence. Such things as I am about to discuss can apparently be refuted easily by so-called external experience, but the Spiritual Scientist must become accustomed to the fact that these refutations are only apparent, and that what is actually derived from the observations of inward processes is true. If the outer facts seem contradictory, we must search and see in how far they are illusion. I will now give a concrete instance, verified by Spiritual Science, which has an important bearing on this point.

Human life changes with respect to many things, but certain fundamental facts of life remain constant for long periods. In the Middle Ages there existed a certain fear, the so-called fear of spirits, of all sorts of elemental beings and ghosts; this we now call mediaeval superstition. In our day the object has changed, but not the fear; for just as the people of the Middle Ages were afraid of ghosts-—those of the present time are afraid of bacilli and similar things. It might be said that ghosts are more respectable and more to be feared than bacilli. The change has come about through the fact that formerly people were of a more spiritual disposition; they were afraid of the elemental spirit-beings; while now as the disposition is more materialistic, the spirits must be of a physical nature. This corresponds better with the age of materialism. What I wanted to say, however, is that Occult Science reveals the fact that bacilli are nourished in the human body if they are to thrive. Human beings do cultivate them. Of course everyone in the present time will say that it would be silly to breed bacilli. This is not a question of principle of any kind, but of looking at things from the right standpoint. It cannot be denied that, as Spiritual Science teaches, an Ego and astral body which have been fed on materialistic ideas alone, and have rejected all spiritual conceptions and wished to have nothing to do with them, when they leave the body during sleep, send into the bodily organs forces from the spiritual spheres which are just what the bacilli need. Nothing better can be done for the rearing of bacilli than to carry crude material ideas into sleep-life; thereby calling forth Ahrimanic forces which stream into the body and become the cultivators of bacilli.

To form a proper judgment of all this, we must understand clearly that the moment we turn to the study of spiritual life, we immediately have to consider what is called human fellowship. For a common co-operation in fellowship is effectual in a far greater measure when working at spiritual matters than when only concerned with the physical plane. We might say that in order to have no harmful bacilli in our bodies, it is best to apply the remedy of falling asleep with spiritual thoughts in our minds. Perhaps that might become a remedy, if it were to be medically proved, so that the most materialistic people in times to come would allow spiritual thoughts to be prescribed for them; and something contributing to spiritual life might be hoped for in this way. But the matter is not so simple, for the importance of communal life really begins when we touch spiritual matters, and there we can say: it is perhaps of no advantage to the individual to cherish spiritual ideas if all those around him are breeding bacilli by their materialistic thinking; here the one breeds for the other. This is an important fact and we must bear it in mind. Therefore I must again emphasize what I have already told you, that Spiritual Science can only be fruitful in its service to humanity when it does not merely serve the individual. It is not enough for the individual to accept it; Spiritual Science must patiently wait until it can become a factor in civilization, until it grips the heart and soul of the many; then we shall see what it can do for man.

There is, however, something which affects the Ahrimanic beings in the bacilli just as strongly. I say Ahrimanic beings, for I can easily show you the difference between Ahrimanic and other beings—and even externally it can be easily seen. Around us we see Nature with her many creatures; all that lives outside in Nature draws its life from the good, wise and progressive beings. Everything having its existence in other organisms and preferring to thrive therein belongs to the creatures of a Luciferic or Ahrimanic order. All parasites are of Luciferic or Ahrimanic origin; if we remember this we can easily distinguish the differences in the nature-kingdoms. There is something, as I said, very helpful for Ahrimanic creatures when they infest the human body. Suppose we are living at the time of an epidemic or plague. Naturally at such a time we must look after others, and a strong human fellowship or co-operation comes into being, for the karmic conditions may actually be such that the one who in his individual life seems least likely to have the illness, falls a prey to it. Nevertheless—we must not be deceived by appearances—what I am going to say is generally true. If we are living among the sick or dying and have to absorb these pictures that are around us and then fall asleep with these pictures in our minds and if nothing is linked with them but selfish fear, the imaginations arising from these pictures in the soul during sleep become filled with this selfish fear, and that enables injurious forces to enter the human body. Imaginations of fear are really the fostering forces for the Ahrimanic enemies of man. When a noble disposition is present, so that egotistic fear retires and loving help for others prevails, and we pass into the sleep life, not with fearful imaginations but with the effects produced by loving help, this means destruction for the Ahrimanic enemies of humanity. It is quite true that by the encouragement of such an attitude we could put an end to epidemics, if we regulated our conduct accordingly.

Here I may indicate how some day (but it cannot be yet) the results of knowledge of spiritual life will be seen in the social life of humanity: human souls will become strong through spiritual knowledge, and those whose disposition is to accept spiritual Knowledge will work healingly on material life on earth.

Hence we see how unjustifiable the objection is, that while living on earth we need not bother about spiritual life. A great deal depends upon the kind of spiritual life we take with us into sleep while here on earth, for by it we mold our souls into good or bad instruments for the sending forth of forces from the spiritual world into those organs of the body which are not used as instruments by the soul in the day consciousness, but which function physically and chemically beneath the threshold of consciousness. Those functions which do not belong to the activity of nerves and blood in the human being but are simply of an organic nature-physical and chemical activity—those are not life functions such as obtain in the plant and mineral kingdoms, but functions into which the forces of the spiritual world flow during sleep. Therefore we see the importance of being able to carry spiritual knowledge into sleep life, and we realize the attitude of mind it creates. If there still is doubt as to the inter-working of the spiritual and physical worlds, we may, among other things, make the following remarks.

Let us imagine that some sort of climatic change were to corrupt the whole ground of the earth, so that nothing good for food could grow on it; we should then discover how important the earth's mineral and plant kingdoms are for man. If the earth were to decay under our feet, we should realize how much we need the lower kingdoms of earth, that human life may be sustained. What the ground and fruits are for our physical life that we are, as living beings with the activities of our souls, for those who have passed through the gates of death. It is a fact that the dead living in their sphere have need of a ground from which they may gather fruits. The following illustration will give an idea of this: Let us think of a crowd of people asleep, all filled with conceptions belonging to earthly life alone, materialistic ideas. This ground which they form for the dead, is just as sterile for them as waste, corrupt ground would be to us. The dead feel this as a region in which they starve.

Every spiritual conception which we take into our soul and carry into sleep helps, while we sleep, to create part of the ground needed by the dead, even as the mineral and plant kingdoms are needed by us. In a certain sense souls filled with spiritual ideas during sleep, form the fruitful spiritual basis for the nourishing of the dead; and we take away the nutriment which the dead need and which must be gathered on our earth, if we allow our souls to become desolate, i.e., empty of spiritual ideas—and conceptions. Here we see still more clearly the importance of cosmic spiritual knowledge, and its fruitfulness for the spiritual world itself. Just as our sleeping souls provide the ground from which the dead draw their sustenance, so, if we knowingly cause spiritual concepts to pass through our souls that helps the dead in their power of perception. For this reason I have advised those who have been bereaved to read to their dead. If we call them to mind, and read in thought something from Spiritual Science, or cause any other spiritual thoughts quietly to pass through our souls, our dead will perceive these. They observe them and are nourished by the unconscious after-effects of the spiritual ideas. Their own consciousness is refreshed or revived by means of what has been read to them. Here again we see constant intercourse between the physical and spiritual worlds. It may easily be suggested that the dead are in the spiritual world and that this method of reading can be of no use to them. Yes! They are in the spiritual world, but the concepts of Spiritual Science have to be formed on earth, and nowhere can they be conceived except in the minds of men on earth: the dead are indeed in a spiritual world and precisely there can these conceptions reach them and sustain them, and we enhance their consciousness if from earth we send these to them. As the most intimate connections exist between the dead and those amongst whom they have lived, the best persons to read to them are those who were friends and helpers before they died, or who have been closely related to them. If you cultivate such thoughts about the connections of the physical with the spiritual world, you will actually experience a new disposition, which truly in the greatest sense of the word must be called the religious disposition of the future. From such spiritual-scientific studies as have just been given, a disposition will be developed which in the highest sense deserves to be called religious, for he who thus acknowledges the spiritual world will build upon the foundations of the Divine Wisdom streaming through the Cosmos.

It is tremendously important that we should acquire this feeling of the ruling Wisdom in the Cosmos and that we should fill ourselves with it. When humanity is permeated by this feeling, it will, with a deep genuine confidence in the wise ruling Wisdom of the Universe, accept its destiny and all the strokes of destiny which are so hard to bear. When we observe the spiritual worlds in which the dead live, we can often see how much easier it is for the dead when the friends they left behind on earth are permeated with this ruling Wisdom of the Universe. Weeping over the dead is, of course, quite natural; but if we cannot put an end to our weeping it looks as though we doubted the ruling Wisdom of the Universe; and he who can look into spiritual worlds knows, that those who long for their dead to be here and not in the spiritual world, are doing the greatest harm to them. We very much help the dead in their life after death if we accept our destiny, and think of the dead as having been taken from us at the right moment by a good ruling Wisdom, because they were needed for other spheres of existence beyond earth. In the future much will depend on people helping more (not less) in all that touches the sorrows of humanity, having a clear knowledge that destiny is ever at work, and that if through Karma even death has befallen those who belong to them, this had to be. This must not prevent us, as long as a person is living, from doing all that is possible to help him when he is ill if he is amenable to treatment, but as human beings, we may not presume to go beyond what is allotted to us as such. We must be sure that the ruling Wisdom of the Universe is wiser than we are. This is all commonplace and trivial, but it is too little spoken of to-day. Great happiness would come to both the living and dead, if this knowledge were more generally circulated; if it could enter as a conviction into men's souls, if they could think of the dead as living, as having experienced a transformation of life, and not think of them as having been taken from them.

If we only observed a little of this connection between the physical and spiritual worlds, we should see the manifold ways in which the one world is intimately linked with the other, and that the affairs of the physical world only become clear when observed in the light of the spiritual world. If with reference to anything that happens to us in the physical world we could but succeed in finding the spiritual causes of some stroke of fate or misfortune, we should look beyond it, and understand that what seems supremely sad may be understood at the fount of Cosmic Wisdom. We must emphasize this over and over again. It does not alter the fact that much suffering may come to us; but it does alter our attitude to it, we do not sink under it and shut ourselves egotistically in our sorrow, or withdraw from the world's life, which we certainly ought not to do. Many other things are similarly linked together and precisely these significant incidents teach us the falsity of the saying that we need not trouble about the spiritual life during our physical life on earth. For the bringing of spiritual ideas, feelings and convictions into physical earth-life is of great importance. Let me now add some examples to what I have told you to-day. Examples will show us clearly the truth of what I have been saying.

A person well-known to some of the members of our Society died before attaining middle age. If a person dies early in life, about the beginning of the thirties, it is often asked: What is the meaning of this? Why should a person be cut off from earth life in the first third of his physical life on earth? When we traced this person back, to describe what she was as an individual, we came to an earlier incarnation about the third or fourth century after Christ, in which she had acquired certain forces, of which we may say that, civilization being as it was at that time, these and similar soul-capacities did not really belong to that period. The time had not arrived when the talents then acquired by the soul of this individual could be used. She was born again in a new life, became one of our members and died before the first half of her life, the ascending part, had been completed. In this case we could immediately see, on studying the whole connection of the physical with the spiritual, that this person was one of the most important and significant workers with us in all our Cosmic work.

Materialism is rampant in our times, it puts its stamp on earth-life more than we realize. In our day particularly, materialism is so strong that those beings of the higher Hierarchies whose task it is to carry on the progress of Cosmic evolution actually cannot rescue all the souls who have to-day become materialistic. These must not be left behind, they must be saved; yet their salvation can only be accomplished by the death of certain souls at an early age, who take with them into the spiritual world the forces which would otherwise have been used in the course of their earth-life, and which they then transmute so that they may help the beings of the higher Hierarchies who are working for the redemption of the materialistically-minded souls. Persons who have thus died early in life, are a wonderful help to the higher beings. Now in the case of the soul to which I am referring, something special resulted. She brought with her into her latest incarnation the powers which could not be fully used in her earlier life, poured them as it were into her body, which became weak and ill because of the penetration of these forces. The soul was too powerful for the body; it really contained very great powers. This person died at the above mentioned early age, and, with the forces which instead of being weakened by age remained at their youthful strength, she passed through the gates of death into the spiritual world, still possessing the fund of strength which would have served a long life in that incarnation, and filled to overflowing with earthly force would have so poured itself into the body, as to bring the same into relationship with the external world. Instead she was able to take up spiritual ideas enthusiastically and thus to bring a great supply into the spiritual world. When we trace this individual, who was dear to a large number of our friends, we may learn a great deal from her. What we see in her is, that at a definite time (in this case about the Third or Fourth Century A.D.) certain forces appeared on the path of human evolution which could not be brought to fulfillment then, and that the work to be done through these forces must be taken up later—we have to look back to what belongs to an earlier period and is preserved by certain individuals for a later life. Now when we look for this individual during her life after death we observe direct results—we see that the powers which have lain dormant for a time, reserved for a coming period, now burst forth and are preparing for humanity's future. Thus we see how a later life must be linked with an earlier one, when talking of human evolution. We could not know certain things, of which it may be said that what had existed in the third and fourth epochs had to be revived in the fifth post Atlantean times, unless we could see into the spiritual worlds and say: ‘There we see an individuality who, by means of a short life on earth, acquired faculties which shine forth like a revival of something that has been lost to human life.’ A great inflow of strength comes to the spiritual investigator on observing such individuals in their life after death.

If the time of physical life on earth were ever so bad, if ever so many enemies were to arise against Spiritual Science, and if danger threatened on all sides, it would certainly be a sad and desperate outlook; but there is one thing which may always be a comfort for the future of Anthroposophy, that is, that in those who have died, in such a way as the person above mentioned, we have the best helpers for our earth, the most powerful fellow-workers. This is a case in which a short life on earth served for the gathering of strength with which to take possession of certain fruitful forces requisite for a later period on the path of human evolution. The wise ruling Cosmic powers far surpass in Wisdom all that we, with our merely earthly wisdom, can comprehend. Naturally such fruits of a shortened earth-life can only result when life is shortened in a purely natural way. In anthroposophical circles it should not be necessary to mention that such results do not occur in cases of suicides, and would be quite impossible.

Now, having said all this, I shall give you another concrete example in reference to a member who has not long since passed from our midst, who had a very long illness, which was connected in a remarkable way with his condition of soul, a lively intellectual person, a renowned poet in his earth life and as we can clearly see, a much more important individual than we had deemed while observing his life on earth. After a life lived in sickness of body and long years of suffering, how strangely the fruits of his suffering on earth, after a relatively short period, reveal themselves in the spiritual world; though only in their beginning. That I may make you understand what I want to say, I should like to lead up to the right concept by means of a comparison.

With deep feeling we can admire nature—a scene in nature or a group of people-but we do not on that account lose anything when a clever artist comes along and depicts the scene as his own soul sees it. We then find in the picture created by the artist something which he has placed alongside nature. We know that we have gained by having looked at Nature through another's soul as well, if we can observe nature side by side with it. Why do I say this? To make use of an illustration: we can go into the spiritual world, we can observe things there; yet it is of great importance to observe something else besides. The person to whom I am referring, who died after a life of much suffering on earth, had during his long illness formed for himself a world of Cosmic imaginations, as it were lifting them up out of a sick body gradually approaching death. In the measure in which the body became more sick and incapacitated, there arose from it this world of Cosmic imaginations. That person then passed through the gates of death, and his imaginations are beginning to shine out in wondrous beauty so that in the spiritual world they can be perceived as a wonderful spiritual work of art, as if created out of the Cosmos. They had their origin in the sick body, and were carried from the sick body into the spiritual world; and for those who are able to see the spiritual worlds in other ways they provide a far richer gain in spiritual knowledge than can be acquired by direct spiritual observation; as in a work of art one sees the world as another soul sees it, side by side with what one sees oneself. The above-mentioned person absorbed spiritual conceptions with great devotion, and was even able to put into his poems much of that which comes to the human soul when it grasps the Mystery of Golgotha in a truly Anthroposophical way, when we allow ourselves to be permeated with the thought of the Christ Whom we have learnt to know through Anthroposophy. For we then so recognize Him in our nature, that we really live according to the Pauline saying ‘Not I, but Christ in me contemplates the Universe.’

These truly Rosicrucian Christian thoughts flowed into the later poems of this personality. While his conscious earth-life was occupied with such poetry and creating these poems, his subconscious powers were molding this world of Cosmic imaginations which really consumed the body by the strength of their inner life, but which so worked that to this person in the spiritual world is probably allotted a task about which I will not speak further now. In any case it must be said that behind this conscious life lies another which passes through the gates of death and so manifests that we know it had already been prepared during earth-life through the disposition which is the result of Spiritual Science, and which has turned into beautiful tableaux of Cosmic imaginations which radiate toward the exploring spiritual investigator, and explain much that perhaps would not otherwise have been so easy to discover, but which will continue to work in the tasks which will be allotted to such an individual.

We must regard such results of Spiritual Science with awe and deep reverence. For if in past times the religious sense of the soul had to be aroused through feeling, in the times in which we now live spirituality must be kindled more and more in man through the inter-working of the physical and spiritual worlds, we must become more and more concrete in our spiritual life. In the future, humanity cannot be prevented from seeking the spiritual in a concrete way, and from thinking about how a human individual continues to work on after death with the forces which, as in this case, were prepared before he had passed through the gates of death.

What depths will be found in human life, how noble will be the feelings with which one human being confronts another I They will in the true sense of the word be moral, and filled with the Divine essence which will then be weaving and working in human life, when the thoughts which speak of the dead in as concrete a way as we now speak of the living, find a home in the hearts of men.

We must think of all this, that we may gain in our hearts and souls a proper sense of the mission and work of Anthroposophy in the future.

I should like you to ponder over the things I have said in the last part of this lecture, regarding them as really springing from that attitude towards Spiritual Science which can only speak of such matters in sacred modesty and with deep reverence, and with this feeling I should like to leave in your souls what I have said.

Tomorrow I shall tell you of other facts, for the stimulation of Spiritual Science in your hearts.

Yesterday we spoke of the relation of the spiritual world to the physical world, as expressed by the actual facts which, in a sense work from one world into the other, in so far as the relation between them means something to life in the physical world, in so far as the filling of the soul with feelings and emotions gained through spiritual knowledge is essential and of significance for human life. Something of a general nature must now be added. Here in the physical world we acquire our ideas through our sense perceptions, through the feelings and emotions experienced when events of physical life touch us. Our conscious life in the physical world arises from all these things, and when we observe that life in the physical world, it seems to the vision of the spiritual investigator that in the main, the more this consciousness serves the physical plane the less are its chances of spiritual experiences in the spiritual world ever surrounding us. We may say: the more a man limits himself to his life of ideas and feelings, allowing these to be aroused by the physical plane alone, the less inner strength and power he possesses for gaining a real relationship with the spiritual world. Of course at first a person does not notice that reliance on merely physical ideas is a hindrance to the gaining of a relationship with the spiritual world; but he is compelled to notice it when he has passed through the gates of death; for if during earth-life a man has gained no conceptions beyond the excitements and requirements of the physical plane, his soul is too weak to adapt itself to the experiences of the spiritual world. This can easily be seen when we remember that all that excites us on the physical plane really storms in upon us and so approaches us that we allow ourselves to be captivated by it. Because we allow ourselves to be thus captivated, because we more or less yield ourselves to its influence, we develop too little power in our souls for the spiritual world to mean more to us than a weak dreamy world in which we can neither stir nor move. In order to be able to move freely in that world, something else is needed: viz., that the soul should be inwardly alive, that it should have evolved within itself, by its own efforts, forces to which it had not been incited externally and in which it does not merely remain passive. Out of the depths of our souls such conceptions, such feelings must arise without any incitement from the external world,—however beautiful we may consider that world to be. I may say: Conceptions and feelings arising freely in the soul can alone make it strong enough to establish its own relationship with the spiritual world—a relationship which it needs.

In order that you may properly understand this, I should like to refer to something which is correct though a seeming paradox. Think of a person yielding entirely to the allurements of the physical plane. He thinks and feels only that which is aroused by the physical plane. Such a person is weak in the spiritual world; when he enters the spiritual world after death he can through his own powers only look upon the richness of spiritual life around him, he cannot bring the beings near to him, though he greatly needs them. Spiritual intercourse with them eludes him. Not that the spiritual world is absent, but he cannot find the clues which would bring him into direct relationship with it. Speaking paradoxically, a person who only fantastically arouses ideas and feelings in his soul which, though they are not aroused from outside, yet do not rise above the sense world—this person, who thinks out ideas in a fanciful way thereby produces forces in his soul, which give a free ascending development, and he in a certain sense, finds life in the spiritual world easier than one who will not think at all about spiritual things. It is very significant that we have to grant that visionaries who form conceptions that have nothing to do with outer sense realities, and are only fanciful; nevertheless stand firmer in the spiritual world than those who will not think about it at all. Naturally such fantastic ideas, though they help a man to stand firmly in the spiritual world, only lead him to strange spiritual conditions and relations such as a man would experience in the physical world if his senses were not functioning properly. All the grotesque, lower beings, useless for spiritual life, would come to the person who formed such fantastic concepts; while all that is progressive and helpful in spirit-life would appear before his soul in distorted shape, if it had only been prepared for spirit life by fantastic conceptions. In olden times, before the Mystery of Golgotha took its place in human evolution, conditions were such that human beings could only have conceptions aroused in them from the physical plane; even those ideas which appeared as clairvoyant conceptions were aroused in the physical body. This is the curious part of humanity's ancient clairvoyance; this clairvoyance, these symbolic plastic ideas, although wholly relating to the spiritual world, were aroused through the influences of the physical plane. So that if people had only devoted themselves to the kind of conceptions which reached the level of ancient clairvoyance, they would be in the position of human beings, who look into the spiritual world by means of fantastic conceptions. In order that humanity might have a sound healthy insight into the spiritual world and develop the right relations with it, the various founders of religions appeared in antiquity, Laotze, Zarathustra, Krishna, Buddha, etc. these were very great benefactors of humanity. They appeared to their age and to their peoples, speaking to them of these secrets of the spiritual worlds, and so speaking of these secrets that the manner of their speaking was inspired by immediate impulses which came to them as Initiates and founders of religion out of the spiritual world itself. Through their mighty authority they influenced the people to whom they had a spiritual mission. Thus the people did not receive into their souls merely what came to them and stirred them on the physical plane, but also what was sent as a message from the spiritual worlds. These ancient peoples had the capacity of sensing and feeling when such a founder of religion appeared to them—or when one of his successors and disciples appeared; they perceived the breath of spiritual life which streamed through the soul of such a founder, flowing down from spiritual heights into the evolution of the people and the epoch. Thus to the people of antiquity were given thoughts and feelings which were put into their souls by the founders of religion, but which had to be re-awakened by each human being himself (because each was under the influence of the teacher's authority), each had to bring them to active life in his own soul. In this way arose healthy conditions and relationships for human beings in the spiritual worlds, and also the possibility of knowing where they were after they had passed through the gates of death; of possessing the forces which cannot be found in the external physical world, but must be awakened in the soul of the individual himself; of possessing those forces which enable a man to live in the spiritual world, just as by his physical forces he is able to live in the physical world. Since the Mystery of Golgotha many changes have taken place for humanity in this respect. This is precisely the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha; it closes the old epoch of human evolution and begins the new. We can say the old evolution had to be built on authority, as we have just described; on the authority of the religion-founders. But because these souls (our own souls) have in earlier incarnations been through the school of authority, they have become responsible or have come of age let us say; so that now, in the incarnations which have run their course since the Mystery of Golgotha, those impulses which formerly had to be received on authority are now received inwardly. Not only are conceptions now formed inwardly but also our impulses come from within. This is what St. Paul's words mean: ‘Not I, but Christ in me’; that is the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Impulse has flowed into the spiritual substance of the earth, and lives in each soul. Souls must learn to understand this Christ-Impulse, which is to be found in the human soul. Humanity has come ‘of age.’ Impulses which formerly had to come from without, must now spring up within. For this reason Christ came to earth. Greater and greater must our understanding of this Christ become. What we gather from our anthroposophical knowledge, what we try to understand about the evolution of the world and of humanity, about the higher worlds and the Hierarchies in those worlds, really brings us at the last to understand more and more the Christ-Impulse which is within us, but which may also remain hidden within us, as do many other things which we do not attempt to understand or to experience. In a certain respect Spiritual Science is a means of attaining what must be reached—of really finding in our souls that which is the Light of Life, the Inner Warmth of life; that Light and Warmth which will lead humanity to its spiritual home, and which is revealed in the soul. In future evolution, human souls will gradually realize that it is simply an abstract idea to speak of ‘the God within,’ if the soul is too easy-going to concern itself with the understanding of the teachings of Spiritual Science. How do we to-day regard the spiritual world in its reality? All that has been written about Spiritual Science, about Saturn, Sun, and Moon, the evolutionary epochs of earth, about the heavenly Hierarchies and all that the spiritual investigator knows and says about the spiritual world, all this he ultimately realizes is a gift to him through the Christ-Impulse which has entered earth evolution. He realizes this Christ-Impulse in such a way that he sees the truth of Christ's words, ‘I am with you always, even to the end of the earth-period.’ Not only at the beginning of our epoch did Christ say this; if we noisy open our souls to Him He is saying it now, here, and in our Spiritual Science, which we must try to spread all over the world. Therefore it is so very necessary that present-day souls should understand that Spiritual Science is the suitable way and the right path into the spiritual worlds for our time. Humanity having come ‘of age’ must consciously develop thoughts and feelings, must seek step by step, of its own powers and not by external authority, to enter the spiritual worlds. Christ has come into the world that humanity may be able to do this. Even though many assert to-day that Spiritual Science must be believed because it is taught by the spiritual investigator—this is not true. If anyone thinks he must believe what Spiritual Science says, without understanding it by the efforts of his own soul-faculties, these only shows that he has not laid aside the prejudices of his materialistic thinking. Anyone who, with a truly open mind, approaches the most daring teachings of Anthroposophy can understand and grasp them. Souls have not passed through their former incarnations in vain; they can find within their souls the inward spiritual language wherewith to understand what the spiritual investigators say. Of course if these souls allow their minds to become clouded, as they are to-day, not by a true Natural Science but by a mistaken outlook on nature, if they allow mist upon mist to accumulate before their spiritual eyes and then say: ‘We do not understand Anthroposophy, we must only believe its statements,’ this does not mean that Anthroposophy cannot really be understood, for it happens that in such a case people create their own hindrances to it. We live in an age when most people never notice how many hindrances there are and how these hindrances can block their path; but we also are living in a century which unconsciously, from its as yet chaotic soul-force, rises in revolt against these hindrances, when longings are arising in the souls of men for an understanding of the spiritual worlds.

Truly of tremendous importance is the work accomplished by Natural Science during the last few centuries, and our friends know how often I emphasize the great significance of the triumphs of Natural Science, and how I compare the present and future work of Anthroposophy with what Natural Science has discovered, especially during the nineteenth century; but we must bear in mind that this Natural Science has become much more dogmatic than the old religions. To-day, people—and mostly those who take up Natural Science as amateurs—stick to dogmas more rigidly and seriously than was the case with the old religious dogmas. Truly the Copernican views represented a great swing of the pendulum; they had to come, they were a step towards the truth, as I have often said; but, they too are in many respects one-sided and must be completed by a spiritual conception of the Universe. If they are held as dogmatically as they are being expressed if it is said that they are absolutely true, they will then force concepts into men's souls which will prevent them from understanding and grasping Spiritual Science. We can even now see the effects of these dogmatic assertions. In our present age of compulsory education children are taught from their earliest years to imagine the sun with the earth revolving around it, also the planets, just as one forms an imagination, if one has in front of one a model. But no one has any right to picture it thus, as if these things were absolute certainties; as though one were able to place a chair in Cosmic space, set oneself down, and from it watch the movements of Sun, earth, and planets as one looks at a model which one sets up in the schoolroom. In these children's souls a consciousness is awakened that the facts really are such. People are amazed when we speak of these matters. Other things are also experienced today, which are false when looked at in another light. During the last few days an apparently very aspiring man sent me a pamphlet. Nothing shall be said here as to whether its contents were right or wrong, but this pamphlet is one proof among many others, of the way in which the human soul revolts against the dogmatism of the Natural Science of the last century; for this writer tries to prove mathematically that the earth is flat, not round. Of course this assertion seems very absurd in our age, and you will naturally say: ‘But a man can easily sail right round the world, therefore the man who says the earth is flat and not round must be a fool.’ The man who wrote the pamphlet knew this however. We need not agree with him, but he knew this and many another valid objections, I assure you. By all this I am only trying to show that in our day souls are already beginning to rise in revolt against all the dogmatic Natural Science stuff which has been piled up in their souls from earliest childhood and which hinders them from exercising the free, judgment which is necessary for the recognition of anthroposophical truths. When humanity has set itself free from dogma, then—yes then, the time will come when we can speak of spiritual scientific knowledge and it will be said; I see that it could not be otherwise. You see, much that is paradoxical must be said now in speaking of the relation of Spiritual Science to our age. Spiritual Science, however, has gradually to flow into human souls, so that they may become ever greater and greater factors in the spiritual civilization of humanity as it progresses into the future. Anthroposophy itself will be able to strengthen them, so that these souls will be enabled to find their links with the spiritual world. Spiritual Science will be welcomed by human beings, will be gradually received by the youngest and they will know: ‘Around me are not only mountains, rivers, clouds, stars, sun, moon, planets, animals and minerals, but also spiritual beings, beings of the higher Hierarchies, and spiritual events, even -as we have around us physical events and processes. I have relationship with both spiritual and physical processes.’

Let me picture a few things which will gradually be more understood by human souls when Spiritual Science becomes a living factor in the soul of man.

In speaking of these things we must start with concrete facts of spiritual research, for they best show man's relation to the spiritual world.

I know a man who, in his twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, had a kind of vision. He wrote about this vision in a clumsy way, we may even say stupidly. The vision was this: He placed into a sort of scene, very awkwardly, the more important spirits of the German intellectual period of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; he did not know why he arranged it so-everything that Goethe, Lessing, Schiller, Herder were doing—but they were doing it after they had already passed to the world to which a human enters after death. Thus he had a vision of these great men living in the spiritual world he saw in his vision what they were now doing. As Spiritual Scientists we must ask: ‘What does such a vision signify? What does it show us?’ It shows the soul as having been greatly permeated by certain influences from the spiritual world, they press into it and become as it were a great dream, which expresses itself in such a way that the soul sees in vision, though indistinctly, its own inner feelings and impressions. Influences work into the soul from the spiritual world. How do they work? What is the actual relationship of the human soul to the beings of the spiritual world, for even the dead are beings in the spiritual world during the period between death and a new birth? What is this relationship? Well, we see an object in the physical world if we look at it—that is the right expression to use; I see the rose, I see the table. It is, however, not right to speak in the same way when referring to spiritual beings. It is not correct. The expression is not quite accurate if we say: I see a being belonging to the ranks of the Angels or Archangels. The expression is not correct; it must be put in a different way. As soon as a human being enters the spiritual world and there has feelings and experiences, instead of his seeing the beings there, they look at him; he is aware of them. He feels the quiet soothing influence of their spiritual senses and forces, which illuminate and resound in his own soul. And we must actually say of the spiritual world, ‘It is not I who see or perceive, but I know that I am seen, that I am perceived.’ Can you feel the change of experience indicated here? When, instead of using the words as in the physical world: ‘I perceive something,’ the other words receive a meaning: ‘Placed as I am in the spiritual world, I am perceived from all sides, that is now my life.’ The ‘Ego’ knows of this ‘being perceived,’ of this ‘being carried away by the experiences which other beings have with me.’ When this change takes place, you have an inkling of what a different relation the soul has to its environment when it rises from the physical into the spiritual world. It will then dawn upon you that a soul's experience is actually different when it passes from the physical to the spiritual world. A part of the task given to the dead is, to turn their glances earthwards, towards those still living; that they may, with their spiritual forces observe them; that those still living on earth may be perceived by the souls of the dead. Humanity will learn through Spiritual Science the meaning of the words: ‘Those who have passed through the gates of death see me; they send their forces down to me.’ Human beings will thus learn to speak of the dead as alive, as spiritually living. The one who had the vision described, realized this relation, though very dimly—for truly Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Herder are not inactive after death; in the spiritual they occupy themselves with those who are still on earth; they watch them, perceive them, stimulate them, according to the measure of the forces they receive from the higher Hierarchies. Thus the man who had this vision felt, without being conscious of the feeling, that he was watched by the spirits who had been sent to aid the evolution of humanity. This may not have been clear, but it expressed itself in the vision which he then put into awkward words, saying that Lessing ‘like a marshal in the spirit world went first,’ followed by Goethe, Schiller and Herder, leading and guiding their successors living on earth.

When such a vision, arising chaotically and as if in a dream, presents itself clearly to the soul, it may mean something for the dreamer; it may mean for instance that his consciousness is directly stirred from the spiritual world so that he can rise to the thought: ‘What I say and do, I will so say and do that I can endure the dead looking down upon me.’ It may also happen that a person living on earth, who is inwardly aroused by a similar vision, feels some task to lie before him, whether small or great, and his power, courage, and energy will be strengthened, his conscience will become easier when he has come to the right conclusion and imagines: ‘The dead are helping me, by watching me.’

Thus can the dead help the living? Through anthroposophy, we learn to feel the responsibility of our actions towards the dead and we may also have the happy feeling: ‘While I am doing this or that, my dead friend with his active power is watching me, and his force is added to mine.’ Not that he gives us the strength—which we must develop ourselves; he does not give us our faculties, those we must already possess; but he is a real help as if he were standing just behind us. He really does stand there. I shall give you a concrete example: for after we have for so long carried on together this anthroposophical work, we may bring forward such examples; perhaps they may sound personal, but they are meant quite impersonally, they set forth only facts and may on that account be mentioned as examples.

In Munich we tried for many years to perform the Mystery Plays, and so arrange the scenes that spiritual force might stream through them into this side of our movement. I am conscious that at any rate the really essential things which were done, those which really mattered, were in complete accord with the spiritual world. Over and over again I went to my work in those days, when the plays were being prepared for the stage, with a definite consciousness. At the commencement of our anthroposophical activity, when we were quite a small society, there was a person among us who was very enthusiastic about Spiritual Science; a person who besides working with quiet enthusiasm in all that could be done in the beginning as regards anthroposophy, introduced into its whole management a wonderfully beautiful and artistic understanding and interest. She was a person who united great kindliness of personal action with great seriousness in her spiritual views. She was soon taken from us, from the physical plane. Not only does she remain what is usually called ‘never to be forgotten’ by us, but she became what a human individual can become, who, by dint of circumstances, is able only in the spiritual world to build up what in physical life has been so beautifully prepared and begun here with many latent powers that she is able to develop in the spiritual world. Many years can be thus spent and many years passed in this case, until the possibility was unfolded, as it were out of a sort of chrysalis condition, for this person to link herself with what was germinating here in the physical world. As if through destiny, it happened that she entered upon a free spiritual life in the spiritual world, a life which had acquired this wonderful power of working, just when we had to undertake our staging, when Karma had led us to that point. Of course we had to bring our own powers and spiritual faculties to the work, but, just as no matter how strong the spiritual powers at our disposal, we must bring our physical abilities to bear when we have physical tasks to accomplish, so must certain forces intervene from the spiritual world, when we have spiritual work to do. Spiritual help, spiritual support must come to us; it comes also to those who cannot see into spiritual worlds, although they are unconscious of it, for we are always being influenced and helped by the spiritual world. In the case of which I speak, it is a fact that I always had the consciousness that the individual to whom I refer was watching over and helping us. We felt this watching as a strengthening force; as a kindling of warmth in our souls, enabling us to carry out our task.

Thus must we describe the way in which the spiritual worlds and the beings living in them—among whom are our dead—work with us in the physical world, and how true is the saying: ‘We are perceived by those in the spiritual world who have developed connections with us.’

There will come a time when human life will be enriched through such events as we have indicated when we shall not merely possess memory pictures in our minds of our dead friends, but shall feel them as real helpers in our undertakings. The souls of our dead will then live on in our consciousness, the consciousness of the human being on earth; although it may seem that the relationship is cut off by death. We can quite understand that this is now only possible for the few, and can understand why. It is because spiritual scientific development is only at its beginning; it has not yet produced in souls the capacities and powers that can act freely.

The road to such conceptions as I have mentioned may be the following: it certainly will be so for many souls in the future. We may think of the dead, while at our daily work here on earth. We may awaken in our souls all the love we had for them, and one day the moment will certainly come, it need not be in a vision—truly it need not be in a vision—when an impression comes to us: ‘Yes the one who died is helping me, as if he were working through my hands and fingers, as if he kindled my ardor for the work. I feel his force within me.’ This clear feeling that spiritual influences work down from spiritual worlds is a fruit, a real living fruit, which comes to souls through Spiritual Science.

Now let us think of the great enrichment that will come to human lives when they are not only aware of what is revealed to their senses, but also have the consciousness impressed upon them (not necessarily in vision) in all their physical work and undertakings: ‘While you are busy and at work, this or that dear one who had been your helper or your protector in life, shields you, helps you still, through powers he did not possess in his physical life, but for which he could only prepare here to be able to exercise them in the spirit world.’ Truly, even as our physical health is refreshed when we inhale the fresh morning air, so will human souls feel refreshed for their spiritual life by breathing in the protecting help they will then be able to perceive and feel coming to them, or even from the gaze directed towards them by the beings in the spiritual worlds. We are looking into a future of humanity which is to be prepared by the culture of Spiritual Science, and which will be much richer than the present life of man. Man will, however, need this enrichment from the spiritual world—for have we not said the old dreamy clairvoyance of antiquity was stimulated in the physical body—but the physical body has changed. It is now only suited for giving to human beings their physical thoughts, thoughts aroused on the physical plane. We must acquire thoughts about the spiritual world through Spiritual Science. Ever less will be the knowledge of spiritual worlds which can be gained by man from the physical plane, the physical body will become more powerless; and as all that is physical originates in the spiritual, and the longing of the soul for a real connection with the spiritual world will become greater and greater.

In olden times something was given to man by his physical nature which flashed into his soul as it were from the workings of his physical body, so that he became clairvoyant. Now we may say: the time has come when human beings will gradually know more of spiritual things, and these must be ever more and more brought down from the spiritual worlds, but the transition must not pass unnoticed. We must gain knowledge of the path which leads into the spiritual world through Anthroposophy. We must not evade the difficulties and inconveniences which a soul may feel when it seeks step by step for knowledge of what happens in the spiritual worlds. It is perhaps very uncomfortable to strain our intellect, our powers of reason, our sense of truth, sufficiently; but we must face this inconvenience. The anthroposophical movement, to which we belong, exists for this. Anthroposophy must gradually cause us to see: By their repeated earth-lives human souls are moving forward, they are being changed; and we are living in the age when human beings must go into the spiritual worlds with understanding. It would not be right if in our Society in particular there were not a growing understanding for the fact, that a man who, without having experienced Spiritual Science, still has the old clairvoyant powers arising out of his body, cannot stand higher than one who with intellectual ideas and understanding learns of what can be communicated about spiritual worlds. Human beings are so easily deceived, led away by their sense of ease not to try to exert their soul's activity, not to strain their powers of perception and observation. Naturally these must be exerted if we wish to live in the spirit of Anthroposophy, but humanity is tempted not to make these efforts. Therefore people are gradually forced to value more highly the mental and psychic forces arising as if out of the body, stimulated by the hidden bodily forces. Indeed we may actually hear people say: ‘What you are trying to make comprehensible about the spiritual worlds is not what we are really seeking, we are not impressed by it; we want to experience the incomprehensible.’ People are much more inclined to accept what cannot be understood than to exert themselves to seek what can be grasped spiritually. This then leads to the fact that there exists what we may call a complete misunderstanding of the true spiritual task of the present; if any one comes forward possessing natural psychic powers without anthroposophical training, people say he is very wonderful, and they put a special halo round his head. Because, they say, we do not know whence his powers come, because he has not been trained through Spiritual Science, and has not made efforts, therefore his powers are so very valuable; another world makes itself evident in our world through him. Truly our Movement would not reach its goal if it did not soon overcome this prejudice. We can often hear it said: This or that man must be the reincarnation of a great individual; he must have been so and so, because he possesses these forces, these chaotic psychic forces, without having worked for them in the present life by means of a really active struggling soul-life. Rather we ought to feel sure that the man who reveals such psychic forces within himself, is a backward soul; one who has remained behind at an earlier stage of evolution, and who must be raised and nurtured in the present age through Spiritual Science. Those who have had the most important incarnations in earlier times, appear to-day more like one of whom we shall be speaking tomorrow, the anniversary of Christian Morgenstern's death, as having powers which, unfortunately, are less valued perhaps by many than is a kind of chaotic psychism, but which are fruits of much higher spiritual forces, even though to-day they are represented as of little value, because they are not understood.

In these two lectures I have attempted partly from concrete facts to put before you a picture of the interpenetration of the spiritual world into the physical, and the working of the physical world into the spiritual. I have tried to show you how unjustifiable it is for people to say that it is useless to trouble about the spiritual world while living on the physical plane. I have tried to show how the very reason why our physical life cannot be understood is that we are not conscious of the concrete inter-working of the spiritual world into our physical world. Not that we receive our knowledge from the spiritual world alone—that is not the point; this knowledge has to be there, we must make it our own because it is truth revealed to us from spiritual worlds and is the key to the understanding and experiencing of the world. This knowledge must, however, lead us to an inner mood, an inner feeling, a kind of ‘knowing oneself to be within the spiritual world.’ Then through the new Spiritual Science there comes into our souls what such an important spirit as Fichte said, and which I have mentioned in a public lecture and shall repeat here. There comes into our souls that at which Fichte could do no more than hint. I know that I speak in the same sense as he did when I add a few words to his, for the understanding of which he still works, from out the spiritual worlds. Thus said the great philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, during his earth life:

The super-earthly will not come to me only when I have lost my connection with earth life. Even now I live in the supersensible world, in it I live a truer life than I do in the sense-world, it is my only firm standpoint; and in that I possess the supersensible world, I possess that for the sake of which alone I would like to continue my life on earth.

‘What you call heaven,’ says Fichte ‘does not only lie on the other side of the grave. It is everywhere around us in Nature, and springs up in every loving heart.’ ‘Now,’ we understand Fichte to mean, as he speaks to us from the spiritual world.

Anthroposophy, as it blossoms in this age and is to become a germ within humanity, shall be the light which strengthens the feelings and emotions for the spiritual life which springs forth in every loving heart. The loving heart will increasingly beget longings for the spiritual world, and Anthroposophy will more and more have to demand this light from the spiritual world for its own possession.

In saying this we are certainly speaking in agreement with those who have died before us, who longed for the spiritual world. While lifting ourselves up into this world, we are truly in harmony with the Cosmic Wisdom which governs human evolution, in so far as we can understand and recognize it with our human powers.

LET me begin by extending to you my heartiest greeting. Friends in Norrköping have expressed the wish that on this occasion I should speak upon a theme concerning that Being Who, in the realm of Spiritual Science, is above all else near to us-the Christ Being. I have endeavored to comply with this wish by undertaking to speak about the coming to life, and the meaning, of the Christ Being in the human soul. We shall thereby have the opportunity of speaking of the most human and intimate significance of Christianity from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.

Let us consider the human soul. Speaking from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, we have a short word which, although it does not embrace all that is included in the expression ‘human soul,’ indicates that which for us earth-men fills and permeates the soul element to its furthest limits-the word ‘I.’ In so far as we are earth-men, our Ego being reaches as far as does our soul nature. By the name of the ‘I,’ or Ego being, we are reminded of one of the four most immediate principles of man. We speak, in the first instance, of four members or principles of the human being-the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. And we need only recall one thing in order to have the starting point for what we shall be considering in these lectures. It is only necessary to be reminded of the fact that we do not regard the laws and the living essence of the physical body of man as being capable of explanation by anything presented by our earthly environment. We know that when we want to understand the physical human body we must go back to the three preceding embodiments of our earth-the Old Saturn, Old Sun, and Old Moon periods. In a remote, primordial past, during Old Saturn, the germ of the physical body was already laid. During the Old Sun the foundation of the etheric body was laid; and during the Old Moon that of the astral body. In reality our Earth evolution in all its phases and in all its epochs is none other than that which gives to the Ego the possibility of the fulfillment of its whole being. It may be said that just as at the end of the Old Saturn period the physical body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, at the end of the Old Sun the etheric body had reached a significant stage of its evolution, the astral body at the end of the Old Moon, so at the end of the Earth period our Ego will have reached a significant point of its evolution. We know that our Ego develops through three soul members or principles, through the sentient soul, the intellectual or rational soul, and the conscious or spirit-soul. All the worlds that come within the range of these three soul members are also concerned with our Ego. In the course of our Earth evolution these three soul members first prepared for themselves the three external bodily members-the physical body, the etheric body and the astral body-through long Earth periods. In successive Post-Atlantean epochs of civilization the three soul principles developed further, and in future Earth periods they will again adapt themselves to the astral, etheric and physical bodies, so that the Earth can be prepared to pass over to the Jupiter evolution. If we take the expression comprehensively enough we might also speak of man's Earth evolution as his soul evolution. It may be said that when the Earth began, the soul element also began, in conformity with law, to bestir itself in man. At first it began to work on the external sheaths, then it developed its own being, and from then onwards begins again to work on the external sheaths in order that preparation may be made for the Jupiter evolution. We must keep before our mind's eye what man is meant to become in his soul during the Earth evolution. He is to become what may be designated by the expression ‘personality.’ This personality needs in the first place what may be called ‘the free-will.’ But it needs also, on the other side, the possibility of finding within itself the way to the Divine in the world. On the one side free-will, the possibility of choosing between the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the evil, the true and the false; and on the other side, the laying hold of the Divine so that the Divine penetrates into the soul and we know ourselves to be inwardly filled with it. Such are the two goals of man's soul evolution on the Earth. This human soul evolution on the Earth has received two religious gifts for the purposes of the attainment of these two goals. The one religious gift is destined to lay down in the human soul those forces which lead to freedom, to the capacity for differentiation between the true and the false, the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad. And on the other side another religious gift had to be given to man during his Earth evolution, in order that there might be laid in his soul that seed through which the soul can feel united to the Divine within itself. (‘Atoned’ is the rendering suggested by a translator.)

The first religious gift is that which we meet in the beginning of the Old Testament as the mighty picture of the Temptation and the Fall.

The second religious gift comes to us from all that ‘the Mystery of Golgotha’ signifies.

The Temptation and the Fall have to do with what planted freedom in man, the gift of being able to distinguish between good and bad, beautiful and ugly, true and false. The Mystery of Golgotha points to the possibility of man's soul finding once again the path to the Divine, of knowing that the Divine can flash up within it and penetrate it. These religious gifts include everything that is most important in the Earth evolution—everything proceeding from the Earth evolution that the soul can experience in its uttermost depths, that is associated most profoundly with the being and the development of the human soul. How far is there a connection between existence and development of the inner experience of the human soul?

I do not want to put these matters before you in an abstract way. I want to start from a perfectly concrete element, from a certain scene in the Mystery of Golgotha as it stands before our eyes in historical tradition and has impressed itself-and should indeed have impressed itself still more—in the hearts and souls of men. Let us assume that we have in Christ Jesus, that Being of Whom we have again and again spoken in the course of our lectures on Spiritual Science. Let us assume that in Christ Jesus we have before our spiritual eyes That Which must be manifest to us men as bearing the greatest importance for the whole universe. And then let us place in contrast to this feeling the outcry, the fury, of the enraged multitudes of Jerusalem at the time of the condemnation before the crucifixion. Let us place before our minds the fact that the High Court of Jerusalem for its own sake held it above all things necessary to question Christ Jesus as to His relationship with the Divine, as to whether He claimed to be the Son of God.

Let us recall to our spiritual eyes the fact that the High Court held such a claim to be the greatest blasphemy that Christ Jesus could have uttered. An historical scene is there before us—a scene wherein the people cry out and clamor for the death of Christ Jesus. And now let us try to picture to ourselves what this shouting and rage of the people signified historically. Let us ask: ‘What ought these people to have recognized in the Christ Jesus?’ They ought to have recognized that Being Who gives meaning and significance to earth life. They ought to have recognized that Being Who had to accomplish the deed without which earth humanity cannot find the way back to the Divine. They ought to have understood that humanity has no significance apart from this Being. Men would have to strike out from the evolution of the earth the word ‘man’ if they wished to strike out the Christ event. Now let us set before our minds that this multitude condemned and were enraged against the Being Who actually makes man upon this earth, and Who is destined to give to the earth its goal and purpose. What lies in this? Surely this, that in those who in Jerusalem at that time were the representatives of human knowledge concerning the true being of man, the knowledge of man was obscured. They had no knowledge of what man is, what his mission on the earth is to be. We are told nothing less than that humanity had reached a point where it had lost itself, where it had condemned That Which gives to the earth evolution its purpose and significance. And out of the cries of the enraged multitude could be heard, not the words of wisdom, but of folly: ‘We do not wish to be men, rather do we wish to cast away from us that which gives us any further meaning as men.’

When we reflect on all this, the relation of man to sin and guilt, in the sense of Pauline Christianity, assumes a different aspect. Man, in the course of his evolution was able to fall into sin which he could not of himself wash away; that is what St. Paul says. And in order for it to be possible for man to be cleansed of sin and debt, Christ had to come to the Earth. That is St. Paul's view. If this view requires any evidence, it is there in the fury and the clamoring of those who cried ‘Crucify Him!’ For this cry implies that the people did not know what they themselves were to be on the Earth; they did not know that it was the aim of their earlier evolution to veil their being with darkness. Here we come to what may be spoken of as the attitude of preparation of the human soul for the Christ Being. This attitude of preparation may be described as follows: Through what it is able to experience within itself, the soul feels, even though it may not be able to express it in words: ‘Since the very beginning of the Earth I have developed in such a way that through what I possess in my own being I cannot fulfill the aim of my evolution. Where is there anything to which I can cling, which I can take into myself and with it reach my goal in evolution?’ To feel as if the human being extends far beyond anything that the soul can achieve through its own strength won during its evolution on the Earth hitherto—such is the Christian attitude or mood of preparation. And when the soul finds that which it must recognize as essentially bound up with its being—but for the attainment of which it could not find the power within itself—when the soul finds that which bestows this power—it finds Christ. The soul then develops. its connection with the Christ, saying to itself: ‘At the very beginning of the Earth a living nature was predestined for me: during the course of Earth evolution darkness has descended over this living nature and when I now look into this darkness I lack the power whereby I may bring it to fulfillment, but I turn my spiritual gaze upon the Christ Who gives me the power.’ The human soul feels the approach of Christ and stands as if in a direct personal relationship to Him. The soul seeks Christ and knows that it cannot find Him if He does not give Himself to humanity through human evolution, if He does not approach from the beyond.

There is a fairly well-known Christian Church Father who was not afraid to speak of the Greek philosophers, Herakleitos, Socrates and Plato, as Christians who lived before the founding of Christianity. Why does he do this? St. Augustine himself said: ‘All religions have contained something of the Truth, and the element of Truth in all religions is what is Christian in them, before there was Christianity in name.’ St. Augustine dares to say that. Nowadays many a man would be regarded as a heretic if he were to say a similar thing within certain Christian bodies.

We most readily arrive at an understanding of what this Church Father wished to convey when he called the old Greek philosophers Christians, by endeavoring to transport ourselves into the feeling of those souls who in the first post Christian centuries tried to determine their personal relationship to the Christ. These souls did not think of Christ as having had no relation to the Earth evolution before the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ has always had something to do with the evolution of the Earth. Through the Mystery of Golgotha, however, His task, His mission in the Earth evolution, was changed from what it was before. It is not Christian to seek Christ in the evolution of the Earth only since the Mystery of Golgotha. True Christians know that Christ had always been connected with the evolution of the Earth.

Let us now turn to the Jewish people. Did the Jews know Christ? I am not speaking of whether the Jewish people knew the name of Christ or whether those who really understand Christianity are justified in saying: ‘Judaism had Christ: Judaism knew Christ.’ It is possible to have some person or other near one, and to see his external form without recognizing his essential being, or being able to place a right value upon him, because one has not risen to real knowledge of him. In the true Christian sense ancient Judaism had Christ, only it did not recognize Him in His true Being. Is it Christian to speak in this way? It is Christian in as true a sense as it is Pauline. Where was Christ for ancient Judaism? It is said in the Old Testament that when Moses led the Jews into the wilderness, a Pillar of Cloud went before them by day and a Pillar of Fire by night. It is said that the Jews passed through the sea, that the sea parted in order that they might pass through; but that behind them the Egyptians were drowned, for the sea closed in on them. It is also said that the Jews murmured, but that at the command of God, Moses was able to go to a rock and to strike it with his staff so that water poured forth for the Jews to drink. Moses led the Jews, he himself being led by God. Who was the God of Moses? We will in the first instance allow Paul to answer. We read in the First Epistle to the Corinthians (x. 1-4): ‘Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant how that all our fathers were under the cloud (he means the pillar of fire) and all passed through the sea; and were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all eat the same spiritual meat and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of the spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ.’ Thus according to Paul, Who was it who led the Jews and who spoke with Moses? Who was it who had allowed water to flow out of the rock and who turned away the sea from the path of the Jews? Only those who wished to declare that Paul was no Christian would dare pronounce it unchristian to see Christ in the guiding God of the Old Testament, in the Lord of Moses.

In the Old Testament there is a passage which must, I think, present great difficulties for all who reflect more deeply. It is a passage to which anyone who does not read the Old Testament thoughtlessly, but who wants to understand its connections, will return again and again. ‘What may this passage mean?’ he asks himself. The passage is as follows: ‘Then Moses raised his hand, and struck the Rock with the staff twice; thereupon much water came forth, and the congregation drank, and their cattle. But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron: Because ye have not believed in Me to sanctify Me before the children of Israel, ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I will give unto them.’ Take this passage in its context in the Old Testament: When the people murmured, the Lord commanded Moses to strike the rock with a staff: Moses struck with his staff on the rock, and water flowed out; everything that the Lord commanded took place through Moses and Aaron, and directly after this, we are told that the Lord reproved Moses—if it is a reproof—for not having believed in Him. What does it mean? Take all the commentaries on this passage, and try to understand the passage by means of what has been written in them. One understands it as one understands a great deal in the Bible—that is to say, really not at all, for behind this passage a mighty mystery is hidden. What is hidden in this passage is this: He Who led Moses, Who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, He Who led the people through the Wilderness and caused water to flow out of the Rock, He was the Lord Christ! But the time was not yet come; Moses himself did not recognize Him; Moses thought He was another. That is what is meant by Moses not having believed in Him Who had commanded him to strike the Rock with his staff.

How did the Lord Christ appear to the Jewish People? We are told that by day it was in a Pillar of Cloud, and by night it was in a Pillar of Fire—and by His dividing the waters for their safety ... and many other things which we can read in the Old Testament. In phenomena of cloud and fire He appeared and was active, but never did it occur to the ancient Jews: That Which appeared in the Pillar of Cloud and in the Pillar of Fire, That Which worked wonders such as the parting of the waters, appears in its purest original form in the human soul. Why did this never occur to the ancient Jews? Because, owing to the course taken by human evolution, the soul of man had lost the power to feel its deepest being within itself. Thus the Jewish soul could look into Nature, it could allow the glory of the phenomena of the elements to work upon it; everywhere it could divine the existence of its God and Lord; but directly, within itself as it was, it could not find Him.

There in the Old Testament we have the Christ. There He worked, but men did not recognize Him. How did the Christ work? Do we not see how He worked, when we read through the Old Testament? The most significant thing Moses had to impart to his people through the mouth of Jehovah was the Ten Commandments. He had received them out of the power of the elements from which Jehovah spoke to him. Moses did not descend into the depths of his own soul; he did not ask in lonely meditation: ‘How does God speak in my own heart?’ He went up into the mountain, and through the power of the elements the Divine Will revealed itself to him. Volition, or Will, is the fundamental character of the Old Testament—this fundamental character is often called that of Law. Will works through the evolution of man, and is expressed in the Decalogue, in the Ten Commandments. The God proclaimed His Will to man through the elements. Will holds sway in the Earth evolution. That is, really, the purport of the Old Testament, and the Old Testament, in accordance with its whole purport, calls for man's subjection to this Will.

If we hold before our souls what we have just been considering, we can express the result in the words: The Will of the Lord was given to men; but men did not know the Lord: they knew not the Divine in such a way as to connect it with their own human soul.

Now let us turn from the Jews to the heathen. The heathen, had they Christ? Is it Christian to say of the heathen that they also had Christ? The heathen had their Mysteries. Those initiated in the Mysteries were brought to the point where their soul passed out of their bodies; the tie connecting body and soul was loosened; and when the soul was outside the body, the soul perceived the mysteries of being in the spiritual world. Much was connected with these Mysteries; much varied knowledge came to the candidates for initiation in the Mysteries. But when we investigate what was the highest that the disciple of the Mysteries could receive into himself, we find that it consisted in the fact that outside his body he was placed before the Christ. As Moses was placed before Christ, so, in the Mysteries was the disciple placed with his soul, outside his body, before Christ. Christ was there for the heathen also, but for them He was there only in the Mysteries. He revealed Himself to them only when the soul was out of the body. Christ was there for the heathen, even if among the heathen there was as little recognition of this Being as Christ, as there was among the Jews of that Being of Whom we have just spoken and before Whom the Mystery-Disciples were placed. The Mysteries were instituted for the heathen. Those who were fit and ready were admitted into the Mysteries. Through these Mysteries Christ worked upon the heathen world. Why did He work thus? Because the soul of man, in its development since the beginning of the earth, had lost its inherent power to find its true being through itself. This true being had to reveal itself to the soul of man when unhampered by the ties of human nature, that is to say when it was not bound up with the body. Hence Christ had to lead men through their being divested of their human nature in the Mysteries. Christ was there for the heathen too I He was their Leader in the Mysteries. For never could man have said: ‘When I develop my own powers, then I can find the meaning and purport of the earth.’ This meaning was lost, obscured in darkness. The forces of the human soul had been pressed down into regions too deep for the soul of itself, through its own powers, to have been able to realize the meaning of the earth.

When we allow that, which was given in the heathen Mysteries to the disciples and candidates for initiation, to work upon us, it is Wisdom. To the Jews was given WILL, through the Laws; to the disciples of the heathen Mysteries was given WISDOM. But if we look at what characterizes this heathen Wisdom, may we not express it in the words: If he did not go out of his body when he was a pupil of the Mysteries, the Earth-man could not recognize his God as such. As little through Wisdom as through Will could the Divinity reveal Himself to man. We find words that sound most wonderfully through Greek Antiquity, like a mighty demand upon humanity. At the entrance to the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo stood the words, ‘Man, know thyself!’ What are we told by the fact that these words, ‘Man, know thyself,’ stood before the abode of the Mysteries, like a demand upon man? We are told that when man remains what he has become since the beginning of the Earth, nowhere outside can he fulfill the commandment ‘Know thyself.’ He must become something more than man; he must loosen in the Mysteries the ties which bind the soul to the body, if he is to know himself. These words, standing like a mighty demand before the abode of the Mysteries of Apollo, point to the fact that darkness had fallen upon humanity—in other words that God could be reached through Wisdom as little as He could directly reveal Himself as Will.

In the same sense as the individual human soul feels that it cannot bring forth within itself the forces which impart to it the purport of the Earth, so we see the human soul at such a stage of development among the Jews that even Moses himself, their leader, did not recognize Who was leading him. Among the heathen we see that the demand ‘Know thyself’ could be fulfilled only in the Mysteries, because man, as he had developed in the course of the evolution of the Earth, was unable with his connection of body and soul to unfold the power whereby he could know himself. The words, ‘Not through Will and not through Wisdom is God to be known,’ sound to us from those ages. Through what, then, was God to be known?

We have often characterized the essential nature of the point of time when Christ entered into the evolution of earth-humanity. Let us now consider exactly what it meant when it is said that a certain darkness of the soul of man had set in, that the Divine could be revealed neither through Will nor through Wisdom. What is the real meaning of this?

People speak of so many relationships between the human and the Divine. They often speak of the relationship between the human and the Divine and of the meaning which the human has within the Divine, in such a way that it is impossible to differentiate between the relation of the human to the Divine, or of any other earthly thing to the Divine. To-day we find again and again that philosophers want to rise to the Divine through pure philosophy. But, through pure philosophy one cannot rise to the Divine. Certainly by means of it man does come to feel that he is bound up with the universe, and to know that the human being must, in some way or other, be bound up with the universe at Death; but how and in what manner he is thus connected with the universe man cannot know through pure philosophy. Why not? If you take the whole meaning of what we have considered to-day, you will be able to say to yourselves:

That which is first revealed to the soul of the Earth-man between birth and death is too weak to perceive anything that transcends the earthly that leads to the Divine-Spiritual. In order to make this quite clear to ourselves let us investigate the meaning of immortality.

In our day, many people have no longer any knowledge of the real meaning of human immortality. Many to-day speak of immortality when they can merely admit that the being of the human soul passes through the gates of death, and then finds some place or other in the Universal All. But every creature does that; what is united into the crystal passes over into the Universal All when the crystal is dissolved; the plant that fades passes into the Universal All. For man the thing is different. Immortality has only a meaning for man when he can carry his consciousness through the gates of death. Picture to yourselves an immortal human soul which was unconscious after death; such immortality would have absolutely no meaning at all. The human soul must carry its consciousness through the gates of death if it is to speak of its immortality. Because of the way in which the soul is united to the body, it cannot find anything in itself of which it can say, ‘I carry that consciously through death,’ for the consciousness of man is enclosed between birth and death; it reaches only as far as death; at first the consciousness possessed by the human soul extends only as far as death. Into this consciousness there shines the Divine Will, for example in the Ten Commandments. Read in the Book of Job as to whether this illumination could stimulate man's consciousness to such strength that it might say to itself: ‘I pass as a conscious being through the gates of death.’ What an intense interest there is for us in these words spoken to Job: ‘Submit thyself to God and die!’ We know that the man was uncertain as to whether he would pass through the gates of death with consciousness. And let us set beside this the Greek saying which gives expression to the dread felt by the Greek in the face of death: ‘Better a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shades.’ Here we have the testimony from heathenism also to the uncertainty felt by man concerning his immortality. And how uncertain many people are even to-day. All those people who say that man, when he goes through the gates of death, passes into the Universal All and is united with some Universal Being or other, take no heed of what the soul must ascribe to itself if it is to speak of its immortality.

We need only pronounce one word, and we shall recognize the position that man must take up with regard to his immortality—this is the word Love. All that we have said concerning the word Immortality we can now connect with what Love designates. Love is nothing we appropriate to ourselves through the Will; Love is nothing that we appropriate to ourselves through Wisdom; Love dwells in the region of the feelings, and we know that we could not be the ideal human soul, if that human soul could not be filled with love. When we penetrate into the nature of the soul, we realize that our human soul would no longer be a human soul if it could not love. But now, let us suppose that we were to pass through the gates of death in such a way that our human individuality was lost, and that we were to be united with some Universal Divinity. We should then be within this Divinity; we should belong to It. We could no longer love the Godhead; we should be in Him. Love would have no meaning if we were in the Godhead. If we could not carry our individuality through death, we should in death have to lose love, for in the moment that individuality ceased, love would cease. One being can only love another that is separate from itself; if we carry our Love of God through death, we must carry with us through death that which kindles Love within us.

If the meaning of the earth is to be brought to man, information concerning his immortality must be given him in such a way that his nature may be thought of as inseparable from Love. Neither Will nor Wisdom can give to man what he needs; only Love can give man what he needs. What was it then that became darkened in the course of man's evolutionary path over the Earth? Let us take the Jews, or the Heathen: the consciousness beyond death had become obscure, dark. Between birth and death-consciousness; beyond death and beyond birth—darkness; nothing remained of the consciousness within the earth-body—‘Know thyself’—at the entrance of the Greek Mysteries, the most holy demand of the Greek sanctuary upon mankind. Man could only answer: ‘If I remain bound to my body with my soul as when an earth-man, I cannot recognize myself in that individuality which can love beyond death. I cannot do it.’ The knowledge that man can love as individuality beyond death—that was what had become lost for man. Death is not the cessation of the physical body. Only a materialist can say that. Suppose that in every hour that he lived in his body, man's consciousness were such that he knew as certainly what lies beyond death as he knows to-day that the sun will rise on the morrow and take its journey across the heavens. Then death would have no sting for him, death would not be that which we call death; man would know in the body that death is only a phenomenon leading from one form to another. Paul did not understand by ‘death’ the cessation of the physical body; by ‘death’ he understood the fact that consciousness only extends as far as death, and that man, in so far as he was united with the body in the existence of that period, could, within his body, extend his consciousness only as far as death. Wherever Paul speaks of death we might add: ‘Lack of consciousness beyond death.’

What gave to man the Mystery of Golgotha? Is it a number of natural phenomena, a pillar of cloud, a pillar of fire that stands before humanity with the Mystery of Golgotha? No! A man stands before men—Christ Jesus. With the Mystery of Golgotha did anything out of mysterious nature take place—did a sea divide so that the people of God could go through? No! A man stood before men, Who made the lame to walk and the blind to see. That proceeded from a man.

The Jew had had to look into Nature when he wanted to see Him Whom he called his Divine Lord. Now it was a man Who could be seen. Of a man it could be said that He had God dwelling in Him. The heathen had to be initiated; his soul had to be withdrawn from his body in order that he might stand before the Humanity which is the Christ. On the earth he had been unable to divine the Christ; he could only know that the Christ was outside the earth. But He Who had been outside the earth came upon the earth, took on a human body. In Christ Jesus there stood as man before men That Being Who formerly had stood in the Mysteries before the soul that was liberated from the body. And what came to pass through this? In this the beginning was made, whereby the powers that man had lost since the beginning of the Earth in the course of the earth-evolution—the powers through which his immortality was assured to him—were to come again to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the overcoming of Death on Golgotha the forces originated which could rekindle the powers which had been lost. And the path of man through the earth-evolution will henceforth be that by taking the Christ more and more into himself he will discover that within himself which can love beyond death—that is to say, he can stand before his God as an immortal individuality. Therefore only since the Mystery of Golgotha, has the saying become true: ‘Love God above all, and thy neighbor as thyself.’

Will was given from the burning thorn bush; Will was given through the Ten Commandments. Wisdom was given through the Mysteries. But Love was given when God became man in Christ Jesus. And the guarantee that we can love beyond death, that by means of the powers won back for our souls a Society of Love exists between God and man, and love of all men for one another—the guarantee for that proceeds from the Mystery of Golgotha. In the Mystery of Golgotha the human soul has found what man had lost from the primal beginnings of the earth, in that his forces had become ever weaker and weaker.

Three forces in three members of the soul: Will, Wisdom, Love I In this Love the soul experiences its relation to Christ.

I wanted to bring these things before you from a certain angle. What may have seemed aphoristic in the explanations given to-day will find its context later on. But I think we can inscribe deeply within our souls, that progress in the knowledge of Christ is a real gain for the human soul, and that when we consider the relationship of the human soul to Christ, it again becomes clear to us how before the Mystery of Golgotha there was a sheath, as it were, between the human soul and Christ; how this sheath was broken by the Mystery of Golgotha, and how we can say with truth: ‘Through the Mystery of Golgotha a Cosmic Being flowed into the Earth-life, a Super-earthly Being united Himself with the Earth.’

As to what the human soul can experience in itself with its Christ, we shall speak of together during the next few days. We shall speak in the following lectures of all that the human soul, with Christ, can experience within itself.

As we live through the day and realize all that we owe to the sun, and to what extent the tasks of life are connected with the sunlight, we forget that through the whole pleasure and satisfaction we derive from the sunlight, there runs the thread of sure knowledge that, on the following morning, after we have rested through the night, the sun will rise anew for us. This is a part of the confidence that lives in our soul—confidence in the lasting reality of the world order. We may not always consciously realize it, but if asked, we should certainly answer in this sense. We devote ourselves to-day to our work because we know that the fruit of our work is assured for tomorrow, that after the night's rest the sun will reappear, and the fruits of our labor can ripen. We turn our gaze upon the earth's covering of plants; this year we revere and admire all its display; we know that the world order ordains that the same covering of plants and fruits for next year will proceed from the seed of this year. If asked again why we live on with such a sense of security, we should in similar circumstances give the answer that the reality of the world order seems to us assured; it seems to us a matter of certainty that what has matured as far as seed in the old crops will in reality reappear.

But there is something of special significance for our inner soul-life, there is something in life which requires a pledge or guarantee of some kind, because, for those who truly think and feel, it does not bear that guarantee of certainty within itself—‘our ideals’—and so much is contained in the expression, ‘our ideals.’ When we think and feel in a higher sense, our ideals belong to those things that are more important to our souls than is external reality. It is our ideals which set our souls inwardly aflame, and in many connections impart to its life its value and dearness. When we look into external life, and at what assures for us the reality of life, we are often troubled by the thought: does this reality contain something that assures to us just the most precious thing in life—the realization of our ideals?

Innumerable conflicts of the human soul proceed from the fact that people doubt more or less strongly in the realization of that upon which they would fain rely with every fiber of their being; that is to say, the realization of their ideals. We need only consider the world of the physical plane in an unprejudiced way and we shall find innumerable human souls passing through the hardest, bitterest struggles owing to the non-attainment of what they hold to be of value in the ideal sense. For from the evolution of reality we cannot in the same sense conclude that our ideals in life will prove to be the seed of a future reality in the same way as the plant seeds of this year foretell the coming harvest. These plant-seeds, we know, will bear within them that which next year will be reality in the widest sense. But if we consider our ideals, we may indeed cherish in our souls the belief that these ideals will have some significance, some value for life; but certainty we cannot have. As human beings we should like our ideals to be the seeds for a later future, but we look in vain for that which can give them assured reality. Even when we consider the physical plane, we find our souls with their ideals, frequently in a parlous condition.

Let us pass from the world of the physical plane into the world of the occult, into the world of hidden spirituality. A man who has become a spiritual seer learns to know souls in the period through which they have to pass between death and a new birth, and it is very significant when one turns the spiritual gaze upon those souls who in their earthly life, were wholly filled with high ideals, with ideals brought forth out of the fire and the light of their hearts.

A man has passed through the gate of death, and has before him the well-known life-tableau, the memory-picture of his past earth life, and interwoven with it is the world of ideals. This world of ideals can come before a man after death in such a way that his feelings concerning it may be expressed as follows: ‘these ideals which have fired and illumined my heart in its innermost recesses, and which I have considered the dearest, the most intimate treasure of my heart, now assume a strange unfamiliar aspect. They look as though they would not rightly belong to all that I remember as actual earth-experience on the physical plane.’ Yet the dead man feels himself magnetically attracted to these ideals of his; he feels, as it were, fascinated by them. But they may also contain an element that gives him a mild shock; he feels that this element may be dangerous, that it may alienate him from the earth-evolution, and what is connected with the Earth-evolution in the life between death and a new birth. In order to express myself quite clearly, I should like to connect what I have said with concrete experiences, with which some of those sitting here are already familiar, but which must this evening be illumined from a certain side so that they may be brought into connection with what I have said in reference to the nature of human ideals.

Of recent years, a man of poetic nature joined us [Christian Morgenstern.]. As the result of a life of dedication to the purest idealism, and a life that had already in pre-anthroposophical days passed through a mystical deepening, this man entered our Movement. Despite the fact that his soul dwelt in a body that was a prey to consumption, he dedicated himself, heart and soul, to our Movement. In the spring of this year we lost him from the earth-life; he passed through the gate of death. He has left to mankind a series of wonderful poems, which have been recently published. Owing to the difficulties of his external physical life, he was in a certain sense, for long periods separated in space from our Movement, either in a lonely spot in the Swiss mountains, or in some other place, where he had to care for his health. But away there, he clung to our Movement, and his poems, which in certain circles have lately been recited over and over again, are the poetic reflection, as it were, of what we have been developing for more than ten years. Now he has passed through the gate of death, and a very remarkable thing results from the occult observance of this soul. The significance of the soul's life in that disease-stricken body has become apparent only since the death of that body. That which this soul absorbed while his soul faithfully followed the progress of our Movement, developed greater force under the surface of the gradually dying body. The diseased body concealed this so long as the soul dwelt within it. And now, when one comes into the presence of this soul after death, there shines forth, as it can only shine forth in the spiritual life, the content of the life which this soul absorbed. The cloudlike sphere, as it were, in which our friend now lives after having passed through the gate of death, is present like a mighty cosmic tableau. For the occult observer it is a most striking sight. It may, perhaps, be said that the occult seer is able to cast his gaze round the whole wide sphere of the cosmic world, but it is one thing to allow the gaze to wander round the whole sphere of the cosmic world of soul, and another to see, separated out from a particular human soul something that has the appearance of a mighty tableau, like a painting of what otherwise is there of itself in the spiritual world. Just as we have the physical world around us, and then see it reflected in the magnificent paintings of a Raphael or Michelangelo, so is it in the spiritual world in the case of which we are here speaking. Just as one never says in presence of a picture by Michelangelo or Raphael, ‘this picture gives me nothing more for I have the whole great reality before me,’—so one does not say, in observing the tableau that mirrors in a soul all that one elsewhere perceives in the vision of spiritual reality, that this soul tableau is not an infinite enrichment. And it may be said that there is infinitely more to be learnt in the presence of this friend who after death contains in his soul a reflection of all that has been described from out the spiritual worlds through the course of many years, than from direct contemplation of the vastness of spiritual reality.

This is an occult fact. I have repeatedly mentioned it to friends in different places and I have now taken from it elements that are of importance in connection with the subject we are to-day considering. As this occult fact presents itself, it shows me something else. In face of all the opposition to-day to the promulgation of occult teaching as we give it—the question may often be put (I will not say there is ‘doubt’ but that the question is put): ‘What progress will this occult teaching find in the hearts and souls of men?’ ‘Is there any guarantee, any assurance that the work of the Anthroposophical Society will continue to influence the course of the spiritual evolution of humanity?’ The sight of what the soul of our friend has become is one such assurance from the occult world. Why? The friend who has left behind him the poems: Wir Janden einen Pfad (‘We found a Path’) lives in the immense cosmic tableau that is for him after death like a kind of soul-body; but while he was connected with us, he absorbed into his being our teaching about the Christ. He absorbed this anthroposophical teaching, binding it to his own soul in such a way that it became the very spiritual heart-blood of his soul; it contained the Christ as substance. The Christ Being flowed into him in the teaching. The Christ, as He lives in our Movement, passed over into his soul. In the face of this occult fact, the following presents itself. The man who goes through the gate of death may indeed live in a cosmic tableau of this kind; he will go forward with it through the life that lies between death and a new birth. This will work and be embodied in his whole being, or rather it will ‘en-soul’ his whole being, and it will permeate his new earth-life, when he again descends to a life on earth. There is also this in addition, that such a soul receives a germ of perfection for its own life, and progresses in the evolution of the earth's existence. All this comes to pass because of the fact that such a soul has absorbed the teaching into its being. But this particular soul accepted all the teaching, steeped through and spiritualized by the Christ Being, by the conception of the Christ Being which we can make our own. All that such a soul absorbed, however, is not merely a treasure stimulating the further evolution of this single soul, but through Christ Who is there for all mankind, it is a treasure which works back again upon the whole of mankind. And that cosmic tableau which for clairvoyant eyes is being developed in the soul of him who this spring passed through the portal of death-that Christ enfilled soul-tableau, is to me an assurance that what may be given to-day from out of the spiritual worlds will, through the love of Christ radiate into souls who will come later. They will be set on fire, inspired by it. Not only will our friend carry forward our Christ-enfilled teaching to the greater perfecting of his own life, but because it has become part of his being it will become an impulse from the spiritual world to the souls who will live in the coming centuries; into them will pour the rays of that which is Christ-enfilled. Your souls cannot take in for themselves alone the teaching which is their most precious possession, but they will bear it through epochs of evolution yet to come. If you will enfill this teaching with Christ, it will stream forth as a seed into the whole of humanity because the Christ Being belongs to the whole of humanity. Where Christ is, the treasures of life are not isolated; their fruitfulness for individuals is always there, but at the same time they become a treasure for the whole of mankind.

We must place this clearly before our souls. We see then what a significant difference there is between Wisdom that is not filled with Christ, and Wisdom that is illuminated by the Light of Christ. When we come together in a narrower circle of our Society we are not there for the sake of abstract considerations, but in order to follow up true occultism, undismayed by what the modern world has to say against this occultism. Consequently we may speak of matters which only come to our knowledge through investigation in the spiritual.

A second example shall be mentioned. In recent years we have had occasion in Munich to perform what we call the Mystery Dramas, and Swedish friends have frequently been present. The performances of these Mystery Dramas had to differ in many respects from other performances. There had to be a sense of responsibility to the spiritual ·world. One could not attend these Mystery Plays as if one were going to an ordinary theatre. What is done in such a case must proceed from one's own soul-powers. But let us understand clearly that when in our physical life we want to carry something out through the will of our souls, we are compelled to use our muscular power, which is imparted to us from without, as it were, but which belongs to us. If we lack this muscular power that comes to us from outside, we cannot carry out certain things. In a certain sense muscular force belongs to us, and yet again not to us. So it is with our spiritual faculties, only there, our physical forces, our muscular forces do not help us when these faculties are to be active in the spiritual spheres. The powers of the spiritual world itself must come to our aid; the powers and forces which stream out of the spiritual world into our physical world must irradiate and permeate us. Undertakings of a different character may indeed begin with another consciousness. It was always clear to me that the facts could only be presented as the years went on, that the different impulses might only be used when definite spiritual forces, moving in this direction, flowed into our human forces, when spiritual ‘Guardian-Angel’ forces flowed into our human forces.

In the early days when we were beginning our activities in a very small circle—and when we gathered together in Berlin, at the beginning of this century, it was always very easy to count the number present. For a short time a faithful soul was always among them, a soul who through her Karma possessed a special talent for beauty and art. Even though it was for a short time, this soul worked with us, in all our most intimate activities. With an inner depth of feeling, and an enlightened enthusiasm, this soul worked among us, and absorbed the cosmological teachings which it was possible to give at that time. And I remember even to-day how at that time a fact came before my soul which may perhaps seem unimportant, but which may be mentioned here. When our Movement began, a periodical which, for well-considered reasons, was called ‘Lucifer,’ came into being. At that time I wrote an article under the title of ‘Lucifer’ which was meant to lay down, in germ at any rate, the direction along which we wished to work. That article, even if it does not say so in words, adhered to the direction in which the then Theosophical—and now Anthroposophical Society—should be maintained, and I may say that that article too is Christ-enfilled. The lifeblood of Christianity is in that article, and as such it can flow into those souls who absorb what that article contains. It may perhaps here be mentioned that at that time this article met with the most heated opposition among the circle of the few who had joined us from the old theosophical Movement. Everywhere was this article considered entirely ‘untheosophical.’ The personality of whom I have been speaking entered into this article with the warmest possible heart and the deepest inner feeling; and I was able to say to myself: when it is a question of the actual truth, her acquiescence is of far more importance for the progress of the Movement than all the rest of the opposition together. In short, this soul was deeply interwoven with all that was to flow into our anthroposophical Movement. She soon died; as early as 1904 she passed through the gate of death. For a while after death she had to struggle through in the spiritual world to that which she really was. Not so early as 1907, but from the time of our plays in Munich, from 1909 onwards, and then in an increasing degree as time went on, this soul was always there guarding and illuminating what I was able to undertake in connection with our Munich Festival Plays. All that this soul, owing to her talent for the beautiful, was able to give to the artistic realization of our anthroposophical ideas, worked down out of the spiritual world, as though from the guardian angel of our Mystery Plays, in such a way that one felt in oneself the power to take the necessary initiative. Just as in the physical world our muscular energy supports us, so the spiritual force streaming down from the spiritual worlds flowed into one's own spiritual force. Thus do the dead work with us, thus they are present with us. That was yet another case—and here comes the point about which I must specially speak to-day—that was again a case in which all that the personality had absorbed in the field of Anthroposophy manifestly assisted progress not only in her individual life, but it flowed back again to us in something that we ventured to do for the whole Movement. Two possibilities existed; this personality had accepted all that she could, she had it in her soul, and so she could apply it for the sake of her further progress through life and also through the life after death. ... That is right—it ought to happen so—for the human soul must, if it is to attain its divine goal, become ever more and more perfect; it must do all that is possible to help forward this perfecting. But because this soul had taken into herself the whole purport of what it is to be ‘Christ-enfilled,’ what she had taken into herself was able to work not merely for herself but it was able to flow down to us—and become in its effectiveness, a kind of common possession for us all. That is what Christ brings about when He permeates the fruits of our knowledge. He does not take away all that these fruits of our knowledge represent for our individuality; Christ died for all souls; and when we rise up to that knowledge which must be possessed by all true earth-men:—‘Not I, but the Christ in me’—when we realize the Christ within us in all that we know, and when we attribute to Christ the forces which we ourselves employ, then, what we take into our being works not for ourselves alone, but for the whole of humanity. It becomes fruitful for the whole of humanity. Look at the souls of men over the earth. Christ died for them all, and that which you receive in His Name you receive for your own perfecting, but also as a most precious possession that is effective for all mankind.

And now let us return to our introductory words this evening. It was said that when, after death, we look back upon our life-tableau, on that which we have lived through, it appears to us as though our ideals might have something strange about them. We feel in regard to our ideals that they really do not bear us forward to the common life of men, that they have no inherent guarantee of reality in the general life of men, that they carry us away from it. Lucifer has a powerful influence over our ideals because they flow in such beauty out of the human soul, but only out of the human soul, and are not rooted in external reality. This is why Lucifer has such power, and it is really the magnetic impulse of Lucifer which we experience after death. Lucifer approaches us, and the ideals we have are especially valuable to him, because by the indirect path of these ideals he can draw us to himself. But when we permeate with Christ all that we attain spiritually, when we feel the Christ in us, knowing that what we receive, is also received by the Christ in us—‘Not I, but the Christ in me’—then, when we pass through the gate of death we do not look back upon our ideals as though they tended to alienate us from the world. Our ideals have been committed to Christ and we know that it is Christ Who makes our ideals His own concern. He takes our ideals upon Himself. ‘Not I alone can so take my ideals upon myself that they are seeds for humanity upon the Earth, as surely as the plant-seeds of the present summer are seeds for the earthly plant-robe for the coming summer; but the Christ in me can do this; the Christ in me permeates my ideals with the reality of substance.’ And of those ideals we can say: ‘Yes, as man we give expression to ideals upon the earth, but in us lives Christ, and He takes them upon Him.’ These are the real germs of future reality. Christ-enfilled Idealism is permeated with the Seed of Reality, and he who truly understands Christ looks upon these ideals in this way; he says: Ideals have not as yet in themselves that guarantee of their own reality, their own actuality, which inheres in the plant-seed for the coming year; but when our ideals are committed to the Christ within us, then they are real seed. Whoever has a true Christ consciousness making into his life substance St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but the Christ in me is the Bearer of my ideals,’ he has this realization. He says: there are the ripe germinating seeds, there are the streams and seas, the hills and valleys—but close by is the world of idealism; this world of idealism is taken over by Christ, and it is like the seed of the future world in the world of the present, for Christ bears our ideals on into the next world as the God of Nature bears the plant-seeds of this year on into the coming year.

This gives reality to idealism; it removes from the soul those bitter, gloomy doubts which can arise in the feeling: What becomes of the world of ideals that are intimately bound up with external reality, and with all that I must consider of value? He who takes the Christ-Impulse into himself perceives that all that ripens in the human soul as wisdom-treasure is permeated, saturated through and through with reality. And I have brought two examples before you, in order to show you out of the occult world, how different is the working of that which is committed, Christ-enfilled, to the soul, from that which is committed to it only as wisdom which is not Christ-enfilled. What the soul has filled with Christ in this earth-life flows down to us in quite a different way from that which is not filled with Christ.

A terrible impression is produced, when clairvoyant consciousness looks out into the spiritual world and sees souls, in whom full Christ consciousness has not arisen during their last incarnation, fighting for their ideals—fighting for what is dearest to them, because in their ideals Lucifer has a power over them, which enables him to separate them from the fruits of reality which the whole world ought to enjoy.

Quite different is the aspect of those who have allowed their soul-wealth, their wisdom-wealth, to become Christ-enfilled. Such souls work upon us already in this life, evoke in us an after-glow, they animate and vitalize our souls, even in bodily life. What can be felt as most precious inner soul-warmth, as comfort in the most difficult conditions of life, as support in the blackest abyss of life, is this very condition of being filled with the Christ Impulse. And why? Because he who is really permeated with the Christ Impulse feels that in the conquests of his soul, however imperfect they may appear in earthly life, there lies this Christ-Impulse as the assurance and the guarantee for their fulfillment. This is why Christ is such a consolation in the doubts of life, such a support for the soul. How much for the souls of earth remains unfulfilled in life! How much seems to them to be of value, although in the outer physical world it can only appear to be like vain hopes of spring. But what we honestly feel in our soul, what we can unite with our soul as a valued possession—that we can commit to Christ; and whatever may be the prospects of its realization, when we have committed it to Christ He bears it forth upon His wings into Reality. It is not always necessary to have knowledge of this, but the soul that feels the Christ within it, as the body feels its life-giving blood, senses the warmth, the element of realization in this Christ-Impulse in respect of all that cannot be realized in the external world, though the soul with perfect justification longs for its realization. The fact that clairvoyant consciousness sees these things when it surveys souls after death is only a proof of how justifiable is the feeling of the human soul, when in all that man does, in all that he thinks, he feels himself Christ-enfilled, takes the Christ into his soul as its comfort, as support, saying in earth life: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me!’ For man may say: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’ in this earth-life! Recall to your souls a passage which stands in my book Theosophy and which is meant to indicate one of those points where, at a certain stage of the spiritual life, there is a realization, a fulfillment of what fills the soul in this earthly-life. In a certain passage of my Theosophy I have drawn attention to the fact that ‘Tat wam asi,’ ‘Thou art That,’ upon which the Eastern sages meditate, comes before man as a reality at that moment when the transition from the so-called soul-world into the spiritual world takes place. Look up the passage in question. But something else can become a reality, in a matter that is of immense human significance in reference to St. Paul's words: ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’ which the Christ-enfilled soul may say in this life. If man knows how to experience in such a way that it is inner truth, this ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ it comes to fulfillment after death with mighty import. For what we accept in the world under the aspect of life which can be expressed in the words ‘Not I, but the Christ in me,’ becomes our own possession, our inner nature between death and a new birth, to such an extent that we may impart it as fruit to the whole of humanity. What we so take that we accept it under the point of view ‘Not I’ Christ makes into a common possession for all humanity. What I accept from the point of view ‘Not I,’ of this I may dare, after death, to say and to feel, ‘“Not for me alone” but for all my fellow men I And then only may I say the words: “Yes, I have loved Thee above all, even above myself,” therefore have I hearkened to the command, “Love thy God above all.”‘—‘Not I, but Christ in me’ And I have fulfilled that other command, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ for that which I have attained for myself will, through the fact that Christ bears it in reality, become the common property of all earth-humanity.

We must allow such things as these to work upon us, and then we experience what Christ has to signify in the human soul. Christ can be the bearer and supporter, the comforter and illuminator of the soul of man; and so we gradually become familiar with that which may be called the relation of Christ to the human soul.